Asimov's SF, September 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The first thing we notice about these stories is that Anvil is not concerned so much with actual combat—in the manner of so many other military SF writers—as he is with the overt and covert forces and patterns that might lead to warfare. Thus, he focuses on diplomacy, economics, technological imbalances and imperatives, politics, the media and personalities. This leads to a nice variety of tales, rather than a constant succession of blood'n'guts and battlefield glory.

  The second thing we notice is that these stories are both time-bound and timeless. Given that the bulk of them derive from a period characterized by the bipolar conflict known as the Cold War that dominated global thinking and strategy, there's a lot of American-Soviet byplay, some of which exhibits freshness of vision, while other parts fall prey to stereotypes. On the other hand, the interrelations among nations that Anvil itemizes exhibit a depressingly eternal accuracy. Here's a description of USA foreign policy toward dictatorships: “The Americans should be pumping in money, which the local dictator will stuff in Swiss bank accounts, and use to pay his guards to keep the people from killing him for not correcting all the trouble nature and three hundred years of bad management have piled onto their heads.” That's from “Sorcerer's Apprentice,” which dates from 1962. And a story like “Top Line,” from 1982, with its plummeting Dow Jones and bankrupt Detroit automakers, looks positively prophetic.

  The last thing one might notice about these stories—last, because they dazzle us by zipping along like maglev trains through a Disneyland of the jester's imagination—is how well they're constructed, and what literary tricks Anvil features in his bag. His prose is hardly ornate or “sophisticated,” but it delivers the action in a punchy, succinct and captivating fashion. There's usually a single, well-conceived kernel of an idea at the heart of each story: for instance, the notion in “Uncalculated Risk” of a soil catalyst that has the same effect as Vonnegut's famous “ice-nine.” (And Anvil's trope precedes Vonnegut's!) But Anvil will elaborate unexpectedly on the central conceit, usually in a kicker at the end. (Sometimes he uses the climax to restate the obvious, which is a less-charming habit.) And of course, as almost everyone knows, Anvil's chosen tone is humorous and sardonic, a mix of cautious cynicism and hopeful optimism. This voice alone lifts him out of the common herd of genre writers who choose to focus on how our sad species manages its aggressive impulses.

  * * * *

  He's a Star, Man

  In retrospect, 1994 seems like an annus mirabilis for wild-eyed, offbeat comics at DC, the home of staid Supes. Anima, by Elizabeth Hand and Paul Witcover, was partway through its too-short 16-month run. Grant Morrison began The Invisibles. Rachel Pollack was doing Doom Patrol—

  —and James Robinson launched Starman, with Tony Harris handling pencils, and Wade von Grawbadger on inks. This series is fondly remembered to this day for its brilliant mix of traditional heroics and postmodern revisionism. And while its whole eight-year run has already been “posthumously” collected in trade paperback form, it now receives the honor of hardcover reprinting in an eventual six volumes, the first of which is now available: The Starman Omnibus: Volume 1 (DC, hardcover, $49.99, 448 pages, ISBN 978-1401216993).

  Robinson gave us a hero, Jack Knight, who was the youthful and irreverent son of his Golden Age ancestor, Ted Knight. While hardly “punk,” with his leather jacket and tattoos Jack was a thoroughly modern creature of the 1990s, by inclination and trade a dealer in pop collectibles, and a reluctant hero at best. He'd be in the middle of a fight scene and yet mentally distant, thinking of some mint Philco Predicta TV sets he'd just scored. His charming ambiguity and hipster humor was mixed with genuine nobility and selflessness. Robinson's dialogue was zesty, his pop culture references telling, and his characterizations sufficiently deep. Blending respect toward the great legacy of DC continuity with touches of revisionist dark'n'gritty, Robinson crafted adventures that evoked older sagas while still feeling fresh. What's not to admire?

  This volume holds the first sixteen issues, and we get to admire Robinson's pacing. The first three issues establish Jack's new career in the midst of carnage and change. The middle batch are some individual adventures that set up good supporting characters and history, and limn Jack growing more comfortable in his role. And the final five installments are what might be considered Jack's first mature outing, against a young woman named Nash.

  As for the Harris-von Grawbadger artwork, it's pleasantly sketchy and impressionistic while at the same time reasonably old-school solid. Page compositions are nicely done, linear for the most part, with the occasional clever yet not flashy arrangement of panels and a welcome outburst now and then of one or two-page spreads. Their novel depictions of a classic character like Solomon Grundy establish that this is not your father's Starman.

  Taken all in all, this series proves itself worthy of such prestige treatment, and future volumes will be hotly awaited.

  The year 2008 saw the somewhat rocky return of Robinson to DC's stable of writers, as a scripter for the Superman family of titles. Let's hope that his unique voice is not deemed out of place in this current age—an age that could use a return to Starman's funky vibe.

  * * * *

  Timeslip Tween

  Although the genuine first edition of Michael Marshall Smith's The Servants was issued in 2007, from the fine small press Earthling Publications, I missed seeing it until its 2008 reprinting from Eos (trade paper, $14.95, 213 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-149416-1). I suspect most readers will encounter this particular edition as well, so we're all in the same boat of discovering a fine novel just a tad behind the curve.

  Consider the fading seaside resort of Brighton, UK, in the wintry off-season. Hardly a venue of warmth and cheer. Now factor in being a lonely and aggrieved eleven-year-old in an intolerable family situation, and you have the stuff of genuine misery.

  Our protagonist, Mark, has been uprooted from his beloved London, in the wake of his mother's remarriage to a fellow named David. While possibly a decent chap in any objective valuation, David is a thorn in Mark's side, since he's not Mark's beloved real Dad. And with Mark's dear Mum ailing from an unspecified illness that renders her less than her usual vital and supportive self, Mark feels alone and defenseless against the new rituals and routines that his stepdad seeks to impose. He attempts to compensate with some desultory skateboarding, but is generally at self-pitying and miserable loose ends.

  Until, that is, he encounters the nameless ancient lady who dwells in the basement of David's Brighton home, a timeless lodger.

  There's nothing overtly supernatural about the mild yet opinionated woman. She invites Mark in for tea and biscuits, and shows him a portion of the basement that used to be the Victorian-era servants’ quarters. But when Mark, on a whim, revisits the abandoned quarters later on his own, he finds them populated with the living staff of another era: housekeeper, butler, scullery maid, et al.

  At this point the reader might imagine Smith is setting up a cozy timeslip fantasy akin to Jack Finney's Time and Again (1970). But nothing proves further from the truth. Rather, we quickly find ourselves in creepy Margo Lanagan/ PKD/Thomas Ligotti territory, with grim and surreal happenings and effects.

  These revenants live in a decaying substandard reality: not the historical past, but rather a psychic plane intimately connected with the doings in the twenty-first century above. As Mark gains hard-earned wisdom through his interactions with the phantoms and his family, he'll begin to see that solving his own problems necessarily involves inserting himself into this buried Jungian drama.

  Smith's skillful and subtle and sly modus operandi ensures that both the world of Mark's domestic dramas and the supernatural milieu belowground are deftly balanced and interlocked, with equal credibility and prominence being given to each. There's nothing preachy or dogmatic or deterministic about the plot or the characters. Each individual is a mix of good and bad traits, heroic behaviors and flaws. The resolution of Mark's troubles is always problematical, producing a suspenseful a
tmosphere right up to the climax.

  This book raises the perennial issue of whether any fiction with a youthful protagonist is, by default, to be seen primarily as a YA title. I tend to think not, citing such examples as Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn (1884) and The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Smith's book is further evidence in favor of this argument. It's certainly not being marketed as YA, and while I'm positive that any intelligent adolescent would find it eminently readable, it might actually be best appreciated by those of us who have already made our accommodations with the secret servants of the mind.

  * * * *

  Blak is Whyte, Whyte is Blak

  The inversion of established hierarchies and orders is a primary tool of satire—and of science fiction. So any instance of satirical SF will almost certainly resort to such a strong and obvious narrative tactic. We get a clue that Ber-nardine Evaristo's fourth novel, Blonde Roots (Riverhead, hardcover, $24.95, 269 pages, ISBN 978-1-59448-863-4), is embarked on such a mission right from its cover, which depicts a European upside-down world in the sky dropping a girl child down upon an African world solidly anchored rightside-up to the earth. (And note that the cover cleverly mimics the famous signature style of controversial black artist Kara Walker and her silhouettes.)

  The cleverly punning, multi-level title is completely appropriate to Evaristo's scenario. She's going to depict a world where whites ("whytes") are slaves and blacks ("blaks") are slaveowners. It's an alternate history of sorts, but one that might demand a little accommodation from genre readers. For while Evaristo is ultimately meticulous in her world-building, she is also fabulistically and allegorically playful. She does not seek to justify in the scholastic fashion of a Harry Turtledove all the logical Jonbar Hinges of her uchronia, nor is she loath to employ unlikely anachronisms if they make a point. Her world is living in its own version of the twentieth century, yet it remains technologically at about an eighteenth century level. And while its cultural touchstones are mostly old-fashioned, there are such things as self-help books entitled How to Motivate Your Workforce and Inheritance Tax for Dummies—both ironically appropriate in context.

  Even the continental masses of this world differ from ours, as we learn from a prefatory map. So there's simply no acceptable way—in SF terms—to get from our continuum to hers. Evaristo's universe is a self-contained rhetorical device.

  But having said this much is not to diminish the book, merely to indicate its non-genre, literary heritage. Because Evaristo never forgets to build a convincing scenario and believable characters, engaged in a gripping plot, all while making her sometimes blunt, sometimes rapier-sharp points.

  Our heroine, narrating in the first person except for “Book Two,” when her master's voice intrudes, is one Doris Scagglethorpe, a whyte child living in primitive Europe, “the Gray Continent.” Abducted by slavers, she is re-christened Oro and sent to the West Japanese Islands (think our West Indies) to be a companion to a spoiled blak girl. When that girl dies, Oro is transferred to the establishment of Bwana, aka Kaga Konata Katamba, whose fortunes come from the slave trade itself. The adult life of Doris/Oro then recapitulates in vigorous detail so many of the slave narratives and historical tidbits of our world that the final effect is one of deep immersion in this topsy-turvy world.

  When Evaristo is not busy with her satirical recastings of archetypical events such as slave auctions and master-slave sexual affairs (with transvalued players in the racial catbird seat), she is busy inverting all the standard esthetic, cultural, political, and religious stereotypes centering on race and that we take for granted. Big blak butts are the apex of attractiveness, and skinny whyte ones are appalling, and so forth. But there's no ultimate preference or privileging given to either race. Holding the whiphand, the blaks are as atrocious and cruel as our whites were. Deracinated and oppressed, the whytes are just as hapless and self-denying and messed-up as our blacks were. What remains is the dreadful institution of slavery itself as the eternal determiner of behavior.

  Despite this general somewhat misanthropic condemnation, Evaristo also is careful to include many humanizing touches on both sides of the equation. Oro's feelings and thoughts, her disappointments and love affairs, emerge as the baseline of how to preserve one's dignity no matter what role chance dictates, making this novel a genuinely useful and fun thought experiment.

  Curiously enough, another novel employing the same conceit as Blonde Roots is also current: In the United States of Africa, by Abdourahman A. Waberi. I don't have access to a copy as I write this review, but look forward to checking it out to see what unique angle of attack Waberi employs.

  * * * *

  Heinlein's Child

  In his latest novel, Saturn's Children (Ace, hardcover, $24.95, 336 pages, ISBN 978-0-441-01594-8), Charles Stross offers an affectionate homage to late-period Heinlein. As he has revealed in various interviews, Stross sought with this project to channel Grandmaster Heinlein—but only as if the elder writer had “been born forty-three years later,” and thus imprinted on such late-twentieth-century tropes as cyberpunk and nanotech. Well, Stross does an uncanny pastiche, omitting any RAH-defects and admirably fulfilling his gameplan while still presenting us with a truly Strossian work.

  If the salient hallmark of genius is infinitely painstaking attention to details, then Stross certainly qualifies. There's not a sentence in this book that does not reflect a rethinking and recasting of speculative matter that has been lazily left unburnished by other writers.

  Perhaps the first and most salient re-think is the grand backdrop for the story. Mankind is extinct, but his android children (with minds mapped directly from homo sapiens wetware) have inherited the solar system, and flourished—in many more niches than humanity ever could have comfortably occupied. There are rich aristo androids and worker androids and slave androids—many of them resembling their human Creators—and even xenoform androids (your hotel or spaceship are such). Our heroine is humaniform, although highly mutable with a body formed of “mechanocytes": Freya Nakamichi-47. She and her sibs—descended from the ur-model dubbed Rhea—were created as geisha sex toys for humans—leaving them in something of an existential quandary, given the extinction of their client base. So Freya bums around, taking odd jobs here and there. But when she goes to work as a courier for a fellow named Jeeves, she finds herself suddenly at the center of a vast set of conspirators and counter-conspirators, all angling for a shot at resurrecting the human species out of “pink goo.”

  Right away, the savvy reader will see a dozen other allusive influences in this scenario, from Clifford Simak to John Varley to Richard Calder (not to mention throwaway asides to everyone from Howard Waldrop to Alfred Bester). But that's Stross's method and goal: in the words of Hemingway, “to beat dead men at their own game.” (Actually, come to think of it, that's literally what Freya's doing as well.) And god bless him, he mostly succeeds.

  The ingenious thriller plot cleverly allows Freya to plausibly bop around the whole solar system, introducing us to all the exotic “steel beach” environments the androids have carved out. The action is nonstop, the speculations abundant, and the philosophizing vintage Heinlein. The whole comes together in a shapely package nearly as sexy as Freya.

  Somewhere, Heinlein is proudly smiling.

  Copyright © 2009 Paul Di Filippo

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR

  by Erwin S. Strauss

  My pick events for us Asimovians in August are ConVersation, ConText, PiCon, ArmadilloCon—and of course WorldCon. Plan for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For an explanation of con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, and info on fanzines and clubs, send me an SASE (self-addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week's cons), leave a message and I'll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For
free listings, tell me of your con 5 months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard.—Erwin S. Strauss

  JULY 2009

  31-Aug. 2—DiversiCon. For info, write: Box 8036, Minneapolis MN 55408. Or phone: (612) 721-5959 (10 am to 10 pm, not collect). (Web) diversicon.org. (E-mail) info@diversicon.org. Con will be held in: Minneapolis MN (if city omitted, same as in address) at a venue to be announced. Guests will include: Kay Kenyon. “Celebrating diversity” in SF/fantasy.

  31-Aug. 2—ConVersation. con-versation.com. info@con-versation.com. Best Western, Ann Arbor MI.

  31-Aug. 2—ConnectiCon. connecticon.com. Connecticut Convention Center, Hartford CT. Gaming, comics, pop culture.

  31-Aug. 2—Chronicles: The Convergence. (316) 209-9225. chronicle-gsa.com. Wichita KS. Gaming, anime and SF.

  31-Aug. 2—PulpFest. pulpfest.com. Ramada Plaza, Columbus OH. Otto Penzler. Pulp magazines and old paperbacks.

  31-Aug. 2—Costume College. cocoregistrar@aol.com. Airtel Plaza, Van Nuys CA. Masqueraders meet to swap know-how.

  31-Aug. 2—Creation. (818) 409-0960. creationent.com. Hilton, Parsippany NJ. Commercial media-oriented event.

  31-Aug. 2—Otakuthon. otakuthon.com. info@otakuthon.com. Palais de Congres, Montreal QE. Anime.

  AUGUST 2009

  6-9—Creation. (818) 409-0960. creationent.com. Hilton, Las Vegas NV. Commercial media-oriented event.

  6-9—Wizard World. (954) 565-6588. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont (Chicago) IL. Many guests. Huge comics event.

  6-10—Anticipation. anticipationsf.ca. Montreal QE. Gaiman, Hartwell, Doherty. WorldCon. US$195+. Pay at the door.