The Holes Around Mars

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 Holes Around Mars” by Jerome Bixby, published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1954.

Gutenberg Link

The Holes Around Mars

SPOILERS BELOW

“The Holes Around Mars” is about an expedition to Mars that discovers a series of bizarre holes through the landscape. They turn out to be caused by a very fast, very dense object in a very low orbit, which punches holes in anything in its way each time it passes.

Now, this would be an interesting little scientific mystery, but it has a problem: one member of the expedition is fond of puns, and he is constantly ruining the atmosphere by spouting off groaners. The big one at the end, that the whole story’s been building up to, isn’t even a good one. Way to ruin what was otherwise a decent little tale.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dave Barry #22: I’ll Mature When I’m Dead: Dave Barry’s Amazing Tales of Adulthood

I hope we still dance like we’re falling in love. Hope we still drink like we’re back in the pub. Hope we grow old, but we never grow up. Hope we still fight over bands that we love. Hope we still cry ’cause we’re laughing too much. Hope we grow old, but we never grow up, we never grow up. Let’s stay young at heart with I’ll Mature When I’m Dead, by Dave Barry.

Synopsis:

A brilliantly funny exploration of the treacherous state of adulthood by the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist.

Some people may wonder what this subject has to do with Dave Barry, since Dave’s struggled hard against growing up his entire life-but the result is one of the funniest, warmest, most pitch-perfect books ever on that mystifying territory we call “adulthood”.

In hilarious, brand-new pieces, Dave tackles everything from fatherhood, new fatherhood (“Over the next five years, you will spend roughly 45 minutes, total, listening to songs you like, and roughly 127,000 hours to songs exploring topics such as how the horn on the bus goes* [*It ‘Beep! Beep! Beep!’]”), self-image, the battle of the sexes, celebrityhood, technology, parenting styles, certain unmentionable medical procedures (“There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of a vasectomy, except THEY CUT A HOLE IN YOUR SCROTUM.”), and much more. It is a book of pure delight from the man one newspaper claimed “could become the most important American humorist since Mark Twain” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel )…though, frankly, we think they were indulging in some adult beverages at the time. Watch a Video

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The theme of this Dave Barry book is ostensibly adulthood. Unfortunately, that means columns about stuff like marriage, parenthood, vasectomies, and colonoscopies, stuff that doesn’t really apply to my life or hold much interest for me. Fortunately, it’s only a loose theme, and there are plenty of columns that I did find funny and interesting: stuff like dogs, crime in Miami, and the decline of the newspaper industry. There were enough of these that I found the book enjoyable as a whole: it delivered plenty of laugh, and that’s what I look for from a Dave Barry book.

I’ll Mature When I’m Dead was another very good collection from Dave Barry.

Final Rating: 4/5

Our Town

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 “Our Town” by Jerome Bixby, published in If Worlds of Science Fiction in 1955.

Gutenberg Link

Our Town

SPOILERS BELOW

“Our Town” is set in the ruins of a town that was destroyed by a nuclear bomb during a war. (But a very convenient future nuclear bomb that doesn’t leave any pesky fallout to render the land uninhabitable). The only survivors were some elderly folk who were out of town having a picnic when the bomb fell. Now they shoot down reconnaissance planes that fly over, all the while grumbling about their aching joints and arguing over who gets credit for the kills.

This was an incredibly bleak story – these characters have no future and they know it, they can’t tell which side the planes belong to and they don’t care; they’ve basically just dedicated themselves to using the remaining time to kill as many people as possible out of sheer spite. This is definitely not the type of story I enjoy reading.

Final Rating: 1/5

Lilith Dark

Lilith, you siren, how could you do this to me? Lilith, I’m dying, why won’t you set me free? Let’s illuminate Lilith Dark, by Charles C. Dowd.

Synopsis:

An all-ages epic! Lilith Dark has no time for tea parties and princess stuff – she’s far too busy fighting off wicked creatures and fantastic beasts… or at least that’s how she imagines things. One day, Lilith follows a mysterious kitten into an old tree and discovers an entire world of real beasties that has been living right under her nose! With her big sister held captive, Lilith must face her fears, rescue her sister from the evil beasties, and save the day before bedtime!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Lilith Dark is about a young girl with an overactive imagination who imagines herself going on monster-fighting adventures. One day, she chases a kitten through a hole in a tree and falls into a world full of magical creatures. At first she has fun, playacting like their queen; but then they abduct and prepare to eat her older sister Becky. When Lilith isn’t down with that, they throw her into prison. Fortunately, help arrives in the form of her brother, her dog, a local who Lilith dubs Spoon, and her dinosaur stuffed animal that randomly gets brought to life by a lighting strike (because sure, why not?).

While the synopsis describes this as an “all-ages epic”, I get the feeling it was intended for a much younger audience; it was certainly too juvenile for me to enjoy. It certainly didn’t help my ability to follow what plot there was that the creatures only communicated in grunts and animalistic exclamations; while they would talk to each other, there was no way of knowing what they were saying. As such, it was impossible to get any sort of sense of their motivations, the structure of their society, or anything like that: they were just random colorful obstacles for Lilith: suitable for a children’s story, but not for anything calling itself an epic. The various attempts at humor also didn’t work for me, leaving me with nothing to really enjoy. All in all, I can’t say I recommend this comic.

Lilith Dark #1-4 are collected in Lilith Dark and the Beastie Tree.

Final Rating: 2/5

The Slizzers

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 Slizzers” by Jerome Bixby, published in Science Fiction Stories in 1953.

Gutenberg Link

The Slizzers

SPOILERS BELOW

“The Slizzers” is about monsters called Slizzers which look human and feed on happiness. They keep humans as livestock, with humans being blissfully ignorant and even enjoying their company because Slizzers work so gosh-darned hard to keep them happy. But instead of doing anything with that premise, the story then gets weird and metafictional and self-referential, devolving into a series of letters between the author and the editor talking about how the story should end.

And postmodernism claims another victim. There are some interesting things you could do with the premise of “The Slizzers”; stopping the story dead to have a fictional discussion about the story itself is not one of them. On top of which, the ending that the exchange does decide on is about the corniest, most hackneyed one imaginable. This just absolutely did not work.

Final Rating: 1/5

Not Quite a Ghost

I can see inside you, the sickness is rising. Don’t try to deny what you feel. Will you give in to me? It seems that all that was good has died and is decaying in me. Will you give in to me? Let’s haunt Not Quite a Ghost, by Anne Ursu.

Synopsis:

From the award-winning author of The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy comes an unforgettable and deeply personal story of the ghosts that surround us—and the ones we carry inside. The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart—whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street—very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay. That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickly flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill—and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night. And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Not Quite a Ghost is about Violet, a girl whose family moves into a new house. As Violet comes down with a mysterious illness that confines her to her room for long periods of time, she gets the sense that she’s not alone in there. Something is watching her from behind the wallpaper: something that is not quite a ghost, not exactly alive, but most certainly malevolent.

This was a decent horror story, in that Violet was a likeable character and her climactic confrontation with the not-quite-a-ghost was satisfying. My main complaint is that it took quite a while to reach that point: much of the plot centers instead around Violet’s illness – which, while mysterious, ultimately turns out to be a mundane condition rather than anything related to the supernatural evil – and the difficulties it causes her at school. Some of the mundane life stuff was good – I liked Violet’s sister Mia, in the few scenes she appeared in – but the supernatural element is what drew me to the book, and I wish there was more of it.

Not Quite a Ghost is a decently enjoyable read.

Final Rating: 3/5

Cargo to Callisto

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 “Cargo to Callisto” by Jerome Bixby writing as Jay B. Drexel, published in Planet Stories in 1950.

Gutenberg Link

Cargo to Callisto

SPOILERS BELOW

“Cargo to Callisto” begins with Joe Caradac, a human living on Mars, hearing the news that four dangerous alien criminals have escaped from a Martian detention facility. These criminals are Aarians, which have the ability to possess the bodies of other living things. They can be detected due to their inability to pronounce the letter J. Completely coincidentally, several people he knows have begun to act bizarrely, including speaking in awkward circumlocutions to avoid having to say any word that includes the letter J. It takes embarassingly long Joe to put two and two together. Fortunately for him, he has a sort of natural psychic block in his mind that prevents the Aarnains from possessing him; so when he does eventually finally wise up to them, he’s able to foil their plan of escaping to Callisto.

This is one of the stories where the reader is just way too far ahead of the characters when it comes to the plot. It was agonizing having to wait for Joe to slowly and painstakingly figure out the bleeding obvious. As such, I can’t really say I enjoyed it.

Final Rating: 2/5

Freelance Blues

Nothing’s ever worse than work unnoticed. Freelance now, yeah I guess you earned it. Life is only wishing we could load it. Level up, you’ve got to make a bonus. Let’s apply for Freelance Blues, by Ian Daffern, Mike Leone, and Vicki Tierney.

Synopsis:

This book is specially designed in Amazon’s fixed-layout KF8 format with region magnification. Double-tap on an area of text to zoom and read. Lance Bunkman’s job is literally sucking the life out of him! Can he save his co-workers, defeat his evil bosses, and (more importantly) find a new job?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Freelance Blues is about Lance Bunkman, a freelancer with a habit of getting into trouble. Every job he gets turns out to be a front for an evil cult or supervillain bent on world domination, and he always ends have to step and save the day – good for the world, but leaving him unemployed and without any references for his resume.

The story begins with him starting a new job, his boss turns out to be evil, and there’s a fight scene where Lance beats him. He then gets a new job, his boss turns out to be evil again, but we skip the fight scene this time and go straight to aftermath. He learns Granpda Bunkman is dying and sets off on road trip to visit him. He needs cash for the trip so takes a job, boss turns out to be evil, fight scene. Then he needs more money, takes another job, boss turns out to be evil, fight scene. We jump straight into another job with no setup this time, boss turns out to be evil, fight scene. Needs money, another job, boss evil, fight scene. Grandpa Bunkman has died by this point, so Lance goes to the funeral home; where, despite not even applying for a job, he encounters an evil boss and has another fight scene. Finally, he learns the big secret that the story has been building up to: that his grandfather also fought evil all the time, and knew that Lance was as well, and was letting him as a test for taking over his evil-fighting business.

This book was a disappointment in every way. The plot was an incredibly repetitive series of random encounters. While that could theoretically work if they were funny and interesting, they really weren’t. The art wasn’t anything to write home about, and the action scenes were particularly weak. The cover, incidentally, is by a completely different artist than the interiors, so in no way reflects the actual quality of the product. They don’t even have the excuse of big publishers like Marvel and DC which frequently do variant cover gimmicks showing off work by famous artists; this is just false advertising. And the reveal at the end, which basically just boiled down to Lance being some vague chosen one, was in no way worth the journey it took to get there.

Freelance Blues is pretty dang terrible.

Final Rating: 1/5

The God-Plllnk

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 God Plllnk” by Jerome Bixby, published in Worlds of Tomorrow in 1963.

Gutenberg Link

The God-Plllnk

SPOILERS BELOW

“The God-Plllnk” is about a human expedition to Mars that lands on Phobos. The aliens there mistake the landers for gods and the humans within for deadly parasites, and accordingly kill the humans.

Is this supposed to be amusing? Are we supposed to go “Ha ha, what a silly misunderstanding?” ‘Cause I just felt depressed reading about so many lives being destroyed by a stupid misunderstanding. Just a very unpleasant story to read.

Final Rating: 1/5

Dilbia #2: Spacepaw

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, forget about your worries and your strife. I mean the bare necessities, Old Mother Nature’s recipes, that bring the bare necessities of life. Let’s shake Spacepaw, by Gordon R. Dickson.

Synopsis:

Operation Spacepaw.

Bill Waltham has a sneaking suspicion that a few important details were purposely withheld from him when he receives his assignment to the planet Dilbia. At first, the project – to teach the planet’s bearlike inhabitants the basic agricultural skills – seems a straightforward, though boring, undertaking for a young engineer on the rise.

But Bill immediately senses a very keen hostility from the Dilbians toward interfering humans. And in trying to solve a major crisis on the planet, he finds himself involved in a knock-down, drag-out brawl that has all the undertones of a David-and-Goliath battle revisited.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The sequel to Spacial Delivery sees engineer Bill “Pick-and-Shovel” Waltham sent to Dilbia as part of Project Spacepaw (roughly equivalent to “Helping Hand From the Stars” in Dilbian); his task will be to familiarize the Dilbians with the use of simple agricultural tools. However, just as with John “Half-Pint Posted’ Tardy before him, he arrives to find that a female sociologist has been abducted by a Dilbian with a real tough reputation, Bone Breaker. Not being an idiot, he figures that this can’t be a coincidence – he’s being set up to have to fight a Dilbian the same way John was. But whereas John was an Olympic medalist in the decathlon, John teaches people how to use shovels – he isn’t going to be able to repeat John’s miraculous victory over Streamside Terror. Instead, he needs to use his cunning to avoid fighting Bone Breaker (which would get him killed) without appearing like he’s avoiding fighting Bone Breaker (which, being cowardly, would cause the humans to lose face with the Dilbians)

I’ll admit, this book had me worried at first: when the opening chapters presented the same set-up of a young man coming to Dilbia and finding himself roped into an honor duel against a Dilbian over an abduction, I worried it was just going to be a retread of the first novel. Fortunately, it quickly became apparent that Bill was a very different character from John, and was approaching his troubles in a very different way. Indeed, by the end, I was actually enjoying this book even more than I had the first one – I really enjoyed Bill’s quick-thinking, clever plans to get out of trouble without looking like he was backing down from a challenge, and ultimate insight into the counterintuitive way that Dilbian society is truly structured – something that gives them a real sense of identity as a truly alien culture rather than merely humans in the shape of bears.

Spacepaw made for a good second half to the Dilbia duology.

Final Rating: 3/5