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The Best of Crank!
Some fine stories from a very different kind of science fiction magazine...
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The Best of Crank!
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Edited by Bryan Cholfin
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Tor Books
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$23.95/$33.95 Canada
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Hardcover, Sept. 1998
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ISBN 0-312-86740-9
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Review by Clinton Lawrence
 bout five years ago, editor and publisher Bryan Cholfin introduced a new science fiction magazine to the world: Crank! Unfortunately, Crank!'s publication schedule has been highly irregular (issue No. 8 appeared only a month or so ago), so those SF fans lucky enough to know about its existence may still have been unable to come across a copy. But for those who have missed the magazine so far, The Best of Crank! collects 17 of the best stories from the first seven issues.
With the first issue it was immediately obvious that Crank! was something completely different from the usual small-press science fiction fare. Rather than settling for weaker versions of the stories published by the established magazines, Cholfin had his own agenda, with a strong preference for satire, surrealism and literary quality. In his introduction to this volume, Cholfin explores some of his literary ideas, chiefly that science fiction and fantasy are merely marketing categories and not genres with stories that universally share common conventions.
Cholfin laments what he feels is a current trend within science fiction to bring back the Golden Age, a movement he believes is disconnecting SF from the culture at large. At the same time, he notes that mainstream writers are more commonly using science fictional themes. He condemns the hypocrisy that category fiction can't be good even as top mainstream writers are adapting its forms, a trend he believes is becoming both more frequent and flagrant. Crank! is Cholfin's response.
In his introduction to R.A. Lafferty's "I Don't Care Who Keeps the Cows," Cholfin writes, "I became a publisher so there would be more R. A. Lafferty books in the world," and Lafferty's influence is obvious in much of the work Cholfin chooses. Along the way, he's also managed to attract such legends as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe and Brian W. Aldiss, as well as some of the best new writers, like Jonathan Lethem and Eliot Fintushel.
A strong selection of stories
To be able to assemble an anthology as strong as The Best of Crank! from seven issues of any magazine is a phenomenal accomplishment. Not every story is destined to be a classic, and it's a bit of a disappointment that Cholfin passed over Carol Emshwiller's "Venus Rising" in favor of several far weaker stories. But there are no bad stories here, and the anthology represents what Crank! does best.
By far the top story here is Le Guin's Tiptree Award winner, "The Matter of Seggri," which explores--through a series of connected narratives--the culture of a planet where women vastly outnumber men. It reads like a miniature short story collection far richer than most novels. Another remarkable work is Michael Bishop's tale of the virtual trial of Judas Iscariot, "I, Iscariot," which is not only hilarious, but also provides a skewering critique of the account in the Gospels.
Cholfin likes experimentation, and one of the more elegant and experimental stories here is Karen Joy Fowler's "The Elizabeth Complex," which intertwines the lives of four famous women named Elizabeth and explores their relationships with their fathers. Three of Lethem's stories are included, the best of them a fine collaboration with Carter Scholz called "Receding Horizon," in which Franz Kafka emigrates to America in the 1930s and becomes a screenwriter working for Frank Capra. The Wolfe contribution is a reprint of "Empires of Flowers and Foliage," a very enjoyable folk tale from the world of The Book of the New Sun, previously available only in a limited edition. And Lafferty's story, while perhaps not his best ever, is still both funny and perceptive.
The Best of Crank! will probably annoy science fiction's traditionalists. But Cholfin has published some innovative work that might otherwise have been lost, and even with his irregular and infrequent publishing schedule, the magazine is always worth waiting for.
I'm a charter subscriber and have loved the magazine from Issue No. 1. It's unfortunate that the magazine doesn't have a much larger audience. The quality is consistently as good as or better than the leading established magazines in the field.
-- Clint
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Hoka! Hoka! Hoka!
Fabulously fun fifties farce
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Hoka! Hoka! Hoka!
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By Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson
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Baen Books
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$5.99/$7.99 Canada
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Paperback, Nov. 1998
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ISBN 0-671-57774-3
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Review by Douglas Fratz
 umorous science fiction had its first "Golden Age" in the 1950s, when the field gained the self-confidence needed to be willing to look at itself and laugh at its own cliches. One of the more memorable series of humorous shorts published in the SF magazines of the time was the Hoka collection by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson.
The Hoka stories were originally published in such magazines as Other Worlds, Universe, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. They were whimsical farces that used the conventions of various literary genres--SF, Westerns, mystery and adventure--in a science fiction construct. The stories concern the Hokas, aliens from the planet Toka who look just like teddy bears, have vivid imaginations, love to play fictional roles, and seek to imitate any Earth literature they can obtain.
The Hokan antics cause no end of problems for the diplomats and bureaucrats of the Earth-led Interbeing League. In particular, they spell trouble for Alexander Jones, the human plenipotentiary to the Hokas. In "The Sheriff of Canyon Gulch," the first Hoka story, Jones crash-lands on the planet Toka to find that the Hokas have created a society imitating western adventure novels, and they are playing cowboys and Indians with the local reptilian race. Other stories involve Hokas who have read early space opera, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," swashbuckling pirate adventures, Don Juan and adventures of the French Foreign Legion. One story, "Joy in Mudville," involves the Hokas playing baseball against a team of tentacled, reptilian aliens.
Alien teddy bears! Alien teddy bears?
The Hoka series is almost totally without literary pretensions. All of the stories are light farces free of biting satire. They are told in the plain prose typical of the time and are not stylistic pastiches of the authors or genres on which they are based. Some bibliographers list the series as juvenile fiction, but these stories were not written for children, but rather as light hearted laughs for readers of adventure fiction of various genres.
The first six stories in the series were collected, along with one new story, in a small-press hardcover edition in 1957 called Earthman's Burden, which was reprinted in paperback in the 1970s by Avon. The authors also published a juvenile novel set in the Hoka universe, Star Prince Charlie, in 1975. A second collection of Hoka stories, entitled Hoka, was issued in the 1980s by Tor. This third collection from Baen Books contains all the stories from the first collection, plus two of the four stories from the second collection. Missing for some reason are "Full Pack (Hokas Wild)," a 1950s story that is a takeoff on Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, and "The Napoleon Crime," the only newer Hoka story, published in 1983 in Analog. It's unfortunate that all the Hoka stories were not included here.
There are most certainly more literary genres that could be used by Anderson and Dickson as the basis for additional stories in this series, but the Hokas have never quite gotten popular enough to entice the authors away from more serious projects. Fans of frivolous farce will probably have to make do with the handful of stories already written.
Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! ain't great lit'rature, but if you're in the mood for a quick, fun read, give it a try.
-- Doug
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