Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 16, September 2015

By Mike Resnick

A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

ISSUE 16: September 2015

Mike Resnick, Editor
Jean Rabe, Assistant Editor
Shahid Mahmud, Publisher

Stories by: Effie Seiberg, David Drake, Alex Shvartsman, Marina J. Lostetter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Sharon Joss, Brian Trent, Kimberly Unger, Kevin J. Anderson, Leena Likitalo, Sheila Finch

Serialization: Reboots by Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

Columns by: Barry Malzberg, Gregory Benford

Book Reviews: Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett

Interview: Joy Ward interviews Connie Willis

Galaxy’s Edge is a bi-monthly (every two months) magazine published by Phoenix Pick, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Arc Manor, an award winning independent press based in Maryland. Each issue of the magazine has a mix of new and old (reprint) stories, a serialization of a novel, columns by Barry Malzberg and Gregory Benford, book reviews by Jody Lynn Nye and Bill Fawcett and an interview conducted by Joy Ward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoenix Pick
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612422800

Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick was a prolific and highly regarded science fiction writer and editor. His popularity and writing skills are evidenced by his thirty-seven nominations for the highly coveted Hugo award. He won it five times, as well as a plethora of other awards from around the world, including from Japan, Poland, France and Spain for his stories translated into various languages. He was the guest of honor at Chicon 7, the executive editor of Jim Baen's Universe and the editor and co-creator of Galaxy's Edge magazine. The Mike Resnick Award for Short Fiction was established in 2021 in his honor by Galaxy’s Edge magazine in partnership with Dragon Con.

Book preview

THE EDITOR'S WORD

by Mike Resnick

Welcome to the 16 th issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We’ve got some fine new stories by Brian Trent, Leena Likitalo, Effie Seiberg, Marina J. Lostetter, Kimberly Unger, Alex Shvartsman, and Sharon Joss, plus some wonderful reprints by old friends David Drake, Sheila Finch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kevin J. Anderson, and the team of Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin.

We’ve also got our regular columnists, with book reviews by Bill Fawcett and Jody Lynn Nye, science by Gregory Benford, anything he wants to talk about by Barry Malzberg, and Joy Ward’s interview – and this issue she’s talking with Connie Willis, the all-time leading Hugo winner and the all-time leading Nebula winner.

We think it’s a pretty good issue, and we hope you’ll think so too.

* * *

We’ve noticed an interesting thing in our fan mail during the past couple of years. We expect comments on the new stories, of course…but an awful lot of readers have been praising the reprints, saying that they’d missed them the first time around. So it’s probably time to help remedy that.

I wrote a series of columns titled Forgotten Treasures for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in the mid-1990s, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they might be even more useful today. Here’s the first of them.

* * *

A few weeks ago I was speaking to a couple of intense young science fiction fans on one of the computer networks. They read just about everything of quality that came out, disdained all the Trek books and Wookie books and such that litter the bestseller lists, knew the works of Gibson and Willis and Kress and Card and even Resnick inside-out, and were looking forward to attending their first convention.

In the course of our conversation, I mentioned Henry Kuttner.

They’d never heard of him.

A little later I referred to something Fredric Brown had written.

They’d never heard of him, either.

They didn’t know Eric Frank Russell. Or Catherine Moore, either by her real name or her pen name of C. L. Moore. Never heard of William Tenn. Or A. Merritt. Kinda sorta thought they’d heard of Stanley Weinbaum, but didn’t know what he’d done.

And long before our conversation was over, it occurred to me that perhaps what the field needed was a regular column pointing out these forgotten treasures to readers who might love them but had no idea they existed.

The books I write about won’t be $50-a-shot collector’s items. Or, if they are, I promise they’ll all have had paperback editions as well. These are books you can pick up for a dollar in your local paperback resale shop, or in a dealers’ room at a science fiction convention, and the odds are you won’t find too many better books on the new paperback racks for five or six times the price.

This field has a history. It didn’t begin with an actor wearing pointy ears, or even with John Campbell and his disciples. It’s been around for a long time, and there’s some wonderful stuff out there waiting to be rediscovered. So let’s begin...

Daniel F. Galouye was a disabled World War II vet who could have been much more prolific, but it would have cost him his disability pension. Still, turning out a mere handful of books in the twenty-plus years he lived after the war, he managed to write one genuine classic and a couple of other near-misses.

The classic is Dark Universe, which lost the 1962 Hugo to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land by the narrowest of margins. It was a paperback original, and has been reprinted in both paperback and hardcover.

Galouye postulates a future in which a number of people went underground—way underground—when atomic war looked inevitable. Except that the war didn’t occur, and this society has been existing in total darkness, far beneath the ground, for generations.

How would such a society develop? What kind of culture would they form? How would knowledge pass from one generation to another?

And how would they react to a silent sound that hurts the eyes (i.e., light?)

Galouye has couched a remarkable bit of speculation in a fast-moving action-adventure framework, far superior to most similar exercises that are available today.

Henry Kuttner was, with his wife C. L. Moore, the exemplar of the smooth, polished, professional writer. He was so prolific that he needed not just one pseudonym, but more than half a dozen. Two of them—Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell—actually were more popular than Kuttner himself in some 1940s readers’ polls.

Kuttner was one of the few writers in the history of this field—Fredric Brown, Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, Ron Goulart, Esther Friesner, John Sladek, George Alec Effinger and myself constitute the bulk of the others—who was able to sell humor in some quantity. And most readers will argue that his Gallagher stories, collected as Robots Have No Tails, are his funniest.

The stories are not that different from each other, except for the gimmick ... and as humorous gimmick stories, they represent a type that John Campbell never tired of running, provided they were well-written (and if Kuttner ever wrote a sloppy story after 1940, I think it must have escaped everyone’s notice.)

Gallagher is an inventor. He is also a drunk. He is, furthermore, a genius—but only when he’s drunk. And in each story, he sobers up, finds some incredibly complex machine that he can’t recall inventing, and has to figure out what it does—whether it can save the world from nuclear holocaust, or whether it’s simply a machine that can open a beer can in seventy-three distinct steps. (Warning: the hardcover lists the author as Lewis Padgett, the paperback as Henry Kuttner.)

Lots of fun—and a fine introduction to this sort of thing.

I’m one of the few people who think Kuttner’s wife, the late C. L. Moore, was an even better writer before she started collaborating with him. She became a much more polished stylist thereafter. But Kuttner, in truth, was never known for the originality of his ideas, and with a few exceptions, such as the classic novella he wrote with Moore under the pseudonym Lawrence O’Donnell, Vintage Season (reprinted as part of a Tor Double a few years ago—buy it if you can find it), I prefer Moore’s earlier work.

In fact, I have said on many occasions that whenever my sense of wonder needs a shot of adrenaline, I picked up one of Moore’s Northwest Smith stories and I’m fine thirty minutes later.

Northwest Smith is a space opera hero, whose adventures tend toward the fantastic and the truly erotic (no, don’t look for explicit sex, not in stories that appeared in the 1930s). Moore can weave a web of words that will transport you to the same exotic lands that Smith visits, and make you—depending on the land—either reluctant to return home or desperate to get back to safe surroundings.

The most famous is the oft-reprinted Shambleau, but there are many others, each equally mesmerizing. The stories were collected in paperback as Northwest Smith, and are still available from specialty publisher Don Grant as Scarlet Dream, a beautiful (but expensive) hardcover with a number of color plates.

Fredric Brown was the master of the vignette, the 500-word short-short story that looks so easy until you try to write it. Brown sold well more than fifty of them, plus dozens of stories of more normal length.

But to me, his masterpiece—maybe it’s just because I grew up in science fiction fandom—is the novel, What Mad Universe, which probably qualifies as the first recursive science fiction novel (i.e., a novel about science fiction).

I’m letting one of the plot kittens out of the bag, but the book is such a delight that it’ll do no serious harm if I tell you that it concerns a pulp science fiction editor who finds himself in a rip-roaring, alien-plagued, super-hero naked-heroine universe that exists in the mind of one of his goshwowboyoboy teenaged readers. Brown takes every tired old cliché of science fiction— all of which appeal to the typical teenager—and forms them into a wonderfully comic adventure.

This is another one that had a few paperback editions, became acknowledged as a classic, and then came out in a limited, very expensive, collector’s hardcover. Hunt up the paperback—it’s not that rare.

Eric Frank Russell is perhaps best-known in science fiction history as the man who caused John Campbell to create Unknown Worlds—perhaps the finest fantasy magazine ever published—when his novel, Sinister Barrier, didn’t fit Astounding’s format but was too good to reject. (It’s not true, of course, but it’s a neat bit of pseudo-history that’s become generally accepted.)

Russell, an Englishman with a sly sense of humor, went on to write Dreadful Sanctuary, the Jay Score stories, and the early Hugo winner Alamagoosa.

But to me, his best novel—and his great lost career opportunity—is Wasp, which has seen numerous paperback editions, most recently the complete, restored text edition from del Rey.

A man is called to his superior’s office during a war with an alien race. The superior shows him a report of a car with four strong, competent, two-hundred-pound men, going over a cliff, killing all the occupants. Why? Because of a one-ounce wasp that took the driver’s attention off the road.

His job is to be set down on the aliens’ home world and become a wasp, a tiny irritant that takes up an inordinate amount of the aliens’ military attention.

It’s a brilliant bit of espionage/thriller fiction. I believed the day I read it—and I believe to this day—that if Russell had set it in Nazi Germany during World War II, he’d have written a worldwide bestseller and ranked as Eric Ambler’s only serious rival until Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett came along decades later. Instead, it was a science fiction novel, with typical science fiction sales figures—the world’s loss, and our gain.

The late James Blish, writing as William Atheling, Jr., once proved—to his satisfaction, at least—that A. Merritt was the lowest kind of hack, and that of all Merritt’s fantasies, The Ship of Ishtar was by far the worst.

Perhaps if he’d talked to some of Merritt’s legion of readers, he might have figured out why Merritt will keep coming back into print long after just about everything Blish wrote is forgotten.

What Merritt wrote were Romances. Not the small-r romance novels of Harlequin and Silhouette, but the Capital-R Romances that are cut from the same cloth as H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Yes, they abound in purple prose. No, no one was ever meant to take them seriously. Yes, they will transport you to worlds that you will wish existed. No, the characters are not three-dimensional; in fact, most of them are lucky to possess two dimensions. Yes, they are filled with Romance and Adventure and Exoticism and a Sense of Wonder—and Blish to the contrary, the best of them is The Ship of Ishtar, which has seen half a dozen paperback and trade paperback editions and shouldn’t be too hard to find.

In California, there is a house built entirely of garbage—and yet, in its final form it is considered a work of art.

I want to tell you about a book like that.

Movie buffs: Remember the Man With No Name? The Fat Man?

Comic fans: Do you know who The Big Red Cheese is?

Pulp fans: Remember the dapper little Lawyer with the sword cane?

Mystery fans: You know the Fat Man (see above)...but how about The Other Fat Man? Or the Consulting Detective?

Well, all these icons exist in one book—Autumn Angels, by Arthur Byron Cover, which I consider the most brilliant debut novel of the 1970s. Cover takes the icons of movies, comics, pulp magazines, and other popular entertainments, icons aimed at the Lowest Common Denominator, puts them together, and comes up with a true work of art as three of his characters go on a quest to end boredom in a world of perfect men with godlike powers.

I realize that this book appeared in 1975. To me, that’s barely the day before yesterday. But demographics say that if you are reading this magazine, the odds are better than 50-50 that Autumn Angels has been out of print since before you were ten years old.

Which, I suppose, is why I’m writing this column in the first place.

Effie Seiberg has recently sold to Analog, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Lightspeed Magazine, and Crossed Genres Magazine. This is her first appearance in Galaxy’s Edge.

RECIPE: 1 UNIVERSE

by Effie Seiberg

Recipe: 1 Universe

Serves: everybody

1) Start with nothing. If you don’t have nothing, discard everything. Discard your house and your bed, your friends and your family and the dog who barks hello to you every time you pass it on your way to work. Discard your work. Discard your hopes and your dreams, your love of peanut butter, and the little crinkle you get at the side of your smile when you smell the sea shore. Discard yourself.

If you’re unable to discard yourself, climb to the top of the tallest mountain and study with the monks who serve at the temple there. When you’re done, discard the monks and the mountain, and even your memories of them.

2) When you have nothing, and there is no you to be floating around in the nothingness, stop for a moment and contemplate the peace and quiet. It will not come again. Then discard that moment, because moments are made of time and you may not keep anything, time least of all.

3) Make a bang. Let that nothingness, which has been aching to be somethingness and which you’ve been holding back as hard as you can (for steps one and two are not easy) and are bursting at the non-existent seams to contain…let it go. If done right, everything will explode out from a single infinitesimal point, and there will be everything instead of nothing. Set the temperature at ten billion degrees Fahrenheit. Safety goggles are advised for this step.

4) At this point, there will be a soup of fundamental particles, of neutrons, electrons, and protons. You will not be able to see these—the free electrons will scatter photons the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds—but you will be able to feel them. Swirl gently with your finger and take a taste. It should taste like raspberries. If the mixture is slowly cooling and small neutral atoms are beginning to form, you’re on the right track.

5) Set your timer to 380,000 years, then check back on your mixture. The expansion should be continuing, so make sure there’s room for your nascent universe to grow.

You should see a soft latte-colored afterglow. This step is most critical, for the echoes of this glow will be visible until the end of your universe, a twinkling tattoo in the background of everything.

6) Swirl in a healthy dollop of dark energy and sprinkle in some dark matter, and stir. Then do this again, and again another time, for nobody ever estimates it correctly on the first try. A true universe has mysteries and depths beyond what can be expected. Your mixture should still be expanding, and at this point, taste like licorice. Set your timer for about another four hundred million years.

7) By now you should have several elements, and the first stars should have started to form. They should nestle in your mixture and expand away from each other like raisins in raisin bread, though they should be flavored like sharp cinnamon oil. While it is tempting, do not taste the stars in this form, though their bright white glow nearly cries out to be licked. Like with so many beautiful things, you will get burned.

8) If they have not yet begun to do so on their own, collect stars together to form galaxies. Reach in to grab a handful at a time—while wearing protective gloves, of course—then set that cluster twirling around itself. Much like a soufflé, be quiet around your universe at this time and avoid bangs and shudders so it doesn’t collapse.

9) Add the spark of life. It is recommended to start this process in several locations in parallel, just in case. Of course, you may choose to leave your universe as-is, sterile and dead with the cosmic wind howling upon lifeless moons and stretches of empty space, but it is not recommended. You’ll find that a lifeless universe can never be a complete one.

10) If your life has started to evolve in some places but not others, that’s okay. If your life has gone extinct in some places, whether through meteorite strikes or stars going nova or through the species’ own stupidity, that’s okay. Just make sure you seed more life elsewhere and keep going.

11) Do not coddle your lifeforms, tempting though it may be. The occasional aversion of a meteorite is all well and good, but you must let your lifeforms develop on their own. At some point some lifeforms will even develop theories about you, and that is fine as well. Do not be tempted by their offerings and flattery—it will do them no good to assume such power over you. However, if you have a set of lifeforms that are lacking love, or curiosity, or logic, feel free to discard them and start a new set elsewhere. Such creatures may well ruin the batch.

12) It should be noted at this point that you will not be the only one following this recipe. There will be universes next to yours, steaming on your colleagues’ windowsills with tantalizing scents. Resist the urge to connect your universe to theirs. Wormholes are aptly named, and nobody wants a wormy universe.

13) At some point, one of your set of lifeforms will develop philosophy and science, and will stumble onto this very recipe. One of them will even follow it. This is as it should be. In the process, their/your universe will be discarded, and you along with it. Universes, like most things of beauty, are ephemeral, cyclical things.

Before you and your universe wink out of existence, take a moment to appreciate the one who came before you and built your original universe, for you had discarded them without a moment’s thought at the beginning of this process. Toast them with a glass of champagne and a thick slice of your freshly-baked universe, studded with stars and planets and love, before you blink away.

Copyright © 2015 by Effie Seiberg

David Drake is the author of theHammer’s Slammersseries, theRCNseries, and literally dozens of other books. This is his first appearance inGalaxy’s Edge.

AIRBORNE ALL THE WAY!

by David Drake

Crewgoblin Dumber Than #3 stared with his unusual look of puzzlement as labor goblins unrolled Balloon Prima. He scratched his chainmail jockstrap and said to Dog Squat, the balloon chief, I dunno, boss.

Dog Squat rolled her eyes expressively and muttered, Mana give me strength! She glanced covertly to see if Roxanne was watching what balloon chiefs had to put up with, but the senior thaumaturge was involved with the team of dragon wranglers bringing the whelp into position in front of the coal pile.

Dog Squat glowered at her four crew goblins. Well, what don’t you know? she snarled. What is there to know? We go up, we throw rocks down. You like to throw rocks, Number Three?

I like to bite them, said Dumber Than #1. Will we be able to bite them, Dog Squat?

The plateau on which the Balloon Brigade was readying for battle overlooked the enemy on the broad plain below. The hostile command group, pulsing with white mana had taken its station well to the rear. White battalions were deploying directly from their line of march. Gullies and knolls skewed the rectangles of troops slightly, but the formations were still precise enough to make a goblin’s disorderly mind ache.

But boss, #3 said, how do we get down again?

Getting down’s the easy part! Dog Squat shouted. Rocks aren’t any smarter than you are, and they manage to get down, don’t they? Well, not much smarter. Just leave the thinking to me, why don’t you?

I really like to bite them, #1 repeated. He scraped at a black, gleaming fang with a black, gleaming foreclaw. After we throw rocks, will we be able to bite, Dog Squat?

Dog Squat tried to visualize biting from a balloon. The closest she could come was a sort of ruddy blur that made her head ache worse than sight of the serried, white-clad ranks on the plains below. No biting, I tell you! she said to cover ignorance. Not even a tiny little bite!

The large pile of coal was ready for ignition. The metal cover sat on the ground behind for the moment. Instead of forging a simple dome, the smiths had created a gigantic horned helmet. To either side of the coal was a sloped dirt ramp so that labor goblins could carry the helmet over the pile and cap it when the time came.

Balloons Prima and Secundus were unrolled to either side, and the three wranglers had finally gotten their dragon whelp into position in front of the pile. The other unfilled balloons waited their turn in double lines. It was time to start.

All right, Theobald! Senior Thaumaturge Roxanne said to the junior thaumaturge accompanying her, a mana specialist. "Get to work and don’t waste a lot of time. We’re already forty minutes behind schedule. Malfegor will singe the skin off me if