All Flesh Is Grass - Clifford D. Simak [1965]

Blurb
In the unremarkable town of Millville, Brad Carter bears witness to the most remarkable event in human history: contact with an alien intelligence. Resembling purple flowers, they have utilized their control over time itself to place a barrier around Millville, preventing access to the outside world. They have come offering humanity their extensive knowledge in exchange for our partnership in their endeavors across time and space. But is anything ever so easy? As Brad tries to learn more about the flowers, nuclear annihilation looms from an increasingly fearful outside world as unrest brews from the terrified citizens within.
Review
All Flesh Is Grass is, at heart, a first contact story with the most unlikely of ambassadors: Brad Carter is a failed insurance and real estate agent in the archetypal small town where nothing ever happens. This backdrop of a dull middle-American town, with all the resident characters you'd expect: the elderly doctor, the beleaguered mayor, the friendly drunk, and others make Brad's plight in dealing with his extraordinary circumstances all the more relatable, and provides additional contrast to the otherworldliness of the aliens. The aliens themselves are rather novel, being hyper-intelligent flowers from a parallel dimension. All these elements come together to form a story that, much like Brad, moves at its own pace, not really in a particular hurry to get from one place to the next. While this may have been done to try to invoke a sense of the mundane world that Brad calls home, it fails to carry the story when it shifts gear into the more fantastical.

Overall, All Flesh Is Grass is a passable novel, and while not excellent, is still certainly worthy of a Nebula nomination. Fans of Simak will recognize his signature style, and it's certainly something different in the first contact sub-genre. Recommended is Asimov's The God's Themselves for another tale of first contact that might not be all it seems.

In Short
All Flesh Is Grass is a unique take on the first contact story that is both familiar and utterly alien at the same time, with sleepy, small-town 1960s America contrasting hyper-intelligent, hive mind flowers.

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It seems that even being on break isn't enough to make me overcome laziness. Oh well. Here's a post anyway. I should probably build up a buffer or something so I can immediately retain my lead when Fern posts again. Also, belated season's greetings!

Oh, and I love foreign book covers.

The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream -G.C. Edmondson [1965]

Blurb

The Alice was an odd ship in the modern navy: wood hulled, sail powered, and sporting a veritable Christmas tree of metal sensors to detect submarines hanging from her mast. But a freak accident involving an illicit vacuum-still hurtles the vessel back in time, making it...The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream!

Review

In a sense, this book itself is something of a time machine, encapsulating the period it was written in and bringing a taste of the early 1960s to readers in the present day. Between the somewhat dated sensibilities regarding minorities and women, the many and repeated references to the now defunct Bureau of Ships (disbanded in 1966, one year after the book was written and four years before the setting of the book), and a couple of historical inaccuracies that have since become relatively common knowledge, this is a book that has not sailed the time stream very well itself. However, this is not to say that it is a terrible book. Once you become acclimated to the odd quirks and plot holes (just why does that vacuum still actually do anything? I dunno, magic) the time travel plot is actually fairly entertaining. The times and locales visited are fleshed out to a pretty good degree, and it's not often that the Islamic Golden Age or prehistoric Mesopotamia are featured in these sorts of stories. There's not a ton of character development, but by the time the Alice's journey comes to a climax, you're at least familiar enough with the crew to become reasonably involved with their plight as a whole, if not the crew members individually.

As a whole, The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream is entertaining, if not a classic for the ages. A decent time travel story, it addresses some large concerns with time travel that many other similar stories gloss over: food and water are suspect, the language barrier is all but inpenetrable (except for the nearly Daniel Jackson-like linguistic abilities of the historian-turned-naval-ensign main character), and the relative movement of the Earth during time jumps is at least mentioned, if not fully expanded on.

One somewhat unusual recommendation is Time Cat, by Lloyd Alexander, which features a similarly hodge podge time travel plot, although aimed at a much younger audience. Additionally, G.C. Edmondson wrote a sequel in To Sail the Century Sea, though I have not yet had a chance to read it.

In Short

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream is an entertaining romp through the ages, even if it doesn't quite survive its own trip through time without noticeable aging.

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Yup, output has definitely fallen after classes started. Oh well, at least I'm still ahead 3-0. I guess I'll take this time to catch up on my Alastair Reynolds while awaiting other reviews... :P

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Phillip K. Dick[1965]

Blurb
In the near future, life on Martian colonies sucks. The only escape to be found is the use of the drug Can-D, which "translates" its users into the bodies of collectible dolls and accessories in a powerful shared hallucination. When Palmer Eldritch returns from Proxima Centauri with a new drug that is poised to supplant Can-D, the Perky Pat Layout company must uncover the hidden truth behind his claims of everlasting life to those who take it.

Review
Like a good number of Phillip K. Dick's works, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch toys with ideas of realities layered under, over, and in between the "real" world and each other, in this case with the fictitious future drugs of Can-D and Chew-Z, powerful hallucinogens capable of creating shared realities. These shared hallucinations, which may be more than just that, are woven throughout the plot, to the point where it can be difficult to tell which scenes are taking place in the hallucination world, which are taking place in reality, and which are taking place in a future accessible via the hallucination world. While this may sound convoluted (and it initially kind of is), the layering and interweaving of realities lends a pleasant quality of trippiness that draws the reader into a similar experience as that of the characters on the hallucinogens. It also gives depth to perhaps the most important character in the book: reality itself.

Of the two Phillip K. Dick books that got nominated in the Nebula Awards' inaugural year, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is probably my favorite, and is certainly a head above most of the other nominees. If you enjoyed the reality bending nature of Stigmata, then another PKD novel, Ubik, comes highly recommended.

In Short
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is probably a close approximation to what reading a Salvador Dali painting while on acid would be like. Ok, maybe not quite, but it's still a damn good read if you're looking for something that'll make you think about the nature of reality.

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Greetings also! I'm the writer for this nebulog who is not Fern. You know, in case the abrupt change in style didn't clue you in already. I'll likely end up posting less frequently owing to laziness, so I figured I'd at least get a leg up on writing the first review.

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