On Books

by Peter Heck

 

Moreno-Garcia’s latest follows three women’s encounters with the supernatural at different points in history. 

The story begins in 1998, when Minerva Contreras is a student at Stoneridge, a small Massachusetts college. She is doing a senior thesis on Beatrice Tremblay, a Depression-era graduate of the college who had a career writing horror stories, including a novel apparently based on the mysterious disappearance of Tremblay’s college roommate, Ginny Somerset. 

Minerva is stuck on her thesis when she learns that a local woman, Carolyn Yates, has an archive of Tremblay’s papers. Yates has not responded to any of her attempts to get in touch, but then Minerva meets Noah Yates, her playboy grandson, at a party, and gets an invitation to look at the papers. Here she finds Tremblay’s journal from 1934, detailing the events leading up to Ginny’s disappearance. At last, it looks as if she’s got a solid foundation for her thesis, based on material no other researcher has had access to. She returns to Carolyn’s house regularly to study the journal, and gets to know Carolyn and Noah better.

Alternating chapters follow the story of Alba, Minerva’s grandmother, in rural Mexico. Alba’s story begins in 1908, shortly after the death of her father. Her uncle Arturo—a sophisticated city dweller only a few years older than she is—has come for a visit. But while Alba admires Arturo’s fancy clothes and manners, her younger brother Tadeo, who is now running the family farm, is unimpressed, and lets everyone know it. Meanwhile, a neighboring farmer, Valentin, is clearly smitten with Alba, and is evidently waiting only for the mourning period for her father to end before proposing to her.

As the three stories progress, Minerva, Tremblay, and Alba all become aware that something disturbing is going on. Minerva believes that someone has been following her around campus and the nearby town. Tremblay records Ginny’s investigations into the supernatural, and her gathering of various protective items and spells. Alba hears frightening sounds on the farm, and then her brother Tadeo goes missing—his horse is later found running loose. Each of the three women finds herself facing uncanny events that are building to some kind of terrible climax, with unclearly sensed forces of evil gathering power.

Moreno-Garcia builds each of their stories organically, making effective use of the different environments and historical eras and the people living in them—rural Mexico early in the last century, an elite women’s college in the 1930s, and the same college, now coed and more egalitarian, in the closing years of the century. And the connections between the four women, at first apparently slim—or, in Ginny’s case, nonexistent—eventually become significant.

A strong performance by one of the most original fantasy writers currently working in the field. 

Turtledove’s latest is an alternate history in which Soviet-style Communism has taken root in the Americas sometime in the second half of the twentieth century. The story is set in the West Coast People’s Democratic Republic (WCPDR), where Charlie Simpkins manages a small produce store in Los Angeles. One day he receives in the mail a propaganda poster to be displayed in the store window: “Workers of the World, Unite!” Annoyed at the pointless message and by the rotten conditions of daily life for ordinary people like himself, he tears it up. He knows he’s asking for trouble; he just doesn’t care.

Charlie’s wife, Lucille, and Gomez, who runs the store next to his, both tell him he’s made a mistake. And when Mary Ann Hannegan, a minor Party official, pays him a visit, the real trouble begins. Charlie declines her offer to forget about it if he’ll just put the poster up the way he was supposed to. “All I want is for people to leave me alone,” he says. Of course, that’s not about to happen.

A few days later, Charlie gets a notice that he’s been transferred to a new job, at lower pay, loading trucks in a grocery warehouse. The new job is a much longer bus ride from home, and the boss is a martinet. When Charlie comes up with an idea to make everyone’s work easier, the boss flat-out forbids it. Charlie is now branded an even worse troublemaker than before. But when he goes with some of his coworkers to a nearby bar, he meets Ervin—an older man who doesn’t hesitate to talk about how things might be better. Listening to Ervin, Charlie realizes that dissatisfaction with the current regime is more widespread than he knew. 

Meanwhile, a new political figure has emerged in the WCPDR government—Alex Eichenlode, who seems to have a little more understanding of the ordinary worker’s plight than most of the other Party bosses. Charlie writes to him, thinking it can’t make things any worse. Surprise! He suddenly gets a letter putting him back in his old store, and shortly thereafter a couple of other privileges are restored. Eichenlode is looking like the first good guy to occupy a government seat in living memory. Things become even more promising when, under pressure from Russia, Eichenlode becomes premier of the WCPDR.

Eichenlode then begins promising “Communism with a smiling face,” and while Mary Ann Hannegan and other Party hardliners don’t like it, regular working people sure do. Charlie starts getting a better quality of produce for his customers, and he finds he and Lucille can occasionally afford a better brand of cigarettes and whiskey. The government relaxes censorship of the news, and some of the local Party officials skip town, presumably just ahead of higher authorities looking into bribery and corruption. It’s too good to last, of course. The Russians—and some of the neighboring American Communist states—decide the new order has gone too far, and things rapidly go to hell. 

The obvious historical model for this is Hungary in the late 1960s, but with Southern Californian place names and institutions as the setting. Turtledove spices things up with borrowed Russian phrases, and Marxist-Leninist slogans that will resonate with anyone who hung out with campus socialists at some point in the past.

As always, Turtledove does a convincing job of showing the effects of larger historical events on ordinary people—in this case, Charlie and his family, along with their friends and co-workers. As a look at daily life in an authoritarian state, this one rivals Orwell’s 1984 for impact—especially since it takes place in an America that might have come about, given a few not-impossible turns of the historical wheels. 

Fans of alternate history shouldn’t miss this one.

The third in Frost’s Rhymer series takes the long-lived Thomas Rhymer to Elizabethan London. In his identity as Robyn Hoode, Thomas continues his campaign of attacking Elves—Yvag, as they are known in their own language—as they attempt to carry away humans to their homeland, or as they infiltrate human institutions in order to gain power in this world and ultimately take it over. 

At the same time, Thomas has crafted an identity as Dr. Gerard, working in a hospital that treats victims of the recurring waves of plague. The powers he acquired during his visit to the Yvag homeland—a visit told in the first book of the series—have given him a higher success rate than most doctors of the era, and in consequence the hospital is sought out by patients who can pull the right strings to be transferred there. When a rich churchman shows up, Thomas recognizes him as a shell of a person inhabited by one of the Yvag. This of course means his plague doctor identity is blown.

Thomas now must escape the attentions of the Yvag, as well as directing them away from his neighbors and co-workers. In the process, he becomes aware of a plot against Queen Elizabeth. The queen’s anti-Catholic policies have drawn the wrath of the Yvag, who have found ready hiding places for their minions in the ranks of the clergy. 

When Thomas foils the plot, he attracts the attention of Francis Walsingham, the queen’s spymaster—who recognizes that Thomas’s unique talents can be extremely useful to the Crown. Reluctantly, Thomas accepts the role of secret agent, traveling abroad on the queen’s business in the company of another recently recruited spy—none other than playwright Christopher Marlowe. Not surprisingly, his ability to shape-shift (another power acquired from the Yvag) makes him adept at spycraft. But when Marlowe—no fool—catches on, Thomas has to explain what he’s doing, inspiring the playwright to start writing a new piece about a deal with the devil. Together, they foil another plot involving a coalition of Catholic powers looking to overthrow the Protestant Elizabeth—with the Yvag ultimate puppetmasters behind the scenes.

But the biggest threat is Bragrender, a powerful Yvag who dares challenge even the Elf Queen herself—and who has identified Thomas as an enemy to all the Yvag plans for the human world. 

Frost has put together a thoroughly enjoyable portrait of Elizabethan London—with a couple of side glances at France, and visits to the Yvag homeland, Hel. Cameo appearances by various historical figures—including a young Shakespeare in one scene—are part of the fun. A fitting conclusion to one of the more original historical fantasies of recent years. Highly recommended.

In Haze, Kerr offers a character-driven space opera, featuring a pilot cashiered from the Fleet for his addiction to the drug that provides the novel’s title. Dan is living a day-to-day life on Nowhere Street, doing whatever he can to get money for another fix. 

Two former shipmates, Captain Evans and Chief Petty Officer Devit, find Dan and offer him a position as pilot on their ship, Dancing Mary. They’re still in the Fleet, but the mission they want Dan for is Special Operations—essentially a spy ship, masquerading as a civilian merchanter. Their goal: to learn why a hyperspace “shunt” allowing interstellar travel somehow closed, roughly four hundred years ago.

Dan joins the crew, which includes members of various sapient species, each with exceptional talents. Devit, head of security, has an uncanny ability to detect patterns. He and Dan are also longtime lovers. The ship’s gunner, Lod-Mata, is a reptilian alien with incredible accuracy with his weapons. As important as any of the living crew is the ship’s AI, on which Dan relies for his navigation of the mysterious lanes of hyperspace. And when the investigation into the closed shunt requires a specialized researcher with AI skills, Lieutenant Santreeza is added to the crew.

As the mission progresses, Evans and her crew are faced with several possible theories on the closure of the shunt, including the possibility that it’s a natural phenomenon—which could mean that hyperspace travel itself is unstable. Equally likely is the possibility that any of several adversary powers is responsible for the closure; candidates include space pirates, enemy aliens, and powerful corporations seeking to gain a monopoly on space transport. An equally important issue is whether the Fleet is capable of stopping someone powerful enough to somehow alter the structure of space itself.

We see the story from several viewpoints. Dan alternates between incredibly precise navigation of the hyperspace shunts and Haze-induced crashes, while Devit does his best to ensure that his partner remains healthy enough to do his job. Things are complicated as Devit finds a new romantic interest. And both Dan and Santreeza, with the help of the AI, begin to find out just what’s going on with the shunt closing—and its broader implications. All this takes place as Evans commands the Dancing Mary on its way from one port to another, masquerading as a bottom-feeding trader. The journey eventually takes them to a vast planet-wide library, where records from all over the galaxy are stored—and where, in addition to answers about the shunt, they get their first clear look at who their adversaries really are. 

With a gang of complex characters, a touch of romance, and an action-oriented space opera plot—not to mention some light-hearted moments as Dan and Santreeza interact with the ship’s AI—this one has plenty to offer. Engaging work by a distinguished veteran author.

Here’s a satirical novel featuring a scientist building simulated worlds and a detective living in one of those worlds.

The scientist, Dr. Krishna, is a category 3 genius—the only one, making him the most intelligent person alive. But he is frustrated; his experiments in creating a simulated world are being subverted from within by a private detective, P. Manjunath. His only recourse so far has been to destroy those simulations—the “acts of god” of the title—in the process killing Manjunath in a number of imaginative ways. Worse yet, his experiments are seriously illegal, so there’s no way he can ask any of his fellow scientists to help him figure out why things keep going wrong.

Dr. K (as he prefers to be called) has found out that every simulated world he creates has followed essentially the same history, coming to an end at exactly the same point. The similarities extend to the existence of the annoying P. Manjunath in each of the worlds. And Dr. K considers it significant that the crash occurs at exactly the point at which those worlds achieve the ability to create their own simulated worlds. Destroying those worlds before the crash and starting anew has so far resulted in no progress.

Meanwhile, within one of the sim worlds, Manjunath and his sidekick, Heng, have traveled to Denmark after reading a news story about a leading scientist who has disappeared from an advanced research facility. The disappearance comes in the wake of several accidents occurring at research facilities scattered around the world. Manjunath has no idea what’s going on, but he has a hunch that there’s some common element to the different events. When the detective investigates the scene of the disappearance, he meets a police officer who—in response to one of Manjunath’s remarks—becomes a Buddha-like street person, attracting a mass following that ultimately has international consequences. The press, picking up on the phenomenon, dubs the movement the “Science Haters.” 

At the same time, Manjunath and Heng meet an aspiring Swiss poet, who joins them in their search for the reason for the strange events affecting scientists and research facilities. Speculating on the probable site of the next attack on science, they decide to head for Switzerland, where there’s an advanced research clinic that appears to be a likely candidate to be the Science Haters’ next target. The journey is beset with minor disasters, leading to the detectives ditching the poet, but they eventually arrive in Switzerland, where the true nature of their quest finally becomes apparent.

Back in Dr. K’s world, his superiors have begun to get a sense of what he’s up to, and are taking steps to curtail his ability to do so. We learn of this through transcripts of various meetings in which he and his collaborators are subjected to scrutiny by government agents. Eventually, his cover blown, Dr. K takes off for parts unknown—leading to a surprise ending. This one has a nice blend of broad comedy and pointed satire of both academic politics and detective story conventions, mixed with a healthy measure of outright absurdity. A new author definitely worth checking out.

Turnbull concludes his “Convergence Saga” trilogy, which began with No Gods, No Monsters. Now the gods and monsters are at center stage, engaged in a struggle for the fate of the Universe—or rather, the multiverse. There are forces working to return everything to the nothingness that preceded creation.

Much of the action takes place in Moon, an isolated community somewhere in rural America, where many of the characters from earlier volumes have fled to escape society’s deep-seated hatred of monsters. Residents include several shapeshifters, notably Dragon—a teenage boy when not adopting the shape that has given him his name. Making use of magical doorways, many of them are supporting themselves by running businesses in the outside world—such as Ridley, who operates an online bookstore after the store he once ran in Boston was burned down in an anti-monster riot. 

Moon at first seems a safe place, but some of the residents, unused to the isolation of their new home, have been visiting nearby towns. This has the predictable result of attracting attention from their overly suspicious small-town neighbors, who have no intention of allowing monsters in their vicinity. Moon comes under attack, and the residents need to decide how to respond. If they defend themselves, will the attacks escalate? Is there anyplace they can escape to?

While this is going on, events are brewing on a higher level of reality. There are factions even among the gods, and a long-standing struggle between two factions is coming to a head—in part as a result of events on the Earthly plane. Two groups—the Cult of Zsouvox and the Order of Asha—see the coming conflict in Moon as a place to bring their centuries-long struggle to a decisive battle. And on an even higher level, some of the gods are planning to bring about the end of the entire universe—and what happens in Moon will have an impact on how that plays out.

The novel brings together a group of intriguing characters, with the action taking place in several loosely connected alternate realities. This is a powerful conclusion to a very distinctive saga, once again marking Turnbull as one of the most interesting authors of his generation. The whole series is recommended, though readers should start with the first volume—this isn’t really a stand-alone.

Zahn brings his popular “Icarus Saga” to a conclusion with this novel, sixth in the series.

As the book begins, Gregory Roarke and his Kadolian partner Selene are on the run. They’ve lost their jobs with the Icarus Group, a secret operation searching for teleportation portals left by a vanished alien species. In the process of that search, they’ve annoyed not only their former employers, but the Patth and the Ammei, two alien species who want the portals for themselves. Since Selene appears to have a native ability to understand the technology behind the portals, they’re all looking to capture her. 

Roarke and Selene—quite understandably—have other ideas. But as they learn shortly after this book opens, there’s now a substantial bounty posted on them. The only good news is that they’re wanted alive, not dead—presumably because their knowledge of the portals’ locations is of value to the bounty posters. They decide that their best chance is to head for Juniper, a multi-species world where they think a particularly powerful portal may be hidden. They’ve reached the planet, and are sitting in a barbecue joint—Roarke’s cuisine of choice—when an unfamiliar alien stumbles in, acting oddly.

The alien’s name is Bubloo, and Roarke is suspicious, especially after Selene detects the distinct scent of the Ammei on him, suggesting that he may be working for that group of aliens. Worse yet, Bubloo almost immediately starts a fight with a human who approaches him. Hoping to avoid attracting the attention of the local police, Roarke breaks up the fight—and learns that the human is Dr. Christopher Robin, a xenopsychiatrist who’s been treating Bubloo for drug dependency. And then Bubloo tells them that he’s looking for “the Gold Ones”—a term Roarke remembers as a name the Ammei gave to their creators, who are possibly the same as the mysterious aliens who built the portals. How does Bubloo fit into their mission?

The answer to that question steers a large part of the novel’s plot. But before they can get that answer, Roarke and Selene need to negotiate their way through multiple complications. Various characters from earlier volumes in the series put in appearances, each with their own agenda—and not all their agendas are immediately obvious. The bounties on our protagonists have attracted a good number of hunters, and there are quite a few of their former antagonists who’d just as soon see them dead. It’s a long, perilous journey, with a fair quota of violence and lots of clever escapes, before the secret of the portals is revealed. 

As in earlier volumes in the series, Roarke’s smart-mouthed comments are one of the main pleasures here. Particularly fun are the various aphorisms he attributes to his father—who also plays a significant role in this volume. This is an enjoyable conclusion to the series. Note that readers who haven’t read the earlier books may feel lost at times—they might want to start with the first in the series, The Icarus Plot, and work their way up. It’ll be a fun ride. 

This entry in Aqueduct’s “Conversation Pieces” series collects four short stories by Duchamp—three of which are reprints. The series—this is the ninety-sixth installment—usually focuses on feminist SF, a term the publishers have chosen to define broadly. The series includes both fiction and nonfiction, not all of them SF or even overtly feminist, although the four stories here definitely fit both descriptions. In Duchamp’s words in an opening comment, the entire series is “passionately interested in challenging the way things are, passionately determined to understand how everything works.”

The first story, “Motherhood, Etc.,” features Pat, a young woman who is being interrogated by a team of investigators about her sexual experiences. Apparently she has a virus that has brought about changes in her blood and her DNA, probably acquired from a boyfriend, Joshua, who has gone missing. The interrogators—all male—ask detailed questions about her relationship with Joshua, which she answers with great reluctance. As the story progresses, the nature of the changes to her system become clear, building to a conclusion that undeniably challenges “the way things are.”

“The Last Nostalgia” is the new story in the volume. It consists of reminiscences by a woman, Daisy Q., who lives in the City—a territory bridging two opposed realities. Inhabitants of the Real World and the Excellent World—their terms for their realities—often see the City as dangerous, although there is in practice considerable movement between the worlds. For example, a degree from a university in the Excellent World is considered a strong credential for jobs in the Real World. The story follows Daisy’s efforts to map the City, which is oddly fragmented, with some sections extremely hard to reach from within it, despite being accessible from one outside world or the other. 

“Welcome, Kid, to the Real World” posits a world in which children are genderless, and must decide as they enter their teens which sex they will become. And “When Joy Came to the World” is a fabulous tale of how an odd meteorological event becomes the impetus of an outbreak of joy, and the reaction of society to this phenomenon.

Duchamp’s stories fit very much in the paradigm of SF as “a literature of ideas,” rather than one that depends on setting or technological trappings. The stories in this collection have the kind of intense focus on how ideas affect society that would be central to a collection of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work. Recommended enthusiastically.

This volume collects five pieces by Panshin (1940–2022), most of which originally appeared on the author’s website. They cover a range from a biographical piece on how Panshin’s father escaped from post-revolutionary Russia to critical essays on Heinlein and van Vogt. 

The opening piece is an account of the author’s discovery of science fiction, which he describes as the embodiment of creative imagination—a trait he believes it shares with Sufi storytelling. Following that is the story of his father, whose escape from Russia Panshin presents as a string of miracles. 

The third piece is a critical analysis of Heinlein’s 1941 story “Solution Unsatisfactory,” which tells of the creation of a nuclear weapon, followed by post-war efforts to prevent its future use. Panshin focuses on the story’s internal contradictions, and points toward what he believes is its true meaning. As an aside, while the bomb itself was not developed until 1945, the possibility of a nuclear weapon was a topic of speculation among scientists, the military, and SF writers well before that date.

Following that is an account of the genesis of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” touching on Carroll’s earlier career as well as the day of storytelling that inspired the published work. The book concludes with a survey of A.E. van Vogt’s early career, with a focus on the “intuitive” process behind the creation of his stories, as well as editor John W. Campbell’s response to them.

Panshin was an extremely talented critic, and a controversial one, never afraid to go out on a limb. This collection offers a fresh look at his provocative takes on SF and its relation to the world at large. Anyone who takes the genre seriously will find it eminently rewarding.