Showing posts with label guest reviewer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guest reviewer. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Guest Book Review by Joseph Green: ANNIE BOT by "Sierra Greer"

 

Annie Bot by "Sierra Greer"

 

This short novel is a far departure from the ray guns, rocket ships and Colonies-on-Mars that dominated early science fiction. Annie is a sex doll, but one provided with high intelligence by the incorporation of advanced AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) programs. Her body, which had a human embryo as part of its starter base, is externally so realistic she can “pass” in a crowd, despite being a battery-operated machine. The thrust of the novel, told from Annie’s Point of View, is her struggle to become fully human—or at least to free herself from the built-in compulsion to always please her owner, primarily as his sex partner.  A major second theme is said owner falling in love with his sex doll, after a failed marriage and an unwillingness to try again with an actual (and capable of resisting him) woman. The interactions of these two characters form the bulk of the novel.

 

Annie provides a great deal to think about, and in places could lead you into deep philosophical queries—such as what is truly human, and how do we judge. Because Annie was created as a sex doll, the novel has many scenes where she fulfills her built-in compulsions. But she is also “more than”, and as these other characteristics surface she begins to fight for an independent existence. This brings the question of what actually is a “human” to the fore.

 

"Sierra Greer" is a pseudonym for Caragh O’Brien, who is an established writer of primarily YA SF. It seems clear that with this breakout novel she has expanded her horizons with an adult and very thoughtful examination of a quite possible, and little-explored, near-future world.

 

Joseph Green (Wikipedia) (ISFDB)

(Copyright © 2024 by Joseph Green) (revised from a discussion-list post)

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Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Guest SSW: Paul Di Filippo on SPACE SCIENCE FICTION magazine, September 1952, edited by Lester Del Rey: Short Story Wednesday (1 of 2)

It took me months to work my way thru this 'zine at a page or two per night.  If I seem hazy on the earlier stories in the TOC, that might be why!  But I think I have given good valuations of them all. Overall, a decent issue with lots of entertainment but no classics and only one or two stinkers.


First the cover, then the TOC, with my brief comments interlineated:



1). The Del Rey lead-off story would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. A lone astronaut is sent to the Moon, and his promised return-trip vessel never shows. He manages (shades of Andy Weir) to survive and return to Earth, but back on Earth no one knows of him or his mission. The bulk of the story is an exercise in paranoia and weirdness, and the hurried conclusion—some unknown force is erasing all traces of any attempt by mankind to attain the stars—is weak by comparison. Basically never reprinted.
2). Simak’s piece has been much reprinted. In a post-scarcity world, our hero feels useless—and even more so when he discovers that mankind is part of a zoo exhibit of some sort.
3). Conan!  What more need be said!  [Uncredited "posthumous collaborator"] L. Sprague De Camp’s short intro opines that this must’ve been “one of the first Conan stories to be written.”  A satisfying amount of gratuitous slaughter.
4). “Michael Sherman” was really R.A.W. Lowndes. Never reprinted. This is the worst thing I have read in a long time. In trawling thru old zines, I try to read every word and not skim, but I had to skip sections here after a while, as the story goes on for what seems an infinite span without anything happening. Our hero has some kind of secret, and is pursued on a cultish planet by authorities, until he isn’t, because he joins the establishment, but is always at risk of falling afoul of the strange customs. The kicker is that—like the Star Trek episode where the natives are reciting a garbled U.S. Declaration of Independence—the three rival planets here derive their culture from three forms of office shorthand! “Gregg, Pittman and Speedwriting.”
5). "Leinster" gives us a competent but perfunctory tale.  A basically Asperger’s-type hero sacrifices love to achieve FTL travel. Basically never reprinted.
6). Jakes’s tale was about his 18th short fiction sale. A vignette about the sad fate a mutant boy. Never reprinted.
7). Pratt’s story has some sardonic humor and satire, as it chronicles a reconnaissance expedition into the territory of a former enemy that had been blockaded for decades while a deliberately deployed war virus has been allowed to run rampant. Some nice biopunk ideas still topical today. Of course, the “superior” invaders are quickly bamboozled and the table is turned. Sparsely reprinted.
8). Society is ruled by a Van Vogtian system that tests all citizens for their moral qualities. Thomas depicts the ramifications of this nicely—imagine politicians who are altruistic and trustworthy!—but then wraps the conceit in the notion that omnipotent aliens secretly watching Earth will utilize the system to deem humanity worth saving or needing destruction. This part seems unnecessary and at odds with the core conceit. Never reprinted.
And, elsewhere, John Boston was moved to comment on the Lowndes-story assessment:
Sherman/Lowndes's "A Matter of Faith" was later booked by Avalon in 1961 as BELIEVERS' WORLD, presumably with some expansion, even allowing for the large type and wide margins that publisher favored.  Interestingly (well, not very), Lowndes was editing their SF line at the time.  I had a similar reaction to yours 60-plus years ago, though unencumbered by any self-imposed obligation to finish it, and I didn't.   

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Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Short Story Wednesday, Guest Post: Paul Di Filippo: THRILLING WONDER STORIES, Winter 1945, edited by Sam Merwin, Jr.

[TM notes: Paul posted this review in FictionMags, and it's reprinted with his permission. It should be noted that this was Sam Merwin's first issue of the magazine, after it had been edited by perhaps its worst editor, Oscar J. Friend, for several years.]




















Over the course of many weeks, I read a few pages each night of this zine:

Contents (view Concise Listing)

[to read this issue at the Luminist Archives]
[to read the issue at the Internet Archive]

I'll try to reconstruct a few thoughts.  Overall, I have to say this was a humdrum, just good-enough issue, with a couple of stinkers.

First, the cover is an accurate depiction of an event in "Fog Over Venus"--except that in the text, no women are involved, just burly construction workers.  But of course, the gal makes for a better cover.

• 6 • The Reader Speaks (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1945) • essay by Sergeant Saturn [sic--an editorial fiction, soon banished by new editor Merwin. TM]

The character of Sergeant Saturn, ringleader of the letters column, is absolutely bonkers.  His speech reads nowadays like someone suffering from glossolalia and fantastical delusions:

"Careful with the Xeno jug, Frogeyes, you're spoiling my space vest--and with dry-cleaners shot to Pluto and gone.  That's better, but less noise please. Old Wart-Ears is after my scalp since last issue."

I detect in this banter full of in-jokes and specialized jargon the roots of what Stan Lee did in his heyday at Marvel Comics. "Listen up, pilgrims--nuff said!"  I wonder if Lee was raised on TWS and other pulps of its ilk. [Seems likely. I will note my own first exposure to the characters gave "Wart-Ears"'s name as "Wartears", and I wasn't at all sure, given the era, that he/its name wasn't essentially "War-Tears"... TM]

In any case, though, these letter writers sure are lively and opinionated. They obviously go through a lot of work to compose their responses, all for egoboo and the glory of SF and TWS.  Most famous name [among the letter-writers] this time around is Chad Oliver.

Maybe modern zines should have such a fictional mascot. I fondly recall Pedro the Mule from my Boy's Life days. And of course the EC Comics horror figures, The Old Witch, etc.

F&SF could have "Old Sally Sturgeon, widow to one of the first Martian settlers." Asimov's could have "R. Tarheel Oliphant, cybernetic circus performer."  I don't know, I'm sure the Assembled Here can think up better mascots.

Lightspeed could have Tacky Yon, sentient photon.

• 11 • "Fog Over Venus" • novella by Arthur K. Barnes

Dueling entrepreneurs fight to tame the hell of Venus with a reliable transport system.  Explicit reference to Barnes's "Interplanetary Hunter".  Vivid, but a little drawn out.  The great men duke it out while the grunts do all the work.  Reprinted once, in 1955.

• 37 • "Castaways in Two Dimensions" • short story by Frank Belknap Long

Dan and Joan crash land on an asteroid, then enter the "Ul Dimension" with their robot Knobby.  The inhabitant of this space threatens, but they escape.  Ends with Joan kissing Knobby:  "a kiss so wet and vehement, it almost short-circuited him..."  Never reprinted.
• 46 • "Pi in the Sky" • novelette by Fredric Brown

The constellations start changing shape, confounding humanity.  They eventually form an advertising jingle. But our hero uncovers the fact that it was all a global illusion. Reprinted often.

• 63 • "Stop, Thief!" • short story by Fox B. Holden

Ostensibly humorous short-short about an alien--Fuj--who wants to steal the Earth. Human hero stymies him, then send him to bother the Japs. Never reprinted.
• 68 • "I Get Off Here" • short story by Oscar J. Friend [as by Ford Smith]

In the 22nd century, the villain Hermes threatens nastiness via teleportation rays, but is stymied by Devore Ragon, operative of "the Solar Observance System, famous detective agency." But Hermes does escape, opening up room for a sequel, natch. Never reprinted.
• 76 • "They Sculp" • short story by Frank Belknap Long [as by Leslie Northern]

A little girl's father-inventor opens an interdimensional portal, and she and a local hobo go through it, to confront the resident aliens.  "It looked not unlike an enormous mummified bullfrog, agate-eyed and with folds of dead-black flesh..."  But the aliens are aesthetes, and the humans finally flee with an extremely valuable sculpture. The end. Never reprinted.
• 85 • "You'll See a Pink House" • short story by Wilm Carver

Our hero is the only one--thanks to brain damage--who can see a certain pink house. Everyone else thinks he's crazy. But he investigates and finds that the pink house is itself an alien entity, that there are millions around the globe, and that they suck elan vital from humans. The pink house kills the narrator, but he survives in astral form. He eventually descends into the the body of one Wilm Carver, SF author, types up the narrative we are reading--as a warning--then drifts off into the ether. Never reprinted.
• 92 • "De Profundis" • short story by "Murray Leinster"

Deep-sea sentient creatures exist, unknown to humanity--until a record-breaking bathyscaph penetrates, before encountering potential destruction. Inside are a husband and wife--as in Long's asteroid story--and the benthic creature can read their minds. He takes a liking to them and carries them to the surface, at some cost to himself. However, when he returns down below, he is regarded as crazy, imagining non-aquatic life. Much reprinted.

• 111 • The Story Behind the Story: "Fog Over Venus" • essay by Arthur K. Barnes

This listing only partial, since Brown also contributes a few paragraphs about his story.


Copyright © 2023 by Paul Di Filippo (on LJ)

For more of today's SSW reviews, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2022

SSW: Guest Post: Dennis Lien on SHORT STORIES, November 1953, edited by Dorothy McIlwraith

I rarely read random issues of old magazines (these days I have little time to read much of anything, sigh) but I did recently go through this one on a whim.  (This is one of their late all-reprint digest-size issues, and a beat-up copy was cheap at DreamHaven [a Minneapolis bookstore devoted mostly to fantastica-TM].  I'd read two or three of the digest issues as a kid in the later 1950s, so there was a bit of nostalgia operating.)

Publishers reprinting old pulp stories these days frequently have recourse to reminding us that "attitudes were of the time and are reproduced as such but of course we're all much wiser today."  Well, maybe so. Anyway I did find a number of slightly queasy racial glitches in some of these, though they seriously affected my enjoyment of only one of the stories.

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/k09/k09048.htm#A1


    ifc. · The Story Tellers’ Circle · [uncredited] · cl
    2 · Never a Law · Bertrand W. Sinclair · nv Short Stories March 10 1931
    31 · A Sagebrush Samaritan · B. M. Bower & S. Boswell · ss Short Stories February 10 1925
    51 · Three A.M. on Arrowhead Island · Karl W. Detzer · ss Short Stories December 10 1927
    72 · Kinross the Killer · Dex Volney · ss Short Stories July 10 1928
    85 · The Blunderin’ Fool · Wilbur Hall · ss Short Stories July 10 1928
    104 · The Barque in the Bottle · Wm. Doerflinger · pm Short Stories May 25 1933
    106 · Sing, You Sailors! · Bill Adams · ss Short Stories June 10 1936
    113 · The Golden Gizzard · Clifford Knight · ss Short Stories July 10 1928
    131 · Adventurers All · [uncredited] · ts
    134 · Red Desert · Norrell Gregory · ss Short Stories June 10 1936
    150 · The Judgement of Mystery Swamp · Lemuel L. de Bra · ss Short Stories December 10 1923

The cover is presumably a reprint, though not cited as such in the FictionMags Index. South Asian (?) tribesmen brandish spears at something/someone unseen stage right.

"Never a Law" is a Northern-- when his partner cracks up and suicides on their ship in the far-north Bay of Seals, Christie is framed for murder by the three crewmen who plan to make off with ship and cargo.  He escapes and sets off on foot on a seemingly hopeless nine-hundred mile journey, followed by a Mountie who is fairly sure Christie is innocent, but must try to overtake and bring him in anyway. Well-done, but not a story one wants to read at the start of a Minnesota winter.

Some natives (Eskimo, or more correctly Inuit) appear as minor characters; none get individual names, and they are described as drunks who will trade their wives for liquor.

"A Sagebrush Samaritan"--Pinto Jack has just stolen the monthly payroll from the Santa Fe railway, but it would only have gone to the "greasers" the company employed anyway, so he feels no guilt. On the run, he is befriended by a stranger and they bond over their shared hatred for Mexicans.  (A third allegedly sympathetic character introduced later also shares this trait.) When the stranger is injured, Pinto Jack risks his own capture to save his life and kidnaps a doctor to treat him, then escapes.

Perfectly good "basic decency of rogue displayed when he repays a favor at risk of his life" plot, but spoiled for me by the strange unanimity of anti-Mexican attitudes, which seem dragged in to the story rather than having an organic reason to be there.

"Three A.M. on Arrowhead Island"--Rather dull murder mystery; the evocative title is the best thing about it. I had trouble keeping straight the dull, interchangeable characters, aside from the servant, Benediction, who stands out only because he speaks in a French-Canadian dialect. (And, spoiler alert, turns out to be the murderer, though he thought he was killing someone else, who had cheated him at cards--so a pretty boring motive as well.)

"Kinross the Killer"--Seattle revenue officer Jim Kinross, his boat wrecked, struggles in stormy water for several pages before making it to shore, just where the entry point for the drug smugglers he's been seeking happens to be located. He's grudgingly rescued by an ancient thug, but soon the smugglers (all "Japs" except for one "half-breed") appear and he finds he has to kill his rescuer, then hide behind his body in the bunk bed until he has a chance to also kill the invaders and break up the "damnable" business.

"The Blunderin' Fool"--Western about mining disputes: cast including protagonist, his Negro blacksmith  sidekick "Skin-and-Bones" ("Ain't nobody out hya to botherate him"), a spunky young woman being cheated by her mine officials, and a few local lawmen. Routine.

"The Barque in the Bottle"--Rather good narrative poem in which sight of a ship in a bottle recalls past adventure to an old tar.

"Sing, You Sailors!"--Two mariners who keep failing their second-mate exams for steamers wind up in charge of a semi-derelict windjammer off South America, and manage to sail it back to England, even towing in a crippled steamer on the last leg. And next time around pass the exams.

"The Golden Gizzard"--Allegedly (and mildly) humorous western about "salted" gold mine claims. An escaped turkey, recaptured after roaming the area, is found by the cook to have gold nuggets in its craw. From whence, and (if not naturally gobbled in the wild) inserted by whom? All rather confusing, really. 

The "Adventurers All" article is a memoir of a reporter in China who is almost killed because of a hat he is given by an unpopular official which, in the dark, makes him mistaken for the official by his enemies. All a good joke, supposedly. The FMI lists this as "uncredited;" it's by Alfred Batson and is copyright 1938.

"Red Desert"--Another spunky young woman (with a weakling but honest brother) who owns a mine, but is being cheated by employees. Undercover agent solves things and romance blooms.

"The Judgement of Mystery Swamp"--One of the two rogues on the train actually killed Benet's brother; the other was only an associate. Benet will toss them both off in the middle of Mystery Swamp and the Swamp, as usual, will ensure that a murderer will not make it out alive.

"The Story-Teller's Circle" contains the only new material in the issue--a longish letter from SS author Caddo Cameron and a preview of the next issue, hyping a (new) serial by Frank Gruber. Cameron praises Short Stories for never printing anything unfit for a young "kid" to read.  (Well, that was *his* opinion.)

All in all, no classics.  I'd rate "Never a Law," "The Judgment of Mystery Swamp," and "Sing, You Sailors!" as the best stories, probably in that order, and "A Sagebrush Samaritan" the clunker (and I wouldn't have encouraged a young "kid" to read it) for the strange "white guys on both sides of the law bond over shared contempt for Mexicans" subtext.

Dennis Lien 

Reprinted from the FictionMags discussion list with permission. 
Copyright © 2022 by Dennis Lien
for more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries, please see 

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Wednesday, November 16, 2022

SSW: Guest Post: Paul Di Filippo on STARTLING STORIES, January 1952, edited by Samuel Mines

I was reading--literally only a few pages a night--an issue of Startling Stories, January 1952.  I finally finished it last night.  Let me see if I can cast my memory back over the weeks and see what I thought of these stories in a few words.


https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?60673 
cover by Earle K. Bergey(?)

•  6 • The Ether Vibrates (Startling Stories, January 1952) • essay by The Editor, Samuel Mines
• 10 • Journey to Barkut (Complete Novel) • serial by Murray Leinster (book publication as Gateway to Elsewhere 1954)
• 10 •  Journey to Barkut (Complete Novel) • interior artwork by Virgil Finlay
• 15 •  Journey to Barkut (Complete Novel) [2] • interior artwork by Virgil Finlay
• 21 •  Journey to Barkut (Complete Novel) [3] • interior artwork by Virgil Finlay
• 80 • The Great Idea • short story by Raymond Z. Gallun
• 80 •  The Great Idea • interior artwork by Paul Orban [as by Orban]
• 94 • Lost Art • novelette by A. Bertram Chandler
• 94 •  Lost Art • interior artwork by Peter Poulton
• 115 • The Wheel • short story by John Wyndham
• 115 •  The Wheel • interior artwork by Peter Poulton
• 121 • How Green Was My Martian • short story by Mack Reynolds
• 121 •  How Green Was My Martian • interior artwork by Vincent Napoli [as by Napoli]
• 127 •  Letter (Startling Stories, January 1952) • [Letters: L. Sprague de Camp] • essay by L. Sprague de Camp
• 140 • Review of the Current Science Fiction Fan Publications (Startling Stories, January 1952) • essay by Jerome Bixby
• 145 • Science Fiction Movie Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still • essay by uncredited
[can be read here]


The inside front cover ad is for a noir film, The Racket. Very nicely eclectic ad. Where are such ads in today's printzines? Asimov's SF getting income from some Amazon Prime advertising for Knives Out? Why not?

The big editorial news is the start of monthly publication. The rest of the editorial is a meditation on the state of SF sales and audience appeal. The letter column starts here, but the bulk of it is at the back of the book. The quality of the letters and the earnest effort and sense of camaraderie is of course impressive, and, I think, hardly equalled by the social media commentary that dimly substitutes for such correspondence today. de Camp has a letter here.
  
The Leinster piece runs for almost 80 pages and is a de Camp & Pratt (with echoes of Thorne Smith) fantasy romp about a staid fellow who finds his way to a magical Middle Eastern land full of djinn, and gradually becomes the Top Dog there. The humor of course might seem antiquated nowadays--lots of silliness around naked girl djinns--but the tale is light and frothy, going down easy, and even possessed of a few scenes of surreal estrangement.  Reprinted.

The Gallun story concerns a couple of dodgy conmen on Mars. A rube arrives with a lot of cash and an idea on how to revolutionize Mars-Earth transportation.  They seem to rook him, but eventually reveal benign intentions, and the rube is acclimated to Mars. Reprinted just once in a non-English publication.

The Chandler story concerns another scammer who can find any lost artwork a buyer can name. The trick is to travel in time to find the original piece. Our hero is an innocent rocket jockey they need for their mission. Much danger ensues, in present and past, but our hero emerges okay. Chandler, not a writer I would have previously deemed conversant with sex, devotes quite a few lines to the porn collection of one buyer. "There was a painting of what, at first glance, could have been some gorgeous tropical flower. At second and subsequent glances it wasn't." Whoa, ABC, does Commander Grimes know that his adventures are coming out of such a filthy typewriter?!? Reprinted just once in a non-English publication.

The Wyndham tale is post-apocalypse. The very notion and sight of any wheel is forbidden tech. A boy reinvents it, and is sentenced to death, but a wise elder claims the crime and punishment, allowing youth to survive for a perhaps better future. Much reprinted.

The only quasi-stinker is the Mack Reynolds story about a Martian advisor to some cardboard Hollywood guys who want to sell movies--excuse me, "wires"--on Mars. The tale is so full of silly Martian words that it makes for tough slogging. Never reprinted.

I was surprised to see Jerome Bixby reviewing fanzines, as I had not thought of him as a fanzine fan. [I noted to Paul that Bixby's column would've been written about when he was leaving his editorial post at Planet Stories and Jungle Stories, and briefly (iirc) taking one on at Galaxy magazine--so while perhaps no too much Of fan culture, certainly Aware of it--TM]

The art was very fine, making me miss any such illos in modern genre publications.

All in all, with the Leinster as standout, a very pleasant reading experience. I envy the readers of 1952, who got installments of SS and other zines monthly.

reprinted with permission from the FictionMags discussion list.
Copyright © 2022 by Paul Di Filippo (on LJ)
for more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog


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Thursday, January 17, 2019

FFB guest review by Laurel Scholnick: HORRORS edited by Charles L. Grant (Playboy Press 1981)


Laurel Scholnick is a professional archivist, librarian and researcher, and a lover of horror fiction, comics/graphic literature, and in dramatic form, particularly film and television drama, and one of the most prolific contributors to the discussion list Horror in Film and Literature at Indiana University. Among her projects has been completion and enhancement of a database of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood episode segments.

On first consideration, Horrors, edited by Charles L. Grant, is a pinnacle among selections of short horror fiction, and as you let the stories sit with you and sink in, the book even more thoroughly lives up to the paperback original's wonderfully foreboding cover, an image of an eyeball floating in a sea of blood. I was hooked from reading Grant's introduction and the first story, as Dennis Etchison's now-classic "The Dead Line" gets at the futility and despair one would feel while one's loved one is incapacitated and is essentially being mined for fluids and parts. A horrible thing, made even more horrible by the way her husband deals with the hopeless situation his wife isn't quite enduring. From there each of the other stories also deals with various sorts of terrible things people (and things like people) can do to each other or, sometimes, to themselves.

There is no lack of supernatural horror in the anthology, but what soon becomes apparent is how well the stories presented here can play on anxiety in the face of both supernatural and real-life horrors.  While no one eats 'dollburgers', and dolls don't in turn actually eat people (as in Lisa Tuttle's "Dollburger"), people (especially women) enter into bad marriages against their better judgment all the time and can end up with children, too, as a result...and then find out just how crazy the one they really love is (as in "Shadetree" by J. Michael Reaves). It can be scary to think that kindness to animals could lead to our undoing...for some it's a just-deserts kind of thing, a price for disingenuousness and cheating ("The Inheritance" by Alan Dean Foster), and for some it's from letting it all go too far to be a benefactor (as in Richard Houston's "The Man Who Was Kind to Animals"). There are stories here of adulterers, a child unaware of how to control his unusual powers, revenge seekers, those who give of themselves until there is (literally) nothing left, werewolves, a pair of occultists, murderous parents who find the tables turned on their predation, a torturer, another magical child, a hypnotizing pool that absorbs much more than the stress from people's muscles...and a toy that will not let itself be lost: Stephen King's "The Monkey", which I first read years ago in his collection Skeleton Crew, is a fine closer as it leaves you with a terrible foreboding that there will be no end to the nightmarish havoc this cursed little mechanical cymbal-clapper will continue to wreak on the world.  

Each of these selections had me eagerly turning the pages and wondering what I was in for in the next story.  Highly recommended!

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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Friday, December 22, 2017

Guest FFB: Barry N. Malzberg on ANATOMY OF A KILLER by Peter Rabe

Just finished this, one of 16 Rabe novels I ordered from Stark House in fulfillment of an ancient sense of obligation (I had never read a word of Rabe...read his divorced wife Claire [Rabe, initially as by "Anna Winter"]'s Olympia Press novel FLESH AND BLOOD when it was published with mine and five others in 1969 in a series of "the inaugural American Olympia hardcover novels" all of which bombed ferociously...it was quite good). This is one of the craziest, most disjointed, most fascinatingly implosive and explosive novels I have ever read; as I just observed to my patient spouse "When you are turning out books for $2500 advances in two or three weeks because you are trying to make a living you can't go back and get it right, but if he had had that unlikely opportunity this could have been a breakthrough work". Even so, I have never read existential fragmentation and individual psychic breakdown merged the way that Rabe manages in the final 15,000 words. That was my off again, on again shtick and in the fourteenth and final novel of THE LONE WOLF [series published as by "Mike Barry"] I might have gotten close but Rabe was on another planet. It's on a level with the last chapters of LOLITA and Rabe does not for better or worse allow linguistic virtuosity to get in his way.

This guy was (as Carter Scholz wrote of me 35 years ago) synchronously the best and worst writer going, sometimes in the same damned paragraph. A stunning broken talent. And a beacon toward the horrible time in which two thirds of a century later we now exist. 

I feel driven to make this observation public, just for the record.  As you were, ladies and gents.

--BNM, reprinted with permission from Rara-Avis.




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