Blindfold | All the Bells on Earth | Dinosaurs II
On a frontier planet where telepathic judges are never wrong, someone has made a mistake
Review by Craig E. Engler
tlas is a rough-and-tumble colony world separated from Earth by 50-years' worth of travel. Life is hard for the settlers, pilgrims and ex-convicts that make up the population, but it's also given them a chance to carve out a new world and a new home. Peace on the frontier planet is enforced by the sol pols -- elite soldier police -- under the control of the Truthsayer's Guild. The Truthsayers are the ultimate arbiters of justice on Atlas, using the mind-enhancing drug Veritas to telepathically determine guilt and innocence. It is a flawless system that has kept order on the planet for decades.
Truthsayer Kalliana, fresh from the ordeal of reading a mass murderer's mind, falsely convicts Troy Boren -- who was in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time -- of murder. Boren is a slight, daydreaming young man whose family recently purchased a respectable job for him in the busy city of First Landing. Obviously no murderer, Boren is nevertheless sentenced to hard labor in the orbital labs, where Veritas is manufactured. While the guild master himself has absolute proof that Boren is not guilty, even he is powerless to rescind the judgment of a Truthsayer. In desperation, he secretly strips Kalliana of her rank and sends her to rescue Boren. Eventually the three discover a plot that will ultimately destroy Atlas by slowly stripping the Truthsayers of their abilities while spreading Veritas throughout the population via the black market.
Blindfold is a strong novel from the prolific Anderson (see what else he has done), who is most widely known for his best-selling Star Wars books. From the start he convincingly depicts life on Atlas, from its lack of good coffee and wine to the cold confines of the orbital labs left over from the original colony ship. Gratifyingly, the main characters range far and wide on the untamed planet, giving readers an excellent and realistic look at life on another world. Anderson also takes great pains to detail the culture on a world that has proven hard to master, and one that is thrown into upheaval every few decades when a new ship arrives from Earth.
The biggest weakness of Blindfold is Anderson's tendency to create pigeon-holed characters whose actions never seem quite justified by their motivations. There is the Machiavellian villain who wants to rule the world but spends most of his time trying to avoid the responsibilities of running a land holding. Or the guild master whose life is dedicated to the truth but who looks the other way when a friend has his followers commit murders. Despite these flaws, Blindfold is a compelling read with an intricate plot and a wonderfully rendered new world. While it may not sell as many copies as the average Star Wars books, it certainly deserves as much attention in its own right.
This was my first taste of Anderson's writing. I'm impressed. -- Craig E.
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Good and Evil fight it out in Orange County, CA
Reviewed by L.R.C. Munro
lthough published under the Ace science fiction imprint, this book is really an urban-fantasy-cum-morality-play that incorporates elements of Christianity, Chinese magic and the problems of ordinary people. It wraps all three into a tale about Good and Evil fighting it out in a small town in America.
Old Towne is an ordinary town occupied mostly by ordinary people like dreamer Walt Stebbins, who's worked hard all his life without much real success. Father Bentley is a minister whose not-so-angelic past seems to be catching up with him, while Robert Argyle is the most successful man in town who also seems to be the most miserable. But all is not peaceful, and as Christmas nears -- along with the impending arrival of Walt's wife's Aunt Jinx and Uncle Henry in their motor home -- it seems the whole town is rife with strange and portentous happenings.
First there is the vandalism of the church bell tower. Strange deaths and mysterious fires follow, and while Father Bentley investigates the possible rebirth of an old and sinister conspiracy, Walt discovers a box of odd and seemingly real Chinese luck charms in his garage that tempt him to deal with his ordinary problems by extraordinary -- and possibly malign -- means. And everything odd and strange that happens seems to point back toward a single common element -- the menacing and yet strangely pathetic Robert Argyle.
The story in All the Bells on Earth is a light-to-medium tale of the vaguely supernatural. There is a lot of cheerful moralizing about the temptation of the "easy way out" and the basic goodness of people despite their weaknesses. The setting is a very familiar small town beset by strange forces; the characters and their problems are relatively well drawn, and yet their ordinariness and active dedication to mediocrity make them less than captivating -- neither particularly lovable nor hate-able. The book is well-written, but very slow to start, although once the nature of the conspiracy comes clear -- about 100 pages in -- things start to happen with increasing momentum.
Sort of like Stephen King meets Frank Capra and they go for donuts at the diner and write a new version of Needful Things but set in New Bedford and without the venom. -- L.R.C.
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Dinosaurs, dinosaurs and...more dinosaurs
Reviewed by Tamara I. Hladik
eed a dinosaur fix? There's a good one here, in Dinosaurs II, an anthology edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (see the other Magic Tales anthologies edited by this duo). It's a tight anthology -- 11 stories -- and a little uneven in quality, but overall a good mouthful.
The dark little jewel of this bunch is "Just Like Old Times," by Robert J. Sawyer, a sliver of a piece about a serial killer sentenced to unusual justice. Other kudos go to "Herding with the Hadrosaurs," by Michael Bishop, and "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny," by R. Garcia y Robertson. Both inventively veer off the well-stomped storyline that usually pours on gore like syrup on a sundae.
Of course, if one is looking for a good shredder storyline, it's in "Trembling Earth," by Allen Steele. A presidential candidate fishes for a prehistoric photo-op in the Okefenokke Swamp and is instead enmeshed in an assasination cabal. "Bernie," by Ian McDowell, explores -- with humor both biting and sanguine -- the consequences of using a real dinosaur as a good-will ambassador to children.
Weaker but still worthy are "Small Deer," by Clifford D. Simak, and "Day of the Hunters," by Isaac Asimov. They offer a similar theme -- alien over-hunting causing dinosaur extinction. In fact, they are so similar that it's curious both are included. The replication of what is essentially a one-trick -- but otherwise sturdy -- pony detracts from either's contribution.
There is only one flaw in this collection, and that is the inclusion of "The Virgin and the Dinosaur," by R. Garcia y Robertson. Although written with spritely aplomb and employing some really neat touches like a dirigible, human/computer integrated navigation and Hunkpapa Sioux, the protagonists are so caricatured that the entire piece is rendered ridiculous. The male is an unimaginitively-written Jack Six-Pack, and his incessantly-voiced lust to nail the gorgeous idiot/savant female -- the type immortalized in "Spock's Brain" -- renders the arc, setting and innovations of the plot mere atmosphere.
Overall, this is an entertaining anthology, and frankly it's just plain hard to beat a good dinosaur yarn. Most of these stories don't date back further than 1990 and are more advanced than "Lost Continent." Its strengths are the stories that explore aspects of human and dinosaur interaction other than tooth and talon, and this makes the collection eminently worthwhile. Of course there's also blood and primal fear, so whatever one's tastes, they're happily met.
I have always had an inveterate interest in paleontology and have usually found the standard dino story lacking. Some of these are pretty good. -- Tamara
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