FSF, September 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  "Don't make fun. It ends up being a more interesting story than you might think...."

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  Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  Portable Childhoods, by Ellen Klages, Tachyon, 2007, $14.95.

  Though her first novel was marketed to young readers, and many of the protagonists of her short fiction are children, Ellen Klages is really writing for adults. I love how she explains the reason for that in a recent interview in Locus. She writes about childhood because:

  "I keep trying to recapture that feeling of going someplace new and not knowing what you're going to find. It's childhood—not necessarily my childhood, or anybody else's, but a sense of wonder that most people lose by the time they are adults and that for some fortunate reason I seem to have kept."

  Elsewhere she likens this sense of going into the past—how everything is new when you're a child—as akin to science fiction. Traveling is particularly an adventure for a child—or at least it was when she was growing up, before the homogenization of North American culture. Everywhere you went was different and she strives to evoke “the way that, because it wasn't near home, it was alien—not scary-alien, just other."

  And this sense of place as though seen for the first time is one of her greatest strengths as a writer. Her stories evoke all the senses, giving us such rich descriptions that, by the time the story is done, her settings are as familiar to us as our own backyards. It doesn't matter if the story takes place in the New Mexican desert during the Forties (as in “The Green Glass Sea,” which later grew into her novel of the same title), San Francisco in the unenlightened days of the Fifties ("Time Gypsy"), or the Carnegie Library sometime in the near future ("In the House of the Seven Librarians").

  But setting is only a piece of the story. Klages also has the true storyteller's gift of character and plot. You believe in her people from the first moment they appear on the page, and you can't guess where the story is going. Well, you can guess, but she invariably takes us someplace we didn't think we'd end up.

  In her afterword she tells us, “And so I write about fear and wonder, and discovering who you are and where you belong,” and you know what? That's really what we look for in any good story—not to mention our own lives—and she does it so well.

  Klages got a late start at the writing game and her output still isn't prodigious. The one novel and stories available under her by-line favor quality over quantity. They are extraordinarily imaginative and exhilarating, with a deep underlying sense of heart.

  If many of the stories in Portable Childhoods aren't already considered classics in the field, they should be. So far, I haven't been disappointed in anything she's written.

  * * * *

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Joss Whedon & Georges Jeanty, Dark Horse Comics, 2007, $2.99 an issue.

  There's an interesting thing happening in comics lately.

  Now I know that there's been a long tradition of adapting TV shows and movies into ongoing comic book series: retelling stories already seen on the screen, filling in between episodes, providing prequels, or continuing the adventures of the various characters after the film or series has ended.

  For instance, Fox Atomic Comics/HarperCollins recently published a trade paperback 28 Days After: The Aftermath which takes readers from the end of the 2003 film and leads them neatly into the upcoming sequel, 28 Weeks Later.

  But that book, while written by Steve Niles of 30 Days of Night fame who certainly knows how to tell a story, is still someone else's vision. What's interesting is that now some original creators are turning to the comic book medium to bring us the untold stories of their characters.

  So one of the executive producers of the CW show Supernatural is writing a prequel to that show in a six-issue series.

  And Joss Whedon is bringing us “season eight” of his popular Buffy the Vampire Series in comic book form.

  Regular readers might remember my disappointment with Nancy Holder's take on what happened after the end of the seventh season in her novel Queen of the Slayers (2006). I had a number of problems with the execution of the story, but my biggest problem with it was that it just didn't feel right.

  This does.

  Instead of starting with the characters staring at the giant hole in the ground that had once been the town of Sunnydale, California, Whedon jumps ahead to when they're already established in their post-season seven lives. I've only seen the first two issues as I write this column, and I don't want to offer up spoilers, so let me just say that Whedon gives us what he does best: great dialogue, surprising turns of events that make perfect sense once they happen, and fun. Big fun.

  Reading these two books reminds me of the joy I felt during the first few seasons of the series with its (at the time) innovative mix of drama, humor, action, and yes, monsters. And interestingly, here, just as in the series, the worst of the monsters can be human.

  This series isn't Whedon's first foray into comics—not even his first foray into the Buffy universe in comic book form. That was Slayer, a futuristic look at his iconic creation that—to the delight of diehard fans—played back into some pivotal elements of the final season of the TV series. He's also been scripting a very successful run on The Astonishing X-Men and has recently taken over Runaways on a monthly basis.

  But this is the story that his fans have wanted to see: Whedon's vision of what would have happened next with Buffy and Co. Given the scope of the story as it has unfolded so far, and how much it would have cost to put this on the screen, I doubt we'd have seen on TV what Whedon's able to do here even if there had been an eighth season of Buffy broadcast.

  It's worth picking up on a monthly basis, but most comic book companies are good about collecting storylines of a few issues in trade paperback format, and Dark Horse is no exception. Check your local comic book shop for details. Or even a regular book store that carries trade paperback collections.

  * * * *

  You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem, Doubleday, 2007, $24.95.

  I remember not long after George R. R. Martin's The Armageddon Rag (with its subtitle “A Stereophonic Long-Playing Novel") was published in 1983, that someone—an agent or an editor, I can't remember which—very earnestly assured me that novels with a musical background—particularly those with a rock'n'roll background—didn't sell.

  Well, The Armageddon Rag wasn't a huge bestseller, but it did well, and it certainly gained a dedicated following. As have any number of other books with a similar sensibility.

  I know that I like them. Maybe it's because I've been a music junkie since the age of twelve. I can't imagine life without music, so why should books ignore it? And unlike a rock'n'roll movie where this terrific band has to show their actual chops for the story to be believable (the prose equivalent would be a book about a great poet; you'd have to provide the real deal in whatever poetry you put in your character's mouth), we can't hear the fictional band. So long as authors do their job well, we'll believe in the musicians.

  Of course an author actually has to know something about music to pull that off, but Jonathan Lethem has that covered. I don't know if he's ever played in a band, but his nonfiction writing about music has authenticity. His piece on Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone comes immediately to mind. It's the kind of writing that makes you want to get up and put an album on. That's what the fictional book needs to do, although unfortunately, there's no album to turn to as our enthusiasm for the material rises.

  All of this is to say that Lethem's done a terrific job in his new novel, describing the social workings and music of a young L.A. band that's trying to get off the ground.

  As usual, I don't like to give too much away, but I think I can safely tell you that this isn't the usual rags-to-riches (and occasionally back-to-rags) tale that is often the case with this sort of a story. Instead, the music, and the scene around it, is a backdrop to a fascinating cast of characters—interacting, loving, messing up ... in other words, carrying on t
he way any group dynamic does.

  Sure, I wanted to hear the music. But I could imagine it well enough (that's what a reader's imagination is for, after all). And I was absolutely captivated with pretty much everything in this book—the good bits, as well as the bits where you wanted to just shake the characters. It's sexy and funny, and brimming with drama.

  And satire that isn't really mean-spirited but certainly spot-on. Like the Complaint Line, where bassist Lucinda works. People can call up to ... well, just complain about whatever they want. (It's a kind of askew art installation, though the callers don't know that.) Or the masturbation boutique where drummer Denise works. (I don't think I need to explain that.) Or the band's first gig where they've been hired to play almost inaudibly while the dance floor is filled with people who are dancing, each listening to their own personal music device. (Another “art” project, though this one doesn't quite come off as planned.)

  Lethem slips in and out of our field, but the commonality all his books hold is that they're inventive, addictive, and very good.

  Material to be considered for review in this column should be sent to Charles de Lint, P. O. Box 9480, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V2.

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  Books by James Sallis

  The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, edited by George Mann, Solaris Books, 2006, $7.99.

  Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, edited by Lou Anders, Pyr, 2007, $15.

  There are these windows that open from time to time. The old days of Astounding. Horace Gold with Galaxy, the advent of F&SF itself. Gold Medal Books. Venues that spring up and allow writers a new voice, new freedoms. Serving as amanuensis for those already established, likely as not such venues also help give rise to an entire new population of writers.

  One of those windows sprang open in the late sixties and seventies with the proliferation of original anthologies, non-thematic collections of theretofore unpublished stories. Damon Knight's Orbit (twenty-one volumes, 1966-1980) led the pack. Harking back to the original original anthology, Fred Pohl's Star Science Fiction (six volumes, 1953-1959), Orbit was promptly joined by Terry Carr's Universe, Harry Harrison's Nova, and Bob Silverberg's New Dimensions, not to mention the colossus of them all, Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions; there was also a second tier including David Gerrold's Alternities, Delany's and Hacker's Quark and, further along, Roy Torgeson's Chrysalis. Many of my generation cut their teeth as writers on these anthologies; many just a bit younger cut their teeth as readers on them.

  All the barricades were down, many of us felt: we could write what and as we wished. And be read.

  It could be argued that the market simply was responding to demand, that a new audience had come up, an audience disenchanted with the genre status quo, an audience jonesing for new ideas and new modes of expression.

  It could equally be argued that the product was already there—that the dozen or so genre magazines and many other short-story markets publishing sf had stimulated genre growth, with new writers pushing hard at the gates—and that the economics of the time (cheap printing, low overhead, wide distribution) made it practical for publishers to forge these new smitheries.

  It is probably no surprise to readers of this magazine that the market for short fiction has since declined, both within the borders of sf and without. Few general-circulation magazines now publish fiction. Most short fiction nowadays finds its home in literary journals of one sort or another or, increasingly, on the Internet. We've but a scant handful of professional-level sf magazines left, these walking a tightrope of ever-diminishing subscriptions, lacunate distribution, and escalating costs. As for anthologies, over the past quarter-century or so the theme anthology has reigned, to the extent that I once proposed a collection of great nose stories, half-fearful that I might be offered a contract.

  Whatever the explanation for the purchase those early anthologies found, no recent series—Full Spectrum, the relaunched Universe, or Starlight, among others—has shown the enduring viability or the vitality of older series. Those that have endured the longest, anthologies such as Polyphony (edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake) and Leviathan (edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre), have come from small independent presses, and from editors eager to broaden the boundaries of the genre.

  One likes to believe that we may be poised to see a revival of the original anthology. Here on my desk are two of the latest avatars, both of them, interestingly enough, tied directly to new publishing ventures—proprietary, if you will—and functioning, one must suppose, as de facto manifestos. Both, as well, rather adamantly science fiction anthologies.

  George Mann, editor of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, in speaking of the short story as “the lifeblood of our genre,” actually uses the word manifesto. This collection presages, he tells us, what is to come under the Solaris imprint.

  And a revival—of the excitement, the ferment, even of the controversies swarming about the original anthology in its heyday—is precisely what editor Lou Anders of Fast Forward 1 calls for. Science fiction he characterizes as “a tool for making sense of a changing world.” Anthologies such as his and Mann's, publishers such as Solaris and Pyr, could be the toolboxes.

  Not many new names here, in either anthology—mostly well-known writers sidestepping from the current magazines, where their craft was honed.

  The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction is far the more traditionally biased of the two, and several stories herein, in their dependence on the big idea, their reach for vision, could almost be from the Golden Age—not throwbacks or pastiche, but reimaginings, recreations.

  At least three of the stories herein take war as their theme. Many others, even if obliquely rather than patently (as in “Cages” and “The Farewell Party"), center on religious issues. Not surprising, since sf is a literature of extremes, war being the extreme of social polity and religion the extreme of humankind's ontological yearning, but it does cause one to wonder what might be in the air.

  The volume opens with a brilliantly written parable of war and human guilt, “In His Sights” by Jeffrey Thomas, the sort of story that only an arealist mode such as science fiction can offer.

  The other young returnees kept looking at him, wondering what horrors were concealed by his mask. The mask looked like several layers of black plastic, vacuum-formed to his face, with openings for his eyes, nostrils, and mouth. From his eyes, with their epicanthic folds, they could at least tell that he was of Asian ancestry. But what wounding had he suffered?

  A soldier returns from war with the blue-skinned Ha Jiin wearing the face of his last kill, living a shadow life among a society of civilians and able finally to rid himself of that face only by further violence. The ending is powerful, the moral confusion and burden of guilt palpable; and the shifts in point of view precisely mirror the blurring of identities at the very heart of the story.

  The volume's sixteen stories continue with (among others) “C-Rock City” by Jay Lake and Greg van Eekhout and “Zora and the Land Ethic Nomads” by Mary Turzillo, both with a fine narrative energy to them; “The Bowdler Strain” by James Lovegrove, a tongue-in-cheek tale of those who would cleanse language (and which reminds me strongly of stories by the great Fritz Leiber); Brian Aldiss's nightmarish fairy tale “Four Ladies of the Apocalypse"; and Neal Asher's “Bioship,” with a future Captain Ahab and crew riding, as it were, in the whale.

  Paul Di Filippo, with “Personal Jesus,” contributes a story that's likely to be remembered and talked about for some time. Scientists, you see, have stumbled onto this chip that, well, channels god? And now everyone carries around a godPod, connected directly to ... what? As always, Di Filippo humanizes the story, focusing on poor-pitiful-me Shepherd Crooks (Dickens would have loved that name) before unfolding onto larger vistas. The story's ending, pulled bodily from the cyclorama, could easily have concluded an episode of early TV's Science Fiction Theater.

  Ian Watson's “Cages” is one of tho
se stories that proceeds and finds its strength primarily in image. In a single day there appeared tens of millions of hoops, jump points through which came the Varroa, looking like giant bees and infinitely more inscrutable. Shortly behind them, and accomplished within a week, came the impediments now sported by all adults, often in the form of a cage about the knee, head, or genitals, sometimes a living cat attached at the person's elbow, or someone else's eye.

  Svelte's hair cascades blackly and the collar of her crimson shirt gapes wide to accommodate a hexagonal neck-curse of brass, which holds her chin high. Her impediment looks the height of funky fashion, something chosen deliberately rather than inflicted upon her.

  "Third Person” by Tony Ballantyne is a projection of the idiocies of surgical strikes, targeted weapons, and contained wars. British troops carry on a frantic war as Spanish-speaking civilians go about their daily lives, threatening to sue if impinged upon by the battles raging about them; a drug given to “conscripts” takes away volition, so that they watch what is happening, what they are doing, as if reading about someone else. This is a marvelously paced, visceral story employing point of view to full effect.

  Every group, be it musicians, accountants, or physicists, has its own cache of in-jokes. Mike Resnick's and David Gerrold's “Jellyfish,” concerning the maladventures of one Dillon K. Filk, science fiction writer, fills the bill for sf. I was reminded again of Fritz Leiber's satires, of John Sladek's juicy pastiches, of the silliness of Harry Harrison at his best. Nor, on another note, could I avoid recalling Barry Malzberg's high comedy Herovit's World.

  My personal favorite here has to be Stephen Baxter's “Last Contact,” a deeply affecting, bittersweet look at endings. As the universe winds down and gets set literally to dissolve from beneath them, Caitlin and mother Maureen meet and talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax. Some stories seem to reach down to the very bedrock of what we are as humans; this is one. We all know that the sweetness of the world is inextricably mixed with its horrors. We know that all things must end, yet must live, day by day, year after year, as though they will not.