Planetary Romance and Other SF Fun
I've begun reading In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S. M. Stirling. Normally, I'd wait to finish a book before commenting on it, but the prologue was such a trip it deserves comment in and of itself.
The setting is the World Science Fiction Convention in 1962 -- in an alternate reality. A group of SF writers are watching a live TV broadcast from the first Viking lander. (People are referred to only by their given names -- Bob, Arthur, Isaac, Poul, etc. -- but if you're an SF buff it's not hard to recognize which famous authors of old are being characterized.) As the writers speculate enthusiastically about the Martian landscape they are seeing -- which includes a canal, of course -- a "landship" pulls up (a wheeled vehicle with sails), and Martians disembark. They are robed and jeweled and armed with weapons both archaic (swords, bows) and futuristic (strange guns). The Martians grab the Viking probe and make off with it.
This makes it sound like the book is a parody, but it isn't really that (despite a healthy dollop of self-referential humor). It's a contemporary take on the "planetary romances" of the first part of the 20th century, when science had not yet revealed that Venus is a hellhole and Mars a lifeless desert. SF writers were free to imagine a Venus of exotic jungles filled with monsters and savages, and a Mars of world-spanning canals and ancient cities -- terrific settings for romantic adventure (romantic as in Romantic Movement, not necessarily as in "ship"). In the Courts of the Crimson Kings is written in a similar though more self-conscious spirit, using some of the same tropes, but with updated, harder science. According to the flap, S. M. Stirling "explains" this alternate reality by positing that super-powerful aliens terra-formed Mars and Venus 200 million years ago, which just happened to produce a reasonable approximation of Ye Olde SF Solar System.
I can already tell this novel is going to be good. S. M. Stirling is an excellent writer. Which reminds me.
I've decided to start discussing my favorite SF writers and books in this journal. I recommended Poul Anderson to
ladyireth and she really enjoyed discovering him, and it's a great feeling to spread the pleasure of a good book. I hope some of you might have recommendations for me, too, as I am always looking for the next great SF&F author (or an oldy-but-goody I missed).
As an introduction/warning, my tastes run to hard SF, space opera, and realistic fantasy, but I read other subgenres also (and lots of nonfiction, but nearly all my fiction reading is SF&F). I'm a Romantic at heart, so I like stories in which the heroes are genuinely good people (though realistically human; not perfect or stock characters), and virtue triumphs in the end, but I like some darkness along the way, too. The stories I love best are the ones that combine Big Ideas and a Sense of Wonder with an engaging plot and well-developed characters.
I'm going to begin this highly subjective roll call of SF&F greats with the author of In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, along with my favorite writer of old-time planetary romances, Leigh Brackett.
S. M. Stirling
This writer is a rising star of SF who specializes in alternate history. He starts with a big, outrageous modification of reality as we know it, and then explores the consequences rigorously, both from a technological perspective and from a cultural/historical perspective. That part satisfies the geek in me. Then there are the fast-paced, tightly-plotted stories and interesting characters, which satisfy the fiction-lover in me -- along with the quality of the writing itself, which is quite good. He has a particular gift for viscerally vivid action sequences.
Stirling has become one of my very favorite authors based on two of his series, which are loosely related (loosely so far). The first starts with Island in the Sea of Time (in which the entire island of Nantucket is transported to 1200 BC); the second begins with Dies the Fire (in which electrical/electronic devices, explosives/gunpowder, and even steam engines suddenly cease to function). The second series is still ongoing, and the first left room for expansion. The latest book hinted that more would be revealed about the "alien space bats" responsible for the inexplicable Event that sets up both series. Of his other books I've read, I also liked The Peshawar Lancers, but didn't care for Conquistador (just falls flat), or the Draka series (well-written but too grim and militaristic for me; I never finished it).
Sterling's stories tend to combine a romantic spirit with gritty realism, which is a combination I find deeply appealing. Underlying his work is a conflict between high-flown dreams and rational limitations; between the good we aspire to and the evil that is woven into our natures. Be warned there is pretty dark stuff in his fiction, including horrific apocalyptic scenarios and graphically described acts of sadism by his villains. (Oh wait, I almost forgot: I'm talking to people who read fan fiction.)
Leigh Brackett
The last thing Leigh Brackett worked on, just prior to her death in 1978, was The Empire Strikes Back. It was an appropriate finale to a career that included classic Hollywood scripts (such as The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart, and Rio Bravo with John Wayne), as well as SF adventure stories. To me, her planetary romances have the feel of Golden Age cinema, with splashes of Technicolor glowing amid the deep shadows of film noir. The writing style is extravagantly melodramatic, and the characters talk in "wretched hive of scum and villainy" mode. But, as with old movies, that over-the-top quality is what makes it fun!
Much of Brackett's SF was written for the "pulp" magazines in the '40s and '50s, so it consists of novellas and short stories. Two novellas stand out in my mind. The setting for both is that semi-scientific myth of the early 20th century, Mars of the Canals. In The Sword of Rhiannon, the hero travels back to a time when the Canals hadn't yet been built because the oceans hadn't yet gone dry -- the Mythical Age of mythical Mars. How cool is that? In The Secret of Sinharat, Brackett's favorite hero, Eric John Stark, gets tangled up with the mysteries of a lost civilization. (Ok, I guess that could describe several Eric John Stark stories, but this is the best, IMO.) Eric is of Earth stock, but was raised by the proto-sentient natives of Mercury (yes, Mercury!), so he tends to revert to a "savage" mindset under stress. He's a sort of Byronic Tarzan. The beings who raised him were wiped out by Earthmen, so it's no wonder Eric is the broody type. He also has a soft spot for oppressed indigenous peoples, which features in many of the stories about him. Brackett came out with a trilogy of Eric John Stark novels in the '70s, starting with The Ginger Star. In these novels, Eric leaves Ye Olde Solar System for an extrasolar planet called Skaith, but the ensuing adventures are very much in a "planetary romance" vein.
P.S. It's been a long time since I read any Brackett stories, but I still have a couple of old paperbacks, including an Ace Double with back-to-back Eric John Stark novellas (literally back-to-back; when you flip the book over, the back cover become the front cover for the second novella). Writing this entry inspired me to start re-reading The Secret of Sinharat, and I'm really enjoying it. I know I said Brackett's style is over-the-top, but wow, I'd forgotten how far over. Let me give you some examples from the scene I'm currently reading, which is where Eric visits a Martian opium den. Some lines are lushly poetic, like, "Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons." Some make me smile, like, "Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as you reckon sin." And then there are the lines that send me into fits of giggles, like, "She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench..."
The setting is the World Science Fiction Convention in 1962 -- in an alternate reality. A group of SF writers are watching a live TV broadcast from the first Viking lander. (People are referred to only by their given names -- Bob, Arthur, Isaac, Poul, etc. -- but if you're an SF buff it's not hard to recognize which famous authors of old are being characterized.) As the writers speculate enthusiastically about the Martian landscape they are seeing -- which includes a canal, of course -- a "landship" pulls up (a wheeled vehicle with sails), and Martians disembark. They are robed and jeweled and armed with weapons both archaic (swords, bows) and futuristic (strange guns). The Martians grab the Viking probe and make off with it.
This makes it sound like the book is a parody, but it isn't really that (despite a healthy dollop of self-referential humor). It's a contemporary take on the "planetary romances" of the first part of the 20th century, when science had not yet revealed that Venus is a hellhole and Mars a lifeless desert. SF writers were free to imagine a Venus of exotic jungles filled with monsters and savages, and a Mars of world-spanning canals and ancient cities -- terrific settings for romantic adventure (romantic as in Romantic Movement, not necessarily as in "ship"). In the Courts of the Crimson Kings is written in a similar though more self-conscious spirit, using some of the same tropes, but with updated, harder science. According to the flap, S. M. Stirling "explains" this alternate reality by positing that super-powerful aliens terra-formed Mars and Venus 200 million years ago, which just happened to produce a reasonable approximation of Ye Olde SF Solar System.
I can already tell this novel is going to be good. S. M. Stirling is an excellent writer. Which reminds me.
I've decided to start discussing my favorite SF writers and books in this journal. I recommended Poul Anderson to
ladyireth and she really enjoyed discovering him, and it's a great feeling to spread the pleasure of a good book. I hope some of you might have recommendations for me, too, as I am always looking for the next great SF&F author (or an oldy-but-goody I missed).
As an introduction/warning, my tastes run to hard SF, space opera, and realistic fantasy, but I read other subgenres also (and lots of nonfiction, but nearly all my fiction reading is SF&F). I'm a Romantic at heart, so I like stories in which the heroes are genuinely good people (though realistically human; not perfect or stock characters), and virtue triumphs in the end, but I like some darkness along the way, too. The stories I love best are the ones that combine Big Ideas and a Sense of Wonder with an engaging plot and well-developed characters.
I'm going to begin this highly subjective roll call of SF&F greats with the author of In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, along with my favorite writer of old-time planetary romances, Leigh Brackett.
S. M. Stirling
This writer is a rising star of SF who specializes in alternate history. He starts with a big, outrageous modification of reality as we know it, and then explores the consequences rigorously, both from a technological perspective and from a cultural/historical perspective. That part satisfies the geek in me. Then there are the fast-paced, tightly-plotted stories and interesting characters, which satisfy the fiction-lover in me -- along with the quality of the writing itself, which is quite good. He has a particular gift for viscerally vivid action sequences.
Stirling has become one of my very favorite authors based on two of his series, which are loosely related (loosely so far). The first starts with Island in the Sea of Time (in which the entire island of Nantucket is transported to 1200 BC); the second begins with Dies the Fire (in which electrical/electronic devices, explosives/gunpowder, and even steam engines suddenly cease to function). The second series is still ongoing, and the first left room for expansion. The latest book hinted that more would be revealed about the "alien space bats" responsible for the inexplicable Event that sets up both series. Of his other books I've read, I also liked The Peshawar Lancers, but didn't care for Conquistador (just falls flat), or the Draka series (well-written but too grim and militaristic for me; I never finished it).
Sterling's stories tend to combine a romantic spirit with gritty realism, which is a combination I find deeply appealing. Underlying his work is a conflict between high-flown dreams and rational limitations; between the good we aspire to and the evil that is woven into our natures. Be warned there is pretty dark stuff in his fiction, including horrific apocalyptic scenarios and graphically described acts of sadism by his villains. (Oh wait, I almost forgot: I'm talking to people who read fan fiction.)
Leigh Brackett
The last thing Leigh Brackett worked on, just prior to her death in 1978, was The Empire Strikes Back. It was an appropriate finale to a career that included classic Hollywood scripts (such as The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart, and Rio Bravo with John Wayne), as well as SF adventure stories. To me, her planetary romances have the feel of Golden Age cinema, with splashes of Technicolor glowing amid the deep shadows of film noir. The writing style is extravagantly melodramatic, and the characters talk in "wretched hive of scum and villainy" mode. But, as with old movies, that over-the-top quality is what makes it fun!
Much of Brackett's SF was written for the "pulp" magazines in the '40s and '50s, so it consists of novellas and short stories. Two novellas stand out in my mind. The setting for both is that semi-scientific myth of the early 20th century, Mars of the Canals. In The Sword of Rhiannon, the hero travels back to a time when the Canals hadn't yet been built because the oceans hadn't yet gone dry -- the Mythical Age of mythical Mars. How cool is that? In The Secret of Sinharat, Brackett's favorite hero, Eric John Stark, gets tangled up with the mysteries of a lost civilization. (Ok, I guess that could describe several Eric John Stark stories, but this is the best, IMO.) Eric is of Earth stock, but was raised by the proto-sentient natives of Mercury (yes, Mercury!), so he tends to revert to a "savage" mindset under stress. He's a sort of Byronic Tarzan. The beings who raised him were wiped out by Earthmen, so it's no wonder Eric is the broody type. He also has a soft spot for oppressed indigenous peoples, which features in many of the stories about him. Brackett came out with a trilogy of Eric John Stark novels in the '70s, starting with The Ginger Star. In these novels, Eric leaves Ye Olde Solar System for an extrasolar planet called Skaith, but the ensuing adventures are very much in a "planetary romance" vein.
P.S. It's been a long time since I read any Brackett stories, but I still have a couple of old paperbacks, including an Ace Double with back-to-back Eric John Stark novellas (literally back-to-back; when you flip the book over, the back cover become the front cover for the second novella). Writing this entry inspired me to start re-reading The Secret of Sinharat, and I'm really enjoying it. I know I said Brackett's style is over-the-top, but wow, I'd forgotten how far over. Let me give you some examples from the scene I'm currently reading, which is where Eric visits a Martian opium den. Some lines are lushly poetic, like, "Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons." Some make me smile, like, "Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as you reckon sin." And then there are the lines that send me into fits of giggles, like, "She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench..."