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A to Z Reviews: “Tag,” by David Kablack

A to Z Reviews: “Tag,” by David Kablack

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A to Z Reviews

David Kablack’s “Tag” appeared in the 18th issue of the magazine Pirate Writings, which would change its name to Fantastic Stories of the Imagination with the next issue. One of the features of Pirate Writings was the inclusion of a short-short story section.  The first story in the section in this particular issue is set in a small town. Charlie, the O’Reilley twins, Wally, and Black Tom O’Faolin, all teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, are spending time playing a game of tag on one of the rare days off the working members of the group have.

Their game is interrupted by one of the village’s outcasts, a hunchback whose father is unknown and whose mother has died, hobbles past them on his way home from the market. Being young boys faced with someone who is an outsider, they stop their game to watch him go by.  As Charlie starts the game up again by tagging Tom, Tom gets an idea and tags the hunchback with enough force that he sends his purchases scattering across the ground.

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A 1970s Future: The Man Responsible by Stephen Robinett

A 1970s Future: The Man Responsible by Stephen Robinett

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The Man Responsible (Ace Books, April 1978). Cover art by Vincent DiFate

This latest in my loose series of essays about fairly obscure 1970s/1980s SF books is about a writer who looked to be establishing a potentially significant career as what might be called a “Ben Bova” writer. Alas, Stephen Robinett contracted Hodgkin’s Disease as a young man, and died at only age 62 in 2004. His final two novels, Final Option and the sadly ironically titled Unfinished Business, were published in 1990, and are only borderline SF if at all, crime stories about a financial journalist investigating fraud. Robinett himself was a lawyer and a business journalist, and this background certainly informs his work, including the novel I’m discussing here.

I have called Robinett a Ben Bova writer, in the sense that the bulk of his stories were published in Ben Bova’s Analog, and his one collection, Projections, was part of a short-lived series of books from Ace labeled “Analog Books,” and edited by Bova. Robinett followed Bova to Omni, and his final short story appeared there in 1983. But Robinett also sold to Vertex, to Jim Baen’s Galaxy, and to Damon Knight’s Orbit, while his first sales were to John W. Campbell at Analog, beginning with “Minitalent” in March 1969. This makes him, along with Rob Chilson, Stepan Chapman and James Tiptree, Jr., one of Campbell’s latest discoveries.

The other interesting thing about Robinett’s first stories — all the way through a couple Galaxy pieces in 1975 — is that they were published as by “Tak Hallus.” And takhallus is a Persian word (derived from Arabic) meaning… pseudonym.

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A to Z Reviews: “Captain Starlight and the Flying Saucer,” by S. Ivan Jurisevic

A to Z Reviews: “Captain Starlight and the Flying Saucer,” by S. Ivan Jurisevic

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A to Z Reviews

An interesting coincidence occurred when I hit the Js. The first author in my collection was Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, whose story “The Haunted House on Rocketworks Street” appeared in an anthology put together in honor of Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, Finland. The final author in my collection in S. Ivan Jurisevic, whose story “Captain Starlight and the Flying Saucer” appeared in Interzone issue 146, which proclaims that it is the “Special Australian WorldCon issue.”

Although this is Jurisevic’s only story listed in the Internet Science Fiction Database, the about an author blurb at the end notes that he previously published a story about Captain Starlight in the magazine Omega. In any event, this story is a typical tall tale about a folkloric character. It reads as if Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill had relocated to the Australian outback and helped form the landscape.

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Besties: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by R.F. Kuang

Besties: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by R.F. Kuang

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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023
(Mariner Books, October 17, 2023)

Perhaps the most overused title for short story anthologies beings with “Best of.” In genre fiction, the heavyweight (in terms of both size and breadth of coverage) was the Gardner Dozois-edited The Year’s Best Science Fiction Stories that ran for 35 years until his death in 2018. And there are a whole slew of similar “Best of’s” for horror, dark fantasy, speculative fiction, you name a subgenre and there’s a “Best of” collection.

If “Best of” is overused for survey anthologies of a year and/or genre, and recognizing that someone’s “best” is someone else’s “meh,” it is probably because a more accurate title of This is Kinda What the Editor Liked More than Others For Whatever Subjective Reasons doesn’t go over well with publisher marketing teams.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Haunted House on Rocketworks Street,” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

A to Z Reviews: “The Haunted House on Rocketworks Street,” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

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A to Z Reviews

Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen captures the nostalgic, carefree summer days of childhood in “The Haunted House on Rocketworks Street,” which also demonstrates the universality of human experience.  The story does have a frame which becomes important, but the meat of the story follows for kids on a summer day, who have the freedom of movement on Rocketworks Street, free from responsibility or parental controls.

The four kids, leader Albin, Max, Henry, and Henry’s sister Henrietta, spend their summer running up and down the street, staying out of sight of their parents, and working up tests of their courage. The fact that all of the parents who live on Rocketworks Street have been pulled into the fireworks factory from which the street took its name, just makes their freedom easy to maintain and enjoy.

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A Paean to the Outsider: A Review of Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

A Paean to the Outsider: A Review of Neither Beg Nor Yield, edited by Jason M. Waltz

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Neither Beg Nor Yield (Rogue Blades Entertainment, April 2024)

I can’t say if Jason M. Waltz and his Rogue Blades Entertainment’s swansong is the largest collection of Sword & Sorcery ever published, but it’s damn close.

It’s also the most metal. From this over-the-top, blood-splash cover featuring an axe headed toward the reader’s face to the powerful black & white line art that runs throughout. there’s a Savage Sword of Conan-meets-Heavy Metal vibe to the layout that tells you exactly the feel of the prose within.

With all respect to my friend Dave Ritzlin at DMR Books (and the most metal *publisher* of S&S), who literally launched his press by bringing S&S-loving metalhead musicians together to create anthologies of tales, I don’t mean erudite, I can tell you the difference between symphonic metal, thrash metal, Viking metal, dark metal, and the White Christ help us, Troll Metal (which I just learned a few months ago is actually a thing): I mean working out with your buddies in your dad’s garage gym with the Judas Priest-cranked between rewatches on VHS of Conan (the Barbarian, we don’t talk about the sequel), and Beastmaster, or cackling to yourself while working on your killer dungeon to spring on your friends at Friday night’s game with Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden wailing metal.

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Back Among the Kencyrath: “The Gates of Tagmeth” by PC Hodgell

Back Among the Kencyrath: “The Gates of Tagmeth” by PC Hodgell

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One of the earliest reviews I wrote for Blackgate was of P.C. Hodgell’s 1982 sword & sorcery classic, God Stalk. It’s the story of Jame, a relative innocent at large in the very Lankhmarian city Tai-Tastigon on the world of Rathilien. She’s a High Born, the ruling race of a tripartite race called the Kencyrath (the other two are the Kendar — warriors and artisans — and the Arrin-ken — the lion-like judges of the three races).  She’s also a Shanir, a subset of her people gifted — or cursed as most have come to believe — with strange abilities. In her case, it’s retractable claws on her fingers.

The Kencyrath have been consecrated by their Three-Faced God to battle Perimal Darkness, a great evil that’s been devouring one world after another in a chain of parallel worlds for millennia. Every time, they’ve failed at their duty, having to retreat to one world or another. As of God Stalk, they’ve been on Rathilien for three thousand years. They escaped there following the Fall, a moment when the High Lord betrayed the Kencyrath and two-thirds were killed, their souls offered up to Perimal Darkness.

After a year in Tai-Tastigon Jame set off into the West in search of her twin brother Torisen and the Kencyrath homeland — well, at least the homeland they took possession of three thousand years ago. Over the following six books, Jame, forever a square peg in a round hole, emerges as a wild card in the political games between the various Kencyrath houses. Unwilling to adopt the cloistered and regulated life of most High Born women, Jame eventually finds herself a candidate in the Kencyrath military officer’s school. Along the way, she learns she is more than likely the prophesied incarnation of the destructive aspect of the Three-Faced God. She also discovers more of the supernatural underpinnings of Rathilien, how the Kencyrath’s arrival disrupted it, and that the final reckoning with Perimal Darkness is near.

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A to Z Reviews: “The Hat in the Hall,” by Jack Iams

A to Z Reviews: “The Hat in the Hall,” by Jack Iams

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A to Z Reviews

Jack Iams published “The Hat in the Hall” in the August 1950 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and it is an example of a story that has dated poorly. Set in the aftermath of a cocktail party in which Charles and Jane Mattson are cleaning up the mess left behind, Iams describes the couple emptying ashtrays, finding hats left behind by their guests, and, most egregious, commenting that one of their friends, Jim, is “a pretty careful driver, even when he’s stewed.”

Although the party is a success, it was also loud, which is why Charles stopped by their next door neighbor, Mrs. Oliver, to apologize the next morning. Oliver had called to complain about the noise a couple of times during the party, but it was only during his visit that Charles realizes that they were holding the party on the anniversary of her husband’s death. What surprised Charles was Mrs. Oliver’s explanation that her husband’s ghost always visited her on the anniversary of his death, but the noise from the party seemed to have kept him away.

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Five Tours in the Galactic Security Service: Backflash (Simon Rack #3) by Laurence James

Five Tours in the Galactic Security Service: Backflash (Simon Rack #3) by Laurence James

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Backflash (Sphere Books, January 1975). Cover by Bruce Pennington

Here’s another review of an obscure (at least to me!) 1970s SF novel. I found it on the free table at Boskone this year. It is slim, and I knew nothing about it or the author, so I figured it was worth a look.

Laurence James (1942-2000) was a British writer and editor, who published dozens of books between 1973 and his all too early death. He wrote in a number of fields, but mostly SF, and he was probably best known for a long series, Deathlands, which still continues with some 150 books published to date. James wrote over 30 novels in the series, most of the first 33 or so, which appeared between 1986 and 1996. All of the books (to this date) are published as by James Axler. I was completely unaware of these books or any other work by James until now.

The Simon Rack series comprises five volumes published in 1974 and 1975. Backflash is the third. It appears (though as I haven’t read the others I’m not sure) to be mostly a flashback to the first Simon Rack adventure by internal chronology (and perhaps that’s the reason for the title.) It opens with Commander Simon Rack of the Galactic Security Service confronting a madman who has stolen an experimental weapon and gone on a killing spree. As he corners him, the madman shoots — and it appears that the weapon’s effect includes messing with the brain’s sense of time, and Rack starts to experience his past life, on the planet Zayin.

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Medical Alternative History: The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove

Medical Alternative History: The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove

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The Wages of Sin (Caezik SF & Fantasy, December 12, 2023). Harry Turtledove photo by Joan Allen

Harry Turtledove has been writing alternative history for a long time: His early stories included those that became A Different Flesh, set in a world where the Americas were inhabited by Homo habilis rather than Homo sapiens, and The Guns of the South, portraying a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, confirmed his standing in this particular subgenre. A large share of his work has explored the two big premises for the genre: reversed outcomes in the Civil War and in World War II — sometimes as straight AH, and sometimes as science fiction (as with the alien invasion during World War II of Worldwar) or even fantasy (as in the created world consumed by a parallel to World War II of The Darkness). Such premises seem to have a huge appeal for fans, going back to Winston Churchill’s “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg” in J. C. Squire’s anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise, published 1931.

Turtledove’s newest novel, The Wages of Sin, is a refreshing change of pace, taking place before the time of either war, and with a point of departure that’s not military at all, though equally grim in a different way. Following a long established tradition of AH, he starts out by showing the point of departure, which provides the premise for his world: the transmission of HIV from Africa to Europe in the year 1509, in a world where there is no chance of an effective treatment for it. His second chapter begins in 1851, in an England that has come to such terms as it can with “the Wasting,” and has been changed by doing so.

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