2003: Veniss Underground (VanderMeer, Jeff)

Myth, horror, and sci-fi in an intricate dance (4/5)

Written in three movements, the three perspectives in Veniss Underground are steeped in textural myth and literary history. As neither a myth historian or literary historian, most of these connotations were only superficially sensed. Veniss Underground has been compared to Dante's Divine Comedy (for its hellish descent into the city's netherworld), Greek mythology's Orpheus and Eurydice (again, for its hellish portrayal), and the Dutch painter Heirontmus Bosch (for its dark portrait of life in a dystopia alá The Hermit Saints Triptych)--all suggested by Publishers Weekly.

Myth? Horror? Science Fiction? Much like the tag of "speculative fiction" or "bizarro-fiction," the amalgamation of each genre's ambiance is brought to the surface in Veniss Underground: the mythical stories of the descent into hell, the horror of somatic pain in the existence of abject poverty, and the science fiction import of future dystopia and reality as illusion. These three heavenly bodies pull of genre and push each other in a dance of literary gravity, a three-bodied system of balance and finesse. where no body exerts more force than any other.

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Part I: Nicholas - 4/5 - Nicholas is robbed of his ceramics and holo art, which leaves him in despair pondering life underground in the garbage of humanity's garbage. One last idea of some sort of personal salvation, Nicholas wants access to Quin's Shanghai Circus through is friend Shadrach. Shadrach, who was once in a relationship with Nicholas' twin sister, Quin "raised him from the dead" after the break-up. Nicholas seeks to get himself a meerkat from "the Livliest Artist" of them all--the creator of new organic species, the regeneration of species long dead, and the melder of the organic. "Working for an artist" of Quin's proportion may be as undefined as the shape and function of his organic avatar of flesh and circus. (16 pages) ----- A fairly short story but laden with terminology and mysteries that can only be and explained revealed upon the completion of Parts I and II. The nuances of the story are flourish when the other stories are read, which turns a confusing 3-star story into a more fulfilling 4-star story upon reflection.

Part II: Nicola - 4/5 - Nicola, twin sister of the recently missing Nicholas, visits her brother's apartment for clues as to his whereabouts. One scrap of paper reveals his obsession with the Livliest Artist, Quin. Nicola contacts her ex-boyfriend and friend of Nicholas, Shadrach, who radiates guilt and brushes off her request for information. Soon after their meeting, Nicola receives a meerkat for a servant, who tends to cook excellent fiddler crab for dinner. Given that the meerkat is the work of the infamous Quin, Nicola trusts the critter very little but also can not resist the urge to follow it as it leaves her flat every morning. (57 pages) ----- Annoying written in a second-person past-tense narrative format, the significance the style ONLY becomes clear half-way through Part III. It definitely takes some adjustment to... but just when you think that the writing style in Part II is just part of the artistic license, the focus is pulled to full detail in Part III and the reader is gifted full insight, forever relieving. Nicola's experience reminds me of Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and Reynolds' Chasm City--a creepy and cryptic combination which favors multi-layered mysteries over th clear and obvious. One possibly idiosyncratic addition to Part II is the narrator's use of alliteration: familiar furry, silently surveys, glint and glitter, row of doors down the corridor, ache of atoms.

Part III: Shadrach - Shadrach still works for Quin but grudgingly accepts the assignments given to him, until his ex-lover Nicola disappears and her eyeballs end up staring back at him from the passive face of a geriatric celebutante. Shadrach returns to Nicola's flat and discovers the hiding servant meerkat in the closet. In order to assist him in descending the rancid depths of the underground, he cuts off the meerkat's head, glues it to a plate, and places it in his inner pocket. With this inside information, Shadrach descends to the organ replacement junk yard seeking Nicola... but he'll have to descend to the 10th level and lower if he plans to seek revenge against the immoral kingpin. (119 pages) ----- The complacent grit in the city alone gives way to evolutions of horror through the levels of the underground; rather than horrific, the events witnessed are ones of abject poverty, bottom of the barrel existence, and the amoral, unnatural existence of creatures from a madman's mind. The chasm of inhumanity is contrasted by the witticisms between the decapitated meerkat and the dedicatedly driven Shadrach. The tiers of corporeal amorality through the descent of the underground is in perfect opposition to Roshwald's descending sterility in Level 7. It also has the odd feeling of Super Mario Bros. and most Nintendo games of the era, where the protagonist/adventurer/hero passes level after level to the conclusive fateful meeting with the "end boss" or "final boss."

2000: Punktown (Thomas, Jeffrey)

Sci-fi, prose, and horror wrapped in imagination (4/5)
From June 7, 2009

Jeffrey Thomas explores his Punktown universe in this collection of 18 short stories. Punktown (officially know as Paxton) is a city on the planet of Oasis which is inhabited by indigenous aliens, humans and a slew of other alien races (some human-like and others... not so much). The entire collection isn't horrific enough for me to able to label in the "horror" genre; rather it's more of a science fiction novel which would comfortably fit the mixed genre of sci-fi/horror. These two essential elements are presented in each story. There's also a fair bit a prose and word usage which keeps the reader endeared amidst the horror--all snug in the wealth of imagination.

This resplendent rare cross-genre extravaganza can be witnessed in Jeremy Robert Johnson's collection Angel Dust Apocalypse, which slants more towards corporeal horror but leans on the gritty underpinnings of a future dystopia. Call it "bizarro-" or "weirdo-" fiction, but the tags applied to these collections detract from the surreal niche in which they fill... an effervescent niche inhabited by the writings of China Miéville of Perdido Street Station) and Haruki Murakami of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.


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The Reflections of Ghosts - 4/5: Drew makes clones for customers, which happen to be mangled versions of himself, so that they could do whatever they please to the helpless copies. He makes a female clone for a wealthy customer who he can mistakenly relate to on a basic level and finds himself in a dilemma. 15 pages

Pink Pills - 4/5: Marisol finds she has a type of tumor named Orb Weaver's Tumor, which is growing from a lump in her jaw. At the alien physician's office, a technician befriends her who could also provide a truth to her lingering suspicions of a rumor. 12 pages

The Flaying Season - 4/5: Kohl has an interest in reviving her erased memories of two traumatic episodes. Could her sister refresh her memory? Could the doctor reload her memories into her brain? Or could a coffee shop customer be a link to her past? 10 pages

Union Dick - 3/5: Yolk is a Union representative and veteran from the Union Wars. His job is to ensure that factories have enough active human employees to work in tandem with their robotic counterparts. One company, though, takes advantage of a loophole in the rule which angers Yolk's dedication to preventing degradation. 11 pages

Wakizashi - 3/5: Officer Soko must assist alien diplomat in its religious purification, even though it will be a horrible death for whoever agrees to be the victim. 14 pages

Dissecting the Soul - 3/5: Maddie is a pathologist who is retrieving the memories of a recently executed murderer. During her retrieval she reviews some events which made the man the monster he became. 6 pages

Precious Metal - 5/5: A robotic jazz band is gunned down inside a club as gangster Grey watches. His clan may be to blame but how does the boss Ng justify this assassination? 10 pages

Sisters of No Mercy - 3/5: A group of women view an act of initiation as the member-to-be Ayn dismembers her victim. With Ayn's further act of dismemberment upon the male race, how will her zealousness be viewed in the eyes of her fellow sisters? 6 pages

Heart for Heart's Sake - 2/5: Impoverished artist Teal and his girlfriend Nimbus are confronted by the power company for stealing electricity and need to come up with money. Thankfully, at his art exhibit a wealthy man purchases his massive artwork... but also comes with its performing beauty, Nimbus. Will this sacrifice help or hinder their relationship? 19 pages

The Ballad of Moosecock Lip - 3/5: Dazey and Brine are drug makers and dealers. They bring a mysterious girl into their circle who then falls victim to the addiction and her life falls apart. Dazey and Brine decide to save her they only way they know how. 6 pages

Face - 4/5: Declan mourns the loss of his mutant son Ian as he revisits the Christmas decorated sewer-mall they had visited in the summer before Ian's death. Declan faces guilt, envy and love yet cannot cope with his loss. 8 pages

The Pressman - 5/5: Manny is a pressman at a printer who works with the new insubordinate yet creative robotic pressman. The mantis-like machine makes Manny seethe with hate and the machine's attitude doesn't help any. 4 pages

The Palace of Nothingness - 4/5: Titus is a Properties Investigator for a real estate company. When reviewing a section of the city, he sees a building, if it is a building, which has been under change decade after decade, yet there is no official mention of its function. Titus takes it upon himself to explore its innards and innateness. 9 pages

The Rusted Gates of Heaven - 2/5: Mendeni visits the Bellakee's estate to see a relic which he had picked up on satellite. The invitation turns into a further unexpected invite and ends with yet another invite, each more provocative than the last. 4 pages

Immolation - 4/5: The non-union Plant worker clone Magnesium Jones escapes to fulfill an assassination contract. This hit is being paid by Plant union employee Parr and the target is the union boss. What are Parr's intentions and the 5-years-out-of-the-tank clone Jones can trusted? 16 pages

Unlimited Daylight - 5/5: Anoushka explores the city to visit book stores and takes lunch at an Indian restaurant in a Choom town. She spies a goggled man there and finds him again in his own bookstore. They befriend each other and talk about each other's language and genres. 15 pages

The Library of Sorrows - 3/5: MacDiaz is the detective of the grisly multiple-murder scene. His memories of this and other murder scenes haunt him, as he has a memory chip installed. His delusional mother has been placed in drawer where she'll stay until she dies. Is the chip more of a blessing than it is a curse? 13 pages

Nom de Guerre - 5/5: A quartet of human assassins meet with a quartet of Vlessi assassins, an alien race shrouded in mystery (rumored to be interdimensional beings, doppelgangers and vampires). Their opposing pharmaceutical company clients have faced them off against each other. Will the rumors be unveiled? 18 pages

1983: The Tartarus Incident (Greenleaf, William)

Science, horror and human error (4/5)
From April 30, 2010

From the front cover: "Trapped in the catacombs of a decaying planet, five desperate space travelers are stalked by the only thing in the universe hungrier than Man." This sentence is a very enticing mini-synopsis but mostly describes the plot condition in the last half of the novel: the horror part of this science fiction/horror novel. The first half of the novel is an original and well-written piece of science fiction. If it were to have a similar mini-synopsis, it would read: "Stranded in the desert of a searing planet, five auditors are coping with the only thing in the universe more dreadful than Taxes." That dreadful thing is the long running basis of the plot: the accumulation of human error.

The rear cover actually provides a good synopsis of the first half of the book:
"'Somebody get us the hell out  of...' This was the last transmission received from Oliver McElroy's audit team. What could never happen... was now a terrifying fact. The five-person crew of the UNSA audit ship jack-a-dandy had simply disappeared during a routine materialization from Graywand station to the planet Sierra. It was the end of their comfortable routine, and the beginning of the interstellar nightmare know as The Tartarus Incident."

I originally gave this book a three-star rating, but I've upped it to four stars because the horrific catacombs in the last haunt me to this day. I'd say the contrast of science and horror was very vivid and provides a long-term thrill!

The style of writing is nondescript but lends itself to be easy on the brain, where it can easily be read in the span of 3-4 hours or within two days of on and off reading. The first half of the short book is the inventive science fiction bit. Greenleaf has the sense to create a novel propulsion unit for the ship, which inevitably goes haywire and strands the crew on the arid planet. This half is full of tense scenarios and tricky problem solving. Intermixed, irritating and interrupting the easy flow of reading are random childhood memories of some of the crew. These insights don't cast a new light on any of the fairly generic crew of five auditors. The second half is the horror section of this book, which takes place in an underground labyrinth. The maze of passageways is detailed but still lacks a defining characteristic: it's dark, it's full of creepy crawlies, and it's dilapidated. The cavernous abyss between the two halves of the book is laden with an eerie foreboding, outlined here in a sequential manner: "The dead city waited under the sun-glazed air." (64) "He sat there a moment longer, feeling the hot breath of the city all around him. And suddenly, for no reason, he was afraid." (65) "[...] with the blazing city all around him and his mind touched by the presence of those who had built it, he could see himself with painful clarity." (66-67)

The resulting tectonic shift of the plot is rather annoying (but stands the test of time) as Greenleaf had an excellent, classic sci-fi novel on his hands as the plot itself was problem-solution based. Sporadic science-based endeavors are included in the second horror half, easing up on the intensity involved down below in the arid catacombs of the scorched planet of Sierra. All in all, it's not such a bad novel as it's a quick and easy read but the story still sticks in your mind due its trying circumstances, terror filled darkness and the realization that sometimes situations are out of our hands because of accumulated human negligence.

2010: Hull Zero Three (Bear, Greg)

Internalizing the essence of exploration and fear (5/5)
From July 21, 2011

It appears that Hull Zero Three hasn't been very well received on Amazon and that's pretty sad. I greatly anticipated its release and was mystified by the Vine program's negative feedback. To truly appreciate Hull Zero Three, I think the reader needs to meet two criteria, like myself:
1) The reader needs to understand most of Greg Bear's work, including his 1980s and 1990s grand space spectacles of The Way series and Forge of God series). Also, the reader must feel distanced by Bear's work since the millennium (Quantico, Vitals and especially City at the End of Time). This will give you a proper lead-up to what Bear has accomplished and why Hull Zero Three is a return to his grand tradition of space spectacles.

2) The reader must be disappointed in the state of the art of American science fiction. I don't read any of the stuff since the millennium as there's been a preferred chasm of difference with British SF. US SF tends to have very short paragraphs with lots of dialogue and it nearly always reads like a Hollywood scrip for people with short attention spans.

NOW, open up the deliciously ambiguous book entitled Hull Zero Three. Granted, from the onset, the initial "man wakes up on ship with amnesia" isn't exactly unique but banish that from your feeble mind as the subject is at the masterful (er, with the exception of End of Time) hands of Greg Bear. Like the main character, Teacher, we, too are borne unto this novel with little knowledge of what is happening but we grow to understand the environment, the dangers, the expectations and direction: where the Teacher learns so the reader, where the Teacher panics so the reader panics. Identify with this: "I'm just a pair of eyes on the end of a stalk of neck with a brain and some hands and legs attached."

I won't to expose too much detail about the greater scene of the book because it's important that the reader, like to protagonist, learns as he/she goes. So, to just glance over the plot, here it is: Three separate hulls are on a 500-hundred-year journey to inhabit the stars. Something has gone wrong, albeit a malicious deviation of course or a natural phenomenon. People are being awoken, these people are being killed by the Ships machines. On board is the entire Gene Pool of earth and the landing crew will make use of this gene pool to adapt to the environment of the one planet they will fall upon. They have only the one shot to establish their civilization.

I must mention the Gene Pool part of the plot because it's by far the most titillating potential in the entire book. Stop and think about the variation of life on earth and how, in the future, it may be possible to alter man in any way, always abiding by the gene pool, to suit Man for life on other planets. Hull Zero Three visits some minor shifts in the human DNA but always tiptoes around some of the more exotic spectrum of what humans could become. The details revolving around this 500-year trip and the gene pool are hugely enticing and very rewarding.

Like mentioned in criterion #2, Hull Zero Three is unlike anything the US SF has recently produced (this includes Vinge and the peripheral Star Wars, Star Trek and Halo series). No author has gotten it right except for our friends across the pond, many of whom I'm a great fan of: Banks, Hamilton, Reynolds, Stross. Greg Bear writes in a style similar to the British friends, where there is more of a focus on describing environment, emotion, experience and detail with longer paragraphs, more internal monologue and less frivolous chit-chat.

"Exploring," in his purest essence, isn't about banally chatting about what you're seeing... it's about internalizing the experience and relating yourself to your surroundings. Much like Hull Zero Three - you'll explore the Ship (Hulls One AND Three!) through the internalized experience of Teacher. However, you'll also be grappling with the fear of death, dismemberment, starvation and suffocation. Great contrast.