Asimov's SF, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He paused briefly, enjoying the anticipation that washed over him.

  "Most important,” he concluded, “we will not leave this little realm of ours until we are children again. Wide-eyed, enthralled children who know what they have in their hands and hold it with all the care they possess."

  Copyright © 2010 Robert Reed

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  Department: ON BOOKS: THIRD WORLD WORLDS by Paul Di Filippo

  The Birth of a Notion

  The debut of any new publishing firm is a moment characterized by hope, promise, enthusiasm, hard work and dreams of success. Such is the case with Panverse Publishing and their initial offering, Panverse One (trade paper, $14.95, 283 pages, ISBN 978-0-578-03842-1). Panverse One is a) an original anthology; b) first in a series; and c) composed of novellas only. With this bold and courageous tripartite assault on expectations and conventionality—short fiction doesn't sell, launch your enterprise with a novel, etc., etc.—editor and publisher Dario Ciriello merits our applause.

  That is, if the fiction itself is any good.

  Which it most certainly is.

  But before looking at the five stories herein, let's take a moment to focus on the gorgeous cover by newcomer Vitaly S. Alexius. Only twenty-six years old, Alexius already possesses a unique style and technical mastery that should ensure him a long career.

  The first entry in the anthology is “Waking the City,” by Andrew Tisbert. This post-apocalypse story reads like some oneiric combo of Andre Norton, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Rudy Rucker, and A.E. van Vogt. In a hostile jungle that exhibits a group consciousness, humans sustain a precarious existence. They dream of re-entering the last city of mankind, a mysterious redoubt to be made accessible by breeding up an avatar with certain mental powers. The young boy named Kuyo, our narrator, seems to be that scion. His adventures in search of his abducted lover Liana resonate both with John and Joseph Campbell.

  Since Uncle River's story “Shiva Not Dancing” is partially concerned with the touchy subject of water rights in the American Southwest, it's tempting for the reviewer to say that the whole novella is a case of “still waters running deep.” Uncle River's preferred storytelling technique is one of surface calm belying psychic turmoil and deep significance below. His tales are seldom filled with conventional pyrotechnics or Big Moments. Instead, they are closely observed slabs of life, three-dimensional and rich. In this instance, a woman named Elissa Maas, meditator at a “pagan” temple, crosses paths with an earnest young scientist, a greedy land speculator, a spoiled teen, a right-wing preacher, and a host of other well-drawn characters over the course of several months of sweetly and ironically depicted American life.

  Combine the lives of the famous Bronte sisters—and brother Bramwell—with Jerome Bixby's creepy tale “It's a Good Life!", then add a dash of the film Heavenly Creatures, along with a splatter of Philip José Farmer, and you might come up with something resembling Alan Smale's “Delusion's Song.” In this gothic extravaganza, the British village of Haworth is translated to a milieu, where the subconscious roilings of the Brontes begin to churn the fabric of reality. Smale works cleverly in a manner akin to that of Rhys Hughes, and succeeds in building an odd landscape that mirrors our world in useful and entertaining ways.

  Although Reggie Lutz chooses to christen his offering with the semi-ignoble title of “Fork You,” the story itself is a splendid blend of comedy, pathos, and hillbilly shambolic fantasy. A feral child named Gladiola is adopted by a clan of inbred country folk, the Johnsons, and becomes a catspaw in a centuries-old feud. If Jeff Ford and Andy Duncan chose to rewrite Avram Davidson's “The House the Blakeneys Built,” the result might resemble this compellingly oddball rural fable.

  Finally, we get an exercise in one of SF's “power chords,” the Big Dumb Object. Jason K. Chapman, in “The Singers of Rhodes,” postulates an alien space station big enough to house a couple of million souls or so. Seemingly empty upon discovery by several rival human groups, its interstices are filled with what seem to be mere ET “rats,” but which prove to be much more. Not neglecting the essential human drama, Chapman stages a stirring tale of reconciliation and self-discovery, with plenty of sense-of-wonder as well.

  Editor Ciriello's broad and discerning tastes portend well for future volumes—and for Panverse Publishing as a whole.

  * * * *

  A Fortress Around SF's Heart

  Another optimistic soul: Warren Lapine, recently in the news for saving Realms of Fantasy magazine from extinction, has founded Fantastic Books as an imprint of his parent firm, Wilder Publications. The remit of Fantastic Books—guided in part by the capable and knowledgeable Marty Halpern, of Golden Gryphon repute—is to make worthwhile out-of-print SF available once more. As of this writing, their website features ten pages of titles, some of which are bound to appeal to readers of Asimov's. One novel that I am almost certain will retain its appeal is James Gunn's This Fortress World (hardcover, $25.95, 180 pages, ISBN 978-1-60459-732-5).

  Originally issued in 1955, the book marked the start of Gunn's long and prestigious career. The author was thirty-two years old at the time, having served in WWII, and the novel reflects a certain maturity, despair, and worldly savvy based on these veteran circumstances of the writer.

  This Fortress World is pure noir. It stands shoulder to shoulder with contemporary paperback originals by John D. MacDonald, Bruno Fischer, Guy Brewer, and David Dodge. The book just happens to take place in a lively, convincing, and non-negligible SF milieu.

  Now, too often people think “noir” means simply “stories involving private detectives.” But this is not the case, and there is no detective character in Gunn's book, although there is certainly a mystery of galactic import. Rather, noir is the portrayal of corruption, decadence, betrayal, selfishness, avarice, and short-sightedness. It's about power and the abuse of power. Gunn's work fits this description perfectly.

  The Second Empire of our galaxy has collapsed long ago, leaving interstellar traffic of a reduced nature among isolated “fortress worlds” whose rulers foster ignorance and xenophobia among the rabble. On one such, Brancusi, Will Dane is an acolyte in the ruling Church. One day, an object that could crack open the stasis of the fortress worlds falls into his hands. His life becomes instant hell.

  Gunn sets Dane on the run almost immediately, and he never stops running for the duration of the story. He is propelled from one catastrophe to another, a string of defeats climaxing in an ultimate bitter victory. He always survives by sheer will and force of character, although his character is not of the best. He brutally kills friends and enemies alike, and conceives a prejudicial attitude toward the one woman who loves him, for reasons of inbred social convention. Gunn employs the pulp technique of a constant stream of cliffhangers and setbacks magnificently, creating a kind of harried, fox-running-from-the-hounds atmosphere that keeps the reader tense and in suspense. The first-person narration supplements the violent action with philosophical and societal speculations, couched in a black emotional ambiance. Gunn's prose is a kind of brute proletarian poetry.

  The symbolical usage of the fortress motif is splendidly done as well. The sheltered, callous, brain-numbed lives of the citizenry are depicted in terms of a protective, self-devised fortress around each individual's heart. Even such a minor incident as Dane being stripped naked is milked for its allegorical value, with Dane referring to his lost clothing as a kind of everyday fortress.

  In a foreword, Gunn speaks of his motivation to write a kind of anti-epic, counter-space opera. He succeeded one hundred percent. The book is a refutation of the glory of empire-building, offering a from-the-gutter perspective on humanity's overweening ambition and lack of compassion.

  Gunn also mentions that his first novel received scant attention in the SF world—perhaps because it was indeed too overwhelmingly against the romantic, utopian, goodness-triumphant impulses of the genre. Given this apparent lack of influence, it's hard to say that the book should be
seen as a pivotal forerunner to much of what was to come. Yet, one can retroactively detect in This Fortress World everything from Bester's Gully Foyle, to some of Algis Budry's early stories, to Laumer & Brown's Earthblood, to the work of Delany and George Martin, to cyberpunk, and down to M. John Harrison's postmodern space operas. Even if these later authors never knew of the Gunn book, its presence, one likes to imagine, was a kind of psychic node in the field, radiating out waves of change.

  And now, thanks to Fantastic Books, a whole new generation of readers gets a chance to appreciate Gunn's neglected minor masterpiece.

  * * * *

  Live Long, and Prospero

  The debut of an individual novel is fraught in a similar fashion as the birth of a new publisher, although on a smaller scale, impacting fewer people. But to the one person most affected—the author—such an event looms just as large. So it's pleasant for me to report that L. Jagi Lamplighter (who in another incarnation is married to the accomplished SF writer John C. Wright) has distinguished herself with the appearance of Prospero Lost (Tor, hardcover, $24.99, 347 pages, ISBN 978-0-7653-1929-6), the first book in a trilogy to be continued with Prospero in Hell and Prospero Regained.

  Lamplighter's premise is disarmingly simple, yet full of narrative potential: Shakespeare's play The Tempest represents a mostly factual account of real wizardry and historical personages. Now, longtime readers might recall a similar riff in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer's Tempest (1974). However, that novel was much more deracinating and estranging, insofar as it postulated an entire timeline where Shakespeare was the “Great Historian."

  In Lamplighter's scenario, The Tempest slots neatly into our familiar world as a bit of secret history with implications down to the present, creating a ripe field for urban fantasy. Because Prospero and his children—yes, children plural: Miranda has six brothers and a sister now—are immortal, and walking among us in the twenty-first century. Not merely walking, mind you, but pulling arcane levers of the physical world, to govern such global matters as climate change and in fact the very nature of physics itself. With spirits from the vasty deep at their command, they are the secret masters and/or guardians of our species.

  But even such demiurges are not immune to predators. Our story opens with a bang, as Prospero goes missing and Miranda is attacked by supernatural beasties unleashed by her own father's misguided experiments. Her only recourse for survival appears to lie in reassembling her bickering, far-scattered siblings into a cohesive family again.

  This “Get the Band Back Together” motif is a potent one that allows for lots of globetrotting across different exotic and intriguing venues. Lamplighter exploits the possibilities very well, hustling Miranda and her assistant spirit Mab (the sprite in this case being housed in the artificial body of a male who looks like a stereotypical 1940's private eye) from New England to the Caribbean and beyond. Lamplighter nicely alternates heavy-duty action scenes with more contemplative and discursive ones. She's particularly good at filling in the Prospero Family's backstory in both explicit and implicit ways so that the reader feels the weight of their history and long lives. Her dialogue is crisp and effective, ranging from humorous to touching. And the Prospero Kids we do meet are all delineated in distinctive fashion, sharing a familial aura yet distinct from each other.

  My two quibbles are these: we don't get to meet the entire family in volume one, thus preventing us from grokking and assessing the crucial family dynamics in their entirety. If I recall my Nine Princes in Amber (1970) correctly (and that book is an obvious template for Lamplighter), we got to meet all the major players by novel's end, despite future surprises. Second, I felt that once in a while the book's fantasy elements drift from genuinely awesome to animation-cute. I can hear echoes of the bickering cast of Shrek (2001), for instance, in certain scenes that depict the dynamics among the characters, and that detracts from Lamplighter's otherwise original conceits.

  * * * *

  Schorr Thing

  I can hardly pretend that the following text will constitute an impartial review. But on the other hand, I am sincerely not wasting your time by touting work of dubious merit for personal gain. The book in question, by a world-acknowledged master, is a beautiful achievement well worth your precious dollars. You will not be disappointed.

  The volume under discussion is American Surreal (Last Gasp, hardcover, $39.95, 100 pages, ISBN 978-0-86719-709-9), the latest compilation of the newest paintings of Todd Schorr. I have been lucky enough to have Todd's fantabulous artwork appear on the covers of two of my books. I wrote the text for his last coffee-table opus, Dreamland (2004). And I consider the artist and his equally talented wife Kathy Staico Schorr to be my pals. But all this does not bias my perception of his paintings as magnificent canvases stuffed to the brim with fantastical touchstones of our favorite literature and cinema. Their objective glory outshines simple friendship.

  Todd's work, a fantasia of popular culture filtered through Boschian dynamics, has never been stronger, in both its conceptual audacity and rigor, and in sheer technique. His combination of classical virtuoso brushwork and postmodern pop motifs, all cemented together by surreal logic and allegorical heft, produces art that is both timeless and of the moment. At the center of this rich volume are two huge projects: A Pirate's Treasure Dream and Ape Worship. Both depict overwhelming panoramic narratives that are at once personal and universal. These paintings boast fractal depths that reward minute scrutiny.

  Todd's text detailing the history and methodology of these works, as well as a fine general assessment by scholar Susan Landauer, add prose icing to this sumptuous cake from the artistic bakery popularized by artist Robert Williams, whose concept of “lowbrow cartoon realism” limns, but does not totally capture Schorr's mastery.

  * * * *

  The Other Side of Several Worlds

  Do you know the name of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya? Don't feel bad if you are ignorant of her byline. I, too, was similarly benighted, until I received a copy of her story collection with the lengthy title, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Penguin, trade paper, $15.00, 206 pages, ISBN 978-0-14-311466-6). This appearance of her fiction is certainly the most prominent showcase of her work in the USA to date, after decades of non-exposure, and thus we all remain non-culpable in our ignorance. But not henceforth. Because this little volume introduces a unique and essential voice in fantastika, you must become intimate with it at once.

  In their introduction, Petrushevskaya's deft translators, Keith Gessen and Anna Summers, hail her as perhaps the best-known fiction writer currently working in Russia. But Petrushevskaya is no spring chicken, as she was born in 1938. Yet for many years she was silenced by the Soviets, who found her surreal fables and allegories too threatening, thus partially explaining her low profile abroad.

  Although the editors divide her stories into several categories—"Songs of the Eastern Slavs,” “Allegories,” “Requiems,” and “Fairy Tales"—Petrushevskaya's work possesses a unity of vision. She depicts the hidden backside of our reality, where the border between death and life is permeable, identities flow and shift and meld, and apocalypses are difficult to distinguish from quotidian existence.

  In “Hygiene,” a mysterious plague leaves its victims as black mounds of corruption, while those who survive possess “a bald scalp covered with the thinnest layer of pink skin, like the foam atop boiling milk.” In “The Fountain House,” a father endures dream perils to resurrect his dead daughter. “The Cabbage-Patch Mother” owns a Thumbelina-style daughter who lives in a matchbox. And in “Marilena's Secret,” two separate women are magically blended into a single giantess, “a girl-mountain . . .with a chest like a big pillow, a back like a blow-up mattress, and a stomach like a bag of potatoes."

  You might be able to tell from the tiny samples of Petrushevskaya's prose I've given that her work exhibits a sly gravitas, a homely poetry that is never showoffy, but always in service to the tale and its beauty. She reminds me someti
mes of Isaac Bashevis Singer in that regard, as well as in her affection for the daily rituals and routines of her protagonists. Reading the stories here that are set in a recognizable Russia (others occur in timeless, far-off lands), one gets a poignant portrait of the endurance and despair of that nation's oft-beleaguered citizens.

  Heir to Kafka and the Brothers Grimm, Petrushevskaya also aligns herself with the great modernist writers of fantastika, and thereby makes herself one of our genre family.

  Copyright © 2010 Paul Di Filippo

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  Department: SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR by Erwin S. Strauss

  Memorial Day is the year's biggest weekend. All the general SF/fantasy events then are good bets for Asimovians. Plan now 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

  MAY 2010

  13-16—Nebula Awards Weekend. sfwa.org. In Florida. SF/Fantasy Writers of America meet. Note new dates.

  14-16—LepreCon. For info, write: Box 26665, Tempe AZ 85285. Or phone: (480) 945-6890 (10 am to 10 pm, not collect). (Web) leprecon.org. (E-mail) lep36@leprecon.org. Con will be held in: Mesa (Phoenix) AZ (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Marriott. Guests will include: G. R. R. Martin, C. Vess, J. A. Owen. General SF/fantasy, with art emphasis.