Analog SFF, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  As I waited for the rover's air-conditioning to do its job, I looked around the interior for a good hiding place. It took me a minute to see it; I grinned then, because Johnson would have approved. I lifted the lid from the rover's trash bin and pushed aside the top layer of torn food wrappers and empty water pouches. The wire pyramid fit with room to spare. I left it half uncovered.

  After easing around Garcia Ortega's ‘copter, I told the rover to head for Glendora. For a long while I watched Johnson's research station shrink in the rearview display.

  I hoped that Roger was all right; it would be handy to have somebody I could trust here in the outback. I shook my head at myself then, as I realized that part of my mind had already begun assembling a team. Roger out here. Tamiko, with her schemes and contacts. Possibly Demetri. Hell, there might even be a place for Daniel.

  I shook my head again. Jenna Dalmas: math instructor on weekday afternoons, on weekends the clandestine leader of the Second Uprising.

  What were the odds of that?

  Copyright (c) 2007 David W. Goldman

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by TOM EASTON

  Fleet of Worlds, Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, Tor, $24.95, 301 pp. (ISBN: 0-7653-1825-3).

  The Aftermath, Ben Bova, Tor, $24.95, 396 pp. (ISBN: 0-7653-0414-7).

  HARM, Brian W. Aldiss, Ballantine Del Rey, $21.95, 229 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-345-49671-3).

  The Phantom's Phantom, Robert Reginald, Wildside, $15.00, 124 pp. (ISBN: 0-8095-6217-0).

  KOP, Warren Hammond, Tor, $24.95, 333 pp. (ISBN: 0-765-31272-7).

  A Nameless Witch, A. Lee Martinez, Tor, $24.95, 320 pp. (ISBN: 0-7653-1868-7).

  Harvest of Changelings, Warren Rochelle, Golden Gryphon, $24.95, 314 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-930846-46-3).

  * * * *

  Among Larry Niven's remarkable creations one must count the Puppeteers, two-headed herd beasts so cowardly that only their insane, such as the famous Nessus, dare to treat with humans. Their leaders are called Hindmost because they lead from behind (not really so unlike humans), and they always bet from paranoia. Fleet of Worlds, set some two hundred years before the time of Ringworld, gives us the first close look at Puppeteer society, and it's disturbing. In 2197, the human starship Long Pass spots a frozen world under acceleration. It hails it and is soon boarded by a swarm of robots. In 2650, we see the Fleet of Worlds, the Puppeteer homeworld Hearth surrounded by a rosette of five farmworlds, all under power as a unit, fleeing the catastrophic supernova burst at the heart of the galaxy. One of those farmworlds bears human Colonists descended from the crew and stored embryos of Long Pass, supposedly rescued from disaster. Nessus has lobbied to use Colonists as scouts, seeking dangers in the fleet's path and is now on a mission with three of the best candidate scouts, pilot Kirsten, captain Omar, and engineer Eric. They are investigating a frozen moon much like Europa, where the native Gw'oth have emerged from the watery depths onto the surface to start building a technological civilization. They are impressive, for they are inventing at a furious pace and no one has given them a thing, as the Puppeteers have given the Colonists. Puppeteer paranoia becomes clear when Nessus has his charges install a powerful reactionless drive in a comet; it is capable of either (as explained) causing a close fly-by of the Gw'oth world to see how they respond, or a world-destroying impact that would remove potential dangers to the fleet.

  Of course, if there are survivors, they will be some PO'd! That's the trouble with final solutions. If they aren't quite final, they can create worse problems than they solve. Using Colonists as scouts has a similar side effect. Before, they were confined to the farm, quite literally, for they served the Puppeteers as producers of food. Now Kirsten, Omar, and Eric have had their perspectives broadened, and as the old song says, that's when it gets hard to keep ‘em down on the farm. Kirsten in particular starts hunting for details about their history, and she quickly finds signs of a massive cover-up of the truth. But she's not about to give up.

  Meanwhile, Nessus is dispatched back to human space to do something about the search for the Puppeteers. They had made humans dependent on their General Products spaceship hulls, and when they mysteriously abandoned Known Space, the economic impact was disastrous. Nessus's mission is to somehow divert human attention and thereby win the affections of the opposition leader, Nike, with whom he is smitten. Nike is an elegant fellow a bit bemused by the scruffy Nessus, but as he deals with Puppeteer politics, Nessus starts looking pretty good.

  And Kirsten is making so much progress that whole apple carts are about to be upset. As we have long expected from Niven, it's a great read, and Lerner—as Analog readers know—has the knack as well. You'll enjoy this one.

  * * * *

  Is The Aftermath the last in Ben Bova's Asteroid Wars series? You just can't say, for Bova has a habit of leaving enough loose ends around to justify whole new trilogies and this is no exception. You should recall that the Asteroid Wars began with The Precipice (serialized here) and The Rock Rats. Pancho Lane, jet-jockey, succeeded to the chairmanship of a major rocket shop, the Astro Corporation, and moved humanity out to the Belt, where the rock rats could extract ores for an Earth wracked by the aftermath of climate disaster. Villain Martin Humphries then plotted a scheme to take over the Belt, using a killer to scare off the independents. In The Silent War (reviewed here in October 2004), Lane, fighting Humphries, began to look pretty villainous herself. In the end, a mysterious alien artifact inside an asteroid scared the heck out of Humphries and changed his pet killer into a redemption-seeking holy man, Dorn.

  Before Dorn became Dorn, however, he was Dorik Harbin and among his misdeeds was the destruction of the rock rats’ Ceres-orbiting habitat, Chrysalis, shortly followed by the near-destruction of the ore-transport Syracuse, crewed by Victor Zacharias, his wife Pauline, and his son Theo and daughter Angela. Aftermath begins with these events. Victor tries to decoy Harbin away from his ship by launching himself in an escape pod. He apparently succeeds, but at the cost of being stuck in space, running out of air, and with no way to get anywhere. Fortunately, he gets picked up by a rather predatory babe who would rather keep him than help him rescue his family, left behind in a hulk without communications or fuel.

  Fortunately, teen Theo is able to pull his act together and make enough repairs to keep everyone alive and on an orbit that will bring them back to Ceres. Eventually. Like years later.

  Meanwhile, Dorn and his aged artist friend Elverda Apacheta are hunting for bodies left over from the war while being hunted by Humphries’ killer ships. And pirates who pretend to be salvagers are hunting for anything they can find. In due time everything comes together, lots of mustachios get twirled (some not very convincingly), and Humphries’ cloned son, Alex, steps onto the stage.

  What will happen next? The people seem to have settled down, but the nature of the alien artifact remains unresolved, and I think Bova may find it difficult to leave that alone, especially since it may mean a grand opportunity to move his saga out of the solar system.

  * * * *

  Brian W. Aldiss says he is not trying to be topical in HARM, but he does an excellent and disturbing job of it. Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali is a born British citizen, child of immigrants, and a Muslim. He is enamored enough with the British culture to write a comic novel in which there is a throwaway line about assassinating the Prime Minister. Promptly arrested by the Hostile Activities Research Ministry (HARM), he is interrogated, beaten, tormented with recordings of his Irish wife screaming in pain, and otherwise abused. Where is he? His tormentors say Syria and Uzbekistan; all he knows is that his cell was once part of a grand house. His present plight—torture by “civilized” people, the possibility of extraordinary rendition, the bigotry aimed at his Muslim roots—echoes the faded glories of that house with the faded glories of Western civilization. The inmates have taken charge of the asylum.

  Or have they? Paul can claim a touch of multiple personality disorder, so perhaps he should be an inmate
. But he's hardly in charge! Except ... He finds himself waking as Fremant to an alternate reality in which a foundering Earth has sent off a starship loaded with the coded minds and bodies of colonists. On arrival at Stygia, the coding process proves imperfect, with the result that everyone is a little dazey, at least partly because the various identities got a bit mixed into each other. Supposedly this means that the kinds of ethnic, religious, and political differences that have caused so much trouble on Earth no longer exist. Some writers might then say that people being people, they waste no time reinventing enough differences to make life hell for each other. Aldiss suggests the need for a seed crystal and sets the colonists to exterminating the local sentients, called Doglovers or Dogovers because they are always to be found with insectoid doglike creatures. Why? When Fremant eventually comes to protest, urging that humans recognize and admit their collective guilt, his fellow colonists insist it's kill or be killed, all done now and best forgotten, and then they beat him.

  Bigotry and denial as the two keys to reality? Back on Earth, Paul is still being beaten etc., even after a chief interrogator announces that he is just a fool, not a terrorist or conspirator, and should be released. And of course the breakdown of society is hardly confined to the scene of the interrogations. There are terrorists out there, even if Paul is not one, and they are conspiring to do awful things. If they manage to assassinate the Prime Minister, will Paul be blamed? Will politicians seize the pretext to turn fascist?

  If Aldiss did not intend to offer commentary on current events, he still did an excellent job of it. I hope that his forecast of the future—the death of all Western ideals, including freedom, tolerance, fairness, respect, and so on—is wrong, but I am afraid that there are forces at work in the world that may make that hope futile.

  * * * *

  Back in the day—in fact, so far back in the day that not many folks alive today were reading or even alive—the pulps were born. The category included the early SF magazines, but also a host of novel series whose quality helped make “pulp” a derogatory term. One of those series was “The Phantom Detective” of the 1930s and 1940s, whose hard-boiled hero, Richard Van Loan, blew away thousands of villains with no regard for their right to a fair trial, or for the feelings of their survivors. You can find reprint issues of Fangs of Murder, Tycoon of Crime, and Stones of Satan at Wildside. You can also find The Phantom's Phantom, Robert Reginald's loving attempt to give Van Loan a conscience. It opens with murder in a restaurant, and the Phantom starts getting notes that say, “I know who you are, what you do, when you die.” A friend dies, and Van Loan goes to California to investigate. He finds echoes of his past, but also a future in which he is a much more human being, as well as a more effective and modern crime-fighter.

  The book is short, but the style fits the antique model, while the plot and characterization make the tale much more appealing to the modern reader.

  * * * *

  Warren Hammond's KOP is either a noir fantasy of corrupt cops or a realistic variation on what can happen in a developing nation. Lagarto is a colony world that had a thriving export business until other worlds figured out how to grow the plants on which it was based. The result was instant poverty for most of Lagarto's citizens, although those who had gotten rich before the crash were still rich. So, a few haves, hordes of have-nots, and the port, the space station, and the tourist businesses were all owned by offworlders. Not surprisingly, organized crime is busy, and as the tale opens, Juno, a cop, once an enforcer for his chief, is collecting protection money from local businesses. Juno's a tough guy who had never had any trouble roughing up the uncooperative for money or information, but now he's old, he's got the shakes, and his wife wants him to lay off the rough stuff. But the chief, Paul, says he needs his help one more time. Here's a nasty murder case to solve, he says, and it's all part of the mayor's plot to bring him down.

  Juno's not too sure about the conspiracy, but as he and his rooky partner, Maggie, collect clues, things begin to look nasty. Paul and Juno became corrupt in the first place by making a deal with the local crime lord to keep things under some sort of control. Now that crime lord is dead, his son is ineffectual, and the competition is moving in with grand schemes, including opening up the slave trade with Lagarto's excess have-nots. Is the mayor involved? All I'll say is that the connections reach high, and the end involves a fair amount of mayhem and blood.

  But the cover gives you a pretty strong hint that Juno survives. After all, Hammond's next novel will be Ex-KOP.

  * * * *

  A. Lee Martinez demonstrated a considerable talent for dark fantasy with a cockamamie twist in Gil's All-Fright Diner (reviewed here in November 2005), and she's at it again. A Nameless Witch starts off by positing that a child is cursed: Nasty Larry, as he died, condemned the sixth child in every generation of his slayer's line to be a gruesome abomination that shuns the light and dwells in miserable darkness. So a girl is born, she's undead at birth, and her folks pitch her unnamed into the dank, dark basement until she's eighteen, when Ghastly Edna shows up to claim her. Once she's out in the light, it turns out she's gorgeous, which perturbs Edna a bit, but never mind. A bit of mud on the complexion, a few dowdy and tattered robes over the rest, and a pointed black hat to top it off, and the kid will do for a witch. At least once Edna has trained her a bit, not long after which a couple of goons show up, murder Edna, and promptly die under the fond attentions of Edna's (now the kid's) familiar, the demon duck Newt.

  Vengeance is the next item on the agenda, so the kid, Newt, and the enchanted broom Penelope hit the road. Soon they acquire a troll, Gwurm, and arrive at Fort Stalwart, a rather primitive outpost still under construction. She sets up as the local witch, makes a couple of friends, and discovers that she thinks men are tasty. Literally. Yum! Must resist! That's when Wyst of the West, White Knight, armored in magic, Defender of the Weak, Destroyer of the Foul, Sworn Champion of Decency, and Avowed Foe of Evil, shows up. He looks pretty tasty too, in both ways, and she is promptly smitten. But she must resist, while he, of course, is really out of reach. Isn't he? Besides being yummy he is also sworn to chastity and virtue. He also brings word of a horde of ravenous goblings heading toward Fort Stalwart.

  Naturally, the nameless witch plays a crucial role in defeating the horde and learning that the goblings aren't really real. They are convincing fakes whose mastermind must be precisely the villain on whom she seeks vengeance. So off they all go, seeking the villain while she tries to resist the lure of Wyst of the West, who is beginning to act a bit smitten himself. How does it turn out? No, not that “it.” Or that too. Whatever. There's a pair of dramatic tensions to resolve, and I won't tell you what happens. You, of course, being Astute Readers, are entitled to make guesses.

  This one's good fun. Enjoy it!

  * * * *

  Warren Rochelle's Harvest of Changelings is a pleasure to read, even though the basic shape of the tale is predictable from the very start. Rochelle is a careful writer with a gift for making almost all his characters come alive, and the reader roots for the good guys and condemns the bad guys with a will.

  Begin with the enticing opening line: “Once upon a time there was a man who fell in love with a fairy....” He's Ben Tyson, widower and librarian in North Carolina. She's Valeria, his neighbor, and when she seems to dematerialize and vanish and fly, he is intrigued. They wind up marrying, and when she is pregnant, she warns him that she must leave once the boy is born. She is needed at home, where her people are fighting a war against the Fomorii, and she is the Prime Mover, head of the ruling council, the Dodecagon. Alas, when she leaves, the Fomorii are waiting for her, all red-eyed and black and wielding fiery whips. She dies on Ben's doorstep, and he is left to raise his son Malachi alone.

  A few years later, Malachi is coming into his powers as only an adolescent can. He's a misfit in school—he's small and looks funny—so the temptation to be a bit pranky is irresistible. And it turns out he is not alone. There are three other mis
fit children also awakening to their changeling status, Russell, Hazel, and Jeff. There is also Thomas, son of Ben's best friend, drawn to black magic, gaining power through human sacrifice, coveting Malachi because his blood will make him lord over all (except for the Fomorii lurking in the shadows behind him) and enabling him to control the gate between Earth and Faery.

  There's a deadline, of course. The kids must find the gate and use it on Halloween Eve, Samhain. Thomas must seize control by then. Meanwhile dragons are seen in the skies, strange things are happening, and the federal government has quarantined North Carolina whence all the evil seems to flow. (He does not include Jesse Helms, but...)

  Why all the fuss? Back in Faery, the Dodecagon has issued a call for all changelings—both those born of human-fairy couples and those whose fairy genes (derived from long-past crosses) are strong—to return to Faery, which won the war with the Fomorii but was weakened and needs new blood. The Fomorii are scheming to revive the war and this time win; indeed one of their leaders remarks on how sweet fairy souls will taste.

  So there's a lot at stake, and it all comes down to a final hell-ride in a church van driven by a changeling priest. At this point even a reader who thinks it's all predictable is on the edge of his or her seat.

  Great fun, well done, and Rochelle deserves loads of fans.

  * * * *

  In 1999, the weekly science journal Nature started running “Futures,” short (two-three page) science fiction stories as attempts to glimpse possible futures. The feature lasted a bit more than a year and then picked up again in 2005 and ran till the end of 2006. Contributors included Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Stephen Baxter, Cory Doctorow, Jack McDevitt, Charles Stross, Bruce Sterling, and far too many more to list here. The anthology Futures from Nature includes a full hundred, most of which are readable and even delectable. And the stories are just the right length for those brief interludes with which life abounds.