Monthly Archives: November 2023

November 13, 2023 · 5:15 am

“Breadth and ambition” is not the way to describe racist policy

The New York Times had an excellent article last week on Trump’s plans for immigrants he doesn’t like: concentration camps and mass deportations, all bypassing due process hearings. Because letting presidents lock up whoever they want without hearings or trial worked so well last time. And Trump, let’s remember, kept insisting the Central Park Five were guilty even after the legal system cleared them. Yeah, I trust his judgment … not.

He also intends to eliminate birthright citizenship, never mind that it’s in the Constitution. Will the courts do anything about that when the inevitable civil liberties case reaches them? If they do, what if he just ignores them. As JD Vance has suggested Trump do if the courts try to stop him staffing the government with party loyalists.

While the article is good, there’s a point where the authors (Maggie Haberman, Charlies Savage and Jonathan Swan) write that “there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.” This I have trouble with. We’re talking a massively racist, unconstitutional policy that will undoubtedly hurt a great many innocent people; the chance of innocent people getting deported or interned in a no-hearing system is damn good (and that’s not the only harm). “Breadth and ambition” sounds laudatory — like a description of the space program in the 1960s, the 1930s New Deal or 1950s containment of Soviet expansion (flawed as our anticommunist strategy became in so many ways). Hitler’s final solution, Putin’s dream of restoring Russia’s Soviet-era empire are visions with breadth and ambition but no American paper would describe them that way. This shouldn’t be any different.

As Lawyers, Guns and Money has said repeatedly, the media’s focus on Biden’s age is irrelevant. Quite aside from the facts Trump’s no spring chicken and seems to be losing it faster, Trump and Biden are going to be the candidates if they live to election day. Pundits pining for the two parties to pick differently or urging that perennial fantasy, a third-party win, are dreaming. And slacking off. This is one period when both sides are not the same; you’d think given Trump’s frequent threats to the media, they’d be aware of that. What matters is what Trump plans to do in office; focusing on Biden’s age or finding something so they can “both sides” it (e.g., Trump said Biden stole the election, Biden said Republicans reject democracy, therefore both parties are the same!) is a waste.

Part of the problem is that the political media love a horse race. It’s more entertaining and less demanding or uncomfortable than dealing with Republicans morphing into a fascist party. This may be why, as Jennifer Rubin says, the press are hooked on “Joe Biden’s in trouble.” Sure, last week’s elections were a win for Democrats and decent Americans but the polls, the polls show Trump’s making amazing gains! And Dems are worried about Biden’s campaign because of those polls! Bad news for Biden!

That’s not to say they shouldn’t report problems with Biden’s campaign or cover the race evenhandedly. But when one party is running on a power grab, has the support of anti-Semites and neo-Nazis — well, I don’t think “both sides do it” is the solution.

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November 12, 2023 · 5:11 am

A thief, a monster slayer and more: books read

Maurice LeBlacn’s ARSENE LUPIN is the first story collection of the early 20th century gentleman thief, and ancestor of anime’s Lupin III. Lupin was a seamstress’ son who paid back his mother’s cruel employers by stealing their most valuable possession (as disclosed in one story); now he’s an elegant and selective (he leaves a note in one mansion that he’ll return when the antiques are real ones) master criminal who can pull a robbery from inside prison and match wits with Sherlock Holmes (edited to Herlock Sholmes after Doyle complained) though that’s an underwhelming story. Overall, Lupin is readable, way more so than Master of Mysteries or the British gentleman thief Raffles, but like so many detective stories of that era, lacks the magic Doyle gave to Sherlock Holmes. For the record, Lupin III is certainly a worthy successor to his grandfather’s skills but so scruffy and uncouth I suspect Arsene would be rolling his eyes.

TRAIL OF LIGHTNING: The Sixth World Book One by Rebecca Roanhorse is set on Navajo land after floods from global warming (or as the name of the series suggests, anative American apocalypse ushering in a new world) have left the region isolated and free but swarming with monsters. Protagonist Maggie is a metahuman monster hunter, former protege of a demigod, now charged with investigating why homunculi are showing up and attacking people and having to do so in the company of the Most Obnoxious, Most Irritating Man She’s Ever Met.

The setting was great and Maggie’s one of the better emotionally scarred characters I’ve read in recent years. However, as one online review put it, most of the book is side quests and subplots rather than tackling the supposed big threat; when they confront it at the climax everything feels rushed and not entirely logical (to avoid spoilers I won’t go into details). Still, I’ll read the sequel eventually, as the library has it.

I assumed the graphic novel SLEAZE CASTLE: The Director’s Cut by Dave McKinnon and Terry Wiley would be some sort of urban-grit-and-sex story but it’s much goofier and more charming. Jo, a TV studies major at college in the UK, falls through a hole in time space and ends up six months in the future, on the same world her bestie Panda came from, in the latter’s ancestral home of Sleaze Castle (family name, I assume). Here she meets a variety of oddballs and hangs out  — which makes for a slight story, but it’s thoroughly winning.I had much less fun with NOWHERE MAN: You Don’t Know Jack by Jerome Walford, an introduction to the comics series. The protagonist is an ambitious cop with some kind of split personality or Hulk-like alt.self which creates problems … but I didn’t care what they were.

#SFWApro. Art by Wiley (t) and Herriman, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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November 11, 2023 · 5:15 am

Movies watched with others (and movies that weren’t)

On my recent visit to Florida I rewatched JOHN CARTER (2012) with my BFF Cindy and her sister and found that despite no familiarity with the original Princess of Mars, they thoroughly enjoyed it (as do I — some thoughts from the last viewing here). Except for the ending, which violated Cindy’s rule that if she’s going to invest time in a film she wants a happy ending. I thought it was obvious things will work out at the end but Cindy didn’t — Carter’s been gone ten years from Mars, who knows what might have happened?And that’s fair enough — she doesn’t have knowledge of the sequel, Gods of Mars. And she did get me thinking about what Part Two would have been like (had Disney not botched the marketing, leading to a box office flip) given that the plot of book two won’t work on screen, given the first film’s revelations about the Therns. I still love this film. “To truly demoralize a nation requires a spectacle on the grandest scale.”

More recently, TYG and I watched THE CONTENDER (2000) for date night, and it holds up well. President Jeff Bridges’ vice president has just died; rather than the front runner, a prominent governor, Bridges shoots for a precedent setting move, picking a woman, Senator Joan Allen. That doesn’t suit the governor’s ally, Sen. Gary Oldman, though he’s also sincere that he thinks Allen’s not ready for prime time. His tactics, however, are gutter fighting: is it true she had a drunken three-way at a frat party on college? Maybe more than two guys? How can we put a woman like that one heartbeat from the Oval Office?

Allen’s response: silence. As she says, even if her answer is No, I Didn’t, it treats the question as a valid standard for judging women’s fitness for office (as she also says, nobody would care if it were a man). Will she crack? Will Bridges give up on her? Part of what makes it good is that rather than present her as a perfect candidate they make her controversial, an atheist who advocates for the complete abolition of private gun ownership (I do not consider atheism controversial but it still is for a lot of Americans). Those are positions worthy of discussion but Oldman skips them in favor “she’s a slut!” It’s depressingly still relevant. And very well acted, with Christian Slater, Saul Rubinek, Katherine Morris and Sam Elliott (sans his usual mustache) in supporting roles. “You are the future of our party … and always will be.”

TANG AND ME (2022) is a Japanese film that plays like a knockoff of Short Circuit as a slacker husband tries to figure out the origin adorably cute robot that follows him around like a puppy. It became a “talking lamp” for me very quickly. “There’s a weird robot in our yard.”

The supervillain MEGAMIND (2010) is Will Ferrell’s Luthor-like adversary to Brad Pitt’s Superman clone Metro Man. Destroying his nemesis early in the film, Megamind discovers there’s no fun to being evil without an adversary. Unfortunately turning schmuck “Hal Stewart” (Jonah Hill) into a superhero goes bad when his superhero Titan almost immediately proves a case of Power Corrupts — gosh, oh gosh, who will step up and save the city now? With Tina Fey as the Lois counterpart, this has more fun with Evil Superman than Brightburn managed. “There’s a benefit to losing — you get to learn from your mistakes.”

A young woman grieving for the death of her BFF discovers NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU (2023?) when Greys sneak into her bedroom, muss up her kitchen, pod-people her neighbors and slam doors telekinetically just to be scary, all of it without dialog (the best feature). Like Dark Skies this is alien invasion as horror with the alien activity indistinguishable from demons or poltergeists (Exorcist: The Greys); while effectively creepy the Greys’ actions feel gratuitous unless you go with Resident Alien‘s theory they’re just pervy sadists. The ending makes even less sense and the director’s explanation — we’re not supposed to understand their logic — doesn’t redeem it.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders. Princess of Mars cover by Michael Whelan.

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November 10, 2023 · 4:30 pm

The dogs ate my homework! The joyscrolling didn’t help.

Joyscrolling being the best term I could think of for the opposite of doomscrolling. After the election turned out so well for us I spent a lot of Wednesday checking for more good news and arguing with forced-birthers on Twitter ranting about how this proved nothing, they would never quit, Republicans had better not even think about giving up the fight! It felt good, (even given Republicans in Ohio are now vowing they’ll just ignore Amendment One).

This did not, of course, get much writing accomplished. In addition to which, TYG left Monday for a business conference and with only one parent on hand, all the animals were with me 24/7. That got me feeling very off-balance by Wednesday. And on Thursday, until she came back that afternoon. Today I was still pretty fried. There’s something about the constant lack of personal space that I find very wearying. Plus Wisp got frustrated because she never got her usual morning snuggle time before the dogs get up. Conversely Plushie was most displeased when he wanted my lap and found Mr. Wisp had the com.I did get a lot of work done for The Local Reporter but no finished articles. I’m still waiting on responses to emails so I can finish up.

I got another chapter of Savage Adventures edited, covering Doc Savage Magazine through The Devil’s Black Rock at the end of 1942. I was dismayed, though, to discover I’d gotten the name of a major character in Birds of Death wrong — it’s Benjamin Boot, not “Boots” Baxter (I’ve fixed it in the relevant post). If I can slip up like that’ll have to double check everything when I do the final proof.Plus I reread the book Windmaster’s Bane which I’ll be discussing next week.

Elsewhere online, I blogged some about The Thing in the Silver Age and about Jim Steranko’s amazing Agent of SHIELD artwork. Below, Nick Fury’s 1967 pad.And on Con-Tinual’s YouTube channel, I’m part of a panel discussing favorite superhero teams.

#SFWApro. Doc Savage covers by Emery Clarke.

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November 10, 2023 · 5:10 am

A Friday morning moment of Zen

Plushie may be loud about barking but he’s still our little boy. And as soft and pettable as he looks.#SFWApro.

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November 9, 2023 · 5:15 am

Republicans: we have the right to silence you but you cannot silence us!

Online misinformation is one of the GOP’s weapons; it’s almost fascinating watching on Twitter as they all turn out the same talking points. Programs to monitor online lies are cracking under GOP pressure and legal action. That’s pretty typical of their playbook: fight for the right to say whatever lies they please, try to shut down everyone else.

Case in point, Moms for Liberty turning their book-banning up several notches: they called the police to arrest librarians for supposedly distributing porn. Another Mom for Liberty who wanted to ban a Diary of Anne Frank graphic-novel adaptation is perfectly fine with having appeared on Jew-hating preacher Rick Wiles’ podcast.

Matt Walsh has never much worried about facts when he unleashes his misogyny, homophobia or trans-hate. That made it easy to harass a trans-care clinic.  Walsh must be envious of Chaya Raichik of the Libs of Tik-Toks, who generates lots more harassment, including bomb threats and death threats, while piously pretending it’s a total coincidence they follow on her posts. Of course, despite the long history of right-wing terrorism, invariably shriek loudly when someone refers to right-wing terrorism; they want it, they just don’t want it blamed on them. This isn’t new: Sarah Palin still wants to sue the NYT for suggesting her rhetoric influenced a mass shooter. (More here).

Or Fox host Clay Travis who says the covid vaccines are fraudulent so the government should seize any profits Moderna and Pfizer made off them. RFK Jr. has more modest goals: end federal spending on infectious disease research for eight years and (according to NBC news) “use the power of that attorney general to threaten editors of medical journals and force them to publish studies that had been retracted (he often cites the retracted studies saying ivermectin, a parasite drug, is an effective treatment for Covid). ‘We’re gonna say we’re fixing to file some racketeering lawsuits if you don’t start telling the truth in your journals.'” As I’ve written before, RFK can’t get the scientific results he wants so he’s simply going to rig the game. Never mind that his anti-vax crusades have already hurt people. And this is a good example of why infection-disease research matters.

Of course, Junior has plenty of other anti-vax liars and idiots to help him out.

Bigot Stephen Miller has been working to wield the court system against anti-racism. NASCAR has diversity initiatives, therefore it’s anti-white people! He’s not the only one pushing back against diversity in business after college affirmative action lost at SCOTUS. And of course, Florida is all in on this. But children of alumni needn’t worry — unsurprisingly all that talk about merit still isn’t affecting legacy admissions.

Lawsuits defending business’s right to refuse gay customers are still a booming industry, even when the business owner hasn’t been asked. Mat Staver’s Liberty Counsel is once again suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling an organization as a hate group.

Right-winger pastor Duncan Urbanek insists that yes, all gay people are pedophiles. He’s lying, but to an audience that wants to believe it.

Bernie Moreno, who’s running for senator in Ohio, claimed the state abortion rights amendment that won Tuesday would allow rapists to make their victims abort. This is a lie. The governor thinks protecting abortion rights is evil and radical; Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose suddenly purged 26,000 voters right before the vote. Among other dirty tricks. Unfortunately the lesson learned won’t be “let’s course-correct on abortion” but “we need to cheat better.” Just as Trump’s allies have concluded the problem with all those conservatives judges and Justice appointees Trump put into place is they’re not fascist enough.

Tom Fitton of the right-wing Judicial Watch has explained the Ohio amendment passing was a “big victory for George Soros.” Nothing anti-semitic in suggesting an international Jewish banker wants American babies dead, no sirree …

Mark Levin is just one of the many right-wing loudmouths — er, pundits — who think Trump should be able to threaten witnesses because free speech!

“Last December, Laramie Faith Community Church Elder Todd Schmidt displayed an anti-trans banner in the UW student union, identifying an individual transgender student by name.” Schmidt sued and collected $35,000.

To end on a good note, Indiana AG and forced birther Todd Rokita has been fined for some of his treatment of Dr. Caitlin Bernard. Moms for Liberty got their butts kicked in Pennsylvania and Iowa. So did a book-burning advocate in Virginia.

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November 8, 2023 · 5:15 am

Is our writers learning? Comps

One of the more frustrating parts of selling a book is “comps” — comparable novels or authors you can use to position yourself. You’ve seen them, I’m sure, the “perfect for fans of Jim Butcher/Lee Childs/Seanan McGuire/Nora Roberts!” recommendations in ads.According to this agent’s advice, and others, when you’re querying agents (and I presume publishers) you want to mention specific titles, preferably recent. This doesn’t seem to apply with ads where the comps are invariably author or occasionally movies or TV; one rom-com ad with a political background declared it would appeal to fans of The West Wing. Given the show is now 20 years old, I wonder if that indicates they’re targeting a demographic in their thirties and up or that they couldn’t come up with anything better.

If so I feel for them; this shit’s hard. As I’ve mentioned before, Southern Discomfort looks like an urban fantasy but in many ways it’s closer to intrusion fantasy, where there’s just one odd magical element and the world is otherwise normal. Does that mean if I pitch to urban fantasy fans I’ll hook them — it’s not quite the same old sort of thing — or annoy them by missing key genre elements?  If b, then what should I compare myself too? As the book’s set in 1973, would historical fiction be a better choice? And I’ll have to ask the same questions when I put out Let No Man Put Asunder.

To see if I can get a handle on the answer I’ve started reading books with an eye to finding comps: Southern fantasy, rural fantasy, small town fantasy, intrusion fantasy. The first of which was Caitlin Kiernan’s ALABASTER, which I first read several years ago.

Protagonist Dancy Flammarion is “an albino Boo Radley” (the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird) who first appeared in Kiernan’s Threshold (which I haven’t read). Assigned by a terrifying angel to track down monsters in a Southern gothic landscape, Dancy wanders through trailer parks, deconsecrated churches, decaying mansions and creepy gas stations with little enthusiasm but a determination to do god’s work.

I think I can cross this one off as a comp. It does feel more intrusion fantasy than urban fantasy — the monsters are an aberration, even if there are a lot of them — but it’s a much darker and freakier setting than Southern Discomfort. Pharisee Georgia may be going through hard times but it’s a nice place to live, which can’t be said about anywhere Dancy visits.

Kiernan’s prose style is also much more literary than mine, more so than on her first book, Silk (which I may reread too). She’s very good. Just not much use for this project but it was still good to reread her.

The one flaw in the book is that the introduction refers to The Well of Stars and Shadows as taking place in “the swamps of Okaloosa County, Florida.” I didn’t register that originally, probably because the story only references “North Florida” but as a former Okaloosa resident this has a very WTF quality. We do have swamps, but they’re on the federal land managed by Eglin Air Force Base, not anywhere people live. Even referring to “the swamps of Okaloosa County” as if it were a familiar landmark, like I’d say “the beaches of Okaloosa County” or “the Destin docks” sounds wrong — swamps are not an important part of the county at all. Which is part of why both Southern Discomfort and Let No Man Put Asunder are in imaginary cities — I’d just as soon not make mistakes like that.

Will I find a comp before Southern Discomfort comes out next year? Stay tuned …

#SFWapro. Covers by Lee Macleod (top) and Ted Naifeh, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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November 7, 2023 · 5:15 am

Once again, art proves easier to post than thoughts

So here are some book covers for y’all to peruse. First Allen Anderson gives us the legendary white jungle goddess, SheenaAn uncredited cover from 1953. I’m pretty sure in that era, that was a Bad Girl amount of cleavage to show.Victor Kalin provides a striking mystery-novel cover. I suspect the cover girl is another Bad Girl.And a final cover by Robert Gibson Jones.#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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November 6, 2023 · 5:10 am

“Biblical worldview” is a meaningless phrase

New House Speaker Mike Johnson has declared that if you want to know what he thinks ““go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” Actually, reading it won’t tell us anything about what Johnson thinks because Biblical worldviews are all over the map.

Take the Civil War. As religious historian Mark Noll has written, it was a theological crisis for white Protestants because their “Biblical worldview” included that the truth of the Bible was so plain, it didn’t need interpretation, didn’t need the Catholic Church to dictate how to read it — any Christian could do that for themselves. Only half of white America interpreted it as clearly supporting slavery; half saw it as a document embracing abolition. Fast-forward a century and lots of white Christians saw the Bible clearly supported segregation and opposed interracial marriage; other Christians disagreed (black Christians didn’t have these deep divisions. Go figure).

Here’s a specific example: for the authorities of Major League Baseball in 1947, the moral stance was keeping the major leagues whites only. For a more recent one, right-winger Anna Perez claims discrimination is Biblically justified.

To paraphrase Fred Clark, anyone who claims a Biblical worldview in relation with their politics should explain just what that worldview involves. As JFK once said, it’s perfectly legitimate to ask a believer of any faith (or an atheist for that matter) how their beliefs will influence their politics; opposing Johnson for being Christian (or atheist, Jewish, Hindu, etc.) is bigoted but opposing him because he opposes no-fault divorce is legit (he’s not alone in this), even if it does stem from his “Biblical worldview.” As a Louisiana state representative, Johnson supported a bill that could have allowed pastors to refuse to marry interracial couples; do his lies about the bill indicate he’s anti-interracial marriage?

While I’ve seen several articles drilling into the details of Johnson’s worldview, I’ve also seen a fair amount of handwaving it aside: how can Dems paint him as extreme when he’s so quiet-spoken? But being quiet-spoken isn’t inconsistent with being a bigot, and having  bad views isn’t excusable because they’re motivated by religion.

And as much as many conservative Christians claim their positions are the will of god, they are, at best, an interpretation of the Bible. Even if we assume the Bible itself is infallible (I certainly don’t think it is), none of us can claim our interpretation is infallible: only God can be without error (speaking from a Christian perspective, obviously). What many right-wingers think is God’s divine plan for men and women, as Kristen Kobes Du Mez says, is just recycled secular misogyny.

Similarly the assumption that election results we like are God’s will is, shall we see, possibly heavily biased. And as Johnson wants to slash IRS funding (as noted at the link this will not save the government money) he apparently doesn’t include “render unto Caesar” in his biblical worldview.

The “worldview” interview was with Sean Hannity, who, of course, wanted to softball the new conservative star. Other reporters shouldn’t go easy. What does his Biblical worldview entail? If Johnson thinks the US is a Christian nation, what does that mean for non-Christians? Which churches does he consider Christian? Given his long history of wanting to re-criminalize gay sex (see the first link up top) I’m guessing churches that are pro-gay do not, but he’ll probably be fine with those that don’t crack down on adultery, even if it is in the Ten Commandments.

Johnson claims it’s impossible for Christians to be hateful because the Bible says to love one another. Therefore the idea he’s going to impose his religion on anyone is just outrageous! The history of right-wing Christianity in this country says he’s lying, ditto Tony Perkins, who supports Johnson (and supported Trump, then whined when he was criticized for it).

Johnson sounds like the kind of guy who inspired the Founders to create this country as emphatically not a Christian nation. There’s never been a “Christian nation” that didn’t advocate for a specific kind of Christianity: Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, whatever. That never worked out well for the other branches of the faith; the Puritans, remember, hung Quakers for simply not being Puritans. Do not think it can’t happen again.

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November 5, 2023 · 5:15 am

Secrets of Winnie the Pooh (and other books)

THE POOH PERPLEX: A Freshman Casebook by Frederick C. Crews is a drop-dead brilliant satire on literary criticism. The supposed premise is that the work of A.A. Milne couldn’t possibly have stayed popular so many decades if it wasn’t full of Deep Hidden Meaning, then collecting a set of mock critical essays trying to unearth the meaning.

Could it be a Christian allegory with Winnie the Pooh as Adam? After all, in the story of Pooh and the Honey Tree he’s told not to eat food of a forbidden tree, tries to do it anyway … and falls?

What about Marxism? Remember when Rabbit trapped Pooh in his doorway and used him for one week’s unpaid labor as a towel rack?

Tortured aesthete? (“I have treasured this book since Mummy was swept away by cirrhosis of the liver.”) Freudian? Something else? I suspect some of this is parodying specific critics or critical schools of the day (back in the 1960s) that I don’t recognize, but it still works. I laughed a lot.

EVE by Victor LaValle and Brittany Peer reminds me a lot of Kirby’s Kamandi as a young girl raised in an isolated bunker discovers the post-apocalyptic world outside is nothing like the one she expected. And it turns out she’s not the person she thinks she is either. Lavalle said his inspiration was his childhood fave Battle of the Planets where he got to see kids like himself saving the world; that and writing a story with a black lead where race wasn’t significant. LaValle isn’t reinventing the wheel but he makes the wheel spin really well.KRAZY KAT: 1916-1918 by George Herriman collects the first two years of Herriman’s legendarily bizarre strip. Krazy Kat wanders around his town doing good, mooning over short-tempered Ignatz Mouse and pining for the moments (there are many) where Ignatz brains him with a brick. Peculiar, and I suspect an acquired taste but one I’ve acquired. The book also includes several examples of Herriman’s earlier strips and some background articles.

THE PAPER MAGICIAN by Charlie N. Holmberg is set in an alternate early 1900s where wizards work by bonding to specific materials such as metal, rubber or stone; protagonist Ceony is a scholarship student at magic school, dismayed to learn she’s being apprenticed to a paper magician simply because there’s nobody else who wants it and the authorities don’t want the discipline to die out. Ceony’s mentor proves eccentric but likeable but Ceony still isn’t happy. Then it turns out the mentor’s being stalked by someone whose bound themselves to flesh and blood with all the potential for cruelty that implies.

This started well, expository but focusing on Ceony’s feelings about her situation. However it gets more expository as it goes along and the last third is a long flashback about the mentor’s tormented life. Thumbs down.

A LONELY BROADCAST by Kel Byron has a woman return to her hometown to run the isolated radio station and discover the reason for its many strange rules (announcing an alert when fog rolls in) is that the mountainous forests around the area are as haunted and monstrous as Man-Thing’s hangout near Citrusville. Byron is very good at capturing weirdness but like Welcome to Nightvale she doesn’t build it into a coherent narrative. In the end, it didn’t work for me.

Neither did Clifford Simak’s WORLDS WITHOUT END even though he’s a favorite of mine. The title story is a novella about a technician who provides dreams to order for people going into cryosleep; it turns out the dreams are being covertly reprogrammed, but by whom? This one’s good but the second story is weaker and the third one is way too talkie.

#SFWApro. Eve cover by Peer, all rights to images remain with current holders.

 

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