Dietz doesn't break any new ground, but that's not his intention. Military SF is intended to be predictable in form if not in detail and Dietz is one of its most reliable practitioners. There is no single central focus to the story, which employs several viewpoint characters so that the reader can observe events from various levels within the military and civilian authority, and even from among the alien Ramanthians. Although this necessarily means that the characterization is relatively sketchy, Dietz skillfully differentiates his characters with brief but incisive scenes that establish them as individuals. One small caveat, however: The specific campaign central to this story is more or less brought to a conclusion, but the saga of the Legion does not end. The war with the Ramanthians and other issues remain unresolved.
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Alan Dean Foster's novels are frequently set in the context of the Commonwealth, a future interstellar civilization created jointly by humans and the Thranx, a race resembling oversized beetles. His latest, Quofum, involves a joint expedition by five humans and one Thranx to a mysterious planet first reported by a robot probe which observed that the planet seemed to blink in and out of existence from time to time. Although the odd data is dismissed by the expedition as erroneous, the reader is obviously aware that there is some mysterious quality to the planet because if there wasn't, there wouldn't be much of a story.
Their arrival is uneventful and they discover an astonishingly fecund world filled with disparate forms of plant and animal life. Although they are initially caught up in the wonders surrounding them, they begin to suspect that something is wrong. In fact, they take a surprisingly long time to conclude that the ecology is not natural, something which the reader will have realized almost from the outset. They encounter five separate intelligent species within a few days of landing, each of which appears to have followed a separate evolutionary path, and not all of the indigenous creatures are even carbon-based. Their reaction to this strange environment is not always entirely plausible, but the story is not about the people in it as much as it is about the world itself. Their adventures are almost an afterthought in what is essentially a catalogue of bizarre forms of life.
The situation changes when the ship's technician identifies himself as a professional criminal and hijacks the ship, marooning two surviving humans and one Thranx. His escape is foiled by the peculiarities of Quofum's existence, but that doesn't help the three stranded scientists, who struggle to remain motivated even after realizing that their situation is hopeless. It is only then that they begin to discover the true nature of the planet, and the purpose underlying its peculiar nature. Although Foster explains the major mystery, the future of the three surviving scientists, and possibly that of the entire human race, will remain unresolved until the next book in the series.
* * * *
The human race has yet to reach the stars in Paul J. McAuley's The Quiet War, but the solar system is littered with human settlements, although the definition of human has changed somewhat. Using genetic engineering and mechanical enhancements, humans colonizing the remote parts of the solar system—known as the Outers—have adapted themselves to that environment. This disparity has added to the political and economic tensions separating them from an Earth where a collapse of the present civilization has made Brazil and a Pacific coalition the major powers on the home planet. Although those commanding the power structure consider the physical variations among the Outers as virtual heresy, they're not above creating genetically designed, cloned soldiers or turning others of their citizens into cyborgs when they feel it is to their advantage.
Although there is an uneasy peace between the two, there are powerful pressures building in both societies. The Outers are concentrated in a few locations and have limited numbers, but there are many among them who want to spread throughout the rest of the solar system, diversifying the human form in order to realize its potential in a variety of ways. The repressive forces on Earth express their disapproval of tampering with God's work with increasing stridence, but in fact the most powerful objections come from those who realize that an evolving and expanding Outer society will marginalize their power. The battle then is not only about what it is to be a human being but also the question of who determines the shape of our collective future.
It would be impossible to tell a story of such great breadth from a single viewpoint, so McAuley shows us the developing situation by means of several protagonists, representing both sides of the issue, although it is obvious where the author's sympathies lie. The specific plot involves a number of separate but divergent elements including an accidental death that might be murder, the passing of a prominent politician, espionage, and other intrigues. The conflict of societies is reflected in the struggle between individuals and vice versa. The author mixes a great variety of ingredients in his pot, stirs well, and provides his readers with a masterful story of a future that is very much unlike the present in many ways, but which still manages to be convincing and gripping and somehow familiar. As the crisis approaches—which will be dealt with more fully in a sequel—the line of battle is clearly drawn and those who hoped to negotiate a peaceful settlement are forced to choose sides for the final confrontation. McAuley successfully blends serious issues with high adventure.
Copyright © 2009 Don D'Ammassa
DON D'AMMASSA
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* * *
Reader's Department: MINI-REFERENCE LIBRARY
by Tom Easton
Fiona Kelleghan, The Savage Humanists,
Robert J. Sawyer Books (Red Deer Press, Fitzhenry & Whiteside), $15.95, 302 pp.
(ISBN: 978-0-88995-425-0).
* * * *
In The Savage Humanists, Fiona Kelleghan stakes out the perimeters of another New Wave. Using stories by James Morrow, Jonathan Lethem, Kim Stanley Robinson, Gregory Frost, Connie Willis, John Kessel, Tim Sullivan, and Robert J. Sawyer, she defines a voice marked by “a cry for reason to prevail over irrationality and hypocrisy, a preference for the scientific method over credulity and faith, and a certitude that, with Reason and Science (as much tools as modes of thought), it may yet be possible that the plight of most humans on this planet and the ongoing despoliation and ruination of the resources of Planet Earth ... might be ameliorated and even remedied.” That explains the “humanism” of the title, and it is of course a very secular humanism. The “savage” is “because the satirical style of their best work—indeed, the best science fiction written today ... is colored by a facetiousness of tone and a violence of plot development expressed as ... anger at the perfidies of modern society and contemporary science fiction.”
* * * *
Kelleghan makes her case at length and chooses excellent stories to illustrate it, from Frost's “Madonna of the Maquiladora” to Morrow's “Veritas.” But is this New Wave so new? I would argue that satire of the sort she recommends to us has a very long history and the best SF—reaching back at least to Kornbluth's Marching Morons, Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, and just about everything by Brunner—has often fit her rubric. If there's anything new in her New Wave, it has to do with the way her savage humanists often comment upon other science fiction, as Kelly's “Think Like a Dinosaur” takes Tom Godwin's classic “The Cold Equations” to vicious task. But Barry Malzberg might well remind us that even that has precedent.
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Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS
Dear Stanley Schmidt,
Many times you have laid the blame for the world's problems at the overpopulation door. I agree. The worst one, of course is global warming. But has anyone ever calculated the (duh!) effect of billions of 98.6-degree heat and moisture machines? Or does it take a low-end genius like me to point it out?
I have subscribed to Analog, Asimov's, and AHMM for decades. I may be a 60-plus woman, but at heart I still read like a teenaged boy. Thanks for cover-to-cover fun ten times a year.
Edee Craig,
Anaheim, CA
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Dear Dr. Schmidt,
I have just finished reading your September 2008 issue of Analog. I have always made it a point to read your editorials, finding them well written and often hitting the nail on the head regarding your subject matter. I must, however, take some exception to a part of this one. I am one of those “humanities” types whose arrogance you complained of. I fully agree with your rant about their nose in the air dismissal of scientific and technical books from a list of the most important non-fiction. I submit, however, that you may have missed an important point. Unless a book is intended for a narrowly limited audience (and depending on that audience and the book's contents, it may well be influential) to truly be “important,” does it not have to reach a fairly wide audience? I suspect that if it does not, it will not have much effect and therefore is unlikely to be important. I do not denigrate the value of such a book or the validity of its contents, merely its importance. What I am coming to with this is the criticism I must sometimes make of the science fact articles in Analog. I am assuming that many of the books you are referring to are similar in style to those articles. If I am in error in that assumption please say so. If not, many of these articles strike us non-scientific types (history major and 33 years administrative law judge) as being made up of a barrage of Greek letter formulae followed by a cavalry charge of charts that are invariably on another page than the material they seek to illustrate. Besides being inconvenient, these deficiencies serve to adversely affect their chance of appealing to the wide audience needed for importance because they lack readability. If the scientists and engineers who write these books might keep this fact in mind, they might make such lists of important writings. I don't believe this is by any means the only reason they fail to make the cut, but it might have something to do with it. Please do keep up those delightful editorials as I do so enjoy them.
Respectfully,
Steve Altman
—
I heartily agree that scientific writers, especially for non-specialist audiences, should strive for the utmost clarity that they can muster, and I recognize that some do this better than others. It isn't easy. However, I also think that some people who have characterized themselves as nonscientists are too quick to glance at a piece of scientific writing and toss it aside because it requires a little effort to digest.
What does “important” mean? If you measure it by the influence it actually has, or the size of the audience it reaches (as you seem to suggest), then the National Enquirer must be very important indeed. I respectfully suggest that at least sometimes the claim of importance might be better justified by content of such pressing relevance to the prospective readers’ future lives that they need to make an effort to understand it—and that lists of the “most important” should at least occasionally try to call readers’ attention to books that warrant such attention and effort.
* * * *
Dear Doctor Schmidt,
Who proofreads Analog? It has been clear for some time that at least a computer does, because all of the text passes the “sounds like” test. Computers are good at finding typos, but not very good at finding “thinkos.” I have been willing to put up with the goofy word usage, believing that the person typing made a typo that the computer corrected to the wrong “sounds like” word. But the errors have been going beyond what can be considered an over-reliance on spell check software, leaving me scratching my head and silently mouthing “Huh?” Now these errors are showing up in work by Analog regulars (you and Doctor Cramer) and seem to indicate that no one is reading for content prior to printing.
I am sure there are many reasons for it being difficult to publish a good product. I am not sure there are many (if any) good ones. I am one of your readers who bought their first issue of Astounding by returning soda bottles for deposits, and was able to become a regular reader when I got a paper route. I held off subscribing until Analog began to disappear from retail outlets, but I have many boxes of past issues. Of these approximately 50 years of reading the magazine, only the last few have burdened me with having to forgive errors such as those mentioned above. Please tell me why.
Steve Schaefer
—
An occasional error does not prove that “no one is reading...” though it does provide yet another illustration of the obvious and widely known fact that none of us is perfect. Furthermore, few of us in practice can be even as perfect as we could be if we had unlimited time to devote to seeking perfection.
As for “these errors have only been appearing recently,” it just ain't so. I've been getting letters of that sort throughout the 30 years I've been editing Analog. I've also gone back though many of those older issues, all the way back to the beginning, while editing anthologies; and I can assure you that they're nowhere near as immaculate as old-timers fondly remembering them think they are.
* * * *
Dear Dr. Schmidt:
I have been a subscriber to Analog/ Astounding for well over a half a century, I believe. I was struck (not stricken) by the short piece “Aliens” in your December 2008 issue. I look to this as a contrived, snide, cheap political shot. Who is Rick Norwood? Does the article represent your own views? How can this particular article be worthy of publication in Analog?
Very truly yours,
William F. Fisher
—
Actually, it was a story, not an article; and I'm sorry you didn't like it, and even sorrier that you chose to read it as you did. Not everyone agreed with you (see the following letter), and we're well aware that we can't expect to please anybody with everything or everybody with anything. (But who the author is, and what my views are, are completely irrelevant to the value of the piece.)
* * * *
Hello Stan,
My only problem with Rick Norwood's “Aliens” in December's Probability Zero is that I would put it at a much higher possibility than that; sadly, I think it's closer to 70%. I usually get a chuckle from reading those. Thanks for challenging my expectations.
Robert Johns
Marysville, WA
* * * *
Dear Stan,
“Rocks” starts off with “The huge rock spiraling into the planet's atmosphere...” Poetic license is certainly acceptable, but this seems to me to be a bit much. It has been estimated that the diameter of the cometary body or asteroid that formed the Chicxulub Crater was some 10 km. A body of this size traveling several km/sec would not be affected by the Earth's rather thin atmosphere and would therefore not spiral into the planet's atmosphere. I think a better description might be: “It went plunk.” I must admit that that isn't very poetic, but more accurate maybe?
Best wishes for a good year in 2009.
Yours truly,
Fred Bushnell
Pfalzgrafenweiler
Germany
—
It sounds like you're picturing the wrong kind of spiral, like a corkscrew. The atmosphere has nothing to do with it; what's happening here is pure gravity: a rock passing close enough to the planet to be drawn into a decaying orbit, making a plane spiral and ultimately hitting the surface.
* * * *
Dear Stan,
Discussing the story “Tracking” in the October 2008 issue, reader Robert P. Odenweller mentions “Shazam,” Billy Batson's legendary incantation that turned him into Captain Marvel, but is unsure of its derivation.
The acronym was derived from the names of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury, each of whom supposedly contributed something to the Captain's powers (though he didn't have Achilles’ notorious weakness). It was also apparently the actual name of the ancient wizard who gave Billy his abilities.
Gomer Pyle's usage was far from the last. In the 1970s, DC Comics, which had bought the rights to the Fawcett characters, revived Captain Marvel (literally—the Captain and his supporting characters were shown as having been in suspended animation since the 1950s). At first rendered in the cartoony styl
e used by creator C.C. Beck, the Captain has been revamped several times since then and is now drawn “realistically” and generally written straight rather than for laughs.
Eric B. Lipps
Staten Island, NY
* * * *
Dear Stanley,
First of all, I haven't finished your editorial. I just happened to be near my computer as I read it. You may cover this later.
You need to consult with some economists before you get into a lot of economic commentary. If you have, you need to consult with some others. Two quick points.
If you dump your waste on your neighbor's property, you have infringed on his rights. It doesn't matter whether you throw it over the fence or if it washes down from rain or river. You have still dumped it on his property and he has a right to complain. The same thing applies to wind-born garbage. It isn't always enforced, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
At this point there are no property rights to most fish or other aquatic creatures in the typical river. In fact, in the US, there are no property rights in the rivers; they are owned by the government. This is too bad because fishing upstream does not infringe rights that don't exist. OTOH, there are property rights to most land animals. Grab your neighbor's cattle and you could get arrested for rustling.
There has been a lot of theoretical work put into developing a theory of property rights in river life. At this point I don't think anything has been decided, although I am not really current on that.
Bob Peirce
Venetia, PA
—
True enough, but you're talking about legal rights and I'm talking about moral (or ethical) rights—which are not necessarily the same.
Analog SFF, May 2009 Page 20