Asimov's SF, September 2007
Page 21
Deitch's artwork is both ultra-modern and old-fashioned. His deep affection for the fashions and physiognomies of the early twentieth century conjures up some lost comic strip of the yellow journalism era. But his layouts and sophisticated bag of artistic tricks within each panel reflect the full range of the past century of graphic narratives. (Several extra features in this edition, including two gorgeous foldouts, add to the effect of the main story.)
Deitch's work, with its parade of misfits, schemers, freaks, and con-men, is a love letter to America in all its sodden, sordid, unrepentant glory.
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Secret Planet
As I indict this review, the online used-book emporium known as AbeBooks offers for sale precisely two copies (in its primal 1993 Owlswick Press incarnation) of Avram Davidson's Adventures in Unhistory—the last book of that unique author published during his too-short lifetime (1923-1993). The merchant in possession of the lower-priced selection asks a mere $400.00; the other, upward of $800.00. Which explains why I have not heretofore handled a copy of this rarity, which, in its market preciousness and collectibility, has ironically come to resemble one of the mythological beasts discussed within its own pages.
Stop. I vow that the rest of this review will not seek impossibly and involuntarily to emulate the ornate, recondite, witty, yet altogether engrossing and captivating style that Davidson employs in these pages.
And how would I know what style he employs in said volume, if I've never perused it? Why, because the majority of the essays that comprise it first appeared in this very magazine, where I did indeed joyously read them, and also because the generous and wise folks at Tor Books have at long last reissued a facsimile edition (which means you get the great George Barr illos as well as Davidson's scintillating words) of Adventures in Unhistory (hardcover, $25.95, 308 pages, ISBN 978-0-765-30760-6), and huzzah to them!
All right. I'm not being too successful in avoiding a bad pastiche of Davidson's prosaic (as in “characteristic of [his] prose,” not, most certainly not, “not having any features that are interesting or imaginative") manner. Maybe this fit will pass....
But the book. Subtitled “Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends,” the book consists of fifteen sojourns through myth, legend, and science, concerned specifically with, but not limited to—oh, no, certainly not limited—Sinbad, the Phoenix, dragons, mandrakes, werewolves, Aleister Crowley, Prester John, the origins of silk, the land of Hyperborea, head-hunting, unicorns, mammoths, extinct birds, the Moon, and mermaids.
What Davidson does is cultural detective work, assembling the clues that will reveal the inner meanings of his resonant conundrums. He spins them all into a golden fleece (see page fifty-one, for thoughts on that aureate pelt's dragonish associations) of narrative that dips and winds (a fleece dipping and winding? We're in flying carpet territory!) through many a land and clime and era, filled with a vast cast of exotic characters. The result is like listening to the voice of History Himself, telling all the really good esoteric anecdotes left out of the official texts. A secret history of the whole globe.
There was precedent for Davidson's demythifying/remythifying and his rambling, shaggy-backed conjectures. He himself generously cites L. Sprague de Camp, Willy Ley, and Charles Fort. And I always associated Davidson's writing with someone vaguely similar who happened to come coincidentally to prominence right about the same time as these pieces: James Burke, and his books/ television series Connections.
But truth be told, all these antecedents fail to hold a candle to Davidson's impassioned, champagne-giddy ("There is a feeling of giddiness which affects diverse people on reading things like this ... “) romps through the kind of material that naturally appeals to those of us who love the fantastic.
Aside from the main intellectual attractions of this book comes another gift: many passages and snippets of autobiography, supplied by Davidson as illustrations of his points. We emerge from this Campbellian—Joseph Campbell, that is—odyssey not only bedazzled by his erudition and wit, but also with a portrait of the man himself in all his mundane (well, not mundane but quotidian) reality and heft.
Davidson closes his book with an explanation of the Buddhist concept of Indra's Net, where every time any two threads cross, an infinite jewel is born, reflecting all others in the net. Davidson was just such a jewel.
* * * *
Fans Are Clanes
Baen Books now offers us a stimulating and meaty A.E. van Vogt omni-bus in the form of Transgalactic (trade paperback, $15.00, 439 pages, ISBN 978-1-4165-2089-4), and it's a definite winner. How pleasant to see the works of this most idiosyncratic of Grand Masters staying alive and available for a new generation.
But what's particularly exciting about this volume is that the editors—Eric Flint and David Drake—scrupulously went back to the original magazine appearances of the material, rather than the “fixup” versions that van Vogt tinkered with for book publication years afterward. This gives us a chance to appreciate the stories as the original generation of Golden Age readers did, to examine van Vogt's skills as a pulpster and serializer, and to get some sense of the ambiance of Golden Age Astounding magazine—since all of the material originated there.
What we have in this package are: 1) five stories from 1946—47 that constitute a novel titled Empire of the Atom, which first reached book form in 1957; 2) the serialized version (April—June of 1950) of the sequel, The Wizard of Linn, which materialized as a book in 1962; 3) two linked stories from 1942 that focus on man's relations with aliens named the ezwals (and which fit into the future history depicted in The War Against the Rull [1959]); 4) and finally, three long stories from 1943—45 that were later assembled as the novel Mission to the Stars in 1952.
Sounds complicated, and it is. The publishing history of van Vogt's stories is insanely baroque. But all of this only concerns nerdly critics such as myself. The average reader will simply plunge whole-heartedly into this book for its narrative pleasures.
Empire of the Atom is the story of Clane Linn, a mutant born into a post-apocalyptic empire on a battered old radioactive Earth. Possessed of superior intelligence, but physically unimpressive (how fast can you say “fanboy analog"?), Clane must survive the internecine power struggles of his ruling family, as well as threats from without the empire, such as barbarians from the moon Europa. Like Asimov's contemporaneous Foundation series, this tale invokes parallels with ancient Rome. But whereas Asimov had the broad historical sweep of Gibbon in mind, van Vogt seemed to have been inspired more by Robert Graves's I, Claudius (1934), with its very personal catalogue of deceit and murder and Machiavellian doings. The plot of this book is linear, unlike van Vogt's famously recomplicated classics, and there is little of convoluted imaginary thought-systems, nor any dreamlike leaps of logic, amidst the surprisingly sophisticated and even cynical realpolitik.
The sequel, The Wizard of Linn, broadens the scope to interstellar dimensions, as Clane and company go searching for a solution to an invasion of Earth by aliens called the Riss. Some super-science comes into play, but the emphasis remains on political intrigue. Clane's emotional growth and turmoil are not neglected either, and there are some surprisingly resonant moments here, especially involving Clane's wife, and the book's muted coda.
All in all, then, a nice exposure of a facet of van Vogt's talents not uppermost in his one-dimensional literary persona.
The two ezwal stories are neat little problem pieces that move at lightning speed. And then comes Mission to the Stars.
Here the reader will get all the quintessential van Vogt frissons he or she demands. Gigantic starcruisers from Imperial Earth that can subjugate entire galaxies; lost colonies of “Dellian robots"; the “Mixed Men” and their paired brains; alluring female starship captains; and dialogue such as this: “I shall subject it [a Mixed Man brain] to the greatest concentration of conditioning ever focused on a human brain, using the two basics: sex and logic. I shall have to use you, noble lady,
as the object of his affections."
They just don't write ‘em like that anymore. And why the hell not?!?
* * * *
Interrogating the World
If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that the esteemed literary reputation of Elizabeth Hand rests mainly on her novels, eight masterful, slippery, slipstreamy volumes, none of which (aside from the first three that form a trilogy) recapitulate their predecessors. (Which is not to say that they do not all observably emanate from the same keen sensibility and deep talent.) And certainly she maintains as well a high profile as a critic, with regular columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the Washington Post Book World. But despite receiving an award or three, her short fiction gets a tad overlooked, it seems to me, just because there's less of it. We need to make sure that her work at shorter lengths, which is just as remarkable as her novels, does not remain concealed in the shadow of the big books. So let me now direct your gaze to Saffron and Brimstone (M Press, trade paperback, $14.95, 240 pages, ISBN 978-1-59582-096-9).
(M Press, by the way, is a new imprint from the comics publisher, Dark Horse, with the capable hand of editor Rob Simpson on the tiller, and bears watching as well.)
This book incorporates a previous volume from PS Publishing titled Bibliomancy, with substantial additions and a subtraction: “Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol” is not present.
“Cleopatra Brimstone” opens the volume with a shocker about a mild young woman named Jane Kendall who develops an alternate personality after emotional and physical trauma. Reminiscent of the work of M. John Harrison and early Kathe Koja, it manages to conjure up shades of James Tiptree as well. “Pavane for a Prince of the Air” is a mimetic piece that poetically keens a muted, heartfelt elegy for a free spirit and the era that birthed him. In the John Crow-leyesque “The Least Trumps,” we follow the life of Ivy Tun, a tattoo artist by trade, as she discovers a pack of cards that might possess the power to remake the continuum. And the messed-up early college years of a woman prone to visions is the focus of “Wonderwall."
The final four pieces are thematically and tonally linked under the heading “The Lost Domain.” “Kronia” chronicles the many serendipitous non-meetings of a man and a woman. “Calypso in Berlin” brings a classic Greek nymph into the modern era. An end-times scenario unfurls through the eyes of an isolated writer in “Echo.” And lastly, the heretofore-unpublished story “The Saffron Gatherers” finds two lovers forever separated by a large-scale disaster.
Hand's stories all exhibit a number of virtues. She anchors her fantastical conceits in closely observed and lovingly brushstroked reality, oftentimes drawing on semi-autobiographical experiences, as we read in her “Afterword” to “The Lost Domain.” This unflinching incorporation of the sinews of her own life adds immense power to the stories—whether the reader even recognizes their origin or not. Additionally, on a line by line basis, Hand writes some of the most beautiful sentences around, either in the genre or outside: consider the beautiful way Ivy Tun describes the physicality of tattooing on page 101 as one example. And Hand's creation of characters is perceptive and empathetic.
But what I'd identify as perhaps the strongest, most invigorating flavor in her work is a poking and prodding at the tenor of reality. As an author—and also while wearing the skins of her protagonists—Hand is always concerned with the nature of life and the cosmos. Is existence false or authentic, joyous or sorrowful, simple or complex—or every quality you can imagine simultaneously? These kind of ontological issues often become explicit—as when the protagonist of “Wonderwall” says she believes that “meaning and transcendence could be shaken from the world, like unripe fruit from a tree; then consumed.” But even if only a subtext, Hand's quest for a visionary experience of the bedrock of creation is the engine that ultimately propels all her bold and adventurous narratives.
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Absurdist Truths, Surreal Verities
Assemble the dead: Jorge Luis Borges, Donald Barthelme, Lord Dunsany.
Assemble the living: Kelly Link, Don Webb, Zoran Zivkovic, Stepan Chapman, William Browning Spen-cer, Barrington Bayley, Neal Barrett, Jr., Ray Vukcevich.
Now let the guest of honor part the curtains and emerge in his humble yet self-assured manner to receive the applause of these simpatico peers, cold-bodied and warm-bodied alike: Bruce Holland Rogers.
In 2005 appeared from Wheatland Press—one of our finer small presses, run by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake—a story collection titled The Keyhole Opera (trade paperback, $19.95, 232 pages, ISBN 0-9755903-7-5). A fair amount of unfortunate silence ensued. But a subset of alert and receptive minds responded, and in 2006 The Keyhole Opera won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Short fanfare, and then the world at large went back to sleep, with very little formal recognition of the graces and delights of this book. Here, now, almost two years after its publication (yet with its continued availability assured, thanks to Wheatland's merits as a smart publisher), we will remedy this, thus acknowledging that excellent fiction is timeless.
Bruce Holland Rogers offers us more than three dozen stories in the span of some two hundred pages, so you can immediately guess that they are generally bite-sized ones. But do not let this fact cause you to underestimate their impact. These multivalent parables and deceptively straightforward narratives pack punches out of all proportion to their size. Whether inhabiting the ancient classical past, some indeterminate land “beyond the fields we know,” or the meticulously observed present, Rogers's stories make the most out of every single carefully chosen word. He has the knack of hooking a reader with a great opening sentence, usually of primal simplicity ("A young man from a fishing village once went to the Capital to see what he could see,” from “Half of the Empire"). Then he plunges into a glass labyrinth of incident and meaning. You think you're in a place without walls, but really you're mazed in the author's crystalline construct.
Rogers is also a formalistic innovator, having invented a story format he calls the “symmetrina.” (Classy warm-up presenter Michael Bishop, so taken with this mode, offers us one of his own in his loving introduction.) And he also produces avant-garde pieces like “Invasions,” which feature neither plot nor character nor setting, but which compel attention nonetheless. In fact, “Invasions” is one of the most powerful anti-war stories I've ever read, critiquing non-ideologically our whole Iraq fiasco better than a thousand polemics. And with a bittersweet humor that is a Rogers trademark.
At once ancient and postmodern, the stories in this volume are mini-masterpieces, built cunningly to outlast the flashier fictions that might command reams of reviews, but which hardly are recalled beyond their brief heydays.
Copyright (c) 2007 Paul Di Filippo
[Back to Table of Contents]
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SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR
by Erwin S. Strauss
The Archon NASFiC has been re-named in honor of Wilson Arthur (Bob) Tucker. 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.—Erwin S. Strauss
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AUGUST 2007
2—5—TuckerCon. For info, write: Box 8387, St. Louis MO 63132. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 AM to 10 PM, not collect). (Web) archonstl.org. (E-mail) info@archonstl.org. Con will be held in: Collinsville IL (near St. Louis MO) (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Gateway Center. Guests will include: Barbara Hambly. No. American SF Con for 2007.
3—6—MythCon. mythsoc.org. Berkeley CA. Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman. High fantasy (Tolk
ien, C.S. Lewis, etc.).
3—5—DiversiCon. diversicon.org. Bloomington MN. Andrea Hairston, Christopher Jones, Melissa S. Kaercher.
3—5—Lazy Dragon Con. (972) 948-3320. lazydragon.com. Hotel phone (888) 890-0242. Dallas TX area.
3—5—OtaKon. otakon.org. Convention Center at the Inner Harbor, Baltimore MD. Big anime meet.
10—12—ArmadilloCon. fact.org. Austin TX. Guests to be announced. A general SF and fantasy convention.
10—12—PiCon. pi-con.org. West Springfield MA. Author C. E. Murphy, musician Voltaire, Web cartoonist Jeph Jacques.
10—12—ConGlomeration. conglomeration.org. Clarion, Louisville KY. Ben Bova, Daniel Dos Santos, & a mystery guest.
16—19—GenCon, 120 Lakeside Ave. #100, Seattle WA 98122. gencon.com. Indianapolis IN. Big gaming convention.
17—19—SpazzyCon, c/o Raven, Rt. 15, Lafayette NJ 07848. sickpups.org. Northern NJ. NY/NJ costumers’ big do.
18—19—Fanex, 9721 Brittanay Ln., Baltimore MD 21234. midmar.com. For fans of horror films.
24—26—BuboniCon, Box 37257, Albuquerque NM 87176. (505) 459-8734. bubonicon.com. V. Vinge, Lindskold, Stout.
24—27—World SF Reader Con. Chengdu China. Timed for easy combining with the Japanese WorldCon the next week.
30-Sep. 3—Nippon 2007, Box 314, Annapolis Jct. MD 20701. nippon2007.org. Yokohama Japan. WorldCon. $220+.
31—Sep. 3—DragonCon, Box 16459, Atlanta GA 30321. (770) 909-0115. dragoncon.org. Marriott & Hyatt. Huge.
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SEPTEMBER 2007
7—ConMart, c/o Martel Enterpr., 309 S. School Av., Fayetteville AR 72701. con-mart.com. chubbermart@cox.net.
7—9—CopperCon, Box 62613, Phoenix AZ 85082. (480) 949-0415. casfs.org/cucon/. Traditional post-WorldCon con.
14—16—Oxonmoot. tolkiensociety.info. Oxford UK. Tolkien & other high fantasy (C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, etc.).