Gravity Wells
by James Alan Gardner
EOS 2005, 344 pp; $15.95

James Alan Gardner is one of my favorite writers, but his short speculative fiction is hard to find, since publishing venues range from Ron Hubbard Presents to Amazing Stories. Here are 14 of his stories, with one of those prefaces that is actually worth reading, in which he explains that “One of the great formative influences in my youth was the Dangerous Visions anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.” That explains several aspects of Gardner’s fiction, particularly the tendency to take a sudden turn into violence. But if Ellison was the major influence of Gardner’s style, I detect an occasional ripple of LeGuin as well.

 “The Children of Crèche” describes gonzo journalist visiting an artists’ colony planet where no children are ever born. “The Last Day of the War, with Parrots” is an eerie blend of rock video and alien artifacts. “Reaper” anticipated – or perhaps inspired – the TV show Dead Like Me; “Hardware Scenario G-49” is another media-prescient story, published in 1991, years before Matrix, in which humans exist in a virtual reality supervised by AIs, and procreation must be attended by some analogue experience in VR for optimum results. So a hardware store clerk dons a knight’s attire to rescue an Amazonian from a dastardly villain so they can be coupled; he takes as his coat of arms a hammer and screwdriver with the motto, My Iron Stands the Test. Those who have any interest in Tarot decks or persona poetry should turn to “Lesser Figures of the Greater Trumps.” “The Young Person’s Guide to the Organism” is the prequel story to all his galactic novels, a description of first contacts by three generations’ worth of humans with an orchestral representation of their motivations and personalities.

If you aren’t already familiar with Gardner, look for Expendable, one of the best peripheral-military SF books ever written. Most of his novels are stand alone sequels to Expendable, set in a future where whatever you do on your own planet is your business, but all interstellar adventuring is monitored by the League of Sentient Beings, who simply do not allow non-sentients off planet. Their definition of non-sentient includes murderers and those from whom preventable negligence allows atrocities to happen. This provides a moral accountability framework for all the stories, but what makes the series so brilliant is its historically accurate premise: morale in any unit plummets when a good-looking member dies; it is less affected if the deceased was ugly or unpopular. Since interstellar warfare is non-existent, the only dangerous line of work is performed by the Exploratory Corps; to be an Explorer, you must be born intelligent – and deformed in some purely cosmetic way. These deformities render Explorers ridiculous and unappealing, so that no one, not even a fellow Explorer, mourns when they go “Oh, sh_t!” Expendable is a tale of political skullduggery and the Explorer who uncovers the truth and discovers that her deformity, a wine-dark birthmark that mars her face, is also her birthright.

Most of Gardner’s protagonists are strong-minded females. Some of his descriptions are like the vivid dreams you wish you could remember in perfect clarity. He wields the ironic scalpel with deftness, and he recently demonstrated a flair for Asimovian limericks in Radiant. The most unusual of his novels is Commitment Hour; a tale of gender variability. On the planet Tober Cove, every person grows up alternating male and female, changing each year on their birthday. At age 20 you get to choose, and that choice becomes your permanent form. Speculative fiction indeed! – Chris Wozny