Book Review: “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman (from Gateways)
Haldeman’s addition to Gateways is, thus far, one of the best stories in the lot (granted, by this point, I’ve only read three). “Sleeping Dogs” is another military-related science fiction story set some time after an interstellar war. Flann Spivey is an ex-soldier-turned-futuristic-psychiatrist whose job is to aid people who have essentially become immortal on their journey towards ending life. In particular, he serves other ex-military by helping them recover lost memories — memories, we learn, that were taken away from them at the end of the war. Spivey, however, has also lost memories, and has decided to return to a mining world on which he believes he once fought in order to recover them. I don’t want to say anything else about the story, because, in true Haldeman fashion, nothing is as it seems when it comes to the military. I have long since been a fan of The Forever War, having just taught it in my first college-level literature course, but “Sleeping Dogs” makes clear that Haldeman has a heck of a lot more to say about the military, soldiers, and militarized society — even in his ripe old age. In many ways, I see “Sleeping Dogs” as a mixture of The Forever War and an allegory of U.S. involvement in Central and South America. The Latin flavor to the story and the culture within it attest to this fact. But the most compelling part of the story is Haldeman’s continued reflection on humanity’s pension for warfare and its consequences. “Sleeping Dogs,” provides an afterwards-view of the soldier: Who do they become when the war is over? What do they do with themselves? And what do they do about what was taken from them? The memory loss, consequentially, serves both as a disturbing “evil” that allows us to sympathize with Flann, but it is also a small mercy. Soldiers today go to war and come back with the incomplete scars of things they remember in full, half remember, or have thrust upon them in flashbacks (PTSD). But Haldeman’s vision is both more sinister and reasonable: soldiers return with their scars, but without the memories to go along with them; instead, the best they can hope to find without deep medicated psychotherapy are their military records, which, we are led to assume, are intentionally made inaccurate. The mercy is made readily apparent: only those who have grown tired of exceedingly prolonged life (hundreds of years) might want to know what they really did all those centuries ago in those long-forgotten wars. All this is packed into a single short story, which I found thrilling precisely because it made me think and ask questions. The only thing that bothered me about “Sleeping Dogs” was the fact that Flann Spivey and the world/universe in which he lives are begging for a novel length treatment. Perhaps we will never see that novel, in part because it would be unfairly compared to The Forever War, but after reading “Sleeping Dogs,” I couldn’t help wanting to know more. I wanted to learn about what happened to Spivey after his discovery and the other folks who suffered similar fates. And when we get right down to it, maybe my desire for more is really a good thing after all. “Sleeping Dogs” is one of the best short stories I’ve read in a while. If you don’t have it, get Gateways and read it. It’s good stuff. Real good stuff. ——————————————————————- The above is the continuation of my story-by-story review of Gateways edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. Below are the reviews of other stories in the collection (which will be updated as reviews become available): “Shoresteading” by David Brin “Von Neuman’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven
Book Review: “Von Neumann’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein (from Gateways)
“Von Neumann’s Bug” (VNB) is occupied with a trope familiar to science fiction fans: the self-replicating machine. In this case, the machine is an alien search drone named Bert who terrorizes a small, middle-class family in an attempt to rebuild itself and escape Earth’s gravity to resume its mission. And it does so by inconspicuously tearing apart a man’s most prized possession: his car. In all honesty, I didn’t much care for VNB. As a humorous take on the Von Neumann concept, it lacked a certain kick that Brin’s preceding story, “Shoresteading,” brought to the anthology. The problem, I think, stems from the fact that the story offers no surprises. Everything the main character doesn’t know are things we do know because we are also presented with Bert’s perspective (and a third character — a military super computer). Even the attempts to paint the main character as mad fall short since nothing of note happens to him; in the end, Bert gets the materials he needs and escapes Earth, leaving the human character to pretend like nothing ever happened. VNB is the kind of story that might have done just fine 80 years ago when the idea was fresh and new, but as a new story (first published in Gateways), it’s little more than a repetition. And that’s really what kills any short story for me: if you’re dealing with a familiar concept, then you have to give me something else to latch onto. Because I have already seen the Von Neumann idea used a dozen times before, I was hoping for character development from the human character. But I never got that. Instead, the story ends with a few minor changes (the neighbors don’t talk to him anymore and he has to fix his car), but overall nothing new. That pretty sums up how I feel about this particular story. Thankfully, the Haldeman short that follows is much better. But you’ll have to wait for a review for that until later. ——————————————————————- The above is the continuation of my story-by-story review of Gateways edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. Below are the reviews of other stories in the collection (which will be updated as reviews become available): “Shoresteading” by David Brin “Von Neuman’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven
Book Review: “Shoresteading” by David Brin (from Gateways)
(I’ve decided to review each of the stories in Gateways — a collection edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull in honor of Frederik Pohl — individually. I will collect my thoughts about the anthology as a whole later. I’m doing this as a kind of experiment, as I find reviewing collections enormously difficult.) David Brin’s contribution to Gateways is an amusing 90+ page novella set in a post-global-warming China. Wer is a poor man trying to make a life for his wife and child by salvaging “valuable items” from the submerged ruins of old Shanghai in order to build a suitable habitat on the carcass of an old mansion. Understandably, things haven’t been going so well — that is until Wer discovers a secret basement full of unusual stones, one of which turns out to be an alien artifact sent thousands of years ago as part of an endless chain message to the stars. And Wer isn’t the only one surprised by the find: soon private groups intrude upon his life, pulling him away from his family and making him wonder if he’ll ever see them again. “Shoresteading” was a welcome shift from the fantasy novels I usually read for review. Purely science fiction, Brin’s tale is filled with exciting ideas. Brin fuses technology and slum-life seamlessly (in top-notch worldbuilding fashion). His world feels all-too-real, even while the narrative plays on stories we’ve read or seen before (alien contact/alien probe tales). And I think that’s what sets Brin’s story above other kinds of alien contact narratives: the alien contact is secondary, in a way, precisely because Brin’s main character is not an upper class everybody, but a lower class nobody who knows how he can be used and manipulated by the upper class and yet still must navigate that upper class world and the decimated planet around him. Wer’s struggle, to put it simply, is wonderfully human and wonderfully three dimensional. One of the other unique things about the “Shoresteading” is how Brin attempts to authenticate his Chinese vision. While I profess an ignorance about Chinese culture, Brin’s new Shanghai and his Chinese characters feel real, from their interaction with the decimated world around them to the ways in which Brin describes the new China. There are even hints at Chinese mythology in this story, with giant serpents and other animalistic robots making appearances (though some might apply the Jonah and the Whale story to “Shoresteading” as an allegorical comparative). While Brin’s vision is enjoyable, the story itself does suffer from some minor pacing issues. Brin shifts his focus more than once in the story in a slightly noticeable way. This produces a multi-tiered narrative which I knew couldn’t be fulfilled by the end and which gives the ending an incomplete feel, as if Brin meant for it to be part of a larger narrative and simply cut it off to fit it into a novella. The end doesn’t resolve the original conflict set up in the first ten to twenty pages, though it does hint that Wer will play a more active role in the future (a slow development that has show Wer going from helpless “toy” to empowered individual). In some ways, I wanted more of a resolution precisely because I cared about Wer and what happened to him. Perhaps the intention wasn’t to “complete” Wer’s narrative, but rather to provide an ambiguous close to reflect the initial perpetual struggle produced in the beginning. But despite feeling incomplete, I still quite enjoyed “Shoresteading.” Placing this story at the start of Gateways was a smart move. Anything less entertaining would make continuing with the anthology less-than-appealing. Instead, I, as a reader, want to know what other fascinating stories have been included. So far, things are looking up. ———————————————— Here are the other reviews (more as they are written): Below are the reviews of other stories in the collection (which will be updated as reviews become available): “Shoresteading” by David Brin “Von Neuman’s Bug” by Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein “Sleeping Dogs” by Joe Haldeman “Gates (Variations)” by Larry Niven
Book Review: Serial Killers Inc. by Andy Remic
Callaghan is a scallywag, divvying up his time between bedding married women, exploiting the vulnerable and dead to make a living at a tabloid magazine, and consuming enough alcohol and hardcore drugs to send him to an early grave. And things are going well for him on this destructive path. But Callaghan has an admirer, someone who has taken a keen interest in his lifestyle and transgressions. Soon Callaghan discovers that his admirer may have a hand in a string of murders in the area, and that he is somehow connected to them. Worst of all, this new killer has an idea to make Callaghan a part of the games. When the walls start to crumble around him and people start to die, Callaghan has to make a decision: continue with his careless lifestyle or finally take responsibility for his actions. But doing so might mean making allies with disreputable characters who have their own twisted sense of morality… Serial Killers Inc. is a disturbingly violent book which demonstrates once more why Remic is both a terrifying human being and a literary dynamo. When I reviewed Kell’s Legend, I said he was “the Tarantino of fantasy,” but having read Serial Killers Inc. I think it’s fair to say that he’s in a league all on his own, touched not by Tarantino’s cult sensibilities, but by the wicked recesses of the human mind. Serial Killers Inc. is a book that questions the morality of immoral people, challenging their limitations in what could be called an exaggerated allegory of “normal” human existence. It’s precisely Remic’s treatment of morality in Serial Killers Inc that makes the book more than a romp into vulgarity. Dragging Callaghan into a game of serial killers and monstrous people means finding a challenge fit for the character, but it also offers challenges to the reader, who might consider how the moral games played in the book reflect upon our world of grays. Remic’s work, however, is not for the faint of heart. It’s violent, crude, and sometimes even vulgar, pushing buttons even I find difficult to stomach. But such things don’t exist in Remic’s work without reason. Serial Killers Inc. is about characters who live in a world where vulgarity and perversion are regularities, and Remic has to find clever ways to make us care about these characters. After all, we would not normally identify with someone who is sleeping with a woman married to a murderer, nor someone who thinks of women as sex objects. And, in fact, it’s because Callaghan is these things that we begin to understand why Remic has chosen to torture him in this novel. Callaghan must be saved, not just from the evils of the world, but also from the evil in himself. This doesn’t mean that Callaghan will come out of the novel’s events a saint; rather, it means he has to acknowledge that his life of disconnection from consequence is unsustainable. Serial Killers Inc. may be a difficult book for some readers to swallow because of its language and themes, but if one can move past these to the heart of the tale (which seems to masquerade as a gory cult horror story, but is, in fact, much more), there’s a compelling story to be had. Serial Killers Inc. does have one major flaw. Most of the plot is straightforward and develops effectively, but where Remic falters is in the introduction of subplots. One of the major subplots is actually a whodunnit mystery narrative with a near-mystical resolution. I thought the way the story turned out was fantastic, but it came too suddenly and with too little foreshadowing to have the impact it needed. Remic does insert clues, but they are often too vague or too short, sometimes even difficult to disentangle from the insanity of the characters who present them (perhaps this is his intention). The novel might have benefited from a linear development of Callaghan’s investigations into the mysteries surrounding the murders of which he has unwittingly become a part. Remic’s novel clearly deals with detective tropes alongside its deconstructions of contemporary morality and cult horror elements. I simply would have liked to see the detective bits expanded as well as the others. As a novel in a new genre for Remic (he traditionally writes science fiction and fantasy), Serial Killers Inc. is a brilliant addition to the man’s oeuvre, encapsulating the rushed, heavy-voiced writing style and cult horror tropes we’ve come to expect of him. This is a novel to entice genre fans with its horror sensibilities, but also one to challenge readers beyond the genre with its no-holds-barred hyperrealism. Though heavy handed, Serial Killers Inc. is a title well worth reading if you can handle Remic’s unrelenting and unrepentant exploitation of the worst aspects of the human condition. Call it a man fantasy or violence porn or whatever you like; if Remic keeps doing what he’s doing, I’ll keep coming back for more. If you’d like to learn more about the book, check out the publisher’s page or the author’s website. Serial Killers Inc. is available on Amazon and anywhere else books are sold.
Book Review: Central Park Knight by C. J. Henderson
Disappointment is an unfortunate thing when it comes to reading. Sometimes a book doesn’t live up to the expectations set up by the cover copy. It’s not often that this happens to me. I’ve found books with such problems to be average or even below-average, but it’s a rare thing that a book leads me to write a review like the one below. Central Park Knight promises adventure of the Indiana Jones variety, magic, dragons, and massive battles. In many ways, Henderson’s delivers on these promises, but not without an inconsistent plot and a slew of other problems, all of which make this novel a weak addition to the urban fantasy genre. Central Park Knight follows Professor Piers Knight, curator at the Brooklyn Museum, a bit of an adventure, and wielder of ancient magics and other arcane things. Of course, those last two are reluctant additions to his relatively simple life at the museum; Knight doesn’t want to be a hero. But whenever monsters and other terrors threaten to the destroy the world, he knows he’s the only one who can do something about it. So begins Central Park Knight: Knight uses all his knowledge to stop a beast from beyond from ending Earth’s days, but even in the aftermath, more dark things are stirring. An old lover once thought dead appears in his office, rumors surface of dragons stirring from the Earth, and talk of new, more terrifying ends reminds him once more why he can’t have a regular curator’s life — because Piers Knight is the only one that knows how to save the world from forces beyond its imagining. The opening chapter of Central Park Knight is my favorite part of the book. It’s only vaguely tied to the actual story, but it gave me the impression that Henderson’s novel would resemble something akin to a New Weird novel. The chapter consists of selections from a fictional academic talk about the existence of dragons and the study of them. It’s fascinating, fun, and set a tone for the book. Henderson, however, never follows through, leaving much of what was compelling about the opening chapters behind for a story that never hits its stride. Therein lies the problem: Central Park Knight is riddled with plotting and writing problems. One of my biggest pet peeves in literature is random POV shifts, of which Henderson seems to be an expert. Viewpoints often shift in the middle of chapters — and sometimes even in the middle of paragraphs — in order to tell us what other characters are feeling at that moment. More often than not, these shifts give us nothing useful to work with as readers, sucking life away from the primary POV of that chapter (usually Knight, but sometimes one of the dragons or George). The shifts are jarring, too, and draw too much attention to themselves, which is the greatest issue here. Once you yank me from the story, it’s hard for me to get back into it without focusing once more on the prose. Popular prose styles aren’t meant to draw attention to themselves; that’s left to more complex and poetic writing, in which language is sometimes more subtle and nuanced. Instead, popular prose should flow and give the reader the space to imagine what is being relayed on the page. The POV shifts made this a daunting task because I could never be sure that the POV on the page would stay firm long enough for me to focus on the character, the scene, or the emotions of the moment. Likewise, Henderson’s prose is bloated and suffers from bizarre temporal orientations (which I’ll explain in a moment). What could easily be said more effectively in fewer words is instead crammed full of excess verbs, prepositions, etc., sometimes to the point of being run-on sentences; such sentences are too frequent for comfort and I found myself growing frustrated when a sentence would suck up four or five lines on the page in order to tell me something that could have been told in less than one line. And then there is the strange structure of his sentences: actions which should be happening on the page are shoved aside by “as he did X, so he did Y” sentences; sentences with this structure are so frequent that the story often gets lost in their clunkiness. Throw in a handful of typos, grievous grammar errors (missing words and the like that should have been caught), and stiff/clunky dialogue (the attempts to make George sound like a modern teenager read more like an offensive caricature than a realistic person) and you end up with a book which reads as poorly as it is plotted. The plot, as such, is where I’ll end this review. The book opens with an event that, quite honestly, is far more climactic and interesting than the story we’re inevitably given. This is a problem not only because the rest of the story is less developed and riddled with logical inconsistencies, but also because one of the characters we’re supposed to care about in the opening scene then disappears without little more than “eh, she went home” as an excuse. I’d expect such a thing from a TV show that has to explain why one of its character (and, thus, the actor) isn’t coming back (House managed to do this by killing one of its characters), but it’s not something I would expect from a novel which is supposed to deal with developed individuals. Since all indications on the actual book suggest that Central Park Knight is a stand-alone novel, these kinds of issues in plotting and character put a black mark on Henderson’s narrative. There are other plot issues that I could mention, but this review is already negative enough as it is. I really wanted to like Central Park Knight. It has an amusing premise, interesting, though undeveloped, characters, and an a mythology and history that, with proper development, could yield challenging and
Book Review: The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
Readers will remember Kate DiCamillo as the author of the adorable Tale of Despereaux, which was turned into a computer animated film in 2008 (which I had the pleasure of seeing and enjoying). The Magician’s Elephant is a less expansive narrative, but one which attempts to reach into the heart of the human condition through the figure of the child. It is a story which looks at the moral complications of lies, the power of loyalty, and the desire and safety found in the family unit (even if that unit is broken). The Magician’s Elephant is about Peter Augustus Duchene, a young boy who has lost his entire family and who has been adopted by an ill and disgruntled soldier (Vilna Lutz) who wants Peter to grow up to be just like him. But when Peter spends Vilna’s grocery money on a fortuneteller, he learns an amazing truth: his sister is alive and an elephant will lead the way. A series of strange events soon follows and Peter begins to question everything, uncovering the lies about his life and his family. DiCamillo makes me wish I had children. The Magician’s Elephant lends itself well to parental voice acting because it has such a large cast of characters: Peter, Vilna, Adele, the Elephant (you read that right), the Magician, Leo, and several more. Each character, remarkably, has his or her own storyline, though some get more attention than others for obvious reasons. The plethora of characters adds a certain charm to the story, since it allows DiCamillo to move temporarily away from the dark family-oriented narrative of Peter into the odd-ness of her world and its eccentric cast. The novel never truly escapes from darkness, though, resting firmly in dark comedy territory. The darkness is perhaps why I found the book so interesting. Setting aside Peter’s orphan status, the novel is rife with trauma-induced mental illness. Vilna is a broken soldier who still thinks he’s part of the army, crying out as if experiencing flashbacks from a war we’re never really told about. The Magician and Madam LaVaughn have been reduced to the repetition of the same grief-stricken routine by the trauma of the Elephant’s entry into the world. Some readers may find the darkness overwhelming, but I think the effect it has on the closure of the narrative is more powerful than would the excavation of everything but Peter’s story. The intersection of all of these other stories and traumas makes the ending a fascinating (almost cathartic) experience (though, in all honesty, I think there were too many secondary characters, some of which weren’t given the attention they deserved). A good deal of the trauma is also attached to an underlying didacticism in the narrative, which I found interesting not because there were messages to be found and learned in The Magician’s Elephant, but because the perspective through which these moralistic moments are derived is that of a child (Peter). There aren’t any grand moments in which adult characters tell the young protagonist that X is wrong and that they must learn a lesson (except when DiCamillo wants to show how some of the adults are hypocrites). As a story for kids, I think The Magician’s Elephant is a fantastic read. While the story is dark, there are plenty of humorous moments. The quirkiness of the plot and characters doesn’t get in the way of the story, though, which is something some chapter books fall prey to. Instead, The Magician’s Elephant is a wonderful story about the power of family, friends, forgiveness, and compassion, with an interesting cast of characters and a strong plot. It’s definitely something to read with your kids (if you have them) or to read on your own. If you’d like to learn more about DiCamillo and her novels, check out her website. The Magician’s Elephant is available pretty much everywhere books are sold.