Can You Dig It?

TITLE: Warriors
EDITORS: George RR Martin, Gardner Dozois
PUBLISHER: TOR

Rating
5/5 "Can you dig it?"; 4/5 "OK, let's get down to it, boppers."; 3/5 "Warriors, come out and play-a-ay!"; 2/5 "The chicks are packed!"; 1/5 "What's the matter? You turning faggot?"
Score: 3/5

"OK, let's get down to it, boppers"

Call it the antidote to the Amazon effect. Modern technology is good at helping us find things similar to the ones we already own or like, but it's completely duff at leading us to new discoveries. Enter the short-fiction anthology. In the foreword to "Warriors", Editor George RR Martin compares anthologies to old-fashioned wire spinner racks, with "all the books jumbled up together". In "Warriors", he and co-editor Gardner Dozois set out to break the walls between genres by mixing up stories from all shades of the literary spectrum.

It's a laudable effort, and one that feels especially timely now, with the rise not only of chain superstores, as lamented by Mr Martin in his foreword, but also of on-line retailers offering sophisticated recommendation engines. It's a pity that much of the material in "Warriors" is not up to the task.

"Warriors, come out and play-a-ay!"

Partly, this is due to the subject matter. Mr Martin and Mr Dozois have made stories about warriors their unifying theme, and this has inevitably limited the range of stories they have collected. The 20 stories gather mainly around the poles of science fiction and historical fiction, with only a few pegs from other genres to support the idea that all fiction can fit under one tent. However, there are one or two exceptions, which not coincidentally turn out to be some of the best in the book.

It is also partly due to the very uneven quality of the stories on offer. While there are a few which are genuinely worthwhile entries, there are far too many which feel merely phoned in or hastily scribbled on the back of an envelope. Surprisingly, Mr Martin himself is one of the culprits here.

Now, let me say I stand in awe of Mr Martin's literary talent. I have encountered few writers in any genre with his gift for instant, vivid, believable characterization and ability to communicate this personality through the character's own voice. I am also staggered and humbled by the man's ability to juggle a best-selling fantasy series, a spin-off TV series, convention appearances, and still find time to edit this collection. So I call automatic BS on anyone who suggests I am insufficiently appreciative of his work.

The fact is, "The Mystery Knight", the latest in his "Dunk and Egg" series of short stories set in the same world as the "Song of Ice and Fire" novels, is just plain no good. Rather than building on our investment in Sir Duncan and his squire, Egg, Mr Martin invents a host of new characters, gives us no reason to care for them, then abruptly resolves the whole situation in an unsatisfying deus ex machina. Considering Mr Martin's name and the prospect of another entry in the Dunk and Egg saga was my main reason for buying the book, this is a terrible letdown.

"We're gonna rain on you, Warriors!"

Mr Martin can perhaps take small comfort in the fact that he has plenty of company. For a bunch of warriors, there are a disappointing number of misfires. Mr Dozois's own entry is not so much a letdown as simply baffling. Some of the big names, including Robin Hobb and Tad Williams, produce only shrug-inducing duds.

There are worse offenders, though. "King of Norway" by Cecelia Holland features a long, tepid battle scene followed by an escape that is pure hokum. David Weber's "Out of the Dark" is a shambling patchwork of Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day", Tom Clancy style military techno-fetishism ("the fifteen-pound round from the M-136 light anti-armor weapon struck the side of his vehicle's turret at a velocity of 360 feet per second") and a truly cringe-worthy Gothic third act. Diana Gabaldon's piece is utterly twee and far too taken with its own preciousness.

"You Warriors are good, real good." "The best."

Fortunately for those of us who already paid full-cover price for the hardback, the collection is not a total loss. In a development that's almost worth a "warriors" story on its own, the day is saved by the veterans of the old guard. Robert Silverberg, 75, turns in a melancholy yet thought-provoking piece on what warriors would do once there is nobody left to fight. Peter S. Beagle, 71, takes the warrior theme in an interesting direction, in a story that unfolds like a dream, which may be appropriate, since the hero may not--if you want to get technical about it--actually exist. S. M. Stirling, 56, gives us a light-hearted, fast-paced romp in a neato retro-future that mixes Napoleonic with post-apocalyptic settings. There are also solid entries from veterinarian James Rollins and closet botanist Naomi Novik.

Five out of 20 hits might be a good average in pro baseball, but makes these warriors look decidedly amateurish. Mr Martin's fumble as the slugger of the team is especially galling for us fans that were rooting hardest for him. We can only hope this shows his entire attention is going into the "Ice and Fire" series. Sadly for Mr Martin's lofty aims, none of the stories here were impressive enough to make me want to read more from the contributors. Though in a weird way, this is also a defeat for the Amazon effect he rails against, since I only got the book because Mr Martin's name was attached to it.

Call it a draw, then.

Not Dead Yet

TITLE: Before They are Hanged
AUTHOR: Joe Abercrombie
PUBLISHER: Pyr

RATING
5/5 “Hang ‘em high”; 4/5 “Just hangin’ out”; 3/5 “Hung jury”; 2/5 “Hung out to dry”; 1/5 “Hangover/Sexual hangups (tie)” DNF “Hanged, drawn & quartered” DISQ “Hung like a horse”
SCORE 4/5

Iconoclasm is fun at first, but it's got a shelf life shorter than a Japanese pop band. Once the glitter rubs off, what once seemed glam feels about as hip as Jefferson Airplane.

"Before They are Hanged" doesn't fall quite so far, but the biting satire is beginning to dull. I confess, I had a whale of a time with Joe Abercrombie’s first book in the series, “The Blade Itself”. Here, Mr Abercrombie cheerfully vivisected some of the ropiest fantasy clichés, from savage barbarians to kindly old wizards. Logen Ninefingers, the barbarian, spent more time screaming in pain than anger. The old wizard proved as kindly as Vlad the Impaler, and the nicest bloke in the whole book turned out to be the torturer.

Mr Abercrombie returns to the bonfire of the inanities in the second book, this time stoking the flames with the concept of heroic journeys and quests, heroes who get through battles without a crease in their woolens, traitors and sieges, heroic romance and famous last words. Nothing is sacred. Again.

The action quickly picks up where “The Blade Itself” left off, with the ramshackle kingdom called the Union facing threats on multiple fronts. The armies of the prophet Khalul, led by a coterie of invincible, cannibalistic Eaters are bearing down on the Union city of Dagoska from the south, while those of the barbarian King Bethod threaten the province of Angland to the north. Inquisitor Glokta arrives in Dagoska to shore up the defenses and unravel the mysterious disappearance of his predecessor.

Bayaz, the First of the Magi and former brother-in-arms to Khalul, journeys in search of a weapon that can stop Khalul’s unnatural underlings. He is joined by a mismatched band of five would-be heroes: Logen, Bayaz’s apprentice, a talkative guide, a dashing swordsman and a feral escaped slave.

A third story arc follows another band of misfits with colorful names like Dogman, as they accompany a Union army heading north, under the dubious leadership of the Union’s vain and cretinous Crown Prince.

We've already been introduced to this identity parade of characters, which leaves Mr Abercrombie more time to expand and enrich his world. We get a little further under the unwashed, flea-bitten skin of Logen and Dogman in particular, and these fatalistic, straightforward yet blackly humorous heroes are easily Mr Abercrombie's best inventions. The backstory to the adventure also contains intriguing hints that all this has gone before--hints that Mr Abercrombie has something to say other than "high fantasy sucks!"

All the same, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in “Before They are Hanged”, watching a string of stale genre staples receive a well-deserved comeuppance. Sword fights become interesting again once you realize Mr Abercrombie is unlikely to let his heroes escape unscathed. Their mask of invulnerability gets its face quite messily mashed in, knocking one hero out but waking the reader up to the possibilities inherent in a story that doesn’t handle its characters with kid gloves. The sex is almost as messy as the fighting, uncomfortably believable, mildly embarrassing and—because hey, it’s not you—sniggeringly funny.

However, all this relentless stereotype-bashing is starting to wear a little thin. There’s now something almost predictable about the character’s inability to dig themselves into anything except more trouble. Some of the catch lines too, such as “Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say…”, have outstayed their welcome, and feel shoehorned into the narrative to suit the author’s desire for continuity. Some of Mr Abercrombie’s deconstructions have themselves become stereotypes—the hapless Crown Prince being a classic example. If Mr Abercrombie really wanted to surprise, he’d have the foppish Prince suddenly turn out to be a military genius. Surprise—nepotism works!

It’s always easier to destroy than make something new, and I hope that before the end Mr Abercrombie builds something on the smoking rubble of fantasy conventions he’s created. In any event, after two books in the series I wonder if he’s run out of targets to obliterate. I kind of hope so, otherwise he might be heading back to the remainder bin with all the other glitter boys.

Pop Goes the World

TITLE: The Windup Girl
AUTHOR: Paolo Bacigalupi
PUBLISHER: Night Shade Books

RATING
5/5 "Led Zeppelin"; 4/5 "99 Luftballons"; 3/5 "Balloon boy"; 2/5 "The Hindenburg"; 1/5 "Lead Zeppelin"
SCORE 3/5

Dirigibles. I knew we were in trouble as soon as the story introduced dirigibles. They’ve become a sort of billboard for an entire class of bloated speculative fiction, an all-too literal metaphor for lardy, lumbering stories flogging thinly-veiled allegories of modern ills—Goodyear blimps for the beard-and-ponytail set. My advice to authors is, you see a zeppelin lumbering into the airspace over one of your stories, show no mercy—shoot that bastard down. Kill your darlings, as Faulkner said. You’ll be glad you did.

Mr Bacigalupi’s novel has rightly won praise and awards for its original blend of futurism and steampunk, a kind of retro-future that preys on modern fears, but the whole structure is a bit like a dirigible itself—the impressive-looking frame most just holds a tub of gas.

“The Windup Girl” is set in Thailand, in a near-future where pretty much every bad thing you’re worried about happening, happened. It’s a kind of scrapbook of apocalyptic newspaper headlines. Oil and gas have run out, leaving civilization dependent on muscle power and a bit of coal (peak oil fears, check!). Airplanes and cars have gone the way of dinosaurs and mammoths, which is ironic, since thanks to genetic engineering, mammoths (“megadonts”, sorry) are back in fashion as a source of muscle. Oh yeah, zeppelins are back in too. Sigh.

Speaking of genetic engineering, geneticists at a “calorie companies”, a bunch of evil corporations located in Des Moines for some strange reason, have deliberately created super-parasites and crop blights, to wipe out the world’s food sources and make everyone dependent on their genetically-modified (GM) products (GM food fears, check! Large, faceless company fears, check! Fears of Midwestern states, che—wait, what?!).

Genetic engineering ain’t all bad though, since it’s allowed the Japanese to neatly solve their problem of a declining population without having to rely on any foul-smelling foreigners. They’ve created “windups”, tailor-made test-tube people, smarter, faster and stronger than ordinary folk, but with deliberate built-in weaknesses to stop them taking over the planet, such as the stuttering motion that gives them their nickname.

Emiko is the “Windup Girl” of the title, bred to be a businessman’s ideal personal secretary—sexy, multilingual, obedient, and when you’re done with her, pop her in the recycling bin. Her last boss didn’t want to keep her but didn’t have the stomach to mulch her, so she has been abandoned in Bangkok, forced to work in a nightclub where she is continually humiliated as subhuman.

There she meets Anderson Lake, whose name sounds like it should be the title of an accounting firm, ostensibly the owner of a factory manufacturing coiled springs, but actually an agent of the “calorie companies”, searching for Thailand’s secret source of new foodstuffs. His mission is complicated by his scheming factory foreman, Hock Seng, an ethnic Chinese from Malaysia who barely escaped an Islamic-inspired pogrom against his people (Fears of fundamental Islam, check!).

Mr Bacigalupi’s Thailand is filled with bowing and corruption, ladyboys and royalist-popularist tensions, a weird mish-mash that feels cribbed from the introduction to a Lonely Planet guide and the “Asia” section of the Economist magazine. This is symptomatic of the wider problem with the book—once you get past some rather neat ideas that went into building this world, there’s not much to keep you there.

The setting is relentlessly grim, and other than Emiko none of the characters is even remotely sympathetic. I enjoyed the book, I’ll admit, but I don’t think I smiled once the whole time I was reading it. It feels downbeat and didactic, more like a Greenpeace manifesto than a work of fiction. I wonder if Mr Bacigalupi isn’t preaching to the converted here, though. I imagine plenty of speculative fiction readers are already composting and bicycling to work and eating locally-grown organic vegetables, or at least wish they did.

The plot, too, feels as thin as a zeppelin’s skin, with events floating from point to point without any particular thrust or trajectory. The climax in particular feels just plain false, involving a sudden and near-psychotic change of heart on the part of one character, while the epilogue’s note of hope jars against the crushing despair of the rest of the book.

In short, I feel Mr Bacigalupi’s imagination and talent for twisting modern fears into future fables is not matched by his skills as a storyteller. I’ve already noted the lack of humor, or even humanity in his characters. At times, he slides into cliché—just once, I’d like to read about a band of evil misfits and rebels brought to heal by a benevolent faceless corporation, just for the hell of it. I’d read that.

Just so long as you promise not to put any dirigibles in it.