Ekalastron #2: The Lorelei Death

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 Lorelei Death” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1941.

Gutenberg Link

The Lorelei Death

SPOILERS BELOW

“The Lorelei Death” is set in the same universe as ““Shadrach””. I’m dubbing this the Ekalastron series, after the valuable metal used in spaceship construction. The titular Lorelei of the Belt is a pirate who lures ships to their destruction and steals their cargo. Chip, having unwisely broadcast the news of his huge Ekalastron find in ““Shadrach””, finds himself the Lorelei’s next target. His ability to appeal for help is limited by a contrived set of circumstances by which a friend “jokingly” accuses him of being a dangerous fugitive wanted for murder, then gets killed in a such a way that Chip is framed for it. It’s just a prank, bro! The only one on his side is that annoying god-botherer, Salvation Smith.

So, this wasn’t a particularly good story. However, it was at least better than the previous one in the series, with Chip triumphing through an actually plausible application of physics in the climax rather than ““Shadrach””’s magic space fire that burns cold and electrocutes you with radiation. So, points for that, I guess.

Final Rating: 2/5

Dave Barry #24: Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster): Life Lessons and Other Ravings From Dave Barry

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Clap along if you know what happiness is to you. Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do. Let’s drink to Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster), by Dave Barry.

Synopsis:

During the course of living (mumble, mumble) years, Dave Barry has learned much of wisdom,* (*actual wisdom not guaranteed) and he is eager to pass it on—to the next generation, the generation after that, and to those idiots who make driving to the grocery store in Florida a death-defying experience.

In brilliant, brand-new, never-before-published pieces, Dave passes on home truths to his new grandson and to his daughter Sophie, who will be getting her learner’s permit in 2015 (“So you’re about to start driving! How exciting! I’m going to kill myself”). He explores the hometown of his youth, where the grown-ups were supposed to be uptight fifties conformists, but seemed to have a lot of un- Mad Men- like fun, unlike Dave’s own Baby Boomer generation, which was supposed to be wild and crazy, but somehow turned into neurotic hover-parents. He dives into everything from the inanity of cable news and the benefits of Google Glass (“You will look like a douchebag”) to the loneliness of high school nerds (“You will never hear a high school girl say about a boy, in a dreamy voice, ‘He’s so sarcastic!’”), from the perils of home repair to firsthand accounts of the soccer craziness of Brazil and the just plain crazy craziness of Vladimir Putin’s Russia (“He stares at the camera with the expression of a man who relaxes by strangling small furry animals”), and a lot more besides.

By the end, if you do not feel wiser, richer in knowledge, more attuned to the universe . . . we wouldn’t be at all surprised. But you’ll have had a lot to laugh about!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

As we approach the end of Dave Barry’s nonfiction works, the titles have stopped pretending these collections have a theme and is admitting that they’re just disjointed ravings about whatever happened to come to mind at the time. Among the topics that were covered, there was a clear winner in “A Letter to My Daughter as She Becomes Eligible for a Florida Learner’s Permit (Unless I Can Get the Law Changed)”, which stood head-and-shoulders above the others in terms of hilarity. The rest, unfortunately, were only about average. As with the previous book, there was one column about a foreign trip he took – this time to Russia – which was longer and duller than all the others and dragged the overall reading experience down; I prefer them when they’re shorter and snappier.

On the whole, Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) is fairly average for a Dave Barry book.

Final Rating: 3/5

Ekalastron #1: “Shadrach”

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 ““Shadrach”” by Nelson S. Bond, published in Planet Stories in 1941.

Gutenberg Link

“Shadrach”

SPOILERS BELOW

““Shadrach”” pushes new bounds in annoying title stylization: one set of quotation marks is part of the title, and since titles of short stories are designated by enclosure within a pair of quotation marks, the result is two pairs of nested quotes whenever I refer to it. The story itself sees a prospector discover a lode of an extremely valuable space metal, but it’s guarded by superstitious primitives (ugh) who force anyone who trespasses on their land to walk through a wall of fire to see whether they’re gods or not. The prospector somehow passed the test; but he dies in a bar brawl, taking the secret with him. The protagonist, Chip, teams up with Salvation Smith, a pioneer and extremely religious missionary (ugh), to try and reach the treasure, competing with a band of criminal thugs. The villains get killed by the fire test, but Chip figures out that the wall of fire is made of magical space flames that don’t burn the skin but instead electrocute anyone who passes through in a spacesuit with radiation. …Look, just go with it. Anyway, Chip and Smith get the treasure, happy ending.

This story ticks off boxes of hated tropes one after another: the superstitious primitives who mistake the civilized main characters for gods, the ramming of religion down my throat in a science fiction story, the nonsense technobabble solution… all my ugh. No enjoyment to be found here.

Final Rating: 1/5

Witch Hammer

The angels are calling out your name across the light and its refrain. And the devil knows which names to call. He’s been calling all night long. And the witch’s hammer is on the floor. And the devil won’t speak to you no more. And even though you’d spit upon my grave, I love, love, love, love, love you all the same. Let’s smash Witch Hammer, by Cullen Bunn and Dalibor Talajić.

Synopsis:

AFTERSHOCK ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVEL! Witch. The word conjures images of hags in black robes and crooked hats, standing over cauldrons of bubbling brew. But witches are among us, and we do not realize it. They are our friends and neighbors. They are our family members. They are our idols.

And someone is murdering them.

A killer is stalking witches, hunting them down mercilessly. Agents Frontenac and Guinness are on the killer’s trail. But as they delve deeper into the hidden, magical world around them, they are haunted by a terrifying question. Is the killer doing the right thing?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

In Witch Hammer, a man in a ram mask is going on a murder spree, and FBI special agents Frontenac and Guinness are working to track him down. They discover that he is a former member of a cult that worshipped the demon Leviathan, now seeking vengeance against the other members of his order after they sacrificed his children. When it becomes clear that there is more than religious fanaticism at play, that actual supernatural forces are at war, how will they fight for justice as mere mortals caught between the divine and the infernal?

Turns out, they won’t. They just give up on stopping the killer and sit on the sidelines while he wipes out the rest of the cult. Wow, that was disappointing.

The structure of this comic just absolutely does not work. Just who the hell is our protagonist supposed to be? My first thought is that it’s Frotnenac and Guinness, since they’re the ones working to track down the killer and unravel the mystery of the cult. But if so, they’re pretty shit protagonists, because they don’t do any protaging. They never really manage to catch up to the killer, and give up the case once it becomes apparent that it’s supernatural. Then is the killer, Jacob, supposed to be the protagonist? He’s not a very good one either. His first introduction is murdering a bunch of teen girls like a slasher movie villain. Oh, but he has a literal angel on his side, so I guess he’s supposed to be morally in the right? Except having all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent Supreme Being in your corner kind of takes the tension out of proceedings – he slaughters his way through cultists like an unstoppable juggernaut, meeting not even the slightest resistance, as narration captions confirm that Leviathan and its followers are helpless against him because the power of God is stronger than the power of the Devil. His quest for vengeance has all the nail-biting suspense of shooting fish in a barrel, is what I’m saying. And then at the end the angel who was helping him turns on him and fries him as well, saying that he isn’t forgiven for his own time spent in the cult before turning against them, so I guess we weren’t supposed to be rooting for him after all? Useless detectives, evil but helpless cultists, boring unstoppable and still apparently evil killer…. all the characters in this story suck. I can’t care about what’s going on when I don’t care about any of the people who are doing it or having it done to them.

I didn’t enjoy Witch Hammer.

Final Rating: 2/5

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