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Authors: Spider Robinson
Tags: Speculative Fiction
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short stories, subtitled “A Pantheon of Modern Gods dedicated to the proposition that if gods die when their followers stop believing, then gods are born when beliefs crystallize.
Harlan takes a look at some of the gods we’re raising up these days, and makes it quite clear that we’d better start learning how to placate them, like pronto. Written over a period of ten years, the stories are superbly crafted and chillingly effective, the kind of which Heinlein once said that you should serve a whisk-broom with every shot so that the customer can brush the sawdust off him when be gets back up. But in the three or four times I’ve met Harlan, I’ve noticed a severe strain on our relationship in that he has nothing to bitch at me about, and so I ought to add some beefs.
First, most of these stories will probably already be familiar to you (a margarine dildo to the first reader who can name an anthology of anything by anyone in the past year that hasn’t contained Deathbird), reminding one of those ten Billie Holiday albums with three albums worth of songs endlessly shuffled and re-dealt. “Maggie Moneyeyes,” “Along the Scenic Route,” “Paingod’ ‘and “Shattered Like A Glass Goblin” aren’t exactly obscure, for instance.
But thass alright-somehow all these stories do belong thematically in one book. My main beef is that all of Harlan’s new gods are scary. Pessimism is okay-but unrelieved pessimism seems a little unrealistic. Maybe all that’s on the other side is the sixteen-year-old perfect goombah and his divine Maserati; but why don’t we take a look?
But how can you complain about a book that has “Whimper of Whipped Dogs” in it?
Next in line is The Shockwave Rider (Harper & Row, price unknown-while this latter phrase reoccurs frequently because I’m working from galleys, for obvious reasons I can’t abbreviate it) by John Brinner, a Spring ‘75 selection for the SF Book Club; This one had seeds of greatness, but maybe it needed more vermiculite. It’s not a bad book-but somehow it just misses. Close though.
The protagonist is Nickie Haflinger, who was drafted as a child into the government’s behaviorist-oriented genius factory, Tarnover. Not content with encouraging natural geniuses to mature, the directors of this institution are attempting to grow genetically-modified geniuses from ova in the laboratory. As a young man Nickie stumbles across a deformed and imbecile Mark I, becomes disillusioned with behaviorism and splits, removing himself from the national data-net and establishing a succession of aliases with a stolen computer-code, dedicating himself to the overthrow of Tarnover and all it stands for. A dandy, plot, and one that in Brunner’s hands should have been Hugo material. I dunno; maybe he was in a hurry. Both his villains and the community of Precipice (Tarnover’s underground antithesis) are cut from cardboard, and there are a series of debate-lectures between Nickie and the government interrogator who’s wringing out his memory that just don’t ring true.
But the book reads well all the same. Individual sections are often brilliant, in the way that John seems to have copyrighted, and the message is incisive and timely. But as a story it limps. So call it the worst book he’s written in five years, and you’ve still put it two notches above average. It kept me turning the page, and its closing questioniias has yet to be answered.
Onward to a pleasant surprise. Somehow or other I got on Doubleday’s SF review list a couple of years back, and as a result my stove here in Nova Scotia has never lacked for fire-starter. Honest to God, you never saw such Stuff in your life. Comic-books without the pictures. But I hear they’ve got a new SF editor lately, and here on my desk, by Jesus, is an actual first-rate science-fiction novel from Doubleday; Newton and the Quasi-Apple, by Stanley Schmidt. I’d never have read it if I hadn’t recognized Stanley’s
Harlan takes a look at some of the gods we’re raising up these days, and makes it quite clear that we’d better start learning how to placate them, like pronto. Written over a period of ten years, the stories are superbly crafted and chillingly effective, the kind of which Heinlein once said that you should serve a whisk-broom with every shot so that the customer can brush the sawdust off him when be gets back up. But in the three or four times I’ve met Harlan, I’ve noticed a severe strain on our relationship in that he has nothing to bitch at me about, and so I ought to add some beefs.
First, most of these stories will probably already be familiar to you (a margarine dildo to the first reader who can name an anthology of anything by anyone in the past year that hasn’t contained Deathbird), reminding one of those ten Billie Holiday albums with three albums worth of songs endlessly shuffled and re-dealt. “Maggie Moneyeyes,” “Along the Scenic Route,” “Paingod’ ‘and “Shattered Like A Glass Goblin” aren’t exactly obscure, for instance.
But thass alright-somehow all these stories do belong thematically in one book. My main beef is that all of Harlan’s new gods are scary. Pessimism is okay-but unrelieved pessimism seems a little unrealistic. Maybe all that’s on the other side is the sixteen-year-old perfect goombah and his divine Maserati; but why don’t we take a look?
But how can you complain about a book that has “Whimper of Whipped Dogs” in it?
Next in line is The Shockwave Rider (Harper & Row, price unknown-while this latter phrase reoccurs frequently because I’m working from galleys, for obvious reasons I can’t abbreviate it) by John Brinner, a Spring ‘75 selection for the SF Book Club; This one had seeds of greatness, but maybe it needed more vermiculite. It’s not a bad book-but somehow it just misses. Close though.
The protagonist is Nickie Haflinger, who was drafted as a child into the government’s behaviorist-oriented genius factory, Tarnover. Not content with encouraging natural geniuses to mature, the directors of this institution are attempting to grow genetically-modified geniuses from ova in the laboratory. As a young man Nickie stumbles across a deformed and imbecile Mark I, becomes disillusioned with behaviorism and splits, removing himself from the national data-net and establishing a succession of aliases with a stolen computer-code, dedicating himself to the overthrow of Tarnover and all it stands for. A dandy, plot, and one that in Brunner’s hands should have been Hugo material. I dunno; maybe he was in a hurry. Both his villains and the community of Precipice (Tarnover’s underground antithesis) are cut from cardboard, and there are a series of debate-lectures between Nickie and the government interrogator who’s wringing out his memory that just don’t ring true.
But the book reads well all the same. Individual sections are often brilliant, in the way that John seems to have copyrighted, and the message is incisive and timely. But as a story it limps. So call it the worst book he’s written in five years, and you’ve still put it two notches above average. It kept me turning the page, and its closing questioniias has yet to be answered.
Onward to a pleasant surprise. Somehow or other I got on Doubleday’s SF review list a couple of years back, and as a result my stove here in Nova Scotia has never lacked for fire-starter. Honest to God, you never saw such Stuff in your life. Comic-books without the pictures. But I hear they’ve got a new SF editor lately, and here on my desk, by Jesus, is an actual first-rate science-fiction novel from Doubleday; Newton and the Quasi-Apple, by Stanley Schmidt. I’d never have read it if I hadn’t recognized Stanley’s
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