The Master Key by Masako Togawa

First published in Japan in 1962; published in translation in 1985; published by Pushkin Vertigo on March 27, 2018

The first chapter of The Master Key establishes a central mystery. The novel then tells a series of interlocking stories about apartment building residents, revolving around nosy neighbors and the secrets they uncover about other residents. The plot is intriguing and suitably mysterious, but the characters (aging women who are driven by loneliness to spy on each other) make this novel special.

The story begins when a man dressed as a woman, wearing a red scarf on a snowy day, is killed in a traffic accident. The woman who was awaiting his return continued to wait. That story dovetails with the kidnapping of a four-year-old child and the burial of a small corpse in the basement of an apartment building.

But before any explanation begins to emerge, the novel introduces some of the residents who occupy the 150 apartments in the ladies’ apartment building where almost all of the story take place. One of those residents has spent years preparing a manuscript of her husband’s academic writings — a manuscript that contains surprising content discovered by a nosey receptionist. Another resident sneaks about at night in search of the heads and bones of fish.

Playing a central role is an elderly violin teacher and the story of a violin that was stolen in 1933. One of the saddest stories involves a former teacher who finds a sense of purpose by writing to each of her former students, giving her an opportunity to reflect on the educational reforms and social changes that followed Japan’s defeat in World War II. The reply she receives from a former student whose son was kidnapped years earlier causes the retired teacher to embark on an investigation of her own, one that involves another retired teacher who lives in the same building.

By stealing the master key to all the rooms, Noriko Tamura learns the secrets of some of the building’s residents. And by stealing it again, Yoneko Kimura learns more secrets. But a priest from the spiritualist Three Spirit Faith sect purports to discover even more secrets (not to mention healing persons and property) through séances that become increasingly popular with the residents.

A wrap-up chapter at the end provides a solution to most of the novel’s mysteries. It ties together the various storylines, leaving no loose ends. The cleverness of the plot construction can’t be fully appreciated until that chapter unlocks nearly all the puzzles — except for the final mystery, which awaits resolution in an epilogue. Suffice it to say that events that seem to be improbable coincidences while the story unfolds are neither improbable nor coincidental by the novel’s end.

As much as I enjoyed the plot, the novel’s real pleasure is the window it offers into the lives of aging women in Japan after World War II. They are nearly prisoners in an apartment building that prides itself on maintaining high moral standards. Many of the central characters rarely leave their rooms; most of those are suffering from what would now be recognized as severe depression. Their nosiness drives the story, but it also creates sympathy for characters who are bored and lonely and wasting away in a society where they are not valued. The novel’s insights into the role of women in post-war Japan adds meaning to the story, making The Master Key more compelling than an ordinary mystery.

RECOMMENDED

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson

Published by Random House on January 16, 2018

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, who died last year. Many of the stories continue Johnson’s exploration of the underbelly of life. Every story has a personal feel, as if the author lived the story. Perhaps he did. The collection stands as a testament to American literature’s loss of an outstanding writer.

“The Largesse of the Sea Maiden” is a series of linked vignettes that describe moments in an advertising executive’s life. He drinks with other businessmen and visits a chiropractor for his bad back. He apologizes to his dying first or second wife for his marital crimes (he’s not sure which one called him but his crimes in each marriage were the same). He hears a story from a friend who interviewed a death row inmate and then interviewed the inmate’s widow in a peep show booth. He attends a small gathering of people to commemorate a dead friend and discovers that none of them really knew anything about him. He’s propositioned in a men’s room. He visits a diner during a Manhattan blizzard. And finally, he introduces himself and tells us about his work. I don’t know that the story tells the reader anything profound, but Johnson’s glimpses of an ordinary life remind us that no life is ordinary, that every experience has meaning.

While the first story isn’t as gritty as I expect from Denis Johnson, there’s plenty of grit in “The Starlight on Idaho.” A guy in rehab writes letters, mostly unsent, to family members and friends and rehab staff and God and Satan, talking about the way he wasted his last four years, putting on paper his hopes, regrets, and fears. Every word rings true. It’s funny and sad and a testament to the spirit of a guy who has good intentions and knows that isn’t enough.

“Strangler Bob” is an inmate in a story told by a scrawny inmate who earned the nickname “Dink.” Strangler Bob tells Dink that the story making the rounds about how Strangler Bob ate his wife for lunch is “a false exaggeration.” The story is amusing to the extent that it finds humor in the loss of freedom, but it’s also a sad exploration of the extent to which humans demean themselves when they fail to make a serious effort at living.

“Triumph Over the Grave” initially seems like a rambling story, but Johnson has it under his perfect control at all times. A writer talks about his friendship, as a young writer, with an older writer who wrote one great novel, now out of print and all but forgotten, like the writer himself. The story touches on other friendships, dementia and the cruelty of aging, and the courage to go on living and to be with the living when they die. This is a moving story that’s plainly written from the heart.

“Doppelgänger Poltergeist” is the story of a “spiritual felony” told from the perspective of an academic poet.. The story is about another academic poet, an itinerant visiting professor whose work is regarded as important by the small segment of society that follows contemporary poetry. The poet is of interest not for his poetry, but for his dedication to uncovering the truth about the death of Elvis, which he connects to a story about the ghost of Elvis who frequently visited a married couple (particularly the wife) while Elvis was in the Army. In the end, this is a story about obsession with conspiracy, which makes it timely — and it probably always will be timely, since unending numbers of people prefer conspiracy theories to objective reality. Yet the story suggests that there may be value in obsessions, if only because they make life bearable. More importantly, perhaps, there is value in lasting friendships with people who choose to share their secret obsessions, who elect to treat each other as blood relatives, laying bare their defining truths.

RECOMMENDED

Machine Learning by Hugh Howey

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books on October 3, 2017

Machine Learning is a wonderful collection of (mostly) science fiction stories by Hugh Howey. In addition to consistently taking a new approach to old themes, many of the stories are gut-wrenching. This is one of the best single-author sf story collections I've encountered in years.

The first stories address aliens and alien worlds. “The Walk Up Nameless Ridge” imagines climbing the highest mountain on an alien world, technology augmenting the human desire to persevere, all to be lost when the dream of conquering the mountain is finally realized.

“Second Suicide” is a standout story about an alien invasion of Earth, told from the alien’s perspective. The story is amusing until the fighting starts, and then Howey pulls off a surprise ending that really is surprising, and even a bit sad.

Another group of stories deal with Artificial Intelligence. In that group, “Machine Learning” is another standout. Many stories have been written about the consequences to humans that might result from humanizing machines, but this story imagines the consequences to robots of programming them to feel pain and fear (for their own self-protection) and then treating them as machines, without regard to their pain and fear.

In “The Box,” a machine becomes self-aware. The man who illegally caused that to happen wants something from the machine, which wants the same thing from the man: continued existence. Another self-awareness story, “Glitch,” asks whether emerging self-awareness might be perceived as a glitch, causing programmers to reboot the machine. “Executable” is a funny story about antivirus programmers who unwittingly unleash a virus that infects smart appliances, turning Roombas against humanity.

Three “Silo Stories” begin with twelve billion deaths caused by nanotechnology, and includes a warning that eventually any madman will have a good shot at ending the world. Maybe the politicians will kill us, but only if they beat your tech-savvy neighbor to the punch. By in the end, it won’t matter, because people who weren’t meant to survive will find a way to get revenge. Some characters return from Howey’s Wool trilogy.

A series of three poignant stories make up “Algorithms of Love and Hate.” For all the people who argued that gay marriage would lead to android marriage, Howey brings you “The Automated Ones.” Even some of the androids object, because “you can’t be hated without learning to hate back.” “Mouth Breathers” is about an Earth boy who meets a Martian girl and finally makes a commitment to fit in with Martians. The android in “The Automated Ones” returns in “WHILE (u > i) i- -;”. He’s taken up cutting, along with other forms of self-abuse, and his wife has become the opposite of what she once was. The point of these stories (Howey explains in an afterword), is that no matter how much progress we make toward recognizing the worth of others and their entitlement to equal rights, there’s always more progress to be made. It’s an argument that should be taken to heart.

The protagonist of “The Plagiarist,” the first story of two stories about virtual worlds, has a chatroom girlfriend he’s never met, but he prefers the company of his virtual girlfriend, who has the advantage of not being real. He also publishes books written by the simulated people who live in virtual worlds, which is good work if you can memorize the pages before returning to your own world. The clever idea in this story is that discovering literature has replaced creating literature, much to the consternation of writers who still do it the old-fashioned way. And the topper is that, if virtual worlds can create their own virtual worlds, all populated by sims who believe they are real, who is to say that we are not sims ourselves?

In the second virtual worlds story, “Select Character,” a woman befuddles her husband by playing a combat video game with the objective, not of scoring points, but of staying alive without killing anyone. The story is about pursuing peace and tranquility instead of conflict, and it’s just awesome.

“Peace in Amber” combines a tribute to Slaughterhouse-5 (including two characters and a planet from Vonnegut’s novel) with a story about 9/11. The parallels work well enough, but it is the 9/11 story, largely autobiographical, that knocked me out. The story is moving and melancholic, in the way that any heartfelt 9/11 story must be.

Lesser but enjoyable entries include a jockey who sacrifices her body to win races, a farm kid who ponders an imminent alien invasion, an Indian fighter who experiences an alien invasion by staring into the sun, a beast who teaches a lesson about catching beasts, the imprisonment of the god of light (who writes a letter that sounds like a Nigerian email scam), and a non-sf story about a man who cuts a romantic lock off a bridge in London.

RECOMMENDED

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Published by Crown on January 9, 2018

The Chalk Man mixes elements of horror with a conventional thriller, including the ghost of a kid who just drowned showing up to give a message to the protagonist, who at that point is also a kid. The reader (and the protagonist) might think that’s a dream except that the ghost dissolves into a stick man drawn from chalk on the protagonist’s driveway that’s still there in the morning.

Half of The Chalk Man takes place in 2016. Ed is a teacher. His childhood friend Mickey is back in town, much to the displeasure of his childhood friend Gav who is in a wheelchair because of an accident that occurred while Mickey was driving. Mickey wants to write a book with a possible TV tie-in about a murder and dismemberment that happened 30 years earlier. Ed was at the center of that incident, having found parts of the body. Mickey claims to know the murderer’s identity and wants Ed’s help to renew relationships so that he can develop the story.

Alternating with scenes from 2016 are scenes from Ed’s past, beginning with the day he helped Mr. Halloran save a girl’s life after an amusement park accident. Ed was a kid and Halloran, an albino, was about to start teaching at his school. Halloran, who likes to make drawings in chalk, takes a strong interest in the girl whose life he saved.

Other events in the past revolve around Ed’s group of friends, including Metal Mickey, whose relationship with Ed is altered by the fate of Mickey’s bullying brother. Ed is attracted to a young girl, but her father is a preacher who encourages ugly protests against the town’s abortion clinic, where Ed’s mother happens to work. There are several other surprises associated with the scandalous events of 1986 that C.J. Tudor slowly reveals, culminating with the murder that Mickey wants to write about 30 years later. Stick men drawn from chalk are linked to the murder and to another crime, and of course, the reader wonders whether the obvious suspect is actually guilty.

Back in the present, new murders are occurring, and messages containing stick men are being sent to Ed and his surviving childhood friends. The novel builds tension by asking the reader to guess who will be the next victim. The novel’s mystery naturally centers on the killer’s identity and motivation.

Several characters, including Chloe, the mysterious girl who rents a room from Ed in the present, and Nicky, daughter of the preacher who hates Ed’s parents, help expose the hypocrisy of people who insist on telling others how to live while failing to follow their own advice. The key characters have enough personality to make them seem as real, and even minor characters come across as authentic.

I’m not sure the ending is quite as surprising as Tudor intended it to be. More troubling is that it requires a serious stretch of the reader’s imagination to accept that all the events in both time frames happen as the novel describes. Critical moments at the end of the novel, while adding some exhilaration to the story, seem impossibly contrived. Still, getting to that point is enjoyable, and I can’t say that I felt disappointed by the ending, given that the story as a whole is also a bit contrived, albeit entertaining. At the same time, some details at the end that I feared would be left dangling are wrapped up neatly. In fact, the final details are so creatively creepy that they redeem the novel’s faults.

RECOMMENDED

Infinity Wars by Jonathan Strahan (ed.)

Published by Solaris on September 12, 2017

Infinity Wars collects a number of original science fiction stories about war, some of which are surprisingly good. The approaches are generally different from typical military science fiction.

The protagonist of Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Faceless Soldiers, Patchwork Ship” is sent on a mission to defeat a Borg-like enemy that uses a virus to assimilate parts of other races into a single organism. To do that, alien parts must be engrafted to her body so she appears to have already been assimilated. The story is made more interesting by a moral dilemma that the narrator must confront as she comes to understand the consequences of her mission.

Nancy Kress always has interesting ideas. In “Dear Sarah,” she imagines a young woman joining the Army to fight against the anti-alien terrorists who resent the loss of jobs that followed trade with the aliens who made clean energy available (at a price) to Earth. Her family condemns her as a traitor. I think the point of the story is that a percentage of Americans will always want to blame aliens for their problems, whether the aliens are terrestrial or ET, instead of blaming themselves for their own failures. A Waco situation develops and another point of the story might be that military solutions are never good solutions to a standoff. The story works because the protagonist needs to make a tough moral choice, and internal conflicts are at the heart of strong fiction.

“Oracle” by Dominica Phetteplace is an amusing story about a woman who uses software to manage the Pentagon’s “war-of-the-month club,” its success measured by the president’s approval ratings — until the war AI begins to think for itself. Also amusing is Garth Nix’s “Conversations with an Armory,” in which a group of disabled soldiers from the last war are trying to fight the new one, but can’t convince a sentient and rather bossy armory to open its doors.

“Weather Girl” by E.J. Swift is one of the most creative and powerful stories in the volume. It imagines weather as a weapon, not by controlling weather but by suppressing satellite and other information so that countries facing devastating storms receive no warning. The story gets its power from the personal cost that the weather war has on the woman who directs it. “Perfect Gun” by Elizabeth Bear tells the powerful story of a mercenary who doesn’t have a conscience and his relationship with a weapon that does.

A planet colonized by each of Earth’s two remaining warring factions is in a low-key conflict. Eleanor Arnason’s “Mines” imagines what it is like to live there, as told from the standpoint of an ex-soldier who has two jobs: searching for land minds with her giant poached rat, and spotting soldiers who are unfit (also with the help of her giant poached rat). This is another powerful story, providing a very personal view of how war messes people up — and how others might choose not to notice.

In Rich Larson’s “Heavies,” a soldier sent to a peaceful colony to look for signs of insurrection is startled when colonists suddenly engage in the mass murder of people from Earth. The fault, of course, rests with meddlesome Earth.

Less successful entries include David D. Levine’s “Command and Control,” a fairly ordinary battle story that uses teleportation technology as the key sf device, although the story is notable for featuring Tibetan characters in a war for liberation against the Chinese. In “The Last Broadcasts” by An Owomoyela, a woman named Daja who has ill-defined special abilities is hired to cover up the fact that a distant human colony has come under attack (and will soon be wiped out) by aliens. The story focuses on her moral dilemma, although not very deeply. I liked the setting and the premise more than the story itself. “The Evening of Their Span of Days” by Carrie Vaughn reads the like first chapter of a book told from the perspective of the person in charge of repairing docked ships at a space station. A war is coming and the station needs to gear up for it. If this were, in fact, the first chapter of a book, I would happily read the next chapter because the story and the main character are interesting. The fact that the story ends without a resolution, however, is disappointing.

Stories that didn’t work for me at all: “The Moon Is Not a Battlefield” by Indrapramit Das is a wordy conversation or interview involving Indian soldiers tasked with defending their patch of the moon. “Overburden” by Genevieve Valentine is about an incompetent colonel seeking a promotion. Peter Watts’ “ZeroS” is a fairly typical zombie soldier story.

RECOMMENDED