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From: donn@sdchema.UUCP (Donn Seeley)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Book Reviews (V)
Message-ID: <835@sdchema.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Aug-83 06:07:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdchema.835
Posted: Sun Aug 28 06:07:58 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Aug-83 07:40:20 EDT
Organization: UC San Diego Chemistry Dept. NIH Research Resource
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Some reviews of my recent reading.  Stars next to titles indicate
collections or anthologies.  All the books are paperbacks, with the
publisher or series title shown.  Ratings are 0-10: 0 = 'I don't know
why I bought this trash,' 5 = 'Readable but disappointing,' 7.5 = 'I
liked it (but I don't know about other people),' 10 = 'Kill for this
book.'

*OUT OF THE EVERYWHERE.  James Tiptree, Jr.  Del Rey.  Alice Sheldon
puts so much energy into her writing as James Tiptree, Jr. that you
might suspect that she was really in her teens (she's actually in her
sixties):  her stories recapture the youthfulness and vivacity of
childhood.  All of the stories in this book are full of zip and
generally enjoyable to read.  'Angel Fix' is a comedy about the
ordinary people who bump into an alien whose flying saucer had a flat
(or did it?).  'The Screwfly Solution' is about a curious disease that
causes men to want to sexually assault and murder women (it won the
Nebula).  'Time-sharing Angel' has a unique solution to the population
problem.  'We Who Stole the DREAM' at first seems to be a shallow story
about the innocent aliens who have been oppressed by the brutal
Earthmen as slaves on a far planet, who discover that their race exists
as a full-blown interstellar empire on the other side of the galaxy;
they steal a ship and try to fly away to this natural-foods
peace-loving utopia, a classic leftist fairy tale, except they find out
something when they land which takes all the steam out of the
fairy-tale aspect.  'Slow Music' is a beautiful but depressing story
about a future Earth on which the human race gives up living
(apparently Sheldon was considering suicide when she wrote this
story).  'Out of the Everywhere' is a story Ted Sturgeon might have
written about a lost interstellar traveller who is forced to hibernate
on our planet and puts pieces of his mind into certain human beings for
safekeeping.  'With Delicate Mad Hands' is about a woman who dreams of
a mysterious voice calling her into space as a child, grows up to be a
spaceship pilot and commits suicide after killing her rabid commander
by flying his ship into the interstellar void; just before her supplies
run out she encounters a strange planet...  Several of the stories read
like adolescent fantasies; sometimes this detracts from the stories,
other times it strengthens them.  One common factor in the stories is a
kind of mysandry, where men are represented as violent and irrational
creatures who seek to degrade and oppress her peaceful and rational
female protagonists.  This is most apparent in 'Your Faces, O My
Sisters!  Your Faces Filled of Light', which is about a housewife who
breaks under the strain of her uncaring husband and falls into the
delusion that she lives in a post-apocalyptic world where all the men
have died out and the world is populated by universally cooperative,
helping 'sisters'; she wanders off into the streets of Chicago, where
she is quickly abducted, beaten and raped by brutal thugs.  If like me
you are a man and have a hard time believing that you are a violent and
irrational creature who enjoys humiliating innocent peaceful rational
women then this sort of propaganda will stick in your craw.  But these
attitudes, like Sheckley's, can be overlooked in view of the general
freshness and fun of the stories. (8.5)

THE SNOW QUEEN.  Joan D. Vinge.  Dell.  This novel won the Hugo award a
few years ago.  It certainly has all the elements for a blockbuster
novel:  it is long (537 pages), loaded with characters, set in an
exotic location, and filled with passionate romance, and it has a happy
ending to boot.  Wicked Arienrhod, the Snow Queen of the planet Tiamat,
desires to perpetuate her rule past the end of Winter into the Summer.
Summer is a both a time and a culture:  it is a time when the multiple
star system of Tiamat brings the planet into a much warmer period,
melting the ice covering most of the northern latitudes and at the same
time preventing interstellar travel through the Gate, a black hole in
the system; and it is an aboriginal culture that lives on some of the
equatorial islands and traditionally moves north to occupy the seat of
government during warm periods.  Arienrhod plants a clone of hers as a
child among the Summers, expecting to train her as a double who can
take the throne when the Festival of the Change occurs.  The daughter's
name is (get this) Moon Dawntreader Summer, and she is desperately in
love with her 'brother', named (get this) Sparks Dawntreader Summer.
The two of them want to go off and marry but Moon feels the
extrasensory attraction of the Sibyls and eventually decides to become
a priestess, while Sparks goes to the capital city of (get this)
Carbuncle to become a nasty techie.  Of course Sparks becomes
Arienrhod's boyfriend and the rest of the novel is about Moon trying
to win said boyfriend back from Arienrhod.  I'm sorry to sound so
sarcastic but I expected more from this book, more from a book that
won the Hugo award.  The writing is occasionally awkward and sometimes
descends to the sappiness of a mock romantic novel:

	'Arienrhod studied him silently; he felt her measure and weigh
	with her eyes.  He thought a shadow passed across her face,
	before she nodded.  "Challenge him, then.  But if you do, and
	fail, I'll call you a vain little braggart and make love to him
	on your grave."  She caught the winking pendant and drew him
	down on top of her.

	'"I won't fail."  He found her lips again, hungrily.  "And if I
	can't be your only lover, I'll be the best."'

There is no depth to the plot or character, although the setting is
nicely drawn (especially the attention to language and social status).
Great lengths are gone to in pointing out just how noble and virtuous
the good guys are and how cruel and nasty the bad guys are.  Sparks
starts out as a good guy and I had great hopes that he would turn out
to be a bad guy, because he spends half the novel being corrupted by
Arienrhod and cultivated into what I was hoping was a despicable brute,
but when Sparks reunites with Moon he flies into tears and says he'll
never do it again, and Moon BELIEVES him.  Argh.  The ending is
particularly annoying -- the bad guys are foiled with implausible ease
and everybody falls in love and goes home happy.  The book is just
incredibly insubstantial; I am really disappointed. (5.0)

EYE OF CAT.  Roger Zelazny.  Timescape(?).  (This one is out on loan;
I'll do my best to keep the details straight...) I've been disappointed
by Roger Zelazny over the last several years; the only novel of the
'Amber' series that I enjoyed was the first one, and the only other
recent novel of his which I felt like buying was DOORWAYS IN THE SAND,
which turned out to be light (very light) entertainment.  I keep hoping
he will do another novel as good as LORD OF LIGHT, a favorite of mine
since high school, but he never seems to put it together.  EYE OF CAT
is not as good as LORD OF LIGHT but I think it is much better than
DOORWAYS IN THE SAND.  William Blackhorse Singer is an anachronism:  he
was born a Navajo Indian at the last time when it was possible to be
brought up a true Navajo, and he is 150 years old as a result of time
dilation.  His mind works two ways -- he is both a sophisticated master
of technology and a primitive who acts with the mental discipline of a
medicine man.  Renowned as a hunter, he is recruited by the government
to hunt down a religious fanatic from another planet, a telepath and a
shapeshifter who is determined to assassinate the representative from
his own planet to Earth in an effort to cut off relations.  Singer
turns to Cat, a shapeshifting being itself, which he caught and
imprisoned in a zoo many years ago.  Cat surprises Singer: it is both
intelligent and telepathic, and it will do the job for one payment:
revenge on Singer.  The revenge is to take the form of a hunt; if
Singer can stay alive for seven days while Cat tracks him, Cat will let
him go.  The chase is quite thrilling, with a climax in the area of
Canyon de Chelly (?) in Arizona, but even scarier is the possibility
that something much worse than Cat is tracking Singer...  The execution
of the book is somewhat uneven but at least Zelazny is playful with his
text like he used to be:  some of the passages are Navajo-like chants
and some are peculiar telepathic conversations.  I liked it and I hope
it is a sign that Zelazny is thinking of doing even better. (8.0)