Beam Us Home

by James Tiptree, Jr.

I th0ught "Beam Us Home" (collected in The Science Fiction Century, ed. by David G. Hartwell) did a wonderful job evoking an archetypal feeling I suspect many of us have had at one time or another--the feeling of being from somewhere else, of not belonging--and then showing how that archetypal feeling might manifest itself within a very specific time period and cultural mileu--the United States in the late 60s. Hobie, the protagonist, feels he is an alien, and meant for something different and better. Tiptree gives us this Hobie not just through the events of his life, the details about how he relates with his parents, or even through sharing the thoughts he has about those things, but also in the prose itself--Hobie seems strangely not present in the story. We never get a full sense of his internal life. We see him in a teen relationship with a girl, but never get a strong sense of what she means to him--Hobie often feels like he is going through the motions of life, without engaging in them, both to himself and to the reader.

What we do know, from the very beginning, is that Hobie is a fan of Star Trek. The show is never named, but it is placed in that Friday evening time slot (that those of us old enough to have watched it when it first came out well remember), and the characters on the show are referred to. The importance Tiptree saw in Star Trek as a cultural milestone is particularly prescient when we note that Tiptree wrote this story in 1969, before the word Trekkie, or any of the conventions, existed.

And so, in Hobie, we find both that ageless sense of not belonging, and a very specific depiction of an alienated teen of the 60s, grasping on to Star Trek as that message from somewhere better.

When Hobie leaves home, he joins the Air Force. This is against the desires of his family--here Tipree paints a marvelous picture of the sort of affluent family that would look down on the Armed Services as a career. (These little highlights of an aspect American society, or class consciousness, at the end of the 60s, which Tiptree gives us almost in passing add to the richness of the story.) However, we find that Hobie hasn't joined the Air Force as a rebellion, but because he wants to become an astronaut, and eventually fly away to the life he believes he came from, and is meant to return to, beyond the planet Earth. Unfortuantely, the US goes to war, the space program is put on hold, and Hobie is deployed to the battlefront. And so even US policy echoes Hobie's internal struggle--striving to rise to exploration of space, it is pulled into the struggle here on Earth.

Even though there is a "spoilers allowed" policy on the site, I won't talk about the ending, so you can go read the story if you haven't already. For me, this story is an excellent example of the kind of piece that can seem like less than it is on first reading. There is a surface simplicity to it. It has a leisurely pace--it doesn't pull one into a "my god what's going to happen next" rush to the end. However, it is a very expansive story, and I find my experience of the story increases as I spend more time with it.

Corpses and Gang Bangs and Bears

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Jack Duggan's Law

by George V. Higgins

This was kick-ass. A story about a hard-boiled lawyer fergawdsake. Snappy, witty dialog that helped me understand what the Wikipedia article meant when it related Higgins's notion that dialog must be representative, rather than literal. I doubt real people would ever talk to each other the way Higgins's characters do, but (and here's a secret) the point of fiction just might be to portray things that aren't real. It's possible to be "made-up" and "realistic" at the same time; "Duggan's Law" proves that "interesting" fits in with those other two.

I did lose track of who some of the characters were, but I always do that when there are more than four character and/or more than two plot threads. Still, I loved the noir of it all, and it was refreshing for a noir to be set outside of L.A. and Manhattan. Sad to learn that Higgins is dead, but I want to read more of his stuff. It has energy. Not only do things happen, they happen fast, which I'm starting to realize is a key ingredient of the stories I like best. Not much musing, contemplation, or birds standing around on one leg. Action! That's it! Action!

Probably not the formula for everyone, but it works for me.

Officers Weep

by Daniel Orozco

This was a novelty piece, in the format of a policeman's log book. Clever, though, and very funny at times. The bit about "Daddy's Sweet Bitch" was so out-of-the-blue that it made one of us (Stevens) genuinely flop over with laughter. Ending was a bit New Yorkerish, but what else could Orozco do? Very clever, and a fun one.

Vasquez Orbital Salvage and Satellite Repair // Captains of Industry

by Matthew Jarpe

Inspired by his zippy "City of Reason," we sought out and found Matthew Jarpe's Web site, where he has posted two more stories he sold to Asimov's. Both have a lot in common with "Reason." They pile on the unlikely events in a steady, but credible way. Both are whimsical at times and do a neat job of tranlating present-day experience (a junk man, a corporate legal battle) into an sf context (a junk man who collects space junk, a corporate legal battle waged from the gravity well of a black hole [maybe the ultimate solution to the slow turn of the wheels of justice 8-) ]).

Of the two, "Vasquez" is the better, we thought. It's more upbeat and has a faster pace. "Captains" mixed two themes, because it switched POV from the space station above the hole to the suface of the planet, and back. On the surface, Jarpe employs (as he does repeatedly, and usually successfully, throughout these stories) a familiar sf trope: in this case, a caste-based corporate culture. (Hmmm... this is similar to Mike McQuay's novel "Jitterbug." In a world where everyone wants to be the next, "next Heinlein," could Jarpe be the next McQuay? I'd be glad if that were true.) It's a workable idea, but it slightly conflicts with the rest of the tale by drawing attention to itself without adding much. We thought he had more material waiting to be developed back on the station, where the cultural effects of leading a vast industry from a location where time runs m-u-c-h more slowly than elsewhere should have been more visible. For example, the protag has lawyers reviewing on the station what his lawyers were doing in flat space. Why? By the time they're done, those flat-space lawyers wil be decades beyond the material reviewed. We thought there were lots of opportunities for exploitation of this, but maybe next time. (One idea we had: make the space station long enough that different floors' clocks run at different rates; each "slower" floor takes its reports from the next "faster" one, allowing the hierarchy to function in something like a traditional management structure, while still requiring that each floor only burden the next one with a summary of its work.)

"Vasquez" was more light-hearted and, at the end, even a bit too sugar-coated. Once again, where other writers would have lost us in the sequence of fortuitous/serendipitous events, this story didn't put us off with all of its unlikely events. Somehow, they still worked in a convincing way. Maybe there's no more reason to it than that it would be just so cool if all of this were real.

We'll remember this author.

City of Reason

by Matthew Jarpe

Finally, a real corker! This is a mix of Niven, Pohl, and the died-way-too-soon Mike McQuay. Jarpe piles on the tropes, but at a steady and exciting rate. It would have been dangerous to add more than he does (Kuiper Belt colonies; cyborgs; atomic space combat; super-science private eyes; replicants; data mongers; autonomous spacecraft; teenaged romance) or as much in a shorter story (Jarpe himself says that 8,000 words is a "sweet spot" for his style, which might limit the markets that take his stuff, alas). But, pretty much all of them are recognizable to the regular reader of sf, so none of it calls for much explanation. For some reason I can't nail down, it also doesn't feel like any of it is too convenient when it appears, or too "made up." When I read the work of wannabe sf writers, a problem I often see is that they feel obliged (or maybe just "allowed") to have helpful robots, super aliens, or secret weapons just appear out of nowhere when nothing else will move the plot along. This is almost always a bad idea, though, because it tends to show that the writer was stuck and couldn't think of a logical and convincing way to keep the story going. Jarpe's introduction of various gizmos and gimcracks skirts this danger, somehow. I need to think more about why it worked for him, when it usually kills a story for others, but I'll figure it out.

Anyway, this was a great story. I'm looking forward to the August, 2007 release of his first novel, "Radio Freefall."

Travels with My Cats

by Mike Resnick

This was a pretty light-hearted piece, but in a poignant way. I was glad to read it after the awfully downish "So Help Me God." There was a point where Ethan seems to have the woman convinced she will live longer than she does, but later she refers to being "brought back," as though she knows she's dead, so I found that confusing. I also thought the ending was unsatisfying. Further, I thought it unlikely that Ethan would remain as calm and potentially accepting of seeing a "ghost" as he did. Still, maybe partly because I've tried writing stories myself that deal directly with this issue, if Resnick had spent much time on how Ethan would really have reacted, I suspect that probably be what the story would have been about entirely.

I did like the theme and the easygoing writing style. I met Resnick in 1994, at a "coffee-clatch" table at Worldcon 52. He's a very affable, level-headed guy. This story matches his personality, at least as far as I can tell. I wonder how much of this arises from his own experiences. Liz said she could see some recognizable moments. That is, bits here and there spoke to her as probably coming from the writer's own life. I think that helps a story, but I'm stumped as to how to do it myself.

In the end, not a bad story, but I think the basic idea has been used a bit often and, therefore, called for a more creative ending.