Fantastika – Page 71 – Wis[s]e Words

Golden Witchbreed – Mary Gentle

Published on August 21, 2011

Cover of Golden Witchbreed

Golden Witchbreed
Mary Gentle
460 pages
published in 1983

It was the beautiful Rowena cover that got my attention, a long long time ago when I was browsing the English shelves at my hometown’s library. Showing a blonde woman in jeans and fur cape, armed with a stave and linking fingers with an obviously alien six fingered man, two swords at his side. That intriqued me, it promised both adventure and romance and it got me to pick up the book and that was how I got to know Mary Gentle. I’m not sure how old I was, but I must’ve been no older than sixteen-seventeen and Golden Witchbreed was arguably the best novel of hers I could’ve started with, much more easier to get into than most of her novels would turn out to be. But though I loved it when I read it and remember it fondly, I haven’t read it since. Which was why I put it on the list for my Year of Reading Women project. I wanted to know if the book I remember was still as good as I remember.

Golden Witchbreed I remembered as a planetary romance, emphasis on romance. It starts with the cover with the two lovers holding hands. The woman on the left Lynne de Lisle Christie, envoy from Earth to the primitive, medievaloid world of Orthe, there to represent both Earth to the Ortheans and to judge Orthe on its fitness to trade and partner with. The Orthean she holds hands with therefore should be her alien lover, Falkyr. I remembered their romance as central to the plot, the circumstances in which it took place ultimately forcing Christie to go on the run and having to travel through most of the civilised lands of Orthe. Apart from that recollections were hazy.

UFO (Enemy Unknown)

Published on August 20, 2011

Found at James Nicoll’s, the title sequence of the old Gerry & Sylvia Anderson live action series UFO. Three years ago Brad Hicks called this his favourite retro future, which was when I first heard about it. UFO is one of those series that, if you didn’t catch it when it was first aired, you’ll never know about and I was much too young (or even born) to do that. Since then I have managed to watch some episodes and seeing this title sequence reminded me of how much it resembles a similarly named classic computer game, UFO: Enemy Unknown. So much so the 1971 television series has to have been an inspiration for the 1994 video game; which the Wikipedia entry indeed says it was.

UFO: Enemy Unknown is one of the best games I’ve ever played and one of the few that actually scared me. A combination of strategy/god game and tactical squad combat, the player is the leader of the X-Com organisation defending Earth against UFO attack, having to set up bases and manage funds to equip his squads, improve weapons and ships and do research. Once an UFO is signaled you can try to intercept it and if you do you can send a squad to capture it and capture or kill any aliens it carries. There are also alien infestations you may need to combat etc. It had relatively good graphics and decent, atmospheric sound effects for a mid-nineties game.

It was when you went to actually fight the aliens that the game got scary. You could only see what was directly in your line of sight, especially in night missions you had little visibility and at literally ever corner some alien menace could hide. Add the music and sound effects, which though synthesiser based were quite spooky, then play late at night with the lights off not to wake anybody up and it could make you jump when you turned a corner and some nasty mo-fo was waiting for you…

I remember one time I had loaded my squad on a Shuttle, which had landed on the site of an UFO crash, I had moved my first soldier out, who had been armed with a grenade launcher, moved out the second one, then some alien fscker psionically possessed that first soldier and got her to launch a grenade right into the shuttle. Whoops, that was the squad gone…

Shorter me: I really should dig out my copy of this game again…

Book loot

Published on August 12, 2011

Books bought yesterday, top to bottom:

bunch of books

The Dancers of Noyo — Margaret St. Clair
City of Illusions — Ursula Le Guin
The Dolphins of Altair — Margaret St. Clair
A Heroine of the World — Tanith Lee
Needle in a Timestack — Robert Silverberg
Planet Run — Keith Laumer & Gordon Dickson
Courtship Rite — Donald Kingsbury
The Martian Inca — Ian Watson

The last one I got because of Adam Roberts’ reviews of Ian Watson’s books over at Punkadiddle. Watson is one of those writers I read a lot of when younger just because the local library had so many of his books, then sort of lost sight of afterwards. The same goes for Tanith Lee. The Le Guin I had a long long time in Dutch, but never read as far as I know. One of her early works.

Margaret St. Clair is a writer who has been largely forgotten it seems like; what I’ve read of her I liked. I also got these books to review for Ian Sale’s SF Mistressworks site.

Finally I buy anything Silverberg or Laumer has done, though with the latter everything after 1971 or so isn’t very good. Sadly Laumer got a stroke that year, lost most of his writing abilities and never was the same afterwards. he had to keep on writing though to pay the bills, but that doesn’t mean you should buy them…

A Point of Honor — Dorothy J. Heydt

Published on August 7, 2011

Cover of A Point of Honor

A Point of Honor
Dorothy J. Heydt
302 pages
published in 1998

A Point of Honor is the seventh book I’ve read in my Year of Reading Women challenge and the first I’ve read before. When I was setting up my reading list last year I wanted to include not just feminist sf classics or books to challenge myself, but also some old favourites that deserve a wider audience, of which this is one. I had read A Point of Honor when it was published back in 1998, after it had gotten some buzz on the old rec.arts.sf.written Usenet group, back in the day when that was still the number one science fiction hangout on the internet. The author herself was one of the group’s regulars, well respected and liked, one reason why I tried out her novel. This wasn’t the first nor the last time I did that: other writers I got to know through rec.arts.sf.written were Jo Walton, Brenda Clough and Matt Ruff, to name just three.

A Point of Honor is one of only two novels Dorothy Heydt wrote, the other being The Interior Life, a fantasy novel she wrote under the pseudonym of Katherine Blake. Apart from that she has only written short stories, some two dozen in total, the last ones a couple of years ago. None of her work is currently in print that I know off. A pity, but unfortunately an all too common fate for science fiction writers as their books for one reason or another fail to reach an audience. Which is another reason why I wanted to talk about this book, to bring some attention to an unfairly overlooked writer and do for A Point of Honor what Jo Walton did last year for The Interior Life.

The Hour of the Dragon – Robert E. Howard

Published on August 4, 2011

The Hour of the Dragon

The Hour of the Dragon
Robert E. Howard
292 pages
published in 1936/1977

When I think of Conan I see John Buscema’s Conan: feet planted firmly on the ground, glaring at you from under his helmet, the weight of his muscular frame apparant in every picture. That’s the image I had in mind while reading The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard’s sole original Conan novel. Written in 1935 as an attempt to interest a British publisher, it was instead serialised in Weird Tales when the publisher went out of business. Recycling scenes and plot twists from earlier stories, it’s somewhat of a greatest hits story: Conan has to fight an overwhelming horde of enemies, is captured and has to escape a dungeon through his great strength, wrestle a supernatural creature and so. Buscema’s Conan naturally came to mind therefore: no other version has the sullen determination and toughness Buscema put in his Conan.

The Hour of the Dragon is set at the end of Conan’s career, after he has become king of Aquilonia. He doesn’t remain king long though as a conspiracy between neigbouring country Nemedia and Valerius, the last remaining heir of the old royalty of Aquilonia use magic to invade the country and depose him. They do this by raising an ancient evil, Xaltotun, an ancient sorcerer from the pre-Hyborian empire of Acheron. As the Nemedian army invades Aquilonia, Xaltotun nearly kills Conan and demoralises and destroys his army. Conan comes to as prisoner of Xaltotun who has … plans … for him. Valerius meanwhile has become nothing more but a pawn for the evil sorceror.