Asimov's Science Fiction 02/01/11 Read online

  That danger is quickly driven home by an assassination attempt that kills two of his senior advisors, before the assassin—the sorcerous Duke Verrakai—is killed. Mikeli issues an order outlawing the rest of the Verrakai family, except for one member known to be untouched by their sorcery: Dorrin Verrakai, one of Kieri’s captains, whom Mikeli calls to assume the dukedom.

  Meanwhile, another of Kieri’s captains, Jandelir Arcolin, has taken over the mercenary company and travels south to assume a commission. Arcolin has also been given the rule of Kieri’s old dukedom, although he has not yet been granted a title. However, he quickly discovers that there is enough turmoil in the south to keep him and his company occupied—including rumors of an ex-pirate turned warlord, who seems to want to expand his territory into the areas Arcolin has been hired to protect. Moon deftly juggles these four variations on the theme of assuming new responsibilities, with different challenges for each of her protagonists. At the same time, she connects their various stories in a way that points to a wider danger than any of them initially realize. The common thread is the apparent survival of supposedly dead members of the Verrakai family, from which Dorrin was banished as a small girl because of her refusal to partake in its bloody and sadistic rituals to nourish her inborn mage powers. Now, to hold her dukedom, she must recover those powers and learn to wield them for good, at the same time resisting the efforts of her kin—now banished in their own right—to recapture their realm. In the process, she discovers an evil magery that exceeds anything she suspected of them.

  At the same time, Mikeli faces evidence that the threat to his kingdom was not ended with the death of the old duke. And in the south, Arcolin’s troops find that their problems go well beyond dealing with a few groups of outlaws. Arcolin finds himself having to think on a strategic scale beyond anything he had to worry about when Kieri was his commander, making the hard decisions. The crisis for him arrives when an apparently simple operation turns out to be a magical trap.

  Dorrin must also balance her need to cleanse her dukedom of her predecessors’ evil and protect its people with her duty to Mikeli, her king. So toward the end of this book she makes the journey to the capital city, Verella, to swear fealty to him—despite the distrust her name inspires among the citizens familiar with her relatives’ careers. At the climactic moment, the full extent of the Verrakai plots starts to become evident, and the ground is laid for the next book in the series.

  Moon, who learned about the military as a Marine, handles the combat scenes and the details of life in a mercenary unit convincingly, with a wealth of insights into the nature of command and discipline. But she is equally aware of the daily life of a pre-modern society, with a wealth of detail on how farming people live, the care and handling of horses, and other matters that many fantasy writers—including some of the giants of the field—never get around to looking at. It is hard to think of another fantasy writer who remembers that her characters need to go to the toilet every so often, just to pick one example.

  At the same time, her characters cover a satisfyingly broad range. From hereditary royalty to unpolished peasants, Moon has the knack of showing all levels of society. While she tends to tell her story through the eyes of those who have made their marks in the meritocratic structure of a mercenary company, she also has an awareness of the kinds of things a prince knows and takes for granted in the society she has created. And while few historic societies have permitted women to fill the variety of roles she affords them, she makes the premise believable—in fact, after a few pages, one notices it only when she decides to call attention to it, as with Dorrin’s selection of clothing to wear to Mikeli’s coronation.

  While this book contains only the beginning of the new story, Moon’s world building and strong characterization are in display throughout, and should be enough reward for any but the most impatient reader. Those already familiar with Moon won’t need any further hints from me. Those who haven’t tried her yet are in for a treat.

  HESPIRA

  By Matthew Hughes

  Night Shade, $24.95 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-101-0

  The third in Hughes’ witty Hengis Hapthorn series, featuring a cerebral detective in a world that is mutating from a dependence on advanced science to domination by magic. The series has aptly been described as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Jack Vance’s “Dying Earth,” although that doesn’t do Hughes full justice.

  The novel begins with Hapthorn winding up a case he considers beneath his abilities. A client wants him to recover a “soul box,” a rare collectible stolen from him. The thief has already contacted the owner to arrange ransom; all Hapthorn has to do is make the exchange, taking care to verify that the goods are in fact authentic. But the client is willing to pay exorbitantly, and Hapthorn is sufficiently fond of the better things of life to be swayed by money.

  But on the way to meet the thief’s go-between, Hapthorn collides in the street with a young woman. He picks himself up, apologizes perfunctorily, and goes off on his assignment. But she has somehow stuck in his memory; seeing her again the next day, he makes a more formal apology. He discovers that she has no memory, she’s not even sure of her name. He decides this puzzle is worthy of his talents. But as he takes her home, he learns that his “routine” job of recovering the stolen soul box has become more complicated, and that he is now the target of reprisals by the underworld figure involved.

  The original client, it turns out, was not satisfied with recovering the stolen item; he wants full revenge on the thief—who, perhaps understandably, holds Hapthorn responsible for his sudden troubles. A complicated series of encounters concludes with Hapthorn and the young woman—who has taken the name Hespira, after a character in a popular play—leaving the planet, searching for her world of origin. There, Hapthorn thinks, he can find the answer to her mystery, which he has decided to solve as an exercise of ingenuity.

  The journey of discovery takes Hapthorn to several worlds, where he learns more and more about his companion, and eventually comes to the true story behind her loss of memory and the more far-reaching (and unexpectedly dangerous) story behind it. In the process, Hughes takes the reader to a variety of interesting worlds, reminiscent of Vance’s picaresque journeys around the galaxy, where he samples strange foods, deals with oddly hierarchical social structures, and arrives at his conclusions by understanding the way those social structures determine the actions of the members of their societies.

  Hughes has effectively captured Vance’s colorfully ironic way of portraying an exotic society and its inhabitants in a few strokes, as in the elaborate dress code on one of the worlds Hapthorn visits. He also has much of Vance’s touch with witty yet highly stylized dialogue. But perhaps the most Vanceian aspect of this series is Hapthorn himself, who may share professions with Sherlock Holmes, but whose overblown ego is more reminiscent of Cugel the Clever, one of Vance’s most memorable protagonists.

  While this novel, like most mysteries, is effectively self-contained and readable without any previous knowledge of the series, readers who haven’t picked up this series previously might want to start with the first book, Majestrum, and follow it up with the second, The Spiral Labyrinth. Not only do they provide a degree of background that sheds light on various events in this book, they are thoroughly entertaining in their own right.

  ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS

  By Henry Kuttner

  Planet Stories, $12.99 (TP)

  ISBN: 978-1-60125-153-4

  Here’s a handful of comic SF stories from one of the Golden Age masters of short fiction, the late Henry Kuttner. They have in common the lead character, Galloway Gallegher, an inventor who comes up with most of his best ideas while blind drunk.

  The stories originally appeared in the pages of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, the predecessor to Analog. As explained in a pithy introduction by F. Paul Wilson, four of them were written in 1942, and the final one in 1948, after Kuttner had served a hitch in the
World War II army. Also included is an appreciation of the Gallegher stories by the late C. L. Moore, Kuttner’s wife and collaborator on a long string of stories under numerous pseudonyms, most famously “Lewis Padgett.” (The intro appeared in a 1973 reprint of the Gallegher stories.)

  Like much of even the best SF of the 1940s, the Gallegher stories show their age. For one obvious example, few current writers would make the hero’s regularly getting smashed the comic lynchpin of a series of stories. Other unspoken attitudes of these stories would fail the most rudimentary test of political correctness, as well. But anyone who can allow for the passage of six decades is likely to end up enchanted by Kuttner’s storytelling virtuosity.

  The first story, “Time Locker,” is as good an example as any. We meet Gallegher in his lab—the scene in which most of the series takes place. As often happens in the series, he has invented something he isn’t sure what the purpose of is—let alone how it works. However, he has a client—in this case, a sharp lawyer named Vanning—who frankly makes his living by finding legal loopholes to exploit. In the past, Gallegher’s inventions have been one of his prime means for doing so—for example, a novel weapon that permitted an undetected murder.

  Gallegher’s newest invention is a box that changes the appearance of things put into it. He doesn’t know what it’s good for, but he lets Vanning take it. Of course, Vanning has an idea what he might use it for. . . . The story develops as Vanning makes use of the “locker,” getting himself out of one kind of trouble only to find himself in some worse fix, leading up to a climax that reveals the true nature of the locker at the same time as it delivers one of Kuttner’s patented twists.

  Economically told, with the wise-guy dialogue that was the style of the day and effective use of the scientific premise to bring the story to a conclusion, “Time Locker” could be a textbook example of the kind of story Kuttner specialized in—and that defined John Campbell’s editorial approach. While comedy wasn’t the norm for Astounding, the tight story telling and slick prose hit the bull’s-eye for readers of the era.

  The other stories take a very similar approach, with the significant addition in several stories of Gallegher’s grandpa, an entertainingly crotchety foil to the alcoholic inventor. The cast of characters includes an entertainingly wacky robot, several oddball aliens, assorted crooks and con artists, and frequent appearances by the police. Women characters tend to be stereotypes typical of the era, but so is almost everybody else. The fun is in the permutations on Gallegher’s tipsy inventions, the discovery of their purpose, and the effect they have on the characters. Nobody is writing stories like this today—which says as much about our era as about Kuttner’s.

  Fans of the good old stuff already know about Kuttner—and probably already have these stories. But anyone who enjoys a good screwball comedy in the science fiction vein should take a look at this collection. It’s the real thing—by one of the finest craftsmen ever to work in our field.

  It’s good to see a small press like Planet Stories bringing back classic SF; they have several other works by Kuttner and Moore available as well.

  HERE’S LOOKING AT EUCLID

  By Alex Bellos

  Free Press, $26.00

  ISBN: 978-1-4165-8825-2

  The title gives a good sense of the flavor of this wide-ranging and highly entertaining nonfiction overview of the world of numbers, figures, and geometrical shapes by a British journalist. Bellos approaches the subject with a wide curiosity and contagious enthusiasm.

  Bellos starts with the concept of number itself, examining the numerical instincts of children, animals, and the non-western cultures that in an earlier era we might have called “primitive.” While some of these subjects seem unable to grasp quantities much above five, all apparently have an ability to recognize which of two trees bears the most fruit or whether one’s group is outnumbered by a group of potential enemies. Belllos convincingly argues that the latter skill is considerably more important for survival.

  Some of the most interesting material touches on cultural differences between the way math functions in different societies. For example, Indian English breaks up numbers above 1,000 differently than we do; “one million” is “ten lakh,” while “ten million” is “crore.” That leads to a discussion of alternate ways to break up the number system, with binary math probably the best-known alternative. But our division of circles into 360 degrees is a remnant of an ancient competitor to the decimal system, favored by the Babylonians.

  For basic arithmetic, the author looks at Japanese abacus users, who can add columns of numbers faster than a calculator. Another non-western mathematical tradition is found in Vedic math, promoted by an Indian sect, which offers advanced algorithms for multiplication and other operations.

  Geometry provides Bellos with some of his richest material. The examples range from usual suspects, the Greeks, with an extended look at several ingenious proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. The Euclidean solids and the mathematics of tiling a plane also receive their due. But the geometrical explorations stretch to include origami as well as the “golden ratio,” also known as “phi,” beloved of architects.

  More advanced math is found in a chapter on logarithms and a discussion of slide rules, the favorite tool of scientists and technicians needing a quick answer until cheap calculators made them obsolete. Other chapters cover probability and statistics, including a clear exposition of the bell curve and its relevance to activities like buying bread at the bakery.

  Recreational math gets its due, as well. Bellos covers the range from the nineteenth-century puzzles of Dudenay and Sam Loyd to Rubik’s Cube and Sudoku. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is an entire annual convention dedicated to the master puzzler Martin Gardner.

  Bellos brings his subject alive by keeping a focus on the people who have created math and who have used it creatively through the ages. So we learn not only about the famous Greeks and Renaissance figures like Descartes and Fermat, but nineteenth-century giants like Gauss and Poincaré, and people who collect slide rules and mechanical calculators, or who promote arcane systems of counting or problem solving.

  The book is plentifully illustrated, and there are occasional equations and proofs; however, anyone who got through high school math unscathed should be able to enjoy the ride. Highly recommended.

  (Note—the book was published in England with the title “Alex’s Adventures in Numberland.”)

  Copyright © 2010 Peter Heck

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  DEPARTMENT

  SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR

  DECEMBER 2010

  The winter holiday weekends (Martin Luther King Day and President’s Day) are great times for some indoor SF fun. I’ll be at Arisia and Boskone. ChattaCon and ConDor are good bets for Asimovians these months. Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For an explanation of con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, and info on fanzines and clubs, send me an SASE (self- addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week’s cons), leave a message and I’ll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For free listings, tell me of your con five months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard. —Erwin S. Strauss

  JANUARY 2011

  31-Jan. 2—IkkiCon. For info, write: Box 1461, Bastrop TX 78602. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 am to 10 pm, not collect). (Web) ikkicon.com. (E-mail) [email protected]. Con will be held in: Austin TX (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Hilton. Guests will include: none announced at press time. Celebrating anime and Japanese popular culture in all its forms.

  31-Jan. 2—M. E. W. Con. mewcon.com. Airport Sheraton, Portland OR. Theme: “Manga and Exotic Worlds” (“M. E. W.”).

  14-16—MarsCon, 131B King Henry Way, WIlliamsburg VA 23188. marscon.net. Jim & Shannon
Butcher, Ursula Vernon. SF/fantasy.

  FEBRUARY 2011

  14-17—Arisia, Box 392596, Cambridge MA 02139. arisia.org. Westin Waterfront, Boston MA. Kelly Armstrong, Shaenon Garrity.

  21-23—ChattaCon, Box 23908, Chattanooga TN 37422. chattacon.org. Rusch, Yarbro, Weiskopf, Ruth Thompson, B. & B. Sutton.

  29-30—Sci-Fi Expo. sci-fiexpo.com/dcc. Dallas Convention Center, Richardson (Dallas) TX. Commercial media SF and toy exposition.

  4-6—Cre2c3ndo, 16 Ann’s Rd., Cambridge CB5 8TH, UK. contabile.org.uk./cre2c3ndo. Grantham UK. H. Dale. SF/fantasy folksinging.

  11-13—EatonCon, c/o Conway, UCR Libraries, Box 5900, Riverside CA 92517. eaton-collection.ucr.edu. Mike Davis. Academic con.

  18-20—Boskone, Box 809, Framingham MA 01701. (617) 625-2311. boskone.org. Boston MA. Stross, C. Harris, G. Manchess, E. Neely.

  18-20—ConDFW, 750 S. Main #14, Keller TX 76248. condfw.org. Richardson (Dallas) TX. Sanderson, McDevitt. SF, fantasy, horror.

  18-20—FarPoint, 11708 Troy Ct., Waldorf MD 20681. farpointcon.com. Timonium (Baltimore) MD. Okrand, Weinstein. Star Trek, etc.

  MARCH 2011

  18-20—TrekTrax, Box 620605, Atlanta GA 30362. trektrax.org. Holiday Inn Perimenter. Tim Rush, B. Marsh, G. Walsh, DJ B-naut.

  18-20—Katsucon, Box 3354, Crofton MD 21114. katsucon.org. Gaylord National Resort, National Harbor MD (near DC). Anime.

  18-20—Eternal Twilight, Box 5773, Milton Keynes MKL10 1AS, UK. massiveevents.co.uk. Hilton, Birmingham UK. “Twilight” series.