Neal Stephenson's "Reamde": The Fantasy Trilogy Grows Up

Reamde - Neal Stephenson

By now, I suppose you've figured out the format for The Great Fantasy (---)logy. It used to always be "Trilogy" in homage to LOTR, but I think some authors are now up to more than twenty volumes per "story." Anyway, the standard set of tropes is a battle between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil, some sort of "fellowship" that invariably splinters, an arduous journey (usually across mountains) and a talisman that must be rescued/destroyed/captured so that Evil can be held at bay – at least until the next series begins. Oh, and there's one more convention: medieval weaponry. It wouldn't do to have this particular saga's version of Frodo picked off by a sniper who's hiding behind a boulder high on the slopes of this particular saga's version of  the Mountains of Mordor. Yeah: that's fantasy.

SciFi for the MBA

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach - Kelly Robson

It used to be that libraries had a section they called “Fantasy and Science Fiction,” but most libraries and bookstores now separate the two. I don’t know the official difference (Wikipedia probably does), but in my world, fantasy is derived from “sword and sorcery” and Science Fiction involves speculation about how the scientific advances will change humanity’s future. Ignore Steampunk and VampRom for now – that’s what I do. Fantasy demands the willing suspension of disbelief; good SciFi is a prediction. We aren’t likely to develop into sorcerers and magicians any time soon, but progress marches on: that’s why we have more computing power on our wrists these days than could be developed in a middle-sized room in the era of punch cards. That may be why the best science fiction authors are scientists themselves… not people with English and “multimedia” degrees like Kelly Robson.

Strange Title, Big Book, Long Reach

Noumenon - Marina J. Lostetter

You’d think I’d know by now, wouldn’t you. Yep, the more superlatives heaped on a debut novel, the less I’m going to like it. Who knows: it might have something to do with the way literature has changed since my debut novel (the first one I read, anyway). Whatever. The reviews for Marina J. Lostetter and her (alleged) first novel, Noumenon, were glowing. They compared it to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (a comparison obviously made by someone who hadn’t read that novel) and Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves. They also compared it to Hugh Howey’s Wool, but I haven’t read it – my one exposure to Howey was unsatisfactory. But we’re not here to talk about Howey (or Stephenson), we’re here to talk about Noumenon…

Life at the Comic-Con

A Hundred Thousand Worlds - Bob Proehl

Those readers among us who prefer that their fiction have a beginning and an end will not particularly like Bob Proehl’s A Hundred Thousand Worlds. I can’t blame them. Oh, sure, the novel has a beginning (around page 1) and an ending (of sorts, slightly before page 368), but the story and the characters seem somehow to aimlessly wander through the interstices of the pages between those two points.

I will say that Proehl has a way with words, as the saying goes, but that's probably the only reason I managed to slog through this entire book. As for a plot, however, let’s just say that the concept at its core was lost on this particular reader. Of course I get it: the novel recounts the westward journey of Valerie Torrey and her nine-year-old son, Alex, as they return to LA from New York City. Exactly why they’re “returning,” however, and why they left in the first place spin out quite slowly (too slowly?) within the pages of the novel.

Val’s an actor, once the female heroine of a long-since cancelled scifi television series, a show that strikingly resembles “Continuum” (no word on whether Val looks like Rachel Nichols, though). Mother and son's westward migration takes place in three steps as she reprises her character at comics conventions in Cleveland, Chicago and LA; with side trips to see her mother and... "The Woman." The road show's cast of characters is padded out with Brett, a comic artist (who, unbeknownst to anyone but the readers, just broke up with a woman who once babysat Alex) and Gail, a lesbian comic writer. A Greek… errr, geek chorus of women in superhero costumes accompanies the little group on their journey. Enormous swaths of the text are given over to the “wonders” (I use the term sarcastically) of comic books, while little or nothing is given over to the motivations of the characters or even scene setting.

Generation Starship? Or Generation Novel...

Arkwright - Allen Steele

It’s getting harder and harder to be a science fiction fan. For one thing, the library and bookstore shelves that used to be filled with space operas are now jammed with vampire tales. For another, there just don’t seem to be any more Asimovs, Clarkes, Sturgeons or Silverbergs coming down the pike (Charlie Stross, perhaps, excepted). To make matters worse, fans have recently been subjected to a slew of long novels that read more like soap operas than space operas – some fairly good (Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves) and some not quite so good (the John Sandford and Ctein collaboration, Saturn Run). And then there’s the just plain bad: Allen Steele’s Arkwright.

Pittacus Backtracks to Fill Some Plot Holes: "The Navigator"

I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: The Navigator - Pittacus Lore

Among all the tangled plotlines of the so-called Lorien Legacies series, there have always been open plot holes. Take, for instance, the sudden appearance – out of nowhere – of Crayton and Ella in… who knows which of the ‘leventy or so novellas so far? Or the dozens of chimerae [sic] held captive by the Mogadorians in their West Virginia base. Or the mysterious tall, dusky woman who shows up in… another book; or at the end of one tale, as the nine Garde flee their doomed home, there’s brief mention of a second ship. Well, Pittacus Lore (in reality the writing team of Jobie Hughes [maybe, or perhaps another ghostwriter] and James Frey ) are nothing if not inventive, once again doubling back in their plotline to fill in the holes. This time, it’s the startlingly out-of-sequence The Navigagtor.

Failed Fusion of SciFi and Romance: "Archetype," M. D. Waters

Archetype - M. D. Waters

A couple of generations ago the concept of “fusion” was pretty much reserved for hydrogen bombs and hopes for cheap, clean electric power. Then came “fusion cuisine,” sometimes interesting but too often hapless mashups of different cooking styles in a single dish. And finally somewhere along the line fusion struck the world of literature. Once upon a time librarians and bookstore clerks only had to look at the cover art to know where to shelve a new release, but genre fusion has made that dicey. Think cozy murder mysteries (Perri O’Shaughnessy, for instance) or VampRom and almost anything Mercedes Lackey ever wrote. Well, the next step in fusion is here, and it’s an uneasy marriage of bodice-ripper and speculative fiction: Archetype, from the pen of M. D. Waters.

Robert Sawyer's Red Planet Blues: Neither Fish nor Fowl

 Robert J. Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

It’s hard to track a person if you don’t know what body he’s in. He could look like anyone –his own self, a movie star, your best friend… Alex Lomax, greatest private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars (in large part because he’s the only private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars) pretty much has a system, however. He kills ‘em all and lets God sort ‘em out. 

No, to be fair, he doesn’t kill them all: if they’re female, he beds them and then kills them (or tries, anyway). In the finest noir detective tradition, Lomax chases every skirt that comes his way and whips out his other rod for the men. Mike Hammer on Mars? Maybe…