Spring 2007

by Subterranean Press

  Suffice it to say that for fans of Ellison and of the SF genre, there are (as in the first two volumes) a number of familiar tales told. But as with the first two volumes, gems are here for the taking. Such as track 12, in which Ellison offers up one his most hilarious anecdotes–about the publishing industry–replete with an impression of Humphrey Bogart and Peter Falk. Or the story about his almost getting a job as a talk show host (the antithesis of Mort Downey, Jr.–or Bill O’ Reilly), and how his views on the Middle East–still, sadly, relevant today–lost him the job.

  It’s all here: how Robert Redford’s film efforts in Colorado may, in fact, be a front for NORAD, the willful ignorance of the mass of Americans and how Ellison has to hum a tune while serving his wife, Susan, breakfast, or risk having sausage and eggs decorate his ceilings. Coming off like Robin Williams’ older brother, Harlan Ellison could make even the recital of his latest grocery list entertaining.

  Review: Softspoken by Lucius Shepard

  SOFTSPOKEN by Lucius Shepard (Nightshade Books/179 pages/$23.95)

  Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

  Readers familiar with the writing of Lucius Shepard – from his many short stories to novels like Green Eyes, Trujillo or A Handbook of American Prayer—know he is, perhaps, one of the few writers to emerge from the SF field who writes the same sort of powerful prose as do mainstream stalwarts like Robert Stone, Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene. The best of his fiction packs the power of myth and wields the magic of poetry. His latest novel, Softspoken, brings all of that and then some to the telling of a southern gothic tale filled with mystery, madness and plenty of hauntings.

  Sanie Bullard, a writer, and her lawyer husband Jackson move into his South Carolina, ancestral home, sharing it with his siblings. The place, as Sanie observes, is “Cobweb central,” dilapidated at best. Jackson’s father, a lawyer himself, was supposedly mad as a hatter. When Sanie begins hearing a distinct voice, she thinks it’s her peyote-chewing, prankster brother-in-law; then she realizes Will has heard the ghost as well. Trying the drug herself, Sanie actually sees the spirits inhabiting the antebellum home: “Half bodied ladies in evening wear mingle and merge in pale, penetrating intimacy with eyeless gentlemen and soldiers with missing limbs that are not the result of battle.” Sanie also begins to realize what the ghost is trying to tell her. Apparently, there is more than one secret, one mystery, hidden in the Bullard family closets. The revelation, when it comes, results in a stunning, bloody and surreal denouement. It’s an ending that seems inevitable in retrospect, and which plays out perfectly. The beauty of Shepard’s prose is that while it never flinches away from describing the gritty, low-end of the new south, it does so with the sweetness of a Magnolia in full bloom, as when the author describes Sanie’s view of the Bullard home after a stroll:

  “…the house emerges from behind the screen of two water oaks, ramshackle and many-eyed with black windows, presenting the impression of a ditsy old matriarch, her torso rising from waist-high yellowing weeds of skirts so ragged, the corroded wrought-iron fence of her bustle shows through.”

  Further down, on the same page, Shepard turns Sanie’s nearly imperceptible feeling about the ghost she has encountered into something feline:

  “Anxiety bristles up in her, but she also feels a mild burst of affection for the voice, and she thinks she detects a faint vibe of devotion, as it it’s been waiting inside to squeeze out the cracked door, nearly tripping her up, and rub against her ankles.”

  Ranking up with the haunted house novels (which are rarely about haunted houses)—The Haunting of Hill House, Ghost Story, Bag of Bones—Shepard’s Softspoken is a classic ghost story that comes off like a collaboration between Shirley Jackson and Tennessee Williams, with just a touch of James M. Cain. The end result is, of course, all Shepard. Softspoken is both a taut psychological thriller and a beautifully rendered portrait of the New American South, told with unflinching honesty, humor, insight and compassion.

  Review: The Last Mimzy by Henry Kuttner

  (Del Rey/352 pages/$13.95, trade paper)

  Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

  It may be sacrilege among the faithful to make such a proclamation, but “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” really isn’t that great of a story. It’s a very fascinating, very interesting premise: A box containing the knowledge of how to gain entrance to an alternate is found; but the problem is, no one but children can understand the “instructions” because as we humans get older, we began to think and reason in a different fashion. It’s a premise that Kuttner cleverly glommed from reading A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes (the title of his story is taken from a stanza of a song in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll). Yes, Mimsy is a clever concept, but as a story, it doesn’t quite work, failing to sustain narrative flow, losing steam and direction about mid-center. At that point, a character named Rex Holloway enters the picture and commits the sin of so many of the scientist characters in 1950s science fiction flicks (and not a few modern SF novels) make, over-explaining this facet or that theory. Check out this excerpt, taken from—I kid you not—nearly two pages of such meandering by the good Dr. Holloway: “The brain’s a colloid, a very complicated machine. We don’t know much about its potentialities. We don’t even know how much it can grasp.” I won’t go on further except to say whatever editor bought the story fell down on the job. A bit more clipping and a genuine classic would have, indeed, been born. As it is, “Mimsy” is still a good short story.

  Why such attention to a story written to a story nearly a century ago? Because New Line Cinema has made a film of the Kuttner classic; and because Del Rey has reissued The Best of Henry Kuttner under a new title, The Last Mimzy, deigning to use the filmmaker’s misspelling of mimsy (but as well all know, most filmmakers, and not a few folks in publishing, rarely make smart choices). Despite that clunky middle ground, “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” is a dark and twisty landscape with enough unseen brambles and potholes about (as well a killer ending) that readers will forgive the narrative hiccup.

  In Worlds of Wonder, the sublime anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, the Grand Master speculates on the writings of Henry Kuttner and his wife C.L. Moore (after marriage, both writers worked on each other’s stories). Silverberg notes early work was marked by “emotional intensity and evocative coloration” while Kuttner’s fiction was always versatile, clever and technically adept. Leading one to speculate that the stronger parts of “Mimsy,” near the tale’s end, might have been provided by Moore; if so, good on her for elevating the tale from merely clever to artful.

  These few nits aside, potential readers should not let the above musings stop them from picking up The Last Mimzy to sample the rest of this best of collection devoted to Kuttner, because there’s plenty to entertain. Such as “The Twonky” (originally published under Kuttner’s Lewis Padgett byline) in which paranoia reigns as characters discover that certain everyday item of entertainment in homes is actually a robot designed to turn humans into bovine-like creatures—or eliminate them (had the story been written a bit later, Kuttner and Moore would no doubt have substituted a television or internet-linked computer, and rightly so). Other highlights include “Two-Handed Engine,” “The Proud Robot” and “Absalom.” In truth, all of the stories in this collection will serve readers well and entertain them beyond their wildest expectations.

  Review: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union By Michael Chabon

  The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

  By Michael Chabon (HarperCollins/414 pages/ $26.95)

  Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

  For those who wish a mainstream writer would get it right when writing genre fiction, the latest tome by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, will put a smile on their faces.

  Unlike Philip Roth, who claimed ignorance of other alternative history novels (easily dismissing great works like The Man in the High Castle or even fun reads like Fatherland) when in talking about the origins of The Plot Aga
inst America, Chabon, who edited McSweeny’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales among others, has a solid knowledge of genre fiction; Chabon also has an astute eye for details, which is why he based his new novel on a fairly obscure bit of history. The author’s starting point? What if, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested, Alaska became the homeland for Jews after World War II? “These are strange times to be a Jew” is the refrain repeated by various characters, a litany which gives voice to the book’s theme.

  Working off that interesting premise, Chabon pulls his readers into a world called “Alyeska,” a Jewish settlement in Alaska’s panhandle. Gangs of young, Orthodox Jews (replete with long curls of hair and knee breeches) known as “Black Hats” roam around the streets of a central city known as Sitka, looking like a bizzaro-world version of the gangs from West Side Story. In their midst is Meyer Landsman, a Jewish Detective who could’ve stepped out of a novel by Raymond Chandler or John D. MacDonald. Landsman is an old-school tough guy who practically oozes alcohol and cigarette smoke when he talks: “…the most decorated shammes in the District of Sitka…” Saddled with all of the conventional problems of any gumshoe worth his salt, Landsman is dealing with the ghost of a broken marriage, the memories of a dead sister, and a case of career ennui that would challenge even Humphrey Bogart When the landlord Tenenboym of the Hotel Zamenhof wakes the drunken Detective up one morning to investigate suspicious happenings with a neighbor in the apartment building, Landsman finds that the neighbor is, of course, dead. Said neighbor was not only a chess prodigy and a heroin addict, he was the son of Sitka’s most prominent and powerful clergyman, Rabbi Lasker.

  For reasons not quite clear to him, this murder suddenly awakens a long-dead spirit inside Landsman. With the help of his partner, Berko Shemets (who is half Jewish, half Tlinget–a Native American tribe), Landsmand sets out to solve the murder mystery. Standing in his way is the fact that in two months Alaska will no longer be a sanctuary for Jews–seems the new homeland was only a rental–the fact that someone (or a group of someones) doesn’t want him to solve the murder, and that his ex-wife, Bina Glebfish, is now Chief of Police!

  Chabon tackled the mystery genre with The Final Solution, an interesting mix of Sherlock Holmes and Holocaust history, proving he can tackle just about any genre (he covered YA fantasy with Summerland). Taking that already honed skill, he breathes some interesting new life into the formulaic, noirish detective story. Hilarious and moving, suspenseful and contemplative, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is, like all good genre novels, a twisted, fun-house mirror gaze into the heart of our own troubled times. Of course, it’s also damned good, entertaining little mystery story and an interesting study of a down-and-out character who redeems himself with an eleventh hour act of heroism and detective work. Filled with wordplay, compassion for all the characters involved, and a genuine sense of Weldschmertz (angst at the pain of the world’s citizens–all of them), The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is wild ride through what might have been, a reflection of what might currently be, and another tour-de-force of storytelling from one of America’s premiere novelists.

  Review: White Night by Jim Butcher & Wizards edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

  White Night

  by Jim Butcher (Roc/416 pages/$23.95)

  Wizards

  Edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Berkely/402 pages/$25.00)

  Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

  Although wizards have been popular in genre fiction since the days of Dorothy and the Scarecrow or Gandalf, the appearance of Harry Potter and friends in the last decade and a half has upped the ante and the interest. The resulting overflow of books about wizards and/or witches seems to be spilling out into the aisles of late. Two such publications are the focus of this week’s column.

  To be fair, The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher owes as much to the Rockford Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as it does to Hogwarts. More so, in fact. After all, Chicago-based Wizard Harry Dresden is a low-rent wizard who works as a consultant (for those in need of advice on how to slay preternatural creatures), performs lost and found services and does just a lot of private investigation work. If you’re a regular watcher of the Sci-fi Network, you may already know of Harry via the television show which has run one season thus far (its renewal is being decided this spring). If you’re a reader who hasn’t caught the TV show, you might like to know that Harry also drives a beat-up Volkswagen, and lives with a talking skull (the skull is actually haunted by the ghost of Bob, a sarcastic magical entity who loves Harry despite all evidence to the contrary).

  Jim Butcher’s amalgam of fantasy and tough-guy private eye genres is one of the better paranormal series currently riding that popular subgenre wave. And White Night, the ninth entry, is one of Butcher’s best efforts, although some political intrigue involving group dynamics and politics (in this case, the White Court of psychic vampires and the Red Court of blood-drinking vampires) threatens to weigh it down at times (strangely, that same albatross currently hangs around the “necks” of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton and the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Gothic Vampire series by Charlaine Harris).

  This time out, Harry is investigating the deaths of several second-class practitioners of magic in the Chicago area. Called on by Detective Karin Murphy - an old buddy in the Special Investigations division of the police department who was recently demoted from Lieutenant to Sergeant - Harry learns that what was thought to be a suicide turned out to be a case of murder. It seems someone is carrying out a vendetta; and Harry finds a card left specifically for him at the first murder scenes. The card bears a quote from the bible, Exodus 22:18 - “Suffer not a witch to live.” Worse, as the investigation continues, evidence Harry uncovers points to his half-brother Thomas (a member of the White Court) as a prime suspect. Getting help from his apprentice, Molly Carpenter, and assorted other eccentric (secondary) characters, Harry eventually finds himself hip-deep in trouble, battling ghouls, vampires and assorted creatures of the night.

  Full of well-written banter, fast-paced plotting and memorable characters, “The Dresden Files” is just a lot of noirish, spell-casting fun - both Harry Dresden and White Night, a series high point, are sure to appeal to the fans of that other wizard with the same first name.

  Unusual for a theme-based anthology, Wizards is full of surprisingly good stories centered on wizards and magic. And it starts from strength with Neil Gaiman’s “The Witch’s Headstone.” Rumored to be part of a novel in progress, the story reads as if written by a descendant of Ray Bradbury, with its poetic prose style, its reverence for traditions, and an unusual bit of family dynamics. Eight-year-old Bod (Nobody Owens) is being raised and schooled by a family of ghouls and ghosts while living in a graveyard: the fanged Silas, the zombified Pennyworth. But it’s the lessons of a Sorceress that prove most important. Although Gaiman ends the tale at the just the right spot, knowing it’s part of a larger work will leave some readers wanting more.

  Orson Scott Card’s “Stonefeather” tells the story of a seemingly unremarkable, Fifteenth Century kid who suddenly discovers heretofore unknown powers after leaving home in search of his destiny. Elizabeth Hand delivers one of her stunning, unexpected endings in “Winter’s Wife,” a New England magical tale which pits modern-day pragmatism against old magic, and Terry Bisson does some interesting things with well-worn images and plotlines when a young boy meets the Devil himself in “Billy and the Wizard.” Other highpoints include stories by Gene Wolfe, Patricia A. McKillip, Jane Yolen and Jeffery Ford. There are a total of eighteen stories in all, with only a couple of clunkers, and most of them well worth the read. As editors Dann and Dozois point out in their preface, “Wizards have stalked through the human imagination for thousands and thousands of years…the figure of the wizard is still a deeply significant one.”

  Five million or more Harry Potter fans would most likely agree.

  Review:The Best of the Best Volume 2 20 Years of The Best Short
Science Fiction Novels

  Edited By Gardner Dozois (St. Martin’s Press/642 pages/$40.00)

  Reviewed by Dorman T Shindler

  More astute reviewers than this one have pointed out that novellas are the perfect form for science fiction writers: just enough time to develop believable premises and worlds, as well as characters, without going on for too long.

  After putting out The Best of the Best Volume 1, a culling of what Dozois believed are the best short stories from twenty years worth of “Year’s Best” collections, the former editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction has done the same for novellas.

  Happily for this reviewer and long-time reader, many favorites are included. Foremost among them is “The Hemingway Hoax” by Joe Haldeman, one of the most perfect novellas I’ve ever read. Haldeman manages to mix bits of crime fiction and mainstream fiction flavor into his outlandish tale of time travel and literary forgery, making it that much more delectable. His protagonist, John Baird, a college professor and Hemingway buff, bears a not-so coincidental resemblance to Haldeman. Both were wounded in the Vietnam War, and both are married. Of course, things diverge from there, since Baird’s wife is willing to play her husband for a patsy when Sylvester Castlemaine enters the picture, trying to convince both of them to commit forgery. Castlemaine’s idea begins slouching toward reality when Baird mentions that Hemingway’s first wife managed to lose a brief case full of his early stories while traveling by train from France to Switzerland. After some persuading from his wife (who was encouraged by Castlemaine), Baird decides to look into the possibility of forging one of those lost stories: properly aged paper has to be obtained, as well as the correct sort of typewriter.