When read as first released – that is, one episode every week – the stories work well. There are some standouts, like the episodes ‘‘The B-Team’’ and ‘‘A Problem of Proportion’’, but each story does an excellent job of standing alone while also hinting at how these isolated events fit into a larger narrative.
What’s interesting is how different the experience of reading them as a print book is. What feels fun and light on the screen gains weight, somehow, when captured in ink on paper. (This may be a function of my reading habits or age or expectations, granted – or that I read the first half of The Human Division as weekly episodes then switched to the physical book. Your mileage, as always, may vary.)
When you have the option of moving from one story to the next with only a few minutes between them, rather than being forced to wait a week, they don’t operate as well. Wilson’s ability to find just the right thing just in the nick of time grows tiresome. The pacing of the overall story feels rushed, airless, and oddly cold. One of my favorite episodes, ‘‘This Must Be the Place’’, where we learn more about Hart Schmidt and everyday life on a successful colony, is one of the few where nothing catastrophic happens and we get to just slow down.
The end episode, ‘‘Earth Below, Sky Above’’, wraps up a few of the larger conflicts in an energetic and vital way that retroactively points out how those forces are mostly absent from the episodes that have come before, which are Scalzi in his Redshirts-before-the-codas mode. That is to say, always smoothly entertaining but without something substantial enough to care too deeply about.
When read as a novel, rather than a story in discrete parts, we’re left with an ending that doesn’t quite feel like one. Some of the plot resolves, yes, but not quite enough to satisfy. One of the extras in the print version, ‘‘Halfte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today’’, helps fill in some of the lingering gaps, but not quite enough to resolve all that Scalzi has set in motion. This incompleteness may be a feature rather than a bug, since another season of episodes has been promised.
Ultimately, the question may be ‘‘is it asking too much of an eseries to also be a great novel? Or vice-versa?’’ The forms dictate different structures; the former requires a complete narrative arc in each installment where the latter encourages a longer game. The pacing has to change as does the depth of characterization when you flip between forms.
Despite its flaws, The Human Division was definitely an experiment worth running. There are some truly great moments here, no matter how uneven the print result can feel. Who knows what method Scalzi will try next?
World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar’s newest novel Martian Sands has drawn comparisons to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. While those are accurate, in the sense that Mars is involved as is some serious paranoia, Sands feels more like early Kurt Vonnegut, particularly his Slaughterhouse-Five.
Tidhar trips through time here, opening with a brief scene in President Roosevelt’s office just before Pearl Harbor, then bouncing into a far future where Mars has several thriving metropolises (metropoli?), then back into the past, and around and around again. Timelines are split wide and vaulted by Tidhar, much like Vonnegut did. Both writers seem to channel the same prankster glee that covers deep despair.
Plus, both have private eyes. Vonnegut has Kilgore Trout; Tidhar has Bill Glimmung. Both have tenuous relationships with the book’s reality, slipping and bobbing through the narrative currents, but these two diverge in style more than they converge. Vonnegut’s classic is the manifestation of the writer trying to grasp what his own experiences did to him; Tidhar’s short novel is more about asking ‘‘what if?’’
It’s hard to completely recap the plot of Martian Sands, if only because time travel makes linearity complicated, at best. The story is told through four characters, who keep turning up no matter when we are. As does Golda Meir, a bullet named Sam, and a guy with a golden thumb.
Plot is the least of what Sands is about, however. It’s a wild ride that’s also a story about transitions and history, as well as how humans mesh with technology and how that might change. Martian Sands crackles with energy and life while poking at some big questions about the nature of reality.
•
Gaie Sebold’s first book, Babylon Steel, was everything I want in a fun read: wisecracking-but-smart first person narration, a seedy underworld where brothels and bars thrive, swords and sorcery without talking kitty cats, and a snappy plot. Is it a deep book that probes the human condition? Nope – and thank whichever deity you choose.
Dangerous Gifts is more of the same again. This time, Babylon is asked to act as a bodyguard for Enthemmerlee, the Itnunnacklish, who must go back to her home plane, Incandress, in order to kick off what will prove to be a revolution where the downtrodden Ikinchli fight for the status long denied them by the uppity Gudain. If you have no idea what those words mean, no worries. Sebold’s world is not Game of Thrones-level complicated and she’s a master at explaining it all as the story thrums along.
There is a polish here, too, that Sebold’s first book lacked. Her voice feels more solid and she is dipping into more complicated ideas. Dangerous Gifts, between the banter and the fighting, pokes at class divides and second-class citizenship. Primarily, however, it’s a book about Babylon Steel, who is a character that either pushes all of your fun-read buttons or fails to.
•
When we last left Detective Hank Palace, the titular Last Policeman in Ben H. Winters’s kick-off to this trilogy, he had just reunited with his sister Nico, who is involved in a quasi-military, super-secret organization that she believes will save the world. And, still, the asteroid that is likely to end all human life on the planet just keeps coming.
In Countdown City, Hank (and by extension Winters) grapples with what the end of the world means in the short term. When humans have the date – October 3 – and the site – the Gulf of Boni – of their doom, how does humanity respond? In short, poorly. Many take off on ‘‘bucket list’’ adventures. Some give in to their inner psychopaths. Society breaks down not with a whisper but with explosions and murder. As Palace himself observes, ‘‘civilization is just a bunch of promises.’’ When those promises are broken, shit gets brutal.
But there is good in the world. Palace, a former cop, agrees to track down a missing person. He is forced to ask for help and is also forced to travel to the now-student-run University of New Hampshire campus, where all of the good intentions and excesses of the recent real-life Occupy movements are logically exploded. Palace’s case continues to wind him through a pre-apocalyptic landscape, one which is somehow more harrowing than it will be after the disaster.
That’s where Winters’s work shines. Yes, the characters are well drawn and, yes, his plot is engaging – but what is most compelling is how finely drawn and horrifyingly plausible his vision is. It’s hard to read about the world coming apart because Winters excels at making it feel personal, painful, and inescapable – and, also, somehow, sweet.
•
Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason’s world is a profoundly weird but oddly possible one, if all of our current technology were turned up to 11. In LoveStar: A Novel all of us are connected by an invisible net of flying creatures, like birds and butterflies, that functions like the internet but with no power sources or radio signals. It’s all in the air – and the air is everywhere.
Then it gets weird.
Now imagine that there’s a Steve Jobs-ian creative genius, LoveStar, who can’t stop having ideas. He came up with the birds, yes, but couldn’t stop there. He’s also responsible for inLove, which finds anyone’s soulmate, no matter where in the world they are, and LoveDeath, which turns death into a cosmic light show. But his creepiest innovation may be iStar, which can deliver marketing messages directly into the nervous systems of any bird net human, who will then shout out HAVE A COKE! or BUY A FORD! or burst into tears because they don’t have a Coke or a Ford.
LoveStar i
s more than an intellectual exercise about the dangers of ceding control to convenience; twin love stories are what shifts it from a diverting read into a compelling one. LoveStar has his own journey, which contrasts with that of two young, star-crossed lovers, Indridi and Sigrid. There is also a Big Bad Wolf involved. And some puffins. Because Magnason’s world is that kind of place, one where seemingly incongruous moments add up to a deep, well-anchored truth.
LoveStar was named the ‘‘Novel of the Year’’ by Icelandic booksellers when it was first published in 2002. Magnason has been racking up awards in that country every since. The Seven Stories Press edition, translated into English by Victoria Cribb, was issued a special citation of excellence during the Philip K. Dick Awards at this year’s Norwescon. It’ll be interesting to read what comes next.
–Adrienne Martini
Return to In This Issue listing.
LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: RICHARD A. LUPOFF
The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey, Fred Nadis (Penguin 978-0-399160457, $28.95, 304pp, hc) June 2013.
Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder from the End of Time, Darrell Schweitzer (Borgo Press 9781479400232, $15.00, 273pp, tp) February 2013. [Order from Wildside Press, 9710 Traville Gateway Dr. #234, Rockville MD 20850;
Science fiction has had its share of colorful and controversial editors, including several who tried to hijack the field for an array of purposes. This started with Hugo Gernsback himself, who saw science fiction as a tool for stimulating the minds of bright but underachieving adolescents and getting them to learn about the wonders of chemistry, astronomy, and so forth. Let’s all get out there and build ourselves a Wheatstone Bridge, classmates!
There were attempts in the 1930s and ’40s to use pulp adventure magazines or fandom itself to spread the doctrines of Technocracy, Michelism (a form of Communism), or Esperanto. John W. Campbell, Jr., used the pages of Astounding Science Fiction to promote one unconventional notion after another; he was a very early booster of D**n*t*cs before moving on to Psionics (read your neighbor’s poker hand and take his money), the Dean Drive (let’s sail a submarine to Jupiter, gang!), the Hieronymous machine (draw an automobile, jump in and drive away), and the Interplanetary Exploration Society (let’s all chip in, buy parts at the local hardware store, and build our own spaceship).
And then there was Raymond A. Palmer. His career paralleled Campbell’s to a remarkable degree, but Campbell somehow managed to maintain a façade of respectability while Palmer was pilloried in the fan press and eventually driven out of the world of science fiction to wander in the wilderness of occultism and cults – okay, let’s be honest, nut-cults – for the rest of his days.
Fred Nadis is a sometime academic, scholar, and chronicler of popular culture. He’s written in the past about ‘‘wonder shows,’’ science, magic, and religion in America. He has now produced the first full-scale biography of Ray Palmer (aka ‘‘RAP’’), who lived as strange a life as an Amazing Stories hero.
Born August 1, 1910, Palmer led a normal, even idyllic early childhood. He was a beautiful toddler and actually appeared in advertisements for a local milk company. Nadis furnishes a photograph of Palmer as a glowing, golden-haired child. But at the age of seven he ran into the street and got tangled in the wheel of a passing truck. He suffered a severe spinal injury and while surgery made it possible for him to walk, he never grew taller than four feet. He overcame this handicap, which was exacerbated by later illnesses and injuries, and later found employment as a roofer and construction worker. He made a successful career as a writer, editor, and publisher. His determination to live a normal existence must have been incredible. He learned to drive a car, eventually married and fathered several offspring. According to Nadis, when children expressed curiosity about Palmer’s diminutive stature, he told them that he was from Mars.
Palmer discovered the first issue of Amazing Stories (April, 1926) on a newsstand and was immediately captivated by the Frank R. Paul cover painting. He became one of the earliest science fiction fans, editing and publishing the first fanzine, The Comet, in 1930. That same year he sold his first science fiction story to a Gernsback publication and he was on his way.
In 1939 Palmer became the editor of Amazing Stories. It was part of a package deal, and the new publisher, Ziff-Davis, wasn’t really very interested in publishing pulp magazines, but they were willing to give it a shot if a new editor and a fresh package could make Amazing Stories profitable.
The former editor, the aged T. O’Conor Sloane, had produced a stodgy periodical that was steadily declining in popularity. Under Palmer’s tutelage and with Ziff-Davis’s support, Amazing Stories enjoyed a thorough revamping into a colorful, even garish product. Palmer replaced the magazine’s dull formality with a chatty, friendly atmosphere that readers responded to immediately. He replaced the slow-moving, science-heavy approach that Sloane had favored with exciting, action-based adventure fiction. Circulation soared.
Palmer was criticized for the juvenile appeal of his magazine (and that of a soon-introduced companion, Fantastic Adventures) but the publisher was more interested in sales figures than the complaints of serious-minded fans. And Palmer, whose compensation was pegged to circulation rather than a fixed pay rate, prospered. Eventually, Ziff-Davis switched him to a steady salary.
Everything went swimmingly until Palmer’s assistant, Howard Browne, conscientiously sorting through readers’ letters, came across a semi-incoherent multi-page missive from one Richard S. Shaver. Shaver claimed that Earth had once been populated by a race of long-lived golden giants whose Edenic existence had been imperiled by harmful solar radiation. Most of these giants had built spaceships and rocketed away to safer worlds, but some had been left behind on Earth. Shades of the Pied Piper of Hamelin!
Some of the left-behind had remained on the surface of the planet and became the ancestors of modern humans. Others had retreated to caves where they continued to degenerate, eventually becoming a race of malicious dwarfs who amused themselves by shooting ray-cannons up through the ground and causing mischief among humankind.
Browne tossed Shaver’s letter into the wastebasket but Palmer retrieved it. He rewrote and expanded it into a 35,000 word novella and published it in Amazing Stories. As fiction, the story was relatively trivial, and even with Palmer’s revisions (or outright rewriting) Shaver’s story was pedestrian fare by Amazing Stories’ standards. But Palmer retained Shaver’s claim that the material came from ancient ‘‘thought records’’ that he had discovered in secret caves and was actually true.
In the mid-and late-1940s the so-called Shaver Mystery came to dominate the pages of Amazing Stories. According to Nadis, Palmer’s employers at Ziff-Davis were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Palmer’s activities while Palmer was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the restrictions of a corporate hierarchy.
By 1950 Palmer left Ziff-Davis to start his own publishing company and create Other Worlds Science Stories. This digest-sized magazine was actually one of the unrecognized gems of the era. To ‘‘OW’’ Palmer brought the chatty, friendly atmosphere that he had established at Amazing. At the same time, his choice of stories was well above that of Amazing. He also brought Richard Shaver with him as a contributor to the magazine, and he started Fate, a periodical devoted to occult topics. There were articles about Atlantis, Lemuria, ancient mystery religions, the secrets of the pyramids, spirit manifestations and – the favorite topic of the day – flying saucers. Issue after issue (under a bewildering array of pseudonyms), Palmer pounded away at the saucer sensation. If the Shaver Mystery had been the mainstay of Palmer’s Amazing, UFO sightings and conspiracy theories played the equivalent role for Fate.
Piling wild claim upon wild claim, Palmer’s magazines gave new exposure to the old hollow-earth theory, featured composite photographs ‘‘showing’’ the North Polar opening to the inner world, and suggested that the saucers emanated not from distant planets but
from the hidden world inside the Earth itself.
With the passage of time, Palmer became evermore deeply enmeshed in the occult movement and increasingly alienated from the science fiction community. Nadis points out that Palmer was actually cautious about revealing his own beliefs. He was ever willing to publish the claims of occultist and esoteric theorists, but did he even take them seriously, or were they merely fodder to feed to a credulous audience?
In later years, this reviewer was told the following story by Stuart J. Byrne (1913-2011), a onetime writer for Palmer’s Amazing Stories and Other Worlds:
Shaver had invited Byrne to visit him at Shaver’s cabin in Wisconsin. During this visit the two men went for a stroll in a nearby town. Byrne reported that he had felt an uncomfortable tingling in his legs. Fearing that he was experiencing a medical emergency, Byrne described the sensation to Shaver.
Laughing, Shaver told Byrne not to worry. ‘‘That’s just a dero named Max. He has a crush on me,’’ Shaver explained. ‘‘He lives in a cave under the sidewalk. He spies on me, and whenever he sees me with another man he gets jealous and shoots him with his ray cannon.’’
Scout’s honor! Now – was Shaver just pulling Byrne’s leg? Or was Byrne just pulling Lupoff’s leg? Or was the whole story absolutely true?
While Palmer burrowed ever deeper into the conspiracy-riddled world of paranoid UFO theorists and contactees, Shaver had found a new interest. He decided that Mankind’s ancient ancestors had left secret documents embedded in rocks. All you had to do was crack a rock open, exposing its interior, and you would find messages in the form of pictographs.
Locus, June 2013 Page 12