Black Dawn, Smartphone, and the Scorpia Menace

In the opening moments of Black Dawn, by Jay Allan, the remnants of the once-proud White Fleet are leading the far superior ships of the Hegemony on a wild goose chase through unexplored space. The longer they can prolong the pursuit, the more time Admiral Tyler Barron has to rally the Confederation’s defenses before the Hegemony discovers Confederation space. But the Union has engineered a scandal to engulf the Confederation in chaos, implicating Barron as the center of corruption. Now Barron must escape custody, rally the Confederation’s fleets, and save his White Fleet from destruction.

Many military science fiction writers have been vying to become the next John Ringo; Jay Allan instead sets his sights on David Weber and David Drake. In broad strokes, Tyler Barron’s careers share much with Honor Harrington’s, where a brilliant ship-to-ship action heralds the meteoric rise of an officer’s career in a meat grinder of a war, only to watch as a more insidious foe based on genetic slavery shatter the hard-won peace. But where Weber follows in the wake of C. S. Forester, Allan instead draws on the recent Battlestar Galactica for inspiration. Fighter pilots and repair crews decide battles, not the huge salvos of the Manticore Missile Massacre. This change in approach makes space combat fresh again and personalizes the stakes. Fortunately for such an ensemble approach, Barron is a firm leader who does not overshadow the rest of the characters, a novelty not seen in many fleet mil-sf books. Keep an eye out for upcoming Blood on the Stars books; the best from Jay Allan is yet to come.

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In Another World with My Smartphone, by Patora Fuyuhara, may just be the classic example of today’s popular blue slime (MMO-inspired) isekai fantasies. As in many light novels, the main character, Touya, dies before his time thanks to an error in heavenly bookkeeping. As a celestial apology, he is given a second chance at life in an European-influenced fantasy world, where, aided by new powers, he earns a living as an adventurer for a local guild. Along the way, he rounds out his party with a team of pretty and available young women. Yes, this plot has been done time and again, but the blueprint here is as true to the tropes as I’ve ever read.

Unfortunately, the trappings of the isekai genre start to choke out the fun of this brisk read. Gone are the focused plots of earlier isekai tales such as Vision of Escaflowne, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Fushigi Yuugi; instead Smartphone is a collection of open-ended slice-of-life chapters, where exploring the consequences of a new complication provides the drama instead of conflict. Its an approach that lends itself to episodic writing. Unfortunately, it also encourages sprawl, cast bloat, and an obsession with new characters at the expense of Touya’s stalwart companions. And that’s before the tried and tired tropes of waifus, middle-school fascinations, gothic lolita frills, and unfortunate accidents clog the pages. Those familiar with the hijinks of most anime high school comedies know where Smartphone is heading and will likely enjoy the story. At least Touya is neither an unrepentant psychopath or a creepy loser like way too many isekai protagonists, which makes his adventures an excellent (and bearable) introduction to isekai.

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The Phantom returns in The Scorpia Menace. With an ocean between Skull Island and Diana Palmer, The Phantom wonders how he can ask the woman he loves to give up the luxury of high society for a home in the jungle. Meanwhile, Diana is eager to learn more about her Phantom. While studying for a history class at her university, she learns of the Scorpia, an ancient band of pirates that served as nemesis time and again to the unbroken father and son line of the 21 Phantoms. Her research indicates that the Scorpia still lurk in the criminal underworld. When the socialite explorer announces this in an interview, she attracts the attention and the kidnappers of the Scorpia. Now The Phantom must ride forth to rescue his beloved and put an end to the Scorpia menace.

Here Lee Falk tries to squeeze a three-hundred-page story idea into a book only half as large. The scenes featuring Diana are fleshed out to the point where this is her book, not The Phantom’s. Kit Walker, unfortunately, gets shorted just as he’s showing some character, and The Phantom’s search for Scorpia and Diana is truncated–almost too easy for a battle of nemeses. The Phantom is supposed to be as much of an elemental force of vengeance as The Shadow, but that ominous charisma that all dark knights possess did not make the leap from comics to prose alongside The Phantom. The stakes for the Phantom certainly are present, but with a little more space, so could the tension. What is present is a rare look at what it takes to be a woman who could woo a pulp hero—brains, bravery, faith, and some hard-won common sense.

The Phantom, Arifureta, and Ignition!

The Ghost Who Walks returns in Hermes Press’s reprinting of the Phantom’s classic novels. In the second, The Slave Markets of Mucar, the Phantom leaves his jungle stronghold for the deserts of Arabia. Prisoners have been escaping from a legendary impenetrable fortress. So when one of the Phantom’s Jungle Patrol agents investigating the prison goes missing, the Phantom must break inside, root out the corrupt officials, and trace the “escaped” prisoners before they are sold in Mucar. To stop this slavery, the Phantom dishes out two-fisted justice with the wisdom of Solomon, accompanied by his wolf, Devil.

The Slave Markets of Mucar is a straightforward adventure through exotic settings. If it seems a little quaint today, it is because our world is sedentary and unacquainted with danger. While the Phantom as a character is a contemporary of pulp heroes such as the Shadow, his novels do not rely on the lurid descriptions of the hero pulps. Instead, the novels update the classic Argosy general adventure to the pacing of the men’s adventure stories. However, the Phantom is more force than character here, as he pulls off impossible treks across the desert to appear where no man expects him. This means that The Slave Markets of Mucar is a bit scant on characterization, but the novel is a short read designed to fill a span of idle time instead of the better part of a weekend.

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At first glance, the translated light novel Arifureta, by Ryo Shirakome, follows the well-worn tracks of the isekai otherworld genre. (English language examples of which include A Princess of Mars, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Song of Albion.) Typically, the light novel isekai tale takes a loser, throws him into another world, and through abuse of a special skill, watches him rise in power, prestige, and responsibility until he saves the new world. Arifureta instead takes a normal guy ostracized by his classmates for the continued attention of the class beauty, throws him into a new world, abandons him in the middle of a lethal mega-dungeon, and watches as his drive to survive turns him into a monster, physically and morally.

Like the rest of his class, Hajime is summoned to a new world to be pressed into fighting the local supreme dark lord. But when a skulking rival for the class beauty’s attention manipulates a training exercise to trap him in the nearest dungeon, Hajime is forced to munchkin his new skills to ensure his survival. It is here where Arifureta begins to lose its way, replacing the expected heroic struggle against the dark lord with that of an underdog gone rabid. Part of this is due to the kishotenketsu structure, where the familiar pattern of rising action-climax-falling action is replaced by an episodic series of cause and effect. Unmoored from any plot arc, Arifureta wanders through a series of digressions that distance the story from the expectations of the first cause and effect cycle. Unlikable characters, intrusive litRPG mechanics, failed attempts at grimdark, and the use of hoary cliches like the blonde child vampire love interest turn reading this popular translated light novel into a grind.

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Rutgers University has finally rereleased John Drury Clark’s classic Ignition!, an informal history of the chemical rocket propulsion race that fueled the Space Race and the Cold War. Clark offers views into both American and Soviet scientific efforts, as well as his own personal research anecdotes, grouped together by chemical family. Care is taken in each chapter to explain which compounds worked, which compounds were abandoned, and which compounds blew the test bench up spectacularly. By the time readers finish Ignition!, they will understand just how chemical propulsion became a mature technology so quickly.

By this point, many of you might be asking just what such an account of dangerous chemistry has to do with science fiction. Clark was one of many scientists and engineers that wrote stories for Astounding during the heady days of 1937-1943, when the physical sciences helped propel the Campbelline Revolution to the forefront of science fiction. Like many of his contemporaries, the demands of war and the laboratory diverted Clark from writing, but he remained a fan and a friend of Campbell’s clique of writers. Isaac Asimov pens the introduction, using humor to reveal Clark’s personality–and the dangers inherent in mixing volatile and reactive chemicals.

However, the true impact of Campbell and Astounding upon Ignition! remains its readability. Clark should be recognized among the early popularizing science writers. Like Feynman in physics, Clark is able to distill the complexities of his field, chemistry, into easily understandable essentials for the layman while preserving substance for the expert. A healthy mixture of firsthand anecdote and dramatic failures elevate this analysis of chemical alternatives into an engaging account of one of the few times where chemistry held the same glamour as physics.

Those interested in following Clark’s footsteps should be aware of a key piece of safety equipment–a good pair of running shoes.