Wild Cards I - Voume One edited by George R R Martin - Book Report #313

 

Apologies for the lack of posts.  There has been a pandemic going on and I've been busy building my own personal blog at eric-hebert.ca

It was the cover that drew me in.  It looked steampunk to me but I've heard the series described as dieselpunk  which is similar in that it's "retro futuristic" but instead of being informed by the Victorian era it takes its technology cues and attitudes from the 1930's to 1950's.  

I've always been drawn to the aesthetics and technology of the WWII era and the rest of the 1940's.  So this looked like fun.

The series has been around since the 1980's and continues on today.  This particular book was in a mini hardcover format that I also found interesting and prompted me to buy it.  I only wish the other two books in the first cycle were available in the same format, they would look very nice on my bookshelf.

The stories are all loosely connected around a singular event, that of an alien virus spreading throughout the world killing many and giving others "powers" that could be described as super or meh.  Some survivors were made heroic, others villains and still others merely shlubs. 

Think of the X-Men to get a feel of the super-powers folks develop.

Each story was a delight to read and did not just tell the story of some conflict but also delved into the consequences of being changed by the Wildcard Virus.  There is a humanity, humour and pulpy fun to the stories.

I found this book a delight to read as it offered a timely subject (the virus) but also charged the stories with fun.  I felt that we can get through this fight with COVID-19 in much the same way as the characters deal with their virus, by coping and adjusting to it.

Recommended for a bit of escapism in a comic book way that does not take itself too seriously. 

Star Trek: Enterprise The First Adventure by Vonda N. McIntyre - Book Report #232

I won’t lie: I found this book tedious. Mostly because I was uninterested in the guests aboard the Enterprise. 

It made perfect sense; a new captain should be assigned an easy, shake-down cruise. Time to get to know the ship and its crew without putting much stress on them. 

So, brand new Captain Kirk takes on a traveling Vaudville show and is instructed to visit all the distant star bases to lift morale by taking the act “on the road.”

The idea of the book was a good one but I did not enjoy the circus performers and the fact that Kirk was instantly attracted to one of them.

There are some added characters; a Vulcan juggler who is emotional, a new alien race is discovered drifting through Federation space and Klingons come to mix it all together. 

Sounds like it should work, right?  Except it doesn’t.  It was exceedingly slow, far too introspective and just boring to read.  I’m not the kind of reader that needs a fistfight in every chapter but this book takes its time to get going. 

Having been published in 1986 it’s conceivable the author was under strict control not to do anything alarming to the franchise. So maybe I’m not being fair. 

But it all comes down to whether I enjoyed the story or not. 

I didn’t. 

To bad too. I was really hoping for something a bit more fun. 

Okay, that was quite a bit of bashing the book. It wasn’t all bad: there were some parts of the book that I did like. 

Since this is an origins story it was a lot of fun to read how Sulu came aboard, the bad feelings the senior crew held comparing Kirk to the departed Captain Pike, how Scotty treated the new captain and how Chekov was always on board the ship. 

That last point filled in the gaping plot hole from The Wrath of Kahn.  How Kahn recognizes Chekov even though he wasn’t on the TV show until the season after his appearance. 

So it did work on some levels.  It just didn’t capture my imagination. 

Vonda N. McIntyre's website - http://www.vondanmcintyre.com/

Aftermaths by Lois McMaster Bujold

What a wonderful story.

In the wake of a battle in space, a two-member crew are sent to a ship that has been destroyed to scan for and recover the dead. 

It sounds dark but is just the opposite. There is a quiet dignity and caring for the fallen that I found heart-warming. 

This is the kind of fiction that works for me.  It's about "people" living and working in the future. 

The best so far.

Bujold's website - http://dendarii.com/

Lois McMaster Bujold

Batman Noir, The Dark Night Returns by Frank Miller (artist and writer) and Klaus Janson (artist)

With all the hype around the new Batman Vs Superman movie I thought I would go back to Frank Miller's work. He is credited in the movie as being an inspiration.

Miller is a strange cat and he sure can put some serious violence and crazy on a page.  I've always liked his noir sensibilities but, incredibly, the art in this book somehow missed the mark for me.  Batman should have been easy to create a menacing mood as the covers surly did.  The interior art, however, was manic and, at times, impossible to understand what was drawn.

The book is a collection of four issues first published in 1986. Miller wrote the story and collaborated with Janson to draw the series.  The mini-series told the story of the return, after a 10 year absence, of Batman.  It explored the reaction of his return by the populous of the city, the criminals and, most interestingly, Bruce Wayne's.  Wayne has aged, and now, in his mid-50's, has to cope with his physical limits.

The entire run was narrated by television news which I thought could have been eliminated. Without it the story would have been cleaner, clearer and darker.  To be honest I felt like I was reading a Judge Dredd story.

Some panels felt more like sketches than finished art and I was constantly wishing Miller had used more of his Sin City methods in the telling of this story.  In the third story, Hunt the Dark Night, the Joker's flying kid-bombs were just too cartoon-like and took me right out of the story.

The entire book was redeemed with the last installment, The Dark Knight Falls where he comes to terms with Super Man and begins to take his crusade in a new direction.

Frank Miller

Klaus Janson

Face Value by Karen Joy Fowler

4/100

What an interesting story.

Two explorers, Hesper a linguist / poet and Taki an xenologist are embedded in an alien community trying to communicate with the native beings.

The story is interesting on two levels.

First, the team is trying to make, not so much first contact, as they are already accepted within the strange community, but first communication. The residents know they are there and interact by touching each human and going through their things.

Second, we witness the changing dynamics between Taki and Hesper: their relationship becomes strained by the frustrating lack of progress.

Stories like this one expose the fallacy of our current TV science fiction trope; that all we need to communicate is a universal translator.

Well worth reading.

This story was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1986.

Karen Joy Fowler's website is here:   http://karenjoyfowler.com/

Karen Joy Fowler

Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1986