Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 72

March to Other Worlds Day 19: The Destroyer by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Day 19 The Destroyer by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

For Day 19, I want to take the March in a different direction.

 

In 1971 Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir published a novel called Created, the Destroyer, the first in a series that has passed 150 books and spun a daughter series. The novels have changed considerably since the beginning. Originally, they read very much like an Executioner novel. Remo Williams is framed for a crime, "killed", and given a new life as a government agent with a so called "license to kill". (They don't use that term.) Apparently, JFK created an extra-constitutional organization called "CURE" which was supposed to save the constitution of the U.S. by violating it. Congress was investigating organized crime and JFK worried that organized crime had become so strong that it threatened American democracy. Enter, the Destroyer, a single man impowered to take out criminals without a trial.

 

To train Remo, Harold Smith, the head of CURE, hired Chiun, a Korean assassin, reigning master of the glorious House of Sinanju. (Sinanju being an impoverished fishing village in North Korea.) Originally, Murphy and Sapir saw Chiun as simply a martial arts expert, but they quickly come to realize that he had superhuman abilities and that Remo could learn those as well. (Explaining why that is takes a good number of books.) The novels enter science fiction with a growing number of non-mob opponents including robots and other machine intelligences, and more. At some point, the authors also became interested in writing scathing (and sometimes hilarious) satires of current celebrities, political figures, and social trends. (Since the series spans fifty years they offend just about everyone.)

 

I picked up the first novel at a used book store called Hole in the Wall Books in Northern Virginia somewhere in the early 1980s. Approximately twenty years later I noticed the “current” volume on a book rack in a Kmart and picked it up and ended up reading the rest of the series. I’m currently rereading them all—in part because the COVID-19 pandemic gave me the opportunity to rediscover hundreds (thousands) of paperbacks I had put into boxes years ago.

 

Let me be clear—The Destroyer is nothing like high literature and while most are fun, many of them are worthy of one-star rankings. But the relationship between Remo, Chiun, and Smith is worthwhile. And it is a rare opportunity to get to experience a series that was written over a sixty-year time frame (and includes multiple ghost authors later in the series at least one of whom (James Mullaney) appeared to understand Remo and Chiun better than Murphy and Sapir).

 

I should also point out that Murphy was an accomplished mystery writer also and his Trace and Digger series (really the same series but published by two different publishers) are well worth reading as well, even if they don’t fit in the March to Other Worlds.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 15: The Chronicles of Fid by David Reiss

Day 15 The Chronicles of Fid by David Reiss

Fid’s Crusade is on the list of my top ten superhero books of all time. Ever since the creation of Marvel’s Wolverine, it’s been popular to depict heroes who often cross the line. Then there are villains like Cat Woman who sometimes find themselves playing the role of hero. Fid’s Crusade is the story of how the world’s most notorious super villain finds himself putting it all on the line to save the world—which would be awesome in and of itself even if the novel didn’t give you one heck of a lot more.

 

First, let’s be clear, Fid is not a particularly sane human. When his younger brother dies because a so-called “hero” puts protecting his secret identify over saving a child’s life, Fid goes off the deep end and determines to prove how fundamentally selfish and unheroic most heroes are. So Fid sets out on a lifetime mission to expose to the public how unheroic their heroes truly are, and in doing so becomes one of the baddest of the bad. The villain no hero can beat—even when they manage to cut his arm off in the middle of a battle. He’s tough, he’s smart, and not a single one of the heroes or the media who love to cover them, have any idea what Fid is really all about.

 

Nor do they have any idea that he’s been changing over time—not losing his need to expose heroic hypocrisy, but evolving to understand that monstrous violence might not be the best way to obtain his ends. This sort of evolution is a tremendously difficult task for an author to take on—especially in a single novel—but Reiss handles it brilliantly. Can Fid change despite the heroes lined up against him? And can he save the world despite the best efforts of the men and women who have sworn to protect it?

 

One more thought on the series. It’s amazing that books that are as heavily psychological as these, could also be packed to the gills with amazing action scenes. David Reiss has given more thought to the armored hero / villain than the creators of Iron Man ever did and the reader benefits tremendously from this care on his part. Plus, Fid is a scientific genius to put Tony Stark and Reed Richards to shame and Reiss really makes you believe it as he applies his IQ to the challenges at hand.

 

This is a wonderful series.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 14: The Sea in the Sky by Jackson Musker

Day 14 The Sea in the Sky by Jackson Musker

One of the things that I think it is hardest for authors to pull off in science fiction is a realistic mission of discovery—stories that don’t devolve into simply surviving the bad guys. One of the movies that I think captures what I’m talking about the best is 2010. Now this fully dramatized audiobook has rivaled what 2010 accomplished for me.

 

Two astronauts spend three years in a spaceship journeying to explore the oceans on one of the moons of Saturn and encounter not only the physical demands of their mission, but the intense psychological pressure of being a billion miles from other human beings and having all of NASA depending on them to find something—i.e. life—that might not even exist there at all. So this is a story about intense psychological pressure, but it’s also, even more importantly, a story of friendship and the positive and negative force it can exert on an already stressed out human mind.

 

The science-adventure part of this novel is top notch. Exploring another world’s sea is an excellent vehicle for a mission of discovery. The two characters are both engaging and interesting, although their back-and-forth banter was way too cute at times, it was also necessary for establishing the friendship at the heart of this story. And the more they come to depend upon each other, the more the reader will fear that something is going to happen to one of them.

 

By far the best part of this novel is the overwhelming psychological pressure. It’s there throughout the whole book, but it becomes much more visible after the two astronauts have to deal with a crushing disaster. Isolation leads to insanity, but the mission continues and the readers, like NASA back on earth, are left to try and figure out what is really happening.

 

I was going to give this book four stars, but changed my mind when I realized I was still thinking about it long after I finished it. Elements have really stuck with me and I find myself still puzzling over where that line between reality and insanity truly sits.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 13: Colonyside by Michael Mammay

Day 13 Colonyside by Michael Mammay

For Day 13 of the March, I want to take a look at the latest book in a series I introduced in the first March to Other Worlds. Yes, Michael Mammay’s Colonel Carl Butler is back! The man who twice launched weapons of mass destruction and is hated by half of the human race for a genocidal action that he took to save them is pulled into another complicated and intensely exciting mystery that once again involves an alien species. This time he’s hired by one of the richest men in the galaxy to find out what really happened to his estranged daughter when she went missing and was reported killed outside the dome on a small colony world. His mission is supported by the president which one would think would mean that people would bend over backward to help the investigation, but the opposite is happening. Most everyone, including the company owned by the man who launched Butler’s inquiry, are all being quietly obstructionist. Everyone appears to expect Carl to rubberstamp the previous report on how the woman died, collect his money, and go home. But obviously, they don’t know Carl Butler!

 

This novel is a completely worthy successor to its two predecessors, Planetside and Spaceside. The tension builds to excruciating levels as Carl gets deeper and deeper inside the mystery. And he’s finally up against an opponent who is frankly better than he is and the odds against him are crushingly high. It’s always hard to write a review that doesn’t give away critical plot elements, but I will say that I’m impressed by how deep inside Carl’s skull Mammay gets in this novel. Every single thing Carl does—correctly or mistakenly—read true right down to his stubborn willingness to die rather than be untrue to himself. In fact, death seems like a very probable outcome of the novel despite the fact that Carl is narrating the action, so if you’re like me, you’ll be looking for opportunities for him to record what he knows, and waiting for someone else to come in with the epilogue to the story. That’s how serious the action gets. I just hope there will be another book in this series soon.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 12: Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

Day 12 Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

For Day 12, I’d like to introduce you to one of the most action-packed urban fantasy series on the market—Monster Hunter International. If you like your urban fantasy with lots of gunfire and brutal combats between heroes and monsters, you’re definitely going to want to read these books. Owen Pitt is trying to settle into life as a simple accountant when his supervisor turns into a werewolf and tries to eat him. Pitt fights back and surprisingly, without silver weapons, not only survives but kills the creature (and if that isn’t an action-packed way to start a series, I don’t know what is). Pitt’s actions bring him to the attention of not only our unfriendly government, which considers keeping the secret that monsters exist more important than its citizens’ lives, but to a private outfit called Monster Hunter International which recruits Pitt to join their ranks.

 

What follows is a rollicking ride through the twisted mind of Larry Correia. There are vampires, gargoyles, insectoid monsters, wights, ghostly figures, and crazy cursed beings galore all set in a fabulously thought-out alternate earth. Correia even offers the very best rendition of Frankenstein that I’ve ever come across. The characters are beautifully drawn and the tension grows from chapter to chapter toward an absolutely fantastic ending.

 

And then the next book starts with even more adrenalin and pulse pounding action than the first. And just when you think you can breathe normally again, you get to move on to book three, and four, and, well, you get the point.

 

If you’ve been wishing for a few more guns in your urban fantasy, Monster Hunter International is the series for you.

 

 

March to Other Worlds Day 11: Whipping Star by Frank Herbert

Day 11 Whipping Star by Frank Herbert

For Day 11 of the March to Other Worlds we’re going to turn to sf great, Frank Herbert. Herbert is best known for his novel, Dune, but he has many other excellent books. He excels at the creation of truly alien, incomprehensible cultures, and it is the resulting problems of communication that is the heart of the superb novel, Whipping Star. In the universe of the future multiple alien species live together in a government called the ConSentiency. For several decades, the peoples of the ConSentiency have taken advantage of advanced technology provided to them by a new race called the Caleban. The Caleban are almost impossible to understand, but they have a jump door technology that permits people to instantaneously move anywhere in the universe. At the start of the novel, the Calebans are disappearing from the universe and with each new disappearance millions of beings are going insane or dying. Very quickly, the protagonist Jorj X. McKie, learns that the disappearances and deaths are connected, and if the last Caleban in the universe disappears or dies (a phrase the Caleban refers to as “ultimate discontinuity”) all people (99% of the ConSentiency) who have used a jump door will also die.

 

So the stakes could not be higher in Whipping Star as McKie tries to determine what could threaten the existence of a being with cosmic power. The answer is totally perplexing, but is also the key to the communication problems which make this book the masterpiece it is. The Caleban is being murdered by the richest woman in the ConSentiency who has an obsession with flogging people, but has had her psyche treated so that she can’t bear the thought of causing suffering. Her answer was to form a contract with a Caleban—a sort of energy creature—and whip her. But why a primitive leather bullwhip could threaten the existence of the most powerful creature in the universe…well that’s the heart of the story.

 

This is a wonderful novel by a master of the science fiction field.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 10: The Henry Gallant Saga by H. Peter Alesso

Day 10 The Henry Gallant Saga by H. Peter Alesso

For Day 10 of the March to Other Worlds we turn to the future and The Henry Gallant Saga. There’s a spark of genius in the setup for this series. When Stan Lee created the X-Men, he made them relatable by making them mutants—reviled by humanity. Alesso accomplishes the same thing by making his hero, Henry Gallant, normal. You read that right. The military of the future is dominated by genetically-engineered humans and Gallant is a throwback without the benefits of all that customization. This makes him the subject of a great deal of harassment by fellow officers determined to prove he can’t be relied upon in stressful situations. But if Gallant does have one extraordinary ability, it’s perseverance. He just doesn’t quit and he certainly doesn’t lay down and die. So now matter how badly the odds stack up against him, Gallant bulls though to victory.

 

The series advances Horatio Hornblower style following Gallant through the ranks. Earth is in a terrible war with an alien race whom they discover developing the outer planets of our solar system. The aliens are not interested in communication or any kind of diplomacy, they want humans wiped out of the way of their developing civilization. So, the setup is apocalyptic, but many of the greatest challenges Gallant faces come from the narrow self-interests and prejudices of his fellow humans rather than the alien menace. If you’re looking for a sharp new military sf series, you should give Henry Gallant a try.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 9: Wolf Mountain by Isaac Stone and Timothy Mayer

Day 9 Wolf Mountain by Isaac Stone and Timothy Mayer

I believe that the best LitRPGs connect events in the real world to the game world, and that is one of the things that Stone and Mayer do very well in their novel, Wolf Mountain, my pick for Day 9 of the March to Other Worlds. The foundation of the story is not particularly original. A game company is testing out new technology and the protagonist, Vince, is hired to help test it. He is immersed in a game world and has to see if he can beat the system.

 

The game setting is a mountainous area of the U.S. during the 1920s—not a time period I’ve seen before in this type of book. The authors don’t bog the story down with countless repetitions of character sheet stats, but you never forget that this is in fact a game environment. As the action progresses, Vince becomes romantically interested in a well-developed NPC and after completing his employment becomes obsessed with learning how she was developed and whether or not she was based on a real-world individual. The game designers oppose his interest and then things get especially interesting as Vince begins to have problems differentiating between the game environment and the real world even though he is no longer attached to the equipment.

 

In many ways, Wolf Mountain is a set up for an even deeper mystery surrounding how the game was developed and what the company that owns it is trying to accomplish. That’s a tale worth telling.

 

March to Other Worlds Day 8: The Defense of Exeter Station by Thom Bedford

Day 8 The Defense of Exeter Station by Thom Bedford

We open the second week of the March to Other Worlds by returning to the far future where we get to witness The Defense of Exeter Station. This is the story of an important early military action in a complex war between the Alliance and the Union. Part of the complexity of the novel is that neither the Alliance nor the Union appear to be particularly admirable political entities. The Alliance is a military and economic powerhouse that has been using its resources to take advantage of a large number of colonial systems. Many of those systems resent the domination by the Alliance core systems and accuse the Alliance government of having created a government that gives the pretense of political participation to the colonies without any real influence or power. The Alliance, quite understandably, sees matters differently.

 

The Union, on the other hand, is also a highly disturbing political entity. While it tries to position itself on the moral high ground, it is the power that initiates violent hostilities and it does so by recruiting thousands of agents inside the Alliance military and key civilian locations and using them to commit acts of mutiny and sabotage that cripple the Alliance fleet and kill millions of people. There’s also something unsettling about the style of Union propaganda that gives their government an almost cultish atmosphere.

 

After hostilities commence, Exeter Station discovers that the new political realities have changed it into an Alliance border system with badly weakened defenses and a Union fleet on the way to take possession of it. The whole novel revolves around the determination of a few Exeter personnel to prevent that from happening.

 

The Defense of Exeter Station is a very exciting novel. As Exeter Station attempts to rebuild its sabotage-weakened defenses in time to stop the Union from capturing it, a mystery ship—possibly a ghost ship—enters Exeter’s proximity further complicating their situation. They have a serious staffing shortage and very little reach thanks to their lack of a defensive fleet. This is really the crux of the novel—can Exeter solve the mystery of the ghost ship and can they create a plan that will bring the enemy ships into reach of Exeter’s superior firepower? Watching the heroes grapple with this issue makes for a great story.

 

 

March to Other Worlds Day 7: Khaled by Francis Marion Crawford

Day 7 Khaled by Francis Marion Crawford

To close out the first week of the March to Other Worlds I’m taking us back in time to one of the most interesting fantasies I’ve ever read—one that is simultaneously a beautiful love story.

 

Khaled is a genie who is also an adherent to the Muslim faith who strives always to live by Allah’s dictates. He steps astray, however, when he intervenes in human affairs and kills a non-Muslim prince from India who has lied about his willingness to genuinely convert to Islam in order to gain the hand in marriage of a Muslim princess named Zehowah. As punishment, or possibly as reward, for killing the prince Allah decrees that Khalid will become a human man and if he can win Zehowah’s love, he will gain a soul and have the chance that every human has to achieve paradise.

 

This is a truly beautiful tale. Khaled knows little of women and Zehowah believes she knows nothing of love and is incapable of feeling it. So they have great discussions about the nature of love and the ways in which men and women should interact. Khaled tries various strategies to win Zehowah’s love, becoming increasingly frustrated with each failure. Yet, he never loses his faith in Allah and his desire to act rightly in accordance to Allah’s plan no matter what the consequence to himself. For her part, Zehowah has a genuine desire to be a good wife, but just doesn’t have the sort of feelings that Khaled needs from her. This is a tense and intriguing masterpiece from an author I’d never encountered before, but will definitely read again.

 

If you’re interested in Khaled, Chris L. Adams led a great discussion of the book at Written Gems on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...