Alfred Bester is one of those authors that I’ve been aware of for a long time, but who never quite made it onto my To Read List: His name would come up in a discussion or article, but my interest was never quite piqued enough, or a copy of the book never found its way in front of my eyes in a timely fashion, and he would sink back into the mental noise of my consciousness.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the stars aligned themselves in the heavens, Bester again came to my attention, and – lo and behold – I discovered used copies of The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man on the shelves of Uncle Hugo’s here in Minneapolis, MN.

Wow. I’ve been missing out.

Three things about Bester stand out to me:

First, his use of what I must call, for lack of a better term, casual detail. Bester will seamlessly drop a staggeringly original idea into a paragraph, casually passing it by as if it were no more remarkable than the mention of an automobile in a novel of today. The effect is that of a novel written in the far future, not merely taking place there. It’s a technique which was pioneered by Heinlein, but Bester presents it in a perfected form.

Second, the fact that these are – at their core – incredibly powerful character dramas. They have all the strength and pathos of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, while simultaneously being driven by a fast-paced, tautly-plotted action-adventure. The result is a reading experience which is not only compelling and addictive, but tremendously powerful. The depth with which the characters are drawn, and the sheer emotional extremity of their circumstance, leaves a lasting impression on your mind and soul.

Finally, the astonishing originality and scope of his ideas. Unlike this contemporaries, Bester is not content to simply choose one or two or ten different ideas with which to build his future. Instead, he uses dozens, spinning them out one after another in an incredibly dense, breath-taking vista. Nor is his cascade a random cornucopia of creativity: Each idea is a facet painstakingly set within an imagined epoch, carefully revealed not only to deepen the setting, but to further the story.

To see this depth and mastery in a piece of 1950s science fiction is astonishing. Bester was incredibly ahead of his time. It would take nearly a decade after the publication of The Stars My Destination before science fiction, as a field, began tentatively taking steps to explore in the directions Bester had already intuitively mapped out. It would take nearly thirty years before the genre showed serious signs of actually catching up to Bester, and even today – nearly fifty years after its publication – The Stars My Destination continues to exist on the cutting edge.

In fact, if I didn’t already know who Alfred Bester was, I would have been terribly excited at discovering a new, cutting edge author after finishing The Stars My Destination. It is the only novel from the 1950’s that I feel could have been written yesterday: The setting reads like a post-cyberpunk novel, and the main character reads like a protagonist from Iain Banks or Stephen Donaldson.

That’s an incredible accomplishment. And the result are books which are exciting to read in any case, and shockingly revelatory when read within their historical context.

After reading these books, one is left to wonder what science fiction would have been like if Bester hadn’t left the field shortly after the publication of The Stars My Destination in 1956. I detect a definite pre-Bester vs. post-Bester watershed in the genre, and I think that if one were to carefully trace out the earliest whispers of the New Wave movement, one would find those whispers firmly rooted in the soil of Bester’s work. Would Bester’s continued work in the field, therefore, have quickened that development? Would Bester have served as a catalyst for a revolution? And, if so, how would that revolution have differed from the one Harlan Ellison catalyzed with Dangerous Visions?

Unfortunately, such ponderings are lost to history – just as Bester was lost to Holiday magazine for the better part of two decades. Perhaps it is an alternate history tale for Michael Burstein to tell.

I have it on Good Authority(TM) that the books Bester wrote upon returning to the SF field in the 1970’s do not compare with these early masterpieces. That’s unfortunate. I plan to give them a shot at some point, anyway, starting with The Computer Connection (since that turned up on the used shelf recently, too).

GRADES:

THE STARS MY DESTINATION: A+
HE DEMOLISHED MAN: A+

Alfred Bester
Published: 1956 / 1953
Publisher: Vintage Books
Cover Price: $12.00
ISBNs: 0679767800 / 0679767819
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The Ruby Dynasty novels – published by Tor as the Saga of the Skolian Empire – have collectively won the Nebula, the Sapphire, the Prism, and several other awards. It was the Nebula, in particular, awarded to the sixth book in the series (The Quantum Rose), which drew my attention. After reading the cover blurb on Primary Inversion (the first novel in the series), I decided to take a chance. And, since the store also had a used copy of the second novel, Catch the Lightning, I ended up picking up a copy of that, too.

This is a reaction to the first three volumes in the series: Primary Inversion, Catch the Lightning, and The Last Hawk.

To give some brief background for the series (and provide necessary context): Six thousand years ago, an unknown alien species, for reasons unknown, scooped a selection of humanity off of Earth and took them to a distant planet. The aliens eventually abandoned this human settlement (again, for reasons unknown) and disappeared. Salvaging the alien technology left behind, this colony of humanity went out to the stars, looking for their lost home.

They never found it. But their colonies did spread throughout the local region of the galaxy under the banner of the Ruby Empire. Eventually, however, the alien technology they had salvaged began to break down – and they lacked the knowledge to repair it or replace it. The Ruby Empire broke apart, and its colonies reverted to various stages of barbarism.

Then Earth discovered the secrets of interstellar travel for itself and turned its eyes to the stars… only to be surprised by the discovery that other humans had gotten there first.

One other piece of crucial information: When the aliens scooped up a segment of humanity, they had, intentionally or not, ended up with a small community which possessed all of the recessive genes necessary for telepathy. Inevitable inbreeding led to psi powers expressing themselves frequently in the Ruby Empire, and in the barbarous colonies the Empire left behind.

In Asaro’s future, humanity is broken down into three interstellar empires: The Allied Worlds of Earth, the Skolian Empire, and the Trader Empire.

The Skolian Empire is effectively ruled by the Ruby Dynasty, a small family of powerful psi descended from the original Ruby Empire. Known as the Rhon, these psi power the Skol-Net – a psi network which binds their empire together and give their fighter pilots a notable edge over the Trader Empire.

The Trader Empire is ruled by aristocrats. These aristos are the result of genetic tinkering with the Rhon. Although the tinkering was an attempt to strengthen their psi powers, the result was far worse: The aristos are genetically-coded sadists, whose psi-receptors receive pain and transform it into pleasure. They conquer worlds mercilessly, and seek out psi to serve them as “providers” (tortured slaves whose ability to project pain greatly increases aristo pleasure).

The Allied Worlds of Earth maintain their existence by virtue of the fact that they could tip the balance of power in the conflict between the Skolians and the Traders. Neither side of the war can afford to antagonize the Allieds.

PRIMARY INVERSION

Asaro’s first novel is packed full of great stuff. At first glance, the plot is well-done space opera of the best sort: Dramatic space battles, larger-than-life characters, planets to be saved, empires to save and empires to thwart.

But as the book develops, surprising depth and detail begin to emerge.

The space battles and interstellar empires are given a firm foundation of hard SF drawn from the cutting-edge of scientific theory: Everything from FTL to space fighters are thoroughly justified. Her larger-than-life characters are given biotech, nano-nets, and cybernetics. Even her planet destroyers are freshly original, thoroughly detailed, and – as a result – thoroughly horrifying in their conception.

And Asaro doesn’t stop there. In addition to her Big Ideas, she also liberally spreads neat ideas all over her universe. The result of all this is a richly textured backdrop against which her action plays out.

Even Asaro’s plot, however, is revealed to have a greater depth than a first glance would reveal: A space opera adventure is quickly shown to be laced by the drama of the characters who participate in it. Romance and heartbreak arise naturally out of Asaro’s strong characterization and active plotting.

Primary Inversion is not, however, without its flaws. Asaro’s ending seems rushed and arbitrary (although it still provides a satisfactory conclusion). The central romance is literally justified through Rhon hormones, instead of arising naturally from circumstance and character.

But these flaws are minor. Primary Inversion is a great read and a ton of fun, and for a first novel it demonstrates a remarkable mastery. I was hooked. I wanted to immediately run back to the store and pick up the rest of the series.

But I had Catch the Lightning already in hand, so I went to that first.

CATCH THE LIGHTNING

Unfortunately, Catch the Lightning was a major let-down.

First off, the hard SF and space opera of Primary Inversion has been flushed for an incredibly stupid alternate universe. Asaro literally tries to convince us that delaying the birth of Jesus Christ and the appearance of monotheism by 340 years would essentially have little or no impact on the modern world. If it hadn’t been for the remarkable strength of Primary Inversion, this would have been a “throw the book against the wall” moment.

The strong, natural plotting of Primary Inversion has also disappeared, to be replaced by deus ex machina after deus ex machina. “Oh, no! The government has taken my boyfriend’s spaceship! It’s a good thing that the mother of my best friend’s roommate works at the top secret facility where my boyfriend’s spaceship has been taken!” (This, by the way, would qualify as yet another “throw the book against the wall” moment.)

Although remnants of the strong, deep characterization remain (notably in the two main characters), most of the cast is populated by poorly rendered clichés. You can always tell who the bad guys are, for example, because they’ll be the ones raping (or trying to rape) the main characters. And even the main characters ring false: The main character is an orphaned teen on the streets of 20th century Los Angeles, yet she has absolutely no problem traveling to the future and engaging in space opera adventures. (Oh, there’s a couple sentences where she tells us how hard it was to make the adjustment. But that’s not demonstrated in even the slightest degree by what she actually says, thinks, or does.)

Perhaps worst of all, the romance elements which made the first novel so endearing have literally been transformed into softcore porn. In fact, all pretence is discarded: Rhon hormones explicitly drive the main characters together, so that Asaro can gleefully move onto describing condoms, erections, and penetration as quickly as possible.

In short, this is an atrocious book. It fails as science fiction. It fails as romance.

It just… fails.

And the disappointment is all the more bitter because it follows the delightful experience which was Primary Inversion.

Based on the strength of Primary Inversion, however, along with some much-needed advice from rec.arts.sf.written, I decided to give Asaro’s third novel a try.

THE LAST HAWK

The Last Hawk reads to me like a strange, mutant blending between Iain Banks’ The Player of Games and all the worst clichés and flaws which began cropping up in Catch the Lightning. The plot strands a Rhon prince on a relatively primitive world. While being held as a secret political captive for various reasons, the prince engages in a somewhat interesting romp of sex, politics, and gambling.

With this book I began to conclude that Asaro simply lacks the skills of a world-builder. She has a lot of neat ideas to throw onto the table, but that’s not the same thing as investing those ideas with believability or making those ideas come together in a coherent fashion. For example, Asaro creates the game of quis: Quis has not only managed to replace warfare on this planet, it has also become the forum for political debate, a repository of lost scientific knowledge, and a way of transmitting messages from one side of the planet to the other (as a result of one player influencing another, who influences another, until the influence reaches the other side of the planet and is then interpreted by someone there).

The problem? Asaro describes quis to us early in the book. It’s essentially a pattern-matching game with a complexity slightly above that of poker. It might have slightly more representational power than Chess, but it comes nowhere near the complexity of Go (even assuming that Asaro is describing to us a simple version of the game). So, basically, Asaro is asking me to believe that Go could replace war, replace talking as a means of conversation and debate, maintain scientific and technological information hidden in its advanced strategies for several millennium, and transmit messages from one side of the planet to the other.

I ain’t buying it.

When Iain Banks told a largely identical story in The Player of Games, the game to which he ascribed such remarkable properties was infinitely more complicated than the simplistic pattern game Asaro describes. (And, in fact, Banks doesn’t ascribe nearly as many ridiculous powers to his game.) As a result, Bank’s story works… and Asaro’s doesn’t.

Did I also mention that this planet is a matriarchy? No? Well, that’s probably because it keeps slipping my mind. The problem is that Asaro’s version of a matriarchy is to essentially take a standard patriarchy and flip-flop the gender roles. In fact, you can take the entire book, flip the genders of the characters, and end up with a perfectly coherent tale. The problem, of course, is that matriarchies don’t work that way. In a society without birth control, for example, females do not become sexually promiscuous while, at the same time, embracing a tradition of warrior leadership. Nor would the concept of “virginal honor” (in the medieval sense) be transferred onto males: They simply lack the physical characteristics required to create such a sense of “honor” being “taken”.

Asaro’s “shortcuts to softcore porn” also take a turn for the worse. No longer content with merely having Rhon hormones justify instant love and eternal commitment, she simply has every single woman with the least hint of sex appeal fall instantly in love with her main character – thus allowing her to quickly segue into pointlessly graphic descriptions of their sex life, before shuffling the female off stage right in order to bring in a brand new love interest from stage left.

What finally killed the book for me, however, were the incessant deus ex machinas. Some of them had become utterly predictable by this point, while others were freshly insipid. For the third straight book, for example, the main character miraculously bumps into someone with a complete set of Rhon genes, but none of the typical recessive deformities. And if you do decide to read this book, make sure to keep an eye on Kelric’s telepathic abilities: Damaged early in the book, they remain turned off whenever they would be inconvenient, but are immediately turned right back on whenever Asaro needs him to read somebody’s mind, only to disappear again in short order when their presence again becomes hindering.

On top of all this, there are quite a few places in the book where Asaro’s plotting is badly telegraphed, and the ending falls apart into a nearly incoherent mess: Scenes without meaning or context begin to be thrown around with wild abandon, jam-packed with coincidences indicative of an author desperately trying to stick to her outline and deadline. And let’s not even discuss the continuity flaws and other authorial oversights. (The main character, for example, leaves his children to die a horrible death by slow poisoning at the end of the book. Not intentionally, but because the author apparently hasn’t realized that that’s what will happen.)

But I’m forced to ask myself this: Would I be judging this book so harshly if it weren’t for the fact that the appallingly bad Catch the Lightning had painted me a roadmap of Asaro’s weaknesses and foibles?

I don’t think so.

But it still isn’t an impressive offering by any stretch of the imagination. Ultimately my reaction to The Last Hawk can be summed up like this: It took me a day and a half to finish the last twenty-five pages of the book. I literally couldn’t muster enough interest in the characters, the plot, or the book to keep my attention focused for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

CONCLUSIONS

All of this leaves me, once again, in a quandary. Do I keep dipping my toes into this pool, hoping that the lightning which struck with Primary Inversions will find Catherine Asaro again? I ended up picking up a copy of The Quantum Rose the day before I started The Last Hawk, because it was used and cheap. But there are still two more volumes between The Last Hawk and The Quantum Rose. So… I dunno. Maybe. There’s still enough there to convince me that Asaro has the stuff it takes to make a good (possibly even great) author. And there’s that Nebula award for The Quantum Rose, which is what intrigued me into trying the series in the first place.

But, at the very least, it will be awhile before I do: There’s other stuff I want to read.

GRADES:

PRIMARY INVERSION: A-
CATCH THE LIGHTNING: F
THE LAST HAWK: C

Catherine Asaro
Published: 1995/1996/1997
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $6.99
ISBNs: 0-812-55023-4 / 0-812-55102-8 / 0-812-55110-9
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When Karl Edward Wagner began writing his Kane stories in 1970 he inherited the legacy of the barbarian hero from Robert E. Howard. Howard had almost single-handedly created sword-and-sorcery with his works, but Wagner – in creating his character of Kane – not only went back to the roots which had been planted by Conan and Kull (as so many other pale imitators had done), but also infused those roots with the rich traditions of fantasy and horror which had blossomed in the forty years since Howard had died.

Kane is one part Elric, one part Conan, but a creation all his own. His tales inherit the purity of Howard’s barbarism, but also reach back into Howard’s own influences to crank up the elements of Lovecraftian horror. You can feel the influences of Moorcock, Leiber, Moore, and Tolkien bubbling beneath the surface.

To this rich tradition, Wagner brought his own natural talent for the fantastical and the horrific, telling his stories with a brutal, beautiful prose.

Gods in Darkness, from Night Shade Books, is a collection of all three of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane novels: Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves. It has a sister volume, The Midnight Sun, which collects all of the Kane short stories.

BLOODSTONE

Unfortunately, the first novel in this collection is almost certainly the weakest. Perhaps the most persistent and grating problem here is Wagner’s infatuation with the thesaurus, coupled with an inordinate amount of obvious pleasure taken in finding the most obscure terms possible. The intention appears to an evocation of Lovecraftian prose, but the effect which Lovecraft so expertly crafts is rendered impotent through the sheer tenacity with which Wagner pursues it.

The plot, while strong in many regards, is conveyed in an episodic fashion – with many events relegated off-stage with description or narration. The effect, in later works, is to keep the action focused on the primary cast of characters – seeing their place and their reactions within a large world. In Bloodstone, however, the effect is disjointed and further weakened by the fact that most of the characters (with the exception of Kane himself) have strong taints of the cliché about them.

Coming to BloodstoneI had heard that Wagner was something of a hidden gem in the sword-and-sorcery genre: A writer whose talents compared favorably to Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock – but whose career had been cut tragically short by an early death. Reading Bloodstone, I was disappointed to discover an author of only mediocre skill.

DARK CRUSADE

Fortunately, the second novel in the collection is Dark Crusade, which should be on the reading list for any fan of sword-and-sorcery.

I don’t know if Bloodstone was just an early work which took its time getting into print, if Wagner was simply rushed or off his rhythm while writing it, or if Wagner had a major breakthrough between ’75 and ’76: Whatever the case may be, everything which was only nascent mediocrity in Bloodstone comes together in Dark Crusade to craft a top notch novel.

One of the interesting things to note about Kane is that, unlike his fellow heroes-in-arms, Kane frequently finds himself on the wrong side of a conflict. Conan finds a crown when he joins a just rebellion against a tyrannical king. Kane seeks empire, and frequently allies himself with any power which becomes convenient or available. He believes that he can overcome whatever flaws or corruption exist within the power base he takes advantage of, but finds – time and time again – that the flaws and corruption are inherent to the power. As a result, Kane often finds himself in a role which would be villainous if it were not for his own nature as an anti-hero: Often he destroys his own dreams in an attempt to purify them of a tarnish which cannot be removed.

It is this dark depth of contradiction and tragic flaw – a wisdom and strength coupled with folly and weakness – which makes the character of Kane so infinitely fascinating. Like all of the great sword-and-sorcery tales, it is not the plot of pulp adventure which makes the stories of Kane a compelling read: It is the careful drawing of their larger-than-life protagonist.

DARKNESS WEAVES

The third novel in Gods in Darkness is on the same playing field as the second. If anything, Darkness Weaves represents an improvement over the craft and skill which went into the telling of Dark Crusade. Notably, a more complex cast of characters is invested with more detail, drawn in more depth, and (as a result) given greater significance.

Ultimately, none of these novels impressed me with the quality of Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon or Leiber’s “Ill Met in Lankhmar”. But Dark Crusade and Darkness Weaves are both classics – and if I want to see more of the war in Dark Crusade and more of the twin romances in Darkness Weaves, that’s only a testament to the strength of what’s already on the page.

GRADES:

BLOODSTONE: C+
DARK CRUSADE: A-
DARKNESS WEAVES: A-

Karl Edward Wagner
Published: 2002 (1975/1976/1978)
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Cover Price: $35.00
ISBN: 1-892389-24-X
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

If Charles Dickens hadn’t laid claim to the line a century and a half earlier, Kage Baker could have used it to pithily sum up this jewel of a novel.

(The only spoilers in here are for the first five pages of the book, even if it doesn’t look that way. Honest.)

Imagine a future in which two inventions revolutionize the world: Time travel and immortality. Actually, you invent the immortality first, and then you invent the time travel in order to test it. But, in any case, both of them come with catches: First, the process for creating an immortal is horrendously expensive, can only be performed on young children, and requires surgery so horrendous that few parents would subject their children to it. Time travel, on the other hand, is an incredibly expensive, one-way street: You can send people into the past, and bring them back to their point of origin, but you can’t send them into the future. Plus, most people find traveling into the past uncomfortable: It’s dirty. It’s violent. It’s unpleasant. It’s full of strange people.

What do you do?

Well, if you’re the Zeus Company you find a simple solution: You go back into the past to the dawn of interesting human history, pick up some orphaned natives, turn them into immortals, give them a top-notch education and massive historical databases, and then come home. Now you don’t have to keep shuttling back and forth your operatives: You just let those immortal natives you’ve recruited travel through time the old-fashioned way – by living it. Along the way they’ll be saving priceless works of art from destruction, preserving endangered species, and recruiting more agents to the cause.

Cool concept? I thought so.

Having rapidly crafted a cunning universe, Kage Baker begins crafting a cunning tale. On the surface, it is a simplistic (perhaps even obvious) tale: A young, orphaned girl is rescued from 16th century Spain by the Company, turned into an immortal operative, and then sent on her first mission to Queen Mary’s England.

Viewed from that simplistic angle, The Garden of Iden is an unremarkable – even boring – novel. But, in truth, the story of this novel is not a nifty time travel mission. The story of this novel is the story of its title character: It’s an emotional, gut-wrenching tale, and the most surprising thing about it is the subtlety with which its emotional punch it delivered.

As you read The Garden of Iden you are lulled into a seeming complacence: Pieces seem to fall into place just the way you would expect, the cast of characters seems to do just what you would expect, and so forth. Through this complacency you are kept heartily – if lightly – entertained through Baker’s irreverent wit, startling reality and depth of characterization, and beautifully accurate descriptions of setting and history.

But then, suddenly, you realize that this complacency is all an illusion. While you’ve been enjoying a light tale of romance and mild adventure, Baker has been gently gathering up the rug you’re standing then: Suddenly she’s yanking the rug out from under you and throwing an emotional fist right into your gut.

And as you stumble back from the impact, you realize that you’ve actually been reading brilliance at work. Because the surprise doesn’t come out of left field: Baker has been building it up from the very first page, and you didn’t see it coming at all.

GRADE: A

THE GARDEN OF IDEN
Kage Baker
Published: 1998
Publisher: Avon Eos
Cover Price: $5.99
ISBN: 0380731797
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I’ve been meaning to give Lawrence Watt-Evans a try for a long time. Last week the stars finally conjoined in such a way that I found myself with a copy of Nightside City clenched between my fists.

One sleepless night later the novel had been devoured and I had come to one simple conclusion:

Nightside City is an unsung masterpiece.

This book stands somewhere between Neuromancer and Snow Crash, and deserves to be as well-known as both. Lawrence Watt-Evans crafts a riveting tale which is one-half cyberpunk and one-half detective noir, with strong dashes of hard SF sensibility, insightful characterization, and tight plotting thrown in to spice the mix.

The world in which the novel takes place is not only immediately memorable for its unique conception (a city in a crater on the dark side of a planet, slowly revolving into the devastatingly deadly rays of the sun), but also deeply immersive as a result of the loving detail Watt-Evans flawlessly weaves throughout the story.

The plot is a tight, fast-paced mystery told with all the style and aplomb of a Chandler – although I’d recommend skipping the back cover text on this one (my edition calmly summarizes the first half of the plot and removes most of the mystery).

In case I haven’t made myself clear, this one comes highly recommended.

GRADE: A

NIGHTSIDE CITY
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Published: 1989
Publisher: Foxacre Press
Cover Price: $13.50
ISBN: 0970971117
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