James Dick

Tag: Book Review

  • Laser Books Review 11

    Laser Books Review 11

    11. Unto the Last Generation by Juanita Coulson

    Last review, I made a crack about women writing sci-fi, and got a crack on the head for my political incorrectness. To anyone who might’ve been offended: I apologize. I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself. I’ve already booked myself into rehab.

    And next week I’ll be on the Jordan Peterson Podcast.

    Okay, okay, I’m gonna cut the chauvinist humour now. In today’s review, we have to talk about extinction, cloning, and vaginas — subjects I take very seriously.

    Juanita Coulson’s first listed sci-fi credit is “Another Rib”, published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, co-authored with Marion Zimmer Bradley in 1963 under the pen name John J. Wells. In 1965, after being nominated seven consecutive years, she, along with her husband Robert, won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine for editing Yandro.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    If the name Robert Coulson sounds familiar, that’s because he co-authored Laser Book 4, Gates of the Universe, with Gene DeWeese. Check out my very short review of that forgettable tale here.

    She is also a Filk Hall of Famer. Her list of works on ISFDB shows a healthy blend of original fiction, essays, art, and reviews — and that’s before you get into her history with filk songs and poetry. To my delight, she also wrote a Star Trek: TOS tie-in story as part of the collection Star Trek: The New Voyages.

    I’m always excited to read works by authors who flex their muscles not only across many different kinds of writing, but also different kinds of art. Generally, this is indicative of a robust intellect and a linguistic ingenuity not often found in those who confine themselves to one field. An excellent example would be Clive Barker: a man whose paintings are as widely appreciated as his prose. He paints with words, and tells stories with paint.

    And speaking of art…

    Cover

    Whoa, what a stark departure from the previous covers! I can tell Kelly Freas got tired of being told to colour inside the lines, so he made his own lines.

    Having read the book, I can tell you this cover is representative of the story within, but not in the way you’d think. There’s a lot of travelling through abandoned cityscapes and desolate imagery in the story, but Freas chose not to depict any of that. So, what did he leave us with?

    The first place the eye goes when looking at the cover is the huge red cloning vat on the right. The ghostly forms of unborn children float within. It’s a haunting image, and it takes effort to tear the eye away from it.

    The bright yellow and orange lights of the leftmost panel draw the eye next. At first, I had no idea what he was saying with these geometric shapes and flashing lights, but now I realize he’s evoking the image of a computer — the bulky kind with flashing lights that was a staple of sci-fi storytelling from 1950 to 1970.

    Next the eye travels to the little girl on the bottom left, Ria. She’s got a forlorn expression on her face, but a hard set to her lips and shoulders. She looks tougher than her size suggests. And her gaze naturally directs us to the portrait of our protagonist, Richard Parnell on the right, looking a little drawn and haggard.

    It’s only writing this review that I realize what Freas was going for:

    • Cloning
    • Computers
    • Ria
    • Parnell

    These are the people and technologies that the world is banking on to provide hope to a fading humanity. Rather than showing dark and depressing images of empty cities and rioting crowds, Freas showed us the tip of the spear, the vanguard, the forces trying to save Homo sapiens from extinction.

    That would be striking enough, but the way he arrays his elements with unexpected geometric precision, leading the eye in a spiral down to our protagonist and all that concerns him, is such a stark departure from what I’ve grown used to seeing from him.

    I hope to see more covers like this in the future.

    Blurb

    Population Zero has accomplished its mission only too well. Not only has the world’s population ceased to mushroom, it has ceased to reproduce…because it cannot. Wholesale application of population control technology has rendered man infertile. In the Life Sciences Building, a team of doctors and scientists is trying everything imaginable in their frantic efforts to produce life artificially…when into their midst walks a little girl. “I’m eight,” the girl announces proudly. But mankind has been sterile for more than 15 years!

    I mentioned last review that this reminded me of The Children of Men. I’d never read the book, but I’ve seen the Alfonso Cuarón film, and the notion of a young woman suddenly turning up who provides hope to a dying humanity definitely has echoes with this blurb.

    Marketing Guy did pretty good here! I’d certainly be intrigued. It’s dark with a bright ray of sunshine cutting the gloom. Nicely done, MG! Keep it up and we might not have to feed you to the hungry Targs.

    Now, while he’s busy quaking in his boots, lets move on to the main course.

    Story

    *cracks open the book, clears throat*

    The story begins… wait a minute…

    *squints*

    Now what are the odds of this!

    First Re: Reading with Caravan, now Bakka!

    You know what that means…

    Bakka-Phoenix Books

    It’s pluggin’ time!

    Bakka was a combined SFF book and comic shop on Queen Street in Toronto, opened in May of 1972 (one month after John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charles Duke went to the moon on Apollo 16, funny enough). The comic portion of the shop split off and became Silver Snail, originally situated across the street from Bakka.

    In March 1998, Bakka “marched” over to Yonge Street, and in March 2005, it “marched” back to Queen. Then in November (sigh… they could’ve gone in March and got the hat trick) 2010, they… relocated… blech… to their current spot at Harbord and Spadina, and rebranded themselves Bakka-Phoenix Books.

    In the years since, they’ve become the de facto launch site for Toronto-based genre writers. P.A. Cornell is the most recent author I know who launched a book there (Shoeshine Boy and Cigarette Girl — check it out!), and I hope to have the Toronto launch of my own debut novel, Seekers of the Fallen Stars, at that store. They’re also frequent vendors at Can*Con. I’ve given them an absurd amount of money over the years, and doubtless I’ll be giving them even more in the future. It’s worth every cent. They are the flagship of Toronto’s SFF scene and I’m happy to support them.

    I look forward to the day when my book is on their shelves.

    Digression Over

    Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the story.

    Unto the Last Generation presents us with a future with echoes of Stephen Goldin’s Caravan, but rather than too many people being the direct cause of societal collapse, it is too few.

    The reason for this is actually quite intriguing. Prior to the events of the book, women across the planet developed an immune response to male sperm, killing sperm cells as they would a virus or bacteria. The result is that no sperm are able to reach an egg and so women cannot have children.

    Would You Like to Know More?
    Human ovum

    Holy shit, Juanita. I don’t know if you realize just how smart and prescient your plot device is, but you deserve the gold-pressed latinum star of sci-fi worldbuilding.

    Let me mansplain for a minute.

    I’m not sure what the state of immmunology was at the time Last Generation was written, but it’s well-known now just how hostile and uninviting the female vagina is.

    Microbiotically-speaking, of course.

    The vagina has a high pH level, is coated with antimicrobial mucus, and is armed to the metaphorical teeth with every kind of immune cell available to the human body.

    (Geez, this got Freudian fast…)

    It shouldn’t be a surprise: being an orifice into the body’s interior, there has to be a great deal of security to prevent unwanted intrusion.

    But that security also attacks sperm cells — the very cells needed for reproduction. The reason why is probably evolutionary: you don’t want any Tom, Dick, or Harry fertilizing your eggs, so the vagina’s defences whittle down the sperm count until only the toughest remain. From there, it’s a race to the ovaries.

    But this world of immune-meets-reproductive systems gets even more interesting.

    We’ve known for some time now that as much as 8% of the human genome comes from viruses — specifically ancient viruses who smuggled genetic sequences into our ancestors which never got eliminated, probably because it imparted an advantage of some kind.

    But there’s a theory gaining traction in recent years that says we may owe our entire existence to viruses. How, you ask? It’s simple.

    Sperm.

    What is a sperm cell, really? It’s a vessel carrying a genetic payload which infiltrates a larger cell (ovum) and reprograms it. This is the exact behaviour a virus uses to reproduce.

    The modern theory is that our ancient ancestors learned this trick during a viral infection and incorporated it into the reproductive process. And since anti-sperm antibodies are already a well-documented cause of infertility in some couples, it’s no stretch to believe that a slight change in genetics (particularly in a developed country, where autoimmune diseases are more common) could lead to sex-wide infertility.

    If you’d like to know where I learned all this, read Philipp Dettmer‘s book Immune. You will come to know not only your immune system, but your whole life, a lot better.

    Researcher Richard Parnell and his wife Therese, who’ve long dreamed of having a baby, have been working feverishly as part of a cross-country team of scientists to solve the fertility issue before humankind goes extinct. So far, cloning has seemed like the best option, and some scientists like Jesse Bliss are going all-in on the technology. Into their midst walks an eight year old girl, Ria, a street orphan being cared for by a group of elderly folk hiding out in the local library.

    Eight years old… except women have been infertile for fifteen years.

    Suddenly the Life Sciences team realizes that not all women are infertile. Someone out there is able to have children. Cloning may not be the only option.

    As a riot inches closer to the Life Sciences Building, Richard and Therese make the decision to move Ria to the project’s headquarters, there to begin a nationwide search for her parents and any other children. This involves a perilous journey across a collapsing America.

    Detloff, Bliss, and Preconceptions

    One of the most interesting characters in the story is Nevin Detloff, a populist radical. Food is scarce in this world, and the government maintains strict control of it. Detloff works hard to redistribute calories equally.

    Reading this book, I assumed early on — as many readers doubtless would — that Detloff would be the villain, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a ringleader of the masses who would use charisma to get whatever he wants. I was surprised, then, when by happenstance he fell in with our hero’s convoy and turned out to be a decent guy.

    Is he opportunistic? Yeah. Always hunting for a political angle? Sure. But it’s always in service of his movement to feed people and building grassroots connections. He is that legendary political unicorn: a moral demagogue.

    If anything, it’s Detloff’s more zealous followers that pose the most danger; people who have taken his message to mean that they should take whatever they want by force of arms, even from innocent people. That’s not what Detloff believes. He always punches up, never down. He challenges authority and fights for the common folk.

    As I mentioned in my Crash Landing on Iduna review, most grassroots movements start out innocently like this. Then some assholes take over and it becomes something sinister.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    One example that hits close to home is incel culture.

    I want you to sit back and think for a minute. Where do you think the term incel came from? When I tell you the answer, you probably won’t believe it.

    The term incel was originally coined by a Canadian university student named Alana. In 1997, she created an online forum called “Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project” wherein she discussed, and invited discussion, on sexual inexperience as it pertained to societal expectations. Initially, it was a positive conversation, and Alana departed believing it would continue thus in her absence.

    But over the next twenty years, the term was taken and perverted by men who used it to blame women for why they failed at relationships. The movement metastasized and became a hub of misogynism — the total opposite of what Alana sought to foster.

    After the Yonge Street Van Attack, she was shocked to discover what her conversation had turned into.

    But do you know which character actually turns out to be an asshole? Jesse Bliss.

    Bliss is the man in charge of the cloning efforts, working closely with a woman named Ines to create a test tube baby. They use one of his sperm and Ines’s ovum to make the child. When Bliss reveals the success to the Parnells, it is treated as a miraculous moment of hope.

    And then Bliss, in front of Ines, casually suggests they dissect the child to make sure it developed properly.

    Ines very nearly claws Bliss’s eyes out for that, and it’s only by revealing their success to the rest of the team that she stops Bliss from going ahead with the dissection.

    Normally in Golden Age Sci-fi novels, the demagogue is the bad guy and the scientist is the good guy. But Juanita Coulson, New Wave authoress that she is, flips it, and throws in a good helping of maternity rights in the bargain. And it’s brilliant.

    Two Hopes for Humanity

    “Send in the clones!”

    — Danilo Odell, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Episode 218, “Up the Long Ladder”

    Shortly after the cloning process is revealed to be working, dozens of other children are found and brought to the Life Sciences headquarters along with their parents, to keep them all safe. Nevin Detloff plays a critical role, here: he uses his network of followers to find the children and their families. His national reach proves essential to Life Sciences’ work.

    Richard Parnell realizes that even with these children, they’ll still need the cloning process; there aren’t enough natural-born kids alive to rebuild the human race in their own time. And what if the mutation that created the infertility problem spreads to the healthy kids eventually?

    Better keep the Kaminoans on speed dial.

    And how will clones be viewed in the future? Will they be seen as second-class citizens, less human than natural born children? How will legislature integrate cloning practices?

    So many questions, so few answers, but the novel ends on a cautiously optimistic note: whatever vicissitudes and pitfalls await us, we’ve proven we’re smart enough not to go extinct. Rich and Therese now have the hope of having their own child someday — a cloned child, perhaps, but a child of their genes nonetheless. Coulson nails the final notes of the book with expert precision.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    You can feel Juanita Coulson struggling against the constraints of the Laser Books in writing this tale. She clearly wants to go further, get meaner, but Harlequin has her on a leash, as they do all the other authors in this series. But she easily ranks among those authors who succeeded despite their constraints, and every page of this book crackles with expectation and tension.

    If this book were written today, without those constraints, it would be very different — and much more brutal.

    Consider this: what would the world’s reaction be if it discovered the human race was about to go extinct, and the female body was empirically proven to be the cause?

    Violence against women would explode in ways the human race has never seen.

    It nauseates me to even contemplate saying this… but I wish that had been examined in this story, because it would absolutely be a pandemic in the future Coulson depicts. Misogyny and femicide are on the rise now, but a fertility crisis involving only the female sex would cause crimes against women to reach the stratosphere.

    I wonder if Coulson would’ve made that a part of her book if she’d been given free reign. I don’t think you could tell this story today without acknowledging it in some way.

    I do not, by any means, advocate for graphic descriptions of violence against women — you can turn on the daily news and glut yourself on that horror any time, which is itself a tragedy — but pretending the crisis doesn’t exist, or would not worsen in Coulson’s invented future, is naive at best, and dishonest at worst.

    But even as it stands, Coulson still manages to integrate women’s rights into the novel at the very end with the showdown between Ines and Bliss, and considering how much else she accomplishes, I’m more than happy with the end product.

    My Goodreads Review

    A tight, powerful, scientifically-informed tale of a fertility crisis in the near future, Unto the Last Generation marks the first story told by a woman in the Laser Books lineup, and it sets a high bar for those that follow. Crackling with tension, sprinkled with poignant commentary, this is a very powerful tale of hope in a hopeless future. Easy recommend if you can find a copy!

    With that, I close out our review of the first female Laser Book entry. I’m eagerly looking forward to our next authoress, Kathleen Sky, and her novel Birthright. We don’t have long to wait; she’s #14 in the series!

    But for the nonce, let’s see who #12 is.

    Who’s Next?

    Damn, that’s sparkly! Let’s see what the blurb says.

    Adventure stories don’t normally make a point as well, but Raymond F. Jones is no ordinary adventure story writer. In this touching and beautiful tale, Forester Bradwell shares his son’s adventures and learns a lesson he will never forget. Neither will you. For Forester Bradwell is one of the elite in a time and society where stupidity and ignorance have been conquered by genetic engineering. But his son Freeman is a Retard. The King of Eolim is the story of the Bradwell’s search for a home that will truly be “home” for Free.

    …

    …

    …

    Fuck.

  • Laser Books Review 10

    Laser Books Review 10

    10. Falling Toward Forever by Gordon Eklund

    *Screeeech!*

    Whew! I made it just in time! I couldn’t possibly miss this week’s review of Gordon Eklund’s second entry in the Laser Books! That’s right, lads and lasses, he’s back with another romp across the spacetime continuum with Falling Toward Forever.

    It’s hard to believe it’s only been a month since I reviewed Serving in Time. Time does indeed fly. And that review was a beast at 4100 words. It couldn’t be helped; I had a lot to say. Eklund had served up a truly original time travel tale with lots of ethical and social questions.

    This seems as good a time as any to remind ourselves what the staples of Eklund’s writing style are before proceeding into the new title:

    • Clean prose with occasional nuanced passages
    • Deep, philosophical queries revealed through character discourse
    • Conversational dialogue with occasional poetic flourishes
    • Twists on well-worn tropes

    Books stick in your mind for different reasons: maybe they had some really gross scenes, maybe you saw yourself reflected in the characters, or maybe — as with Serving in Time — they left you with thought-provoking questions about the society you live in.

    Here’s hoping that Falling Toward Forever gives us at least as much to chew on after the final page!

    But of course, we have to take a moment and see what Kelly Freas has for us on the cover.

    Cover

    My first thought was that this is a little too much like Walls Within Walls (bland, lacking detail), but nothing could be further from the truth. Freas takes his mastery of lighting and texture (and the combination thereof) to a whole new level in this cover.

    The sun in particular caught my eye. The fluidic texture of its surface reminds me of the simple shaders I learned to create in Unity, and which I saw a great deal of in the early space-based video games I used to play as a kid. Freas also layered flames around it — orange over bronze — to create a magnificent, hot corona.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Dick’s Solar Cookbook: Serve your own sun in twenty minutes or less.

    Ingredients:

    • Sphere (any size)
    • Shader
    • Point light (substitute directional light for fixed perspective games)

    Instructions:

    • Create a sphere in your game engine. Most engines have the option to create simple geometric shapes.
    • Create a shader graph. Ideally, you want a watery, rippling surface texture. Noise can be increased to simulate sunspot activity
    • Apply the finished shader to the sphere
    • Create a point light and attach it to the sphere (if you find the sun doesn’t “glow” much, you can try placing an additional light in front of the sun to illuminate its surface)

    The cover is not so monochrome as it first appears: the dome and towers in the background inject a little teal and green into the image, and everything is contrasted nicely by the large purple lettering of the title. Again, Freas shows how a title can be a key ingredient in the composition of a cover.

    The hunched, shadowy figures impart a sense of unease; are they human? Once human? Alien? Who knows? The unease is only enhanced by Calvin Waller’s tortured face, bound round the neck with a shimmering chain. This is not the kind of face you make when you’re having a good time.

    Or… maybe it is?

    Now, let’s see how Marketing Guy did with the blurb.

    Blurb

    As a mercenary soldier of fortune, Calvin Waller has grown used to danger. Danger is the air he breathes. But when he finds himself thrown from the midst of an African battle into a primitive farm community of the future, he is naturally disoriented. Trained as he is, he quickly gets his bearings and begins a new and different battle…only to be “thrown” again. He is being manipulated. Falling Toward Forever, is the story of his search for The Manipulator, and for himself. A strange and wonderful search…for The Manipulator holds all the strings.

    Ooh, a temporal whodunit? I like this! We haven’t actually had a soldier as a protagonist yet in this series, let alone a mercenary. And coming out as this book does in 1975, I’m intrigued at how Eklund will depict a soldier of fortune, given that they were responsible for some deplorable, detestable, dastardly deeds throughout the Cold War.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    If you’d like a deep dive into the structure, ethics, and history of a modern mercenary company, check out this excellent book by Jeremy Scahill.

    I first became aware of Scahill’s work through the documentary Dirty Wars, chronicling the War on Terror through the lens of special forces black ops.

    In Blackwater, he breaks down the history and operations of the eponymous mercenary corporation behind the Nisour Square massacre, known today as “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday.”

    Curiously, Blackwater, Dirty Wars and Falling Toward Forever all cover the same subject matter: self-fulfilling prophecies.

    The blurb hints that this man, who’s fought only for coin most of his life, will begin to find a higher calling as he is dragged across the spacetime continuum. These kinds of stories are simple, but enjoyable: we all want to believe that a person who has lived a life of self-interest can redeem themselves by helping others, and reading this blurb, that’s the kind of story I’m anticipating.

    But of course, Eklund has proven himself deft at manipulating expectations and turning well-worn tropes on their heads, so lets see what he does with this!

    I’m getting gooseflesh just thinking about it.

    Story

    The face you make when you step on a Lego.

    Or when you finish this book.

    Ugh… Gordon… what happened?

    This isn’t a four-star book.

    This ain’t even a three-star book!

    How can the man who wrote Serving in Time turn around and write something as mediocre and pulpy as this?

    Actually, I take that back. Some really great work came out of the pulp magazines. This, though… I can’t fathom it.

    This is gonna be a short review, guys…

    Waller is serving in Africa (specific country unknown) fighting for a local insurgency. He decided long ago that he didn’t like governments and now fights for the underdogs. In the middle of a battle, Waller, his comrade Ahmad, and a civilian named Sondra are yoinked out of their native time and flung into the future.

    What follows is a pretty repetitive plot: the three of them fall in with a group of oppressed people indigenous to a particular time, they arm the indigenous group, teach them to fight their oppressors, and then are yoinked again. The cause of these jumps are unknown until the end of the book.

    In the far future, millions or perhaps billions of years hence, the human race split into two camps: those who embraced change and evolution, and those who clung to our Homo sapiens past (I’m not really clear on the nuances here — I think we’re supposed to infer that the latter is bad?).

    One of these “pure Homo sapiens“, Barone, had access to a time machine and wanted to know why the species appeared to split, with the majority of us leaving. He identified Waller, Ahmad, and Sondra as the cause, and sought to prevent the split and keep humanity pure by yoinking them out of their native time.

    Of course, us veterans of the genre can immediately see the idiot’s mistake: in trying to manipulate time to prevent the future he feared, he ended up ensuring it would come to be. Our three um… heroes? I guess? They’re like a thread across history, teaching various groups to embrace change and ultimately leave Earth behind.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    As I said before, this is painfully reminiscent of the War on Terror. Al Qaeda’s stated goal was to “end the American Century” with it’s 9/11 attacks. They started the job, but America finished it by becoming embroiled in endless conflict in the Middle East.

    A story which, unbelievably, is playing out again today.

    This is kind of a callback to Serving in Time, if you squint: a single action cannot change history, but several of them, compounded together, can completely divert its track.

    The story ends with Waller, Ahmad, and Sondra destroying Barone’s time machine. History is reset to the moment they were taken, but Waller remembers everything, and it is hinted at that Ahmad and Sondra do as well.

    And… yeah, that’s kind of it.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    This is baffling to me.

    Gordon Eklund demonstrated such skill and invention when he wrote Serving in Time, and I’m still chewing over the ethical implications of that book two years on! But with Falling Toward Forever, he comes out with the most generic piece of Golden Age tripe you ever saw.

    I could make some suggestions about how to fix the plot, but… why bother? This kind of story — an unwilling hero being dragged through time — has been done to death. There are some choice Twilight Zone episodes you could watch that execute this premise with verve, sass, and ingenuity, and Rod Serling’s writing is really the pinnacle of play where sci-fi tropes are concerned.

    Really, Gordon, what happened? Did a loved one die just before you started writing this book? Do you owe money to somebody? I could at least cut you some slack if there was a good reason for this.

    But this is a bigger misstep than declaring war on a Middle Eastern country without a plan.

    “What a flop. What a fiasco!” — Cardinal Copia

    6. Serving in Time by Gordon Eklund
    10. Falling Toward Forever by Gordon Eklund

    My Goodreads Review

    I can’t believe the man who wrote Serving in Time also wrote this book. Falling Toward Forever, much like its antagonist, is an uninventive, unintelligent, unenlightened throwback to the Golden Age of Sci-fi. Eklund demonstrates none of the creativity he exhibited with his first entry in the Laser Books, and consequently comes up with a plodding snorefest of a novel. The only reason I’m giving it two stars instead of one is because, unlike with the novels comprising the Trench of Sadness (Crash Landing on Iduna, Gates of the Universe, Walls Within Walls), there is nothing truly offensive about this tale and it is at least more memorable than Gates. But it is still a terrible disappointment.

    Geez, guys, I’m sorry. This is a bummer. I really had high hopes for this book. I feel like I need to make this up to you somehow. Maybe write about my love of Babylon 5 or something.

    Oh, actually, did you know I got my girlfriend L. hooked on that series recently? It’s my second time through, but her first. We just finished “Babylon Squared”, where Babylon 4 gets yoinked through spacetime much the same way Waller was.

    That’s a good example of unwilling time travel, but man that episode hurts my soul knowing where everything leads…

    Hey, why don’t you just watch that episode instead of reading Falling Toward Forever? At least it builds to something interesting!

    Who’s Next?

    Wait… what’s this?!

    A science fiction novel…

    … written by a woman?

    I had no idea such a thing existed! What a rare occurrence, like neutron stars colliding in deep space.

    *shouting* Hey! Hey, L.! You gotta see this, baby! It’s a science fiction novel written by a woman! I didn’t know they let women write these days!

    Wait… what’re you doing with that frying pan? Oh… oh no, it was just a joke, honey. A trifling bit of japery! Y’know, cuz the Golden Age was such an Old Boys Clu–

    *BONG*

    Ahem… You guys check out the blurb while I go look for some Tylenol…

    Population Zero has accomplished its mission only too well. Not only has the world’s population ceased to mushroom, it has ceased to reproduce…because it cannot. Wholesale application of population control technology has rendered man infertile. In the Life Sciences Building, a team of doctors and scientists is trying everything imaginable in their frantic efforts to produce life artificially…when into their midst walks a little girl. “I’m eight,” the girl announces proudly. But mankind has been sterile for more than 15 years!

    Looks like we’ve got a Children of Men scenario! See y’all then!

    *rubbing my head*

    Ouch…

  • Laser Books Review 9

    Laser Books Review 9

    9. Invasion by Aaron Wolfe (Dean Koontz)

    Stay tuned at the end of this review for an important public service announcement regarding the Laser Books upload schedule!

    Sorry, I had to.

    At 4:30p.m., June 19th, 1999, a man named Bryan Edwin Smith struck Stephen King with his van and put him in the hospital. While he was recuperating, he wrote the novel Dreamcatcher, which is a story of a small rural community that comes under threat from alien lifeforms during a terrible blizzard. Most of the action takes place in a cabin. Dreamcatcher came out in 2001.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Despite being a hot mess of a book, I actually have very fond memories of it. I read it in late December of 2017 while my grandmother, Doreen Dick, lay dying in Michael Garron Hospital. I needed to get out of my house and be alone after visiting her, so I’d hike a kilometer through the snow to a Tim Hortons on Warden Avenue, order an iced capp, and read the book for a couple hours while the sun went down.

    Even then, I knew it was not the best of Stephen King’s work, but it was a much-needed, low engagement escape at a time when I desperately needed one, and for that, I’m happy to have picked up the book when I did.

    Mid-winter — especially a bitter cold Ontario mid-winter — is an excellent time to read Dreamcatcher. As the dark comes early and the temperature plunges below -20 Celsius, the oppressive atmosphere of the book is enhanced. Try to find a beat up paperback version from a used bookstore and read it by a solitary incandescent lamp in a place where the wind keens tauntingly.

    Suddenly everything which seems silly in the book becomes quite a bit scarier.

    Stephen King and Dean Koontz are often mentioned in the same breath because they both work in similar genres (horror and suspense), are both incredibly prolific, and, by any metric, enormously successful. I remember discovering King in my teens, as most young writers do, but it took a while for his style to click with me.

    I didn’t discover Koontz until I read Invasion, which he wrote under the nom de plume Aaron Wolfe, and something struck me harder than Smith’s truck struck King.

    Invasion is Dreamcatcher.

    Or rather Dreamcatcher as it should have been.

    It was written in 1975.

    And it is Dean Koontz’s first novel.

    I actually could not believe Invasion was a Laser Book by the time I finished it. The quality is so high it could’ve easily appeared as a serial in any science-fiction or horror magazine at the time, or been published as a standalone novel by Ace, Del Rey, or Tor.

    Invasion is the equivalent an in-field home run for the Laser Books: we’ve had a few singles (Seeds of Change, Caravan), a few strikeouts (Crash Landing on Iduna, Gates of the Universe), a proper home run or two (Serving in Time, Herds), but now we have a play that is unbelievably rare and awesome, and just when you think it’s gonna get shut down, Koontz pulls it home.

    There’s literally no part of this book that isn’t incredible, and it all starts with the cover.

    Cover

    This is Freas‘s best cover yet, hands down. Why? He tells the entire story.

    First thing you notice is the protagonist in the portrait, Don, staring in bug-eyed terror at the skull in the centre-left, behind Roger Elwood‘s name.

    From there the eye naturally travels up to the alien invaders on the left, which are sketched with such simplicity while still being faithful to their description in the novel. I don’t know how Freas managed to make their claws so detailed while being so tiny. The eye roves over theirs, glowing and yellow, then up to the shattered doors of the farmhouse, then up to the huge snowball-shaped spaceship hovering over everything.

    This is literally the path the story takes: first you see the aliens’ leavings, then their eyes, then the home they broke into, then their ship. Freas visually describes the story to you the way Don witnesses it.

    But perhaps my favourite element of the cover is that blood-red title looming over everything. We’ve never seen a title with these rigid lines in the Laser Books before, nor one such an alarming and pure shade of red. At first I thought it was a military stencil font, like the kind you see stamped onto the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but upon closer inspection, I realize that’s not it.

    The letters are composed of simple geometric shapes. Stare at any one of them for long enough, and it almost ceases to be a letter at all, and just becomes an abstract symbol. Like when you say a word like “refrigerator” ten times in a row and it loses all meaning and becomes a weird collection of sounds.

    The craziest thing is… this is an actual metaphor for the book’s plot! Don sees all the individual signs of the alien invasion around Timberlake Farm, but doesn’t recognize them for what they are because he isn’t stepping back and seeing the wider picture.

    Perspective, sightlines, colour, title font, Freas went above and beyond the call of duty with Invasion’s cover. As my girlfriend L. would say, “I have no notes.”

    Blurb

    Barry Malzberg says that Invasion “is simply one of the most remarkable first novels in any field that I have ever read.” The English critic, Philip Pollock says that it is “quite genuinely spine-chilling, well-written… with a twist to the ending which I like very much…” (but we can’t reveal the ending). He goes on to say that “in any collection of SF there has to be one tale such as this, and I think it might probably be difficult to find another one of quite this calibre.” Difficult indeed! Invasion is nothing less than a superb novel.

    Okay, listen.

    I know I harped on about Seeklight‘s usage of critic reviews on the cover blurb, but the reality is, I don’t think the hype for that book was deserved. It was competently written, but it’s plot was done better in the years before and since.

    Invasion, though… I’m pissed off as hell it doesn’t have a proper blurb, because that would be so easy to write. It could even be one sentence:

    Isolated on a rented farm during a terrible blizzard, a man fights to protect his family against the alien creatures prowling in the snow outside.

    However, this one time, I’m giving it a pass, because every word of praise for Invasion is deserved.

    In short, I would not be very tempted to read this book based on the cover blurb, which is a crime on Marketing Guy’s part because I would’ve missed out on — yes, I’ll quote the blurb — “nothing less than a superb novel.”

    Of course all of this is preamble to what I really want to tell you about.

    Story

    Don is a discharged Vietnam veteran working through the trauma of his terrible time in that war. He’s rented the Timberlake Farm in New England (no, down, down, Stephen! I’ll walk you later) with his wife, Connie, and his son, Toby. They’re the very picture of a well-adjusted, loving family, and Don seems to be on the mend, barring a few phantoms from the war.

    Don’s also a writer (down, Stephen! Later, I said!).

    Even when a blizzard covers the farm in deep snow, the three of them take it in stride, keen to enjoy a cozy winter together. Don and Connie make saucy comments and try to figure out how to have an intimate moment with Toby in the house. The cuteness is almost too much to bear.

    Then Toby finds this strange track in the snow.

    “Starting with the feet.” — Roanoke Gaming

    This is, as the kids say, sus. It’s like no animal track Don has ever seen before. It’s fun seeing him do these mental gymnastics trying to explain what kind of creature made it, because it’s exactly the kind of thing anyone would do when faced with the unknown.

    Pretty soon, other things start to go wrong: livestock winds up dead, the phone lines are cut, and strange yellow eyes peer in at Don and his family from the ground floor windows. They all begin to suspect something is out there, stalking them. But why doesn’t it come inside? And why have all the outbuildings on the farm begun to smell so heavily of ammonia?

    The buildup of suspense is masterful.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Barry Malzberg‘s introduction to the book makes particular mention of Aaron Wolfe/Dean Koontz’s credits in Escapade, Virginia Quarterly, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Hitchcock‘s in particular has historically been a showcase of some of the best rising talents in mystery and suspense, so I’m not at all surprised to hear Koontz cut his teeth there.

    As the threat builds, Don’s memories of the war resurface. He partook of some grisly hand-to-hand combat, and the terror of those events never left him. He elucidates the lessons he learned on pages 104 to 105. This is one of my favourite passages from the book. I call it The Death Poem.

    Death is real and final.

    Death is not a release from suffering.

    Death is not a blessing.

    Death is not a mystery.

    Death is not a solution.

    Death is not a trip to heaven.

    Or to hell.

    Or to limbo.

    Or to nirvana.

    Or to (fill in your favourite paradise).

    Death is not a oneness with Nature.

    Or with God.

    Or with the universe.

    Death is not reincarnation.

    Death does not just happen to other people.

    Death is not just what the villain deserves.

    Death is not just a novelist’s device.

    Death is not heroic.

    Death is not just for the movies.

    Death is not just a stage we go through.

    Death is not mutable.

    Death is not beatable.

    Death is not cheatable.

    Death is not a joke.

    Death. Is. Real. And. Final.

    Final.

    Forever.

    And that’s it.

    This is the second hardest mic drop I’ve encountered in the Laser Books.

    The first… is also in Invasion, on the very last page.

    Lines from the above poem recur with ever-increasing frequency as the tension rises and the threat closes in on Don and his family. He does not fear death for himself, but is terrified at the prospect of losing his wife or son and having to live with the memory of that.

    He also isn’t completely honest with them about how deeply the war affected him, or how it changed his worldview, and that latent anxiety becomes a new enemy he must contend with in addition to the aliens.

    After a couple days of mounting terror, Don makes the difficult decision to hike to the Johnsons’ house and use their phone. They’re a couple miles away and the snow is only getting deeper, but by this point he is forced to admit that something inhuman out there is hunting him and his family.

    The one question he can’t answer is… why don’t these creatures simply march into the house and kill them all?

    He gets a big clue at the neighbours’ house. He finds them both dead, with the phone lines cut and, most crucially, the heat off. Don beats a hasty retreat back to Connie and Toby, having reasoned out what’s going on. His memories from the war have kicked in and the pattern of strange occurrences finally makes sense:

    • Cutting the communication lines
    • Foraging for food
    • Eliminating isolated groups
    • Close observation

    It’s the exact playbook of an advance reconnaissance force, and you only deploy recon for one reason:

    Planning an invasion.

    The Aliens

    New England vacay with the lads.

    Dean Koontz may have cut his teeth in mystery and suspense, but he shows an aptitude and a love of science fiction with his aliens.

    While the principle solvent in the human body, and the compound of which we are mostly made, is H2O (water), the principle compound that comprises the aliens is NH3 — ammonia — which has a melting point of −77.73 °C and boiling point of −33.34 °C.

    The coldest winter on Earth is just barely tolerable for the aliens. The ideal temperature range for humans indoors is generally between 18 and 22 °C, depending on individual preference. To the aliens, that would be like standing inside an oven.

    There’s a phenomenal scene when the aliens shut down power to the farmhouse and break in, and Don watches as their bodies literally start boiling off of them as the ammonia sublimates into gas.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    I love depictions of alien life with alternative biochemistries, or even the absence thereof. Silicon-based life was popularized in the Star Trek TOS episode “The Devil in the Dark” with the Horta, and has since remained a staple of science fiction. The Changelings of Deep Space Nine are also an incredibly strange and wonderful form of life that appears carbon based, but probably have so much more going on.

    My favourite non-carbon-based alien life form, however, is the Hiss from Remedy‘s Control.

    The Hiss is hard to describe. It’s a “resonance-based entity” so it exists primarily as a sort of signal, radio wave, or vibration. It came crashing through the walls of our reality from a parallel universe, and its been doing this dimension hopping for God knows how long, taking over who knows how many cultures in its wake.

    It’s like a virus in the way it takes control of the people, places, and things it passes through. And when you become possessed, you act like a modem or relay, infecting others with the Hiss signal.

    But it’s also adaptable like a full-fledged organism. When it encounters something that resists infection, it takes those it possessed — usually soldiers and security guards — and “activates” them, sending them into battle to destroy the one resisting, or subdue them so that they can be overwhelmed by a more powerful burst of the signal later on.

    And resisting only makes things worse: the Hiss is an interdimensional force with loads of shit that it acquired over its time roaming the multiverse, including the supernatural weapons of fallen civilizations. It can and will throw the arsenals of whole planets — including some Lovecraftian monstrosities — at you if you fight it hard enough.

    Oh and the best part? Any single ability or weapon the Hiss acquired can, eventually, be uploaded to all its soldiers.

    Basically, unless you’re Jesse Faden, or the Dark Presence, your one choice with the Hiss is when you’re ready to give in. I can’t really think of another sci-fi property with a “sound-based life form.”

    SPOILERS!

    Hey, we haven’t had one of these sections since Seeds of Change!

    So, as is typical with these alien arrival stories, the visitors from space are here to gauge our evolutionary development and find out if we present a threat. Is coexistence possible? Can’t we all just get along?

    In the final chapters of the book, Connie is killed by one of the aliens’ venomous stingers and Toby is telepathically possessed in order to communicate with Don. Since Don’s a writer, they want him to write a book recounting the whole alien encounter from his point of view, so the aliens can understand how humans see them.

    So yeah, the whole book is basically a seven-day retrospective on a First Contact event gone horribly awry.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Fiiine, Stephen, I’ll give you a walk.

    The framing devices of Invasion, the family-man protagonist, the oppressive winter storm, and the constant taunting of the aliens also put me in mind of Stephen King’s stories. He does that a lot in his books: frames the entire tale as a recollection by a writer and an outline of the lessons that man learned, but the one in particular I’m thinking of is Storm of the Century.

    This is tying back to the start of this review re: all the comparisons you could make between King and Koontz. I just find it funny that from 1999 to 2001, King retread so much of the same ground Koontz did in 1975 with Invasion.

    Don writes the book in three days, and gives it to the aliens, and the aliens give him back his son… and another gift.

    This legitimately knocked my socks off.

    The aliens turned and stalked out of the room.

    They were finished with me, and they never looked back.

    Toby said, “Dad? What’s going on here? I’m scared.” His voice trembled.

    “It’s over,” I assured him. I picked him up and hugged him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of now.”

    “Where’s Mom?”

    “Let’s go find her,” I said, a lump rising in my throat.

    I carried him upstairs.

    She was sitting up in bed when we got there. She was as beautiful as ever. “Don?”

    “I’m here.”

    “Toby?”

    “Hi, Mom.”

    Death is not final.

    — Pages 189-190

    I did not see that coming.

    The whole tone of the book right up to the end has been dark, and each moment affirmed Don’s bleak worldview. The aliens fucked up his life, tore his heart out, threatened his son, but at least he could cling to that small certainty that life is finite and death is final.

    And then the aliens resurrect his wife like it’s nothing.

    Don’s orderly world is upended on the last page, and the last two paragraphs he writes feel like a man coming to terms with his own insanity. It’s a happy ending, but it’s the kind of happy that comes from accepting there is no meaning in the world. The rules don’t apply, and never did. Don was delusional the whole time.

    This ending is disturbing because it confronts us with a world where life and death are freely given and bartered for. The end doesn’t have to be The End. But we only value our earthly time because we believe it to be finite.

    Would we still value life if it were not finite?

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    I read that Dean Koontz soured on Invasion for the same reason that other Laser Books authors soured on their works: Roger Elwood did a lot of cutting-down to meet the guidelines set out by Harlequin. I can only imagine that Koontz would’ve doubled down on the passion between Don and Connie and extended the book to draw the tension out like a blade. He keeps saying he might pick up Invasion and republish it as it was meant to be, like Tim Powers did with The Skies Discrowned, but it’s been over fifty years, so I don’t know how likely that is.

    I’m saddened to hear he doesn’t like the book because it is truly an incredible novel. I still can’t believe it’s one of the Laser Books. Playing within the rigid guidelines, Koontz somehow came out with a story that could stand all on its own. And like I said at the start, he even beat Stephen King to the Dreamcatcher scenario of “alien invasion in the snow.”

    No notes at all.

    My Goodreads Review

    This is my first five-star Laser Book review, and it is well earned. Dean Koontz, writing as Aaron Wolfe, wrote an “alien invasion in the snow” story a full 25 years before Stephen King wrote Dreamcatcher, but whereas Dreamcatcher is a hot mess, Invasion is a suspense story as chilling as an Alberta Clipper, with deep musings on life, death, family, and meaning in the cosmos. I can recommend this book heartily and without any reservation. It is a killer tale.

    Well, death may not be final, but this review has certainly reached its end, and so I bid a teary-eyed farewell to Dean Koontz, a.k.a. Aaron Wolfe, and look to our next Laser Book.

    Who’s Next?

    Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm welcome to our favourite spinner of time travel yarns, Gordon Eklund! So happy to have you back so soon, bud! We’re really eatin’ good with the last few Laser Books. Let’s check out the blurb.

    Blurb

    As a mercenary soldier of fortune, Calvin Waller has grown used to danger. Danger is the air he breathes. But when he finds himself thrown from the midst of an African battle into a primitive farm community of the future, he is naturally disoriented. Trained as he is, he quickly gets his bearings and begins a new and different battle…only to be “thrown” again. He is being manipulated. Falling Toward Forever, is the story of his search for The Manipulator, and for himself. A strange and wonderful search…for The Manipulator holds all the strings.

    I’m tremendously excited to see what other temporal twists Eklund can cook up after Serving in Time! See y’all soon!

    Public Service Announcement

    The Laser Book reviews will be switching from a weekly to a bi-weekly upload schedule. This is so that I can devote more time to editing my novel, Seekers of the Fallen Stars, to stay on track for a 2027 publishing date.

    In theory, I could keep releasing the Laser Books Reviews on a weekly basis, but their quality would suffer and I would soon run into the very real issue that I’ve not yet read all of them. At time of writing, I’m about halfway through 16. Kane’s Odyssey. That still leaves 42 titles I have to get through, and I do want to read and write other things over the course of this year.

    The quality and length of the Laser Books Reviews depends on two factors:

    • The quality of the book I’m discussing
    • The kinds of jokes and discussion topics I’m able to pull in based on who the author is

    For example, the Seeklight review was one of my favourites to write because of K.W. Jeter’s Star Wars connection. I could make so many references and jokes based on that. That’s the kind of review I want to deliver every time, and so I need time in order to keep that up.

    The good news is, you’ll be getting Laser Books reviews up through next year, and in the off-weeks, I may have a chance to talk about other books I’ve read or projects I’m working on. Ultimately, my novels and short stories take precedence over this blog, but if I can consistently deliver quality work on both fronts by giving myself more time, I will do that.

    Excellence, in all things! I’ll see you guys in two weeks!

  • Laser Books Review 8

    Laser Books Review 8

    8. Caravan by Stephen Goldin

    We’ve had one, yes, but what about second Goldin?

    Yes, dear readers, I am delighted to say that the author of the fantastic Columbo-style howcatchem Herds has returned with a new yarn, this time the tale of a nightmare road trip across doomsday America.

    If you haven’t read my review of… wait a second.

    *Squints*

    Well, I’ll be damned!

    I completely forgot that I bought this at Re: Reading on the Danforth!

    What a lovely day this is turning out to be. It’s little things like this that make life worth living.

    It’s my sincere pleasure to introduce you all to my favourite place to shop for used books in my hometown of Toronto. Re: Reading has everything: a juicy selection of genre fiction, rare first editions from the likes of James Clavell and Frank Herbert, complete TV series on DVD, but my personal favourite is the shelf in the Quantum Unicorn: Science Fiction Fantasy Chamber filled with back issues of SFF magazines dating to the 1950s.

    You wouldn’t believe some of the things they’ve got here! Old issues of Galaxy with some of Herbert’s earliest short stories, copies of Analog containing the first appearances of the Strugatsky Brothers in English, and issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction stuffed with original cinema and science columns penned by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov. Buy three, get the fourth free!

    And I have.

    God help my reading list, but I have…

    This isn’t even all of it…

    But wait there’s more! When I asked Christopher, the proprietor, if he had any Laser Books, he said, “Yeah, I think we have a couple.”

    A couple? Try a couple dozen!

    Unfortunately, most of them were copies of books already in my collection, but Caravan was one of those I was missing, so I was pleased as punch walking out of the store that day.

    Man, fifteen bucks to get multiple original publications of some of the best sci-fi authors ever. What a magical place. If you’re ever in Toronto, or if you live there but have never visited Re: Reading, you can find them on the Danforth between Pape and Chester, closer to Pape than Chester. There’s parking one block north. Tell Christopher I sent you.

    Where was I? Ah yes!

    If you haven’t read my review of Herds — I mean, you should have, but in case you didn’t — I won’t get into the meat of that novel here. Instead, I’ll just briefly outline Goldin’s style:

    • Straightforward, unadorned prose
    • Simple characters with easily understood motivations
    • Scathing social commentary

    Herds in particular stands out in my memory for deconstructing several Golden Age of Sci-fi myths about society, chief among which is the nature of credibility: who has it and why.

    Herds currently stands as my second-favourite of the Laser Books, behind Serving in Time. I’m eager to find out where Caravan sits in the pack, but of course, as we all know, we must first weigh the work of Kelly Freas.

    Eh, it’s a bit of a step back from Seeklight in its use of negative space. I understand Freas is trying to imply the barren solitude of post-collapse America, but I don’t remember seeing much snow in Caravan. The burned-out husks of vehicles, the titular Caravan barreling down cracked and crumbling highways, and the gunfights in the gas stations and motels are the deepest impressions the book left in my mind.

    More Mad Max, less Mount Everest.

    Yes, there’s a spaceship, but you don’t see it till very late in the book when the caravan’s purpose is revealed. I don’t dislike it as much as Crash Landing on Iduna or Gates of the Universe, but like… come on.

    The most I can say is that Caravan’s cover doesn’t make me nauseated.

    The real star of this cover is the dude in the doo rag, Kudjo Wilson. He’s drawn with such personality, and the expression in his eyes could be anything from suspicion to hope to unease. Kudjo’s a guard for the caravan — a bad mofo in the parlance of the inner city. He’s the kind of black man white southern Americans have nightmares about: fiercely independent, loyal to his kin, and extremely handy with a switchblade.

    When the cops show up at Kudjo’s house, they’re the ones who leave in body bags.

    So, on the cover as well as in the book, Kudjo’s really carrying the day. I’ll give points for the portrait, even if the overall composition is lackluster.

    *Sigh*

    Do we have to? We all know Marketing Guy fucked it up, can we not just skip this bit? No? Fiiiine.

    Blurb

    When Peter Stone wrote his book, “World Collapse,” he thought he was just describing possible trends his book might help avoid. But not only did the collapse come, everyone blamed Stone for it, because he had predicted it. He is rescued from the angry mob by a caravan of “idealists.” The caravan’s leader, Honon, is the most idealistic, practical, hardened, lovable leader to come along in many a year… and it is only his belief in his dreams that enables the caravan to reach the starship. Stone had never predicted this!

    Holy shit… it’s actually good?! How?! How did this happen? Did Marketing Guy get replaced between books? Is this MG 2.0?

    Okay, straight up, not a word of a lie, I’d buy this book, and I’ll tell you why.

    Growing up as a child of the early 2000s, I was a devotee of Al Gore. I watched The Day After Tomorrow too many times to count. I truly believed that radical changes in the climate were just around the corner. And then… they weren’t. Of course, they were happening, just not on the time scales predicted.

    Later, I read Michael Crichton‘s novel State of Fear and became a closeted climate realist. I believed the carbon footprint idea was a government deception like the Red Scare and the War on Terror in order to distract and control people.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    It turns out I was half right. BP Oil created the notion of a carbon footprint to shift the blame for catastrophic emission levels onto the general public. The result was a sort of mass-flagellation that any student of history would immediately find familiar:

    When life is getting worse for the Everyman, tell him he can fix it by depriving himself of the things he wants and becoming an ascetic, and get him to shame anyone who won’t do the same. Thus the real culprits get off the hook.

    I tell you all this because the resentment I felt toward people like Al Gore is something I saw reflected in many people throughout the 2010s. There was a cancerous belief that the prophets of science had failed us. That oft-repeated refrain of, “It will happen. Maybe not on the timescale we predicted, but it will happen” became hateful to a great many people, myself included.

    Obviously, I’ve got my head on straight now, and that’s why this blurb intrigues me.

    How would the world treat a prophet who lived long enough to see his prediction come true?

    Humans always shoot the messenger, despite all adages to the contrary. And as the 21st Century matures and brings with it all manner of climate catastrophes, will we change our attitudes toward the climate scientists we’ve spat on and disregarded for so long, or will we ultimately hold them responsible, either for speaking too loudly or doing too little, to stop climate change?

    Story

    Caravan posits a world where overpopulation has led to societal collapse. Peter Stone, the protagonist, predicted this in his book, “World Collapse.” Each chapter begins with a real-life news article, and a page from Stone’s book commenting on the societal phenomenon in the article.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    We’ve had one, yes, but what about second Stone?

    Yep, if you’re keeping track, this is the second Laser Book with a protagonist named Stone, the first being Thomas F. Monteleone‘s Seeds of Change (check out my review for that here).

    Let’s go for the hat trick, Roger Elwood. One more Stone! One more Stone!

    The pages written by Stone (which in fact are written by Goldin) read less like a non-fiction book about societal phenomena and more like a YouTube commenter trying to sound intelligent by regurgitating concepts they kinda sorta understand, but have no intention of doing anything about.

    Slacktivism, in another word.

    Reading his passages, I actually find myself sympathizing a little bit with the other people in the world.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    The premise of Goldin’s book is that overpopulation will lead to collapse, but in the last two decades, it’s begun to look like underpopulation, or demographic collapse, is the greatest threat facing the nations of the world. With the cost of living rising to an exorbitant level, it’s very difficult to raise children, and with a decline in population comes an inability to exploit and distribute a country’s resources.

    Gas stations run dry.

    People can’t drive to the grocery store.

    Those with no support systems like family or friends begin to die off.

    Populations shrink faster.

    Buildings sit empty.

    Nature begins reclaiming cities.

    What’s so eerie about Goldin’s depiction of America is that he absolutely nailed what the country — and indeed the Earth — would look like if demographic collapse occurs on a widespread scale: ghost cities, silent suburbs, and decaying highways, all primed for plants and animals to retake them.

    The story begins with Stone trying to find sanctuary in an America where police have turned into gangs, people shoot each other over gasoline, and the government has abdicated all responsibility to its people.

    Basically the modern United States.

    Scarcity of resources and Stone’s reputation as a doomsayer means he’s always turned away by the gated societies that still survive. Leaving one of these societies in despair, he is set upon by a group of kids who recognize him, and blame him for their present circumstances. Just before they can really work him over, Kudjo Wilson shows up and gets medieval on the kids asses, saving Stone’s life.

    Kudjo belongs to a caravan, a group of armed men and women criss-crossing the country gathering what resources they can, and delivering it to a launch site in the Carlsbad Caverns. From there, a splinter of the US Government launches spacecraft to carry what’s left of humanity to the stars. The leader of the caravan, Honon, invites Stone to join them. With nowhere else to go, Stone accepts.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Honon invites Stone to join the caravan because Stone is a cynic; as Honon says, “Every cynic is just an optimist who’s been knocked around one too many times.” This is actually a central theme of the book: why does anyone go on living if they believe there is no hope left in the world? Are we just hardwired to choose life, or deep down, in our heart of hearts, do we all preserve a spark of hope that things will get better?

    Many moral conundrums ensue as they drive westward across the country, including a question of whether or not to chase down and punish a group of raiders who attacked a defenceless settlement and raped a woman. Some of the sequences in this book can be truly brutal, and Goldin pushes the envelope of the Laser Books in the violence he depicts.

    The caravanners are not much better than raiders themselves: they believe their mission of preserving humanity entitles them to steal from anyone they want and take on the mantle of judge, jury, and executioner when they feel it necessary. But Goldin again demonstrates nuance when he shows the internal struggles of the caravanners with their role.

    Honon is a complicated leader: he pursues his goals doggedly, but questions himself at every turn. He remains strong for his people, but isn’t above saying, “This moral dilemma is too big for me to decide alone. You all should have a say.” He believes criminals should be punished, but isn’t totally comfortable meting out justice at gunpoint just because there’s no other option in a lawless world. Honon tries to be pro-social in a world where societies frequently fall victim to infighting, powerplay, or each other.

    Caravan’s Best Scene

    There’s a woman in the caravan Stone falls for: Risa. She left her neighbourhood when she was little and hasn’t seen her mother since.

    The route the caravan takes brings them close to Risa’s neighbourhood, and she and Stone take a detour. They find her mother’s house and it’s… empty.

    This is such a crushing moment to read because it makes the collapse of society deeply personal. What if you left home, and came back to find it utterly abandoned, silent, empty? What if you came home hoping for just one last hug from your mother only to find her gone — not dead, but vanished?

    I can only imagine this is the experience many Ukrainians will have when the war with Russia finally ends; people will go back to their homes, looking for their parents, and find, if not craters, deserted suburbs, picked over by scavengers.

    It’s a really bleak scene and hits harder than most material in the Laser Books ever does.

    Stone transforms in a big way by the end of the book. He regains his sense of optimism and devotes himself to building a new life out amongst the stars with Risa, whom he marries on the last page. It’s a weirdly optimistic ending considering all that’s come before, and I can’t imagine any other sci-fi novelist from this period doing the same, but it’s the Laser Books, so whatever.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    With Herds we’ve got a Columbo episode and with Caravan we’ve got Mad Max. Both these books work because they examine the personal cost of extraordinary events happening to ordinary people.

    But as with Herds, I think Goldin could’ve gone further in exploring the inner life of his protagonist. Stone feels too much like a casual observer to events. What did he lose in the collapse? What did it cost him? These are the things I need to know. Again, Goldin’s female character, Risa, holds more promise in her character arc than Stone, but is held back by being a secondary character.

    My Goodreads Review

    Caravan is striking because it depicts a post-apocalyptic America which is far closer than people think — not because of overpopulation, as the book suggests, but demographic collapse, which many countries now face. Some of this imagery will haunt me for years. The social commentary isn’t as deep as Goldin’s previous entry in the Laser Books, Herds, but it’s still enough to tickle your brain.

    We must now bid farewell to Stephen Goldin once again, and this time for a long while. We won’t see his name until Laser Book 25, Scavenger Hunt, near the middle of this series. I’m keen to see what he cooks up then.

    Brr… is it getting chilly in here?

    Who’s Next?

    YEEEEEESS!!!

    That my friends is the sound of the angels singing rapturous harmony. Next Monday is gonna be a watershed moment in the Laser Books, because our next title is Invasion by Aaron Wolfe.

    If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because it’s a pen name for an author you’ve almost certainly heard of.

    An author of over 140 published novels and 74 short stories.

    An author who’s sold over 500 million books.

    An author with a net worth of $200 million.

    An author by the name of…

    Dean Koontz.

    And he has written the first five-star Laser Book.

    Blurb

    Barry Malzberg says that Invasion “is simply one of the most remarkable first novels in any field that I have ever read.” The English critic, Philip Pollock says that it is “quite genuinely spine-chilling, well-written… with a twist to the ending which I like very much…” (but we can’t reveal the ending). He goes on to say that “in any collection of SF there has to be one tale such as this, and I think it might probably be difficult to find another one of quite this calibre.” Difficult indeed! Invasion is nothing less than a superb novel.

    I’m not even going to harp on the fact that, like Seeklight, this is another critics’ blurb, because for once, ladies and gentlemen, the critics are absolutely correct.

    Dig out your snowshoes and zip up your parkas. Next Monday brings a blizzard…

    … and terror.

  • Laser Books Review 7

    Laser Books Review 7

    7. Seeklight by K.W. Jeter

    Jeter, Jeter, pumpkin-eater.

    Now we’re on to a book from an author of Star Wars tie-in stories whose name sounds like the callsign of a TIE/In starfighter.

    As mentioned in my review of Gordon Eklund‘s Serving in Time, K.W. Jeter came up through the ranks with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers. They all met in the English program at Cal State Fullerton and became close friends, publishing poetry in the English department’s periodical under the name William Ashbless, who later became a recurring character in Powers’ books.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    William Ashbless is basically the Glup Shitto of the Blaylock/Powers/Jeter-verse.

    His biggest claim to fame seems to be The Bounty Hunter Wars, a SW sequel series depicting Boba Fett‘s escape from the Sarlacc‘s stomach and fight to make a name for himself in the post-Imperial era. Sounds like a terrific plot that a certain Maori actor would make a meal out of.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    “There’s always a bit of truth in legends.” — Ahsoka Tano, Star Wars: Rebels, Episode 221, “Twilight of the Apprentice: Part 1”

    I’m going to say something that will earn me more enemies than Prince Xizor: I applauded Disney for binning the expanded Star Wars universe into the Legends label.

    Lets be brutally honest: the Star Wars EU was a slapdash, haphazard, derivative mess. It was developed in a panic by 20th Century Fox five minutes after A New Hope came out and they realized that this weird little money sink was actually going to be a watershed moment in cinema. So they hired a bunch of sci-fi writers and cobbled something together.

    Most of the EU was bad, a lot of it was contradictory, and the really good stories to come out of it did so in spite of the Star Wars label, not because of it. And while I’m slaughtering this sacred cow, I’ll add that Star Wars itself is a derivative mess; scratch the paint, and you’ll find Dune, Foundation, and a half-dozen Kurosawa films underneath. My brother Sean described it perfectly: “Star Wars is a gateway drug to better sci-fi.”

    So when Disney axed the EU, I thought it was a masterstroke. They freed themselves from being stuck with the ball-and-chain called “canon” and could then cherry-pick the best stories to come out of the EU.

    Of course, that was assuming Disney would then cherry-pick the best stories to come out of the EU, and here was a wrinkle I did not anticipate: Kathleen Kennedy. Man, that woman had no idea what she was doing…

    I’d say it’s a good thing Dave Filoni was there to pick up the pieces but even he seems to be losing the plot these days.

    I digress.

    My point is, Disney should’ve looked to writers like Jeter and Timothy Zahn, whose respective Bounty Hunter and Thrawn Trilogy provided the perfect roadmap to writing a sequel trilogy. The stories were already a hit with fans, and Dave Filoni could’ve punched up the writing and drama.

    But there’s not much chance of righting the ship these days.

    Goodreads lists Jeter as having contributed tie-in work to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (my beloved) and Blade Runner as well, but Seeklight is his first novel. Since Jeter is usually known for his work-for-hire books, I’m keen to see what his earliest efforts entailed.

    But the Padawan must wait, for Master Freas is speaking!

    Cover

    “I’ve got a really good feeling about this.” — Han, Solo: A Star Wars Story

    Something tells me this story’s gonna be really upbeat with lots of love, hugs, and mutual acceptance. What a lovely change of pace!

    Even the robot agrees with me!

    Seriously now: this is Freas’s most striking cover yet. The red background is the first thing you notice. It’s so nauseating to look at! This is a good use of negative space. Instead of a flat field, Freas gives the red background a subtle texture like clotted blood, which fits this story really well because Seeklight deals with violence, both immediate and generational.

    The other thing the background reminds me of is the Warp from Warhammer 40,000 or hyperspace from Babylon 5. Both are spaces which hide Lovecraftian nightmares, and neither are wholly safe to traverse. The spaceships superimposed over it are blurred, implying that they’re travelling at great speed, as if fleeing something hiding just outside our field of view.

    The next thing that catches the eye is the Regent–the robot priest. Everything about this guy screams “intelligent”: the book, the threadbare hem of his habit, the way he sticks his pinky out, the subtle “fuck you” in his scan cell eyes. This is a guy who looks like he knows what’s what, like he’s in on some kind of big secret (which he most certainly is). The way the ragged hem of his garments subtly bleeds into the background implies he is part and parcel of the violence of this world. He looks ancient, powerful, and merciless. Such a great translation of a character design from page to art!

    And lastly, we have the Lady Marche in the portrait bottom-right. Her design is handsome if plain, but it’s the expression on her face that’s of note. She looks perturbed, frightened even, as if she knows something terrible is coming.

    All in all, this is one of Freas’s most interesting covers so far. Most pieces of art (cover art, certainly) draw your eye to a character or location in the foreground, and only then do you investigate the deeper layers. Freas inverts this: the eye is instantly captivated with that blood-clot background, and roves over the texture, exploring every bulge and fold. And only once the eye has been satiated by this horror show does it start pulling back through the layers, seeing the spaceships, the Regent, and Lady Marche. This is such subtle, inventive work on Freas’s part, and he still manages to capture or evoke all the crucial elements of the novel! Truly excellent.

    Blurb

    Barry Malzberg calls Seeklight one of the three or four best science fiction novels he has ever read by an author new to the field. The world Seeklight creates is extraordinary. The English critic, Philip Pollock, says Seeklight is a “straightforward, highly imaginative, very well told story. It falls into the class that I rate as ‘a jolly good read’. As the crime novel critics say ‘I couldn’t put it down’.” He concludes his review by saying, “For a first novel it has remarkable selfpossession and professionalism and I enjoyed it very much indeed.” There is no doubt that you will too.

    Oof. I’m always leery of book blurbs that quote what others have said about the story without saying anything about the story itself. I don’t care how high the praise is. I need to know about the world and the characters so I can make an informed decision about whether to buy the book.

    Now, I know it’s common practice to include quotes from other well-known authors on a book cover/jacket, but we don’t have that luxury or space when it comes to Laser Books, so I wouldn’t buy this based on the blurb.

    Story

    “It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you.” — Sheev

    Fans of Dune and Star Wars will immediately find parallels within Seeklight: a young noble loses his only family and goes on the run with some blue collar workers. In the end he chooses to pursue his birthright and confront the dark history of his family.

    But I’m getting ahead of myself.

    Seeklight begins with an introduction and a prologue. The introduction is written by SF (or s-f, as he writes it) veteran Barry Malzberg.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    In researching this review, I learned that Malzberg become one with the Force fairly recently, in December of 2024. In the obituary on the SFWA website, Author Robert J. Sawyer says of Malzberg:

    “Barry N. Malzberg was a true mensch. He believed fervently in the power of science fiction and fought for it to transcend being a commercial category of mere escapism. The field has lost not only one of its greatest authors but also one of its fiercest champions.”

    I don’t know much about Malzberg, but this endears me to him. Sci-fi is still, even in the post-2001, –Trek, –Star Wars era, spat upon by literary writers, critics, and audiences, despite the fact it is beloved by millions upon millions of people of all ages, creeds, and colours around the world.

    The prologue is simply an excerpt from a chapter later on in the novel.

    Seeklight is set on a human colony far from Earth. Human genetic material was sent here and shepherded to life by robots from the spacecraft that touched down. Daenek, our protagonist, is the son of an assassinated thane and is treated like an outsider for the perceived crimes of his father.

    What struck me initially is that the opening chapters of the story play out much more like a traditional fantasy novel: An orphan prince is raised by a wise female with forbidden knowledge and secrets, is forced to leave his home, go on the run, falls in with a found family, but ultimately leaves them in search of his heritage.

    Magic and technology are indistinguishable in this world because no one can quite remember what the dividing line is between the two; there’s a hint of Stephen King‘s Dark Tower series in the depiction of an advanced world gone to decay, corruption, and forgetfulness.

    It is in these motifs that we see the pedigree that will earn Jeter a place amongst the Star Wars tie-in novelists: his blending of mystique and technology is a staple of the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

    In Seeklight, the decay of the world is the result of the Dark Seed, a piece of genetic coding which manifests as a subtle apathy in all the people of this world. Things don’t get fixed, no one aspires to anything, and when misfortune occurs, everyone just accepts it. Daenek isn’t spared, and I was legitimately surprised with how Jeter manifested the Dark Seed in his protagonist.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    It isn’t by chance that the Dark Seed proliferated across the planet. The robots who were built to be caregivers, protectors, and teachers to the human colonists decided they could do a better job of running the place, and so they threaded the Dark Seed throughout the population. Over time, people would become so disaffected and apathetic that the robots would just take over by default, because no one could be arsed to lift a finger to govern.

    Humanity brings about its own genocide through sheer laziness.

    In a typical narrative like this, the hero confronts the evil festering at the heart of the world, rallies people together, and puts right what once went wrong. Jeter makes you think that Daenek will rise above the Dark Seed and fix things, but he doesn’t.

    At the end of the novel, Daenek confronts the Regent (the ruling robot) and learns just how extensive the Dark Seed’s corruption is. He claims his birthright, but decides that no amount of personal or political power is enough to stop the robots, and so he simply… leaves.

    Daenek, son of the Thane, the man entrusted to safeguard the people, falls victim to the Dark Seed–to apathy, to lack of willpower–and departs his home world. Perhaps he goes to Earth, or another colony that the robots haven’t taken over, but he knows deep down that wherever he goes, he will be a pauper, a street urchin, a nobody. His genetic destiny holds no currency beyond his home world. The Dark Seed holds sway, and the robots claim their planet.

    It reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite plays/films:

    “God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.” — Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons

    This quote has stuck with me since I first heard it, because it illuminates and redeems humanity in such a special way. If you turn away from a great moral struggle, it doesn’t make you a coward, it simply means you have not yet found the line you cannot cross. Each of us has a hill we may die on, and we will have no choice about that, simply because our conscience will not permit us to choose otherwise.

    This quote made me a lot more forgiving of people who, as Dante wrote, “Maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” To be human is to want to live, to survive, to escape danger. Before you shame someone for not marching in a demonstration, or standing up to an authority figure, ask yourself: “Would I have the courage to do better?” In most instances, the answer is no, and that’s all right.

    You simply haven’t found your hill yet.

    The ending of Seeklight is brutally honest, and I respect the hell out of Jeter for writing it. Daenek’s decision to escape rings true, and elevates Seeklight above a simple s-f adventure.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    My Goodreads Review

    While most of the book is not very memorable, and some dialogue falls into the category of “Golden Age Sci-fi Schlock”, Seeklight is elevated by elegant prose and an ending which provides an incisive commentary on human nature. In terms of the Laser Books, I’d still say it’s a 3 out of 5, but that three is strong and very well earned. In other words, Jeter, you are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of Master.

    Who’s Next?

    Herds author Stephen Goldin steps up to the plate for a second time this series with the novel Caravan. I’m delighted to have him back. Blurb it, baby!

    Blurb

    When Peter Stone wrote his book, “World Collapse,” he thought he was just describing possible trends his book might help avoid. But not only did the collapse come, everyone blamed Stone for it, because he had predicted it. He is rescued from the angry mob by a caravan of “idealists.” The caravan’s leader, Honon, is the most idealistic, practical, hardened, lovable leader to come along in many a year… and it is only his belief in his dreams that enables the caravan to reach the starship. Stone had never predicted this!

    Damn, Marketing Guy, you might’ve actually gotten done good for once!

    So, next week we shall make a pilgrimage back from the fringes of known space to our own backyard, and see what humanity has done with the place. I’m really looking forward to another Goldin title, and I hope you are too. See you there!

    And remember…

    The Force will be with you, always.

  • Laser Books Review 6

    Laser Books Review 6

    6. Serving in Time by Gordon Eklund

    Fire up the DeLorean and cue the Huey Lewis, we’re goin’ back in time!

    And forward in time!

    To utopian futures and altered histories.

    To villains triumphant and heroes betrayed.

    To elections lost and wars won.

    Ladies and gentlemen, Earthlings and Vulcans, androids and temporal agents, I give you…

    Serving in Time by Gordon Eklund!

    Oh my friends, words cannot begin to express how excited I am to share this book with you. As I mentioned at the end of my review on Walls Within Walls, this is the title that convinced me to start writing about the Laser Books. It’s not only a standout in the canon of science fiction, it’s also, like Herds, a story of hope for the times we live in, a scathing examination of our preconceptions, and an exhortation to fight the good fight no matter how impossible things seem.

    There are twists and turns aplenty in this book, and I long to dig in, but like our hero Jan, I’m going to break the chronology here a bit.

    If you like science fiction.

    If you like stories of hope.

    If you like time travel.

    STOP READING NOW.

    Try to find a copy of Serving in Time and read it, because this is not a tale to be spoiled lightly. And believe me, I’m going to give you everything in this review, nothing held back. The whole story will be revealed to you, and I would hate to leave you wishing you’d read this book before I told you about it.

    So consider carefully, because this is your one and only warning.

    SPOILER ALERT!

    Let us begin.

    Cover

    “I’m back, baby.” — Bender, Futurama

    Hallelujah and sing Hosanna, brethren, Kelly Freas has returned!

    After the Trench of Sadness (books 3, 4, and 5) I feared perhaps Kelly had mentally checked out of the Laser Books altogether and resigned himself to turning in mediocre cover art for bad stories, but I see he merely needed the proper inspiration!

    Granted, this isn’t one of Freas’s most representative covers–at best I spy four elements that actually appear in the novel–but God damn, I love this cover! The spectra of blues, purples, and pinks is such a departure from the brown and green tones which have dominated the covers thus far. The warriors and political leaders of history are drawn with such subtlety and character. And my favourite element: the pink motes, which bring vibrance and warmth to an otherwise cold and flat field.

    Also, note how the light from those pink motes bounces off Horatio’s face in the portrait, making him a part of the scene rather than a separate entity. that’s extraordinarily subtle work on Freas’ part!

    My only complaint–and ’tis a very minor complaint–is that Freas doesn’t really capture the time periods represented in the book. Serving in Time focuses solely on American history; vikings, knights, and Cleopatra ain’t in it. But that’s okay, because a major theme of the story is that people are linked by invisible threads of cause and effect, and everybody matters.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Another excellent time travel story with a similar premise of “Reluctant Time Cops” is the NBC television series Timeless. Co-produced by Supernatural’s Eric Kripke, and starring Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, and Malcolm Barrett, Timeless follows a team who travel back in time to stop a man from altering American history.

    But as these heroes try to put right what once went wrong, they begin to question whether the history they’re preserving is truly the best possible one.

    What’s similar between Timeless and Serving in Time is that they focus exclusively on American history, limiting the subject matter to well-known episodes from the United States’ past, and capture a sort of king-of-the-hill game playing out across spacetime.

    Plus, Freas still has an American frontiersman, politician, robot, and Horatio in the frame. I’ll happily accept an excess of style over accuracy any day!

    Blurb

    Jan Jeroux is leading a carefree and idyllic life in the serene, underpopulated pastoral earth of the year 2500. His idyll ends abruptly when he is abducted and forced to join the Time Service of the mysterious world government. In the service he learns how history was manipulated and controlled to produce the beautiful world he enjoyed so much. Thinking he understands how to rectify the injustice and devastation inflicted on the world by the time managers, Jan decides to make things right. But he makes a tragic error…

    Okay, this is a very confusing blurb. It basically sounds like, “There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s wrong, and our hero needs to fix it.”

    I don’t know if I’d pick up the novel based on this blurb, but I’m going to cut Marketing Guy a break here, because instead of being saddled with a story that’s unmarketable because it’s bland, he’s been given a tale that’s too complex and excellent to explain in 100 words.

    Having read the book, I can tell you exactly what happened here.

    The real conflict of the book doesn’t begin until the halfway point, whereas most books would kick into gear long before that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s riveting all the way through! But how do you pitch a book to a prospective reader when it doesn’t follow the typical narrative structure–especially when you only have 100 words to work with?

    Moreover, MG actually did an amazing job describing the plot of the book, and with another three sentences, he might’ve been okay. But this is the Laser Books, and in the words of the philosopher Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want.”

    But after two Tofte titles and the most forgettable novel I’ve ever read, Serving in Time is just what we need.

    Story

    Let’s travel back to December 15th, 2023.

    The time: 2:00 a.m.

    The place: Caesars Windsor, Ontario.

    A few hours prior, my dad had finished his guest appearance as Santa Clause in The Tenors‘ Christmas show in the casino theatre. I’d travelled to Windsor with him, partly to carry his suitcase, and partly because I hadn’t had a Christmas getaway in years, and let me tell you, The Tenors’ Christmas show is one hell of a way to celebrate Christmas.

    After roaming the casino floor in search of a Tim Hortons staffed by a lone overworked employee, we repaired to our room with a couple of cappuccinos and tried to entertain ourselves. Dad flipped through the various TV channels, and I read Serving in Time.

    There, sitting by the window, the lights of Windsor and Detroit glittering under a starless winter sky, I was carried away.

    As the blurb says, Jan Jeroux is Shanghaied into the Time Service after a conversation with his Uncle Phineas. Jan has never really had much responsibility in life, nor has he ever thought about how his perfect, utopian future came to be. But he’s about to learn.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    I’m convinced that Uncle Phineas is actually a future version of Jan; after giving Jan a pep talk, he vanishes into thin air two seconds before the Time Service comes for Jan, priming him for the adventure ahead–exactly the sort of thing the Time Service does throughout the novel. Eklund, showing masterful restraint, never confirms Phineas’ identity, but leaves it up to the reader to decide the truth.

    There’s no way out once the Time Service nabs you. If you refuse to serve, or fail to pass your final exams, they cast you adrift in the void of time to die. It may raise your eyebrows that a supposedly utopian society would have an agency that utilizes such tactics, but it makes sense when you think about it.

    Do you really think it’s safe to have a bunch of maladjusted flunkies who’d just been kidnapped and put through boot camp running around with the secrets of time travel in their brains?

    The mandate of the Time Service is purely to observe the past and not interfere. We’ve seen this kind of thing on Star Trek plenty of times: historians who travel across history to witness events like the battle of Waterloo or the building of the pyramids, but who cannot engage with or alter the events they witness.

    Sacred Timelines

    There’s a term Marvel coined called the Sacred Timeline. I feel it could be applied to many time travel stories. Essentially, it posits that there is a single, inviolate timeline that must be preserved, often with the assistance of time cops or forces outside of time.

    Some sci-fi properties like Star Trek include a “Temporal Prime Directive” or equivalent law forbidding all tampering with the timeline. The example burned into my brain is Crewman Daniels’ first appearance in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Cold Front”. Daniels shows Captain Archer a view from a temporal observatory, showing all the time travelers from the 31st Century Federation engaged in the real-time recording of history as it unfolds.

    These time travelers can observe, but cannot interfere. The title “Cold Front” refers to the Temporal Cold War which the Federation of the future is fighting with factions who want the autonomy to rewrite history, either for their own benefit or the perceived benefit of all. One of the Federation’s favourite tactics in the war is recruiting agents from the past–people already adapted to their time and place in history–presumably mitigating the amount of false identities they need to create, and minimizing the number of person-shaped-holes in history they need to patch.

    Most time travel stories centre on preserving the past rather than changing it (Back to the Future, Quantum Leap, Doctor Who), but this kind of non-interference raises several ethical questions.

    The Ethics of Time Travel

    Has anyone ever stopped to consider the psychological and emotional strain a policy of temporal non-interference would put on someone?

    How hard would it be for a black person to go back and observe Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, knowing he’s going to be assassinated five years later, and being told they can’t stop the assassination?

    Or how about a Jew chronicling the Holocaust as it happened, and being told it’s illegal to save anyone?

    Or perhaps a woman traveling to, I don’t know, literally any period in history, witnessing crimes against her sex on an unimaginably wide spectrum of violence, and being told to just observe and come home?

    That’s why I love the show Timeless: it shows you how non-interference looks great on the living room television, but becomes impossible when you witness the weight of human suffering across history.

    The people of the past are not set dressing for a story, they are real. And most of them got the shitty end of the stick; those of us alive today are only here because our ancestors were either lucky or rich enough to escape the flood or the plague or the firing squad.

    “History isn’t a tale of who was right, but who was left.” — Sean Dick

    There are many reasons given in time travel stories why meddling with the past is wrong:

    • You may erase your present
    • You don’t have the right to play God
    • It’s morally wrong to meddle with people’s lives

    The admonitions are always given in light of what we might lose, never what we might gain. They are always focused on preserving the status quo, which tends to benefit only a few.

    Think of a below-the-poverty-line indigenous mother of three on a reservation. Do you really believe she would restrain herself from tampering with history? White men came and took everything from her people; now they’re telling her she doesn’t have the moral right to want to undo that?

    I would actually argue most people would leap at the chance to try and alter the past because every single person on Earth has been screwed royally at one time or another. I’m sure someone reading this has had a misfortune happen to either them or a family member that is perfectly preventable with a quick jaunt to the past. Perhaps you had a family member who was killed or crippled in a car crash.

    Or maybe it’s something even simpler: your train broke down and you missed that job interview you absolutely needed to get, and you have to move back with your parents because you can’t pay the rent on your 15-square-foot apartment anymore.

    These morality plays about leaving well enough alone only work for those who are happy, well-fed, and comfortable. It seems to me the only people who could possibly embrace this policy of “temporal non-interference” would be cis-het white men because we’re the only ones pleased with the outcome of history.

    Actually, wait a minute… I’m of Irish descent…

    Gimme that time machine! I’m gonna have a little “chat” with Oliver Cromwell!

    Well… I digress.

    If you read everything I’ve written and believe that the Time Service is doing more than observing the past, then you’d be right.

    Changing History

    After graduating from the academy, Jan is partnered with a veteran time traveler named Horatio (man, what a loaded name for a man voyaging to the past!) and goes back to 19th century New York.

    Horatio and Jan discuss whether they should vote for a local politician in order to gain his confidence and observe him in close company:

    “But won’t that create a paradox? I mean, you’re not really a person in this time.”

    Horatio smiled. “Paradoxes are a good deal harder to create than that. Time–history–is like a big river. It’s not easy to dam those powerful waters. If I vote, it won’t stay. The waters will sweep it easily away.”

    Horatio does a lot more than cast votes: he pushes a man off a sidewalk into the mud, causing him to miss an important meeting with said politician. Horatio brushes this off as nothing more than a bit of fun, but Jan is puzzled: Horatio directly, indisputably interfered with the past.

    But the present doesn’t look any different, so these changes clearly aren’t having ripple effects…

    Or are they?

    Kirk and Gail, Jan’s colleagues and fellow time academy graduates, persuade him that the Time Service might be corrupt, possibly trying to change history to suit their own ends. So as an experiment, Kirk says he wants to try stopping Horatio from bumping that man into the mud and seeing what response it prompts from the Service. Jan is reluctant to go along, but Gail supports Kirk. Kirk uses a time machine, as per their plan, only he doesn’t just stop Horatio.

    Kirk murders him.

    Jan and Gail return to their present to discover their utopian future is gone. In place of the world government under which they grew up, there’s a totalitarian regime that uses human-like androids to patrol the streets and summarily executes anyone who possesses firearms or advanced technology.

    Pursued by armed androids, Jan, smartly grabs a few history books before he and Gail retreat to the relative safety of the distant past. He reads the books and puts the pieces together, and what follows is one of the greatest mic drop moments I’ve ever read in a sci-fi novel.

    The Agenda of the Time Service

    Jan starts rattling off events that happened in the history that he knows.

    • George Washington was captured by the British and executed at the Battle of Fort Washington
    • The cotton gin was never invented
    • The United States declared war on Nazi Germany on September 1st, 1939

    This is when the reader makes the horrible realization that the utopian future of 2500 isn’t built on real-life history, but on a history manufactured by the Time Service.

    Horatio didn’t tell the whole truth when he said the river of time couldn’t be shifted. A single action can’t divert it, but a dozen of them? A hundred of them? All those small changes–meetings averted, wars declared, machines never invented–amount to a different future. That’s what the Time Service was created to do: divert the river of time and create a better, more egalitarian future.

    How?

    Let me explain.

    Take the cotton gin for example: what happens if it is never invented? Well, cotton farming doesn’t take off as an industry in the American South, which means there’s no demand for cheap slave labour. Slavery as an industry collapses in America and the Civil War never happens.

    Or how about the U.S. joining the war alongside Great Britain in September 1939 instead of waiting until December 1941? Faced with the prospect of fighting the most technologically-advanced nation on Earth, people rethink their allegiance to the Axis powers. Stalin cancels the rape of Poland. Many nations join the Allies. Nazi Germany is laid low long before the Holocaust reaches its peak, and President Roosevelt lives long enough to help Winston Churchill build the foundations for a World Government.

    Noticing a pattern?

    Every action the Time Service takes has a pro-social outcome. Populist xenophobes are prevented from rallying political support and taking office (hence Horatio pushing that guy into a mud puddle and making him miss his meeting), hateful ideologies are curtailed before reaching their zenith (hence the simultaneous declaration of war on Germany), and the general consolidation of power in the hands of individuals is prevented (hence Washington being caught and executed by the British).

    So wait a minute… what about the history we know? The one where the Civil War and Pearl Harbor happened? Where does that lead if not to the utopian future we saw at the start of the novel?

    The Aborted Timeline

    I hope you’re sitting down, dear reader.

    In most time travel stories, it is presumed that the real history of the world–the one you and I are living in–must be protected at all costs. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative. Think of Biff in Back to the Future II: he goes back in time, and creates a new timeline where he rules the world in a cyberpunk dystopia.

    These types of time travel stories are about a group of plucky adventurers putting things back to normal, where apprehending the bad guy will automatically reset time to the comfortable history we know.

    But in Serving in Time, the course which the river of time seeks to follow, the path of least resistance, the road which humanity will automatically take if everyone just sits back and not meddle with history–in other words, the Sacred Timeline–leads to a dystopian future where AI is used to police humanity, a totalitarian regime rules the world, minorities are not tolerated, and individual freedoms are severely curtailed.

    Reading this book in 2023 was a revelation like no other. The notion that the Sacred Timeline leads, forever and always, to dystopia, is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s a bold move on Eklund’s part, but it rings truer today than in 1975.

    But wait… if the Sacred Timeline leads to a dystopia… where did Jan’s utopian future come from?

    The Real Renegades of Time

    Let’s talk about the Time Service.

    The final great technological invention of the world tyranny in our timeline was a time machine. They wanted to use it to tighten their grip on the planet and increase their power.

    But the men and women who invented the time machine had other plans. They wanted to create a better world, and they knew the only way to defeat the tyranny was to kill it in the womb.

    The problem is, no single action in history will stop the tyranny from rising. This would be the work of many agents, acting in concert, to build a dam brick by brick which would divert the river of time.

    And they would have to repeat these actions: return over and over again to the critical moments and take the exact same actions. Utopia wouldn’t just be a one-and-done deal, it would require an entire army working forever and always to maintain it.

    And you know what? It worked. Utopia was born.

    But it turns out that Kirk, Jan’s friend from the academy, is actually a survivor of the aborted timeline. He, along with a handful of other agents, followed the Time Service’s founders into the new timeline, infiltrated the Time Service, and waited for the exact moment to strike.

    Their plan isn’t to break the dam, but to ensure it is never built in the first place, and the best way to do that is by killing the dam’s builders.

    Kirk’s plan works flawlessly, and Jan and Gail find themselves alone and without help. They spend the next few (subjective) years of their lives working to figure out exactly what events the Time Service manipulated, and how to tip their outcomes onto the utopian path. Ultimately they are successful, but it’s a harrowing road to get there, and many times it seems as if they are only going to obtain a partial victory. The writing and pacing has the ever-increasing momentum of a steam engine at full throttle.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    “Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” — David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

    I wish this book were longer, but I’m astounded at how much Gordon Eklund accomplishes in the 190 pages afforded him.

    He somehow manages to write not only one of the best Laser Books, but also one of the most intriguing and challenging sci-fi books I’ve ever read. His assertion that evil always wins unless extraordinary measures are taken is not a new theme, but he hammers it home one nail at a time until you cannot deny it.

    This book stuck with me because of its simple premise: the history we know and love is not the best outcome for the human race; most of it is not worth preserving, and we should have done better at each of the turning points. In this story, changing history is the whole point, and when you see the tweaks the Time Service made, you cannot help but agree with them. It’s a fantastic example of how technology can be used to set humanity free, or enslave us.

    It’s also a message of hope for a time when we, as people, feel a distinct lack of personal freedom. The Time Service didn’t build their utopia overnight, nor was it created by a simple throw of a switch. It was built with a thousand small actions which together amounted to a better future.

    The corporations and the politicians would have us believe that we are powerless, but each of us holds a brick with which we can dam their river and divert it onto the course we choose. It’s up to us whether we lay those bricks, either together or singly, but lay them we must if we want to live in fairer times.

    My Goodreads Review

    A time travel story that dares to suggest changing the past might not only be ethical, but the only way to build a better present, this story takes all the usual temporal tropes and flips them on their head. Gordon Eklund has achieved a truly original and powerful tale within the confines of the Laser Books, and it’s a story you should all be reading right now.

    I am thoroughly impressed with Gord’s first outing in the Laser Books and eagerly await his next: Book 10, Falling Toward Forever. For now though, we must look to Book 7.

    Who’s Next?

    Seeklight by K.W. Jeter!

    Jeter is notable for being friends with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers, both of whom I discovered through the Treasure Chest (see The Laser Books). These three musketeers met in the English program at California State University, Fullerton in the 1970s, where they palled around with Philip K. Dick.

    At time of writing, I’ve read several Powers novels, but nothing by Blaylock or Jeter, so I’m interested in getting a taste of the latter’s work. A glance at Jeter’s Goodreads page shows he’s most well known for his Star Wars and Trek tie-in novels.

    Of the three, Blaylock is the only one who doesn’t have an entry in the Laser Books, probably because his oeuvre tends toward fantasy rather than sci-fi.

    Blurb

    Barry Malzberg calls Seeklight one of the three or four best science fiction novels he has ever read by an author new to the field. The world Seeklight creates is extraordinary. The English critic, Philip Pollock, says Seeklight is a “straightforward, highly imaginative, very well told story. It falls into the class that I rate as ‘a jolly good read’. As the crime novel critics say ‘I couldn’t put it down’.” He concludes his review by saying, “For a first novel it has remarkable selfpossession and professionalism and I enjoyed it very much indeed.” There is no doubt that you will too.

    High praise. Join me next week to see if it lives up to the hype!

  • Laser Books Review 5

    Laser Books Review 5

    5. Walls Within Walls by Arthur Tofte

    Listen carefully. I don’t know how much time I have.

    I had to leave my house–drop everything, cut through the back field, cross the neighbour’s vineyard, and run ten kilometres toward town. From there I hitched a ride on a maple syrup truck south through Codrington to the 401, and thence to Cobourg. Tried to rent a car but my credit card bounced–should’ve known he’d have thought of that–so instead I paid cash for a train ticket to Ottawa.

    He was on the train.

    I thought about contacting my friends in Ottawa, maybe hole up at one of their places, but I realized that would just put them in danger. I slept on the bridge to Gatineau. My God, it was cold.

    Saw a shadow moving in the night. Knew it was him.

    He had the book with him.

    He’s always right behind me. I can’t outrun him. But that’s okay. If–when–he catches me, I’m going to give him what he wants.

    Just not the way he wanted it.

    I’ve got it all figured out, you see. He wants me to tell him his book is good, that it’s a great work of science fiction, but he’s from the 70s. He’s not canny with computers–even his characters aren’t; they talk about smashing them up all the time. He’s regressive. He touts “the old ways”. Fair enough.

    By the time he realizes I’ve tricked him, it’ll be too late.

    Speak of the Devil; there he is now, coming into the internet cafe. Yes, I see you Arthur. I’m ready.

    Give me the book.

    I don’t know what kompromat Arthur held over Roger Elwood to blackmail him into buying a second title so soon after the first, but it must have been serious. And, unfortunately for me, Elwood isn’t the only one getting screwed because I now have to read what he bought. I do not have high hopes after Crash Landing on Iduna, so lets see if Tofte can redeem himself.

    But before we cover Art, let’s start with cover art.

    Cover

    Speaking of blackmail, thanks to my swift intervention and the heroic efforts of the Ontario Provincial Police, Kelly Freas is no longer being threatened by the Marketing Guy to turn in shitty cover art.

    For this entry, he instead turned in a cover the colour of actual shit.

    Before you get on my case, I want the record to show that I don’t dislike this cover art. It’s… fine. This is one of Freas’s more workmanlike pieces. It depicts elements of the story: the mutants of Destruction City in the background, Rolf (the protagonist) is in the portrait, and lighting is used to suggest a ray of sun shining down into the caverns where the mutants dwell. But there’s no flair, to it, no creativity, no spark, and the colours all congeal into a hodgepodge of blandness.

    Also I’m troubled by the depiction of the mutants as some kind of carnival sideshow. Bodily deformities being used a selling point for sci-fi is such an outdated idea.

    But then, the Laser Books’ mission statement is about bringing back Golden Age sci-fi, so what else should I expect?

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Now these guys know how to do mutants.

    Blurb

    For sixteen years Rolf’s parents had kept him hidden away from the society in which they lived. His twin brother was able to move about freely and indeed was regarded by all as a young man of talent and great promise. But Rolf was a mutant and, as such, illegally alive. What happens when he escapes from his hiding place and discovers a whole world of mutants living underground, beneath the highly controlled technologically advanced city that had been his prison, is the main thread of Arthur Tofte’s engrossing tale. The city was never the same again. Nor, perhaps, will you be after you read it.

    I had horrible nausea at the end which I didn’t have at the start, so no, I was not the same after reading it.

    There are a million science fiction books in the world with blurbs exactly like this one. I’m still mad at Marketing Guy for what he did to Freas, and I still think his blurbs are mostly mediocre, but for once, he’s not to blame. He’s been handed a cliche story and told to pitch it to a highly discerning New Wave audience. Even Don Draper would struggle to find an angle on this.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    1975 was a year when Ursula K. Le Guin‘s The Dispossessed, Philip K. Dick‘s Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and T.J. Bass‘s The Godwhale were cleaning up at the Nebulas and Hugos. With these titans of sci-fi on bookshelves, do you really think anyone is gonna reach for novels with blurbs like the Laser Books have?

    Story

    DWAYNE: Please, do not be frightened, we’re harmless.

    RAOUL: I have three arms.

    DWAYNE: I said “harmless” not “armless”.

    VYOLET: Lay off him. You know he’s only got one ear.

    — Futurama, Episode 205 “I Second that Emotion”

    Well, it was easier to read than Crash Landing on Iduna, but not by much.

    The story unfolds exactly how you’d expect. The world and its characters dwell in a postwar society (Resurrection City) created to ensure the survival of the human race. They do this in part by wiping out anyone who presents with heavily mutated DNA, but they don’t always get everyone: many flee to the old sewers beneath the city (called Destruction City), which contain ruins of whatever settlement Resurrection is built overtop of.

    It’s a genetic twist on the behaviourally-controlled world of Seeds of Change‘s enclosed city (check out my review for that book).

    Rolf ventures into the undercity, meets a mentor figure, educates himself, gets discovered by the authorities, and has to flee to the other side of the wall separating Resurrection City from the rest of the world. He gets a taste of rough living, realizes he can’t leave Resurrection without doing something about his brother Ralf and the unjust regime there, so he goes back. Ultimately he discovers what you all probably guessed early on: that everyone in this city carries “the taint of mutation” since the war. The society’s built on a lie and every scientist is complicit.

    But of course, this is Arthur Tofte, so we’re in for some deeply uncomfortable flourishes like Rolf, as a child, spying on his neighbour Elissa, also a child.

    One very hot day I was at my secret perch at the side wall when she came out dressed, as usual, in her short white tunic. She started to lie down in the grass, stopped and glanced back toward her house.

    I could even hear her giggle as she lifted her tunic over her head. She had nothing on underneath.

    Almost as if she knew I was watching and she wanted me to look at her, she lifted her arms overhead and turned slowly, her face raised to the sky, to let the hot sun beat down on all parts of her. — page 19

    And he waffles on about how her body looks for a few paragraphs. When I read this page, I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to just glide through a mediocre sci-fi novel. I would be forced to endure some deeply uncomfortable passages before I could close this thing.

    There are musings on genetic purity, the importance of wilderness living (idyllic pastoralism again, really?), and even a suggestion by another character that Elissa’s cold shoulder could be cured if Rolf rapes her, and that if Rolf doesn’t do the job, this other character will happily do it.

    I can’t even look up who makes this suggestion. I don’t want to revisit that unpleasantness; I’m already going to have a hard time facing the women in my life with this book in my brain.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    Look if you want a good story about mutants, I can recommend some excellent Futurama episodes. If you want a good story about in-groups, out-groups, preconceptions, and sexual frustration, there are plenty of better stories; some written by other authors in the same period as the Laser Books, and some appearing in the Laser Books themselves. Your own good judgment will probably steer you better in this department than I could.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    The biggest award-winner of 1975 was The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s a wonderful commentary on anarchism, capitalism, societies estranged from one another, and how even societies that espouse personal freedom will find novel ways to limit that freedom in the name of economic security and infrastructure development.

    My Goodreads Review

    This is a superfluous book in sci-fi canon whose one virtue is that it’s not as bad as some others in the series. But there is no reason why you’d want to pick this up, aside from, like me, a desire to collect the entire series. Give this one and Crash Landing on Iduna a pass for your own sanity. They are both mediocre-to-bad books and are two of the weakest entries in the Laser Books. If you want good stories about mutants, go watch Futurama!

    And with that, I close out this third bummer of a review. With luck, Arthur will never realize I sabotaged him. He’s leaving the cafe now, taking the book with him.

    I am free.

    Who’s Next?

    Actually, we’re all free! The three books I’ve just reviewed–Crash Landing on Iduna, Gates of the Universe, and Walls Within Walls— comprise what I’ve (un)affectionately dubbed the Trench of Sadness in the Laser Books collection.

    At this point in my reading, I was beginning to despair that all the remaining books would be of this quality, but Stephen Goldin‘s Herds gave me hope that there still might be some gems out there; It convinced me to keep reading.

    I’m glad I did, because our next book, ladies and gentlemen… is Serving in Time.

    Blurb

    Jan Jeroux is leading a carefree and idyllic life in the serene, underpopulated pastoral earth of the year 2500. His idyll ends abruptly when he is abducted and forced to join the Time Service of the mysterious world government. In the service he learns how history was manipulated and controlled to produce the beautiful world he enjoyed so much. Thinking he understands how to rectify the injustice and devastation inflicted on the world by the time managers, Jan decides to make things right. But he makes a tragic error…

    Geez, I know I’ve harped on about idyllic pastoralism, but this is the one mention of it that’ll get a free pass.

    This novel, penned by Gordon Eklund, is the one that convinced me to start writing about the Laser Books. It’s a book that inverts several familiar sci-fi tropes and delivers something truly original.

    If you haven’t been vibing with the last three reviews, I promise you, this is one you won’t want to miss. It’s only a week away, and I’m stuck here in an Ottawa internet cafe. I hope I make it back in time…

  • Laser Books Review 4

    Laser Books Review 4

    4. Gates of the Universe by Robert Coulson and Gene DeWeese

    Our first pair of cowriters materializes in the Laser Books in the personages of R. Coulson and G. DeWeese. Behold what they have wrought!

    Considering the restrictions Harlequin placed on the Laser Books I’m keen to see if two heads are better than one. Let’s dive in!

    Cover

    …

    …

    …

    *sigh* Okay look, Kelly.

    I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that, between this and Crash Landing on Iduna, maybe you were having an off-week. Probably flu season, right? Okay? Please? You’re gonna be back on form with the next title, right? Because I’m sorry man, you cannot keep doing this.

    There’s even more negative space than on your last cover! And the colour gradient is so similar I feel like you changed one digit on each of your hexadecimals and called it a day. This not why Elwood’s paying you the big bucks.

    Wait… did he withhold your paycheque for this month? Is that why your work is suddenly so bad? ‘Cause if that’s the case I will call up my lawyers and we’ll get this straightened out.

    No? It’s something else? But what could… oh my God, is it Marketing Guy?! Is he threatening you, getting you to reduce the quality of your art so his cover blurbs stand out more? Don’t speak, don’t do anything, I’m just going to turn the book over and point to the blurb, and if you are in danger, just nod your head once, slowly.

    Blurb

    Operating a bulldozer may be exciting, but it’s not normally exciting in the way that Ross Allen found it. The fact that he was a science fiction writer on the side had nothing to do with it. There was something strange about the rock he struck with his machine. Even stranger was what he found inside it. But that was only the beginning. It led him to Orl who was brilliant and likeable, even if a bit odd by human standards. It brought him to Kari who was beautiful, but far different from any woman he’d ever met before. It led him to a world he could never have dreamed up himself.

    OPP Transcript–19/01/2026

    Operator: 911, what’s your emergency?

    James Dick: Um, yes, operator, I think my friend is being threatened!

    Operator: All right, stay calm, sir. Can you describe the nature of this threat?

    JD: He’s a cover artist for a line of sci-fi books and he’s being made to reduce the quality of his work so that sub-par marketing blurbs can stand out. I–I just–I don’t know what to do!

    Operator: I understand completely, sir. Please just tell me: how bad is the quality of the blurb?

    JD: Well it’s… it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s… it’s just mediocre. It’s meandering, doesn’t go anywhere, doesn’t say anything concrete about the book, and it… it… I’m sorry, this is really quite confusing.

    Operator: You’re doing very well, sir. We have officers en route. Just a little longer, sir. One final question: do you feel enticed to buy the book?

    JD: No, not at all.

    Operator: Good, good. We’re going to resolve this soon. Our officers are arriving on the scene now and they’re going to take over from here.

    JD: Oh, I can see the flashing lights! Kelly, we’re saved!!

    END TRANSCRIPT

    Story

    So um… there’s this story, right? And… it’s a… a sci-fi story.

    All right, I’ll be brutally honest with you. I cannot remember anything past page 9 of this book.

    I know for certain I read it cover to cover last year, otherwise I wouldn’t have moved on with this series, but aside from sentence fragments and bits of scenes, I cannot for the life of me recall anything clearly other than Ross getting teleported to the alien planet with his boss Kujawa.

    I’m so sorry, I’m truly at a loss! If you put a gun to my head right now and said, “Give me a synopsis or I’ll pull the trigger,” my response would be, “… you’d better pull the trigger.”

    I toyed with the idea of rereading this book for this review, but then I thought, “Why?” If this book left so little impact that I can remember only 0.5% of it, it’s not a book worth recommending, so what would be the point?

    Okay, here’s what I’m sure of:

    • Ross and his boss Kujawa accidentally travel to an alien planet via some kind of Stargate hidden under the construction site they’re working on.
    • Kujawa is killed… somehow. Pretty sure it’s Ross’s fault.
    • Ross falls in with a woman named Kari (pictured on the cover) whose brawn is greater than her brains, and Orl, a lizard-man whose brains are greater than his brawn.
    • Ross learns the planet is a sort of Union Station for Stargates, all leading to other parts of the universe.
    • Together they face some kind of alien threat.
    • Ross and Kari win the day, open the gates, and fly off into the sunset.

    Beyond that, I cannot recall specifics. So… yeah…

    My Goodreads Review

    I read this last year and cannot remember a single thing about it beyond page 9. This has been the single most unmemorable book I have ever read. Take that for what it is.

    This is a bummer. I feel like I’m shortchanging you guys with this review. Maybe next week will be–

    Who’s Next?

    5. Walls within Walls by Arthur Tofte

    Blurb

    For sixteen years Rolf’s parents had kept him hidden away from the society in which they lived. His twin brother was able to move about freely and indeed was regarded by all as a young man of talent and great promise. But Rolf was a mutant and, as such, illegally alive. What happens when he escapes from his hiding place and discovers a whole world of mutants living underground, beneath the highly controlled technologically advanced city that had been his prison, is the main thread of Arthur Tofte’s engrossing tale. The city was never the same again. Nor, perhaps, will you be after you read it.

    No… no it’s too soon! He can’t be back, he just can’t be! I only just finished Crash Landing on Iduna! I’m not mentally prepared for this!

    All right… all right, just breathe, just breathe.

    It can’t be that bad, right?

    … right?!

    Aaaaahhh!!

  • Laser Books Review 3

    Laser Books Review 3

    3. Crash Landing on Iduna by Arthur Tofte

    Well, life can’t all be sunshine and roses.

    Sometimes it’s cottagecore and fascism.

    This book is where the problem in “bringing back Golden Age sci-fi” shows itself: people think they want to go back, but they really, really don’t.

    Take John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding (now Analog) for example. He was a man of deplorable convictions who, according to Isaac Asimov, “Never had an unkind word to say about Hitler.” Many of the stories he championed depicted “supermen” (always white), degraded women, and positioned people of colour as evil.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Cory Doctorow published an excellent opinion piece in Locus Magazine about Jeannette Ng‘s acceptance speech at the John W. Campbell Awards in which she called out both Campbell and the people who celebrate him.

    Crash Landing on Iduna romanticizes an imagined past.

    There’s a lot I have to unpack so let’s hurry up and crash the bloody ship already.

    Cover

    Even Freas has mentally checked out.

    Look, I’m not gonna sugar-coat it: this is one of Kelly Freas‘ most boring covers.

    I mean, look at all that negative space! You should be ashamed of yourself, Kelly. There’s a poor marketer starving for real estate on the back cover and here you are, throwing it away for nothin’.

    Front-and-centre we’ve got Chewbacca fondling Dolly Parton, and in the background… I can’t even tell what’s going on. Is that some kind of alien? What’s that dude on the left running through? Water? Tentacles?

    The blue-eyed devil on the right is Lars Evenson, the father of the Evenson family. I’ve got a bone to pick with him later.

    Blurb

    When a spaceship crashes, the survivors are in peril for their lives. When the planet and its inhabitants are unknown to the survivors, fear becomes tangible among them. When the survivors are a crippled man and his four children the odds against survival increase dramatically. When the entire family has lived a controlled, docile, protected life and has been deliberately kept passive by the managers of the society on earth from which they came, the situation looks hopeless. But when two of the survivors are Peder and Inga Evenson there is always hope. This is their story.

    Congratulations, marketing guy, you started every sentence of this thing but two with “When” and failed to capitalize “Earth.” You were lazy and disrespected Momma E. Hang your head in shame.

    Neither this nor Freas’s cover would entice me to buy this book, and I was not looking forward to reading it. But you know, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Freas and Marketing Guy had the flu that week, and that’s why Freas chose puke-green for the cover and Marketing Guy gave us a hundred words of fever drivel.

    Where art fails, maybe Art can succeed!

    Story

    Can’t believe my tree cousins were cut down to print this book.

    Nope.

    Buckle yer fuckles, good people, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

    On Earth, all needs are met and there are no wars, no strife, no scarcity. Jobs are optional and all your prescriptions are free. Sounds great, right?

    Lars Evenson doesn’t think so. He pines for the frontier lifestyle.

    When men built cabins in the woods and provided for their families. When human beings hunted and skinned animals in the woods. When people struggled with nature. When the average life expectancy was under fifty. When a cut finger could kill you. But when Lars breaks his leg in the first five minutes, he finds out just how much the past sucks. This is his story.

    (See, Marketing Guy? I can do it too!)

    Believing that true humans must struggle to survive, Lars packs up his whole family into a spaceship, flies it to an alien planet, gets his wife killed and himself crippled trying to land the thing, and his children have to shoulder the burden of survival.

    If Lars were around today, he’d be part of the cottagecore movement and his wife would have a tradwives TikTok — except they wouldn’t be around because they were vaccine deniers and measles and COVID tag-teamed them into an early grave!

    Would You Like to Know More?

    I recently read Philipp Dettmer‘s book Immune and found out why measles is such a scary disease. Like all viruses, measles reproduces by penetrating cells, hijacking them, and using them to make more of the virus, which then spreads to other cells to repeat the cycle.

    But measles is a special fucker in that it attacks Memory T and B cells. These are the cells in which the records of your body’s encounters with diseases are encoded, and they are the reason why you can’t get sick from the exact same virus twice (unless it mutates, as all viruses do, which is why vaccines are important).

    Once you survive a disease — influenza, common cold, COVID-19 — your body preserves a sort of “battle record”: what the enemy looked like, how they attacked you, and most importantly, which antibodies ultimately stopped the invasion. This is where “immunity” comes from: the memories of the battles your body won.

    Measles destroys those Memory cells and the records within, erasing the information your body needs to repel those diseases. Memory B cells in particular are a devastating loss because their records stretch back decades, possibly to the time you spent in your mother’s womb. And as we all know, some diseases like chickenpox are usually mild if we contract them as children, but potentially lethal if contracted as adults.

    So if you survive your bout with measles, you might actually be susceptible to hundreds, even thousands, of pathogens you already beat, and you’ll have to face them all again — get sick from them all again — to reacquire your immunity.

    So please, for the love of God, vaccinate yourself and your children!!!

    A few months after landing, Lars’s children, Inga and Peder, discover two tribes of aliens living on the planet: an aggressive one and a docile one. The family rushes to the aid of the docile one because white saviours, and after spending some time on Iduna, they set up a distress beacon and plan to go back to Earth to show people how sexy it is living that frontier lifestyle.

    I’m not joking: Peder sends his siblings Sven and Bretta back to Earth in the hopes that, once people see how toned you get building cabins in the woods, they’ll try it for themselves.

    They would be like a god and goddess out of man’s past… a past that could point to a better future. — page 190

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    Up until now, the Laser Books have been either harmless or entertaining. Crash Landing on Iduna is neither: the ideas it espouses are harmful and its story is incredibly boring.

    Idyllic pastoralism has been a staple of every regressive, exclusive, hateful ideology from Naziism to the Deep South alt-right because it extolls a past when men did not have to share power with women, their word was law, and the strong were determined through violent struggle.

    We find idyllic pastoralism so seductive because, in one sense, it is correct: we should co-exist with nature; we should find value in hard work; we should want to be masters of our own destinies.

    During COVID, cottagecore started as a movement among the LGBTQ+ community and flourished because people suddenly had the time to discover or rediscover simple joys: growing their own food, baking bread, handcrafting art.

    “But where our hearts truly lie is in peace, and quiet, and good tilled earth, for all Hobbits share a love of things that grow.” — Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

    But what always happens with movements like this is that some asshole steps in and says, “Let’s go one step further… let’s also adopt traditional gender roles and morals,” when all we really wanted to do was bake nice bread and grow pretty flowers.

    I’ve spent many summers hiking and camping in the wilderness and I will be the first to tell you: I do not want to live there.

    I love reconnecting with nature, and I wouldn’t trade my adventures for anything. But when it’s minus ten degrees Celsius in a foot of snow and you can’t get a fire started, or you’re at death’s door in fifty degrees of desert heat, or you’re struck down with fever in a forest and you don’t have antipyretics, you understand why humans don’t live like that anymore.

    It fucking sucks.

    We need to walk in green places.

    We need to create things with our own two hands.

    We need to have the freedom to choose our path.

    But we should not idealize the past. Few words get my hackles up faster than, “Things were better when…”

    My brother’s an historian and I asked his take on this subject. I love his answer.

    “If there’s an amenity our ancestors would’ve killed for — hot shower, ready-made meal, warm bed — I will use it to the fullest, because they could not.” — Sean Dick

    Would You Like to Know More?

    Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did a phenomenal take on the sheer insanity of idyllic pastoralism with its season 2 episode, “Paradise”.

    Where was I? Oh yes. Crash Landing on Iduna. Can’t possibly be saved. This kind of book should never have been written.

    Recommendation

    “There be work for the axe. Take them behind the sauna, jumalauta.” — Ahti, Control

    Shoot. Almost forgot my Goodreads review!

    A frontier fantasy with every conceivable trope you might expect from that genre, including the white saviour. It touts idyllic pastoralism and positions its characters as heroes for choosing a life where they might die at any second from eating the wrong plant. This kind of backwards tripe should’ve died with the 1930s era of science fiction, but sadly, I predict us being plagued by it in the 2030s. Do yourself a favour and don’t read this book.

    That oughta do it.

    I gotta say, I’m not looking forward to the next appearance of Arthur Tofte in this series. He wrote Laser Book 5, so after our next title, we’re back in this man’s imagination. Mercifully, however, that will be the last we see of him in this series.

    Now, who’s on deck?

    Who’s Next?

    Gates of the Universe by Robert Coulson and Gene DeWeese, our first double act in the Laser Books.

    Blurb

    Operating a bulldozer may be exciting, but it’s not normally exciting in the way that Ross Allen found it. The fact that he was a science fiction writer on the side had nothing to do with it. There was something strange about the rock he struck with his machine. Even stranger was what he found inside it. But that was only the beginning. It led him to Orl who was brilliant and likeable, even if a bit odd by human standards. It brought him to Kari who was beautiful, but far different from any woman he’d ever met before. It led him to a world he could never have dreamed up himself.

    So… the protagonist… is a writer…

    … a sci-fi writer…

    … I’m gonna need another drink.

  • Laser Books Review 2

    Laser Books Review 2

    2. Herds by Stephen Goldin

    They’re moving in herds. They do move in herds. — Dr. Alan Grant, Jurassic Park

    With Raymond F. Jones‘s Renegades of Time behind us, it’s time to ring in the New Year with Stephen Goldin’s first Laser Books entry.

    This will not be the last tale we get from Goldin either; as mentioned in my previous review, this author spun four yarns across the run of 58 Laser Books. Guess we’ll see if his talent merits repeat appearances.

    But first, of course, we must pay due deference to the almighty Kelly Freas and his cover art.

    Cover

    O-ho, delicious!

    This book is very much a tale of opposites: light versus dark, generosity versus greed, community versus self-centredness. Freas captures that expertly with his use of contrasts: cold and warm colours juxtaposed in two opposing parts of the frame. Note how the Zartics occupy a lofty, heavenly position over Wesley Stoneham (the portrait) who is surrounded in a lower, baser position by the flames of hell.

    By placing a shining bright star above the Zartic city — a star which calls to mind that which shone over Bethlehem which caught the attention of wise men from a far distant country to bring gifts to Christ’s crib — Freas suggests that the Zartic way of life (communal, unselfish) might be the ideal we all should aspire to.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    There have been many scientific attempts to explain the Star of Bethlehem in the two thousand years since it occurred. This article by Astronomy explores some of those theories.

    Additionally, check out Arthur C. Clarke‘s landmark science fiction short story, “The Star”, for a truly heartbreaking study of this odd question mark in the annals of history.

    Also, even though Freas is following a formula prescribed for these covers by Harlequin, he still manages to reflect Stoneham’s ego by making his head appear just a hair (ha-ha) larger than his comrades on the other Laser Book covers.

    I don’t even feel like I can make jokes about this, it’s just a solid, well thought out cover. Great work, Freas!

    Blurb

    The wife of a powerful figure in California is found brutally murdered in the couples’ lonely mountain retreat. Wesley Stoneham made certain that all the evidence concerning the murderer of his wife pointed to a nearby hippie community. He had three goals in mind: to get rid of his wife, to drive out to the hippie commune and to enhance his own power in the State. He was at the point of achieving them all when Garnna, from the peaceful planet of Zartic finally made contact with Debby, a hippie from the commune, who had problems of her own. Then Stoneham’s troubles began.

    Looks like we got ourselves a good old-fashioned “howcatchem?” with a sci-fi twist! Unlike other Laser Books blurbs, it feels like the premise of a New Wave sci-fi tale, rather than a Golden Age one: a corrupt politician as a villain, a hippie from a commune for a heroine, and an alien from across the stars as a trusty sidekick. Golden Age stories typically position politicians as authority figures (or at worst, harmless buffoons), hippies as deviants, and aliens as either angels or demons.

    Actually, I can think of a fair few Golden Age short stories by Arthur C. Clarke that have similar premises: an alien helping a human put right what once went wrong. But in a post-Watergate world, a story like this takes on a new sense of urgency — and Watergate was only three years old by the time Herds was published.

    Again, I can’t really make jokes. The blurb works! So why don’t we just dive right in and see if this book is all that it promises?

    Story

    “… people won’t vote for a man who has been charged with a capital crime, even if he’s innocent.” Maschen, Herds

    Oof, this hits too close to home…

    The book reads exactly like an episode of Columbo (the episode I’m thinking of is “Candidate for Crime“, which aired two years prior to Herds‘ publication… and one year after Watergate… hmm) which is one of my favourite shows, so that alone pushes all the right buttons for me.

    Would You Like to Know More?

    If you haven’t seen Columbo, or you’re already a fan who craves some behind-the-scenes trivia, check out the comprehensive and sprawling Columbophile Blog. Here, you’ll find reviews of every single Columbo episode (including the two TV movies that first gave us the Lieutenant), series facts, and rankings of the best (and worst) of actor Peter Falk’s outings as the iconic detective. And, if you are a newcomer and want a taste of what this show has to offer, the blog also has links to a handful of full episodes free on YouTube!

    But what I love most about this book is the commentary on power and society, and how we view certain people as credible and others as incredible. Stoneham, as a politician, naturally curries favour with other politicians, local law enforcement, and the media. His attempt to pin his crime on a minority is a base, cynical act, but sadly one which feels all too familiar in Donald Trump’s America.

    Full Disclosure: I read this book a year before Trump got re-elected, and looking back through its pages for this review today is a chilling experience.

    In addition to the quote above, I’d like to share with you a couple more passages from the book — a book written, I’ll remind you, in 1975. The interlocutors are Dr. Polaski, an anthropologist studying the hippie commune, and Sheriff Maschen, who is investigating Wesley Stoneham:

    “If you could boil all the current troubles of the world down into a single word, sheriff, what would it be?”

    Maschen thought as best he could, but his brain was not functioning at its sharpest this morning. “I don’t know. What?”

    “Divisiveness. The splintering off of groups from the whole, the alienation of the individual from his group, and the sheer polarity between groups. Have you noticed that moderation has seemed to become a thing of the past? People are no longer able to agree to disagree anymore; they’re either violently in favor of something or just as violently opposed. Individuals are feeling more and more set apart from the society in which they’re living, which increases tensions. The groups, instead of trying to settle differences, actually go around looking for new ways to disagree. Each group becomes hardened against the problems of another, and then each one splinters into a myriad of sub-groups, and the cycle is repeated. — Herds, pages 170-171

    Ask yourself: how many times have I had this conversation with my friends and family lately? How often have I heard it at work or in the classroom? How clearly do I feel that I am seeing this every day?

    The discussion is not new — in truth, it’s probably thousands of years old — but how keenly these words cut in the year 2026 A.D.

    And further on, another character asks Polaski:

    “But you must have some theory as to causes,” Simpson persisted.

    “I do, yes, but I hesitate to state them when I can’t substantiate them. It would be a ridiculous oversimplification to blame any one factor, but I think that one of the primary causes is modern rapid communications. In the space of just a few generations, we have moved into a position where we can know instanteously what is gonig on anywhere else in the world. We never had that ability before, and consequently we find ourselves faced with worries over food riots in Kurdistan that we would never have even thought about a century ago. There are suddenly too many things that must be cared about, and our minds, which are unused to so many complications, rebel. In order to preserve sanity, they narrow their attention to one specific field and ignore — or worse, despise — all others. Society, which should be a cohesive whole in order to be most effective, is breaking down to a collection of narrow-minded individuals who care nothing for anyone but themselves and their group. And we’re going to have to learn how to treat this problem on an immense scale before our world becomes any saner.” — Herds, page 172

    Wow.

    This is what I meant in my first post about the Laser Books that some of these titles should still be talked about. Herds is a story about an self-centred egoist who believes he has just enough power to commit a murder and get away with it.

    And you know what?

    He would have.

    It takes the intervention of a psychic alien to find the evidence that will put Stoneham away. But even then, Goldin intimates that Stoneham might not actually see jail time, that the real victory is that, with this murder allegation hanging round his neck, he will never reach the corridors of power.

    But recall the Chappaquiddick incident, six years prior to Herds‘ publication, in which Teddy Kennedy’s reckless driving killed Mary Jo Kopechne and he got away with it.

    Or how about That Bad Man who orchestrated a failed insurrection, and was re-elected to the U.S. Presidency four years later? He got away with it.

    The most haunting thing about Herds as a book is that it throws the faults of our society into stark relief. Ask yourselves who’d win: a politician with a faultless track record, or a frazzled, pot-smoking hippie girl who says she gets visions from the planet Zartic?

    No single line makes a murderer soil their pants faster than this.

    I really love the various symmetries that exist in this story. The commune and Zartic represent similar utopian societies. Debby and Garnna are both iconoclasts who believe in getting involved and challenging authority. Humanity and the Zartics face similar problems of burying their heads in the sand in the face of great trouble.

    But most of all, I love how the stakes reflect the moral question at the centre of the book: “Who has credibility… and why?”

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    One of the annoying publishing guidelines of the Laser Books is that the protagonist has to be a man. Consequently, even though Debby is the centre of the story, she’s not allowed to be the sole driver of the plot. Goldin is forced to bring in Sheriff Maschen, Dr. Polaski, and a few other boys to help Debby along. This is really the biggest fault with Herds. When these men appear, they crowd out Debby, who truly deserves the lion’s share of screentime.

    Other than that… there’s actually nothing wrong with this book. I vibed with it the whole way through and read a handful of my favourite passages to my family. I actually wished it were longer so Goldin could have more room to examine each of the book’s social environments — the police station, the commune, Zartic — in greater detail. My Goodreads review, therefore, will be very positive:

    This is a book for our times. The premise of a politician trying to pin his crime on a minority is always relevant, but is especially biting today with Donald Trump in the White House. The plot reads exactly like a classic NBC-era Columbo episode: a “howcatchem” as opposed to a “whodunnit”. Stakes are both high and personal, as you don’t want Wesley Stoneham anywhere near the levers of power in America, and the only one standing in his way is a woman whose credibility he’s determined to destroy. The only thing I would wish different is that that woman, Debby, received a greater share of screen time as opposed to being pushed aside for Big Strong Men to tell her how they’re going to catch Stoneham. An easy recommend from me!

    I’d love to talk more about this book, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of the Laser Books, so we’ll bid adieu to Herds and Stephen Goldin. Grieve not; we’ll see him again in Laser Book 8, Caravan!

    But for now, on deck we have… hold on… *squints at list*

    Who’s Next?

    *sigh* Next is… Crash Landing on Iduna by Arthur Tofte.

    Blurb

    When a spaceship crashes, the survivors are in peril for their lives. When the planet and its inhabitants are unknown to the survivors, fear becomes tangible among them. When the survivors are a crippled man and his four children the odds against survival increase dramatically. When the entire family has lived a controlled, docile, protected life and has been deliberately kept passive by the managers of the society on earth from which they came, the situation looks hopeless. But when two of the survivors are Peder and Inga Evenson there is always hope. This is their story.

    … I need a drink.