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Fiction reviews
In which I am bitchy.
Jennifer Fallon, Medalon: Okay, so maybe I was in a bad mood when I started this book, the first in a fantasy trilogy, but the silly names didn’t help: R’shiel, Joyhinia, Fardohnya (this, the name of a far-off land), and most especially Shananara (Terry Brooks does doo-wop!). In a small country run by the devoutly atheistic Sisterhood, beautiful but evil Joyhinia plots against homely but good Mahina, the head Sister. Her daugher R’shiel, who sees through her mother’s pretense of righteousness though almost no one else can, is supposed to be a pawn in Joyhinia’s schemes. She rebels, along with her equally clear-eyed brother Tarja. Meanwhile, rumors of a half-human, half-demon child returned to the land help destabilize the political situation, which Joyhinia manipulates to her own ends, and Medalon is threatened from all sides by religious fanatics of various stripes. Fallon keeps flirting with surprising takes on the cliches she’s set up – sometimes she gets to second base with them – but no, in the end R’shiel’s snap judgments are right and everyone else is wrong, of course. Maybe George R.R. Martin spoiled me, but I want my bad guys to pass some basic Evil Overlord tests, and Joyhinia, despite her years of plotting, seems to have overlooked some obvious flaws in her plan (not the least of which was neglecting to seduce and/or successfully intimidate her children, even though she managed to attend to everyone else around her). And – here I get really petty – the family name, Tenragen, kept making me think “Emmagen,” and I wished Teyla were in the story to chew bubblegum and kick ass.
Steven Gould, Helm: I’d call this a YA novel, though it does have enough sex in it to make you notice (I hear that’s a thing with YA books generally these days, as it is with sf). The invention of the imprinter, which can convey information instantly or convert people into true believers in anything, triggers a religious war that destroys Earth, leaving only a few survivors in search of a new home for humanity. Reluctantly, the folks in charge send imprinters with the spaceship they send out, trying to preserve knowledge and promote ethics that will enable the small colony to survive. Hundreds of years later, things haven’t gone entirely as planned, with only one imprinter left and its function largely not understood: It is the Helm. A teenage boy, the son of the enlightened ruler of his province, recklessly tries it on and gets a dose of martial arts (and other) knowledge from a long-ago source. His father wanted to use the Helm, which charges slowly, for an older son, but he works with what he’s got, training young Leland to use his new memories. Leland is soon swept up in various battles, political and sword-clashing, and struggles to use his powers for good. His Mary-Suelike super-competence was a little too much for me even with the imprinting, but that’s a pretty standard YA trope. Another weakness was that Gould pulled a lot of punches, with coincidences coming to save people who probably should have died. Nonetheless, the setting was provocative, especially the hints of different philosophical stances towards the use of the imprinter. I’d definitely read the story of how the imprinter destroyed the world.
Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold: My eyes! My childhood illusions! The trauma, it burns! Published in 1964, this bizarre book posits a white nuclear family (with a black servant whose deference and gentility holds past disaster but not past the acquisistion of power) who, with the servant and a young female houseguest, survive a nuclear war in the shelter the patriarch has presciently constructed, only to emerge into a pristine new world that seems geographically the same as the Earth they knew, only untouched by human habitation. That’s not quite true, as they discover. The sexual politics are icky, icky, icky, with the houseguest sleeping with the patriarch their first night in the shelter while his wife sleeps, alcohol-sodden and drugged, nearby. But it’s okay because she’s become worthless in her old age, you see? It’s not that I find last-night-of-the-world sex implausible, but this sex skeeved me – with the nubile girl, who fortunately is a divorcee so she knows her way about a man, immediately declaring her love for and devotion to patriarch Farnham. And then Farnham’s daugher tells him she’d happily commit incest with him if he asked, because he’s just that good of a guy.
This is one sick fantasy of patriarchy (which is why I keep using the epithet for Farnham), in which the patriarch is always right and wise and in control, while everyone else, including the resentful and overindulged son, is dangerously unreliable. Farnham says he takes partial responsibility for his wife’s decline – she used to be a plucky, hardworking sort, but prosperity allowed her to grow torpid and selfish, you see – but we’re clearly supposed to understand that everyone is responsible for themselves and only for themselves, so his guilt is just a sign of good character. The racial politics, when the Farnhams are discovered by an advanced civilization ruled by blacks, are possibly even skeevier, since the blacks keep white slaves and breed them according to a eugenics program. I think Heinlein was trying to be progressive with this role reversal, sort of like the juror in A Time to Kill who asks her fellow jurors to imagine whether they’d let off a white man who killed black men for raping the white man’s daughter. But it comes off as just as patronizing as every other part of the book, since Farnham always knows best and, even when he’s severely outwitted by his new master (and I must congratulate Heinlein for allowing that to happen – Farnham’s prejudices have led him to underestimate his adversary, even though the master is otherwise a monster), he ends up all right in the end. Now I remember why I love Octavia Butler so much.
Charles Stross, The Concrete Jungle, novella from The Atrocity Archives, available as a free download. Stross combines computer-savvy wryness with demonology. Though he isn’t going to be a favorite of mine, I can see why this novella won the Hugo. Sentences sometimes had very nice payoffs, as in, “I spend a very uncomfortable half hour being checked through security by a couple of Rottweilers in blue suits who work on the assumption that anyone who is not known to be a Communist infiltrator from North Korea is a dangerously unclassified security risk.” (Did I mention present tense first person narration?) I probably would have benefited from knowing the background to the story, but I think I mostly picked it up: Magic is real and is highly weaponized, making it subject to the same covert dramas as other high-tech weapons. In particular, an operative has to deal with an outbreak of gorgonism that is connected with a secret project to turn all Britain’s cameras into offensive weapons instead of just surveillance devices. Stross gets in some jabs at digital rights management technologies and the RIAA while he’s at it. Engaging enough that I’ll look for his other work, a significant percentage of which is available online at his site.
Jennifer Fallon, Medalon: Okay, so maybe I was in a bad mood when I started this book, the first in a fantasy trilogy, but the silly names didn’t help: R’shiel, Joyhinia, Fardohnya (this, the name of a far-off land), and most especially Shananara (Terry Brooks does doo-wop!). In a small country run by the devoutly atheistic Sisterhood, beautiful but evil Joyhinia plots against homely but good Mahina, the head Sister. Her daugher R’shiel, who sees through her mother’s pretense of righteousness though almost no one else can, is supposed to be a pawn in Joyhinia’s schemes. She rebels, along with her equally clear-eyed brother Tarja. Meanwhile, rumors of a half-human, half-demon child returned to the land help destabilize the political situation, which Joyhinia manipulates to her own ends, and Medalon is threatened from all sides by religious fanatics of various stripes. Fallon keeps flirting with surprising takes on the cliches she’s set up – sometimes she gets to second base with them – but no, in the end R’shiel’s snap judgments are right and everyone else is wrong, of course. Maybe George R.R. Martin spoiled me, but I want my bad guys to pass some basic Evil Overlord tests, and Joyhinia, despite her years of plotting, seems to have overlooked some obvious flaws in her plan (not the least of which was neglecting to seduce and/or successfully intimidate her children, even though she managed to attend to everyone else around her). And – here I get really petty – the family name, Tenragen, kept making me think “Emmagen,” and I wished Teyla were in the story to chew bubblegum and kick ass.
Steven Gould, Helm: I’d call this a YA novel, though it does have enough sex in it to make you notice (I hear that’s a thing with YA books generally these days, as it is with sf). The invention of the imprinter, which can convey information instantly or convert people into true believers in anything, triggers a religious war that destroys Earth, leaving only a few survivors in search of a new home for humanity. Reluctantly, the folks in charge send imprinters with the spaceship they send out, trying to preserve knowledge and promote ethics that will enable the small colony to survive. Hundreds of years later, things haven’t gone entirely as planned, with only one imprinter left and its function largely not understood: It is the Helm. A teenage boy, the son of the enlightened ruler of his province, recklessly tries it on and gets a dose of martial arts (and other) knowledge from a long-ago source. His father wanted to use the Helm, which charges slowly, for an older son, but he works with what he’s got, training young Leland to use his new memories. Leland is soon swept up in various battles, political and sword-clashing, and struggles to use his powers for good. His Mary-Suelike super-competence was a little too much for me even with the imprinting, but that’s a pretty standard YA trope. Another weakness was that Gould pulled a lot of punches, with coincidences coming to save people who probably should have died. Nonetheless, the setting was provocative, especially the hints of different philosophical stances towards the use of the imprinter. I’d definitely read the story of how the imprinter destroyed the world.
Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham’s Freehold: My eyes! My childhood illusions! The trauma, it burns! Published in 1964, this bizarre book posits a white nuclear family (with a black servant whose deference and gentility holds past disaster but not past the acquisistion of power) who, with the servant and a young female houseguest, survive a nuclear war in the shelter the patriarch has presciently constructed, only to emerge into a pristine new world that seems geographically the same as the Earth they knew, only untouched by human habitation. That’s not quite true, as they discover. The sexual politics are icky, icky, icky, with the houseguest sleeping with the patriarch their first night in the shelter while his wife sleeps, alcohol-sodden and drugged, nearby. But it’s okay because she’s become worthless in her old age, you see? It’s not that I find last-night-of-the-world sex implausible, but this sex skeeved me – with the nubile girl, who fortunately is a divorcee so she knows her way about a man, immediately declaring her love for and devotion to patriarch Farnham. And then Farnham’s daugher tells him she’d happily commit incest with him if he asked, because he’s just that good of a guy.
This is one sick fantasy of patriarchy (which is why I keep using the epithet for Farnham), in which the patriarch is always right and wise and in control, while everyone else, including the resentful and overindulged son, is dangerously unreliable. Farnham says he takes partial responsibility for his wife’s decline – she used to be a plucky, hardworking sort, but prosperity allowed her to grow torpid and selfish, you see – but we’re clearly supposed to understand that everyone is responsible for themselves and only for themselves, so his guilt is just a sign of good character. The racial politics, when the Farnhams are discovered by an advanced civilization ruled by blacks, are possibly even skeevier, since the blacks keep white slaves and breed them according to a eugenics program. I think Heinlein was trying to be progressive with this role reversal, sort of like the juror in A Time to Kill who asks her fellow jurors to imagine whether they’d let off a white man who killed black men for raping the white man’s daughter. But it comes off as just as patronizing as every other part of the book, since Farnham always knows best and, even when he’s severely outwitted by his new master (and I must congratulate Heinlein for allowing that to happen – Farnham’s prejudices have led him to underestimate his adversary, even though the master is otherwise a monster), he ends up all right in the end. Now I remember why I love Octavia Butler so much.
Charles Stross, The Concrete Jungle, novella from The Atrocity Archives, available as a free download. Stross combines computer-savvy wryness with demonology. Though he isn’t going to be a favorite of mine, I can see why this novella won the Hugo. Sentences sometimes had very nice payoffs, as in, “I spend a very uncomfortable half hour being checked through security by a couple of Rottweilers in blue suits who work on the assumption that anyone who is not known to be a Communist infiltrator from North Korea is a dangerously unclassified security risk.” (Did I mention present tense first person narration?) I probably would have benefited from knowing the background to the story, but I think I mostly picked it up: Magic is real and is highly weaponized, making it subject to the same covert dramas as other high-tech weapons. In particular, an operative has to deal with an outbreak of gorgonism that is connected with a secret project to turn all Britain’s cameras into offensive weapons instead of just surveillance devices. Stross gets in some jabs at digital rights management technologies and the RIAA while he’s at it. Engaging enough that I’ll look for his other work, a significant percentage of which is available online at his site.
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On the other hand, when Heinlein flubbed it, the results could be downright embarrassing -- Farnham's Freehold is pretty much the "Spock's Brain" of the Heinlein canon.
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As birthday gifts go, it was stellar. The only better one (by the Perfect Birthday Present definition of being completely surprised by exactly what you always wanted) was the complete works of Steeleye Span on LP, and that guy, I married.
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In a more enjoyable vein, have you read Stross' A Colder War (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm)? It's one of my favorite novellas ever, and from what you described of "The Concrete Jungle" (which I'm so going to read as soon as I have the time, thanks for the review *g*), you'd probably enjoy it just as much.
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I downloaded the Stross for later airplane reading.
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There should've been more gelding in that book.
Yes. Yes, it is.
Re: Yes. Yes, it is.
I read that book when I was too young to pick up on much of what was objectionable (I remember scandalizing my class as an eleven-year-old by bringing in Friday with that infamous cover to read while killing time in between assignments, and I think that was from the same period); it's only looking back on it that I am completely appalled.
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Farnham's Freehold, on the other hand, I've never even tried to read. When I was twelve, a family friend gave me Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, and then, when that went down well, carefully fed me what I now realize was the Only the Good Parts Edition of the Complete Works of Heinlein. Later, when I had free and easy access to this family friend's library, I pounced on all the Heinlein I hadn't read, and he took it out of my hands and said, "See, [TFV], as a writer, Heinlein only had one gear. Either he traveled at the speed of light or the ship blew up." I stubbornly insisted on reading the books, but I gave up in horror halfway through the second one, and have never looked back.
Farnham's Freehold is the one that that friend defined as "the worst of all possible Heinleins." I was never brave enough to ask why, but I guess I know now.
*makes mental note to send that guy a thank-you card*
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As for the Heinlein, I think "the best parts" was my introduction too, but I wasn't really old enough to tell the difference.
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Fallon's prose is not what seemed promising about her work, I grant you.
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Thomas M Disch's monstrously bitter book about American sf, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, has a whole chapter about Heinlein, much of it about Farnham's Freehold.
Heinlein really liked the idea of himself as a patriarch. I wonder if anyone's tried to write a seriously researched biography of him yet? (I wonder what it's like to work with the estate?)
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