Tales from now, then and maybe

REVIEWS BY GAVIN J. GRANT

Thirty years ago Ursula K. Le Guin began telling a story that eventually became the Earthsea trilogy: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. It was a pleasant surprise to millions of happy readers when she produced a fourth book, Tehanu, in 1990. Now Le Guin deepens the series with Tales from Earthsea, five stories from various periods in the history of this fictional land. They are wonderful stories, bright and shining, and guaranteed to stir even the most jaded readers and probably bring tears to their eyes at least once.

Le Guin's writing is often concerned with the costs of action -- or inaction. A prime example is found in the shortest story in the collection, "The Bones of the Earth," where different forms of magic, and points of view, come together. It is a story that will leave you somber yet exulted at the magnificent things men and women sometimes do. Le Guin's characters, never wholly good or wholly evil, often end up doing the best they can.

This new collection also includes two maps and a short essay, "A Description of Earthsea," that provides insights into the thoughts and workings of this wonderful writer.


Passage to the other side

Connie Willis, winner of numerous Hugo and Nebula awards, has two major modes of writing, serious and funny. In her latest novel, Passage, the two are artfully intertwined into perhaps her best novel yet. The subject of the book is a serious one -- near death experiences -- but there are enough deft touches of humor to keep the reader amused.

Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist researching NDEs by immediately recording patients' memories of the experience. One of Willis' running jokes is how she uses Mercy General Hospital's labyrinthian halls and stairways to avoid Maurice Mandrake, a writer trying to fit the NDE evidence to his theory that all is golden and light after death.

Richard Wright -- "Doctor Right" for Joanna, according to an ER nurse friend -- comes to the hospital to research NDEs by inducing a similar state with drugs. Once Joanna realizes he is serious about his work, she joins him, and their research begins to reveal unsuspected and increasingly chilling possibilities.

Be warned that this book may make you keep the light on too long at night, perhaps even as you try to sleep. It may make you skip lunch or call in sick to work. You might miss many things if you read Passage, but don't miss out on the chance to read an author at the very top of her game.


Time travelers

Chronospace by Allen Steele is an expansion of the author's Hugo Award-winning novella, Where Angels Fear to Tread. David Murphy is a NASA scientist and a huge science fiction fan. A failed science fiction writer, he now manages to write only an occasional magazine article. His boss usually looks on this as harmless publicity for NASA, until Murphy's latest piece hits the stands, proposing that UFOs might actually be time travelers.

The Oberon is just such a time ship. Its 23rd century crew has successfully traveled back to 13th century Anasazi civilization and to Wall Street in 1929. Now they plan to kidnap an American couple in Berlin and impersonate them on their journey home . . . on the Hindenburg.

It's an old paradox: what happens if time travelers come back from the future? If it's true, then they must already be here. And if they are, why can't we see them? Are there invisible 24th century scientists studying the early 21st century economic collapse? Are 25th century kids making crop circles for fun?

Steele weaves the strands of his story together with precision, revealing important plot details in an unobtrusive way that brings them to the reader's attention at just the right time later in the book.

This is old-fashioned science fiction -- with secret government projects run by scientists who unwittingly change the world with their single-minded research. Steele has a lot of fun with the material and with the field of science fiction -- bringing in one real-life author/scientist, Gregory Benford, as a character and mentioning half a dozen others.


Gavin J. Grant lives in Brooklyn, where he reviews, writes and publishes speculative fiction.

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