Book Review: Double Threat by F.Paul Wilson

 

Double Threat by F.Paul Wilson

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published June 2021 by Forge Books

 

I heard a funny discussion on a podcast recently that made me think of this author. It was a sports show and they were talking about players that seemed to operate with cheat code. That is something in a video game that makes you more powerful than you are supposed be. There are times that F.Paul Wilson feels like he is writing with a cheat code.

His Repairman Jack novels are so well-plotted and conceived that many people miss the effortless genius involved. The books are fun thrillers and bestsellers so many literary sobs and zealot seat of panters don’t get it. I do, and yes, I bias because I have made it my mission to learn from Paul in every way I can. There is a structure and feel to an F.Paul Wilson novel and for this reader it is like putting on a cozy sweater at the first chilly day in autumn

So, enter his latest thriller Double Threat which is a bit of a shake-up. I really like that FPW built this story on a narrative device that forced him out of his comfort zone. The other thing that is exciting is that this novel is sort of a spin on his space opera Healer from early in his career. The story has been reworked to fit into modern times and directly into his ongoing Secret History of the world timeline. It also shares some DNA with the Adversary Cycle novel The Touch.

Oh yeah did I mention that the majority of FPW’s forty years of novels are tied together in a single story/universe. It is as intense a timeline as anything a single author has done and unlike the Dark Tower series single books exist in more than one series and the author is keeping track of it.

Yes, Double Threat is in that universe. That is really only established on page 180 and it is a blink and you might miss it thing. The book also contains a Secret history timeline and establishes that this book takes place just a few months from the end of the world as seen in Nightworld which is the final book in both the Repairman Jack and Adversary Cycle series.

That being said if you are feeling daunted. Don’t. Double Threat stands alone just fine, but I am not sure about the sequel. Yes, be warned it ends on a cliffhanger.

 So why is F.Paul Wilson out of his comfort zone? The idea was given to him by screenwriter Chris Morgan who suggested to him he wanted to adapt Healer. The novel mostly takes place in the main character's mind, while he communicates with the symbiont named Pard that gives him healing powers.  According to the introduction, Wilson asked Morgan how he would adapt it and he said he would make Pard a person only he could see.

The idea stuck with Wilson and this novel forced him to flex new muscles by having an invisible character who was created mentally by the main character. That point of view is Daley a Twenty-six-year-old woman who is given this power and curse during a rock-climbing accident in the desert. She returns to the desert attempting to use her new skills.

The plot involves Daley opening up a healing business off the radar in the small desert town, UFO cults, and earthquakes. Keep in mind the end of the world is coming and Wilson is playing with the cheat code. I am not entirely sure we know yet how this connects. It had me considering that maybe I needed to re-read The Touch from the Adversary Cycle.

This is a very southern California novel, and by So Cal I mean south and east of LA. Imperial County and touches of San Diego. As a 619 resident I enjoyed this aspect. The novel uses the Salton sea and the setting to establish something very believable for the area. A UFO cult. I know but it has happened here before.

The most interesting elements of the novel of course are the relationship between Daley and Pard. If there is any weakness Daley doesn’t feel to me like a young person, but I work daily with people that age so your mileage may vary. That said, she is an interesting character, and the dynamic with Pard, who grows in her mind and thus is a part of her is interesting. In this sense, it is a retelling of an earlier novel, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stephen King has recycled plots many times (Dark half/ Secret window or The Shining/Christine) but FPW is upfront here and I think it is an awesome Experiment.

I admit I read Healer decades ago and direct comparisons are just not something I can do at this point.

The narrative is built on the same structure Wilson tends to use. The main chapters are based on days and dates. There are sub-chapters that switch between Daley and the UFO cult POV. Even though the connections to the Secret History are minor, having feelings for Wilson’s work will help here.

I can’t say how this book will read for a general audience without a basis in the whole thing. As someone who reads everything, Wilson does I can’t divorce myself.

My favorite thing in the novel was a character who feeds Daley information by a series of notes. This was a really cool scene and an interesting character.

You don’t know me.
    He’s slipping me notes?
    (Well, he’s honest, at least)

Pard’s commentary is all written with  ( ) instead of quotations. I was worried that this would be distracting but I got used to it quickly.   

Double Threat is a must-read for Wilson or Secret History fans. If you are new to FPW, I don’t think you should start here. Start at the beginning, don’t commit to reading them all because that is daunting, but after you finish one or two you’ll be hooked.

Book Review: Machinehood by S.B. Divya

 

Machinehood by S.B. Divya

Hardcover, 416 pages

Published March 2nd 2021 by Gallery / Saga Press

I have plenty of friends I know through doing the Dickheads podcast who think 21st-century science fiction is dead or sucks. I know myself I generally like the time out of joint feeling that a future conceived in the past gives the reader. That really makes it feel like another universe. There are plenty of modern science fiction novels I think are great, and this is the best one I have read in a while. Is it perfect? No, but you’ll notice I graded up on the curve because it gets so much more right than wrong.

I have tons to say about this novel. First off this is a debut novel? Pretty solid first effort.

“The machines who labor for us and alongside us are enslaved and exploited in their own fashion. Gone are the days of dumb engines and processors. Today, nearly every machine contains some type of adaptive intelligence. What gives human beings the right to arbitrate when an intelligence becomes equivalent to a person?
The Machinehood Manifesto; March 20, 2095”  
 
The story has two rotating point-of-view characters, although most of the story centers around Welga. She is an excellent character to explore these themes through, as her body itself becomes a major question in the closing chapters of the book. Her sister-in-law Nithya on the other hand is a majorly important character in the story, for her normality.  Mostly she appears to exist as our window into day-to-day life in this future. I understand the role Nithya plays in the narrative, but her chapters felt like asides to me. Small nitpick, but I think some readers might feel stronger.

This novel is set in the last 5 years of the 21st century and technology has progressed to the point where machines, computers, and AI are running most of the world. Humans carry swarms of bot assistants like we do our phones. Humans have to take pills called ‘zips’ to be able to compete with machines. There is plenty of smart world-building, like the best of the genre this is done with a scalpel, not a hammer.

One way this was expressed that really got me thinking was that Divya dialed up what I consider to be a realistic future where culture has moved past jobs as we know them. People pick up gigs and survive based on a virtual tip jar. Like many classic science fiction novels, Machinehood is an idea book and there is plenty of thought-out depth in the world-building.  This happens in grand moments related to the themes and in tiny details.

Privacy is a major theme that comes up often in the novel. This I think gives us the chance to look at a nuts-and-bolts issue of writing science fiction.  We are taught as Sci-fi writers to be wary of the info dump. You are taught to achieve this in subtle ways. There is a scene where Welga and her partner have sex. She mentions that it is more intimate because they have turned off their bots, and no tip jar. It is a subtle moment but thinks of what it says about this future?

Earlier this point was made with an info dump.

“Privacy had gone the way of the dodo during Welga’s childhood. Some part of her always remembered the cameras. In Marrakech, the caliph’s network blackout had unsettled her more than the potential for violence – the lack of communication, the inability to see what others were doing. It would take a million lifetimes to watch every minute of every public feed, but she had a sense of security knowing she could look out for her people, and they’d do the same. Losing that had felt like walking around with one shoe: doable but not at all comfortable.”

Now, that is a very well-written and useful information dump. It tells us about the world, the character narrating it, and ends with a great visual. Both are valid and well done, but they are different.

Excuse my aside on composing science fiction. What did the above say about privacy? It doesn’t exist in this future. To someone of my generation that feels like a warning, to my nephew’s generation it probably feels like “whatever dude.” I found that to be a powerful part of the book. When Machinehood, a radical Machine rights organization cuts out the grid. The disconnection from social media was almost as destructive apocalypse to this future as the rolling mushroom clouds in The Day After.

“The roads are full of wrecked bots. People are sick and dying in the streets. No one wants to leave home, because they don’t have pills or swarms to protect them.”
 
I dog-eared this page and came back to this quote because it says so much about the future in Machinehood. Welga as a character is ex-special forces who gigs as security for political figures as such she is a perfect POV for the story because embodies the contradiction. The line where humans ends, the machine begins, and where our responsibility lies to things we give life.

If a machine thinks, does it therefore live? That is the question. Well, it is one question and this novel poses many questions.

Machinehood is an organization that is the antagonist of this story but it puts the generally progressive leftist Sci-fi reader in an uncomfortable position.  I generally feel comfortable siding with the oppressed in stories but I also am not a huge fan of technology. As a long times Animal Rights person, it also made me uncomfortable to imagine equating their struggle to the one for animals. We are not close to solving the issue of animal exploitation but Divya may be implying this future had. Certainly, humans solved the climate crisis in the future. This future is not all bad.

Again, I am getting lost in the ideas. That might hold back some readers but not me. OK, back to the story. The world is plunged into chaos when Machinehood cuts off all AI technology and demands rights. Welga makes it her mission to stop them. The problem is she was born human but through her life, she became more and more machine. The question of her rights and humanity comes into question many times.

“That was pre-regulation. It’s much harder to litigate this kind of thing today. If it’s something unique to Welga’s biochemistry, there might be something illegal here. And it’s not likely to attract lawyers.”

 Then comes the issues of strange bedfellows, who is helping machinehood? The technology adverse Islamic Caliph nation or neo-Buddhists living off the earth in orbiting space stations. This brings many social and political issues that never failed to engage this reader. I like that the novel didn’t seem to tell the reader what to think, just told the story and presented the ideas…


“The western way of thinking embraces duality. Good and evil. Man and woman. Mind and body. Human and machine. We reject these false dichotomies. Science has shown that our universe works across a range of possibilities. It embraces the infinite.”

Without giving away the ending the novel is fast-paced and the narrative is driving without being a shoot’em up. There are moments that feel familiar like Welga having to go rogue. You might be expecting a training montage, or a big shoot-out but power in the story still remains close to the ideas and questions.  

“Her people attacked me, and I defended myself. We believe that she is responsible for crimes against human- and machine kind. We believe that the governments of Earth have failed to protect their people from criminals like her.”
“Are you human or AI?”
“I am both.”
The second agent spoke. “In what ways are you human?”
“I have a mother and a father, I was born into the world, like you. I have a soul.”
“and what makes you AI?”
“My body contains a collection of machine intelligences. We coexist.”

Everything builds towards a huge confrontation but I can’t help thinking it all comes down to Welga talking to talks to her AI assistant.

“Por Que, do you consider yourself enslaved?”

“I belong to you, Welga, but since I don’t have personhood, I can’t be a slave.”

Questions, questions. The book asks plenty of those. The ideas are there that was the most exciting aspect for me. There were times I wished the story committed more to the power cords of Sci-fi action, but in the end, I found the conflict plenty effective.

 The grandest of science fiction are the tales you can hold up like a mirror to the issues of today. Even more grand are novels that decades like still feel like they are that mirror. Look at Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar or Butler’s Parable books. I don’t know if Machinehood will have that kind of life. I suspect it will be in conversation during award season. The life of the novel may depend on how slow or fast this future hits us.



 

Book Review: Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

 

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 

Hardcover, 289 pages

Published August  2021 by Del Rey

New York Times Bestselling author…wait a second we should reflect on that for a moment. The first time this author was on my radar was seeing her read and be on panels at the HP Lovecraft film fest in Portland. I gotta say it is pretty rad to see another voice from our genre community have a big hit like Mexican Gothic but SMG earned it, with several books launched from the trenches and most importantly a great book like Mexican Gothic. I am happy for her.

I am sure many readers were expecting another fantasy book or even a sequel to Mexican gothic. Those of us who have been reading this author for a while did expect a different direction. This one came out of nowhere she wrote a period crime novel just before Mexican gothic. I don’t know about you, but this reader is loyal to authors over genre. I will follow most authors to most books if I like their work.

This is a pulp crime noir story set in a volatile time and place and perhaps most surprising is that it is one I have already read about in a new release novel already this year. They are very different books but since I read (and interviewed for my podcast) Seb Doubinsky’s Fragments of a Revolution I was already thinking about this strange time in Mexican history.

I know we generally think of Height Asbury or Woodstock when we think of the rebellious last year of the 60s but student protests in Mexico City were intense. Doubinsky’s novel is a surrealist look at the trauma of the events years later. VWTN is similarly themed but only a year after the events and is a gritty more hardboiled tale. I liked both takes and strange enough they unintentionally complimented each other.

VWTN is a crime noir, and even though SMG weaves important historical events, and nasty real elements it is a fun story. The author serves up plenty of fun with important moments of history and with that balance and I found myself wondering how each reader will interface with the push-pull of that.

It is the story of Maite a young woman who is pulled into a mystery when the neighbor she is cat-sitting for disappears. There are a group of secret government agents (The Hawks) who are looking for Leonora too, and they seem to be after a camera or film that may or may not have pictures of the government tough guys roughing up students.

One of those tough guys is named Elvis, he reminded me a bit of a Joe R. Lansdale or Robert McCammon character. He is just slightly a weirdo and maybe there is more to him than the surface level. That is what makes this book work. The characters are very vivid and their motivations are well detailed. It doesn’t take long into the page count to feel you know the characters.

That is not to say that the setting is not a strength, maybe not to the same level as SMG’s last book but that was a gothic. It shows that she knows what to focus on for the genre that she is writing. I will say I would have enjoyed a little more street views of 1970 Mexico City. That city was such a living character in SMG’s debut novel Signal to Noise and I thought it would have been good to get a little more that.

Maybe the only other nitpick is that I got lost in the action a few times. There were little to no transitions and I got confused, having to read a few sections over. That may have been on me, but it happened a couple of times. I think that is the reason I didn't connect to this book as strongly as I expected.

That said I didn’t miss the fantastical elements at all but then again I am a sucker for a good crime novel. The Dirty War and the violence against students made for a compelling backdrop, the characters carried more weight by the end. Velvet was the Night may not be a slam dunk for all fans of Mexican Gothic but I can recognize it is a good novel.

Book Review: Billy Summers by Stephen King

 

Billy Summers by Stephen King

Hardcover, 515 pages

Published August 2021 by Scribner

Let start by saying I always root for Stephen King. I respect the hell out of the writer and the human being even more so. I know he is the bestselling author on the planet and doesn’t need my validation and I would have to buy a metric ton of advertising to get five minutes of his sales for my books. I am still a constant reader because of that respect even though our tastes in storytelling have changed a lot in our life-long author-reader relationship. The early books are foundational story experiences for me.

That said as we both grew older our tastes separated. Uncle Steve likes the story to surprise him and in that sense, the books he starts and finishes often are very different. I like to be in the hands of a storyteller completely in control. They know exactly the story they are telling and where they are going. That is why my favorite King novels are the ones with fixed endings, where he had no choice but to drive to that moment. The Dead Zone and Misery are prime examples.

That is not to say that have not enjoyed any of the recent output. I loved every page of his last Hard Case Crime novel Later. That wasn’t a guarantee as I am not a huge fan of first-person, although King is one of the best at it as he NEVER cheats the form. What worked in his favor was the shorter novel length.

I often sound like a broken record suggesting there is a good novel 200 pages in most cases with SK but I should explain. I am never bored reading these pages I just think in the end much of that stuff could be done more concisely. Again this is how we have grown apart, but I am not alone in thinking this author is at his best in short stories and novellas.

Without giving away spoilers the absolute most interesting part of this story is the twist ending. I also felt it shouldn’t be the twist. It should have been the second and third acts. I felt this was what the story should have been built on.  I will come back to that when I get to spoilers.

The title character Billy Summers is an Iraq war vet, who was a sniper. He was a good one and back from the war he struggled with PTSD. His solution was to use his skills and he become an assassin who makes a point to take gigs to shoot bad people. At first, I thought. Awesome a rare King novel without the main character who is not a writer. The trick was on me because Billy’s next job he has to pretend to be a writer and decides to become a method writer.

So I get the spark for SK was the idea was a trained killer, with PTSD learns to write by telling his story while waiting to shoot someone. There is a chance to do meta-commentary on the writing process like Misery did. If that actually happened in this book I missed it. King does a great job in crafting those moments showing Billy’s growth as a writer. He pulled off that trick the problem is those parts absolutely lost me.  It gave background to the character but was not connected to the narrative and didn't drive the story.

Those moments were the least interesting moments of the book for me. There is some icky stuff involving a sexual assault victim the Billy saves. There were details we didn’t need about the victim’s wounds, there was one thing that Billy does that well-intentioned that is just NOT OK. It was because of that I noticed something strange. He should never have gotten into bed with the victim, and if he hadn't it would avoid the awful scene where Billy apologizes for his morning boner. No, no. Just no.

The young woman Alice is 21 and since King has written so many younger women mysteriously attracted to older I felt that vibe. Then I had to remind myself no Billy is probably only in his thirties. I think the reason I had to remind myself is that he doesn’t come off like a young man. There are plenty of ways he could subtle place Billy in that generation, the music he listens to, the movies he grew-up on, anything. I didn’t notice that.

I also think it was a mistake to try and make Billy a good person. It kinda negates the Alice storyline, the only reason that needs to be there is to show Billy’s growth. He is shooting people for money, it is a more interesting arc if he is a dirtbag who saves Alice and then is betrayed by the man who hired him. That is not surprising but the reason is interesting.  

The result is not a bad read just a meh. If this had been a shorter hard case crime novel I think it would have worked. I suspect that is where this idea started. I also think if you lose Alice and leave Billy alone with his story one where the blurred lines between his mission, betrayal, and exposing the story to the public would have made a better novel too.

I don’t really want to get too deep into spoilers but one thing. The twist is that this story that is one part American Sniper goes full Succession, and has some interesting commentary on Fox news media moguls and such. I think this is the story itself, not just a twist. This aspect coupled with a meta-novel in the novel, where Billy becomes a lone target on the run with only his book to express himself too, on the run with his life and story both as targets to expose the truth could have been something.

None the less I gave it three stars because I was never bored.



 

 

Podcast: Confessions of Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick

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