Book Review: A Fire in the Sun

Book Review: 'A Fire in the Sun' by George Alec Effinger

5 / 5 Stars

'A Fire in the Sun' (290 pp.) was published by Bantam Spectra in April 1990, and features cover art by Steve and Paul Youll.

 

This is the second volume in the so-called 'Marid Audran' or 'Budayeen' franchise. My review of the first volume 'When Gravity Fails,' is here. ‘‘The Exile Kiss’ is the concluding volume. (1991). A collection of related short stories, titled ‘Budayeen Nights’, was released in 2003.

 

 

'Fire' picks up where 'Gravity' left off. In what is likely a near-future Alexandria, Egypt, our hero Marid Audran is acquiescing to life as the lieutenant of Friedlander Bey, the boss of the Budayeen district. Marid would much prefer to return to his dissolute life as a go-between for the various unsavory personages doing business in the Budayeen, a line of work that supports his drug habit, if not much else. But Friedlander not only has co-opted Marid into being a permanent member of the household, but he has arranged for Marid to become a policeman, no less.

 

Marid's friends and acquaintances are less than pleased to learn that Marid has 'sold out,' but for his part, Marid is slowly coming to an awareness that his life is trending to more important things than self-indulgence. Friedlander is old and ill, and more and more reliant on Marid to be a troublehshooter. And Friedlander has his troubles, indeed; an uneasy peace with the other boss man in the city, one Reda Abu Adil, is showing strains, with clandestine operations and treacheries coming to light with each passing week.

 

For Marid, things get complicated with the discovery that people in the Budayeen are being murdered, not for money or spite, but for reasons quite sinister. Marid suspects that Friedlander and Abu Adil know more than they are saying about these murders. A gunman loose in the city may be a source of information, but tracking him down will be dangerous, and Marid isn't cut out to be a hero. But as events close in on him, Marid is going to have to think about being a hero, whether he likes it or not.........

 

'A Fire in the Sun' is a better novel than its predecessor (to which I gave a Four Star Rating). 'Fire' has better pacing, livelier characterization, and a little less contrivance in terms of the denouement, which settles some questions about Marid's ancestry and the consequences of his alliances with the movers and shakers in the Budayeen. The setting of a cyberpunk North Africa retains its novelty, a place where poverty sits side-by-side with wealth and privilege, and prayers to Allah alternate with jacking in 'mods' that impart skills directly to a user's brain.

 

At the finish of 'A Fire in the Sun,' I was comfortable with a Five Star Rating, and looking forward to the next volume in this interesting first-generation cyberpunk series.

'Where the Summer Ends' by Karl Edward Wagner

(repost)

Here in Central Virginia we're in the deepest and most humid part of the long, long season of summer. The atmosphere is sweltering and steamy and there is a thunderstorm every afternoon. And every vacant lot or untended piece of turf gets swamped with vegetation.

At these times, I readily think of the story ‘Where the Summer Ends’ (1980) by Karl Edward Wagner.

While Wagner is best known for his novels about Kane, the red-haired sword and sorcery adventurer, Wagner could also be a competent writer of short stories. And among the best of these short stories is ‘Summer’, which first appeared in the 1980 anthology 'Dark Forces,' edited by Kirby McCauley.

The story also is printed in the anthology of southern ghost and supernatural stories 'Nightmares in Dixie' (1987), edited by McSherry, Waugh and Greenberg; and in 'The American Fantasy Tradition' (2002), edited by Brian M. Thomsen. And it's among the stories collected in Valancourt Books' 2023 reissue of Wagner's anthology, 'In A Lonely Place.'

“Where the Summer Ends’ is set in Knoxville, Tennessee in the summer of 1977. Mercer, the protagonist of the story, is an older college student who is rehabbing a house in a seedy, gentrifying neighborhood. He furnishes his house with items salvaged from the abandoned homes littering the area, or, when the opportunity presents itself, with better-quality purchases from Grady, an elderly, cantankerous ‘antiques’ dealer who lives nearby. Grady has a fine mantelpiece that Mercer covets; with the strategic application of the right amount of liquor, maybe Grady will sell it for a price Mercer can afford.

The summer is hot and sticky and there are thunderstorms nearly every night. The entire ghetto has been overrun with kudzu, the fast-growing shrub originally imported from Japan. It overgrows the deserted homes and parking lots and playgrounds, and it’s even encroaching on Grady’s house.

Mercer’s cat has gone missing.

Winos and vagrants from the neighborhood are turning up dead; old Morny’s corpse, mutilated and missing most of its skin, was discovered within a stand of kudzu.

And Mercer, when he stands very still on the sidewalk on a sweltering afternoon, hears rustling and skittering noises coming from under the thick clumps of kudzu….

The Black Death Re-Read

Re-Read: 'The Black Death' by Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr

4 / 5 Stars

 

It's been nearly 8 years since I last read 'The Black Death,' which first was published in hardcover in 1977, with this Ballantine Books paperback released in March 1978. The blanket of heat and humidity that has settled over the northeast this Summer reminded me of the novel and prompted me to sit down and re-read it.

'Death' is set in New York City in the mid-1970s, a city in crisis from strikes, budget cuts, crime, malfeasance, and inept political leadership. Piles of garbage lie festering in the late Summer heat. All of these things are ideal to foster an outbreak of highly transmissible pneumonic plague.

 

David Hart, an epidemiologist with the city's Bureau of Preventable Diseases, gets word of a case with a troubling presentation, a case with features common to plague. Within days, there are secondary infections and it is clear that a pathogen of unusual virulence is loose in the city's upper and under classes. But New York's politicians and bureaucrats are loath to declare any emergency that would cause a 'panic' in an already stressed infrastructure. Hart tries to do what he can he prevent an epidemic from starting, but the odds are against him..........

 

I gave 'The Black Death' a Four Star Rating in my initial read and I am comfortable with retaining that score in my re-read. The only weak feature in the novel is the inclusion of a 70s staple villain, the megalomaniacal general anxious to gain glory from utilizing cruel measures to stamp out the infection. But overall, this novel remains "....a very entertaining medical thriller and a great evocation of the era in which the Rolling Stones song 'Shattered' summed up the state of New York City." 

Being cruel at the National Lampoon

Being Cruel at the National Lampoon

The Lampoon could be cruel and vicious at times, particularly when taking satirical aim at celebrities. Thus, the July, 1976 issue features a scathing portrayal of Elvis on the cover.

 

Inside the magazine, we have the Letters page, where the Lampoon staff would publish fictitious letters purporting to be from celebrities and those close to them. 

 

The July issue first takes cruel aim at Karen Ann Quinlan. In April, 1975, a 21 year-old Quinlan collapsed into a coma after taking Valium in conjunction with alcohol. Her condition became the subject of a complex legal battle by her parents to have her disconnected from her ventilator, which happened in May, 1976. Despite her vegetative state, Quinlan remained alive without the ventilator, and lingered until June 1985, when she died from respiratory failure.

The July '76 Lampoon presents a letter from Quinlan:

 

 

Then there is Caroline Kennedy, who, in April 1975, was admitted to the New England Baptist Hospital for what the gossip column in the New York Times referred to as a 'routine checkup.'

 

 

Leave it to the Lampoon to fabricate a letter that is perfectly snide and vicious:

 

Lots of transgressive stuff in that July, 1976, issue ! That's how they did it, back in the seventies...... 

Philippe Druillet graphic novel lineup

Philippe Druillet graphic novel lineup

Titan Comics, 2015 - 2023

As of 2023 there are nine volumes in this series (the volumes missing in my collection, above, are 'Lone Sloane: Chaos, Vol. 1,' and 'Lone Sloane: Babel').

 

These all are classics of 70s and 80s sci-fi graphic art, with a decidedly 'French' sensibility. You can find each volume selling brand-new for about $20 - $35 each. They are well worth getting at that price, because with the passage of time these things see their asking prices start to rise. More information is available at the Titan Comics website.

Book Review: Among the Dead

Book Review: 'Among the Dead' by Edward Bryant

 

3 / 5 Stars

 

'Among the Dead' (210 pp.) was issued in 1974 by Collier Books. The cover art is by Grey Morrow, and it's not very good. In fact, it's among the worst cover art I've ever seen for a sci-fi paperback.

 

Edward Bryant (1945 - 2017) was a leading writer during the New Wave era. His short stories readily were labeled as 'speculative fiction,' and most of the 17 tales presented in 'Among the Dead' adhere to this label. These stories saw print in such anthologies as 'Clarion,' 'Quark,' 'New Dimensions,' and 'Orbit,' all prominent New Wave outlets.

 

Reading this anthology reminds me that for every imaginative and powerful story the New Wave era produced, there were a bunch of other stories that were failures.

 

In 'Among the Dead,' the failures are plentiful. I mean, one story bears the title 'No. 2 Plain Tank Auxiliary Fill Structural Limit 17,605 lbs. Fuel PWA Spec. 522 Revised,' which is sheer New Wave self-indulgence, and the sort of stuff editors like Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg thought was just so, so precious, back in the early seventies. 

I won't bother to synopsize 'The Hanged Man', 'Jody After the War,' 'Sending the Very Best,' 'Love Song of Herself,' 'Their Thousandth Season,' 'Pinup,' and 'Dune's Edge,'because there's really not much there to synopsize. Just figurative prose, with no plot. 

For example, in 'Dune's Edge,', a group of people find themselves stranded at a beach where they are compelled to climb to the top of a nearby sand dune. The narrator has some bad dreams. That's the plot. Just your average ordinary Existential Crisis. 

 

'Teleidoscope' is about Markham, his struggles with impotence, his abuse during childhood at the hands of his mother, and his relationship with a woman named Cara. There are allusions to black holes and collapsing stars. This story is so New-Wavey that it's an unwitting parody of a New Wave story...............

 

'The Poet in the Hologram in the Middle of Prime Time' is reasonably coherent, plot-wise. It's about a new form of 3D television being marketed by the UniComp corporation, a form of TV that lets the viewer interact with the characters on-screen. A poet named Ransom, who supports himself by writing scripts for UniComp, sees this advance as a threat to Art, and contemplates taking drastic action to subvert the process. The story tries to say something Profound about the nature of Art in the futuristic society.

 

And the aforementioned 'No. 2 Plain Tank Auxiliary Fill Structural Limit 17,605 lbs,' is all about a political activist on a mission. 

 

Also dealing with politics, with a helping of The Parallax View - style 70s paranoia, is 'Tactics,' which unfortunately has too vague an ending to be effective.

 

The thing about Bryant is, when he wanted to, he could write very good stories. And there are some of these in the pages of 'Among the Dead.' Stories that are well-constructed and well-plotted.

 

Among the best of these is 'The Human Side of the Village Monster,' which, despite its cumbersome title, is a very good tale about a near-future New York City ruined by overpopulation and Eco-Catastrophe. It seems to have a predictable denouement, but veers off into an unexpected, but unpleasant, direction. I've placed this story in my list of top horror stories of the 1960s to the early 1990s. 

 

The title story also is well-done. It takes a familiar theme: the Last People on Earth, and their struggle for survival, and imbues these with a dark humor that calls to mind Harlan Ellison at his transgressive best.

 

Also worthy is 'Shark,' in which the first-person narrator's girlfriend has her brain transplanted into that very animal. It's a sort of warped version of the 1973 movie The Day of the Dolphin.

'Adrift on the Freeway' deals with entropy and middle-aged angst, and while the ending is a little too ambiguous for me, it does capture existential anomie as well as any New Wave era piece did. 

 

An oddity in this collection is 'File on the Plague,' which first appeared in the April, 1971 issue of the National Lampoon. As one might expect, it's a humorous piece.........sheep are involved. I'll just post scans of the story, and let you decide whether it has merit........

 

 

 

'The Soft Blue Bunny Rabbit Story' focuses on a college student caught up in campus unrest; the situation is made worse - or perhaps better - by his use of hallucinogens.

 

Summing up, there are enough good stories in 'Among the Dead' to justify giving the anthology a Three Star Rating. 

 

For an overview of Bryant and his works by someone who tends to be a bit more sympathetic to New Wave writing than I am, I direct readers to Joachim Boaz and the 'Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations' blog.

Weeds by Stephen King

'Weeds' by Stephen King

from Cavalier, May 1976

Here's a fun little Fourth-of-July story from Stephen King: 'Weeds,' first published in Cavalier magazine in the May, 1976 issue. A meteor falls onto a field near Jordy Verrill's house in rural Maine, and when Jordy messes with the remains of the meteor, he unleashes something unpleasant.

 

 

King later would re-use the story, retitled as 'The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,' as a segment in the 1982 movie Creepshow. King himself played the hapless Jordy.

You can access the story, and the May '76 issue of Cavalier, at the Internet Archive. Happy Fourth of July, everyone ! 

The Merchants of Venus graphic novel

The Merchants of Venus

by Frederik Pohl

DC Comics Science Fiction Graphic Novel No. 4 

January, 1986

 

'The Merchants of Venus' was issued in 1986 as one of the entries in DC Comics' 'Science Fiction Graphic Novel' catalog. The writers are Victoria Petersen and Neal McPheeters, with art by McPheeters.

 

'Merchants' first was published as a novelette in August, 1972 in Worlds of If. 

 

 

Protagonist Audee Walthers lives on, or rather, in Venus, in the Spindle, an immense underground cavern excavated by the since-vanished race of aliens known as the Heechee. Walthers makes a modest living by transporting tourists around Venus in his aircar. 

 

There's not much to see on the surface of Venus, but Walthers specializes in bringing his clients to see the engineering works left by the Heechee, including the underground tunnels where, sometimes, scavengers have come across valuable and precious artifacts.

Needing money, and lots of it, Walthers is intrigued when a wealthy Terran couple, Boyce Cochenour, and his stunning mistress Dorotha Keefer, arrive at the Spindle looking for adventure and excitement. Walthers convinces them that he can take them to places on-planet where there might yet be undiscovered Heechee warrens, and in those warrens, treasure.

Stuffing Walthers' aircar with gear and provisions, the trio set off. For Cochenour and Keefer, Venus turns out to be quite dangerous and unpleasant, but the lure of wealth overrides their concerns. For his part, Walther has his own - rather selfish - motives for wanting to find a cache of Heechee technology.

As the plot progresses it turns out Walthers isn't the only one with secrets and ulterior motives. Can he and his charges put aside their tensions long enough to find that one site where some digging might yield an undiscovered Heechee stash ?

I admit I had low expectations when I picked up 'Merchants,' mainly because I find Pohl to be an underwhelming author, and the bright, primary color scheme of the book gave it a cartoony aspect. But it turns out that 'Merchants' has a decent, very readable hard-sf story, one where you're kept guessing until the very last page.

 

Summing up, you don't have to be a Pohl fan to appreciate this book. With copies going for $10 for a Very Good grading, I was fortunate to pick this up for $5. If you can find it for a reasonable price, you may want to get one yourself............