Worlds by Joe Haldeman

First published in 1981; published digitally by Open Road Media on December 2, 2014

First published in 1981, Worlds imagined mankind's presence in space by the early twenty-first century, not to mention limitless fusion energy. Like a lot of older sf, you can advance the dates by a few (or several) decades and the story will still work.

New New York, a mining asteroid forced into Earth orbit, is the most prosperous of several Worlds that all share a dependence on Earth for the basic resources they need to sustain life. Nations on Earth have also become dependent upon the Worlds for raw materials and energy. That balance (or imbalance) is threatened by a discovery that could allow the Worlds to become independent of Earth. Chaos ensues.

Marianne O'Hara, a young woman born in New New York, goes to Earth for a year of study. Much of the first quarter of the novel, in diary or letter form, presents Marianne's thoughts about Earth in comparison to New New York (shorter version: Earth is exciting but vile). After that, Marianne becomes involved with a group that wants to foment revolution using means that are not immediately made known to her. Eventually her involvement iwith that group puts Marianne at risk while the group itself puts the orbiting Worlds (and the Earth itself) at risk.

Haldeman advances some clever ideas in Worlds, including the notion of "line families" that are essentially families that have incorporated and merged in order to avoid estate taxes. America has experienced a lower middle class revolution called "People's Capitalism." Citizens must join a lobby to vote (which police and soldiers cannot do, giving them effective control of guns but not of politicians).

Much of Worlds feels like a set-up for a plot that only gets underway in the last third of the novel. Worlds is the first novel in a trilogy, which explains the unresolved feeling when the novel abruptly ends. As a "teaser," I found the political background of Worlds (and, to a lesser extent, the characters) sufficiently intriguing to motivate me to read the remaining volumes. Because Worlds does not work well as a stand-alone novel, I would not recommend it unless you are prepared to read the entire trilogy.

The Open Road edition of Worlds contains a brief biography of Joe Haldeman as well as some photographs that chronicle his life and hair loss. A couple of other (aging) sf writers show up in snapshots taken at awards ceremonies. The Open Road edition also includes the first several pages of the second novel in the trilogy, Worlds Apart.

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The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke

Published by Algonquin Books on November 4, 2014

After the controversy surrounding the Jyllands-Posten publication of twelve cartoons depicting Mohammed rattles Denmark, Jens Baedrup, the editorial cartoonist for a small Danish newspaper, is ordered to draw a similar cartoon. After a couple of teens burn down his house, the Danish authorities announce that Jens died in the fire and place him into witness protection. Whether Jens' wife will miss him seems doubtful. Lorraine Callahan, a CIA agent who is guarding Jens, decides to send him to Broomeville, New York to work with Matty Klock, the school principal with whom she once had an affair. Matty fires a drunken guidance counselor and gives the job to Jens, who is now known as Henry.

We are told repeatedly that Danes are the happiest people in the world. Americans clearly are not. Lorraine wants to be sleeping with Matty, who still pines for Lorraine although he sort of wants to be faithful to his unforgiving wife Ellen, who wants to sleep with Jens. Also unhappy is a guy named Capo who is monitoring all of these shenanigans for reasons that are not immediately revealed to the reader.

Another plot thread concerns Soren, one of the teens who holds himself responsible for (what he believes to be) Jens' death. Despite his experimentation with arson, Soren is a likable character who enters into an unlikely alliance with another of the novel's central characters.

Brock Clarke gets comic mileage from a Denmark that he portrays as populated by people who feel guilty about the religious stereotypes to which they subscribe while making no effort to overcome them. He also has fun with the unspoken thoughts that race through his characters' brains. As is common with unspoken thoughts, they tend to be ridiculous and are wisely left unspoken. But they are also very funny.

You might need Venn diagrams to keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other. None are developed in great depth but they are deep enough to carry a comedy. This is a dark comedy but the story is heartening in many ways, including its depiction of father's admiration of his son. That he admires his son's ability to buy an illicit gun in Copenhagen merely adds to the story's amusement.

For a novel that is marketed as having great political depth, The Happiest People is surprisingly light, yet I did not regard that as a fault by the time I finished reading it. Perhaps it has hidden depths, but I enjoyed it as a fairly superficial look at the ways in which life (and people) can become utterly strange.

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Mobile Library by David Whitehouse

Published by Scribner on January 20, 2015

Mobile Library begins at the end. A mobile library sits on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by police cars. Detective Jimmy Samas is worried that the woman at the wheel might drive over the cliff. He believes two missing kids are in the mobile library with the driver and a dangerous adult passenger.

To explain the scenario that confronts Samas, the story backtracks to follow the young life of Bobby Nusko, a bullied child with an abusive father who wonders where his mother went. Bobby meets a mentally challenged girl named Rosa who is also the victim of bullying. Soon thereafter he meets Rosa's mother, Val Reed, whose job is to give a mobile library its weekly cleaning. Val and Rosa become his surrogate family and the mobile library his adopted home. Until meeting Rosa and Val, Bobby's only friend was a boy who made a painful attempt to turn himself into a cyborg to protect Bobby from harm.

From time to time, the story backtracks further to give the reader some insight into Bobby's sad family history, including the truth about his mother's absence, colored by memories that are "indelibly written in love's stubborn ink." Eventually Bobby finds himself running from his past, sending him on a road trip in the mobile library with Rosa and Val.

The fourth significant character is Joe, a Scot who is living in the woods until he becomes part of the mobile library family. Joe has anger management issues. Whether he will be a good or bad traveling companion is not immediately apparent.

The conception of family as "a puzzle of people" is the novel's theme. Mobile Library suggests that the families we assemble for ourselves are sometimes better than those into which we are born.

Although Mobile Library starts at the end, it is filled with surprises, particularly after Joe joins the party. Even minor characters are easy to visualize, full of quirks and tics that bring them to life. Perhaps the purity of the characters (they tend to be purely good or purely evil) sets them apart from reality, but I don't think that's a problem in a story that uses the purity of characters to illustrate lessons about the qualities of human nature.

David Whitehouse's prose is just as surprising as the plot. There is a lot of charm in Mobile Library and more than a little truth. It is more engaging than Bed, another Whitehouse novel that explores human nature by examining damaged characters who struggle with their unconventional lives.

Val tells Bobby that "in every book there is a clue about life." The clue in Mobile Library might be that hope, the "pilot light in the soul," is the flame people use to warm their hands on days when they have nothing else. Or it might be that life is like a book -- it begins and ends but it is part of a larger story told in other books, a story that will carry on beyond the "tiny window of time" through which we peer. Or your life is yours to live as you choose, parentage notwithstanding. Or life moves forward no matter how much we want to stay rooted or return to a happier past. Or maybe the clue is that if you feel a need to escape from your life, there are worse places to spend your time than in a mobile library.

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Quozl by Alan Dean Foster

First published in 1989; published digitally by Open Road Media on November 4, 2014

If you are tired of stories in which aliens look like lizards and are intent on killing as many humans as possible, Quozl is for you. The Open Road edition of Alan Dean Foster's 1989 novel contains a brief biography of Foster and several pictures of the talented author.

Quozlene has become overpopulated due to the ravenous sexual appetites of the Quozl. Population was once controlled by war but, in more civilized times, peaceful but desperate Quozl have joined settlement ships that voyage to the stars in the hope of finding a habitable planet. It is a one-way trip; failure means death.

Looks-at-Charts is a scout on a ship that is reaching its destination, the planet they have named Shiraz, after a six generation journey. Shiraz turns out to be inhabited by a population at war and so, of course, you can guess what planet that is. The Quozl burrow into the hills of Idaho, confident that they will remain undiscovered. First contact does not go well for the Quozl, who are unprepared for the wholly uncivilized greeting they receive. Second contact is a vast improvement, although only one human and one Quozl know about it. Contacts continue and are eventually expanded, although the existence of the Quozl is concealed from the world at large for most of the novel. About two-thirds of the way into the novel, the story takes an amusing turn.

Creating aliens and alien environments is Alan Dean Foster's strength. He gives the Quozl a richly imagined culture. For example, ritual challenges combine a form of martial arts dance (draw blood, you lose) with verbal jousting; eloquent insults contribute to a winning performance. Social encounters demand extravagant forms of politeness and self-effacement at risk of losing status. The Quozl happily indulge in uninhibited sex several times a day with varying partners. In fact, as the Quozl study humans from their hidden colony, they quickly realize the cause of all human strife: humans just don't have enough sex!

In other respects, as well, Foster uses the Quozl observation of humans to illuminate human absurdity. Just as one culture on Earth often views another culture as bizarre, the Quozl regard human behavior on the whole as puzzling, if not insane. Foster has great fun with those observations while making some telling points.

The manner in which the Quozl are eventually revealed to humans is clever, original, and very funny. While the final chapters might be a little too expository, they are satisfying. The ending contains a final twist that is true to Quozl nature.

Quozl is a gentle, charming novel that is nevertheless meaningful. Trust is its central theme. Trust between civilizations begins with one person trusting another -- or, in the case of First Contact, with one human and one alien trusting each other. That's a refreshing change from lizard aliens and humans trying to kill each other. Perhaps another moral is the novel's reminder that appearance is important to perception. Cute and cuddly Quozl are easier to befriend than lizard aliens would be, but their nonthreatening appearance also makes it easy for Quozl to get what they want from humans. Alien lizards, no matter how friendly, would never have that same advantage.

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Mort(e) by Robert Rupino

Published by Soho Press on January 30, 2014

Mort(e) is sort of an animal apocalypse story, a refreshing change from the omnipresent zombie apocalypse genre. While zombie apocalypse stories are told from the point of view of surviving humans, Mort(e) is told from the perspective of a talking cat. The best novels about animals, like Animal Farm or Watership Down, teach lessons about human society. Mort(e) tries to do that ("human resistance is a testament to the power of belief") but its primary lesson is: Don't step on ants. They are a formidable enemy, best left unprovoked.

Sebastian is a contented housecat until the female half of his human household has an affair with a dog owner. Sebastian befriends the dog -- a first in his life --but greater changes come when Sebastian, like other animals, develops human intelligence and physiology, along with the ability to speak and use weapons. All of this has been instigated by ants. Thanks to ant scientists, giant ants have swarmed the cities, leaving human dust in their wake. The intelligent Sebastian takes the name Mort(e).

So far this sounds like a really bad movie with subtitles that you wouldn't bother reading. Mort(e) is nevertheless a good (albeit flawed) novel. The story's internal logic and vivid imagery makes it easy to suspend disbelief, at least until the second half when religious imagery takes the story in unconvincing directions. Robert Repino manages the neat trick of creating sympathy for ants, who justly (from their singular perspective) regard humans as "an unfortunate anomaly staining the elegance of the animal kingdom." Other animals eventually join the revolution, having been convinced by the ants that humans have always treated animals as slaves and food. Given that ants eat each other and live in a society that is based on subjugation, the ants' complaints about human behavior seems a bit hypocritical, but the ants never seem to notice. They're just tired of being stepped on, which is understandable.

The plot runs off the track when the war between humans and animals introduces a weapon that is initially understood to be a virus. Without revealing too much about it, I can say that the plot thread and much of the story that follows is unnecessarily convoluted. The eventual revelation of the truth behind the weapon struck me as silly in a way that talking cats did not. The second half of the novel is not nearly as engaging as the first.

Mort(e) nevertheless explores interesting questions: If humans were created to have dominion over animals, why do animals bite us? If animals acquire human intelligence and abilities, will they use them for better ends than humans? Is freedom necessarily better than being a pet? Can anyone, human or animal, get along with ants?

Repino exhibits some creative thought in Mort(e). I like the notion of the Queen ant as a kind of supercomputer, assimilating all the data (scents, sounds, and sights) collected by other ants. I like the idea that people who are desperate for salvation will fashion saviors from unlikely sources and will attach religious significance to facts they misunderstand. On the other hand, some ideas (like a "catpedo," a torpedo holding a cat that ejects molten metal to drill into rock but doesn't cook the cat) are just preposterous.

Mort(e) is, in the end, an offbeat love story. It doesn't quite work but the underlying sweetness and the clever ideas offset the many scenes that seem to have little point. My sense is that Repino had a great idea but didn't know how to develop it. Much of the novel works, some of it doesn't, but the end result is entertaining.

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