The Ultimate Salient

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “The Ultimate Salient” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1940.

Gutenberg Link

The Ultimate Salient

SPOILERS BELOW

“The Ultimate Salient” sees a science fiction author beseeched for help by a man who has made telepathic contact with someone in the future. He relays an extremely long and boring story, the ultimate point of which is that future guy is stuck on a spaceship that’s running out of air and his only hope for survival is if one of the cheap science fiction magazines he has with him contains the chemical formula for chlorophyll, so this author needs to write a story which contains that formula so that it can be read by him in the future. And this turns out to be that very story, with the formula given at the end: C55,H70,O6,N4,Mg. (Which is specifically Chlorophyll b, one of six different types of chlorophyll). And with that, the day is saved! From that formula, it should be easy to reconstruct the chlorophyll molecule; after all, how complicated could its structure be?

…Oh. Well, uh, good luck with that.

Seriously, though, I was bored out of my mind reading this. The payoff is in no way worth the slog to get there.

Final Rating: 1/5

The Lost Girl

Someone spare thoughts for this lost girl. Someone show me through this lost world. Someone out there who’s without a doubt there, guide this little lost girl. Let’s find The Lost Girl, by Anne Ursu.

Synopsis:

When you’re an identical twin, your story always starts with someone else. For Iris, that means her story starts with Lark. Iris has always been the grounded, capable, and rational one; Lark has been inventive, dreamy, and brilliant—and from their first moments in the world together, they’ve never left each other’s side. Everyone around them realized early on what the two sisters already knew: they had better outcomes when they were together.

When fifth grade arrives, however, it is decided that Iris and Lark should be split into different classrooms, and something breaks in them both. Iris is no longer so confident; Lark retreats into herself as she deals with challenges at school. And at the same time, something strange is happening in the city around them, things both great and small going missing without a trace. As Iris begins to understand that anything can be lost in the blink of an eye, she decides it’s up to her to find a way to keep her sister safe.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The Lost Girl is about twins Iris and Lark. Though they’ve been in the same class all through elementary school, their parents decide to split them into separate classes in their final year, much to their distress. Also, a new antique shop with a hint of magic to it has opened in town, and things have started disappearing – both large objects from around the city, and small objects from inside the girls’ house. These plot threads converge… eventually. Very, very eventually.

This is the third book by Anne Ursu that I’ve read, and my complaint about it is the same as about the previous ones: it takes forever to get to the interesting part. The early chapters do a good job of establishing the characters of Iris and Lark and getting me invested in their relationship, but then they spend most of the book not really doing much of anything outside of angsting about their school situation while I’m stuck wondering when the magic elements are going to come into play.

This story had a lot of good elements to it; I just wish it was either shorter or more stuff happened in it, because as it is, the plot feels stretched thin. As such, my final rating of The Lost Girl is just alright.

Final Rating: 3/5

Revolt on Io

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Revolt on Io” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1941.

Gutenberg Link

Revolt on Io

SPOILERS BELOW

In “Revolt on Io”, a revolt has broken out on, you guessed it, Io. A ship is heading there carrying a courier bringing information vital to the allies, but someone else on board is a spy working for the traitors. The protagonist is charged with protecting the courier from the spy, with the problem that he doesn’t know who out of the crew and passengers they are. Naturally, there are other characters hiding their own dark secrets – a jewel thief, a drug dealer – who get caught up in the investigation, and a misinterpreted message causes him to mistake the courier for the spy, but he’s able to save the day in the end.

This was a decent enough short story of intrigue and espionage. Not great by any means; but given that the other Nelson S. Bond stories I’ve read have ranged from bad to terrible, my standards have been sufficiently lowered to give this one a pass. Just try not to think too hard about the inherent assumption that the primitive natives who are rebelling are obviously the bad guys and the human colonists overseeing them (for their own good, naturally, them being too stupid and primitive to run their own society) are obviously the good guys; there’s all sorts of white man’s burden stuff in there that I’m not prepared to unpack.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Girl Who Hibernates

Summer has come and passed, the innocent can never last. Wake me up when September ends. Let’s settle down for the winter with The Girl Who Hibernates, by Satori Okita.

Synopsis:

In a world where winter claims half the year, Haru Tamura, a florist’s daughter, feels suffocated by her high school life of merely conforming to others. Her peaceful days are disrupted when she encounters a mysterious girl who repeatedly hibernates. This is a tale of small hopes blossoming in the hearts of 2 girls.

Source: Anime Planet

SPOILERS BELOW

The Girl Who Hibernates is a one-shot set in a world that is rapidly cooling, with winter now lasting six months of the year. The main character is a girl named Tamura who befriends a transfer student into her class, Shimotsuki. Shimotsuki has a condition that causes her to hibernate through winter; with winters becoming longer, she now spends more than half the year asleep, which forces her to keep transferring schools. Though Shimotsuki tells Tamura to give up on being friends with her, as Tamura will move on while Shimotsuki sleeps ever more of her life away, this only encourages Tamura to treasure every moment they’re able to spend together. When Shimotsuki does eventually fall into hibernation, Tamura brings her flowers every day; eventually so many flowers accumulate in her room that Shimotsuki’s body is fooled into thinking spring has come, and she awakens.

This was a really sweet manga. Though it isn’t explicitly yuri, there are definite romantic undertones to Tamura and Shimotsuki’s relationship, and I enjoyed their chemistry together: how Shimotsuki encourages Tamura to assert herself and stand up to her bullies at school, and how Tamura’s gesture of gratitude ends up uncovering a treatment for Shimotsuki’s condition. Also, while I can find pure contemporary romance stories a bit boring, the speculative fiction hooks of the lengthening winter and Shimotsuki’s condition helped catch my interest long enough for me to get invested in the characters and their relationship. On the whole, a solid one-shot.

The Girl Who Hibernates made for a very pleasant read.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Castaway

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “The Castaway” by Nelson S. Bond writing as George Danzell, published in Planet Stories in 1940.

Gutenberg Link

The Castaway

SPOILERS BELOW

“The Castaway” sees a space ship locate a man stranded on an asteroid, rescuing him just as his oxygen runs out. The man wants to die, and sabotages the ship to try to destroy it with him on board; but the crew convince him to fix the sabotage by asking him in God’s name, which he apparently cannot disobey. Turns out he’s the immortal Wandering Jew, doomed to seek death and never find it.

Ugh, you got your religion in my sci-fi – and that’s not even getting into the very questionable stuff about “the coloration of the races of man” which the story feels fit to bring up. Nope, not for me.

Final Rating: 1/5

Princess #1: The Stepsister Scheme

The prettiest girl in all the land was left alone without a hand to hold or teach or mold or pray. She fell down the sewer and got led astray. Monsters, demons, and all the rest took her soul and innocence. They tweezed and pulled all that was left ’til she was made a Disney princess. Let’s plot The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim C. Hines.

Synopsis:

What would happen if an author went back to the darker themes of the original fairy tales for his plots, and then crossed the Disney princesses with “Charlie’s Angels?” Hines delivers a new take on what happened to Cinderella and her prince after the wedding. Original.

You know how all those old fairy tales take you through lots of scary adventures till you finally reach that inevitable line: “And they lived happily ever after…” Guess what? It’s not true. Life in never-never land isn’t all sweetness and light. Cinderella – whose real name is Danielle Whiteshore (nee Danielle de Glas) – does marry Prince Armand. And (if you can ignore the pigeon incident) their wedding is a dream-come-true.

But not long after the “happily ever after,” Danielle is attacked by her stepsister Charlotte, who suddenly has all sorts of magic to call upon. And though Talia – otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty – comes to the rescue (she’s a martial arts master, and all those fairy blessings make her almost unbeatable), Charlotte gets away.

That’s when Danielle discovers a number of disturbing facts: Armand has been kidnapped and taken to the realm of the Fairies; Danielle is pregnant with his child; and the Queen has her very own Secret Service that consists of Talia and Snow (White, of course). Snow is an expert at mirror magic and heavy-duty flirting.

Can three princesses track down Armand and extract both the prince and themselves from the clutches of some of fantasyland’s most nefarious villains?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The Stepsister Scheme is set in a fantasy world of magic, curses, and fantastical beings where fairytale stories take place. Danielle Whiteshore (Cinderella) is adjusting to life as a princess after marrying Prince Armand, only for him to suddenly go missing when her wicked stepsisters attack the castle using powerful magic. It’s clear that this isn’t something that they could have managed themselves, but who is backing them and why? Danielle teams up with Talia Malak-el-Dahshat (Sleeping Beauty) and Ermillina Curtana (Snow White) to find out, beginning a journey that sees them confront dangerous fairies and vengeful ghosts.

This was a really interesting book. It did an excellent job at reinventing the fairytale princesses into action heroes by calling back to or reinterpreting various aspects of their legends: the supernatural grace and skill at dance bestowed on Sleeping Beauty by the fairies translating into fighting skills, for instance, or Snow White learning the magic used by the Evil Queen from her enchanted mirror after defeating her. I also appreciated that it didn’t go with the more well-known Disney versions of the fairy tales but went back to the original Grimm versions: having Cinderella’s benefactor being not a fairy godmother but rather her mother’s spirit acting through a tree that grew on her grave, for instance. And it did a good job of delivering both exciting action scenes and clever moments where Cinderella used lateral thinking to outwit fairies who challenged her with puzzles, riddles, or other such obstacles.

The Stepsister Scheme is a promising start to the Princess series, and I look forwards to seeing what future books have to offer.

Final Rating: 4/5

Beyond Light

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Beyond Light” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1940.

Gutenberg Link

Beyond Light

SPOILERS BELOW

In “Beyond Light”, a ship crashes on Venus. The three survivors are captured by subterranean bat-men, the dreaded Vampires of Venus, who plan to eat the men and mate with the woman. (Seriously? Ugh.) However, the protagonist uses his knowledge of refrigeration systems to cool the caves and send them into hibernation, allowing the captives to escape.

This was very nearly a decent story, up until the mate thing came up. Why throw that in there? Why on Earth (or Venus) would these weird alien creatures be sexually interested in a human woman? This is the second story in a row by Nelson S. Bond I’ve read where the villain suddenly develops a creepy sexual interest in the female heroine (the previous one being “Dictator of Time”); I seriously hope this isn’t a recurring trend for him. Much more of this, and I might start to suspect he sees women as nothing more than love-objects, devoid of any character, personality, or narrative purpose other than being lusted over by the males, be they human or alien.

Final Rating: 2/5

No\Name

Behind the black cell bars, I was born. I wish for the price for my malice. Well, I’ll give you that justice, as much as you desire it, before you can destroy or be destroyed by it. I pay the price for my karma. Let’s go together, monster without a name. Let’s name-drop No\Name, by Rafal Jaki and Machine Gamu.

Synopsis:

In a world where people’s names grant them superhuman powers… Two agents from the Nordic Naming Bureau (NNB), an agency specialized in investigating crimes committed by “Namers”, handle the case of a man and his missing wife and son. Things take a turn, however, when the duo come face to face with the man, who wishes to give his son the same name as himself…

Source: Anime Planet

SPOILERS BELOW

No\Name is set in a world where a person’s name gives them a related superpower. As such, the names children are given require government approval. Our protagonists are Ralf (“wolf commander”) and Ursula (“bear), agents for the Nordic Naming Bureau, an organization that investigates crimes committed using name powers. The series sets up a mystery involving terrorist attacks that seem to be committed using name powers, but by culprits with names unrelated to the powers used. However, it never gets around to actually solving that mystery (which seemed to involve abducted children and a secret book of previously unknown names of great power) because it got cancelled at just 14 chapters.

So, the setting of this series is actually very interesting. It’s a comic book cliche for superheroes and supervillains to have civilian names that are coincidentally appropriate for their powers, but making it explicit that names give relevant powers is a new twist with compelling implications for the setting. Unfortunately, it never really gets explored: the first chapter hints at government involvement in approving names (and sometimes in assigning names against the parents’ wishes), we don’t get to see the impact that has on this society, because Ralf and Ursula only get to investigate a grand total of two cases before the series’s unceremonious end.

It is a major failing of this series that it never pays off its premise; but that is almost certainly due to it being cut short, which then raises the question: what were the problems that caused it to fail in the first place? Personally, I blame the case they investigate in the first chapter, which sees them royally fuck up and kill a woman who was trying to save her baby from her abusive husband, then fail to prevent the husband from regaining custody of the baby. If the first thing we see our protagonists do is majorly fuck up, we’re going to think of them as major fuck-ups. I’m not going to say you can’t have a series where the protagonist makes a big mistake at the beginning and the main plot is about them trying to fix it, or even that you can’t have a grim and gritty series where the protagonists are morally grey enforcers of a broken and corrupt system (Psycho-Pass comes to mind); but such a thing is harder to pull off than your typical shounen, and the author here didn’t prove up to it. Ralf and Ursula made a bad first impression, and nothing was really done to counteract it; they just moved on to the next case like we were expected to sympathize with and root for them just because they were the designated protagonists. It also certainly didn’t help matters that the time the series did get wasn’t used very wisely: it felt like more time was spent following Ursula competing in Bear Fight Club events than actually working on the case or developing the plot. As much as I would have liked to see the world is set up have time to get properly developed, I can’t say it didn’t deserve cancellation based on the story it actually delivered.

No\Name is a series with a promising premise that unfortunately squandered its potential.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dictator of Time

Project Gutenberg is a massive digital library of public domain works. Its archives contain not merely novels, but also numerous short stories from magazines with adjectives like “Amazing”, “Thrilling”, “Startling” and “Wondrous” in their titles. I’m making my way through its vast catalogue of these speculative fiction works. Today, I’ll be looking at “Dictator of Time” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1940.

Gutenberg Link

Dictator of Time

SPOILERS BELOW

“Dictator of Time” sees the protagonists, Larry and Sandra, abducted by a future scientist with a time machine who wants to vivisect them in the name of research. Naturally, as primitive barbarians, their ethical objections to this procedure are ignored. However, despite being incredible geniuses when it comes to building time machines, the Masters (as the future people call themselves) are incredibly inept when it comes to imprisoning captives, and so Larry and Sandra are able to escape in due course and raise a slave rebellion to overthrow the Masters.

This story had a lot of bad elements. There was the trite, by-the-numbers romance between Larry and Sandra, a groan-inducing and completely irrelevant past-life regression sequence, and an incredibly cliched moment where the villain offers to spare Sandra if she will be his bride. But at least it had a decent action climax with the rebellion, I’ll give it that much.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dave Barry #23: You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About

I spent ten long days in Jerusalem. Mm, Jerusalem. Sweet Jerusalem. And all I ate was olives. Nothing but olives. Mountains of olives. It was a good ten days, I like olives. I like you too. So when I tell you that I love you, don’t test my love. Accept my love. Don’t test my love, ‘cause maybe I don’t love you all that much. Let’s go out with You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty, by Dave Barry.

Synopsis:

A brilliantly funny exploration of the twin mysteries of parenthood and families from the Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times –bestselling author of Insane City .

In his New York Times – bestselling I’ll Mature When I’m Dead , Dave Barry embarked on the treacherous seas of adulthood, to hilarious results. What comes next? Parenthood, of course, and families.

In uproarious, brand-new pieces, Barry tackles everything from family trips, bat mitzvah parties and dating (he’s serious about that “When my daughter can legally commence dating—February 24, 2040—I intend to monitor her closely, even if I am deceased”) to funeral instructions (“I would like my eulogy to be given by William Shatner”), the differences between male and female friendships, the deeper meaning of Fifty Shades of Grey , and a father’s ultimate accompanying his daughter to a Justin Bieber concert (“It turns out that the noise teenaged girls make to express happiness is the same noise they would make if their feet were being gnawed off by badgers”).

Let’s face families not only enrich our lives every day, they drive us completely around the bend. Thank goodness we have Dave Barry as our guide!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Based on its subtitle, you might assume that this Dave Barry book would be on the subject of parenting. However, you would assume wrongly: according to the introduction, the title was chosen for marketing purposes. There are one or two columns (or perhaps I should says essays, since they weren’t previously published in the newspaper; but I’m so used to referring to his work as columns that it’s a hard habit to break) that are indeed about parenthood, but the majority would fall under the category of “other subjects”.

In a sense, this is fortunate, because parenthood is not a topic I really relate to and I find Barry’s columns a lot funnier when they’re about subjects I’m interested in. Unfortunately, however, by far the longest portion of the book is dedicated to a trip he took to Israel. Not being a member of an Abrahamic faith, I don’t have any particular interest in the sacred sites of that region; and current world events do not have me in much of a mood to laugh about Israel. That one kind of soured my reading experience. The other columns were decent to good, but since the Israel one was about four times as long, it kind of overshadowed them a bit.

You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty is alright.

Final Rating: 3/5