Fotografía de autor
2 Obras 16 Miembros 2 Reseñas

Obras de Winston Engle

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 (2009) — Editor — 8 copias
Thrilling Wonder Stories - Summer 2007 (2007) — Editor — 8 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
20th century
Género
male
Nacionalidad
USA

Miembros

Reseñas

Thrilling Wonder Stories was supposed to be a quarterly publication, according to some interviews I read with Engle (the lettercol in Volume 1 promises Volume 2 will appear in "2008 at the outside"), but Volume 2 didn't make an appearance until Spring 2009. It's obvious that Engle intended the whole thing to come out much sooner than it did; most of the copyright dates for individual stories are either 2007 or '08. And, unfortunately, almost all of the "next issue" teasers in Volume 1 go unfulfilled, aside from an exploration of Marc Scott Zicree's Star Trek: New Voyages episode. Star Trek turns out to be the basis of the entire second issue; every story, classic and new alike, is penned by an author who also worked on the television series at one point.

The first new story is "Enterprise Fish" by David Gerrold ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), which has a very interesting premise but no real resolution. You realize why at the story's end: it's not a story at all, but an excerpt from one of his Chtorr novels. Disappointing. "Manifest Destiny" by Michael Reaves ("Where No One Has Gone Before") and Steve Perry seems to think that being in a Star Trek-themed volume requires writing a Star Trek story with the serial numbers filed off. There's a shocking ending, and I might have cared had the story had a remotely original moment of characterization prior to that point. Disappointingly, the usually-excellent Diane Duane turns in a too-Trekkish story with "Palladium" as well, though it has a couple moments. "A Gift Though Small" by Melinda M. Snodgrass ("The Measure of a Man") is a tale of a son estranged from his father, and offers little new or interesting. "Moon Over Luna" is by David R. George III ("Prime Factors"), one of my favorite Trek novelists. This story, which parallels the appearance of a second moon over Earth with a man grieving for his wife, never comes together. He handles the human impact very well-- we get snippets of different reactions around the world (this is everything Eddie Robson wanted to do in The Eight Truths and failed), and the man grieving is excellent. But the grief plotline never connects with the moon one in a meaningful way, and moon goes unexplained to boot. Decent, but it could have been better. "Float Like a Butterfly" by Norman Spinrad ("The Doomsday Machine") is resoundingly pointless: a long dream narrative with a paltry sf frame. Why the heck should I care? "Dark Energies" by Larry Niven is a neat idea for a story wasted-- it consists of one character explaining his idea to another over two pages. Boring.

The first classic story is by Harlan Ellison® ("The City of the Edge of Forever"), a short called "Life Hutch". It's a decent, enjoyable puzzle story, but I don't have much to say about it. "The Seventh Other" by Jerry Sohl ("The Corbomite Maneuver") sets up an excellent dilemma for its characters... almost too good, as the solution is somewhat dissatisfying. Still, I enjoyed the story; George was a fantastically creepy villain. I liked "The Golden Helix" by Theodore Sturgeon, about a group of human colonists adapting to the weird evolutionary system on an alien planet. A haunting story, with a lot of great moments. "F---" by Richard Matheson ("The Enemy Within") has a great premise, but doesn't really do anything very interesting with it. "Arena" by Fredric Brown, the basis for the classic Trek episode, is also included. I've read it before; it primarily serves to demonstrate that the Trek episode (by Gene L. Coon) is way, way better.

There's no editorial this time, which disappoints-- I want to know what happened to make Volume 2 take so long! And what motivated Engle to do a Star Trek issue. Several of the features deal with Trek itself; Marc Scott Zicree's "Where No Scribe Had Gone Before" is an interesting look at literary sf writers who worked on the show over the years. Crystal Anne Taylor contributes a making-of for Zicree's New Voyages fanfilm, "World Enough and Time". It's a little fawning, but it's genuinely interesting, and it almost has me interested in watching a New Voyages episode... though after suffering through "Blood and Fire", I know better. Adam Weiner covers the science of Star Trek in "I Canna Change the Laws of Physics!" He has one really good insight (about phasers) and a bunch of banal ones you've seen a million times (sound in space is dumb, inertial dampeners don't make sense, the ship shouldn't tilt when hit, &c.). Yawn. "Columbus of the Stars: A Trek Not Taken?" chronicles a 1964 pitch for an sf series by Ib Melichor and Vic Lundin. I'd never heard of it (I guess it never really went anywhere) and it's tantalizing to see what could have been picked up in lieu of Gene Roddenberry's ideas. I don't think it would have had the longevity or potential of Star Trek, but you never know. Also unmade is a classic Trek pitch by George Clayton Johnson ("The Man Trap") called "Rock-a-Bye Baby, or Die!", which seems all right. It's hard to judge an episode in this format. This volume's Scientificats are as underwhelming as those in the first: did you know that the Earth's magnetic poles periodically reverse!? The Televisualizer is again highly entertaining, even though it makes no effort to tie into the book's Star Trek theme. I sort of want to see Attack of the 50-Foot Woman now. Throughout the book are excerpts from NASA press releases, usually used to take up space at the bottom of a page. A neat idea, but even at mere months old, they already feel dated and pointless. The volume closes with a "Dr. Zotts" that, though still not amusing, seems to demonstrate that in the two years since Volume 1, Engle learned how to ink.

From reading this book, you'd easily think that the writers of Star Trek actually aren't very good. Unlike Volume 1, which had a number of classic stories vying for the standout spot, there's nothing really that special here. Most are likable, but none of them fully click. And the original stories are almost universally disappointing; the best is David R. George's "Moon Over Luna", and even that didn't work for me in the end. What saved the book for me were the features, which were almost universally enjoyable and entertaining, and occasionally even informing.

I'd love to keep on reading volumes of this series, but it looks like the problems that have plagued it are never going to stop; as of this posting the publisher's official website doesn't even exist anymore. That doesn't bode well, because with one excellent volume and one mediocre one, I'd certainly pick up a Volume 3. Not to mention I want Cleve Cartmill's Space Salvage, Inc.!
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Denunciada
Stevil2001 | Aug 7, 2009 |
Volume 1 of Thrilling Wonder Stories first came to my attention back in the spring of 2008, when I was visiting the Center for the Study of Science Fiction in Lawrence, Kansas. You can see why-- a pulp style cover (modeled after an 1952 Planet Stories cover)... but on a modern book! A quick examination showed that the whole book had been created with this modus operandi: new and old mixed. It contained classic stories and new stories in the classic style, along with a variety of other features reminiscent of the science fiction magazines of old, such as "scientifacts", interviews, reviews, and even a letter column. (It was apparently there because James Gunn, director of the CSSF, had written a retrospective about space opera for the book.) I mentally filed it away for later purchase, but I never did get around to buying it; I never even jotted it down on my books-to-buy list! But the series crossed my way again in the spring of 2009, when Star Trek novelist David R. George III began promoting Volume 2 on the TrekBBS, as he was featured within. Both books were offered for sale on Thrilling Wonder's website for a fabulous discount, so I snapped them both up and resolved to read them this summer. The contents of the books are pretty jumbled up, but for both volumes I'll be tackling them in the order of new stories, classic stories, and other features.

The first newly written story in Volume 1 (and, indeed, the first story full stop) is "Tomb of the Tyrant Emperor" by Constance Cooper. I was initially worried, as we were in for what looked like a group of stereotypical cat-aliens with an elaborate caste system, but this turned out to be pretty well thought-out and not mere window-dressing. The aliens (who called themselves "the Free") even incorporate a number of belief systems, and this turns out to be relevant to the story and themes as well. The premise of the story-- a group of Free archaeologists venturing into the only known structure of the Tyrants, the race that once ruled their planet-- is a good one, and I really enjoyed the story. Some good ruminations on belief, and a good ending. On the other hand, "Three's a Crowd..." by Eric Brown is cliched starting with the title and never improves. There's an android, against whom our characters are prejudiced, who ends up putting herself in harm's way and proving her worth. And there's a hive-minded alien, who can be injured by injuring any one of its parts. But God knows why, because the creature's nature adds exactly nothing to the story being told. Kevin King's "Dark Side" tells of a classified and lost to history Apollo 19 mission, but my lack of emotional engagement with it destroyed any effectiveness the ending might have had, as did the character's seeming bizarre haste in making a very important decision. "Farthest Horizons" claims to be an original story, but the copyright information reveals that Geoffrey A. Landis's story originally appeared in an sf mag back in 1996. Whatever, I don't care, as it's a surprisingly involving story of a group of people who find a strange planet-like structure that appears to be the opposite end of a black hole. It has some overused tropes of sf, but it uses them well, and the characters are sharply drawn, turning this into the best "new" story of the book. "Enlightenment" by Michael Kandel, on the other hand, is one of the book's weaker offerings, about a man trying to wake up from his dream into a reality. It just never quite cohered for me, and the explanations didn't really fly. "Love Seat" by R. Neube sort of worked, but I'm uncertain why the object at the center of the story had to be a couch, other than to create the excellent title. Finally, Ben Bova's two-page "Jovian Dreams" didn't really do anything interesting.

Following some snippets of stories by Jack Williamson (where he very nearly, but doesn't, coin the terms "black hole" and "wormhole"), we get the first classic sf story of the volume, "The Moon Era". A young schoolteacher explores the prehistoric moon, and he encounters some absolutely fabulously-described creatures. I really enjoyed Williamson's imaginatively described balloon monsters, the Mother, and the Eternal Ones. Unfortunately, Williamson is unable to devise a plot to match; most of what we get is the teacher hitting things with a pole, which results in the story becoming somewhat tedious after a while, especially due to its novella length. Isaac Asimov's "The Portable Star" is a story that io9 once claimed was one of Asimov's uncollected stories, but that's not true, because here it is. Aside from the alleged risque section (which isn't really risque at all), I can't see why; it's not very good, but it's not very bad, either. A typical sf story from the Good Doctor: a neat idea presented in the form of a puzzle that has to be solved by thinly characterized protagonists. Probably the best classic story of the volume was "The Irritated People" by Ray Bradbury, which depicts a very amusing ending to a far-future Cold War. Some good twists and some good black humor. Good fun all around. Also quite good was "Salvage", a story by Cleve Cartmill about the crew of a salvage spaceship that comes across the biggest haul of their careers-- while on a mission they can't miss. I really liked it, and I'm saddened that the vintage novel featuring the same characters (advertised at the story's end) never materialized. "The World of If" by Stanley G. Weinbaum was another excellent one, a very amusing take on alternative universes. I was amused that it predicted an economic collapse for 2010 (we'll see), but it's prediction of transoceanic flights being so long and boring that they simply had to lead to socialization with strangers certainly didn't transpire! On the other hand, once I realized that Raymond F. Jones's "The Alien Machine" was (in part) the basis for This Island Earth, the subject of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, I was entirely unable to take it seriously. ("Increase the Flash Gordon noise and put more science stuff around!")

The first feature is also the book's first piece in general, an editorial called "The Wonders of Wonder" by Winston Engle. This details what lead Engle to publishing the book in the first place, and also lays out his vision for it. Like a lot of pieces along these lines, it can come off a bit like a manifesto for what makes "good sf" even when Engle closes with a defensive statement that he does say other types can be good, too. But as someone who enjoys the odd thrilling wonder story himself from time to time, it's an enjoyable read. As far as defining sf goes, there's "What Science Fiction Means to Me: Tremendous Contribution to Civilization" by Jack Williamson, a 1929 piece that nicely and concisely lays out the appeal and potential of science fiction. I really liked his notion that it didn't matter if a spaceship had even been built or not, for science fiction had already imagined it and launched it. "Space Opera Revisited" by James E. Gunn gives us an overview of the sf genre; James Gunn generally knows what he's talking about (he wrote a six-volume history of sf, after all), and this volume is no exception. The "Scientifacts: Strange But True" section by James Trefil is interesting for its retro nature, but doesn't really offer anything too exciting or unknown. Did you know that a computer virus is a lot like a real virus!? Better along these lines is "Many World in Science and Science Fiction" by Joseph D. Miller, which explores the scientific theory behind alternate universes and suggests ways to incorporate it into sf, a fascinating (if occasionally incomprehensible) read. Winston Engle's interview with Forrest Ackerman, "4e-Membrance of Things Past" (a bit of a stretch for a pun, if you ask me) is an interesting glimpse into a bygone era of fandom. One of my favorite features of the book was "The Televisualizer", where Bill Warren reviewed a number of sf DVD releases in exacting detail; it's more interesting for his comments on these films and their importance and history, than the reviews himself, but that's just fine. The lettercol, featuring letters to the original Thrilling Wonder Stories from the 1930s by the likes of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, is good fun. Not so much Winston Engle's poorly-written and worse-drawn comic strip, "Dr. Zotts".

As you can see, there's a lot in this book. The new stories are decent-- a couple good ones, a couple not-so-good ones-- but where the book really shines is the classic stories: six of them, and the worst is Asimov's decidedly average "The Portable Star". And the plethora of features is just icing on the cake. I haven't even mentioned the illustrations: there's at least one with every story, sometimes more. If it's a classic story, they come from the original publication; new stories have newly commissioned ones. The book as a whole is a delight and a resounding success. My biggest complaint is that one of my anthology pet peeves is when there are no author bios, and that is unfortunately present here, but this would be rectified in the second volume.
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Denunciada
Stevil2001 | Aug 7, 2009 |

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Estadísticas

Obras
2
Miembros
16
Popularidad
#679,947
Valoración
5.0
Reseñas
2
ISBNs
2