1970: Cities in Flight (Blish, James)

Full-bodied red wine when all you want is a crisp rosé (3/5)
From April 8, 2010

I knew from the start that I couldn't digest the entirety of Cities in Flight in one sitting, as it was composed of four separate but chronological books. Therefore, I read the book in four steps, which took the better part of eight months interspersing it with other fiction and science fiction reading. I could just never really get into any of the others books other than besides the initial book: They Shall Have Stars. Thereafter, each story had its own troublesome adventure, clash with ideals, and its eventual dry conclusion. I was definitely not bowled over by this collection. Terry Pratchett once said of the series, "This is the real heady wine of science fiction." Well, I don't like wine so much and when I do drink it, I like it to be a cool, crisp chardonnay or rosé... Pratchett can take his heady red wine and go elsewhere... put some cubes of ice in white wine while you're at it.

Blish insistently overuses the comma and semi-colon to such an extent that sentences drag on and on, much like that of Kafka (but with dramatically less flamboyance). At least Kafka had a certain charm or uniqueness to his writings whereas Blish just drones on and on. Another random but irritating aspect of Blish's idiosyncratic writing in Triumph is his overuse of Latin quips. I've never studied Latin so I haven't a clue as to what most of the quips were about. The dialogue is rarely ever taken past the point of being a degree above freezing point, making the reading even more dragging... as if the rambling paragraphs between the dry dialogue wasn't torture enough. Still, Blish manages to slip in a few wondrous ideas of the ultimate fantasy of human space flight and the plights which humans may face beyond our own little star. His consistent use of physics is a fun frolic but not to be taken too seriously as the characters still use some archaic technology.

It's remarkable that Arthur C. Clarke had the amazing vision to apply his knowledge in science to dream up the geostationary satellite and the space cable. He brought a true wonder to the world which made people awe that these new inventions may just be within their grasp. At the opposite end of the spectrum lays James Blish, whose characters still use slide-rules (Pg 584: "Amen! Can I borrow your slide-rule? I've got a few setting up exercises I'd better start on right now.") and vacuum tubes (Pg 587: "...there was a single spearpoint of yellow-orange which was only the heater of a vacuum tube smaller than an acorn.") He constricted himself to such old technologies but still dabbled in the higher end of science and physics with anti-particles, particle waves and galactic formation; all a curious mixture of dated-technology and theoretical physics.

------------

Book 1: They Shall Have Stars (novel, 1956) - 4/5 - A lull in the space program spawns an idea in which `crackpots' must be hired in order to delve into unexplored regions of science. The government thereon sponsors the exorbitant cost in order to take humankind to new levels. In sci-fi culture, it is widely known that the two discoveries found which will send humankind beyond the lonely confines of the earthly orbit are the spindizzy (the anti-gravity device) and ascomycin (the anti-agathic [or anti-mortality] drug). The lead-up to these discoveries is shrouded in mystery but at the same time is also lightly exposed to play into the hands of the government's agenda. Written with outstanding intelligence and focused maturity, James Blish presents a new format of science fiction which eclipses the fiction of the same era (including his peers Asimov and Pohl). The science is thick enough to satisfy any hard sci-fi reader and also inventive enough to titillate the consumer of speculative fiction. The story may be fairly short but it provides a solid bootstrap to the universe which Blish has created. Its sheer ingenuity condensed into the number of pages leads to its dryness and abbreviation of finer points.

Book 2: A Life for the Stars (novel, 1962) - 4/5 - A great amount detail about the Exile history from Earth, the mechanisms of the Cities and about general life on-board has been written. The reader follows Chris from his humble upbringing in Pennsylvania to his unwilling assignment on the City of Scranton to his bright-eyed transfer to the City of New York. Besides the enlightening detail about the Cities in Flight universe, Blish makes a brilliant attempt to impose a dark shadow over the morale of the passengers (as opposed to the Citizens) and also of the pessimism of the people. Some Cities can't find a contract on a planet as many of the closer moons and heavenly bodies have already been speculated. The City of Scranton and the City of New York must look far into deeper space to find a toehold for their existence. Little did either City know just how their fates would intertwine. The only negative phase of this book is the transparent and seemingly forceful portrayal of Chris as being a self-motivated and self-stylized plot thickener. He conjures up simple plots which lay a thick plot foundation but which feel as desperate attempts to shake up the establishment of the wonderfully creative City idea. When the Cities stray planet-ward, the plot tends to become self-centered on Chris and suffers a sense of silliness.

Book 3: Earthman, Come Home (novel, 1955) - 3/5 - Earthman doesn't follow suit (even though it was the first story written) with the rest of the series. Firstly, Earthman is much longer and is split into nine chapters, which is strange considering that the third book is pretty much just a consolidation of four stories. The linking between each story is strained with effort on the part of Blish. The strain is hard to bear as the book is laden with too much dialogue. Typically, it's more difficult for readers to pay attention to a plot with little dialogue and much description. Blish managed to fail in holding my attention as the excessive dialogue was as dry as the pages they were printed on. I found the logic of the plot to be all within the skull of the Mayor. He sets every plot and sub-plot with information and foresight only known to him. There's a certain amount of clairvoyance involved. Watching the result of the Mayor's pre-planning is what keeps the book from slipping into a 2-star reading and hence off my shelf and to the second-hand book store. But trying to predict what the Mayor is thinking, what harebrained schemes he will come up with, and what path his madness will follow is impossible. It's unpredictable and frankly a tad off the wall.

Book 4: The Triumph of Time (novel, 1958) - 3/5 - In the first conflict, the City is taken under hostage by religious extremists who protest over New Earth's use of the philosophy called Stochasticism. The conflict is quickly resolves through some quick wit reminiscent of the classic problem/solution sort of science fiction back from the 1950s Golden Age science fiction. This plows forward into the second and more interesting conflict: the realities of a parallel anti-matter universe and the coming of the end of the universe by June 3rd, 4104. It's only in the last forty or so pages that the story really begins to pick up pace because the first eighty pages had me putting the book up and down like no tomorrow as I was beginning to doubt Blish's grand finale. The finale is chalked full of based-on-reality physics and hypothetical physics, too, where the cast find that their fate is drawing ever nearer. The implications of their actions are a fantastic conclusion to a somewhat lengthy, yet important, but also rather dry series.

1954: Lord of the Flies (Golding, William)

The frisson between accepting childhood or adulthood (5/5)

Not science fiction here, but Lord of the Flies is usually rated as one of the top 100 horror novels... and I do like my horror, though much of it is painted in supernatural droll that it becomes unappealing. But when the horror is purely human, when the human nature rears its head... that's good horror, even when I disagree with the human nature/nature of childhood Golding pens in Lord of the Flies.

I've been a teacher for over seven years now but only in the past year have I been getting more and more interested in the history of pedagogy. Through my master's studies, two names have struck me as both progressive and extreme: A.S. Neill (1883-1973) and Anton Makarenko (1888-1939). While progressive education may be not suitable for nationwide schools, some lessons gleamed from the case studies can be implemented. Before reading Lord of the Flies, I channeled by humanistic educational theories to sort out the misconception of the brutality of childhood through the theories of Neill and Makarenko.

Rear cover synopsis:
"A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behavior starts to take on a murderous, savage significance."

------------

Inspired by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne's Coral Island (1858), William Golding turned the tables on the way children react when left by themselves. In Coral Island, three boys were stranded in the south pacific and got along quite well... until the adults intervened: pirates, inhabitants, and missionaries. By themselves in their childish world they led an idyllic life, but conflict arose when they were confronted by world of the adults. Golding takes a different stand on this theme and sees the children as hopeless without adult supervision; the nature of the child as a barbarian.

Golding is a Cornish author while Ballantyne was a Scottish author. These are facts often better left to historians, but one more character needs to come into play in order to reaffirm my position: the Scottish progressive educator A. S. Neill. Neill believed that children carried the same tacit ideals of what it means to be a good human being as adults do; children have the innate ability to govern themselves and discipline themselves. When adults assume their self-appointed role as governors over children, Neill believed that the children were then subjected to all the psychoses in the adult world, which steals the essence of childhood away from the children. Neill's Summerhill School offers an education like this.

As an educator myself, I read The Lord of the Flies through the eyes of A. S. Neill and his Soviet counterpart Anton Makarenko, both believing in child self-sufficiency. Much of the symbolism and many of the incidences on the island can be attributed to the psychological distress the boys endured when under the rule of the adults and how some struggle to hope with their childhood nature. The conflicts arising from the adult-ish characters (Ralph and Piggy) contrast the overbearing childish attitudes of the rest (Jack and Roger) with the "littluns" displaced from the power struggle between Ralph and Jack. Though frightened and largely ignored, the "littluns" are the only children on the island to be spared the awkward suspension of responsibility between childhood and adulthood. The rest are victims of their inadequate understanding of their adulthood misconceptions and their own miscarriage of upholding their childhood values.

The central symbol of adulthood misconception is the conch, a tool used to gather around the subordinates like the children experienced at the airfield when they were gathered by the megaphone. While initially successful, and with much disdain displayed by Jack, the conch is accepted as a symbol of unity and law. However, the mere idea of using the conch to symbolize the megaphone shows that Ralph and the children are ill at ease with their new found freedom. Abiding by the rules of adulthood they experienced in school has ill equipped them for the freedom they should be experiencing on the island--a time for growth, a time for the children to be children.

The awkwardness is apparent: the life they were experiencing in England (under the yoke of adult governors) versus the life they can experience on the island, where the children can be children. Even Golding writes in Chapter Four, "the northern European tradition of work, play, and food right through the day, made it impossible for them to adjust themselves wholly to this [the island's] new rhythm" (74).

Piggy and Ralph both obviously carry the largest burden of adulthood to the island. Their intrinsic need for conformity and law drive a stake through the fabric of the childhood experience for the rest of the children. When a schism arises between Ralph and Jack, it's Jack's childish notion of having fun that tears him away from Ralph's sect; Jack's need to experience the hunt, to have what he considers fun, establishes the rift which separates his cave-dwelling clan (what boy doesn't want to build a fort?) from Ralph's stricter beach-sheltered clan. This schism between the clans of adulthood and childhood manifests itself in hopelessness and savagery.

The savagery experienced through the eyes of Ralph is that through the eyes of an adult. The children, the clan of Jack's cave, simply see their bloodlust actions as uninhabited self-governance--those who disallow their childish ambitions are persecuted, albeit beyond Neill's and Makarenko's idea of kind justice. Even then, the savagery isn't realistically experienced by all of Jack's clan with one death being attributed to honest fear and another death being attributed by the action of one. The ultimate hunt at the end is seen as bloodthirsty through the eyes of Ralph and Roger, whereas only Roger really sees the violence as necessary to regain the equilibrium of his clan's childish motives. Jack is Roger's vehicle of madness, his key to the door of his warped fantasies... adult fantasies not shared among the rest of Jack's clan (What happens to the twins at the end of chapter 11? Torture?).

The fear of adulthood manifests itself with the arrival of the dead airman. When the children are begging for the presence of an adult, one arrives in corporal yet corrupted form, and the children vilify the corpse. They assure themselves there is no beast yet they later confirm its very existence. This fear stays with them even after the corpse itself is flung to sea. At the conclusion there's an air of unwelcome acceptance, calm hostility, or belittling realism.

So, the savagery of childhood that is commonly associated the Lord of the Flies isn't part and parcel with childhood itself; rather, the brutality is only a symptom of one character's (Roger) nonacceptance of childhood and the most of the scenes of violence can be explained by the children's inadequate understanding of both their own childhood nature and their misconceptions of the adult world which they try to implement, failingly, in their own world. It's not childhood that's brutal, it's the misconstrued conveyance of adulthood to children (through education, advertising, entertainment, etc.) that is manifested in the child's actions that's brutal. Children aren't born with hate... their taught.

1991: Hard-Boiled Wonderland (Murakami, Haruki)

Extraordinarily mundane: a treat for the observer (5/5)
From April 19, 2009

Not science fiction exactly, but straddling the precipice of fantasy and bizarro, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is just as much of a mind-trip as many science fiction books out there... if not more so. I hasn't read any Murakami before this but I had heard only great things from friends. I'm thrilled to have finally discovered the wondrous, yet sometime repetitive, talents of Murakami. Originally published in Japan in 1985, the book was translated to English in 1991 by Alfred Birnbaum.

Rear cover synopsis:
"A narrative particle-accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim.

"Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. The result is a wildly inventive fantasy and a meditation on the many uses of the mind."

A nameless cast in a half-fantasy Tokyo and internal cerebral realm dominate the pages of this Murakami novel. It's thoroughly rich in mundane nuances and details which give the broad plot its sheik and shiny coat. And most importantly, its Japanese-esque isn't lost through the translation, coming out foreign enough to be slightly mystical along side its fantasy and nebulousness. It feels like a combination of the movie Lost in Translation, the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan and the novel Queen of Angles by Greg Bear.

I didn't realize that the characters themselves didn't have names when I was through about 80% of the novel, which shows you two things: one, I'm terrible with names and two, I was too busy being absorbed by the on goings to be bothered with anything like a generic label for individuals. Murakami focuses the reader's attention to the scene, the plot, the casual and pointedly nebulous unfolding.

Spread across this novel are Japanese tinted cultural items, such as foods and fauna, which give it an additional novelty to match its' already speckled chapters with western culture oddities; from a detailed Italian dinner to records of once-great jazz and pop artists to the proud collection of a fine whiskey collection. Piled on this heap of anecdotal oddities comes to rich recollection of the main character's personal history in the form of reminiscing, including details about his divorce, his sex life, his jobs, his sofa appreciation and his unique childhood experiences; from jetsam to a Skyline to chubby girls to a aviator jacket. Wildly, mundanely detailed!

Even with a wider view, many of the characters are actually quite mundane themselves: the librarian, the scientist, the chubby girl, the Gatekeeper, the General, etc. It's only the Calcutec (the main character) in which we get to view personal glimpses of. They seem to be mundane to an extraordinary degree... something which Murakami seems to have honed down to an art. I think it's not the characters themselves which make them seem so extraordinarily rich, but rather the authors and translators vision to make the dull details feel so delightful.

While you pan the hemispheres of your brain as you read the parallel tracks of this Murakami masterpiece, keep in mind that these two stories aren't open for your viewing pleasure. It's written so that you must confront what's been written with what the author wants you to believe to what is the reality in the Calcultec's world. Pan between a simple/traditional/non-abbreviated fantasy world where one man holds his one job with the reality where a materialistic/vivid/linguistically-truncated world. Compare, contrast, concentrate and be ready for a cornucopia of insight and depth.

2007: Helix (Brown, Eric)

Helix's awe subdued by anthropomorphic aliens (4/5)

Eric Brown has had two things going for him: (1) he has penned a large and diverse bibliography with earth- and space-based stories, each as enticing as the next and (2) he has continually introduced stories highlighting characterization. These two broad elements of Brown's writing were prevalent in the first three Brown novels I've read: The Fall of Tartarus (2005), Engineman (1994), and Guardians of the Phoenix (2010). The first hiccup came when I read Brown's newest novel, Weird Space: The Devil's Nebula, which mainly failed because I expected a strong story with a strong cast. Undeterred, I was eager to dig into another Brown novel--Helix, at 526 pages, was begging to be read!

Rear cover synopsis:
"Five hundred years from its launch, the colony vessel Lovelock is deep into its sub-lightspeed journey, carrying four thousand humans in search of a habitable planet. When a series of explosions tear the ship apart, it, it [sic] is forced to land on the nearest possible location: a polar section of the Helix--a vast, spiral construct of worlds, would about a G-type sun.

"While most of the colonists remain in coldsleep, the surviving crew members of the Lovelock must proceed upspiral in search of a habitable section. On their expedition they encounter extraordinary landscapes and alien races, meet with conflict and assistance, and attempt to solve the epic mystery that surrounds the origin of the Helix."

------------

In 2095, the Earth was under the corruption of the people she housed, a natural extension the people being so corrupt on the personal level that it was inevitably mirrored in society at large (13). Even at the national level, "eighty percent of other European countries... suffered from civil wars, plagues, societal breakdown" (41) because of the "droughts, rising sea levels and resource wars" (16), dwindling the Earth's population to mere millions. The one hope remaining, secreted against attacks by neo-Luddites, was the construction of a orbiting colony ship. Onboard were to be four thousand cryogenically frozen colonists and a small crew to oversee the piloting an engineering. One of the corpsicles was to be Chrissie and one of the crew was to be her father, Hendry.

While "cruising at just under the speed of light" (79), the main engines blew "a parsec away" (83) from their destination. "Running on auxiliaries" (81) at "thirty percent efficiency" (82), the colony ship is able to make atmospheric entry on the frigid yet inhabitable surface below (improbable???). One thousand years had passed [erroneously stated as five hundred in the book's synopsis] since the ships departure but most of the six-man crew are able to walk from the massive wreckage of their colony ship. Besides Hendry the smartware expert, one African nuclear engineer (Friday Olembe), one Taiwanese pilot (Lisa Xiang), one American pilot (Greg Cartwright), one Inuit cryonics specialist (Sissy Kaluchek) [ha!], and one Italian medic (Carrelli) also make up the crew... but two of them perish soon after landing, one from injuries sustained during the another by the lethal hands of the hostile aliens.

One thousand colonists, including Hendry's daughter, are killed in the tumultuous descent but the four-man crew forge on to find a most hospital region of the tract they've landed on. When they peer into the sky, the wondrous sight of a coiled helix around the sun awes them. Themselves, on the lowest polar region of the Helix, the sight above them is spectacular: "each curving tier is make up of thousand of individual worlds... like beads on a rosary, each world turning... on a horizontal axis" (161) with "landmass in the entire helix to contain over ten thousand planets the size of Earth" (160). [Compare with Niven's Ringworld: a surface area a billion times as the Earth's surface.] Their procession to the next rung is aided by a mysterious elevator system but soon hampered by the same mechanism... this the world home of the city of Agstarn.

Agstarn is ruled by the Church, an institution dedicated to eradicating dissent even when the truth opposes the Church-sanctioned stance, according to its Book of Books. The intellectual veil of the Church is synonymous with the permanent veil of cloud of gray which hangs over their world. Ehrin's father was dissident an a well-known dirigible mogul before "an accident" saw the company transferred to Ehrin. Ehrin approaches the Church with a proposition to explore the mountainous regions by dirigible for ore and for contact. Given that the Church stance is that their world is a platform which "floats in the limitless sea of the Grey" (127), any discovery could be seen as heretic.

Worlds collide when an alien from an adjoining planet contacts the exploration team. Suddenly, their reclusive nature is shattered and unlimited opportunity seems to be at Ehrin's feet. Then the humans from the colony ship are captured, traded, and beat into submission by the church, whose sudden appearance is wrongfully blamed on Ehrin. The three alien races will soon find themselves part of something much bigger than their own species' destiny. Outside of the city of Agstarn and over its seas, the Helix beckons them to "wonder at the vastness of the construct, awe at the fact of its existence, curiosity at the mystery of its provenance" (358).

------------

The alien cast are perhaps more interesting than the human crew of four. Ehrin is the heterodox but his fiancée is the daughter of the Elder of the Church. The friction between the two appears to be playful at first but it soon becomes the crux of their explorative frisson. The humans, on the other hand, bring with them the troubles which besought them on Earth--self-pity and acute distrust. A bubbling love story softens the friction between the four of them, but a back story seems drive a wedge between one of the crew and the rest.

I didn't think that the aliens were too exotic. Ehrin is a member of a bipedal one-meter all weasel-like species, while two of the other species mentioned in the book are also bipedal and exhibit very anthropomorphic actions, attitudes, and inventions. The most irksome quality found in Helix, and in many early science fiction books, is the ease of translation (instantaneous or prolonged). The answer for the ease of translation is ludicrous, as if all languages are based on algorithms and predictability (e.g. look at what a mess the English language is). The further up the Helix the team ascends, the more interesting the aliens become and the closer they come to the truth of the Helix.

The ultimate quest for the truth of the Helix is convoluted. The four-man crew are to find a new world for the frozen colonists to inhabit; instead they are eager to find the answers to the mystery of the Helix, a secret which hampers their duty to the three thousand colonists. They may need help settling the colonists somewhere upspiral, but heading straight into the lair of "the Builders" may not be their best bet. Making due in the polar subregions of the Helix may have to suffice, but the stubborn crew persist on exploration.

Taken as a whole, the book reminded me of two novels: (1) obviously, Larry Niven's Ringworld is another world which has mysterious origins and is inhabited by an untold number of aliens and (2) Louis Trimble's The Wandering Variables (1972) where a xeno-social experiment is being conducted on a planet. One character hypothesizes, "...the tiers were developed expressly for air-breathers, who were then brought here, if they were brought here, perhaps as some kind of experiment" (230). The wonder that the Helix inspires if most welcome to modern science fiction... that sense of wonderment seems to have been lost somewhere along the way in favor of page length, profits, and sequel upon unending sequel.

Funnily enough... though written in 2007, Eric Brown has seen fit to actually MAKE a sequel for Helix, entitled Helix Wars (2012). Where Niven failed in Ringworld was his hesitant attitude in exploring the full depths of the possibilities in Ringworld. Eric Brown did just right in touching on different worlds on the Helix, a mere sample of the thousands of possibilities. When Stephen Baxter says, "This is the rediscovery of wonder," you can only expect big ideas or concepts to bud from Eric Brown. Hopefully, with fingers crossed to the point of breaking, Helix Wars, though dully titled, will be as exciting as Helix but with a wider range of alien variety.

2005: The Fall of Tartarus (Brown, Eric)

Imminent supernova spawns tales of coping with death (5/5)
From June 4, 2010

Having read three more Brown books since first reading The Fall of Tartarus, I've become familiar with the author's humanistic characterizations, particularly in Engineman (1994). But Brown can also built up a world from nothingness, as he's done here in The Fall of Tartarus and in Guardians of the Phoenix (2010). I'd urge the reader to seek out Brown's humanistic science fiction, but don't go looking for it in his pulpier novels like his recent Weirdspace: Devil's Nebula (2012).

That said, The Fall of Tartarus is a collection of eight stories taking place on the planet of the same name, which is under the punishment of its near-nova solar body. Much like the levels of Dante's hell, the progressive stories only grow more and more insidious as the last. The running theme of personal death is each story reflects the terrestrial and solar death of the system; I don't know which line of mortality is more gripping, harrowing or enlightening... all in one. If you think experiencing death through the eyes of another human could be called monotonous, then perhaps this saga isn't for you. The further you dig into this collection, the deeper the sentiment and the richer the pay dirt of the greater plot.

------------

Destiny of Tartarus (2000, novella) - 5/5 - A young man returns to Tartarus in search of his father, who is rumored to have been last seen competing in Charybdis boat races. On the onus led train ride, the man befriends an influential man and a cherubic Messenger. The three agree to partake in the races together while the young man is eager to unravel the mystery surrounding his father's history thereafter. 68 pages

A Prayer for the Dead (1995, novelette) - 5/5 - A man revisits his homeland and reflects upon the tragedy which occurred the many years ago when he was to wed his lover in an ersatz wedding hosted by an alien hermit- the summer of love which turned into a lifelong summer of longing. 41 pages

The Eschatarium at Lyssia (1997, novelette) - 4/5 - Sculptor/drug addict/widower abandons sculptures dedicated to his wife's death throes to revisit the alien amphitheater in which he and his wife spent many a-years. The Messenger tells him of his wife's ghost and her will to set his mind at ease. 26 pages

The Ultimate Sacrifice (2000, novelette) - 5/5 - Videographer/journalist begins an emotional documentary of her search for her brother, officially deceased but rumored to still be alive in a monastery of The Church of Ultimate Sacrifice, whose belief revolves around personal suffering for the benefit of delaying the sun's supernova. 42 pages

The People of the Nova (1999, novelette) - 4/5 - Widowed Director of Evacuation and his savage-cum-daughter are confronted by a tribal man who knows the whereabouts of the two missing scouts. 25 pages

Vulpheous (1998, novelette) - 4/5 - Xenobiologist and hunter tracks the last remaining Vulpheous to a volcanic caldera where he hopes to capture the animal for the sake of mankind. However, there is also a young tribal woman around the lake to await the same animal for healing purposes. 28 pages

Hunting the Slarque (1999, novelette) - 5/5 - Reincarnated man remembers being ripped to shreds and dying on Tartarus, but why is he on Million and his wife back on Tartarus again? To reimburse the expense of the reincarnation, the man must travel back to the sight of his death to capture the very thing which killed him before. 49 pages

Dark Calvary (1999, novelette) - 5/5 - Cramer shot his wife in the back but the Church of Ultimate Sacrifice has proof of her undeath, so he returns to Tartarus to find his wife and help the abbot find the fabled secret alien temple... all before the sun goes nova within the month. Cramer must confront his hatred of the church and his odd longing to see his reanimated wife but under such circumstances he cannot comprehend. 33 pages

1970: And Chaos Died (Russ, Joanna)

Words of praise are words of warning (2/5)

When a book is covered with more praise than synopsis, my instinct is to stay clear--within may contain an author's convoluted playground, an experimental foray, or a psychotropic explosion. Sometimes these books, like Delany's Dhalgren (1975), border on being an anti-novel but can also inspire and offer insight where the attention to detail is synergistic of the greater nebulous plot. Luckily for Dhalgren, the greater circumstances and lesser nuances meshed wonderfully--I was enthralled, immersed, and energized. This does not describe my affair with And Chaos Died.

Rear cover synopsis:
"The contemporary masterpiece that begins with a star voyage, ends on an autumn afternoon, and alters the very shape of science fiction between."

------------

Jai Vedh is stranded on an uncharted planet after the destruction of the ship he was on. The rash captain joins him in the initial exploration of the eerie planet and its curious inhabitants. Jai comes to understand their psionic talents but the captain, in his self-pity and ignorance, is shut out from their mental linkages. When rescue comes, the inhabitant Evne is psionicly thrust into the ship returning to an Earth overpopulated by humans and underpopulated by plants, animals, and insects. The dire state of the Earth contrasts Evne's eden-like home planet where "nobody works, nobody does anything, everything just grows" (36).

And Chaos Died was recurrently frustrating. The crests and troughs of plot building and plot destruction is tantamount to punishment. When the reader is becoming engaged with the discovery of a new planet or old Earth, Russ donkey punches (mmm, never used that word in a review before) the reader just at the point of deeper interest; thereafter she makes a mess of the whole debacle with rants of unpredictable violence and psychotropic dalliances. I can appreciate contrast but this was ridiculous. The words of praise from Robert Silverberg, "A work of awesome originality!" ring true... it's certainly original but it's as unpalatable as a durian fruit: enveloped in the rich taste but smacked by the stomach-turning stench.

Fritz Leiber praised, "A stunning achievement," but after reading the 183 pages, the only achievement produced was ending the entire kerfuffle altogether. As with Dhalgren, there actually ARE greater circumstances which render the reader in awe, but when Russ turns mean, the delicate nuances are barbed with vindictiveness. Delany's aimlessness and prose heightened Dhalgren's nebulousness, but Russ doesn't have the finesse or courtesy (?) to allow the dichotomous writing to work for her or her novel.

I mention Delany again because he offered more words of praise: "...a spectacular experience to undergo." I'd prefer to misquote this as "a[n]... experience to undergo," like that of suturing a lacerated upper lip. There's the two-faced experience of Russ's delicate world building then her wanton destruction of sense, a backhanded flinch empowering chaos. If chaos died, it must have been when "the ship exploded" (4) because chaos was then reincarnated in the form of the psi-phenomena.

But not all is chaos. Russ does actually play the psi card very well. I'm typically not a psi in sci-fi fan, but Russ pushed the envelope when she took it upon herself to write a clever psi novel:

It's hard to distinguish from feelings and fantasies [...] it's direct perception of mass. If mass is energy, that means everything [...] There's no inside there's no outside. Mass affects space-time instantaneously and at a distance. This is all instantaneously and at a distance (66-67).

Further:

[...] if you can control heat you can control motion, if you control motion you can control mass, that the control of mass means the control of energy, and that both mean the control of gravity (140).

With this stretch of logic in psi-control, the ability to not only manipulate minds becomes possible but also the manipulation of macro- and micro-scale matter, inertia, and space itself. I like the way this is implemented, but it becomes hard to "distinguish from feelings and fantasies," I'm lost in Russ's purple haze and pink elephants. When the characters are unable to distinguish from reality and fantasy, the reader is left to the random acts of violence to interpret the shades of gray between the two.

If another reader is more tolerant of chaotic swings between plot building and plot destruction, between psi control and psi chaos, and between intention and impulse... then perhaps you'd agree with the words of praise by Silverberg, Leiber, and Delany. Treat the praise as highfalutin backslapping amongst authors.

1955: The Big Jump (Brackett, Leigh)

Unique take on transuranics, but lacks in development (3/5)
From April 22, 2011

I was unfamiliar with Brackett's work before eying this $1 purchase. Leary of it's 1955 initial publication, I was pleasantly surprised by the rigorous details of the greater plot. If this is typical of Brackett's work then I'd love to indulge if she can only refrain from making an irksome last page or two.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Mankind had finally made the Big Jump. But when the first expedition to another star system returned, only one man was aboard- one man mad with pain and nearly dead from an unknown and ghastly form of radiation sickness... No one could learn what became of the rest of the crew.

Arch Comyn had to find out what happened, and eventually he made the second Big Jump himself- and came face to face with the secret horror that awaited all men in the other reaches of the universe."

------------

A rather thin, 148-page book, at first glance, looks like a pulpy sci-fi novel. Within the first quarter of the book, there is very little characterization of Comyn or very little merit given to his pursuits, except that one of the crewmen once saved his life in unspecified circumstances. Comyn isn't physically described or developed; only his choice of career, workboss, had been given. I'm assuming this is an appeal to generally characterize Comyn as rugged, crass and, indeed, it falls this way.

If motivation and characterization aren't you're thing, then it'll definitely be the greater plot which will summon your readership: the one man (Ballantyne) coming back from the voyage to Bernard's Star is in a coma, his body chemistry slightly askew and laying derelict in his secure hospital bed, being kept from the eyes of the media. It's only Comyn who succeeds through his determination and bullying to gain entry to the hospital room where Ballantyne awakes to the sound of security drilling through the door and burst forth a stream of barely intelligible words including transuranics.

Comyn's antics infuriate the mega-corporation of the Cochrane family and eventually come to terms with his limited knowledge and allow him to join the second secret mission to Bernard's Star. Interfamily grudges abound, putting strain on trust and reliability, ultimately putting the mission at risk.

I liked the second mission, the details of the drive and the effects experiences from the drive, from the exit of hyperspace and the effects the planet has on humans. It's a fairly exciting and unique book and granted it's from 1955, the science is remarkably not too geeky or cheesy. The transuranics elements are an interesting device not very well explored by science fiction and Brackett does a good job of keep tabs on speculation.

For what it makes up in originality, it loses in character development... and a poor, poor dismount with the last two pages (eye-rolling, why-did-you-end-it-this-way kind of frivol).