Night Lamp | Georgia on My Mind and Other Places | Callahan's Legacy

Night Lamp

A young man seeks to discover the truth about his origins in a unique universe

• Night Lamp
• By Jack Vance
• Tor Books
• $23.95
• Hardcover, Oct. 1996

ight Lamp begins on the remote world Camberwell, where visiting academics Hilyer and Altheah Fath come across a gang of ruffians beating a young boy. They rescue the child and take him to the hospital, where, in addition to his injuries, they find he is suffering from some terrible psychological trauma. In order to save his life, doctors remove most of his memory. The child survives and, since he appears to be without family or friends, the Faths adopt him and return with him to their homeworld, Gallingale.

Jaro thrives under the Fath's care, but he is also haunted by strange images and sounds that seem to resonate from the depths of his missing memory. The Faths try to protect Jaro, encouraging him to forget the past and participate fully in his new life. But much as he loves his foster parents, Jaro can't give up his desire to learn about his origins, and he secretly determines to solve the mystery of his past.

The story follows Jaro as he grows up trying to achieve this goal. He overcomes many obstacles; makes friends and enemies; falls in love -- all while learning to find his way through Gallingale's arcane social hierarchy (in which he is considered a lowly, classless "nimp"). Much as he tries however, he learns little about his personal mystery and is thwarted in every attempt to solve it. When effort and events finally concur to allow Jaro to set off in pursuit of his past, he discovers that the truth can be a very dangerous thing to learn.

Night Lamp is a sort of Dickensian space opera with an engaging hero, foul villains, and numerous exotic planets and alien societies. These elements are assembled into a somewhat rambling novel, written with an eye for fanciful detail, a poetic turn of phrase and a dry sense of humor.

Vance has a unique writing style and he ignores many conventions of modern genre novels. For some readers this is sheer delight; for others it may be torture. For example, one favorite Vance-ism is frequent digressions. Some of these turn out to be vital plot points, others are just...there. Readers who enjoy ephemera and eclectica for it's own sake will be well rewarded as Vance has an amazing imagination; readers hoping to get to the "action" may find themselves frustrated. However, as stylistically unusual as Night Lamp is, its not pretentious: the plot is fun, the characters are likable and the book never takes itself too seriously.

Night Lamp is the first new science fiction novel from Jack Vance in several years. It was worth the wait. This book will satisfy fans who have missed the unique Vance voice and it is also an enjoyable read on its own merits.

If Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss teamed up to write a space opera, they might manage to come up with something as imaginative, whimsical and entertaining as Night Lamp. -- LRC

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Georgia on My Mind and Other Places

Sheffield shows how science and emotion can interact

• Georgia on My Mind and Other Places
• By Charles Sheffield
• Tor Books
• $13.95/$19.95 Canada
• Trade Paperback, Oct. 1996

harles Sheffield's new collection, Georgia on My Mind and Other Places, contains 14 of his short stories, most originally published between 1987 and 1994. Each story contains a brief afterword where Sheffield explains what inspired the story.

The stories cover a wide range of issues and ideas, and while Sheffield is best known as a hard science fiction writer, he shows in this collection his ability to weave strong characters, emotion and some very personal themes around his scientific foundations. The stories range from the distant past ("Beyond the Golden Road") to the distant future ("The Bee's Kiss"), but most take place in near-future settings. Along the way, Sheffield presents a consistently humanistic world view, with a great deal of emphasis on exploring not just the effects of science on humanity but its ethics as well.

The best story in the collection is the title story, "Georgia on My Mind," which won a Nebula Award in 1993. It's an intricately constructed scientific mystery, set in New Zealand where a scientist has discovered parts and notebooks suggesting someone in the 1850s secretly attempted to build a mechanical computer like Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. In the afterword to a previous story, Sheffield reveals that this one is about his late wife, Sarah. It shows. Despite the last part of the story involving mostly mathematical searches for an explanation to unidentified numbers in a ledger the scientist found, Sheffield turns the search into a very emotional climax.

"Beyond the Golden Road" is another outstanding story. In the 13th century, Dari is a 13-year-old servant who convinces his master to send him as an interpreter on an expedition to China to visit Kublai Khan and to determine the truth of fantastic rumors from previous visitors. In the desert, as they're running out of water, they encounter an armed party from Kabul escorting a 15-year-old virgin, Nataree, as a bride for Kublai Khan. Dari is suspicious of her, thinking she's a witch-woman, and is quite concerned about the time she spends with his new master, Johannes, and her interest in the abacus he carries as a gift. It's a beautifully-written story with a very surprising end.

Even the weaker stories in this collection have many virtues, and some of the other particular strong pieces include "Deep Safari," "The Bee's Kiss," "Destroyer of Worlds," "Trapalanda," "Health Care System," and "Humanity Test."

This is a strong collection, usually presenting Sheffield in full command of his literary skill. It's an excellent testimony that hard science fiction can deal effectively with human issues.

Even if you usually don't like hard science fiction, I recommend this collection. Sheffield doesn't cheat on the science, but he gives strong characterization and literary values just as much attention. -- Clint

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Callahan's Legacy

What a short, strange trip it still is

• Callahan's Legacy
• By Spider Robinson
• Tor Books
• $20.95/$26.95 Canada
• Hardcover, Oct. 1996

allahan's Crosstime Saloon went up in a blaze of glory two books ago, but the bar's regulars keep on chugging along. In this fifth installment of the series, nouveau-bartender Jake Stonebender (a blatant proxy for author Spider Robinson, as the book's cover makes clearer than ever) is still standing in for Mike Callahan, The Mick of Time. Most of the old regulars from the early 1970s stories are still competing to see who can produce the most skull-clawingly awful pun. And of course, every time the door opens it's guaranteed to reveal someone even weirder than the last visitor, from a walking hairy fireplug to the world's most cheerfully altruistic millionaire.

But like most of Robinson's work, this generally lighthearted collection of improbabilities has its equal and opposite serious half. This time around, the familiar gang is once again trying to save the earth from an inordinately powerful and malevolent alien invader, in a retread of a plot from volume one that resurfaced in volume three. To fend off the attack, Callahan's crew decides they have to achieve group telepathy, as they've done only once before. And the best way to do it is apparently to suck down high-test coffee and release some of the anguish from their pasts.

Legacy claws its way uncomfortably deeply into the secret lives of some of the bar's best-known characters. Their stories are painful, even grotesquely cruel. But one of Robinson's longest-running themes is "Shared pain is diminished; shared joy is increased." Presumably this book is another segment in Robinson's multi-decade tutorial on how to be a better, kinder and more capable human being by sharing other people's agony without shutting down.

This latest lesson is, however, a mixed success. Robinson's folksy, tongue-in-cheek writing style certainly isn't at fault -- reading his prose is like taking a naked trip down a greased silver waterslide. The speed is exhilarating. But after the ride ends, conscious thought -- and then a certain disappointment -- begins to set in.

The biggest problem is Legacy's paltry 207-page length, which leaves the book with some very high peaks and some very deep valleys, and not nearly enough in between. Robinson goes from brutal to facetious quickly enough to leave smoking rubber on the asphalt between his turns. Virtually every emerging plot twist is bashed into resolution in a matter of bare pages, and at the same time, the ending is a conscious cliffhanger begging for a sequel. The entire project feels distinctly rushed.

In particular, the whiplash summaries of that-which-went-before are likely to baffle new readers while simultaneously irritating the Callahan addicts who have been there before and are desperate to get at some new material before the book suddenly ends.

Indubitably, Callahan's Legacy does contain more of what those addicts are hoping for -- shared pain, shared joy, long-beloved characters and some of the most heinous wordplay ever committed to paper. But like any good thing in too-small doses, it only whets the appetite, leaving readers frustrated and hungry for more.

Spider's stories are always riffing on perfection -- the perfect trip, the perfect coffeemaker, the perfect toilet, the perfect psychic connection that will make all us humans stop hurting each other so much. I hate kicking dirt at the shoes of someone I respect this much, but can I help it if he's trained me to hold out for the perfect book? -- Tasha

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