There was a time when I owned every single Star Trek tie-in novel ever published. When I became a paperboy in grade school I took my first real paycheck and bought every single Star Trek novel ever published by Pocket Books. (This would have been the late ‘80s, so there would have already been a lot of them, although not nearly as many as there are now.) I had already collected all the novels published before Pocket Books took the helm, including the retellings of the original series by Blish and the animated series by Alan Dean Foster. I took a great deal of pride in the completeness of my collection, continuing to buy each and every Star Trek novel as it was released.

I kept that up even after I had essentially stopped reading them. Then, eventually, the habit grew too expensive: Once DS9 made its appearance there were three different series of novels, each with a monthly release, and I couldn’t afford to spend $20 or more each month on books I wasn’t even reading.

Not to mention the shelf space.

My point here is that I had gotten to the point where I simply ignored media tie-ins. My philosophy was simple: With all the great books out there that I will never get a chance to read, why should I waste my time trying to sort through the great sea of mediocrity which is tie-in fiction?

But then I encountered Babylon 5, which lit a burning passion in my heart. In fact, the TV series was painfully good, with each new episode leaving an ache of yearning in its wake.

That ache still wasn’t good enough to get to me try out the tie-in fiction, mind you. In fact, in a lot of ways, my love for this particular series only made the tie-in novels less interesting to me. Why? Because what raised Babylon 5 to its transcendent level was largely the loving care with which J. Michael Straczynski revealed his universe, his characters, and his story. Disconnected, disjointed tie-in fiction written by third party authors simply lacked the very things which made Babylon 5 so special.

But, suddenly, that changed: The license for Babylon 5 tie-in novels changed hands and, with the new arrangement, J. Michael Straczynski was providing detailed outlines. The new novels were, rather than being misbegotten step-children, unique new windows into the Babylon 5 universe.

And that, finally, enticed me back into the tie-in stable. Three trilogies resulted from the Straczynski outlines: Legions of Fire by Peter David; The Passing of the Techno-Mages by Jeanne Cavelos; and The Psi Corps Trilogy by J. Gregory Keyes. All three were eventually issued as omnibuses by the SFBC, and it’s in that form that I finally picked up copies.

I read Legions of Fire last year. It was my first choice among the three because it finished the story of Londo Mollari – a story which had been broadly and intriguingly hinted at over the course of the TV series, but never told. Its revelations made it an addictive and entertaining read for me, but I couldn’t help regretting the relative crudity of its craft. In a lot of ways, the flaws in the novel made it painfully clear that I was reading a novel written by one author from the outline of another: For whatever reason, Peter David had been unable to fully own the material, resulting in a certain lack of depth. Nor had he been able to forge a smooth narrative from bullet points, creating an awkward pacing and a definite lack of causal continuity.

In short, you had a very compelling plot that simply didn’t come to life in the telling. The result was something that I think any fan of Babylon 5 would enjoy reading, but which fails on its own merits. As a result, I ended up setting aside the other two trilogies, expecting more of the same.

All of this is nothing more than a lengthy prelude, however. What I’m really here to talk about is my reaction to The Psi Corps Trilogy, which I just finished reading.

Let me brutally blunt here, because otherwise I fear my point will be lost:

These are damn good books.

And I don’t mean that in a “these are really good considering that they’re tie-in novels” way. I mean that these are damn good books, period. Start with a little of Mutant by Henry Kuttner, then add a lot of The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, and then give it some meat with a dark version of the best parts of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and you’ll begin to have some sense of what The Psi Corps Trilogy has to offer.

In short, J. Gregory Keyes offers a dynamic, complex story with an epic scale. He seizes the opportunity to work with a large, multigenerational cast by drawing each character with care and detail. He then cements the entire work by placing at center stage an absolutely compelling psychological drama which takes the reader’s heart in hand and wrings emotion from it almost effortlessly.

The only “flaw” – and I hesitate to call it such – is that there is a gap in the narrative of the trilogy. The first volume, in an epic style reminiscent of the Foundation Trilogy, covers the history of telepaths from their first appearance in the 21^st century until the time of Alfred Bester (another of the many compelling and deeply drawn characters from the television series). The second volume is the life story of Bester up to his first appearance in the series. The third volume essentially completes Bester’s story after the series. (The missing part of the narrative, of course, is the story that we see in the series itself.)

In essence, The Psi Corps Trilogy is the Tragedy of Alfred Bester. The particular brilliance of the work can be ascribed entirely to Keyes’ success in not only telling this story as an intense drama of the human spirit, but also by imbuing in Bester the legacy of the telepathic race. Keyes perfectly captures a character created by Straczynski and portrayed by Walter Koenig, and then renders that character into a Janus-like figure, looking down upon the twin destinies of his people. The result is Shakespearean in its scope.

As I sit here, giving the work the thought it deserves – looking at its details and savoring each in turn – I am particularly struck by the complexity of the characters. Not only does Keyes practice an exceptional conservation of cast (never once allowing a character to simply amble through his narrative without some deeper purpose or effect), he also makes sure that every character is fully realized as a living, breathing being.

On a similar note, the careful weaving of the story’s many themes also leaps out at me as a stellar accomplishment. No event is allowed to pass as an idle plot point: Nothing simply happens – it happens to someone, and has a meaning; an impact; an effect upon them. And, on top of that, each event carefully illuminates some new facet of the gem which Keyes is crafting – it has a unique significance not only to the characters, but to the reader.

Which brings me back to my thesis statement:

These are damn good books.

You should read them.

GRADES:

DARK GENESIS: A
DEADLY RELATIONS: A
FINAL RECKONING: A

J. Gregory Keyes
Published: 1998-1999
Publisher: Del Rey
Cover Price: $6.50
ISBNs: 0-34-542715-7 / 0-34-542716-5 / 0-34-542717-3
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I’ve been on a pulp fantasy kick for the past month or so: I started with Robert E. Howard, having finally secured (by way of the Science Fiction Book Club) a hardcover copy of what promises to be the first true edition of his Conan stories to be issued in the States. From that familiar territory I spun off for a quick foray through Henry Kuttner’s imaginative Prince Raynor stories before returning to Howard for the outstanding – if unfortunately few – Cormac Mac Art stories. I then took a voyage of peril and pleasure across Clark Ashton Smith’s forgotten continent of Zothique before turning my attention to Fritz Leiber’s legendary duo: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

From there I had intended to set sail for the lands of either Moorcock’s Elric or Wagner’s Kane, but – in truth – I find myself so disheartened that I am instead turning my attention to wholly different pastures for awhile.

But I fear that I set my premise before my scene. Let me back up for a moment.

For those who don’t know, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are famed heroes of the sword and sorcery genre. First unleashed in the pages of the pulps, their literary career spanned almost five decades, coming to an end only with Leiber’s death in the early ‘90s. Their tales are most commonly available in seven authoritative collections: Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, Swords in the Mist, Swords Against Wizardry, Swords of Lankhmar, Swords and Ice Magic, and The Knight and Knave of Swords.

I first read their adventures in junior high, savoring the two omnibuses which collected the first six of these volumes: The Three Swords and Swords’ Masters. Coming back to them now, nearly fifteen years later, I had only dim and disjointed memories of the two dashing swashbucklers, their gritty city of Lankhmar , and the mystic-laden land of Nehwon .

On this return trip, I found myself harboring a great deal of uneven disappointment. In short, I found that the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser could be roughly divided into two camps – the outstanding and the painfully mediocre – with the latter far outnumbering the former.

Nor can one simply say, as one can in so many cases, that the earlier tales are superior to the hack work of the later. “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, The Swords of Lankhmar, and even the somewhat mixed “Rime Isle”, although among the later works, would make the list of those stories I would recommend. Although, that being said, I think it is clear that, as the series continued, a certain dreary repetition and self-conscious cleverness began to consistently diminish the stories.

Perhaps the best way to approach this inconsistent and self-crippling series is through a volume-by-volume summary of impressions.

SWORDS AND DEVILTRY: Fortunately, the most consistent volume in the series is also the first, although it contains only three tales. “The Snow Women” and “The Unholy Grail” each tell a tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser before their fateful and legendary meeting in Lankhmar. The former is a top-notch tale of youth and magic in the frozen north, keenly demonstrating the fantastic and unique vision which Leiber is capable of delivering. The latter, although strongly crafted, is a somewhat weaker tale – its plot more commonplace in its conception. The volume is rounded out by “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, which is the tale of the first true meeting of our destined heroes. It is also a powerfully tragic story, and its strength is best described by the fact that it represented my strongest memory of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser before returning to the series.

SWORDS AGAINST DEATH: The second volume in the series begins to show the inconsistency I’m talking about, particularly in the short bridging stories which I believe Leiber wrote specifically for these collections. “The Jewels in the Forest ” and “Thieves’ House”, two of the oldest stories, are the highlights here, and come highly recommended. Running close behind are “The Howling Tower” and “Claws of the Night” – the former being slight, but imaginative; while the latter comes as close to being a prototypical tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as you are likely to find (mixing thievery, gods, and sly humor across the backdrop of Lankhmar).

Much of this volume, however, is thoroughly pedestrian. To this category belong “The Bleak Shore”, “The Sunken Land”, “The Seven Black Priests”, and “Bazaar of the Bizarre”. (Although, in their favor, I will note that these all have their moments of fantastic vision. The last, however, is a very thin pastiche.) Finally, it would be charitable to describe the last two tales offered here – “The Circle Curse” and “The Price of Pain-Ease” – as thoroughly mediocre. It would be more accurate to simply describe them as bad.

SWORDS IN THE MIST: The third volume is even more uneven than the second. On the one hand, it arguably contains the two best stories in the series: The first of these, “Lean Times in Lankhmar”, is a masterfully crafted tale. Its characters keep you enthralled while its fanciful premise is cleverly worked into an utterly hilarious conclusion. It reminds me strongly of Terry Pratchett at his finest. (Pratchett’s Small Gods, in particular, owes an obvious debt to this story.) The second gem to be found here is “Adept’s Gambit”, which is also the first tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser written by Leiber. Set in a mythically tinged epoch of ancient history, the tale is faintly resonant with the finest creations of Lovecraft, Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, but possesses a flair and unique sense of character which makes it all Leiber’s own.

Unfortunately the rest of this volume can’t compare with these two classics: “The Cloud of Hate” and “When the Sea-King’s Away” are forgettable clichés, while “Their Mistress, the Sea” and “The Wrong Branch” are ham-fisted, half-baked afterthoughts attempting to create an unnecessary bridge between one tale and the next.

SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDRY: The bulk of this volume is taken up by two lengthy tales, “Stardock” and “The Lords of Quarmall”. Both stories play out across a fantastic and vividly imagined landscape populated with strange cultures and larger-than-life characters. These two tales give Swords Against Wizardry perhaps the strongest base of any volume in the series. Unfortunately, the collection is also padded out with a couple of bridging stories – “The Witch’s Tent” and “The Two Best Thieves of Lankhmar” – which have a bit more substance to them than the other bridging stories, but are still mediocre offerings at best.

THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR: This is, in fact, the only stand-alone novel in the series. It tells the sprawling saga of an attempted invasion (of a most unusual size and character) aimed against the great city of Lankhmar . Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, of course, almost single-handedly turn back this invasion – although the path they take is anything but simple or straight-forward.

The Swords of Lankhmar is not the best story told of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but it is perhaps the greatest. The expanded format allows Leiber a chance to stretch his muscles, and he accepts the challenge admirably by weaving a tapestry not only expansive in its imaginings but detailed in its fancies.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing to me about this novel is the clear inheritance its narrative receives from fairy tales. Whereas most writers of sword-and-sorcery trace their antecedents back to classical myth and legend, Leiber’s heroes clearly inhabit a world inspired as much as by Hans Christian Anderson as it is by Beowulf. And it is perhaps this, more than anything else, which gives these stories a unique distinction in the field.

SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC: Unfortunately, after The Swords of Lankhmar the series appears to have spent its creativity. Swords and Ice Magic, the sixth volume, is largely an unimaginative regurgitation of the themes, plots, and characters found earlier in the series. The first five stories in this collection (“The Bait”, “Beauty and the Beasts”, “Trapped in Shadowland”, “The Bait”, and “Under the Thumbs of the Gods”) are simply dreadful wastes of time. In fact, they are all essentially the same story: Distant powers or gods attempt to kill Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, who – for their part – accept the improbable with stoic complacency while thoroughly and effortlessly thwarting the attempts each time. Unfortunately, this is also a story which was told twice before in these collections.

Fortunately, things then take a slight turn for the better. The sixth story, “Trapped in the Sea of Stars ”, is badly contrived and nearly plotless, but makes up for it through the vivid description of its sense-of-wonder sea voyage. There is, in fact, no particular story here at all – but the visions conjured forth by Leiber’s prose are worth the price of admission.

The last two stories in the collection – “The Frost Monstreme” and “Rime Isle” – are, in fact, two halves of a single story. Although still flawed by an increasingly rambling style, self-conscious commentary, and regurgitation of plot and imagery, this story still has a lot to offer: Clever interactions of character, epic sensibility, charming wit, and wondrous feats are offered up with a melancholic flair.

THE KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS: Sadly, however, that is the end of it. This last collection of stories offers nothing but an imagination apparently spent.  “Sea Magic”, “The Mer She”, and “The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars” each offer us regurgitated plots while doing nothing more than shuffling around the characters and magic items presented in “Rime Isle” to little sense of purpose or accomplishment.

Finally, in “The Mouser Goes Below”, Leiber pulls the same trick: Shuffling around characters and devices already well-worn beyond any effective use. The only difference to be found is that Leiber pulls his reused material from a larger portion of the series, rather than a single story.

I also found another trend in this last volume particularly disconcerting: A pointless coarseness which was previously absent from the series. I’m not sure what Leiber was attempting to accomplish by suddenly inundating the narrative with “long poniards” piercing “cunts and arse holes”, but the effect was merely distasteful.

In the end, I think this was a series which long-outlived its creator’s interest. Or, at the very least, his ability. The later offerings become increasingly repetitive and unimaginative, as if Leiber had simply run out of new ideas to share. Unfortunately, in collected form, these lackluster efforts seem to out-mass and actively detract from those stories which legitimately earn Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser a place of high honor in the pantheon of fantasy heroes.

Indeed, I found myself unable to finish the series. Swords and Ice Magic had seriously fatigued my interest, and I pushed on with The Knight and Knave of Swords only because (a) I had never read that final volume and (b) I wanted to finish what I had started.

But, in the end, I could manage no further than the mid-point of “The Mouser Goes Below”. Leiber pinioned the Mouser – immobile, invisible, and speechless – in order to have him bear witness to a gratuitously graphic description of one of his former loves having her maid stripped bare, fondled in the cunt and arse hole, and then given instruction on “naked serving”. After several pages of this pointlessly turgid prose I finally gave up and closed the book.

If I ever return to the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, it shall be a markedly proscribed path I take through their tales. Such a journey would look something like this:

“The Snow Woman”
“The Unholy Grail”
“Ill Met in Lankhmar”
“The Jewels in the Forest”
“Thieves’ House”
“The Bleak Shore”
“The Howling Tower”
“The Sunken Land”
“The Seven Black Priests”
“Claws of the Night”
“Lean Times in Lankhmar”
“When the Sea-King’s Away”
Adept’s Gambit
“Stardock”
“The Lords of Quarmall”
The Swords of Lankhmar
“The Frost Monstreme”
“Rime Isle”

I suspect this is less than half of the words written by Leiber of the two greatest swordsmen to ever live in this or any other universe, but it is decidedly the better half. And it, unlike the balance of the series, comes with my highest recommendation.

GRADES:

SWORDS AND DEVILTRY: A-
SWORDS AGAINST DEATH: B+
SWORDS IN THE MIST: A-
SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDRY: A-
SWORDS IN LANKHMAR: A-
SWORDS AND ICE MAGIC: B
KNIGHT AND KNAVE OF SWORDS: D

Fritz Leiber
Published: 1940-1990
Publisher: Various
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The sheer scope of Deadhouse Gates is truly amazing. It’s also nearly impossible to describe. Imagine The Iliad, The Odyssey, Dune, and an Elric novel all seamlessly integrated into a single narrative and then lightly spiced with a little Lord of Light. And I’m not even beginning to do it justice.

When I got to page 200 in this book, I thought for a moment that I had it all figured out: I knew exactly where Erikson was going with the story. But then I realized I was only a fifth of the way through the novel and, in point of fact, I had no idea where he was going.

It was then that I realized something special was happening here.

When you look at this 900 page novel, I suspect your first instinct will be to cry, “Bloat!” After all, your typical 900 page fantasy epic is just begging for a ruthless edit, right?

Wrong.

Deadhouse Gates is, in fact, one of the tightest novels I’ve ever read. There’s more plot per square inch of page space in this book than any other book I can think of, and I wouldn’t give up even the tiniest iota of it.

Let me back up.

When you’re talking about fantasy masterpieces, you’re talking about books like Deadhouse Gates.

When I finished Gardens of the Moon with a somewhat tepid reaction, I had a lot of people tell me that Deadhouse Gates was going to be a massive improvement. I thought I understood what they meant. But I didn’t. See, they meant massive improvement. The type of improvement which just leaves your mouth gaping open.

Erikson jumped straight from “pretty damn good” to “one of the best fantasy books I’ve ever read”.

The improvement in basic storytelling is immediate and amazing. The primary difference between Deadhouse Gates and Gardens of the Moon is not the size of the cast, the density of the plot, or the complexity of the world – it is simply the fact that, in Deadhouse Gates, you can actually follow the story.

There are a lot of things that contribute to this: Erikson sticks with each plot thread long enough for details to establish themselves. He’s also much better at identifying the important details of who, what, and where in a scene – rather than expecting you to read his mind through loose detail. To some extent, I also learned to hook location to character groups – but that’s also an improvement on Erikson’s part, because his characters no longer hopscotch across continents while off-screen.

It’s a relatively simple improvement, but it allows everything else to shine – the epic plot; the extravagant detail and depth of the world; the powerful characters. With Gardens of the Moon we were looking at Erikson’s genius through a smoky room. With Deadhouse Gates we’re staring straight into the halogen bulb.

There’s almost too much to rave about here: The sheer, brilliant pacing of Coltaine’s march. The dozens of characters drawn with a depth which will absolutely wrench your heart out. The careful point and counterpoint of every plot thread. The tragedies of Sophoclean scope and Euripidian detail. The ineffable brilliance which lends the whole a greatness larger than the sum of its many accomplished parts.

On top of all that, there is a quality here which is really quite remarkable, because Erikson manages to evoke the mythic and the epic within the framework of a modern novel. And that’s something I really haven’t seen out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – especially with the kind of scope and scale that Erikson attempts here.

My joyous shouts aside, there are still some problems here: The names remain a grab-bag of inconsistency. Erikson can, at times, make butchery and pain amazingly boring through its senseless repetition and lack of effect. (Oh, sure, people feel pain – but there’s no lingering effect or psychological impact. Even the most pampered nobles apparently have a limitless capacity of stoic resolve in Erikson’s world. People can have their eyeballs burst, their faces crushed with maces, and their ears ripped off… and still be smiling about it a couple minutes after it happened.)

There is a whole range of fantasy species, but I never get a firm description of any of them. For example, one of the main characters is a Trell: I know that he has a thick hide and lots of muscles. But that’s not enough information to actually construct a coherent picture. All of these races are well-defined and detailed (in fact, they feel truly *alien* in a way that most fantasy races don’t)… except when it comes to physical appearance. The ironic thing is that I found myself continually struggling to pin some kind of fantasy archetype onto Erikson’s creations – not because they’re particularly similar to other fantasy races (they aren’t), but because I was desperate to find something to base a mental picture on.

There is also a slight tendency towards minor deus ex machinas to resolve minor plot points in midstream, and a handful of authorial tics…

But, really, none of these amount to a significant criticism when compared to sheer, towering might of Erikson’s accomplishment.

As a final note: Don’t let Gardens of the Moon be the only Tale of the Malazan Empire you read. If you must place the series within a crucible, then let Deadhouse Gates be the work you judge. (It’s also notable that each novel in this series stands independently of the rest. Each is its own story, with a unique beginning, middle, and end all its own.)

GRADE: A+

Steven Erikson
Published: 2003
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $29.95
ISBN: 0-765-31002-3
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Neal Stephenson’s career to this point can be split into roughly two halves: In the first half, he possessed a vibrant style of satirical SF which – while still rough around the edges – developed quickly with laser-like prose, memorable casts of characters, high octane plots, technical savvy, and vividly imagined settings. In the second half of his career, all of these things have been perfected – but Stephenson also developed a tendency towards bloat (although the quality of his prose tends to keep you engaged) and an unfortunate habit of writing books without ends (although the plots-without-resolution remain high octane right up until the very last page).

And poised right at the pinnacle between these two halves – possessing all of their strengths and none of their shortcomings – is Snow Crash, which is almost certainly Stephenson’s finest work to date.

Saying that Snow Crash is a fantastic novel – a jewel whose facets have been cut with breathtaking precision – is easy enough. Trying to explain what Snow Crash is, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult.

On this reading of Snow Crash (this is the second time I’ve read it), I found myself being strongly reminded of Philip K. Dick. It took me awhile to figure out why, but once I did it was like a lightbulb going off above my head: Snow Crash is satire.

But, more than that, Snow Crash is a satire on three completely different levels: First, and most obviously, it’s a satire of the cyberpunk genre as popularized by William Gibson during the 1980’s. Second, it’s a satire of the modern world. Third, it’s a satire of a future world.

It is this last, and most remarkable, accomplishment that reminds me so strongly of Dickian classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Like Dick, Stephenson not only creates a fully-realized future, he presents that future in a stylized fashion. At first glance, the result seems surreal. But a closer look reveals a reality made all the more tangible and believable as a result of the uniquely skewed point of view.

People talk about the fact that Heinlein wrote science fiction stories as if they were just fiction stories written by authors in the future. I would argue that Dick took this to the next level by writing his stories as if they were written by future authors with stylistic flair, and that Stephenson has taken this to yet another level by layering the technique.

And looking at Snow Crash through this new lens, the opening sequence of the novel – which had previously seemed to me, despite its hilarious effectiveness, to be oddly out of synch with the rest of the novel – suddenly came into sharp focus. This opening sequence is nothing more than a pizza delivery, but Stephenson presents it as a matter of life-and-death – neatly satirizing the self-important style of classical cyberpunk tales: “When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway – might want his car, or his cargo.”

But if you take a closer look, the sequence is satirizing life in the modern world as much as it is the stylings of Gibsonesque cyberpunk: “Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell time?

“Didn’t happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University for four years just to learn it. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of door delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was fucking inalienable.”

And, of course, beneath it all, Stephenson is laying down the first building blocks in the foundation of his setting.

The whole, ten-page sequence is a tour de force of talent. It is the work of a writer who has mastered his craft, and with supreme confidence proceeds to suck you into his story and his world.

And it’s just the beginning, because this superb layering of satire and world-building is just one of the most basic delights the novel has to offer.

Snow Crash also reminds me of Kenneth Hite. Hite writes a column called “Suppressed Transmissions” for Pyramid, an on-line magazine published by Steve Jackson Games. Every two weeks Hite mixes up a potent brew of Kabbalism, tarot symbolism, grail mythology, Nazi mysticism, Illuminati conspiracy, Tesla science, and a dozen other types of secret history – serving up the result as an idea mine for roleplayers everywhere.

In similar fashion, the central plot of Snow Crash hangs upon Sumerian myth cycles, comparative linguistics, memetic theory, and cyberpunk tropism. I draw a direct line from H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Forte, through Robert Anton Wilson, and end up with Stephenson and Hite.

Snow Crash is also, arguably, the moment of crystallization for the post-cyberpunk genre. It was the first massively popular work to break away from the narrow bandwidth the cyberpunk genre had possessed since Gibson first crystallized it in 1984 with Neuromancer, and demonstrated that the genre was a form which was not necessarily tied to a specific content of plot or theme. On top of that, Stephenson shed many of the technological trappings of cyberpunk that had more to do with science fantasy than science fiction, and rooted those that remained in much firmer soil. (Stephenson’s Metaverse, for example, is a believable extrapolation, whereas Gibson’s cyberspace doesn’t rise above the level of metaphorical handwaving.)

(Antecedents, of course, exist for Snow Crash’s moment of crystallization. For one example, check out my reaction to Lawrence Watt-Evans’ excellent Nightside City. Similarly, Gibson’s crystallization of the cyberpunk genre as a whole had a number of antecedents.)

And, last but not least, despite a complex setting resting upon the monomolecular cutting edge of science fiction, Snow Crash is also written as a mainstream technothriller. Stephenson never expects his readers to be familiar with the tropes of science fiction, but instead explains every extrapolation from the modern world. It is a further testament of Stephenson’s mastery that these descriptions never become tedious to the hardcore fan, instead existing as an entertaining and stylistic patter that never slow the book down. For example: “The computer is a featureless black wedge. It does not have a power cord, but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging from a hatch on the rear, spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor, and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics cable. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro’s computer and the rest of the world. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper, they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes, forever.”

So what is Snow Crash? I dunno. It’s identity lies somewhere within a gestalt; it’s a masterpiece that can be discussed in facets, but never as a whole.

And it’s all bundled up in a tight little package with all of Stephenson’s remarkable gifts as a writer: Masterful and compelling plotting, a remarkably detailed world, and a cast of characters drawn with enough breadth and depth to make most authors drop their jaws with jealousy. And then there’s Stephenson’s prose, which can be relished as a main course all by itself. You can see some examples of it above, but the entire book is peppered with memorable passages and quotable lines. Every page seems to hum with a distinctive beat and rhythm, propelling you from one chapter to the next in a compulsive, addictive reading experience.

This isn’t the best SF novel of the past fifteen years. But it’s definitely in the top ten.

GRADE: A+
Neal Stephenson
Published: 1992
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0-553-56261-4
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Gardens of the Moon is the first volume in Steven Erikson’s Malazan Empire series. I was drawn to the series after hearing roughly a dozen different people heap mighty amounts of praise upon it. Although it was still shockingly unavailable in the United States , I managed to obtain the first three paperbacks from www.amazon.ca. (Tor has now acquired the rights to the series and will be releasing Gardens of the Moon sometime this summer.)

I think Gardens of the Moon can best be described as “epic fantasy with the dial cranked up to 11”: The dragons, empires, and wars are all bigger. The cast of characters is larger. The intrigues more convoluted. The elder races more alien. The magic more powerful (and its forms more mysterious). Even the world is too big for the map (and its only one of many).

And I mean all of that in the best possible way.

No, seriously, I do. Erikson has invested his world with some truly amazing depth and a truly astounding scope, and it’s perfectly delightful to behold.

For example, Erikson manages to detail a complex, interwoven set of magical systems – yet, at the same time, his magic feels magical. He manages to sidestep the trap of making magic nothing more than an alternative physics, but he also doesn’t cheat by simply drawing a curtain across its workings.

Another remarkable thing about Gardens of the Moon is the history. Its so thick that it seems to ooze right off the page. And its not just the world which has received this lavish attention: Every single character has been gifted with a rich backstory that, once it becomes apparent, gives them a life and vitality and reality all their own.

I could rave on for quite some time in this vein, because Erikson has truly created a marvelously complex and lovingly detailed world: A work of art with few equals.

Unfortunately, not everything about Gardens of the Moon is so deserving of praise. The book is, to put it bluntly, very rough around the edges. Where Erikson succeeds so brilliantly at evoking a world and creating a compelling plot, he frequently falls down when it comes to prose and (most importantly) basic storytelling. And what is perhaps most frustrating about these latter flaws is that you can see, here and there throughout the book, that he is capable of so much better.

It was nearly 150 pages before I began to have something resembling a firm grasp on what was happening. Erikson dumps you right into the middle of a complex society, history, cast of characters, and action – and then skips around like a rabid rabbit, flashing forward and backward in time, between characters, and across continents.

To be perfectly clear here: It’s not simply starting you in the middle of things which is the problem here. I don’t have any problem with starting a story in media res. But Erikson never stops. No narrative thread is held onto for longer than a couple of pages. You’re constantly flipping between the literally dozens of POV characters and are never allowed a chance to focus your attention on anything.

Adding to this problem is Erikson’s concerted effort to withhold information from one end of the book to the other: Unnamed characters do cryptic, unexplained things to other characters (who are frequently no more than a name on the page); false cliffhangers are created through selective description; motivations are often left unexplained until hundreds of pages after the fact.

Which leads to another problem: There are significant spans of the novel where characters stop doing things for any particular reason and start doing them because, well, that’s what happens next (and, besides, they need to do it so that something else can happen later on). Sometimes this is just an impression left by Erikson holding back essential information. And sometimes its justified by having gods explicitly or implicitly mucking around in the mix. But, just as frequently, the only all-powerful hand at work seems to be the author’s, fating characters to an inevitable outline.

(This is all simultaneously contrasted and highlighted rather oddly by a stretch of the book in which vast amounts of secret history comes spilling out during a casual conversation between two characters. I was left with the vague sensation of taking a walk with someone and having them casually – and for no apparent reason – describe the secret history of the Illuminati, the Masons’ involvement in the Fall of Atlantis, and the secret war between the Templars and Papist Loyalists over the Holy Grail in Victorian India. Ironically, very little of this conversation actually serves to directly illuminate the active threads of the plot.)

In the end, I was simply left with the vague feeling that – if I had known everything I knew by the end of the book at the beginning of the book – the whole work would have been a lot more effective for me.

More than anything, though, I’m left with a general feeling of inconsistency, because, like I said, there are large spans of the book where Erikson’s potential shines through unfettered by these storytelling flaws. (Most notably the last 150 pages flew by with only a couple of rough spots standing in the way.)

A couple more problems I need to throw out here before moving on:

First, Erikson cannot write poetry. Which is unfortunate, because he spreads it around pretty liberally in the books. Fortunately, the vast majority of it is found at the beginning of chapters and is easily skipped.

Second, someone hereabouts mentioned recently that Erikson has a tin ear for names, and that’s true in spades. He varies between two extremes: Names which are common words (Burn, Sorry, Whiskeyjack, Hairlock) and names which are nearly unpronounceable. Mixed inbetween the two extremes are more traditional-sounding fantasy names (Kalam, Paran) and a few names drawn from the real world (Quick Ben). The result is simply chaos, and I surely can’t see any rhyme or reason to the divisions: Whether a character is a god, a mage, a noble, or a common soldier seems to have no bearing whatsoever on the type of name they’ll possess.

Okay, I’ve now spent nearly a dozen paragraphs hashing out the problems I had with Gardens of the Moon. But take all that with a pinch of salt: The only reason that these problems stand out like sore thumbs is because they mar what would otherwise be a colossal triumph and achievement.

Erikson offers a rich world, spectacular settings, and powerful characters tied together in a plot of epic proportions and fiendish intrigue. If he ends up tripping over his feet every so often in the process, then that’s something I’m willing to forgive.

Before I bring this to an end, there’s one last thing that I want to point out: Gardens of the Moon functions as a stand-alone novel, not just the first volume in a series. The story being told here has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are also clearly some threads which will be picked up and used later in the series, but they’re handled in a way which is entirely consistent with Gardens of the Moon having an independent existence. So even if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to pick up an unfinished series, you might want to give Gardens of the Moon a try.

GRADE: B+
Steven Erikson
Published: 2003
Publishers: Tor
Cover Price: $18.00
ISBN: 0-765-31001-5

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