All reviews copyright 1984-2008 Evelyn C. Leeper.
ALTERNATE SKIFFY edited by Mike Resnick and Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Wildside Press, ISBN 1-880448-54-8, 1997, 123pp, US$9) and INSIDE THE FUNHOUSE edited by Mike Resnick (AvoNova, ISBN 0-380-76643-4, 1992, 246pp, trade paperback):
In their introductions, Resnick and Nielsen Hayden tell two different stories of how this anthology came about. Both are obviously from alternate universes. But Resnick has cruised these waters before--see the comments on Inside the Funhouse at the end of this review.
This seems to me to be a sort of cousin to Resnick's Alternate Worldcons and Again, Alternate Worldcons. The main difference to me is that these stories seem more professional and less "fannish." In fact, one had already appeared in Interzone: Dave Langford's excellent G. K. Chesterton pastiche, "The Spear of the Sun."
There are a few other stories which stand well on their own. Gregory Feeley's "Scatchophily" has Samuel Beckett and James Joyce in an unlikely situation, but Feeley's writing style, including subtle literary puns, compensates for that.
Nick DiChario, who burst upon the science fiction scene with his Hugo-nominated "Winterberry" in Resnick's first alternate history anthology (Alternate Presidents) turns in "Mission 51-L," in which a science fiction author rather than a teacher is chosen to go into space. It has a realistic feel as a possible history, in addition to examining several famous (and infamous) science fiction authors.
Anthony R. Lewis's "Plus Ultra" has Hugo Gernsback heading up the League of Nations rather than Amazing Stories (a fairly low probability event, given Gernsback's background) with results more colored by wishful thinking than likelihood. Still, this at least tries to stay in a serious path rather than straying into the cutesy byways that some of the stories head down.
Barry N. Malzberg can always be relied on to produce a good story, and his "Science of the Mind" delivers, with Theodore Sturgeon attempting to invent a religion. (Well, at least he had the name for it.) And eluki bes shahar's "My Object All Sublime" makes some interesting observations on media fandom and book publishing and marketing.
The rest of the stories vary in quality from passable to real groaners. Some seem to have been created by saying, "Let's take author A and move him arbitrarily to situation B." Some seem to throw in gratuitous comments about science fiction authors who have nothing to do with the story.
Let's face it, either you were interested in this book as soon as you heard about it, or you're still not interested. It's quirky and focused enough that the function of a review is more to announce this than to review it.
If you are interested in this, the best way to get it is by ordering directly from Wildside Press, 522 Park Avenue, Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922. Add US$3 for postage in the United States, and 6% sales tax if you live in New Jersey.
Resnick previously edited Inside the Funhouse, a reprint anthology of "SF stories about SF." Not all of those were alternate history, but a few were and are worth mentioning here: Patricia Nurse's "One Rejection Too Many," Frederik Pohl's "The Reunion at the Mile-High," Allen Steele's "Hapgood's Hoax," and Barry N. Malzberg's "Corridors."
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ALTERNATE TYRANTS edited by Mike Resnick (Tor, ISBN 0-812-54835-3, 1997, 337pp, mass market paperback):
I'm a big fan of alternate history, but even I have my limits, and I think I've reached them. In fact, I have problems with this book on two levels, both its contents and its format. Since in general people care more about the content, I'll start there.
The first two Resnick alternate history anthologies (Alternate Presidents and Alternate Kennedys) were quite good and their stories garnered several award nominations. The third book (Alternate Warriors) was passable but definitely a step down. And Alternate Tyrants is still more disappointing. Of the twenty stories, only the Maureen McHugh ("The Lincoln Train") is noteworthy. It was, in fact, a Hugo nominee. I found the rest surprisingly unengaging, even the Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg, who can usually be relied upon. But stories of rock stars as President (shades of "Ike at the Mike"?), gangsters as President, Einstein as the leader of Israel, and so on, while they sound promising, decline rapidly into cliche and predictability. Example: "Jubilee" by Jack C. Haldeman II and Barbara Delaplace is set in a 957 C.E. in which the turning point was the failed assassination of Julius Caesar. The characters speculate about what might have happened had the assassination succeeded. Okay, it is the millenial celebration, but why have a millenial celebration of a failed assassination anyway? And why have a spaceship called a spatiumnavis, when other vehicles are called freighters and vans?
Realizing that it is a capital mistake to theorize without data, I suspect the method of constructing this anthology may be partially to blame. It appears (from the introductory notes) that in many cases writers were given scenarios (or at least premises) to develop into stories. It is of course possible to write to spec (television writers do it all the time), but I can't help but feel that it is not the way to get the most creative results from fiction writers. And the fact that the stories are all copyrighted 1996 even though the anthology didn't appear until April of 1997 makes me wonder if perhaps it was decided to give the authors a chance to sell the first publication rights elsewhere first. This is okay, but the reference to "new stories" leads one to think this is an original anthology, while the copyright dates indicate perhaps not.
As for the format, this book has the worst of both the trade paperback and the mass market paperback formats. (It is, technically, a mass market paperback.) It has the higher price and larger, more-difficult-to-store size of a traditional trade paperback, but the cheap paper and environmentally unsound strippability of a mass market paperback. When I spend $12 for a book, I don't want it to feel like paper toweling.
In summary, much as I wanted to like this book, I cannot recommend it.
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ALTERNATE WORLDCONS and AGAIN, ALTERNATE WORLDCONS edited by Mike Resnick (WC Books, no ISBN, 1996, 262pp, trade paperback):
This omnibus book contains both Alternate Worldcons (with seventeen stories) and Again, Alternate Worldcons (with eleven stories). Alternate Worldcons was conceived at ConFrancisco in 1993 and appeared at ConAdian in 1994; Again, Alternate Worldcons is new this year. (A third volume is a possibility. Quel surprise.)
As a fan of alternate histories and an attendee of Worldcons (so far, twenty-one of them), this would seem to be right up my alley. But these are not, on the whole, serious alternate histories. They are very "fannish," often dealing with people or events not known to most readers. Strangely enough, Mike Resnick is a character in many of these. There are a few that stand out, though. "ApocalypseCon" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a poem rather than a story and could hold its own in a "regular" anthology. While it's true that its subject matter is a bit specialized, I hope it does make a more visible appearance somewhere. The other notable serious work is "Letters in the Wall" by Barry N. Malzberg and Batya Swift Yasgur. (Malzberg appears frequently in alternate history anthologies, and usually blows away the rest of the stories. For some reason I don't see him in magazines as much, but for the life of me can't figure out why.) The third story of note is "The Man Who Corflued Mohammed" by Mike Glyer, a well-done fannish homage to Alfred Bester's "Man Who Murdered Mohammed."
But most of the stories require some knowledge of fannish personalities, Worldcon business meeting minutiae, and so on. Of course, the book will probably be found only at conventions or in very specialized stores, so it is targeted at its audience. If you have all the prerequisites, you may find this volume of interest. If so, and you can't find it locally, you can order it from Old Earth Books, P. O. Box 19951, Baltimore MD 21211-0951, or Blue Moon Books, Ltd., 360 West First Avenue, Eugene OR 97401, http://www.teleport.com/~hypatia, hypatia@teleport.com or BlueMoonBk@aol.com.
To order Alternate Worldcons and Again, Alternate Worldcons from amazon.com, click here.
"Distant Replay" by Mike Resnick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/27/2008]
Judith Berman has bemoaned the change in science fiction from a focus on the future to a focus on the present, or even the past. "Distant Replay" by Mike Resnick (ASIMOV'S Apr/May) is an example of this, as indeed are many of Resnick's recent stories. In "Replay" an old man meets a young woman who looks, acts, thinks, and even smells like his late wife--but as she was decades earlier. This sort of sentimental story appears to be popular with the Hugo voters--both Resnick and Connie Willis have a long string of nominations and wins for this sort of thing--but I think I prefer my science fiction more, well, science fictional.
"Down Memory Lane" by Mike Resnick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/19/2006]
"Down Memory Lane" by Mike Resnick (ASIMOV'S Apr/May 2005) covers much the same territory Resnick has dealt with before in stories: aging, loss of memory, and so on--all the things that led Judith Berman to bemoan what she perceived as a transition away from the sense-of-wonder science fiction, or even just from the futuristic science fiction of years past. (I suppose there is an irony in being nostalgic for the science fiction that was written before nostalgic science fiction arrived!) At any rate, while this is a story that means well, I just cannot get enthused about it, and the ending, I think, is *awfully* similar to that of another very well-known science fiction work. Homage? I suppose so, but it just makes the story seem that less original.
"A Princess of Earth" by Mike Resnick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/2005]
"A Princess of Earth" by Mike Resnick ("Asimov's" 12/04) is a tribute to reading, or at least to one of the classic characters of science fiction. This has an even thinner premise than the other stories about reading this year.
"Robots Don't Cry by Mike Resnick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/09/2004]
I agree with others that "Robots Don't Cry" by Mike Resnick verges on the overly sentimental, but Resnick manages to carry it off.
"Travels wth My Cats" by Mike Resnick:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/2005]
"Travels with My Cats" by Mike Resnick ("Asimov's" 02/04) has its main character reading a travel book about exotic places as a young boy, falling in love with it, and being later visited by the author's ghost. Again, this is an okay story that was probably nominated more for its paean to the power of writing and the promise of the future than for being a really high-quality story. Is it just me, or are a lot of these starting to seem formulaic and predictable?
CLASSICS REVISITED
by Kenneth Rexroth:
MORE CLASSICS REVISITED
by Kenneth Rexroth:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/14/2007]
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Michael Ondaajte's LOST CLASSICS made sound very appealing CLASSICS REVISITED by Kenneth Rexroth (ISBN-13 978-0-8112-0988-5, ISBN-10 0-8112-0988-1) and MORE CLASSICS REVISITED by Kenneth Rexroth (ISBN-13 978-0-8112-1083-6, ISBN-10 0-8112-1083-9). And surprisingly for lost classics, they were in my local library. Apparently they are collections of essays about classics written by Rexroth for the SATURDAY REVIEW and other magazines, and so are not intended to form a "Lifetime Reading Plan" or any other consistent whole. Some are interesting, some are not. Some recommend which translation to read, some do not. (For some, one gets the impression that there is only one translation to choose from--or perhaps none. Where does find translations of Tu Fu these days? [Mark suggested Chinese restaurant menus, but I pointed out that was "tofu", not "tu fu".])
To order Classics Revisited from amazon.com, click here.
To order More Classics Revisited from amazon.com, click here.
DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS by Alastair Reynolds:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/25/2005]
The first story in DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS by Alastair Reynolds (ISBN 0-441-01238-8) was recommended to us as having a mathematical content. "Diamond Dogs" is a novella in which a team of explorers tries to conquer/solve the Blood Spire, a structure in which one must solve a mathematical puzzle to go from one room to the next. (A wrong guess results in punishment.) As one progresses, the puzzles become harder, the time limits shorter, the doors smaller, and the punishments more severe. The premise seems to be taken from the movie CUBE, the math (after the first couple of puzzles) is purposely vague (because it is supposed to be comprehensible only if one has special conditioning), and there seem to be any number of rabbits pulled out of hats to solve problems. I know Alastair Reynolds is popular, but from this novella I do not understand why.
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WAGNER, THE WEHR-WOLF by G. W. M. Reynolds (Dover, 1975 (originally published 1846), ISBN 0-486-220005-2):
[From MT VOID, 1988]
Like VARNEY THE VAMPIRE (which I reviewed last year [1987]), this is not your normal horror novel. It's old (almost 150 years) and it's deceptively long (though it's only 150 pages, they are 8-1/2" by 11" with very small print, or about 120,000 words). Unlike VARNEY THE VAMPIRE, however, people are sure who wrote it. E. F. Bleiler, in his introduction, describes Reynolds as being involved in one "cause" after another, including the temperance movement, the early women's liberation movement, and various political causes. Much of his philosophy comes through in this novel, particularly his campaign against the anti-Semitism of his time.
WAGNER, THE WEHR-WOLF is much more readable than VARNEY THE VAMPIRE. It doesn't have the padding that VARNEY has. There are two reasons for this. The first is that it is shorter and hence less in need of padding. The second is that Reynolds apparently used every plot thread that occurred to him while he was writing the novel (which, like so many of that time, appeared as a series of installments in magazines). So a plot includes helpless maidens being thrown into brutal convents, shipwrecks on desert islands, the Faust legend, the Rosicrucians, the imperial Turkish court, the Inquisition, and a lot lot more I can't remember. You see, Wagner falls in love with Nisida, the deaf-mute daughter of the Count of Riverola, who dies leaving his estate to his son Francisco, whom he hates, unless Nisida recovers before her thirty-sixth birthday. Francisco loves Flora, Nisida's maid, who was orphaned early in life, as was her brother Alessandro, who got a position in the foreign service and was sent to Turkey, where he became an apostate and rose to become the Grand Vizier. Meanwhile, Nisida has Flora thrown into the Carmelite convent to keep her away from Francisco, and there Flora meets the Countess of Arestino, who had pawned her husband's jewels with the Jewish pawnbroker Issachar ben Solomon to get money for her lover, Manuel d'Orsini, to pay his gambling debts. But The Count of Arestino discovered this and had her thrown into the convent, while Manuel and the bandit Stephano go to Issachar's house, where they fight a duel, so that when the police come they find blood on Issachar's floor and accuse him of sacrificing Christian children children and hand him over to the Inquisition. Meanwhile, Wagner has been thrown into prison and is about to be executed and Nisida has been captured by Stephano, who was carrying her off when their ship was ship-wrecked on a desert island. Just before the execution, Wagner turns into a wolf, scares everyone, and escapes. Then he hears that Nisida has been carried off and then ship-wrecked, so he goes searching for her, runs into a storm, and gets ship-wrecked on--you guessed it--the same island. Of course, this is because the Devil has diverted his ship so that he could tempt him as he did Faust (from whom Wagner got his lycanthropy), but Wagner resists so an angel appears who sends him to the Rosicrucians. You got that? Anyway, Nisida is rescued by the Grand Vizier, who is really Alessandro, and returns to Florence, as does Wagner in a boat conveniently abandoned by the Turks. Meanwhile, at least three of the main characters are in the hands of the Inquisition, Nisida is still plotting against Flora, the Turkish army is at the gates of the city, and things are generally heating up.
Never let it be said that the plot lags. The writing is florid, but not overly so. Many, but not all, of characters are one-dimensional--but then with this many characters, that's hard to avoid. Those who prefer clean-cut "Campbellian" prose will not find this their cup of tea, but for students of the Gothic horror novel, it's a must-read.
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THE ORIENTAL CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Theodore Riccardi:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/21/2005]
Of the Sherlockian Canon, all are told by Watson except for three stories. "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" and "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" are told with Holmes as the first- person narrator, and "His Last Bow" is told by an anonymous third-person narrator. All three seem awkward because of this; the reader desperately wishes for the "comfort" of the Watsonian narration. Theodore Riccardi's THE ORIENTAL CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (ISBN 1-4000-6065-6) is a collection of stories set during the Great Hiatus (the three-year period when Holmes was presumed dead, but was actually traveling in the East). So Watson was not present during any of these cases. But Riccardi mostly avoids the problem of Holmes recounting the story as a first-person narrative by having Watson write most of the stories after Holmes tells it to him. It sounds clumsy when one describes it that way, but it is not in execution. The book is weakest when he falls back on first-person Holmesian narrative. There are also more coincidences than I'm entirely comfortable with, and given how many people seem to know that Holmes is still alive, it's amazing that word did not get back to Watson.
To order The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes from amazon.com, click here.
UNTANGLING MY CHOPSTICKS by Victoria Abbott Riccardi:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/10/2004]
Victoria Abbott Riccardi's UNTANGLING MY CHOPSTICKS (ISBN 0-7679- 0852-X) is the story of the author's year in Japan learning "tea kaiseki", a very specialized cuisine style served as part of the tea ceremony. Riccardi explains the history and meaning of the tea ceremony, the various foods, the utensils and methods, and just about everything else connected with the tea ceremony, as well as a fair swath of Japanese culture as well. Recipes are included. My only complaint is that it may go into more depth about tea kaiseki than you really want to know.
To order Untangling My Chopsticks from amazon.com, click here.
CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT by Anne Rice:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/05/2008]
The original discussion group read CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT by Anne Rice (ISBN-13 978-0-345-492739, ISBN-10 0-345-49273-0), and that also seemed to have a logic problem. It is the story of Jesus, told from his point of view. This volume covers his childhood, and is written as though by a boy of ten (or so). However, as someone pointed out, it was obviously written much later, when he was older, so it should not have the "voice" of a ten-year-old. But my complaint is deeper. The premise of the book is that the tenets of Christianity are correct. This means, as I understand that Jesus is basically God. And God is omniscient. So why doesn't the young Jesus *know* he is the Messiah, and what is in store for him? (I'm sure that the answer that Jesus started as fully and solely human and became divine only later is some sort of heresy--possibly adoptionism.)
(In one of the more interesting typos I've seen, this meeting was listed on the library's web page schedule as discussing CHRIS THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT.)
To order Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt from amazon.com, click here.
THE END OF THE ALPHABET by C. S. Richardson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/20/2008]
THE END OF THE ALPHABET by C. S. Richardson (ISBN-13 978-0-385-52255-7, ISBN-10 0-385-52255-X) was recommended to me somewhere. The premise is that Ambrose Zephyr has been told that he has a month to live, and hence decides that he and his wife Zappora Ashkenazi should travel to cities he has always wanted to visit, working his way through the alphabet, one city per letter. Unfortunately, not much comes of this other than that which would have happened with the alphabetical conceit. There is the occasional bon mot (e.g., "He was cinematically familiar with a few biblical stories."). This is also another example of a book that has done away with quotation marks as perhaps being an unnecessary expense of ink.
To order The End of the Alphabet from amazon.com, click here.
CLARA'S GRAND TOUR by Glynis Ridley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/21/2005]
CLARA'S GRAND TOUR by Glynis Ridley (ISBN 0-87113-883-2) is about Clara's travels through Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. Travel then was hard in general, but for Clara it was even harder. Clara, you see, was a three-ton rhinoceros. Brought from India by Douwemount Van der Meer, Clara became a media celebrity, the first live rhinoceros exhibited in Europe since Roman times. The discussion of the logistics of moving this creature is likely to appeal to engineers, and the effect that the existence of this fabled creature (believed by some to be the "behemoth" of the Bible) had on the populace. My major complaint about the book would be that Ridley describes a lot of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other works portraying Clara, yet includes only seven in the small section of illustrations. And Ridley repeats the claim that CLARISSA is the longest novel in the English language. At a million words, it was the longest for centuries (although I know VARNEY THE VAMPIRE, at about 900,000 words, is close, and there may well be other "penny dreadful" novels that are longer) but I would claim that Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Fire" is a single, serialized book that is considerably longer. (Ridley mentions CLARISSA because the fourth edition was revised to include a reference to the rhinoceros, which is almost definitely a reaction to Clara's tour.)
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ENGLISH GOTHIC: A CENTURY OF HORROR CINEMA by Jonathan Rigby (Reynolds & Hearn, 2000, 272pp, L17.95)
NIGHTWALKERS: GOTHIC HORROR MOVIES: THE MODERN ERA by Bruce Lanier Wright (Taylor, 1995, 171pp, $17.95)
BRIGHT DARKNESS: THE LOST ART OF THE SUPERNATURAL FILM by Jeremy Dyson (Cassell, 1997, 282pp, price unknown):
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/06/2003]
Last year I read Jonathan Rigby's ENGLISH GOTHIC: A CENTURY OF HORROR CINEMA (Reynolds & Hearn, 2000, 272pp, L17.95). Then a couple of weeks ago, I read NIGHTWALKERS: GOTHIC HORROR MOVIES: THE MODERN ERA by Bruce Lanier Wright (Taylor, 1995, 171pp, $17.95). And when Mark saw me enjoying that, he said I should also read Jeremy Dyson's BRIGHT DARKNESS: THE LOST ART OF THE SUPERNATURAL FILM (Cassell, 1997, 282pp, price unknown).
The first point worth noting is that only one of these are British, which is surprising when one considers that when one talks about "Gothic horror films" or "supernatural horror films," often the studio name that first comes to mind is Hammer Films. Ironically, Dyson doesn't cover the Hammer era at all, but instead concentrates on the Universal/RKO era of the 1930s and 1940s. Wright, on the other hand, focuses on the Hammer period from 1957 to 1976 but covers American and Continental horror films as well as British, while Rigby takes an approach orthogonal to both and covers a century's worth of films, all English.
All three have one thing in common--they concentrate on the "horror film" rather than the "terror film." Their goal is not to write about slasher films, or stalker films, or psycho films, but about "supernatural" horror--horror that is based on something beyond the world we know. (Wright makes the distinction at the end between Gothic and Grand Guignol styles, saying the latter emphasizes our physical existence in this world, while the former postulates a structure of good and evil in which we move.)
On to specifics. Rigby's ENGLISH GOTHIC is a very thorough coverage of its topics, with particular value for the pre-Hammer era which tends to be ignored or skimmed over in works of this kind. Rigby does not cover every film in detail, but at least references and puts in context the films for which he doesn't give detailed plot synopses and analyses.
Wright's NIGHTWALKERS is much less thorough, even for the period it covers, though he spends a bit more time on the films he does cover in depth. And Dyson covers even fewer films, but each again in yet more depth, with entire chapters devoted to "King Kong" and "Cat People", for example.
The real problem with all of these, of course, is that after you have finished reading about a film, you'll want to pull out the DVD (or videotape) and watch it again. After reading about what Wright called "the Cornish horrors" ("The Reptile" and "Plague of the Zombies"), for example, I suggested to Mark that this would make a good Sunday afternoon double feature. Luckily, he agreed, and since it just happened to be Sunday afternoon, that was one problem solved. :-)
All three books are somewhat difficult to find in stores, though on-line booksellers have made it relatively easy on-line. If you are going to get only one of the three, ENGLISH GOTHIC is probably the best choice. BRIGHT DARKNESS is the most academic, with NIGHTWALKERS being the most "pop culture" of the three, though hardly a fluff coffee table book.
To order English Gothic from amazon.com, click here.
To order Nightwalkers from amazon.com, click here.
To order Bright Darkness from amazon.com, click here.