Tor Double #25
Sep. 23rd, 2007 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishThe Tor (and Ace) Doubles are a great idea. They're a way for longer short stories (~100pp) to find an audience, you get two books for the price of one cheap paperback, and they've got that neat flip-effect going on. (Plus, two covers! Don't like one? Store it so you see the other!) Of course these days the Reading Public wants six-hundred-page bricks for their seven bucks, so there's no real market anymore. But still.
John M. Ford, Fugue State
This book is made of confusion.
It apparently began life as a short story, and was expanded for publication here. Joel Rosenberg, on hearing this, said "Oh good, you're clearing up some of the ambiguities, then?" and JMF replied "No; adding new ones."
There are three or four, or maybe five (six?) stories going on, all with what are probably the same characters and concerning similar events. There are weirdnesses with memory, and what might be as full an explanation as possible at the end.
It is amazing and almost comprehensible. Even the title is a multilayered thing of beauty, in ways that aren't wholly clear until you've come out the other side and have some space for reflection.
Gene Wolfe, The Death of Dr. Island
I've read this before, in The Island of Doctor Death And Other Stories And Other Stories (yes). Unlike Fugue State, the only ambiguities are in the rather clever title. That doesn't make it any less brilliant, though. The titular doctor is a therapist with ultimate control over his environment (somewhere in the asteroid belt, I think). He has three patients, whom he helps to varying degrees.
Conceit: brilliant. Plot: quite good. Characters: of the four, two are fully realised, and two are drawn as they are mostly to support the theme. Which theme is my main problem with the book: the willingness of Dr. Island to play God with his patients unsettles me quite a bit. On the other hand, without that arrogance there'd be no book at all, and in the context of the book his methods are at least fifty percent effective.
John M. Ford, Fugue State
This book is made of confusion.
It apparently began life as a short story, and was expanded for publication here. Joel Rosenberg, on hearing this, said "Oh good, you're clearing up some of the ambiguities, then?" and JMF replied "No; adding new ones."
There are three or four, or maybe five (six?) stories going on, all with what are probably the same characters and concerning similar events. There are weirdnesses with memory, and what might be as full an explanation as possible at the end.
It is amazing and almost comprehensible. Even the title is a multilayered thing of beauty, in ways that aren't wholly clear until you've come out the other side and have some space for reflection.
Gene Wolfe, The Death of Dr. Island
I've read this before, in The Island of Doctor Death And Other Stories And Other Stories (yes). Unlike Fugue State, the only ambiguities are in the rather clever title. That doesn't make it any less brilliant, though. The titular doctor is a therapist with ultimate control over his environment (somewhere in the asteroid belt, I think). He has three patients, whom he helps to varying degrees.
Conceit: brilliant. Plot: quite good. Characters: of the four, two are fully realised, and two are drawn as they are mostly to support the theme. Which theme is my main problem with the book: the willingness of Dr. Island to play God with his patients unsettles me quite a bit. On the other hand, without that arrogance there'd be no book at all, and in the context of the book his methods are at least fifty percent effective.