Careers Subsidize Science-Fiction Addiction

"I see [acting] as subsidizing my used-book career, my book buying" [and book sniffing] -- Paul Giamatti

SF Writers mentioned: Avram Davidson, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven.

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Audio: Four Stories by Melanie Tem:


1. Come Live with Me
2. Cousins
3. Margaret's 'Possums
4. Siguanaba y Sombreron

Review: I Am Not A Serial Killer (John Cleaver Book 1) by Dan Wells

Recently, I've read a few novels that blend the speculative and mystery genres with mixed success. So I wondered what made a good mystery that also scratches the speculative itch.

When it comes SF, Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun and "The Billiard Ball" both do well--not to omit Larry Niven's Flatlander. Asimov and Niven work the more difficult territories of "whodunnits": displaying a cast of criminals, shifting blame until we land on the criminal at the end. They do not shirk the responsibility of creating speculative societies in the meantime. Niven, if I recall correctly, said he wouldn't write another SF mystery as obeying the two genres was too difficult.

"Howdunnits" explore the criminal's methodology. While you may know who the criminal is, you can't convict him without evidence.

There is also the "whydunnit" which is usually the exploration of a criminal mind--sometimes within the mind of the criminal. A famous example would be Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."

When it comes to recent fantasy mysteries,  I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells actually melds a few of these. The narrator, John Wayne Cleaver, is a high school student whose mother is a mortician. He helps embalm the bodies. The first part of the narrative, oddly enough, is a description of how this is done. This is a pretty risky step to take, but Wells successfully surmounts the limitations by creating a narrator buoyant with dark humor--a kid so fascinated by serial killers that he fears he might become one himself. His very name mirrors not only John Wayne (All-American hero) but also John Wayne Gacy (notorious serial killer) and, of course, an infamous murder weapon.

He does his best to look "normal" and fit in with most teenagers, but his mother notices a small part of his fascination and sends him to get psychological help. Later, when he thinks he spies the work of a serial killer in their small town, she excludes him from the joys of embalming since he likes it too much. This exacerbates the problem.

There is an element of whodunnit here since the identity of the killer is not immediately known, but we are not privy to an analysis of suspects. Instead, it is more of a howdunnit and whydunnit. First, Cleaver is a serial killer in the bud, trying to nip it, which makes fascinating reading. Next, he shifts to typical serial killer MO's. Once he finds his suspect, he hones in on the how and why of his suspect and how he might stop the killer from killing again.

The ending itself is potent as Wells manages to make us feel two ways about the killer. The main reason the novel as a mystery succeeds is that it redirects our attention from whodunnit to why/howdunnit. The  If you like mysteries and horror, this is a must-read.

Wells deserved more attention for this novel that he got initially. Perhaps that was a function of the risky opening. Still readers can still remedy that. This one should be one of Wells's longer lived works.

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"Mistake" by Larry Niven

First appeared in Stellar #2.  Reprinted by Joseph D. Olander, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Isaac Asimov.  It was up for a Nebula.  Caveat:  Plot revealed.

While Commander Elroy Barnes is tripping on a drug, a mind-reading Martian visits and demands military secrets.  Barnes refuses.  Alien uses force and Barnes demands a little blue pill.  The alien relents because Barnes's mind is clouded by the drug.  When Barnes's mind clears, so does the alien.

Interesting POV piece.  It seems to be playing with a dual POV, but maybe there's really only one.  However, what would the mistake be if the alien is just a figment?  This may refer to Vishnu's dream where humans are just a figment of his dream and we are just his players without true free will.

"Wrong-Way Street" by Larry Niven

First appeared in Galaxy.  Reprinted by Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, and Hal Clement.  It was up for a Nebula.  Caveat:  Plot revealed in fourth paragraph.

As a child, Mike Capoferri accidentally killed his brother, shaping him.  Doctor Stuart told him that time was a "one-way street."  After Mike moves to the moon, he proves the doctor wrong.  

The moons' new human resident discover alien artifacts on the moon--one a ship, inside a mysterious pyramid.  Mike fiddles with the pyramid by instinct and finds himself in another time.  

He guesses he's some three billion years in the past as the Earth is nearer than anticipated.  He wants to prove he was there, without time paradoxes.  He carves a hole with a sculpting pencil, which he accidentally lets go of.  When he tries to leave again, the moon is disintegrated and he has to go back further in time to save the moon.  After a few more mistakes, he travels back to find the aliens themselves,

Not just a cool onion-concept of time--revising and revisiting ideas of time as a street--Mike's past comes back to haunt his "present" as he discovers a third way of seeing time--a problematic one.

"For a Foggy Night" by Larry Niven

Appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Reprinted by George Scithers.

Philosophically allied with "All the Myriad Ways" alternate universe.  A mathematician professor meets up with a stranger at a bar who says that foggy nights are when you might walk into a different universe, which explains why you don't want to go out on a foggy night.  Narrator walks out anyway and ends up in a quite different universe, yet still does quite well for himself.

"All the Myriad Ways" by Larry Niven

First appeared in Galaxy.  Was up for a Hugo award.  Reprinted by Robert Silverberg, Donald L. Lawler, Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, including three major genre retrospectives concerning Galaxy magazine and alternate history.

Detective Trimble is investigating strange suicides, even of prominent citizens.  Why is it happening?  Trimble suspects the new opening of universes, finding universes of what-might-have-beens where your life turned out differently is the cause.  And then psychologically it hits him as it must have hit everyone else:

"There was no luck anywhere.  Every decision was made both ways.  For every wise choice you bled your heart out over, you had made all the other choices too.  And so it went, all through history....

"If every choice was cancelled elsewhere, why make a decision at all?"

The ending is left ambiguous leaving many possibilities on the table.  Or, more likely, all were taken.

"Jigsaw Man" by Larry Niven

First published in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions.  Nominated for a Hugo award.  Reprinted in two major retrospective anthologies:  James Gunn's The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here and Garyn G. Roberts's Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

Warren Lewis Knowles (or "Lew" presumably not the same man killed in "How the Heroes Die") stands to be tried for the death penalty.  In his cell he is surrounded by organleggers who steals people for organ donations (Wiki for Organ Transplantations and the Organ-theft urban legend, so according to Snopes, Niven predates the urban legend).

Bernie, the doc, explodes himself and the cell, and Lew escapes.  As luck would have it, Lew escapes into a hospital.  There he runs across all of the harvested organs donated waiting to be placed in people.  He attacks them so that he'll have died for a reason.

Spoiler:  The ending shows what his crime had been to deserve the death penalty:  various traffic tickets, drunk driving.  That is, the death penalty became a more popular option when other people benefited.

Cool, resonant ending:  Society shifts its moral structure to benefit itself.  Cool, too, is how Bernie believes that Lew's crimes deserve the death penalty.

"How the Heroes Die" by Larry Niven

First published in Galaxy.  Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

Inside a Martian colony, John Carter (different than Burrough's character) kills Lew because Lew became homosexual on an all-male crew.  Lew tries to wreck the colony's bubble, not anticipating the colony members would be able to suit up in time to live and repair their colony bubble.

So Carter takes in a buggy.  Alf, Lew's brother, chases after.  They taunt each other on the radio.  Who will turn back first?  Who has the stronger will to live?

During the chase, evidence of living Martians appears (evidence of dead ones in "Eye of an Octopus"), but they are too busy trying to kill each other to do anything about it--the reason they are both there:  to learn more about Mars when they're only interested in destroying each other.  Nice thematic quirk, that.

The cool thing about this story is how it keeps revising the "ticking time bomb" effect (See classic opening to Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil also below).  This is what scientists or engineers have to do on occasion:  This didn't work, so what do we do now?  The "bomb" or the death of one or both men keeps getting revised as they calculate a new scenario.

What may be less popular is the change point of view.  This didn't bother me much, but it will some.  What makes a homosexual may disturb people on both sides of the political fence, but oh well.

"Eye of an Octopus" by Larry Niven

First published in Galaxy. Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

Mars explorers find they weren't the first.  The prior inhabitants appear to have adapted to the acidic environment.  When they find something that looks like a well, it turns out to be used for the exact opposite purpose.  The explorers add water to a corpse they found:

"That nitric acid wasn't dilute, exactly, but there was water in it.  Maybe this guy's chemistry can extract the water from nitric acid."

What they'd achieve is not clear--  However, the corpse explodes.  Remember, kids:  "Add acid to watuh, as you oughta."  Assuming this is the reaction intended.  Below is a video of a kid pouring water into acid (out to prove his chemistry professor wrong).  The mixture only heats up (in his other video he does not measure before and after, nor account for different volumes, nor the fact that the water he adds has not been in the sun).  As an undergraduate, I've had the mixture fizz and splatter acid out.

Niven may have had another reaction in mind although the corpse is dry, so when heated, maybe it becomes kindling.

"Wait It Out" by Larry Niven

First published in Future Unbounded Science Fiction Show and Convention Program Book. Reprinted by Robert Silverberg, Charles G. Waugh, Isaac Asimov, and Martin Harry Greenberg.  This forms a part of Larry Niven's future history series, Known Space.  Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

Who wouldn't want to be the first to walk on Pluto?  Not you if its surface melts when your ship come in contact with it and hardens as the hull sinks halfway down.  The astronauts are trapped on Pluto and may have to wait years before a new ship comes.  All you have for electricity is a battery that's dying.

They encounter a helium-amoeba alien that sounds much like the one on Mercury ("The Coldest Place").  One astronaut removes his helmet and dies.  The other, though, decides too leap out in his underwear and hope that he's cryonically preserved.  He freezes and at night when it's super cold, he becomes a superconductor and can think and feel once more if not move.  Years pass in a blink.  He waits.

This carries resonance with some classic SF like Harry Bates' "Farewell to the Master"--not to mention some cool if out-there ideas.  I'm surprised it hasn't been collected more often.

"Becalmed in Hell" by Larry Niven

First published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominated for a Nebula award and reprinted by Donald A. Wollheim, Terry Carr, Damon Knight, Edward L. Ferman, Robert P. Mills, and Gardner Dozois.  This forms a part of Larry Niven's future history series, Known Space.  Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

On Venus, human/ship Eric (character from "The Coldest Place") cannot feel his wings.  When the narrator cannot find damage inside or out, there's a friendly stalemate.  Is one or the other character mentally unstable?  Is Eric being psychosomatic?  Is the narrator stalling, not wanting to do his job?  Or is there a third solution?  When objects heat, usually they expand.  In this case, Eric was losing contact.  Good science mystery with a healthy dose of psychology thrown in.  Worth seeking out.

"The Coldest Place" by Larry Niven

First published in If. Reprinted by Orson Scott Card, Keith Olexa, Christian O'Toole, and James L. Sutter.  This forms a part of Larry Niven's future history series, Known Space.  Caveat:  I will "ruin" some of these Larry Niven stories as it is impossible to discuss the science without revealing the key plot points.

The coldest place in the solar system is... the farside of Mercury--the side that faces away from the Sun.  It may support an unusual form of life.   Niven notes that some of the science may have dated.

A repeat character (see also "Becalmed in Hell"), Eric fused to his spaceship, possibly pays tribute to Anne McCaffrey's "The Ship Who Sang"--a story collected in Judith Merrill's Best SF.  In the future, those with accidents can have an adventurous life as a ship.

These aspects make the tale worth reading--how ideas of science change, how we might envision working on a future Mercury, and the idea that the disabled are not "not abled", so to speak.

Free pdf ebook sampler of Robert Heinlein

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Includes

• advice to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle concerning The Mote in God's Eye
• other letters
• essays
• the short-story classic, perhaps greatest time-travel story ever written,  "All You Zombies"

"The Subject Is Closed" by Larry Niven

First appeared in Cosmos.  Reprinted twice by Jack M. Dann, Gardner R. Dozois, and by Darrell Schweitzer, George H. Scithers.  From The Draco Tavern collection.

Aliens approached by Christian for tentative conversion, but these aliens avoid the subject because when explored many committed suicide.  Story provides one possible explanation--too easy to get in to heaven--but others may exist (Lovecraft's answer might be different--more dire).  Interesting little religious/philosophical piece.