Ian Sales is a UK author, editor (both for books and websites), and publisher; who grew up in the Middle East before returning to the UK to enthral us with his tales of spaceflight as we know it (and then some more) that he could not do himself. His motto/tagline, on his own blog, is “It doesn't have to be right... it just has to sound plausible”, which very nicely sums up his writing, especially the Apollo Quartet, of which All That Outer Space Allows is the 4th and final instalment. Unless you count Dreams of the Space Age as the 5th one, of course... but not everybody is of the Douglas Adams school of counting series.
The books and stories in the Apollo Quartet are only loosely connected, but all are based on and extrapolated from the US space program during the space race. All of them have some point of departure, where they branch off from spaceflight history as we know it, or where they continue where our history left off. All That Outer Space Allows is a bit of a departure from this format of the previous 3 books – not only is it one step removed from actual spaceflight activity and told through the viewpoint of an observer, but it also does not contain the trappings in the form of acronym lists, mission listings etc – kept in Apollo project font and forma – which gave the earlier books their own, slightly grubby retro-feeling. Instead the story is interspersed with faux NASA and other contemporary (-looking) lists, announcements, and press clippings which underpin the events in the story. One real fun piece was a faux SF Encyclopedia article, putting the story itself into a larger framework of Ginny's life, by outlining the larger cornerstones in her past and future.
Instead of projected spaceflight history we get what I felt was Ian's most 'fiction' story in the quartet. Not because the other stories aren't fiction (they are – all of them start at a point in spaceflight history and extrapolate from there in a direction our history did not take), but because here the initial premise is fictionalised, too – I guess writing about an actual astronaut and his wife in the way this is written would have been ever so slightly iffy...
Let me give you a story of ascendance. Or, rather, a story of repeatedly failed ascendance, following an Imugi (Korean Lesser Dragon, some kind of giant serpent) in its repeatedly thwarted attempts to become a Dragon and enter the gates of heaven. It's a story of persistence, of human love, and of the coming together of two very different world views; and it's great.
Zen Cho is a Malayan author living in the UK - her website is linked below, and I would suggest you check it (and her other work) out.
If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again was was published by Barnes&Noble
The cover design on the right is by Shirley Jackson
Let’s talk about Fredric Brown for a minute, just in case you have not heard of him before. Yes, it might have happened, even if he is, in my eyes, one of the great classic SF writers. Or maybe because of it - he might simply have been before your time, just as he was before mine. And I don’t know if/as/when I might have come across his oeuvre if I had not been given a copy of the marvellous short story collection Honeymoon in Hell to read. He was a master of the short story, frequently holding up a mirror to humanity through his fantastic settings, and just as frequently leading his readers down the garden path, reversing everything with the final paragraph (or even sentence at times) and sending them back to the beginning, to re-read the story with the correct mind set this time. He wrote Science Fiction, Mysteries, Farces, Detective stories, and, as a pulp writer frequently paid by volume and frequency, at a fantastic rate, which means that a full bibliography of novels, collections, never mind short publications is longer than mine and your arm together! And, just to go back to this, if you really have not heard of him before, then you really should have a look, now you know of him!
Most of his output is in print, or has a tendency to be re-printed occasionally, the edition of the book at hand comes from Blackmask, who, as far as I can establish, are a Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press, and most likely POD (nothing wrong with that for such a large back-catalogue!)
The Screaming Mimi is a detective novel, following the investigative reporter Bill Sweeney, working for the Blade, as he follows the trail of The Ripper in a classic Chicago setting, and crosses path (and frequently more) with a number of classic characters whilst doing so - starting with the exceedingly good-looking (he’s seen her naked, accidentally) dancer Yolanda Lang, her agent/manager JJ ‘Doc’ Greene, her huge dog Satan (also part of her dance act. Don’t ask.), or a bum called God. The ripper in question has slashed and killed 3 girls, all good-looking and blonde, and has only been deterred from doing the same to Yolanda by Satan.
The Apollo Quartet is a series of Novellas by Ian Sales, telling stories derived from the US Space Programme – each of them on their own topic, and with their own departure point somewhere along the line from the history of spaceflight which we know. Some of them have SFnal elements and/or are projected into the future, whilst others are pure Alternate History. All of them are beautifully styled – the font they are printed in looks like the manual typewriter sheets that the US produced for their documents and checklists; they are full of the classic abbreviations and acronyms in use by NASA (and thus require a Glossary to translate the resulting, equally classic Alphabet Soup); they come with a Bibliography and list of Online Sources, and generally feel exceedingly well researched.
The first book in the series, called Adrift on the Sea of Rains, won the BSFA Award, and was a finalist for the Sidewise Award in 2012. The second book was called The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself – you might notice some trend concerning titles here. All of them are quotes from a relevant source, and/or have other clever connotations with the story as well as the historical realities behind them. Succinct they are not, but all the more evocative I feel!
“This is not our world. But it very nearly was.”
Then Will the Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, the book at hand, is the one cutting closest to the bone of actual history (as known in our time line!) so far; Ian indicates in his notes that there is only one character in the story which he entirely invented. The title, just to come back to this topic, is a quote from a Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo.
I cannot really call it a first contact scenario (although it takes place as part of one), as it plays out at the moment when humanity thinks they finally got their hands on a number of alien 'Worms' after one of their spaceships ends up in the Pacific. We see the mortician Hank perform an autopsy on one of the cadavers, brought in by his ex-wife, who now works for the governement.
Now, things are never as simple and straight forward with Aliens, of course, and this story has multiple levels of complications and implications which I won't spoil by pointing them out to you before you read the story yourself. You know the old saying about staring into the void... this here is similar, if a bit more physical. Passage, in ever so many ways.
The story is impressive, with a very interesting twist to it. And whilst I found some of the stylings and plot sub-threads to be over the top I would suggest you make up your own mind, this is inventive stuff right here. The story can be read on the Clarkesworld website for free - links are below and to the right.
The picture on the right is, despite its Alien looks, of an Earth creature - namely a Scale Worm.
As a US-born, raised (and now living) in Paris, English-writing author of half-French and half-Vietnamese origin Aliette de Bodard has both the background/grounding in and the interest to explore non-Western cultures and settings in her novels and short stories in a convincing way. She meanwhile has 12 books of varying lengths to her name, and has won a number of awards for her work, including BSFA and Nebula Awards. She writes across SF, Fantasy, and Alternate History settings, although frequently her stories are hard to assign to one or the other, never mind her series which can combine several in a very natural way. The book at hand, In the Vanishers' Palace, is not part of any of her series/universes (Aztec, Xuya, Domion of the Fallen), but is a Việt story and thus naturally closer to her Xuya ones, even if I have not found anything which would connect it to either the historical or future settings. But even if this is set in a world of it's own, it hopefully won't remain like that!
The story kicks off in an (unnamed) village, where Oanh, the village head's child is found to be sick from a genetic virus. Yện, a scholar trapped in the village as she did not pass the exam which would take her to the court, attends together with her mother, the village healer. There is nothing that her mother can do to help, except use her (limited) magic abilities to call a dragon to help. But whilst Vu Côn, the dragon called, saves Oanh, this comes at a price; and the village elders give her Yện, mainly because she is of less use, less value to them than her mother. But instead of the expected painful death Yện is taken to the palace where the dragon lives, and put to work teaching her children. Doesn't this sound like classic Fantasy to you, maybe with an Eastern slant? Except for the genetic virus, maybe? This world is much more complex. Here once lived, and ruled, the Vanishers. But when they left (and I have no idea if they were known as Vanishers before that!) they threw out all their toys, poisoned, twisted and broke the world, and left behind loads of technological artefacts, creatures and things roaming the wilds, all kinds of mutating genetical deceases, and a palace, which is now being inhabited by Vu Côn, one of their former servants. But whilst Yện teaches the twins, dragons, in the teachings of the Broken-World-Teacher and the rules of filial piety she does not seem to notice that they are different, not really dragons like her master. But maybe living whilst expecting to be dead, or to be violently dying at any point, and living in a Vanisher house/palace with nausea-inducing doors, and rooms with improbable geometry ("their idea of geometry wasn't quite ours") of course provides plenty of distractions of its own, never mind her attraction to the dragon Vu Côn.
Passage of Earth
