I often think of Gateway as being the last great hurrah of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Although published in 1977, to me it has always felt like a Campbellian classic — as if it should be a contemporary of Childhood’s End or the Foundation Trilogy. A throwback to the 1950’s.

I probably wouldn’t have that impression if I had been reading science fiction when Gateway was published, but there it is.

And there’s really no denying, in my opinion, that Gateway‘s crowning achievement is the perfect melding of multiple branches of the science fiction tree.

On the one hand there is the Big Concept: The Gateway itself. A concept so breathtakingly original that people have been imitating it ever since. (Basically, it goes like this: Humans find a space station abandoned by aliens. Inside they find hundreds of ships. They don’t know how the ships work, but they can operate the auto-pilot. Brave prospectors board the ships, hit a button, and go God-knows-where in the search for Heechee technology.)

Hidden within that Big Concept are the hints of space opera: Small bands of adventurous heroes journeying into the unknown on missions of thrilling exploration.

But while Pohl teases us with the structure of space opera, he weds it to the best literary traditions of hard science fiction: His prospectors are exploring the cold, hard worlds and braving the impossible terrors laid bare by the cutting edge of science. And rather than proving indulgences, the carefully extrapolated detail of the milieu is instead used to provide dramatic sauce for the goose.

Meanwhile, wrapped around all of this, Pohl is tapping the alternative literary structures and deep, psychological characterizations of the New Wave to illuminate the personal struggles of Robin Broadhead, one of the richest and most rewarding characters in science fiction.

The plot of Gateway doesn’t merely happen; it is made painfully relevant by the effect it has on Broadhead. Indeed, the greatest triumph of the novel is the creation of Broadhead: A deeply sympathetic, flawed, and yet (on some very real level) noble human being. His transformation — revealed through complex and interwoven flashbacks and flashforwards — is the heart and soul of the book, lending true meaning to the amazing universe that Pohl has crafted.

In short, Gateway pushes all the buttons. It’s a true highlight of what the science fiction genre is capable of achieving.

GRADE: A+

Frederik Pohl
Published: 1977
Publisher: Del Rey
Cover Price: $14.95
ISBN: 0345475836
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Steven Brust’s Khaavren Romances comprise three novels spread across five volumes: The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, and The Viscount of Adrilankha (published as The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode). As the titles might suggest, Brust wrote the entire series as a pastiche of Alexander Dumas (and, most notably, his tales of the Three Musketeers).

This is not to say that the novels are merely fantasy regurgitations of Dumas. Far from it. Although the first chunk of The Phoenix Guards is heavily inspired by The Three Musketteers, from that point forward the tales diverge quite rapidly. Brust is merely using the stylings of Dumas to tell his own tale. A tale which, in point of fact, becomes increasingly remarkable as the series continues.

The strength of the series is that it captures the swashbuckling fervor and derring-do of Dumas’ tales, adapts it for its own purposes, and then raises the stakes. Much as Brust’s Jhereg takes the trappings of Raymond Chandler, weds them to high fantasy, and then prefects the resulting gestalt into something unique and powerful, so the Khaavren Romances make Dumas’ stylings their own.

The overwhelming weakness of the series, however, is that it also whole-heartedly embraces Dumas’ weaknesses as a novelist.

There are two unpleasant truths when it comes to the work of Dumas:

(1) He was part of a tradition among many 19th century authors — such as Victor Hugo and Herman Melville — in which the phrase “show your work” was taken to be some sort of holy writ. Their ability to interrupt their own stories in order to engage in long factual discourses with only the most tangential relationship to the surrounding text is truly astounding. The term “infodump” cannot satisfactorily summarize these turgid pace-killers, some of which could persist for the length of an entire chapter before finally drawing to a close.

Such works are aptly parodied in William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, in which the conceit is that Goldman is not actually writing the novel, but rather presenting the “good parts” of a novel by the 19th century author S. Morgenstern. The footnotes in which Goldman describes the material he’s “cutting” for our benefit are made even funnier if you’ve suffered through such passages in Dumas, Hugo, Melville, and their like.

At first, I thought Brust was going for a similar sense of parody. But it quickly became apparent that he was, in fact, embracing the tradition. He succeeds in making it more generally palatable (mostly by limiting the interminable length of such passages), but he is not always wholly successful in his efforts.

(2) Similarly, it is important to understand that Dumas was effectively paid by the word. And Dumas was quite adept at wringing as many words as he possibly could from his work. Brust enthusiastically captures this “art” in passages like this one:

“If there is a conspiracy around me, Jurabin,” said the Emperor, “I am unable to see it.”
“It is not, perhaps, a conspiracy, Sire,” said the Prime Minister.
“It is not?”
“Perhaps not.”
“Then, you are saying that perhaps it is?”
“That is not precisely my meaning either, Sire.”
“Well then,” said the Emperor, “What is your meaning?”
“To speak plainly—”
“The Gods!” His Majesty burst out. “It is nearly time for you to do so!”
“I believe that many of the Deputies are, quite simply, afraid to appear.”
“Afraid?” cried the Emperor. “Come, tell me what you mean. Are they afraid of me, do you think?”
“Not you, Sire; rather, of each other.”
“Jurabin, I confess that I am as confused as ever.”
“Shall I explain?”
“Shards and splinters, it is an hour since I asked for anything else!”
“Well, then, this is how I see it.”
“Go on. You perceive that you have my full attention.”

The first time I read such a passage I thought to myself, “Ha, ha! Very funny! You have aptly parodied Dumas there!”

The ninth time I read such a passage, the joke had worn itself thoroughly thin.

The ninetieth time I read such a passage, I wanted to scoop out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon.

The nine-hundredth time I read such a passage, I decided it was actually Steven Brust’s eyeballs I wanted to scoop out with the rusty spoon.

It’s simply bloat. It’s not funny. It’s not clever. It’s not stylistic. It’s just copy-and-paste, by-the-numbers, rubber-stamped bloat. It’s a form for rapidly generating empty verbiage so that you can fill up your quota for the weekly serial, get paid, and head down to the local tavern.

So why did I keep reading — even after I had long since perfected the art of detecting passages like this and adroitly skimming ahead a page or two pages in order to get the next bit of pertinent narrative?

Because the stories are, in point of fact, quite compelling. The plot is epic in its scope and fascinating for the depth of insight it gives you into the Dragaeran Empire. The action is both exciting and humorous. The characters are charming, endearing, and memorable.

In short, despite their rather systematic failings, I have no hesitation in recommending the Khaavren Romances.

I would, however, heartily recommend starting with the Vlad Taltos novels. A good deal of the fascination I had for the setting derived from my knowledge of the Taltos series, and I’m not sure I would have actually persevered if I did not have the context of the Taltos novels in which to root the Khaavren Romances.

GRADES:

THE PHOENIX GUARDS: B-
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER: B-
THE PATHS OF THE DEAD: B-
THE LORD OF CASTLE BLACK: B-
SETHRA LAVODE: B-

Steven Brust
Published: 1992 / 1995 / 2003 / 2004 / 2005
Publisher: Ace
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0812506898 / 0812515226 / 0812534174 / 0812534190 / 0812534182
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The worst writing I have ever read.

(And I write that as someone who has suffered through multiple readings of the Eye of Argon.)

A sample:

Her hair had the sheen of the sea beneath an eclipsed moon. It was the color of a leopard’s tongue, of oiled mahogany. It was terra cotta, bay and chestnut. Her hair was a helmet, a hood, the cowl of the monk, magician or cobra.

Her face had the fragrance of a gibbous moon. The scent of fresh snow. Her eyes were dark birds in fresh snow. They were the birds’ shadows, they were mirrors; they were the legends on old charts. They were antique armor and the tears of dragons. Her brows were a raptor’s sharp, anxious wings. They were a pair of scythes. Her ears were a puzzle carved in ivory. Her teeth were her only bracelet; she carried them within the red velvet purse of her lips.

You really have to read it out loud to appreciate just how mind-numbingly awful it is. I found, when reading it to myself, that my subconscious brain just started skimming over things. It was only when I started reading it out loud that the Cthulhuian mind-rending began.

This is taken, by the way, from a published novel: Silk and Steel by Ron Miller.

I’m also fairly enamored of this pictorial rendition of the subject of the passage (although you really need to click through and read the full thing to appreciate it fully).

This has been making the rounds for a couple of months now, so I’m probably not the first person to note the similarity between this misbegotten narrative excess and the Song of Solomon. I suspect this is not merely an accidental resemblance: One of the characters, you’ll note, is named Spikenard. While many reading the passage dismiss this as merely some horrible fantasy name, Spikenard is actually the name of a flower which is mentioned twice in the Song of Solomon.

By pure synchronicity, a couple of days after reading this for the first time, I was reading 3:16 – Bible Text Illuminated by Donald E. Knuth, which expanded insightfully on the topic while discussing the Song of Solomon (pg. 96):

These songlets are examples of an ancient type of love poem called a wa?f, in which a beloved’s body is praised part by part, often making use of extravagant and far-fetched metaphors. For example, an Egyptian papyrus from about 1250 B.C. contains a fragment of a wa?f that says, “my sister’s mouth is a lotus; her breasts are mandrakes”. Wa?f songs appear several times in the Thousand and One Nights, and they are still popular in modern Arab poetry. A 19th-century wa?f includes the line: “Her bosom is like polished marble tablets, as ships bring them to Sidon; like pomegranates topped with piles of glittering jewels.”

So there is clearly a very specific effect that Ron Miller is going for. Does this make it better? Not really. I’d even argue it makes it worse. Miller has clearly put a lot of thought and care into rendering something that, in its actual execution, ends up being a mockery of the very thing it sought to create.

Understanding what Miller was attempting to create helps us to understand where it all went horribly, horribly wrong. But the skidmarks don’t negate the car crash.

I came to this novel by way of Gary Gygax by way of Appendix N of the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide by way of James Maliszewski at Grognardia.

I think it’s safe to say that, if not for that rather remarkable (and lengthy) chain of recommendations, I would probably have never read this slim volume — which, as far as I know, was published in 1963 and never seen again.

Sign of the Labrys is a post-apocalyptic tale of the sort commonly found in mid-20th century science fiction. What sets it apart is that it is also, although it doesn’t strictly look like it at first, science fantasy. (This becomes clear fairly quickly, but the exact reasons for its fantastical nature constitute a spoiler so drastic that I won’t even hint at it here.)

The ways in which Sign of the Labrys inspired Gygax’s dungeoncraft become both rapidly and intriguingly apparent: Sam Sewell, the protagonist of the tale, lives in a vast underground complex of modified caverns that was built as a refuge before the collapse of civilization. The apocalypse thinned out the population (killing nine in ten) and eradicated central authority, leaving behind vast catacombs of uninhabited space which small, spontaneous societies have repurposed in a variety of ways.

In short, Sign of the Labrys reads like a strange hybrid of Dungeons & Dragons and Metamorphosis Alpha. Here we find a clear predecessor of Castle Greyhawk: A multi-cultural, subterranean menagerie laid out in a pattern of levels and sub-levels connected by both the well-known thoroughfares and a plentitude of secret passages and hidden ladders.

This, by itself, would have made Sign of the Labrys a fascinating and worthwhile novel for a D&D afficionado like myself. But I also found the novel to be very entertaining in its own right. Addictive, in fact. It’s got a page-turning, pulpy pace mixed together with some nigh-poetic language and a strange, enigmatic mystery that leaves you yearning to know the answer.

Stylistically Sign of the Labrys reminds me quite favorably of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. It possesses the strange, otherworldly, and fantastical approach to matters of science fiction which characterizes the best of their work. Particularly Moore’s. Like Moore’s classic Jirel of Joiry stories, Sign of the Labrys reminds me of Alice in Wonderland smashed through the broken mirror of another genre’s conceits and set pieces. If I were to say that Sign of the Labrys periodically reads as if the author had taken a tab of LSD before sitting down at her typewriter it would not be wholly inaccurate. (It would, however, be rather less than charitable, as St. Clair’s writing is not merely a drug-induced rambling. In fact, it works consistently towards a larger stylistic and revelatory purpose.)

In the end, I found Sign of the Labrys to be delightfully entertaining. And since, like me, you are unlikely to encounter it by chance, I shall pass on the same recommendation that was given to me: From Gygax to AD&D to Grognardia to me to the Alexandrian and thus to you…

Find a copy if you can.

GRADE: B-

Margaret St. Clair
Published: 1963
Publisher: Bantam Books
Cover Price: $0.60
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Wow. That was really bad.

I just got back from watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I feel absolutely compelled to warn others from wasting their money on a cinematic travesty. What’s particularly remarkable about this disastrous failure is that the first half of the film is actually quite good. It’s not a cinematic triumph by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a solid, entertaining popcorn film.

But then, a little over halfway through the movie, a switch is flipped. Something incredibly stupid happens, and from that point forward the entire film becomes nearly unwatchable: The plot, the characters, and even the editing all become insultingly idiotic.

It’s as if the two halves of the film were made by completely different creative teams.

You probably won’t believe me. I’d certainly seen people giving the thumbs-down to this movie in various places around the ‘net before deciding to go and see it anyway. But consider this: I actually left the theater thinking X-Men 3 wasn’t a complete disaster. (It was a huge disappointment and completely wasted the opportunity created by the first two films. But it was passable.)

And I’m telling you that X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unwatchable travesty.

From this point forward we’ll have SPOILERS so that I can rant a bit.

(1) First, allow me to reiterate that I thought the first half of the film was actually quite good for a popcorn action flick. The opening sequence with the young brothers; the montage sequence over the opening credits; and Hugh Jackman’s performance through the next section all made the film very entertaining.

(2) First Warning Sign: The scene where Logan is getting injected with the adamantine skeleton.

Stryker: “By the way, here are your dog-tags. Because even though you’re completely naked, laying in a tub of water, and about to be injected with molten metal, I think you should be wearing these.”

Logan: “I want new ones.”

Stryker: “What do you want them to say?”

Logan: “Wolverine.”

Stryker: “Really? Okay. Well, damn. Okay, everybody hold on. Logan, you just stay laying right there. Everybody else just hang out. I’m going to go have completely new dog-tags made.”

And they do…!

(3) Second Warning Sign: Agent Zero has just been killed trying to kill Wolverine.

Nameless Dude: “Agent Zero had no chance. You would need a gun with adamantine bullets. Like this one right here. That we have had all along. And could have easily given him.”

Stryker: “Wasn’t Agent Zero’s mutant power his ability to shoot guns really, really well?”

Nameless Dude: “Don’t forget his ability to leap around like a jackrabbit.”

Stryker: “Right. I see we’re theming these mutant powers well. But since he could shoot really well, wouldn’t it have made more sense to give him this gun?”

Nameless Dude: “… dude. You could have said something like an hour ago.”

(4) The Stupid of No Return: The first time Gambit attacked Wolverine, it made perfect sense. The second time Gambit attacked Wolverine? That was stupid. Really, really, really stupid.

(For those who haven’t seen the film: Gambit hates Sabretooth and wants him dead. He sees Wolverine with his blades to Sabretooth’s throat and hears him say, “I’m going to kill you.” So what does Gambit do? He attacks Wolverine and stops him from killing Sabretooth. Thirty seconds later after Sabretooth has escaped? Gambit is asking Wolverine to help him kill Sabretooth.)

(5) The Rest of the Stupid: I’d try to list it, but there’s really no point. After the Stupid of No Return, virtually every single second of the movie is stupid. So I’ll just highlight one particularly egregrious bit of stupid…

(6) Professor X is a Dick: Remember in the first X-Men movie when Professor X knows nothing about Wolverine? Turns out, he’s a dick. Not only is he telepathically monitoring the entire finale of the movie (and thus probably knows exactly who Wolverine is), but even if he somehow missed Wolverine’s presence telepathically it turns out his first twenty students (including Cyclops!) were all rescued by Wolverine himself!

The fact that the Cyclops himself doesn’t recognize Wolverine makes sense (because they’re actually quite careful about making sure he’s blind and never even hears Wolverine speak). But Professor X? He’s a dick.

Unless they get Bryan Singer back, this is probably the last X-Men movie they’ll be conning me into seeing for awhile.