Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 (32 page)

***

Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

Small Beer Press, 2012

Paperback, 300 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1931520454 (Trade paperback)

This is an extraordinary collection of stories by one of our best writers. Kress has won several Hugo and Nebula awards for her work and justifiably so. Her focus tends to be on biology and genetics (though not always), but her real heart lies in how humans behave. But let me make this a bit clearer. Her real interest is how families behave and interact in close proximity to one another. Literally. Many of these stories involve the profoundly deep interactions (and subsequent emotions) with people who are in the midst of a crisis. The collection begins with “The Erdmann Nexus,” which won the Hugo Award when it first appeared in 2008. In “The Erdmann Nexus” a number of retirees in an old folks’ home are having very strange experiences. All of this is happening as an alien ship is passing by the solar system. Kress weaves the interactions of her characters and their caretakers with great empathy and compassion. Kress cares about her characters as if they were real people. She also has them behave (and emote and think) as if they were real people. This is such a relief from those stories about genius children who speak with the articulation of fifty-year-old humans or the spunky, energetic grandmother with a sassy mouth right out of the worst of Heinlein. Kress’ children may be precocious, but they’re still children with all of their needs and her elderly still have a spark of life left in them. “Safeguard” is about a group of enhanced children who are used against an alien menace. They’re not quite the brainy children of destiny so common to Orson Scott Card’s writings and that helps the story immensely. Another story about an enhanced child is “First Rites,” where gene modification in an adopted child backfires totally on the people behind his engineering. One of the subtexts of this story is the problem of ethics in science and the role that skepticism should play in scientific research. This is to say just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. Often political solutions win out over the scientific. In Kress, either outcome can be tragic.

There are nine stories in this collection and all of them are keepers. I did find “The Erdmann Nexus,” the longest story here, to be the better story, if only because of its length. Kress really does excel in the short form. Unlike her novels which can be untidy and sprawl more than is good for them, her shorter works tend to be highly focused, even if they contain quite a few characters and all sorts of things happening—bills to pay, babies to feed, work to do, etc. This is a collection that absolutely belongs on your shelves.

***

Unidentified Funny Objects

edited by Alex Shvartsman

UFO Publishing 2012

Trade Paperback, 320 pages

ISBN 978-0-9884328-0-2

Here is “light” science fiction reading at its best. And I don’t mean that as faint praise, either. The “light” here is the absolute lack of seriousness in these hilarious short stories that straddle both the science fiction and fantasy genres. And a couple totally “unidentifiable”—which, if you think of it, totally fits being here.

These stories, gathered by anthologist Alex Shvartsman, run the gamut from straight-forward stories to outright romps. They’ve got ghosts, zombies, tweeting aliens, hobo vampires, Nazis from the Moon, pandas with large sexual appetites, and a little girl who wants a samurai sword from Santa so she can fight zombies. Santa’s reaction to her request is priceless. There’s also a send-up on a famous Cheech and Chong routine that had me in stitches.

Here’s a partial list of authors gathered here, Jody Lynn Nye, Lavie Tidhar, Ken Liu, Mike Resnick, Michael Kurland, and Don Sakers. These names should help introduce the readers to the other authors here, who might not be as familiar to the general reader. This book is a delight. There are a lot of giggles here, and every now and then you’ll laugh your head off. This is a hoot from start to finish.

***

From The Vault:

American Science Fiction
: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s (two volumes
)
edited by Gary K. Wolfe

Library of America, 2013

Hardcover, 1750 pages (in 2 volumes)

ISBN: 978-1-59853-157-2

The Library of America is a non-profit company devoted to publishing the very best of American literature, from the Colonies up to the present day. Within the last several years they’ve also published the collected works of authors in our field such as Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and H.P. Lovecraft. Many of these novels and stories are also in print in regular trade paperback editions, but it helps to have a kind of academic seal-of-approval from such a storied publisher.

The volumes in hand collect nine novels of classic science fiction. The first collects from the years 1953 to 1956. The second collects novels from the years 1956-1958. These novels represent the first flowering of science fiction beyond the hard-science Campbellian era of the 1940s as it evolved into the fields of “soft” science fiction. Soft science fiction would include social science fiction, satire, and stories about the various kinds of existential threats posed by nuclear weapons and the Cold War. Here are the titles:

Volume One:

The Space Merchants
- C.M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl

More Than Human
- Theodore Sturgeon

The Long Tomorrow -
Leigh Brackett

The Shrinking Man
- Richard Matheson

Volume Two:

Double Star -
Robert A. Heinlein

The Stars My Destination
- Alfred Bester

A Case of Conscience
- James Blish

Who? -
Algis Budrys

The Big Time -
Fritz Leiber

Even though the Fifties are filled with major works in science fiction (think of Hal Clement’s
Mission of Gravity
and Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
just to name two). The works here are not the hard-science fiction of Asimov or Clarke but tend to focus on questions of individual and societal identity, given the swift changes in American culture after World War II. This most definitely includes the rise (and fears) of nuclear proliferation and the appearance of the Iron Curtain. Nuclear warfare, radiation, and mutations figure heavily here:
More Than Human, The Long Tomorrow, The Shrinking Man
and
Who?
all deal with the fears brought on by changes beyond the control of any one individual. These are true extrapolations, but not in any rigorous scientific manner: the protagonists in these novels tend to be ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Some are tragic; others less so.
The Space Merchants
is the obvious romp here;
The Shrinking Man
is the one, true tragedy.

Each volume has covers that are reminiscent of Fifties paperback covers and this boxed set would make a handsome edition for any household who also might have within it squirmy, nerdy children (or grandkids) who, perhaps bored on a Sunday afternoon, might discover this on the bookshelves and dive in to the world of Gully Foyle or Fritz Leiber’s R&R facility outside of time. It happened to me. I know it happened to you. Pay it forward with this collection and stand back!

DARK UNIVERSE

by Daniel Galouye

Phoenix Pick, 2010

Trade Paperback: 182 pages.
Kindle, Nook, More

ISBN:  978-1-60450-487-3

Dark Universe
Copyright © 1961 Daniel F. Galouye.
All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. 

Excerpt is reprinted here by permission of the Publisher and the Estate’s literary agent.

SERIALIZATION:
Dark Universe

(Continued from Issue Two)

Dark Universe

(Continued from Issue One)

CHAPTER TEN

Jared flinched from the absurd impressions, from the contradictory composites of physical orientation. He was certain he still lay in the corridor near the dripping needle of rock. Yet, he was equally sure he was somewhere else.

The
drip-drip
of the water changed to a weary
tap-tap-tap
and back to a
drip-drip
again. The coarse hardness of stone under his feverish body was, alternately, the soft fibers of manna husks piled upon a sleeping ledge.

In the next phase of the here-there alternation, the distant
tap-tap-tap
commanded his attention. And its sharp echoes conveyed the impression of someone seated on a ledge absently drumming his finger on stone.

Light, but the man was
old!
Had it not been for the movement of his hand, he might easily have been mistaken for a skeleton. The head, trembling with an affliction of senility, was like a skull. And the beard, unkempt and sparse, trailed to the ground, losing itself in the inaudibility of its thinness.

Tap-tap-tap...drip-drip...

Jared was back in the corridor. And, like commingling sounds, the straggly beard had metamorphosed into the moist hanging stone.

“Relax, Jared. Everything’s under control now.”

He almost lurched out of the dream. “Kind Survivoress!”

“It’ll be less awkward if you just call me Leah.”

He puzzled over the name, then thought flatly, “I’m dreaming again.”

“For the moment—yes.”

Another anxious, soundless voice intruded, “Leah! How’s he doing?”

“Coming around,” she said.

“So I can hear.” Then, “Jared?”

Jared, however, had returned to the corridor—but only for a moment. Soon he was back on the manna fiber mattress in a minor world where the vague outline of a woman bent over him and an inconceivably ancient man sat against the far wall tapping his finger.

“Jared,” the woman offered, “that
other voice
was Ethan’s.”

“Ethan?”

“You knew him as Little Listener before we changed his name. He’s been out after game, but he’s coming back now.”

Jared was even more confused.

More to soothe him than for any other reason, he felt sure, the woman said, “I can’t believe you found your way here after all these gestations.”

He started to say something, but she interrupted, “Don’t explain. I heard everything from your mind—what you were doing in the passages, how you were bitten by—”

“Della!” he shouted, remembering.

“She’ll be all right. I reached you in time.”

Abruptly, he realized he was awake now and that Kind Survivoress’ last words had been spoken.

“Not Kind Survivoress, Jared—Leah.”

And he was astonished by his audible impression of the woman. He sent his hands groping over her face, across her shoulders, along her arms. Why—she wasn’t the least bit old!

“What did you expect—someone like the Forever Man?”
She sent her thoughts to him.
“After all, I was really practically a child when I used to go to you.”

He listened more closely at her. Hadn’t she once told him she could reach his mind only when he was asleep?

“Only when you’re asleep if you’re far away,” she clarified. “When you’re this close you don’t have to be asleep.”

He studied her auditory reflections. She was perhaps a bit taller than Della. But her proportions, despite her nine or ten gestations’ seniority over the girl, suffered none in comparison. She was closed-eyed and kept her hair clipped shoulder-length on the sides, reaching to her eyebrows in front.

Turning his ears on his surroundings, he listened to a small, dismal world with a scattering of hot springs, each surrounded by its usual clump of manna plants; an arm of a river flowing out of and right back into the wall; another slumber ledge nearby—Della there, asleep. All these impressions he sifted from the echoes provided by the finger tapping of—the Forever Man?

“That’s right,” Leah confirmed.

He rose, feeling not as weak as he thought he would, and started across the world.

Leah cautioned, “We don’t disturb him until he stops tapping.”

He came back and stood in front of the woman, still rejecting the fact that he was actually
here,
in his preposterous dream setting. “How did you know I was out in the corridor?”

“I listened to you coming.” And he heard the unspoken explanation that
listen,
in this case, didn’t mean hearing
sound
.

She placed a solicitous hand on his shoulder. “And I also hear from your thoughts that this Della is a Zivver.”

“She thinks I’m one too.”

“Yes, I know. And I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”

“I—”

“Oh, I know what you have in mind. But I still don’t understand it. I realize you want to get to the Zivver World so you can hunt for Darkness.”

“For Light too. And using Della is the only way I can get in.”

“So I hear. But how do you know what
her
plans are? I don’t trust the girl, Jared.”

“It’s just because you can’t listen to what she’s thinking.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m so used to hearing feelings, intentions, that I’m lost when outer impressions are all I have to go by.”

“You won’t tell Della I’m not like her?”

“If that’s the way you want it. We’ll just let her go on believing you’re the only Zivver whose mind I can reach. But I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Little Listener came storming into the world and it was remarkable that his exuberant shouts failed to rouse Della and were ignored by the Forever Man, who merely continued his tapping.

“Jared! Where are you?”

“Over here!” Jared was suddenly swept up in the excitement of renewing an acquaintance he hadn’t even known was real.

“He can’t hear you—remember?” Leah reminded.

“But he’s running straight toward us!” Then he puzzled over the scent of—crickets?—that was coming from Little Listener.

“Ethan,” Leah corrected. “And those
are
crickets. He keeps a pouch filled with them. Unhearable cricket noises make just as good echoes for him as clickstones do for you.”

Then the other was upon him and, in a bone-crushing embrace, swung him around and around as easily as he would a bundle of manna stalks.

Jared’s gratification over the reunion was dulled by his awed appreciation of Ethan’s tremendous proportions. It was just as well that Little Listener had been banished from the Upper Level because of his uncanny hearing. Otherwise, he most certainly would have been expelled later for his almost inhuman size.

“You old son of a soubat!” Ethan chortled. “I knew you’d come some period!”

“Light, but it’s good to—” Jared broke off in mid-sentence as blunt, trembling fingers came to rest lightly against his lips.

“Let him,” Leah urged. “That’s the only way he can find out what you’re saying.”

They spent the better part of a period talking about their childhood meetings. And Jared had to tell them about the worlds of man, how it felt to live with many people, what the Zivvers’ latest tricks were, whether there had been any more Different Ones recently.

They interrupted their session once to haul food from a boiling pit and bring a portion to the Forever Man. But the latter, still not talkatively disposed, ignored their presence.

Later, Jared said in answer to Leah’s question, “Why do I want to go to the Zivver World? Because I’ve got a hunch that’s the right place to hunt for Darkness and Light.”

Ethan shook his head. “Forget it. You’re here; stay here.”

“No. This is something I’ve
got
to do.”

“Great flying soubats!” the other exclaimed. “You never had ideas like that before!”

At this point Jared, from the edge of his hearing, caught the impression of Della stirring on her ledge.

He hurried over and knelt beside her. He felt her face and it was cool and dry, signifying that she had slept off the fever.

“Where are we?” she asked weakly.

He started to tell her, but before he got halfway through he heard that she had drifted into normal sleep.

***

During the next period Della more than made up for her inactivity of the previous one. That she had been pensively silent on hearing Jared explain about the world they were in and on meeting Leah and Ethan was a prelude to something or other.

When they were alone later, kneeling beside a hot spring and applying fresh poultices to their spider bites, he learned the reason for her reticence.

“When was the last time you were here?” she demanded.

“Oh, so many gestations ago that I—”

“Manna sauce!” She turned away and the Forever Man’s tapping sounds blunted themselves against the cool stiffness of her back. “I must say, your Kind Survivoress is
quite
a surprise.”

“Yes, she—” Then he understood what she was intimating.

“Kind Survivoress—I’ll
bet
she was kind!”

“You don’t think—”

“Why did you bring me along? Was it because you thought that awkward giant might be interested in a Unification partner?”

Then she relented. “Oh, Jared, have you forgotten about the Zivver World already?”

“Of course not.”

“Then let’s get on our way.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t just run off. Leah saved our lives. These are friends!”

“Friends!” She cleared her throat and made it sound like the lash of a swish-rope. “You and your friends!”

Her head insolently erect, she strode off.

Jared followed, but drew up sharply when the world was suddenly cast into silence.

The Forever Man had stopped tapping! He was ready for company!

Unaccountably hesitant, Jared advanced cautiously across the world. Leah and Ethan had been credible. But the Forever Man loomed like a haunting creature from a fantastic past—someone whom he could never hope to understand.

Orienting himself by the asthmatic rasps that came from ahead, he approached the ledge.

“This is Jared,”
Leah’s unspoken introduction rippled the psychic silence.
“He’s finally come to hear us.”

“Jared?”
The other’s reply, carried weakly on the crest of the woman’s thoughts, was burdened with the perplexity of forgetfulness.

“Of course, you remember.”

The Forever Man tapped inquisitively. And Jared intercepted the impression of a thin finger delving almost its entire length into a depression in the rock before producing each
tap.
Over untold generations his thumping had eroded the stone
that much!

“I don’t know you.” The voice, a pained whisper, was coarse as a rock slide.

“Leah used to sort of—bring me here long ago.”

“Oh,
Ethan’s
little friend!” A hand that was all bone set up an audible flutter as it trembled forward. It seized Jared’s wrist in a grip as tenuous as air. The Forever Man tried to smile, but the composite was grossly confused by a disheveled beard, skeletal protuberances and a misshapen, toothless mouth.

“How old
are
you?” Jared asked.

Even as he posed the question he knew it was unanswerable. Living by himself, before Leah and Ethan had come, the man would have had no life spans or gestations against which to measure time’s passage.

“Too old, son. And it’s been
so
lonely.” The straining voice was a murmur of despair against the stark silence of the world.

“Even with Leah and Ethan?”

“They don’t know what it means to have listened to loved ones pass on countless ages ago, to be banished from the beauties of the Original World, to—”

Jared started. “You
lived
in the Original World?”

“—to be cast out after hearing your grandchildren and their great-great-grandchildren grow into Survivorship.”

“Did you live in the Original World?” Jared demanded.