Time Travelers Strictly Cash (7 page)

*Ted raises rabbits.

surplus. (Most of the books I receive for review are surplus.)

I acquired a number of new friends in the business (a small number, as most writers seem to believe a good review is only what they deserve), and a number of new enemies (a rather larger number, as most writers seem to believe that a bad review can only come from an admixture of envy, stupidity and innate evil).

And, as a side effect, readership of my own stories increased. People who liked my columns decided that if I was that entertaining talking about books, imagine how entertaining I’d be telling stories, People who hated my columns wanted to prove that I had no business criticizing anyone else’s work.

The net result is that as I write this, five years almost to the day since Jim Baen decided to take a chance on an unknown (a decision for which he says he received a huge amount of static from some quarters), I’m making a (tenuous) living at my trade.

So it seems tome that if you take the word “bane” (“Nemesis; cause of destruction or ruin.”) and reverse the last two-letters, you totally reverse the meaning. it is at Jim Baen’s insistence that the following, my first-ever “guest” review column, is reprinted here, despite its amateurishness, and I understOnd how he feels. He has reason to be proud.

And I have reason to be grateful.

(Lest, however, you put this book down with the erroneous impression that any editor is a totally nice guy, I direct your attention to the logo at the head of tile following column. It is the original-logo for “Spider vs. The Has,” commissioned by Baen and drawn by Freff. 1 first saw it when it was printed, and I sent what I considered a mild letter (no specific death threats) to Jim, suggesting that perhaps the logo “lacked dignity” a trifle. Freff happened to be in the office when the letter arrived, and their mutual response follows the column.

SPIDER VERSUS THE HAX OF SOL III

I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I just have that kind of mind, andthere’snothinglcandoaboutit. WhenJimBaenasksme for a guest review, all I can visualize is a psychopathic butler, ex-Army no doubt, who instead of announcing the guests as they arrive, lines them up and begins inspecting them for flaws. “Suck in that gut, sister. You there, call that a shave?” I’m sorry, honest.

So here’s a guest review, Jim.

Laurels first, then brickbats, with the white elephant saved for last. I’m sorry to say that there are no perfect books waiting for you at your bookstore this month, genties and ladlemen. But some come closer than others.

Closest is Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison (Harper & Row, price unknown). This, friends, is one king hell collection of gutpunching, groin-kicking, arm-breaking short stories, subtitled “A Pantheon of Modern Gods dedicated to the proposition that if gods die when their followers stop believing, then gods are born when beliefs crystallize.

Harlan takes a look at some of the gods we’re raising up these days, and makes it quite clear that we’d better start learning how to placate them, like pronto. Written over a period of ten years, the stories are superbly crafted and chillingly effective, the kind of which Heinlein once said that you should serve a whisk-broom with every shot so that the customer can brush the sawdust off him when be gets back up. But in the three or four times I’ve met Harlan, I’ve noticed a severe strain on our relationship in that he has nothing to bitch at me about, and so I ought to add some beefs.

First, most of these stories will probably already be familiar to you (a margarine dildo to the first reader who can name an anthology of anything by anyone in the past year that hasn’t contained Deathbird), reminding one of those ten Billie Holiday albums with three albums worth of songs endlessly shuffled and re-dealt. “Maggie Moneyeyes,” “Along the Scenic Route,” “Paingod’ ‘and “Shattered Like A Glass Goblin” aren’t exactly obscure, for instance.

But thass alright-somehow all these stories do belong thematically in one book. My main beef is that all of Harlan’s new gods are scary. Pessimism is okay-but unrelieved pessimism seems a little unrealistic. Maybe all that’s on the other side is the sixteen-year-old perfect goombah and his divine Maserati; but why don’t we take a look?

But how can you complain about a book that has “Whimper of Whipped Dogs” in it?

Next in line is The Shockwave Rider (Harper & Row, price unknown-while this latter phrase reoccurs frequently because I’m working from galleys, for obvious reasons I can’t abbreviate it) by John Brinner, a Spring ‘75 selection for the SF Book Club; This one had seeds of greatness, but maybe it needed more vermiculite. It’s not a bad book-but somehow it just misses. Close though.

The protagonist is Nickie Haflinger, who was drafted as a child into the government’s behaviorist-oriented genius factory, Tarnover. Not content with encouraging natural geniuses to mature, the directors of this institution are attempting to grow genetically-modified geniuses from ova in the laboratory. As a young man Nickie stumbles across a deformed and imbecile Mark I, becomes disillusioned with behaviorism and splits, removing himself from the national data-net and establishing a succession of aliases with a stolen computer-code, dedicating himself to the overthrow of Tarnover and all it stands for. A dandy, plot, and one that in Brunner’s hands should have been Hugo material. I dunno; maybe he was in a hurry. Both his villains and the community of Precipice (Tarnover’s underground antithesis) are cut from cardboard, and there are a series of debate-lectures between Nickie and the government interrogator who’s wringing out his memory that just don’t ring true.

But the book reads well all the same. Individual sections are often brilliant, in the way that John seems to have copyrighted, and the message is incisive and timely. But as a story it limps. So call it the worst book he’s written in five years, and you’ve still put it two notches above average. It kept me turning the page, and its closing questioniias has yet to be answered.

Onward to a pleasant surprise. Somehow or other I got on Doubleday’s SF review list a couple of years back, and as a result my stove here in Nova Scotia has never lacked for fire-starter. Honest to God, you never saw such Stuff in your life. Comic-books without the pictures. But I hear they’ve got a new SF editor lately, and here on my desk, by Jesus, is an actual first-rate science-fiction novel from Doubleday; Newton and the Quasi-Apple, by Stanley Schmidt. I’d never have read it if I hadn’t recognized Stanley’s name from some fine stories in Analog, but I’m glad I gave it a chance. The planet of Ymrek, see, is at a crisis point in its cultural development. The civilized types in the city of Yngmer are threatened by the barbarian Ketaxil, and have for defense only crude cannon which they don’t know how to aim vely well. A pair of human xenologists reluctantly decide to interfere by giving the Yngmerians technological aid in the form of “quasimatter,” a wondrous stuff they hope to pass off as “nothing more than simple magic.” Unfortunately, at the same time a native genius named Terek has singlehandedly duplicated the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, deducing laws of motion with which he hopes to save the day by inventing ballistics, to aim the cannon better. The local shaman reacts little better than did Galileo’s inquisitors, and just as Terek has begun to convince him that perhaps il se nsuovo after all, in come the xenologists-with quasimatter trinkets that don’t obey Newton’s Laws! Poor Terek is ceremonially proclaimed a Dunce, and the rest of the book deals with the attempts of the meddling but well-intentioned xenologists to set things right. It’s a dandy, and I’m proud of Stanley for his refusal to yield to temptation and pull rabbits out of a hat for an ending.

My only complaint is his failure to explain quasimatter rather than simply describe it-but as a man with a trunkfull of letters saying, “your last story was okay-but it’s not science fiction,” possibly I should shut up. Tasty stuff, Stan.

Cliff Simak’s new book, Enchanted Pilgrimage (Putnam-Berkley) is another one of those that gave me mixed feelings. If there’s a sequel planned, I withdraw most of my objections, but as it stands it raises more questions than it answers.

To say that it’s well told would be more unnecessarily redundant than is absolutely called for-it is, after all, a Simak. The characters are well-drawn, the menaces chilling, the succession of events compelling. But the book frustrates me, dammit. The first half reads like alternate universe sword-and-sorcery-a little strange for Cliff, but what the hell. In this alternate universe men have never really left the Middle Ages, and gobblins, trolls, elves and unicorns festoon the countryside. A quest is undertaken (incidentally, quests involving a chalice or grail are a separate subgenre called cup-and-sorcery) by a band of good joes. Fine.

Then: halfway through the book, a modern-day human appears from our time-stream, complete with firestick and a Honda dragon, and one not unnaturally assumes that some of the strange goings-on are going to get mundane explanations. Only some do, and some don’t, and one of the most impressive menaces turns out for no apparent reason to be an alien, which dies in giving birth to a robot (!) that seems to do nothing to advance the plot. We learn that there are three alternate universes, (why only three?) and that the third of these is a “humanist” world in which all the problems of

man have been solved-but all we ever get to see of it is two characters who appear only by rumor. Nor do we ever learn how travel between the universes is managed, nor why only one not-especially-bright inhabitant of our own time-stream (named Jones, forsooth) pulled it off. Worst, the quest turns out to have been a wild-goose chase for all but one of its members.

Oh hell-Cliff is just too good a craftsman to leave such gaping holes in the foundations: there has to be a sequel. But I wish there’d been words to that effect somewhere in the galleys.

The missing man in Katherine MacLean’s book of the same name (Putnam-Berkley) seems to be the protagonist-the one we are given just doesn’t seem real to me. No, amend that: he seems real for the first chapter (which, if my memory serves, appeared somewhere or other as a novelette-and a damned good one* and then vanishes, leaving behind a cardboard simulacrum. There’s just no consistency to his character; he’s an ex-teengang member, big and strong when the plot requires it, but most of the time he acts like a timid chump; he is a professional empath, and yet he gets suckered into buying the metaphysics of a sociopath gang leader with nary a quiver. And the fmal group of villains to be dragged onstage, comic-opera Com-Yew-Nists Who Want To Make

*1980 update; to give you an idea how well my memory serves me, the shortest version, a novella, won the Nebula in 1971.

The World A Conformist Utopia So They Can Power Trip Us (but get this: they’re telepathic, see…) went down like two tablespoons of peanut butter.

Which leaves me astounded. For years I have watched Kate MacLean write circles around a large lot of folks, and upon receiving the first novel I’ve seen by her I rejoiced, expecting something above average. But this is barely adequate. The first chapter, in which we meet George, the high-sensitivity empath who works as a locator for the Rescue Squad, is really excellent-but the book as a whole lacks an internal consistency somehow, and suspending that disbelief starts to give you cramps. I’m disappointed. I don’t object to a simple series-of-episodes-but the cast should be continuous.

Getting near the bottom, now. Funny SF novels, when they work, are among the funniest things ever written: e.g., Niven & Gerrold’s The Flying Sorcerer, a sizable chunk of Keith Laumer’s work, and the new Bester novel. Some are a trifle strained,but still make you giggle consistently:
e.g.
Bob Toomey’s World of Trouble. And some are as strained as the stuff that goes in I.V. bottles: e.g., The Wilk Are Among Us, by Isidore Haiblum(Doubleday, $5.95).

Since Stan Schmidt’s book had turned out so well, I decided to try the one that came with it; but when I got to the part where the ferocious and homidical nil! says to the alien protagonist, “If I wasn’t a bit under the weather, and you didn’t have that crude mind-block on-really, under ordinary conditions it wouldn’t do at all, you know-I’d give you such a hit!” I began to suspect that the stack of handkerchiefs I’d laid in against tears of laughter might be superfluous:

Everybody in the book is named Leonard or Ernest or Marviii, extraterrestrials who’ve never heard of Earth call each other boychik, and at odd intervals Haiblum succumbs to Zelazny’s Syndrome: the habit of stringing together sentence fragments.

As paragraphs.

In groups of six of seven.

For no discernible reason.

Like a freshman art student.

Making a collage.

Or some.

Thing.

Followed by two skipped lines and a block of more or less standard copy. There’s a lot of action, a cast of thousands, and a plot that would confound a panel consisting of Ketib Laumer, P.O. Wodehouse and Avram Davidson, and if you use an Ashley wood-burning stove and don’t subscribe to a newspaper you’ll be interested to know that the hardcover edition fits snugly into the firebox and will support a good base of kindling and mixed hardwood. I recommend maple if you can get it.

And so at last we come to Sprague de Camp’s Antique Shoppe.

I know there are a horde of you Lovecraft freaks out there, and maybe some of you are Trekkie-type groupies, and I really truly do believe that a reviewer has a duty to finish a book before publishing his views on it, but honest to Christ, fellas. The Life of H.P. Lovecraft by L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, $12.95) is simply above and beyond the call of whatever Baen is underpaying me. [Sold! he shrieked.-Ed.] it is no bigger than a Smith-Corona portable, clearly the result of a literally incredible amount of time and energy, and I tried, cross my heart. But do any of you really want to know that at the age of two, Lovecraft’s golden curls led his landlady to call him “Little Sunshine”?