Killdozer!
More classic stories from the late, great Theodore Sturgeon
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Killdozer! Volume III: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon
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By Theodore Sturgeon
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North Atlantic Books
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$24.00
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Hardcover, 1996
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ISBN I-55643-227-5
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Review by Curt Wohleber
 heodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) is probably remembered mostly for two episodes of the original Star Trek, but in the 40s and 50s he made a name for himself in science fiction as a writer of original, groundbreaking short stories and novels.
Killdozer! collects 15 stories written around 1941-1946, a transitional period in Sturgeon's writing career. A talented gymnast grounded by a heart condition, Sturgeon started his writing career as one of the rising stars nurtured by John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog). The collection's early stories are mostly light, superficial diversions. The later stories show Sturgeon heading into new, uncharted territory.
The title story, written in the midst of a long literary dry spell, is a straightforward, solidly built piece of high-octane suspense. "Killdozer!" pits an isolated team of construction workers against a bulldozer possessed by an ancient and thoroughly hostile alien intelligence. Sturgeon himself worked as a bulldozer operator in Jamaica during World War II, and he makes readers feel the heat of the machine's exhaust and the menacing growl of its diesel engine.
Atomic powered writing
As a whole, the stories demonstrate impressive range and ambition, by turns lyrical, satirical and experimental. Sturgeon's not yet ready for prime time here, though -- there's some embarrassingly bad writing and too much of the kind of slangy, breezy dialogue E.B. White warned about in The Elements of Style. But there are also glimmerings of a daring and maturity rare in the science fiction of Sturgeon's era, qualities that would later yield such Sturgeon classics as "Bianca's Hands," "Slow Sculpture" and the short novel More Than Human.
The atomic bomb casts a long, dark shadow on several tales. "Memorial" (1946) is one of the first stories to deal with the now-pedestrian theme of nuclear holocaust. While crude in spots, Sturgeon's cautionary fable packs more punch than scores of later nuclear-doom stories by other writers. "August Sixth, 1945," previously unpublished, employs the kind of experimental narrative techniques that became popular during science fiction's "New Wave" movement of the 1960s.
Sturgeon never became as popular as his fellow Astounding writers Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He wasn't really prolific enough to flourish as a novelist, and his insistence on delving into then-taboo themes such as incest, racism and homosexuality kept him from reaching a wider audience until he started writing for television in the 1960s. The visionary Sturgeon wasn't really cut out for TV writing, but only Sturgeon could have gotten away with a prime-time episode about Mr. Spock's mating urges.
I found this collection a fascinating look at the
development of one of science fiction's most original talents. --Curt
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Promised Land
Life on Planet Hick can be fun
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Promised Land
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By Cynthia Felice & Connie Willis
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Ace Books
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$21.95/$30.95 Canada
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Hardback, Feb. 1997
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ISBN: 0-441-004059
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Review by Tasha Robinson
 ere it not for its exotic setting, Promised Land would barely be science fiction. It reads more like a romance novel -- albeit one with an alien or two.
The setting in question is the planet Keramos, a dusty, near-barren ball of salty dirt populated mostly by rustic, gossipy farmers. Keramos is where Delanna Milleflores's mother lived and died, spending her dissatisfied, angry life complaining about the backwater ignorance of the people around her. Delanna has fully embraced her mother's often-repeated diatribes, and when she returns to Keramos, it's only to sell off her deceased mother's land.
But she's barely touched the planet's surface when she finds out that Keramos is even more provincial than she expected. Its ownership and inheritance laws -- the same ones that apparently tied her mother to the land she so hated -- demand that Delanna take up immediate residency on her land or forfeit it. The laws forbid her from selling it for a year, proscribe who she can sell it to...and stipulate that she's now married to her neighbor Sonny Tanner, a boy she hasn't seen since she was a child.
Delanna's too broke to debate her choices. Though Keramos's laws also demand her beloved pet Cleo be destroyed, and though she finds herself targeted for abuse by a jealous female friend of Sonny's and targeted as a conquest by the smarmy, unrelenting local Don Juan, she has to go back to everything her mother desperately wanted her to escape.
Willis, plain and simple
Promised Land reads like a stripped-down version of Connie Willis's usual prose. The well-drawn, wryly funny characters with their open mouths and closed minds are particularly familiar, as is the barbed humor. But unlike Water Witch and Light Raid -- Willis's other two collaborations with Cynthia Felice -- Land is straightforward and fairly predictable. Though Keramos does sport knotty laws and one odd species, it lacks the political or social complexity that filled the other two books with surprises.
Will it come as a surprise to anyone that after Delanna's strident but uninformed parroting of her mother's dogmatic anti-Keramos dialectic, she finds there are pleasant surprises about the place? Is it any more surprising when she viciously abuses Sonny, only to later find herself admiring his "sooty lashes" and "red-gold" chest? Not to anyone who's ever watched a typical Hollywood boy-meets-girl flick or read a panting romance novel. Land is never as lurid as either genre, but it borrows from the same cliches, with the same uneven results.
Land reads easily and smoothly, prompting quick chuckles and momentary sympathies. But it's a very light read indeed. And these two authors have so much more to offer.
Reminds me a lot of Willis's Uncharted Territory, easily my least favorite of her generally stunning books. If that one's on your all-time-favorites list, you'll doubtless like this one much better than I did. --Tasha
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