Mind Over Ship, by David Marusek, $24.95, and Getting to Know You, by David Marusek, $15. It’s been a four-year wait for David Marusek’s second novel. The result is marvelous. It extends the world of his first novel, “Counting Heads,” but stands perfectly on its own.
Fred Lodenstane is a russ clone, a type based on a Secret Service agent ready to protect others with his life. When Fred disobeyed orders to protect his wife it was a major scandal. When Fred gets out of prison he is shunned by his fellows and a subject of worry over “clone fatigue” to the corporations that depend on the clones.
Fred’s wife, Mary, is an evangeline. The nurse clone cares for Ellen Starke. Ellen’s head is all that survived the attack that killed her mother, Eleanor. She is growing a new body but now has a head attached to the body of a 16-month-old child.
Eleanor Starke was the main proponent behind the push for starships to colonize new planets. With her gone, the Garden Earth Project is under attack from board members who want to abandon the mission and convert the starships into space condos.
The rich are preparing themselves for a posthuman world with distributed minds and bodies on request. The wild-card players are the artificial intelligences they depend on to accomplish these goals. These intelligences have their own agendas about their place in this future.
Fred’s story gives a lot of emphasis to the workers made and easily abandoned by a world that has unlimited potential for the rich along with a ruthless disregard for the lives of others.
This world that has dominated Marusek’s career. His short fiction is gathered in the 10 stories of “Getting to Know You.” Half of them, starting with the second story he published, are in the same future as “Mind Over Ship.”
“The Wedding Album” has been reprinted several times, not just in a best-of-the-year anthology but a best-of-the-best anthology. It’s a justly honored story of abandoned simulacra created to remember significant events but abandoned like old postcards.
Marusek’s idea of the future can be grim but there is dark humor in the very short “My Morning Glory” of a cheery artificial presence at home before facing a dark world. “Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz” is an outright funny story of a quest for immortality through a catchy jingle and a hole in the Alaskan permafrost. It’s also a tale of the quirky inhabitants of the author’s home in Fairbanks.
The collection makes an excellent complement to a novel that will make you hungry for more by Marusek.
Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, by John Langan, $24.95. John Langan’s first collection is a set of five long, brilliantly told horror stories. Interesting story notes provide background on the wide range of influences from Henry James to “Star Wars.”
“On Skua Island” is a mummy story set on a Scottish island. A body disturbed in the bog wreaks havoc on those who dare to dig it up. For those of us slow to recognize things, the notes point out the echoes of Henry James.
“Mr. Gaunt” displays its Henry James influence openly as the story of a James scholar passing on the dark family secrets to his son. A locked study at the top of the stairs is an irresistible object of curiosity until one gets inside and discovers the secrets of Mr. Gaunt, the butler.
“Tutorial” is a writing student’s revenge. Langan loves language and long, elegant descriptions. Told too often to cut out unnecessary words, he shows the dark places reserved to torture those who ignore the strictures of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.”
“Episode Seven” is the most experimental story, with sentences that go on for pages in Langan’s take on a Stephen King nightmare. Large, ravenous beasts are attacking everyone and few have the will to survive. Wayne takes on the fighting abilities of the comic-book heroes he loves to be one of the few able to survive.
The original story in the book, “Laocoon, or the Singularity,” is a masterpiece of art theory coming to life and a classical story becoming an H.R. Giger science fiction horror. Dennis is a failure in pretty much everything, from his unfinished arts degree to his marriage. He thinks he can turn things around with a sculpture he finds abandoned in an alley. His art appropriation instead appropriates him.
Fred Cleaver is a freelancer who writes regularly about new science fiction releases.
