Tuf Voyaging (1986) by George R.R. Martin

Tuf Voyaging (1986) by George R.R. Martin: A 'paste-up' novel of stories and novellas published over about a decade, Tuf Voyaging tells of several adventures of Haviland Tuf. Tuf lives several thousand years in the future, during George R.R. Martin's 'Thousand Worlds' universe in which humanity has spread out across the galaxy (that's the Thousand Worlds) after the collapse of its Federal Empire. 

Tuf starts off as a quirky but somewhat unsuccessful freighter captain. Personality-wise, Tuf sometimes seems like a first draft for Varys in A Song of Ice and Fire. However, circumstances detailed here put him in sole control of a 30-km-long seed ship, the last of its kind, built by that Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corps.

This seed ship, named Ark, can do just about anything biology-related. Thanks to vast libraries of genetic material, genetic manipulation machines, and other doodads, the Ark can unleash planet-destroying plagues, planet-saving biological miracles, or even a few telepathic cats. Tuf finally has a way to make money. And so he does.

This may be Martin's most traditionally Golden-Age science-fiction work. Tuf is quirky and a fairly solid judge of human character, and the stories themselves are the sort of 'science puzzle' stories made popular by writers that include Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Martin seems to be having a lot of fun with the biological puzzles Haviland Tuf faces, and so too the reader.

Even the discovery of the Ark rests on a puzzle being solved -- and Tuf figuring out how to survive that finding. He will then be confronted by a variety of puzzles on different worlds. The puzzles and the solutions are ingenious. It's all breezy science-fiction fun with a few serious points about over-population, religious mania, and cruelty to animals along the way. And, of course, the dangers of invasive species. Especially when that invasive species is humanity. This would make a fine TV series. Come on, guys! Highly recommended.

Dreamsongs Volume 2 (2004) by George R. R. Martin

Dreamsongs Volume 2 (2004) by George R. R. Martin:

This collection is generous and generously gifted with lengthy, illuminating essays by George R.R. Martin. Originally released in one volume, breaking it up into two volumes definitely helps with actually reading it.

• "A Beast for Norn" (1976): The first tale of Haviland Tuf showcases his biological and ecological engineering skills thanks to the massive seedship Ark, along with his idiosyncratic personality and one of the more medieval-futuristic planets of the far-future Thousand Worlds universe. This version is the original, while that in Tuf Voyaging has been edited and expanded.
• "Guardians"  (1981): A Haviland Tuf story that riffs on how seemingly minor changes to an alien environment lead to catastrophic consequences for the human inhabitants of a watery world. Tuf's favourite animals, cats, play a key role in this one.
• "The Road Less Travelled" (Unproduced screenplay, Twilight Zone) (1986): A never-produced screenplay would still make a dandy TZ episode.
• "Doorways" (Unproduced version of pilot) (1993): A different, less-expensive version of this screenplay was made into a pilot that never made it to series. This would now be familiar to viewers thanks to shows like Sliders.
• "Shell Games" (1987): One of Martin's first heroes in the shared-universe superhero series Wild Cards was the amiable Great and Powerful Turtle. Fun stuff.
• "From the Journal of Xavier Desmond" (1988): Compiles the linking story from Wild Cards novel Aces Abroad, focusing on the Mayor of Jokertown, the elephant-trunked Desmond.
• "Under Siege" (1985): Time-travel story incorporates a story Martin wrote for a history class (that story appears early in Volume 1 of Dreamsongs).
• "The Skin Trade" (1988): Award-winning novella involves a city run by werewolves and a mysterious mirror.
• "Unsound Variations" (1982): Martin turns his college experiences with chess tournaments into an excellent time-travel story.
• "The Glass Flower" (1986): Melancholy farewell (for now and then) to Martin's Thousand Worlds universe.
• "The Hedge Knight" (1998): A story from the Game of Thrones universe, set roughly a generation before the events of the novel.
• "Portraits of His Children" (1985): Somewhat metafictional horror story about the lengths some writers go for inspiration.

Overall: Excellent overview of Martin's writing from the mid-1980's to 2003, with a few dips further into the past to suit both thematic divisions and series that ended in the 1980's. Highly recommended.

Dreamsongs Volume 1 (2004) by George R. R. Martin

Dreamsongs Volume 1 (2004) by George R. R. Martin:

This collection is generous and generously gifted with lengthy, illuminating essays by George R.R. Martin. Originally released in one volume in 2003, breaking it up into two volumes definitely helps with actually reading it without being crushed.

Volume 1 covers Martin's career from his days writing for the amateur press in the 1960's to the greatest days of his success as a writer of short stories and novellas in the mid-1980's. I think Martin was a better writer of predominantly science-fictional stories than he is a fantasy novelist, but your results may vary. In any event, this is a fine introduction to Martin's work for those who haven't read much beyond his A Song of Ice and Fire. 

The stories:

"Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark (1967): Almost juvenilia. Superhero stuff for an amateur press.
"The Fortress" (1960s): A short story submitted as an essay in a history course. Interesting.
"And Death His Legacy" (1960s): Started life as the first in a projected series about a billionaire super-assassin before transforming into a cautionary tale about the limits of political violence.
"The Hero" (1971): Martin's first professional sale, a stinger about the future of warfare.
"The Exit to San Breta" (1972): Science fiction ghost story. Minor but enjoyable.
"The Second Kind of Loneliness" (1972): From Martin's short-lived "Star Ring" series, a meditation on isolation and madness.
"With Morning Comes Mistfall" (1973): An entry in Martin's loose-knit far-future history of humanity dubbed "A Thousand Worlds." Martin's first truly top-notch story.
"A Song for Lya" (1974): Martin's second top-notch sf story, also set in the Thousand Worlds universe, explores an alien religion and its strange attraction for some humans.
"This Tower of Ashes" (1976): More of a character piece set on yet another of the Thousand Worlds. Bad spiders!
"And Seven Times Never Kill Man" (1975): The title comes from Kipling; Martin's notes indicate that he parodies Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai series in specific (and militaristic sf in general) here. Thousand Worlds.
"The Stone City" (1977): A more Lovecraftian or Clark Ashton Smith-style take on the Thousand Worlds. Really a subtle piece of cosmic, science-fictional horror.
"Bitterblooms" (1977): A more fabulistic piece set on one of the more isolated Thousand Worlds of humanity.
"The Way of Cross and Dragon" (1979): Excellent sf story exploring religion and its mutations in the far future of the Thousand Worlds.
"The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr" (1976): Universe-hopping fantasy story was meant to start a series. It didn't, though Martin would re-use elements in his 1990's pilot "Doorways" (see Dreamsongs Volume 2).
"The Ice Dragon" (1980): Martin is pretty sure he created the idea of a literal ice dragon here. Not part of the Game of Thrones universe, though there are some similarities.
"In the Lost Lands" (1982: Another first piece in a never-continued series, set in a world that combines traditional sword-and-sorcery elements with post-apocalyptic settings.
"Meathouse Man" (1976): The most mournful and disturbing of Martin's three 'Corpse-Handler' sf stories is sometimes viewed as a precursor to Splatterpunk.
"Remembering Melody" (1981): Precise 'traditional' horror story.
"Sandkings" (1979): My favourite of Martin's stories, a terrific novella of science-fictional horror that features a thoroughly rotten protagonist and a fascinating alien species, the eponymous Sandkings. Also meant to be part of a series!
"Nightflyers" (1976/1980): Fine science-fictional horror novella set in the far-future Thousand Worlds timeline was thoroughly misused in both a 1980's movie and the recent SyFy Channel series.
"The Monkey Treatment" (1983): Somewhat traditional 'Be careful what you wish for' horror.
"The Pear-Shaped Man" (1987): Nice horror piece does not go quite where the reader fears it will. It goes someplace way more disturbing!

Overall: Highly recommended.

Nightflyers (1987) by George R.R. Martin

When bad covers happen...

Nightflyers (1987) by George RR Martin, containing the following stories:

• Nightflyers (1980): Martin's acclaimed novella of horror and first contact was badly mangled by the recent SyFy Channel series, mercifully canceled after one season. Set thousands of years in the future, "Nightflyers" follows the efforts of an interstellar archaeology team to make First Contact with the mysterious Volcryn. The Volcryn fly between the stars at normal spatial velocities, avoiding star systems and faster-than-light travel. Why? And why have they been doing it for at least tens of thousands of years, flying outwards from the Galactic Core? Martin balances cosmic horror, a bit of grue, a sense of wonder, and a keen sense of irony once the final revelations arrive.
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• Override (1973): Enjoyable, minor Corpse-handler story. Martin's walking dead do so with artificial brains in their heads, all under the control of that handler. Yuck!
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• Weekend in a War Zone (1977): Dystopic, bleak satire of corporate outings. Would make a good half-hour Twilight Zone episode if they still made such a thing.
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• And Seven Times Never Kill Man (1975): Another story set in the Thousand Worlds universe shows us aliens vs. humans. And not just any humans, but the horrible sect of humans who are Martin's parody of/commentary on Gordon Dickson's militaristic Dorsai.
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• Nor the Many-Coloured Fires of a Star Ring (1976): The Star Ring was an FTL gateway created by dumping massive amounts of power into a pre-existing spatial rift. But in this story, the rift seems to open on a parallel universe.
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• A Song for Lya (1974): One of Martin's cleverest, most affecting stories. Again set in the Thousand Worlds universe, "A Song for Lya" follows the efforts of a telepathic duo to discover the secrets of a planet of aliens that has lived in peaceful cultural stasis for thousands of years -- and whose attractions now seem to be wooing humans to have brain-eating blobs put on their heads. Yes, it's the most melancholy episode of Futurama ever!!!

Once upon a time, George R.R. Martin was a writer of terrific short stories and novellas. His first novel, written with Lisa Tuttle, was a fix-up of previously published stories, as was a later novel, Tuf Voyaging. 

These stories all come from about two decades or more before Game of Thrones hit the book-stands. Some of them are from different universes Martin created -- the Star Ring universe, the Corpse-handler universe, and the Thousand Worlds of humanity thousands of years in the future. They all make for fine reading. Highly recommended.

13 Steps Lead Down

13 Short Horror Novels: edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh (Collected 1987), containing the following stories:

"Jerusalem's Lot" (1978) by Stephen King: Fun riff by King on Lovecraft's horror stories, most obviously "The Rats in the Walls", told through a series of letters. Has nothing to do with 'Salem's Lot.

"The Parasite" (1894) by Arthur Conan Doyle: The creator of Sherlock Holmes indulges his love of the paranormal, specifically hypnotism, here. Boy, people thought hypnotism (or 'mesmerism') could do some crazy stuff in the 19th century. Here it allows for the telepathic takeover of other people's bodies!

"Fearful Rock" (1939) by Manly Wade Wellman: Excellent Civil War period piece from Wellman, as a patrol of Union soldiers finds itself confronted with supernatural evil.

"Sardonicus" (1961) by Ray Russell: Classic story from Russell is a blackly humourous character study written in a 19th-century epistolary style. Made into a movie called Mr. Sardonicus.

"Nightflyers" (1980) by George R. R. Martin: Once upon a time, the Game of Thrones creator was an excellent horror and science fiction writer. He combines the two here for a locked-room-in-space horror show. Made into a terrible movie of the same name.

"Horrible Imaginings" (1982) by Fritz Leiber: Weird, relatively late-career novella from the great Leiber riffs much more grimly on his years in San Francisco after his wife's death than similar works of the same period that include "The Ghost Light" and Our Lady of Darkness. Not great, but spellbinding nonetheless, with a completely bizarre conclusion.

"Jane Brown's Body" (1938) by Cornell Woolrich: Interesting combination of the horror and hard-boiled crime-fiction genres. Gangsters, mad scientists, and a tragic ending you know is coming, as inevitable as death in a world where death has been temporarily conquered.

"Killdozer!" (1944) by Theodore Sturgeon: Sturgeon goes full-on Basil Exposition here as he explains pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about how to operate a bulldozer and a backhoe. I kid you not. There's pages and pages of handy bulldozer operation knowledge here. An interesting premise (an electromagnetic monster takes over a bulldozer; hilarity obviously ensues) bogs down in interminable explanations of how everything works. If you're fascinated by the heavy machinery of 1944, this novella is for you. Made into a movie of the same name.

"The Shadow Out of Time" (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft: One of Lovecraft's least horrifying, most science-fictiony and sublime meditations on cosmic stuff and time abysses. The aliens here -- 12-foot-tall rugose cones dubbed "the Great Race" -- are probably Lovecraft's least threatening, most benign race of super-aliens. Also, they're socialists.

"The Stains" (1980) by Robert Aickman: Aickman is at his creepy, ambiguous best here in a story of a buttoned-down widower who starts a new life with a young woman who is...well, I don't know. Baffling, oblique, and utterly haunting, but not for anybody who wants some sort of minimal explanation of what is actually happening.

"The Horror from the Hills" (1931) by Frank Belknap Long: Gonzo Exposition from Long's Gonzo Exposition Cosmic Horror Period that also yielded such distinctive, Lovecraft-lecture-series gems as "The Space-Eaters" and "The Hounds of Tindalos." A man-sized, vaguely elephant-shaped idol comes to life and threatens all life on Earth. And only a museum director, a cop, and an occult inventor can save us in a final battle staged in...New Jersey! Paging Jules de Grandin!

"Children of the Kingdom" (1980) by T. E. D. Klein: I've read this novella at least ten times over the course of 32 years and find something new to ponder every time. This time around, it's the fact that in this story of racism and xenophobia in the decaying, crime-ridden New York of the late 1970's, the ultimate horrors that move literally beneath the surface are fish-belly white.

"Frost and Fire" (1946) by Ray Bradbury: Disquieting and propulsive bit of science-fiction-as-metaphor by Bradbury, as humans stranded on a highly radioactive planet by a spaceship crash are born, age, and die in the space of eight days (!). A telepathy mutation allows the children to rapidly learn, but can one determined man find a way to reach the last extant starship and find a way off the planet?

Fear in the 1980's

Fears: edited by Charles L. Grant (1983) containing:

Surrogate by Janet Fox; Coasting by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; Spring-Fingered Jack by Susan Casper; Flash Point by Gardner Dozois; A Cold Day in the Mesozoic by Jack Dann; The Train by William F. Nolan; The Dripping by David Morrell; The Ragman by Leslie Alan Horvitz; Deathtracks by Dennis Etchison; Father Dear by Al Sarrantonio; As Old as Sin by Peter D. Pautz; Fish Night by Joe R. Lansdale; Remembering Melody by George R. R. Martin; The Pond by Pat Cadigan; The Beasts That Perish by Reginald Bretnor; Cassie, Waiting by Julie Stevens; and High Tide by Leanne Frahm.

Dandy anthology comprising both reprints and originals from the heyday of anthologized horror, and the heyday of horror great Charles L. Grant. There's something very Bradburyesque about many of these stories. Early, nastier Bradbury, that is, before the whimsy curdled, back when nostalgia worked alongside horror and the fantastic to conjure up that distinctive Bradbury glow that could suddenly be shot through with terror. Certainly the stories by Joe Lansdale, Jack Dann, Al Sarrantonio, and Pat Cadigan operate within the parameters of that Bradbury without slavishly imitating him stylistically or even thematically.

The anthology also gives us a mournful horror dandy from George R.R. Martin when he was a science fiction and horror writer, and not a best-selling epic fantasist. Reginald Bretnor's entry seems like it would make a dandy pitch for a TV show. Susan Casper gives us a prescient horror story about video games (prescient enough to anticipate a subplot on this season's Dexter, pretty good for 1983); Janet Fox leads with a prescient shocker about surrogate parenting. Dennis Etchison is represented here with one of his 1980's classics, and the anthology ends with a nice, Wyndhamesque bio-disaster piece by Leanne Frahm, an Australian writer I'm unfamiliar with. Recommended.

Before Westeros

Wild Cards: Card Sharks, created and edited by George R.R. Martin, written by Stephen Leigh, William F. Wu, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Michael Cassutt, Victor Milan, Roger Zelazny, Kevin Andrew Murphy and Laura J. Mixon (1993): George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards shared-universe series is a delight, a dark romp through a world forever altered by the introduction of an alien virus in 1946. The virus, a bioweapon meant to be tested on humanity by an alien race, does one of four things to humans who contract it: kills 90% of them, gives them major superpowers, gives them minor superpowers, or twists them into grotesques who also occasionally have superpowers.

In the vernacular of the series, the first group drew the Black Queen, the second group an Ace, the third group a Deuce and the fourth the Joker. Like anthrax, the wild card virus proliferates through spores and not direct human contact, so that over time Wild Cards are everywhere and not just in the New York area where the virus was first introduced. 'Normal' humans are disparagingly referred to as 'Nats' by Jokers, who themselves are ghettoized both literally and figuratively.

The first 12-book Wild Cards cycle followed world events from 1946 to the late 1980's, introducing such characters as Doctor "Tachyon", the alien scientist who tried to stop the virus's release; The Great and Powerful Turtle, a telekinetic ace who only appears in public inside a flying, heavily armored tank; The Sleeper, a wild card who gains a new power and new appearance after every hibernation/regeneration cycle; Captain Trips, a hippie with multiple personalities with their own bodies; and a host of other heroes, villains, and just plain folk.

This first book in the second Wild Cards 'cycle' sends Hannah Davis, a stubborn human fire investigator, on a trip through past events that suggest a massive conspiracy against Wild Cards since the virus first appeared -- a sustained attempt to find a way to kill every Wild Card on Earth by a cabal of the world's most powerful people. The conspiracy may have killed the Kennedys, caused the spread of AIDS, destroyed the early American space program, caused the failure of the Iran hostage rescue, and involved Marilyn Monroe, who in the Wild Card universe is still alive in the early 1990's.

Aided by the hunchbacked, time-and-mind-fractured Joker Quasiman and a number of other Aces, Jokers and Nats, Davis begins to uncover the current plans of the conspiracy (whose members call themselves 'Card Sharks'), inviting unwelcome attention. By the end of this volume, Davis has enlisted an ally whom readers of the previous cycle will find somewhat...worrying.

Basically, this is a very snazzy superhero book with a better explanation for its hero's wild powers than most traditional comic-book superheroes (the Wild Card virus is essentially telepathic and telekinetic in nature, and those it doesn't kill are generally empowered or twisted by some random trigger within that person's self-image or subconscious. Regardless, the powers themselves are telepathic and telekinetic in nature no matter how they appear -- super-strength and super-speed are both telekinetic in nature, as would be weather control, fire control, flying and a variety of others).

It's Heroes or Alphas, only with good writers who know what they're doing and have an unlimited special effects budget. And it gave us heroic, doomed Jetboy's poignant dying line, "I can't die yet. I haven't seen The Jolson Story!" Highly recommended, though one should read the earlier books first.