The New York Review of Science Fiction

The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn, reviewed by Damien Broderick

Unbound, September 2019, $32.95 hc; 480 pages

The title of this thoughtful, challenging book about the work of a writer once hailed as the Dean of Science Fiction and first to be inducted as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America but now often ignored or even “canceled,” provides a sharp, twenty-first-century jolt of the unexpected.

To Rouse Leviathan by Matt Cardin, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer

New York: Hippocampus Press, 2019; $20.00 tpb; 374 pages

Post-Ligottian Fiction

A lot of people go mad in this book. This is not just an occupational hazard for Matt Cardin’s characters; it almost seems required of them. Most of the stories involve someone discovering that the universe, existence itself, is hostile and unutterably foul so that the best we can do is hold back chaos and death for a little while, for all it may not be worth doing. In one of the most impressive pieces, a novella aptly enough entitled “The God of Foulness,” a wannabe religious scholar turned newspaper reporter investigates the “Sick Seekers,” a new death-and-transcendence cult that embraces disease so that the foulness of both body and soul may subsumed into its divinity, which is, in effect, the universe:

Everything is empty and good for nothing but to rot, except for this chaos, this madness, this filth. In the end, there is no real choice for me to make, for I have nothing else from which to choose. Nor do any of us. (279)

David Langford: Random Reading 19: Punch, Brothers, Punch

Genre bibliographers have tended to avoid Britain’s long-running humorous and satirical magazine Punch (1841–1992), for the excellent reason that it didn’t publish much fiction, still less science fiction. Occasional needles of sf or fantasy interest are lost in the vast and seemingly unindexed haystack generated by a century and a half of weekly publication. It was thus a slight surprise to learn from my old fan friend Roy Kettle that the magazine ran a whole season of sf stories in 1960. This emerged during his visit to a 2017 Jane Austen exhibition in Oxford, whose priceless memorabilia included a Punch spoof titled “Jane in Space” and written by—of all people—Stella Gibbons of Cold Comfort Farm fame.

A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer

Framingham, Massachusetts: NESFA Press, 2017: $35.00 hc; 416 pages

Oh, look, a book about Harlan. A very entertaining, even moving book about Harlan.

If I have to explain who “Harlan” is, this book is probably not for you. If you have never read his work, you will not have the associations in your head for this book to really resonate. But if you are of a certain age and you have been reading science fiction all your life, then he has been a presence in your life even if you’ve never met him or heard him speak. If you have attended conventions and interacted with him, if only as a member of his audience, this very lively book is going to mean a great deal. It is not a regular biography, but it’s what we’ve got, and it’s full of Harlan Ellison Stories.

The Lovecraft Squad: All Hallows Horror by John Llewellyn Probert, reviewed by Peter Rawlik

New York: Pegasus Books, 2017; $25.95 hc; 336 pages

John Llewellyn Probert won the British Fantasy Award for his 2012 novella The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine, inspired by the works of Vincent Price, particularly The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and Madhouse. As an homage to a particular type of film, it certified Probert’s skill at constructing and pacing longer pieces of fiction while at the same time cementing his obvious love of horror cinema. As such he seems an unobvious choice to write a Lovecraftian novel, a subgenre that is notoriously uncinematic, and yet that may exactly be the point. Given Probert’s credentials, it would be interesting to see what he would produce. Such challenges, asking a writer whose work is unrelated to the Lovecraftian oeuvre to step into the Mythos, has worked in the past. The most notable example is Colin Wilson who for better or worse took the Cthulhu Mythos in new directions with his novels The Mind Parasites (1967), The Philosopher’s Stone (1969), and The Space Vampires (1976), which introduced overt psychological and philosophical elements to the Mythos, elements that had only been hinted at previously. It is such challenges, the drive in new and interesting directions, that will not only keep the genre alive but also move it into the future. However, it must be acknowledged that such ventures are fraught with risk and that success is not guaranteed.

Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster

New York: Tor Books, 2017; $26.95 hc; 319 pages

I met Frank M. Robinson once. In 1979, he was a guest at Windycon, Chicago’s largest sf convention. I was a senior at Beloit College, from which Robinson had graduated in 1950. I went with other members of the Beloit Science Fiction and Fantasy Association to the con, and at one point we surrounded him and told him how proud we were that he was an alumnus.

He was quite pleased that students at Beloit remembered him, and he came across as someone who was fundamentally decent and kind.

Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow, reviewed by Joe Sanders

Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2015; $30.00 hc 320 pages

It’s difficult to review James Morrow’s fiction without lapsing into a lecture about the importance of satiric literature—Candide, “A Modest Proposal,” yadayadayada—building up to an exhortation that “This Is Important and You Should Read It Because It’s Good for You!” Well, yes, you should read this book, but not out of a grim sense of duty. At his best, when he’s not overcome by outrage at our narrow-minded cruelty, Morrow argues effectively for humane tolerance. He’s thoughtful and funny.

Read This: recently read and recommended by Fran Wilde

A Particular Magic: Two Books from Ellen Klages

In a printed book, words can press together like a kiss or line up into a story. It’s all a matter of how the pages are folded or divided. It’s a particular bit of everyday paper magic that allows us to open up worlds.

In a similar way, Ellen Klages has combined physics and magic in not one but two books published during the turbulent spring of 2017. More than that, Passing Strange, a novella from Tor.com publishing, and Wicked Wonders, a collection of short stories from Tachyon Publications, seem at first glance to be entirely separate entities, but they, too, connect when folded properly.

The Terrorists of Irustan by Louise Marley, reviewed by Anne Leonard

New York: Ace Books, 1999; $13.00 tpb; 323 pages

1.

When a girl in Irustan turns eight, she puts on a veil with three layers: the drape, which hangs to her waist and frames her face, covering neck and shoulders; the verge, which covers the mouth and nose; and the rill, a light fabric which covers her entire face, barely allowing her to see. At home, woman are not required to wear the rill, but everywhere else they must. The only man who can see a woman unveiled is her husband.

This is the world of Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan, first published in 1999. It is a cousin to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; like Atwood, Marley has created a world where women live cloistered and inferior lives inside draconian theocracies. Like Offred, Marley’s protagonist Zahra is in the household of a man of power; her husband, Qadir IbSada, is the Chief Director of the ExtraSolar Corporation, which rules Irustan.

Read This: recently read and recommended by Darrell Schweitzer

Of Eggs, Chickens, and the Fall of Rome

Macrobius (or Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius) was a writer of the early fifth century ce, about whom little is known, save that he may have been a Romanized Greek from Egypt. He wrote, in Latin, the Saturnalia (available in three volumes from the Loeb Classical Library), which is part of a genre popular in late antiquity, descended from the dialogues of Plato but devolved into light reading. The Saturnalia is in the form of a lengthy imaginary dinner conversation between (mostly) real people, who were not necessarily acquainted or even alive when the book was written. It is a vast compendium of curious lore somewhat akin to the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius or The Learned Banqueters of Athenaeus, filled with discourses on the divinity of the Sun, the universal wisdom of Vergil, arcane points of grammar, and even speculations on the workings of the human digestive system.