Edward Bryant (1) (1945–2017)

This book is isn't a novel; it's a collection of short stories with a common setting and overlapping sets of characters. This kind of thing isn't done that much anymore (unless by Alexander McCall Smith) but was not so terribly unusual in the SF genre back when magazines were still at least on equal terms with paperback books. In this case the common setting is Cinnabar, the City at the Centre of Time, which is not a Utopia, but stands alongside some other Cities of the fantastical literary show more genres as a place that many real people would like to go to, at least for a visit. (Moorcock's Tanelorn and M. John Harrison's Viriconium are two such kindred Urbs.) Indeed in one story, an adolescent male is forcibly, though accidentally, dragged from the 1960s to Cinnabar, which may be the only human community left in its time. This simple device allows Bryant to contrast the culture he was writing in with the culture he was writing about very effectively. What is Cinnabar like, then?

When I first read the book I was a teen (like the visitor to Cinnabar) and I was greatly impressed by the book. Twenty or so years later I remembered liking it greatly for its atmosphere and for one story in particular...Sharking Down. I didn't remember much detail about the city, just an over-all notion of other-worldly, dream-like strangeness. Re-reading it I find that this is because the place is not described in great detail and it is placed between the sea and the desert, between two empty worlds. One's imagination is allowed to work on it as new locales and oddities and strange characters are introduced, never filling the place, indeed leaving it still largely empty and unexplored. There is so much room for more stories that seem never to have appeared. I forgot just how much sex there is in Cinnabar - seems like they hardly have time for anything else! Sometimes it's a distraction but over-all it is a big aspect of what Bryant was writing about - 30 or so years after its publication we aren't really much closer to the exceedingly permissive attitudes he gives his characters and it seems to me that one reason amongst many is that the problem of disease has got worse rather than better.

One thing I did not forget is Sharking Down. Because I love it. It is the penultimate story of the collection and spends much of its time on matters extraneous to the central plot, setting things up for the final story - I'd forgotten all that - but I'd remembered accurately the main thrust and plot of the story, which is about sharks. Not just any old sharks, either, but two Carcharodon Megalodon - apparently the largest sharks to have swum the oceans of Earth, 20m long as full grown adults. One of these has been ressurected through genetic means, the other is a synthetic reconstruction - and the latter was specifically built to fight the former. What happens I shall not say and why it happens - well, see if you can figure it out from the cryptic clues given in the earlier part of the story.

I've told people the story of Sharking Down repeatedly, cutting it to its bare essentials, so that it has taken on a sort of oral tradition in my mind and in some ways that version is better than Bryant's - but only outside the context of the book. Within it, Bryant rules. Why do I love this essentially simple story? Because it is about sharks, and I love sharks, as did Bryant. And if you're going to have a fantastical story about sharks, why bother with Great Whites or Tigers? Why not go for the Ultimate Shark, instead? Hence Megalodon. It's a great story - but perhaps if you don't admire a-moral predators as much as I do you won't think so.

Over all this re-reading of Cinnabar was enjoyable but many of the SF ideas presented which seemed radical to me twenty years ago are rather old hat now - the book survives mainly on its atmosphere, characters and pair of really big fish...

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On reading for a third time, I notice that the two stand-out stories are those I give some details of above: the one where Cinnabar receives a visitor from 1963 and Sharking Down. There are many subtleties in the latter that I am not sure I had noticed previously. For instance, the name of the genetically resurrected shark has been carefully chosen by the author to have multiple symbolic meanings in relation to the rest of the story and the title also has multiple interpretations.

I should try to dig up more by Bryant; there is another short story collection, at least. show less

I had one of my semi-regular outbreaks of completist-itis, and since I owned about half of the Author’s Choice Monthly issues, I decided I needed to have the rest. A full set. Even though many of the authors in the series I’m far from a fan of. Like Mike Resnick. Ed Bryant I knew nothing about. The name rang a vague bell, but if I’ve read anything by him in the past, I don’t recall doing so. Bryant’s introduction explains he’s better known as a horror writer, although he did show more write heartland sf once – and it’s three of the latter stories which are collected here. All three are set in the same space opera universe – the first story he set there, a later one when he decided to use the setting for a commissioned story, and a third written specifically for this short collection. They are… okay. The stories are set in some sort of interstellar polity – it’s all a bit vague – in which disputes are settled through ceremonial wars, in which mercenaries in fighters battle each other. And those who survive, and have the highest kills, become popular heroes. The second story was written for an anthology set in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker universe, so the mercenaries have to fight off a giant machine intelligence bent on killing everyone. And they do it using the previously unknown telekinetic powers of one settled world’s indigenes. The whole fighter/mercenary thing takes some swallowing, because there’s nothing remotely plausible about using fighters in space combat, despite their prevalence in science fiction. The whole folk hero thing doesn’t really parse either – after all, who remembers the aces from the Vietnam War? From any war? These Author’s Choice Monthly have proven to be very much of variable quality. But they’re a set, so I’m going to buy them all and read them all, damn it. Even if they’re crap. show less

Short, exciting 0-to-60 story that will surprise and entertain!

A woman goes to the mall one cold, slushy night before Christmas to pick up some last-minute wrapping paper and walks straight into a nightmare. She encounters a gang of thugs in the parking lot who are on the lam and takes umbrage at her attitude about their parking. The confrontation quickly escalates to murder, and the woman must run for her life and try to outwit her pursuers, alone in the rural darkness and frigid show more isolation.

While She Was Out really was a heart-pounding, heart-STOPPING tale, and I understand why it was developed into a feature film. The story kept me on the edge of my seat, and I was blown away by its surprising twists and turns. Violent and frightening! show less

In an ultra-religious agrarian community known as Cypress Corners, young Devon has become an outcast not only for questioning authority, but also for falling in love with Rachel, a farmer's daughter who has been betrothed to Garth, the local blacksmith. Garth and Devon had been friends since childhood, and since Rachel and Garth do not love one another, the blacksmith is all too happy to turn a blind eye toward the "secret"—and forbidden—romance.

While living out his temporary exile in show more the hills beyond the town, Devon survives on care packages brought by Rachel, who sneaks away from town after evening prayers. When his penance is complete, the town elders escort Devon back to Cypress Corners, expecting him to repent. Yet Devon remains recalcitrant and soon discovers that the Creator's Machine, from which the Elders receive their instructions for leading the community, is broken. The Elders have since learned how to record their own orders into the machine and play them back at will.

After attacking the Elders and stealing the recording device, Devon tries to reason with Rachel and her parents, but they do not believe him. Knowing he will soon be arrested, Devon flees for the hills. While there, he discovers a portal that leads to a strange and wondrous place. Devon soon learns that he, and everyone in Cypress Corners, is aboard an ancient interstellar Earth vessel known as the Ark.

Upon finding a library computer, Devon learns that the Ark's purpose was to transport millions of humans from a dying Earth to a new home across the galaxy—until an accident diverted the ship from its course and sent it on a path directly toward a star. If the Ark cannot be repaired and its course corrected, the ship and everyone aboard will be dead in five years.

This mysterious catastrophe, having occurred 400 years ago, also terminated communications between the thousands of communities aboard. As a result, no one in Cypress Corners is even aware of the other societies, or the truth about their very existence.

Can Devon convince the Elders of this new information and enlist their help in repairing the ship, or will they sentence him to a brutal end for his blasphemy?

Edward Bryant did an admirable job of adapting Harlan Ellison's screenplay for The Starlost into the novelization. The chapters are brief, averaging about 5 pages, and the pacing is solid.

It would not be a Harlan Ellison book without an introduction as interesting as the story itself. This time, Harlan describes the debacle that ensued from the time he pitched The Starlost all the way through the ineptitude of the producers in marketing it, and their ignorance in utterly misinterpreting the series bible that they had pressed him into writing on an impossible deadline.

As a result of his experiences, and his dissatisfaction with the quality of the production, Harlan removed himself from the television project and demanded that his nom de plume, Cordwainer Bird, be used in the credits. Harlan was known to employ this pseudonym as a symbol of his objection to the mistreatment of his work by others. show less