Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (23 page)

“Col, anything that tires you or upsets you is bad. You need rest. Why are you climbing imaginary walls?”

“You don’t know the feeling. If I could jump all the way back, right to the first spark of life, I bet the intensity of life force and joy would be just about too much to stand. I’m going there, Julie. Across the barrier, into the Permian, all the way to the beginning. And I’m never coming back. Never.”

As though on cue, the thin body arched up from the bed, arms flailing. The mouth widened to a rictus of infernal torment and breath came hoarse and loud. Julia cried out, just as the nurse appeared. Wollaston was right behind her.

“Grand mal.” He was bending over Colin, grabbing at a rubber spatula and pushing it into the mouth just as the teeth clenched down. “Hold this, nurse, we don’t want him swallowing his tongue.”

But the spasm ended as quickly as it had started. Colin Trantham lay totally at ease, his breath slow and easy. His face smoothed, and the fixed grin faded. In its place came a look of infinite calm and blissful peace.

“Dr. Wollaston!” The nurse was watching the monitors, her hand on Colin’s pulse. “Dr. Wollaston, we have arrhythmia. Becoming fainter.”

Wollaston had the hypodermic with its six-inch needle in his hand, the syringe already filled. It was poised above Colin Trantham’s chest when he caught Julia’s eye.

She shook her head. “No, Jim. Please. Not for one month more pain.”

He hesitated, finally nodded, and stepped away from the bed.

“Dr. Wollaston.” The nurse looked up, sensing that she had missed something important but not sure what. She was still holding Colin Trantham’s wrist. “I can’t help him. He’s going, doctor. He’s going.”

Julia Trantham moved to grip her brother’s other hand in both of hers.

“He is,” she said. “He’s going.” She leaned forward, to stare down into open eyes that still sparkled with a surprised joy. “He’s going. And I’d give anything to know where.”

Afterword to “The Feynman Saltation”

Anthony Trollope said, “A genius must wait for inspiration. I am not a genius, so I write every day.”

I am not a genius, and I don’t write every day, either, but there is one guaranteed way to get a story from me. You ask me for one, on some specialized subject, and my brain juices start to flow at once.

This story began with a letter from Robert Silverberg, asking if I had a dinosaur story for a new book he was editing. I didn’t, and at the time I was not writing anything because I was busy reading deeply about parasitic diseases and cancer treatment. I also know nothing about dinosaurs.

Naturally, I wrote back at once and said yes; I gave him my proposed title, “The Feynman Saltation,” and I started to write. But I could not get my mind far away from the morbid fascinations of glioblastomas and chemotherapy and antimetabolite drugs. If this tale seems to be more about cancer than dinosaurs, you now know why.

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Copyright © 1992 by Charles Sheffield

...

The above story was taken from
Georgia On My Mind and Other Places
published by Phoenix Pick

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Paperback:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612420303?tag=arcman-20

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Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052GA4H6?tag=arcman-20

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Publisher’s Direct

http://www.PPickings.com

Paul Cook is the author of eight books of science fiction, and is currently both a college instructor and the editor of the
Phoenix Pick Science Fiction Classics line.

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BOOK REVIEWS

by Paul Cook

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The Cassandra Project

by Jack McDevitt & Mike Resnick

Ace Science Fiction 2012

Hardcover, 400 pages

ISBN: 978-1937008710

Two of our most successful writers have joined to produce a taut political and scientific thriller in
The Cassandra Project.

The novel opens with the travails of Jerry Culpepper, a seasoned PR expert at NASA who yearns for the good old days when America had a space program. Now, it’s shutting down completely. Culpepper moves on to work for a multi-billionaire (picture a cross between a visionary such as Richard Branson and a good ole boy who understands how the system—and money—actually works: someone such as Lyndon Johnson). But before all this happens, we, the readers, discover that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin might not have been the first humans on the moon in 1969. Instead, Culpepper discovers redacted photos of the far side of the moon as well as other missing data that suggest a cover-up during the presidency of Richard Nixon. (Watergate figures into this novel. Imagine that!) Nevertheless,
something
was found on the far side of the moon and has been suppressed for more than fifty years by every administration. But what was it? “Bucky” Blackstone wants to fund his own moon mission and find out and Jerry Culpepper is on board.
The Cassandra Project
never lags and is engaging to the very end. In fact, it practically rushes to its conclusion.

A personal note—What drew me to the novel was its main conceit: that there was “something” on the dark side of the moon and that NASA sent two missions to examine it before Armstrong and Aldrin flew the “official” mission to the moon. When I was eleven, I went on the Rocket to the Moon ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. This would have been about 1961. You sat in a seat that leaned back and felt the theater rumble as the rocket took off, and you saw the voyage through an overhead screen. Disney animation wasn’t all that good, but the thrill for an eleven-year-old was to circle the moon and see the Captain fire a flare on the far side of the moon to show the audience the rectangular remains of “something” built there and abandoned a long time ago. This is what science fiction is about: that sense of wonder.

We’re all grown up now, and that sense of wonder has virtually been hammered out of all of us. But it’s the character of Jerry Culpepper that drives the novel. He’s the one with a real sense of wonder and he still has pride in a space program that used to provide that same thrill to a whole world. Now the space program is gone but McDevitt and Resnick manage to evoke just enough to make
The Cassandra Project
worth your time…especially if there’s an eleven-year-old trapped inside you or you remember Disneyland of old.

***

Son of Heaven

by
David Wingrove

Atlantic Books 2012

Paperback: 442 pages

ISBN: 978-1848875265

Reviewed here is the newly-released trade paperback edition of the original UK hardbound publication of David Wingrove’s
Son of Heaven
, which originally came out in 2011.
Son of Heaven
is the first of six projected novels that form a prequel to his extraordinary Chung Kuo series that started in 1989 and concluded in 1999. Those first novels are:

The Middle Kingdom
(1989)

The Broken Wheel
(1990)

The White Mountain
(1992)

The Stone Within (
1993)

Beneath the Tree of Heaven
(1994)

White Moon, Red Dragon
(1994)

Days of Bitter Strength
(1997)

The Marriage of the Living Dark
(1999)

These books were major science fiction bestsellers in the UK but hardly received much traction in the US when they appeared—or at least any traction critically other than a few measly book reviews. If you haven’t discovered this series, then you’re in for a treat. China hasn’t been the focus of much science fiction in the past. Here it is, full bore. The series Chung Kuo (or China) chronicles the rise and fall of a future world dominated by a highly-advanced China which had earlier caused the downfall of the West in the middle of the 21st century. This China has created a fantastic world-smothering City, but despite its power, it is riddled with palace intrigues and a resurgence of the groups (racial, ethnic, and political) who are actively being suppressed by China’s iron rule. Despite the huge cast of the original characters and the unfamiliarity American readers might have with Chinese names and terms, the Chung Kuo series is very readable. It is written with both lyricism and an attention to visual detail. Wingrove is a master writer and a master storyteller, as the original series amply demonstrated. I hope that first series will return to print soon as this new one unfolds.

With this new series, Wingrove is pulling a George Lucas, telling the story of how this future China came about. Unlike Lucas’ prequels to the first three
Star Wars
movies, this new series seems to actually work and requires none of the knowledge of the middle books (now numbered 7-14).
Son of Heaven
, the inaugural novel in this new series, tells the story of Jake Reed, a man who is working in a high-tech London as a financial wizard. It’s 2085 and he discovers that China’s main computer wizard is clandestinely at work to wreck the entire global financial system. Which he does. And it throws the world into barbarism and chaos. Anyone familiar with the world-wrecking novels of British writer John Christopher (Sam Youd), who wrote
The Long Winter
,
The Ragged Edge
, and
No Blade of Grass
, will find much of Wingrove’s post-apocalyptic Wessex familiar (but not derivative).

What makes matters worse is that as Reed is keeping his little village safe from refugees and brigands, they observe to the east a strange white “wall,” like a line of glaciers, appearing along the horizon. This is the City being built out of nano-particles, super-cement, and indestructible steel. Then there are the odd blimp-like airships with Chinese dragon insignias flying in the distance: China is literally covering the surface of the earth with a fantastic white city that’s building itself on its own. Behind it all is Tsao Ch’un, the current Chinese ruler, who wants to destroy every aspect of Western Civilization. Jake Reed gets caught up in this conquest and thus the series begins.

The novel does stand on its own, but such is Wingrove’s skill that we do want to see how this turns out, what else China has in mind to conquer. Wingrove knows his science fiction and he creates sympathetic characters who have deep family concerns as well as broader cultural worries. This would also include one Chinese general who has a strong moral streak, a man who is probably to be further tested as the series progresses (as well as Jake Reed).

Son of Heaven
is actually a quick read and the series, taken together, stands a good chance of becoming science fiction’s equivalent of
War and Peace
. It’s
that
good.

***

Sisterhood of Dune

by
Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Tor Science Fiction 2012

Hardcover: 496 pages

ISBN: 978-0765322739

Sisterhood of Dune
is the opening work in a trilogy that predates the Dune series at the conclusion of the Battle of Corrin where all thinking machines (and a whole bunch of human beings) were destroyed. Faykan Butler has taken the name of Corrino and has pronounced himself as the first Emperor of a new order—the Imperium.
Sisterhood
starts in the backwash of the Corrin conflict where disorder rules the roost and all kinds of minor groups and partisans fight to find their place in this new society.

The novel follows the Butlerians, led by Manford Torondo, as they further their jihad to destroy all technology, and the Bene Gesserit, which is just starting to evolve, led by the Reverend Mother Raquella Berto-Anirul, who is working on a human breeding program (which will lead to Paul Atreides, of course). The Emperor, meanwhile, has his hands full juggling palace intrigues, dealing with the Suk school, the rise of the Swordmaster school, and the Mental adepts, always an interesting group. One of the most interesting tropes in this novel is the rise of the Navigators, probably the most important class of (altered) humans in the entire
Dune
series. I personally found their story the most enthralling (mostly because I know where it’s going to lead and how important the Navigators will be).

Sisterhood of Dune
is really a fine read, falling squarely into the space opera category, moving perhaps a bit faster than the original Frank Herbert books in this series—probably because it’s less philosophical than the original novels, less talky. Herbert fils
and
Anderson write with both passion and skill, and the action is non-stop. All the tropes and conceits that run through Frank Herbert’s original trilogy are here and the authors don’t much violate Frank Herbert’s original creation.

The real issue here is whether or not these books add anything to the series or perhaps whether they should exist at all. The former notion is probably not germane or relevant. Readers read these books because they take us back to the original universe and all of the original intrigues. Franchising is nothing new in science fiction and novels-in-franchise such as the
Star Wars
novels and the
Star Trek
books are a case in point. True, neither Brian Herbert nor Kevin Anderson
are
Frank Herbert and thus cannot write like him. Still, none of that is to the point, nor should it be. Herbert and Anderson have wisely made their
Dune
books their own and really make no effort to write in Frank Herbert’s style. (And we can be thankful that they don’t enter the heads of their characters where we are privy to their every thought. There are hardly any italics in this book, and for that both authors deserve medals.)