Continuing the review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - part 2

So let's see what other wonders this book of "the best" fantasy stories of 2002 has for us.

"A Book by Its Cover" by P.D. Cacek - In Nazi Germany, shortly before the Holocaust begins in earnest, a Jewish bookshop owner finds his store, which the Nazis had raided and burned all his books, can turn people into a copy of their favorite book, from which state they can be recalled. He uses this to help Jews escape the e-e-e-evil Nazis.

I found this story annoying at first, but after a while, it was actually pretty funny. Once you've grasped that the event in question simply did not happen, the propaganda about it can be humorous. In this case, you have to accept that the Germans this boy knew, for no reason at all, became seized by an insane hatred. They are literally cartoonishly evil. The author does not have the main character's former friend, now Nazi, actually twirl his mustache while cackling maniacally, but he may as well have.

The only reason stories like this get by is because they are coasting on a huge swell of emotional manipulation. But if you're free of that, it's quite funny how empty they are.

"Somewhere in My Mind There Is a Painting Box" by Charles de Lint - Holy crap! It's an actual, unambiguous fantasy story...and there's not some wicked political message thinly disguised...and it feels like a fairy tale, with the same kind of dangers of fairy land that stories all the way back to the brothers Grimm might warn of. I'm shocked.

Good story. This is the first good unambiguous fantasy story I've seen here so far, and I'm almost a quarter of the way through the book.

"The Pyramid of Amirah" by James Patrick Kelly - Fantasy? Check. Good? It's interesting and well-written, at least. For a late-twentieth century atheist, this is a pretty good take on religion. So, yeah, it works.

"Our Friend Electricity" by Ron Wolfe - A middle-aged low-level book editor has a whirlwind romance mostly at Coney Island with a pretty twenty-ish young woman. The main character may murder someone with a skee ball. Near the end, he either has a vision of the past or travels back in time briefly for no clearly explained reason.

There are some genuinely poetic passages here, but by the end, it feels self-indulgent, writers writing about writers, for one thing. Also, the "fantasy" element enters late, and is vague and poorly integrated with the rest of the story. This is not a bad story, but it's terrible fantasy.

Again, I grow weary of being sold "It might be fantasy if you squint and look at it from a certain angle." Writers and editors, if you don't want to write fantasy or science fiction, that's fine. You don't have to. Don't write it. But please do not write mundane "literary" fiction, barely dress it up, and try to sell it to me as "fantasy."

I am now about 1/3 of the way through this book and I have found 2 stories, only 2, that are actually good, and actually fantasy. I get the impression Hartwell knows better and I can only attribute this disaster to the co-editor Kathryn Cramer.

Hmmm, Cramer? Oh, every single time.

I will soldier on and complete this review, possibly by the end of this year.

A rolling review of Year's Best Fantasy 3 - Part I

  

In an ongoing effort to be as irrelevant as possible, I'm going to review the anthology I'm currently reading, Year's Best Fantasy 3 edited by David Hartwell...which was published 20 years ago. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm going to do a rolling review of the individual stories as I go.

These stories were first published in 2002. If these were, indeed, the best fantasy stories published that year, then the fantasy genre was almost entirely dead. They weren't, of course. They were just the ones most politically fashionable. It was not nearly as bad then as it is now, but SJW corruption of science fiction and fantasy was already well underway.

I have no doubt that with money and time, I could create an equally long collection (~490 pages) of actually good, actually fantasy stories that would sustain an actual fanbase. Of course, if I understand correctly, Amazon has destroyed the ebook market, but that's a separate question.

So, on to the stories.

First thing I did was browse the table of contents. I saw "Cecil Rhodes in Hell" by Michael Swanwick near the end. It was only a single page. I had an idea what I was in for, and I was curious, so I skipped to that.

This could barely be called a story. It is basically an encyclopedia entry (Wikipedia before that existed, kiddies) with a "white people bad" moral tagged on at the end. I am not kidding. It is garbage and the only reason anyone would publish it is because of a sick, seething hatred of white people.

Also, for anyone who wants to engage with the real world, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) is not doing well at all since they decided to kick out all of their white farmers, confiscate their land, and hand it over to blacks. Good. I hope they starve.

Going for a more standard reading experience, I returned to the beginning of the book for Kage Baker's "Her Father's Eyes." This is a story told from the point of view of a young girl on a train ride in post-World War II America. It is atmospheric and tense, and...debatably fantasy. There is nothing here that is absolutely distinct from our own world. It might be a fantasy story, but it could very well be just...bad people.

I hate these it-might-be-fantasy stories. If you're going to sell it as fantasy, make it fantastic, not, "might be fantasy, might be mental illness or a child's misunderstanding of the world."

It's not a bad story, but is it fantasy? Is it the best fantasy?

Next up "Want's Master" by Patricia Bowne, which is about academic politics and fundraising and growing old slightly dressed up in magical terms. Instead of taking us out of our own world into something exciting and fresh, Patricia opted to make magic boring and petty as office politics and gladhanding to raise money.

"October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman - The months of the year convene to share stories. It's a cool setup. The personifications of the months are interesting. The story October ends up telling is a self-indulgent gamma poor-persecuted-me fantasy...in the worst sense of that word.

"Greaves, This Is Serious" by William Mingin - A send-up of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories. He makes a fair point, but it's fundamentally a mean-spirited shot at a much, much better writer, and, once again, barely qualifies as fantasy.

"Shift" by Nalo Hopkinson - Before I get to the story, I want to quote a bit from the author bio, "She is on the steering committee of the Carl Brandon Society, which promotes the involvement of people of color in speculative fiction." So yeah, you know what to expect.

In fairness, this is actually pretty well-written. It is, however, vile poison. It takes up the story of Shakespeare's Caliban centuries later. Caliban is a black man. When she arrived at the island, Miranda was so taken by this black man that she immediately decided to have sex with him, and then her father caught them and she accused him of rape.

Literally the entire point of the story is that white girls are desperate to get with black men, and somehow, it's white girls' fault that black men abandon those children. And black men are poor, persecuted victims of white people's perceptions who never did nothing wrong.

On behalf of the tens of thousands of white women in the U.S. raped by black men since this story was written, burn in Hell, Nalo. Burn in Hell.

And that's what I've read so far. It's gotten far worse since, but as you can see, our culture has been in deep trouble for some time now. There are also stories by Tanith Lee and Gene Wolfe in here, so there may be other worthwhile ones. I'm going to keep going, but, geez, this is bad.

My (as yet untitled) story chapter 1

 So I've had this story idea in mind for a while. I've not actually done much on it, though. Here's what may end up as the first chapter (depending how chronologically I decide to tell the story.) Let me know what you think. If people are interested, I may start another blog specifically for this story (Book? We'll see).

Without further ado, our story commences:

---

It was just after 2:00 AM when the windows of Leonard Clump’s 27th floor law offices exploded out into the night, showering the streets below with glass and various fragments of desks, office chairs, and legal documents. Even the cleaning staff had gone home by this point, so nobody was harmed. Firefighters arrived at the scene within twenty minutes and police were investigating the next morning.

Len Clump himself was on CNN and MSNBC the next day denouncing the attack as obviously the act of a white supremacist seeking revenge on his persecuted black clients. “From Emmet Till to Rodney King to Treyvon Martin, we’ve faced senseless violence and hatred from the white man, and we’ve fought it with nothing but our own intelligence and determination. We will continue that fight.” It was in the news for two weeks, but then, as there were few new developments, faded away.

The Tallahassee police devoted all the detectives they could spare to the case, knowing that any misstep was likely to bring national attention. They had brief video of a suspect who may have planted the bomb, but weren’t able to identify anyone. The forensics lab was similarly stumped. The bomb, they said, appeared to have been deliberately constructed to destroy almost all of its primary components. Analyzing the explosives residue, they were able to track it to a package which was delivered to a post office box in Idaho over a year ago, and found nothing more.

So the event dropped out of the public eye. Apart from a few blogs and independent commentators, nobody thought much about it . . . until Clump died in an apparent car-jacking.

(3 years earlier)

“. . . and nothing but the truth,” Edmund Dantent finished, then looked around the courtroom. His throat was tight with anticipation of the questions he might have to answer. This week had been circled on his calendar for two months, although he didn’t know when his specific day would come.

Defense counsel Leonard Clump, standing at his podium, turned to look directly at Edmund for a moment before addressing him. His shaven black head gleamed in the courtroom’s bright lights.

Edmund’s eyes wandered to the defendant’s table, but he quickly looked away. He couldn’t look there, couldn’t think about that.

Clump tapped a button and put something on the screen on the far side of the courtroom. Edmund didn’t notice what it was as he was intently watching the lawyer.

Mr. Dantent, is this your Facebook account?”

“Yes, that looks like it.”

“And is this your post from August 17, 2014?”

The prosecuting attorney said, “Objection, your honor, relevance?”

Judge Liebowitz replied, “Overruled. Please answer the question.”

Edmund read the post to himself, then answered yes.

Clump read the post for the courtroom: “I don’t think this was murder. It looks to me like Michael Brown was attacking that cop. What was the cop supposed to do?”

Clump paused a moment before turning to the jury.

“This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the kind of racism and bigotry that my client had to face on a daily basis in this neighborhood.”

“Obje—"

“Overruled. Please continue.”

“And this is the kind of racism and bigotry was coming from this very man before you, creating a toxic environment, damaging to my client’s mental—“

Edmund could no longer contain himself here: “What’s going on? I’m not on trial here! I am the victim!”

At the first word, Judge Leibowitz began banging his gavel. “Order in the court! You are not to speak unless answering questions. Please continue, counsel.”

Edmund sat in shock as the lawyer droned on, barely noticing what was said until the lawyer had to repeat his name several times for the next question.

Reviewing The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

The Great Divorce is . . . *pauses to consider genre classifications* a theological fantasy novel by C.S. Lewis. The narrator finds himself standing in line for a bus in a vast, dreary town. The people he is surrounded by are cruel, arrogant, petty and quarrelsome. When the bus arrives and they embark on their journey, they find themselves in a bright, open field in a land awaiting the sunrise. They also find that this land is profoundly inhospitable to them. Compared to everything else here, they are wraiths so weak and insubstantial that even lifting a single leaf from the ground is beyond their strength. The grass is painful to walk upon because they can't so much as bend down the blades, and the points dig into their feet.

The Ghosts (for so the narrator dubs them) are soon met by bright Spirits, people to whom this land is home. The Spirits attempt to persuade them to stay and promise they will grow stronger and more real if they will. The narrator eventually discovers that this land is Heaven, the dull, empty town is Hell, and the Spirits are messengers sent to attempt the salvation of the damned.

The great majority of the Ghosts eventually choose to return to Hell. In order to stay, they would have to surrender their pride, their control over others, their "rights," or their hunger to feel like aggrieved victims.

Through the conversation the narrator witnesses, Lewis exposes many of the ways we choose to deceive ourselves and deprive ourselves of joy, both in this life and in eternity. He also shows how damnation is not merely a risk for murderers or robbers, but a very real threat to all of us who place ourselves and our will above God's plan for us, and how even petty sins, if not repented of, can finally destroy us.

There are a few pages here and there with what amounts to a mini-sermon or a lecture, but on the whole, the lessons of the story are taught through dialogue and interaction between characters. The whole thing is imagined and described in excellent detail, and there is one part that has, on previous reads, moved me near tears.

In case I have not already made it clear, I highly recommend this book.

Reviewing Titans of Chaos by John C. Wright

I feel a little awkward reviewing Titans of Chaos by John C. Wright. It's the third in a trilogy, and while I have read the other 2, it's been a couple of years. I ran across this one at a used bookstore not long ago, and decided to finish the story. But I'd like to make reviewing books I read a regular habit, so here goes.

The Chronicles of Chaos is the story of five children who grow up in a private boarding school in England. The main character is the ambitious explorer Amelia Windrose. Her friends are the stoic Victor Triumph, the melancholy Quentin Nemo, the rambunctious and hormonal Colin mac Firbolg, and the preening Vanity Fair. They soon discover that they are not ordinary teenagers, but have magical powers.

But their magical powers are not all the same. In fact, at least one of them scoffs at the very idea of magic, even though he can accomplish feats no human can do. They find that four of them have powers that can cooperate with two of the others and simply nullifies the last.

They eventually discover that they are not human at all, but children of the Titans held as hostage for the good behavior of their people. Their captors are the gods of Olympus, who created the world most of us know, which the Titans consider a foul prison.

This book tells about their flight from their captors and their fight to keep their freedom.

The characters

The characters feel real. They feel like real teenagers struggling to figure out their social standing and love lives. (Admittedly, they are also very intelligent and excellently educated teenagers.) They also feel like real gods manipulating vast powers who could wipe out an entire army of humans with little effort.

The Olympians they fight against also feel real people, power-hungry and engaged in very high-stakes political machinations. They, too, are trying to establish leadership after Zeus was assassinated, which kicked off the struggle which resulted in the main characters being taken as hostages. Some of them want to maintain the stand-off, and some want to initiate a theomachy which will likely result in the world we mortals experience being destroyed so they can remake it. Unfortunately for our main characters, killing them would be an expedient way to start that war.

The magic

The principles of the magic in this book are explained in broad outline. Exactly what is possible or not is not explained in detail, but the general nature of each character's powers and how they interact is given. To refer to other authors, it's not explained in the kind of detail of a Brandon Sanderson book, but in better detail than a Harry Potter book. Thus, the use of magic in this book generally feels satisfying, but you don't feel, in retrospect, that you should have predicted it, as you might in a Sanderson book.

The story

As is often the case with John C. Wright books, the story alternates between cataclysmic action scenes with potentially Earth-shattering (not an exaggeration) consequences and extended philosophical and moral discussions.

My evaluation

Overall, I highly enjoyed this book and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in intelligent science-fiction/fantasy. I fear my description of the book may be somewhat inadequate, but I'm trying not to spoil too much from previous stories in the series.

Not reviewing There Is No Antimemetics Division

 

I just finished reading There Is No Antimemetics Division. I will not be posting a review of it yet because I intend to hold a discussion of the book shortly. I will say for now that I highly recommend it, and if you find it interesting, you should listen to our discussion of the book when it is posted to YouTube and Odysee.

Reviewing There Will Be War Vol. II edited by Jerry Pournelle

 

This is the second in Jerry Pournelle's anthology series There Will Be War. Each book is a collection of science fiction stories and poems about war and its effects. These books also contain practical essays about military strategy.

The stories range from present day to decades in the future to centuries in the future. Being an anthology, it is a mixed bag. You're probably not going to like every single story, but if the idea interests you at all, you'll find something to enjoy.

This is the fifth in the series I've read, and I've liked all of them so far. Honestly, though, this is not my favorite. There's a lot of good stuff in here, but it's not the best of the series.

This book was published in 1984 and it's fascinating with hindsight seeing them so concerned about the arms race with the Soviet Union . . . which was very shortly to cease to exist. Also, they didn't notice what now appears obvious to be the downfall of the U.S. as a unified polity within our lifetimes: increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

My personal favorites:

"Manual of Operations" by Jerry Pournelle about a man who finds an abandoned flying saucer that he can only operate while raging drunk

"Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke about why a military's technological superiority brought about it's downfall

And "'Caster" by Eric Vinicoff about how much influence the news media can have on success or failure in war.

On the whole, I highly recommend the series and middling recommend this particular volume.

Reviewing Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander

I recently read Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander. I was looking for a new audiobook and I liked Alexander because of his Prydain books. The audiobook I got was read by Ron Keith.

Time Cat is a children's novel about a boy named Jason and his time-travelling cat Gareth. It is episodic in structure, with the two of them journeying to various times and places throughout history, including ancient Egypt, late republic Rome, 1500s Peru, medieval Germany and others.

Honestly, I didn't enjoy this book much. The biggest problem is something I've seen in several children's shows, less so in books: so that the child protagonists have something to do, all of the adults tend to act like morons. Also, everywhere he went, people either had never encountered cats before or were strangely obsessed with them somehow.

Being a basically episodic children's novel, I expected it to have a kind of lesson with each incident, but either it didn't or the lessons just didn't make much impression.

Also, Ron Keith's reading here was unbearably cutesy. His voice tone was like a sweet chocolate bar dipped in syrup and rolled in brown sugar. It was far too much. I honestly don't think I could accurately reproduce this kind of performance. I suspect you could have Ron Keith read a graphic torture scene in a tone that would have you react with "A-a-aw" (in three syllables of rising tone). 

There are many children's books I've re-read and enjoyed as an adult. A well-written children's book can have a lot of depth. I did not find that here. If you liked this book as a child, sorry if I'm ruining your memories, but I did not like it as an adult.

Reviewing Star Light by Hal Clement

 

Star Light is a 1971 science fiction novel by Hal Clement. The novel is a sequel to his Mission of Gravity. In this book, an interstellar-exploring humanity is conducting a scientific expedition to a world named Dhrawn. This planet has a surface gravity forty times that of Earth, which is inconvenient for humans, but perfectly comfortable for their recent allies, the Mesklinites (encountered in Mission of Gravity). In collaboration with the humans, who have far superior technology, but physiology completely incompatible with Dhrawn, the Mesklinites are exploring the planet's surface. Even they are hampered by an atmosphere which contains oxygen, toxic to them, and must either work in sealed settlements and vehicles or in air-suits for extra-vehicular activity.

The story centers on Dondragmar, captain of one of the land-cruisers exploring Dhrawn. He repeatedly encounters unexpected obstacles in exploring the planet and must, with the help of human observers about 30 light-seconds away, protect his ship and crew from a world that nobody involved fully understands.

The most interesting thing about this novel, to me, is the hard s.f. aspects. Huge parts of the story turn on the chemical and physical interactions of atmospheric water and ammonia and the xenometeorology they create. Also quite important is the sheer physical distance of the humans' space station from the surface, which means even light-speed communication takes 30 seconds to go one way. I'm not aware of much hard s.f. being published these days, and it creates a very different feel to the story.

It does, however, have the usual shortcoming of such fiction: It doesn't have much in the way of character development. Practically, it seems like you could choose interesting, well-developed characters or profound technical competence in your story-telling. There are, however, interesting politics developed, both among the humans of the space station and between them and their Mesklin allies. The Mesklinites are quite happy to help the humans explore the planet, but have distinct goals of their own, some of which they hide from the humans, which, in turn, creates further dangers for them since they don't have high-speed communication of their own.

My verdict: It's a fun read and I like reading hard s.f. like this sometimes for the crisp, clean style of thinking. I wouldn't call it great literature, but not everything has to be. I enjoyed it, and I suspect someday I'll read this and the earlier book back to back. (I read Mission of Gravity several years ago.)