Reviews and Comments

The Bodleian Libraries put up a Tolkien exhibition in 2018 and this book was released as a companion book to the exhibition. For those who went (and those, like me, who didn't or couldn't), the book is the best way of looking at what the exhibition featured, namely the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The book starts with a series of introductions covering Tolkien's life, his relationship with the famous group, the Inklings (which includes C.S. Lewis), his concept of the Faerie (as opposed to Fairies), his invention of the Elvish languages, his fascinating with the mythology of the Northern world and, finally, his artistic side.

The rest of the book looks at the various items featured in the exhibition, along with an explanation. Chapter One looks at various letters Tolkien received from his readers. Chapter Two features photos, letters and items from his childhood. Chapter Three looks at his student days and includes photos of his activities and friends, including his beloved Edith Bratt. Chapter Four features various watercolours and drawings he did of the land of Faerie and other places.

Chapter Five features notes and sketches he did while working on his unfinished book, "The Silmarillion" (on the world of the Elves). Chapter Six looks at items in his study, featuring his working desk, sketches and several of his fascinating 'Father Christmas' letters.

Chapter Eight looks at the sketches, drawings, maps and notes he wrote while working on "The Hobbit". Chapter Nine covers "The Lord of the Rings" and Chapter Ten covers the various maps he and his son, Christopher, worked on while working out the geography of Middle Earth.

For those who enjoyed the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the exhibition would be a must-see event. For those who couldn't see it (and even for those who did), this book is a good companion to the exhibition. The only downside to the book is the photo reproductions of some items featured. Due to their age, some writings and sketches have become faint and, while the book does it's best, some of it is unreadable without closer examination of the actual item. Otherwise, an enjoyable book to read and see how life might have been for Tolkien while he was working on his famous Legendarium.

An excellent book about the adventures of Kiki, a young witch who is coming of age, and her cat, Jiji, as they move to a new town, hoping to fit in and become an accepted part of the town. Through an unexpected meeting, she makes her first impromptu delivery and decides to put to good use her skills in flying on a broomstick by providing a delivery service.

Through episodic adventures, the book gradually shows Kiki becoming used to making deliveries, learning about how to fit in with the people of the town and even making a difference as her abilities as a witch that flies allows her to do some jobs in rather strange ways. And in the end, we see how Kiki discovers that she has really found her place in the town while remaining true to herself, even as she misses being with her family.

Most people may be familiar with the Studio Ghibli version of the story (based on the book). While similar in tone (a journey of discovery), there are differences in the adventures Kiki has, but presents the same conclusions. The book (and the film) are equally enjoyable to read and watch.

An interesting 'fable' based on the idea that in the past, two great civilizations arose among the ants and dinosaurs that rose to incredible heights before hubris and desperation to save the environment (and stop a 'doomsday device') bought it all crashing down.

The premise of the story is that at the beginning, the dinosaurs were fairly intelligent, but their size and inability to handle tiny work crippled their abilities. At the other end, ants are collectively intelligent, but their small size hampers their ability to shape the world. The two would come together through an accidental meeting between a dinosaur with dental problems and ants looking for a quick meal. From there, both civilizations would rise up in greatness together, with the dinosaurs doing the heavy lifting and the ants doing the fine handy work holding technology together.

But all is not well, as a religious rift cause them to go to a war of attrition with one another. When it ends and peace is restored, their restored civilizations would go on to use more of the Earth resources, until the ants plead with the dinosaurs to rein in their consumption or risk ecological collapse. This causes another brief war but in the subsequent détente, the ants put forward a plan to stop the dinosaurs once and for all: not knowing that the dinosaurs already have another plan of their own.

On the face of it, the situation sounds a bit ridiculous and over the top, especially with the descriptions of huge transport vessels and buildings required to house dinosaurs which are much bigger than us. The ability of the ants also seen incredible, especially in the field of micro engineering and surgery.

But what drives the story forward is the story of two contrasting civilizations that somehow work together to achieve even greater heights before it all comes tumbling down. The humour of the situations also comes through in the translation, making it accessible to an English audience.

A collection of fantasy tales full of spirit (and spirits) featuring legends and folk tales from Southeast Asia. Those who have grown up hearing tales of 'pontianak' and other local spirits may enjoy the modern twist the author has given to them. Others, hearing them for the first time, may be puzzled by how the spirits interact with humans until the context is made clear from the stories.

• The First Witch of Damansara: the death of a grandmother (considered a witch) brings back a granddaughter to Malaysia, where she discovers some strange going-on centred around the funeral arrangements. A visit by the grandmother's ghost would change things for the better.

• The Guest: a girl picks up a cat for companionship. Only later do we learn the girl can work spells through smells, and she is aware of, and can influence people through their smell.

• The Fish Bowl: a girl being stressed out over studies and exams gets her wishes fulfilled by a koi fish. But each wish leads to the desire for more, only to cause more difficulties until there is only one thing left she can wish for.

• First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia: at a forum about minorities, a little known minority makes its presence known and rekindles a relationship.

• Odette: the niece of a demanding and bullying uncle yearns to be free of him, yet continue to stay at his house, whom she has grown fond of. Little would she know, the house also has plans for her and her uncle.

• The House of Aunts: the usual girl meets boy, and they like each other story. Only here, the girl is a 'pontianak' and stays with her dead aunts and grandmas who frown on their relationship, in this tale that has horror, comedy and touching scenes.

• Balik Kampung: a dead woman returns to the world of the living during the Hungry Ghost month. Despite not remembering how she died, she wants to go home. But a chance meeting with a medium who reveal how she died.

• One-Day Travelcard for Fairyland: overseas teenagers in an English boarding school have to fight off a sudden invasion of fairies.

• 起狮, 行礼 (Rising Lion—The Lion Bows): a lion dance troop gives a performance at an English hotel. But they have a sideline business in dealing with ghosts, but this ghost at the hotel is one they have never experienced before.

• 七星鼓 (Seven Star Drum): a boy who sees ghosts and is scared of them gets a revelation about then after an encounter with a lion dance troop and their more than real lion, and realizes he does not have to be scared of them any more.

• The Mystery of the Suet Swain: a Malaysian girl is being courted by a mysterious suitor on campus. It would need some serious investigation by her friend to figure out just who, or what, is interested in her.

• Prudence and the Dragon: a dragon and other magical things appear in London. The dragon is, of course, after a maiden. But the maiden he chooses turns out to be a rather unassuming girl who can't understand why a dragon would be interested in her, or even why he is her boyfriend.

• The Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life: set after the events in "Prudence and the Dragon", this one has the maiden's friend being 'split' into two: one in the present, one from the past. Resolving and bringing the two back together would require a reckoning with the past self.

• If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again: An interesting story about an imugi, an earth-bound creature who makes several attempts to ascend to heaven and become a dragon. But it is always bought back to earth by humans who see it and proclaim it to be an imugi, not a dragon. When its latest attempt is thwarted by a selfie taking woman, the imugi decides enough is enough and sets out to find the woman and devour her. But at the last moment, the imugi, disguised as a heavenly angel, becomes fascinated by the woman instead and strikes up a long term relationship with her. As time passes, it begins to forget it is an imugi and deepens their relationship. But in the end, it reveals its true self to her, and she urges it to try to become a dragon one last time.

• The Earth Spirit’s Favorite Anecdote: an earth spirit needs permission from a forest spirit to stay on its land. But she keeps getting 'maybe tomorrow' answers, until one day she decides not to wait any more, setting in motion more spirits and emotions from the forest spirit.

• Monkey King, Faerie Queen: on an adventure the Monkey King world have in the land of the Faerie Queen, as they don't get along with each other.

• Liyana: a touching story of a girl born from a fruit and who lives a good life with her family. But the day has come when a sacrifice has to be made to give peace to a grandmother also born from a fruit, and it is now time to say goodbye to her.

• The Terra-cotta Bride: in a Chinese afterlife, a young dead girl is 'married' to another man. As she adjusts to the household, another bride appears: not a human one, but one made of terra-cotta. Tensions would rise as the purpose of the new bride becomes clearer, and it would involve defying the authorities of Hell and a possible rebirth into a new life.

• The Four Generations of Chang E: a tale of immigrating to a new land, as told in the form of Chang E going to the moon and trying to fit in with life on the moon among the moon rabbits.

A better than average issue, with fascinating stories by James Morrow, David Erik Nelson, Brian Trent and a hilarious story by Madeleine Robins exploring a fantastic version of "My Fair Lady" that probably deserves to be made into a play too.

• "Knock Knock Said the Ship" by Rati Mehrotra: on a spaceship that tries to tell 'Knock Knock' jokes, a former Lunar refugee working off her debt is thrown into conflict when the ship is taken over by attackers also from Lunar, who did so to get supplies for fellow refugees. Should her loyalties lie with her shipmates or with the attackers?

• "Last Night at the Fair" by M. Rickert: it's the last night at a fair, and in this fantasy, the attractions are free for all to enjoy until the break of dawn.

• "Bible Stories for Adults No. 37: The Jawbone" by James Morrow: another in a line of tales giving an SF spin to various Bible characters, this one looks at Samson, the source of his strength and what happens when it is discovered that it can be transferred to various implements and transforms them into weapons of personal destruction that echoes the gun culture in the USA.

• "Spirit Level" by John Kessel: a man attempting to sell his old house encounters the spirits of his ex-wife and father under unusual circumstances, as his ex-wife isn't dead, and the father proceeds to put him in his place via his spirit level (the carpenter's tool). Via interactions with his current lover and his elderly mother, we learn more about his current circumstances and his desires to return to an earlier life when his mother was more active and loving and his father able to use the spirit level for it proper purpose.

• "All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal" by David Erik Nelson: a strange fantasy story about events that happened in the past and present around a pizza oven in a closed shop. The pizza shop was involved into a strange murder case in the past. Now, in the present, it is to be reopened, but the appearance of the Pizza King and his request for blood to 'close the circuit' would get the two characters involved in a mad dash to ward off a possible invasion of the Earth.

• "Madre Nuestra, Que Estas en Maracaibo" by Ana Hurtado: a fantasy story involving a niece who visits her family home as her grandmother is near death. But her grandmother's strange behaviour, wailing and moving in unexpected ways, may be connected to her past practice of praying for the dead who don't get to go to heaven, and only she can help her grandmother now as the ghosts return to haunt them instead.

• "A Bridge from Sea to Sky" by Bennett North: the Earth's space elevator suffers major damage at a time of budget cutbacks. Now, the only maintenance crew for the cable must find a way to fix the damage and convince the various countries to come together to keep it running.

• "Crawfather" by Mel Kassel: a story about a family 'tradition' to do battle with a huge crawfish (or crayfish) and what happens when things go wrong: a person dies and others decide to take revenge.

• "'Omunculus" by Madeleine Robins: a hilarious story involving Henry Higgins (from 'Pygmalion' or 'My Fair Lady') meeting with a man named Rossum who proceeds to provide Higgins with what he wants: an automaton who can speak. Higgins, being who he is, begins to teach it to speak Proper English and names it Eliza. Events then proceed as expected, even the ending when Higgins gets his comeuppance when the machine puts him in his place. A nicely written piece that gives an SF spin on a well known tale.

• "The Staircase" by Sephanie Feldman: a group of friends tests the 'legend' of a staircase on a hill that supposedly leads somewhere else. But when one of them momentarily vanished and then returns with a changed behaviour, are the rest of her friends willing to follow where she has gone?

• "The Monster of Olympus Mons" by Brian Trent: on a Mars being torn apart by civil war, a civilian hero stumbles into a museum for help, only to discover it inhabited by the least expected of Martian 'creatures'. They decide to complete a mission for him against the current tyrants of Mars. But they are being chased by a military officer who thinks that 'facts' should 'fit' the narrative he wants. And it is in the final confrontation between them that we discover who are the real monsters to be found on Mars.

• "The Shape of Gifts" by Natalia Theodoridou: a naturalist is gifted with the ability to see the future of the creatures and people she meets, making her wary of relationships. But when she senses the possible future of a fellow observer who is the only person she likes to meet, she has to decide whether to embrace whatever the future has in store for them.

A mild fantasy novel apparently set in Peninsula Malaysia, the story tells of a nun from the Order of the Pure Moon who decides to join up with a gang of bandits (who prefer to call themselves 'roving contractors') after a fight at a coffee house where she was working, when one of the bandits backs up her version of events that lead to the fight.

For much of the story, the fantasy elements remain muted, but the characters, their banter, and the situations she and the gang end up in drive the story. But things start to change when the nun discovers what the bandits are trying to sell to a third party. When the sale goes sour due to her intervention, a different plan is proposed by her, and this is where the story starts to give out twists to the characters, revealing that some bandits are not what they may appear at first, and also that she may also have been more than just a nun in the Order and that it may have granted her more than the normal abilities to see and affect the world in the usual ways.

By the end of the story, more is revealed about her frightening powers, and she has to make her own way in the world again, but she may not be going alone.

An interesting, light fantasy tale that starts off sounding like a tale of a misfit trying to fit into a group but ends up being another kind of story, revealing it to be a tale about relationships and different genders that feels quite normal in the context of the tale,

A collection of Greg Egan's recent stories, this collection shows the strength and breath of the author's imagination in stories that span from personal crisis, financial and biological, to ones that envelop the whole world and involve characters that think about and solve complex problems. “The Slipway” stands out as a story that involves scientists solving an astronomical problem, yet remains personal by showing that scientists are human and argue about but finally agree on the solution to a Hard SF problem.

• “The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”: in a future when people are being replaced by machines at their jobs, one man loses his job and struggles to find work and support his family. But unusual events, like a parent who apparently makes a living secretly writing monthly porn novels or a relative who believes the machines are out to get him, start to make him wonder what kind of future is in store, especially when his own desperate plan to get money suddenly appears to succeed. Could it be yet another plan by the machines for those out of work?

• “Zero For Conduct”: an Afghan girl who is very smart 'dabbles' in chemistry and creates a long sought after material. But now living in Iran, she has to resort to trickery and deception to get enough money first to secure a patent on it before she can earn her well deserved riches. This, she will have to do with the help of her relatives who recognize her cleverness amidst a society that does not pay much heed to the intelligence of women.

• “Uncanny Valley”: a famous scriptwriter uploads a copy of himself into another body. But for unknown reasons parts of his memory are left out of the copy, rendering it almost complete. Now, after his death, the copy wants to find out why some memories were left out; and it may involve it in finding the uncomfortable truth about a period in the past when the scriptwriter was just starting out and gets involved in a potential plagiarism case.

• “Seventh Sight”: a young boy fitted with an implant to replace his failing eyesight 'upgrades' the implants by unlocking additional features that enable him to see additional shades of colour. He also gets involved with a group of teens who have also done the 'upgrades'. But what happens when technology catches up with them and lets everybody see the world in additional shades of colour like them?

• “The Nearest”: a detective investigates a disturbing family murder case. But as the case proceeds, the detective is suddenly thrown into shock when she discovers that those closest to her are not who they say they are. As she runs and hides, she learns of other people who have also discovered that those nearest to them have been 'replaced' by unfamiliar replicas. But further investigations would reveal the actual truth behind the epidemic of unfamiliarity.

• “Shadow Flock”: a lecturer at a university is suddenly involved in an 'evil' Mission:Impossible type mission when her brother is held hostage. Her skills at programming groups of small drones to perform tasks in a changing environment are key to a group's desire to steal crypto-money from several people. With no way to get the police involved and no guarantees she and her brother might be okay at the end of the caper, she subtlety modifies her code to ensure they can get away somehow, but maybe not to safety.

• “Bit Players”: what looks at first to be a strange world where the rules of gravity have gone haywire turns out to be a virtual creation, with characters who act out lives for the players who enter the world. But the characters, whose templates were scans of real people, have feelings and ambitions, and they want to push at the boundaries of their created world.

• “Break My Fall”: a trip to Mars, aided by spinning slingshots made from asteroids, turns into a crisis when the sun starts to misbehave and the fleet must seek shelter. But an emergency requires the members of one ship to take life-or-death risks to save another ship in danger.

• “3-adica”: a sequel to “Bit Players”, this story has some characters but now in another game. They have discovered how to exploit flaws and bugs in the rendering software of the game engines to transport themselves to from game to game, looking for the game called 3-adica, whose unusual mathematical rules may give them space to live out their own lives free from observation of the system administrators. But they first have to survive in this game while gathering the materials needed for that final jump, a game featuring vampires in Victorian times.

• “The Slipway”: an amateur astronomer discovers strange new stars in the sky that shouldn't be there. But it is only after more astronomers and theorists look at the strange growing patch of new stars in the sky do they start to realize the truth of what happened. A story that shows the way scientific discoveries are really made, as well as taxing the ability of the reader to comprehend what has happened.

• “Instantiation”: a sequel to “3-adica”, the characters safely living unnoticed in a place of their own making among the game worlds now need an escape, for the company that runs the games is losing money and may shut down. But to do that, they need to lure a player who uses a gaming system with a known flaw back into a game, so they can exploit the flaw to move to other servers. Complications arise when they realize the player may be logging their data movements, so they need an audacious plan to deceive the player and hide where they have gone.