Stars Seen Through Stone
Stars Seen Through Stone
by Lucius Shepard
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 2007
Jan. 18th, 2008
Jan. 17th, 2008
Kiosk and Aye, and Gomorrah...
Kiosk
by Bruce Sterling
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2007
Aye, and Gomorrah...
by Samuel R. Delany
Dangerous Visions #3, edited by Harlan Ellison
Berkley Medallion Edition, July 1969
by Bruce Sterling
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2007
Aye, and Gomorrah...
by Samuel R. Delany
Dangerous Visions #3, edited by Harlan Ellison
Berkley Medallion Edition, July 1969
Jan. 15th, 2008
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
by Ted Chiang
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 2007
by Ted Chiang
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 2007
Jan. 14th, 2008
The Man Who Went to the Moon--Twice
The Man Who Went to the Moon--Twice
by Howard Rodman
Dangerous Visions #2, edited by Harlan Ellison
Berkley Medallion Edition, June 1969
by Howard Rodman
Dangerous Visions #2, edited by Harlan Ellison
Berkley Medallion Edition, June 1969
New Worlds? Eh...
I need to change up things...
January was to be New Worlds month. My plan was to read stories from only the three volumes I have of Best SF Stories from New Worlds. (I had/have vague plans for the occasional theme month: pulp (H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, etc.), horror (Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, etc.), stories from the recently published first volume of Best American Fantasy, and so on.) Last Thursday, in addition to the New Worlds story ('The Last Inn on the Road'), I read 'The Strange Case of X' by Jeff VanderMeer from his collection, City of Saints and Madmen. I had to.
Excluding The Last Inn, I haven't been moved by the last few stories I've read from New Worlds. The two Harvey Jacobs stories ('Gravity' and 'In Seclusion') succeed as light, humorous stories, but don't do much for me in terms of wonder or awe; there is nothing to them that I feel I need or want to revisit. They were funny and breezy -- I was amused, but then the stories were immediately trivialized. Nothing about either captured my imagination.
Ballard's 'The Death Module' I could not parse well enough to gather from it anything meaningful. When I read 'The Killing Ground,' I was afraid it was a story commenting too intimately on a time and history to which I could not adequately relate (Vietnam, the '60s -- I was born in '79), regardless of the timelessness of its theme. I had that same feeling reading 'The Death Module' -- so much so that the story seems taken out of context. The characters are their obsessions, and their obsessions (a catastrophic space flight, the Kennedy assassination, Ralph Nader's auto crash tests, et al.) are somehow mimetised in posture and gesture, body contours. And consciousness... there's something about consciousness and isolation tests... and sexual ambiguities.
I dunno -- I'm an idiot. I've read the story three times now, and cannot say I understand it in a meaningful way. That would be a problem, except that in those three readings nothing has grabbed me (not my interest, not my imagination, not my sympathy, not my humanity). My intellectual curiosity has been piqued (I hadn't known anything about Nader's auto safety initiatives -- see, told you: I'm an idiot), but-- eh, I think I'm going to have to give it some time.
To avoid burning out in the first few weeks of this experiment, I'm going to mix it up a bit more. I'm not looking for anything in particular. Just want to be moved, to be awed, to be surprised. I love that giddy feeling you get when you discover a great short story -- a feeling novels cannot sustain.
New voices, new worlds...
Jan. 10th, 2008
The Strange Case of X and The Last Inn on the Road
The Strange Case of X
by Jeff VanderMeer
City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff VanderMeer
Prime First Edition, July 2002
(Have previously enjoyed 'Dradin, In Love,' 'The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris,' and 'The Transformation of Martin Lake.')
The Last Inn on the Road
by Roger Zelazny and Danny Plachta
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 5, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, May 1971
by Jeff VanderMeer
City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff VanderMeer
Prime First Edition, July 2002
(Have previously enjoyed 'Dradin, In Love,' 'The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris,' and 'The Transformation of Martin Lake.')
The Last Inn on the Road
by Roger Zelazny and Danny Plachta
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 5, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, May 1971
Jan. 9th, 2008
In Seclusion
In Seclusion
by Harvey Jacobs
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, January 1971
by Harvey Jacobs
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, January 1971
Jan. 8th, 2008
The Death Module & Gravity
The Death Module
by J. G. Ballard
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 5, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, May 1971
Gravity
by Harvey Jacobs
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 6, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, July 1971
by J. G. Ballard
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 5, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, May 1971
Gravity
by Harvey Jacobs
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 6, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, July 1971
Jan. 4th, 2008
The Square Root of Brain
The Square Root of Brain
by Fritz Leiber
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, January 1971
I've enjoyed what little of Fritz Leiber's work I've read (namely his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories). His characters are always surprising, and his stories catch you off guard: subversively (and often humorously) juxtaposing the typical and the atypical, specifically in terms of generic expectations (e.g., a contemporary humanness not a lot of characters in fantasy possess).
In 'The Square Root of Brain,' Leiber takes us to a Hollywood party, and abandons us surrounded by ridiculous people and ridiculous pronouncements. Within the main narrative, he intersperses brief, baffling, and often erroneous excerpts from the Universal American Encyclopedia, my favorite of which follows:
EVIL, the subject of an appaling [sic] quantity of barren speculation.
Regarding the encyclopedia, searching online brought up no hits. In his introduction, Moorcock notes Leiber's story is "based on [his] experience [...] when he worked on the original of the Universal American Encyclopedia," adding that the quotes are "absolutely authentic." Frankly, I don't know what to make of it: fictional or long forgotten.
Regardless, Leiber's use of the excerpts is deft. They aren't used in place of scene breaks (there are none); in all instances except the first and last (which reference each other), they interrupt dialogue. In this bustling party atmosphere, the effect is like being momentarily distracted by an overheard snippet of conversation while trying to follow the one in which you are engaged.
by Fritz Leiber
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, January 1971
I've enjoyed what little of Fritz Leiber's work I've read (namely his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories). His characters are always surprising, and his stories catch you off guard: subversively (and often humorously) juxtaposing the typical and the atypical, specifically in terms of generic expectations (e.g., a contemporary humanness not a lot of characters in fantasy possess).
In 'The Square Root of Brain,' Leiber takes us to a Hollywood party, and abandons us surrounded by ridiculous people and ridiculous pronouncements. Within the main narrative, he intersperses brief, baffling, and often erroneous excerpts from the Universal American Encyclopedia, my favorite of which follows:
EVIL, the subject of an appaling [sic] quantity of barren speculation.
Regarding the encyclopedia, searching online brought up no hits. In his introduction, Moorcock notes Leiber's story is "based on [his] experience [...] when he worked on the original of the Universal American Encyclopedia," adding that the quotes are "absolutely authentic." Frankly, I don't know what to make of it: fictional or long forgotten.
Regardless, Leiber's use of the excerpts is deft. They aren't used in place of scene breaks (there are none); in all instances except the first and last (which reference each other), they interrupt dialogue. In this bustling party atmosphere, the effect is like being momentarily distracted by an overheard snippet of conversation while trying to follow the one in which you are engaged.
Jan. 3rd, 2008
The Killing Ground
The Killing Ground
by J. G. Ballard
Best SF Stories from New Worlds 6, edited by Michael Moorcock
Berkley Medallion Edition, July 1971
I was disappointed in this one. I haven’t read a lot of Ballard, but what I have read is from his early science fiction output (I’m sure I’ll revisit those stories in the course of this experiment). Moorcock notes in his brief introduction to this story that as of the late-sixties, Ballard’s reputation is for a kind of “experimental fiction entirely of his own conception, [but] from time to time, contributes a narrative of the more traditional sort.” 'The Killing Ground' is such a narrative, and, I think, failing to capture my imagination for it.
There’s a little bit of speculative world-building that has some resonance: the United States has spread itself thin fighting a “global war against dozens of national liberation armies,” a “world Viet Nam” thirty years hence.
Our viewpoint in the story, Major Pearson, is kind of interesting: a former schoolteacher, he’s now battle weary and hopeless, more inclined to withdraw than forge ahead into an uncertain confrontation.
The fighting of the war is played down -- most of the fighting happening a handful of miles away, involving helicopters and tanks, large caliber arms fire, the sporadic “rattle of small arms.” Even once Pearson and his men mobilize and are engaged in combat, the action is portrayed simply and swiftly. All of which contrasts the vividness of the execution of three American prisoners immediately prior:
As he began to sit down again [Sergeant] Tulloch stepped behind him and shot him through the head. The American fell on to the sleeping private. Tulloch straddled his body with one leg. Like a farmer expertly shearing a sheep he shot the other two men, holding them as they struggled. They lay together at the base of the memorial, their legs streaming with blood.
Compare to how Major Pearson and Sergeant Tulloch meet their end:
To me, the line that begins Like a farmer makes the difference. I think it resituates the violence and makes it accessible, and it's that accessibility that intensifies the brutality for me. The straightforwardness of the military violence that befalls Pearson and Tulloch lacks the visceral element that Ballard gives to the American prisoners' execution.
Fifty yards from the bank a murderous fire had greeted them from the Americans concealed among the trees along the opposite shore. Pearson saw Tulloch shot down into the waterlogged grass.
…………………………
Mortar shells fell in the damp grass around him. Pearson stood up […] and ran forward to the wreck of the personnel carrier. Ten steps later he was shot down into the oil-stained water.
To me, the line that begins Like a farmer makes the difference. I think it resituates the violence and makes it accessible, and it's that accessibility that intensifies the brutality for me. The straightforwardness of the military violence that befalls Pearson and Tulloch lacks the visceral element that Ballard gives to the American prisoners' execution.
