I love to travel. My job frequently takes me to strange, foreign lands, places like Korea, and Japan, and Texas. Travel Rule Number One: The trip never goes according to plan.

I also like Amy Tan. Any author of note who keeps a wall papered with rejection notices understands the illusory nature of success and fame, and that’s a good quality. She has a nifty lecture on creativity posted at TED…check it out, and keep your eye on that suitcase.

In Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan chronicles the misadventures of a group of tourists on a journey to experience the art and culture of Asia along the old Burma Road, from the Himalayan foothills to the jungles of Myanmar. It’s a diverse group, including a British television celebrity, a mother and daughter, a father and son, and two young couples.

Their problems start immediately. The group’s friend, art mentor, and tour leader, the dynamic, eccentric Bibi Chan, dies suddenly, under mysterious circumstances. We experience the trip through her eyes, as she observes from the spirit world with an odd mingling of amusement and detachment. Her substitute, Bennie, is enthusiastic, but sadly inexperienced. The tour group realizes almost every nightmare of the novice traveler–disastrous schedule changes, mechanical breakdowns, lodging significantly worse than advertised, inadvertent violation of local taboos, food poisoning, unscrupulous guides, untruthful translators, tropical diseases, and, finally, kidnapping. As the unwilling “guests” of a Burmese Karen tribe that believes one of the travelers is the second coming of their messiah, it’s unclear if our heroes will ever be allowed to leave, or if the government forces hunting the Karen will find them and decide to shoot first and ask questions later.

Ms. Tan has written a complex tapestry of a novel that is simultaneously an exotic travelogue, a hellish tourist nightmare, a political commentary, and a rumination on the nature of life and its many improbable coincidences. As for the enigmatic title, I’ll leave the explanation to the author. It’s in that lecture I mentioned earlier.

Her descriptions of the land and people of Myanmar and south China are beautiful and haunting. This is an area of the world most Americans have never and will never see for themselves, and frankly, I didn’t know much about Myanmar/Burma myself, beyond the fact that it’s governed by an authoritarian regime, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was recently put on trial there for allegedly violating the terms of her house arrest. I also remember reading a news article about the Karens and a pair of cigar-smoking child prophets who make an appearance in Ms. Tan’s story, but other than that, it’s always blurred into the rest of Southeast Asia for me. I wouldn’t say this story motivated me to pack up and trek down the Burma Road, but Ms. Tan’s vivid imagery made me feel like I was taking the trip along with her hapless tourists.

 The tourists are an interesting bunch of characters, from the condescending British “dog whisperer” to the hypochondriac young woman whose obsessive health precautions are ultimately vindicated, to the brooding teen whose affinity for magic tricks connects him to the history of the Karen people in a way that seems more than mere chance. Likewise, most of the people they encounter along the way aren’t quite what they seem to be. Scruffy-looking old people might be powerful shamans, a local tour guide could have ties to the Karen resistance, and an drunken expatriate hotelier may or may not be working for the CIA. I could tell you, but I’d have to…well, you know.

The tourist’s difficulties threaten to veer into cliche’–we get the obligatory gastrointestinal disruptions, grumbling about Asian-style hotels and toilet facilities, and yes, Ugly American, when the locals shift into their native tongue, they are talking about you.  Bibi Chen’s commentary from beyond the grave comes to the rescue, as she alerts us that when the tour group enters these ancient lands, the rules change. There are spiritual forces outside the experience of Western civilization to contend with, and these forces aren’t very nice. The tourists blunder from one “coincidence” to the next, blissfully unaware of the larger forces, natural and supernatural, swirling about them.

Things are tied up pretty neatly in the end, even the circumstances of Bibi’s untimely death, though she observes, as the story concludes, that life is ultimately a mystery–she thought death would be the end, but there was more to come. As closing summations go, that’s not bad.

A little late posting this, but it’s been a busy month, and the reading material I was expecting just arrived the other day. A short list this time, doing more writing than reading this month.

The Enclave by Karen Hancock. Adventure! Romance! Mad Science!

Off World, by Robin Parrish. “We’re back from Mars, y’all! Hey…where’d everybody go?”

“He’d transformed her memories of a world alive with hope and possibility and danger into make-believe, the foolish stuff of children.”

So says Alice Liddell, or rather, Alyss, about Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll’s) new book, Alice in Wonderland. Dodgson has collected all of Alyss’ shared recollections about a place from her earliest memories and turned them into…ptui!…popular fiction for young adults. He’s even spelled her name wrong.

She’s very upset about this.

I wasn’t too happy either.

In The Looking Glass Wars, Frank Beddor gives us the first installment of a series of tales about Wonderland, from the other side of the looking glass. His Wonderland is a real place, an alternate dimension from the Earth we know, where imagination is the power to create reality. Alyss is the presumptive heir to the throne, the next Queen of Hearts, until her fairytale future is shattered by a bloody coup engineered by her Aunt Redd, a seriously disturbed royal who didn’t meet the sanity standard for queenship. Heads roll, and Alyss flees into exile, falling through a watery portal into Victorian England, where she’s eventually adopted by the good Reverend Liddell and his family, her memories of Wonderland fading over the years.

After her altercation with Mr. Dodgson, Alyss spends another few years in limbo until she’s discovered by a long-lost retainer from Wonderland who’s been searching for her ever since they were separated during their flight from Redd. He arrives just in time to avert Alyss’ impending marriage to a British royal. Together, they return to Wonderland to set things right, but Redd’s firmly established on the throne, and unseating her won’t be easy.

Sigh. I just got done beating up on Orson Scott Card for trying to “reimagine” classic literature. I guess that’s just one of my pet peeves. The Looking Glass Wars isn’t a bad story. It’s well-written and showcases Mr. Beddor’s creativity in his vision of Wonderland. Unlike the original Alice in Wonderland, though, there’s no poetry or profound feeling of strangeness that immerses the reader in a completely alien realm. If anything, this Wonderland might seem a little too familiar to anybody who’s been to the movies in the last five or ten years. It tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end, but it never took hold of me. It was pleasant, but not compelling.

Yes, this is a “young adult” book, but I’ve still got enough kid in me to get wrapped up in a good kids’ story, when I find one.

I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This: The Penguin Speak paperback copy I bought was a nice product. The cover had a coppery sheen to it, the backcover copy told me everything I needed to know about the story inside, and the artwork was attractive. Unfortunately, the depictions of the card soldiers, including the descriptive text within the story, painted a picture uncomfortably like the droid troopers from the Star Wars movies. I was waiting for one of them to sound off with a cheery, “Roger-roger,” but they remained mercifully silent. There are interior color plates with more cool artwork, very pretty and creepy in an American McGee’s Alice sort of way.

Spies Like Us: One of the reimaginings that I thought was fun and mostly worked was casting the Mad Hatter as a sort of covert agent/bodyguard, part of a network of agents known collectively as “The Millinery.” Lots of sharp objects are tossed about, including hats that morph into nasty, razor-edged weapons ala Oddjob from the James Bond movies. Alyss picks up a personal bodyguard toward the end of the story by the name of Homburg Molly, who’s a very focused apprentice spy and one of the few characters not cribbed from Alice in Wonderland, which may be one reason I found her so appealing. The poor Cheshire Cat appears as a humorless cybernetic assassin on Redd’s team who loses his nine lives one-by-one, mostly at the hands of his homicidal mistress.

Up in Smoke: There are multiple Caterpillars in the story, and they’re all mystic sages of some sort (nobody who plays around with the Alice stories seems to be able to think of anything else to do with them), but as in the original, they’re not much help.  We still have no idea what’s getting smoked in that hookah.

Bottom Line: The Looking Glass Wars is an interesting “reimagining” of the Alice in Wonderland mythos, but it fell a little flat for me. There’s some very creative worldbuilding. The secondary characters created by Beddor for this story are a bright spot, and I expect them to grow into star players by the end of this series. Not a bad read, especially for an older tween, but, for the love of all that’s good and true, introduce them to Lewis Carroll’s immortal works first.

Precious Ramotswe has had a tough life. Her father has passed away after a long, painful illness. She’s survived a disastrous marriage to a ne’er-do-well musician, and miscarried a child. What should she do with the modest legacy her father has left behind?

Start a detective agency, of course.

It’s the first detective agency in Botswana run by a woman, and after a little hoopla and media attention, she settles down into the routine of a small businessperson trying to meet the monthly expenses. Who in Botswana is going to want to hire a lady detective, anyhow? Lots of people, it turns out. Precious is a natural detective. She has a sharp eye for detail and a good memory. She listens patiently and sympathetically to people’s problems, and the clients begin coming to her, in ones and twos, then more regularly. She handles a variety of small cases–unfaithful husbands, rebellious children, con artists and embezzlers. She gains a reputation as somebody who solves problems.

One day, she encounters a more serious mystery–a missing child may have been murdered, and powerful people are implicated. Memories of her own lost child haunt her, and this case becomes an obsession. She must find the answers, no matter what the cost.

Alexander McCall Smith lives in Scotland, not the sort of fellow you’d expect to pen The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, first in a series of detective novels featuring a woman in Botswana, but he was born not far away, in Zimbabwe, and taught law at the University of Botswana. He visits regularly. His affection for Africa and its people comes through loud and clear. This is a story that savors the slow pace of life on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, the summer’s relentless heat and broad blue skies.

Precious is a fabulous character. A woman of progressive ideas, and a “traditionally-built African lady,” she moves through the male-dominated culture of Botswana with grace and style. She’s comfortable in her own skin, proud of her accomplishments, and filled with unquenchable love for her homeland and its people. No obstacle is insurmountable, given a little thought, and patience, and a good cup of bush tea. She obtains guidance from an obscure book on private investigation, and inspiration from Agatha Christie, but she doesn’t really need it. Precious has all the intellectual tools a good detective needs, plus the confidence and audacity to stick her nose in where society says it shouldn’t be allowed. She gains many admirers along the way, including two very eligible bachelors, but she insists she’s through with husbands and wants to focus on her new career.

There are no sensational crimes, intractable puzzles, or drawing-room confrontations in this book. The cases Precious handles might seem rather mundane, but they are of paramount importance to her and her clients. She solves them mostly through persistence, keen observational skills, and old-fashioned common sense, leavened with compassion for both victims and perpetrators. It’s a very human story, and I was fascinated by the interactions among the characters. I didn’t care so much about the crimes–Precious was going to figure out what happened, no doubt of that–I wanted to find out who she was going to meet along the way, and what they were going to talk about.

Smith has written a very charming story, with an insider’s feel for the people and territory of Botswana and its neighbors. Like much of Africa, the story moves at a tranquil pace that allows the reader to savor its images and characters. It’s a great book for a sunny summer afternoon.

HBO has produced a television series based on the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, but I haven’t seen it, and I don’t really have any plans to. The book’s good enough on it’s own.

Received notification today that my story “Prison Dreams” will appear in the September 2009 issue of Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine.

There are many ways to break a man’s spirit in this prison, but only one way to survive.

I love anthologies. My first real encounter with science fiction was Nine Tomorrows, an anthology of Isaac Asimov short stories I found in my high school library at lunch one day. The stories were nothing like anything I’d read before, they were all different, and they were bite-sized–very appealing to my short-attention-span teenage brain. In the secular publishing world, there are entire bookstore racks devoted to science fiction anthologies such as Year’s Best SF, Universe, Tangents, and so on. In the harsh wasteland of Christian sci-fi, not so much.

In fact, I’m pretty sure the only anthologies of science fiction short stories written from a Christian perspective (aside from the C.S. Lewis collection, Of Other Worlds) are the ones Robert and Karina Fabian have assembled: Infinite Space, Infinite God, and Leaps of Faith.

Leaps of Faith is a collection of 14 short stories, from a wider faith perspective than the Catholic-focused Infinite Space, Infinite God. There’s a good mix of adventure, drama, introspection, and humor, and I found most of the stories both entertaining and thought-provoking. They don’t all end cheerily or with every theological conundrum neatly tied up in a bow. As Dr. Simon Morden says in his foreword to the anthology, “Good storytelling isn’t safe.”

Reviewing all 14 stories individually would be way too tranquilizing, so I’ll just hit the high points:

“High Hopes for the Dead” by Alex Lobdell: The collection leads off with a poignant tale of pathfinders in the early days of interstellar travel, their mortality rate so high that the job amounts to a suicide mission. One character’s simple act of faith transforms despair into hope for the entire community—then that individual’s faith is put to the ultimate test.

Faith and prejudice grapple in “Comprehending it Not,” by Cherith Baldry. A priest must choose whether to solemnize the union of a man and an android, a biologically-manufactured woman. Can an artificially-created being have a soul, and if so, what are the implications for religion and society? Similar questions are posed in Susanne Marie Knight’s “The Convert,” but here the intended union is between a human and a very alien being.

Vincent Malzahn’s “Quantum Express” is a chilling little story that speculates on quantum teleportation technology and its implications for the human soul. I won’t be stepping into that transporter booth, thank you very much.

“Leap of Faith,” the anthology’s namesake, co-authored by the Fabians, is a story from their Rescue Sisters universe, in which an order of spacefaring nuns watches over space travelers and workers in Earth orbit and beyond. In “Leap of Faith,” a young Sister must overcome her fear to accomplish a rescue mission, and we discover that sometimes even miracles need a hand.

Is human history written in stone? Time travel and its possible results are addressed humorously in “Moses Disposes,” by Frank C. Gunderloy Jr., and more seriously in Karina Fabian’s “Tampering With God’s Time.”

Martyrdom is the theme of the last two stories. “Sometimes We Lie” is Barton Levinson’s gripping tale of an alien convert to Christianity, a master spy who must run a lethal gauntlet for a chance to practice his new religion in peace. In “Lost Rythar,” by Colleen Drippe, missionaries attempt to evangelize a lost human colony that has fallen into barbarism. Both stories eloquently communicate the truth that faith is more often and effectively spread through sacrifice than through persuasion.

This is a wonderful selection of quality science-fiction stories with Christian themes, and it’s strong evidence that we could use a lot more collections like it.

Yes, I’ve only covered nine of the stories. You can read the rest yourself.

Actually, I found two cool stories. Two of my cohorts at Liberty Hall Writers Forum, a virtual wellspring of cool stories, are featured in the current issue of Lorelei Signal, a webzine devoted to fantasy stories with strong female characters.

No wallflower princesses or spunky sidekicks here.

C.L. Holland, a 2008 Writers of the Future winner, weighs in with A Celebration in Blue Silk, in which a woman suffering in a forced marriage to the enemy who slaughtered her family is offered an opportunity to rewrite the past…at a price.

Christine Lucas, a former Greek Air Forces officer and cat fancier (how cool is that?) brings a lighthearted tale of magic and thievery in Plague Chalice. A servant girl pockets an attractive bauble, and gets a lot more than she bargained for. Christine’s work has appeared in such notable publications as Ballista, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Expanded Horizons.

Read and enjoy.

In honor of the “Boys of Summer,” this month’s banner features Walter “Big Train” Johnson, pitcher for the Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927, and the foremost power pitcher of his era. This quote from Ty Cobb says it all:

“…The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn’t touch him… every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.”

The statue in the photo is on display at Nationals Park, home of the Washington (D.C.) Nationals. More shots of the park, plus a host of outstanding photos of the D.C. area, are posted at wallyg’s flickr site.

This train, like all the others featured on this site, runs on subjective time, and makes you look like a fool doing it.

“…The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn’t touch him… every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.” y

My flash story, “A Quiet Afternoon at the Alabaster Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Patchwork Society,” is now online at Residential Aliens. Just a placid little tale about passing the time with a few friends, a cup of tea, and a bit of needlepoint.

If only.

Res Aliens recently completed a domain change and website redesign, and it’s looking better than ever. There’s a whole slew of fictional goodness there now for your reading pleasure, so check it out!

June’s promise dissolved into the heat of summer…I picked up an extra tasking at work, and family issues continued turbulent. I failed to make it halfway through Midsummer Madness at Liberty Hall, and what writing I did get done had mostly non-quantifiable benefits. I put out an assortment of book reviews, almost finished what I think is a pretty good story that is probably unpublishable because it falls too close to fan-fiction, and adapted one of my published short stories, “A Taste of Honey,” into a kinetic novel version with pictures and music that I’ll probably be tweaking for a couple more months.

On top of all that, responses on stories I’ve sent out the past few months have been slow. Very slow. Molasses in January slow.

On the plus side, and a pretty nice plus, “A Quiet Afternoon at the Alabaster County Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Patchwork Society” appeared today in Residential Aliens. “One Smile at a Time” should be appearing in Mindflights any day now.

I also managed to finish my revisions on The Muse, which I’ll be sending back to my publisher later this week.

The June Scoreboard:

2 June: “Prison Dreams” submitted to Niteblade.

29 June: “A Quiet Afternoon at the Alabaster County Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Patchwork Society” published in Residential Aliens.

Still awaiting responses from  Three-Lobed Burning Eye for “Come You Back to Mandalay,” Atomjack for “An Eternal, Unbroken Chain,” and A Fly in Amber for “Insubstantiation.”