Electronic OtherRealms #20 Spring, 1988 Part 4 Scattered Gold Reviews by Charles de Lint Copyright 1988 by Charles de Lint Reviewed in this Issue The Secret Ascension [***+] by Michael Bishop Tor, November, 1987, 341pp, $16.95 0-312-93031-3 Fairie Tale [***+] by Raymond E. Feist Doubleday, February, 1988, 415pp, $17.95 0-385-23623-9 Memory [*****] by Margaret Mahy J.M. Dent & Sons, 1987, 234pp, $7.95 0-460-06269-7 Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences [*****] by Ursula K. Le Guin Capra Press, 1987, 196pp, $15.95 0-88496-270-9 The Tommyknockers [****] by Stephen King Putnam, November, 1987, 558pp, $29.95 0-339-13314-3 Soulstring [****] by Midori Snyder Ace, November 1987, 182pp, $2.95 0-441-77591-8 Marlborough Street [****] by Richard Bowker Doubleday, 1987, $12.95 0-385-19753-5 Mercedes Nights [****] by Michael D. Weaver St. Martin's Press, December, 1987; 240pp; $16.95 0-312-01066-4 The Scream [***+] by John Skipp & Craig Spector Bantam/Spectra, February, 1988, 416pp, $3.95 0-553-26798-1 Tea with the Black Dragon [*****] by R.A. MacAvoy Hypatia Press, 1987, 210pp 0-940841-037 Lightning [*****] by Dean R. Koontz G.P. Putnam, January 1988, 352pp, $18.95 0-399-13319-4 A Truce With Time [****] by Parke Godwin Bantam/Spectra, February, 1988, 310pp, $16.95 0-553-05201-2 A quick glance at the ratings in this column will call up a preponderance of four and five star generals marching along, each to their own rhythm, through the following pages. Before you ask -- no, I haven't gone mad with my asterisk key. There've just been a lot of very good books crossing my desk in the past couple of months. And since, as I mentioned when we first met, I prefer to talk about the good books, I'm concentrating on the Good Stuff I read recently, rather than the material I'd rather just as soon not have cracked open in the first place. Alright. The books are formed up for full-dress parade, ready for your inspection, so let's get straight to them. The Secret Ascension I'm not sure if a familiarity with Philip K. Dick's canon is necessary to appreciate this novel -- I have to admit that Dick is on of the classic SF writers that I still have to read -- but its apparent from reading The Secret Ascension that a familiarity will certainly add a deeper resonance to what's a fine novel all on its own. Subtitled Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas, Bishop's newest novel is set in a dystopian alternate America where the Vietnam war was won, Nixon has held office for sixteen years, and a writer named Philip K. Dick -- known for his startling and original mainstream novels, but not for his Sf -- has been blacklisted by the government for writing anti-government works that are only available in samizdat circulation (much like the works of certain Russian authors in our world). Dick has died at the opening of the novel and become an avatar of sorts -- a catalyst that sets into motion a series of events that will hopefully bring this alternate world back into a more positive timeline -- such as our own. Bishop's prose has never been better. His characters are fully realized and his alternate history stands not only as a fascinating speculation, but also illuminates our own. So don't worry if you're familiar with dick's work or not. bishop's novel stands on its own, though I don't doubt that if you are unfamiliar with Dick's work, it will pique your interest, as it has mine, to go out and read something by the man. Fairie Tale After a number of very successful forays into high fantasy, including one in the company of collaborator Janny Wurts, Raymond Feist is staking out some new territory with his latest novel Fairie Tale. The packaging tells us that this territory is Stephen King country -- by which I mean horror that's sold as mainstream -- even though King's name is noticeably absent from the blurbs. Barker, Streiber and Straub have been called in to take his place as a comparison. But the packaging, while it doesn't lie, isn't quite right. This is in fact a contemporary fantasy, or more properly a mainstream novel with vague fantasy traces that grow more pronounced the further we get into the book. How does it fare? Quite well, although it does have a few problems. Successful screenwriter Phil Hastings moves with his family from California to their new rural home in upstate New York where Hastings plans to get back into writing novels. They meet Hasting's old friend, Abigail Cook, and make new friends. but unknown to them all, the forest behind the house is inhabited by Fairie and an ancient mystery cult, which humans caught in the crossfire. Feist's prose has never been better and he's done a wonderful job of bringing in all sorts of Faerie lore to the storyline. The problems that the book has aren't enough to spoil it by any means. But they are present. The first is that all the human characters are simply too nice. They're kind and considerate, brave, rich, and good-natured and not one of them has a single flaw. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this -- but it does become a little tiresome. Some conflict between the characters -- and we spend most of our time with these paradigms -- would have lent some well-needed tension, especially to the first two thirds of the book. Because that's the other problem. Until about two thirds of the way through, the only tensions delivered are some reasoning tidbits dealing with the Faerie that are thrown in here and there, almost at random. Other than that, we know what's going to happen. The rich daughter is going to get together with the poor student; of course the researchers are going to become good friends with the family; the twin boys will fit right in with the other kids in the area, etc., etc. it's not until there is only a third of the book left that the conflict really rises above the tantalizing hints of Faerie menace. Be that as it may, Faerie Tale is still an entertaining book, due mostly to Feist's control of the language. the prose is so deftly laid out and rolls ahead so smoothly that it's very easy to read on and if everything does tie up neatly with only one casualty among the cast, well, this is a fairy tale, isn't it? I hope this book does well for Feist because I'd like to see him try something else in a similar mode -- only with a more varied cast. A little bit of treachery and betrayal wouldn't hurt -- just to keep us on our toes. he's proven himself capable of this with his high fantasy books and I'd like to see him translate that to a contemporary fantasy. Memory I get on a big of a crusade at times when it comes to some books that are marketed as YA, but completely ignored by the greater part of the SF/F reading public. I can remember when this applied to Patricia McKillip, Jane Yolen and Diana Wynne Jones. And it still applies to New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy, though I was happy to see her last book The Tricksters (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1986) make the final ballot for the World Fantasy Awards. It should have won. Mahy's writing has everything one could hope for: complex plots, rich characterizations, and a way with words that makes each individual paragraph worth reading on its own, as well as in the context of the story. There's a different flavour about her writing which might, perhaps, be due to the New Zealand setting of most of her books, but I'll wager it's more because of her skill as a writer. And while, yes, her protagonists are young, their situations are timeless. We were all young. We all went through the difficulties of adolescence. And such subject matter is just as relevant as any other -- so long as it's in the hands of a skilled author. Her earlier novels (as opposed to her picture books aimed at very young children, which have their own charm) usually have a fantasy or SF flavour. Besides the above-mentioned The Tricksters, my other two personal favorites that I can whole-heartedly recommend are The Haunting (J.M. Dent, 1982) and The Changeover (Atheneum, 1984), each of which won the Carnegie Medal in their respective years of publication. Her new novel Memory is less overtly fantasy-oriented; in fact, its fantastical elements are not so much overt as to be found in between the lines. Nineteen-year-old Jonny Dart is haunted by his past, especially the death of his sister. On the fifth anniversary of her death, he sets out to find his sister's best friend, Bonny Benedicta, who was a fortune teller as a young girl. Instead he meets up with Sophie West, an old woman living by herself in a house with a giant sculpture of a tap attached to the wall of her house. If Jonny has too much memory, Sophie, suffering from Alzheimer's, has too little. How a street punk and a senile old lady get along might not seem like the basis for a very exciting novel, but let me assure you, Memory is a riveting book. The storyline moves strongly, while Mahy's descriptive passages, her insights into the humans psyche, and the book's underlying resonances make the trip through its pages extremely rewarding. Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences This is a rare treat from Le Guin -- especially following the fascinating and experimental, but ultimately unsuccessful novel Always Coming Home (Harper & Row). Again it's a collection of bits and pieces; this time the unifying whole of the short stories and verse collection together is a common theme of communication between mankind and others -- animals, plants, stones, aliens. The centerpiece of the collection is the new novelette "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" (just reading that title brings the melody of that song to mind), an outstanding contemporary exploration of native American totem animals. It's about a young girl, a child really, who survives a plan crash in the desert and finds herself in a kind of Dreamtime where she meets, first Coyote, then a whole village of totem animals. The prose is sharp and clean the characters wonderful, and the story itself, with all of its asides and SF speculations mixed in with Native lore, is a real treat. Other material includes stories from the perspective of an oak tree ("The Direction of the Road") to those of ants and penguins ("The Author of the Acacia Seeds"); from a laurel tree ("The Crown of Laurel") to an alien tapped in a scientist's laboratory ("Mazes"). But no matter what the individual subject matter, the theme running through each offering, including the author's introductions to each piece and her forward, all deal with communication. In that sense, Buffalo Gals becomes a must read. For that's what the expression of creativity is all about. communication. And what Le Guin has given us here are compass directions to help us broaden not only out understanding of the world around us, but of those others that we share it with as well. Strangers and aliens. She's given us the blueprints to open lines of communication not only between men and women (and too wide a gap lies there too often), but between human and non-human -- a valid need if we're all to survive the coming years. And if talking animals seem too juvenile for you -- think of them as archetypes. It won't change the voices, but if it helps you to hear them, then it won't matter what label you put on them. The Tommyknockers The is it; after five novels released rapid-fire in the past fourteen months, The Tommyknockers will be the last of Stephen King's original fiction to hit the stands for the next five years. If, of course, King holds to his promised retirement. Considering how prolific he has been, and his own avowed "need to write," he could very easily change his mind. The Tommyknockers is the first novel-length Science Fiction to come out under King's own name, but it's not the SF of Gregory Benford and other Hard SF writers. It owes its inspiration instead to the B "Sci-Fi" movies that King takes such delight in. He describes it himself as "a gadget novel -- it's about our obsession with gadgets. That's what our nuclear weapons, our Sidewinder missiles, all of those tools of destruction are -- just gadgets. Our technology has outraced our morality. And I don't think it's possible to stick the devil back in the box." He goes on to add, "Every day, when I wake up and turn on the news, I wait for someone to say that Paris was obliterated last night...by a gadget. it's only the grace of god that has kept it from happening so far." That sense of moral outrage comes through in The Tommyknockers, hard and clear. As in Misery, the two main characters here are writers -- Bobbi Anderson produces western novels, her old friend Jim Gardner is a poet. But this time the characters' occupations aren't intrinsic to the novel. we're not exploring the craft of writing; we're watching the impact of an alien artifact upon the sensibilities of a wide spectrum of human beings. It beings innocently enough with Anderson stumbling over a piece of metal in the woods behind her house in the fictional township of Haven, Maine. Subsequent unearthing proves that it's just the tip of a much larger object, buried for millennia in the Main woods. Anderson becomes obsessed with its excavations, first drawing her friend Gardner in to help, then the rest of the township. Gardner is an alcoholic and upon the brink of suicide when he goes to help Anderson. Because of a metal plate in his skull, he remains unaffected by the madness that soon takes over all the other residents of Haven. First the artifact exudes an influence that awakens a burst of creativity in the townspeople and they find themselves capable of putting together all kinds of gadgets. Hot-water heaters are run on flashlight batteries; portable radios become teleportation devices. But then the artifact begins to pervert people. They become telepathic, eventually sharing a group mind, and physically change. The more alien they become, the more Gardner realizes that they present a danger not only to himself, but to the world as a whole. Unfortunately, he's alone, against five hundred of what he calls "the tommyknockers," naming the aliens after the old nursery rhyme. If you can run with the basically silly "Sci-Fi" premise, The Tommyknockers is a lot of fun. Faithful King readers will also enjoy the usual references to other of his books -- including the nearby town of Derry (from It) through mentions of John Smith (from The Dead Zone) and the C.I.A. "shop" (from Firestarter). King's books themselves are described as one character speaks of Anderson's westerns being good reading, not "full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the ones that fellow who lived up in Bangor wrote." Also present is a very strong sense of rural and small town Maine -- one of King's strengths, though the fact that he's such an excellent regionalist writer often gets lost behind talk of how he's just a horror writer, or how much his latest book sold for. The characterization, always King's forte, is as excellent as ever and it's because of that and the sheer verve of his writing style, that the five year drought coming up is going to be hard to take by his admirers. But in the meantime we have The Tommyknockers and there are always the old books to reread. And King will be back, because just as the butler Stevens in his novella "The Breathing Method" (Different Seasons), King lives by the words "Here, sir, there are always more tales." Soulstring Because of the vast body of work that's been built up in the high fantasy genre over the past decade and a half, it's difficult for writers to come up with something fresh. Some, like Stephen Donaldson, overcome this by bringing characters with modern sensibilities from our world to a magical one. Others, like Judith Tarr, get by on the sheer verve of their storytelling and characterization, so that while the story itself might not be entirely new, the telling of it is. Midori Snyder can be added to the latter company with her first novel. In Soulstring, Magda de'Stain Moravia has inherited the family magical strengths to the great disappointment of her father. Because she's not male, she can't rule, but her father has hopes of at least marrying her off, thereby making an alliance with some powerful lord and salvaging something out of his disappointment. Naturally Magda has different ideas about her future and the book tells the story of her struggle to free herself from her father's influence and make a new life for herself with the husband she's chosen on her own. Unfortunately, her father's put a most interesting curse on her husband. What makes the old story work is Snyder's fresh approach to the material. It's high fantasy, but it reads like something else again as she combines a lean edge to her passages of lyric prose. The warmth of her characters is effortlessly conveyed to her readers, the traditional mock medieval setting has a grittiness that rings true and, old story or not, she's still added some new twists to the brew. Marlborough Street There's a lot of talk in Marlborough Street about baseball and psychics; the plot's about a young psychic -- mostly ineffectual, but good-hearted -- caught in a life-and-death struggle with another psychic who uses his power towards evil ends; but mostly the book is about awareness and growth. It's refreshing to read a book where the protagonist makes mistakes, but you don't consider him a loser; where you can enjoy following the change and actual growth of his character as the story unfolds; where the interaction between characters reads so well that you feel as though you're eavesdropping on their conversations, rather than reading a book. I enjoyed parts of the novel Bowker followed this with (Dover Beach, Bantam/Spectra, 1987 -- reviewed last time around), but Marlborough Street really engaged me. What strikes me odd, however, is that, in looking back, I can't really find what the difference is between the way Bowker told either story. This one just clicked up for me, right from the opening page, but it's not simply the plot that grabbed me (although there is a much better plot this time). there's something going on between the lines of Marlborough Street that lends it a deeper resonance -- and I'm neither a baseball fan nor overly enamoured with psychics. Mercedes Nights Sometimes in the near future the top vidstar is one Mercedes Night; talented, intelligent and beautiful, everybody wants a piece of her, just as they do the screen goddesses of the present century. Now someone has cloned her. The replicas are prefect and anyone with enough money can own one and do anything they want with her. Naturally, the original Mercedes Night isn't particularly enamoured with what's going on when she finds out about it. to further complicate matters, those behind the clones plan to use them to disrupt the political and economic structure of this future world. The clones are expendable to them -- as it the original Mercedes. And to yet further complicate matters, the clones have such developed personalities that each of them is certain that they're the original. This is Mike Weaver's second novel (written before the Avon fantasy Wolf-Dreams which came out earlier this year, but appearing later). Unlike Wolf-Dreams, which while it was entertaining, still trod some well-travelled ground, Mercedes Nights is a unique blend of believable extrapolation, strong sympathetic characters, a hard boiled plot that never lets up, and enough ideas to fill a dozen standard novels. like Heinlein at his best, or some of the current writers like William Gibson, Weaver doesn't spend a lot of time explaining the background. Future tech is simply presented as there while the story move on, leaving the reader to go back and enjoy all those background ideas on their second time through. A quick look at the plotline and Weaver's style of telling the story might leave you with the idea that this is just another cyberflash rip-off, but this simply isn't so. Mercedes Nights has got the flash, and verve and vigor, too, but it's got substance as well and this time around Weaver's not treading any old ground. Behind the striking cover by comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz is one of this year's most entertaining reads. The Scream It's rock'n'roll horror -- a battle of the bands like you wouldn't believe. On the one side we have The Jake Hamer Band, fronted by Vietnam vet, Jake Hamer himself. Serious musicians, dedicating their craft to entertaining their fans, yes, but also to making a statement to the world at large, that music can be a force for good. Defending themselves and rock music against the political and religious onslaught that is currently trying to bring it down. On the other side we have The Scream, and all they want is your blood. The novel ends with a literal battle of the bands -- and I don't mean who plays the hottest licks. To get there we find out a lot about the music scene, TV evangelists, how Vietnam lives on in some vets, and we meet a cross-section of characters that run from those we wouldn't mind sitting down to have a beer with, to those who'd make us move to another continent -- just so that we wouldn't chance running into them on the street one day. John Skipp and Craig Spector know the music scene and life on the streets -- something that's come through with startling clarity in their previous works. The Light at the End (Bantam/Spectra, 1986) was about a vampire loose in New York's subway system -- standing against it were the employees of a messenger service. Although there are moments of sloppy writing (incredibly sloppy writing) the book had such a powerhouse sense of energy that almost anything could be forgiven. They followed that up with The Cleanup (Bantam/Spectra, 1987) in which an aspiring musician is given godlike powers and uses them to try to clean up New York. In it the authors appeared to simply lose control for while there were the usual sections of just plain bad writing, the energy level of the book wasn't nearly as high as the previous one and the plot was downright silly. How do they fare in the new one? The uneven writing continues -- brilliant passages run side-by-side with material so awkward you wonder how it got past the editor -- but the energy level's back, the straight-ahead assurance of what they're about, and in that sense, the book's a rousing success. Think of it as going to the drive-in for a couple of B-movies and just being blown away by the cinematography -- the pacing, slow pans, quick editing cuts of one of them. It's the surprise of the parts that are so good, squeezed in amongst that B-movie material you went to see, that really startles. The good parts, the energy, are such that you'll catch it again -- or look into the next flick that director's involved in -- and that's exactly the way it is with Skipp and Spector's work. While the craftsmanship isn't always of the level it should be, it still works. Or in other worlds, while The Scream ain't good English, it's still rock'n'roll. Tea with the Black Dragon Tea with the Black Dragon was one of the best fantasy novels to be published in 1983 -- a perfect little book, unmatched by any of MacAvoy's later fine works except for perhaps The Grey Horse (Bantam/Spectra, 1987). It introduced us to the middle-aged Celtic fiddler Martha Macnamara and her friend Mayland Long, a centuries old Chinese dragon in the shape of a man, both of whom later appeared in Twisting the Rope (Bantam/Spectra, 1986). What MacAvoy did with that first novel was weave some new twists into our venerable genre by mingling old dragon magic with new computer magic and topping the whole brew off with a liberal dose of realistic characterization and a snappy plot. And she pulled the whole affair off with aplomb and bravado. Yes, yes, you're saying, but the book's five years old, so why review it now? I thought you'd never ask. You see, it was a paperback original -- a nice enough edition because the original publisher Bantam makes decent paperbacks that don't fall apart in your hands the second time you read them, but it's still just a paperback. A book this good was just crying for a durable hardcover edition and that's just what Allan Newcomer's Hypatia Press has done for us now. The trade edition -- which is all I've seen -- is printed on acid-free paper in a fairly nice design (I think larger margins all around would have added to the visual appeal of the interior pages), with a leather-like finish on the cover and dustjacket -- both of which are very attractive: gold on black. I'm not sure of the price, but I think it ran twenty dollars with a slipcase offered for an extra five dollars. There's an introduction by Anne McCaffrey and an afterward by MacAvoy, signatures by both, and for the price, I don't think you could ask for more. For ordering information, write to Hypatia Press, 86501 Central road, Eugene, OR 97402. Lightning Ever since I discovered Dean Koontz's work a half dozen years or so ago, his books have gone to the top of my "to be read" list as soon as they've been published. The prime reason for this is that they're just so damned good. They're literately written, thrillers that never let up their tension, but more importantly, at least for me, the characters -- and especially the sympathetic ones -- that Koontz creates are so real you feel that any day you could bump into one of them on the street. Each subsequent book's been better than the one before it, but with last year's Watchers, I really didn't think they could get any better. happily, Koontz has proved me wrong again. Lightning is ostensibly a thriller. Laura Shane has an apparently ageless guardian angel who comes out of nowhere at various times in her life to help her in moments of great danger. But what happens when the angel needs help from her? I won't give you more than the above thumbnail sketch of the plot, because Lightning is definitely one of those books in which half the pleasure is discovering just what happens next. Twenty pages into the novel, Koontz has what other authors would make the climax of the book, but he just keeps rollercoasting along, the plot as tightly wound as a coiled spring. The narrative technique he uses in certain sections -- juxtapositioning present actions with flashbacks -- actually maintains the books impetus, rather than slowing it down. But it's Koontz's skill with the language, and his characters, that keep me coming back to his books. In Lightning, it's the friendship between Laura and her childhood friend Thelma Ackerson that gives this novel its true heart. The warmth and humor with which Koontz conveys their relationship would be enough to make a wonderful story all on its own. Have I convinced you to try it yet? Yes, I know. It looks like a novel that takes place in "Stephen King country," but trust me, it's not. That's just the packaging. Under that cover is as warm a group of characters -- caught up in a high speed thriller of a plot, it's true -- as you're likely to find anywhere. In other words, Good Stuff. A Truce With Time This novel is for those readers who loved Parke Godwin's contemporary short fiction such as "Influencing the Hell Out of Time and Theresa Golowitz" and "The Fire When It Comes" (both of which are available in the excellent collection titled after the latter story, published by Doubleday, 1984). For Godwin himself, it might well have been an exorcism of past ghosts, though only those who know him would be able to assign how much truth to that there is. It is a brave novel. It deals not with quests and dragons and unicorns, nor with Faerie running through city streets. Rather it chronicles the lives of some middle-age characters -- old enough to realize the mistakes they've made with their lives, young enough to try to change them. Pat Landry is a writer who's known some success with his craft, but only in a limited way. His relationships with women have all slipped away and he is approaching a crisis point in his life when he meets the artist Lauren Hodge. What follows is a love story -- but not a Harlequin romance. It's a very real and searching study of what it means to be human, to grow old, to fall in love, to spend half a lifetime wanting to make something of oneself, but always having that success lie just out of reach. It's also a novel about ghosts, for as Landry is working through his present problems, he also has to deal with ghostly visits from his late family. Landry learns that to be at peace in one's present, one needs to be at peace with one's past. I said that this was a brave book, and I meant it. Godwin could just as easily have gone on to write yet one more Arthurian novel. One more fantasy. One more SF collaboration with Marvin Kaye. And any of those would have undoubtably been very good. But they would also have been safe. Godwin is a writer who isn't afraid of stretching his talents, nor, would it seem, of exorcising his ghosts in public. And that's something we all benefit from: a writing who isn't afraid to bare his heart on the page. That's it for this time. Next installment we'll look at how effective Orson Scott Card's continuation of his Tales of Alvin Maker series is with the second volume, Red Prophet and who knows what else. Until then, be merry and well. OtherRealms #20 Spring, 1988 Copyright 1988 by Chuq Von Rospach All Rights Reserved One time rights have been acquired from the contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors. OtherRealms may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Chuq Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced in its entirety as long as all copyrights, author and publication information remain intact. No individual article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way without the express permission of the author. OtherRealms is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) by: Chuq Von Rospach 35111-F Newark Blvd. Suite 255 Newark, CA 94560. Usenet: chuq@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ CompuServe: 73317,635 GENie: C.VONROSPAC