A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl

Published by Viking on June 28, 2016

A Hundred Thousand Worlds takes place inside the comic book industry. That doesn’t make this novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, gushing blurbs notwithstanding, but it is nevertheless an interesting setting.

Valerie Torrey is an actress who once starred in a time travel series. She lives with her son, Alex, in New York, where she acts in off-Broadway plays when she gets a chance. Alex’s father is an actor in a current television show that Alex is probably too young to watch, but Valerie can’t bear to stop him. He was also Valerie’s co-star in the time travel show.

Valerie earns pocket money by appearing at comic book conventions. At a convention in Cleveland, she meets Gail Pope, who has achieved token popularity as the only female writer for a major publisher. Part of the novel deals with the difficulty of being a female writer in a medium that is dominated by males. The story also addresses Gail’s professional jealousy as another writer is selected to revive an iconic title that has gone unpublished for 20 years. Similar jealousies afflict an independent artist (Brett) and writer (Fred) who work as a team until their professional relationship is threatened.

Comic book fans will appreciate the critical examination the industry. Gail and other writers discuss the relative merits of the various companies (a thinly disguised DC has embraced change for the sake of change, even when the changes are bad; a thinly disguised Marvel is incapable of change because it has sold the movie rights to its characters). Women who attend conventions dressed as female comic book characters add humor to the story.

But the world of comics is only the background for Alex’s story. Growing up with an absent father, Alex befriends Brett, who draws the stories that Alex narrates. When Alex’s father comes back into his life, Valerie frets about whether it would be wise to allow Alex to live with him in LA. She also frets about her own future if Alex goes to live with his father. Alex, on the other hand, is more mature than any adult in the story. His resilience allows him to handle change even if he doesn’t look forward to any disturbance of a life he loves. As Alex makes up his own comic book story, the reader quickly understands that it is the story of the life Alex wants to have.

While the story and its background are interesting, I’m not sure the twin plot threads (one involving Alex and his parents, the other involving comic book writers and artists) mesh together very well. Alex’s story resolves a bit predictably, while the other thread fizzles out.

Alex might be the sweetest kid who ever lived, which makes his character difficult to believe. Much of the story is a family drama, but it generates little dramatic tension. Notwithstanding those observations, I was consistently entertained by A Hundred Thousand Worlds. Bob Proehl’s prose is lively, the setting is colorful, and the gentle humor sprinkled through the story kept me smiling.

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Pressure by Brian Keene

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on June 21, 2016

The seabed around Mauritius is collapsing. The island may need to be evacuated. Attempts to investigate the phenomenon have been hampered by electrical malfunctions. Diver Carrie Anderson nearly dies because of equipment failure, but she sees something during her dive that makes her want to return.

Pressure is a denizen of the deep novel. Creepy creatures lurking in the ocean are common residents of thriller/horror novels. “There’s something down there” is followed by attempts to figure out whether the “something” is an alien, a prehistoric fish monster, an experiment gone awry, or a predator of some other origin. In addition to messing up their electronics, this one instills hallucinations in divers who get too close.

In an apparent effort to accumulate as many near-death experiences as possible, Carrie and her friend Paolo continue to investigate the monster. I find it hard to care about people who care so little for their own lives, so I began to cheer for the monster.

The monster’s nature, once revealed, turns out to be a tired and unimaginative science fiction construct. That flaw cannot be overcome by a story that is surprisingly dull given the action upon it relies to generate excitement.

On the other hand, the quality of Brian Keene’s prose is fine and the key characters are drawn in greater detail than is common for an action-thriller. I particularly like a crusty old skipper whose cantankerous nature adds humor to the story. Not all of the characters are who or what they appear to be, which adds moderate interest to a lackluster plot.

Sadly, the story never becomes surprising. It churns along to a predictable finish that is even duller than the story that precedes it. Even by the relatively low standards of denizen of the deep novels, Pressure isn’t sufficiently suspenseful to merit reading.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Trap by Melanie Raabe

Published by Grand Central Publishing on July 5, 2016

Linda Conrads is the pen name of a successful literary author. She was traumatized after witnessing the death of her sister. She’s 38 and hasn’t set foot outside her house in more than a decade. She lives in her own dark world, which is sometimes invaded by the face of her sister’s assailant. Her troubled life becomes worse when she sees the killer on television. He is, it seems, a news reporter named Victor Lenzen.

Conrads does not think the police will believe her (they didn’t before) so she decides to set a trap in order to expose Lenzen’s guilt. As a reclusive celebrity, she knows the reporter would seize the chance to interview her in her home. First, she needs to write a crime novel that is based on her sister’s death so that Lenzen will have something to ask her about. At the same time, she hopes that Lenzen recognizes the crime he committed when he reads the book, giving him an additional motivation to come to her house for the interview. The book -- excepts of which appear at regular intervals -- is too cheesy to take seriously as the work of a respected author.

Melanie Raabe never quite convinced me that Conrads’ decision to deal with Lenzen on her own terms, rather than calling the police, was credible. True, the police might have doubts about her credibility, but she had little reason to forego their involvement or to fear that a public figure like Lenzen would retaliate against her largely nonexistent “loved ones” because she identified him to the police.

In any event, the interview does not go as Conrads planned, although it gives her an opportunity to reflect upon her relationship with her sister, one that he idealized in the book and in her memory. Whether Lenzen is or is not the guilty party becomes the novel’s driving mystery.

The plot is contrived and the ending is predictable. I wasn’t surprised by it and I didn’t believe it. That’s a poor combination. A weak love story that doesn’t develop until the novel is nearly over is also contrived and predictable.

There are also too many “cheats” during the story. The worst example: a chapter ends with a shock and the next chapter tells us that the shocking event was imagined, not real. That’s a cheap way to build suspense, but none of the suspense-building efforts succeed in The Trap.

Raabe’s prose (translated by Imogen Taylor) is graceful. Her portrayal of the reclusive author is convincing. Those attributes make the story easy to read. With so many better choices available to fans of crime fiction, however, I question whether The Trap is worth a reader’s time.

NOT RECOMMENDED

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig

First published in German in 1927; published in translation by Pushkin Press on September 6, 2016

A woman who takes up with an “elegant and handsome” young Frenchman and leaves her “stout, provincial husband” during a family vacation at the beach becomes the focal point of a strident argument among other hotel guests. Most guests at the narrator’s table assume that the woman had been having an affair and had conspired with the Frenchman to meet, as if by chance, for the purpose of running away together. They refuse to believe that a woman would abandon her husband and children on a whim. The narrator suggests that an unhappy woman might do just that in a moment of passion. The outraged discussion that follows is only diffused by the gentling remarks of an elderly, upper-class woman from England.

The conversation sparks the elderly woman to tell the narrator her own story. It is the story of a transformative encounter with a despairing stranger when the woman was in her 40s, years after her husband’s death. The stranger suffers from a compulsion that threatens to be his undoing. As she endeavors to save the man from himself, the woman is overwhelmed by a compulsion of her own.

Stefan Zweig plumbs the depths of the woman’s mind, dissecting it for the reader’s inspection. Her story is a confession, a remembrance of pain, an unburdening of shame, a reminder of how easily uncontrolled passion becomes uncontrollable pain. It is also the story of how the memory of a single day can become so deeply rooted that living with it for decades changes the person who bears it. The story invites the reader to ask about the value of passionate love -- whether it is worth the risk of losing everything we have to embrace something we are missing. The novella covers vast ground in fewer than a hundred pages as it invites the reader to feel and understand all that lies within the woman’s tortured soul.

The translation  from German is by Anthea Bell. I haven’t read this is German so all I can say about the translation is that the prose is both fluid and strong.

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Grotto of the Dancing Deer and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

Published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy on March 1, 2016

Grotto of the Dancing Deer is one of several books in a series that will collect all of Clifford D. Simak’s short stories. The stories in this volume are representative of Simak’s range as a writer. Most of them are quite good.

In “Over the River and Through the Woods,” two children show up to visit their grandparents, but the grandparents have never seen the children before. The boy says his father is a temporal engineer, a phrase the grandmother doesn’t understand. Well, you can see where this is going, although the story takes an interesting turn. The story reflects Simak’s love of simple country lifestyles as well as the moral dilemma inherent in time travel. The story is short but powerful. It shows Simak at his best.

“Grotto of the Dancing Deer” is about a 20,000-year-old man. He’s the original survivalist and he does it without a bug-out bag, because survival is about instinct and judgment, not gear and guns. The story’s well-deserved awards include a Hugo and a Nebula. Its point, I think, is that having a friend who understands you, even if the friendship is fleeting, is the true key to survival.

“The Reformation of Hangman’s Gulch” is one of Simak’s westerns. It has the hallmarks of a classic western, including the theme of good versus evil, but the good guy isn’t all that good, giving the story the kind of subtlety that Simak brought to much of his fiction. The dialog could have been better but the story is entertaining.

In “The Civilization Game,” the human race is striving to preserve its culture (everything from art to politics to war) as humans become a minority in the galactic matrix. Those who try to preserve human achievements discover that many of them (like political assassination) are quite ugly. Simak gives a clever twist to the notion of cultural preservation as the story ends.

“Crying Jag” is about an alien (and his robot) who comes to a small town and listens to the sad stories people love to tell about their lives. They feel better after confessing their sorrows, making the alien seem like a priest or psychiatrist, but the alien listens to the stories because they have the same effect on aliens that alcohol has on humans. The gentle humor and the twisted ending are typical Simak, but the story is also typical of Simak’s ability to make a profound point with a simple story.

“The Hunger Disease” was written when sf authors thought that Venus was just a rainy version of Earth. Colonists on Venus come down with a fatal disease that makes them insatiably hungry. A reporter wonders if there’s a connection between the disease and a visit by a colonist from Mars. Simak’s appreciation of agrarian life and its rigors is evident the story, as is his love of westerns. The story, in fact, gives a science fiction twist to a traditional western theme of a man fighting to save his land from swindlers who file an opposing claim. Add a Martian conspiracy, and you’ve got classic Simak.

“Mutiny on Mercury” is probably the first published story that Simak wrote, although it took him a while to sell it. It’s sort of a John Carter story that is easily skipped.

The spaceship crew in “Jackpot” spend their time plundering planets. They come across a planet with only one structure. It appears to be an immense library. This creates a moral dilemma -- should they rob the library, a prospect that will finally give them the wealth they want, or should they leave it for the rest of the galaxy to enjoy? Should education be freely available to benefit all of humankind or should it be sold at a profit to those who can afford it? Is honesty the most important value, even if it leads to complacency? Simak excelled at stories that ask moral questions. This one stands out.

Some aspects of “Day of Truce” reminded me of the first stories in City: the tension between city dwellers and those who are turning the country into cities with larger yards; the tension between generations; the difficulty of living in peace when people have their minds set on conflict. The story builds on a shrewd version of the angry old man who shakes a fist while yelling “you kids get off my lawn.” The story also asks whether a preemptive strike can ever be justified as self-defense. This isn’t one of Simak’s best, but it’s a good effort.

“Unsilent Spring” returns to one of Simak’s favorite themes -- the merits of simple country lifestyles. A rural doctor is asked to keep an eye out for a strange malady that is becoming epidemic. Symptoms include lethargy, abnormal blood sugar, and an increased appetite. Only townfolk complain of those symptoms; country and hill folk seem to be immune. The hill people, in particular, are healthy and self-sufficient, surviving on the food they grow, the fish and game they catch, the few cows and pigs they own. They are “happy, reliable, proud, and independent people, filled with dignity and inborn curiosity” -- the kind of people Simak extolled in his fiction. The story is sort of an ode to country doctors. The solution to the medical mystery might be a little silly, but it’s consistent with Simak’s lifelong interest in the process of evolution.

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