Modern masterpieces of science fiction Book

"Salvador," by Lucius Shepard (1984): 8
- Above all else, this reads like story from 1984, and not simply because of the Contra allusions, but more so for the half-reactionary anti-Reagan meandering at play here, the kind of knee-jerk 'againstness' here struggling to find a coherent ideological/narrative outlet, instead opting for ambiguity rather than directness. STORY: in an only slightly-altered timeline [depicting a much more concentrated (maybe?) American presence in El Salvador/"anti-communist" insurgencies throughout the Third World], a soldier, concurrently taking way too many hyper-combat-readiness drugs, maybe hallucinates / maybe actually finds his way into an in-between world, where a girl tells him to, effectively, bring the war home to Americans. In turn, he slaughters his regiment and returns home, and we leave the story on the cusp of him, likely, slaughtering some American civilians for these murky reasons. It works half-effectively as a hazy, what's-happening play on the messiness of both America's Cold War commitments, as well as on the toll that the nature of this cruel war has on the ones perpetrating it (although, in that line, in falls square in line with takes on SFF/genre lit, in which Vietnam and our country's sundry sins are played out as, first and foremost, tragedies for us, rather than for those against whom these actions are committed). At the very least, it works much better at this angle than it does at all in the 'depiction of battle or soldiers' angle, case in point being DT, the menacing, jive talkin' black commander of the group.

"This Moment of the Storm," by Roger Zelazny (1966): 9.5
- Reading Zelazny short fiction, you understand how revolutionary he must have appeared in the mid-60s. Not so much for his spry prose, although that is there'others had been playing at that move for a decade. Not so much for his coyness or misdirection'although that doesn't make the wonderful one-two punch of "Why stopover, if you sleep most of the time between the stars? Think about it awhile, and I'll tell you later if you're right." any less bemusing. No, it's more for the extended AIMLESSNESS of his narrative. Much like "He Who Shapes," we know there's a story coming, although Zelazny (and us, eventually) is in no hurry to reach it, content to luxuriate in the world he's crafted and deepen, rather than complicate our understanding of the same. As such, his fiction exudes a lived-in-ness near unequalled in mid-century sf. What is more, when that "story" then does appear, it might as well not even announce itself as such, being principally only a heightening or emotional reflection on the general sfnal dynamics already established. In the case of this story, no "story" as such, even appears. Instead, Zelazny just takes his characters, his world, and shakes it.

"The Fifth Head of Cerberus," by Gene Wolfe (1972): 7
- (NOTE: just about the original, 'Fifth Head' novella from Orbit 10): Strange that I've now several times heard that newcomers to Wolfe DEFINITELY should start with Cerberus rather than the more complex New Sun, as the former simply seems a slimmer volume of the self-same Wolfe-isms: ellipses, Easter eggs (both deep and banal), mid-tier Proust rip-off deep memory mining mixed with mid-tier Jamesian convoluted syntax thick description, small hints at much bigger events (the world-building he hides in the middle of paragraphs), hypnotic narrativization (how did we get from here to there? [this isn't a good thing]), and meandering alluisivity. And it never works for me. In fact, it's all a little embarrassing'as if his advocates, in their advocacy, are just un-self-consciously crying out "I didn't get this at first and so it's this is better than van Vogt." Wolfe storyboards his shit, then, in its composition, consciously carves out a chasm in its emplotment' i.e. taking a to b to c to d to e, etc. plot and cutting out b through d'and hopes that the winks in their direction throughout will suffice, OR he just flat tells us at the end (and WHY exactly is Marsch an aborigine?!). I mean, take this snippet from a review of the novella (and this is one of the SMART reviewers!): "Setting this aside for the moment, here is my take away, as Joan Gordon suggests. In Gene Wolfe ' I think in general in his works, and not just in this one story ' it's not about absolute understanding. It's about living with uncertainty, and ambiguity." Said reviewer goes on to basically acknowledge that he has no idea what's happening, but that, surely, that MUST be the point and that, surely, that MUST mean this is the work that most elevates sf into "literature." Drivel.

"Country of the Kind," by Damon Knight (1956): 7.5
A mildly clumsy (allegory-wise; the prose is largely smooth and propulsive and withholding in an effective way [indeed, the best part: the sinister opening]) Harrison Bergeron template, in which the ambiguities complicating BOTH that story's utopia and deficiencies are not so much flattened as they are repackaged cynically (although some of the nuance is still there [see the connection posited between art and destruction]) and with that darker conclusion. For me, a tad warmer over, but I don't begrudge those feeling otherwise.