Book Review: The Best SF Stories from New Worlds

Book Review: 'The Best SF Stories from New Worlds', edited by Michael Moorcock


2 / 5 Stars

‘The Best SF Stories from New Worlds’ (Berkley, 1968, 158 pp.) is the US paperback version of the Panther (British) anthology published in 1967. The distinctive cover illustration is uncredited. The stories in this anthology were published in 1965 – 1967.

In his Introduction, Michael Moorcock, editor of the anthology (and also, of course of the British magazine ‘New Worlds’), invokes the ‘new spirit in sf these days’ which was of course what we now refer to as the 'New Wave' movement. So, ‘The Best SF Stories from New Worlds’ rightly may be considered one of the earliest showcases for that unique literary phenomenon.

How do the stories present upon being read more than 40 years later ?

The opening tale, ‘The Small Betraying Detail’, by Brian Aldiss, is narrated by a tubercular man who is being escorted by acquaintances to a sanitarium; en route, the narrator becomes obsessed with the idea that somehow, his companions represent another evolutionary offshoot of the human race. I found the plot device to be too contrived to be convincing, and the ending – meant to be understated, but alarming – suffers as a result.

Roger Zelazny contributes ‘The Keys to December’, in which genetically modified humans set out to terraform an entire planet. This is very much a Zelazny New Wave tale; one of his sentences lasts for nearly a page, and contains something like 20 semicolons. Under these literary contrivances, there is a modestly entertaining story.

J.G. Ballard, at the time the established star of the New Wave movement, contributes ‘The Assassination Weapon’, which is not so much a short story as it is a loosely connected series of brief paragraphs dealing with the hallucinations of a bomber pilot. It’s very much ‘experimental’ in form and construction (for example, one of the paragraphs is headed 'GOOGOLPLEX') and holds up poorly when read today.

‘Nobody Axed You’, by John Brunner, takes place in a dystopian near-future where overcrowding is so severe that sexual reproduction is outlawed, and television shows depicting acts of murder are used by the ruling authorities to inspire the populace to commit various bits of mayhem (with a goal towards keeping the population in check). Its satirical content seems more representative of 50s SF, and I suspect many readers will see the story’s denouement coming well in advance.

‘A Two-Timer’, by David I. Masson, is the best story in the collection. When a time-traveler from the future arrives in an English village in 1683, an enterprising local steals his time machine and travels forward to the same locale, albeit in 1964. There he has various humorous adventures. While a bit lengthy, the story’s appeal is that it is phrased in the dialect of a 17-century writer, i.e., “their Lamps use neither oyl nor candle, but instead, are Contrived to light by Manipulation of a special type of Ether, which they term ‘Elecktricity’.”

Langdon Jones contributes ‘The Music Makers’, in which some snobby classical musicians, performing on Mars for the benefit of its colonists, experience existential angst amid the barren dunes.

‘The Squirrel Cage’, by Thomas M. Disch, is a first-person story about a man imprisoned in a single room, perhaps by aliens. There is much musing about alienation, some of it involving pogonophore worms (the ‘tube worms’ that live around warm-water vents deep in the Pacific Ocean). The story has not aged well.

All in all, I can’t really recommend ‘The Best SF Stories from New Worlds’ to anyone but the most dedicated fans of the New Wave scene. Most of the stories seem dated by today’s standards, and I suspect contemporary readers will have little patience for the prose tricks that were deemed quite stylish back in the late 60s.

Book Review: Catastrophes

Book Review: 'Catastrophes' edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Henry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

3 / 5 Stars

‘Catastrophes !’ (1981, Fawcett) is edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. It’s a thick chunk of a paperback book at 413 pages with a 10-point font; the suitably apocalyptic cover illustration is by John Berkey.

‘Catastrophes’ is an anthology devoted to end-of-the-world stories; the book is organized into five Parts, with the Parts devoted to accounts of the destruction of the Universe, the Sun, the Earth, Humanity, and Civilization. The stories (ranging from the late 30s to the mid 70s) in the anthology all were previously published in SF magazines or hard-bound story collections.

My capsule descriptions of the contents:

‘The Last Trump’, Isaac Asimov: the Biblical End of the World takes place, and the resurrected dead wander a rather bland, but renewed, Earth. Asimov attempts a twist in his ending; however, most readers will spot it coming well in advance.

‘No Other Gods’, Edward Wellen: a fable of two space travelers and their interaction with a God-like computer.

‘The Wine Has Been Left Open Too Long and the Memory Has Gone Flat', Harlan Ellison: yet another pretentious New Wave story from Ellison. A intergalactic music contest (?!) provokes deep angst and retrospection on the part of a troubled alien named Stileen.

‘Stars, Won’t You Hide Me’, Ben Bova: a human space pilot tries to elude vengeful aliens. A ‘cosmic’ ending helps this become a very readable story.

‘Judgement Day’, Lloyd Biggle, Jr.: a man with a unique mental power finds himself in trouble in small-town America. Reminiscent of Jerome Bixby’s ‘It’s a Good Life’, ‘Day’ is one of the better tales in the collection.

‘The Custodian’, William Tenn: a mildly satirical tale of a recluse who hopes to be the Last Man on Earth.

‘Phoenix’, Clark Ashton Smith: an old school pulp story from Smith that is actually rather readable (!). Maybe he was depleted of metaphors, similes, adverbs, and adjectives the day he wrote it. Anyways, it’s about the Sun gone colder, and a last-ditch effort to save Mankind is under way.

‘Run from the Fire’, Harry Harrison: an entertaining story of alternate universes and efforts to dodge a Sun going nova. Harrison effortlessly runs through more plot developments in three pages than other authors do in 20 pages.

‘Requiem’, Edmond Hamilton: By 1962, when this story first appeared, Hamilton had progressed as a writer and was capable of producing a reasonably good short story. A spaceship captain explores the melancholy ruins of a far-future Earth.

‘At the Core’, Larry Niven: Set in Niven’s ‘Known Space’ universe, pilot Beowulf Schaeffer helms a new starship on a maiden journey to the galactic Core. Hard science theme, but quite readable and featuring some wry humor.

‘A Pail of Air’, Fritz Leiber: a competent tale from Leiber about survivors of a new Ice Age.

‘King of the Hill’, Chad Oliver: a wealthy man contemplates an Earth dying from overcrowding and pollution. The cynical, preachy tone of the story is an inevitable component of any early-70s Eco-catastrophe story.

‘The New Atlantis’ by Ursula K. Le Guin: a much-anthologized New Wave short story. A married couple struggle to survive in a threadbare, dystopian future America; interspersed with their narrative is one in which a long-buried race of alien beings prepare to reassert control of the Earth.

‘History Lesson’ by Arthur C. Clarke: in the far future, aliens comes across some artifacts left by Man. Clarke’s rather plodding prose style doesn’t set up the ‘surprise’ ending very well.

‘Seeds of the Dusk’ by Raymond Z. Gallun: an Old School pulp story from 1938. A spore from Mars touches down on a bleak, far future Earth. The story holds up quite well for modern readers.

‘Dark Benediction’, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. : a plague from space strikes the Earth, and Paul Oberlin scavenges in the empty streets of Houston. The ending veers into sentimentality, but in many ways this novelette is superior to Miller’s remarkably over-rated novel ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’.

‘Last Night of Summer’, by Alfred Coppel: a short, melodramatic story about end-of-the-world debauchery taking place the evening before a massive solar flare is predicted to subject the Earth to lethal temperatures.

‘The Store of the Worlds’, by Robert Sheckley: a melancholy tale of a man purchasing the fantasy of his choice.

‘How It Was When the Past Went Away’, by Robert Silverberg: a drug that causes amnesia gets slipped into the water supply of 2002 San Francisco. For some who imbibed, forgetfulness is a blessing. As was typical of Silverberg’s output in the late 60s – early 70s, it’s more of a novelette about Relationships than a hard-core SF adventure.

‘Shark Ship’, C. M. Kornbluth: another much-anthologized Eco-catastrophe story. In a near-future Earth gripped by overpopulation and environmental collapse, vast ships ply the oceans in a ceaseless search for edible plankton.

The verdict ? Taken as a whole, ‘Catastrophes’ is a serviceable collection of SF tales. There are four or five entries that qualify as memorable stories, with the rest more or less standard-issue. If you are into apocalyptic and end-of-the-world themed collections, then this one may be worth searching out.

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 24 (May 1974)

'Amazing Adventures' No. 24 (May 1974) features Killraven in the 'War of the Worlds' storyline. This issue is titled 'For He's A Jolly Dead Rebel', with script by Don McGregor and art by Herb Trimpe.

Although the cover date was May 1974, the issue was actually on the stands in early Winter 1974, therefore, there is a 'New Year 2019' theme.

The story: having escaped Abraxas and the Martians at the ruins of the Lincoln Memorial, Killraven and his band of adventurers make for the underground tunnel system that encircles the ruins of Washington, DC. There they have the misfortune to encounter a horde of mutated vampire bats; I've excerpted some pages of the ensuing mayhem.

Despite an increase in the cover price from 20 cents to 25 cents (a rather large increase according to the economics of the time), this issue, as others before it, offers only 15 pages for the Killraven tale, with another 4 pages being made up of (yet another) reprint from a long-ago issue of 'Journey Into Mystery' from the Marvel vaults. With the New Year of 1974 dawning, Marvel was still having problems with producing material to fill its rapidly expanding list of titles.

Book Review: The Forever War

Book Review: 'The Forever War' by Joe Haldeman

5 / 5 Stars

‘The Forever War’ first was published in hardback in 1975, although two short stories that prefigured the novel were published in sf digests in the early 1970s: 'Time Piece' ( If , July / August 1970) and 'We Are Very Happy Here' (Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, November 1973). 

This Del Rey paperback edition (218 pp.) was published in 1976, and features a cover illustration by Murray Tinkleman.

It’s 1997, and the Earth space fleet has discovered a network of wormholes- ‘collapsars’ – that permit instantaneous travel from one region of the galaxy to another location thousands of light-years distant. The problem is, spaceships of an alien race, known as the Taurans, also use the collapsars, and they have destroyed a Terran vessel. 

In response, the United Nations goes on war footing and William Mandella, a college physics major, is drafted into the Army.

Because travel to the collapsars and the strategic planets located in proximity to them takes place at near-light velocities, combat missions may occupy a year or so of shipboard time. However, back on Earth, decades can pass relative to shipboard time. Consequently, one of the main plot devices of ‘War’ deals with the disorientation and anomie Mandella and his fellow soldiers experience when they return to a greatly changed Earth upon completion of a combat mission.

As the war progresses, the likelihood of survival for an individual soldier becomes smaller and smaller. Can Mandella survive these almost impossible odds ? Will the Taurans be vanquished ? As the years unfold, will Mandella even recognize the Earth that he is fighting to protect ?

I first read ‘The Forever War’ in 1975, and read it several more times during the 70s. It was one of the better novels to see print in the New Wave era. Despite being very engaging and well-written, the novel was something of an anomaly for its time (it did receive the Hugo award in 1976).

Its prose is very spare and direct, and lacks any of the stylistic contrivances that marked so many other novels of the New Wave era. The first-person narrative is entirely in the present tense; there are no flashbacks lasting longer than a few sentences; there are no lengthy and  overwritten expositions on the main character’s mental state, as might be expected of a New Wave novel dealing with the military and violence. The ‘hard’ science aspects of the book are carefully worked into the text, and serve to enhance the story without clogging it with overly technical descriptions.

‘Forever War’ is first and foremost a great SF adventure story. The antiwar aspects of the novel are understated and derive not from a polemical stance on the part of author Haldeman, but more from the inclusion of little vignettes and plot twists that signal the author’s familiarity with combat in the ‘real world’ (Haldeman was drafted, and saw combat, in the Viet Nam war). Fellow soldiers die from blunders in training; they are killed or mutilated by friendly fire; tactical mistakes by the commanding authority are depressingly frequent; and the ‘grunts’ in the trenches only have an incomplete understanding of what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Thirty-five years after it first appeared, ‘Forever War’ remains one of the best SF novels yet written about future combat.

Haldeman wrote two novels in the 90s that are more or less related to ‘War’; ‘Forever Peace’ (1998) deals with a near-future war on Earth in which remotely-controlled androids perform the combat. ‘Forever Free’ (1999) is a sequel proper, featuring the further adventures of William Mandela.

Happy New Year 2010

A little two-page strip, 'Midnight Feast', by Reveillon,  from the December 1979 issue of 'Heavy Metal' magazine. 

Despite its brevity, 'Feast' effectively communicates something of the initial merriment, then the following melancholy, of a New Year's Eve revels. 

In many ways, the end-of-the-decade sense of anomie and weariness that characterized the New Year's Eve of 1979 is also present as we confront New Year's Eve 2009 and the end of its own decade....

Book Review: Spawn

Book Review: 'Spawn' by Shaun Hutson

4 / 5 Stars

I am NOT making up this synopsis:

Harold Pierce is a mental patient, a man disfigured from burns acquired when, as a child, he was caught in a house fire (he carelessly started the fire while torturing crane flies........ by dropping lit matches into the jar holding them).

As the book opens, Harold is being released from an asylum, and forced to make his own way in the world. He finds employment as an aide at Fairvale Hospital in the little town of Exham in northern Britain. One of his assignments is to dispose of the corpses of aborted fetuses by placing them in the hospital furnace. However, this action makes Harold so distraught that he smuggles the corpses out from the hospital and buries them in makeshift graves near his small cottage (!).

One night, a severe storm hits the area and the ground over the graves is struck by bolt of lightning. The corpses of the fetuses are revived and, using a powerful telepathic ability, they command Harold to dig them up, and shelter them in the dank cupboard below the sink in his cottage (!).

It becomes apparent that the zombie fetuses (the Spawn of the book's title) need human blood to sustain them......and an increasingly deranged Harold is forced to carry out the wishes of these demonic creatures.

To make matters worse, a lunatic named Paul Harvey (!) has escaped from the Exham mental hospital and is loose in the countryside, having armed himself with a rusty scythe. When headless corpses start turning up in the vicinity of Exham, it looks like Harvey is on the prowl....and when he meets up with Harold and the Spawn, the body count can only get worse....

'Spawn' (Leisure Books, 1983, 367 pp.) features a great cover illustration of a truly malevolent-looking fetus gazing at the reader. Unfortunately, the artist is uncredited.

I remember seeing Shaun Hutson's paperback novels on the shelves back in the mid 80s; 'Slugs' stuck in my memory. His US publisher was Leisure Books, today a significant source of many horror and mystery titles.

But......... back in the 80s there was a rather low-class, pulp-fiction air to Leisure Books and its releases (at least, as far as more mainstream publishers were concerned). 

Authors like Hutson were not granted approving cover blurbs from genre heavyweights like Steven King or Peter Straub. In fact, there was some degree of enmity between Ramsey Campbell- the grand old man of British Horror - and Hutson. And, needless to say, Hutson and other Leisure authors were not included in high-profile collections of the era, like DAW's The Year's Best Horror Stories or any of the other anthologies of the 80s (Whispers, Shadows, Prime Evil, etc.).

This was unfortunate, since Hutson was one of the premiere British Splatterpunk authors, and a descendent of a literary line first founded by Colin Wilson in the 60s, then carried on by James Herbert in the 70s, before Hutson (and Clive Barker) sustained the genre through the 80s.

Hutson's books are unashamedly gruesome and transgressive, and may be considered trash by some readers. The various literary contrivances that constitute 'quality' fiction writing may not make an appearance. But Hutson's books often have an undercurrent of sly humor, as if a smiling Hutson is asking the reader to join him in offending moral sensibilities and insulting the purveyors of 'quiet' horror.

In my opinion, Hutson's novels are more genuine examples of the genre than most of the mannered, plodding works issued by Campbell, Straub, and King. Anyone looking for an offbeat, original horror tale will find that 'Spawn' fits the bill.

Book Review: 'After Man' by Dougal Dixon

 3 / 5 Stars

This oversize (9 1/4 x 11 inches) trade paperback edition of ‘After Man’ (124 pp., St Martin’s Press) was published in 1981.

Dougal Dixon is a Scottish-born author and illustrator of illustrated science fiction and science fact books, primarily for a juvenile audience, although some of his work is quite accessible to adults as well.

‘After Man’ takes as its premise the state of the Earth some 50 million years into the future. Homo sapiens has, through some vaguely described Eco-catastrophe, passed from the world. Since most of larger mammalian species were extinguished along with Man, the animals that have inherited this new world all are descended from the more resourceful ‘trash’ species of our own era: rats, squirrels, crows, pigs, mongooses, etc.

The book opens with a grayscale text section reviewing the basics of evolution and ecology as per 1981, then moves into the bulk of the book, which consists of nicely done color illustrations of the various animals inhabiting the major habitats: temperate woodlands and grasslands, the tundra and polar regions, deserts, tropical forests, etc.

The book is very didactic; practically every page is suffused with references to the reality and process of evolution, the devastation wrought by the careless and thoughtless actions of Man, and the miraculous ability of Nature to recover from these ravages. Indeed, Man is seen as a nasty sort of disease that plagued Gaia / Mother Earth for an unnecessarily long time and whose riddance is cause for celebration.

This was not all that surprising a tenor for a natural history book seeing print in 1981; while ‘Global Warming’ had yet to exist as the primary cause celebre’, Doomsday Angst - linked to the threat of nuclear war – was all the rage among the scholarly and intellectual classes. This attitude was soon to be articulated in books such as Jonathan Schell’s ‘The Fate of the Earth’ (1982), and the New Wave song ‘Red Skies’ by The Fixx (also 1982).

As a book to be read for either reasons of pleasure or pedagogy, ‘After Man’ comes across reasonably well. Older children will find the different kinds of animals, and the explanations of their behavior and life histories, to be engaging and informative. ‘After Man’ is a very ‘British’ book, in the sense that it mimics the style of a Victorian-era natural history tome. Many of the picture captions are in spidery longhand, and the background color scheme sports the sort of sepia tint one might associate with an old book collecting dust on the shelf of a Gentlemen’s Study ca. 1870. This rather eccentric presentation gives the book its own unique visual character.

The book does have some weaknesses; the sententious tone of the narrative starts to grate after a while, and the 9-pt. text, and cursive writing of the picture captions, will be laborious to take in for those with less than ideal eyesight. As well, the Introduction by that old fraud Desmond Morris (‘The Naked Ape’, ‘The Human Zoo’), he of the cunning and calculated winking, tweedy, salacious mien, could have been jettisoned without loss.

In summary, even though it’s getting close to 30 years after it first saw print, ‘After Man’ remains an interesting look at a ‘what if’ scenario and should continue to appeal to a broad readership of children and adults.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Heavy Metal' magazine December 1979: 'A Tale of Christmas' by Moebius

 From the December 1979 issue, a three-page comic from Moebius with the quirky title  'A Tale of Christmas' ..... so ironic and existential, those Frenchies.....

 

 

Book Review: The Saga of Solomon Kane

Book Review: 'The Saga of Solomon Kane'

 

 5 / 5 Stars

While Marvel has been reprinting its comic book back-catalogue  in black and white format as part of the 'Marvel Essentials' series, the licensing rights to reprint the content of the Marvel / Curtis imprint magazines- such as 'Savage Sword of Conan', 'Kull and the Barbarians', 'Dracula Lives !', and 'Monsters Unleashed' - has been purchased by Dark Horse.

'The Saga of Solomon Kane' (Dark Horse Books, 2009) reprints 27 comics that originally appeared in black and white in Marvel magazines- mainly 'Savage Sword' -  from 1973 to 1994. At over 400 pp. in length, it's a real bargain (cover price is $19.95).

Among the artists represented are Neal Adams, David Wenzel, Sonny Trinidad, Howard Chaykin, and Steve Carr and Al Williamson. The pen-and-ink draftsmanship  in the assembled comics is outstanding, particularly the work from the early 70s when many artists were excited at the ability to present their work on the larger page size of the magazine format, without adhering to the content restrictions of the Comics Code. 

[And, very importantly,  they got better, and more timely, pay than they did with their submissions to the Warren b & w magazines.]

The book's only real drawback is that at 8 1/2 x 11 inches, it does not mimic the larger dimensions of the Curtis magazines; thus,  the pages have a rather cramped aspect due to the reduction in page size. The other peculiarity  - if one could call it that - in the collection has to do with the historical accuracy of the clothing and appearance of Solomon Kane. According to this blog, men of Kane's era did not usually wear the drab clothing sported by our Puritan hero.

I've posted some panels from the stories in the anthology in order to give some idea of the variety of illustrative styles used in the Kane adventures.

Among the best of the assembled comics are the opening adventure, 'Skulls in the Stars', with distinctive artwork from Ralph Reese:

 

'Castle of the Undead', with great artwork by Neal Adams and a plot featuring Count Dracula:

 

'The Hills of the Dead' features some intricate draftsmanship from Alan Weiss and Neal Adams:

One of the best entries in 'Saga' is the adaptation of Howard's tale 'Wings of the Night', in which Solomon comes upon an African village beset by the Harpies of mythology. This is one of Howard's more grisly and unrelenting Kane tales, and it gets great treatment by artist David Wenzel:

'The One Black Stain', a poem dealing with historical events, is also illustrated by David Wenzel; with this comic, however, Wenzel makes a conscious effort to evoke the intricate penmanship of late 19th century illustration, as might be done by an affiliate of Howard Pyle's Brandywine School of art: 

Steve Gan, in his illustration of ‘The Right Hand of Doom’, another classic tale, aptly captures the brooding countenance of Kane at his most dour and puritanical:

Along with the comics, the book features several brief text entries providing the details of the Kane saga. This one features an illustration by Fred Blosser:

In summary, anyone who appreciates great graphic art, and stories about an offbeat hero placed in memorable settings against a variety of earthly and unearthly adversaries, should put 'The Saga of Solomon Kane' on their Christmas list.

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 23 (March 1974)

‘Amazing Adventures’ No. 23 (March 1974) was written by Don McGregor and  illustrated by Herb Trimpe. In this issue, the ‘War of the Worlds’ storyline continues, and the title of this chapter is ‘The Legend Assassins’.

I previously posted an excerpt of this issue taken from the b & w ‘Marvel Essentials: Killraven’ trade paperback, but the excerpt looks much better in full color, as presented here from the original comic. The green-skinned, white-haired chick on the cover is ‘Mint Julep’, a soldier-ess of fortune who threw in with Killraven and his crew on a sporadic basis.

In ‘The Legend Assassins’, Killraven finds himself captured by ‘Rattack’, a mutant human-rat creature who was (prior to the war with the Martians) a secret service agent (!?). In homage to the early 70s thrillers ‘Willard’ (1971) and ‘Ben’ (1972), there is a sequence in which a bound and helpless Killraven serves as a living meal for the little beady-eyed minions of Rattack, which I have posted here.  While nowadays such a setup would draw little oversight, this was rather intense stuff for a Code-approved comic published at the end of 1973.