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

Where There’s Hope

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 “Where There’s Hope” by Jerome Bixby, published in If Worlds of Science Fiction in 1953.

Gutenberg Link

Where There’s Hope

SPOILERS BELOW

“Where There’s Hope” is about a group of colonists who have landed on a planet called New Earth. The planet is currently extremely dangerous due to hazards like dinosaur-like monsters, and the women on the mission decide they don’t want to have children until conditions are improved somewhat. The men decide that, to keep progress on schedule, they can’t afford to wait; and so they drug, hypnotize, and rape the women. The story doesn’t call it rape, of course, but that’s what it is. And of course this results in the colony prospering and we’re all supposed to cheer at the happy ending.

This story is loathsome. Just absolutely disgusting. Does anything else really need to be said?

Final Rating: 1/5

Eden (2018)

Let me paint a picture for you, then I’ll have to teach you to see it. Illustrate the remnants of the life I used to live here in Eden. Rolled a lucky pair of dice, ended up in paradise. Landed on a snake’s eyes, took a bite, and ended up bleeding. Let’s get expelled from Eden, by Eric Henson.

Synopsis:

In the year 2714, earth has been conquered by a brutal alien race. The only hope is a team of unlikely heroes, led by the planet’s most formidable warrior, Brigadier General Neriah Willis. The utopian world of Eden offers refuge, but when Neriah’s only son is suddenly kidnapped, our heroes discover something far more sinister is at play. This volume collects issues #1-4 and contains exclusive, never-before-seen material!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Eden is set on the titular planet, a sanctuary for interstellar war refugees (including humans, as Earth has been conquered by alien invaders called the Nomads). Our protagonist is Neriah, a woman searching for her missing son.

Wow, this series was bad. The problem start with the fact that its short length doesn’t give it time to develop its setting or characters. We’re thrown into Neriah’s quest to find her son in medias res rather than getting any sort of background on our heroes – which, granted could be a stylistic choice rather than one forced by length constraints; but if so, it’s a poor one, as it’s hard to get invested in these people when I don’t know them from Joe Random. Neriah gets a flashback sequence providing a slideshow of important moments from her past, with hits with all the impact of a PowerPoint presentation nobody brought donuts to, while Christian just gets his backstory infodumped in a monologue. As for the third member of the trio, Kla’tuu, he has so little to him that he’s less a character than a plot device. The main villain, Ghost, is equally uninspired, seeming to talk entirely in cliches – including, yes, an “I am your father” reveal. The setting is similarly threadbare; we’re told a lot about how Eden is supposedly a utopian paradise but actually rotten and corrupt, but it doesn’t have much impact when we don’t actually see any of it. But plotting is where the story suffers most of all, as powers and gadgets pop out of nowhere with no foreshadowing. The worst example of this would have to be Neriah second fight with Reno, where she suddenly remembers that, oh, actually she’s had her gauntlet loaded with a poison that neutralizes his rapid healing all along, silly of her not to have used it on him the first time around.

And then there’s the ending – or rather “ending”, as it is one of those bullshit “or is it?” conclusions that refuses to tie anything up. You can’t excuse it a cancellation-forced premature end, because this was clearly marketed from the start as a four-issue limited series rather than an ongoing, or call it sequel-bait, because like hell this is ever getting a sequel. No, it’s just a sheer perverse refusal to provide the reader any sort of closure. Terrible, just terrible.

Eden #1-4 are collected in Eden.

Final Rating: 1/5

Laboratory

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

Gutenberg Link

Laboratory

SPOILERS BELOW

“Laboratory” sees human explorers land on a seemingly-uninhabited planet. Unbeknownst to them, it’s actually a laboratory planet where dangerous experiments are being conducted, and the gigantic invisible alien scientists have to frantically scramble to keep them out of harm’s way.

This was a decently-amusing comedy, though the “here we go again” ending was perhaps a bit too predictable. Still, I liked it well enough, I suppose.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Tarakan Chronicles #2: The Puzzler’s War

There’s a puzzle in my head. I’ll spend a lifetime finding pieces. It’ll take forever to put together, the square and the round. Something to prove I’m not hanging around, hanging around. Let’s fight The Puzzler’s War, by Eyal Kless.

Synopsis:

The intriguing futuristic dystopian story begun with The Lost Puzzler continues in this expansive speculative science fiction adventure.

There is nothing out of the ordinary in waking up . . . unless you’re dead. Sent on a dangerous mission with little hope of succeeding, the man known as “Twinkle Eyes” has beaten the odds and found the key that could save Rafik, a teenage boy with the power to unlock the invaluable Tarakan technology that can restart their world. But the world might not be ready for what is unleashed, and now Twinkle Eyes must find a needle in a haystack in order to save himself . . . and perhaps the world. This time, though, he will not go it alone. And while his companions—from the fiery Vincha to the laconic Galinak—have their own motivations, each will be vital in solving the last grand puzzle. One that could bring prosperity and progress to the world or destroy humanity’s last hope for ascension. Now, a lone assassin from another era, two old friends, a dead man, a ruthless rogue mercenary, and a vicious warlord are all hunting for the ultimate prize. But what will happen when the final secret is unlocked, and technology long since buried once again finds its way into the hands of mankind?

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

The Puzzler’s War picks up five years after the end of The Lost Puzzler, with Twinkle Eyes and Galinak being dispatched on a mission to recover Vincha’s daughter Emilija, a powerful Puzzler with the potential to tip the balance of power between the warring AIs Adam and Cain. However, they face opposition from Mannes, the programmer who originally created Cain, who has survived for 200 years using Tarakan medical technology, and who has awakened a Tarakan sleeper agent going by the name of Peach to retrieve Emilija for Cain instead.

This book was good up until the end, which made me angry at it for wasting my time. See, our protagonists completely fail in their mission; but that turns out to be a good thing, because actually Adam was evil and Cain was good the whole time, so everything they ever did in both this book and the previous one was misguided and pointless.

Now, call me old-fashioned, but I believe that the role of a protagonist is to protag. When you have a story where the heroes could have just stayed home drinking beer instead and everything still would have turned out the same way, that’s a pretty shit story. Why the hell did I spend two books reading about these idiots bumbling around and accomplishing nothing if it was actually Mannes and Cain who were saving the day all along?

Ugh. If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to go ahead and pretend that The Lost Puzzler was a stand-alone. This sequel just doesn’t work for me at all.

Final Rating: 2/5