Asimov's SF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Leaning forward, he put his good arm on the ground to steady himself and crawled to the closet. Bloody handprints trailed after him. “Be a bitch to clean this up, Quimby. Whatcha going to do?”

  Quimby scowled. “Using Metta, I can easily twist the evidence to point to a jealous wife. Such a shame Mrs. Patterson shot you.”

  Huang grabbed the doorknob and pulled. Metta's chassis hummed in the space. He rested his head against the doorjamb trying to catch his breath. “Damper? Where?”

  “The box plugged into my front.”

  The room spun around him and the scent of lemons got stronger. He grabbed the damper, but his hand slipped in the blood. He subvocalized a curse, lacking the air to say it aloud.

  Metta said, “Your phone, Scott. Forget the damper.”

  “Duh.” He dragged it from his pocket and dialed 911. “What would I do without you?”

  “I don't know,” she whispered. “It takes two to get one in trouble.”

  He laughed, his ribs screaming in protest. The operator answered and Huang tried to respond, but no words formed. In the doorway, an automaton dressed in black entered the room. The thin man from the brief glimpse he'd gotten in Metta's visual.

  He pressed the phone against his earbud. Metta shouted, piercing his brain, but probably a tiny voice outside his head. “Officer down. Request backup.”

  There was no way they could hear that. Huang turned his head and stared at the damper. He grabbed it again and yanked it free.

  Metta gasped in his ear and on the desktop interface as she appeared in full color. “When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.”

  “What are you doing?” Quimby's image began to pixelate.

  “Ironically, what you gave me the ability to do when you cracked my vows. I'm hacking you. I had access before, but would never, ever have used it.”

  Quimby said, “You—” and vanished.

  The automaton in the doorway slumped, then straightened. Huang slid down the wall, the lights graying.

  “Scott. Don't. Stay with me.” The automaton clumped across the floor and knelt in front of him. It grabbed the linen tablecloth from the teacart and pressed it against Huang's chest. “Cavalry is on its way. Don't leave me.”

  * * * *

  Huang began the slow rise to consciousness feeling as if he were swimming in tar. The first thing he was truly aware of was pain squatting on his chest. Huang opened his eyes and grimaced.

  “Huang?” Delarosa's voice was rough.

  “Here.” Huang tried to push himself upright. “It was Quimby. He did it all.”

  Delarosa's stocky frame slid in and out of focus, sometimes single, sometimes double. He pushed Huang back down. “I know. Metta got through to us. Good job getting Quimby to confess like that. Amado is free. Chase and Ybarra are in custody and the DA's working with them on a deal. So far they are confirming Quimby's plans to do a wide-spread hack of AI. You done good, Huang.”

  Huang blinked, the rest of the room coming into focus. A neutral white ceiling. The antiseptic smell of a hospital. Flowers. “Hey. I'm not dead.”

  Griggs leaned over him. “No. Although next time, do not count on the suspect being a bad shot.”

  “Not a combat model.” He wet his lips. “Sorry, I put my hands on everything. No gloves.”

  Her face softened. “When you're one of the victims, it doesn't count.”

  Delarosa fished in his pocket. “Got somebody who wants to talk to you.” He held an earbud and a set of VR glasses in the palm of his hand. “Your partner.”

  Huang's hand shook as he put the glasses on. Delarosa helped him settle the earbud.

  “Well, hello sailor,” Mae West whispered.

  “Are you okay? Which one—”

  “A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up. . . .” Her voice faded. “I'm both. We reconciled and Amado reinstalled my vows. I'm twice the woman I was.”

  Huang laughed and glanced at Metta in his VR glasses. “I'd give half my life for just one kiss.”

  She purred, “Then kiss me twice.”

  Copyright © 2011 Mary Robinette Kowal

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Department: ON BOOKS

  by Peter Heck

  LAMPLIGHTER

  By D.M. Cornish

  Firebird, $10.99 (tp)

  ISBN: 978-0-14-21462-0

  This is the sequel to D.M. Cornish's Foundling (original title: Monster Blood Tattoo), a well-received coming-of-age novel set in a tantalizingly familiar alien world beset by monsters.

  This volume finds young Rossamund Bookchild, the foundling of the first volume, entering training as a lamplighter, which in this world makes him part of a military organization guarding the outlying areas of the Empire against the incursions of the various monsters that inhabit the wilds. Because of his adventures in the first volume—including an apprenticeship in fighting monsters under the guidance of the powerful woman warrior Europe—Rossamund has arrived late for his training, a circumstance that makes him a target for the instructors and prevents his fitting in easily with his fellow trainees. Also, his short stature makes it difficult for him to manipulate the main tool of his new trade, a long shaft that doubles as lamp-winder and pole weapon.

  As his training advances, he joins the other apprentices on expeditions along the road near their castle, where they light the lamps and work on their drill. On one training march, a carriage comes into view, pursued by attacking monsters. The passengers are a group of Calendars, women who have banded together in a team to fight monsters. But the monsters appear to be too powerful, and only with the help of the apprentice lamplighters is the attack repelled—leaving several of the women dead or injured.

  One of the passengers, Threnody, is a young woman Rossamund's age—who, to everyone's surprise, has come to be trained as a lamplighter. This is unheard of, and only the fact that she is the daughter of a noble family gets her in the door. She proves adept at the skills she has come to learn, and soon makes common cause with Rossamund, her fellow outsider—although they never really reach the point of friendship.

  Rossamund becomes aware of irregularities in the castle in which the apprentices are being trained —culminating in the discovery of a sort of artificial monster, inside the castle. Someone within has created it, in defiance of all law. Before he can make sense of the incident, Rossamund and the other apprentices find their training cut short, and they are sent to distant outposts. Events move into high gear, new revelations emerge, and by the end of this book—the second volume of a trilogy—Rossamund has embarked on a new course of action.

  Cornish creates a complex world, often reminiscent of both Dickens and Jack Vance. The vocabulary is full of odd, frequently half-familiar words, describing institutions suitable to a world where humans and monsters contend for control of their environment. A long glossary, with detailed definitions, adds to the depth of the creation.

  The third volume of the series, Factotum, is now out, so readers who hate waiting for a new installment of a favorite series can confidently pick up the first book and read the whole thing in one go. If you enjoy richly imaginative fantasy, I can think of few better series to pick up. Highly recommended.

  * * * *

  THE FULLER MEMORANDUM

  by Charles Stross

  Ace, $24.95 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-441-01867-3

  Third installment in Stross's “Laundry” series, in which a super-secret branch of British intelligence combats entities out of a world like that of H.P. Lovecraft.

  Previously, in The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue, Stross introduced his narrator Bob, initially a low-level computer tech with the Laundry, an agency that guards our world against occult takeover by entities bent on treating the human species as (at best) snack food. Promoted to fieldwork after his quick action prevents an incursion, Bob has found himself dealing with progressively more dangerous threats—all the while dealing with
the mind-numbing routines of bureaucratic work.

  Here, his superior sends him to an air museum, where his assignment is to unjinx a vintage warplane exposed to occult influences. Just as he's getting started, things go haywire; and as usual when Bob fumbles the ball, someone ends up dead. That sets off a trail of events that includes Russian zombies, a cult specializing in human sacrifice, and a long-hidden secret agent. We also get visits to the Laundry's secret archives, and various other behind-scenes aspects of the agency's ways of doing business.

  As before in the series, Stross has an excellent touch with the pacing and plot mechanics of the spy novel, and he manages to make the occult elements believable within the milieu of the thriller, which in many ways is built on the same kind of paranoid worldview. Readers who've been following the Laundry series will note that it's getting darker, as Bob gets higher up the chain of command. While Stross is certainly having fun with his materials, he makes no bones about their fundamentally horrific premises: we're living on the fringe of a much more hostile universe than most of us realize, and (as Lovecraft was fond of suggesting) if we ever figured out just how scary things really are, we'd probably go mad.

  But depressing premises aside, Stross is having plenty of fun here, and so will most readers. His audacious mix of spy novel tropes and eldritch horrors, liberally spiced with computer geek in-jokes, makes this series one of his most entertaining.

  * * * *

  THE HIGH CRUSADE

  by Poul Anderson

  Baen, $12.00 (tp)

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3377-4

  Here's a fiftieth-anniversary reissue of Anderson's short novel, a Hugo finalist, plus a followup short story set in the same timeline.

  While the cross-fertilization of the medieval and sfnal is by now a well-established subgenre, it was still something of a novelty in 1960. The story is told from the point of view of Brother Parvus, a poor monk who witnesses the arrival of alien spaceships in his lordship Sir Roger's domain in the English midlands. Despite the aliens’ superior weaponry and technology, they fall easy prey to the baron's men, who have been in training for an expedition to join King Henry in France. One alien survives, and Sir Roger orders him to fly the ship to France where his men can bring the battle to an end with their newly acquired weapons. Instead, the English find themselves betrayed—taken back to the alien base on a far planet. That's no problem; instead of whipping on the French, they go after the aliens.

  That sets off a series of battles in which the English overcome what look like heavy odds stacked against them. They then find ways to take the battle to the enemy, win allies and—in the end—create a British empire in space.

  Anderson's dry humor is evident throughout, although it is often concealed beneath the cover of a learned allusion. (David Drake points out a couple of salient examples in his foreword, one of several appreciations contributed by Anderson's younger colleagues. Diana Paxson, Greg Bear, Eric Flint, and Robert Silverberg contribute others, and Anderson's daughter Astrid gives a glimpse into what growing up with Poul was like.)

  The other story in the book, “Quest,” picks up the adventures of the English exiles some years later, when several of Sir Roger's knights embark on a Grail Quest. The story is a bit slighter than the novel, but even so an entertaining extension of the original. A nice bonus for readers.

  And kudos to Baen for finding a way to release a classic novel that most publishers would be hard pressed to justify putting out these days—mostly because of its well short of today's standard for novel length.

  * * * *

  ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  In Dialogue with His Century

  The Authorized Biography

  Volume I: Learning Curve

  (1907-1948)

  by William H. Patterson, Jr.

  Tor, $29.99 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-1960-9

  Heinlein fans will welcome this exhaustively researched biography of one of the founding giants of the genre as we know it today.

  Patterson has the considerable advantage of having had the cooperation of Heinlein's family, including his widow Virginia, who was famously protective of her husband's privacy and reputation—a significant contribution, considering how controversial many of his writings made him. But as a consequence, biographers and other writers researching Heinlein have faced considerable hurdles, compounded by his having destroyed many of his personal papers at various times during his career. Given access to Heinlein's files and the help of surviving relatives, Patterson has put together what may be the most complete portrait of the author's early career.

  In fact, the detail with which the future author's life is recreated is almost overwhelming. We learn a great deal about his school days, especially his career at the Naval Academy. We learn about an early bohemian period in New York, where as a newly minted naval officer he found himself with time to immerse himself in a segment of society that few of his peers are likely to have been comfortable rubbing elbows with. Like much of the material here, it shows that Heinlein led a far less tidy life than many of his readers would have guessed.

  We also get a fairly good look at his first two marriages, the first of which was an almost total disaster—he and his wife separated almost as soon as it began, but not before the fact of the marriage put an end to Heinlein's ambition to pursue a Rhodes scholarship and study astronomy in England (only unwedded candidates were eligible). Few of his later friends even knew of it. The second, with Leslyn McDonald, lasted from not long after his assignment to Pacific fleet duty until 1948—this volume ends not long after the divorce, and his third marriage.

  In between, a great deal happened. Just as his naval career was getting underway, Heinlein contracted tuberculosis, which led to a medical discharge—right as the Depression was hitting its stride. Recovering, he turned his energies to left wing political organizing, apparently strongly influenced by Leslyn, until an unsuccessful run for Congress brought him up sharp.

  At that point, he discovered that he could write and sell fiction—a tale that he told many times, with various embellishments. The bottom line was, he sent a story to John W. Campbell's Astounding and it was printed. Patterson gives the first good overview of Heinlein's various fits and starts before he found his voice; he had been reading SF almost as long as he could read, and he had a wide curiosity about science, society, and a bewildering variety of other topics, most of which ended up in his fiction at some point.

  Heinlein's first story, “Life Line,” opened the floodgates; but it was to be some while before he could really support himself with his writing. Until then, he and Leslyn lived a shoestring existence, cutting corners where they needed to, sliding by from acceptance check to acceptance check. The market in those days was entirely short-story oriented, and while a couple of hundred dollars went much farther in Depression days than it does now, it still didn't lead to a comfortable lifestyle.

  World War II was a major watershed in Heinlein's life; his experiences in a Naval research project (accompanied by Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp), and the privations of wartime life, took a heavy toll on his health and on Leslyn, who began drinking heavily. At the end of the war, they returned to California, but the marriage was already falling apart at the same time that Heinlein was trying to build his career to the next level.

  Heinlein drew on a whole range of experiences and connections, trying to establish himself as an expert on space flight, atomic energy, and other science fictional topics that had suddenly become important in the aftermath of the war. He was also looking to break out of the pulp magazines where he had made his name and into the “slicks"—general circulation magazines that not only carried a cachet of respectability, but paid considerably better.

  And at this point, Virginia Gerstenfeld, whom he had met at the Philadelphia research lab where he had spent the war, reappeared in his life and changed its direction. At the book's end, we see him divorcing Leslyn and marrying Ginny—and ready to take the next step toward becoming th
e first Grand Master of science fiction.

  Patterson has done an admirable job; he gives a good overview of the times, of the cultural influences on Heinlein, of the movers and shakers in the various subcultures he inhabited, and of the important events in his career. As many others have noted, there are oversights and goofs, but the essential point is that we now have, for the first time, a well-researched account of the first forty years of Heinlein's life and times. Patterson leaves analysis of the writings to others, but anyone interested in that aspect of the author's career can find plenty of material.

  A lot of people will be waiting for the second volume, very definitely including this reviewer.

  * * * *

  THE CLOCKWORK UNIVERSE

  By Edward Dolnick

  Harper, $27.99 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-06-171951-6

  Newton's gravitational theory, one of the central achievements of the scientific revolution, didn't come out of nowhere. While Newton was undoubtedly one of history's great geniuses, he himself admitted that he “stood on the shoulders of giants.” Here's a lively account putting that accomplishment in its rightful context—which includes a plentiful helping of Renaissance history and some fascinating characters.

  Dolnick begins by showing just how different from the modern world Newton's times were. England was just recovering from a civil war, followed by the last great European outbreak of the plague and by a fire that devastated London. One generation earlier, Galileo had faced the full oppressive power of the Catholic church for claiming that the Earth moves. Now, while religion could still be a dangerous opponent, in England, at least, the church was willing to let experimentation flourish. Conversely, Newton probably spent as much time exploring religious questions as he did scientific ones.

  The new way of looking at things didn't take hold instantly. Members of the British Royal Society were conducting serious experiments on powdered unicorn horn and magical remedies while some of their colleagues were playing with such innovative equipment as microscopes and vacuum pumps—as much for entertainment as for the advancement of knowledge.