1984: The Pandora Stone (Greenleaf, William)

Linear plot of vying for an alien artifact (4/5)

William Greenleaf was a minor science fiction writer in the 1980s, beginning with a single publication of his freshman novel Time Jumper (1980) and later with more single publications of his novels The Tartarus Incident (1983), The Pandora Stone (1984), Starjacked (1987), and Clarion (1988)... three of which were published with Ace. Enjoying a revival of sorts, Greenleaf has been making his novels more accessible with some digital versions now available. If Tartarus and Pandora are a testament to his creativity and cleverness, then the rest of his works are to be hunted down in paperback format and enjoyed.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Arlo Field didn't match the holo-vid image of a contract courier--he was short, scrawny and homely, and he suffered from recurring nightmares about his one encounter with the alien cobra, an encounter is which his lover was killed. But Arlo was good at his job--so good that when UNSA needed someone to acquire and transport a mysterious alien crystal to headquarters on Sierra, Arlo got the assignment. Unfortunately, nobody told him that the five more ruthless criminals in the human k-stream loop also wanted the crystal. And would stop at nothing to get it."

A genuine alien artifact which was stashed away by a noble, well-intended scientist has gradually come to surface on the black market. The artifact, a crystal the size of a large man's fist, is currently owned by a reclusive but well-to-do business man by the name of Steele. With pressure from hierarchically coming from above, Sherborn Tharp hires Arlo to purchase the crystal and return it to him, no questions asked. The Deputy Assistant of Security for the United Nations Space Administration (USNA), Tharp, cannot envision the perils which lay in deep space for Arlo, nor can he contemplate the importance the crystal has on humanity's place under the stars.

Once the crystal is handed over to Arlo and he secures the metallic attaché case to his wrist, the craft he is flying in is almost at once attacked by the Guard. Stumped by whose allegiance the Guard is under, Arlo knows for certain that trust cannot be wantonly given to passers-by. His dramatic rescue by a female pilot plunges him further into cross-weaving agendas for ownership for the crystal. Dodging criminals, scoundrels, and general lowlifes, the two keep a low profile on a mining planet while those who vie for the crystal's power tie up loose ends... which requires ammunition to be spent and blood to be spilled.

Without an allegiance to any of the vying parties, Arlo eventually places a limited amount of trust in his rescuer, the female pilot/lithesome companion Tabby Brooke. Her prerogative of returning the crystal to earth is unsettling to Arlo, as his knowledge of earth concerns its mutated inhabitants and derelict cities; the Plague survivors of earth, the Sgor la Lyurr, are seen as primitives and little could connect them with the extraterrestrial artifact.

In an arm of the galaxy colonized by humans, no benevolent alien life has been found, while one alien raced, named the cobras, are savagely at war with the humans. A seemingly blood-thirsty race, once such conflict has forever scarred the mind of Arlo as he saw his friends die one-by-one by the single vicious attack of a cobra. But it are the cobra, too, who find that ownership of the crystal is the most dire need for the continuation of their race.

This is only my second Greenleaf novel but I can summarize his style as this: technically specific but without the mumbo-jumbo typically associated with it, fast paced but without missing large tracts of plot, character-based but not superficially glazed, and attentive to detail without being obnoxious or repetitive. The entire composition comes off very cleanly without the sanitized sensation of a paint-by-numbers novel.

When I say "technically specific" I don't mean page after page of scientific detail or a step-by-step physics lesson ala Charles Sheffield, Greg Egan, or Bruce Sterling. Grreenleaf isn't so specific as he his attentive to the environment the characters are placed in and interact with (hmm, well put): "The girl folded the flight control wheel into its niche under the console. She keyed a command, and the craft's grav control set the level at Terran standard." (35) "He flipped the switch to borrow power from the idled drive engines. The commset speaker burped once, then began issuing a faint hum." (41)

All this provides a fairly homely feel for where the characters are placed. When the cast are set in a spaceship, an office, a bar, or a hotel, Greenleaf follows through with this importance of character environment: "Their room was as dismal as the rest of Bly Harbor. The furniture consisted of a word couch and a bed that sagged in the middle." (61) "The towers that cast shadows across city blocks were of the same squared designs of concrete and glass [...] Rusted heaps of apparatus squatted on the flat roofs." (161)

Everything that Greenleaf mentions in The Pandora Stone is relevant to the plot. There aren't any loose threads, no red herrings, no parallel plots of annoying brevity, and no social or political diatribes. He's written a very well packaged science fiction book, perhaps common to the 1980s but taken with a sigh of relief before the 1990s trend of 500 page tomes somehow became fashionable. All the aliens, all the technology, all the groups vying for the crystal, and all the histories leading up to the climax are important to Greenleaf's plot. Maybe it's not exactly Hugo material or spiced with philosophy, but it is an exciting novel which entertains... something which most Hugo authors tend to forget about.

Along with William Gibson, Greg Bear, and Larry Niven, William Greenleaf also provides an entertaining 1980s novel in comparison to the lengthier and more weighted likes of Kim Stanley Robinson, David Brin, and George Alec Effinger. Greenleaf provides the perfect recipe for flawless entertainment, at the cost of being simple and structured but not juvenile or scripted.

2003: The Line of Polity (Asher, Neal)

Same old Asher routine, getting old but maturing, too (3/5)
From March 29, 2009

This is the fifth Asher novel I've read, after the two Spatterjay novels (The Skinner and The Voyage of Sable Keech), Prador Moon and Gridlinked. When spaced apart, the novels are a fun read as they typically include wry wit and gruesome battles. The Spatterjay novels also added detailed yet horrific planetary creature, a similar system which Asher employs in Line of Polity: wit, battles and fauna. But after reading the previous novels, the entire system is getting a bit repetitive with the endless battle scenes and homicidal native animals. Line of Polity doesn't stray far at all from Asher's signature plot and is actually quite evident towards the final 20% of the book when there are battles after endless battles all adding very little to the plot itself. A simplification would have been much appreciated to cut down on the amount of superfluous scenes. Asher is the type of battle writer who uses "a short-stock grenade-launcher for more intimate work."

The planet of Masada is where a good chunk of the book takes place, a place "you cannot draw a breath... even if its horrifying wildlife would let you." That's from the back cover of the novel... that's it, meaning not much info to go by before you buy the novel in the bookstore. A better, in book, quote about Masada is a place where "choices are limited to two - fight or die - and they are not mutually exclusive."

One more downside of the book is the villain Skellor. His name reminds me of Skeletor from the fames of He-man, Master of the Universe. Therefore, the name Skellor feels cheesy, as if it was ripped off from He-man. His presence in the novel is straight from the get-go and makes appearances all the way until the end, but what's seriously lacking is Skellor's motivation for being the villain rather than being part of the Polity.

The Polity doesn't play as big of a role in Line of Polity as it did in Gridlinked. There isn't a focus on augmentations or runcibles as it typically found in Polity society. The entire novel takes place on two distant planets and outer space. It lends little the structure of the Polity society but makes up for it by adding to the mystery surrounding the Dragon, which ended in Gridlinked. An apt foreshadowing quote would be, "That was Dragon. And my guess is that things are just about to start getting very complicated - and very deadly."

I'm interested to see how Asher will progress with the Cormac series, whether in the direction of wit and gore, a focus on Polity society or a concentration on the Dragon. The third novel in the series should answer this question--Brass Man (not as good, honestly--a good book or two, but not worth the while).

1969: Secret of the Sunless World (Capps, Carrol M.)

Complex plot carries its own weight (4/5)

Carrol M. Capps (more well known under the pseodonym C.C. MacApp) wrote only a handful of science fiction and fantasy novels from 1968-1971 but also wrote more than 30 short stories from 1960 until his death in 1971. His novella The Mercurymen won the Nebula award in 1966, but otherwise remains fairly unknown. The most accessible works of Capps would be via Project Gutenberg with this short stories (1) Tulan and (2) And All the Earth a Grave.

Rear cover synopsis:
"SPACE PIRATE - His name was Gondal, most feared of all creatures in the universe. But there was one ravenous ambition he had yet to satisfy. On a distant, sunless planet lay the key to the secret of the humanoids who had strangely vanished after reigning over all space. Gondal intended to discover that secret--and become master of the galaxies. But Gondal needed one man to help him--an Earthling named Vince Cullow. Prisoner on Gondal's Spaceship, Cullow was forced to choose between robot-like submission, and the kind of torture only a twisted mind of Gondal would conceive, as they sped toward the unknown..."

Thrice as long and thrice as accurate, so goes my synopsis: Vince Cullow has been smitten with the first known human case of an alien virus. No humanly elixir can cure his pain and progressive blindness, but the hypertrichosic bipedal Nessen aliens DO know of a cure. The aliens concoct a scheme to deliver Vince to a notorious ophidian space pirate named Gondal, who will take Vince to the sunless world where a cure is available. But the deal is too good to be true.

The Nessen use Vince to get close to Gondal and to another Nessen named Zarpi, who they both suspect of secretly vying for unseen booty hidden away on the sunless world, Shann. As Vince receives his treatment, the arachnid doctor spins the revelation that Gondal played a deviance hand in the operation, where Gondal holds the only medication that will allow Vince to keep his vision for good. Thus, the pirate holds Vince as captive to his plans to unveil the hidden treasure stolen away somewhere on the resort planet.

As Vince spies another Zarpi with the kidnapped Lenjan archaeologist of interest, so begins the levels of deceit Vince will unfold. The operation has granted him perfect vision in both dark and light, which he uses to lead Gondal into a hollowed cave which houses mysterious Lenjan artifacts. Are the scientific remains of the Lenj the real prize, and is it as valuable as their lives when Zarpi and the ursine Chullwei are boring into the mountain for access to the same trove?

It's obviously a completed plot given that it's only 204 pages long. There are more alien species, more planets, and even more interesting tidbits that make the universe that Capps has created to be of such intrigue to warrant a 4-star rating. It's this scope and detail of plot which really secure such a high rating for a single-edition novel (Dell, July 1969). I'd recommend taking notes with this one.

As far as literary flare is concerned, Capps fails to find his knack for insightful passages and sympathetic situations, but one area of focus he excels in is physical descriptions of all the alien species. The four or five bipedal aliens are a tad monotonous, including the near-glabrous human, but the lengthy descriptions of each are an interesting appendix to the plot. Capps's invention of the sunless world, Shann, is interesting, too. Perhaps it's not too realistic but the idea is fantastic.

One major problem with the novel and one minor issue drop the book from a 5-star to a 4-star rating with prompt. Nearly the last third of book is continued after a stop-gap in the plot. The transition is abrupt and detracts from the wonders of the Shann and the battle being waged between the Vred caretakers and the collaboration of Zarpi and the Chullwei. The remaining third of the novel has its enticing parts--some enshrouded plot teasers and some otherworldly charms. The final 5% is a bit of a let down, depending how you view the last 15%. It's certainly no whiz-bang conclusion, but it could have been better crafted if the damnable transition never occurred.

Reading Capps's short fiction would be on my list if it were condensed into a collection, but as it stands now, his 32 works of short fictions are scattered throughout the pages of Fantastic Stores, Amazing Stores, and If. Sadly, none of Capps's other titles exactly beckon the attention of my visual scrutiny... maybe Recall Not Earth... maybe.

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.

1972: Starbrat (Morressy, John)

Rapid plot bypasses unique planets and subplots (3/5)

John Morressy is better know for his fantasy in the Kedrigern Universe but has also made a foray into the science fiction genre with Starbrat (the first book in a series of six) and a single edition of The Extraterritorial. If you can squirm past the irksome sight of the cover and refrain from cringing at the generic title, inside the book there is all-too-rapid plot set amid a post-diaspora galaxy where humanity has colonized the stars for forty-seven generations. Old Earth is just a memory as one man is kidnapped from his bucolic home world and finds himself at the center of more than one galactic stage.

Del is small for his age on the planet of Gilead, where life is slow and the work on the farm takes precedence over everything. Del (short for Deliverance-from-the-Void Whitby) has faster reflexes than his counterparts and the reason for this is given to him on the eve of his rite of passage: he was delivered as a baby to the planet in a mysterious single-man craft with an illegible piece of paper. Soon after this revelation comes to light, Del is kidnapped by space pirates (oh my!) while protecting his sweetheart from the grips of the slave mongers.

Once upon the ship, the pirates discuss what to do with little Del. When one pirate speaks ill of his sweetheart, Del must defend her honor while aboard the spaceship, where his nimbleness and swiftness allow him to fall the beast of a man. It is thus decided to take Del to a planet which sees human combat as the greatest sport. This is where Del begins his second life.

Del has a humble upbringing which drives him to seek out his home planet and return to his sweetheart. After his departure from the gladiator/arena planet of Tarquin VII, his fighting skills take him around the planets at breakneck speed. Each planetfall results in a mini-adventure for Del and his expanding crew of noble yet fearsome cohorts, but what Morressy doesn't do is weave it all together in a tidy manner. There are too many coincidences for such a large galaxy; too many links to the past; too many tiny revelations regarding Del's ancestry. The last 10% of the book skips decades and decades, distancing the reader from Del's ordeals and leading to the sequel... which doesn't even have the same protagonist but takes place in the same universe Morressy has created.

There are some great aspects to Starbrat like the aforementioned planet Tarquin VII and Watson's planet, where data is currency and a supercomputer governs all. Also, the galaxy teems with life. "...the races of the galaxy were a homogeneous bunch... they were homogeneous enough to interbreed successfully." The other viviparous aliens aren't explored in great detail (as a matter of fact, nothing is really explored in great detail) but one or two aliens do play key roles in the later chapters.

It's not a boring read because of all the commotion but then again I do prefer a calm setting with lots of romantic description and vivid imagery. Starbrat sulks in th 2-star region before one twist of plot ratchets it up to three stars. This twist is a culmination of years of physical and mental effort on Del's part and provides the means to his final decision. It's a well crafted move but leaves the end of the novel flapping in the wind. The sequel Nail Down the Stars doesn't have any appeal to me but I have already purchased his other science fiction novel, The Extraterritorial. I don't hold great hopes for it.