1977’s Ordinary Jack is the first volume in Helen Cresswell’s YA Bagthorpe Saga.

The Bagthorpes are perhaps the single greatest collection of geniuses the world has ever seen. At least, that is what the Bagthorpes would say … and if you cannot trust the single greatest collection of geniuses the world has ever seen, whom¹ can you trust?

Jack Bagthorpe is the sole exception. Poor Jack is exceptionally unexceptional.

Read review

1954’s Search the Sky is a standalone(ish) science fiction novel. It was the second novel-length collaboration between Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth,.

Ross has lived his whole life on Halsey’s Planet. Somehow he senses what his fellows cannot or will not: population levels are slowly, inexorably declining. The future will be grim.

Halsey’s Planet is just one of many worlds settled by humans. Contact with its sister worlds is intermittent, carried out by sublight longliners, smaller versions of the ships that delivered the original colonists to Halsey’s Planet fourteen centuries earlier.

A longliner arrives with an inbred crew of happy idiots bearing an enigmatic message and doleful news about the other human worlds. Another Halsey merchant, Haarland, asks Ross to come meet with him. This is odd, as Ross works for a rival firm. It turns out that Haarland has some bad news to share.

 Spoilers….

Read review

Robert C. O’Brien’s 1971 Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a standalone children’s SF novel. O’Brien wrote no sequels.

Mrs. Frisby (a mouse) and her children (mice) have taken shelter in a cinder block near one of the fields owned by farmer Fitzgibbons. Winter is over and plowing season is approaching. The widow Frisby must move her children before a plow smashes into their home.

In previous years, Mrs. Frisby had no trouble relocating her family before plowing season. This year is different.

Read review

2017’s Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is the first volume in Julie C. Dao’s Rise of the Empress series.

Xifeng has been raised from birth to marry Emperor Jun. It is a lofty ambition (very much so given that Xifeng is a poor orphan) but it is not entirely unreasonable. Xifeng’s abusive aunt Guma claims to possess magical powers; she insists that one day Xifeng will be great and powerful. Also, Xifeng is an unparalleled beauty, which should smooth her rise to empress .

Tired of Guma’s beatings, Xifeng flees with Wei, a young soldier who is utterly besotted with Xifeng. Alas for Wei, she is not besotted with Wei. Xifeng has a plan. A plan that involves the emperor.

Read review

Sorata Akizuki’s Snow White with the Red Hair (Akagami no Shirayukihime) is an ongoing shoujo manga. It is very, very, very loosely based on the folktale of Snow White.

Prince Raji of Tabarun decides to take herbalist Shirayuki as his next concubine. Why? Because her hair is the colour of red ripe apples. It does not occur to him that Shirayuki might have her own thoughts about the matter. He dispatches a summons and awaits his new red-haired lover.

Rather than submit to being a spoiled prince’s momentary pastime, Shirayuki cuts off her long red hair, leaving it for the prince who valued it so much, then decamps for the neighbouring kingdom of Clarines. Along the way she takes shelter in an abandoned mansion, one that is not so empty as it appears.

Enter another prince.

Read review

Margaret Mahy’s 1984 The Changeover is a standalone YA fantasy novel.

Schoolgirl Laura Chant lives with her divorced mother Kate and her younger brother Jacko. One morning she wakes with a premonition that life in the quiet Christchurch suburb of Gardendale is about to change for the worse. She knows from past experience that her premonitions are trustworthy. However, there seems to be nothing she can do to prevent whatever fate is looming. She must carry on as normal and hope for the best.

She does not get the best.

Read review

1954’s The Caves of Steel is the first of Isaac Asimov’s novels that feature Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw.

Elijah is a human. R. Daneel is a robot. They fight crime!

Read review

2016’s The Girl From Everywhere is the first volume in Heidi Heilig’s YA time-travel series, The Girl From Everywhere.

Sixteen-year-old Nix Song has seen more of the world than most people. She has spent most of her life on her father’s ship, the Temptation, sailing the seven seas … and the timestream. Her father, Slate, is a Navigator. His special powers mean that all of recorded history is within reach.

There is of course a catch.

Read review

Megan E. O’Keefe’s upcoming 2019 Velocity Weapon is the first volume in her projected Protectorate series.

In the 22^nd century, Alexandra Halston’s invention of Prime gave humanity the Casimir Gates and access to the stars. By the 36^th century, Prime spans many systems. Prime’s Keepers carefully maintain the network and all that is necessary to create more gates, in return for which they impose tariffs on the goods shipped from system to system. Everyone who matters agrees that this is a just arrangement — save for the planet of Icarion.

Read review

2019’s The Wandering Earth (Chinese: 流浪地球) is a 2019 Chinese film adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novella of the same name (which I have not read). It is directed by Frant Gwo and stars Qu Chuxiao, Li Guangjie, Ng Man-tat, Zhao Jinmai, Wu Jing, and Qu Jingjing. A major hit in China, it was stealth-released on Netflix on May 6, 2019.

Bad news for Earth! The Sun is transitioning from a main sequence star to a red giant five billion years ahead of schedule. Life within the Solar System will soon become impossible.

There’s an alternative to extinction, at least for humanity. Simply move the Earth to the Alpha Centauri system.

Read review

1987’s Wild Cards is the first volume in George R. R. Martin’s ongoing superhero shared-universe project of the same name.

Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the anthology (i.e. the table of contents).

“Prologue (Wild Cards I)” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

Thirty Minutes Over Broadway! • novelette by Howard Waldrop

The Sleeper • novelette by Roger Zelazny

Witness • novelette by Walter Jon Williams

Degradation Rites • novelette by Melinda M. Snodgrass

“Interlude One” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

Shell Games • novelette by George R. R. Martin

“Interlude Two” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

“The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato” • short story by Lewis Shiner

Transfigurations • novelette by Victor Milán

“Interlude Three” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

Down Deep • novelette by Edward Bryant and Leanne C. Harper

“Interlude Four” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

Strings • novelette by Stephen Leigh

“Interlude Five” • short fiction by George R. R. Martin

Comes a Hunter • novelette by John J. Miller

“Epilogue: Third Generation” • short fiction by Lewis Shiner

“The Science of the Wild Card Virus: Excerpts from the Literature” • short fiction by Victor Milán

For the most part, the interludes are pretend non-fiction pieces intended to flesh out the worldbuilding.

The planet Takis and 1940s Earth are both inhabited by humans. Why this is so, the Takisians do not know, but it does mean that backwater Earth is an ideal test site for a biological weapon. The man Earth will come to call Doctor Tachyon does his best to prevent the delivery of the weapon to Earth; he fails. Others, including war hero Jetboy, do their best to prevent the detonation of the device; they fail as well.

Those inhabitants of New York who don’t reach shelter in time are exposed to the Wild Cards virus. Ninety percent of the people who contract it die horribly. Of the ones who survive, ninety percent are horribly transformed. These are the Jokers. This is an era that values conformity; any sort of physical imperfection or unusual appearance is enough to turn someone into a pariah. Shunned, Jokers congregate in their own slums.

That leaves the final ten percent of survivors. These lucky few are transformed in ways society finds acceptable: good-looking, super-powered, they can become celebrities. Some even try their hands at being heroes. These last are repaid for their good deeds in the usual fashion: they’re often ignored, sometimes punished, infrequently rewarded.

 ~oOo~

Shared universe anthologies were a popular format in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Examples include Thieves World, Heroes in Hell, Liavek, Wild Cards, and Man-Kzin Wars, and many many others. I’m reviewing Wild Cards because it was competently done and it’s still on-going.

Well, actually … I was thinking of doing the Liavek series and even purchased an ebook. Alas, I discovered that my new ebook does not include all of the original stories¹.

Whereas the current edition of Wild Cards has more stories than appeared originally. I’m reviewing the1987 edition, not the expanded edition.

Revisiting this series after thirty-three years….

As I recall, the Wild Cards project grew out of Martin and chums’ fondness for the roleplaying game Superworld. Gaming was taking time away from writing, as astounding as that may sound in an era when no author ever allows themself such distractions. Wild Cards was not just an attempt to jump on the shared universe bandwagon; it was an attempt to monetize time otherwise wasted on mere enjoyment.

It turned out that Martin’s fellow gamers were pretty good writers. Can one generalize? Is the sort of imagination you need to be a good RPG player also the kind of talent you need to write compelling stories? I would argue that it’s not surprising that the skills exercised when creating RPG campaigns and characters can be applied to prose writing².

It may be significant that the specific game Martin and company played (and that inspired their setting) was Superworld. Chaosium’s Superworld used a point-based design in which the total number of points available was equal to the sum of the characteristics the player randomly rolled. This meant that there was considerable variation in the power level available to characters. As well, because this was a BRP/Runequest-derived system, even tough characters could be … fragile. Regular folk can be squashed or dismembered with ease. It’s a nasty world out there.

Rather than explaining superhero origins with a lot of disparate incidents (lab accidents, rescue rockets, etc.) this world explains them all with one event, the release of the virus. The variable effects of the virus allow for the creation of pretty much any kind of character the players and writers could imagine.

Thanks to the lookist bigotry of the society, it’s easy to forgive characters who live on the wrong side of the law³. They needn’t be bad … but all too often they are. Some of the most memorable characters in this series are also the least likeable. Super-pimp Fortunato is a champ at grooming women for prostitution. The prodigiously powerful Great and Powerful Turtle spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself.

The series is often violent. Martin is fond of using rape as a plot-engine. The series is often not fun to read. It gets tedious. But there are exceptions. When I first read these stories, I found a number of them impressive (Sleeper, Witness, Shell Games in particular). Rereading established that yes, they were memorable, and yes, they were still quite good.

The Wild Cards shared universe has survived for three decades (while competitors died) and at least three changes of publisher, all thanks to its discerning editors. They picked talented writers and good stories. Too bad about the violence and rape.

Wild Cards is available here (Amazon), here (Amazon.ca). If Chapters-Indigo has it, their terrible search engine successfully hid it from me.

1: The Amazon listing does make this clear, but I was insufficiently diligent.

2: This sort of cross-over must be pretty common. Members of my own gaming group, which the mediocrity principle suggests is unlikely to be exceptional, have garnered five spots on Hugo finalist lists, not to mention nomination for the Nebula, Locus, Sunburst, Campbell, and the Tiptree awards. Members have also served as jurors for awards like the Tiptree and the Diverse Writers Award.

3: The fact that Marvel’s Magneto thought “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” was a good name for a superhero collective suggests that those mutants could have done with Don Draper and Peggy Olson’s help. Perhaps a concerted campaign against ableist and lookist prejudice? Of course, successful campaigns would erase one of the appeals of the superhero genre: identifying with protagonists who are unappreciated, who may hide behind an everyday identity, but who are still worthy of love and admiration. Who hasn’t felt like that?

Read review

Robert Sheckley’s 1966 Mindswap is a standalone SF comedy.

Interplanetary travel is prohibitively expensive. Interstellar travel even more-so. Bad news for Marvin Flynn, a small town young man with the travel bug.

Even though travelling in person is far too expensive for Marvin, there exists an affordable alternative. Simply dispatch his mind to some waiting body on a far-off world. What could go wrong?

Read review

2013’s Natural Selection is an ancillary work to Malinda Lo’s Adaptation¹.

Amber was born on distant Kurra before moving with her parents to Earth. She looks human enough to pass without notice. None of Amber’s schoolmates know that an alien is among them².

This piece describes two rites of passage: one on Kurra (obligatory for Imrians like Amber) and one on Earth (not a formal rite of passage, but nonetheless a formative experience for Amber). Amber’s Earth experience takes place two years before her Kurra rite.

Read review

Kingdom is a 2019 South Korean television series. It was written by Kim Eun-hee and directed by Kim Seong-hun. There are six episodes in season one, of which this is the third. The primary cast are (from Wikipedia):

• Ju Ji-hoon as Crown Prince Yi Chang

• Ryu Seung-ryong as Cho Hak-ju

• Bae Doo-na as Seo-bi

• Kim Sung-gyu as Yeong-shin

Prince Yi Chang, crown prince of Great Joseon, is trying to discover just what is going on with his father, the king, who is secluded in his palace. The prince is opposed by his stepmother and her Haewon Cho clan. As a result, the prince is now a wanted man. Oh, and the kingdom is threatened with zombie apocalypse.

Read review

2018’s The Barrow Will Send What It May is the second entry in Margaret Killjoy’s Danielle Cain series.

Danielle and her new chums Brynne, Doomsday, Vulture, and Thursday survived the events in The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, the previous book in the series. However, they find themselves suspected of causing (rather than surviving) the pile of dead police in the town of Lamb. Rather than try to convince skeptical detectives that the dead cops were slain by a demon, the quintet have hit the road. Perhaps they can become itinerant demon-hunters?

America’s great highway network will whisk them away from suspicion. It’s a fine plan. Too bad Danielle manages to total the car near Pendleton, Montana.

Read review

1948’s Beyond This Horizon¹ is a standalone novel by Robert A. Heinlein.

The development of workable methods for genetic selection sparked two genocidal wars. But all that’s in the past. The world has recovered. The Americas are practically a utopia. A long-running program aimed at creating the perfect human is close to completion. The latest iteration is Hamilton Felix. He would be the perfect man save for two flaws:

• He could have a perfect memory (or so think the program planners²).

• He refuses to marry and produce the child who would be the perfect human.

Oh, and his pal Monroe-Alpha has committed a spot of treason. We’ll get to that later.

Read review

Bruce Sterling’s 1985 hard SF novel Schismatrix is the sole novel set in his Shaper/Mechanist universe, a setting also featured in handful of short pieces¹.

The human colonies of the Solar System are divided into two factions: the Shapers, who want to enlist biology in reshaping humanity, and the Mechanists, who rely on technology. The two sides loath each other and are engaged in an increasingly tense cold war. It isn’t clear which camp will shape humanity’s future.

Abelard Lyndsay, born to a high-ranked family in the Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic, was sent as envoy to the Shaper city-states in the Rings of Saturn. This was during a brief period when the Republic was flirting with a Shaper alliance. Once the lunar aristocrats allied with the Mechanists, Abelard found himself an embarrassing relic of a failed policy.

Already radicalized by the Shapers, Abelard turned to extreme political gestures. Upshot: Abelard’s lover Vera dead, and Abelard an exile from his former home.

Read review

2019’s The River Twice is the first volume in Brenda W. Clough’s Edge to Center series.

It’s good to be the king! And if one lives in a purported republic with a dubious record of democratic transfer of power, it’s good to be the grand-daughter of the President. Calla Ang’s grandmother is Madame President of Jalanesia and (save for the tragic deaths of Calla’s parents when she was but a child) Calla’s life has so far been prosperous. Her future as the likely inheritor of her grand-mother’s position seems secure.

Her comfortable life is disrupted by the sudden appearance of a bewhiskered Englishman.

Read review

Gangsta, Volume 1 collects the first five issues of Kohske’s eponymous SF crime manga. First published in 2011, the English language edition came out in 2014.

Ergastulum is a hive of scum and villainy, populated by monsters and victims. The cops are crooked, the criminals are in charge, and life is for the most part unpleasant.

Worick Arcangelo and Nicolas Brown are handymen. They handle problems the other people of Ergastulum are unwilling or unable to face.

Read review

2019’s Atlas Alone is the fourth installment in Emma Newman’s Planetfall series.

Humanity’s second crewed starship is on its way to the distant star system pioneered by the Pathfinder. The 10,400 people on board Atlas 2 have a twenty-year voyage ahead of them¹, which raises the question of how they are to fill their time. Dee knows exactly how she will spend it.

(spoilers for After Atlas)

Read review

Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Akira was serialized in Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990. The first English translation was published by Marvel Comics’ Epic line from 1988 to 1995¹. The US edition pioneered the use of computer colourization, courtesy Steve Oliff. For many North Americans this was their introduction to manga.

Viktor Haag was kind enough to lend me his Epic collection.

Since I am not sure how the Epic volumes map onto the current version from Dark Horse, I decided to review the entire, 2000+ page work as a whole.

All together now:

 “TETSUOOOO!”

Read review

1970’s “Identified” was the first episode of the TV series UFO. The series was helmed by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, with Reg Hill. The episode was written by the Andersons and Tony Barwick and directed by Gerry Anderson. Unlike previous Anderson efforts, characters were portrayed not by puppets, but by live actors.

Humanity has incontrovertible proof that aliens have discovered Earth and are taking a close interest in humans. This interest outs itself whenever the aliens notice humans noticing them; the luckless humans are killed. One such attack on a highly placed colonel (played by Ed Bishop) moves the top powers of the day (US, USSR, etc.) to adopt a new strategy: secrecy. They’ll form a task force that will covertly investigate the aliens.

Ten years later…

Read review

Karen Lord’s 2019 Unraveling is a standalone fantasy.

Forensic therapist Dr. Miranda Ecouvo put detectives on the trail of a serial killer. He’s caught and convicted. But it’s not clear why the killer killed or who put him up to it. Human justice cannot solve this. But someone else can.

Read review

Una McCormack’s 2019’s The Undefeated is a science fiction novella.

After a long and successful career, famed journalist Monica Greatorex returns to Sienna, the backwater world from whence she came. She chooses an interesting time for her return. There have been great changes on Sienna. She observes and reflects.

Read review

James P. Hogan’s 1982 Voyage from Yesteryear is a standalone science fiction novel.

Faced with seemingly inevitable nuclear war in the near future, the North American Space Development Organization and its Asian partners decided to take the bold step of re-purposing the SP3 interstellar probe. Five years before its 2020 launch, the probe was redesigned to deliver human life to Chiron, the habitable world in the Alpha Centauri system. But there’s a catch.

Read review