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10/30/2009 3:58:34 PM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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"The Jekyll Island Horror"--how's that for a feature story? Looks like a Model-T Ford on the Dada-like, Dr. No-ish (no ish? I got mine) cover by Jeroen Advocaat. Other interesting-looking items on the contents page, "Conditional Love" by Felicity Shoulders, "Hey, Dude, Where's My Hovercar?" by James Patrick Kelly, and the annual readers' awards, I'll be able to vote in them this year, having read all the stories published during the year.
Any other impressions of the issue forthcoming?
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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10/30/2009 8:03:39 PM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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Some of the readers seem to be viewed as kind of illiterate on the Readers' Award form. I went back to the editorial and found a description of a highly illiterate post office there, too, so maybe it's a matter of concern at the present time. As to the Hugos for magazines not being, I think that may be due to there only being three to choose from that can be considered dependable magazines. The same magazines are likely to keep coming up until it gets boring.
Seems to me Greeks had enough devices to suit them--remember Ulysses' ship had a steering wheel, and that's a complicated device. (Referring to Silverberg's column.)
I couldn't get really interested in the divergent history enterprise described in Roberson's story--they are too far away to count for anything. They seemed to have the right idea about what would sell and make a profit, but didn't know how to handle it. The poem by Ruth Berman following it was just an issue too late for me to rate it #1 as a poem--it's one of the best I've known Asimov's to print. But her work in the time range covered did not place on my three poetry selections.
I like how Di Filippo remarks on the great currency of post-Apocalyptic fiction. The two fellows in Roberson's story might know what he's talking about.
Always some strange conventions coming up on that convention calendar--"Horror Hound Weekend". I was looking for the Starbase Indy since they seem to be putting on one this year, but I don't think they've been handling their publicity very well.
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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10/31/2009 12:42:20 PM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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Tem's story, as his name suggests, requires a little interpretation. The possibility of ships which opine turning into wombs permeates Star Trek and often these ships speak in a female voice. (Speaking of ST, where is the guidebook so many writers must use which includes such usages as "breached"?) We have a sexual situation in this story which is essentially what the story concerns and which relates to estrangement. Everyone is estranged in this intellectually-maintained empire which has no known guiding spirit except this elusive "emperor". The womb-ship is part of layer upon layer of government without any management. The condition exists in real life and is taken to extremes here where it is given an examination. The story wouldn't be called existential as it goes beyond the boundaries of existential thought as it leaves anything that can be called existence behind. It just refers back to existentialism.
Does the story have anything in common with stories by Rajnar Vajra?
Felicity Shoulders' story makes it clear that the genetics being practiced in it is neither beneficial nor successful, and puts one in mind of medical incompetence and how that looks to sufferers from incurable disorders. Apparently it ends with euthanasia about to be commenced. It's an attitude advanced over the one that I used to see expressed in OMNI and other defunct magazines that genetics was both the coming thing and where it's at, but it's one of the first stories I've seen that escapes the pervasive doctrine expressed in these magazines. Heretofore an objector to genetics experimentation would have to refer back to FRANKENSTEIN.
I don't know why Ursula Leguin would be welcoming Carol Emshwiller into the fold of the elite, as Carol Emshwiller has been around longer than her, as far as I know. There was a "rare women writing sf" thing going on about her when she first appeared, I think in F&SF. "Wilds" brings up that at least three of the four short stories in this issue have been heavily about estrangement, but I don't have much to say about it except that I'm not sure how the character in it survived his aggressive entrance into nature, considering bacteria. He was eating raw fish and questionable food sources. Maybe dogs can survive that kind of eating, but I think humans are considered not cut out for it. Anyway I get the point of how brutal nature has become.
Noting about Mark Rich's poem that as the two were in sight of one another they would, it seems to me, have gravitated toward one another and thus closed the gap, but perhaps Rich is aware of that point and is portraying a circumstantial opposite.
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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11/2/2009 9:40:55 AM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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A Google search immediately brings up quite a bit of information about Jekyll Island, placing Steele in the category of writers about local places, places they've been; we've already read one such story set near Boston. Still the story has all the looks of a hoax. Detail after detail seems not to tally with fact, for instance there's a magazine in it named "Fascinating SF" which predates Amazing, the first SF magazine outside of the partially SF magazine "Air Wonder". I think the crux of the hoax is whether Steele got paid for presenting someone else's story. Aside from the form of the story, it presented nothing new, and resembled something on Syfy's monster lineups, with the same sort of unlikeable characters. Think I'll look over the Reed and Landis offerings for my novelette.
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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11/2/2009 7:31:37 PM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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I googled De Niro, Pacino, The Good Hand and got no results. Apparently no such movie as is cited in Reed's story was ever made. I'm glad, but I don't know why he'd put real actors in a movie he just made up. Anyway, I like reading his mundane-sf looks at holocausts as he shows the probable effects on tourism and international enterprising of a nuclear standoff. Though I don't like this sentence: "Like most twelve-year-old boys, my favorite movies usually involved World War II." Movies aren't like most twelve-year-old boys. "As is true of most twelve-year-old boys" would turn the trick.
"Marya and the Pirate" is like a twice-told tale, much in the folkloric tradition. As is FIREFLY, which it recalls to mind. I was wondering why people with what it takes to get into space would be going for cheap piracy, then found that it was due to their enterprise having gone under, leaving them with the equipment but no capital whatsoever unless they sold the equipment. Next, another sex-in-space incident, no more believeable than it's ever been made. but as usual described as inevitable...and under even triter and more improbable circumstance, "we'll be dead pretty soon so let's get pleasure while we can." People don't want that when they're about to die. Also women don't lay with people who have robbed and next to killed them, and this one shows all the evidence of putting down a creep. It might be nice, if writers want sex scenes, to go back and recall what sex is about. The relating is what the story's about, but why?
I've finished up on the issue---is anyone else wanting to comment? Feel welcome to post below.
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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11/3/2009 1:28:53 AM
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Brian Crowley
Posts 23
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John Thiel wrote:
Felicity Shoulders' story makes it clear that the genetics being practiced in it is neither beneficial nor successful, and puts one in mind of medical incompetence and how that looks to sufferers from incurable disorders. Apparently it ends with euthanasia about to be commenced.
I think you misread the ending.
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11/3/2009 10:52:46 AM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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Thanks, Brian, I'll keep an eye on my comment.
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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11/4/2009 10:28:05 PM
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Thomas R
Posts 3572
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I just got the issue. I've barely looked at December's though. I'm easily distracted of late and going through the issues slow.
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"Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies." Federico Garcia Lorca
"I was going down a long hallway, and at the end of it there was a bright light a kind man with a beard reaching his hand out to me, beckoning me, and he looked at me as I got closer.. and said: 'Hey buddy, can you spare some change? I want a cup of coffee!'" Tom Servo
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11/6/2009 11:40:28 PM
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Marian
Posts 3065
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Just read Silverberg's article. Interesting point that since the survival of the Greek computer was so accidental, it suggests that kind of technology was not uncommon.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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11/7/2009 8:02:51 AM
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Jbarney
Posts 91
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John Thiel wrote:
"The Jekyll Island Horror"--how's that for a feature story? Looks like a Model-T Ford on the Dada-like, Dr. No-ish (no ish? I got mine) cover by Jeroen Advocaat. Other interesting-looking items on the contents page, "Conditional Love" by Felicity Shoulders, "Hey, Dude, Where's My Hovercar?" by James Patrick Kelly, and the annual readers' awards, I'll be able to vote in them this year, having read all the stories published during the year.
Any other impressions of the issue forthcoming?
I really enjoyed "The Jekyll Island Horror". I thought it was really quite the hook for the writer to include his own "comments" and backstory as to how he came across Solomon Hess's manuscript. The story itself was very well done, the pacing was great. The build up to the Hess going to take a look at the crash site was great. The ending was a little disappointing, but oh well. It was still a good story. I've read the three novelletes in the issue and the only one I really didn't like was "The Good Hand". Not a slap against the writer, just wasn't a story I could get into.
I'm looking forward to the four short stories.
Jason
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11/7/2009 10:23:47 AM
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Brian Crowley
Posts 23
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This issue seemed like an especially quick read with several recurring themes - including alternate histories, publishing, myths and stories. I was impressed with 3 of the short stories:
1. Conditional Love - by far my favorite of the issue. Interesting take on the potential problems associated with genetic engineering. What makes the story exceptional though is the Dr. at the center of the story and the dramatic choices she makes. Also, Minerva (who is literally the poster child against genetic tampering) is realistically portrayed. I thought I saw where the story was going, but it took a bit of an unexpected twist for me that was exactly the right ending. Exceptional story.
2. Wilds - interesting & fun origin of a rather mythic forest "creature".
3. A Letter From the Emperor - great use of the galactic empire & emperor ideas and exploration of the role/power of stories for the characters. I liked that Jacob returned directly to his ship after reading the letter and that he didn't stick around - very appropriate & well done.
I enjoyed "The Good Hand" quite a bit. The other novelettes were fun, but did not seem too original. I agree with a lot of J. Thiel's comments on the pirate story.
I didn't like "Wonder House", which seemed derivative of a few of Chabon's ideas, but was not a terribly engaging story or alternate world.
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11/7/2009 6:45:50 PM
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Rich Horton
Posts 354
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For me, "A Letter from the Emperor" is the clear best story of the issue.
"Conditional Love" is also nice work, nice manipulation of readers' natural sympathies.
Both "The Jekyll Island Horror" and "Wonder House" use something SF readers of a certain age (mine, I suppose) are predisposed to like -- evocation of the old pulp publishing era -- and while that's peripheral to Steele's story it's central to Roberson's, fatally so, in my view. (Not as bad as, but in the same direction of bad as, Burstein's "Cosmic Corkscrew" thing from a few years ago.)
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11/8/2009 5:34:04 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 3572
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Brian Crowley wrote:
I didn't like "Wonder House", which seemed derivative of a few of Chabon's ideas, but was not a terribly engaging story or alternate world.
Mostly agree. I like many stories in this "Celestial Universe" of his, but this one felt like a bit of a throwaway gag about Superman or something. However I have yet to read anything else in the issue.
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"Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies." Federico Garcia Lorca
"I was going down a long hallway, and at the end of it there was a bright light a kind man with a beard reaching his hand out to me, beckoning me, and he looked at me as I got closer.. and said: 'Hey buddy, can you spare some change? I want a cup of coffee!'" Tom Servo
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11/15/2009 4:55:40 AM
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AVorlon
Posts 193
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Thomas R wrote:
Brian Crowley wrote: I didn't like "Wonder House", which seemed derivative of a few of Chabon's ideas, but was not a terribly engaging story or alternate world. Mostly agree. I like many stories in this "Celestial Universe" of his, but this one felt like a bit of a throwaway gag about Superman or something. However I have yet to read anything else in the issue.
That’s exactly what I thought about it too. The author creates an alternative world similar to our own, and then throws in the creation of Supernan. I was thinking ‘so what’, and are we now going to get stories from the same universe about the creation of the television show “Mexican Idol”? How about we just re-invent everything in a string of pointless stories?
Sorry to be so harsh. I did enjoy the Tem story, and I think I’m still processing that one. There were several levels to that, even though it wasn’t very long. The disconnect with the protaganist to his ship-mate, who committed suicide, and to everyone else in general except for his AI, was really well done. The fact that the “letter from the Emporer” was taken from the dead man’s journal of fantasies, and completely fabricated, was also a nice touch.
Also, I loved the comment earlier from John Theil, about having sex in space with a pirate who basically just tried to kill you. ”It might be nice, if writers want sex scenes, to go back and recall what sex is about.”Heh, loved that one.
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11/23/2009 2:50:06 PM
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Fidus Achates
Posts 22
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Got this, the first issue of my (re-)subscription after a 3-year hiatus (more or less), a couple of weeks ago. Just now getting around to it. I've only read the non-fiction departments so far, and of course, taken a nice long look at the cover. Nice cover. Can't wait to read "The Jekyll Island Horror" if it's got guys in 1930s hats and a monster washed up on shore.
On the Greeks and Romans: it's amazing what they knew about their world, given their limited reach and lack of modern technology. Greeks and Romans had gone as far as Iceland, beyond the Pillars of Gibraltar, circumnavigated Africa; some ended up in India and Central Asia; one Roman legion is even purported to have made it as far as western China, having gotten lost. They had some wonky speculations about the universe beyond the Earth, but they at least knew the Earth was spherical (based on geometry), and they could observe that the Moon orbited around the Earth. For some real entertainment, read Cicero's Somnium Scipionis ("The Dream of Scipio, book six of his De Re Publica): the elder Scipio appears in a dream to the younger Scipio and tells him the structure of the universe. A fascinating hodge-podge of ideas current at the time -- gives you quite a look at what the Romans could speculate with the tools at hand.
Looking forward to "Marya and the Pirate." Maybe tonight.
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11/23/2009 4:25:03 PM
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karlb
Posts 534
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Greeks and Romans had gone as far as Iceland, beyond the Pillars of Gibraltar, circumnavigated Africa
Fidus, is there anything beyond educated guesswork that they got to Iceland? AFAIK the identity of "Ultima Thule" is still up in the air. And wasn't it some hired Phoenicians who sailed around Africa, for Pharoah Necho? The story I remember is that Herodotus didn't believe the tale because they said they had the sun on their "right hand" (i.e., to the north) during the westward part of the circumnavigation, which is exactly why modern scholars DO believe it.
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11/23/2009 6:51:29 PM
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John Thiel
Posts 1980
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How was it for you during the time you weren't with Asimov's, Fidus?
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Surprising Stories has a slush pile.
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11/24/2009 9:11:10 AM
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Fidus Achates
Posts 22
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Karl, you've got me there: I was recalling some "guesswork" that I'd read a few years ago. Not much for modern historical method, I'm afraid. Thule could be Iceland, Norway, or one of those islands to the north of Britain (at any rate, a place a few days' sail north of Britain and surrounded by some thick mass -- freezing fog?). On Africa, it's been a long time since I've read Herodotus, and my faulty memory replaced the Phoenicians (particularly, the Carthaginian sailor Hanno) with the Greeks, that is, one Mediterranean sailing culture with another.
John, it was a time full of sorrow, gnashing of teeth, etc. I went to grad school and had to read too much academic stuff. I've found the time again, and now I remember what I've been missing.
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11/24/2009 9:24:45 AM
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Fidus Achates
Posts 22
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I read "Marya and the Pirate" last night: what a fun and clever story! Just enough "hard" science to picture what's going on in some detail, but not overwhelming. Terrific writing. I noticed these characters are full of deception toward one another, and perhaps didn't even realize it at times. I didn't really think the sex was out of place: "May" is a charmer, in an odd way, from the moment she meets Domingo, and their games of deception were, I think, intriguing for them both. As for having sex just because it looks as if they're going to die soon... well, Domingo knew full well that they weren't going to die (it seemed to me that his plan was already there, as he revealed after their tryst); but, in any case, why not? They're both young, attractive, clever, and always playing games with each other. And if there's only 9 hours left, and the sexual tension has been building, it is kind of... inevitable. Another thing I liked was the chiastic relationship between the title and the story: Marya is named first in the title, but last in the story. The Pirate, named last in the title, is named first in the story, on page one. Looking at the title, I thought the story would be about Marya, but it's about the "Pirate," at least for a good while. In the end, though, Marya might just be the winner.
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11/25/2009 8:58:23 AM
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Fidus Achates
Posts 22
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Got to "Conditional Love" last night. Nice story; I found it slow (especially after reading "Marya and the Pirate"), but well worth it in the end. The moral questions were difficult throughout, and I think the end could never have resolved them. In any case, I thought the ending was the best result for both the kid and the adult. That was not euthanasia, as I read it; it was a way to save the kid from his "defect," which depends on his eyesight. No death, but lots of pain.
Interesting take, by the way, on the ancient literary conceit of the "gaze," where, once you see something beautiful, you're more or less an emotional slave to it. A kind of Oedipean solution in the end, in an oblique way.
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