Martin's Booklog

Short SF Marathon Day 25: Kelly Sandoval, John Scalzi, Veronica Schanoes

Published on March 1, 2015Leave a comment

Kelly Sandoval, “The One They Took Before.” Shimmer #22, November 2014.

I think this is going on my Hugo short story shortlist, an urban fantasy story that looks at what happens after you get back from fairy land. It reminded me a bit of Jo Walton’s Relentlessly Mundane, about the same general emotions of loss and bitterness, but in a different key so to speak.

John Scalzi, “Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome.” Tor.com, May 13, 2014.

Scalzi takes the oral history format that’s become popular in the last couple of years to remember anything from the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in America in the early eighties and uses it to chronicle the spread of his fictional disease from his novel Locked In. A bit of a tear jerker in places.

Some of the developments seem to have gone a bit too quick or easy to be totally believable, but that’s more of a question of how much room there is in a novella. It’s funny to think that Scalzi has basically taken the exposition from his novel and reworked it into this.

Veronica Schanoes, “Among the Thorns.” Tor.com, May 7, 2014.

I’ve mentioned before I don’t like fairy tale inspired fantasy, but once again I have to make an exception. Apparantly there was a Brothers Grimm fairy tale in which a lowly peddler tricks an evil Jew and robs him of his money, then kills him by dancing him to death in a thorn bush. Veronica Schanoes uses this as the base of her story and puts it in the context of the actual antisemitism and brutality against Jews as happened in the period the fairy tale was roughly set in. Then she takes the daughter of the murdered Jew and let her take her revenge on the people who killed her father.

There are some horrible scenes in the first paragraphs of the story, but the violence isn’t gratitious. What I liked was this was both brutal and humane; the people who killed the protagonist’s father aren’t nazi caricatures but ordinary human beings and way Schanoes described the crowd who watched his death reminded me also of lynching mobs from American history. Ordinary, decent people can take great delight in watching the other being tortured and murdered in the right circumstances and Schanoes isn’t shy to point this out. But it’s not a story totally devoid of hope and decency. Revenge is taken but not total, Itte is too human to be as horrible as the tormentors of her father were.

Well done. On the Hugo ballot it goes.

Spies of the Balkans — Alan Furst

Published on March 1, 2015Leave a comment

Cover of Spies of the Balkans

Spies of the Balkans
Alan Furst
279 pages
published in 2010

Since 1988 Alan Furst has been writing a loosely connected series of thrillers set in Europe just before and during World War II, usually known as the Night Soldiers, after the first novel in the series; Spies of the Balkan is the eleventh. As you may imagine, these are not very jolly books. Even disregarding what we as readers know is waiting for them in World War II, the characters themselves are smart enough and knowledgeable enough to see the danger on the horizon, even if they don’t quite realise how bad it will become. Of course in 1940 Greece the danger is easy to spot. Hitler has already conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, France and the Low Countries, while Mussolini is tooling around the Mediterranean, with Italian troops massing in Albania on the border with Greece.

In an important harbour town like Salonika, such times requires police officers sensitive to the political realities Greece has to face. Costas Zannis is one such police officer, tasked with dealing with all those …delicate… matters that crop up in a city that’s home to so many nationalities, in a country that has to tread careful to stay neutral and free. Though free is perhaps the wrong word to use under the Metaxas dictatorship. For an honest(ish) cop like Zannis, manoeuvring his way through the thickets of political considerations is tough. Yet his tact, honesty and understanding do make him eminently suitable for his job, as can be seen in the way he handles the problems a certain Jewish woman has crossing into Turkey.

This is the start of Zannis’ involvement with the pipeline the woman, wife of a powerful Wehrmacht officer, has set up to smuggle Jews out of Nazi Germany. Pragmatic as he is, he only does so after he gets the blessing of his superior in the Greek intelligence services in Salonika, who also helps provide him with the money needed. He also uses his contacts in the police forces of various countries the pipeline runs through, ironically the same telex equipment these countries bought under German pressure…

Meanwhile the political situation for Greece worsens, as the long awaited Italian invasion takes place, though it goes surprisingly badly for the invader. Zannis himself is drafted, as like most police officers, he’s also a reserve officer in the Greek army. This doesn’t last long however, as he’s invalided out of the army after he got wounded in an arial attack.

Through his involvement with the Jewish pipeline, Zannis also comes to the attention of the British intelligence services, though as it turns out they had had their eye on him for a long time already. Not surprising of course for a political police officer in a politically sensitive city. He’s “asked” to retrieve an English scientist from Paris, who had landed in occupied France when the bomber he was on was shot down. Things do not go entirely to plan and Zannis knows he’s now on the nazis hit list once they invade.

What I like about Furst’s writing is that his characters aren’t helpless in the face of the inevitability of World War II, despite being very much aware something bad is coming. What Zannis does isn’t futile. Even if he can’t stop the course of history, he can at least help some of its victims escape. For such a gloom merchant, Spies of the Balkans is a remarkably optimistic book.

Short SF Marathon Day 24: Alastair Reynolds, Mary Rickert, Sofia Samatar

Published on February 28, 2015Leave a comment

Alastair Reynolds, “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa.” Subterranean, Summer 2014.

This is set in the same universe as Reynolds’ first novel, Revelation Space and sequels, another one of those stories where a dysfunctional crew stumbles over an alien secret unimaginably old. Well written as anything Reynolds has done, but it reminded me a bit too much of an average Star Trek episode.

Mary Rickert, “The Mothers of Voorhisville.” Tor.com, April 30, 2014.

This is a stupid story about stupid people doing the most stupid thing possible because they have to adhere to the conventions of genre fiction, so nobody ever talks to anybody else until it’s too late. It’s mired in gender essentialism and goes on for way too long.

In Voorhisville a mysterious man driving a hearse seduces and impregnates most of the town’s women and when their children are born they have wings. Everybody is convinced nothing good can come from revealing their children, who do seem to have some mysterious powers and while those are troubling, mother love trumps everything. Therefore they all responds the same by keeping it a secret and from there things meander to their foregone, blood soaked conclusion in a Waco style standoff. All of which told through a sort of diary supposedly put together at the end of the siege, with the mothers acting as the narrator in turns.

The problem I have with this is that this is a short story spun out into a novella, with lots of padding and local colour that doesn’t really add anything to the story. In a short story, it doesn’t matter so much that each of the mothers respond exactly the same to their baby boy developing wings, but here there’s room to notice. This could’ve actually worked better as a novel, where there’s more room to develop the characters beyond “town floozy” or “rebellious teenager” and the threat of the babies could’ve been build up better.

A bigger problem is that whole idea of mother love trumping everything else and women being made crazy through pregnancy. It feels old fashioned and slightly insulting. You could argue that it was because of the nature of the pregnancies, but that wasn’t established well enough for my liking.

Sofia Samatar, “How to Get Back to the Forest.” Lightspeed, March 2014.

Now this is a much better example of body horror fiction, one that can achieve in a tenth of the words the sort of revulsion Rickert was going for. It starts with a group of girls on campin the middle of the night herded to the bathroom to puke because one girl believes that way you can puke up a bug that regulates your emotions and it builds up from there. It’s a smart enough story to only hint at what’s going on, not have easy answers and that’s what makes it uncomfortable. There’s also an undercurrent of queerness running through it, a sort of counter current to the surface emotions in the story.

Short SF Marathon Day 23: Richard Parks, Robert Reed

Published on February 27, 2015Leave a comment

Richard Parks, “The Sorrow of Rain.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 2, 2014.

This is the second Richard Parks story, again from Beneath Ceaseless Skies and the last story on the list to come from that magazine. If you like traditional fantasy, this may be the magazine for you because all of these stories have been interesting at the very least. “The Sorrow of Rain” is no exception, a story of Lord Yamada and his friend the priest Kenji coming to hunt down some demon or ghost keeping the summer rains going over the village of Aoiyama but finding something else entirely.

I’m certain whether this is meant to be set in historical Japan or a fantasy analogue, or whether it matters. A somewhat bittersweet love story and Parks is somebody I’d like to read more off.

Shannon Peavey, “Dogs From Other Places” (audio only). Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, Issue 38, March 2014.

I didn’t read this because this was only available as an audio book and I can’t stand those.

Robert Reed, “Pernicious Romance.” Clarkesworld, November 2014.

A typically complex and thought provoking Robert Reed story about what seems to be a terrorist attack during a football game which sent the entire stadium in what looked to be a coma and killed a couple of dozen people. Things get strange however when the victims start to wake up and tell stories of living weeks to entire lives in other worlds.

It’s told as some sort of government report or scientific study, which I’m a sucker for. No real explenation for the event is given, though strong hints are dropped.

Short SF Marathon Day 22: K. J. Parker, Richard Parks

Published on February 26, 2015Leave a comment

K. J. Parker, “I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There.” Subterranean, Winter 2014.

Three fantasy stories today, two by Parker, which read as if they’re set in the same or at least very similar worlds. Both star feckless young men who made the wrong choices in their lives and now have to live with the consequences. The first one is a light, humourous piece about a con artist/thief who seeks to entrap another con artist in teaching him magic.

I begin to understand Parker’s strengths as an author, they’re excellent at creating a well put together world through little details and have that ability of a good fantasy writer to take you along with them on their journey.

K. J. Parker, “The Things We Do For Love.” Subterranean, Summer 2014.

Which is even more the case in this story, even if i got this song stuck in my head thanks to its title. This is the longest story so far I’ve read, a proper novella about a young thief who has a witch fall in love with him and the increasingly desperate attempts he undertakes to get rid of her or her love, either by killing her or by killing himself.

This is meant to be light hearted I’m sure, but I found the protagonist to be an ass and some of the details were a bit uncomfortable.

Richard Parks, “The Manor of Lost Time.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June 26, 2014.

Richard Parks meanwhile writes a good old fashioned demonic summoning story, told in the traditional monologue to the reader as the demon pontificates on his relationship to the very famous enchantress his summoner was interested in. Well told, with some neat ideas, this still feels more like an advertisement for a novel than a proper short story in its own right.