Terry Brooks feels like an old friend by now, which is natural, since the first book of his I read – The Elfstones of Shannara – started me on a long journey that included a huge number of sequels and prequels. Also, the Elfstones blew my 12-year-old mind, and to this day, I actually like it better than LotR.
Recently, though, I’d fallen into a bit of a Brooks slump. I finished a sequel sub-series well in the future of his world, and then had concentrated on other things for some time.
But eventually, through the magic of the much missed and lamented Bookdepository, I bought a copy of Armageddon’s Children and restarted where I’d left off.
This is another prequel, one which links the worlds of The Word and the Void and the Shannara books. The setting is a war between humans and demons–the demons of the Shannara world–and it introduces a whole set of new characters, and shows what I assume (without having read all the books that came later) is the first inkling of a meeting between humans and elves.
Like every book in this series, this one is a page-turner, combining action and character development seamlessly in a way that makes the reader want to go on and on. And, though my least favorite part of Brooks’ world is the Word and the Void series, this book still holds my attention, just because Brooks is that good of a storyteller.
And since this is the only long-running fantasy series I read that’s still running, I’m delighted to find I still enjoy it.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
I sell a lot of fiction to The Fifth Di… which is cool for me for a number of reasons. The most obvious. is that I get paid for these stories, which is always a plus. More important than that is the fact that I get to share my writing with the mag’s readers.
Finally, I get to read what my peers are up to, which usually means getting to read a bunch of very cool science fiction and fantasy tales.
The March 2022 issue of The Fifth Di… (yes, I’m way behind on my reading… I’m working on that!) was another fun read with everything from science fiction flash to comedic novelette-length fantasy featuring a bumbling wizard.
It was a fun ride, but there was one piece that I particularly liked (well, apart from the one about the wizard, which rocked, too) and that was a poem by Pedro Iniguez called “Sandcastles on the Moon.” A wonderful, poignant piece.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a high concept science fiction novel entitled–perhaps controversially–Fat Man. He hopes readers enjoy the book as much as he loved writing it… but mainly, he hopes it makes them think. You can check it out here.
While at WorldCon a couple of years ago, I bought not one but two issues of Galaxy’s Edge. I already did my review of the first of these, so now it’s the turn of issue 50.
First off, this was a fun one to read. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been reading way too much automotive content or whether it was actually better, I found this one to be a quicker, more engaging read than the previous issue I’d seen (which I’d also liked – but this one was better).
Like the previous one, this issue is filled with solid stories, a mix of new and reprinted fiction. The reprints are from superstars in the field, such as the late Mike Resnick and David Farland, so it’s not just some warmed-over obscurity.
The best of the stories was a hard SF tale by C. Stuart Hardwick entitled “The Snows of Maxwell Montes”, which is a fascinating look at mining on Venus. Of the serialized works, I found the piece of “Incarnation Day” by Walter Jon Williams to be quite intriguing, although I would probably need to read the whole thing to give a more complete verdict.
This issue also held another installment of Harry Turtledove’s “Over the Wine-Dark Sea”. And it was also good… but didn’t fascinate me quite as much as the initial one in issue 48 did. Of course, that was my introduction to Turtledove’s style and to the well-researched world of ancient Greece, so I was probably more engaged by the novelty.
These are good magazines, and I suggest looking out for them. Future issues will be in anthology form, which probably means more content in each individual delivery, but less-frequent installments. I’ll see if I can snag one and let people know what I thought.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.
The first I heard of Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth was about fifteen years ago when I read a antho logy entitled My Favorite Fantasy Story, in which important writers of the 1990s each chose one tale that managed to move, influence or impress them. To my surprise, two of them were by Jack Vance, a writer I was aware of as someone active in the fifties, but who I’d never placed among the genre greats.
The stories were “Mazirian the Magician”, which I found okay, but not particularly great, and Lianne the Wayfarer, which I found unforgettable.
More importantly, the introductions stated that the stories were part of a larger cycle of Dying Earth stories, and I thought it would be cool to buy the rest.
Eventually, I bought the volume that includes the short stories from the original cycle (and holds the two I’d read) as well as three standalone novels: The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvelous.
The first thing that comes to mind is that Vance’s imagination is quite fertile, but more than that, his grasp of human nature is masterful. What kind of people will inhabit a world they know is doomed, you ask? A race of people who will take what they can, take it now, and not worry overmuch about the niceties of civilized interaction. When you toss magic into the mix, you have basically two categories: victims and victimizers.
This is true on the macro level–murderers and their murderees–as well as on a micro level–swindlers and the swindled. Every interaction between two individuals is a game of who can take what the other has that he wants.
Which means that the best of the books are the two that star Cugel the Clever who is a cunning little bastard who slots in the middle. He’s not powerful enough to be one of the feared and respected masters, but he refuses to be anyone’s victim for very long. Which means that he spends the entire book being on one side or the other of the little power games, whether that be in search of wealth, revenge, sex or anything else.
As to the sex, there isn’t all that much of it, but what there is is consistent with the rules of the world and with the personalities of the people within, which would be a brave choice today, but was more natural in the 1950s and 60s when these books were written: people back then were realists who didn’t try to conform to a uniform morality or even care about outraged special-interest groups who can’t accept the world as it is. I’ve seen any number of reviews and posts saying that the Cugel books are awful because of some of the things Cugel gets away with, but they’re actually internally consistent and that is more important than being “nice”.
Of course, two novels worth of Cugel swindling and being swindled would test the patience of even the greatest of saints, even though each episode is interesting in itsef, so I was delighted to switch gears to Rhialto, who is one of the powerful mages of his age, and who is involved in struggles at a slightly higher level–if philosophically similar in vein.
This was a fun book, and it is also one of those that everyone seems to have read, an important book in the genre. So I’d recommend giving it a go.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.
I have some writing news. My collection Thin Air – The Cosmic Crime Fiction of Gustavo Bondoni, has been released.
This one is hugely exciting to me, because I love crime fiction. And I love SF. So I love, really love, these stories. If you want to know the whole tale of why I love them so much, you should read the intro to the book.
And most of all, I LOVE this cover:
It just conveys what the book is bout so spectacularly well.
Want to know more? Here’s the back cover blurb:
Crime has always been around, and it will continue far into the future. Whether it’s priceless artifacts disappearing from a sealed container, trading useless space rocks to aliens in exchange for something far more valuable, a genetically-modified, not-quite-human-anymore celebrity who dies under mysterious circumstances, ghosts achieving the perfect revenge, or robots finding the equivalent of digital drugs, the possibilities are endless for committing-and solving-any type of crime you can imagine.
Find all of these, and more, in Thin Air: The Cosmic Crime Fiction of Gustavo Bondoni. The twenty-one tales in this volume represent over fifteen years of storytelling, giving unique perspectives from both heros and villains alike. Three of those stories appear here for the first time! So, tip back in your chair and read a few while listening to the city as it bustles by on the rainy streets below. This is sure to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Two weeks ago, I was in the Barnes and Noble on Union Square, which is probably my favorite bookstore in the world. As I always do when visiting the store, I spent a long time staring at the science fiction shelves, trying to understand the trends. I consider B&N the best benchmark to see what people are actually reading (the specialized critical press and genre awards seem to have completely lost contact with what readers actually want in favor of considerations that are a bit more political).
Of the modern stuff, Cixin Liu appears to be the great winner, with other things on the shelves in smaller quantities. Of course, all the usual suspects are still there: Asimov, Heinlein, Card, etc.. Tolkien in the Fantasy section.
But you know which of the classic, traditional SF writers has the most shelf space dedicated to him?
Frank Herbert.
This surprised me. Dune is a great book (although God-Emperor is my particular favorite of the series for its sheer weirdness), and the Dune series is amazing. And clearly, Brian Herbert’s continuation of the series, as well as movies, have kept it relevant. Still, I wasn’t expecting it.
One never expects the New Wave of science fiction to overcome the Golden Age. The New Wave, after all, was annoyingly activist.
Of course, for the most part, you’d be correct in your expectations. Though the New Wave’s influence is undeniable–it changed the way science fiction is written and the topics it can encompass–the actual writers are considered lesser lights. Talk to a random person about Asimov and Philip José Farmer and the person will likely have heard of the former and not the latter. Same with Budrys, Moorcock or whoever you like. Heinlein and Clark are probably better known than even the giants of the New Wave (I consider the top New Wavers to be Le Guin, Ellison and Herbert). Ellison, in particular, seems to have disappeared from the public consciousness after flashing across the firmament as a particularly bright star. I hope his ghost doesn’t sue me for saying that.
Even some newer writers, such as Orson Scott Card or Larry Niven appear to have more name recognition than the New Wave, and certainly command more shelf space than most.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for most of the New Wave, I thoroughly enjoyed Dangerous Visions and New Worlds, a critical-assessment-cum-history of the movement. This is a wonderful book that takes on a difficult, varied subject and breaks it into parts that can be digested by someone who’s never made the effort to learn about the New Wave in detail.
It explains where the writers and literary movements fit in the broader social tapestry of the “long sixties” and also focuses on the major players that molded the era, and the story of how major themes (sex, race, feminism) were employed.
Even better, it focuses on tiny ripples and currents within the overall flow, details that I’d never have heard of without this book. Forgotten authors. Micropresses.
It’s a great book (I picked it up at WorldCon a couple of years ago) and I’m delighted to have read it.
Weirdly, though, the man that time has anointed as the absolute giant of the New Wave, Frank Herbert, only gets a few lines. Perhaps that’s fine. The New Wave was never meant to be a mass-market phenomenon.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of science fiction and fantasy crime stories entitled Thin Air. He hopes readers enjoy the stories as much as he loved writing them. You can check it out here.
Morgoth’s Ring is the tenth volume in Christopher Tolkien’s in-depth study of his father’s writing about Middle-Earth. This one takes up the story from after the completion of The Lord of the Rings. While I’m pretty sure a majority of readers would prefer the volumes that talk about the adventures of Frodo and the gang, I am much more partial to the other stuff, as it paints the story of a writer whose process is absolutely different from everyone else’s.
After he turned in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien got back to his earlier legends of Middle-Earth, the stories that were eventually collected into The Silmarillion. This volume concentrates on the evolution of the origin myth of Middle Earth and its link to a proposed legendarium for England, which was the whole point of the whole Middle-Earth exercise initially.
I enjoy reading these books for the depth and texture they give to the published works, but if your idea of fun isn’t reading several versions of the same work as modified and re-modified by an obsessive, you might want to steer clear.
I’ve gotten it mostly finished, so I’ll read the final two volumes at some point. They are interesting, if not necessarily exciting, to read.
Gustavo Bondoni has recently completed the Emily Plair Trilogy with the final novel, Amalgam. Find out what happens to each of the characters in the satisfying conclusion, which you can purchase here.
Most science fiction writers might write one story or novel that catches the public’s eye and which forever cements them as greats of the field. Frank Herbert’s name will be synonymous with Dune for all time. Anne McCaffrey with her Dragonriders. Clarke is the guy who wrote 2001 and Dick is Blade Runner. It’s unfair, of course, but that’s life.
The exception must be Asimov. Is he the man who wrote Foundation? Or is he the person responsible for the Three Laws of Robotics. Or maybe he is the dude who wrote Nightfall. Where do we draw the line on Asimov? I suppose we don’t, and we’ll have to accept him as the Shakespeare of the genre, a man who will be remembered for many, many works.
All of which is driven home by Isaac Asimov – The Complete Stories Volume II. Note that the title says Volume II. We recorded Volume I earlier, but this is the second volume. You’d expect the second volume of a series like this one to contain maybe a semi-decent anchor story and then a few weaker pieces.
So I flipped open to the first story and found that it was “The Ugly Little Boy”. Wow. I was impressed, as that is a heavy-duty classic. I read through it, felt my heartstrings pulled and remembered why Asimov is so beloved, even today, and then, with a smirk, turned to the next story, expecting filler of the lowest order after that amazing start. So I turned and saw…
“Nightfall”.
Let that sink in. In volume II of a “Complete” series, Asimov has two stories that most writers would have killed to sign their byline to. And the series hasn’t even started on the robot tales (although there are plenty of Multivac stories) or the Foundation novellas (although I suppose those would have fallen out of the scope of the series if it had ever been completed).
Some modern critics show their utter lack of reading comprehension by attempting to minimize Asimov for reasons that range from the quality of his prose (I can kinda get that if you prefer Joycean obscurity to clarity of prose) to factors outside of his writing (any critic doing that should reevaluate their life choices and ask themselves what it was that lowered their IQ to that degree). Those critics need to read the first third of this book and see that they’ve been wrong all this time, and apologize for their sins. There used to be a “Big 3” and, though I love Clarke and Heinlein, it must be said that, with the passage of time, they have paled a bit beside the figure of Asimov.
Once recovered from the near-religious experience of those first two stories, I move on. Surely, there must be some filler in here, right. Even Asimov couldn’t have hit a home run on every story, could he?
To my relief, he couldn’t. Like in volume I, most of the stories in this volume other than the first two are good but not great. Asimov was far from flawless, and his major flaw is that, if he had a clever idea, he would run with it no matter the consequences, which sometimes leads to thin–or groan-worthy tales. Of course, even those are eminently readable and entertaining–he was a hell of a writer–until the denouement, and it is only afterward that one groans or scratches one’s head. These stories are, of course, a minority… even in volume II.
Only one of the tales here fell apart on him, in my opinion, and that one is “Hostess”, which I consider to be one of his worst tales. If anyone but Asimov had written that one, it wouldn’t be in their “Complete Stories” collection for the very simple reason that it wouldn’t have been published without significant rewriting.
Those are exceptions, however. In general, this is a hugely enjoyable book that reminds one why the Golden Age of Science Fiction existed. It was because regular readers, people on the street, soldiers, just normal people, read the work to be entertained and to experience the sense of wonder. Today’s work, though embracing the politics of the day (and preaching and “educating” with every breath), often forgets that the reason popular literature exists is to entertain. Even Hollywood has fallen into that trap, and has suffered the loss of popularity that comes with it (and yes, I know there are other factors at play, but no one wants to watch didactic crap, and that is also a factor, no matter how people attempt to minimize it).
Asimov never forgot his readers. He wrote to entertain them, using his fertile imagination and enormous writing skills to bring you along on a voyage you enjoyed, never preaching the current political fad at you. And that is why he was so popular.
Of course, his poetry was utterly awful. But then again, nobody’s perfect.
Gustavo Bondoni has recently completed the Emily Plair Trilogy with the final novel, Amalgam. Find out what happens to each of the characters in the satisfying conclusion, which you can purchase here.
Now, it’s no secret that I consider Isaac Asimov to be the most important SF writer to ever live. Sure, he was born too late to give form to the genre, so he’ll never be as seminal as Shelley, Wells and Verne, but he is probably the man most responsible for the greatness of modern science fiction, the man who best interpreted the great John W. Campbell’s vision for what the genre should be.
I recently reread his autobiography, but he wasn’t famous for writing about himself. I’d argue he wasn’t even famous for writing novels, even though that is what brought him into the consciousness of a wider audience. My opinion is that the bedrock of Asimov’s career is the enormous body of short stories he wrote, especially for Campbell during the glorious years of the Golden Age.
Isaac Asimov – The Complete Stories is one of the tragedies of the publishing industry. It was, perhaps an over-ambitious project that only managed two volumes and forty-odd stories out of the hundreds of tales this series would have consisted of. (As an aside, I see that volume III is scheduled to be published in late 2023… so apparently Asimov is still more attractive to readers than most of the modern SF being published). Originally compiles in the very early 1990s, the project was derailed by the great man’s death.
But the books are still in print, so I bought a copy and read the stories. I wondered how they’d hold up today.
First off, the nitpicking. I find Asimov’s writing to be better suited to things like his autobiography. Fiction has moved on a bit and his simple style feels a little old-fashioned. Also, technology moved so quickly in some directions that his references to tech, especially things like data tapes, is almost humorous.
But those are just small details. The central questions of his fiction are still brilliant today, and the colossal scope of his imagination is evident. Volume I doesn’t hold his most famous shorts, but the ones it does contain give you an idea of his range: this contains everything from fantasy follies to intentionally bad poetry, to–of course–thought-provoking science fiction. The stories might not be brilliant–when you are as prolific as Asimov, you can’t expect that–but they are all entertaining, and the characters are all really, really human.
In fact, if I had to hand an eleven-year-old a book to make him love SF in 2023, I’d probably give him an Asimov tome. These books are well-written enough to be for literate audiences, but they aren’t the tortured and over-political work we’ve gotten so used to nowadays. If our selected reader decides he likes SF after all, he can discover the newer and more “literary” stuff on his own… and that way it won’t be my fault.
Asimov, as always, is highly recommended.
Gustavo Bondoni has recently completed the Emily Plair Trilogy with the final novel, Amalgam. Find out what happens to each of the characters in the satisfying conclusion, which you can purchase here.
A lot of people like to disparage dead white guys as bad writers. Sometimes they have a point, and some writing has aged badly. I’m not referring to changing mores, of course–any intelligent reader can accept that a writer from 1850 might find themes and social structures we now find unpleasant to be perfectly acceptable, and not be bothered by old customs–but to the way the prose reads. Asimov’s fiction, for example, reads as dated to an adult in 2023, although it was wonderful to a 12-year-old in the late 1980s (his nonfiction is still the perfect writing, of course).
So, after a few years of not reading Robert Asprin, I wondered how his work would age when I picked up Myth Interpretations, a collection of his shorter work.
Wow. This guy was good.
Compared to the prose being written today, fiction from the 80s is, of course, a little less literary… which is actually a good thing (fiction today is overly-literary, like in the sixties. Like in the sixties, this fad will pass). The stories are almost perfectly paced, and even when they drag or go off on a tangent, the writing is so good that you don’t want to return to the original.
This one has a bunch of stories related to Asprin’s Myth series… and they’re ALL good.
I’ve heard that Asprin was a bit of a jerk, but even the person who said that to me–a peer of his from the 80s who has since died–respected the man’s writing. Her exact words were: “He was an asshole, but a talented asshole.” And while it’s hard to believe the asshole part when reading his delightful characters and scenes, the talent shines through in a way that makes you love every sentence.
As a writer, of course, there are a few people whose talent makes me shake my head and silently hate them. Douglas Adams. Wodehouse. Peadar O’Guillin is a contemporary one, but he’s hard to hate because he is a truly good guy.
And Robert Lynn Asprin. Find something he wrote and read it. Anything. You won’t regret it. This particular book is for people who are already fans, but any of the others will do.
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest novel is a dark historical fantasy entitled The Swords of Rasna, in which the Etruscan armies attempt to hold the Roman legions at bay… by any means necessary. You can check it out here.
Classically Educated 