James Nicoll Reviews

Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s 1953 The Space Merchants is a near-future SF satire. It was followed by The Merchant’s War, written by Pohl alone. 

Earth is a utopia. Population continues to soar and with it the economy explodes unchecked. True, supporting such a vast economic enterprise demands bold solutions to the challenge of dwindling resources, but only the worst sort of Consie—the Conservationists, lowest of the low — would object. Nation-states are guided by what best serves the corporations who effectively own the governments. At the top of this most perfect society sit the advertising experts who shape opinion. 

Mitch Courtenay, a Fowler Schocken Associates advertising agency star-class copywriter, is one of the elite. He has his own lavish two-bedroom apartment, can afford unreconstituted food, and enjoys the confidence of Fowler Schocken himself. He is, in other words, a man on his way up.

There are one or two tiny flaws in his idyllic life.

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2020’s Warchild (Monstress, Volume 5) collects issues 25 to 30 of Marjorie Liu’s ongoing cosmic-horror-fantasy-war comic series. Art is by Sana Takeda.

The previous war between the Federation of Man and the Arcanic Empire ended when the city of Constantine was annihilated, taking over a hundred thousand people with it. The Federation credited the weapon used to the Arcanics — inaccurately, although the Arcanics were in no hurry to correct the error — and lacking their own equivalent, backed down to regroup. 

When the Federation’s holy city of Aurum is obliterated by a seemingly similar weapon, the logical inference is that the Arcanic Empire is to blame. They are not but the war is back on regardless.

High on the Federation’s to-conquer list: the city of Ravenna.

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Allie Brosh’s 2020 Solutions and Other Problems marked the end of a seven-year drought (no books, no web posts). The latest volume is a loosely structured collection of illustrated autobiographical anecdotes. Illustrated as only Brosh can illustrate.

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2006’s The Library War (Toshokan Sensō) is the first volume in Hiro Arikawa’s Seiun-winning Library War novel series. 

In the last year of the Shouwa period, the Media Improvement Act provided the Improvement Special Agencies of the Ministry of Justice with sweeping powers of censorship and confiscation. Since criticism of the Act fell within the scope of the Act, legal reform of the Act is unlikely. Protecting Japan’s literary world therefore fell to the nation’s libraries, who soon found legal pretexts both to claim the right to assemble inclusive archives and more importantly, to arm their Library Defense Force. There will be no repeat of the Nightmare at Nino! 

The libraries follow four core principles.

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2020’s The Unspoken Name is the first novel in A. K. Larkwood’s new series, The Serpent Gates. 

Csorwe is the latest in a long line of Chosen Brides of the Unspoken One. Until she turns fourteen, she will serve as a prophetess in the House of Silence. When she turns fourteen, she will ascend to the Shrine of the Unspoken One, perform a religious rite, and then disappear into the Shrine, never to be seen again.

What exactly happens to the Brides is unknown — each Bride enters the Shrine alone — but hauntings by revenants of previous Brides suggests that it’s nothing good. Csorwe will soon discover for herself the fate of Brides, because her fourteenth birthday is imminent. 

Then a stranger arrives.

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Angela Mi Young Hur’s 2021 Folklorn is an up-coming contemporary fantasy novel.

Else Park splits her time between stalking the wild neutrino in desolate Antarctica and doing physics research in Sweden. She’s aiming at professional success — which will be hers if her hypothesis is supported by experimental evidence — and also at emotion management: putting thousands of kilometres between her and her family back in America. 

Turns out that this isn’t far enough.

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G. Harry Stine’s 1954 Starship Through Space is a standalone juvenile SF novel. It was published under his pen name, Lee Correy. It shares a setting and a character with 1953’s And a Star to Steer Her By.

Granted a leave of absence from Schiaparelli Space Academy on Mars, Walter ​“Walt” Hansman is summoned back to Earth by his father. He fears that this might be bereavement leave, but Commander Le Farge assures Walt that whatever has happened, or is happening, it is not that Walt’s mother has died. Otherwise, neither the Commander nor the summons provides any hint as to what waits on Earth.

Warning: this review contains spoilers for a book I am pretty sure you will never read.

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Gardner Dozois’ 1988 The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection is the fifth Dozois anthology of noteworthy science fiction from the previous calendar year. I too am horrified that Dozois used the term ​“collection” when ​“anthology” would have been more appropriate. 

And what did the SF of 1987 — now thirty-four years in the past — look like?

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Crystal M. Huff’s 2020 Recognize Fascism is an anthology of stories about people recognizing fascism. It’s example of truth in advertising, which is something in short supply in certain circles these days.

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Eiko Kadono 1985 Kiki’s Delivery Service is a coming-of-age fantasy novel, the first of a series featuring the eponymous Kiki. Illustrations are by Yuta Onoda. Translation is by Emily Balistrieri.

Kiki is half-witch: her mother Kokiri is a witch while her father, folklorist Okiro, is human. She has the choice of two heritages but can embrace only one. She chooses witch but … to her mother’s disappointment has mastered but a single witchy talent: flying her broom.

Nevertheless, Kiki is thirteen. For witches that means leaving home to find their destiny out in the world. Accompanied by her cat, Jiji, and her parents’ best wishes, Kiki flies away from her former home and heads off to her new one. 

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