Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 13

March to Other Worlds Day 18 The Veterinarian's Field Guide to Rabid Unicorns by Elise Loyacano Perl

March to Other Worlds Day 18 The Veterinarian’s Field Guide to Rabid Unicorns by Elise Loyacano Perl

For Day 18 of the March, I offer a fun novel inspired by a combination of Jurassic Park and ancient mythology. It’s a little bit slow in getting started, probably so we understand that our hero is not the assertive type. He’s the “everyone takes advantage of me type”. He’s in a terrible job situation and gets offered a new job with a fantastic salary that involves his skills as a veterinarian, but the new employer won’t tell him what his “patients” will be or where the job is.

 

So, pushed to the limit, our hero ends up accepting the job and finds out that he is working at a “Jurassic Park” style zoo for unicorns—carnivorous unicorns whose craving for meat is out of control because the mad scientist who created them can’t accept that they are really meat eaters. The boss worries that the kids he wants to frolic with the unicorns won’t like them as much if his star attraction want to eat them. (And yes, I think we, the reader, can agree that the kids probably wouldn’t enjoy frolicking with animals who spear them on their horns and then eat them.) Our hero’s seemingly impossible job is to find a way to get the carnivorous unicorns to stop being carnivorous, which doesn’t look like a realistic possibility to either the hero or the reader. But it’s fun watching him try to keep a disaster from happening and finally watching him learn that some things are worth asserting himself for.

 

This book had two surprises I just didn’t see coming which is always a good thing. It’s a fun romp from beginning to end. If you’d rather read about man-eating unicorns instead of dinosaurs and laugh while you do it, I think you’ll find this a good read.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Veterinarians-...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 17 The Fold by Peter Clines

March to Other Worlds Day 17 The Fold by Peter Clines

This novel starts out as cerebral science fiction at its very best. A group of scientists have created a device that permits instantaneous teleportation from point A to point B, yet they are not ready to make their government financers happy by releasing the device—which they swear all evidence shows is safe—for commercial (or even secret government) use yet. The question is why? That’s the heart of the mystery in the first half of the novel and despite the protests of the scientists, the reader knows from chapter one that people are being hurt by their work. As the chapters unfold it becomes apparent that the whole world may be in jeopardy—not from a cataclysm but through a series of subtle juxtapositions that would cause ever increasing amounts of chaos and distress to societies across the planet.

 

That’s an awesome problem and the hero is extremely well suited to uncover the root of the trouble. Mike has a fully eidetic memory and Clines has conceptualized what that means better than any author I have ever read. Mike’s ability to sort through vast amounts of information quickly and decisively was amazing. The psychic damage that never being able to forget anything does to him was also a brilliantly insightful addition to the tale. I always enjoyed the scenes where his mind spins into gear and starts making connections, although frankly I wondered why it was so difficult for him to come to a conclusion that I reached in chapter one.

 

And that’s the first problem with this story. Mike makes brilliant deductions throughout the book but we’re at least halfway through it before he begins to consider what every reader knows is happening from chapter one. Heck, one of the team of scientists is even a Star Trek fanatic but the solution (born right out of that series) never occurs to her. So that’s bad, but perhaps we have to accept it so that there is proper dramatic build up.

 

It's not so easy to excuse the second problem. The last quarter of the book moves from being a fantastic cerebral mystery to a shoot-them-up standoff at the OK Corral. This was such a copout from the much subtler and frankly far scarier problem I had initially envisioned based on the idea of millions of juxtapositions ripping apart social ties throughout the planet. In many ways, that ending would have been far creepier because it would be very easy to imagine the government refusing to accept the evidence of disaster in favor of a highly lucrative economy-changing invention.

 

In summary, The Fold is a wonderful idea that loses a little of its power toward the end of the tale.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Fold-Novel-Pet...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 16 The Godmakers by Frank Herbert

March to Other Worlds Day 16 The Godmakers by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert is one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time. My favorite one of his books is The Godmakers. I read the novel the first time while I was in high school and I’ve read it many times since in print and in audio format. On the surface it is a simple adventure story—and a good one at that. Lewis Orne is a well-meaning, extremely bright young man who works for the Rediscovery and Reeducation Service trying to help planets reconnect with galactic civilization after the devastating Rim Wars of five hundred years earlier. He discovers that all is not right on the planet Hamal and he helps to prevent a military debacle there, getting himself drafted into the more cynical Investigative Adjustment Service in the process. And then he goes and does it again, preventing an alien race from being wiped out of existence until he makes a teeny tiny error and nearly gets himself killed.

 

When he’s finally let out of the hospital with regenerated organs and a knee that fits better than the original one did, he is ready for the big time. Galactic elections are about to be held and his bosses have discovered evidence that their enemies during the Rim Wars (500 years ago) are still around and maneuvering to take over the government. Orne, who ran away from home when he was eighteen years old, has a “family” connection to the wife of a man who may well win the election and might also be the leader of this 500 year old cabal, so he’s dropped into the fire yet again to see if he can save galactic civilization.

 

As you can see from the above description, this is a novel that is willing to tackle some very complex topics surrounding politics and society and Herbert doesn’t shy away from these problems. Yet, this is not the climax of the book, so far everything has been set up for Herbert to explore issues of power, and ethics, and mob psychology, and on a fundamental level, right and wrong. Remember, this book was titled the Godmakers, and everything that has been happening has been, on one level, manipulated to discover if Lewis Orne is the god the makers were striving to create. This leads to an exciting conclusion where Herbert gets to explore religion and psychology as Orne tries to survive the forces that brought him into being. It’s a truly wonderful book which always makes me think.

 

https://www.amazon.com/The-Godmakers-...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 15 Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck

March to Other Worlds Day 15 Beneath the Dark Ice by Greig Beck

To open the third week of the March to Other Worlds, I would like to introduce the reader to Greig Beck, who has an amazing gift for making whole primordial worlds come to life. In Beneath the Dark Ice, that world can be found in Antarctica deep in a cave network where there are just a ton of nasty surprises. The excuse for the expedition is the loss of a tycoon when his plane crashed into the ice over Antarctica, but the real reason for the expedition seems to be a quest for oil on the seventh continent. Unfortunately for the scientists and military men sent on the expedition, there’s a whole world down beneath the ice and it’s filled with hostile creatures. And just in case we forget that it’s Beck writing this, there are also hostile humans determined to make things even more deadly than this bizarre aberration of nature has already made things.

 

As you read, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a whole underground world. So, it’s not just the big bad monster that stalks the heroes from beginning to end (and believe me, that would have made this book super creepy and scary enough), but it’s a host of other predators that live and compete in this isolated ecosphere and are only too happy to discover if humans make a tasty treat. Every chapter is filled with suspense and danger—a problem made more acute by the impact of the stress on the various members of the group making people untrustworthy just at the moment that they most need to pull together.

 

If I have a complaint, and I’m not certain that I do, I think it is in the discovery of a sort of proto civilization—the granddaddy of all our ancient civilizations—beneath the Antarctic ice. This civilization provides a tremendous amount of interesting information on the big bad monster, but it’s that information that bothered me. Much of it comes in the form of carvings that the archaeologist in the group translates with remarkable ease. I’m not saying he instantly knows everything he’s seeing, but it’s my understanding that ancient writing of this sort is not easy to decipher and that it takes a long time to actually carve words (much less whole narratives) into the stone. I’m not confident that much of the carvings (tracing the journey of two brothers ten thousand years earlier) could have been written this way. Remember, Jules Verne only had Arne Saknussemm leave his initials and the date to mark his journey—not whole accounts of the adventures of two ancient heroes. So, I don’t think that part of the story holds up, but it is a very small complaint in a long and exciting adventure.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Dark-I...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 14 A Wizard???s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

March to Other Worlds Day 14 A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

 

To close out the second week of the March to Other Worlds, I turn to a more traditional fantasy by T. Kingfisher, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Banking. I suspect this novel was inspired by the baking of the giant gingerbread cookie in one of the Shrek movies. The plot revolves around a city state in which all of the people capable of using magic have been slowly killed off over the past year or so. Enter our heroine, a fourteen-year-old baker who discovers a dead body in her aunt’s bakery when she goes in to start the preparations for the day’s business at 4am. Somewhat to her surprise, the inquisitor immediately suspects her of being the killer because she discovered the body. The reader will immediately suspect that something other than extreme dimwittedness is the cause of this suspicion.

 

Things quickly get worse. Someone tries to kill the young baker and she and a new friend decide to try and figure out what is really going on. This leads, through a quick series of twists and turns, into the young baker becoming the primary defense against an invading army. Never before has a baker been so important to a kingdom’s front line of defense.

 

There’s some nice tension and some very clever ideas in this cute novel. If you’re tired of blood and guts but still want your dose of fantasy, you should give this book a try.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Wizards-Guide-...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 13 Honor Bound by W.E.B. Griffin

March to Other Worlds Day 13 Honor Bound by W.E.B. Griffin

Sometimes the most interesting “other worlds” are right here on planet earth—in this case the country of Argentina during World War II. During the war, Argentina played a role similar to that of Berlin during the Cold War. As a neutral country favoring the Nazi regime, it was the focus of a great deal of clandestine activity during the war as it struggled to maintain its neutrality while both the Axis and the Allies maneuvered on its territory. This is the backdrop to W.E.B. Griffin’s Honor Bound series as he continues to explore the fascinating realm of intelligence work during World War II. The hero of this book is Cletus Frade, a marine aviator called home from Guadalcanal to take on a covert mission in Argentina to blow up a neutral vessel that is refueling Nazi submarines in Argentinian waters.

 

Clete is totally unqualified for this mission, as are the two men assigned to him. None have any training as spies and while one is an expert in demolitions, none of them really have a clue as to what they are doing. The one thing Clete might have going for him is that his father, Jorge Guillermo Frade, is one of the most important and influential men in Argentina. Unfortunately, Clete has never met him and everything he knows about the man (coming from his maternal grandfather) is that he is the SOB responsible for Clete’s mother’s death.

 

It's the slow development of the relationship between father and son that makes this such a powerful book. Griffin has never been particularly interested in “action” in the conventional sense. There are occasional spurts of it, but Griffin has always been much more concerned with the nuts and bolts about how missions are planned and information is gathered. In this novel, he gets to play with multiple cultures as well—Argentinian, German, Nazi (yes, I know those last two should be the same but Griffin paints them differently), and American. It all blends together into a fascinating look at Argentina through the eyes of an outsider at a critical moment in its history.

 

The mission to destroy that tanker is the heart of the story. To emphasize the danger, Griffin lets the reader know that the previous team sent on this mission has simply disappeared. Clete’s mission is opposed by both the Argentinians and the Nazis, but also by elements within the American Office of Strategic Services who believe that Clete would be of better use to them if he were dead by German hands. They figure that his father would be more likely to help the Allies if he had a personal reason to hate the Nazis.

 

This is a wonderful and exciting book. I read it the first time roughly twenty years ago and enjoyed it just as much on this latest reading. Yet, I want to stress that it is not a typical military novel filled with battles and fights to the death. That sort of action is the exception here, not the rule. Truth is, Honor Bound doesn’t need it.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 12 The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

March to Other Worlds Day 12 The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

For the twelfth day of the March to Other Worlds I have invited Guest-Reviewer Will Hahn back to share his thoughts with us. Last year, he reviewed Lord Foul’s Bane. This year he returns to Stephen R. Donaldson’s work with his novel The Mirror of Her Dreams. Here’s the review:

 

As a writer who did the bulk of his fantasy reading in an earlier generation, I would have to say that the Mordant’s Need series, beginning with this volume, is the finest heroic fantasy tale I ever read. And it came on the heels of Donaldson’s incredible epic fantasy series Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever a few years earlier. I did not expect this later effort to even be as good. It’s probably better.

 

In The Mirror of Her Dreams, Terisa is a sheltered daughter to an uncaring wealthy businessman, who has given her everything except purpose. She crams her apartment with mirrors to continually show her own reflection, as Terisa staves off the suggestion that she doesn’t really exist.

 

And then a handsome fellow stumbles through one of those mirrors and begs her to come back with him to save the world.

 

{I will not give spoilers, I will not give spoilers, I will NOT…}

 

The story that unfolds is incredible for several reasons, all of which were revelations to me. First off, Donaldson resolutely pins himself to Terisa’s PoV; much as you’re screaming to see any hint of what happens with the many characters she meets, you don’t get a sniff. And as with Thomas Covenant, Terisa is such a frustrating narrator! Coming to a medieval kingdom beset with multiple threats, where all magic is quite literally done with mirrors, she takes no active part in helping because she doesn’t believe in herself. The Imagers of Mordant generally think that creations seen in their mystic panes do not have souls and are not worthy of equal treatment. Only her hopeless admirer, the handsome bumbling apprentice, Geraden, is convinced she is the savior; he can’t even get her to agree!

 

The entire premise of Imagery, how magic is done and its secrets guarded, is beautifully handled and will have you salivating for more details wherever you can find them.

 

But most of all, the story has simply everything. Action and adventure galore, including fights with magical beasts and duels between master swordsmen. An enormous mystery about who the kingdom’s enemies truly are, and what they’re up to. Intrigue around a monarch and his chief wizard, both evidently mad as hatters. Not a little spicy romance, close to erotica, as everyone agrees Terisa is incredibly attractive (except of course, for herself). Donaldson weaves every major kind of genre fiction together—fantasy, horror, sex, thriller, mystery—and yet it’s always an intact tale, completely true to itself and dancing around the tropes and cliches you’d expect to be there.

 

Readers as well as writers need to put this book on the nightstand. I dare you not to buy the second one, you won’t be able to put it down.

 

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https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Dreams-...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 4 Novel Problems by George Morrison

March to Other Worlds Day 4 Novel Problems by George Morrison

Aliens always make up an important part of the March to Other Worlds. Sometimes they are invading, sometimes they are infiltrating, and sometimes, as in the humorous Novel Problems by George Morrison, they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The trouble has its roots in a man’s desire to publish a novel…

 

Jake writes really bad science fiction in which he includes some non-classified information about a missile defense system his company builds. His friends convince him to rewrite and get rid of the company info, but through a complicated series of events his original manuscript ends up in an agent’s hands who sends it to a contact in the military to vet. That contact, who is also working on the actual missile defense system, gets in a car accident and the sf manuscript and the real documents concerning the defense system get mixed together convincing the most inept group of military intelligence operatives in existence (think Monty Python doing a skit about inept government investigators) that there is a spy ring trying to steal their system. To make matters even worse, the sf manuscript has aliens in it and the investigators think that the aliens are also involved in the espionage plot.

 

What follows is a convoluted series of mistakes and other bungles that would make the aforementioned Monty Python actors proud. The investigators convince themselves that a serious plot is afoot that actually involves outer space aliens and they are determined to uncover it no matter how many idiots get in their way. The most competent people in the whole story are the dog and the third grader—oh, and the actual aliens who are trying very hard not to get caught up in this investigation.

 

It certainly is a crazy storyline and that’s what makes it fun.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Novel-Problems...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 11 The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer

March to Other Worlds Day 11 The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer

My next choice for the March to Other Worlds isn’t technically a science fiction or fantasy story although it does have elements of each. It’s The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu which was published by Sax Rohmer in 1913 and depicts a world that didn’t exist then and seems particularly strange to us now.

 

Right off the top it’s important to recognize that this is a truly difficult book for the modern reader. It was written just before World War I at the end of the British Empire—an Empire that embraced the philosophy in Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden”. Its protagonists, in fact, are unapologetically racist in their attitude with Smith in the first chapter stating that he is trying to save the white race and with Fu Manchu (the villain of the series) commanding a criminal enterprise that apparently includes (through threat and intimidation) every Asian on the planet. These attitudes are terribly jarring as they continually pop up throughout the novel and it’s difficult to keep oneself in the frame of mind of the early twentieth century English man who narrates the tale—a man who is encountering the “exotic” criminal strategies of Fu Manchu for the first time in England.

 

The protagonists are Smith (from the Foreign Office) and Petrie (a physician). They seem to have been loosely modeled on Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Petrie bungles around always in the thick of things but is totally ignorant of his foe and totally overwhelmed with admiration for Smith. Smith, for his part, fully recognizes the danger presented by Fu Manchu’s schemes, but doesn’t actually do much beside run from place to place throwing himself into the problems without any apparent plan. His success is more dumb luck than careful strategy (so the Sherlock Holmes comparison is obviously weak).

 

The actual adventure story is only “all right”. There are death traps (some of which were very serious) for our heroes to escape. And there’s a lot of worrying and running about, always a step behind Fu Manchu. There’s a love interest introduced for Petrie which serves mostly to get Petrie and Smith out of their problems. But overall, plot isn’t a strong point in the story (although it’s easy to see how the many deathtraps attracted the attention of the many film makers who have tackled this series).

 

Why then are people still reading this book more than a hundred years later? The answer is simple—Dr. Fu Manchu is a wonderful villain. To continue the Sherlock Holmes parallel, he’s Moriarty, but with more intelligence, greater reach, and frankly, more ruthlessness than Sherlock Holmes’ foe. He is a fantastic bad guy, worthy of superhero comics. He’s always several steps ahead of Smith and Petrie and frankly, it’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than that he allows them to survive the book because they are somehow furthering his plans. He also has a strong sense of honor that is the only limit on his success. For example, he seems completely committed to telling the truth. His disdain for modern weapons like guns also adds an exotic element to his character. Remove Fu Manchu and this would be a very dull tale.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Insidious-Dr-F...

 

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March to Other Worlds Day 10 Fugitive by Gilbert M. Stack

March to Other Worlds Day 10 Fugitive by Gilbert M. Stack

Two of the themes I like best in science fiction literature are the exploration of the unknown and the clash of cultures, and to spotlight these themes I’d like to take a look at one of my own novels, Fugitive. Like most authors, I usually have at least a half dozen story nuggets bouncing around in my head and eventually two or three of those nuggets will stick together to form an idea big enough to build a novel around and that’s what happened here. I started with my young heroine, Jewel, scion of an extraordinarily wealthy family who has runaway to avoid an arranged marriage, and put her in the middle of an extraordinary mystery in deep space—one that has the potential to shake the entire galaxy.

 

Now, before I go on about the mystery, I’d like to expand on the idea of the arranged marriage that is the impetus for everything that happens in this story. If you stop to think about it for a few moments, you will recognize that an arranged marriage is a fundamentally frightening concept especially when the intended bride and bridegroom have never even met. Man and woman are expected to bind themselves to each other for life in the most intimate of ways without having even the slightest clue if their personalities are compatible. Now add to the mix that my bride and bridegroom are from two completely opposite cultures—one hedonistic in the extreme and the other extraordinarily spartan—and you have an even more disturbing situation. Throw in horrendous consequences on a galactic scale if the marriage is not forged and you have psyche-breaking pressure being brought to bear on the young couple.

 

That is what Jewel is running from. Raised in an intensely capitalistic and libertine culture in which the elites think only of their own best interests, she is unable to come to grips with the sacrifice being asked of her and runs away—smack into a problem that threatens not only her continued freedom but ultimately peace in the galaxy. All of this might not matter if she were truly a daughter of her culture, but she was raised with this idea foreign to her peers that she has a duty to her family and cartel that requires her to worry about the wellbeing of others. And while the idea wasn’t strong enough to keep her from running away, it continues to influence her actions, a nagging conscience which keeps her from being the completely self-centered daughter of her self-interested parents.

 

The problem I had when I sat down to write Fugitive was that the opening mystery that was intended to set the stage and introduce Jewel kept growing in scope and importance until it became a novel all its own—changing the overarching story into a series in which I could take the time to fully explore the issues that inspired the first book.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Fugitive-Unity...

 

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