2005: Starwater Strains (Wolfe, Gene)

Less than half of the stories are science fiction (3/5)
From September 5, 2011

I became interested in Wolfe because of the Long Sun series. I liked to series but was disappointed by the lack of science in the books. As a science fiction reader, a books doesn't always need to have technology, laser and spaceships, but the Long Sun needed something to counter its' almost fantasy-like elements. When I saw Wolfe had a short story collection with the cover saying "New Science Fiction Tales," I had to find it.

Disappointingly, only about 10 of the 25 stories here have elements of science fiction, with the majority of them containing things like magic swords, mythical sea creatures, folklore, surreal experiences, and possession. I admit, most of it was lost on me. Call Wolfe "clever" or "subtle" but I think he writes for himself rather than an audience. Sometimes you just have to shrug and take each story at face value because you'll have no clue what Wolfe is trying to get across.

Viewpoint - 4/5 - Woodman becomes reality show contestant in the city which he must survive while spending the $100,000 on his person. With viewers watching his every move from his first-person POV and the government wanting to tax him, elusiveness is difficult without cooperation. 39 pages

Rattler - 4/5 - Two rednecks talk about a truck which manifests the spirit (like Carrie) of an old hunting dog. The canine-possessed truck inspires another man to train his new truck to perform new tricks, with predictable results. 7 pages

In Glory like Their Stars - 4/5 - Gabby materialistic yet primitive humans idolize a visiting humanoid alien but their simplicity and relentlessness drive the benevolent being away. 6 pages

Calamity Warps - 5/5 - If your dog dragged home a four-armed, horned shadow, you'd be a little freaked out, too. When the shadow becomes your very own, things become downright odd. 5 pages

Graylord Man's Last Words - 4/5 - Robotic boy sent to his aunt's Biological house where lays a man on his deathbed. His last words are uttered but the boy is unable to compute the sensation. 6 pages

Shields of Mars - 5/5 - Human and alien childhood friends on Mars are the sole caretakers of an air plant, which is about to become decommissioned. A final plea to headquarters is made and the results enliven their spirit. 11 pages

From the Cradle - 5/5 - A young man working in a book store comes into contact with a mysterious, old, brown book which is seemingly basing stories about his life through its fables. 19 pages

Black Shoes - 3/5 - Prior to an oceanside holiday, a professor didn't believe in mythical sea creatures but during a shoeless stroll through the surf, he enters a surreal and confronts his past errs. 8 pages

Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon? - 4/5 A circus muscleman and his love-interest/manager ponder the mysterious properties of the moon, dodge the Feds and seek out the strange lunar material. 11 pages

Pulp Cover - 5/5 - Mid-level manager at a furniture store falls in love with the boss's daughter, who soon marries a stranger... who is stranger than anyone knows. 10 pages

Of Soil and Climate - 3/5 - Imprisoned psychiatrist experiences a fantasy realm inhabited by metaphorical "night people" where we becomes a prince to aid the king's mental illness. 21 pages

The Dog of Drops - 3/5 - After the Bigkill, an intelligent wolf befriends a man and his family. His story is transcribed in what seems to be a thick Scottish or Welsh accent. 3 pages

Mute - 3/5 - Siblings discover their father's house empty except for the mute TV and the corpse in the basement. Upon leaving the house, they jump the fence to only return to the same exact house. 10 pages

Petting Zoo - 4/5 - The government commandeers a T-Rex after a boy grows it himself and unleashes tyranny upon the forest copse and herds of cattle. Now on a diet of tofu, the didactic machines teach children of the era of the dinosaurs. 6 pages

Castaway - 4/5 - Man stranded on planet for 27 years describes to one crew member of an old female who accompanied him on the planet. He reminisces of shared memories of birds and tress; things which the crewmember knows nothing of. 6 pages

The Fat Magician - 3/5 - An American pens a letter while being stranded in an Austrian city which is home to an almost mythical figure from WWII - a giant of a magician hiding persecuted peoples from the Nazis. 10 pages

Hunter Lake - 3/5 - Mother and daughter search for an elusive lake by questioning a specter-like elderly lady, an even more elusive elderly man and an Injun woman. 11 pages

The Boy Who Hooked the Sun - 3/5 - A short tale explaining why the seasons change. 3 pages

Try and Kill It - 5/5 - Nocking an arrow, the hunter takes aim on a passing doe but demurs. Later, a rush of wildlife bursts forth but still stalls... then takes aim on a grizzly, which can break aluminum arrow shafts. 21 pages

Game in the Pope's Head - 2/5 - A quartet of players are playing a mixed menagerie of games simultaneously. Reality keeps shifting and it is somewhat of an idea of someone's personal hell. 6 pages

Empires of Foliage and Flower - 1/5 - Reminiscent of the Long Sun series but with more of a fantasy slant... couldn't get through even half of it. 26 pages

The Arimaspian Legacy - 3/5 - Astronomer and obsessive book collector discovers secrets in the sun's spots and excitedly tells his childhood friend of the discovery. 5 pages

The Seraph and Its Sepulcher - 4/5 - Missionary to a recently extinct alien race receives a researcher from the Motherworld light-years away. The researcher aims to study the religious records, the ancient sites and anything the Father has. 15 pages

Lord of the Land - 3/5 - Folklorist interviews an old man at a farm, who speaks of a soul-sucking shadow-like being. With the interviewer interning at the ranch, odd occurrences must... occur. 16 pages

Golden City Far - 2/5 - A boy experiences life set on the cusp of reality and fantasy - real, imaginary or psychotic? 45 pages

1972: The Wandering Variables (Trimble, Louis)

Angering grad students and natives when on vacation (3/5)

Louis Trimble has authored nearly a dozen western and mystery books in his early career but turned to science fiction in the late 1960s. He has two Ace doubles with Anthropol and The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy before publishing three books for DAW: The City Machine (1972: Daw #24), this novel (1972: DAW #34), and the The Bodelan Way (1974: DAW #86). I've only read Trimble's The City Machine (4/5 stars) and considered it a thought provoking, socially intuitive novel. He also wrote a quirky time travel short story entitled Probability (1954, which can be found on Project Gutenberg) which ends with "...how can I be sure what to do if he won't let me read about what I did." Fun stuff.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Dr. Tandy Venner was an irreplaceable asset to the Charter Worlds Union... so when she decided to take a mind-bending vacation with a Euphor team, Jano Kegan was sent along to keep an eye on her. But to qualify for the safari across that mad planet, he too had to submit to the Trekkers' mental conditioning. What was not on the tour program was the unwritten sidetrack their guide had planned for Tandy. What was not on the guide's secret detour was the planet's own out-of-bounds programming. And what was not on any of them was the eccentricity of the two brilliant vacationers breaking all the rules to find out what Euphor was really all about."

Jano works for the Cultural Rehab unit for the Chartered World Union, where it's his duty to contact both regressed human civilizations on colonized planets and technologically advanced human races across the galaxy. Because his survival skills are needed when dealing with backwater primitive human tribes, Jano is selected to protect the important Dr. Tandy from the menacing hands of the arch rival corporation of Argo and its henchmen Mingo and Pars.

Prior to arrival in the holiday planet of Euphor, Tandy and others receive conditioning which allows them to act uninhibitedly yet it also confines them to the narrow tract of land, bordered by two parallel rivers, for an 11 day joyful hike to the rendezvous. Jano soon uses his lessened programming to allow Tandy and himself to escape into the prohibited zone. There, the programming wears off and ill effects start to surface. Jano and Tandy both show they have outdoorsmanship when innovating utensils and gadgets from the flora surrounding them.

When the duo stumble upon an isolated tribe of primitive humans, it soon becomes known that the tribe is actually part of a graduate student's thesis. Pheeno, the graduate student, is unseen but praised as a god by his study tribe. Dismayed by the inclusion of the two "variables" in his thesis's equation, Pheeno still assists them in finding an alternative route to the rendezvous. However, this route takes them through another graduate student's anthropological thesis, where two variables are very much unwelcome.

Trimble wastes no time in diving straight into this hare-brained adventure. We dive into Jano's job description, jump out onto the planet smack-dab in the middle of Tandy' uninhibited behavior, right through into the wilderness of the planet Euphor. No time for tea, no smoke break, do not pass go. The rest of the 154-page novel does little to characterize them, so we're left with two descriptions of each: Tandy is tall and jade-skinned while Jano is short and jade-skinned. No reason is given for the oddly skinned characters (there's even one with blue and pink striped skin). Two duo are dynamic yet combative at times, never really convincing the reader than they grow to care for one another through their 11-day trek.

I mention above that the adventure is hare-brained. I'm not entirely sure if this novel was supposed to be a thought-focused attempt at balderdash or a lackadaisical failure of artistry... it lays in the murky chasm of the two. I'm going to stand my ground after some thought now and say that this was, indeed, a stab at silliness which was shot from the hip. I like the imagery of two escapees/adventurers getting mixed up in the god-like graduate affairs of two university students, once accidentally inserting their own variable nature into the graduate's anthropological equation, and once again on purpose. As a current graduate student myself, my favorite quote by far is, "...they had no way of gauging the reaction of an angered graduate student should they interfere in his experiment." (67)

The Wandering Variables reminds me of another rather unique DAW book, Guy Syder's Testament XXI, which was also a bit silly. I ended up thinking that Testament XXI was simply a one-off idiosyncratic novel... but Wandering Variables strikes me much the same way - perhaps the rest of the Trimble library isn't quite this odd, but by the looks of The Bodelan Way cover, he might just have another odd-ball novel lurking out there.

1973: Testament XXI (Snyder, Guy)

Snyder's one-off: unique is good and bad ways (3/5)
From October 15, 2011

Guy Snyder's Testament XXI: The Book of the Twice Damned (DAW #64) is a total one-off; this author never wrote another novel, novelette or even short story, according to ISFDB. The rear cover also adds, "...a novel quite unlike any you have ever read in modern science fiction." This is true. It's... unique. Hmph.


Rear cover synopsis:
"When Astronaut Williamson returned after the longest flight ever made he found that the great civilization that had launched him was gone... destroyed in a chaos of its own creation. But somewheres in what had once been Michigan the Republic welcomed him back. The Republic that was a kingdom, the Republic that consisted of one underground city ruled by a weakling monarch and a power-hungry priesthood."

Returning from a mission to Bernard's Star, our lone astronaut, James, has left his crewmates in the mothership in a decaying orbit around earth. Crashing his craft, James is accepted into the underground colony of Detroit. With a military background, he is quickly trained to rise to the ranks of defense commander. His novelty has him in close proximity to the ailing king who uses him to spy on his nearly-psychotic prince son, Richard. The relationship between James and Richard matures as the king passes away and Richard assumes responsibility for the livelihood of the colony. At the same time, the powerful Archbishop makes a powerplay against the rising star, James. A secret stash of 2011 bibles contrasts the current 2111 bible, which James says is a crook. Branded for treason, the Archbishop puts him on trail but is saved by the heir apparent. Add to this conundrum the recent deflection of an 80-megaton nuclear bomb and a successful scouting mission to the colony of Chicago, and circumstances begin to align themselves.

Pretty decent synopsis, which is much easier to read than the actual novel. The chapter passages are oddly separated one-line sentences beginning and ending with notational ellipses. Sometimes this spacing fills nearly an entire page. Some of the dialogue, too, is spaced in this fashion, as if the editor is trying to bulk up an otherwise rather thin novel (which could be easily read in 2-3 hours). Four of the seventeen chapters begins with a perspective from an animal living on the surface above the colony: a lizard, a buzzard, a kangaroo rat and a rat. These four passages last for 2-3 pages and add a certain charm to the book. It's unique, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot.

Snyder's writing style, besides the repetitive notational ellipses, is bipolar. Most of the time the writing is very straight forward but there are also glimpses of wonderful insight:
"What causes men to become no more than celestial chess players?"
"War's a game, my lord."
"That's a trite, lousy explanation of the phenomenon."
"That's because the phenomenon itself it trite." (93)

And other times he is tirelessly wordy with obscure descriptions: "The fuel was called, noncommercially, Grade #3H. It was, of course, the right kind of fuel for this type of VL-VTO craft, series R12-56." (100)

It's not an easy read because you have to understand the constantly shifting viewpoints from pilots, animals, James and the Archbishop. There is even shifting viewpoints of characters who have an entire chapter dedicated to them but play no role in the plot, such as "this particular man" in Chapter 9 who is described while going to work, doing nothing and finally witnessing the war production line begin, much to his dismay.

Unique, it is- the synopsis was right for a change! It think I'll keep this book on my shelves for sheer novelty. It's a little fun, actually. She's a keeper.