Conference noted::sf

1198.0. "Gotlieb/White/Wallace/Price/McIntyre" by VERGA::KLAES (Quo vadimus?) Fri Nov 26 1993 15:44

Article: 445
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews
Subject: REPOST: Belated Reviews PS#31: Gotlieb/White/Wallace/Price/McIntyre
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 25 Nov 93 17:16:52 GMT
 
Belated Reviews PS#31: Short Takes on Gotlieb/White/Wallace/Price/McIntyre
 
"Sunburst" (***+), by Phyllis Gotlieb (1964) is one of the better takes on
the children-of-the-atom theme.  In this case they're called 'Dumplings',
because when their powers manifested -- violently -- they were imprisoned
in a high-tech containment known as the Dump, and declared a secret.  (The
original nuclear accident, the 'Blowup' was kept secret.  Once you start
hiding things like that, it becomes difficult to stop.)  The Dumplings'
first rampage was spontaneous.  By the time they escape the Dump, years
later, their second rampage has a real head of rage behind it.  The story
is told from the perspective of Shandy, a precocious thirteen-year-old who
is not a Dumpling and can't read minds or telekinetically toss around
heavy machinery -- but who is somehow impervious to being mind-read.
"Sunburst" takes a thoughtful and sympathetic look at an evolutionary
advance that might be an evolutionary mistake.  Among her other books,
Gotlieb is also the author of "A Judgment of Dragons" (***+), in which she
takes the overworked cliche of intelligent, telepathic felines and manages
to make them complex and interesting without making them disguised humans.
 
"The Watch Below" (***), by James White (1966) tells the parallel (and
intersecting) stories of two thoroughly isolated groups.  One consists of
a handful of people trapped in an underwater wreck during WWII.  They
manage to put together a scratch ecosystem in which they can survive (this
was obviously written pre-biosphere) but beyond that they have nothing to
do but look at the walls and stay sane, as generations go by.  Meanwhile,
in space, a fleet of ships is fleeing a nova and heading towards Earth.
Most of the survivors are in cold sleep, but a crew stays awake -- as
generations go by.  It's a flawed book, but it's my personal favorite from
White's four decades of writing.  He is also the author of the "Sector
General" series (his novels generally have medical tie-ins), about a hospital
meant to serve a vast disarray of species, of which "Star Surgeon" (***)
may be the best.  (The sequels start to drag after a while.)
 
"The World Assunder" (***+), by Ian Wallace (1976), is a strange romp.
That can be said about all his books, actually.  They all combine strange
premises, strange (albeit competent) characters, and a refusal to take
themselves too seriously.  This science fantasy consists of two parallel
and interacting (yes, we're being non-Euclidean today) stories.  One takes
place in 1952, when the main characters first encounter (create?) the
being who calls himself (?) Kali.  The other takes place in 2002, when
Kali finally succeeds in destroying the Earth (which is a bad thing but
not, if you'll pardon the expression, the end of the world).  It's an odd
book.  The author's attention, and perforce the readers', is focused far
less upon the how and why of these events than upon (to quote from the
preface) "the responses of different kinds of intelligent people confronted
by absolutely impossible situations."  Other books by Wallace include "The
Lucifer Comet" (***+), in which a neanderthaloid Satan meets a modern
Pandora, and "Deathstar Voyage" (***), a Claudine St. Cyr 'mystery'.  None
of which are going to be to all tastes.
 
"The Jade Enchantress" (***+) is by E. Hoffmann Price (1982).  Note that
date, because this is the same Price who was writing for the pulps in the
twenties and thirties.  His later books certainly don't *read* like period
pieces, though!  The Jade Enchantress of the title is a minor Immortal, a
Buddhist nun promoted to the celestial bureaucracy.  After a thousand years
of making jade out of moon beams, she petitions Chang Wo, the moon goddess,
for a change of pace:  She wants a lover.  In fact, she has just the man
picked out.  The lucky man is Ju-hai -- who wasn't consulted, and whose
troubles are just beginning.  This is the book I point people to when they
want something "like Hughart's 'Bridge of Birds'".  It's not as good as
Hughart's book -- though Price was probably more knowledgeable about the
milieu -- but it's quite good.  Price also wrote "The Devil Wives of Li
Fong" (***), which you might think of as a rough draft of "The Jade
Enchantress" (with different characters), and the 'Operation' series,
which is self-indulgent and strange sf/satire. 
 
"Dreamsnake" (****), by Vonda N. McIntyre (1978).  I'm being silly again.
Nobody's going to read this who hasn't already read "Dreamsnake", right?
Right.  Oh, well, as long as I've started... Snake is a healer, which in
the post-holocaust world of the novel means that, among things, she has
snakes which have been bioengineered to produce medicines.  She also has
a dreamsnake -- a creature of unknown but probably alien origin -- until
it is killed through a wretched misunderstanding.  And dreamsnakes are
scarce -- irreplaceable.  It's a brilliantly written book, set in a highly
original world.  The novel has two antecedents.  It is an expansion of the
novelette "Of Mist, Grass and Sand" (****, a Nebula award winner) and its
setting is that of her early but promising "The Exile Waiting" (**+).  The
novelette ends with the death of the dreamsnake, and it's rarely a favor
to a short piece to expand it into a novel, but in this case McIntyre
manages to maintain most of the quality of the original as she takes Snake
through more of her world.  McIntyre's written good books since, but
nothing this good.  
 
%A  Gotlieb, Phyllis
%T  Sunburst
 
%A  White, James
%T  The Watch Below
 
%A  Wallace, Ian
%T  The World Assunder
 
%A  Price, E. Hoffman
%T  The Jade Enchantress
 
%A  McIntyre, Vonda M.
%T  Dreamsnake
 
=============================================================================
 
The postscripts to Belated Reviews cover authors of earlier decades who
didn't fit into the original format -- whether because the author seemed
an inappropriate subject, or because I was unfamiliar with too much of the
author's work, or whatever -- or sometimes just isolated works of such
authors.  The emphasis will continue to be on guiding newer readers
towards books or authors worth trying out, rather than on discussing them
comprehensively or in depth.  I'll retain the rating scheme of ****
(recommended), *** (an old favorite that hasn't aged well), ** (a solid
lesser work), and * (nothing special). 
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]
 
   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own

		--Alexander Pope
  

>He is also the author of the "Sector
>General" series (his novels generally have medical tie-ins), about a hospital
>meant to serve a vast disarray of species, of which "Star Surgeon" (***)
>may be the best.  (The sequels start to drag after a while.)
    
    I like the Sector General series. It has its faults, but the aliens are
    interesting (and there lots of them). The sequels were starting to drag, but
    the latest I have read - "Code Blue Emergency" - is as good as any of them.
    It features an alien as the main character, rather than the human surgeon
    Conway who is featured in almost all the other stories, and who is not very
    interesting.
    
    Peter

Article: 679
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Vonda McIntyre: Nautilus
Sender: [email protected] (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh, PA USA
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 1994 00:00:27 GMT
 
"Nautilus" is the fourth and last book in Vonda McIntyre's "Starfarers"
series.  I seem to have been in the minority in not caring for
"Starfarers", the first book in the series.  I thought it complex and
imaginative, but uninteresting for all that.  The books following it,
however, "Transition", "Metaphase", and now "Nautilus", have been better.
 
At the core of "Nautilus" is a best-intentions First Contact:  Instead of
introducing a host of melodramatic plot devices, the author assumes that
both sides are intelligent, reasonably tolerant, and anxious for the
contact to succeed.  This still doesn't preclude misunderstandings,
missteps, and sheer stupidity getting in the way, but it enables us to
focus on the wonder of the contact, not on arbitrary plot complications.
 
There are enough complications built in.  The Starfarers are being asked
to take a lot on trust (and risk mucking up the contact if they don't).
They are being asked to hand over an algorithm which is clearly of great
value to those they contact.  They face an amusing ethical dilemma in that
the aliens also seem to place a great value on what the Starfarers can't
convince them is a fake fossil bed.  And they face a serious ethical
dilemma over whether they can make agreements on behalf of Earth -- and
whether they can pass up the opportunity.
 
If the contact was the best part of the book for me, the plot complications
were the weakest.  There are the romantic subplots, the main one being
driven primarily by one of the characters acting like an idiot, and the
mystery/thriller subplot, which is driven by a seemingly pointless
malevolence directed at a seemingly unlikely target, and a few personal
crises which simply don't get enough air-time to become interesting.
 
One theme I'd have liked to see explored more was that of behavior- and
dominance-patterns being played out in surroundings where they don't make
sense.  One of the frustrating challenges facing the Starfarers throughout
the series has been the presence of people who are important on Earth, but
who are just in the way aboard the Starfarer -- and who will not contribute
to (or actively obstruct) important endeavors.  At the end of the journey,
however, the shoe will be on the other foot:  Those self-important
obstructionists will be back in an environment in which their power counts
for a great deal, and in which their view of the mission may become its
official history.
 
Ursula K. Le Guin contributed a cover blurb which described "Nautilus" as
"the breathtaking conclusion to the most important series in science
fiction."  Well, it isn't.  It is, however, a thought-provoking and
largely satisfying conclusion to what has turned out to be an interesting
and enjoyable tetralogy.
 
%A McIntyre, Vonda N.
%T Nautilus
%I Bantam Spectra
%C New York
%D October, 1994
%G ISBN 0-553-56026-3
%P 419 pp.
%O $5.99
%S Starfarers
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]  [email protected]
 
   Should 'anal retentive' have a hyphen? -- unidentified passing t-shirt