Review: Strange Stars, by Jason Heller

Review: Strange Stars, by Jason Heller

by Rich Horton

Strange Stars is a history of science fiction themed rock music throughout the 1970s. It is Jason Heller's thesis that, with a few outliers in the previous couple of decades, popular music (in this case specifically rock music) with themes and injury began in 1970. To be more specific, he ties it to the landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, and to the nearly simultaneous release of David Bowie's song "Space Oddity". To some extent this choice seems personal to Heller -- he admits to being a major fan of David Bowie's work -- but I think it holds up pretty well anyway. The book then goes year by year through the decade, highlighting major and obscure bands and records with songs based in some sense on science fiction. (Heller largely excludes fantasy from his remit.

There are a few bands and artists that he follows in depth -- considering them prolific, influential, and effective in using science fiction-inspired tropes, characters, and musical styles in their music. David Bowie is one, of course -- and certainly he qualifies in spades, with such albums as Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs. Paul Kantner specifically, and his bands Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship as well, are important contributors -- most notably with Kantner's Blows Against the Empire, which was for many years the only musical work to receive a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation. Hawkwind, of course, is treated extensively -- their entire corpus is SF-influenced, from an early album like In Search of Space forward. Their association with Michael Moorcock is highlighted, and, later in the decade, Moorcock's association with Blue Öyster Cult is also treated at length. 

The great jazz musician Sun Ra is given a lot of play, even though most of his work was instrumental, and Heller also emphasizes his influence on Afrofuturism. George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and their interlinked bands Parliament and Funkadelic are a huge part of Heller's narrative, and their music is certainly explicitly SFnal and very influential. Kraftwerk and the entire "Krautrock" scene are an important thread, including discussion of one of my wife's favorite records, Nektar's Remember the Future. Prog Rock, of course, is featured prominently. Obviously Yes gets a lot of discussion, as well as ELP and Pink Floyd. Alan Parsons Project is briefly mentioned for I Robot. Queen is discussed -- with a lot of emphasis on Brian May's Astrophysics study. Rush, and especially 2112, is part of the story. Devo is given a major place, slightly to my surprise, but Heller demonstrated that it makes a lot of sense. About the time Star Wars comes out, Heller discusses disco -- there was more SF in disco than I, at least, ever thought. His focus is Domenico Monardo, who, as Meco, made the album Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. Towards the end of the decade there is a discussion of Joy Division -- a band I greatly admire -- though eventually their SFnal contribution seems minor to me, perhaps because of Ian Curtis' tragically early suicide.

There are also, of course, references to a lot of less obvious figures: Mark Bolan and T-Rex, X-Ray Spex, Magma, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, Alex Harvey, Amon Düül, Splendor. Major artists who did only a bit of SF-influenced work include Jimi Hendrix (a known SF fan) is mentioned in the prelude about the 1960s. Elton John; Blondie; Earth, Wind and Fire; Marvin Gaye; the MC5; the Jackson Five; Brian Eno; King Crimson; Steve Miller; Neil Young; and many more get a nod. 

Heller also interleaves the way science fiction was permeating pop culture in other ways, most obviously movies, with Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind getting the most attention, plus the Bowie vehicle The Man Who Fell to Earth. The science fictional imagery on album art is discussed, include the "guitar spaceships" on the covers of Boston albums, which otherwise didn't really have SF content. Heller also namedrops a great many authors who were influences on these musical artists -- often explicitly acknowledged by the artists, sometimes assumed so by Heller: George Orwell, Robert Heinlein, Samuel R. Delany, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip José Farmer, Isaac Asimov, and more. (I had not realized that Delany's Fall of the Towers was part of the genesis of 2112!) The book includes a number of footnotes and a useful discography.

I would just have a few quibbles. Some are personal (I still have a hard time with the term Sci Fi), some are trivial (Philip José Farmer's Night of Light, a novel that Hendrix was reading around the time of composing "Purple Haze", is from 1966, not 1957, though one of the stories that became part of the novel, "The Night of Light", was published in that earlier year), some are matters of interpretation -- I think Heller occasionally reaches a bit in labeling songs science fictional. I admit I did wish that after crediting Paul Kantner for his giving credit to some of his inspirations, he'd have mentioned his failure to credit Mark Clifton after he swiped the "Hide Hide Witch" lyrics for his song "Mau Mau (Amerikon)". His knowledge of the music of the '70 is amazing and deep -- far deeper than mine -- and about the only plausible omission that comes to mind if Jackson Browne's "Before the Deluge". But none of these quibbles are at all fatal, and Strange Stars is a convincing portrayal of the growth of rock music featuring science fiction themes in the 1970s -- and I learned a lot about many artists I had no knowledge of. 

Old Bestseller Review: The Belovéd Vagabond, by William J. Locke

Old Bestseller Review: The Belovéd Vagabond, by William J. Locke

by Rich Horton

William J. Locke (1863-1930) was a quite popular writer of the early 20th Century. His first novel appeared in 1894, but his best known novels are all from the 20th Century, and he continued publishing until his death. He was born in British Guiana (now Guyana), moved to Trinidad shortly later, and was sent to England for his education at a very young age. His best known novels are the two I've read: this one, and The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (reviewed here). (I should add that at least five on his novels were among the top ten bestsellers of the year, according to Publishers' Weekly -- but not those two!)  Many of his stories have been filmed, notably including Stella Maris, a 1918 silent starring Mary Pickford, and Ladies in Lavender, a 2004 movie starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. The Belovéd Vagabond itself was filmed at least twice, a silent verison in 1923, and a musical in 1936, a somewhat faithful adaptation (but perhaps not very good) starring Maurice Chevalier (Cary Grant having turned down the role) and Margaret Lockwood (proof that one aspect of one character's appearance was entirely altered!)

My copy of this novel is an A. L. Burt edition -- Burt was a reprint publisher, sort of the mass market paperback equivalent of its time. The book was originally published in 1906 by John Lane. (A. L. Burt often used the original plates, acquired from the original publisher. I'm not sure if that's the case here.)

The Belovéd Vagabond is narrated by Asticot Pradel, who was born Augustus Smith to a London washerwoman, but adopted and renamed at the age of 10 or so by a man he calls Paragot. Paragot -- the vagabond of the title -- is a strange man, given to philosophical expostulation, to heavy drinking, and to lots of reading. As the novel opens he is the main attraction at a London drinking establishment, but when that changes hands, he and Asticot head to France, and wander for a while. Asticot has learned that there is a secret tragedy in Paragot's past, involving a beautiful woman named Joanna. 

Eventually Paragot finds himself replacing the suddenly deceased violinist in a duet who played at weddings and suchlike. One of Paragot's hidden talents is for the violin, and as a result, his little group is a success, and he more or less adopts the zither player, a young woman named Blanquette, and along the way also a mongrel dog, while he makes Asticot play the tambourine, though the boy's only real talent is art. But this leads to an engagement in Aix Le Bains, and an unexpected encounter with Joanna, who is now the Comtesse de Verneuil, married to a repulsive French nobleman. Paragot wants no contact with the couple, but Asticot makes Joanna's acquaintance, and in an adolescent way becomes infatuated.

Soon Paragot's ménage proceeds to Paris, with Blanquette acting as housekeeper, Paragot taking up again a position as philosopher-in-residence at a drinking establishment, and Asticot getting some formal training as an artist, and beginning to make a bit of a name for himself. (This is later established as roughly the time of the emergence of Impressionism, the mid-1870s, though Asticot is not an Impressionist. And there was an earlier reference to La Bohème, from the mid-1890s, and also to the 1880 popular song "Funiculì, Funiculà",so perhaps Locke just didn't care about the precise time frame.) And all are fairly happy -- until Asticot encounters Joanna again, and she begs him to have Paragot meet her. There are, of course, secrets about Joanna and Paragot (or Gaston de Nérac, as she knew him) which come clear, and revelations about her husband, and the lives of everyone are again upended. But -- what is really best for all the people involved? The conclusion is honest as to admitting to the real nature of the characters, and what would work for them.

It's an enjoyable novel. For me, after reading this book, and The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, I'd class Locke as one of those writers of whom one can say one sees why they were popular, and admires them for that, without necessarily believing they need, nor will ever get, a revival of any sort. Locke wrote pretty well, and told engaging stories. Having said that -- the stories are a bit implausible, and the characters are not exactly wholly believable -- they are not two-dimensional, exactly, but more 2.5 dimensional than three. The plot is likewise a tad implausible. But if you see a William J. Locke novel in an antique store or something, and if you like old books -- his books will probably work for you.

Review: Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

By mistake I read Framley Parsonage, the fourth of Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, before reading the third, Doctor Thorne. This isn't really a big deal, though Doctor Thorne, as well as his niece Mary, and Frank Gresham, the main characters in Doctor Thorne, do have small roles in Framley Parsonage, so I knew how the earlier novel would end. But, really that doesn't matter in a Trollope novel. At the end of this review I'll discuss some of Trollope's schemes, and why they both make him so fun to read, but also are the reason that, great as he is, he's not quite at the level of Dickens or Eliot. As with Framley Parsonage, I listed to this book via Audible, and with the same narrator, Timothy West, who does a fine job.

Class of course was a major aspect of Victorian novels -- always present if not necessarily centered. In Doctor Thorne is it absolutely -- and overtly -- central. The other Barsetshire novels I've read were a bit more about church politics (The Warden and Barchester Towers) and about financial maneuvering and electoral politics (Framley Parsonage.) Can You Forgive Her, the only Palliser (or Parliamentary) novel I've read is about electoral politics but also about romance. The latter subject is of course a thread in all these novels, but not quite as central. And indeed, in Doctor Thorne, while the romance between the two main younger characters is key, it is never questioned really. That is to say, in Can You Forgive Her the main character (the Her of the title) is truly torn between two quite different men, but in Doctor Thorne the only question is whether or not Frank Gresham can marry Mary Thorne -- but never whether or not he loves her and she him.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Which is okay, because Trollope does too -- at any rate, he tells us early on that he is too kindhearted a writer, so that the reader can trust that our young hero won't die of a broken heart. So -- as mentioned the chief young characters are Frank Gresham and Mary Thorne. Frank is the son of the squire of Greshamsbury, Frank Gresham Sr. He is considered to be the highest ranked commoner in the county, and his wife, Lady Arabella, is a daughter of the Earl of Courcy -- the second highest ranked noble in the county, after the Duke of Omnium. Which is to say that the Greshams are a very good family -- but, unfortunately, Frank Sr. has gotten into serious financial difficulties, caused in part by his unwise attempts to regain a seat in Parliament, and also the expenses inherent in his role as Master of the local hunt, but also due to his wife's extravagance. The upshot of this financial peril is that his son must marry money. 

Mary Thorne, on the other hand, is the niece of the title character, Doctor Thorne. The Thornes are also a good family, but Doctor Thorne is only a second cousin of the head of the Thornes, Mr. Thorne of Ullathorne (whom many readers will have met as he and his sister were (somewhat comic) characters in Barchester Towers.) Doctor Thorne is not on good terms with his cousins, which only lowers his prestige. And his only income is from his profession -- but he is a very good doctor. Alas, that too is a problem of sorts, for his advanced ideas about the profession have offended the older Doctor Fillgrave (Trollope loved to give his minor characters punny names of that sort.) Doctor Fillgrave is clearly not a particularly good doctor, at least not compared to Doctor Thorne, but he does have a prestigious practice, and many powerful clients. At any rate, Doctor Thorne is a man of particular integrity, but a sometimes prickly character, and he is at the same time convinced that anyone's virtue is based on their own character, a rather republican view, while also extremely proud of his "good blood". And his niece, Mary Thorne, has "good blood", as she is the daughter of Doctor Thorne's brother Henry; but also "bad blood", as she is illegitimate, the result of her father seducing a local girl, daughter of a working man. It's made very clear that the girl is innocent, and Henry Thorne's character is terrible, but still, somehow in class-obsessed England, it is her "blood" that is base.

Doctor Thorne had arranged to adopt his niece after his brother was killed by the girl's brother, a certain Roger Scatcherd, a tremendously talented stonemason but also an alcoholic. Miss Scatcherd was married off to a man who had been sweet on her, but who won't tolerate raising a bastard child, and the couple emigrated to America. Mary Thorne, then, is brought up by the Doctor, who does not reveal the secret of her birth. He is a good parent to her, and she gets a good education, and is a frequent and (mostly) treasured guest at the Gresham's house. Meanwhile, Roger Scatcherd, Mary's other uncle, rises greatly in the world, becoming a very wealthly construction magnate, and even a Baronet. Alas, he is still an alcoholic, with one son who is also dissolute, and only one friend -- Doctor Thorne, who had forgiven him for the (apparently somewhat accidental) murder of Henry Thorne, and who had helped him re-establish his place after a short spell in prison.

Then comes the main action of the novel. Frank Jr. is coming of age. Frank Sr.'s money problems worsen, and his primary creditor is Sir Roger Scatcherd. Sir Roger runs for Parliament. Frank has realized he is in love with Mary Thorne, but his mother of course opposes any such match (because "Frank must marry money!" -- and indeed Mary, conscious of their difference in social standing, and of the financial issues, has refused to listen to Frank's suit. Frank is sent off to Courcy Castle with instructions to court a rich if somewhat older woman, the delightful Miss Dunstable (whom I already knew from her somewhat important role in Framley Parsonage.) Frank out of loyalty does pay court to Miss Dunstable, but she gently lets him down, and the two become great friends. Sir Roger is forced out of Parliament due to an election scandal, and his alcoholism worsens. He persuades Doctor Thorne to be executor of his will, and also to be a guardian for Roger's wild son -- Sir Roger hopes that Doctor Thorne can reform the young man.  And Doctor Thorne learns of a surprising clause in Sir Roger's will -- 

I won't detail the rest of the plot -- most readers can probably figure out where it's going. But the plot isn't what matters, it's the telling. As ever, Trollope's voice is delightfully engaging. There are some very funny passages, some satirical ones, some quite moving ones. And as I said, the book turns on questions of class. Money is important of course -- and money is the only thing that overcomes class questions. And always hypocritically. Characters like Lady Arabella, and the whole de Courcy family, are profoundly hypocritical. There are several examples of decidely low born individuals who are eagerly promoted as potential mates only due to money -- one of Frank's sisters has a narrow escape early on from what would have been a bad marriage that her mother promoted; and later on she rejects an eligible man because he works for his money -- and the most supercilious of the Courcys, having urged her to tell the man no, proceeds to marry him herself. But the hypocrisy, if less pronounced, extends even to Doctor Thorne. Thorne's pride in his family connections always rubs against his general republican sympathies; and even in his niece's case, while he defends her as having a better character than anyone else in the book (which is true in the author's eyes, I'd say) he still cannot quite see his way to her marrying a Gresham for a long time. There are reasons that class differences could have made marriages founder -- primarily differences in expectation due to how people have been brought up. But of course Mary does not have that problem, having been brought up almost in the Gresham family.

I found the novel immensely enjoyable. Trollope has yet to fail me. But I must say that the ending is a bit of a cheat. It is set up by a somewhat outlandish set of circumstances, maintained by even more outlandish circumstances -- and in the end I rather felt that Doctor Thorne acted in a slightly less than upright manner. But so be it -- we know what we are getting, and we accept that -- and enjoy the journey the whole way.

Review: Doting, by Henry Green

Review: Doting, by Henry Green

by Rich Horton

I discovered Henry Green a couple of decades ago largely because he was a friend of Anthony Powell, one of my favorite writers. I tried his best-known novel, Loving, and liked it a good deal, but it took me a while to continue. A few years ago I read Party Going, and found it astonishing. I have been planning to continue with him for a while, and indeed I started in on Doting, his last novel from 1952, some time back, but then the book somehow disappeared. So this past weekend I made a disciplined search for it, and it turned up in one of the many crates I'd filled with books while we were remodeling during COVID. And I've finally read it. I'm linking to my review of Party Going, which includes much more detail about Henry Green, whose real name was Henry Yorke (1905-1972).

The novel, as with his second to last novel, Nothing (1950), is told almost entirely in dialogue. It opens with Arthur Middleton, his wife Diana, his son Peter, and Annabel Paynter, the daughter of friends, attending a dinner theater, sometime shortly after the war. Arthur and Diana are about 40, Annabel is 19 or so, and Peter about to turn 17, and just about to return to boarding school. The conversation covers the entertainment, the food and drinks, and such things as Annabel, to Peter's displeasure, visiting one the prefects at his school. We also notice Arthur leering a bit at Annabel (getting a glimpse of her breasts when she leans over, for example) ... and it's fairly clear Annabel doesn't mind.

And thus the whirl of the characters begin. Soon Arthur is asking Ann out for "friendly" lunches, and even dinners, and their conversations move in the direction of seduction. Arthur has a confidante -- his and Diana's longtime friend Charles, a widower. And Ann confides with her coworker Claire. Diana gets wind of Arthur's attentions to Annabel, and tries to put a stop to them, at the same time beginning to meet with Charles. It's hinted that the Middletons' marriage is sort of semi-open, but Diana has her limits of toleration -- and so does Arthur, once he senses that something might be going on between his wife and his good friend. Claire joins the carousel -- lunching with Arthur and then with Charles, and happily going to bed with Charles. Annabel and Claire both claim to be atracted to older men. Arthur and Diana maintain that they love each other still, and over time Arthur, a busy civil servant, seems more willing to put aside his work to spend time -- in bed and out -- with Diana. Claire is perhaps just looking for a good time, but Annabel seems to be angling for something more. Charles remains traumatizzed by his wife's death (in childbirth) and his raising his son alone, and seems unwilling to think of marriage. Peter, a minor character really, is clearly a bit too young to be part of all this ... and the novel comes to its conclusion after perhaps a year, with another dinner party as Peter prepares to go to school again the following yeaer.

Described that way the book seems almost a sex comedy, even farce -- but there is no actual adultery -- it seems that Claire and Charles sleep together, and Arthur and Diana, but that's all. There are teases throughout, and plenty of talk of sex, and marriage. There's also the implied background of the recent war. There's the shadow of postwar rationing, and of death. There's the question as to what a single woman should be looking to do with herself. There's a good deal of ambiguous dialogue -- of outright lies and lots of evasions, and coy flirting. We do learn some of the background of the characters. It's at one level a light-seeming novel -- amusing and fast-moving, natural but arch conversation, an erotic frisson (though no real sex scenes.) At another level it's -- not exactly said but almost desperate. There is some happiness for the characters, but it seems thin, parlous. The war is over but the characters are not over it, is some of it; but, too, the men and women are, as ever, trying to learn how to be together. And, as Arthur tells Annabel: "Love must include adoration of course, but if you just dote on a girl you don’t necessarily go so far as to love her. Loving goes deeper." It's not entirely clear that anyone in this novel quite manages the deeper part.

SF Hall of Fame 1989-2018

Christopher Rowe wondered what might be in an "SF Hall of Fame" anthology going back a similar period that the original SF Hall of Fame covered in 1970 -- about 30 years, from a few years prior to that. And I decide to make my own list of stories that fits that specification. I posted it in a comment at Christopher's FB wall, but here's the same list, with some additional "just misses" added, for preservation at my own blog!

Best stories 1989-2018

Here's a list I put together today. I have lists of "short stories" (up to approximately 10,000 words) for a rough analog to the SF HOF Volume I, and novellas (10,000 to 40,000 or so) as a rough analog to Volumes IIA and IIB. I purposely slanted the list heavily to SF and not fantasy -- much as the first books were -- but there is some fantasy on these lists. I stuck to the 1989-2018 timeframe. I chose 30 short stories and 22 novellas -- just a bit more than the original books had. (So sue me!) If I did this tomorrow, the list might change by 1/3! ??

It was great fun putting this together, and especially choosing some somewhat forgotten stories that I think deserve more attention ("The Spade of Reason", "Sailing the Painted Ocean", "Three Days of Rain", "Sadness", "Milo and Sylvie" ...)

Short Stories

"Game Night at the Fox and Goose", by Karen Joy Fowler (1989)

"Bears Discover Fire", by Terry Bisson (1990)

"Buffalo", by John Kessel (1991)

"Another Story; or, The Fisherman of the Inland Sea", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)

"Think Like a Dinosaur", by James Patrick Kelly (1995)

"Wang's Carpets", by Greg Egan (1995)

"Starship Day", by Ian R. MacLeod (1995)

"The Lincoln Train", by Maureen McHugh (1995)

"The Spade of Reason", by Jim Cowan (1996)

"Gone", by John Crowley (1996)

"Get a Grip", by Paul Park (1997)

"Suicide Coast", by M. John Harrison (1999)

"Stellar Harvest", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)

"Scherzo With Tyrannosaur", by Michael Swanwick (1999)

"Sailing the Painted Ocean" by Denise Lee (1999)

"Lull" by Kelly Link (2002)

"The House Beyond Your Sky" by Benjamin Rosenbaum (2006)

"Eight Episodes", by Robert Reed (2006)

"Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips (2007)

"Exhalation" by Ted Chiang (2008)

"26 Monkeys, also the Abyss", by Kij Johnson (2008)

"Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee (2010)

"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees", by E. Lily Yu (2011)

"Sadness" by Timons Esaias (2014)

"Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", by Theodora Goss (2014)

"Mutability" by Ray Nayler (2015)

"Red in Tooth and Cog" by Cat Rambo (2016)

"Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home" by Genevieve Valentine (2016)

"Empty Planets" by Naomi Kanakia (2016)

"An Account of the Land of Witches" by Sofia Samatar (2017)

Novellas:

"Great Work of Time", by John Crowley (1989)

"Forgiveness Day", by Ursula K. Le Guin (1994)

"The Ziggurat", by Gene Wolfe (1995)

"The Flowers of Aulit Prison" by Nancy Kress (1996)

"Animae Celestes", by Gregory Feeley (1998)

"Story of Your Life", by Ted Chiang (1998)

"Dapple", by Eleanor Arnason (1999)

"New Light on the Drake Equation", by Ian R. MacLeod (2000)

"Milo and Sylvie", by Eliot Fintushel (2000)

"The Path of the Transgressor" by Tom Purdom (2003)

"The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe (2004)

"Magic for Beginners", by Kelly Link (2005)

"A Billion Eves", by Robert Reed (2006)

"Tenbrook of Mars" by Dean McLaughlin (2008)

"Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (2009)

"The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand (2010)

"In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns" by Elizabeth Bear (2012)

"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson (2014)

"Fifty Shades of Greys" by Steven Barnes (2016)

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson (2016)

"And Then There Were (N-One)" by Sarah Pinsker (2017)

"Dayenu" by James Sallis (2018)

Stories that just missed, were too many by the same writer, or more fantastical than I wanted

"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link

"The Sandal-Bride" by Genevieve Valentine

"Pip and the Fairies" by Theodora Goss

"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong" by K.J. Parker

"Isabel of the Fall" by Ian R. MacLeod

"Journey Into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert

"Salt Wine" by Peter S. Beagle

"Another Word for Map is Faith" by Christopher Rowe

"The Small Door" by Holly Phillips

"The Tear" by Ian McDonald

"The Island" by Peter Watts

"A Letter from the Emperor" by Steve Rasnic Tem

"Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of her Glory" by Paul M. Berger

"Walking Stick Fires" by Anya Johanna de Niro

"The Bridge of Dreams" by Gregory Feeley

"Martyr's Gem" by C. S. E. Cooney

"Three Twilight Tales" by Jo Walton

"Aberration" by Genevieve Valentine

"Project Empathy" by Dominica Phetteplace

"Grace's Family" by James Patrick Kelly

"Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" by Fran Wilde

"Exclusion" by Daniel Abraham 

"More Adventures on Other Planets" by Michael Cassutt

"Stories for Men" by John Kessel

"Ten Bears; or, A Journey to the Weterings" by Henry Wessells

"The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford

"Seven Guesses of the Heart" by M. John Harrison

"The Price of Oranges" by Nancy Kress

"Buddha Nostril Bird" by John Kessel

"Steelcollar Worker" by Vonda McIntyre

"Stairs" by Neal Barrett, Jr.

"Exogamy" by John Crowley

"Erase, Record, Play" by John M. Ford

A Few Stories from 2019 or later ...

"Green Glass: A Love Story" by E. Lily Yu

"Laws of Impermanence" by Ken Schneyer

"Crazy Beautiful" by Cat Rambo

"If the Martians Have Magic" by P. Djèlí Clark

"The White Road" by Kelly Link

Review: The Book of Gems, by Fran Wilde

Review: The Book of Gems, by Fran Wilde

by Rich Horton

This is the third in a series of novellas from Tor.com set in Fran Wilde's Gem continuity. The three books are widely separated in time -- The Jewel and Her Lapidary (2016) concerns the fall of a kingdom controlled by royals who manage the power of magical jewels, and their "lapidaries", who protect their linked royals from falling prey to the danger of the jewels. The Fire Opal Mechanism (2019) is set much later, when the jewels and their powers are myths, and a couple of people are battling to save independent knowledge from a sort of press that devours and summarizes books, creating a sort of mishmash of all the knowledge. 

The Book of Gems (2023) is set a while later. Dev Brunai studies the stories about jewels, and the fragments of The Book of Gems that survive, and works on making synthetic jewels that can do some minor things, but have nothing like the power of natural gems. Dev aspires to be admitted to the Society that controls gem research. But now she has realized that her mentor, Dr. Netherby, has stolen her very promising research and gone away to the valley located where the old jewel kingdom had been. There is an archaeological dig there, and they have unearthed the old Palace. But Netherby has disappeared. Without the Society's approval, Dev -- who is actually descended from people living in this valley -- heads out to try to track down Netherby, with the hopes of finding out anything he has learned, and advancing her own research as well.

Once there, she realizes that Lurai, the woman running the inn she stays at, is actually her cousin. And, with some reluctance, Dev and Lurai sneak out to the location of the dig, finding a hidden way into the Palace. This is fraught for both of them, because their goals are not quite the same, and their perceptions of the reality behind the jewels are different -- Dev with a more scientific view, Lurai with a more magical view (to a gross approximation.) But both are severely affected by the latent power of the buried gems. And what they find in this Palace points to a dangerous but important new understanding of the jewels, of the mysterious Prince of Gems, and what direction their world must go to accommodate the jewels' power but control it.

This is a nicely written book, and in many ways it is doing what I hoped to see after The Jewel and her Lapidary. I had found The Fire Opal Mechanism an unanticipated sidestep into an oddly more science fictional world. The Books of Gems seems on the road to resolving this conflict -- to creating a wholly understood sort of Science Fantasy milieu. I was involved in Dev and Lurai's story, and I found the questions (stated and implied) to by worthwhile. Having said that, I feel like the three novellas are incomplete in a sense, and what I really want is more -- more backstory, and more filling in of the real way the gems operate, and of how they (and such tools as the tem-powered escritoire they use for communication) are seen "scientifically", as it were. In a way perhaps this threatens the mystery some fantasy generates, I admit. I don't know if Wilde plans more stories in this sequence (there are already a couple of related short stories), or if she plans to write a full-length novel -- and I don't want to set her any assignments! But I imagine a rather grand novel, incorporating and expanding on what we already have, might really be something. In the interim -- or perhaps forever! -- these are some fine novellas set in a quite original universe.

Review: Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov

Review: Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov

by Rich Horton

Laughter in the Dark was originally published in Russian in serialized form in 1932-1933, and in book form in 1933, as Kamera Obskura. The first English translation, by Winifred Roy, was published in England in 1936, under the title Camera Obscura. Nabokov was disappointed with the translation, and he revised it himself, as Laughter in the Dark. This version appeared in 1938. It was radically revised from the original translation, but also from the original Russian version. The original translation did not sell well, and the remaining copies were lost when the warehouse in which they were stored was bombed in WWII, so it is an extremely rare book. But John Colapinto in the New Yorker compared the two versions -- using a copy which was apparently Nabokov's own, which he used to prepare his own translation. It's clear that many of the changes are more due to Nabokov reconsidering his earlier Russian version, rather than simply improving Roy's translation (and it seems fairly clear that the eventual English Laughter in the Dark owes a fair amount to Roy's Camera Obscura.) Nabokov changed character names, removed scenes that didn't work, and altered the ending, in addition to changes at the line/paragraph level.

In this sense Laughter in the Dark is in some ways a new novel, written in English (though to be sure similar in overall shape to the original Russian version.) I don't know if another Russian version, translated from the English, has ever been made, but I do know that there was a 1930s French translation of Kamera Obskura, and a much later French translation of Laughter in the Dark. At the same time, more or less, Nabokov translated his last Russian novel, Despair, into English. Those two efforts, it seems to me, serve as a sort of practice for his subsequent novels, which were all written in English.

Laughter in the Dark has a somewhat famous opening passage (as famous as a not all that well known novel could have): "Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster." Albinus is middle-aged, with a wife and young daughter. He's an expert in art, and not an expert in love -- he had a couple of unsatisfying relationships before his marriage, and he seems to love his wife well enough but find her a bit -- boring, I suppose, or insipid. One day he stops in a cinema to waste an extra hour, and he conceives an obsession with the girl who is serving as usher.

This girl, Margot Peters, is about 17 or 18. A year or two earlier she had left her unhappy and somewhat abusive parents, had become a nude model for painters, and, without quite realizing it, had fallen into the hands of a procuress, who arranges eventually for her to go off with a young man, which pleases Margot enough -- she finds she enjoys sex. But that comes to an end, and Margot can't conceive of any future except to continue to be kept by different men, or to become a movie star. And by the time Albinus encounters her, the closest she's got to the movie business is her job as an usher.

As Albinus clumsily begins to pursue Margot, hoping for a short fling and some excitement and sex, she maneuvers to get more than that out of him. She knows he's well off, and she finds him a tolerable companion. And Albinus, to some extent against his will, is manipulated into a situation where his wife leaves him, and he and Margot live together. This is a scandal, of course, though in Weimar Germany perhaps less than it might have been, and as Margot pushes him to get a divorce he resists -- until a terrible crisis involving his daughter forces events. And Albinus' fate is sealed, in the Greek tragedy sense, especially when Margot decides she likes another man's attentions more, though Albinus' money remains necessary. And so things go to the eventual conclusion -- told us in the first lines of the book, foreshadowed too by the movie Albinus was watching when he first saw Margot, alluded to by such things as a cunning reference to Anna Karenina.

It's a striking novel, blackly comic but legitimately tragic. I haven't mentioned the chief villain, Margot's other lover, an artist of some talent but no morals named Axel Rex, whom Albinus already knew (due to his art connections) but hardly understood. Margot's cupidity, Rex's outright capricious cruelty, and Albinus' weakness collide dreadfully. The prose is excellent, if not quite at the sumptuous levels of Nabokov's great later novels in English. The characters are well depicted. Nabokov's way with the surprising but perfect image is on display. There are no overt sex scenes but there are erotic passages of considerable effect, due to his depiction of character -- and of bodies. It is impossible not to see distorted pre-echoes of Lolita here -- the middle-aged man with a teenaged girl, though in this case the girl is in control and the man the victim. The construction is intricate and effective, the foreshadowing, as I've hinted, remarkable, and not really apparent until the end. It's a slim novel (perhaps 55,000 words) and something of a genre novel, and perhaps a bit slight. (Though slimness doesn't need to imply slightness -- Pnin is very slim but not slight at all.)

I've only read a few of Nabokov's Russian novels, though most of his Russian short stories. I think very highly of Invitation to a Beheading, and I enjoyed King, Queen, Knave and The Defense. I have not read The Gift, nor Despair -- each considered among the best of his Russian books. I'd place Laughter in the Dark below Invitation to a Beheading, but just ahead of The Defense.