Fantasy and Science Fiction July 1989

Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy
This is the best story in the magazine. The narrator's sister and daughter have both strange deaths while in the presence of a priceless statue of a glass cat. (The death's have been explained naturally, however, she knows they have been caused by the cat. The artist even states that he put his anger in the cat.) Others have promised to sell the statue, but nobody has yet to do it. The narrator has lived much of her adult life in a mental hospital, and only comes out at the end due to her daughters' family attempting to save money. She finally decides to take matters into her own hands. We are still left to wonder whether the narrator is truly insane or if the cat really does have some powers.

The Happy Frog by Elizabeth Moon
Princesses try to kiss frogs to find a prince, but all they end up doing is murdering frogs. In the end, the frog kisses a girl and ends up with a beautiful she-frog. It is moderately well written.

The Husband of Puma St. Louis Desire by W. Warren Wagar
meh. A shy guy goes back a few hundred years to live in the body of a pop star's husband. The bulk of the story is set in the 1990s, and it just doesn't age well. There is also too much name-dropped far-future technology, not to mention a fairly disgusting premise. This is the epitome of bad science fiction.


The Consequences of Buying Maria Montez for Dad • shortstory by Ron Goulart
ok. This is set in 2020, which seemed a long way off when it was written, but now seems to be totally inaccurate. The story is about two heavily indebted playboy sons who want their zillion-are father to die so they can inherit all the money. One suggests using an android nurse to clandestinely hurry up the process. The other feels moral pangs about doing that. In the end, the father dies and the nurse android shows up at the house of one of sons. This could have been a decent story if the science fiction elements were taken out. However, the technology name dropping gets things really wrong and is quite distracting.

The Importance of Pitch essay by Isaac Asimov
He really comes off as conceited. It seemed like ok science.

Termin'ator by Michael Armstrong
Purpose [Pteros] by P. E. Cunningham

Robots of Dawn

Isaac Asimov's first two books in the robot series were palatable sci-fi mysteries. Robots of Dawn is not. It comes across as the unedited musings of a lecherous old man. It is much longer than the other robot books, and filled with too much of Asimov's sociological musings. Plot and characters, are, alas tough to find. It does, however, have a nice sounding title.

Naked Sun

Ok, it has been a long time since I read this book. (Nine months can put a dent on an initial reaction.) It is a detective story set in a science fiction future with robots. The key to solving it is figuring out the loopholes in the laws of robotics. It is not a bad story, but not a great one either.

Caves of Steel

Caves of steel in six sentences: A cop is assigned a robot for a companion. They attempt to crack a murder case in "space town". The cop goes down a lot of false paths, manifesting his robot prejudice. Eventually he helps crack the case. The robot was not able to identify the culprit because his brain analysis did not reveal the guilt. However, the human realized an accidental killing would not manifest the guilt.

Caves of Steel in six words: Human outsmarts robot, solves Turing test.

Caves of Steel is OK as a mystery and OK as science fiction.

I wonder if this was one of the things I read in my youth. I remember reading a lot of Asimov, but not reading the foundation books. There must be some good stuff out there. However, it seems a lot of this is merely ok.

The Gods Themselves

Asimov can get annoying. He spends too much time describing the science and the "people" and not enough time developing characters and story. However, he usually has an interesting premise and writes just well enough to keep things interesting.

Alas, in "The Gods Themselves" he managed to show us everything that can go wrong with science fiction. There are a few "deep thoughts" held together with a horribly executed story. The premise is a cross-universe energy exchange device that can seemingly produce endless amounts of free energy, with only one minor catch. Alas, the catch is that the sun in one universe gets hotter, while that of the other gets colder, eventually wiping out life in both universes.

The story structure seemed to serve the ego of the author. "I am so good, I can rearrange things just because." Long sections of the parallel universe and their "triad" relationships are just plain tedious. They may be computers or they may be slaves to the "hard ones". However, it didn't seem to matter much for the story. The section in our universe didn't matter much either. The people on the moon had some sci-fi utopia and helped "provide" for the earth. Most of the people in both universe enjoyed the cheap power and didn't want to change. (Asimov did add a quip about people trying to make "safer" cigarettes and more fuel efficient cars rather than smoking and driving less. It was a nice soundbite, but it didn't fit in with the story.)

Some beings in both universes decide to rebel and... the book ends.

Asimov thought this was one of his favorite books. This enjoyment must have been based on the writing process, for reading this book is pure tedium.

Forward the Foundation

Forward the Foundation is the final book that Asimov published. It deals with Hari Seldon as he ages and develops his psychohistory. Along the way, he sees almost everyone close to him leave this world before him. His wife is shown to be a robot and destroyed by somebody that didn't like her. (This book hints at her super-human strength and lack of aging, but he appear to not know that she is one until her destruction.) The "robot" minister leaves (leaving Hari as the minister.) The emperor is assassinated. His closest psychohistory coworker dies from overwork. His adopted son dies in a rebellion, while his daughter-in-law and one daughter are "lost in space." Hari himself eventually dies at the end.

The galactic empire gradually starts to fall apart. Asimov appears to be espousing some of his politics in the view of how it happens. The beauracracy (and especially taxation mechanism) grows too big. Dissafection and corruption within lead to major events without. Police and security become too independent. Democratic institutions slow real progress.

Eventually, Hari discovers that his granddaughter is a mind reader. She locates some other "mentalics" and these people are used to set up the second foundation. They also use their power of persuasion to help get access to the library and get the funds needed to set up the first foundation to create the galactic encyclopedia at the end of Galaxy.

The "science fiction" in this story is rather weak. Computers are seen as something through the "mainframe age", seeming to be less advanced than they are today. Asimov's obsession with robots grants them strange significance. Psychohistory does seem somewhat plausible. However, it is more an issue with getting all the needed datapoints than crafting intricate equations. (and why would people care so much about it?) Mind reading and pushing? Yeah I guess that could be interesting.

The story is, however, more about growing old. Hari is concerned with his age. We have sections as he reaches each decade of life. The "big picture" events in the plot all seem a little too contrived to be believable. A few people always seem to know exactly what needs to be done at a certain point in time, whether for good or for bad. The dumb luck and predictive power play too important of a role to be believable. In the end, Seldon manages to survive to create the foundation that can save the world from millenia of fighting. But, he still dies. It makes for an ok story. (At least he wasn't hunting for earth!) However, missing it is no great loss.

Foundation's Edge

This was the first of the "written because there was fan demand" foundation books. It seemed better than the other two that I have read. However, it deals with similar themes and the story of finding planet earth.

Here we have parallel stories of both the first and second foundation. Members of each fall out of favor with their group and are sent on missions. They end up finding each other on Gaia, where one has been "recruited" to make a decision on the course of humanity. He decides on "galaxia" instead of the basic Seldon plan. This most of "chosen" to provide for the "free choice" rather than forceful adoption. People of Gaia are all independent parts of a collective. However, they must chose to do that. (The Mule from the main Foundation books was a rougue escapee from there.) Through the mind control mechanism, the others have been send back thinking they have eeked out a minor victory.

There seems to be some concern here with institutions becoming too old and set in their ways. New blood is needed to invigorate them. However, the old blood often tries to push out the more radical ideas. The desire of individual legacy can often interfere with the long term goals of the institution itself.

Foundation and Earth

This is one of the "later" foundations books that Asimov wrote because people wanted to write them. We start with Travize on Gaia. Gaia is a collective mind where everybody shares the thoughts of everyone else, whether they be thoughts or emotions. Travize is going on a mission to try to find the legendary planet Earth.

Most of the novel consists of the group traveling around ancient, "uncharted" planets trying to find earth. Asimov uses this as a route to explore how isolated societies can fall. We have one planet that is now devoid of people, but now ruled by dogs and other carnivores. Another planet has people that have become hermaphrodites in order to not require the interaction with other humans and obtain maximal "personal freedom". (They also produce power on their own through 'tranducer lobes'.) Another society has a primitive culture that has advances in biotechnology and weather manipulation. They seem very peaceful. However, in order to maintain their their isolation, they inflict visitors with a deadly virus.

And so the novel goes, exploring these and a few other planets in order to find out more about the legendary earth (and hopefully find earth itself.) The exploration suffers from being very tied into the time Asimov's writings. These societies are separated by vast distances of space and time, yet they are very late-20th century in their outlook and behaviors. A "primitive" society looks a lot like 18th century Polynesia, despite being settled from earth many years in our future. (They also manage to maintain the same language despite thousands of year of time passing.) There are occasional "big differences" in technology, but somehow these don't cause any alterations to the society beyond their direct impacts.

Eventually the protagonists find earth. However, as in the legends, it appears to be too radioactive to support life. However, through something that looks like happenstance they end up on the moon, where a 20,000 year old robot has been manipulating human activity for some time.

The robot is on its last legs an has been quietly manipulating them so they can arrive there. This is an Asimovian robot with strong human characteristics. (The society at large is devoid of robots, viewing them as something that leads to degeneration.) The robot can manipulate people. However, it must adhere to the laws of robotics which require it to help humans and humankind. Thus it relies on Travize to make the decision to implement "Galaxia" instead of the Seldon plan for the betterment of humanity. Travize agrees and everything is happy.

Prelude to the Foundation

Asimov's foundation series was one of the most popular in science fiction. As a kid, I had heard about it. However, I preferred reading Asimov's other books. Later, I finally read the original Foundation series. It wasn't bad, but when I think about it in retrospect, the final books seemed to ramble a bit. He seemed to be done writing.

Enter Prelude to the Foundation. In the introduction he admits that he thought he was done, but was convinced by his readers and publisher to write more books. So we get this uninspiring work.

Prelude to the Foundation is a critique of 1950s cultural norms, written in the 1980s and set tens of thousands of years in the future. Just imagine a world that sees rapid technological innovations, robots, space travel, quadrillions of people, the domination of science. Yet somehow, through all of this, people still have the morals and concerns of people in the 1950s. Yuck.

A "hand on thigh" story of situational moral relativism is repeatedly referenced. Why? Perhaps he just couldn't think of anything else to bring in the point.

The plot is also held together by threads without much substance.

Hari Seldon delivers a paper on "psychohistory", a mathematical concept in which large-scale history of people can be predicted given enough data. For some reason, people are interested in this. Some people try to chase him down. Others try to help him. He always manages to escape just in time. He also comes across as brash, violating norms of different cultures in an attempt to gain more knowledge to carry out his psychohistory. Somehow these actions all end up being just what is needed. In spite of some close calls, he and his friends have just the needed fighting skills and manage to escape without any harm.

In the end, it turns out that the emperor's assistant has been controlling them all along. Only Hari is able to determine that he is in fact not a person, but a robot who has been using powers of emotion to influence everyone and attempt to protect society.

The plot is a real yawner. The characters are not believable (or appealing.) The theme about questioning the norms of societies falls flat. Perhaps the only interesting idea here is that of information. In the quest to find all that is needed to "create" psychohistory, Hari realizes that knowing what unuseful information can be discarded is the most important part of accumulating knowledge.

Stars Like Dust

A young son of a rancher is on a ship where an attempt is made on his life. He eventually sneaks away with the daughter of a sycophantal ruler and they attempt to find the rebel groups who are fighting against the local tyrants. They are caught but don't find the tyrants. Eventually, they reason that the rebel home-base is actually the girl's home planet and the rebel leader is her father. In the process there are a number of different twists and turns and a few bold leaps of intuition. It is all mildly entertaining, but not exceptional.

One part that did stretch reason a bit was the "important document" that the boy's deceased father knew about. This document was seen as being key to the revolution and the installation of power by the people instead of a ruler or oligarchy. This "old document" turned out to be the US constitution. It guess it makes it a raw-raw patriotic work. It was written in the 1950s after all.

I, Robot

[July 2009] It's always fun reading "old" futurist books that talk about the present day. By today, they were expecting flying cars, interplanetary travel and impressive robots. However, robots still had vacuum tubes, and newspapers were read in paper form.
These provide some interesting chuckles in this book. However, despite the title, the book is primarily a comment on man and his post World War II prejudices. The fear of the 'unknown' in robots can be replaced by many other modern technological fears, or could even be viewed as a fear of "immigrants". The main thrust of the many stories, however, involve how to 'outwit' robots that have been programmed to obey certain rules.
The many "stories" contained in the book are seen through the reflection of a robot psychologist, and while having some threads keeping them together, all could stand as short stories on their own. They each give rise to many psychological and sociological questions and help make this an interesting read.

Flux

There is just something about Card's works. I find myself really engrossed and excited to read them, yet there are very few that would be called "great". There are plenty of really interesting ideas. He also has a thing for literary allusions. Perhaps it is the writing style that degrades the work. But, I seem to like the style. Maybe it is just something missing there. Something that is hard to pinpoint, but that would be needed to launch his writing from the "good" to the "great".

Short story collections are always nice because they explore new ideas quickly. If one gets dull, there is not much time wasted before moving on to the next. Card is also very good with providing commentary on his stories - this is often some of the best stuff.

The last story in the work, "The Originist", was also the longest. As I started the story I did a quick double-take. These characters sounded familiar. Weren't they from Asimov's Foundation universe? No. That couldn't be. Card hates fan fiction. But, as they started talking about Trantor and foundations, I knew it was Asimov. What's with that? Well, it turns out that Card ended up breaking his own rules as part of a "Foundation's Friends" work. (Is that a sign of a great author?) The story was pretty good and did fit in well with Asimov's Foundation and Empire series.

"In the Doghouse" is a story about aliens looking for a new home planet. They only have their minds left and need to live in a host species. However, their morals don't allow them to live in highly sentient species. One scout comes down to earth "controlled" by a power-company monopoly. The company charges high rates, limits usage and prohibits solar panels. The alien scout comes down, assumes the body of a condemned man and starts selling doghouses with solar panels. This provides abundant power to people. However, so they don't get caught, he also requires everyone to have a dog. The power company now falls to its knees, and dog houses are spread all over the world. The scout goes back home, is commended for a setting up the ideal host situation, and is then asked to commit suicide (for being hosted in a man.) The aliens then come down, occupy the bodies of the dogs, and start showing their supreme intellect to the humans. The humans just laugh at the smart dogs, and the aliens end up going back to being just dogs.
This has a sly message about government and "do-gooders" getting mangled up in ideas that are not necessarily good. People conserve energy because it is so limited. Alternatives are made illegal. The great monopolists can grow rich in this scenario. Only through subterfuge can people overcome this. After gaining this victory with the aid of the aliens, the people turn around and do the same with the aliens. Rather than working together with the intellectual giants that have visited, they continue to hold dogs in their same subservient positions.

"A Thousand Deaths" is a gruesome tale of a man that is cloned and killed multiple times in an attempt to get a coerced "believable" confession. The confession is judged believable by the response of a test audience. He is never believable, eventually deciding to criticize the state and mentally "poison" the audience.

In "Clap Hands and Sing" a man and a woman independently travel back in time to kindle a childhood crush. This is one of the poorer stories.

"Dogwalker" is Card's cyperbunk about a password cracking man-boy who almost gets away with the perfect crime, but fails because the target always types his password twice. How hard would it be to guess somebody's password after knowing their life well?

"But We Try Not to Act Like It" is about a lonely man who is sick of his TV. Legislation has made TV watching mandatory for singles. Legislation also requires individualized programming for small minority groups, and restricts content based on tendencies (such as violence) of the audience. However, this attempt to control entertainment backfires as many people are harmed by problems with the programs. It contains some big-brother themes, but is an easily forgettable story.

"I Put My Blue Genes" is about a crew that returns to earth after 100s of years in space. They left right as the USSR and USA were on the brink of biological warfare. They find a small US base that is battling the Russian attacks. It turns out the Russians had been eliminated a long time ago, and it is simply the mutations of the past weapons that they are fighting. The earth, however, is nearly uninhabitable, and the people have significantly mutated and need to continue to do so to survive. Its a cautionary tale of war for war's sake. When your entire identity is wound up in fighting an enemy, its difficult to know what to do when the enemy is gone.

End of Eternity

"Eternity" is a monastic-like organization that whose members bounce around through time. They have complex computer formulas to calculate the impact of changes. With that, they attempt to make the minimum possible change that will make the desired alteration in the world. If some great leader is about to destroy the world, they might move his briefcase, causing him to get agitated and miss a key meeting that lead to him getting in power. New members are men recruited from various time periods who can never marry, but have great power to affect changes.

One technician falls in love with a girl and is willing to throw all of eternity to the kabosh to get her back. It turns out he is a man who was supposed to train the guy that actual invents eternity. The guy is supposed to go back in time to "invent" the time travel. So, out protagonist alters the controls sending him back too early. Only, he has a change of heart after he is promised his girl, and searches magazine adds for the appropriate time period to find the guy. He gets the girl first, then goes back with her to the ancient past. Only, then he discovers she is a double agent. She came from a future that developed an even better time travel where they can see all possible outcomes. "Eternity"'s meddling has eliminated major conflicts, but because of this they have also eliminated major achievements, and led to the gradual extinction of man. He felt he had been used by eternity to bond with her and set up eternity. Then he discovered he had been used by her to kill eternity. But, in the end, she loves him, so who cares about the rest of the world? They then decide to live happily ever after, killing "eternity" they can improve the world. And as a bonus, they live happily ever after.

Ok. That is quite a jumble. This book tells a fairly compelling story, and has all sorts of ideas. Some are well executed, while others are not quite fully flushed out. (Computers can really calculate such detailed changes?) And how is it that people in the future can send things back to the past in order to invent the future? (Reminds me of how "Shakespeare" was invented in a Jasper Fforde book.)

Politically, the novel presents a strong indictment of central planning. Here it is amplified to an extreme of planning things over time. Sure, the central planning does alleviate some human wants. But the lack of these wants is often what drives the very innovation that improves society as a whole. Here Big Brother isn't just watching. Big Brother is actually changing - only it does it so well you don't even know. Freewill on the individual and societal level is very important here. Libertarians rule!

Time travel is presented in a couple, somewhat confusing, ways. With eternity, time travel an cause changes. But these changes are then "always" in place. If you change something in the past that should eliminate you, but you are still there, then the change didn't eliminate you. There is also a separate concept of "time" by those living in eternity. Somehow this time continues linearly while the "real" time is going on. Thus, they may not have "reached" their elimination yet in the linear time, even though they are in a vastly different time frame than the person sent back to invent them. Alas, this extra time doesn't quite jell. But, just set back and enjoy the flight, and try to worry about the world later.

Pebble in the Sky

Earth is a radioactive wasteland in the netherworld of the galactic empire. However, some people think it may have been the origin of the human race. An archaeologist is going out there to try to prove his theory that it was the birthplace of humans. Coincidentally, at the same time, the earthlings are plotting to take over the universe, by sending a biological agent to kill off everyone in the galaxy. (Since earth people have evolved so quickly, they are relatively unharmed by this disease that would kill most others.) The earth people are able to do this in part due to a machine that they have created that allows people to rapidly learn and think (as long as they are not killed off first.)

And, just to make sure there is some connection to today, a tailor (Schwartz) walking around mid-20th century Chicago accidentally gets zapped some 50000+ years in to the future by some strange nuclear incident. This guy would end up being the person that helps save the galaxy.

There are plenty of obvious parallels here. Substitute Africa for "earth" and the world for the galaxy, and you could easily have been writing about contemporary events. You could even through something like AIDS in there for the disease. (The book predated AIDS, but there were plenty of other "old world" diseases that have caused problems in the world.) The moderns have spread out of the "old" world, and now see the differently-evolved old-worlders as primitive. They wonder why they stick to there old ways when there is so much new that they are missing out. At the same time, they don't want them to be too closely intertwined in the world system.

The goal of the earth people could be a commentary on Napolean, Mao or many of the other large-scale empire-builders. They often come out in the name of liberation. But in the end, they simply replace one type of despot with another.

It could even be commentary on the black-white relations in the U.S. Rather than seek
"integration", some of the "opressed" would like to become the "opressors". After all, this is the system they are used to. Somebody has to be on the bottom, right?

In addition to the geo-political slant, we also have population control and eugenics. People are supposed to be euthanized when they turn 60. The only exception is for extraordinary talents that must be approved by the high minister (without recourse to appeal.) Why this is needed with such a small earth population is not clearly explained.

With all the politics, there is still room for a story. It was a page-turner, yet surprisingly flat. Schwartz seems to discover new avenues of his powers just as he needs them. Yet, he doesn't use them to his full ability. (If he can read people's minds and force them to do things, why are people still negotiating with him?) The climatic jailing and kidnapping seems to drag out for way to long. Then, after the rockets have been supposedly been launched and the galaxy is about to be destroyed, everyone behaves nobody seems to care. So much for suspense. We just have the good guy inform us that he was secretly controlling people to go bomb the base on his own.

While the writing had much to be desired, it did create an interesting world, and posed a number of contemplative questions. It was also one of his first works, so there was plenty of time in the career for the writing to improve.

Currents of Space

A scientist discovers that a planet is about to be destroyed. When he tries to tell the authorities, he is hushed up and eventually "brain-washed" in to a village idiot. His prediction leads to a great deal of political intrigue. The planet (Florinia) he predicted would be destroyed is currently the only place in the galaxy where a valuable cloth can be grown. The trade, however, is controlled by another planet (Sark), that has made the Florinians in to virtual slaves. (They have even gone so far to take all "exceptional" members of society and move them in to positions of responsibility - but prohibiting them from reproduction.) After a lot of politics, it turns out the planet will be destroyed. But, this knowledge provides the insight needed to grow the cloth material elsewhere in the galaxy. Most everyone is evacuated and people are happy.

The story was interesting, but the story-telling had much to be desire. The story consisted of a number of overlapping narratives, told from different points of view. The last part of one narrative would be described again in the second narrative. At first, I had to check to make sure I didn't go backwards. I knew how it would turn out. Why do I have to go through it again.

The story also became fairly predictable early on. Sure, there were some twists, but it was fairly easy to predict what was going to happen. The multiple narratives also ruined what could have been suspenseful twists.

Second Foundation

This third foundation book continues directly where Foundation and Empire left off.
The "second foundation" was discovered when they came out to stop the "Mule". This discovery, however, caused others to put down their guard. They figured they wouldn't have to work very hard, because if anything bad happened, the second foundation would save them. However, while they had theories as to the whereabouts of the second foundation, nobody was sure.

Some people, however, thought that the "mind control" abilities of the second foundation were an affront to personal freedom. They sought out to discover this second foundation to destroy it. The second foundation was playing right along with them. If people knew there were others still guiding them, they may continue to get lax. Thus, the second foundation encouraged a "discovery" and "destruction" of the "second foundation". This coupled with an easy war victory helped people that the first foundation was the ruling power, and that there was no second foundation that could step in and help steer history in the right direction. This allowed the second foundation to continue to exercise its full control, for people were now acting in their best interest.

From the "quotes" of fictional works in the books, it is obvious that the foundation plan had succeeded in the future. It would be interesting to see how the "philosopher kings" did manage to make it in to power. Was the "psychohistorian" really powerful enough to plan and predict the course of events for the next 1000 years? Or was it simply a guise to steer history in that direction. (If people are expecting the plan to be predicted, and a clandestine group steers it that way, there are bound to be more and more believers.)

Foundation and Empire

The second Foundation book is more of a novel than the first. The story centers around The Mule, a "mutant" who is able to break the plans for the Foundation as predicted by "psycho-history". The futuristic predictions predict the actions of "mobs". However, it was not very accurate at predicting the actions of a single person. Enter the Mule. His mutant ability allows him to control the emotions of people, and thus to take over the whole empire himself.

In the first book, non-comformist actions by individual were merely "inevitable" actions needed to continue the group actions. In this book, the actions of the Mule are truly 'original', and thus can change the course of history.

It would be interesting to explore the importance of other historical characters. Which historical figures truly changed history, versus simply moved forward the plans already in process?

The first part of this book is a little confusing, but it eventually starts to become coherent. The final part seems an odd monologue by the Mule, seeming to only explain things. (The character of the Mule was, however, set up to provide these monologues - however, we don't actually see him do it until the end.)

Foundation

Foundation is the story of the 1000 year period between the fall of a great world empire and the arise of the new "civilization". The setting is now obviously the 1950s, set way in the future. "Atomics" are the key to power source and control. Tobacco use is still common place and important. Scientists are able to "predict the future" using complex mathematical models. But in the end, it just seems a lot like the fall of Rome. The periphery "falls" first, but the Foundation maintains scientific progress by induing science with religion, making nuclear technician into priests. The original scientist that predicted aspects of their life is also portrayed as a deity.

The book reads like a collection of short stories. The different stories follow chronologically through different periods of the "advancement" of the foundation. The main characters always seem to do exactly what needs to be done at the exact right time. This is a similar savant believability problem that Card has used in his Ender books. Similarly, in the foundation books, it always seems to be a "young buck" going against society that does exactly what is needed to continue the inevitable path outlined by the predictions.