I’m not a big fan of Dickens; I usually find him tedious and long-winded.
But it would take a far more curmudgeonly fellow than I am to dislike Mr.
Pickwick and his travelling companions, to say nothing of the inimitable
Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick’s unsinkable servant.

This was my second time through The Pickwick Papers; I doubt
it will be my last. The first time I read it, it was as a Project
Gutenberg e-text on my PDA. I picked up a paperback copy while I was in
Vancouver last month. I needed a book to read while I ate dinner, and
the only bookstore I could find was a remainder shop. Fortunately it had
a number of remaindered classics, Pickwick among them.

This is a very long book to read straight through, and I don’t recommend
that you do that; but being largely episodic in nature it’s a wonderful
book to pick up every so often, between other books, and that’s how I
read it.

Bring a little bit of patience, and don’t take too much at once, and I
think you’ll enjoy it considerably.

My last few Heinlein reviews have all contained caveats, not least that
the reviewed books have all been dated in various ways. This one I can
unequivocally recommend–not least because it’s what I call a “small”
story.

I class plots as “big stories” and “small stories”.
The Lord of the Rings is the canonical big story–the fate of
the entire world is at stake. I like epics as well as anyone else, but
they are problematic. When you’re writing a big story, the tale you’re
telling is by definition the most important thing going on in your world.
At best, that spoils your world as a setting for smaller stories; at
worst, it trivializes your story if the tale you’re telling isn’t good
enough to carry the weight. And then, of course, you get plot
inflation–somehow your big story has to be grander and more explosive
and have a more memorable ending than the next guy’s.

The big story is a natural temptation, of course–having invented an
entire world, one naturally wants to use all of it. And so I find
that in the F&SF genre, small stories, stories about events that are
important to those involved but which do not shake the world as a whole,
are not only more interesting, but also better written than the big
stories. The author of a small story has learned some restraint.

Such is the case here. Humanity is colonizing the galaxy, spreading from
planet to planet by means of teleportation gates. Pioneering on newly
discovered planets is extremely hazardous–no one knows all of the
dangers until much later. And so, in order to qualify as a colonist, one
must have completed a detailed course in survival. The course culminates
in a survival test: each individual is dropped onto a wild planet, they
know not where, and must somehow survive until retrieved some days later.
It’s not easy–if you survive, you pass the test. If you fail, you’re
dead.

This book is the story of one particular survival test, a test that goes
grossly awry. The only book I can compare it with is
Lord of the Flies–except to say that Heinlein is much more
optimistic about the human capability to adapt and survive and maintain
civility than William Golding. As a descendant of pioneers
myself, I think Heinlein’s more likely to be correct.

Anyway, it’s good stuff–not earthshaking, but a good solid novel. If you
like Heinlein’s style, go buy it.

This is a deceptively silly book about destiny and the nature of fantasy
fiction. I picked it up on a whim, based on the cover description,
thinking that it was more likely to be really bad, but if good might be a
lot of fun.

It’s the story of a young man named Apropos, the son of a prostitute and
the child of an unknown father. He’s got a mishapen and useless leg
(a birth defect), a flame shaped book mark, and a bad attitude; he’s a
classic anti-hero in the style of Harry Flashman. In fact, the book
reads rather like a mixture of Harry Flashman with
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. For a period of time,
Apropos is squire to Sir Umbrage of the Flaming Nether Regions (the name
describes his manor, not his person); at one point he encounters the
dreadful Harpers Bizarre.

Except that sometimes it’s more serious than that.

I began the book skeptically; I grew to enjoy it; by the end, after
numerous twists and surprises, I was really rather pleased. The closing
scene is as good a close as I’ve seen in quite awhile.

There’s a sequel out in hardcover, The Woad to Wuin; I’m
looking forward to it.

Sedley writes mysteries set in 1400’s in England during the War of the
Roses. Her detective is Roger the Chapman, a failed monk who peddles door
to door from his pack–oddments like laces, needles, pins and assorted
pieces of fabric. The conceit is that he is telling each story looking
back on his life from old age, 50 years after the action has taken place.
“Death and the Chapman” is the first in the series and sets up the life
of Roger leaving the monastery to seek his fortune on the road after his
mother dies and frees him from his obligation to fulfill her wishes that
he become a monk. The cloistered life is not for him so he buys a pack of
inventory from a retiring Chapman and sets out. He discovers, eventually,
that the son of a wealthy Alderman has disappeared on a journey to London
and promises to investigate when he reaches London.

The Plymouth Cloak follows shortly afterwards when Roger is asked to
protect a messenger of the Duke of Gloucester on his journey to deliver a
secret letter to France. The Plymouth Cloak refers to the club that Roger
carries as his weapon on the journey. Unfortunately, he and the messenger
are not particularly compatible and his discovery that the guy has
engaged in kidnapping young children and dwarves and selling them to
royalty for court jesters doesn’t endear him either. They are attacked
and Roger must figure out if the attacks are directed at the message they
carry or are retribution for the messenger’s former shady trade.

These were ok mysteries. The action dragged in places and I often wished
she’d hurry up and put something into the plot to make it more
interesting. The period detail was there but could have been done better.
Roger isn’t a compelling detective. He seems to stumble upon the answer
rather than figure it out. I kept comparing these books to Ellis Peter’s
Brother Cadfael mysteries and they seriously fall short of the standard
Peters created. I have one more in the series that I purchased along with
these so perhaps they will improve as they go along. If you like medieval
mysteries, they might be worth picking up at a used bookstore. I doubt I
would pay full price for them, though. There are too many really good
mysteries out there.

I have read other mysteries by Wright and been impressed with her plot
lines and general writing so when I found this one in the used bookstore
I pulled it off the shelf right away. After I got home, I realized they
charged me $6 for it because it’s out of print but, hey, it’s less than
the price of a movie and it took me at least a couple hours to read it.

The story opens on a rainy night with the murder of the young woman by
some shadowy man in a dark clearing in a woods outside of Sechelt,
British Columbia. No names, no motives and no descriptions of the people
involved. Fortunately, Sechelt is blessed to have Staff Sergeant Karl
Alberg, of the CMP, to handle figuring out the who’s and why’s of it. Not
that he fits the profile of a Mountie, mind you. He’s slightly
overweight, doesnÂ’t wear the red uniform, is middle-aged and drives a
beat-up car rather than flinging himself on a horse. His subordinates
aren’t really movie Mountie material either. Plus Alberg has his eye
on the local librarian who, unfortunately, is having an affair with a
movie star taking a sabbatical from the pace of life in California. As
the lone stranger in town, the movie star is the prime suspect.

The whole thing sounds pretty lame but it actually reads quite well.
Summarize the plot to a Stephen King novel (who I think is a dynamite
storyteller), and it sounds just as hokey. Wright uses the weather
beautifully, particularly the rain, to add to the eerieness and suspense
of having a murderer in the town. There’s brush and brambles and dripping
water and fog. She adds some local color characters that ring true and
sets up some other possible victims that you just know are going to get
it next. My only beef is that the ending moved a little too fast. She
could have drawn it out a little more and gave the killer more lines but,
all in all, I really like this book.

I wish I could find more of her books. Sadly, none of the chains carry her.

I remember when this book first came out. I remember picking it up,
looking it over, and saying to myself, “Oh. Another incompetent wizard.
How nice.” Then I put it back on the shelf. At that point I’d read a
number of Terry
Pratchett‘s books about Rincewind the inept
wizard, and a number of Craig Shaw Gardner’s books about
Wuntvor the Eternal Apprentice, as well as several other singletons along
the same lines, and frankly I was tired of the whole thing. I’m still
very fond of Rincewind, but you couldn’t pay me to read anything by
Craig Shaw Gardner these days (nor for many years prior to
this one). But I was browsing about the bookstore the other day, and saw
it on the shelf, and thought to myself, “You know, this book has been
continuously in print for the last ten years. Perhaps it’s better than
I expected.” So I bought it, and today (so as not to go through the
Heinleins I bought too quickly) I picked it up and read it.

Frankly, it was a victim of bad packaging. Daimbert, the hero, isn’t so
much inept as lazy; as a student he’d been too fond of drinking and
skipping lectures to learn what he was supposed. And while the cover
makes it look like a zany comedy, it’s really nothing of the kind, which
is a good thing–few authors are really good at it, and bad zany comedy
is unspeakably bad, like a failed souffle. Which is why I no longer read
Craig Shaw Gardner; I made the mistake of trying to read one
of his books aloud to Jane once. Like the souffle it fell; and there was
no point in trying to revive it again.

But I digress. Daimbert, new graduate of the Wizard’s School in the
City, is hired as Royal Wizard of a small kingdom called Yurt. And
Daimbert hasn’t been there very long when it becomes clear that there’s
something wrong. The King is aging unnaturally; Daimbert’s wizard locks
are broken; the evil something the previous Royal Wizard though he had
permanently pent up in his tower chamber is gone. And eventually,
Daimbert figures out what it is.

As a mystery, the book is only so-so; the clues were clear enough that by
the time Daimbert fingered the nominal culprit the answer had been
obvious for quite a long while. But as a fantasy, it was quite
competent, and it provided me an entertaining afternoon while Jane was
celebrating her birthday. (She had a group of girlfriends to an English High
Tea. I was not invited. I was not sorry not to be invited, either.
Some things Man was not meant to know.) The book has a good heart.

One other thing that’s worthy of note: it’s one of the few fantasy or
science fiction novels I’ve read in quite a long while in which organized
religion is treated at all positively; and more surprisingly, the
religion is Christianity. What a Christian church is doing in a fantasy
world I have no idea; but the local priest, while lacking somewhat in
humor, becomes Daimbert’s good friend. The presentation of Christianity
is neither detailed nor profound (nor, in this sort of book, should it be
either)–but the very fact that it’s positive is remarkable.

This is book about pioneering, survival, and the Boy Scouts–on Ganymede,
one of Jupiter’s satellites (A condensed version of it appeared in
Boy’s Life magazine). And actually, it’s
quite good, and has much, much less of the dated feel of
Starman Jones, despite having been written three years earlier.

I had somewhat the same feeling reading this as I did reading
1632 a month or so ago–a sense that I was reading about
values that our popular culture has done its best to trivialize
out of existence. When did basic morality become something to laugh at,
rather than to adhere to? When did the Boy Scout Oath start seeming
quaint? I think we’re coming to a time when such things will seem less
like a laughing matter, and more like a way of life. I sure hope so.

But anyway, it’s a good book. I liked it.

Will suggested I read the books in this series in order so that I don’t
spoil them by knowing too much ahead of time and I would agree that is
the way to go. You have to have all the background so that you can
FINALLY get to the best book in the series and actually get all the jokes
Bujold throws at you in such short a time. And while you are at it, you
might want to brush up on Jane Austen and Bronte and the others she lists
in her dedication because they all show up in the book one way or the
other. So do Hamlet and Rumpole but you donÂ’t really need to know them
as well.

The plot is fairly simple. Miles falls in love and, being Miles, sets
about courting with the same tactics he used to take over planets and
conduct covert ops for ImpSec. Unfortunately, he forgets to include his
lady love in on the mission plan. Also unfortunately, his brother, Lord
Mark, has been undergoing therapy on Beta colony for his, um, “issues”
and met up with the brainy, chesty daughter of Miles’ mother’s former
female bodyguard. And Lord Mark comes home with a scheme to make money on
Barrayar using genetically altered bugs that make something like tofu in
their guts, setting up shop in the basement of Vorkosignan House. Oh yes,
and Emperor Gregor is getting married and the entire city of Vorbarra
Sultana is preparing for the social and political event of the season,
including poor Ivan who is assigned to run errands for his mother, Lady
Alys, who is in charge of the entire wedding and tired of her son running
after anything in skirts and not settling down to provide her with
grandchildren. And that’s the simple version of the plot. I left out all
the sub plots, including the sex change operation of Lady Donna to get
herself a Vor Countship and dear Pym, playing straight man in the whole
mess.

If you are a Miles fan and haven’t read this one, buzz thru the books
before so you can read this one. Go back and reread the others later for
themselves. It’s worth it just to read the scene where Miles throws a
dinner party. Honest!

I’ve been avoiding Heinlein’s juveniles for years because of bad
experiences I had with them in elementary school. I tried reading two or
three of them–of which this might or might not be one, I’m not sure–and
every one of them seemed to begin with some poor kid in an intolerably
painful clash with authority and no appeal. At the time, this was not
something I was prepared to cope with. Those I’ve read in the last few
years have done nothing to weaken that impression; in fact, I think it’s
truer than I realized. Fortunately I’m no longer twelve and can get
past all that.

But all of Heinlein’s work appears to be back in print these days, so on
the strength of the Heinlein books I read on my recent trip to Vancouver
I’ve decided to make the effort to pick up the rest of the set. Here’s
the first of the lot.

Starman Jones is the tale of Max Jones, a young kid in
trouble. His dad is long dead, leaving him to run the farm and support
his step-mother; his step-mother has married the town
ne’er-do-well; his late uncle the Astrogator neglected to add his nephew’s
name to the rolls of the Astrogators’ Guild. For Max lives in a future
United States where all of the professions are controlled by hereditary
guilds. He has the talents and many of the skills he needs to go to
space, and no way to get there.

Of course these little problems are resolved satisfactorily, with a
plethora of exciting adventures; but what struck me most is Heinlein’s
impression of what space flight would be like. (Note:
Starman Jones was written in 1953.) The most important person
on board ship is the Astrogator; it is his job to pilot the ship into the
charted anomalies which provide quick transport around the galaxy. To do
the job, the Astrogator must track the ship’s position minute by minute as
the ship approaches the anomaly; he must continually compute and apply course
correction factors or the ship might be lost in space when it leaves the
anomaly again. He has the help of a couple of chartsmen and a
“computerman”; the chartsmen feed him numbers from a book of tables, and
the computerman enters the result of the Astrogator’s calculations
into the ship’s computer to perform the needed course corrections.
That’s right–the important calculations all take place in the
Astrogator’s head.

Even more interesting is the way in which they take sightings of the
ship’s position. They take photographs of the star field (real
photographs, on photographic plates) and compare them with photographs on
file or taken just previously.

It’s as though you built a starship with all 1953 technology, except for
the space drive.

I do have to given Heinlein credit; he’s one of the few science fiction
authors who gives the feeling that he really understands what computing
orbits and trajectories is all about. And the mechanisms he describes
would probably do the job. But man! Just thinking of relying on
fallible human beings and brute force analog technology to do such
accurate computation in real time makes me cringe.

It’s a good book though; easily better than Red Planet.

Over the last year, Baen Books has been publishing anthologies of all of
Schmitz’ published fiction; this is the penultimate book in the series.
The previous anthologies collected his short stories and novellas in
related series; this one collects everything else but his outstanding
novel The Witches of Karres (which will be re-released in a
few months).

A few of the stories in Eternal Frontier have been
anthologized since their original magazine appearances; most have not, in
some cases because the magazine folded shortly afterward, and nobody had
ever heard of them. So there’s likely to be something new here for all
but the most hardcore Schmitz fans, and it was all new for me.

I wish I could say that I liked this volume as much as its predecessors,
all of which have been great fun. On the other hand, I’m not sorry I
bought it; some of the stories (“Crime Buff”, “The Big Terrarium”, and
“Summer Guests”, to name of a few) are very good. But this isn’t where
I’d start.

If you like science fiction at all, and you’ve not read any of these
reissues, you owe it to yourself to pick up
The Witches of Karres when it comes out. If you like that,
I’d look for the first few books in this edition and only buy this one if
you enjoyed those.