By Brenda Clough
Tor, $22.95
ISBN 0312862636
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Reviews by Larry Woods
Extrasensory perception and telepathy have long been favorite themes in science fiction and fantasy. Author Brenda Clough's version in How Like a God owes a legitimate literary debt to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and to Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside, where Silverberg's telepath sinks ever lower into despair over the loss of his powers.
In How Like a God, Rob Lewis, a Washington, DC, software creator, is driving his children to daycare when he suddenly understands that he has the ability to read and influence the hearts and minds of those around him. Obviously with this kind of power, a power that every juvenile dreams of possessing, life could potentially be interesting and fun. Rob, being more high minded, contemplates solving the Balkan conflict and ethnic cleansing by going to the President and offering "to make the Croats and the Serbs forget about the entire thing." Then Rob figures he will move on to solving crises in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Israel-Palestine, and a few other places. Harsh reality quickly intrudes, however, as Rob is exposed incessantly to a flood of emotions and thoughts and descends into darkness and desperation.
Rob's fear for his own sanity then takes him to the National Institute of Mental Health at which point this fantasy novel evolves into a quest to discover the meaning of Rob's power. Clough's novel is a magnificent success both for its evocation of the character of Rob Lewis and her development of the classic ESP theme, as well as for its homage to the epic of Gilgamesh.
Another subgenre entirely is that of hard science fiction as practiced by masters such as Larry Niven, Hal Clement, and Robert Forward. Saturn Rukh by Robert L. Forward is a well-developed example of hardcore science fiction with plenty of gizmos, gadgets, and some really big ideas.
Physicist Robert Forward is consistently imaginative, presenting intelligent puzzles and adroit solutions, as he takes us on a journey to the planet Saturn, one of the giants of the solar system. Rod Morgan has been working on a project to build a Mars resort when he is solicited along with four others for a job that pays one billion dollars each. In return, these five intrepid humans must risk voyaging into the upper atmosphere of the rings of Saturn on a Boeing-Mitsubishi space ship to try to convert atmospheric chemicals into nitrometahelium fuel.
The priority is to obtain a cheap supply of fuel for interplanetary space ships, but unforeseen events arise in the form of huge flying creatures that dwell in the Saturnian skies. The explorers' ship becomes marooned, and survival and rescue become the order of the day.
Forward's newest novel is thought provoking and entertaining because of its attention to scientific detail and understanding of the dynamics among the space ship crew as they overcome their challenge.
Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel, is the first in a planned series of three anthologies (fantasy, science fiction, and horror) compiling 22 original excursions into extra-normal characters living in extra-reality. That's politically correct talk for saying these anthologists are either gay and lesbian authors writing fantasy or straight authors writing gay and lesbian fantasy.
To the degree that editors Nicola Griffith (a great author -- read her novels Ammonite and Slow River) and Stephen Pagel, publisher of Absolute Magnitude magazine, are publicizing this work as a gay and lesbian oriented anthology, they do it a disservice for many of the stories are routinely post-modernist fiction featuring burning issues of identity, self-discovery, injustice, and self-examination. Besides, Philip Jose Farmer in the 1950s and Samuel R. Delaney have already been there and done that by constructing their short stories displaying every possible aspect of sexual identity, gender disposition, and prejudice.
Larry D. Woods is an avid collector of science fiction.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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