What is so often forgotten is that Brian Herbert had his own independent sf writing career before taking up the reins of the Dune franchise. His solo work included genuinely funny books like Sydney's Comet, The Garbage Chronicles, and the exquisite Sudanna, Sudanna (in which chuckle builds on chuckle inexorably, until without quite noticing it you're laughing so much you can hardly breathe).
Recently, in between Dune books, Brian Herbert has been crafting a space opera as big as the galaxy; like the best space operas, this one moves from simple sf into the realm of brand new mythology.
The Timeweb Chronicles concern the Timeweb, a multidimensional structure that fills the galaxy, connecting stars and planets with communications and transport. Sapient podships travel along the Timeweb at faster-than-light speed, bringing together diverse races and cultures.
The hero of this epic is Noah Watanabe, an ecologist who once specialized in repairing damaged planets. By this third volume, Noah has turned his attention to the greatest ecological crisis of all: the disintegration and death of the Timeweb itself.
As the Web decays, the Human Merchant Prince Alliance joins with their erstwhile enemies, the shape-shifting Mutati Kingdom. Meanwhile, Noah finds his paranormal abilities boosted by a connection to an ultimate power, and begins evolving into something beyond human. Whether this power is for good or evil, he does not know.
I'm not going to tell you that The Timeweb Chronicles are easy reading. Each volume weighs in at over 500 pages of prose that can sometimes be as dense as the worst excesses of his father. But it's rewarding work: the universe of the Timeweb is spectacularly wonder-filled, and the story is mythic.
Fair warning, though: this is one of those trilogies that's really one long super-novel; if you start with this third volume, you're really cheating yourself. Book One is Timeweb; Book Two is The Web and the Stars.
If you like far-future space operas teeming with interesting aliens and larger-than-life characters, give this one a try.
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As hardcore sf readers, it is always incumbent upon us to try to share the wealth (or, if you'd rather, spread the infection). Gift-giving season provides a perfect opportunity for proselytizing ... er ... sharing. Your targets might be friends, coworkers, children (your own or someone else's), or random strangers. The right story, book, or author may just turn a person on to science fiction. This world needs more sf and more sf readers. So let's get started.
It should go without saying that a subscription to Analog makes an excellent gift for anyone who fancies science fiction ... but I'm saying it anyway. Subscription information is readily available in the pages of this very magazine, and the recipient will thank you all year.
In the past few months I've reviewed a number of fine novels and anthologies that would make great gifts for adult sf readers, and I'm not going to go back over that ground. Instead, I want to give you some ideas for the younger folks among your circle, particularly those who might not regularly read sf.
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Gantz (multiple volumes)
Hiroya Oku
Dark Horse Manga, $12.95
ISBN: varies
Genre: Manga
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The anime/manga genre is big with teens and young adults—and more than a bit of an enigma to many sf-reading older adults. It's that Japanese stuff, largely fantasy, that all the kids seem so excited about these days. Nowadays there are lots of swords and magic and dragons and demons ... but it all started as good old science fiction: the lovable robot that we English-speakers learned to call Astro Boy.
If the entire anime/manga scene is unfamiliar to you, a little terminology may help. “Anime” is video: movies and television. “Manga” are printed volumes that combine pictures and words (like comics). Manga are generally printed in thick pulp-like paperbacks, and most of them are read back-to-front (in the Japanese style). Usually, a story in manga form consists of ten or more individual volumes. A particular story may be told in anime form, as manga, or both.
If you know a young adult or mature teen who fancies manga, you may want to give them something with more science fiction content. Gantz is a good choice.
The story is fairly simple. Some recently dead folks awaken in a secluded room dominated by a mysterious talking black sphere, which calls itself Gantz. These folks have been cloned and resurrected in order to serve as agents for Gantz: it arms them with special suits and weapons, then sends them on missions to confront hostile aliens that are invading the world.
Or maybe it's all a virtual-reality game, run by an unknown game master for some obscure purpose.
Gantz is not for kids: there's a fair amount of violence, foul language, and some sexual content. But the characters are compelling and the story psychologically gripping. The art is superbly atmospheric. Give this to your favorite young anime fan, and you'll quickly become the coolest “old person” they know.
If you aren't already.
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Little Brother
Cory Doctorow
Tor, 382 pages, $17.95 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1985-2
Genres: Cyberpunk, Teen SF
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It's been said that most books for teenagers are based on the literary form called Rite of Passage, a ritual in which a young person learns to assert his or her independence while becoming part of the larger society. Combine the Rite of Passage with science fiction, and the result can be very powerful. That's certainly true of many of the great classic “juveniles” by the likes of Andre Norton and Robert A. Heinlein. Little Brother is the first of a pair of recent teen sf novels that would make great gifts for the teenagers in your life.
Marcus Yallow is a high school senior in San Francisco, and he's a whiz at computers and the Internet. Moreover, he knows it; he is smarter than any of the adults around him, and he's not shy at expressing his contempt for them.
Now before you go disliking Marcus, you have to understand that this sort of thing is part and parcel with books for teens. If one is going to have teenage protagonists getting into various troubles and getting themselves out, then one has to de-emphasize the adult characters. It is an unspoken assumption of children's and teen fiction that most adults are stupid, ineffectual, or both. (Just look at what idiots the adults are in the Harry Potter books.) Adult villains can be a little more canny than friendly adults, but ultimately the kid has to outsmart them in the end.
It's no use protesting—the books aren't written for us adults, anyway. And the kids who read them don't notice.
Back to Marcus. He and his friends, deep into a live-action role-playing game, ditch school and go in search of clues. But they are in the wrong place at the wrong time when a major terrorist attack hits San Francisco, killing thousands.
Suddenly Marcus and his friends are detained by the Department of Homeland Security. With their encrypted computer files, mad hacking skills, and ability to evade school surveillance technology, they look an awful lot like terrorists.
Imprisoned and psychologically tortured, Marcus gives up his passwords and files, and after a few days he's released. One of his other friends is also set free; the third remains missing and (presumably) still in custody. But that's only the beginning of the story.
Over the next weeks, Homeland Security turns San Francisco into a police state bristling with security measures. And Marcus realizes he has a mission in life: to use his knowledge and his networks (both computer and personal) to bring down Homeland Security.
Although a little preachy in spots, the story is exciting and Marcus winds up being a fairly sympathetic character (even for old people like me). The story of one boy's opposition of authority is bound to please most teens.
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The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press, 374 pages, $17.99
ISBN: 978-0-439-02348-1
Genres: Post-Apocalyptic, Teen SF
Series: Hunger Games 1
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br /> Katniss Everdeen, 17, lives a hard life in the Seam, an impoverished village in District 12, one of the poorest of the twelve Districts that make up the nation of Panem. Ever since her father died in a mining accident, Katniss has been the primary breadwinner for her ineffectual mother and her frail younger sister. Along with her male friend Gale, Katniss spends most of her time hunting and gathering in the forbidden forest, then trading with other villagers for the necessities of life. It's subsistence living at best.
Once a year, by law, comes the Reaping. All children between twelve and eighteen are entered in a lottery, and each District draws two Tributes: one boy and one girl. The Tributes are sent to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games: a reality show gone mad, a no-holds-barred fight to the death where only one child survives.
To Katniss's horror, this year's winner is her little sister. Without thinking, Katniss steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games.
The rest of the book tells the story of Katniss's participation in the Games, her struggle to survive and overcome the other twenty-three contestants, and her ultimate fate.
This gripping story is also sophisticated science fiction, as rewarding to adults as to the teens who are the main audience. Besides the survival plot, there is a larger political plot going on here. The Capitol uses the Games as but one weapon for subjugating the Districts; Katniss is as much freedom fighter as she is reality show contestant.
Along the way, Katniss learns quite a bit about her fellow humans ... and more than a bit about herself.
The Hunger Games, while a complete story, is Book One of a series. There's certainly more to be told of Katniss and the richly detailed world she inhabits. I look forward to Book Two.
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There you have it: something naughty, something nice, and some gift ideas. May your winter holidays of choice be rewarding, and I'll see you back here next year.
Copyright © 2009 Don Sakers
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Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
Dear Stan,
Thank you for your piece, “Signs of Respect,” in the June issue. You touch on a subject that has interested me for a long, long time.
When I was in primary school, more years ago than I care to remember, I attended a small school (twenty kids) in the middle of a feudal estate in South-western England. From time to time, as I made my way along footpaths in the forest, to and from school, a member of the land-owning gentry would pass me, coming or going. I always did what we children were told to do, and tugged a forelock as the individual passed me. Later, when I noted that grown-ups did not follow the forelock rule, I concluded that it was designed to show not respect, but subservience. I did not like it, but I still obeyed the “phantom tyrant."
Later still, when I knew a bit of history, I concluded that the Magna Carta (1215) was all about forelocks. The barons of that time hated having to show, by that or some other similar motion, their subservience to the king, so they rebelled and reduced the king to a lower level of dominance.
I used to muse on the fact that it took over seven hundred years for the principle to go from general to minimal use.
King and country needed me in the Army in 1944. I learned about saluting, and concluded that it was nothing but the forelock thing all over again, a reminder of my own subservient status. I never did think of it as a mark of respect.
At that time, I began thinking about culture and the organization of society; that is, about the phantom tyrants. I don't know how long it took me to arrive at this conclusion, but I concluded that culture was what people did without thinking about it, and its development was helpful to persons in authority—it made the behavior of subservient persons predictable.
Probably a good deal later, I thought about silverback gorillas, about elephant matriarchs, and alpha male wolves. Humans, I thought, probably also need dominant leaders to survive. Likely, that has gone on for so many generations that evolution has implanted it in our genes.
Another long time ago, when I was still quite young, I read Arnold Toynbee's model of human affairs, presented in his Study of History. Toynbee, you may recall, reckoned that societies facing serious challenges to their survival develop creative minorities who resolve their problems. Later, with the problems resolved, societies succumb to the authority of dominant minorities, non-problem-solvers with a vested interest in maintaining status quos. This works well enough, until a new set of challenges develops, whereupon the dominants, unable to cope, go to war, becoming more tyrannical along the way. War destroys the society, whether it be tribe, nation, empire, or civilization, but creatives re-emerge, and we start all over again.
Well, that is a gross over-simplification of a twelve-volume work, but it is, perhaps, enough to be relevant. With Toynbee in mind, I let my thoughts regress to hunter-gatherer times. Creatives, over thousand of generations, must have observed the migrations of game, the succulence and timing of edible fruit and plants, and must have established myths—cultures—that enabled dominants to take over and exercise their tyranny. Evolution probably did the rest. Once again I concluded that our human actions, such as males taking off their hats indoors, are most likely genetically based, enforcing conformity on the lower classes, and creating obedience to the dominants. For as long as humans existed, these were life and death matters. Our subjection to phantom tyrants must go very deep within all of us.
Dominants, of course, indulge in ever-harsher measures to enforce their tyranny. We, in our time (and place) enjoy an exceptional measure of freedom. But it does seem to me that after the creative decades following WW II, the dominants, here and elsewhere, have been gaining. Recently, inspired by the war in Iraq, I wrote a poem—actually a ghazal—in which a desert hermit reminds a passing camel-borne aristocrat of the two problems that humanity must always confront. The first is that of those in authority—how to control the People. The second is that of the People—how to control those in authority. Unfortunately, modern IT and communications technology vastly increase the power of those in authority. That is something to think about, every time you find yourself taking off your hat, as you go indoors.
Thanks again. Best wishes, and apologies for running on and on.
Brian C. Coad.
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Dear Doctor Schmidt,
Your editorial about the all-too-common modern fantasy of achieving absolute safety was one of those, which, in my more romantic moments, I dream might someday not need saying at all.
I half-expected you to bring up an obvious counter-example to this kind of unthinking hysteria; since you didn't, allow me to do so.
I wonder (in both senses of the term) why it is that we don't also see editorials and political campaigns aimed at real-life dangers that in fact take many, many more human lives every year than have Canada geese over the entire history of powered flight. If the Post were really concerned about the safety of its readers, surely it will publish many editorials demanding that cars be limited to speeds of no more than 20 kilometers per hour, if not that the private automobile be banned altogether.
On an entirely unrelated note, if Don Sakers’ first column is anything to go by (and why wouldn't it be?), you have found an excellent replacement for Tom Easton as your resident book reviewer.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey Dow
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Dear Dr. Schmidt:
Your editorial about the NY Post screaming for blood after geese disabled the USAIR jet, forcing its heroically successful, controlled crash landing in the Hudson River, grabbed me hard in two respects. First, thank you for once again pointing out the folly of tendering perfect safety as public policy. In addition to the impossibility of the goal and wastefulness of its pursuit, I believe you have pointed out elsewhere the danger of diverting public emphasis from t
he kind of self-reliance on which the possibility of persistence as a free people depends. Such ad hoc rationales as the preciousness of every single human life over ALL alternatives are fallbacks in arguments for many popular causes, from the right to bear arms to music in the public schools and the right to go to college. We need a better rationale. May we find one soon. Second, I am just exasperated enough with the ubiquitous public nuisance afforded by Canada geese where I live (northern Ohio), yet mindful of the fact that not many decades ago we had NONE, that I would love to see a national goose harvesting program go into effect as soon and enthusiastically as possible. “Stamp out hunger: eat a goose today!” If even one child can be saved from malnutrition...
Joseph E. Quittner
Cleveland Heights, OH
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Stan,
Your September editorial ("Where Credit is Due") really struck home with me, especially your schools and your teachers. I was born and raised in the little (1,400 people then) historic town (you can Google it for its history) of New Harmony, Indiana. The school was just one building: eight rooms for the 1st through 8th grades, and in the high school area: a language room (English and Latin; I took four years of Latin!), a math room (including advanced algebra and solid geometry), a history and social studies room, and a large assembly room where we each had a desk assigned.
As I have realized in later years, what was really amazing was the teaching staff. I had almost every discipline, they were very knowledgeable in their subjects, and great motivators. For many years, I've had a local artist's picture of the school hanging in my bedroom, and every time I glance at it, I'm reminded again of how fortunate I was to have my early schooling there. In subsequent years, I acquired a BS in Chemistry, an MS in Analytical Chemistry, and an MS in Operations Research, but never had any more talented teachers than the ones I started out with.
Thanks for motivating me to write to you about them.
Jack E. Garrett
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Dear Dr. Schmidt,
I must disagree with your response to the September letter from John Jarrell in Brass Tacks. You fault him for having a political bias. I certainly do have one, and I would presume that you do also. If you should choose not to print a letter with a political bias, I could easily understand that, but having printed it, and then faulting him for it seems suspect.
Analog SFF, December 2009 Page 23
