Book Review: I Think I Am Philip K. Dick by Laurence A. Rickels

 

I Think I Am Philip K. Dick by Laurence A. Rickels 

432 pages, Paperback 

Published: August 2010 University of Minnesota Press

I don't write super long reviews for stuff that is non-fiction or used for research but I want to highlight this book a little.

Laurence A. Rickels serves as the Sigmund Freud Professor of Media and Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, after a couple of decades teaching German and Comparative literature at UC Santa Barbara. This is the second book of his I've read coming after Germany A Science Fiction which I thought was a novel when I started reading it. Like Germany this book is a piece of literary criticism and it is very academic.

There are moments when things are going over my head. I needed parts of this book desperately for the chapter I am working on for my (title not public yet) PKD non-fiction book. Rickels and this book will be quoted in the book because I am interviewing him in two as of the writing of this review so you see I read this book very quickly. Too quickly, I think If I had not read most of PKD's books and studied them deeply I would have been able to dig through them as quickly as I did.

My copy of this book is dog-eared and marked with Yellow-highlighter. Rickels is a unique kind of genius to me in exploring the work of PKD. A media critic and a psychoanalyst, this book and Kyle Arnold's The Divine Madness of Philip K. Dick are extremely useful in understanding him. Arnold's book is better about looking into Phil's life, but Rickels goes deep into his work.

Not counting the notes this book has 400 pages of deep dives into almost all of Phil's novels and a few of his short stories. Me, I was very interested in the influence of Heidegger and Binswanger but the last section goes deep into Robot ethics. All the major themes get explored deeply.

Rickels is often writing over my head but I know a serious Dickhead or researcher interested in the weight of this man's work needs to have this one on the shelf. I will reference it constantly in the years to come.

Book Review: Daphne by Josh Malerman

 

 

Daphne by Josh Malerman 

262 pages, Hardcover 

Published:August, 2022 by Del Rey

 

If there is one name that gets associated with horror it is Stephen King which is something early in his career he wouldn’t have minded. As the years moved forward King’s relationship to horror became complicated,  With a few Shawshank’s and Tom Gordan’s and the King equals horror got a little muddy. His last also didn’t help disavow from Horror royalty thing. The future of horror was Clive Barker and then for a generation it was Brian Keene. I enjoy Brian Keene the writer almost as much as Brian Keene the person. Truth be told I like Keene Lost level pulp stuff as much or more than his horror.  We got Maberry, Pinborough,  and Lebbon all experimenting with different genres. Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Trembly are so literary, incredible but…

When I closed the book on Malerman’s Daphne I started to think Josh Malerman might be the pure horror royalty at this point. I admit I was wrong about Josh Malerman in the early days. Bird Box was so good and even before the movie that was lightning in a bottle success. I thought there is no way this dude he repeats it. As a band dude, I thought all the young bands who poured all their heart and hunger into their first album never raged again. I thought there is no way he repeats the power of Birdbox.

The thing is Josh Malerman proves me wrong book after book. His novel play with the genre, horror western in Unbury Carol, surrealism in Inspection, and takes big swings like the cursed pig in Pearl. Just a few examples but every release is pure horror, and he seems very comfortable with that. His books sell and more importantly, they work for most readers.  

I mean you have the right to be annoyed because the dude is handsome, plays guitar, plays basketball, and writes amazingly. I would hate the guy if he wasn’t also a sweet and genuine dude. Damn it Malerman. You did it again. He hasn’t written a bad book. Not one. My least favorite is still a good book.

Daphne was a book that I was skeptical about it at first. He hinted at the plot as he was working on it when we hung around a zoom after recording a podcast interview. He had the spark in his eyes, by the end of the conversation I thought. He is going to pull it off.

Like his novel Pearl, it is a concept that if it was explained the wrong way would sound silly. Before I get into the details of the story and how genius much of the writing is. Yes if you are a horror reader you should read this book. Malerman pushes a concept and is inventive with how he treats the character and the horror elements. I would say this novel is a wonderful hybrid of a basketball story with the feel of the first Nightmare on Elm Street.

I wondered if the book would work for the non-sports fan. It was a trick Stephen Graham Jones another lover of basketball pulled off in his masterpiece The Only Good Indians. I peeped some of the reviews for this book and found one by fellow San Diegan and Horrible Imaginings Film Fest founder Miguel Rodriguez noted non-sports fan said Malerman got him invested.

I had to check because I am a hooper. I grew up in Indiana, I play basketball three times a week here in San Diego, yesterday I played a game that we finished after it started raining on us. So I was in the bag for the genius of a horror novel with the inciting incident based on the age old adage of hoop – the ball don’t lie. You see in basketball if you call a foul that players think is a BS call and the free throw is missed you’ll always hear hoopers say “Ball don’t lie.”
 
 The novel starts with Kit Lamb at the free-throw line, game on the line. She is about to take the free throw that will give them the state championship.

“Even as she lifts the ball, elbow in, left hand supporting, even as it seems like nothing could chop her focus, and nothing has yet, not in this game, not even when she made the and-one that lead to this moment, a question for the rim:
 

Will Daphne kill me?”

It is a game that Kit and her teammates play. Ask a question before you shoot the basketball the rime doesn’t lie. The ball goes in the hoop it is a yes. Just as Kit hits the shot that gives her team the lead with seconds to go she becomes a hero and target at the same time. They won the game, they were underdogs, but the rim doesn’t lie. Daphne the urban legend of the 7-foot-tall young woman who haunts their hometown is going to get her now. There is no stopping her.

The seed is planted not just in Kit, but her teammates that Daphne whose body would have made her a force in their chosen sport was looming over them. First as a topic, but a threat when they start to die one by one. Malerman shows he knows perfectly how to unfold the story that he meant to lovingly pay tribute to the sport and ties it to the game.

Starting at that moment works for any reader, but in a small Venn Diagram of people like me who understand both horror and basketball, this moment is genius. There is no more nerve-wracking moment for a hooper than looking at that rim with the game on the line and having to sink a shot. Kit who has survived Anxiety at that moment unlocking the ghost of Daphne. Well, it is genius.
 

The Rim said Daphne is real.

Making the team a girl's team was also a bold move. A smart move. Young boys playing basketball are a cocky bunch, the ladies play fundamental basketball and are more likely to struggle with the anxiety the story needed. Not to say that is always the case but that is one reason I think this was a good call. Also as a teacher, who is around young kids, I feel like Malerman writes good teenage characters. There is a funny part when Kit is freaked out by pictures of the band KISS – who of course young kids would not know anything about. A good detail. The young ladies are hoopers so that is easy in for the author but Malerman handles their fears and internal lives pretty solidly. 

One of the things that separate this novel is how it tackles anxiety. There is a journal entry of Kit’s talking about the time she called 911 on herself during a panic attack. It is written with such authority it is impossible to not believe it is personal. It is so powerfully written that the chapter alone elevates the book, not just because of how well it is written, but for how powerful it feels.  It deepens the characters.  A reminder that no matter how perfect someone’s life might look.  Everyone struggles. Powerful stuff and wanted to hug the book if that makes sense.

Kennedy Lichtenstein is a character that has a short but powerful scene, the Daphne super fans and Gloria the cop who is investigating the murders are minor but fully realized characters. 250 pages are short for a novel but Malerman makes all these elements gel.

A horror master at the top of his form. Daphne is a far better novel than the concept would lead you to believe, much the way I felt when I read Malerman’s Peral. This shouldn’t work but it does. Why? Because Malerman is that good. Not everybody could pull off this book, the amazing fact is Only Malerman could.

Book Review: Virtual Zen by Ray Faraday Nelson

 

Virtual Zen by Ray Faraday Nelson 

220 pages, Paperback

First published by AvonNova Books August 1, 1996

In December 2021 I went to Berkeley to make a pilgrimage to the various childhood homes and hometown haunts of Philip K. Dick. With David Gill the noted writer of the For Dickheads Only blog as my guide and nerd companion, we visited the many places where Dick hung out. One of the names that came up on that trip several times was Ray Faraday Nelson. Gill and I visited Hillside School in Berkeley where Ray and Phil met in the 4th grade. (Note the building is no longer a school when we poked around, we discovered a European millionaire was living in the building and using it as an art space) Ray and Phil both attended Tony Boucher's $1 Thursday night Science Fiction workshops in the Phil early 50s and Ray in the early 60s. In the 60s they were housemates in Oakland long enough for Nelson to complete the final revisions on Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch when Phil was afraid to revisit it. They also co-authored the Ganymede Takeover making the rights sticky and one of the few hard-to-find PKD novels. We saw the house in Oakland where they were housemates.

So at one point in my trip, I stopped at a Half-Price books and found this really silly-looking paperback. If I judged a book by the cover, I wouldn’t have picked up Virtual Zen which looked super goofy. But I was in Berkeley and I decided to pick up this paperback. When I took it to the counter, the Bored Millennial Cashier and I had this exchange. I put down my stack of old paperbacks.

Me: That author lived here.
Bored Millennial Cashier: Oh yeah?
Me: He attended Thursday night $1 Science Fiction workshops in the 50s with some of the greats of the genre just six blocks from here on Dana street.
Bored Millennial Cashier: Your total is $20. 35, did you need a bag?

I thought it was interesting. Maybe she would have been more impressed if she knew he invented the propeller beanie. He did by the way, as first seen as part of his outfit at early conventions.  As Ray himself said, "Centuries after all my writings have been forgotten, in some far corner of the galaxy, a beaniecopter will still be spinning."

This last November at 91 years old one week after we lost Greg Bear Science Fiction lost Ray Nelson. He had a long productive life that will mostly be remembered for a short story. 'Eight O'Clock in the Morning' was published 59 years ago to the month of his death. It is a pretty great story to be remembered for. It was published first in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in November 1963. This is an important issue of the magazine currently going for $200 bucks on Amazon. This issue has the first publication of Roger Zelazny's classic 'A Rose for Ecclesiastes,' which was nominated for the Hugo Award, I know many think of it as one of Zelazny's best and was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One. Nelson’s story didn’t make the cover but in the end, it is the most famous one, as it inspired John Carpenter’s classic movie 'They Live' which was the reason I tracked down the story as a teenager. There are lots of free audio narrations on YouTube, you should check it out, it is a far more creepy and paranoid story than the movie. Packs lots of story into a short word count. Classic for a reason.

So right after Bear’s death I read and reviewed Blood Music. So it was with a heavy heart that I decided I needed to honor Nelson with a first-time read. I thought the cover of this one was goofy, and with no idea what it was about, I started to read. I didn’t read the back cover, knew absolutely nothing about the story.  I know more about Nelson from Phil. In my study of Phil, he mentions Nelson a couple of times as a model for characters. Famously Roy Batty in Blade Runner. It is one thing that they wrote a novel together but Phil who was established already really wanted to push Ray forward and offered to write more novels with him to try and get Nelson more chances at Ace.

It wasn’t until ten years after their collaboration that Nelson published his next novel Blake’s Progress, which many consider to be his best work.  I should have probably read that one but I read his last work. Virtual Zen was published in 1996 by an Avon books SF label called AvonNova. If you don’t know Avon was a publisher known for Romance novels targeted at housewives. It must of been short-lived as I could find no information on the line or who the editor was.

After reading the novel I have a theory that it was written in the late 80s. I don’t when or if Ray Nelson ever quit writing SF. I know Barry Malzberg has kept writing after he felt his publishing days were over. Perhaps there are Ray Nelson gems hanging around on hard-drive, or in a folder somewhere. I respect the hell out of Nelson, and reading Virtual Zen was an interesting experience. I am not sure anyone who is not invested in Nelson as a person would find Virtual Zen to be an objectively good science fiction novel. The one and only review of  it on Goodreads before I came along was a 1-star review that started with “Oh god did this book suck.” Look it is a weird book and I can admit it is not for everybody. That said I really enjoyed the experience.

Virtual Zen is a bizarro experience because it is a Science Fiction book about hip-music culture written by a guy who admittedly aged out of being hip when this novel was released. Consider that in 1996 we are talking about the dawn of the internet, written before that era. It is a really interesting artifact projecting a future that has interesting cross-winds of ideas set in motion by the fertile imagination of a classical SF voice. I mean Ray Nelson was a cool, hip guy in the 50s and 60s but this book was released in the 90s.

I can’t really imagine Ray Nelson being on the cutting edge of post-grunge avant-garde neo-post punk in 1996. So a novel about John Henry Koyama, the son of a popular musician who just killed himself and becomes a pop icon takes a surreal quality.  The record label needs him to pick up his dad’s career, using AI programming they can compose new work he just needs to be the face of the effort. It is interesting as the internet has had a constant debate in the past month about art created by artificial intelligence. “Few people in the industry, or even in the inside your father’s organization, know it, but today Mike Koyama, as a creative artist, is a totally artificial being. To maintain our standing with the listening public, however, we need a human figurehead.”

John Henry Koyama who goes under the “Big Mike” label becomes a sensation playing his street music on a toy flute, and he rebels against the record label and the industry. He creates music and style the cool kids call Wabi,  As in that song is Wabi or not Wabi. In the future, the most wabi composer of the long ago 20th century is Annie Lennox. Such a weird dated choice, but I kind of loved it when I read that.

The story is set in a post-America future but only two new countries of Pacifica and MexAmerica are mentioned. Most of the story is set in Tokyo which has become a cross-ocean nation with former California. This world-building is kinda impossible enough to me that it has to be a little tongue-in-cheek or satire. I mean it is the actions of President Dan Quayle (his big mouth apparently) that led to this future, not only is that hilarious to consider it is what dates the writing of this novel to the 80s for me. No proof, but it seems clear to me.

That use of humor in World-building was something his friend Philip K Dick was a master at.  There are moments that hint at a darker outside world. “Today there are no great powers, only hundreds of small powers, all with nuclear weapons, not all governed by anyone’s idea of sane.”

Trivideo is all-encompassing technology similar to our phones that connects the characters to the Net as it exists in this world.  There are really strange sentences that I thought were perhaps a not-so-subtle diss at one of the greats of Science Fiction whose reputation has since been exposed as having a problem with groping women. “And I admired her walk as she strolled away. Neither my mother nor Issac Asimov had warned me about girls like her.” Well, then  I realized it was about a sex-worker robot.

On the Dickheads Podcast we always make Dick-like suggestions and the most PKD part of this novel is the opening of chapter 20.

“Good Morning Mr.Foster.” said the door in its cheery Miss Holy Valentine voice.
“Up yours door,” I muttered.

Of course in Phil's book, he might be short the change to afford to open the door at all.

Virtual Zen is a really strange book. There are no action scenes, no shoot-outs, or car chases, the thing that makes it interesting is the weird surreal world and for me how strangely out of date it was even when it was released. The idea of Wabi, something the book expresses as so cool, doesn’t feel cool to me, but who cares. The novel is interesting if you ride with it. In the final act even Wabi becomes capitalized. The very idea of the book is built around a Tokyo street musician who plays a toy flute is just so great.

The reality is Ray Faraday Nelson had great success in his career. He wrote good stuff. Roy Batty, They Live and the propeller Beanie will be his legacy. Not Hugo awards or being a household name even in genre circles, but you know fuck that. Ray Nelson did cool stuff. He wrote cool stuff. He deserves to be remembered as a powerful writer.

 I don’t think Virtual Zen will work for most readers. I have to admit that. I kind of love the way the novel lives in that zone. Yeah, most readers will be turned off. They will think it is silly and weird. The cover art as goofy as it is actually fits the novel. That is a feature, not a bug.

Ray Nelson's celebration of life Feb 2022




 

Book Review: Amazing Stories: Cents of Wonder Edited by Steve Davidson and Kermit Woodall

 

 

Amazing Stories: Cents of Wonder Edited by Steve Davidson and Kermit Woodall

Publication September 2022

I am not sure why but at some point, Hasbro Toy company owned the rights to Amazing Stories magazine which was started in the mid-1920s by Hugo Gernsbeck. Yep, The Hugo of THE Hugo awards. You probably know that but part of writing about the history of the genre is not assuming that any knows because many people don’t. Steve Davidson at some point noticed that the trademark lapsed and now the former professional paintballer is the owner and publisher of Amazing Stories. Without him, we wouldn’t have the 88th-anniversary edition so you go, Steve!

Sure he is keeping the tradition alive by doing new issues and but with this book Cent$ of Wonder he doing serious rediscovery which is normally the job of academics. This book is history and contains 14 stories that would’ve been lost to history. Steve sent me this book and I am glad he did. It was after I did my five-part series on 1930 SF.  I thought that was OLD, but how about the 20s? These stories written between 26 and 30  are special for another reason.

These were not pros, and as best I can tell only two went on to become noted writers. The stories in this book were entries in a series of writing contests that used a piece of art as a story prompt. Writers could submit stories inspired by the art and Gernsbeck choose winners and honorable mentions. There was a cash prize for the top winners. The reason for this contest is simple. Gernsbeck needed to encourage new writers and to expand his pool of talent.

$500 was a shitload of money now. The sad thing is, that is more than most outlets can afford to pay writers today.  All the introductions and histories in this book are as valuable, if not more useful than the stories themselves. Most of the stories are not that great, but that is not the point. They are really cool to read because you get a view into how the writers were translating the image.

I was amazed that some of the stories didn’t feel as dated as they could have. Most of the flaws come from narrative flow and things more experienced writers would iron out. Two of the three best stories in the collection were by authors who would go on to succeed. That didn’t surprise me. 

So the first part of the book was the Amazing Stories December 1926- to April 1927 contest.  The magazine published the first through third-place winners as well four honorable mentions. I got something out of all the stories, one of the drawbacks were the length of the stories, some of them drag. I think Gernsbeck understood this so the later stories are shorter.

The two best in this half in my opinion were the third and first-place stories. Coming in at third place was the only author I knew already - Claire Wagner Harris. Her story Miracle of the Lily is a stand-out in Lisa Yazsek’s first volume of The Future is Female. Her story 'The Fate of Poseidonia' comes with a back-handed insulting sexist introduction by Gernsbeck, who seems shocked to give the prize to a woman and says “As a rule, women do not make good scientifiction writers.” He goes on to compliment the story and calling it an exception to the rules. Wow, 1927.

Harris to me is the best writer in the book so no surprise she is the one I knew before. Still, she didn’t have the success she probably deserved and had to be rediscovered. This story has sweeping vistas of time and involves lots of the solar system. It has a very powerful scene when the far future of 1945 sees the pacific ocean receding and world-wide panic. The story has a futuristic trans-Atlantic plane. And does all the stuff you want a retro SF story to do. Create a surreal future envisioned by a woman in 1927. It is a cool end-of-the-world story and certainly my favorite of the book.

The first place story The Visitation by Cyril G. Waters was also pretty cool. It was a delightfully weird tale of the SS Shah of Iran a vessel involved in a bizarro first contact story. Those were the two real standouts of the first half for me.

I enjoyed the results of the second contest a little more. Part Two of the book was the Cover story contest for the November 1929 issue of Science Wonder Stories. They had a cover that had a flying saucer holding a skyscraper and the Effiel Tower in space.  $300 prize and more importantly a shorter word count. This meant the stories in this half took less time to read and the ones of lesser quality felt like less of a chore to read. It was also a bit harder a scenario to explain.

The first-place winner is an early story by Charles Tanner who would go on to be a Weird Tales regular and write the classic “Tumithak Of The Corridors.”  In that context, while spelled differently the title Color of space, similar to Lovecraft's tale made me smile. The Colour Out of Space was published two years earlier. Tanner according to the intro had been a Gernsbeck reader since 1908 in Modern Electronics. His story involves scientists trying to overcome gravity, it is the use of gravity and space travel in the late 20s that makes this story fun. No real attempt at science even for the time. There is however a story that tries to do the science of the time.

My third favorite story from the book The Relics From the Earth by John Pierce. He didn’t go on to be a writer but he was a hang glider and apparently a student at the California institute of technology. I was impressed for his hard SF approach. The story of the post-earth exodus out into the solar system written in 1929 holds better than you might think.

I like the stories in the second half better because they are shorter and sweeter and the bad ones wasted less of my time. That said the book as a whole is an important document. Entertainment sure, a great historical document. I have to thank Steve and Kermit Woodall for putting in the work to get this out there. It is an important historical document in the development of SF. Anyone interested in the early glory days of the genre should really put it on their shelf.

Magazine/Journal Review: Startling Stories 2022 Issue

 

Featuring...John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, Adrian Cole, Cynthia Ward, Mike Chin, Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito, Stephen Persing, Lorenzo Crescenti, A.J. McIntosh, Andrew J. Wilson

I didn't know that Wildside press was doing a modern yearly Startling Stories until I found John Shirley had a story/ interview in the issue. The Shirley story is a great political time-spanning satire that I reviewed last month alongside his F and SF story and Western novel Axle Bust Creek. So for deeper thoughts check that out.

Anyways this reboot is worth the money, articles, interviews, and excellent that carry on the tradition.

Book Review: Galaxies by Barry N. Malzberg

 

Galaxies by Barry N. Malzberg

208 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2014 by Anti-Oedipus Press  

First published August 1, 1975 Pyramid books

When Barry Malzberg graduated from Syracuse University he joked about not wanting to become an unpublished English professor. That is one reason he "fell into Science Fiction" as he put it. As he started publishing he bounced back and forth at jobs between reading slush piles at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency and ACE books under a brief mentorship of DAW books founder Don Wollheim. Enough so he told us during a (during Dickheads podcast interview) a story about being in the room when Wollheim blew a gasket over Man in the High Castle (a novel he passed on) getting a Hugo nomination.  SMLA represented both PKD and Arthur C. Clarke among others. The dude read tons of manuscripts.  In that era, he probably read more wretched SF than good.

I think that is one of the most important factors to consider when thinking about this uh novel, I mean I will call it a novel for lack of a better word. Let's talk more about Malzberg because it is meaningful. While he comes off as a grump and he certainly takes shots at the genre in this book he really loves the history of the genre. If it should please the court I offer two key points of evidence. Malzberg wrote fiction faster than PKD on pills. The dude had so many pen names in part because he was writing dirty erotica books (I am told a few classics in the genre) but also because he was publishing more SF than one name could handle.  Two of his most beloved stories Final War and  Gathering at the Hall of Planets were released under the name"K. M. O'Donnell",  a tip of the hat to the surnames of Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and their joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell." If you Barry he will tell Henry Kuttner was the best, or at least his favorite. The second piece of evidence would be his collection of  essays on the genre, anyone interested in the history of the genre must read “Breakfast in the Ruins.”

 When I interviewed him he pointed out that he got really good at reading the slush pile. That is important because he was reading the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the genre during the period when the Golden Age faded to New Wave. That makes Barry Malzberg a one in million critical eye on the genre that makes this book stand out. NO ONE. Not any other human being was in a position to comment on Science fiction in this era that way.

Barry N. Malazberg and his multiple Science Fiction personalities were on the frontlines as eras shifted from Asimovian ideas to a counter-culture middle finger held high novels filled with sex, drugs, and political points of view. There were a few authors who bridged the eras Leigh Brackett, John Brunner, and Philip K. Dick. Malzberg who is still rocking as the grumpy old man of Science Fiction in the 2020s can feel like he was born a grumpy old man, but he was a radical young voice. In the era when Astronauts were golden boys he wrote several novels critical of the space program including his masterpiece Beyond Apollo. At the time that was a punk rock move for a young SF writer.

Here is the point where if you trust me and want to go unspoiled is where I suggest you order the re-print from AOP and come back to read the rest of the review…

Malzberg was always a writer going for deeper, more serious meaning. I expected something deeper and cooler than your average SF novel but knew nothing going in.  Galaxies is a novel I had been saving, knowing that my friend whose taste I respect D.Harlan Wilson went to the length of putting this novel back into print. I knew it was important. I am glad that the meta-commentary was not spoiled for me.

I want to quote David Pringle’s Ultimate guide to SF entry about Galaxies. “Mock hard-SF tale in which heroine flies her spacecraft into a ‘black galaxy.’ The author interweaves many sour comments on the nature of SF as a genre. Witty, self-reflexive, occasionally irritating.”  Despite that three-star review later Pringle would list it in his Science Fiction: 100 best novels. “Galaxies is a love/hate letter to all readers and writers of Science Fiction, a witty criticism of the genre and its aspirations.”

 It kinda makes sense that this novel would pull two very different takes from the same person. Galaxies is a tough novel to judge. It has flashes of genius and moments that could easily be nitpicked. to me the genius outweighs the moments that had me stratching my head. The story follows Lena Thomas a starship captain in the 40th century on the verge of her ship falling into a black hole and creating time-warping effects that cause her to trip through infinite lifetimes, talk to the dead, and live in the subconscious of the author writing this very science fiction novel. Personally, I pictured Barry typing away in an office piled up with slush piles at SMLA in 1974. I gotta write a novel before lunch!

I think in most authors' hands this novel would start entirely in the 40th century and Lena would discover The author and the existence of the novel as a twist. I am not sure that version wouldn’t be better but that is not the point here. Malzberg is not messing around with that stuff, he tells you the score in the first sentence. “To define the terms at the outset, this will not be novel so much as a series of notes towards one.” On the first page, he makes fun of pulpy SF by saying “…it will be as much a novel as the Rammers of Arcturus or Slinking Slowly on the Slime Planet’s Sludge, titles which flank this to the left and right.”

The first fifteen pages are a commentary on the genre, and in that sense, Malzberg warned the reader that these were notes, at some point the novel starts. The thing is it is more of a novel at that point but no one would fool themselves that this is a traditional narrative.

The author talks to us, to his characters, and along the way comments on the genre, he has a love/hate relationship with. I personally think this novel is a 128-page reaction to the years of his life spent reading the slush pile. David Gerrold recently told me on my podcast that Malzberg fought for his now classic time travel novel “The Man Who Folded Himself,” after the editor he was working for declared it nonsense.

Eventually, Malzberg would publish essays on the topic,  but in 1974 if he wanted to express an opinion it was unlikely to find a home. So blending it in with a novel was not only subversive but smart. My dude was taking a chance to teach history  “ Consider Science Fiction since its formal inception as a romantic subgenre in this country in 1926 with the publication of the first issues of Hugo Gernsbeck’s Amazing Stories has been known for its simple and melodramatic plots which demonstrate man’s mastery (or later on loss of control of technology.”

That is not the introduction that is in the novel. The direct commentary and notes start to fade away as the novel continues. We get commentary on the lack of sex in novels and BM makes clear they do it in the future. One of my favorite asides happens on page 27. “Thirty-Nine zero two. There has yet been no contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, although humanity has colonized many planets and investigated several thousand more. This seemingly exclusivity of human intelligence baffles cosmologists and mathematicians while pleasing theologians.” I love those bovine animals of Sirius who turned out to be intelligent. This doesn’t forward the narrative, but it is an example of how asides in this novel take little funny shots at SF in general.  

The story once it gets humming takes advantage of high-concept ideas of black holes and time dilation. Lena starts to feel time and space stretched and manipulated. “But it can be said that the black galaxy not only repeats and intensifies time but also compresses so that although seventy-thousand  years are in one sense quite extended, in another, they are short enough for Lena all the various sensations of her various lives.”

Part of the novel’s mission statement is expressed after Lena knowing she is trapped to falling into the black galaxy calls on cyborgs to discuss her problem. She suggests the dead have overcome death.

“They have not. It is all in your imagination. There are places man was not meant to go, objects he was not meant to touch, and emotions beyond his ability to interpret. And this is all of them. You must yield. You must face the futility of the situation. I would recommend that you look for a religious solution. That would probably serve you better than anything at this time.”

Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo is about the madness of going out into the universe, in this moment he is saying to his main character in the face of the black galaxy there is nothing to do but surrender. Unlike other novels, Malzberg has the excuse and right to just talk about the meaning of the novel directly.

“The material would indeed have to be handled carefully and with an awareness of how easily it might descend into riotous. Pain would have to be wrenched out of it; the reader would have to feel with the characters. Not only intellectual content but levels of the ambiguous would have to woven through less Galaxies become merely an attack upon the technological, a curse against the absurdity. Nothing, surely, could be further from the intent of the novel.”

Galaxies is a work of genius. It won't work for everyone. It is a bit of satire, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the genre. It is not the kind of novel that would ever get attention for awards like Hugos or nebulas. A good number of SF readers probably are never going to vibe with it. Had PKD or LeGuin written something like it, it would be taught and studied widely.

It wasn't written by those titans, I mean Malzberg is that important to a few of us, and I suppose it is our mission to get more eyeballs to this book and the author in general.  

   

Graphic novel review: Star Trek: Year Four - The Enterprise Experiment D.C. Fontana, Gordon Purcell, Derek Chester

 

Star Trek: Year Four - The Enterprise Experiment
D.C. Fontana, Gordon Purcell, Derek Chester

My reason for reading this is pretty simple. I have researched and written about D.C. Fontana off and on throughout the last couple of months. When IDW launched a comic series called Star Trek Year Four it was obvious that D.C. Fontana had to be one of the writers. Released in 2006 in Fontana’s mind it is clear it takes place in the same era as the animated series that she was the story editor .
Gene Coon and Dorothy Fontana are debatably more important to the writing of Star Trek than even the show’s creator Gene Roddenberry. Much of the tone, style, and consistency was in the hands of those two writers who were in the foxhole of daily production much more than Roddenberry.

Fontana started her time at Star Trek before it was even a thing. She gave Roddenberry notes on his early drafts and answered the phones in the Star Trek offices. It is interesting that this is a sequel in part to Fontana’s episode Enterprise Incident. It was an episode that she changed dramatically from the first draft to the shooting draft, but it was a fight. Personally as someone who has read Fontana's original treatment for the Enterprise Incident, I kinda wish they had produced that. Nonetheless.

Fontana tells the story of the continued development of the Starfleet cloaking tech that the enterprise had stolen from the Romulans a year earlier. Now with Arex in the crew, this story does have a TAS feel. That is fine for me I always liked how much more Science Fiction the Animated Series felt.
This story has Romulans, a bad cloaking device that phases the Enterprise out of space-time, and plenty of legacy characters. The second half is a sequel to Errand of Mercy, just like the first ST novel by James Blish, with lots of sequels to those stories. There are callbacks all over the place to various episodes. This is where we see the most Fontana influence. Most interesting in the second storyline involves Kor trying to steal Preserver technology. A storyline that got developed in the later seasons of TNG that Fontana said she never watched.

The stories are good with a few moments that made me smile wishing we got this as an episode in a fourth season. Of course, it is not exactly that. There is a hint of modern storytelling and enough to make it feel a little deeper. Fontana re-writes her own back story for McCoy’s daughter and that was really interesting to me. It was also fun to see her use Carol Marcus a creation of Star Trek 2.
 

Big thumbs up.

Book Review: The House on the Borderland By William Hope Hodgson

 

The House on the Borderland By William Hope Hodgson

92 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 1908

Classic is a hyperbole that often lacks meaning thanks to overuse.  I first read this one when I was a teenager as Lovecraft wrote about it at length in his essay about Supernatural horror. That is at least my memory of it. Much of Lovecraft’s DNA is found in this short novel that blurs the haunted house tale with cosmic horror on a scale that is hard to believe existed in the first decade of the 20th century.

This novel is one hundred and fourteen years old at this time. Considering all the elements involved it is not crazy to say it is one of the major influences of Weird Tales (the magazine – altogether). Hodgson himself was a character and more than just a little interesting. He was well known for poems and essays before Borderland, he had lived at sea for many years. He ran away from boarding school at thirteen and spent four years on a ship as a cabin boy. After two years of study, he went out again as a sailor but was so bullied he started to work out purely in self-defense. The mean and crass behavior became a theme he explored in his stories set at sea.

Once he became famous he was even on stage with Harry Houdini. When he was just twenty-two years old, he opened a School of Physical Culture. Offering training, and diet help, it was like an early CrossFit gym. He wrote his first fiction in 1904 a story called Goddess of Death. Borderland was only four years later.

I know I am straight edge and far from an expert. I have been reading lots of 60’s new wave about drugs and when I read parts like “It might have been a million years later, that I perceived, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world, was darkening.” It sounds like a bad trip to me. I know he was a health and fitness dude but he also traveled the world and I bet he picked up drugs. I mean it was thirty years before LSD was invented by accident. So what do I know. Opium??? Maybe the dude was writing about time and cosmic issues before many others.

The narrative structure of the two boys on the fishing trip who find the book that explains the weird house they found with the nasty reputation gives the cosmic events a bit of separation, it is one of the few weak elements of the novel. Considering when and by whom this was written the cosmic themes are incredible. I find it impossible to not grade this highly on that curve.
 

Even the moments of horror cliché are well done. Consider how the house is introduced.

“There had stood a great house in the centre of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were evil. No one ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village, it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.”

The letters that take you inside the house and the madness is that “holy shit you’ll never believe this,” method that Lovecraft would beat to death. Can’t blame Hodgson and I suppose that is natural way to start a story about a house, out of space and time being invaded by half-swine guys.  For me, the book worked best when the house was a portal to the cosmos.

“And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central Sun—the great sun, round which our universe and countless others revolve."

 The double sunset decades before Luke watched the Tatooine suns was super powerful for me in this reading. I think the first time maybe I was more into the swine dudes.   
“The inner story must be uncovered, personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire.”

True, true Mister Hodgson but I think this novel is so overshadowed by Lovecraft it is sad we have to remind people that Howie had influences too. Having recently re-read At The Mountains of Madness it is hard for me to say which one holds up better. House on the Borderlands is a classic that deserves fresh eyeballs.

Book Review: God's Leftovers by Grant Wamack

God’s Leftovers by Grant Wamack

64 pages, Paperback 

Published  August, 2022 by Bizarro Pulp Press

I was excited to finally catch up with a Grant Wamack work. Grant is a writer I have spent some time with at cons and things. He had been a guest on the podcast. I knew he was a unique voice, and his novella was one I had wanted to read since it was announced. God’s Leftovers packs an unnatural amount of story and ideas into a thin 60 pages. The biggest negative here is that as much as I love short work I would have loved another forty pages. It is rare that I close a book and think there needed to be more. It is not needed here, It is a great novella I wanted, not needed more.

We’ll come back to that as I want to focus on the awesome stuff you get with this book. God’s Leftovers is a southwestern modern horror tale that makes use of the setting of the Valley of Fire and characters to present a vibe and story that is a pure product of Grant. The young couple who shouldn’t be in the desert, the out-of-place rapper, and the weird cult that has a strange relationship with the flesh.

With a no-nonsense set-up God’s Leftovers played in my mind on grainy film, and I could almost feel my feet sticking to the grindhouse theater floor. It is the kinda story that got rented to kids too young having to be careful their parents didn’t know they watched it. Wamack doesn’t flinch so serious trigger warnings apply. The violence is not implied, the visceral  moments are as shockingly real as psychedelic and dark fantasy moments are unreal.

It is a combo that worked for me. This is a five-star 60-page novella. I enjoyed reading this novella and has me excited to read more of Grant’s work. Anyone who reads my reviews know I am a sucker for small moments that show a command of horror. “Shoes Crunched in the sand with each step. They felt far away, but still too close for comfort. Nicole wanted to scream, wail in frustration, but instead she bit her lip. She saw the man drop down on all fours scanning the ground for movement. She clamped a hand over her mouth willing him and his black ponytail to look the opposite direction. His head swiveled and locked in on her.”

Well-done moments like this are throughout the book I choose this one as my favorite.
Now could it have been longer? I loved this book at 60 pages but I think it could’ve been one hundred pages and not lost its short and hardcore tone. Will and Anca’s relationship being one arranged from Romanian over the internet gets attention and details, and it helps the character grow in our minds. All the characters get short backstories. It is well done but I wanted just a little more.

The Wiry Man, and The Collective – and their connection to nature are things I would have liked a little more exploration of. Not because the book is lacking those things but because it suggests them and I just wanted more.  

God’s Leftovers is a one-sitting read and packs an amazing amount of story into 60 pages. It is not for everyone as it is very, very brutal. The most important takeaway is that I wanted more, more, more. That is a great thing Grant Wamack has my attention and horror readers looking for the gritty underground shit have a new author to check out.