APB: All Points Between Science and Literature: Robert Silverberg

Hugo award announced (and where to find them if online)

***

The Last Witchking
by Vox Day
Free
Up for the current Hugo. Controversial. A number speculated, without reading, whether this should be on the ballot. He has enemies but also active loyal readers according to the reviews. Time to ignore both camps and seek the truth for yourself.

Spirit Walker
(Serpent Catch)
by David Farland
$0.99
The opening book in a science fantasy series. It appears to be redivided from the original. One novel appears to have fallen short of a Nebula nomination.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
by Tim Powers
$1.99
Featured in best-of collections and up for a Locus.

Beyond the Rift
by Peter Watts
$1.99
Some of these stories won or were up for about every SF award. Only a few hours left!

Cosmic Kaleidoscope
by Bob Shaw
$2.99
A few classic stories

Orbitsville
by Bob Shaw
$3.79
Won the British SF award

The Star-Spangled Future
by Norman Spinrad
$3.99
A few classic stories

Faces
by Leigh Kennedy
$3.99
Stories up for Locus, Nebula and in Best SF

The Journal of Nicholas the American
by Leigh Kennedy
$3.99
Up for a Nebula

The Songbirds of Pain
by Garry Kilworth
$3.99
collection up for World Fantasy

In the Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave
by Garry Kilworth
$3.99
A few classic stories

Roma Eterna
by Robert Silverberg
$4.74

Up for Locus awards, Best SF

A Song Called Youth
by John Shirley
$6.99
early cyberpunk -- three novels!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era by Robert Silverberg

I've been collecting Silverberg's story collections but hesitated on this one. He writes:

"I have to confess, right up front here, that you will not find a great deal of poetic vision in these stories, or singing prose, or deep insight into character. Nor are these stories that will tell you much about the human condition."

He needn't confess. Describing what a work isn't, isn't necessary. Just say what it is. I haven't read or bought books by authors whom I've admired because they belittled their own work--Bear, Fowler, Powers. On the one hand, you don't want to raise expectations, so that the reader never reads your stuff again. But on the other, the reader might like it.

I reciprocated for Fowler when she asked me to sign a story. I dismissed the tale, flushing, embarrassed that my literary hero was asking me for a signature. What if she didn't like it? Unless the work is really bad, please don't dismiss it. Let the reader decide. Point out what the tale is or attempts, or that it was early work.

In Silverberg's essay, the lines that follow are enough. These are simple pulp tales written speedily for the money. That's descriptor enough. If a person doesn't like pulp, they won't buy it. For those that do, they'll buy it.

The collection's tales and the accompanying biographical material are a romp.... Aliens come to Earth seeking advanced technology, but the lines are long--at least two year long. ...unless you can think of a way to shorten the time, like play on human preconceptions of danger.

Or an escaped prisoner--one who is always optimistic he'll get out of this fix--crash-lands on a planet where he will have to be a Robinson Crusoe... only the natives have different plans.

The plots aren't fresh but fun. The biographical material sold me. How did Silverberg establish homself? If you enjoy Silverberg's Reflections columns for Asimov's magazine, you'll find this one a similar treat.

Speaking of which, why hasn't anyone collected his Reflections columns?

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Subterranean Press has released eight volumes of Robert Silverberg's short fiction (and others)

Most are $2.99. I love their ebooks.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

"Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Appeared in

Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction,
Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling's Year's Best Fantasy,
Arthur W. Saha's Year's Best Fantasy Stories,
Gardner Dozois's Modern Classics of Fantasy,
Robert Silverberg's A Century of Fantasy 1980-1989,
Robert Silverberg's The Fantasy Hall of Fame,
American Fantasy Tradition, (Sep 2002, ed. Brian M. Thomsen,

Honors

Hugo
World Fantasy
Locus nominee
Sturgeon nominee
Nebula nominee

Clearly, this story is highly respected, deservedly so. Its charm begins almost immediately. A young girl has fallen from an airplane and protects one eye:

"Did you lose an eye?" the coyote asked, interested.

"I don't know," the child said....

"I'll help you look for it.... I knew a trick once where I could throw my eyes way up into a tree and see everything from up there, and then whistle, and they'd come back into my head. But that goddam bluejay stole them, and wen I whistled nothing came. I had to stick lumps of pine pitch into my head so I could see anything. You could try that. But you've got one eye that's OK, what do you need two for? re you coming or are you dying there?"

The child follows various animals-as-humans around (who behave much like native American gods). Since she has little background, probably she is our surrogate witness: Perhaps some of our "civilized" hang-ups, such as where we relieve ourselves, are unnecessary. The primary key, though, is our relationship with nature, in particular animals--the environment: how we impinge their world.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Close Reading of " 'The Author of the Acacia Seeds' and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics" by Ursula K. Le Guin

First appeared in Terry Carr's Fellowship of the Stars. Reprinted in Silverberg and Greenberg's The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces, and in Hartwell and Cramer's The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF.

Like "Schrödinger's Cat", "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" examines what we actually know from scientific research. The first extract examines the language of ants written on acacia seeds, but it is necessarily full of uncertainties due to the gulf of differences in how we understand language. This is followed by the penguin language which is complicated by its being a bird in the sea. Its author is even less certain what to glean from it. The editor also extrapolates further difficulties--out to plants and even rocks.

Because of the story's scholarly tone, the story may be taken at face value--what do we truly know of science--or its final point indicates it may also be read as an idea taken out to its absurd conclusion. However, as "Schrödinger's Cat" indicates, scientific absurdities may be true as well--if not stranger than we currently imagine.

Friday, June 14, 2013

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith

Bibliography: First appeared in H. L. Gold's Galaxy. Available online. Also part of Dozois' ebook, Magicats, and in a number of major anthologies: Dikty's Best SF; Robert Silverberg's The Mirror of Infinity: A Critics' Anthology of Science Fiction; Patricia Warrick, Martin Harry Greenberg, Joseph Olander's Science Fiction: Contemporary Mythology, James Gunn's The Road to Science Fiction #3: From Heinlein to Here; Kingsley Amis' The Golden Age of Science Fiction; Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg's Great SF Stories: #17 (1955); Robert Silverberg's Century of Science Fiction 1950-1959; Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction; Pat Cadigan's The Ultimate Cyberpunk; David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's The Space Opera Renaissance.

The above list ranks this as a major story in the field. Interestingly, not only is this important, but Cadigan lists it as a forefather to cyberpunk and Hartwell/Cramer to space opera. It is due in large part to its inventiveness--inventive with amazing if dizzying economy:

"Pinlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living."

What kind of occupation is Pinlighting?

"As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully.

" 'Meow.' That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife."

Girl = cat?

"As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him."

Comforting solidity of the Sun? This is the strangeness that pushes away some readers, but pulls in the true-blue, the die-hards.

Underhill pinlights with his cat, where they mind-meld and hunt creatures they call dragons in space. Only cats are fast enough to kill the dragons. They kill off dragons.

Curiously, like Fredric Brown's "Mouse", the cat measures favorably against women (hinted at in the above, early quote.

Tobias Buckell recently did a semi-controversial homage to Smith at Lightspeed: "A Game of Rats and Dragon".

Commentary:

Gary K. Wolfe's "Mythic Structures in Cordwainer Smith's 'The Game of Rat and Dragon' " [Science Fiction Studies]

Thursday, June 13, 2013

New novella from Damien Broderick, based on Robert Silverberg's classic, Born with the Dead

...is on sale on Amazon for 99 cents for one day, today, June 13, 2013. This is Phoenix Pick's sale.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

"Hawksbill Station" by Robert Silverberg

Collected in To the Dark Star: 1962-69, it first appeared in Frederik Pohl's Galaxy, reprinted in both Donald Wollheim/Terry Carr's and Brian Aldiss/Harry Harrison's Year's Best anthologies. It was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula awards. It is Silverberg's first story to capture award nominators' attention.

Because time travelers can only go backwards, the government has placed their troublesome, male revolutionaries in the Precambrian where they cannot create time paradoxes, accidentally destroying an evolutionary ancestor. The former revolutionaries go a little crazy without anything to do or females to spend their time with. One actually "creates" a woman out of mud and grass.

Our hero is Barrett, "the uncrowned King of Hawksbill Station," due to his length of stay, mental stamina, and size although he became crippled after a rock slide, eroding his power somewhat--at least in his mind. They keep hoping for a female although one never comes. Lew Hahn arrives and everything changes. The men get suspicious as he cannot explain his. Stranger still, he's been taking damning notes on everyone at the station, saying it ought to be gotten rid of. The men consider him a spy and watch him carefully... until he disappears.

This is truly a significant work: the power in one's powerlessness, the search for importance and the fear of losing it even when you'd suspect that one's position should be anathema. These themes create a potent tale. The novel doesn't work as well as the stir-crazy aspects and crucible conditions get lost (although it has its own appeal).

The plot-pivotal character, Hahn, probably should have been a psychologist and his assessments not so quickly lost--or at least misinterpreted. However, this does not erode the power of the novella because this is Barrett's tale--his effort to hold the station together, come what may.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

"Multiples" by Robert Silverberg

Originally appeared in Omni. Reprinted in Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction. Collected in Silverberg's collection, Multiples.

Cleo goes to a Multiples' bar to pick up a Multiple, a person uncontrollably changes from one personality/person to another. Multiple persons can even be present in one body at one time. She, however, is only a Singleton--like you or I. She pretends that she, too, contains multiple people, but eventually she's caught. In fact, She returns to "singleton" life, but it's not the same.

Possible, intriguing metaphor for the attraction between complex and simple personalities.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Mostly Literary Links

Accepting poetry book submissions:

Solaris Rising 2 released

Awards

All of these posts about the Clarke awards are worth reading. The first responds to this editorial about the gender of the writers.

Hugh Howey

Salon
Wired

Dean Wesley Smith on Agents

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on

Changes in publishing over past four years
Her Survival Guide
Book format

Swarming robots

Cellular map of the fountain of youth

Nathaniel Williams on teaching Steampunk

On reading ebooks -- how we do it

Richard Parks answers critics -- on writing historical fiction

This article on Robert Silverberg's "Good News from the Vatican" received a bump when a new pope was chosen. It's out as an ebook recently, but expensively. Perhaps a collection a more affordable option.

Gate to "Hell" -- poison fumes steaming Pluto's gate found based on documentation

David Farland

Details -- importance of using precise and necessary words
"it isn’t enough to become adept at storytelling. You need to master dozens of writing skills before you can bring a story to life."
Character interviews
Take time for life

Nightshade

Cat Rambo on rewriting novels

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Most popular posts

Most popular posts (% based on the most popular)

100%
"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid

64%
"Warm" by Robert Sheckley

31% (% based on two posts, forgetting I'd written the earlier one; otherwise Silverberg's would come before)
"The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" by Andrea Kail (earlier, more popular post

26%
"Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg

20% (% based on two posts, forgetting I'd written the earlier one)
"The Stone Cipher" by Tony Pi (later, less popular post)

18%
"Day Million" by Frederik Pohl

7%
"Life in Steam" by Gra Linnaea

&

"They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson

Number Stopping by:

The first year was 100/month
The second 150/month
The third 200/month
Since July, it's 700/month

Visitors most often come from:

United States
Russia
Germany
Canada
France
United Kingdom
Philippines
Ukraine
Netherlands
India

Saturday, January 29, 2011

"Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg

The next pope is a robot. Why did Carr, del Rey, and LeGuin think this an important story? It was probably the then recent Vatican II that many saw as the beginning of many changes within how religion--at Roman Catholicism--was interpreted. Without historical context, the story loses some of its power. Another lens to read the story would be through race relations with the fear of robots running operations. Nonetheless, despite allusions, metaphor and theme, sometimes a robot is just a robot. It is often more useful to read at a literal level before advancing to other topics and heading off into misinterpretations.

Universe 1, ed. Terry Carr, Ace 1971
Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, ed. Lester del Rey, E.P. Dutton 1972
Nebula Award Stories 7, ed. Lloyd Biggle, Jr., Harper & Row 1973
Unfamiliar Territory, Scribner’s 1973
Social Problems Through Science Fiction, ed. Martin H. Greenberg, John W. Milstead, Joseph D. Olander & Patricia S. Warrick, St. Martin’s 1975
The New Awareness, ed. Patricia S. Warrick & Martin H. Greenberg, Delacorte 1975
The Best of Robert Silverberg, Pocket 1976 The Best from Universe, ed. Terry Carr, Doubleday 1984
Beyond the Safe Zone, Donald I. Fine 1986
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IV, ed. Terry Carr, Avon 1986
The Norton Book of Science Fiction, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin & Brian Attebery, Norton 1993

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

"Ishmael in Love" by Robert Silverberg

Synopsis: Ishmael, a dolphin who helps out humans on the island of St. Croix, falls in love with Lisabeth Caulkins. He saves the island for love of her, but she does not love in return.

Commentary (science): Despite its presence on a website called "Biology in Science Fiction," very little applies directly to the general study. Yet much is pertinent in its examination of love (unrequited): What is love? What makes a creature fall in love with its own kind (sexual characteristics, etc.)? Can it be enough to touch the mind of someone to kindle love? Can one fall in love with another who is almost wholly other, or are we not built that way?

Commentary (literary): Clearly, with Moby Dick's first line in the title, an allusion is here--however overt or subtle. How close is the connection? Can we find one? Perhaps summarize both in a way that teases out a relationship. In Moby Dick, a man loathes a "fish" so much that he risks himself and his entire crew to kill it. In "Call Me Ishmael," this time the "fish" saves the lives of all humans on an island for love of one woman. Are there other correlations?

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

$ 2.99 ebooks from Fairwood Press

Monday, September 15, 2014

New and reduced ebook lunches (updated)

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

(updated) Reduced and new ebook lunches

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Hugos announced (which are online) + Free & reduced ebook lunches (updated to add Farland, Powers, Day)