Russell Newquist of Silver Empire was so good as to send me a review copy of Paragons: An Anthology of Superheroes which I've been enjoying very much this past week. Thirteen tales of original superheroes make up the collection, exploring the theme of heroic adventures with fantastic powers.
There’s a wide variety of length and tone here. Steve Beaulieu’s “Medusa” is a good choice to introduce the anthology, being about a 1000-word short look at a superheroine’s isolation, followed by what I think must be the longest one in the collection, Kai Wai Cheah’s “Nightstick”, an intricate novella of a dark superhero fighting to protect his city in a near-future where many people, both good guys and bad, had suddenly acquired extraordinary powers.
Morgon Newquist, who also edited the book, wrote “Blackout”, which delves into the characters of two heroes: the optimistic and candid Jameson Hirsch, and his more brooding and tormented friend, Michael Turner, in an introduction that for me harkened back to G. K. Chesterton’s stories of Father Brown and his frenemy, Flambeau. The subtitle is “A Serenity City Story,” which makes me hope to see much more of their interactions with each other—and the still-mysterious Rhiannon Argall, for whose love they are rivals.
Jon Mollison’s knack for stories of high adventure with heroes motivated by deep family love comes through again in “Like Father”. Dawn Witzke’s “Deadly Calm Returns” takes a lighter look at a superhero’s family life and had the people in the donut shop where I read it wondering, I’m sure, why that fellow kept bursting into laughter. Declan Finn’s “Weather Witch” has his trademark well-told fantasy action. It's one of the few "origin stories" in this collection, and one of the few not set in a city.
If "Nightstick" had a darkness to it that reminded me of Batman, "Someone is Aiming for You" by J. D. Cowan made me think of The Shadow (though I blush to admit I still only know that series through the Alec Baldwin movie): a dark drama between good and evil metaphysical forces. The final story in the book, "Stalina" by Sam Kepfield, tells of a Khruschev-era idealistic Russian superwoman, devoted to Truth, Justice, and the Soviet Way...like many of the stories here that seem to cry out for sequels, "Stalina" made me want to read more about her.
A lot of these stories could be turned into series, and I hope at least some of them will be. I found Paragons to be a terrific read, and I'll be looking for more.
Science fiction and fantasy author, published for the first time in 2017. Also into recreational math, chess variants, puzzles, doggerel.
Showing posts with label #reviews_science_fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #reviews_science_fiction. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Thursday Review: ADVENTURE CONSTANT by Jon Mollison
ADVENTURE CONSTANT: A Tale of the Planetary Romantic, by Jon Mollison
The explanation of the title of this exuberant adventure comes about three-fourths of the way into the book, and is so original and droll—well, and so outlandish—that when I came to it I laughed out loud. By that point, our hero, Jack Dashing, has been in, oh, a half-dozen fights, several chases, a couple rescues, and put a roomful of pompous asses in their place…always acquitting himself honorably and well.
The action begins early, the minute Dashing, a NASA astronaut, finds himself shifted into this parallel Earth as the result of an experimental FTL spacecraft not operating as expected. He is immediately caught up in international intrigue in a mission to rescue beautiful Princess Okanamokoa from the nefarious agents of the Red Collective, and along with that to find the ambiguous Dr. Abduraxus, the only man who could understand how he came to be here and might get back home. The pace continues throughout the book, which I guesstimate at about 70,000 words, and the conflicts are varied and interesting. It might be easier and less spoilerific to list what it does not have. No vampires; no werewolves; no airplane dogfights. That’s all I can think of offhand.
The characters are colorful and memorable, if not particularly deep: good guys are honorable and sympathetic and you care what happens to them, bad guys are despicable and you're pleased when they get what's coming to them. But I didn't note any agonizing moral choices to be made that would reveal and develop them.
But this book is more about action and adventure and the panoramic setting of Mollison's parallel Earth: a globe divided into the Red Collective, the Shogunate of the Red Dawn, the Machine Empire of Europe, the Allied States, the Hashishim Moonies, and undoubtedly more not yet mentioned (hopefully there will be sequels). The world’s history resembles our own just enough to be vaguely familiar, but as if it had been conceived by a Martian counterpart of Edgar Rice Burroughs creating a setting for tales of exotic derring-do on the Blue Planet.
And that’s the whole idea, of course: Jon Mollison is one of the pulp revolution’s most enthusiastic participants, and hits his stride in this one. ADVENTURE CONSTANT only begins to sample the possibilities of this world, and while it wraps up the story by the book’s end, it still leaves enough characters with mysteries unrevealed that I’m eager for a sequel.
The explanation of the title of this exuberant adventure comes about three-fourths of the way into the book, and is so original and droll—well, and so outlandish—that when I came to it I laughed out loud. By that point, our hero, Jack Dashing, has been in, oh, a half-dozen fights, several chases, a couple rescues, and put a roomful of pompous asses in their place…always acquitting himself honorably and well.
The action begins early, the minute Dashing, a NASA astronaut, finds himself shifted into this parallel Earth as the result of an experimental FTL spacecraft not operating as expected. He is immediately caught up in international intrigue in a mission to rescue beautiful Princess Okanamokoa from the nefarious agents of the Red Collective, and along with that to find the ambiguous Dr. Abduraxus, the only man who could understand how he came to be here and might get back home. The pace continues throughout the book, which I guesstimate at about 70,000 words, and the conflicts are varied and interesting. It might be easier and less spoilerific to list what it does not have. No vampires; no werewolves; no airplane dogfights. That’s all I can think of offhand.
The characters are colorful and memorable, if not particularly deep: good guys are honorable and sympathetic and you care what happens to them, bad guys are despicable and you're pleased when they get what's coming to them. But I didn't note any agonizing moral choices to be made that would reveal and develop them.
But this book is more about action and adventure and the panoramic setting of Mollison's parallel Earth: a globe divided into the Red Collective, the Shogunate of the Red Dawn, the Machine Empire of Europe, the Allied States, the Hashishim Moonies, and undoubtedly more not yet mentioned (hopefully there will be sequels). The world’s history resembles our own just enough to be vaguely familiar, but as if it had been conceived by a Martian counterpart of Edgar Rice Burroughs creating a setting for tales of exotic derring-do on the Blue Planet.
And that’s the whole idea, of course: Jon Mollison is one of the pulp revolution’s most enthusiastic participants, and hits his stride in this one. ADVENTURE CONSTANT only begins to sample the possibilities of this world, and while it wraps up the story by the book’s end, it still leaves enough characters with mysteries unrevealed that I’m eager for a sequel.
Friday, February 3, 2017
"Captive Market", Philip K Dick (1955)
Over lunch I read Philip K Dick's story, "Captive Market" (Worlds of If, April 1955). I picked it almost at random from the issues at that Web site and the stories in that issue (well, it was PKD, and that caught my eye), and I found the story far better than what I'd usually get randomly picking from a modern SFF magazine at Barnes & Noble. So that supports the contention that SFF has sorely deteriorated since the coming of the SJW gatekeepers. Also, it was good without using any of the old-SFF tropes or cultural features that disturb the sensibilities of today's delicate youngsters: no swordfights, ray guns, space princesses, or monsters (not that there's anything wrong with all those things). Instead, "Captive Market" tells a story of a post-apocalyptic future meeting a present-day backwater through a marvellous time-travel phenomenon, and casts it into the mold of a dark, convincingly SF fairy-tale.
Reading it right after my post of yesterday, I'm also struck by how it exhibits the "right way" of offending, or let's say challenging, a reader's opinions: in this case, my own. I doubt that PKD set out to write a story that would depict the rapacity of a petty businessman as the ultimate death-blow for humanity, with a simple "Moral: Capitalism sucks" implied. But although you could take that from it, that's not what I get from reading it. At every point in the story, it's just telling a good tale. I presume that PKD had a jaundiced view of profit-making businesses, and that his attitudes worked their way into the story; but even though I certainly don't object to people making honest bucks, I don't get any uncomfortable feeling that the characters have to be taken as archetypes: their failings are their own.
My own story, "The Kings of the Corona", has its own stamp of its author's personality: you could, if you like, take it as a sort of libertarian allegory. But I was actually surprised myself to see the story growing this way--I didn't intentionally put those ideas into it (honest!), it just naturally filled in that way, probably since it came from materials in my mind, and there's a lot of libertarian-leaning stuff in there.
So, perhaps, the way to write a story that expresses your point of view on larger issues in life is not to try to do that at all. Focus on writing a good story, and perhaps choose a plot with a central conflict providing fertile ground for issues you have a strong point of view about, and just let it happen.
I'll let you know more when I know more. As I say, at this point I'm still getting started on my SECOND story.
Reading it right after my post of yesterday, I'm also struck by how it exhibits the "right way" of offending, or let's say challenging, a reader's opinions: in this case, my own. I doubt that PKD set out to write a story that would depict the rapacity of a petty businessman as the ultimate death-blow for humanity, with a simple "Moral: Capitalism sucks" implied. But although you could take that from it, that's not what I get from reading it. At every point in the story, it's just telling a good tale. I presume that PKD had a jaundiced view of profit-making businesses, and that his attitudes worked their way into the story; but even though I certainly don't object to people making honest bucks, I don't get any uncomfortable feeling that the characters have to be taken as archetypes: their failings are their own.
My own story, "The Kings of the Corona", has its own stamp of its author's personality: you could, if you like, take it as a sort of libertarian allegory. But I was actually surprised myself to see the story growing this way--I didn't intentionally put those ideas into it (honest!), it just naturally filled in that way, probably since it came from materials in my mind, and there's a lot of libertarian-leaning stuff in there.
So, perhaps, the way to write a story that expresses your point of view on larger issues in life is not to try to do that at all. Focus on writing a good story, and perhaps choose a plot with a central conflict providing fertile ground for issues you have a strong point of view about, and just let it happen.
I'll let you know more when I know more. As I say, at this point I'm still getting started on my SECOND story.
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