Andrew Weiner

I get the impression that many of Weiner’s stories are inspired by other authors’ works, authors like J. G. Ballard, Frederik Pohl, and Philip K. Dick. The inspiration here seems to be Stansilaw Lem’s Solaris. Instead of a space station lightly crewed above a world that possesses a living intelligent ocean that manifests itself it visions and resurrections of the dead, here we have a lightly-crewed terraforming station on the planet Gehenna which also has a single planetary show more intelligence communicating with the station’s personnel.

Weiner quite effectively and efficiently presents this story via a sort of detective story. Narrator Victor Lewin is not a detective but, as Weiner was, a psychologist. He relates the story in exactly the sort of language you’d expect of that sort of man, and the prose is sparse enough to rapidly tell the story, complete with some flashbacks, but not so sparse as to seem the mere outline of a novel.

The Interplanetary Corporation has a lot of money involved in its first terraforming project, and the death of the station’s leisure officer Andrew Duggan, seemingly by suicide, points to a larger problem. The company is worried about the declining efficiency of the station and lags in the project, so Lewin is sent to investigate.

He makes the odd choice to go undercover as the new leisure officer. His supervisor Haines argues against it. Haines was a once-renowned psychological troubleshooter for the company. Now Lewin thinks he’s a has-been who never wants to leave the office. However, he has the support of Ron G. Spooner, Jr, the only child of legendary company founder Spooner who entered the family business. Spooner, Sr is a man Lewin admires despite a liberal academic friend (Lewin is an ex-academic) sneering that Spooner has a fascistic personality dominated by his will and the desire to dominate others.

On arrival, Lewin immediately comes to learn Duggan’s death was suspicious. Details about it weren’t noted by station commander Muller. The station’s maintenance man Remus thinks Duggan was murdered given that there is no way the normal safety interlocks should have allowed Duggan to walk outside without his suit on.

Is there a saboteur on the station? If so, are they working for a competing company? Is it a Contractionist (a coalition of anarchists, feminists, some traditional conservatives, and environmentalists opposed to what Spooner represents)? Is Ron Jr, eager to take over from his aging father, sabotaging the project to discredit his him?

Was Duggan murdered out of sexual jealousy? The company likes married couples at its facilities and personnel often have marriage contracts with monogamy clauses, and, often, the dismissal of one half of the couple means the other is forced out of employment.

Lewin’s cover isn’t very secure, and members of the station suspect right from the start that he’s a “detective” sent to investigate Duggan’s death.

There is also the possibility of implanted delusions facilitated by a dream machine developed by science officer Theron, Duggan’s widow.

When Duggan insists on going outside with Theron, he actually sees a giant, white version of Duggan urging him to join him on the hostile surface of Gehenna. (The idea of the alien consciousness of Gehenna being white owes, I suspect, something to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.)

Further deaths and intrigue follow with a very satisfying and traditional resolution of the mysteries behind the deaths and what’s going on with Gehenna.

Weiner includes some flashbacks which deal with “father-son stuff” in which Lewtin’s family life partly mirrors the troubled relationship of the Spooners and speculation that maybe terraforming Gehenna is a tragic and foolish manifestation of a masculine will to control and dominate.

We also get background on the broader world where masses are permanently unemployed with jobs leaving Earth and a short, but delicious, satire on academia with the character of Rosemary, Lewin’s ex-wife, possessor of a Ph.D. in “ancient and modern soap operas”, member of the History of Popular Culture Association, and an intellectual only “within the most generous definition of the term”. Rosemary’s field of study appeals to her because of “the simplicity of the material, its ease of manipulation”.

As usual with the books in the Isaac Asimov Presents series, Asimov gives us a two page introduction, “Science Fiction Mysteries”. Here he talks about the difficulties of mixing the detective and science fiction genres. The former is all about restoring order with the latter, in its best forms, about disorder and societal changes. show less

A young boy spends the day fly-fishing with his grandfather and mother in this lovely picture-book from author Andrew Weiner and illustrator April Chu. Listening to his grandfather's stories about his mother's first attempts, the boy feels somewhat insecure, especially after his first cast lands his line in a tree. Then his grandfather shares the story of his own first cast, while patiently helping the boy with his efforts...

I have never fished in my life, and know next to nothing about the show more subject, but the great fondness that Weiner has for the activity, and the sense of family closeness that it engenders in his characters, is readily apparent while reading Down by the River. This is as much family story as it is fishing adventure, although young children will certainly learn a great deal about fly-fishing, if they don't know it already. The artwork by Chu, done in charcoal pencil and then colored digitally, is really quite lovely. I particularly appreciated the decorative end-papers, which show a variety of flies used by fishermen. Recommended to anyone looking for picture-books about fishing and/or families interacting with one another in the natural world. show less

A celebrity-driven graphic novel that's not bad but lacks real spark.

Loretta "Lolo" Wright undergoes a fairly standard "teen discovers they have super powers" origin: sharing her powers with some friends and family, hiding them from other friends and family, dealing with random bullies and a neighborhood-level bad guy with a simple profit motive, finding out a member of her family has been hiding a secret. Kids who haven't seen these beats too many times already and fans of Alicia Keys show more trying graphic novels for the first time will probably enjoy it, but it's all too familiar to me. The characters are likable though, and I would be interested in seeing a sequel that truly allows Lolo to show her inner fire instead of just reacting to everything.

I wonder if there was a whole creative/editorial discussion wherein it was decided Lolo having pyrokinetic powers would be too on the nose? They have settled on telekinetic and telepathic powers instead, which seems sort of safe and ordinary as far as super powers go. show less

This felt very early 2000’s and not necessarily in a good way. Could have been a Static Shock (which I do like!) episode. I liked the artwork and the dialogue was good. But the story’s execution could’ve been better. A few abrupt transitions and rushed pacing.

The chapter titles are all Alicia Key songs, but I personally think there was a missed opportunity in not tying the songs more into the narrative.

I can’t figure out if I liked this or not. A mixed bag. Definitely some things I show more liked and others I didn’t.
fictional stories always have multiracial gangs, but I’ve yet to really see that in real life.

2.5 show less