Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded
Ed. by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Tachyon Publications, 2010

In the introduction to this collection the VanderMeers do not give a clear definition of what is steampunk. In the last paragraph of the introduction the editors, however, notice that «steampunk is alive and well and manifesting in a myriad of different ways». This is where the editors are right. After reading «Steampunk II» you are unlikely to become clear what steampunk is, but the diversity of the stories will give an idea how wide the scope of this subgenre.

Steampunk’s grandparents had sci-fi roots, but it does not mean that the whole steampunk is definitely SF. There are stories here that in spirit and entourage tend toward fantasy, there are those that can be called science fiction, and there are simply examples of "weird fiction."

The strongest stories here «Dr. Lash Remembers» by Jeffrey Ford, where an unknown virus that causes disease blur the line between reality and fantasy, «O One» by Chris Roberson, a fantasy in which the action takes place on Chinese soil. Among the representatives of the weird fiction stands out David Erik Nelson’s «The Bold Explorer in the Place Beyond», where the first-person narrator tells of the clash of two worlds. «Tanglefoot» by Cherie Priest is a bit lightweight, but Priest puts the best from Victorian prose in her story of a mad scientist.

Three more stories related to the theme of the South. In «The Steam Dancer (1896)" Caitleen R. Kiernan tells unusually touching story that could happen in our world in the Wild West, but the presence of elements of science fiction helps to better describe the character of the heroine of the story, a dancer from the title. Wild West is the entourage of another story, pure western, but with robots, «The Cast-Iron Kid» by Andrew Knighton. Steampunk-western is even better than Spaghetti Western! «Machine Maid» by Margo Lanagan takes place not the Wild West, but it could happen there. Noirish elements are heard in this tense tale of the maid and her master.

This is not an ideal anthology, there are some mediocre stories. But «Steampunk II» by its very existence proves that if a genre has borders, they are very fragile.

The Third Bear

Jeff VanderMeer

The Third Bear


Tachyon Publications, 2010

This collection of short stories (one original, other 13 were published in one form or another in magazines and anthologies) by Jeff VanderMeer can confound all those who believe that the format of the short story had died. After reading «The Third Bear», it becomes clear to anyone that the story is alive and is not going to die for a few hundred years more at least.

«The Third Bear» is a shooting gallery for the reader. The book is populated by huge numbers of animals and the creatures that pretend to be animals, and when the eye-gun hits the target, then as a gift you take a story about an animal.

In «The Third Bear», which after the first page seems the standard fantasy, but then turns into something more sophisticated and unconventional, a kind of monster that people call for the convenience The Third Bear, attackes the village of Grommin, abducting people and devouring them. The Third Bear, of course, is not a bear, and got his nickname because of the consonance with Theeber. The village already is in a mess, but the monster eats strong men, placing the existence of the entire community at risk. Head of the village at any price has to stop the dangerous animal. You can’t find in the story typical clashes between conan-villager and man-eating bear; powerful wizards; king defender, guarding his citizens. Vandermeer does not give the answer where the bear came from and for what purpose. Author does not give an answer to the question, what kind of world is this, as well. This well may be the Earth in feudal times, this may be another planet, another world. And is it so important when you stay cut off from the world, with your village in front of the forest with the most terrible creature, which you ever saw?

VanderMeer leaves unanswered the appearance of the speaking rabbit in the story «The Quickening». Parents of 12-year old Rachel died in a car accident, and now she lives in a house with his aunt Etta. One day a stranger near the pond gives the girl a rabbit and says his name is Sensio. Sensio soon begins to talk to the girl and tells her that he is not a rabbit. The Aunt Etta, having learnt about the abilities of the beast, at first gives him royal honors, and then decides to make money. To some people the fabula of «The Quickening» may seem unoriginal: how many times we've read about talking animals? But Sensio is anything, but not an animal. This is a story (not without a bit of black humor) about the blackness of the soul and tyranny, about the narrow-mindedness and breadth of meanness. «The Quickening» could be written by Updike or Carver, if they came up with the story of a girl, her despot aunt and a creature in the guise of a rabbit.

«My manager was extremely thin, made of plastic, with paper covering the plastic» - so begins «The Situation», very weird office farce. Conspiracy is building up against the protagonist, his Manager every day asks whether he loves her, colleagues mutate. The expression "office plankton" should be understood literally. Very weird.

Each story in this collection is not what it seems. «Fixing Hanover» is more than steampunk. «Errata» is more than a postmodern story on how to write a story. «Shark God Versus Octopus God» is more than a story based on a myth. «The Surgeon's Tale» is more than the retelling of "Frankenstein."

Vandermeer has everything that a good storyteller should have: he is original, he knows how to build a structure of a story, and he can change style depending on the story. Read this book, or you will be eaten by the bear.

The Search for Philip K. Dick

Anne R. Dick
The Search for Philip K. Dick

Tachyon Publications, 2010

Memoirs of the third wife of Philip K. Dick, who lived with him for six years, consist of three parts. The first part describes life with one of the most influential writers of the second half of XX century. This is the most vulnerable point of the book, but, perhaps, the most interesting as well. The relationship between then married on his second wife Dick and recently moved to that town where he lived, Anne Dick, a young widow with two children, started easy. Ann and Philip have been interested in each other, and Anne also had a passion for writers (her late husband was a poet.) For Ann’s sake Dick without any problems divorces his wife, and his new wife becomes Anne. During these six years of life Dick’d written Confessions of a Crap Artist, Martian Time Slip, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan and other books. Dick often included scenes from his life in his own books. Anne was also the prototype for many of the heroines of the novels of Dick. During these years there has been one of the most critical moment in Dick’s literary career:

Phil's agent submitted the Confessions manuscript to Knopf. Alfred Knopf personally wrote to Phil saying he was interested in publishing the novel if Phil would rewrite the last third to make the female character more sympathetic. He compared Phil's writing to that of Salinger, Roth, and Mailer, the three top novelists of that time. We were both thrilled - but Phil said, "I can't rewrite this novel. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I'm not able to. "This is a big clue to Phil's writing. At the time I was disappointed that Phil wouldn't or couldn't take advantage of this fantastic opportunity, but it was his novel, his career, his decision. Of course Knopf didn't buy the novel.

Perhaps, if Dick then would sell the novel to Knopf, we would not see The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Valis, but we would see another Dick.

Anne initially admired prolificity of the husband and was proud that he was quite well-known writer, but later everything started to change. Dick's novels became more and more anxious, gloomy, and the writer himself has changed, gradually losing control of himself. Anne tried to save the marriage, but saving the family could cost Dick a part of himself. And because of this you should not trust everything that is written in this book. It's the memories of hurt women, left behind and abandoned. Anne takes a firm stance here: I was right in everything, the family split up due to the fault of Phil. And emotions often obscure the truth.

We should not believe Dick as well, who was himself a master of invention. He made his life like his books and his books like his life. More objective in the book are the next parts of the book where Anne Dick, based on interviews and documents, restores the childhood of Dick and the life after her divorce with him. The author covered a large number of sources, including interviews with other wives of Phil, to show the reader the most plausible picture of events. After the divorce from Anne Dick's life, however, takes the shape so surreal that the remaining two-thirds of the book reads more like fiction than like non-fiction.

At the end of his life, Dick has become a mockery: he suffers from various types of mental illness, becomes paranoid, inconsistent. A great writer, lost soul, he becomes the hero of his own novels. However, he lived as he wanted. And we finally learned what was the life of the great creator.

The Word of God

Thomas M. Disch
The Word of God

Tachyon Publications, 2008

Reviewing the book written by God through normal review standards is something not quite right and comfortable. And fearful - all written God may deem blasphemous, on the one hand, and on the other - What to fear of if God who wrote a book is not worshiped and prayed by you? Disch, like any creator who creates his own world with his commandments, found such a comparison is quite appropriate for a literary game.
This novella can be read as a satirical statement about religion, but it's better to read like quite inventive memoir. Now, when Disch is no longer alive, the book looks like a logical final of writing career. Here is the places about the thoughts on suicide, and Disch-poet (in a book published a few poems), and the plans for the future, and Philip Dick, and the youth of the writer, and his old age, and on creativity, in the end ends. This is quite unevenly written book (sometimes the author forgets where he starts), but it has things for which we read books, including those ones that are not written by gods but by men: fear, hope, love, death, despair, sadness. In the text of the book Disch puts some short stories that make up a coherent story about Disch itself, his mother, Philip Dick, Thomas Mann, 39th year, and of course, this is all science fiction that Dish wrote all his life.
And if at the beginning of reading this book, we still doubt whether the author is God, then at the end we don’t anymore. Now it seems clear: God is.

Shambling Towards Hiroshima

James Morrow
Shambling Towards Hiroshima

Tachyon Publications, 2009

A successful b-movies star Syms Thorley is at the peak of his career: he stars in films with such titles as "Corpuscula", "Lycanthropus", "Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra" and their many sequels, writes his own script, which is already predoomed to success, and generally has fun life. Hollywood is Hollywood, but that is the early summer of 1945, Japan still resists in the Pacific Ocean, but the military plans are maturing how with minimal losses to end the war. For plan realization they need someone who knows how to convincingly play in the costume of the reptile. This is Thorley. After listening to a plan of U. S. Navy, Thorley could not believe his ears: there is a secret project that America wants to use to intimidate the Japanese without using nuclear bomb. A team of U.S. scientists raised in the laboratory dragon-like terrible lizards, like Godzilla, to release them on the Japanese cities. However, the reptiles were not dangerous than kittens, besides they don’t live long. The plan had to be adjusted: in a secret hangar an exact copy of one of Japan's cities had been built, the delegation of embassy had been invited, and the role of the lizard would have to play Thorley, especially for him the suit of mighty lizard had been stitched. According to the plan Thorley with stage effects would destroy the city to scare the ambassadors so that they would run to the Emperor to beg him to stop immediately the war to save innocent people from the giant reptiles.

If in retelling it looks just funny when you read this book this is very funny. It's not just an ability of Morrow to construct convincing despite its seemingly absurdity and impossibility plot, but that’s Thorley himself. That b-movies star jokes as good as Chandler’s Marlowe, besides he has a dig at Hollywood celebrities of that time (cinephiles will get a special pleasure), Thorley is witty and resourceful.

This brilliantly written short novel has, it seems, only one flaw: for all his playfulness and irrationality, Thorley is too contrite. But without actor's contrition this book which is the longest suicide note in the world as well wouldn’t appear.

We Never Talk About My Brother

We Never Talk About My Brother
By Peter S. Beagle

Tachyon Publications, 2009

If someone begins to tell you about the death of the short story, show him this book as a living proof that the story, genre or not genre, it does not matter, is alive and well.

In this collection, Peter Beagle, known more for his fantasy novels, presents nine new stories, each of them deserves the highest praise.

Starting collection with the most powerful story is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, knocking down after reading the first story, you certainly want to read the entire book, and the sooner the better. On the other, moving lower and lower in content, feel some bitterness - the other ones fail to reach the level of the opening story. Beagle broke the sword: his story «Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel» which opens the collection are the best, but if the remaining eight ones inferior to it, then not too much. At the very least, a sense of frustration does not arise. This story tells about the childhood of the boy whose parents leave him with his uncle and aunt. Uncle Chaim is the artist, and the boy all his spare time spends in his studio, watching as his uncle paints. One day, when the uncle works on a portrait of the wife of his friend in his studio an angel shows up. This is a woman, and she requested that Chaim paints only her and nobody else. His uncle is stubborn at first, but then agrees, despite protests from his wife. Angel is a perfect poser: she does not get tired and all day can sit in the same position, she does not need to eat and drink. But the boy's aunt Rifke still feels that something is wrong with this angel: the angel knows almost nothing about the life on the earth, but she is silent about life on the heaven. The aunt with Rabbi reveals the secret of the mysterious angel.

The narrator, a little boy, is largely Beagle himself , what he acknowledges in the preface to the story, because it is based on the memories of the author about his childhood in New York. And this is the boy, and not Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke or the angel, who in the final pages makes the reader wince. This audacious in its precision and accuracy in drawing the characters, and simultaneously very touching and melancholy story of humility and self-sacrifice.

Children but those who had matured became heroes of the second story in this collection, which gave the title to the entire collection - «We Never Talk About My Brother». Older brother Jacob and his sister no longer mention in the conversation of younger brother Esau, after one case in their childhood: little brother warns his abuser, that he would run off the car. The next day it happens. The path of Esau in his life was easy. But his older brother also has its own secret. A strong story about, it may sound corny, good and evil, where the worst is that good and evil are always brothers, one blood.

«The Tale About Junko and Sayuri» occurs in Japanese set. Junko hits the otter, after recovery, a beautiful girl. The former otter Sayuki and Junko marry, live happily and would live so always, if not envy of Junko. Slim and graceful story.
In the «King Pelle the Sure» King unleashes a war with hiss neighbors just for fun. This leads to dire consequences for him and his country. Anti-war story in which the humanistic message does not hurt the eyes.

In «The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French », perhaps, the strangest story in the collection, ordinary man, whose native language is English, loses his "Englishness" and becomes - becomes a Frenchman. That's only he does not see anything French in other Frenchmen.

The easiest tale in the book turns out «The Stickball Witch». Boy games on the street often have not the most pleasant consequences: the ball for the game in stickball accidentally flies into the courtyard of one woman, long rumored that she was a witch. The witch, however, shows himself to quite unexpected side. It is more realistic story, but the atmosphere created by the author still makes change your mind in the direction of fantasy. (If you have not yet felt a sense of humor of Peter Beagle, the title of the story should have been convincing you in his presence: it sounds funny, “The Stickball Witch”, doesnt` it?)

The final in the collection are «By Moonlight» and «Chandail». They are, perhaps, too monotonous and verbose. «Chandail», taking place in the world of Beagle`s novel «The Innkeeper` s Song», so deeply dives (the story takes place into the sea) in the theme of memory, describing the fear of our past, that we have to hold our breath.

Beagle has shown himself not only a good novelist, but also the absolute master of short fiction. «We Never Talk About My Brother» means one thing: we wait for his new short stories.