Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree, Jr.

First published in 1985

Writing as James Tiptree Jr., Alice Sheldon composed some of the most creative stories in science fiction. Any collection of Tiptree stories is worth a reader’s time; Tales of the Quintana Roo is a good place to start.

Brightness Falls from the Air was Tiptree’s last (and only her second) novel. It tells an interesting story, but Tiptree’s short fiction is what made her special.

Brightness Falls from the Air takes place on the planet Damiem. It is a beautiful planet, although the novel’s end explains why the perception of beauty, like life, might be fleeting. The native population are winged creatures, also of extraordinary beauty. The Dameii are timid and afraid of humans. Their fear is grounded in abuse inflicted by humans who discovered that, when the Dameii are tortured, they produce secretions that have a powerful analgesic effect. Torturing Dameii to create an in-demand drug was profitable until the Federation banned the practice, set up Guardians on the planet to protect the Dameii from further exploitation, and negotiated reparations.

The current guardians are Cory Estreel-Korso, Kip Korso-Estreel, and Bram Baramji. Bram is a xenophysician who tends to the Dameii’s medical needs. On the Federation’s behalf, Cory and Kip permit a certain degree of tourism while assuring that the tourists do not disturb the Dameii. The current tourist group has come to see the light show that will be produced when the second wave of an exploding star passes by Damiem. The explosion killed an entire race of aliens, apart from the few who were off planet when their sun was destroyed. The reason for that star’s explosion becomes a central plot driver.

Among the tourists are four performers and the director/cameraman of a touring group of theatrical/film performers, although their work is more soft porn than theater. A preteen prince, heir to the royal throne of Pavo, has come to enjoy the lights, as have a retired professor of cybernetics, a light sculptor, twin sisters (one of them paralyzed) of noble birth, two students of water worlds (one of whom has been adapted to breathe through gills), and the logistics officer on the ship that brought them.

The novel’s first half establishes the characters and sets up the dawning realization that one or more characters intend to cause harm. Whether the targets are the guardians or the Dameii or both remains a mystery until the second half. Even then, the reader must spend some time pondering which of the characters are bad guys and which are not. To an extent, Brightness Falls from the Air reads like a crime novel set on an alien world with otherworldly motivations for the various crimes that characters commit.

Tiptree builds a fair amount of action into the story without turning it into a comic book plot. At the same time, this is also a novel of philosophy and choice. One of the guardians must make a hard choice between duty (protecting the Demeii) or protecting a person he loves. Another guardian must learn to accept fate because denying reality won’t make life better for anyone. A character who seeks retribution eventually wonders whether vengeance is any more just than the crime that is avenged. Toss in a story of blossoming love and another of enduring love and Brightness Falls from the Air becomes a story in full.

While the story moves quickly, it gets its flesh from Tiptree’s evocative descriptions of Damiem and the Demeii. Her careful attention to detail, both in the setting and in her development of human and alien characters, is the novel’s strength. Characters have colorful personalities. A young teen porn star is grounded and centered because none of her choices have been forced. The twin sister who isn’t paralyzed is a bit batty; her cybernet connection to the paralyzed twin makes the other characters wonder whether the paralyzed twin would like to get her sister out of her head. Original touches like those are evidence that the reader is immersed in a Tiptree story.

The novel’s ending is both happy and sad. Some characters take advantage of traumatic circumstances to make changes in their lives. Other characters suffer because suffering is a part of life. While Tiptree’s prose and inventiveness does not reach the heights of her bast short stories, the novel is one that science fiction fans shouldn’t overlook.

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Running Dog by Don DeLillo

First published in 1978

Running Dog is Don DeLillo’s sixth novel. He wrote it several years before he achieved fame for White Noise, the first in a string of award-winning books that showcase DeLillo’s quirky humor and unique perspective on the human condition. Running Dog has some thriller elements, but they give way to DeLillo’s “big picture” assessment of the quest to acquire, a quest that is often more satisfying than making the actual acquisition.

Lightborne deals in upscale erotica from his New York gallery. He acquires antiquities and minor works of art that depict erections and coitus. One collector of such products is a senator who deals with Lightborne through an intermediary. The senator keeps his collection locked away in a windowless house that adjoins his own through a fake fireplace.

Lightborne thinks he has a source who can deliver a film of an orgy that occurred in Hitler’s bunker at about the time of Hitler’s death. The agent fronting for the senator would like to acquire the film, but competing buyers are making life difficult for Lightborne. Organized crime takes an interest, as does a young but successful smut dealer in Dallas. Their competition for the unseen product puts Lightborne at risk; hence DeLillo’s flirtation with the thriller genre.

While Lightborne shares the spotlight, the true protagonist is Moll Robbins. Moll writes for Running Dog, a publication that once positioned itself as radical. The publication takes its name from the Vietnam-era phrase “capitalist lackeys and running dogs” used to describe the western obsession with consumerism and class distinctions. After the marketplace for radical publications dwindled, Running Dog began to focus on sensational stories. Moll writes about sex because sex sells but she misses the “sense of evil design” that comes with investigating government conspiracies. She’s trying to get back in the political game by investigating rumors that a wealthy senator has a hidden collection of erotic art.

During a drunken and seductive interview with the aging senator, Moll learns that a Senate committee is investigating a secret organization called Radical Matrix. Once a procurement arm of the CIA, Radical Matrix has spun off into a self-funded shop of dirty deeds operated by Earl Mudger, who flew clandestine operations in Laos under contract with the CIA before he was hired to run Radical Matrix. Moll becomes involved with Radical Matrix agent Glen Selvy, an irreducible spy who has no identity beyond his paranoid existence as a spook. Radical Matrix comes to view Selvy as a threat for paranoid reasons of its own.

All of this adds up to a dark and amusing story about people who muddle through with evil or unsavory plans to get what they want because that’s all that life seems to offer. The porn acquisition story is particularly funny because none of the people fighting over the film have a clue whether the rumors of a sex romp in Hitler’s bunker are true. The collateral story about Radical Matrix seems to be poking fun at conspiracy theories and the paranoia that afflicts the intelligence community, as well as the continuing and unsuccessful political effort to keep track of CIA mischief. While the two halves of the story never cohere, each half has some merit. Running Dog allows a glimpse of the talent that would eventually burst forth from DeLillo and, to his fans at least, might be worth reading for that reason alone.

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Billy Summers by Stephen King

Published by Scribner on August 3, 2021

Both gritty and darkly heartwarming, Billy Summers tells the story of a contract killer. Billy assures us that he only ever killed bad people. He sees himself as a “garbageman with a gun.” Billy knows he’s also a bad person, but that’s the kind of assurance that allows a reader to perceive Billy as likable, if not admirable.

Billy works with an intermediary named Bucky. When Nick Majarian asks Bucky whether Billy is available, Bucky says that Billy is thinking about retirement but might be willing to do one more job if the price right. Nick offers the right price ($2.5 million) to shoot an inmate from an office window as the inmate is being walked from a police car to the courthouse. Nick is a middleman. He won’t reveal the name of the man who wants the inmate dead. The inmate committed senseless murders and fits Billy’s definition of a bad guy who deserves to die, so Billy takes the job.

Nick doesn’t know when the inmate will be extradited to the state where the killing is supposed to occur. Until that date arrives, Billy will occupy the office from which he’ll shoot. Nick gives him a cover identity as a writer who needs to be isolated while he finishes his novel. Billy has always wanted to write a novel, so he uses his down time to write the story of his life. Nick also rents a house for Billy. While Billy knows better than to get friendly with his neighbors, Billy is a friendly guy. He plays Monopoly with the neighbor kids and attends cookouts, knowing his neighbors will be disappointed when they learn that Billy is an assassin. The novel’s first half disappears in the rearview mirror as the story moves forward.

Billy pretends to be stupid but he’s smart enough to figure out that Nick intends to take him out when the shooting is accomplished. Billy is put off by Nick’s rude behavior. He’s also anxious not to be cheated out of a fee. The reader knows that things will not go well for Nick, but Billy’s strategy for handling the betrayal is surprising.

In the novel's second act, Billy rescues a young woman named Alice Maxwell who has just been raped. The rest of the novel develops Billy’s relationship with Alice and with Bucky as the plot pivots toward Billy’s plan to get even with the guy who wants Nick to kill him. By the end, the reader will understand why the death of the inmate was so personal to the man who funded the assassination. The explanation is plausible.

While some aspects of the story are predictable — this is far from the first novel to feature a kindly assassin as the protagonist — Steven King offers so much detail that it almost seems fresh. The characters are pretty much who the reader would want them to be. Likable characters are almost comforting in a novel of this nature. Billy feels a sense of shame for not being a better person, but he redeems himself by taking care of Alice. Bucky is a gruff old loner who redeems himself in a similar fashion. Alice matures quickly, both by surviving her rape and by helping Billy. It’s easy to bond with the key players.

King provides a story within a story by sharing the book that Billy is writing. Billy’s book focuses on his horrific war experiences. The material is again predictable, but King is such a good storyteller that it’s easy to become lost in the narrative.

Billy Summers is not a horror novel, but King gives a nod to his early years as a horror novelist by placing a character near the site of the (now destroyed) Overlook Hotel, the setting of King’s The Shining. He also suggests that a guest house near the character’s home might be haunted. It’s fun to see King paying homage to his own roots.

There’s nothing special about Billy Summers apart from the fact that Stephen King wrote it. It’s the kind of book King can probably knock out during the halftime of a Patriots game. At the same time, King’s gift at storytelling sets him apart from writers who would have turned the same story into a melodrama or a silly action novel. King evokes true emotion, particularly in the final chapters as he finds a clever mechanism to resolve the story in a couple of different ways.

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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Published by Scribner on September 28, 2021

Anthony Doerr tells this story in multiple time frames. Each chapter begins with fragments of a story written by Antonius Diogenes, a second century storyteller. The title of Diogenes’ story translates as Cloud Cuckoo Land. The rest of the book bounces around in time. The segments are connected by Diogenes’ story. That connection reminds us of the importance of books and the ease with which, in the long stretch of time, knowledge is lost. We believe that everything will last “but that is only because of the extreme brevity of our own lives.” Cities “come and go like anthills.” “The houses of the rich burn as quick as any other.” From ancient works and the ruins of the past, we might discover lost knowledge that will help us understand how our present came into existence. We might also learn something about the universality of human experience.

Diogenes’ story tells of Aethon’s “journey to a utopian city in the sky.” The story was supposedly written on wooden slates that Diogenes discovered in Aethon’s tomb. Diogenes claimed to have transcribed the slates onto papyrus and had the transcripts delivered to his ailing niece, an entertainment designed to encourage her recovery.

Centuries later, as the Saracens prepare to sack Constantinople, a girl named Anna is ransacking a hidden trove of manuscripts, delivering them to monks who hope to find a book that contains the entire world. Anna believes Diogenes’ codex fits that description when it speaks of “a place of golden towers stacked on clouds, redshanks, quails, moorhens, and cuckoos, where rivers of broth gushed from spigots.”

North of Constantinople, Omeir was born with a facial deformity that makes his village regard him as a djinn. His grandfather cannot find it in himself to leave the baby to die. Omeir turns into a gentle child who raises and loves two oxen before he and his oxen are drafted to attack Constantinople. Omeir’s path eventually intersects Anna’s. Diogenes’ book, once important only to Anna, now becomes important to Omeir.

Zeno Ninis is a prisoner of war in Korea during the early 1950s, where he meets and falls in love with a scholar named Rex. Zeno learns root words in Greek from Rex, including a particularly telling phrase that translates as: “That’s what the gods do. They spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.”

Seymour Stuhlman is a child in Lakeport, Idaho in the mid-2010s. Birds are losing their Lakeport habitat to developers who replace forests with parking lots. One of those birds was an owl Seymour knew as Trustyfriend. Medication is the adult answer to Seymour’s perception of the doomed world in which he lives, but Seymour has a bent for subversion that neither medication nor prison will change. His eventual purpose in life is to undo the lies that corporate America tells people who prefer a clean and cheerful world to the one they have created.

Zeno’s story collides with Seymour’s in 2020. Seymour is apparently prepared to blow up the Lakeport library as Zeno is upstairs, directing a children’s play.

Konstance lives on a generation ship making its way to a distant planet after Earth has succumbed to environmental disaster. Konstance loses herself in the generation ship’s computer, discovering Earth’s history, before she is forced into isolation to avoid a rapidly spreading contagion. Konstance’s father had a book called Cloud Cuckoo Land, translated from the Greek by Zeno Ninis. In the ship’s virtual library, she searches for information about Zeno and begins to guess the truth about her isolated existence.

Diogenes’ tale links all the characters, illustrating the reality that history has unforeseeable impacts on the future, that people who history does not recall have played their role in shaping our present. The novel’s characters are imbued with the same qualities as Aethon. They persist. They take wrong turns but eventually right their course. They stand in awe of a world they don’t understand, but they strive to gain knowledge of their place within it. They might get lost, they might lose things, but they come to understand that “sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.” The characters are fighting not just to make sense of the world but to make sense of themselves.

Like his characters, Doerr’s prose is lively and surprising. He asks important questions: “Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we are young?” Why do we find it so hard to accept reality? Why do people want to conquer others when what they have is enough? Doerr gives the reader nutritious thoughts to chew upon, but he does so in the context of a story that gradually evolves from bewildering to astonishing.

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