Robert Reginald (1948–2013)

We are all going to die. Everyone you have ever met, everyone you have ever cared about, and you yourself are all going to die. Sooner or later, we must each come to that realization and deal with it. How we deal with it and how we allow death to affect life – I think – matters. Robert Reginald is a man who has wrestled with, and come to terms with, these issues, particularly his own mortality. TRILOBITE DREAMS, OR, THE AUTODIDACT'S TALE: A ROMANCE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY is an autobiographical show more account, not just of Reginald’s near-fatal heart attack, but also his life as an editor, publisher, writer of genre fiction, librarian, and academic.

Like most people, I suspect, I have never personally faced a life-threatening health crisis. I’ve almost died on a handful of occasions, but those were each spontaneous, catastrophic events that came close to ending my life but just as quickly passed without doing so. There was no time to reflect, ponder, or worry, except afterwards, when it was all too easy to dismiss the possibility of near-death. Not so Reginald. In 2003, and on a couple occasions after that, he came perilously close to dying. As his health crises were happening, he was conscious of exactly what was going on, and how close he was to dying. That has to change a person. His recovery was long and painful, offering more than enough time for reflection, and physically he’s probably not quite the same man he was a decade ago. I don’t think he’s the same psychologically either – he’s seen too much, experienced too much, and has had to deal with painful truths, the kind that inevitably change people.

Having said all that, none of us wants a life that is defined by death, and Reginald has not written a mopey, morbid account of his health woes and crises. Chapters about his brushes with death are interspersed with chapters about the rest of his life. Before going any further, in case you’re unfamiliar with Robert Reginald, I should briefly try to summarize his life in very broad terms. Reginald, with his wife Mary, founded and ran the Borgo Press, a prolific and long-running small press publisher of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction that ran from 1975-1998. Eventually the company got to be more trouble than it was worth, so the Borgo Press folded. Fortunately for the rest of us, John Betancourt of Wildside Books eventually acquired the remnants of the Borgo Press – and Reginald’s services – so it still operates as an imprint of Wildside. While running Borgo, until his retirement in 2010, Reginald also served as an academic librarian and university official at California State University, San Bernardino for decades. That doesn’t begin to do his life justice, but hey, you should read the autobiography not just my summary of it!

There’s a great deal of interest here on the history of the science fiction and fantasy genres, the trials and tribulations of being both the owner/operator of a publishing venture and an author, and the politics and petty-mindedness of life as an academic. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I know Robert Reginald and consider him a friend. I was interested in reading his thoughts on life, death, and everything in between. Your mileage will necessarily vary. But I think that Reginald has a lot to say that’s of value for a general audience, and writers specifically. TRILOBITE DREAMS is a quick read, and one I found riveting. I recommend it for readers interested in the story of someone who has come close to dying, but survived to tell us about it. It is also a fascinating account of a man who spent decades not only as an academic librarian and university official but also as a prolific editor and founder of a small publishing imprint and writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels.

Review copyright © 2013 J. Andrew Byers show less

Of the 25 tales in this Christmas collection, few kept me hooked, and I skipped the least engaging ones.

Gary Lovisi’s ‘The Christmas Crazies’ is the latest in a long line of stories that refers to tears being silent:

‘I noticed a tear streaming silently down her cheek.’

Has anyone in human history heard a tear that wasn’t silent? I’ve seen many variations of the ‘silent tear’ in fiction now that I consider it to be the most absurd of all clichés. You can cry at different show more volumes but tears are never loud. It's as pointless as stating, 'Wet rain fell from the sky.'

I only had one magical experience reading this collection, which came in the shape of the funniest short story – and perhaps the funniest piece of literature of any length – that I’ve ever read, namely ‘Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs’. Written in the early 1920s by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, whom I hadn’t previously heard of (and will be reading more of), this is a work of comic genius.

In short, a girl of seventeen or eighteen called Flame decides to spend her Christmas Day with four dogs in their owner’s house. The owner is away and, after Flame’s meeting with a servant who yearns to be elsewhere drinking cider, she offers to dogsit for him. Hilarity and chaos follow. I’ll be giving this one a separate read again next Christmas. show less

When I read books like THE CRACKS IN THE AETHER, I become increasingly convinced that the only difference between a blockbuster hit and a terrific book that few will ever read is a big marketing budget. This a genuinely funny, smart fantasy novel with engaging characters, snappy dialogue, and an interesting, well-developed setting. There’s absolutely no reason why this couldn’t be as big of a hit as, say, Robert Asprin’s Myth Adventures series or much of Alan Dean Foster’s or Craig show more Shaw Gardner’s work. (And I intend those comparisons to be extremely complimentary, as those are genuinely funny books that were big hits in their day.)

Some plot spoilers follow, but I promise not to ruin your enjoyment of the story.

This is the first volume in the Hypatomancer’s Tale trilogy that tells the story of a court mage, Morpheus, who has the misfortune/opportunity to live in a time of great crisis and change. He is the eponymous hypatomancer, a mage who possesses the gift of fortunetelling, in addition to his other arcane abilities. Morpheus, seemingly by sheer happenstance, hears a cry for help from a woman trapped somewhere in the Otherworlds, the collective name for the network of various alternative timelines/universes to Nova Europa (I suppose that our own Earth is one of these).

Several plots and sub-plots soon unfold: it quickly becomes apparent that the kingdom of Korynthia in Nova Europa (Morpheus’ world) serves faces a time of great change. Indeed, the very kingdom may soon collapse into civil war. Morpheus soon resigns his position in Korynthia and leaves his responsibilities to travel through the Otherworlds to rescue a woman he has never met and hasn’t even seen her face. Now that’s a true romantic!

Much of the book involves scenes of witty banter between our protagonist and his familiar, a wherret, which seems to be a sentient ferret-like creature with a nicely alien mindset and vast knowledge of all things magical. Dialogue and humor are the real strengths of THE CRACKS IN THE AETHER. Reginald uses an ever-so-slightly archaic tone in his dialogue and exposition, and this seems to work well in establishing the tone that (1) this is a fantasy setting and (2) this is not our world.

I should also note that I would dearly love to see a map of Nova Europa. I don’t know if such a graphic exists, but I’m always a sucker for cool, interesting maps in fantasy novels, so let me put in a request for one now. I would also like to hear more about Nova Europa as a setting, as the vague hints and allusions to it in THE CRACKS IN THE AETHER are intriguing. When exactly did it begin diverging from our own history? Has magic always been available to its inhabitants? It’s become clear that the next book (and possibly the third) will move away from Nova Europa and to the Otherworlds, but I would also like to see Morpheus return to Korynthia and see if he can help resolve that poor kingdom’s troubles. I grew to like that place and its queen while Morpheus was there and I’d like to know what’s going to happen to it.

If you like fun, light-hearted, but still smart fantasy novels, than look no further than THE CRACKS IN THE AETHER. I recommend it highly. This trilogy is apparently part of a larger, twelve-volume sequence of tales set in Nova Europa. I have not yet read those first nine volumes, but their existence certainly presented no difficulties when I plunged into THE CRACKS IN THE AETHER.

Review copyright 2012 J. Andrew Byers show less

H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is an early classic science fiction tale that has been imitated and retold in countless ways, and it’s always been a favorite of mine. Robert Reginald has taken Wells’ basic idea – a surprise, devastating attack by Martians that is only barely stopped, and even then not because of any human action – and expanded it to three novels, setting it in modern-day America. The trilogy was originally published in one great big fat trade paperback by Underwood show more Books in 2007 (with very nice cover art and interior black and white illustrations by Choi Tae-Young), but didn’t make the popular splash that it deserved, and I’ve only just recently even learned of its existence. I’ve heard from a little bird that the three works that constitute the series thus far will be reprinted as individual books by Wildside Books soon. I hope that a fourth volume continuing the series will soon follow.

Some mild plot spoilers follow.

The first book in the series (War of Two Worlds) is essentially a retelling of the classic Wells story, following the experiences of everyman academic Alex Smith in modern-day California. Smith is a college professor and travels around California witnessing and participating in the violence and devastation that accompanies the Martian invasion. California is an area the author knows intimately, and this certainly comes across as the places the protagonist travels through have a real presence in the story. This first book follows the same essential plot as the original, with Wells’ key events also present here, in modernized format.

The middle and final volumes of the trilogy (Operation Crimson Storm and The Martians Strike Back!, respectively) are entirely new and pick up some years after the initial Martian invasion. Earth has mostly recovered from the onslaught, reengineered some of the Martians’ technology, and built a massive spacefleet in an attempt to bring the war to the Martians’ homeland. Earth is getting pummeled by asteroids the Martians send crashing into Earth (shades of Starship Troopers) and they pretty much have no choice if human civilization is to survive. They land on Mars, set up a couple bases, and start fighting back. Along the way, Alex Smith and his family gain new insights into the truly alien culture (and ecosystem) of the Martians in an effort to learn why the Martians attacked and how the conflict may be stopped. The Martians were very well-crafted – these are not simply Star Trek-style aliens who are essentially humans with antennae – and the trilogy sets up some additional mysteries that I’d love to see resolved in a fourth volume.

As much as I enjoy and respect H. G. Wells’ work, he was a product of the literary and genre conventions of the day, and his style didn’t permit deep characterization or exploration of human psychology. Reginald’s retelling allows him to explore both characterization of individuals and human society much more extensively than the original did, and that’s all to the good. Clearly, one of the themes of the trilogy (and this is present in Reginald’s novel Knack’ Attack as well) is the conflict that can arise from a lack of communication and cultural affinity between societies. That’s a theme that’s well-taken, and adds some additional richness to the novels, making them more than simple military SF tales. At times, Reginald seems a little conflicted though: are the humans making a dumb decision attacking the Martians, succumbing to militaristic impulses, or are they justified in what they’re doing since Mars attacked Earth with very little provocation, killing probably tens of millions of people and wreaking catastrophic damage? It’s hard not to be at least a little sympathetic with even the most militaristic humans in the novels, seeing as how we didn’t start the war, though the Martians (at least some of them) don’t quite see it that way.

I give this one 4.5 stars out of 5. I enjoyed this trilogy immensely and highly recommend it for fans of the original War of the Worlds as well as military science fiction/adventure fans who are looking for more than a simple shoot-‘em-up.

Review copyright 2011 J. Andrew Byers show less