Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Don Sakers
It's the time of year for universal peace, goodwill, and gathering together with family and friends. This time around, I have something naughty, something nice, and some helpful gift suggestions. First, the naughty:
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Death's Head: Day of the Damned
David Gunn
Del Rey, 346 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-345-48404-8
Genre: Military SF
Series: Death's Head 3
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In the mainstream suspense/thriller genre, there is a very popular subset of books written by former military men (and, sometimes, women): rough-talking, hard-living men who sling authentic lingo about weapons and warfare; men who, given the slightest provocation, are two-fisted death. Some of these authors use pseudonyms; one gets the idea that hostile foreign mercenaries are close on their trail. In extreme cases, author bios hint that the writer spends most of his time on covert missions in the Middle East, Central Asia, or the jungles of Latin America ... presumably dashing off books by flickering torchlight during lulls in the fighting.
All of this is meant in the spirit of fun; after all, who wants to read a military adventure written by an accountant from Connecticut?
Now SF has its own mysterious military man: David Gunn. According to his bio, Mr. Gunn (we all believe that's his real name, right?) “has undertaken assignments in Central America, the Middle East, and Russia (among numerous other places). Coming from a service family, he is happiest when on the move and tends not to stay in one town or city for very long."
Death's Head: Day of the Damned continues the story of Sven Tveskoeg, a lieutenant in the Death's Head, the elite fighting force of the Octovian Empire sometime in the distant future. Sven is a genetically engineered super-soldier who lives to kill—and he's very good at it. Humans, alien monsters, game animals, the odd lizard or two: Sven kills them all with a dizzying assortment of weapons, all lovingly described. He has a prosthetic arm which sprouts knives whenever necessary; he has guns (including his favorite SIG-37, an AI-enhanced heavy pistol that throws an assortment of bullets and wisecracks with equal ease); he even has a handy portable planet-buster bomb just in case it might come in handy (and son of a gun, by the end of the book it does.)
Sven has various friends besides his gun: most notable is Aptitude, a teenage girl who is only slightly less capable and bloodthirsty than Sven himself. Together, they fight their way through a civil war that has split the Octovian Empire and the Death's Head itself. He faces conflicting orders, betrayal, and enough enemies to make the pages seem to drip with blood.
The style is terse and harried, with little subtlety. Sven and his fellow soldiers communicate in short, matter-of-fact utterances that are a step above grunts. In “authentic” military fashion, four-letter words proliferate, violence is everywhere, and all of the characters seem to harbor deep hostilities toward one another.
To be sure, there are some interesting touches hiding in the background. The Emperor, OctoV, is a part-human, part-machine construct that eternally manifests as a 14-year-old boy. The Empire's chief antagonists are the United Free (or U/Free in military parlance), a cultured society with the power to move planets and extinguish stars. But in the main, the background and plot are excuses to get Sven moving across the landscape, slaying everything he comes across.
By now you may have recognized what Death's Head: Day of the Damned is all about: it is essentially the printed and bound equivalent of those video games in which one wanders around the neighborhood shooting at everything that moves, splashing blood all over the screen and racking up points. And for what it is, the book does a good job.
If that sort of thing appeals to you, you'll like this one.
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Webdancers
Brian Herbert
Five Star, 522 pages, $25.95 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-59414-218-5
Genres: Bigger Than Worlds, Space Opera
Series: Timeweb Chronicles 3
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Now for something nice.
It's impossible to mention Brian Herbert without also mentioning that his father was Frank Herbert, bestselling author of the Dune series. Since Frank's death, Brian has continued the series in a string of bestseller collaborations with Kevin J. Anderson.
What is so often forgotten is that Brian Herbert had his own independent sf writing career before taking up the reins of the Dune franchise. His solo work included genuinely funny books like Sydney's Comet, The Garbage Chronicles, and the exquisite Sudanna, Sudanna (in which chuckle builds on chuckle inexorably, until without quite noticing it you're laughing so much you can hardly breathe).
Recently, in between Dune books, Brian Herbert has been crafting a space opera as big as the galaxy; like the best space operas, this one moves from simple sf into the realm of brand new mythology.
The Timeweb Chronicles concern the Timeweb, a multidimensional structure that fills the galaxy, connecting stars and planets with communications and transport. Sapient podships travel along the Timeweb at faster-than-light speed, bringing together diverse races and cultures.
The hero of this epic is Noah Watanabe, an ecologist who once specialized in repairing damaged planets. By this third volume, Noah has turned his attention to the greatest ecological crisis of all: the disintegration and death of the Timeweb itself.
As the Web decays, the Human Merchant Prince Alliance joins with their erstwhile enemies, the shape-shifting Mutati Kingdom. Meanwhile, Noah finds his paranormal abilities boosted by a connection to an ultimate power, and begins evolving into something beyond human. Whether this power is for good or evil, he does not know.
I'm not going to tell you that The Timeweb Chronicles are easy reading. Each volume weighs in at over 500 pages of prose that can sometimes be as dense as the worst excesses of his father. But it's rewarding work: the universe of the Timeweb is spectacularly wonder-filled, and the story is mythic.
Fair warning, though: this is one of those trilogies that's really one long super-novel; if you start with this third volume, you're really cheating yourself. Book One is Timeweb; Book Two is The Web and the Stars.
If you like far-future space operas teeming with interesting aliens and larger-than-life characters, give this one a try.
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As hardcore sf readers, it is always incumbent upon us to try to share the wealth (or, if you'd rather, spread the infection). Gift-giving season provides a perfect opportunity for proselytizing ... er ... sharing. Your targets might be friends, coworkers, children (your own or someone else's), or random strangers. The right story, book, or author may just turn a person on to science fiction. This world needs more sf and more sf readers. So let's get started.
It should go without saying that a subscription to Analog makes an excellent gift for anyone who fancies science fiction ... but I'm saying it anyway. Subscription information is readily available in the pages of this very magazine, and the recipient will thank you all year.
In the past few months I've reviewed a number of fine novels and anthologies that would make great gifts for adult sf readers, and I'm not going to go back over that ground. Instead, I want to give you some ideas for the younger folks among your circle, particularly those who might not regularly read sf.
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Gantz (multiple volumes)
Hiroya Oku
Dark Horse Manga, $12.95
ISBN: varies
Genre: Manga
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The anime/manga genre is big with teens and young adults—and more than a bit of an enigma to many sf-reading older adults. It's that Japanese stuff, largely fantasy, that all the kids seem so excited about these days. Nowadays there are lots of swords and magic and dragons and demons ... but it all started as good old science fiction: the lovable robot that we English-speakers learned to call Astro Boy.
If the entire anime/manga scene is unfamiliar to you, a little terminology may help. “Anime” is video: movies and television. “Manga” are printed volumes that combine pictures and words (like comics). Manga are generally printed in thick pulp-like paperbacks, and most of them are read back-to-front (in the Japanese style). Usually, a story in manga form consists of ten or more individual volumes. A particular story may be told in anime form, as manga, or both.
If you know a young adult or mature teen who fancies manga, you may want to give them something with more science fiction content. Gantz is a good choice.
The story is fairly simple. Some recently dead folks awaken in a secluded room dominated by a mysterious talking black sphere, which calls itself Gantz. These folks have been cloned and resurrected in order to serve as agents for Gantz: it arms them with special suits and weapons, then sends them on missions to confront hostile aliens that are invading the world.
Or maybe it's all a virtual-reality game, run by an unknown game master for some obscure purpose.
Gantz is not for kids: there's a fair amount of violence, foul language, and some sexual content. But the characters are compelling and the story psychologically gripping. The art is superbly atmospheric. Give this to your favorite young anime fan, and you'll quickly become the coolest “old person” they know.
If you aren't already.
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Little Brother
Cory Doctorow
Tor, 382 pages, $17.95 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1985-2
Genres: Cyberpunk, Teen SF
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It's been said that most books for teenagers are based on the literary form called Rite of Passage, a ritual in which a young person learns to assert his or her independence while becoming part of the larger society. Combine the Rite of Passage with science fiction, and the result can be very powerful. That's certainly true of many of the great classic “juveniles” by the likes of Andre Norton and Robert A. Heinlein. Little Brother is the first of a pair of recent teen sf novels that would make great gifts for the teenagers in your life.
Marcus Yallow is a high school senior in San Francisco, and he's a whiz at computers and the Internet. Moreover, he knows it; he is smarter than any of the adults around him, and he's not shy at expressing his contempt for them.
Now before you go disliking Marcus, you have to understand that this sort of thing is part and parcel with books for teens. If one is going to have teenage protagonists getting into various troubles and getting themselves out, then one has to de-emphasize the adult characters. It is an unspoken assumption of children's and teen fiction that most adults are stupid, ineffectual, or both. (Just look at what idiots the adults are in the Harry Potter books.) Adult villains can be a little more canny than friendly adults, but ultimately the kid has to outsmart them in the end.
It's no use protesting—the books aren't written for us adults, anyway. And the kids who read them don't notice.
Back to Marcus. He and his friends, deep into a live-action role-playing game, ditch school and go in search of clues. But they are in the wrong place at the wrong time when a major terrorist attack hits San Francisco, killing thousands.
Suddenly Marcus and his friends are detained by the Department of Homeland Security. With their encrypted computer files, mad hacking skills, and ability to evade school surveillance technology, they look an awful lot like terrorists.
Imprisoned and psychologically tortured, Marcus gives up his passwords and files, and after a few days he's released. One of his other friends is also set free; the third remains missing and (presumably) still in custody. But that's only the beginning of the story.
Over the next weeks, Homeland Security turns San Francisco into a police state bristling with security measures. And Marcus realizes he has a mission in life: to use his knowledge and his networks (both computer and personal) to bring down Homeland Security.
Although a little preachy in spots, the story is exciting and Marcus winds up being a fairly sympathetic character (even for old people like me). The story of one boy's opposition of authority is bound to please most teens.
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The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press, 374 pages, $17.99
ISBN: 978-0-439-02348-1
Genres: Post-Apocalyptic, Teen SF
Series: Hunger Games 1
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Katniss Everdeen, 17, lives a hard life in the Seam, an impoverished village in District 12, one of the poorest of the twelve Districts that make up the nation of Panem. Ever since her father died in a mining accident, Katniss has been the primary breadwinner for her ineffectual mother and her frail younger sister. Along with her male friend Gale, Katniss spends most of her time hunting and gathering in the forbidden forest, then trading with other villagers for the necessities of life. It's subsistence living at best.
Once a year, by law, comes the Reaping. All children between twelve and eighteen are entered in a lottery, and each District draws two Tributes: one boy and one girl. The Tributes are sent to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games: a reality show gone mad, a no-holds-barred fight to the death where only one child survives.
To Katniss's horror, this year's winner is her little sister. Without thinking, Katniss steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games.
The rest of the book tells the story of Katniss's participation in the Games, her struggle to survive and overcome the other twenty-three contestants, and her ultimate fate.
This gripping story is also sophisticated science fiction, as rewarding to adults as to the teens who are the main audience. Besides the survival plot, there is a larger political plot going on here. The Capitol uses the Games as but one weapon for subjugating the Districts; Katniss is as much freedom fighter as she is reality show contestant.
Along the way, Katniss learns quite a bit about her fellow humans ... and more than a bit about herself.
The Hunger Games, while a complete story, is Book One of a series. There's certainly more to be told of Katniss and the richly detailed world she inhabits. I look forward to Book Two.