MONDAY MORNING

The Grand Masters of Science Fiction: Harry Harrison

I have not chosen well when it comes to my reading of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction. I have searched out early honorees by whom I had previously neither read nor been inclined to read anything. BIg surprise. I haven't much liked anything I've come across. Some of it I have admired and found historically interesting, but nothing have I been crazy about,

And now I've done it again with Harry Harrison. Years of working with used books made me familiar with Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, novels that i knew instinctively I would not find funny. I still have that instinct without ever having so much as opened one of the books, but I think such complete lack of contact with the material gives my opinion a certain purity. Then there was Make Room Make Room, a novel I never read since Charlton Heston had already told me, "Soylent Green is people!"

The Deathworld Trilogy was new to me when I looked into Harrison again. The idea is hard to beat. Here is a planet where every animal, plant. and microbe is out to destroy human life and the gravity is twice that of earth. Humans live there only because mining operations create such enormous wealth that the high mortality rate seems worth it. The novel opens with planet-hopping professional gambler Jason dinAlt receiving an offer he can't refuse. Kerk, resident of Pyrrus aka Deathworld, want dinAlt to turn a 27 million credit bankroll into three billion credits in one night of gambling. He can keep anything over the three billion. Pyrrus needs ships and weapons.

The opening chapters of Deathworld are full of tough talk and action and are really a lot of fun. dinAlt wins the money, the cassino owners want him dead, and he wants to escape with Kerk to get a look at Pyrrus for himself. Why is never really that clear.

Once the action moves to Pyrrus, things slow down. What should be some pretty funny stuff about dinAlt taking survival classes with ten-year-olds before he is allowed outside never realize their comic potential. And dinAlt, for all his wild past and swashbuckling ways, transforms into a one man NGO on Pyrrus, determined to crack the mystery of why everything on the planet is so darn mean. He does so through a series of encounters that are not particularly exciting and completely lacking the comedy of the novel's opening scenes. 

I confess I started the second novel in the trilogy but couldn't face it. It promised to be more of the same.

MONDAY MORNING

PHILIP K. DICKATHON 21: NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR

I hate it when this happens. I try out a brand new hallucinogenic drug only to find out that it is addictive after a single use. Then, while suffering withdrawals, I'm offered help only if I agree to spy on my estranged husband who is now special physician to the ailing Sec. Gen of the United Nations Gino Molinari. I take more of the drug to get me through the trip to the White House in Cheyenne, Wyoming, only to find that the drug messes not only with my sense of time but with time itself. I'm  stuck in a cow pasture in a auto-cab in the year 1935. The cab cannot make it to Cheyenne without refueling, and so we have to wait for the effects of the drug to wear off so we will be returned to the mid 21st century where the super-refined protonex that fuels the cab will once again be available. 

Actually that has never happened to me. But it happens to Kathy Sweetscent in Now Wait for Last Year, and true to the spirit of PKD novels this wild scene is barely a sidebar to what -- or whatever -- the book is about. Kathy will make it to Cheyenne, where the time-traveling aspects of the drug JJ-180 will mess with her life and that of her long-suffering, at least in his own mind, husband, Dr. Eric Sweetscent. He has an obese, hypochondriac despot to keep alive while earth is embroiled in a losing war between 'Starmen and reegs. Earth has teamed with the 'Starmen because they are humanoid. The reegs are six-foot tall bugs who must communicate through boxes that resemble training potties. But they are also winning the war. And 'Starmen are infiltrating earth, and Molinari, known affectionately as The Mole, may actually be at death's doorstep, or he might be yet another of the simulacra he has had made of himself, one of which is his young, vibrant leader self while another is a bullet-riddled corpse lying in a glass coffin. 

Molinari is both a buffoon and shrewd politico. His constantly failing body may only be a ruse to get out of awkward meetings with the overbearing Frenesky, leader of the 'Starmen. I pictured him as a character actor whose name I cannot remember, but PKD  thought of him as a combination of Christ, Abraham Lincoln, and Mussolini. (That was an personality triad PKD attributed to several of his favorite characters.)

The plot starts running out of steam towards the end, but there are classic PKD moments of paranoia, intrigue, and absurdity. Now Wait for Last Year has made it into the three volume set of PKD novels distributed by the Library of America, so its reputation must be pretty good. 

MONDAY MORNING

MANGA MANIA: PARASYTE VOL 9 by Hiroshi Iwaaki

The Mysterious Reiko Tamura

I am still not convinced that this series should not have ended with Volume 8. There were loose ends, which I figured were better than whatever resolution could be cooked up to tie them together. And I thought Migi, the parasyte living in Shin's right hand, had died. It was sad. But some part of him seems to have survived in Shin, although in a weakened condition. He sleeps through more and more of the action.

This new installment returns to the mysterious Reiko Tamura, the parasyte with an interest in how human and parasyte might learn to coexist. Much of which boils down to whether or not parasytes can control their taste for human flesh. Several installments ago, Reiko stole a human baby -- I think it belonged to the human she possessed. It is now her bargaining chip with Shin and the detective that are on to her. This episode ends up with most of the main characters meeting up in a park where the requisite amount of blodshed and weird body transformations ensue. 

Starting with Vol 9, the copies I am getting from the library come from Tokyo Pop. They have westernized the layouts, which causes some awkwardness with Migi's name. Migi is Japanese for "righty," since he lives in Shin's right hand. Now with the panel reversed, he lives in Sihn's left hand and goes by the name "lefty."

The question left hanging at the end of Vol 9 is, is Shin ready to be a single parent. He still has to finish high school and fight parasytes.

Parasyte like to have fun

Parasytes play rough

INTO THE SLIPSTREAM: GREY by Jon Armstrong

(Science fiction author Bruce Sterling wrote an article in 1987 that defined "Sliptream" as those novels that incorporated elements of genre fiction into literary fiction. In other words, novels that at the time gave a sense of what it felt like to live in the late twentieth century, and could be even more descriptive of daily life now in the 21st. INTO THE SLIPSTREAM will take a look at some of these novels.)

I know this will be difficult, but try to imagine a world where millions of common, everyday people live their lives vicariously by following the fashion trends, the sex lives, and the day-by-day doings of a select group of super glamorous, super wealthy people.

Wait a minute! That's our world. But do not despair, the world Jon Armstrong creates in his debut novel takes all our fascination with celebrity and wealth and cranks it up several notches. (TMZ would seem as sober as C-SPAN in this world.) We are in an unspecified future with society divided between members of the elite, ruled over by families whose aristocratic status is determined by their corporate holdings and the amount of publicity they can generate, and then, down below, well, everybody else. The slubbers. Those who live in the slubs -- the vast wastelands of housing developments and thrown-together shacks visible some twenty feet below the highways were the families travel in luxury conveyances at jet propelled speeds. (Slubs is my favorite neologism of recent science fiction.)

Enter Michael and Nora, dream couple. Michael, once famous as a teenage dancer on programs watched by millions, is scion of the River Group. Nora family is older, possibly more distinguished, but not so loaded. The slubs and really everyone else in the world seem to watch the couple's every move. As the novel opens they are returning from a highly formalized date that took them around the Pacific Rim. Michael and Nora, however, are also rebels of a kind. In a world where you are defined by what fashion magazines you read, Micheel and Nora are dedicated followers of Pure H, a magazine of excruciatingly subtle layouts complemented by enigmatic statements. Devotees of Pure H reject the gaudy flamboyance of the world around them and wear only shades of gray, brown, and a few carefully chosen color accent pieces. It sounds like that want to live in a Calvin Klein shop from the 1980's, but they do go to extreme. Each has chosen to burn out the rods in one eye so that by closing the other they see the world only in shades of gray.

In a way you can't fault Michael and Nora for their revolt into tastefulness. Michael's father epitomizes the vulgarity of this society. His fashion crimes go far beyond mixing stripes and checks. He is always in what would be some ridiculous costume were it not accepted as high fashion by those around him. His mouth is a fountain of enthusiastic obscenities that would give Judd Apatow pause. He has a cameraman in charge of documenting his every move and a hairdresser, with the marvelous name Xavid, who never leaves his side.

This book does have a plot, taken loosely from Romeo and Juliet. As star-crossed lovers Michael and Nora may be rather tedious, but that's part of Armstrong's joke. Their coupling while on the run is left discretely off stage. It is impossible to imagine the two of them involved in anything as squishy as sex.

There are assassination attempts, betrayals, daring escapes, and a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride shortcut over the North Pole. And Michael's estranged mother runs a carnival. She's quite a character.

I can imagine people either loving this book or thinking it is too clever for its own good. I am obviously in the first camp.

(Follow the "slipstream: label for reviews of other slipstream novels,)

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