I first encountered Robert Asprin’s Myth novels in a library book sale in Rochester, MN when I spotted a copy of Myth Conceptions in the stacks. I was a young kid at the time and for some reason I thought that Robert Asprin was an author my mother had read and enjoyed, so I picked the book up as a present for her. In reality, she had never heard of him before, so I sat down to read it instead.

The story of Skeeve, a young apprentice who ends up, through a confidence job gone horribly awry, leading a misfit gang of interdimensional adventurers against a massive army of ridiculous size was practically ready-made for a twelve-year old steeped in Tolkien and D&D. The characters were witty and endearing. The plot was clever. The humor warm and entertaining. I immediately started hunting down the other books in the series, and its strong continuity and character growth quickly made for a solid addiction. In the years since I’ve re-read most of the Myth books two or three times.

A week or so ago, while suffering from a rather nasty head cold, I noticed the Myth books lying out on my recently rearranged and expanded bookshelves. Since I was looking for some quick comfort reading, I grabbed Myth Conceptions once again and curled up in my blankets. This, of course, freshly renewed my addiction and I spent the better part of the week plowing through most of the rest of the series.

A few random thoughts on the series and its parts:

Another Fine Myth is the first book in the series, but I’ve never been particularly enamored with it. This may be because I only managed to find a copy after I had already finished the next six books in the series, but I genuinely feel that this is one of the weaker books Asprin has to offer. The humor relies more on the mediocre puns rather than the clever character interactions of the later books. The plot also comes across as formulaic and forced. Basically, there’s a reason why I started re-reading the series with Myth Conceptions (the second volume) instead of Another Fine Myth.

In my opinion, the series really hits its stride with Myth Conceptions: The characters come to life. The plots start to hum. The humor finds its pace. In short, Asprin finds his groove and the result is pure entertainment. From Myth Conceptions through Myth Directions, Hit or Myth, Myth-ing Persons, and Little Myth Marker the series shows consistent growth and improvement.

Unfortunately, that’s when the series does a pratfall.

The next volume, Myth I.N.C. Link, marks a departure in the format of the series: Rather than being told from the POV of Skeeve, Asprin’s intention was for the Myth Inc. volumes to be told from the POVs of the other characters in the series. Myth I.N.C. Link inaugurates the tradition through a series of interlocking short stories, each told from a different POV. In theory, this could’ve been really clever. In practice, it was disastrous.

The first and most immediate problem is that Asprin isn’t as comfortable inside the heads of his supporting cast as he is inside the head of Skeeve. Characters who seem full of life when viewed from Skeeve’s POV suddenly become lifeless and cliched when seen through their own.

The second big problem is that Asprin, apparently spurred on by the desire for new POVs, decides to create a treepony. (For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s a pejorative reference to the treecats of Weber’s Honor Harrington novels by way of Mercedes Lackey. Basically, I’m extending the term to include any SFnal pet which suddenly begins to accrue massive intellect and amazing powers as a series progresses.) The result is as stupid as you would expect.

The series recovers, at least to a large extent, with Myth-Nomers and Im-pervections. The treepony is shuffled off-stage, we’re back in the believable environs of Skeeve’s head, and almost all of the problems which plagued Myth I.N.C. Link have been alleviated.

Unfortunately, the recovery is not quite complete. Myth I.N.C. Link has apparently weakened Asprin’s creative immune system and he is now being devoured by the brain eater. It’s not obvious at first, but the first nagging suggestions can be found lurking here that Asprin is suffering from one of the Three Symptoms of the Brain Eater.

(What are the Three Symptoms of the Brain Eater?

1. Injecting long philosophical rants into the middle of a novel.

2. Bizarre attempts to link a variety of disparate works into a single chronology.

3. A belief that a synopsis constitutes a final draft, usually coupled with rapid scene shifts between characters describing all the interesting things they just finished doing off-camera.)

Specifically, Asprin begins to rant. Not badly at first, but by Sweet Myth-tery of Life the jig is up: At least half of that novel involves Skeeve going from one character to another and listening to each of them lecture him on love and marriage. The other half involves accounting. (I kid you not.) Surprisingly, the result is still mildly entertaining. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the really good stuff that Asprin was producing just a few books earlier.

(You’ll notice I skipped Myth I.N.C. in Action. I suggest you do the same. I read it once, and that was once too many. Fortunately, unlike Myth I.N.C. Link, you can skip it without being completely lost by later continuity.)

After Sweet Myth-tery of Life, Asprin thankfully took a break from the Myth series. I say thankfully, because during that time he was fully consumed by the brain eater and produced a painful barrage of utter tripe. I tried some of that tripe. It hurt. It hurt real bad. So when Asprin returned to the Myth series a couple years back with Myth-ion Improbable I was skeptical, but I was willing to give it a shot.

Myth-ion Improbable is something of a prequel. It’s a previously untold adventure squeezed in between the third and fourth volumes of the series. Asprin specifically wrote it as a light-hearted attempt to get back in touch with his characters before tackling the much more difficult stories waiting to be told after Sweet Myth-tery of Life. The result was fairly mediocre compared to the rest of the series, but it’s also the first readable piece of fiction Asprin managed to produce in nearly a decade.

The biggest problem with Myth-ion Improbable is Asprin’s mind-numbing devotion to detail. Imagine an entire novel in which nobody ever simply waits in town a couple of hours for their friends to show up. Instead, they stop by the saloon for a couple of drinks; walk up and down main street a couple of times; say hello to a few random strangers they happen to pass; go back to the saloon to see if their friends have shown up; head to the edge of town and sit around for awhile; get back up and head back into town… And so forth. It doesn’t help that one of the plot points is that everyone and everything in the novel’s primary dimension looks pretty much the same no matter where you go. The result is the plodding pace of a novella padded out to novel length.

Perhaps the best thing about Myth-ion Improbable, despite its flaws, is that it really does have the feel of Asprin at his best. It promises a recovery.

Asprin has now written several more Myth novels in collaboration with Jody Lynn Nye. Asprin’s previous collaborations have, in my experience, been truly dreadful. Plus, the first of these collaborations was another Myth, Inc. novel, so I haven’t gone out of my way to track these latest volumes down. But if I were to spot them on the shelf of my local bookstore, I’d probably give them a shot.

A few additional thoughts and caveats:

I hear a lot of people compare the Myth series to Xanth. Usually this is along the lines of, “It’s just a bunch of stupid puns. Like Xanth at its worst.” I think a lot of this comes from Another Fine Myth, which (as I noted above) is a lot more punny than the rest of the series. And, frankly, I’ll agree that Asprin is thoroughly mediocre when it comes to punning. But I don’t think the puns ever come close to defining the series (as they do with Xanth).

I also hear a lot of people compare Myth to Discworld, usually unfavorably. And that’s generally true: In works like Small Gods and Reaper Man, Pratchett delivers on a level and with a depth that is far beyond the best that Asprin has to offer.

To sum up: This series gets a rough start in Another Fine Myth, but is a lot of fun from Myth Conceptions all the way through Little Myth Marker. Beyond that, it gets pretty sketchy, but I think all of the Myth volumes (as opposed to the Myth Inc. volumes) are worth your time.

GRADES:

ANOTHER FINE MYTH: B
MYTH CONCEPTIONS: A-
MYTH DIRECTIONS: A-
HIT OR MYTH: A
MYTH-ING PERSONS: A-
LITTLE MYTH MARKER: A
MYTH I.N.C. LINK: C
MYTH-NOMERS AND IM-PERVECTIONS: B
MYTH I.N.C. IN ACTION: D+
SWEET MYTH-TERY OF LIFE: B-
MYTH-ION IMPROBABLE: C+

Robert Asprin
Published: 1978-2001
Publisher: Ace Books
Cover Price: $7.99
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I didn’t mean to read this book.

Awhile back I downloaded all of the free e-books offered through the Baen Library, which included The Tank Lords by David Drake. These got carefully sorted into the rest of my personal e-library, which includes purchases and digital back-ups of books I own in hardcopy.

I remember that I was looking for a digital copy of Asprin’s Myth-ion Improbable because I’d left the paperback copy I was reading at home. I remember discovering that I didn’t have it in my e-library.

I have absolutely no memory of changing directories, opening up The Tank Lords, and beginning to read. But I must have, because a few minutes later I was hooked.

The Tank Lords is a collection of short stories written between 1979 and 1997. It includes “Under the Hammer”, “Rolling Hot”, “Night March”, “Code-Name Firefeitz”, and “The Tank Lords”.

What these stories all have in common are Hammer’s Slammers, a company of mercenaries led by Colonel Hammer across a post-Diaspora galaxy of strife and turmoil. The Slammers’ calling cards are their super-tanks — monstrous, hovering arsenals of fusion-powered firepower.

The result, informed by Drake’s own experience in Vietnam, is an addictive example of what military SF is capable of: A far-flung future provides a perfect backdrop for all the drama, excitement, wonder, and tragedy inherent in humanity’s passion for war. Drake excels not only in vividly portraying his action-packed battle sequences, but also grounds his stories in the profound impact those battles have upon the individuals caught in their midst.

These stories, although at times deeply moving, are not profound or life-changing works. I’m not going to declare them literary triumphs. But they deliver, hard and true. I was compelled to keep the pages turning, and now that I’ve finished The Tank Lords I’m hungry for more. The only question is whether I hunt down the Baen paperbacks or wait for the hardbacks being released by Night Shade Books.

GRADE: B+

(Particularly notable in this collection is “Rolling Hot”, which I would give an A-.)

David Drake
Published: 1997
Publisher: Baen Books
Cover Price: $6.99
ISBN: 0-671-87794-1
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This was the third time I’ve attempted to read Startide Rising. A couple years ago I read Sundiver, the first of Brin’s Uplift books, and enjoyed it enough that I immediately ran out to buy the Earthclan omnibus (collecting Startide Rising and The Uplift War). I naturally started reading Startide Rising as soon as I got home, but after about twenty or thirty pages I simply lost interest and got involved in another book.

I picked it up again about six months later and didn’t even get that far before putting the book down again.

This time I managed to build up a good head of steam and finished the book. But I found the exact same flaws this time which had turned me off the book completely the last two times I’d attempted to read it: Crude characterization, sloppy prose, and a poorly constructed narrative.

The first and most immediate problem is that Brin literally starts his story in the wrong place. I have nothing against in media res openings, but imagine Rendezvous with Rama if Clarke had decided to start the narrative with the alien ship already half-explored. It’s not inconceivable that some other writer could have started the story in the same place and made it work, but it’s certain that Brin didn’t: Large swaths of the first hundred pages is spent conveying heavy-handed chunks of pace-killing, awkward exposition.

And when the exposition isn’t killing your interest in the book, Brin’s clumsy writing takes up the slack. Not only does he literally have characters giving “as you know, Bob” speeches, but he frequently feels a need to explain to the reader why the last paragraph was not, in fact, awkward and out of character (which, of course, only calls attention to the fact that it was, in fact, awkward and out of character).

The cast, meanwhile, is populated by trite clichés who – despite the momentous and deadly circumstances in which they find themselves – seem to be mostly content in playing out mediocre soap opera dramas. In fact, their mundanity is an impressive achievement considering that most of them are uplifted dolphins.

In some ways, it almost feels as if Brin is deliberately on a scavenger hunt for every bad habit of science fiction writing he can find, and Startide Rising is his way of checking off the finds. He even makes one of his characters briefly an aficionado of 20^th century science fiction, and then he follows up by having her claim that if someone were reading about Brin’s Uplift universe back then they wouldn’t believe it (because its oh-so-dark)! I’m pretty sure I audibly groaned when I came across that stinker of a paragraph.

So why did I keep reading through this slop? Because where Startide Rising succeeds is in the sheer creative scope of its future: A galactic society billions of years old, formed entirely of species artificially uplifted to sentience and capable of tracing their ancestry back to near-mythic Progenitors. An anarchic society given constancy only by is adherence to the principles of uplift – that each client species shall give, in payment for its sentience, a hundred thousand years of indentured servitude to its patrons – and to the Library, a body of knowledge contributed to and shared by every sentient species.

Even here, unfortunately, Brin doesn’t quite get the job done. (For example, not only are his aliens limited to uni-cultures that make Star Trek species look positively diverse, but he has those uni-cultures persist for MILLIONS OF YEARS.) But, ultimately, it’s the speculation in Brin’s speculative fiction that captures the imagination and keeps you reading.

In fact, as a general principle, Brin consistently succeeds when it comes to the Big Ideas. It’s only in the details that he falls down flat. For example, all the little mini-soap operas Brin has playing out among his cast of characters ring false; but the greater drama – of a Terran crew desperately fleeing the wrath of the galaxy after stumbling across a secret better left forgotten – works on a compelling level. Similarly, Brin’s future is pedestrian in its part, but epic in its scope: Any given technology is relatively commonplace, but a galactic society so ancient and diverse that they have developed a hundred different ways to break the lightspeed barrier immediately captures the imagination.

It’s also true that, as the book goes on, Brin begins to find his feet and delivers a more reliable performance. But this has as much to do with the fact that, as Brin gets his tiresome exposition out the way, the main plot heats up and he has less and less time to dwell on his mediocre soap operas.

In the final analysis, Startide Rising is disappointing because it could have been so much more. But, by the same token, that failed promise of greatness still results in a good book. A flawed book, yes, but a book which still delivers a lot of entertainment on a lot of different levels.

GRADE: B
David Brin
Published: 1983
Publisher: Spectra
Cover Price: $7.50
ISBN: 0-553-27418-X
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Happy birthday, Sarah.

And now for the other three people reading this, more What I’m Reading:

31. Startide Rising – David Brin
32. The Tank Lords – David Drake
33. The Myth Novels – Robert Asprin
34. Unicorn Variations – Roger Zelazny
35. The Uplift War – David Brin

Here’s the trick to Cherryh: She doesn’t explain herself. Another author might say, “Jane saw him strike the girl. Memories of her own father’s abuse welled up inside her and filled her with an uncontrollable rage. She raced over and threw herself upon him, her fists pummeling him. Every blow was a cathartic release, blotting out her memories.” Cherryh, on the other hand, will simply have Jane become uncharacteristically quiet on page 25 when someone asks about her father. Later, on page 122, she’ll switch off a television program about child abuse with a shiver. And then, at the climactic moment, all you’ll get is: “Jane saw him strike the girl. Faster than thought she was on him, her fists beating a staccato rhythm. Tears welled in her eyes, poured down her cheeks. And then it was done, and she dropped to her knees, shook with the sheer relief of it.” And if you weren’t paying attention – if you didn’t catch the clues – you’ll have only the most superficial understanding of what just happened.

The result is a work which demands attention; it demands that you work for it. And the pay-off, as a result, is rich and full and complex. Because it’s not just that Cherryh cloaks her resolution; it’s that her resolution transforms your understanding of what has come before.

I don’t think it’s possible to fully understand a Cherryh novel without re-reading it. In fact, I doubt it’s possible to ever fully understand a Cherryh novel. Her novels are too finely crafted; too dense; too real to be fully captured in the imagination. I have seen the smallest detail in her work completely transform my understanding of both character and plot. And I suspect that, because of this fine detail and because she forces you to draw your own conclusions from what you see, where you are in your own life will have a profound effect upon the impression the narrative leaves upon you.

And it almost goes without saying that this remarkably powerful technique is extended not only to Cherryh’s characters, but throughout the entire work. In fact, every Cherryh novel I’ve read makes me feel as if I’m standing on an iceberg: I can only see the ten percent of my environment lurking above the surface, and that environment itself is merely a single set of crystallized events floating upon the vast, supporting ocean of Cherryh’s fully-realized universe, the true depths of which are only hinted at with abyssal contours.

Which brings me to 40,000 in Gehenna.

Imagine that you’re one of forty thousand colonists dispatched to an alien world. Your mission is to lay the foundation for the full-blown colony ships which will be arriving in three years: You’re breaking the frontier, establishing the agriculture, and building the homes of those who will come after. You dream of creating a fresh, new society while exploring the wonders of your new home.

But within only a few months those dreams have turned to black nightmare: The weather, far worse than the scout ships reported, washes out your fields and rusts your equipment. Accidents claim the lives of your most effective and important leaders. Fear and desperation settle into your heart. Of course, everything will be all right once the ships arrive, carrying new supplies and new people and new hope.

But three years pass. And the ships don’t arrive. And with each passing month it becomes clearer and clearer that they aren’t just late… they aren’t coming at all.

And that’s when it all falls apart.

40,000 in Gehenna is a grim story. It starts with a shattered dream and flows seamlessly into a dark age. But what makes the book unforgettable is what emerges from that dark age — a thing shaped of strange humanity, alien biology, and unimaginable hardship.

Looking at this slim volume it may be hard to believe that it contains a generational epic, but it does. Cherryh is masterful at taking the stories of her individual characters, each drawn with laser-like precision, and crafting them into a larger narrative telling the story of an entire society.

And then, of course, there are the hidden agendas; the secret behind the missing relief ships; and the mysteries of Gehenna itself. Because Cherryh is never content with simply telling a story on one level: She tells it on three or five or ten. A single sequence of events will tell a simple-yet-powerful story. Then she’ll pull back the curtain and show how those events were, in fact, part of a completely different story. And then she’ll move on and you’ll realize that both of those stories — possibly even the story you thought the whole novel was all about — were, in fact, just a small part of her much larger story. (Which, in turn, has layers all its own.)

In another universe we might have read the Saga of Gehenna in seven volumes. Gehenna could have been the next Pern or Dune and presaged the Mars Trilogy. Instead, Cherryh has given us a single volume. And she’s made it work. And the result is powerful and moving and intense.

GRADE: A
C.J. Cherryh
Published: 1983
Publisher: Out of Print
Cover Price: Out of Print
ISBN: Out of Print
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