"A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel

I enjoyed "A Dry, Quiet War" like I enjoy a really well-made spaghetti western or samurai movie. There's some plot-development there, and the characters are deep and engaging, but what you're really there for is the scene where the unassuming main character (usually some kind of veteran of some war) really decides to come out and kick ass. That's where the real fun begins.

Don't get me wrong, Daniel is doing some really interesting things here with ideas like time-travel, interdimensional beings, and wars at the end of the world. He's also saying some interesting things about how much a person might be willing to sacrifice in order to protect the people he loves. But, at it's heart, "A Dry, Quiet War" is a Spaghetti Western in space. And I thank him for that. As a big fan of Joss Whedon's Firefly, I think there really needs to be more work that plays with that aesthetic. All in all, a very enjoyable read.

Oh, and I know, I'm still one story behind. This was yesterday's story, which I never got around to posting last night. I'm reading William Sanders' "The Undiscovered" right now. I'll post about it when I'm finished.

"The Pure Product" By John Kessel

I'm going to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what's exactly going on in this short story. In the story, Kessel introduces us to a nameless* protagonist who, as we quickly find out, not only appears to be immortal, but also totally immoral, travelling across America leaving a trail of senseless murders and various petty crimes in his wake. Furthermore, it appears that he's not the only immortal out there, as he meets a "girl" named Ruth during the course of his story that's also immortal and, like him, pretty randomly psychopathic. To make matters a little more confusing, he might also actually be from the future, and lives in the past because he's afraid of change; of what the world becomes. Of course, that particular revelation comes during a scene in which he's hallucinating from heavy drug use.

So like I said, I don't know what's going on here, but I do know that it's pretty compelling. Despite the central character's psychopathic impulses, the mystery of who or what he is really pulls you along in the story. You really want to know if he's some kind of immortal or demigod or man from the future. Or, if he really is just crazy. Perhaps it's a tribute to Kessel's writing that he doesn't really let us pin the character down into a neat little category. That maybe keeping us guessing is part of the point? Whatever the case, I know that the end result is an awfully good read.


*He might be named "Gerald Spotsworth," or he might be named "Loki." It's hard to tell.

"A Cabin on the Coast"

Gene Wolfe is playing with some classic fairy-myth tropes in this story, mixing the traditions of fairy-folk from a range of cultures with the more modern idea of alien visitors. What results is a sort of gestalt. A distant, utterly alien, and totally aloof force that takes the forms of human myths as it sees fit. This is an interesting idea, of course, but the story the surrounds the idea seems a little done to me. Because he's telling a fairy-story, we're given all the requisite earmarks: a supernatural kidnapping, a deal, and a sacrifice. Even, somewhat expectedly, a twist on wording of the deal that leads to a "surprise" ending. These are all very necessary if you're going to play off of fairy-tales and myths in the first place. But it just ends up feeling like I've read this story before, written by other authors, and with more interesting varients. Also, while the twist is a clever one, it's not entirely unexpected. In the end, I'm a little ambivalent about the story. It's good enough to be fairly enjoyable, but not great.

I should say that the above is, of course, just my opinion, and it is clear that others don't share this opinion, as this story was nominated for both a Nebula and an Locus award in 1985.

"Demons Hide Their Faces" by A. A. Attanasio

Let me start this entry out by saying that not everyone can be Charles de Lint, and, A. A. Attanasio, you are most certainly not Charles de Lint. This is not a bad story by any stretch. The cyclical structure of the story in which the later parts of the story are told interspersed with the earlier segments is actually quite clever and plays into the ending quite well. It won't make any sense until you're almost done the story, but once it does, it strikes you as pretty clever. I don't particularly have anything against the story itself either. The idea that demons steal book to gain power is interesting, to say the least, and Attanasio's portrayal of Hell is nothing if not original.

What I do have against this story is Attanasio's prose style. His prose is just too, well, crowded. When he could say something in a few words, he instead opts for a whole heap of them, choosing complex and obscure terms when simpler ones would do. Now, there could be an argument here that this is done for the sake of poetic style; that Attanasio's choice of words are calculated to bring a more vibrant image to the reader's mind. However, it comes accross more like he's saying "Hey, I know a lot of obscure words! Watch me you them in sentences!" The end effect for me is a distancing from the story itself.

This is especially concerning when the first sentence suffers from this problem. Attanasio opens the story with:

Winterset in Egypt beside a rotting canal at Sidi Bishr, with the little, ceramic hashish pipe in her freckled hand, a thin thread of palpitant smoke twisting in the air before her, the professor faced her student and informed him seriously and with hollow impersonality, "The most avid collectors of books are demons. But they want only the old texts The oldest texts."

Not only does this sentence run on and on, its use of words like "palpitant" (pulsating) and "Winterset" (which, is not defined in any dictionary I can find, and is not "the professor's" name, so I can only assume it means "in the winter") distract the reader. At least they distracted me. The end effect is that I became more interested in deciphering Attanasio's strange vocabulary than the story itself, which I think is a major failing for any piece of prose.

"Riding Shotgun" by Charles de Lint

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this short story because it is just so good. The characters are full and lifelike, the story is engaging (sometimes even heart-wrenching), and the central conceit of "going back and doing it all over again" is masterfully handled. This is easily the best story I've read during this whole self-challenge, and Charles de Lint in one of my new favourite authors.

Gushing aside, de Lint does some great things with his main character here, playing off his urges to save the people he loves, whether it is his dead brother, the ghost-girl Ginny, or his long time friend, Allessandra. These competing urges to make things better for everyone involved creates some great tensions in the story, as the character is forced to make tough decisions in order to do what he knows is right.

I won't say any more, because I don't want to ruin any part of this great story. Please, if you're actually reading this (there may be one or two you), just go out and find this story and read it. Don't worry, I'll wait.

"The King of Where-I-Go" By Howard Waldrop

If I had to choose one word for this story, it would be "subtle." I know that that sounds overly melodramatic, but what I mean is that I'm impressed about the subtle way that Waldrop has decided to deal with time travel in this story. He shows the consequences of going back in time to change the past, and, as a result, the present, but not in an overblown "Oh No, the Nazis won World War II! And then the Commies took over!! And I'm my own grandfather!!!" kind of way. The changes that are wrought in Waldrop's story are small, and the consequences equally so. Of course, they have significant repercussions for the story's protagonist, but not necessarily devastating ones.

Because these consequences are so small, Waldrop ends up focussing much more of his time on the life of his story's protagonist, Franklin (Bubba), and the protagonist’s sister Ethel than on the time-travel element. The reader receives lush descriptions of key scenes from Bubba's childhood, and you really get the feeling of what it must have been like to grow up in 1950s / 1960s Texas and Alabama.* In my mind, this is really the only way to make the reader care about the changes that are made in Bubba's life as a result of the time travel. Without the background, the changes, which are really only implied, would not make sense, and certainly wouldn’t have the same degree of impact.

In the end, I have to hand it to Waldrop for taking an overdone SF trope like time travel and, while not really doing anything new with it, still managing to create a compelling story. Actually, I think that the story itself could have been compelling without the SF elements at all. The story stands well on its own as a story about growing up in the American south in the middle of the 20th century, without having to complicate things with the time travel angle.

*Actually, I wonder how much of the story is based on Waldrop's and his sister own childhoods, since he dedicates the story to "Ms. Mary Ethel (Waldrop) Burton Falco Bray Hodnett, my little sister. . . "