The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1989 (first quarter)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index
to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/

1989
January THE GARRETT FILES (3-in-1 of SWEET SILVER BLUES, BITTER GOLD HEARTS
and COLD COPPER TEARS) by Glen Cook

Three related novels featuring the wise-cracking Garrett as the protagonist. The setting is a multispecific city that has been at war for a long time and as the burden of serving at the front falls on the humans (to keep weapons out of the hands of the non-humans?) the local economy is increasingly dominated by nonhumans.

My impression is that Cook had WWII LA as one model.

Garrett, a veteran of the War, fills his time by being as close to a PI as makes no difference. He is aided in his work by the Dead Man, an expired but not gone entity from a very durable race. It's odd how this parallels the setup in the Nero Wolfe books given that apparently Cook had never read any at this point.

There are comic elements to the books but they are not comedies. At least one of them is a tragedy.


TO THE VANISHING POINT by Alan Dean Foster

Missed it.


JOHN THE BALLADEER by Manly Wade Wellman (Alternate)

Missed it.

[This is the 'imagine Johnny Cash fighting demons with the power of his music' one, right?]


STAR TREK: SPOCK'S WORLD by Diane Duane (Alternate)

Missed it.


THE PALADIN by C.J. Cherryh (Alternate)

Missed it.


THE ARTHURIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA edited by Norris J. Lacy (Enclosure)

Missed it.


February THE DRAGONBONE CHAIR by Tad Williams

Bogged down about a million pages in. Never finished it. Never got on the Tad Williams bandwagon as a result.


The Day the Martians Came Frederik Pohl (St. Martin's 0-312-02183-6,
Dec '88 [Nov '88], $15.95, 248pp, hc); Episodic novel based on
ten sf stories plus connecting material. Seven of the stories
have appeared before.

+ 3 o Extract from the Congressional Record o ms
+ 7 o A Martian Christmas ["Adeste Fideles"] o ss Omni Dec '87
+ 29 o From The New York Times: Martians Lack Language but
Possess Organized Society o ms
+ 31 o Sad Screenwriter Sam ["Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam"] o
ss F&SF Jun '72
+ 44 o NBC Nightly News: "Ferdie Dead" o ms
+ 49 o The View from Mars Hill o nv IASFM May '87
+ 73 o Scientific American: "Martian Polar Wanderings" o ms
+ 76 o Saucery o ss F&SF Oct '86
+ 90 o New Scientist: "Mars at the British Ass." o ms
+ 96 o The Beltway Bandit o nv *
+ 124 o The President's News Conference o ms
+ 127 o Too Much Loosestrife o ss Amazing Nov '87
+ 146 o "Oprah Winfrey" o ms
+ 150 o Iriadeska's Martians o nv IASFM Nov '86
+ 186 o Notes from the British Interplanetary Society o ms
+ 189 o The Missioner o nv *
+ 212 o Time magazine: "We Wait with Eagerness and Joy" o ms
+ 216 o Across the River o nv *
+ 238 o The Day After the Day the Martians Came o ss Dangerous
Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
+ 249 o Huddling o aw

A collection of stories spanning a considerable fraction of Pohl's career. Unfortunately it's a sequence that has always left me cold but it appears so early in Pohl's career than it didn't make think
worry about the brain eater the way O Pioneer did.


Azazel Isaac Asimov (Doubleday Foundation 0-385-24410-X, Nov '88 [Oct
'88], $16.95, 221pp, hc) [*Azazel]; Fantasy collection of 18
stories featuring a pocket demon. One of them is an original.

+ xi o Introduction o in
+ 1 o The Two-Centimeter Demon o ss *
+ 11 o One Night of Song o ss F&SF Apr '82
+ 19 o The Smile That Loses o ss F&SF Nov '82
+ 29 o To the Victor o ss IASFM Jul '82
+ 39 o The Dim Rumble o ss IASFM Oct '82
+ 51 o Saving Humanity o ss IASFM Sep '83
+ 63 o A Matter of Principle o ss IASFM Feb '84
+ 77 o The Evil Drink Does o ss IASFM May '84
+ 89 o Writing Time o ss IASFM Jul '84
+ 103 o Dashing Through the Snow o ss IASFM mid-Dec '84
+ 119 o Logic Is Logic o ss IASFM Aug '85
+ 131 o He Travels the Fastest o ss IASFM Nov '85
+ 141 o The Eye of the Beholder o ss IASFM Jan '86
+ 155 o More Things in Heaven and Earth o ss Science Fiction by
Isaac Asimov, pamphlet, 1986
+ 167 o The Mind's Construction o ss IASFM Oct '86
+ 179 o The Fights of Spring o ss IASFM Feb '87
+ 193 o Galatea o ss IASFM mid-Dec '87
+ 207 o Flight of Fancy o ss IASFM May '88


I missed all of these.


THE CHANTRY GUILD by Gordon R. Dickson (Alternate)

And I avoided this.


CUT AND CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN BRONTOSAURUS by Alan Robbins
(Alternate)

No idea what this is.


March THE WANDERINGS OF WUNTVOR (3-in-1 of A DIFFICULTY WITH DWARVES, AN
EXCESS OF ENCHANTMENTS and A DISAGREEMENT WITH DEATH) by Craig Shaw Gardner

More 'comic' fantasy by CSG? If so, avoid avoid avoid.


SHADOWS OF THE WHITE SUN by Raymond Harris

Missed it.


DEMON LORD OF KARANDA by David Eddings (Alternate)

Avoided this.


ROGER ZELAZNY'S VISUAL GUIDE TO CASTLE AMBER by Roger Zelazny and Neil Randall (Alternate)

I missed this *but* I know Neil Randall, who teaches at the
University of Waterloo.

[Weird. I was just looking at Neil's entry at UW today!]

Comments

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

To the Vanishing Point is a kind of horror/alternate universe SF thing. I don't think it really worked, but points to ADF for trying something different.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

I could go with Johnny Cash fighting demons. Are the stories any good?

[(Anonymous)]

The main character is more "inspired by" than "based on". But he is a guitar-playing man, and he does fight a variety of supernatural (and maybe-SFnal) unpleasantness in mid-20th-century Appalachia.

The stories are indeed good. If you read a bunch of them all together, they get a bit repetitive, but they're still good.

Paizo (a gaming company that occasionally dabbles in publishing classic F&SF) came out with a complete collection a few years back. They're running low on copies, but haven't yet run out, so you can still buy it on their website: http://paizo.com/products/btpy85jz?Who-Fears-the-Devil-The-Complete-Silver-John.


Doug M.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The main character is more "inspired by" than "based on".

I doubt it.

First John story: "O Ugly Bird!" in 1951.

First Johnny Cash record: 1955. By which year Wellman had published five stories in the series.

"Imagine Johnny Cash fighting demons with the power of his music" remains a fair one-sentence description. But Mr. Cash was not the original inspiration for Mr. Wellman's character.

(I wonder whether John in his travels ever ran across The People, who also inhabited the pages of F&SF in the same era? Either he kept their secret, or he was separated from them by the impervious barrier between Fantasy and Science Fiction.)

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

Correct; J. Cash was not just exactly six feet tall. (The initials are correct though.)

--Dave

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I'll add to this recommendation that the short stories are good, but the novels, which were written later, are not.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately my local library network only has (some of) the novels. :-(

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

If you happen to feel like doing an interlibrary loan request for it, the story collection I have is John the Balladeer.

John the Balladeer stories available as a Baen ebook

[(Anonymous)]

Pardon me for jumping in. If you like ebooks, you can get *all* the John the Balladeer short stories from Baen Ebooks in the anthology _Mountain Magic_. (Note that the paper version of _Mountain Magic_ has Henry Kuttner's Hogben stories instead; the Wellman stories are in the ebook only, as a replacement because "[T]he Kuttner estate does not allow publication of electronic versions of his works.")

Re: John the Balladeer stories available as a Baen ebook

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

My reactions:

1. That is good to know, thank you.

2. Gee, selling Wellman and Kuttner under the same title seems weird.

3. These stories are all about weird, so Embrace The Weirdness.

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

The Garret novels started out pretty strong, did ok through the next few books, and then at some point (no later than 'Angry Lead Skies') just completely went off the rails, but I can't stop buying the damn things.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

Roger Zelazny wrote somewhere that he felt restricted by the published "Castle of Amber" information, so, in the next book, he blew up the castle.

(Merlin #3 or #4)

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

THE PALADIN by C.J. Cherryh

In a country that vaguely resembles both Japan and China, a young girl gets revenge on her family's killers after being trained by the old emperor's sword master. Fairly straight forward for Cherryh, with almost no fantasy elements.

[goljerp]

In fact, it's arguable that there is no actual fantasy in the book at all; although some of the characters believe in demons, dragons, etc., there is nothing unambiguous shown. Bs pbhefr, vg gbbx zr hagvy znlor cntr 299 bs zl svefg ernq bs Nzbat Bguref orsber V jnf pregnva gur zntvp jnf erny gurer. :-)