Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  COMING SOON

  new stories by Bill Pronzini & Barry N. Malzberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jack Skillingstead, Neal Barrett, jr., David Ira Cleary, John Kessel.

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  ON BOOKS

  Peter Heck

  THE BIRD OF THE RIVER

  by Kage Baker

  Tor, $25.99 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-2295-9

  Baker returns to the world of The House of the Stag, her World Fantasy Award nominee, for a coming of age story set on a fabulous riverboat.

  This is the story of Eliss, the teenage daughter of Falena, a woman who has fallen on hard times and is addicted to a sort of narcotic. Eliss finds a job for her mother, a trained diver, aboard The Bird of the River, which plies a regular trade route. Like other such vessels, it uses divers to remove snags and salvage wrec-kage, which the captain trades for supplies.

  This seems a promising move. Then, just as they are becoming comfortable on board, her mother is trapped underwater during a dive and drowns—leaving Eliss the sole support of herself and her younger brother, Alder, whose father was one of the elf-like Yendri.

  Surprisingly, in spite of the tragedy, Eliss finds a new life on board the Bird. She has already begun to make friends among the crew, which is surprisingly diverse. The captain, Glass, is a reclusive giant, who spends most of his time in his cabin and drinks a surprising amount of whatever liquor can be found in the riverside towns.

  The first mate, Mr. Riveter, is in charge of the day-to-day running of the boat. Others on board include a cartographer—an apparently aristocratic woman with a cabin of her own; several seemingly carefree musicians, who play to ease shipboard work and to entertain townspeople; and the families of the various crew members. As long as Eliss can pull her weight, the crew is willing to accept her.

  And before long, she discovers an unexpected talent: the ability to see things beneath the water’s surface. This wins her a position as lookout—a job she is soon doing better than anyone else on board. This secures her place on the ship, saving her the fear of having to find a way to support herself and Alder, who is beginning to fit in with the children aboard.

  Eliss’s life is complicated by the arrival of a young man her own age, Krelan, who gets a job based on what appears to be a forged letter of recommendation. Eliss quickly figures out that he is an agent for a noble family, whose son was found drowned in the river. It was the young man’s body Falena was diving for when she met her death. It is clear that the noble was murdered—he was found headless—and Krelan’s mission is to avenge the killing. Eliss and he eventually team up, and much of the remainder of the book follows their adventures in tracking down the truth of the matter.

  Baker weaves echoes of other river stories into this apparently simple travel tale. Eliss’s piloting lore owes much to Mark Twain’s education in that trade in Life on the Mississippi. The magical elements are kept to a bare minimum, but there’s enough for the book to qualify as a fantasy and to give the plot a forward momentum, as when Alder decides to seek out his Yendri roots.

  The Bird of the River also displays Baker’s unusual emotional range, covering the ground from tenderness to rich comedy. Much of this grows out of the juxtaposition of the fantastic with the completely mundane, such as Krelan’s misadventures after being assigned as a galley helper, under the baleful eye of an unsympathetic cook.

  Baker’s death earlier this year truncated a career that was already quite accomplished. For another recent title, check out her steampunkish darkly comic novel, a sort of prequel to her “Company” series, Not Less Than Gods (also from Tor). The books now being released are a reminder of just how much we could have had to look forward to if her life had not been cut short.

  Baker, who just won a much-deserved Nebula for her novella “The Women of Nell Gwynne’s,” was only beginning to receive recognition for her work in both fantasy and SF. Her death at age fifty-seven is a great loss to the field.

  KRAKEN

  by China Mieville

  Del Rey, $26 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-345-49749-9

  Strange cults battle over the fate of London in Mieville’s latest, which carries on his fascination with diverse urban settings.

  The tale begins with a young man, Billy Harrow, working as a curator in the British Natural History Museum. His particular specialty is the giant squid preserved in a huge tank in one of the exhibit rooms. The disappearance of the squid—against all probability or common sense—opens the action. Harrow cooperates with the police investigation, then returns to his flat, where the police tell him they will upgrade his security. Not certain why he needs it, he invites in a friend, Leon—who brings in a package he found left at the door. When Harrow opens the package, chaos ensues. For the rest of the novel, he is essentially on the run.

  Where he runs to, who he runs with, who he runs from—those become the meat of the story. The missing squid is the key to many things, it turns out. There is a whole religion, little known except to its adherents, built around squid gods, with a rich and complex body of scripture. Because of his work in the museum, Harrow finds himself considered one of its prophets—not a position that gives him any safety, because the believers in the squid also believe in a coming apocalypse. And whether he believes or not, Harrow is in a central role.

  The opposing forces are spectacularly evil. Two of them, named Goss and Subby, kill in nightmarish ways, showing a kind of glee in dealing death. They are currently in the service of the Tattoo—who is literally a huge, mobile face tattooed on the back of a young man. The Tattoo is a sort of overlord of London crime, with a gang of vicious mutant toughs to do his bidding.

  He too has an interest in the squid’s whereabouts—whether because he can’t stand the idea of anyone else controlling things on his turf or because he plans his own apocalypse isn’t immediately clear. What is clear is that having come to Tattoo’s attention, Harrow is in deadly peril.

  He finds allies among the kraken worshippers, including Dane, a sort of holy warrior whose mission is to protect the cult and its place of worship. Harrow quickly becomes uncomfortable among the cultists, and decides to try to go it alone; to his surprise, Dane comes along, helping him find safe houses and advising him on strategies for avoiding the numerous bad guys on his trail.

  At the same time, an extremely quirky police unit—the FSRC, a special squad with an interest in cult activities—is avidly following the case. Its members include an academic who is a sort of connoisseur of cults, joining one after another to partake of its secret lore, a no-nonsense inspector, and Kate, a foul-mouthed and very tough street cop with an unexpected talent for cult work. They’d like very much to get to the bottom of the rumors of an apocalypse, and they’d like even more to shut down the Tattoo’s operation. But to do either one, they need more clues than they’re currently getting.

  Finally, Leon’s old girlfriend is desperately trying to find out what happened to Leon, who has disappeared without notice. She’s convinced Harrow had something to do with it, but to find out what, she has to find him. She goes searching through parts of London that don’t appear on any maps, visiting places where she thinks she can find news of the two men. Which of course puts her directly in harm’s way, as an encounter with Goss and Subby makes amply clear. Even that isn’t enough to dissuade her.

  As the novel builds, the characters delve deeper and deeper into the conflicting schemes of odd cults and the inhuman ambitions of strange gods. Mieville handles it all like a virtuoso, with Lovecraft-like building of the paraphernalia and literary foundations of his various cults, evocative glimpses of a London only partly the same as the one his readers can visit, and a wildly varied cast of characters. He gets a good bit of humor into the dialogue, much of it when Kate is onstage. And the rhythm of tension and release is orchestrated with a sure hand.

  If you’re in the mood for a big, complex read th
at takes a modern urban setting and fills it with the kind of paranoid supernatural horror that began with Lovecraft, all with a wink at contemporary pop culture, this one’s your kind of book.

  COYOTE HORIZON

  by Allen Steele

  Ace, $7.99 (mm)

  ISBN: 978-0-441-01849-6

  COYOTE DESTINY

  by Allen Steele

  Ace, $25.95 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-0-441-01821-6

  This is a two-volume novel set in Steele’s “Coyote” universe.

  The plot focuses on several characters from families of the planet’s first settlers. Key among them is Hawk Thompson, a customs inspector with a past that includes the murder of his own father. Only family pull has let him have a position from which he may be able to reestablish a normal life.

  Two pieces of luck change his life. First, he spots an infiltrator, a fugitive from the warped politics of Earth who comes to Coyote to strike a blow against the settlement of other worlds. He turns him in and wins points, but makes a serious enemy.

  Shortly thereafter, he is asked to screen the ambassador of the hjadd, whom Coyote’s leaders wish to bring through customs with the minimum of interference and without possible insult by ignorant humans. During the screening, sensing Hawk’s discomfort with the process, the alien gives him a small box, which he says contains the book of Sa’Tong. When Hawk begins to read it, everything changes.

  Meanwhile, Hawk has befriended his neighbor Melissa, a young prostitute he saved from a vicious assault by a client. He did so at the price of drawing attention from his parole officer, who winks at it because saving a life is more important than following the rules. But with his new discovery, which he shares with her, his priorities change. He quits his job without notice and the two of them take off for the outback, doing their best to obliterate their trail.

  Meanwhile, Steele shifts the spotlight to another set of characters. Sawyer Lee, a wilderness guide, takes on one of the richest men on the planet as a client. The job takes him to a strange settlement in the far north, where an odd cult makes use of an indigenous herb mostly known for its nettle-like sting. What the cultists have discovered is that the herb’s smoke, when inhaled, induces telepathic states and mass consciousness among its members. And two of those members are Hawk and Melissa, who have brought the insights of Sa’Tong to the community. The combination of the book’s teachings and the herb’s expansion of their consciousness opens up unexpected possibilities.

  The rest of the book follows Hawk and Melissa as they begin to return to mainstream Coyotean society, bringing the teachings of Sa’Tong to the human race. Naturally, there are complications arising from the radical alterations of society that are the logical consequences of the Sa’Tong teachings. The fact that it is the prevalent philosophy of almost all other civilized races does not prevent humans with a stock in the status quo from fighting against the new ideals. One of them is the fugitive Hawk had intercepted while a customs inspector. The man finds a way to take revenge—and in doing so, throws two worlds into unexpected isolation.

  Steele has built up Coyote and its inhabitants through several volumes, and this is a culmination of the work he has put into the series, which is in some ways his equivalent of Dune. At the same time, it is a kind of homage to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, with its clash between an idealistic otherworldly religion and the vested interests of society.

  Even the central message of Sa’Tong has clear echoes of Michael Valentine Smith’s mantra, “Thou art God.” Steele has his own story to tell, though, and the two-volume novel draws heavily on the fascinating history and world-building that have marked the “Coyote” series.

  Those who appreciate far-reaching SF with big ideas and strong world-building are likely to find this one very much to their taste. The two books can be read independently of the previous books in the series—but be warned. Once you’ve gotten through them, you’re likely to want to go back and read the rest.

  THE BUSINESS OF SCIENCE FICTION

  by Mike Resnick & Barry Malzberg

  McFarland, $35 (tp)

  ISBN: 978-0-7864-4797-8

  Resnick and Malzberg, two thoroughly seasoned pros, have been carrying on a conversation about the facts of life for the SF writer in the pages of the SFWA Bulletin—one of the best publications I know of for working writers—for over a decade. It’s been a provocative, insightful look behind the scenes of the publishing biz, especially as it relates to the working genre writer—and here is the best of it in book form, from an academic publisher with a very respectable SF-related list.

  The two writers differ in many ways. Resnick has had considerable commercial success and is a frequent award winner, and he has the optimistic outlook that such success often brings. Malzberg has had critical acclaim, but on the whole has never hit the bull’s-eye in the popularity polls, and reflects it with a resigned good humor.

  Each has done a wide range of work, and each brings with him the hard-won knowledge of all the bear traps and seductive myths that confront the would-be professional SF writer. Between them, their credentials include novels, short fiction, work in numerous other genres, large amounts of non-fiction, editing magazines and anthologies, working at a major literary agency, and observing first hand almost every good and bad career move an author can make. And each of them writes from the point of view of one who, whatever else, loves the field.

  The topics here cover a wide range: foreign sales, anthologies, work for hire, agents, print on demand, magazines, and “really dumb ideas,” to pick just a few. While both men came up at a time when print ruled the roost, they are aware of the growth of the electronic marketplace, and address what it can mean to a writer working in the modern era.

  The advice is extremely down to earth, and based on the authors’ real-world experience. The field is more competitive than ever, and the advent of the internet has done more to confuse issues for the neophyte than almost any other innovation. Barry and Mike dive right into the fray, and while not every writer will agree with all their points, it would be a foolish writer who didn’t at least consider what they have to offer.

  Fact is, they don’t always agree with each other. Malzberg describes their differences bluntly: Resnick’s view of the business is the product of success and his own is the product of frustration. Where Resnick tends to see opportunities, Malzberg often sees disappointments waiting to rear their heads and take a bite out of the unwary. Because of these differences, the reader gets a fuller understanding of the real world issues facing a writer in the field.

  While you’re unlikely to find this in your local bookstore, it can be ordered at www.mcfarland.com or by calling the publisher at 1-800-253-2187. And while the price is steep compared to other commercial books, anyone seriously considering trying to write SF professionally is well advised to get a copy. Probably the only better bargain is a subscription to the SFWA Bulletin, where this kind of advice and discussion of the field appears on an ongoing basis.

  Copyright © 2010 Peter Heck

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  SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR

  Erwin S. Strauss

  October is the busiest month of the year for SF meets. I'll be at AlbaCon and CapClave. NecronomiCon is good too. 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 FIVE months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard.

  OCTOBER 2010

  8-10—AlbaCon. For info, write: Box 2085, Albany NY 12220. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 am to 10 pm,
not collect). (Web) albacon.org. (E-mail) info@albacon.org. Con will be held in: Albany NY (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Best Western Sovereign. Guests will include: writer Alan Steele, artist Ron Miller, fan Lisa Ashton and many others.

  7-10—Sirens. sirensconference.org. Vail CO. Holly Black, Marie Brennan, Terri Windling. “Women in Fantasy Literature.”

  8-10—Motaku. (816) 863-0164. motaku.org. Park Place Hotel, Kansas City MO. Cassandra Hodges, Sophie McNutt. Anime.

  9-12—Spain Nat'l. Con. hispacon2010.blogspot.com. Burjassot, Spain. Many guests. Spanish SF, fantasy and horror.

  15-17—ConVersion. con-version.org. Calgary AB. General SF and fantasy convention.

  15-17—Arcana. (612) 721-5959. arcana.com. Best Western Bandana Blvd., St. Paul MN. C. Kiernan. “The Dark Fantastic.”

  19-28—CruiseTrek, 23852 PCH, #385, Malibu CA 90265. (310) 456-7544. cruisetrek.com. Iberian peninsula from Genoa.

  22-24—CapClave, c/o Box 53, Ashton MD 20861. capclave.org. Hilton, Rockvile MD (near DC). Willis, the Vandermeers.

  22-24—NecronomiCon, 5902 Thontosassa Rd., Plant City FL 33565. stonehill.org. St. Petersburg FL. David Gerrold.

  22-24—Eternal Twilight, Box 5773, Milton Keynes MK10 1AS, UK. massiveevents.co.uk. Birmingham UK. Twilight series.

  22-24—MileHiCon, Box 487, Westminster CO 80036. milehicon.org. Hyatt Tech Center, Denver CO. R. Caine, K. Kurtz.