Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Experience

Two of the Most Entertaining SF Novels from the 1980s

2009-05-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Most inventive, flamboyant science fiction to see the light of day - published some 25 years ago

Fall in love again with the no-holds-barred, edge-of-your-seat science fiction, featuring inexhaustible flow of ideas, rich language, and skillfully-plotted adventure. Even though the following two novels were published back in the 1980s, there are highly recommended for those who can not stand run-of-the-mill bland SF fare and wants to feel excitement about reading SF again.

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Michael Swanwick
"Vacuum Flowers" (nv)
© 1986, IASFM, Dec-Mar
Ace Books, 1987
--novel : 1988 Locus/7
--/ third place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ style award

Review by author M. Christian
There’s a lot of ways you could label Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick: cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, pre-transhuman, post-posthuman … and all those other silly labels pretentious science fiction reviewers and nit-picking analysts have been sticking on various books since the genre began to be taken -- or took itself -- too seriously.

But I have a better label for it. One I think says a lot more about this delightful book than any pre- or post- definition anyone could give it.

Sure, Vacuum Flowers does neatly fit into the cyberpunky domain (pre- or post- or whatever): set in an accessible where earth has been overrun by The Comprise, a voracious digital hive-mind, and the remaining free-will humans has escaped out into the solar system. The protagonist, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, begins the story like all good protagonists, as the subject of shadowy forces out to get something she possesses – and, naturally, what she isn’t exactly what she possesses.

But what makes Swanwick’s novel so wonderfully unique is that Rebel isn’t really Rebel. Originally a restless personality tester, someone who tries on artificial identities, she did the unthinkable and found a perfect one for her – Rebel’s – and stole it. See, in the post/pre (whatever) world of Vacuum Flowers personalities, memories, abilities, are as changeable as putting on, or taking off, make-up. In fact, Swanwick is credited by many as being one of the first creators of wetware, the idea of ‘painting on’ software to do just that.

And a lot of painting goes in Vacuum Flowers, but to Swanwick’s credit he takes this esoteric and possibly-confusing concept and makes it deceptively easy to understand, the book completely readable and totally enjoyable.

Just like the best of Alfred Bester, Swanwick is also deliciously and dazzling inventive, each page sparkling with memorable details and dazzling inventiveness: a blindly-focused quasi-communistic society dedicated to terraforming Mars, a renegade ‘mob boss’ who entertains himself by twisting the minds of his prisoner/guests, a multiple-personality ‘hero’ who has just the right mind for pretty much any job … Swanwick coolly and seductively brings the reader into Rebel’s kaleidoscopically fantastic, yet completely real-feeling world.

Yep, there are a lot of labels that could be tossed at Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers: post-this, post-that, transhuman, posthuman, cyberpunk ... whatever. The best label, though, and one that fits the novel so very well is one that every writer wants to get: A Really Good Book.

Art copyright: Grant Morrison (click to enlarge)

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Tim Powers
"The Anubis Gates" (nv)
© 1983, Ace Books
- novel : 1984 Philip K. Dick award W
- fantasy novel : 1984 Locus/2
- novel : 1984 SF Chronicle award W
- novel : 1986 British SF award
- 1987 Apollo award W
- fantasy novel (before 1990) : 1998 Locus All-Time Poll/14
- fantasy book : 2001 Geffen award W
--/ FIRST place time sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ awesome scale

Review by author M. Christian
There’s a scene in The Anubis Gates that’s stayed with me ever since I first read it, some twenty or so years ago: our hero, Brendan Doyle, a professor at California State University Fullerton (one of my old alma maters, by the way), has found himself magically transported back to London in 1810.

Doyle, fascinated by a time he’s only read about, but also devastated that he’s trapped forever in the past, is walking through a street market when he hears someone whistling a tune, a song he suddenly realizes he knows.

The tune? “Yesterday” by the Beatles.

For me, that’s a special moment of brilliance in a novel packed full of all kinds of brilliances: a shivering little touch of perfect story-telling. One of the things I think is particularly excellent about the book is the way that Powers sort of restrains himself in his writing. Put it this way, if someone else were to write The Anubis Gates, especially these days, they’d have a tendency to make the book’s language too closely mirror the style and language of the time. But what Tim Powers does in The Anubis Gates is, instead, get to the basic – and fantastic – nature of a book from that time without resorting to overly-elaborate tricks.

The story-telling language in The Anubs Gates is the best kind of writing, smooth and seamless – infinitely readable and totally enjoyable.

But back to what makes The Anubis Gates so special. Like I said, what Powers has done is create an marvelously enjoyable book filled with the characters and details that feel like they’ve come from every Penny Dreadful and broadsheet from the 1800s: Horrabin, the nightmare clown and king of the London beggars; Jacky, the beggar who is actually the daughter of nobility on a quest for revenge; Amenophis Fikee, magician and leader of a gypsy clan cursed to become the body-thief Dog-Faced Joe, and so much more.

But The Anubis Gates is not just a playground for the author’s vivid imagination, for many real literary and historical celebrities also walk across the stage: Byron, publisher John Murray and many others. The world Powers creates – or just the past of the real world he plays in -- feels vivid, real, and always enjoyable.

In the end, the Anubis Gates remains a classically stylish and brightly imaginative novel told in a delightfully elegant way – an enjoyable read that feels timeless, which is quite an accomplishment for a book about time and travel.

Art copyright: Sam VanOlffen

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1986 - Year in SF&F: December

2009-05-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

THE WONDER TIMELINE: SF&F RETROSPECTIVE
Read other issues here

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Michael Swanwick
"Vacuum Flowers" (nv)
© 1986, IASFM, Dec-Mar
Ace Books, 1987
--novel : 1988 Locus/7
--/ third place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ style award

Review by author M. Christian
There’s a lot of ways you could label Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick: cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, pre-transhuman, post-posthuman … and all those other silly labels pretentious science fiction reviewers and nit-picking analysts have been sticking on various books since the genre began to be taken -- or took itself -- too seriously.

But I have a better label for it. One I think says a lot more about this delightful book than any pre- or post- definition anyone could give it.

Sure, Vacuum Flowers does neatly fit into the cyberpunky domain (pre- or post- or whatever): set in an accessible where earth has been overrun by The Comprise, a voracious digital hive-mind, and the remaining free-will humans has escaped out into the solar system. The protagonist, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, begins the story like all good protagonists, as the subject of shadowy forces out to get something she possesses – and, naturally, what she isn’t exactly what she possesses.

But what makes Swanwick’s novel so wonderfully unique is that Rebel isn’t really Rebel. Originally a restless personality tester, someone who tries on artificial identities, she did the unthinkable and found a perfect one for her – Rebel’s – and stole it. See, in the post/pre (whatever) world of Vacuum Flowers personalities, memories, abilities, are as changeable as putting on, or taking off, make-up. In fact, Swanwick is credited by many as being one of the first creators of wetware, the idea of ‘painting on’ software to do just that.

And a lot of painting goes in Vacuum Flowers, but to Swanwick’s credit he takes this esoteric and possibly-confusing concept and makes it deceptively easy to understand, the book completely readable and totally enjoyable.

Just like the best of Alfred Bester, Swanwick is also deliciously and dazzling inventive, each page sparkling with memorable details and dazzling inventiveness: a blindly-focused quasi-communistic society dedicated to terraforming Mars, a renegade ‘mob boss’ who entertains himself by twisting the minds of his prisoner/guests, a multiple-personality ‘hero’ who has just the right mind for pretty much any job … Swanwick coolly and seductively brings the reader into Rebel’s kaleidoscopically fantastic, yet completely real-feeling world.

Yep, there are a lot of labels that could be tossed at Michael Swanwick’s Vacuum Flowers: post-this, post-that, transhuman, posthuman, cyberpunk ... whatever. The best label, though, and one that fits the novel so very well is one that every writer wants to get: A Really Good Book.

Art copyright: Grant Morrison (click to enlarge)

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Philip C. Jennings
"Teddy Bug and the Hot Purple Snowball"
© Far Frontiers, Dec 1986
The Bug Life Chronicles, 1989
--/ fourth place space sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ style award

This story deserves a better exposure... wonderful romp through the Solar System inside a prisoner's mind, transplanted into a Charles Stross Lobster-like or Bruce Sterling's Shizmatrix robotic environment: clean, precise prose with good adventure plot. Reminds me of the classic "Delilah and the Space Rigger" by Heinlein. Minds transplanted into space mining robots... can perhaps be scifi subgenre of its own! So many stories are using this theme. Robert Sheckley, Alfred Bester - the list goes on. But this is an extremely entertaining short example.

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Roger McBride Allen
Winged Mysteries—The Soviet Shuttles
© Far Frontiers, Dec 1986
--/ cool article
--/ rare find

This is the most entertaining and interesting account of America's groping in the dark about the current (in 1986) Soviet space shuttle technology (as Roger McBride Allen points out "They steal nothing but the best technology") Well, the shuttles are no longer a mystery, of course, and we know how the whole shuttle era ended (see the detailed account in this DRB article: Rare Photos of the Russian "Buran" Space Program) - but this is very rare, paranoid take on the subject, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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Roger McBride Allen
"Young As You Feel"
© Far Frontiers, Dec 1986
--/ cool "mad scientist" sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ rare find

The hilarious opening of that extremely rare story had me laughing, as it describes a two-year old kid "attacking" the parents in the most innocent way - the mess, the bother, the overall so-familiar situation... What develops next, is one of the more entertaining "mad scientist" plots in recent SF. Mind you, they don't write like that any more - this would be perfectly at home in the 1940s Astounding or "Thrilling Wonder" pulp: a youthfulness plague and "responsibility" cure. Good stuff, enjoyable.

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Return to the Wonder Timeline

"The Body Snatchers" and other Alien Pods

2009-03-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Snatchers, impostors and imitators from BEYOND!

Pods, or no pods, these creatures will gladly invade your privacy to the point of sharing your brain and eating your grandma for breakfast. Read (watch the movies, too) and shudder at the pulp adventures highlighted below, full of sleek writing and even sleeker alien psychology.

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Jack Finney
"The Body Snatchers" (nv)
© Colliers, Dec 10, 1954
New York: Dell; Eyre & Spottiswode 1955
--/ third place apocalyptic sf novel
--/ adventure award
--/ style award
--/ emotion award: paranoia

Review by author M. Christian
I am not writing this review. Sure, I might look like, sound like, act like, your regular reviewer but I am, in fact, a flawless reproduction .....

There's a very special kind of story out there and, ironically, it is unique and rare: "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson is one, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe is another -- and then there's Jack Finney's "The Body Snatchers".

What makes these stories special? They are the beginning, a unique and fresh approach: Stevenson created the archetypal story of man's dual nature, Poe created the first detective story, and Finney created ... well, he created pod people.

It's hard in some ways to read Finney's book today. Not that it's not a good or even great book, because it's that and much more. Finney's restrained style is there, his wry sense of humor is there, his enviously lean prose is there, but if you'd never read "The Body Snatchers" and picked up a copy only today, you'd fail to see its incredible uniqueness against the now-ubiquitous theme. That's a shame because the world owes a lot to Finney's (deceptively) simple little book. For the first time, we saw the horror of a world grown cool and impersonal, distant and nightmarishly "the same."

So powerful is Finney's creation -- as well as the great 1956 film version directed by Don Siegel, starring Kevin McCarthy -- that even the tiniest glimpse of someone acting cold and remote, removed and distant, conjures up the entire idea of the book ... and, naturally, alien seed pods.

Alas, what a lot of people don't know about the book, as it was excised from every adaption of it, is that the aliens in the novel DO have emotions -- it's just that theirs are faked. That twist adds a whole new level of power to the novel: the impostors aren't just unemotional, they actually put a "face" on over their inhumanity -- which is a much more biting commentary than just the simple idea of a cold and drone-like inhumanity. Another horror of the book that's never been adapted is the idea that the pod-people can't reproduce. Once all of humanity has been replaced -- and the aliens have left for space again -- the earth will be left as nothing but a depopulated wasteland.

Again, the book really has to be savored, relished -- re-read again and again to appreciate Finney's sly genius. Just look at the characters. It would be easy to make Dr. Miles Bennell and Becky stand out, and so make the impostors more of a statement about conformity. Instead, they are anything but outrageous, which only adds to the chilling creeps when you realize that they, too, have been less than honest with their emotions, that they are too close -- far too close -- to the impostors in their emotional range, the depth of their feelings. Their fight almost feels like it's a battle against the end of the world, sure, but also to preserve the tiny, almost invisible contrast between the cold indifference of the invaders and the slightly-less-cold indifference of the real humans.

In the end, "The Body Snatchers" is a truly great book. The trick, though, is to read it for its uniqueness -- and not let all its subsequent impostors and imitators take away from its unique and special shine.

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Robert A. Heinlein
"The Puppet Masters"
© 1951, Galaxy, Sep-Nov
novel: Doubleday, 1951
--/ fourth place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ style award

Review by author M. Christian
There are a lot of ways to look at Heinlein's classic, The Puppet Masters: as a perfect example of what makes a 'Heinlein' book (a determined uberman, a fiery female, sparkling language, etc), an ideal cold-war parable (US vs relentless, soul-sucking invaders out to turn us into mindless slaves), or as an examination of classic paranoia (who can you trust?), but for this review let's take a look at The Puppet Masters as a book about hunting dragons.

No, there are no dragons in The Puppet Masters. Set in a near future US after a limited nuclear war, the book is about a covert alien invasion -- a rarity for Heinlein -- by 'slugs:' parasitic lifeforms that control their human hosts. In this way it's a perfect companion to Jack Finney's Body Snatchers: an unearthly threat not just to our world but to our sense of identity. With Finney the aliens impersonated the people around us; with The Puppet Masters the aliens control everyone around us -- two sides of a similar coin.

But while Finney approached the theme with sly terror and sneaky suspense, Heinlein puts us in the shoes of 'Sam' an opperative for a so-secret-no-one-knows-about-it-but-the-presdient organization simply called 'The Section' -- run with an iron fist by 'The Old Man' -- that discovers and then fights against the invading parasites.

This is what makes the book so interesting. Sure it has Heinlein's fun use of language, a tough-but-not-robotic hero, a flamboyant female character, and his always-interesting social commentary (some so subtle as to escape everyone but a very determined reader); absolutely it works as a Cold War analogy with its war between unique identity and faceless uniformity; and, certainly, it works as a paranoiac mind-game where you literally cannot trust anyone; but then there is the dragon.

What I mean is 'dragon' in the Nietzsche sense: "The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon." Sure "Sam" is our hero but he is also a victim of his own organization's ruthlessness: he cannot remember his original face, for instance, for his so many disguises and alterations. The "Section" reads less like a 'boy's own hero' bunch of freedom fighters than it does a Kafka nightmare bureu of manipulation of everyone and everything. Sure the 'slugs' are nasty, evil, horrible creatures, but reading through the book a niggling suspicion rises that the forces that are working against them are ... well, if not as bad then are just a different flavor.

This devilish gray area of what makes the book so enjoyable -- in a dark and disturbing way. Reading The Puppet Masters you come away with the unsettling feeling that Heinlein's mind-controlling 'Masters' may mean creatures from outer space, our own ruthlessly cold determination to stop them or ... well, both.

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Clifford Simak
"No Life Of Their Own"
© Galaxy, Aug 1959
All the Traps Of Earth, 1962
--/ third place time sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ style award
--/ humour award
--/ idea: luck/time dimension
plus alien/human village melting pot
--/ rare find

Review by Avi Abrams
Entirely different (not urban, but rather relaxed country) view of alien infiltration: I could write the whole article about this one... First, this is one the best examples of Simak's "pastoral", small-town-style writing, where we are comforted just by simple rural surroundings and simplicity of how people speak and live. All the more strange, then, the out-worldly elements seem when they appear, and all the more the "sense-of-wonder" is activated, contrasted against subdued background. This might be Simak's writing secret, successful formula that I can not get enough of...

Second, the sheer intensity and weirdness of alien elements are breathtaking, accompanied by rapid play of ideas. And third, but not last, - humour. The story is about the "melting-pot" of aliens and humans in a normal village, where aliens do whatever they please and humans just observe, slack-jawed. Humans are confronted with "alternate-universe-inhabiting" creatures who play the hand of good luck to some chosen people, both humans and aliens are trying to solve time mysteries, and in the end "good time was had by all"

Read full review of "All the Traps of Earth" collection

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Jack Vance
"Brains Of Earth" (nv)
(also as "Nopalgarth")
(Nopalgarth series)
© Ace Double, 1966
also - DAW Books, 1980
--/ fourth place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ idea: para-cosmos
--/ shock value

Review by Avi Abrams
This is a small pop-art masterpiece with some psychedelic overtones. It feeds on paranoid ideas of the Fifties (aliens possessing our brains), embellishes it with cool descriptions of psychological and aural warfare (reminds me of "Final Fantasy" ghostly doppelganger entities), and reads like a gaudy poster in its simplicity of idea and plot. I often skipped many pages, to arrive sooner at the bizarre parasitic "brain" warfare sequences, which make this book stand out from other invasion fare, and from everything else Vance has written.

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Clifford Simak
"Good-night, Mr. James"

(also as "Night of the Puudly")
(also as ``The Duplicate Man'')
© Galaxy, Mar 1951
All The Traps Of Earth, 1962
Skirmish, 1977
--/ fourth place sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ style award

Another very complicated human / alien relationship unfolds in a classic tale, written at the beginning of 1950s "snatchers" craze. It is generally a horror story, about a duplicate human being created to destroy a particularly nasty alien illegally smuggled to Earth. Quite edgy and thriller-like writing. This is certainly a hit, blockbuster, Hollywood-friendly creation with lots of color and typical Simak world-building.

Read full review of "All the Traps of Earth" collection

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James Schmitz
"We Don't Want Any Trouble"
© Galaxy, Jun 1953
Eternal Frontier, 2002
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ shock value

Another interesting treatment of the alien infiltration, and how to deal with it - quite a ruthless story, suspenseful and strong. Aliens among us and they can do mimicry very well (probably even better than in "Body Snatchers") and they put up quite a spectacle for their human captors.... right before the execution. Idea is not fresh, but the gutsy, hard-boiled treatment of it in this story makes it one of the best for Schmitz.

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Robert Bloch
"The Shambler from the Stars"
(Cthulhu Mythos)
© Weird Tales, Sep 1935
The Opener of the Way, 1945
--/ fourth place f story
--/ wonder award
--/ style award

Review by Avi Abrams
The Thirties gave history many monsters, some very real (like Stalin, Hitler, etc), but most imaginary - in the pulps. No other decade produced such a fertile crop of aliens and mad-scientist pets, and most of them were indeed pretty ugly. Witness this "star vampire" creature (part of the Cthulhu Mythos zoo of beings)... Quote from the story: "It was red and dripping; an immensity of pulsing, moving jelly; a scarlet blob with myriad tentacular trunks that waved and waved. There were suckers on the tips of the appendages, and these were opening and closing with a ghoulish lust.... The thing was bloated and obscene; a headless, faceless, eyeless bulk with the ravenous maw and titanic talons of a star-born monster".

"The star vampire dwells in outer space and is characterized by its ravenous appetite for blood. The creature uses its enormous talons to capture its prey, grappling and crushing the unfortunate and then draining the victim's blood through its tubular suckers. It is normally invisible, but following a sanguine repast, the star vampire becomes temporarily visible from the undigested blood it has absorbed." The story itself is an assault on the senses in the best "weird wonder" pulp tradition. Bloch apparently had a blast writing it, even killing off his fellow writer H. P. Lovecraft at the end of the story, in his unbridled enthusiasm. Lovecraft returned the favour, killing off a Bloch character in his "Haunter of the Dark". All in good fun, fellows.

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They're here!

Actual photograph, taken in Brussels, Belgium...

(image credit: Daniel Zimmel, some rights reserved)

William Gibson's "Count Zero"

2009-03-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

William Gibson
"Count Zero" (nv)
(Neuromancer #2)
© IASFM, Jan 1986
Arbor House / Gollancz, 1986
--novel : 1987 Hugo
--novel : 1987 Nebula
--sf novel : 1987 Locus /3
--novel : 1987 British SF
--novel : 1987 SF Chronicle /2
--/ third place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ adventure award

Review by Baz Anderson
If Neuromancer planted the seed of cyberpunk, Count Zero sees it begin to flower into something fractal and immense. It builds well on its predecessor; taking mind-blowing ideas and concepts of the previous book and developing them in unexpected, yet entirely natural, ways.

From a narrative standpoint the book is chancier with three protagonists, each enmeshed in their own lushly described Gibson-esque world (all taking place in familiar "Sprawl" setting). They start on quite dissimilar paths only to find their stories weaving together into essentially one crime epic, seen from three points of view.

Gibson continues sprinkle his prose with small, sharp insights that cut through veneer ("sci-fi is just a wet-dream for nerds") and become profound predictions for some 50 years ahead. More than two decades after the original publication it remains an intense and cool-minded examination of humanity’s foibles, for example, our seemingly insatiable desire for maddeningly intrusive and loud media.

Hacker sub-culture, religious idealists, art investors and businessmen seem quite happy to navigate through the grey areas of the law, motivated by greed and notions of "creative destruction". Victims are led to believe they are the ones who call the shots, and vice versa. Corporate espionage provides ubiquitous set of thrills. Voodoo easily mixes with artificial intelligence, wild architecture and street culture - all presented in newly minted tech jargon and ideas which already may feel familiar, but only because we were so eager to adopt them.

If the book seems cold, it is not for lack of strong characters. Almost documentary-like, reminiscent perhaps of Truman Capote's mainstream classic "In Cold Blood", Count Zero revels in detached observation rather than heart-wrenching melodrama. Somebody compared reading cyberpunk to listening to virtuoso jazz performance, and indeed, this book is brimming with disciplined improvisation and stylized burst of sheer orgasmic exuberance.

Read other reviews of William Gibson's fiction

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Exploring the Noir and the Grotesque

2009-03-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

Reviews by Avi Abrams
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Jack O'Connell
"The Resurrectionist" (nv)
© 2008, Algonquin Books
--/ fourth place f novel
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ emotion award

Themes of redemption and forgiveness glow throughout the fabric of this essentially noir narrative, melding together two wildly separate storylines - one half of this novel can be enjoyed as a dark paranormal medical thriller (channeling the best of Dean R. Koontz or Robin Cook), and the other half is a rich, colorful trip down Ray Bradbury lane (or more recently, Katherine Dunn's surreal world of "Geek Love"): following a group of sideshow freaks on their way across darkly-shaded land to find their true selves - the lyrical, sad tone enriches the visions of the grotesque and finds a way to the reader's heart, to the point that this "Limbo" part of the story can be considered a masterpiece of "New Weird" in its own right.

Not all is seamless in this book (this is partly why it reads like a wildly swerving motorbike ride). Some parts of the novel seem jumbled together like jigsaw puzzle pieces that do not quite fit, but are forced in anyway. For example, the ending contains some deep allusions and metaphors that ask to be expanded upon, and the final pages come way too quickly - one is left with half-substantiated emotions and unsatisfied longings, which might even be termed as sheer "confusion"... but, boy, does this novel reads like melancholy Bradbury sometimes! Some critics say that The Resurrectionist "transcends reality and redefines noir"; I would not go that far, but I have to admit that I was entirely charmed by the protagonist's story and lovable freaks' encounters with ruthless people and cruel landscapes... The book leaves a solid bittersweet aftertaste, prompting long reflection on themes of identity, grace and redemption - a lingering and haunting effect.

"Part classic noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy, The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. It is the story of Sweeney, a druggist by trade, and his son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a persistent coma. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the forbidding, fortresslike Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have “resurrected” other patients who were lost in the void. What Sweeney comes to realize, however, is that the real cure for his son’s condition may lie in Limbo, a fantasy comic book world into which his son had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that envelops the clinic, Sweeney’s search for answers leads to sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying corners of darkness and mystery."

Buy it from Amazon, the novel also has a website: Enter the Limbo.

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Will Elliott
"The Pilo Family Circus" (nv)
© 2006, Allen & Unwin
--horror novel : 2007 Aurealis W (tie)
--novel : 2007 Ditmar W
--novel : 2007 Int. Horror Guild

Clowns, madness and mayhem - but we saw all this in the "Dark Knight" already, didn't we? I've had enough psychotic clowns rammed down my throat this year, thank you. Critics are quite happy about this book - "an entertaining mixture of Palahnuik and David Lynch" - but I found out that I'm strongly allergic to demonic clowns, and black comedy of this sort is largely lost on me (too obvious?).

In Australia this book co-won the Aurealis for best horror, won the Golden Aurealis for best novel, the Australian Shadows Award, the Ditmar, the ABC fiction award and the Sydney Morning Herald 'Best Young Novelist of the Year' Award, was also short-listed for the 2007 International Horror Guild Award - the consensus is overwhelmingly positive, even though the clowns are intensely gaudy and disturbing, and there is no escaping them.

"Jamie is plunged into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between hell and earth from which humankind's greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place peopled by the gruesome, grotesque and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself-for when he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead...."

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Brian Evenson
"Last Days" (nv)
(based on "The Bortherhood of Mutilation")
© 2009, Underland Press
original novella: 2003, Earthling Publications

Brian Evenson can be effective in shorter form, and I suspect the original novella was more intense - but this exploration of dark religious waters is not the best of its kind (maybe because I was spoiled by reading Norman Spinrad's magnum opus "The Process" back in 1983)

"After losing a hand in a sting operation, Kline, a detective, finds himself unwillingly dragged into a secret amputation cult... a grim, darkly hilarious riff on blind obedience and pointless self-sacrifice". Brian Evenson's past involvement with Mormonism gives this creepy story an even creepier sense of becoming reality, and slaps a gut-wrenching indictment on cults of all sorts - but again, I found this effort a bit heavy-handed and lacking in subtlety.

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Tom Piccirilli
"Ice On Heated Steel Script"
© Chiaroscuro # 19, 2004
--/ fourth place dark f story
--/ shock value
--/ rare find

Tom Piccirilli went on to win bigger battles in the literary world (he is a best-selling novelist right now), leaving behind this wretched, miserable, and yet strangely adorable hunchback of a tale, almost like a "your favorite idiot you love to hate": a nuclear tooth-paste to pollute your literary sensibilities, to warn you what to sink your teeth into and what to avoid. Certainly, like ungainly swamp-roots poetry, this lunatic tale shimmers with unexpected brilliance in the murky waters, revealing nuggets of style, however well concealed by bizarre violence. Recommended.

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"The Neverending Search" (Art copyright David Ho)

Robert Silverberg's "The World Inside": Overpopulation, Sex and Sensibility

2009-03-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

Robert Silverberg is a seasoned writer and editor in the field, who honed his skill in the pulp market in the 1950s and then unleashed his highly-entertaining and progressive fiction on the unsuspecting public in the 1970s. Quite a lot of his stories are regarded as classics of the genre, his writing is usually very smooth, sparkling with imagination and adventure (at his best) and smooth to the point of being forgettable (at worst).

Pen names:
Gordon Aghill, Robert Arnette, T. D. Bethlen, Alexander Blade (some), Robert Burke, Walter Chapman, Dirk Clinton, Walter Drummond, Don Elliott, Richard Greer, E. K. Jarvis (some), Ivar Jorgensen (some), Warren Kastel (some), Calvin M. Knox, Dan Malcolm, Webber Martin, Ray McKenzie, Alex Merriman, Clyde T. Mitchell, David Osborne, George Osborne, Robert Randall, Ellis Robertson, Eric Rodman, Lee Sebastian, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw (some), Hall Thornton, Gerald Vance (some), Richard F. Watson, L. T. Woodward

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Robert Silverberg
"The World Inside" (nv)
© Nova 1, ed. Harry Harrison, 1970
also in Galaxy, 1970-1971
novel: 1971, Doubleday
--novella : 1971 Hugo ("The World Outside")
--novel : 1972 Hugo (withdrawn)
--novel : 1972 Locus/6
--/ fourth place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ style award

Review by author M. Christian
Welcome to the year 2381. Things are perfect: very, very perfect. Everyone is happy, everyone is satisfied within the towering blocks of the Urban Monads -- monster monoliths of humanity towering hundreds of floors, and thousands of feet, above the surface of the planet.

If there is one rule, one overriding philosophy of the people living in the monads -- beyond their pathological satisfaction with the state of the world and their lives -- it’s “be fruitful and multiply.”

Each monad is made up of 25 cities, each existing within their own sections of 40 floors. Urban Monad 116, the setting of Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside, has a population of 800,000 happy, happy people, with the world population at 75 billion people … and climbing.

There have been many books about the horrors of overpopulation, most notably, Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, which you might know better as "Soylent Green" when it made it onto the big screen. But The World Inside is unique and powerful: a nightmare dipped in a super-sweet glaze, a hell made of smiles and sex. The residents of Urban Monad 116 -- the musician, the bureaucrat, the rebel, and all the other characters that rotate onto the novel’s stage -- don’t know they are living in a nightmare of bodies, bodies, and more bodies. For them, births -- and huge families -- are not just the norm but the ultimate desire of every citizen. To encourage this population explosion, the male residents roam their tower, falling into every available woman’s bed, each carnal encounter a possibility for -- joy, joy -- even more life.

The World Inside is, itself, a seduction. Because the reader follows each character, we first see their world as they see it: a bountiful celebration of humanity, a sensual monolithic rave. But then the glaze, the smiles, and the sex begin to wear thin for both the reader as well as the people of Urban Monad 116 we are following, and the book begins to show the horrifying isolation, the hollow monolith that is their building as well as their life.

As with most everything Robert Silverberg has written in this period, The World Inside is a literary treat: vivid and kaleidoscopic, richly textured but also smoothly told. It’s far too easy to read a book like The World Inside and forget the awe-inspiring literary skill and storytelling mastery that’s going on right before your eyes. The World Inside is a book that shouldn’t just be read but re-read and re-read and re-read: once for the pure enjoyment of this unique and powerful story, again to enjoy Silverberg’s magnificent talent as a writer, and yet again to enjoy the story's careful weaving of plot and story and theme.

The World Inside is a perfect example of a master storyteller’s craft: a timeless book and an eternal warning of substituting quantity for quality.

A bit of trivia: It was nominated for a Hugo in 1972 for best novel, but withdrawn by Silverberg in favor of A Time of Changes, which was also nominated that year.

Original stories that make up this novel:

A Happy Day in 2381
© Nova 1, ed. Harry Harrison, 1970
In the Beginning
© Science Against Man, ed. Anthony Cheetham, 1970
The Throwbacks
© Galaxy, Jul 1970
The World Outside
© Galaxy, Oct 1970
We Are Well Organized
© Galaxy, Dec 1970
All the Way Up, All the Way Down
© Galaxy, Jul 1971

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Robert Silverberg
"Born with the Dead"
© F&SF, Apr 1974
Born with the Dead, 1974
--novella : 1975 Hugo
--novella : 1975 Nebula W
--novella : 1975 Locus W
--novella : 1975 Jupiter
--novella : 1999 Locus All-Time Poll /22
--/ fourth place sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ shock value

Review by author M. Christian
Simple is hard: very, very hard. Not that complexity is, therefore, easy, but writing a story that's elegant yet lean, graceful yet subtly complex, lyrical yet spare -- that demonstrates the skill of a true master. A true master like Robert Silverberg. It's no wonder his Born With The Dead won the Nebula: the story is the absolute essence of a simple, powerful story told with true mastery of the storyteller's art.

The plot is pretty easy to explain. In the future (well, the 1990s ...according to the story) the recently dead can be reanimated, "rekindled" to use the term in the novella. The problem is that while they aren't dead, they aren't quite alive either: distant and removed, the resurrected live among themselves in Cold Towns, forming a whole population, an entire world, apart from the rest of still-alive humanity.

Having recently lost Sybille, his wife, Jorge is having a hard time adjusting to seeing her rekindled into an aloof and distant version of herself. A very hard time. In fact he begins to stalk her as she slips into the life of the reanimated dead. This is where Silverberg again shines: the world he creates, if just for the length of a novella, is rich and sensory, full of sparkling details woven with musically brilliant prose. Silverberg also manages, in the space of a few spare pages, to investigate and ponder the role of death in human society, as well as in various flavors of culture.

The ending of Born With The Dead comes almost too soon, but when it does come it arrives like a thunderclap. And like a thunderclap, when you think back on its arrival, you realize you saw it coming for a long time - a short journey of Jorge and Sybille makes for a perfectly executed story, a tight little package of character, theme, style. Born With The Dead is considered one of Silverberg's best works, and it's definitely worth to seek out.

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(image via)

Read other reviews of R. Silverberg's fiction ->

H. P. Lovecraft "At the Mountains of Madness" and other masterpieces of terror

2009-02-25T11:53:00.000-08:00

H. P. Lovecraft
"At the Mountains of Madness" (nv)
(Cthulhu Mythos)
© 1931, original
Astounding Stories, Feb 1936
novel: 1939, Gollancz
--/ third place sf novel
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ style award
--/ emotion award
--/ shock value

Review by author M. Christian
Talking about an H. P. Lovecraft book is -- to paraphrase that old chestnut -- like singing about food, or writing about music. What makes it doubly difficult is that so many others have tried: Lovecraft’s probably been analyzed and dissected more than any other fantasy author. So much so that a comprehensive review has also to mention every other review, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.

But putting aside the difficulty of a review, and every other review, At the Mountains of Madness is still a brilliantly told horror story. Best of all, it’s almost a "perfect" Lovecraft story, combining everything that makes Lovecraft … well, ‘Lovecraftian:’ constant impending dread, mysteries beyond time and space, characters driven to the brink of -- and then beyond -- insanity, science knocking at the doors of the nightmarish unknown, and tantalizing clues to a star-and-time-spanning mythology.

Told by William Dyer, of Lovecraft’s ubiquitous Miskatonic U (“Go Pods!”), At the Mountains of Madness is about an expedition to Antarctica, which, in 1936, might as well have been the dark side of the moon. While there, Dyer and the other members of the expedition encounter various dreads and haunting mysteries (this is Lovecraft after all: specifics isn’t what he’s all about) until they discover an ancient city and with it, the horrifying secret of the Elder Things, the once-great-but-now-extinct terrifying rulers of time and space.

For a book written more than 70 years ago, At the Mountains of Madness still has a dreadful power. Like the tomes so often mentioned by Lovecraft, the novel crawls under the skin before twisting around the knots of the spine before working its way to the brain and then straight into the mind. Hallucinatory and haunting, the book reads more like a narrative nightmare than what most people think of when they think of a novel.

What’s particularly interesting about At the Mountains of Madness is how it forms a ‘bridge’ between Lovecraft’s mythology. Before it, his "horrors from beyond" were more mythological, but with At the Mountains of Madness he instead moves in a more science fictionlike direction -- a change many other reviewers have called extremely significant for his very long-lasting popularity.

Dream, nightmare, hallucination -- Lovecraft and especially At the Mountains of Madness might be hard to pin down, hard to quantify, but the work, and especially its author, remain truly great legends of horror, and not to be missed … if you want to lose sleep.

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H. P. Lovecraft
"The Dream-Quest of
Unknown Kadath" (nv)
© 1926, original
Arkham Sampler, 1948
Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, 1943
At The Mountains Of Madness, 1968
--/ FIRST place f novella
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ style award
--/ emotion award
--/ awesome scale

Review by A. Abrams
Reading this novella was a peculiar experience - a dream, or rather a trance, with sights floating by, wonder upon wonder, written in the very ornate, intensely descriptive prose; a narrative that - if you let it - will pull you in and leave you stranded inside that same dream. Which is exactly what happened to me. Can you believe it, I've never been able to finish reading it... Somewhere half-way along the quest the sheer weird beauty and the implied deep horror of thousands of wonders reached a critical mass in my head and prevented me from going further, prompting rather to stop, savour at length and reflect on what I've already read. So I do not even know how it ends. Maybe one day I will try this book again, armed with a more jaded and indifferent approach, and will escape this bizarre dream-like effect, but for now - nothing I have ever read (not even Tolkien) produced such vivid images of strange worlds in my head.

Admittedly, I did not read Lord Dunsany stories (upon which Lovecraft modelled this novel), but then you can only have so much of that kind of "high imaginative calorie" food. It has a minimal plot, and fulfills exactly the promise of the title: it's "a Dream Quest in a Mysterious and Haunted Land" with elements of dark and high fantasy intermingled. A painting, perhaps? A symphony? Any of these things, but not a novel per se, rather a haunting poetry.

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H. P. Lovecraft
"The Shadow Out Of Time"
(Cthulhu Mythos series)
© Astounding Stories, Jun 1936
The Dunwich Horror, 1963
--/ fourth place sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ awesome scale

In this particular case Lovecraft's attempt at science fiction ultimately disappoints. I approached this novella with a great expectation to find something of a magnitude of "The Mountains of Madness", but the pedantic and non-involving style of the narrative, combined with not enough tension and visuals, spoiled it for me. It is, however, a grand effort.

Here is a synopsis from Wikipedia: "It indirectly tells of the Great Race of Yith, an extraterrestrial species with the ability to travel through space and time. They switch bodies with hosts from the intended space or time destination.The Yithians original purpose is to study the history of various times and places, and they have amassed a "library city" that is filled with the past and future history of multiple races, including humans. Ultimately the Yithians use their ability to escape the destruction of their planet in another galaxy by switching bodies with a race of cone-shaped beings who lived 250 million years ago on Earth. The cone-shaped entities (now also known as the Great Race of Yith) live in a vast city in what would later become Australia Great Desert."

Read the full review of this issue of "Astounding" ->

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H. P. Lovecraft
"The Strange High House In The Mist"
© written in 1926
Weird Tales, Oct 1931
Dagon & Others, 1965
--/ fourth place f story
--/ wonder award
--/ emotion award

Review by A. Abrams
The mother of all "haunted house on the seashore" tales. Just try this little quote for size: "And when tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager vapours flock to heaven laden with lore; and Kingsport, nestling uneasy on its lesser cliffs below that awesome hanging sentinel of rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of the buoys tolled free in the aether of faery".

As you can see, the wonder and mystery are not confined to the house alone. In the most insidious ways Lovecraft tales stay with you for hours, infusing your reality with faery glow, and (in an even bigger measure) enhancing the shadows, till they grow to be sentient and grimly intent, bound to coalesce around you, if you do not swiftly flee into reality.

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BONUS:
In the same year, in 1926 (more than eighty years ago... time not just flies, it seems to have boarded Han Solo's Millenium Falcon and winked out of existence into entirely different continuum) - another writer was starting his career and appearing alongside Lovecraft in the "Weird Tales" magazine. The Grand Master of Space Adventure, Edmon Hamilton made an impression with the very first story he wrote, and here is why:

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Edmond Hamilton
"The Monster-God of Mamurth"
© Weird Tales, Aug 1926
Weird Tales, Sep 1935
Horror on the Asteroid, 1936
Magazine of Horror, Win 1967
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ rare find

Review by A. Abrams
Not "science fiction" per se, this was Edmond Hamilton's first published story, and it already has color and excitement aplenty. It is somber, exotic, "Clark-Ashton-Smith"-esque, baroque and morbid in a most delicious ways. Desert landscapes with unspeakable monsters hiding in grandiose mysterious structures, a dread and a trembling for an amateur adventurer and a professional curiosity for Sean Connery-like types. I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, and - just think - it's only the beginning of a Universe-spanning career!

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"Constellations", ed. by Peter Crowther

2009-02-24T20:40:00.000-08:00

Review by Avi Abrams

All the writers in this anthology are British, so you might think that "new space opera" and "high-concept science fiction" are only flourishing in the UK, while American writers are leaning more toward fantasy and away from "solid science fiction" (of the kind that's sprinkled with sheer cosmic grandeur) Well, in 2005 when this anthology came out, it might've seemed this way - but in the last couple of years the field has leveled somewhat: great science fiction stories are written on both sides of the Atlantic, and stand up quite well against the current blight of paranormal romance.

"Constellation" is fascinating, bejewelled collection, shimmering with ideas and wonder: a singular read.

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Adam Roberts
"The Order of Things"
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
--/ third place sf story
--/ idea award
--/ style award

This is one of those reading experiences where every word seems to fall into place and resonate perfectly with your worldview, almost ridiculously so - you catch yourself thinking you could've written the story, and in fact, Adam Roberts must've sneaked into the chambers of your mind and plucked it from there... You nod and smile with every paragraph, and wish the story would unroll into a novel, breaking the boundaries of the book, streaming in gaudy tapestries, out through the door and into the blue wide yonder - to the place where awards are distributed and happy critics fall over themselves to lavish praise (this story did not win any awards, by the way) Why am I so excited about this? Because it brings organized and repressive religion to its knees, with little effort - just a neat little "what if" premise.

This is a perfect "thought-variant" story, that would make the editor of the Golden Age of "Astounding" proud: one weird idea taken to the extreme - I am not going to spoil your reading pleasure, the surprises start from page one and never slow down - turning the story into a passionate statement against cast-in-stones rules and religions, bizarre traditions which take over people minds (traditions just as vicious and hard to exterminate as alien slugs or zombies). This story is intense and wonderful on plenty of levels, including unique world-building. Adam Roberts skyrockets to the top of my reading list (although, I hear that some off his books are quite obtuse and uneven). This story should be a required reading in every church, perhaps even preached from the pulpit.

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Alastair Reynolds
"Beyond the Aquila Rift"
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
Zima Blue & Other Stories, 2006
--novelette : 2006 Locus award
--/ third place space sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ adventure award
--/ awesome scale

The mind-boggling scale of vacuous space is compounded by the sense of being totally lost in it, not knowing where you are - the pilot in this story is lost in more ways than one, as Reynolds unveils the "degrees of separation" with the skill of a master magician. A few times the story pirouettes on its tail to further convolute the proceedings, but a happy reader will lap up every progressive revelation with a grin of joy. One of the most s-p-a-c-i-o-u-s novellas in Reynolds' portfolio, great stuff of wonder, a mournful note ghastly ringing in the dark-lit halls of outer space.

"Beyond the Aquila Rift" is set in a future with interstellar flight through a barely understood system long abandoned by the aliens that built it, and involves one of the occasional errors where ships arrive far from their intended destinations." (source)

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Eric Brown
"Heritage of Stars"
(Kethani series)
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
Kethani, 2008
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ emotion award
--/ style award

Immortality is considered and emotionally re-charged here with a lyrical treatment, reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer", or Vance's "To Live Forever". Eric Brown deftly sets up the scene with elements of wonder, danger and loss - adding a dash of sorrow and bittersweet human reflection. All these ingredients play well in this precisely-told story of one couple's romance heavily burdened (but not sagging!) with cold concepts of immortality and infinity.

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Paul McAuley
"Rats of the System"
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
--/ cool sf story
--/ wonder award

"A two person ship - manned by its captain and a scientist - try to escape an alien ship of the Transcendent. Very good mini-space-opera with lots of action, narrow-escapes and grand ideas. The alien backdrop concerns the Transcendent (AIs that have achieved a higher state of being) and their plan to maneuver stars for some grander (yet unrevealed) scheme as well as the Fanatics who worship them. As per a mid-story analogy, the "rats" of the title are the humans who, like the rodents, have the propensity to survive." via

All that is good and well, but two years after reading this story I've totally forgotten what's it about, of even if I enjoyed it or not. That tells you something about this particular adventure's originality and depth. It is certainly a competent piece of work, though.

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Brian Aldiss
"Ten Million of Them"
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
--/ cool sf story
--/ awesome scale

"...Provides a Very Big Picture, as a deity on a galactic scale views, in a detached manner, humanity's struggle to survive. As Sol expands, all manner of life take to the seas of the Earth, evolving into aquatic forms. Others have fled to the Kuiper Belt (the ten billion rocks in that Belt accounting for the title), but it is a much smaller being (the humble flu virus) which makes its escape. " via

Again, something that did not impress me all that much - but Aldiss can be vastly original and intense... read his short story collections to achieve that sort of reader's gestalt: swimming in the seas of his outrageous concepts and styles, and loving it.

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Tony Ballantyne
"Star!"
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
--/ cool sf story
--/ idea award

When teens say they want to become "a star" they don't usually mean it in a literal sense. In this story (reminiscent of Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund's "If The Stars Are Gods" from 1974 Terry Carr's Universe) stars are alive... a teen can turn into one, for example. This weird, preposterous idea gets an appropriately tongue-in-cheek treatment, enough said.

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Stephen Baxter
"Lakes of Light"
(Xeelee series)
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
Resplendent, 2006
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ awesome scale

"A star has been sheathed in a thin but impermeable substance; this is rotating at such a speed that the centrifugal force cancels out just enough of the sun's enormous gravity to permit people to live on the surface. Holes in the sheath provide the titular lakes, from which the inhabitants harvest their energy and (via a network of giant mirrors) their light. It's a splendid concept, with all sorts of narrative possibilities..." - via

Living on a surface of a star... Resplendent! (this was a fitting title for Baxter's collection, in which this story appeared later). It is of the same caliber as Larry Niven's super-space fiction, only slightly lacking in color and action. Still, a clear winner for its sheer originality.

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Ian Watson
"The Navigator's Children"
(also as "The Navigator's Tale")
© Constellations, ed. by Peter Crowther, 2005
The Butterflies of Memory, 2006
--/ fourth place sf story
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ awesome scale

I loved this story for its epic feel and a baroque atmosphere, plus the interesting premise of a Universe where you can only travel by certain rules and connected constellations. If the constellations change, it affects the very fabric of world events and geography. There is a lot of depth in this idea; much of it stems from Kaballah, and would've been technically fantasy, not science fiction, if not for the additional "world in a tea-cup" twist in the end... Seek out this story and enjoy having your brains cosmologically wrecked, and your worldview turned on fire. Didn't I say, this was an epic story? There is a Neal Stephenson trilogy hidden in there somewhere, and you know it.

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Also included:
Keith Brooke "A Different Sky"
Roger Levy "No Cure for Love"
Colin Greenland "Kings"
Gwyneth Jones "The Fulcrum"
Ian McDonald "Written in the Stars"
Justina Robson "The Little Bear"

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(IC 1396 H-Alpha Close-Up - image credit: Nick Wright, NASA)

Read more reviews of original anthologies ->

The Ultimate Guide to Modern Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy

2009-02-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

Click here to launch the Guide in new window:

"The Ultimate Guide to Modern Writers of Fantastic Literature: 1990-2009" ->

Making sense out of the current boom in fantastic literature

It is no secret that we live in the Golden Age of Fantastic Literature. With more books published in the genre than ever, plus an ever-increasing availability of obscure titles on the internet, a dedicated fan of science fiction and fantasy literature might think he died and went to heaven.

Not only are the pulp masterpieces of the 30's and 40's easily acquired (for the most part), but the whole history of the genre can be sampled and read in any order, and enjoyed as thoroughly as one likes - and on top of that more than 3,000 new books are published every year, with at least a hundred of utmost quality by new and promising writers. So, speaking of new writers...

(art courtesy Christophe Vacher)

Do you ever feel lost and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of noteworthy authors bursting onto the scene in the past decade? Top names are better known, of course, but the beauty of science fiction and fantasy is in the variety and full spectrum of the sub-genres, topics, and styles offered.

It was much easier to follow the development of the field in the 1980s: fewer books were published and one could follow the writers he chooses - and actually read them all. Starting in the 1991, as Locus magazine puts it, "more books were published that year than anybody could possibly read unless he makes a full-time job out of it." Since then, even if you read books all day, you still can not catch up on more than 10 books issued each day. One needs to have a guide, a directory, and recommendations to complement the offerings of your typical bookstore (just like in music, most good stuff is not even displayed and needs to be discovered by other means)

During last couple of years, Avi Abrams from Dark Roasted Blend has been compiling information about new and promising writers in science fiction, fantasy, horror and slipstream (magic realism). We decided to make this wealth of information available online as the

"Ultimate Guide to Modern Writers of Fantastic Literature" ->

Click here to launch Guide in new window

This monumental work includes more than 2,000 already established and upcoming writers, tagged by sub-genre, awards, recommendations, and year of achieving prominence in the field. For the first time, each writer's entry contains a link to a related site on the internet (for additional info and instant updates). This is a searchable database, allowing us to publish genre reviews based on this constantly updated data.

example screen picture

Some notes about the structure and contents of this Guide:

We tried to include the full spectrum of genre writers: science fiction, fantasy, horror, young adult, paranormal romance (only highlights) and even slipstream "magic realism" authors. We arbitrarily drew the line at 1990, and only include writers who were active in the field and writing since that year (if a particular author stopped writing after 1990, he or she is not included, but can be checked out in our general Writer's Directory at DRB SF Site).

All pen names are listed inside the "Notes" field; for a complete list of SF&F pen names we refer you to this page.

1. "Read" simply means if I personally read the work of this writer - my time is limited, but I try to follow the most promising books and stories. Obviously, the color-coded recommendations will correspond to my own tastes (if I have read this writer), but also will reflect how this writer fares with critics and reviewers (based on information published in "year's best" and Locus, among other sources). A bright red square means highly recommended, a pink square means also recommended, a grey square is reserved for all other fiction, and it simply means "as yet unrated".

Please note that while this compilation covers some 2000 writers from this genre we have not included every single writer since 1990. This work will be regularly updated as we investigate further archives and as the industry evolves.

2. "Link" should bring you to the writer's personal site or Wikipedia entry. However, the coding for this link is based on Google's top results for this name, so if the writer is not popular enough, or lacks a personal site, Google might choose some weird page - we are trying to weed out these occurrences, let us know if you find any.

3. "Genre" column: the abbreviations should be self-explanatory, with "h" meaning horror genre, though we are more inclined to call it "dark fantasy". If a writer wrote in many genres, we show only the ones that brought him the most popularity. All "magic realism" and slipstream is labeled as fantasy for simplicity.

4. "Disc." ("Discovered") column shows the year when this writer achieved some degree of popularity (either by inclusion in "year's best" or winning an award). The exception is every year before 1990 - we just put "90" to signify that this author was actively writing in the 1980s, and in rare cases in the 1970s as well.

5. "Awards" - this Guide does not intend to replace the excellent Locus' Guide to SF Awards, we only include the highlights of a writer's career, for the details you can check out Locus' database here. Winners are indicated by letter "W", otherwise all listed award references signify nominations ("r-up" also means "runner-up for this award") We will be updating the awards section per writer at least every other month, so check back often.

6. "From" shows the country of writer's citizenship, the default is U.S., "UK" means United Kingdom, "Au" means Australian (including New Zealand), all other countries are specified in Notes.

7. "Notes" field contains a very short description of writer's predominant style and sub-genre, plus most often-used pen names and "claims to fame".

(art courtesy Christophe Vacher)

We will be regularly updating this database, publish certain "slices" and overviews by sub-genre, or by year - and ultimately incorporate it with our "Wonder Timeline" of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Check back often, as we travel on the road of discovery of the most brilliant and life-enriching literature of the Fantastique.

Please contact us with your suggestions, thoughts and input.

CLICK TO CONTINUE TO THE GUIDE ->

The Surreal Office

2009-01-05T23:57:00.000-08:00

Weird Fiction by Jeff VanderMeer and Vernor Vinge

Here is some required reading for those who feel stuck in a daily grind, or on the contrary, are dreaming about becoming a symbiotic whole with a cubicle.

Jeff VanderMeer and Vernor Vinge are two very different writers in style and approach, but the subject matter is painfully familiar ("Office", "Office Space", Dilbert, you name it). In these short works of fiction, the same office life receives a refreshingly surreal makeover that you likely will never forget... or look at your job prospects in the same way again.

(art courtesy David Fuhrer)

Unless you work in a gorgeous environment like this (Google sets the trend, again), you may desire profound changes in your workplace. Read this story then, and be careful what you wish for:

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Jeff VanderMeer
"The Situation"
© 2008, PS Publishing
--/ third place f novelette
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ emotion award

Jeff VanderMeer is not a pirate (swashbuckler, filibustier, rogue), nor is he a squid researcher, or a mushroom grower (though some of his writings may suggest all that, given their ferocious weirdness). He is, however, a damn good writer, who can easily cram a juicy epic into a thin sliver of a book: in this case, a 50-page worth Situation.

Somewhat reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's novella "The Cookie Monster", this particularly steamy slice of corporate Gormenghast for the economy-plagued America provides plenty of emotional harakiri and gut-spilling visual thrills... it crawls around the astonished reader like a misshapen beetle (complete with the grotesque patterns on its carapace and clockwork-sounding clicks). At any point in time this novella seems to have enough potential to be turned into a full-blown 500-page paperback slab, but Jeff VanderMeer never makes this "Alienation in the Workforce" any longer than it needs to be. He lets it lie where it may (using the long-forgotten art form of understatement) - and boy, does the whole thing curl around your subconscious in deliciously disturbing ways!

Suffice it to say that anybody who's been slighted by the benefits-rich corporate culture, or has ever caught a whiff of something rotten emanating from the CEO's office (the Chairmen of the Board abide in a sort of a metaphysical tower and seem to be of insectoid, slug, or worse nature) - anybody who felt the foreboding of CHANGE ready to percolate down the managerial chain... anybody who was strangled creatively or artistically in the name of Almighty Routine... these readers would really appreciate the bizarre Kafka-esque environment of the "Situation", and may cherish it as a sort of confessional, akin to a conversation with a wise (if somewhat mischievous) priest at an altar. The words of wisdom seem to be "Get Out! While you can, and leave your red stapler behind" - but there is more to the particular kind of doom which Jeff VanderMeer carefully measures out. The unavoidable outcome of being fired seems almost a happy ending to a progression of humiliation and defeat.

So in a way, this is a quest, only in reverse. The happy start of the story occurred somewhere during the peaceful "belonging" stage of being gainfully employed. But when the situation developed, everything turned into a bloody, fleshy, surreal set-up (think of "Existenz" movie, or J. G. Ballard's particularly weird nightmares). With the final page the reader can expect to be emotionally exhausted, greatly desiring more details, and only getting fifty pages worth of text. Kind of like Harlan Ellison's angriest (and most laconic) best. Good things come in small packages, indeed.

Download the full text online here, read about the circumstances of how it was written in Jeff's interview on DRB, or order the book at PS Publishing site.

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Jeff VanderMeer
"Secret Lives" (coll)
© 2008, Prime Books
--/ fourth place f collection
--/ idea award
--/ style award
--/ humour award

Speaking of Harlan Ellison's "angry candies", or his "From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet", here we have a similarly delicious set - a short collection (little more than 100 pages) of themed stories, vignettes of the secret lives of various quite ridiculous, or utterly boring characters. This is a gauntlet thrown in the face of each of us: "Hey there, do YOU have a secret worth of writing about?" My completely uneducated guess would be that most people lead some sort of secret life, even if known only to the powers above. Admit it, or not, this is a voyarist bliss package, capable to illuminate your boring life with rays of unadulterated lunacy, even if said lunacy is only a product of Jeff VanderMeer's mind.

This book takes my pick as the most intriguing and under-appreciated publishing event of the year (it even has a strange, unaccounted story on the other side of the cover). Don't try to search for it in your cavernous Borders store, and don't confuse this book with Jeff's previously-issued collection "Secret Life". You can order a copy through the Prime Books website.

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(art courtesy David Fuhrer, click to enlarge)

Here is a reminder of what conceptual science fiction can do with the "office farce" sub-genre: Hugo award-winning 2003 novella by Vernor Vinge (written after the dot com crash, also in a pretty negative corporate and economic climate)

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Vernor Vinge
"The Cookie Monster"
© Analog, Oct 2003
--novella : 2004 Hugo Winner
--novella : 2004 Locus Winner
--novella : 2004 AnLab /3
--/ second place sf novella
--/ wonder award
--/ idea award
--/ awesome scale

Just like "The Situation", this haunting novella contains images of corporate hell worthy of Dilbert's worst. It certainly puts a stop to dreams of a cozy desk job in sunny California, grazing around the campus of some hip computer corporation. Instead of perks, freedom and stability the employees here get something quite different... and you get a sinking feeling from the moment the first email arrives in the story.

This is a classic novella about the manipulation of reality; engaging, hilarious and deceptively simple: most of it happens inside a generic industrial park, with the main characters having a reckless adventure... by walking from one building to the other. Soon, however, the daily grind turns into a nightmare (and/or conspiracy) worthy of Kafka and Philip K. Dick. As our characters realize that they have become part of the biggest reality scam since "The Truman Show", they have nothing left to do but to shuffle around in a zombie-like fashion, hoping to "cool off" their thought processes, or trying to figure out the implications of the plot.

A few years back, Vinge popularized the "singularity" concept, in which he predicted that humanity will be left in the dust in the wake of self-evolving software. This writer knows how to handle the vastness of concept, how to tighten the plot with the velvet gloves of the reader's own fears and paranoias. It all starts with an email (just like the good old "Matrix" starts with a call on Neo's phone)... but soon the workplace transforms into something else, and time itself is bending out of shape.

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(art courtesy David Fuhrer, click to enlarge)

Also Read: "Surreal Art Update"

Interview with Jeff VanderMeer