Con-Fen

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 “Con-Fen” by James R. Adams, published in Planet Stories in 1953.

Gutenberg Link

Con-Fen

SPOILERS BELOW

“Con-Fen” is about two Martians, Koosh and Thuko, who are visiting Chicago. They are protected by some psychic mechanism that renders them invisible to anyone who does not believe in Martians. Unfortunately, they happen to choose to visit a sci-fi convention full of people who do believe in Martians; and then, when running away, get hit by a truck being driven by someone who doesn’t believe in Martians. Don’t feel too bad for them, though; they were assholes who murdered a Jovian to steal his spaceship and brought leprosy to Earth in the process.

This story didn’t particularly work for me. It’s intended to be a comedy, I think, but I didn’t find it particularly funny. There is some satisfaction to be found in the fact that the Martians deserved their fate, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a compelling narrative. On the whole, something of a miss.

Final Rating: 2/5

Assembly

Everyone, everywhere, shed yourselves of everything and gather in the street. We’re falling to pieces. We’re so pulled apart and we fight with no purpose. We’re all disassembled from the start. Let’s put together Assembly, by Sherard Jackson.

Synopsis:

In a land where war and rain are constant, the only way to pull your life together is sacrifice. A tale exploring the line between reality and perception unfolds in a war-torn socialist city-state. Giant mechanized warriors are locked in a perpetual struggle, but it is the flying corps, the pilots, who fuel the war. What motivates Shon, a young woman living in poverty, to sign away her freedom for almost certain death?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Assembly is set in a totalitarian state in a dystopian future. Shon joins the state military, lured by the family legacy of service and the promise of a steady paycheck, despite her older sister Elaine’s warnings. She serves initially as a surgeon in the medic corps, getting promoted to giant robot pilot when the grueling death toll causes the army to run out of more qualified candidates. Given an outdated suit, she finds herself thrust onto the front lines.

The story of Assembly was decent, if a bit predictable; my problem was with the art. Now, I’ll always maintain that art quality is less important than story quality, in that a good story can make up for bad art; I’m a fan of some extremely low-art-quality works like Trixie Slaughteraxe For President. However, there’s a threshold, and that’s when the art quality it so poor that it hampers my understanding of the story. That line was crossed during the fight scenes, where I often couldn’t tell what the hell was going on: what the mechs were doing, or even which mech belonged to which side. I’d find myself having to reread pages, trying to determine if the mech that blew up was an enemy or an ally, thus breaking the flow of the story, and it was hard to stay invested in the action when it was all just a big blob of crap with no way to tell who was doing what. As such, I can’t really say I enjoyed this comic.

Assembly #1-4 are collected in Assembly.

Final Rating: 2/5

Quest on Phoebe

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 “Quest on Phoebe” by James R. Adams, published in Planet Stories in 1947.

Gutenberg Link

Quest on Phoebe

SPOILERS BELOW

“Quest on Phoebe” is about Ron Farr, an explorer searching the jungles of Phoebe for the elixir of eternal life which is rumored to be hidden there, placed by aliens called the Ancients and surrounded with traps to protect it from the unworthy. After senselessly murdering one of the natives just because, he overcomes a number of traps and reaches the temple that holds the elixir, only to be caught by the final trap. Unable to ever leave, he is forced to kill himself. It is then revealed that the elixir he thought he found was just a decoy, that the real elixir is in the hands of the natives, and that the true test of worthiness set by the Ancients is just to politely ask them for it like a civilized person instead of dismissing them with the typical high-handed imperial colonizer’s disdain for natives.

This was a good story. After seeing far too many works in which the ugly colonialist attitudes at the time were on full display, I appreciated that the twist of this story was a rebuke against such attitudes. It’s still pretty condescending towards the native aliens, mind you, the narration continuing to call them savages even after the reveal, so I can’t give it a perfect score on that regard; but it still came as a breath of fresh of air.

Final Rating: 4/5

Divine Misfortune

I am no one’s blessing, I’ll just bring you harm. I’m a cursed black cat, I’m an albatross, I’m a mirror broken. Sad to say, I’m your bad luck charm. Let’s suffer Divine Misfortune, by A. Lee Martinez.

Synopsis:

DIVINE MISFORTUNE is a story of gods and mortals—in worship, in love, and at parties.

Teri and Phil had never needed their own personal god. But when Phil is passed up for a promotion – again-it’s time to take matters into their own hands. And look online.

Choosing a god isn’t as simple as you would think. There are too many choices; and they often have very hefty prices for their eternal blood, money, sacrifices, and vows of chastity. But then they found Luka, raccoon god of prosperity. All he wants is a small cut of their good fortune.

Oh — and can he crash on their couch for a few days?

Throw in a heartbroken love goddess and an ancient deity bent on revenge and not even the gods can save Teri and Phil.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Divine Misfortune is set in a world where a multitude of gods are real and provide tangible benefits to their worshipers. The story is about Teri and Phil, a couple envious of the blessings their god-worshiping neighbors and coworkers receive who decide to finally bite the bullet and get a god of their own. They settle on Luka, aka Lucky, a racoon-headed god of good fortune. He isn’t asking for any austere vows or elaborate sacrifices; he just wants to crash at their house for a while. It seems like a great deal. But what they don’t know is that Lucky has enemies: a heartbroken goddess of tragedy who resents him from breaking up with her, and a primal god of chaos who is looking to kill his followers. Suddenly caught in the middle of a divine holy war, Teri and Phil are going to need all the good luck they can get.

This was a decent story. I liked the worldbuilding of this setting where worship takes the form of a business transaction, and Lucky and his friend Quick were both good characters. I also liked the subplot about Bonnie trying to help Syph get over her heartbreak. The ending was a bit anticlimactic, being, as Lucky admits, a deus ex machina; but it had plenty of good bits along the way. Overall, I liked it.

Divine Misfortune was a decently entertaining read.

Final Rating: 3/5

Steel Giants of Chaos

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 “Steel Giants of Chaos” by James R. Adams, published in Planet Stories in 1945.

Gutenberg Link

Steel Giants of Chaos

SPOILERS BELOW

“Steel Giants of Chaos” is about Gene Drummond, an explorer who returns from surveying Venus to discover that Earth is being afflicted by a phenomenon that causes metal to lose cohesion and crumble to dust. The cause having been determined to be some sinister ray being protected from outer space, Gene is sent on a new mission to track down and destroy the source. He discovers a planet beyond Pluto, inhabited by bat-like Beast People and a humanoid tribe called the Wronged Ones who believe that they once inhabited Earth but were long ago displaced from it by humanity and banished to this icy, dying sphere. Gene finds a way to set things right by repairing the ancient machinery and using it to relocate the Wronged Ones to Venus… at the price of dooming the Venusians, forced to take their place on the dying world. But it’s all good, because the Venusians were “lower on the evolutionary ladder” or some such bullshit.

Snark aside – the story does make clear that choosing the Wronged Ones over the Venusians was not a slam-dunk moral choice, and that Gene did it out of self-interest because the grateful Wronged Ones could assist humanity as trading partners while the Venusians wouldn’t/couldn’t – this was actually a decent story, with the intriguing history of the Wronged Ones and Gene’s efforts to save them in addition to completing his original mission of destroying the anti-metal ray. I just wish the author would stay away from anything involving evolution or “devolution” or “evolutionary levels” or anything like that – that is not how any of that works!

Final Rating: 3/5

Adventure Finders

Adventure time. Come on, grab your friends. We’ll go to very distant lands. The fun will never end, it’s adventure time. Let’s journey with Adventure Finders, by Rod Espinosa.

Synopsis:

She wants so much more than what her small town has to offer! This is the dream of starry eyed fishmonger Clariette de Artegnean. This first volume covers our heroines’ first tentative steps into adventuring–saving people from danger and fighting evil everywhere it appears! Our heroes realize the real world is not as simple as the tales say. Monsters can be sympathetic and humans can do evil things. The adventures are just heating up! As they come upon their destination city, they find out things have radically changed–for the worse!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Adventure Finders is the story of Clariette, a girl from the quiet village of Good River who dreams of becoming a traveling adventurer: fighting evil, slaying dragons, that sort of thing. She joins the Warriors of Dawn as a hireling along with her cousin Jolfe, a wizard; her cousin Deren, a militiaman; and her friend Ariarra, a cleric of the Moon Goddess Order. As they head out on their first quest, escorting a caravan of women and orphans to safety, they recruit additional allies, loot some sweet swag, deal with obnoxious nobles, and fight armies of monstrous humanoids (the story is very clearly based on D&D/Pathfinder rules, including providing character sheets with level, class, stats, and magic items for some of the lead characters as a volume extra).

It didn’t take me long to fall in love with Adventure Finders. What really shone about Clariette was not just her strength, but her goodness: her willingness to take in and protect anyone, even demi-humans and monstrous humanoids that others would kill without a second thought, or children deemed a burden and abandoned due to birth defects. All the money and treasure she accumulates as an adventure is quickly spent on helping anyone she can. Her class may be Fighter, but her heart shines with the virtue of a Paladin. It also resulted in her adventuring party quickly filling up with oddballs and outcasts who are interesting in their own right: Asogog, the gnoll slave she rescued from being a circus attraction; Bielsica, the half-elf, half-dryad defender of the forests; and Neshallin, the Devourer of Life, wielder of the foulest black magics, but an otherwise nice lady just so long as you aren’t the one standing closest to her when she needs to top off her hit points. The battle sequences are great, and the need to protect the caravan of orphans provides a real sense of drama to the battles: these adventurers aren’t just killing monsters and stealing their treasure for fun and self-enrichment, they are striving against overwhelming odds to defend the helpless in a savagely cruel world.

Unfortunately, the story is incomplete. Volume 3 ends on a cliffhanger, promising that the story will continue in Volume 4; but no fourth volume ever materialized. As such, we will never know how Clariette’s adventure ends. It saddens me, as I was truly enjoying the story and characters. However, I am thankful for what we did get, as this was a truly excellent comic.

Adventure Finders is collected in Adventure Finders Vol. 1: Newly Hired Adventurers, Adventure Finders Vol. 2: The Edge of Empire, and Adventure Finders Vol. 3: Adventures, Monsters, and Treasure!.

Final Rating: 5/5

Crisis on Titan

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 “Crisis on Titan” by James R. Adams, published in Planet Stories in 1946.

Gutenberg Link

Crisis on Titan

SPOILERS BELOW

In “Crisis on Titan”, humanity is mining Titan for special salts that are essentially for space travel, as they combat the negative effects of cosmic radiation exposure. Some native life-forms known as the Squeakers object to this – the temerity of them, thinking they have some claim of ownership just because they, you know, live there! The only thing the Squeakers fear is another native race, the B.D.s; but while friendly enough, the B.D.s are non-sapient and so can’t be relief upon to cooperate in fighting them. When Squeakers seize a fortified garrison, a group of soldiers has to figure out a way to take it back,

This story was decent enough. Once you get past the ugly imperialist overtones – which are something so unfortunately common to the genre fiction of the time that you kinda either have to learn to tune them out or just give up on pulp altogether – this is basically a decent story about soldiers facing a tactical dilemma and having to figure out how they can utilize the B.D.s to achieve victory. Let’s just pretend that there’s a legitimate Squeaker government which negotiated a fair and balanced treaty with humanity allowing them to mine and export a certain quantity of the salt, and that these particular Squeakers are radical terrorists acting in violation of the accord. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Final Rating: 3/5

Too Many Curses

Help me, I don’t know what I’m doing. Help me before I fall to ruin. And if I’m blind, I will lead you on. Come follow me now before our time is gone. Let’s rid ourselves of Too Many Curses, by A. Lee Martinez.

Synopsis:

Margle the Horrendous takes special pride in never killing his enemies. Instead, the wizard transforms them into various accursed forms and locks them away in his castle. His halls are filled with his collection of fallen heroes and defeated villains.

It’s Nessy’s duty to tend this castle. It’s a lot of work, but she takes pride in housekeeping talents that keep the castle from collapsing into chaos. But when Margle suddenly dies, everything begins to unravel. Nessy finds herself surrounded by monsters, curses, a door that should never be opened, and one very deadly dark wizardess.

Nessy doesn’t have might or magic on her side; she’s just a kobold: short, furry, and sensible. It would be smarter to walk away, but taking care of the castle is Nessy’s job, and that’s just what she intends to do.

If only she could find time to polish the silver while beating back the forces of darkness.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Too Many Curses is about Nessy, a kobold servant of the evil wizard Margle the Horrendous. It’s her duty to keep the castle neat and tidy, looking after all the monsters and cursed victims who inhabit its halls. However, when Margle suddenly meets an untimely end, the diabolical wizardess Tiama the Scarred shows up intent on claiming the castle for herself. It’s up to Nessy, small and powerless though she may be, to find a way to foil Tiama and keep the castle’s inhabitants safe.

This was a pleasant little read. Nessy made for a likeable main character with her optimistic and sensible attitude, and I found most of the castle’s other inhabitants to be enjoyable as well. The ending was also very sweet, with a good message about the strength of compassion and friendship. It was a bit short, perhaps, but I liked it.

Too Many Curses is a pleasantly charming fantasy story.

Final Rating: 3/5

Formula For Conquest

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 “Formula For Conquest” by James R. Adams, published in Planet Stories in 1945.

Gutenberg Link

Formula For Conquest

SPOILERS BELOW

“Formula For Conquest” sees the scientist Twilken approach the soldier of fortune Mulhane with a formula he developed that he believes can tip the balance of power between the allied Inner Planets and the evil Jovians by super-accelerating the evolution of the Venusians and turning them into allies. However, they are overheard by a Jovian spy, who abducts them in order to use the scientist’s formula on the Jovians’ Plutonian allies instead. Twilken and Mulhane have to break free and stop the weapon Twilken intended to win the war from losing it for them instead.

Fundamentally, this story has the makings of an exciting caper. However, it had too many problems for me to be able to enjoy it. For one thing, (say it with me now), EVOLUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. Species evolve, not individuals; there is no pre-determined course that evolution follows that one can accelerate one’s way down, it is a reaction to environmental pressures; there is no reason to suppose evolution must be in the direction of greater intelligence (and thus ability to serve as an ally in an interplanetary war), as only one of the billions of extant species on Earth has evolved human intelligence (humans, obviously) despite all of them having evolved over the same period of time, etc., etc. And even if you’re tempted to give it a pass for that because 40’s pulp writers couldn’t be expected to know any better, the story also features another bugaboo of mine: phonetically transcribed accents. Nothing more quickly jars me out of a story than having the smooth progress of my reading slam to a halt as I’m forced to try and untangle what the author was attempting to convey with the misbegotten assemblage of letters vomited onto the page in only vague approximation of actual English.

“Formula For Conquest” ended up being a flop.

Final Rating: 2/5

Shangri-La (2016)

Now that you’ve found your paradise, this is your kingdom to command. You can go outside and polish your car or sit by the fire in your Shangri-La. Let’s fall out of love with Shangri-La, by Mathieu Bablet.

Synopsis:

A few hundred years in the future, humans have abandoned an uninhabitable Earth to live in a space station governed by the Tianzhu Corporation. Their needs and creature comforts are provided without questions, and everyone seems to be satisfied with this “perfect society”. But there are those who would trade that peaceful comfort for freedom…

As science reaches the verge of creating life from nothing, a blanket of shadowy secrets begin to unravel, revealing a conspiracy of carefully crafted manipulation that could usher in a new stage of evolution or signal the end of everything we know.

There is a dangerous difference between playing gods and becoming gods…

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Shangri-La begins a million years ago, with our protagonist Scott dying on alien planet on the other side of the galaxy. We then jump to the present, where he works for the all-powerful Tianzhu Corporation in a dystopian future where Earth is uninhabitable, humanity and uplifted animals live on a space station, and Titan is being terraformed. Scott’s job has him covering up the evidence of failed experiments by decommissioning orbital labs that were damaged by the dangerous research they were performing. In the process, he uncovers a conspiracy: Earth is actually habitable, but the Corporation is keeping it secret so they can continue to keep humanity confined to the station and under their absolute control. Meanwhile, a rogue group of scientists is obsessed with creating antimatter because it will make them God or something, I don’t know, they cray-cray. Uncovering this leads the previously-loyal Scott to join a revolutionary conspiracy. Where will his new path lead him?

…Well, it’s going to lead to him going back in time a million years and dying on an alien planet on the other side of the galaxy. Duh. We already saw so at the beginning. That’s how stable time loops work. Way to take all the dramatic tension out of the story. The only narrative stakes, then, are what will happen to the other characters. Perhaps Scott made a noble sacrifice to save them all, resulting in a happy ending for everyone else even though he died in the process? Ha, ha, no; despite his best efforts, everyone dies. What a bleak and pointless story.

Shangri-La made for an utterly miserable read.

Final Rating: 1/5