Review: "Operation Haystack" by Frank Herbert (1959)
Posted on March 6th, 2008
This novelette is an odd one because it is the third part of a four part serialization that became the novel The Godmakers in 1972. It begins with the main character, Lewis Orne, completely mangled following a mission sniffing out revolutionaries on a matriarchal planet.
Orne miraculously lives and heals, against all medical expectation, and as soon as he regains his feet he is sent to investigate a family, known to his own estranged family, for potential revolutionary activities. He uses his convalescence as a cover and insinuates his way into the family while falling for the daughter.
Of course, the family is involved in a grand scheme of universal domination and Orne is forced to deal with their ambitions, his duties, and his own personal issues all in the space of this short novelette.
The story is fine, and much more involved than I’ve described here, but even though this story has its own complete arc, I would recommend giving Project Gutenberg a little time and seeing if they release the other parts of the serialization first.
However, if you don’t want to wait, you can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "Final Weapon" by Everett Cole (1955)
Posted on March 4th, 2008
This novella opens with Howard Morely, a conniving, back-stabbing District Leader in a dystopian world of tomorrow. Morely acts as a martinet to those below him and plots against those above him as he leads his district in reconstruction and busy work in the decades following the major war that took place in the 1990s.
The societal picture painted by Cole is mainly gray: for second and third class citizens, life is literally lived underground, at subsistence or lower, and closely monitored in all aspects. The few ruling elite, the first class citizens, enjoy personal freedoms and luxuries and exercise control over the rest, forming the basis for Cole criticism of socialist societies. 
Much of the story is spent fleshing out Morely’s character and the lengths to which he will go to increase efficiency in his division until an invention that enables instant thought communication is introduced and the story begins to follow that line to a greater degree.
Morely encourages the production of the device to minimize communication costs, but soon becomes left behind as individuals with greater empathy quickly become skilled at its use. Eventually, the device enables societal changes because individuals find it impossible to oppress each other when they completely understand the viewpoint of those they oppress. Morely, and dinosaurs like him, have difficulty coping with the regime change.
Despite the somewhat grim face of the society shown in the beginning, such as the underground living quarters and the crumbling remnants of civilization, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, this story is overall rather bright and optimistic. I like Cole because he can draw characters and tell a story and even though I sometimes feel his endings fall apart, I’m calling it
Recommended. You can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "By Proxy" by Randall Garrett (1960)
Posted on March 1st, 2008
Randall Garrett stories are comfort food, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes of free fiction. Sure, if you have a bad day you can always come home, knock back a fifth of Jim Beam and kick the dog, but what does that get you? A hangover and a pissed-off dog. Next time you need a cocktail, try a Randall Garrett Old-Fashioned.
This novelette is thankfully missing psionics and while there are one or two light-hearted lines, Garrett’s atrocious punning also skips its appearance. At its heart, it is really just a slow-boiled adventure/mystery/suspense tale that happens to have a scientific invention at the center. The story could likely have been told with a different type of discovery and still worked.
Terrence Elshawe is a newspaper reporter assigned to the upcoming launch of Malcolm Porter’s homemade spaceship. Porter has just recently been released from prison after serving three years of a five year sentence for launching an unauthorized rocket.
Porter’s defense at his trial had been that he hadn’t launched a rocket, but that his craft had used a new anti-gravity technology. Unfortunately, the military had obliterated the ship when it shot it down, so he could not prove his claim, and after the government’s physics experts discounted his anti-gravity theory to the jury, he was easily convicted.
Following his release, Porter pulled the old gang together and developed another ship and is now set to launch. Elshawe is sent to cover the story, but finds multiple government players out to put a stop to it, including threatening Porter’s parole.
Egotistical Porter is unswayed, and continues preparations. Meanwhile, Elshawe begins investigating a quiet character on Porter’s team and finds out some interesting information about him. Eventually, there is a launch, and Elshawe, an on-the-scene-witness, finds himself in front of a congressional committee hoping he can keep certain secrets.
Overall, it was interesting enough and focused more on the psychology of a couple individuals involved than it did on pot-boiling suspense or mystery. Like I said, comfort food.
Recommended. You can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "A Colder War" by Charlie Stross (2000)
Posted on February 25th, 2008
“A Colder War” is an alternate history novelette that places the Iran-Contra Affair square within the Cthulhu Mythos.
Roger Jourgensen is first a CIA analyst, then a field spook/lackey who is privy to the biggest secret in the world: that shoggoths, Cthulhu, and Lovecraft’s other horrible weak-godlike agencies exist and are kept under wraps only through an international secret treaty known as the Dresden Agreement.
If you know a little Cold War history and have read H. P. Lovercraft’s “Mountains of Madness,” you will be impressed by the numerous, but natural, references to both in this story. Jourgensen is tapped by Ollie North for a super-secret special group doing covert work smuggling heroin through the temples of the Elder Gods. The group is also trying, but failing, to contain the proliferation of these weapons of universal destruction.
The shoggoth balloon goes up and Jourgensen is evacuated through a portal to another world along with some bigwigs as they attempt to figure out if the world can still be salvaged.
Stross’ characteristic humor is present in spots, and of course the satirical alternate history itself is humorous at times. Stross reaches for, but does not grasp, Lovecraft’s sense of nameless dread even though some of the plot turns here are more explicitly harrowing than much Lovecraft tended to write. Instead Jourgensen generally comes across as either worried-but-resigned, or just plain resigned.
As an aside, this is a separate storyline to the future of Stross’ Atrocity Archives, although both mix Lovecraft and espionage.
You can read it online here at Infinity Plus, but you might want to copy and paste it into a word processor because, while it has good contrast, there was something about the blue-on-blue on that page that got to me.
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Audiobook Review: "Trunk and Disorderly" by Charlie Stross (2007)
Posted on February 22nd, 2008
Charlie Stross, perhaps the most entertaining science fiction author writing today, is known for his ability to cross genres. He puts that ability to good use in this novelette by dropping P.G. Wodehouse characters into an early-but-updated science fiction adventure.
Ralph is the main character, a Bertie Wooster of the future: he lives off his aristocratic family, is a faithful club member, drinks as if alcohol contained vital nutrients necessary to his daily survival, is infatuated with his on-again-off-again robot girlfriend Laura, and relies almost utterly upon his butler for everything.
Miss Feng is the Jeeves-ian hyper-capable butler who deals with all the unpleasantness in Ralph’s life as well as feeds him reminders, minds his actions, and generally plays nursemaid to the spoiled but eminently likeable Ralph.
The tale begins as Laura leaves Ralph as he prepares to do some Martian sky surfing, an occurrence dashedly inconvenient to Ralph as the danger always left Laura in the mood for love.
Ralph is then invited to a birthday party by the younger brother of the Emir of Mars held at the Emir’s stronghold. Lots of food and drink, and a contest for the selection of the Emir’s concubine, although it turns out that the losers tend to lose their heads, and not in the figurative sense.
Laura, of course, has somehow been added to the list of the contestants and Ralph sees that he will have to save Laura, save the Emir from the evil eunuch Vizier, and escape the impregnable fortress. Then it will be cocktails all around, what?
Stross has again penned a delightfully funny tale and the narrator does a tremendous job- I don’t know if I could have handled all the “what?”, ‘jolly good” and “dash it” talk if it were not for the narrator blurting them out in his English accent.
Excellent/Highly Recommended. You can download it or listen to it online here.
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Review: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (2005)
Posted on February 22nd, 2008
Free download!
There are only a few military science fiction books I consider significant, but his is one of them. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” series, and Haldeman’s Forever War are the big ones for me. I would place OMW in the list as being in the same vein as Heinlein, a position I think Scalzi has explicitly stated.
John Perry is seventy-five, his wife has passed away, and he is stepping into the Colonial Defense Force’s recruiting station as the novel opens. The mysterious CDF ships him off-planet, gives him a new augmented body and sends him away to interesting planets to meet interesting aliens and kill them.
There are crises of conscious as he wonders why he is doing what he is doing (think Forever War), and interesting encounters like when he runs across someone wearing his dead wife’s body, and of course, lots of fighting with aliens. I don’t think I need to go into too much depth here because there are reviews all over the web discussing this book. I will simply say it is
Excellent/Very Highly Recommended. I promised you a free download, but you’ll have to work for it a bit. You can get this by signing up with Tor’s mailing list. They are launching a new site and are giving away digital downloads as they countdown towards launch (next is Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin). If you are worried about spam, use a junk email account.
Sign up here. FYI, it took a few days for me to get the email with the link.
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Review: Tinker’s Dam by Randall Garrett (1961)
Posted on February 22nd, 2008
“Joseph Tinker” is listed as the author at Project Gutenberg, but even though wikipedia does not list “Joseph Tinker” as a pseudonym, I would lay money that this novelette was actually written by Randall Garrett. Sorry for any confusion.
Joseph “Gyp” Tinker is the head of the F.B.I.’s Chief of the Division of Psychic Investigation. He’s a snake hunter issued special powers by Congress, including summary execution. Mainly he just hunts down telepaths and deports them to Oklahoma so they can’t learn sensitive Washington D.C. secrets and spill them by having their own minds read by the Russian embassy telepaths.
Gyp finds himself with a pretty secretary protecting his back from an underling looking to climb over it. Fred Plaice, the backstabber, has captured a telepath that claims to be Gyp’s mother, Maude Tinker, and is looking to ruin Gyp. If you’re wondering, that’s Maude over there, the one giving me the hairy eyeball.
Anyway, the news that Gyp’s mother is a telepath would be troublesome because telepathy is known to be hereditary, and disclosure would cost Gyp his position at the very least.
This novelette is pretty short, so I won’t give away any more. You can read it yourself to see how Gyp resolves the situation. Randall Garrett fans will not be surprised at the ending, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Therefore I’m calling it
Good/Recommended. You can read it online here or hunt it down at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: The Soul Bottles by Jay Lake (2004)
Posted on February 20th, 2008
This novelette was originally published in 2004 and popped up in a couple of places since then. It also serves as the backstory for Lake’s 2006 novel Trial of Flowers.
It is a story about redemption in a fantasy setting that includes magic and hints of goth horror. At the age of fourteen, Jason watches as his father is killed, his sister is sold into a harem, and his mother skips town all as a result of a turn in his father’s business fortunes. Jason is left only with the collection of soul bottles that was the cause of his father’s misfortune.
Of the characters we see from the City Imperishable, an inordinate amount seem to be obsessed with dwarves (created by shutting growing bodies in boxes) and the practice of sewing dwarves’ mouths shut. Therefore, Bijaz, who is Jason’s father’s former house/business dwarf, getting a chance to exercise his own set of kinks, agrees to let Jason live with him for a year as long as Jason agrees to have his mouth sewn shut. In case you’re wondering, as I first did, there is a little pucker left in the middle so you can eat gruel and fish soup through a straw.
Jason agrees, serves his year, and then goes to work for Bijaz’s relative at the port where Jason begins to work his way up in the lower class business world, although his character leans more towards the sordid as time passes.
Eventually, an upper class ruling-type with some magical talent comes looking for Jason’s soul bottles, which contains a bit of the souls of each person who breathed into them. Jason faces a choice of whether to commit his first unselfish act in a long while or tell the magic-type to beat it, a choice that will lead to either redemption or a continuation of his downward spiral.
This novelette got a little freaky for me with all the dwarves and mouth-sewing. Not a call-the-Little-People-Anti-Defamation-League type freaky, but certainly weird. If that’s your thing, hop in your little box and thread your needle.
You can read it online here or you can download it at Manybooks.net in a number of formats.
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Review: "Blind Man’s Lantern" by Allen K. Lang (1962)
Posted on February 20th, 2008
I have to be honest, this is the first Amish science fiction novelette I can recall reading. I recall an Amish presence in Scalzi’s The Last Colony and I think there were some Amish in Murray Leinster’s The Pirates of Ersatz, but this is the first to focus on them as far as I know.
I’ve said before with my review of The Destroyers that I’m not much into reading tales of farmers. I can firmly state that that position goes double for tales of Amish farmers. Here, an Amish couple are sent to help colonize a world inhabited mainly by Hausa colonists. I think the Amish were needed for their back-to-soil-techniques which had been lost. How the hell they can dig up Amish in the future, but can’t find Hausa on the agrarian planet who remembers how to farm is beyond me.
Frankly, I could not finish this story. I skimmed to get the gist, which was that the Amish moved in, had a barn-raising (of course), made nice with the local muckety-muck, and then angered said muckety-muck with a farming faux-pas that offended his religious sensibilities.
The Amish figured out the problem, which turned out to be humorous only if you are an Amish farmer in the future on a planet inhabited by Islamic fundamentals, and everything turned out just grand. I found this story
Excruciating and I want those minutes of my life back. But maybe you’ll have a better time of it. You can read it online here or dig your own hole at Project Gutenberg to find it in a couple formats or in more at Manybooks.net
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Review: Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff (2007) [Not Free]
Posted on February 19th, 2008
Beware: this novel is insanely enthralling. You will likely finish it the same day you crack it, so do not wait past early evening to begin reading it if you have to work in the morning.
This is the story of Jane Charlotte, who is being interviewed by a psychiatrist in the Las Vegas lockup after being charged with murder. Charlotte doesn’t dispute that she killed anyone, she just knows the psychiatrist interviewing her will not believe her story: that she is a hitperson for a super-secret organization that knocks off Irredeemable Persons, the "Bad Monkeys" of the title. In her eyes, she works for the good guys.
Charlotte tells how she grew up and how she came to do what she does. Meanwhile, the interviewer tries to pick holes in her story to force her to confront reality. The only problem is, you’re not sure which one is better grounded in reality. Her story not only has more twists and turns than a Grand Prix track, but they come upon you even more suddenly. This novel throws the reader left, right, up, down, and backwards trying to figure out if Charlotte is good, bad, sane, insane, or just a liar.
I don’t even know how to label this: a science fiction thriller, I guess, but you could also go with conspiracy theory, psychological study, interrogation/crime thriller, suspense novel, you name it. It really does cross genres, while still throwing in some satire and humor.
I very highly recommend this book. While it’s not free, you can read the first chapter here. Or you can just go ahead and order it now, because you will not be disappointed:
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Review: "Kill Switch" by Steve Perry (2008)
Posted on February 15th, 2008
This is a very short story, coming in a little over 1300 words, but it is also a good example of why I have recently found so much respect for the genre. I used to be a novel snob, not wanting to get invested in a story that was going to end right when the getting got good, but I’ve shed that skin after reviewing all the short stories on this site.
Perry, in few words, manages to convey a future setting, complete a story arc, and even give some insight into both of the characters in the story. Here, a man is about to trigger the kill switch that will put down his Companion, a "woman" produced by coupling genetic manipulation and nanotech technology and designed to be a, well, a companion. The designers included the kill switch in case they became a threat and needed to be terminated.
It opens in a peaceful kitchen setting, but Perry tosses in a nice bit of foreshadowing by describing the Companion cutting vegetables with the "Japanese knife he had bought her for her birthday, a long, hand-made folded-steel thing so sharp that to risk the edge with your thumb even lightly would cut you." You just know somebody’s gonna get it after reading that line.
The story describes the confrontation between the two when the man readies himself to press the button, but as this review is getting to be almost as long as the story itself, and I was mainly looking to spread the word, I’ll just tell you to go read it and I’ll label it:
Very Good/Recommended. You can read it online here at Steve Perry’s site.
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Review: "Watch the Sky" by James Schmitz (1962)
Posted on February 15th, 2008
This novelette has more turns in it than a driving test. As the story opens, seemingly dutiful grand-nephew Phil Boles is visiting his elderly grand-aunt to check on her. It becomes apparent that Boles, the backwater planet Roye’s union leader, is not quite as dutiful as he seems and has an ulterior motive in his visit.
There is a long-term war being waged against the alien Geest and Boles has a plan to clone a Geest war relic collected by his grand-uncle off-planet in order to plant the weapon somewhere on Roye where it will be discovered. Boles’ rationale is that once the weapon is discovered, Earth will massively fortify the military base on the planet and Boles’ personal fortunes will rise as a result of the influx of personnel.
The plan goes awry and some of Boles’ Earth confederates are caught and sent to Roye, not surprising considering that Roye is a Botany Bay destination where Earth undesirables are discreetly shipped.
Boles, wondering whether his former confederates are planning to do him in, has his own surprise in store for them, one that is bigger than Boles, his former confederates, and the whole planet of Roye. This story kept me guessing about Boles and I’m rating it as:
Very good/Recommended. You can plant and read it online here or hatch your own plot and download it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "Accidental Death" by Peter Baily (1959)
Posted on February 15th, 2008
Unfortunately, this short story starts in the "it was a dark and stormy night" vein:
The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow.
The writing lets up a little after that, though, and becomes less distracting. It turns out to be the story of Matt Hennessey, a lone survivor space astronomer recording the events leading to the crash of an experimental spaceship on its return to Earth. The rest of the crew has been lost along the way and the survivor is recounting how a seemingly friendly catlike alien race they encountered caused them to hit a run of suspicious bad luck. Hennessy believes they have an affinity for causing others bad luck, and is warning Earth about the race, but he further believes his survival is proof that their abilities are not foolproof. He may be wrong.
I had problems with this story from the writing in the opening paragraph to the alien race. The ending does contain a twist, albeit a lukewarm one. On the other hand, it’s pretty short and the same things might not bother you, but I’m giving it a rating of
Poor to Fair. No matter what your luck you can read it online here or find it available for download at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: My Own Kind of Freedom [Firefly] by Steven Brust (2007)
Posted on February 15th, 2008
As a fan of the Firefly series, I was concerned about reading this novel and I don’t think I ever really got past that concern as I was expecting jarring notes on every page. Luckily that expectation was disappointed for the most part.
For this novel, pretty much the whole crew is back: Mal, Zoe, River, Simon, Jayne, Kaylee, Serenity, and yes, even Wash, so it’s clear this takes place before the events of the movie Serenity but after the Firefly episodes. Proper for that period, Inara and Shepherd Book are both absent from the story.
The plot is similar to those Firefly episodes you know and love: there’s a delivery, the delivery goes south, and Mal makes a sticking point out of doing what he believes is the right thing.
I was most worried about the dialogue and characterization, and the beginning dialogue does feel forced. As well, Brust never gets the characterization quite right for two particular characters. For example, Simon Tam is a cardboard cutout playing nursemaid to his sister, but he was a much stronger character in the episodes and movie. Jayne is missing the sly humor that made him so fun to watch throughout the series and is instead portrayed only as an overly-dumb crooked thug. More is the pity that while he has Vera, there is no sign of his cunning hat.
Aside from those faults, even big fans can quickly come to grips with the dialogue. Once the story gets moving the dialogue does feel authentic enough, and the best part is that Brust used the characters’ type of speech without resorting to mimicry. The turns of phrase seemed new, but fitting, which was an impressive accomplishment.
The best part about the story was in Brust’s deep digging into two of the most mysterious characters. The reader forst gets to look inside River’s head and understand what is going on there and what is behind the odd responses she always throw out. Then there is also a deeper look into what Serenity Valley meant to Mal (and Zoe) and readers get to see a little further into Mal’s head than they ever have before. Both of these characters rang true and Brust did an excellent job extending the development of these characters farther than we had ever seen.
While I would still rather see a Firefly novel from the original writers than Candido or Brust, I’m calling this one
Good/Recommended. So read the gorram thing online here.
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Review: "Faithfully Yours" by Lou Tabakow (1955)
Posted on February 14th, 2008
Short psychological story about Tee Ormond, an escapee from the prison planet Hades (”No one escapes Hades”). Ormond is a desperate fugitive, destined to stay continually on the run after the prison authorities on Hades assign an electronic bloodhound to pursue him and fool with his brain.
After ten long years, Ormond, increasingly desperate to shake the demon that is driving him, attempts to turn himself in to the Hades authorities only to find that once the bloodhound is set to a scent, it cannot be recalled. He is last seen, haunted, heading for the deep reaches of space.
Fair. You can catch your own copy and read it online here or track it down at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or Manybooks.net in more.
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