Spring 2007 (30 page)

I’d been guv a lot information about where to go next.
Too much, you might say. So I did the only reasonable thing. I waited until the
breeze died down, turned my left hand palm up, spat in it, then slapped my
right hand down right hard, and decided that whichever the way the spit flew
was the direction in which a passel of sinners would soon find themselves
saved.

As my next narrative will
show, it wasn’t near as easy as it figgered to be.

Review:
Jack Knife and Map of Dreams

Jack Knife

By Virginia Baker (Jove/346 pages/$7.99)

MAP OF DREAMS

By M. Rickert (Golden Gryphon/310 pages/$24.95)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

Half of this latest entry in my reviews for Subterranean
falls under the “books I overlooked” category. Both of the titles are by women
writers fairly new to the genre scene, and both of them are worthy of your
attention. The first,
Jack Knife,
by Virginia Baker (a Writers of the
Future grand prize winner for “Rachel’s Wedding”), is an entertaining but
familiar twist on the Jack-the-Ripper mystery, which has gotten a lot of play
in the SF and fantasy field, with TV shows like
Star Trek
and
Babylon
5
making use of it, and writers as varied as Robert Bloch, Harlan Elllison,
Alan Moore and Karl Alexander using it for fictional fodder. Like Alexander
(whose book
Time After Time
was adapted to film), Baker makes use of
time travel in her novel, resulting in something both formulaic and original.

The formulaic part comes in the premise: two time
travelers, Sara Grant and David Eliot–Americans both–are hot on the
trail of time-traveling, continuum-changing rogue Jonathan Avery. The rogue is
none other than the scientist who invented the time-traveling machine. Miffed
because he wasn’t chosen to be the first time traveler (fellow scientist Grant
got that honor), Avery violates protocol, commits an act of violence that takes
someone’s life, and heads back in time. Special Ops Agent Eliot accompanies
Grant back to the late 19th Century to capture Avery before he can do something
to seriously alter the future. Once they arrive in London, the pair discovers
Avery may be linked to the Ripper murders in White Chapel. That’s the
hackneyed, derivative part–and it’s a lot–of Baker’s debut. What
elevates the tale to the level of an entertaining, worth-at-least one read,
novel is Baker’s sure-handedness in drawing scenes and creating characters from
19th Century London, as well as offering up obscure facts and suspects in the
age-old mystery that still fascinates most everyone. Good fun!

It’s a rarely admitted but sad fact: most reviewers (and
editors, and writers, etc.) in the field don’t have time to read everything
that’s published. Somehow, I managed to miss all of M. Rickert’s poetic and
powerful stories being published in various genre magazines, but fortunately
the always excellent Golden Gryphon Press managed to remedy that situation by
publishing
Map of Dreams.
And although I managed to set aside Rickert’s
2006 debut for far too long, it kindly waited for me. Good thing, too, because
Map
of Dreams
is a must-read collection of stories by a writer whose growing
body of work already puts her among the finest of her generation–genre
and mainstream writers alike. The title story alone is worth the price of
entry. It deals so unerringly with the grief of a parent that even those of us
who
haven’t
suffered such a horrendous loss know this is so (like a
character says in
The World According to Garp,
another piece of fiction
that dealt with loss, “It’s just so true”). After Annie Merchant’s daughter is
shot and killed by a sniper in New York City, life as she knows it ceases to
exist (any loving parent will relate to this notion). Fending off those
good-natured but ultimately annoying attempts by others to help her resume
life, Annie commits herself to the possibility–via a vaguely magical,
vaguely scientific method (think quantum physics)–of finding her daughter
in time and space. Her relentless pursuit brings her to an island just off of
Australia–where an author who lost his wife to the same killer supposedly
resides. Once there, Annie meets a man named Herrick (who has also suffered
loss), as well as Daisy and O’ Toole, two people who seem to have stepped out
of a parallel universe–or something far more unfathomable. It’s a
tour-de-force that sounds the territory of grief and, to use the author’s
words, succeeds in “measuring the height of sorrow, the rivered depths of
despair.”

Heart-wrenching, funny, poetic and damn-near perfect in
execution, “Map of Dreams” is a piece of fiction that grabs the reader by his
or her emotions and doesn’t let go until every last drop of blood, sweat and
tears has been wrung out.
That’s just the first story!
There are fifteen
more extremely well-written stories in this collection, including “Cold Fire,”
“Moorina of the Seals” and “The Harrowing,” every last one of them engaging,
well-crafted works of fiction.

Pick up this collection by
Rickert and prepared to be enthralled and entertained, moved and maddened. Then
make sure to shelve it next to works by Harlan Ellison, Luisa Valenzuela,
Connie Willis, Angela Carter and Lucius Shepard. Right where it belongs.

Review:
Nebula Awards Showcase 2007 edited by Mike Resnick

(Roc/400 pages/$15.95, trade paper)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

The annual Nebula Awards Showcase anthologies always
have something interesting to offer up, and the 2007 edition of this stalwart
sports some stories most likely familiar to avid genre readers—especially
those by Kelly Link, “The Faery Handbag” and “Magic for Beginners,” winners for
novelette and novella, respectively.

It’s no accident that Link won a double-shot of
recognition for her writing last year. Her fiction is that good. What’s more,
Link is representative of a new school of writer, one that brings the
sensibilities of both genre and mainstream fiction to stories. For lack of a
better description, Kelly Link’s fiction often comes off like a cross between
Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “Magic For Beginners”
is a bemused, slightly distant narrative (in an I got a great buzz from that
beer/joint or whatever way) that follows the lives of Jeremy Mars (the son of a
shop-lifting, semi-successful horror writer) and his teenage
friends—Elizabeth, Talis and Karl—as well as a cult fantasy
television show called “The Library” (which is reminiscent of “Buffy the
Vampire Slayer,” “Twin Peaks” and half a dozen other strange but wonderful
shows). Link intersperses the narrative of the show with the narrative of the
teenage friends, so that reality and fantasy overlap (within her
own
fantasy tale, of course). The kids all lead fractured lives (dysfunctional
parents, etc.) and eventually begin to feel as if they are, themselves,
starring in a television show. The way Link blurs the line between fantasy and
reality is indicative of anyone’s adolescent years—and not a few adult
years as well—making a powerful statement about the nature of reality and
fantasy, and the role entertainment plays in our everyday life.

Although her name may not yet be as well known as
Link’s, and although her story didn’t win an award in the last Nebula round,
Anne Harris has a distinctive voice and sensibility that—with
persistence—could win her a strong following and mantle-full of shiny
plaques and statues as well. “Still Life With Boobs” is one of the most
outrageous, insightful and original works of fantasy to come down the pike in
some time. The premise is simple, as is the narrative: a young woman given to
seeking out her share of good times and pleasure awakens one morning to the
realization that her boobs, George and Gracie (which her boyfriend, in a moment
of whimsy, nicknamed), have been stepping out on their own. The visible
scratches and “smears” of “less identifiable substances” is a dead giveaway to
the betrayal by her breasts. And if her suspicions aren’t evidence enough, she
awakens one night after dozing in front of the TV to find her mammary glands
are gone—and tracks them down to a club where they are cavorting with all
manner of “detached body parts.” Pretty soon, the errant boobs are even taking
off in the middle of the daytime during dinner!

A startling well-balanced mix of erotica, slap-stick
comedy and clever insightfulness on the American mindset toward
sex—either puritanical or self-indulgent—“Still Life With Boobs” is
a hilarious and moving little fable reminiscent of the best writing of
stalwarts like Connie Willis.

There are plenty of other solid, entertaining pieces in
this anthology, including stories by James Patrick Kelly (“Men Are Trouble”)
and Carol Emshwiller (“I Live With You”), nonfiction pieces on the state of the
genre, and even an excerpt from the Nebula Award-winning novel of 2006, Joe
Haldeman’s
Camouflage.

Since Harlan Ellison was
just added onto the distinguished list of Grand Masters that the Nebula
Committee honors, author Barry N. Malzberg lobbied the editors of this edition
to include an old, but still powerful, mainstream story—“The Resurgence
of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie”—about an actress named Valerie Lone (based,
it’s been said, on Veronica Lake), who’s Hollywood boat has long sailed, and
the attempts by a couple of opportunists to make use of her in their
film—on the premise that their efforts will rekindle her already dead
career. The story’s structure gives it that much more oomph, and the tale of
obsession and greed and self-serving is told in a noirish narrative well-suited
to the story. It’s powerful stuff, and not a word of it is science fiction…or
fantasy. But it’s also a fine reminder that the best writers in the field of
SF& fantasy don’t pay attention boundaries, borders, streams or
pigeonholes, preferring to blaze their own trails and look back in wonder when
all is said and done.

Review:
On the Road with Harlan Ellison volume 3

HARLAN ELLISON: ON THE ROAD WITH ELLISON: Volume Three

(Deep Shag Records/$17.99)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

For those of you who can’t get enough, here is this
week’s mini-bonus review, covering the latest in an ongoing cavalcade of Harlan
Ellison’s spoken word recordings.

For years, when anyone asked about his penning a
biography–despite guaranteed bestsellerdom should he ever do
so–Harlan Ellison replied he wasn’t interested, and that he’d already done
so in his dozens of introductions and essays. Add to that his CDs produced by
Deepshag
. Each of the (so far) three
volumes has contained between nine and fifteen tracks which are basically
memoirs of the dirty life and times of Harlan Ellison. This time out, Ellison
covers things like his two hour stint as an employee of Disney or the strange
story of his attacking convention goers with a chandelier. Of course, very few
orators–outside of Lenny Bruce or Mark Twain–could recount their
own lives with such hilarity and perfect timing, but that, as Ellison would
say, is another story.

Suffice it to say that for fans of Ellison and of the SF
genre, there are (as in the first two volumes) a number of familiar tales told.
But as with the first two volumes, gems are here for the taking. Such as track
12, in which Ellison offers up one his most hilarious anecdotes–about the
publishing industry–replete with an impression of Humphrey Bogart and
Peter Falk. Or the story about his almost getting a job as a talk show host
(the antithesis of Mort Downey, Jr.–or Bill O’ Reilly), and how his views
on the Middle East–still, sadly, relevant today–lost him the job.

It’s all here: how Robert
Redford’s film efforts in Colorado may, in fact, be a front for NORAD, the
willful ignorance of the mass of Americans and how Ellison has to hum a tune
while serving his wife, Susan, breakfast, or risk having sausage and eggs
decorate his ceilings. Coming off like Robin Williams’ older brother, Harlan
Ellison could make even the recital of his latest grocery list entertaining.

Review:
Softspoken by Lucius Shepard

SOFTSPOKEN by Lucius Shepard (Nightshade Books/179
pages/$23.95)

Reviewed by Dorman T. Shindler

Readers familiar with the writing of Lucius Shepard
– from his many short stories to novels like
Green Eyes, Trujillo
or
A Handbook of American Prayer
—know he is, perhaps, one of the
few writers to emerge from the SF field who writes the same sort of powerful
prose as do mainstream stalwarts like Robert Stone, Joseph Conrad and Graham
Greene. The best of his fiction packs the power of myth and wields the magic of
poetry. His latest novel,
Softspoken,
brings all of that and then some
to the telling of a southern gothic tale filled with mystery, madness and
plenty of hauntings.

Sanie Bullard, a writer, and her lawyer husband Jackson
move into his South Carolina, ancestral home, sharing it with his siblings. The
place, as Sanie observes, is “Cobweb central,” dilapidated at best. Jackson’s
father, a lawyer himself, was supposedly mad as a hatter. When Sanie begins
hearing a distinct voice, she thinks it’s her peyote-chewing, prankster
brother-in-law; then she realizes Will has heard the ghost as well. Trying the
drug herself, Sanie actually
sees
the spirits inhabiting the antebellum
home: “Half bodied ladies in evening wear mingle and merge in pale, penetrating
intimacy with eyeless gentlemen and soldiers with missing limbs that are not
the result of battle.” Sanie also begins to realize what the ghost is trying to
tell her. Apparently, there is more than one secret, one mystery, hidden in the
Bullard family closets. The revelation, when it comes, results in a stunning,
bloody and surreal denouement. It’s an ending that seems inevitable in
retrospect, and which plays out perfectly. The beauty of Shepard’s prose is
that while it never flinches away from describing the gritty, low-end of the
new south, it does so with the sweetness of a Magnolia in full bloom, as when
the author describes Sanie’s view of the Bullard home after a stroll: