science fiction

Slan — A. E. van Vogt

science fiction
Published on 1 Comment on Slan — A. E. van Vogt

Cover of Slan


Slan
A. E. van Vogt
159 pages
published in 1940

“His mother’s hand felt cold, clutching his. Her fear as they walked hurriedly along the street was a quiet, swift pulsation that throbbed from her mind to his. A hundred other thoughts beat against his mind, from the crowds that swarmed by on either side, and from inside the buildings they passed. But only his mother’s thought were clear and coherent–and afraid.”

The opening sentences of Slan show why A. E. van Vogt was the most popular writer of science fiction’s Golden Age, somebody who in 1940 could not only be compared to an Asimov or Heinlein, but compared favourably. Van Vogt had honed his craft on writing “true confession” stories for the pulp market, then got into science fiction with a big bang in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction with “Black Destroyer” — the story that would decades later inspire the Alien movie. For about a decade or so he was incredibly prolific, inventive and with an almost instinctive understanding of how to push his readers’ buttons, learned while writing sob stories for the romance pulps. All these qualities come together in Slan and if you want to understand van Vogt’s appeal, this is the best novel to try: short, focused and tense.

Slan is the story of Jommy Cross, a mutant, a slan, like all slans stronger and smarter than ordinary humans and equipped with two golden tendrils on his forehead which gives him the ability to read minds — but he’s only nine years old. And he and his mother are caught in the very centre of Centropolis, she sacrifising her own life to enable him to escape from the slan hunters, the secret police that shoots slans on sight, because slans are too dangerous to be allowed to life. Those slans who haven’t been murdered yet have to live in secret, hiding their abilities and their tendrils. Jommy does not know how many of them are still or if he’s the only one, but he knows that he is their last hope, that he has to survive to one day take on the might of the dictator of Earth, Kier Gray, as well as the chief of the secret police, the head slan hunter, John Petty. And then there’s the captive slan girl, Kathleen Layton, subject of a power struggle between the two men…

Kier Gray, though a dictator and hunter of slans is through the point of view of Kathleen revealed to be a noble man, fighting for a place for normal humans in a world in which the hidden superscientists of the slans are decades ahead in their research and mastery of science, locked in struggle with those like John Perry who are just out for their own power and glory. Jommy Cross meanwhile, who is the heir to much of the slan superscience, his father having been one of the most brilliant of the slan scientists, discovers that there are other slans, slans without the golden tendrils that give them telepathy, but who can shield their thoughts to him and who have been secretly manipulating humans and slans both…

There are more twists and revelations van Vogt adds in only 159 pages he has for his story; it’s a bit of an understatement to calll this a plot driven story. Characterisation is broad, making use of pulp shorthand, the prose is short, to the point but effective. What Slan really got going for itself are the ideas. It’s not the first novel about mutants — Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John was published five years earlier — but it’s the one that popularised and shaped the idea of a race of mutants superior to humanity in abilities and skills, hated and feared by normal people and having to hide their otherness. Everything The X-Men is about was first present in Slan.

And it has a huge impact on fandom in the 1940ties, with some fans taking it so seriously they set up fan houses called “slan shacks” and started trying to breed the coming race. The idea of a superior race evolving out of humanity of course fit in quite well with the general atmosphere of the times, what with all the ideas about eugenics and other much later discredited unpleasantness doing the rounds back then. The idea of directed improvement of the human stock was generally accepted and Slan spoke to science fiction readers, who more than most not just accepted but welcomed this idea. In fact, quite a few fans already suspected they themselves were to be the new super race, hence that whole “fans are slans!” idea. Sadly the truth is otherwise.

Looking back at Slan some seven decades later its appeal is much diminished, its revolutionary impact not quite understandable anymore. There have been newer and better novels about mutants and superhumans, while science fiction on the whole no longer believes in telepathy or mindreading and psionic powers and finds it all a bit embarassing even. Van Vogt himself is barely read, his reputation demolished both by his critics (e.g. Damon Knight’s devastating portrayal of van Vogt as a dwarf using a giant’s typewriter) and his own later work, rewriting and fixing up his old stories into “new” novels. His ideas, both for plot and for how to write his novels, would become increasingly outlandish while he lost his ability to focus his writing, making his work increasingly incoherent. Yet for a while he was perhaps the most popular and important sf writer in the world, and Slan his best novel.

The Best of C. L. Moore — C. L. Moore

Fantasy, science fiction
Published on 1 Comment on The Best of C. L. Moore — C. L. Moore

Cover of The Best of C. L. Moore


The Best of C. L. Moore
C L. Moore
372 pages
published in 1975

In the mid seventies Ballantine Books, just before it renamed itself into Del Rey, launched a “Best of” series of short story collections by classic science fiction and fantasy authors which I personally think is perhaps the best such series ever produced. Just at a time when science fiction was switching from being a short story, magazine orientated genre to one in which the novel is supreme, here were collections by all the old masters who had made their name in the pulp magazines of the thirties, forties and fifties. The series offered a sense of history to the genre just when science fiction was in danger of losing touch with its roots. It offered both a reminder to old fans of what had attracted them to the genre in the first place and to new fans a sampling of authors they may have thought oldfashioned or perhaps never had the chance to read in the first place.

One of such authors must have been C. L. Moore, who had made her reputation writing science fantasy stories for Weird Tales in the 1930ties. In the 1940ties, after she met and married Henry Kuttner she almost completely stopped writing on her own, instead collaborating with him (often under the Lewis Padgett pseudonym) on a series of classic sf stories, then moving on to writing crime stories and for television, both of which unfortunately paid better, in the late fifties. By the time The Best of C. L. Moore was published it had been the better part of two decades that she had written much new science fiction. Now that more than twice as much time has passed, this collection is still a great introduction to what C. L. Moore had to offer when not collaborating with her husband.

The story that first introduced me to C. L. Moore Vintage Season, was however originally published under both her and Kuttner’s names. I first read it in a Dutch anthology of crime and detective stories written by women, which sort of made sense as it can be read as a detective puzzle story. For years that was the extent of my C. L. Moore reading, until I read this collection. It was enough to realise how great a writer she was.

The Best of C. L. Moore is a well balanced collection, with most of the stories from before she met and married Henry Kuttner. Both of her best known heroes, Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry are represented but do not dominate. In general the stories here vary from outright fantasy to pure science fiction, but what they have all in common is the human touch. Her characters are fully human, three dimensional in a way that was rare for pulp science fiction. She builds her stories around the characters of her protagonists, even in the science fantasy of her Northwest Smith and Jirel stories. There are no clunkers whatsoever in here, as we’ll see.

Shambleau (1933)
This is the story that introduced both Northwest Smith and Moore herself to Weird Tales, her first published story. It’s space fantasy of the kind Leigh Brackett also wrote, with some of the cliches of that genre, but already with the same craft and power brought to all the stories here. It starts with a mixed race mob –Martians, Venusians, Earthmen — chasing a slim nutberry brown beauty in a radiant scarlet cloak down the streets of a Martian town and Northwest Smith rescuing her. But she’s shambleau and Smith does not know what this is and only finds out — almost too late.

Black Thirst (1934)
Another Northwest Smith story, about a Venusian castle where they breed beauty and its master who feast on it. Almost as good as the first story.

The Bright Illusion (1934)
A man dying of thirst in the great Saharan desert is set on a quest on a strange world by an intelligence so powerful it can only be described as a god, to meet this god’s priestess and fall in love with her, no matter her innate alienness. This should be schmaltzy as hell, but Moore’s skill as a writer make this work.

Black God’s Kiss (1934)
The first Jirel of Joiry story, a Medieval French swordwoman whose kingdom is taken over through sorcery, who manages to escape her capturer, then has to travel much farther than she could’ve ever imagined for her vengeance. As with the first Northwest Smith story this has an immediate impact: everything Jirel is, is here fully formed.

Tryst in Time (1936)
Another love story, where a man who has grown bored with everything the modern world has to offer, who has tasted all adventure and sensation that’s in it, volunteers to be the guinea pig for his genius friend’s time machine. He gradually realises that in all the historic scenes he witnesses one girl remains constant and falls in love with her — but does she know him and could they ever be together?

Greater Than Gods (1939)
On one man’s decision which of the two women he loved he wanted to marry rested the faith of the future. Hinging on this decision, Earth would become either a slowly dying, rural idyllic paradise, or it would rule the universe but at the cost of human happiness. Which alternative is better and is there truly no other option? As a story it does depend on a certain gender essentialism we’ve largely grown out of, but if you can swallow this, this is a clever, sentimental story.

Fruit of Knowledge (1940)
According to Jewish legend, before Eve Adam had another wife, Lilith, who refused to be dominated by him and therefore was cast aside. Normally I don’t like this kind of Biblical fantasy, but Moore manages to make this story interesting by making Lilith a sympathetic character without quite making either Adam or Eve into the villains of the piece.

No Woman Born (1944)
A woman, the greatest dancer of her generation, is caught in a horrible accident and given an experimental cyborg body, her brain in a metal shell. The male scientists and psychologists responsible for her transformation worry about her and whether or not she can remain human living like this. An interesting psychological story.

Daemon (1946)
A simpleminded Brazillian boy is shanghaied on a Yankee clipper as a cabin boy, but he has a secret: he can see the soul or daemon every person but he himself carries with him. It keeps him alone in a world full of people, until on a small remote island he discovers others like him…

Vintage Season (1946)
The best story in the collection, this bittersweet tale of how a group of strange foreigners hiring a house at the edge of an unnamed American city slowly are revealed to be timetravelling tourists with a penchant for the horrible and tragic. In this way Moore shows us the mirror image of how we ourselves treat historical horrors as entertainment, where whatever tragedy we’re witnessing can be dismissed as destiny, just as these tourist from the future dismiss what happens to the narrator and his city and world as something that happened long ago in their past…

Old Man’s War — John Scalzi

science fiction
Published on Leave a comment on Old Man’s War — John Scalzi

Cover of Old Man's War


Old Man’s War
John Scalzi
311 pages
published in 2005

John Scalzi’s debts to Heinlein in Old Man’s War are indeed obvious as he says in his afterword. Even without what looks to be a shootout to the opening scenes of Starship Troopers halfway through the novel it’s pretty obvious where Scalzi got his inspiration from. In structure, plot and protagonist Old Man’s War could fit in neatly with any of Heinlein’s coming of age stories like Space Cadet or The Tunnel in the Sky in which a young man is forced to grow up quickly to confront a hostile universe. The only difference is that John Perry is not a young man, but a seventyfive years old widower when he signs up for his stint with the Colonial Defence Forces.

Apart from that, John fulfills the same role as Rico in Starship Troopers, that of the new recruit who we’ll follow through basis training and combat, somebody who needs to be educated in the true nature of the world he lives in and who can function as a stand in for the reader. Where the two differ is that John obviously is not a callow teenager, but somebody who lived a long and fulfilling life, who saw a chance to regain his youth and took it, without knowing or caring too much about what he’s getting himself into.

Which turns out to be getting his consciousness transferred into a completely new body, adapted for combat, faster, better, stronger, tougher than a regular human body. It’s obviously also much younger than his old one and is fully functional biologically too, without any unpleasant side effects — cue the orgy as hundreds of seventyfive year olds who’ve gotten their youth back get it on. That’s all part of the leisurely introduction of the first part of the book, with things getting kicked up a notch when John and his mates finally get to proper training. Which thanks to their new bodies and especially their integrated onboard computer or “brainpal” as the CDF has named it, is massively accelerated.

Through his training and first battles with various alien species, John Perry learns how the universe really works. Habitable planets are rare in the universe and most species want the same sort of planet, which means that often they have to be fought for. The CDF is there not just to protect humanity’s existing colonies, but also to take over planets from weaker races when possible, while avoiding as much as possible the attention of stronger peoples. It’s a dog eats alien dog eat universe and CDF soldiers can’t allow themselves any illusions about the situation they’re in: their ten year hitch will likely see most of them killed. So far it’s still very much like Starship Troopers but Scalzi lacks Heinlein’s conviction that this is for the best: there are some hints that the situation in Scalzi’s universe isn’t as black and white as all that.

In the third and final part of the book John Perry gets involved into the big battle for Coral, a human colony attacked by the Rraey, one of the alien races most antagonistic to humans, if only because they like the taste of human meat… Scalzi here sets up the conditions for eventual sequels, which indeed were not long in coming, with three so far having been published. Old Man’s War however is a complete story on its own and doesn’t need them to be enjoyed.

But that will probably not stop you from reading them anyway, as Scalzi is such a fun and engaging storyteller that if you have any interest in mil-sf, you’ll want to read these stories. Old Man’s War is a familiar story well told, an updated Starship Troopers without the pseudofascist ideology of Heinlein’s original. Ideologically the idea of humanity versus an universe filled with hostile alien races who can’t be argued with but have to be shot at is still suspect of course, considering the implications of that sort of idea in actually existing history, but you never get the feeling as you do with Heinlein that Scalzi actually believes this stuff other than for the story.

Well written, entertaining, fastpaced and with some depth to it, Old Man’s War is one of the best mil-sf novels I’ve ever read.

A Civil Campaign – Lois Mc Master Bujold

science fiction
Published on

Cover of A Civil Campaign


A Civil Campaign
Lois McMaster Bujold
534 pages
published in 1999

A Civil Campaign should have been the last novel in the Vorkosigan series. Starting with Brothers in Arms and continuing through Mirror Dance, Memory and Komarr Lois McMaster Bujold had constantly upped the ante for Miles, not just by giving him bigger challenges to overcome, but by forcing him to grow up and become mature, putting him in situations where his character strengths are useless or even counterproductive. A Civil Campaign is the culmination of that process, as Miles crashes hard against the realisation that his usual crisis management tactics are not suitable for trying to win the hand of the woman he fell in love with the first time he saw her. At the same time Bujold also ties up all the loose ends from the earlier novels, providing a proper ending for the series. It’s not a book for people new to the series.

In the previous book, Komarr, Miles had met Ekaterin, a duty bound Vor woman trapped in a loveless marriage, and fallen hard for her from the first moment. With Ekaterin now a widow, Miles sets out to court her, but with the best of intentions decides to do so without her knowning or telling her that this is what he’s doing. Surely the same tactics of deception that worked so well in his career as a galactic man of mystery will be good enough to win him a wife? Of course there’s also the small matter of the imperial wedding to prepare for, the return of his clone brother Mark with his Escobarian business partner and their somewhat too biological startup they’ve set up in Vorkosigan House, the blossoming relationship of Mark with Kareen, the daughter of one of Miles’ father’s — count Vorkosigan — oldest friends and various other minor complications and side issues Miless will have to deal with, but how hard can it all be?

In typical Miles style, on small deception leads to another and it all blows up in spectacularl fashion when the small and intimate dinner Miles planned for him and Ekaterin and some carefully selected guests grows out of control and everything that shouldn’t have come out in the open just yet, does. It’s then that Miles finally learns you can plan to conquer a woman’s heart like you can plan the conquest of a star system. It’s a brutally crafted, darkly funny comedic scene, excruciating in the way the best comedy can be. It makes me wince everytime I read it. For Miles, once he gets out of his funk, it’s the chance to do what he does best: damage limitation.

What makes A Civil Campaign so good are the characters, as Bujold has developed them over the course of the series. Miles, though he should know better by now, is still the same cocky little manipulator he always was going into the book, only to come acropper because of it, but is able to learn from his mistakes and grow up. Ekaterin, though angry at Miles’ deception is also able in the end to set herself over it. Most of the people involved in the various plots and subplots, the viewpoint characters, are confused to what they want and how they can get it, struggling even to get to a place where they can find out what they need to do. In the end it’s all set to rights of course, but it takes effort for everybody. And it’s only once the disastrous dinner party has happened and everybody’s dreams seem shattered that rebuilding can take place, helped by one of the greatest supporting characters in science fiction, Cordelia.

Despite the lack of galactic intrigue and worldshattering conspiracies this is the most compelling novel in the whole Vorkosigan saga and also the most entertaining and witty. You could call A Civil Campaign a regency romance in space, Bujold keeping the tone light even when Miles’ dreams are shattered. This light mood is sustained by the callbacks and references to earlier stories, making it something of a box of chocolates for a Vorkosigan fan, with something for everyone. It all helps to set off the darker parts of the plot.

Speaking of regency romance, this is more Jane Austen than Georgette Heyer, as the reality from Ekaterin’s point of view is far more serious than it is for Miles, no matter how bad he feels when he thinks he may just have chased away the love of his life. Barrayar is a primitive, conservative society and the role of women in it is not at all equal to that of men. She has to deal with the expectations of Barrayar society and her own family in addition to everything Miles has to go through and at one point she might just lose her son, Nicky, if she does the wrong thing. After Komarr it’s another example of how Bujold manages to sneak in some light feminism…

Trading in Danger — Elizabeth Moon

science fiction
Published on Leave a comment on Trading in Danger — Elizabeth Moon

cover of Trading in Danger


Trading in Danger
Elizabeth Moon
506 pages
published in 2003

Reading Sheepfarmer’s Daughter gave me a taste for more Elizabeth Moon. Trading in Danger, the first book in the Vatta’s War series was what the local library had available. It’s science fiction rather than fantasy, but it’ll do. It’s still the same sort of adventure story even if the genre has changed. The other thing they have in common is familiarity, both are coming of age stories with few surprises, but sometimes familiarity is just what you want in a story.

Ky Vatta is a cadet at the naval Academy, an unusual career choice for a child of one of the great trading families. She’s an examplary cadet, but this doesn’t save her when an impulse to help a fellow cadet lands her in the shit. Expelled from the academy, she now has to face her family. Worse, because it’s a highly politicised mess she found herself in, she also has to leave Slotter Key, her home planet. Worst of all, the reputation she has in her family as a sucker for anybody with a sob story is once again confirmed, in the worst possible way. The solution to all her problems lies in an old Vatta family tradition, that sends any child wanting to join the family trade on a shakedown cruise first. She will captain the Glennys Jones, an old trading ship on its last voyage which will be sold as salvage at the end of it, as it’s too expensive to bring up to modern standards. This trading trip will take a couple of months and at the end of it Ky will be able to come home, having proven herself as a captain. As importantly, it will also get her away from her own humiliation.

Things don’t turn out to be quite that simple of course. At the first leg of her journey she runs into a trading opportunity that might just get her the money to save the ship, giving her a chance to prove herself to her family. When she explains this plan to her crew however it turns out that this is what everybody more or less expected her to do; apparantly it’s something most firstrun captains do…

So profiting from a rival firm’s failure to deliver agricultural equipment, she takes the Glennys Jones to Sabine, to buy the equipment again on spec, getting paid on delivery. It’s a bit risky, but the profit will be worth it. But when the FTL drive craps out completely when they reach Sabine and the machines they need to buy are much more expensive than Ky thought they would be, things cannot get any worse, or can they?

Course they can and Ky and the Glennys Jones find themselves in the middle of a warzone, with no way to get out of it. What’s more, the FTL communication station in the Sabine system is blown up by one of the parties in the conflict and nobody outside the system will know what happens inside. And then the ship is hailed by mercenaries, they board to inspect it and things go horribly wrong as Ky is almost killed when one young ship’s mate pulls a gun at the mercenaries.

Ky is cut from much of the same cloth as Paks in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter: young, somewhat naive, largely unaware of her own abilities, but with an iron will and potential that’s only fully realised under pressure. Like Paks, Ky’s shipmates see her worth much more clearly than she herself does; an old trick to make your main character not too concieted. She has her flaws though, a certain blind spot late in the book leaving her and her crew vulnerable to a betrayal I could see coming from a mile away. Again like Paks, Ky is also a bit more honourable than you’d expect most people to be.

As a novel, Trading in Danger feels a bit flabby. Elizabeth Moon takes her time getting the main plot going, taking well over fifty pages just to get Ky into space. The pacing in general is leisurely. There are a lot of side issues and little subplots not of direct relevance to the main plot that help up the page count; The minutia of trading life take up a large part of this. Moon also spends some time once the main enemy is defeated setting Ky up for the sequels, as well as having her deal with the aftermath of her adventure to see that her problems have not quite all disappeared. All this can be irritating to some readers. Myself I did not mind it this time, though it did annoy me sometimes. Moon has a knack for keeping me interested in the mundane, day to day details of her heroines’ lives even if they’re not directly contributing to the plot.

Trading in Danger is good, light entertainment, slightly better than it needed to be. Sometimes that’s just what you want.