Electronic OtherRealms #20 Spring, 1988 Part 8 Pico Reviews, Part 2 Masterplay William F. Wu [**+] Popular Library, $2.95, 0-445-20504-0 Masterplay, I'm afraid, is evidence that doing one's homework is not enough. The basic idea is simple: some court cases are decided by a computer-mediated wargame between two master gamers. (Wu constantly italicized that phrase, which grated on my nerves a bit.) Unfortunately, I find the concept quite unbelievable. Nor is Wu's justification -- that this is a reasonable thing to do when technology has outstripped statutes and case law, so why not (in effect) flip a coin -- acceptable, either. Worse yet, debate on this point is central to the plot, but there's never any evidence that enough people could like the idea for the system to get started. The wargames are always re-enactments of famous battles in history, ranging from Richard III's defeat at Bosworth Field to the battle of Kadesh about 3000 years ago. The gamers take the part of the opposing generals and try to win the battle. Here is where Wu's homework shows; he clearly knows the battles he presents, and understands enough about tactics and strategy to discuss variations. (Many science fiction authors don't do nearly as well; Gordon Dickson comes to mind.) In passing, Wu subtly reminds us that not all of the great generals and great battles were Western; a number of Asian and African examples are presented as well, though generally not in as much detail. (These subtle reminders about cultural biases are present throughout the book. The two main characters are of Chinese ancestry, for example, though there is little or no use made of their cultural background.) The writing quality is generally acceptable, though there is one oddity. Periodically, we are presented with some minor detail in a totally obtrusive fashion. It is all well and good to be told that the videophone in the gym has a small, recessed screen, for safety reasons; the way we are told, however, totally breaks the flow of the narrative. -- Steve Bellovin Memory Blank by John E. Stith [*] Ace, January 1986 $2.95, 230 pgs. 0-441-52417-6 Cal Donley wakes up covered with blood, not knowing why, not knowing where he is, not knowing who he is. By the end of the book, all these questions -- and more -- are answered, but the reader probably won't care. Stith's prose is so unprepossessing as to be totally forgettable. The setting takes place on an orbital colony, but this has so little to do with the plot that it could as well have taken place in Anytown, USA. Characters, action and dialogue are all equally uninteresting. The exceptions are some of the interchanges between Donley and his talking wrist computer, which at times show traces of a Zelazny-like humor which Stith would do well to try to develop to better effect in his future writing. And finally, Annoying Thing That Publishers Do Case #333: It will be obvious to anyone who actually reads the book that the writer of the back-cover blurb didn't. -- Fred Bals Mercedes Nights by Michael D. Weaver [**] St. Martins Press, 1987, $16.95., 240 pgs., 0-312-01066-4 The dustjacket synopsis of Mercedes Nights relates an intriguing plot; a black market operation has made illegal clones of a popular and beautiful video star, Mercedes Night. The clones are being sold to those who want to indulge their fantasies of doing, well, of doing whatever they want with their Mercedes replicas. If author Michael D. Weaver had stayed focused on that one idea, I think I would have enjoyed Mercedes Nights much more than I did. Unfortunately, Weaver weaves -- if you'll excuse the pun -- a variety of other confusing and convoluted storylines into his main story. On page 80 of a 240-page book, I realized that the black market cloning operation had been barely referred to up to that point. I also realized that I didn't have the slightest idea what was happening anymore, and worse, didn't care. Weaver had blitzed me with so many different storylines, with no connecting thread among them, that I was completely lost. Weaver's writing is sharp and hard-edged, especially when it comes to action and descriptive scenes. But the lack of a solid, straightforward plot makes the book difficult, and some will probably find, impossible, reading. Fans of comic books will enjoy the dust jacket art for Mercedes Nights, drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz. -- Fred Bals Mercedes Night Michael D. Weaver [***] St. Martin's Press 240 pg. $16.95 Except for the ending, this is a very good book. The ending is a deus ex machina ending. The reader has some forewarning about the ending. Still, the ending is a cheat. The story starts with the illegal cloning of video star Mercedes Nights to create sex slaves for the rich and depraved. Mercedes is a strong willed woman and her clones share this trait. Some escape and threaten to expose the cloning operation. Since the cloning operation could not exist without help in high places, the exposure threatens a lot of very powerful people. Weaver has stacked the odds against Nights and her clones so much so that he seems to have been unable to think of a way to end it except through a deus ex machina. The story is told as a series of separate story lines involving disparate people that converge in the end. Weaver uses this technique very well. What seems to be irrelevant characters and story lines all turn out to be relevant in the end. The novel is a mystery as well. The mystery is who backed the cloning operation and why as it quickly becomes clear that selling the clones as sex slaves is really a cover for the real purpose. The mystery is well done. The reader has a good chance to figure out the mystery before it is revealed although it was not all that hard to solve it. The greatest strength of the novel is the personalities of the people. They may be stupid or bright, nasty or nice, but they are all rememberable as distinctive personalities. The future has a distinctive cyberpunk feel but is restrained enough that it also has the feel of a future society that could really occur. This book is definitely worthwhile reading although it is probably more worthwhile to wait for the paperback edition. -- Danny Low Metrophage by Richard Kadrey [*****][*] Ace, February 1988, $2.95, 240 pgs., 0-441-52813-9 The disparity between the ratings above is caused by the fact that Metrophage is something of the quintessence of cyberpunk. If you like cyberpunk, specifically the cyberpunk style of William Gibson, Metrophage is going to blow the top of your head off. But if hardcore high-tech, street- smart losers, and a kinetic, surrealistic storyline leaves you flatlined, then avoid Metrophage at all costs. According to the introduction by Rudy Rucker, Richard Kadrey is "... well known for his dadaistic collage illustrations." Kadrey's artistic background is sharply evident in the descriptive scenes which pervade Metrophage. The images throughout are as vivid as a hologram, as biting as a hypodermic needle, blasting at the reader with such intensity that your eyes will be bleeding by the end of the book. Indeed, I found it necessary to put down Metrophage at times - so saturated with information overload that I had to absorb what I had just read before I could go on. If there is any justice, Kadrey will have a profound impact upon the field. Even with it's early release date, I guarantee Metrophage will certainly be one of the best books you'll read in 1988. Do your imagination a favor and buy it. The high rating is for Cyberpunk fans, the low rating for all others. -- Fred Bals Midnight City by Robert Tine [***] Signet, December 1987 $3.95, 284 pgs., 0-451-15036-8 If you have a taste for the hard-boiled, I commend Midnight City to your attention. Although not marketed as SF, Midnight City does have some familiar science fiction elements to it. The story takes place in a near- future New York City realistically extrapolated from the present. Jake Sullivan, a member of an special force police unit, familiarly known as the "Rovers," is charged with bringing a cop killer to justice. Readers who like specifics may find the book annoying, as Tine paints his future setting with a very wide brush, seldom giving any details. But those who like realistic crime stories, crisp dialogue, and tough characters should find Midnight City a good read. -- Fred Bals Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections Robert Asprin [**] Starblaze graphics, 189pp,, $7.95, 0-89865-529-3 Another long running series that's running long in the tooth. This time, Skeeve heads off to Perv in search of his friend and mentor Aahz. If you're looking for an interesting exploration of Perv and it's society, you'll be very disappointed -- it's little different from downtown New York or any major metropolitan area. The book, when all is said and done, basically falls flat, and is one of the weakest links in the series. This is two weak books in a row, which, to me, means it's time to think about retiring the series. -- chuq von rospach Night and the Enemy Harlan Ellison & Ken Steacy [***] Comico graphic novel, $11.95, 0-938965-06-9 An illustrated collection of some of Harlan Ellison's stories, including 'Run for the Stars' and 'Life Hutch.' Nicely executed drawings, and I always enjoy reading Ellison, but I think the book is a little too expensive for what you get. -- chuq von rospach Shade of the Tree Piers Anthony [*-] If I have read the back cover correctly, this is Anthony's first attempt at the supernatural/Stephen King genre. I freely admit I have never really read any of these types of books before, but having read a lot of Piers Anthony before, I thought this might be very interesting. It turned out to be incredibly boring. I suppose it is part of the formula to hint at the mysterious supernatural events that must come later, but the various deaths and events recalled are so similar to one another that each new one introduced just seems to add more pages to plow through until one finds out the cause. Only those readers who just cannot put down a book will bother to do so however. And, if the idea is to build suspense and curiosity about that cause, I can only say that by the time I got to within the last 60 pages, I could really have cared less. I kept thinking Anthony would pull it out of the fire somehow, but he never really did. I'd hate to truly ruin the ending for those who might care (though I would tend to classify giving away the ending as an act of mercy in this case) -- so let me just say that the computer analogy drawn at the end will ring false to anyone in the industry, and that it is never really drawn to a full conclusion anyway, thus complementing a boring beginning and middle with a weak ending. -- Larry Kaufman lsk@sun.com Silverglass J.F. Rivken [**] Ace books, $2.95, 186pp It would be pleasant to report that under the apallingly sexist cover of Silverglass is concealed a pretty good book. Alas, this is not quite the case. It is an adequate, routine little Fantasy of no particular distinctions and no conspicuous flaws. It has a little magic, a little romance, some tepid AC/DC sex, the obligatory whiff of violence, and a fair amount of mildly pretty writing. As a first novel, it is not bad, but not that good either; the seams are occasionally visible, and the authors habit of breaking the book into micro-chapters of about four pages each is a trifle annoying. However, the reader who is particularly into Fantasy about women might find some modest light reading here. You can always tape some plain brown paper over the cover. -- David M. Shea Spectre by Stephen Laws [**+] Tor; 275 pp; $3.95 Stephen Laws is the author of Ghost Train -- the book that this summer had its ads removed from the English train station walls by British Transport Advertising because they were "offensive to the general travelling public." It seems British Rail wasn't too pleased with the idea of haunted trains. Which makes me wonder what the photography industry is going to say when they read Laws' new novel Spectre. In the district of Byker in Northern England, six boys and a girl band together as the "Byker Chapter" while growing up -- shades of Gary Kilworth's Witchwater Country [The Bodley Head, 1986] or Stephen King's It [Viking, 1986[, but nonetheless effective for this. Inseparable while growing up, they each went their own way upon finishing collect -- each keeping a copy of the same momento photograph from their last good night together. But then one by one they begin to die, their images disappearing from the photograph as they do, and the remaining few have to band together once again to try to survive. Laws' language is good. His characters, while veering slightly into stereotype at times, are still mostly well-delineated. And he's got a good touch with the scare, bringing some fresh frights to some ordinary household items. But there's one major flaw that comes at the end of the book that spoiled a good deal of the tension for me. Laws rightfully lets us follow his characters as, through their own initiative, they slowly discover what's going on, but then he allows his principal antagonist to step into stage-center right at the high-point of the climax and blather on about cosmic horrors a la Lovecraft by way of Greek myth for far too many pages. It isn't realistic (something that's desperately needed in horror fiction to maintain its believability and tension), but worse, it's boring and stops the story dead. Still, that aside, Spectre has some fine moments, some especially chilling imagery, and a good solid story at its heard. And say, in that high school picture of you and your friends, wasn't there someone standing beside the teacher last time you looked...? -- Charles de Lint Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight by Mike Resnick [***+] TOR, 1987, 314pp, $3.50 John Justin Mallory, New York private eye, is hired by an elf to find a unicorn in an alternate/parallel universe New York City that sounds a lot more fun than the one in our universe. Along the way he joins forces with a cat woman, a big game hunter/unicorn expert and a 9 inch high horse against double crossing leprechauns and eventually the demon-in-charge, the Grundy. If you're in the mood for light comic fantasy, try this, though it did stretch out a bit too long to maintain the pace. The ending doesn't definitely say 'series' but it could be just the beginning of Mallory's bizarre adventures. -- Mary Anne Espenshade The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted Harry Harrison [**] Bantam Books 256 Pg. $14.95 This is the latest Stainless Steel Rat book to be published although it is the second book in terms of story chronology. Unlike the previous diGriz stories, this one is not an independent story. It is a sequel to A Stainless Steel Rat is Born. The story and the opening chapters in particular, do not make much sense unless one has read the prequel. Harrison also seems to have caught the Heinlein disease with this book. A good portion of the book is taken up with much philosophizing at the expense of the story. To a certain extend, such a philosophical discussion is necessary as Harrison has deliberately created two diametrically opposed societies, one clearly Good and one clearly Bad, and brought them into conflict but the extent of the discussion goes far beyond what is needed to explain the situation. The Stainless Steel Rat series has always been at the comic book level of reality but with this book, Harrison has gone beyond that to a pure cartoonish level of unreality. The stereotypical characterization of people and society is so exaggerated in this book as to be totally unbelievable. In the previous books, there was enough restraint that one could accept the people and situations as stereotypical but real. In all, this book is only for the completist. The original book in the series, The Stainless Steel Rat, is still the best book to start with for anyone who is interested in discovering why the series is so much fun. -- Danny Low The Starwolves Thorarinn Gunnarsson [***] Questar/Popular Library 281 pg. $2.95 This is one of those rare Star Wars imitations that is actually good. The main reason for this is characterization. The characters are stereotypes but well done stereotypes. There actually is a well thought story universe and the story itself is well plotted. The story also has a sly sense of humor. Of course, there is lots of action and hints of a great future for the hero, Velmeran. 50,000 years ago, the Union was formed to unify all of known space. Many systems did not want to be part it as the Union was and is clearly a tyranny. One of these was the Terran Republic. They called upon the Aldessans for aid. The Aldessan provided the Terrans with the technology to build warships better than those of the Union and an artificial race, the Kelvessans, to crew the ships. However, by overwhelming numbers the Union forced the Kelvessans to abandon Terra and retreat to the fringe worlds where they have been fighting a guerilla war against the Union ever since. This is the situation at the beginning of the story. This book is good basic fun SF. There's no startling scientific wonders to dazzle the reader and no thought provoking examination of the human condition. It's just an enjoyable story. While it is the first book of a series, the story in the book is resolved before the end. -- Danny Low Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook [*] Signet, August 1987, $3.50 255 pgs., 0-451-15061-9 In all honesty, I have little love for elves, gnomes, or other High Fantasy elements and opened Sweet Silver Blues because of its implied promise of a "hard-boiled detective" style. Lovers of fantasy may find some redeeming qualities to this book. I found it a queasy mishandling of the P.I. genre which at times seemed to be reaching for parody but never quite made it. The story - such as it is - concerns a human detective hired to track down a missing heiress in a world filled with the standard cast of fantasy creatures for no apparent reason. I was unable to finish this book, something which happens so rarely (I'm compulsive about finishing everything, but most especially free review copies) that I feel duty-bound to report it. -- Fred Bals Ten Little Wizards by Michael Kurland [**] Ace Fantasy, 188pp, March, 1988, 0-441-80057-2 Based on the late Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, Michael Kurland does attempts to do what may be impossible -- step in a great author's footsteps. The story is a reasonably executed locked room mystery (based pretty closely on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, as the title implies). If you're looking for a good Fantasy/Mystery mix, this is a good book. If you're looking for a Lord Darcy book, you'll be disappointed. The character names are the same, but the life and levity and depth that Garrett wrote into his characters are missing. -- chuq von rospach Tesseract Joseph Addison [***] Del Rel/Ballantine Books 246pg. $3.50 Tesseract is a mysterious being with godlike powers but some strange weaknesses. It needs the help of humanity to save another race on another planet. The problem is that mankind has destroyed itself in a nuclear Armageddon. Tesseract decides to travel back in time and alter human history to save mankind from itself so mankind can save the other race. Mark Johnson is an up and coming young executive in the Tyson financial empire. One day he receives an urgent call from Jonathan Tyson to report to him immediately. This is the beginning of Tesseract's plan. Or is it the end? The story is a very convoluted time travel story with all the complications and confusion to be expected when cause and effect are turned around. However, the time travel paradoxes are not the point of the story. The story is a series of mysteries within mysteries. Why, if Tesseract is so powerful, does it need the help of humanity and Mark Johnson in particular to save the other race? Who is the other race? What is the menace? What can mankind do to save them? And why mankind? The mysteries and questions are all nicely resolved at the end and the answers are logical and sensible as well. The characters are well developed but very familiar. The Reluctant Hero, the Weary Mentor, the Power Mad Villain, etc. However, Addison does a good job of developing them into realistic people. The whole book is a recycling of familiar SF ideas and characters but done in a fresh new way. This book is well worth while reading. -- Danny Low Thieves' World #10: Aftermath edited by Robert Asprin & Lynn Abbey [**] Ace Fantasy, November, 1987, 273pp, $3.50, 0-441-80597-3. I've been a big fan of Thieves' World shared world anthology. Unfortunately, it is starting to show its age and losing its originality. Still interesting to hardcore fans, but there are more interesting books to spend your time on. Unless #11 picks up dramatically, I'll be dropping the series. -- chuq von rospach Time Pressure by Spider Robinson [**] Ace (Hardcover),October 1987, $16.95 216 pgs., 0441-80932-4 I've formed the opinion that Spider Robinson hasn't had a novel (in both senses of the word) idea worthy of his talents since the one which engendered the Hugo-winning Stardance. Unfortunately, Time Pressure did nothing for me but lend added weight to that opinion. As usual, Robinson has created some of the most intriguing, fully-developed, and just plain real characters in science fiction with Time Pressure. And you have to love an author who flies in the face of good sense -- or taste -- by deliberately starting his book with the nadir of bad opening lines, "It was a dark and stormy night," and makes it work. The plot of Time Pressure concerns itself primarily with the interaction between Rachel, a visitor from the future on a mysterious mission and Sam, something of an unreconstructed hippie living in Nova Scotia. While Sam's narration always stays interesting enough to keep you reading the book, the plot of Time Pressure simply never goes anywhere, finally culminating into a near-joke answer to the question which no one has been asking, "Where have all the hippies gone?" Something of a sequel to Robinson's earlier Mindkiller, Time Pressure will only be of interest to his most ardent fans. The rest of us will have to wait -- and hope -- that his next idea will finally be something equal to his writing skills. -- Fred Bals The Vang (The Military Form) Christopher Rowley [***] Del Rel/Ballantine Books 369pg. $3.50 This story takes place 1000 years after Starhammer and uses an event from that book as the basis for the story but otherwise has no connection with that book. An illegal prospecting ship working near the colony of Saskatch discovers a Vang lifeboat and unwittingly brings it aboard, releasing the Military Form Vang inside it. It takes over the ship and begins the conquest of the universe that its race had started millennia ago that was rudely interrupted when another race destroyed the Vang race in self defense. The story is told in three separate story lines that converge at the end. The first story line is that of the prospectors who find the Vang ship. The second is that of a group of Saskatchers trying to rid their planet of corruption. The third is that of a group of environmentalists who are trying to prevent humanity from destroying Saskatch in their quest for the illegal drug TA45 which is found only on Saskatch. The characterization is superb. Not only are the characters distinctive but they act as you might expect real people with their personalities to act. The action starts out at a fast pace and quickly speeds to an all out run that doesn't stop until the end. The ending is also well done. Rowley has had problems in previous books finding a proper ending for his books. All too often, a deus ex machina (and it was literally that in Starhammer) would descend and resolve everything. In this book, the ending is logical and realistic. This is an excellent action SF story with superb characterization as well. -- Danny Low War for the Oaks Emma Bull [***-] Ace Fantasy Special, 309pp, $3.50 Emma Bull is best known as co-editor of and contributor to the Liavek shared world Fantasy series. In this, her first solo novel, a similar sensibility is shown. The reader encounters an uneven mix of love, war, and rock-and-roll as two dissident Faery factions battle for control of Minneapolis. Eddi, girl guitarist/vocalist in a local bar band, is drafted as the token mortal in this conflict, and her assigned bodyguard is a shape- changer who occasionally turns into a large nasty dog. Ditching her boyfriend and his band, Eddi begins to form a new and better band, since music is to be her weapon in the stylized but brutal Faery rumble in a city park. Bull has a pretty good grasp of the hot Minneapolis rock scene, post Prince; and she does about as well as anyone could at conveying in cold prose the mortal magic which is rock music in its better moments. It would be fun to jam with her. The book is reasonably well written, though not terribly difficult to anticipate. Is the problem with me? Am I the only SF/fantasy reader who has had Faery stories up to here? Evidently so. If you like this sort of thing -- and clearly lots of people do -- this is a reasonably good example of the type. Enjoy. -- David M. Shea When Gravity Fails George Alec Effinger [****] Arbor House, 1987, $16.95. 290 pgs., 0-87795-851-3 I've seen When Gravity Fails cited in some quarters as Effinger's entry into cyberpunk. Actually, it has much more in common with the works of Raymond Chandler, turf which Effinger stakes out immediately by opening the book with an excerpt from Chandler's definitive treatise on the private detective, "The Simple Art of Murder." Like Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, Effinger's main character, Marid Audran, is a "good" man in a bad place, trying to maintain honor and dignity in a society which places little weight on either. "Good" is in quotes because, on first blush, Audran isn't represented as a particularly nice individual, making his living through dope dealing and (Effinger implies) pimping in an Arabic ghetto known as "the Budayeen." Yet, Audran has a code of honor as strict as a samurai's sense of bushido. When a series of apparently senseless murders begin to take place in the Budayeen, Audran finds himself caught up in trying to find the killer, even though his involvement will ultimately force him to compromise his values. On the final ballot of the Nebula awards at the time of this writing, When Gravity Fails is a book worthy of your attention, especially if you like works in the growing cross-genre of mystery and science fiction. -- Fred Bals Wulfston's Odyssey Jean Lorrah & Winston Howlett [*] Sixth in the "Savage Empire" series, Wulfston's Odyssey is a superficial book. The characters are not nearly as well defined as in the other entries in the series. Lorrah and Howlett fell into a trap in their previous offering. They gave some of their most entertaining characters too much power. In this book, they concentrate on one of their remaining characters. While the treatment is very light, the characters remain true to their previously established personalities. We follow two of the savage empire's most interesting characters to a foreign setting. All the elements of an exciting story are provided. A kidnapping, a beautiful princess, a powerful enemy, poisonings, a ghost from the past, even enough family intrigues for the Dynasty fans. Somehow the authors never manage to pull it all together. The reader, at least this reader, never becomes involved in the story. The solutions to the problems in the story are not very inventive either. Any story is in trouble when the obvious comes as a surprise to all the characters. Still and all, fans of the series will find this book a reasonable way to kill several hours while waiting for the next book in the series. -- Peter Rubenstein 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