Hunter's Run - George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham

A book with three authors, I can't think of many of those. The only one that comes to mind is Black Trilium by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May and Andre Norton, which is less that successful to put it mildly. That book was more or less commissioned. Hunter's Run has a completely different history. That alone makes is a much more interesting book. I read it the first time in Januari 2008, not long after it had been published. Back then I thought it was pretty seamlessly written for a book with three authors. Of course I hadn't read anything by Dozois and Daniel back then. That has since been remedied and I still think it is a very well edited book. Whether you will like it depends on your expectations I guess.

Mankind has made it to the stars only to find out they were beaten to it by more advanced species. None of them managed to overcome the limitations imposed by the speed of light however. That hasn't stopped these species from colonizing other planets. Humans, whit their capacity to bend ecosystems to their needs (or destroy them, depending on where you are standing) are very useful to these species indeed. They get sent out to newly discovered worlds to settle them. One such place is São Paulo, a planet in the early stages of settlement. The kind of frontier mentality that rules the planet suits our violent and anti social main character Ramon Espejo just fine. After he kills someone in a bar brawl, he decides to make himself scarce for a bit and go out prospecting. During that trip, he finds out the planet is not quite as empty has the settlers believe.

Hunter's Run has one of the most unlikely histories I've ever come across in a novel. Gardner Dozois started writing it in 1976 with the intention of writing a short story. He got stuck at one point and put it away for a bit before handing it over to George R.R. Martin to have a go at it. Martin did, but like Dozois, got stuck somewhere along to the way. He handed it back to Dozois in 1982 with the intention of alternating it between them until it was done. This never happened and in the end the two of them decided to bring in a third author, a young writer by the name of Daniel Abraham. Finishing it under the editorship of both Dozois and Martin, who by that time had big reputations in the field, must have been quite an experience for Abraham. He finished the story eventually and it was published as a novella called Shadow Twin in 2004. The three of them saw the potential for a novel in the story however and again it was substantially rewritten and expanded, resulting in the release of Hunter's Run in 2007.

Did all of that work result in a good book? Well that depends on how you look at it. It was published during the long wait for A Dance with Dragons (which wasn't even halfway by then) looking for something else by Martin to read. His influence in the novel can be felt of course, but it reaches back to the period in his career when a lot of his output consisted of short science fiction stories. Martin didn't publish his first novel, The Dying of the Light, until 1979 after all. Hunter's Run is many things but it is nothing like A Game of Thrones. People going into this novel with the expectation of getting something like that will be very disappointed. This should be obvious just from the cover text but there are an amazing number of reviews out on the web complaining about it.

There is something very unusual about the setting of this novel. Back in 1976, science fiction was the domain of white men. Dozois decided to take the rather bold step of coming up with a story with mostly characters Latin American descent. John W. Campbell would have been turning in his grave. It might have been pretty revolutionary if it had actually been published back then. These days, science fiction is thankfully a bit more varied. I understand that the novel fits into the same universe Dozois uses in his 1978 novel Strangers. I own an e-book version of that novel but I haven't read it yet. I might have to do something about that. Dozois' universe is only superficially explored in this novel I would say there is more to tell about it.

It is hard to tell who is responsible for what in this novel but if I had to have a guess, I think the character of Ramon is mostly shaped by Abraham. He is from another generation of writers approaching science fiction concepts in a different way. Ramon is something of an anit-hero. He is violent, anti-social, prone to drinking too much and involved in a very dysfunctional relationship with a woman called Elana. Sex, booze and violence are the crutches he uses to get by in a society he despises. The only time when Ramon is somewhat at ease is when he is alone prospecting. The authors use a science fiction plot device to force Ramon to look at himself and ask himself what is means to be human and how he can become a better man. The answers Ramon comes up with are surprising. It's the psychological struggle Ramon is facing that is the core of the novel. I think Martin and Dozois could have done a lot worse that bring Abraham on board for this.

If you go into this novel leaving Martin's success in the last fifteen years behind, I think Hunter's Run is a very enjoyable novel. Despite being a smooth read in terms of prose, personally I still can't see the cracks in the writing after this second read, there is something of a split in the novel. The early stages and the final section of the novel, set in the major city of the colony, read like a more traditional story, whereas the section set in the unexplored wilderness of the planet are more of a psychological drama. Not all readers will appreciates both parts of the story. Personally I don't think it is brilliant but I do think it is a very interesting work. The history, the impact each writer had on the novel and the phase of their careers they were in at the time make the story that about the novel just as interesting as the one in it. I don't think I've read a lot of books for which that is true. Still, Hunter's Run will not be what each of these three authors will be remembered for. They all have written better stuff. As such, I do consider it a minor work in the bibliographies of Martin, Dozois and Abraham.

Book Details
Title: Hunter's Run
Author: George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Pages: 394
Year: 2007
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-00-726021-8
First published: 2007

When the Great Days Come - Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois is probably best known for his work as editor, for which he has won an unprecedented number of Hugo Awards. He was in the editor of Asimov's for twenty years between 1984 and 2004 and has edited an enormous number of anthologies of all kinds, including The Year's Best Science Fiction series, which is up to its 28th annual edition. Recently there have also been a series of cross genre anthologies edited with George R.R. Martin that were generally well received. Dozois' fiction is less well know. He is not a very prolific writer, somewhere between 50 and 60 short stories were published, the first of which appeared in 1966. He has also published three novels, the most recent being Hunter's Run (2007), a collaboration with George R.R. Martin and Daniel Abraham. This book was the only work I have read of Dozois before reading this collection.

When the Great Days Come is the latests of half a dozen collections that have appeared over the years. It is a selection of eighteen stories spanning his entire career and contains an insightful introduction by Robert Silverberg. The oldest stories were published in 1971, while the most recent is a story originally published in one of the cross genre anthologies I mentioned before. Three of them are award winning stories. Dozois got a Nebula for The Peacemaker (1983) and Morning Child (1984) and a Sidewise Award for Counterfactual (2006). The collection contains stories that range from post apocalyptic to alternate histories, first contact and horror/science fiction hybrid. One of the stories even borders on fantasy. They are often very bleak, containing very little in the way of optimism or utopian themes. As such, it took me a while to get though this collection. Although the stories are very well crafted, you don't want to read them all in one sitting. Eighteen stories is too much to discuss them all, so I will just cover a few. I found it very hard to pick favourites, the quality of this entire collection is exceptional.

Counterfactual is the story that opens the collection and is, in my opinion, one of the strongest pieces in it. It's an alternate history, set in an America where the civil war didn't end with General Lee surrendering his army but where the South started a guerilla war that lasted for generations. The main character is a journalist writing a counterfactual (alternate history) on a boring trip to cover a speech by the vice president in one of the occupied southern states. What Gardner does is have the main character examine a future that could well be ours, tugging at Lee's motivation for dispersing his army and wondering how close he came to giving up. He constantly asks the "what if" question letting the reader bounce back and forth between our history and that of the main character. There are some very good stories in this collection but I think I like this one the best.

Two stories that offer a nice contrast are When the Great Days Came (2005) and A Cat Horror Story (1994). In the first story Dozois writes about a great change from the point of view from a rat. He very carefully avoids anthropomorphizing pointing out several times that smart as they may be, we can't project human emotions on these rodents. He only hits at the evolutionary path these creatures are about to take, to which the rat is completely oblivious. Somehow Dozois makes this story work without a sentient character.  In a A Cat Horror Story, Dozois does the opposite. It deals with a gathering of cats telling tachometer stories of the horrible faith that may befall each of them. They include such evils as cars, castration and euthanasia. Despite being a cat person, I didn't think it was the strongest story in the collection but in combination with When the Great Days Came, which I like a lot, it works nicely.

Ancestral Voices (1998), written in collaboration with Michael Swanwick is one of the longest pieces in the collection. I guess you could see it as a first contact story. The story contains two points of view. One of a creature struggling to override his survival instincts, the other of an old woman who encounters it. It's a very bleak story, one that could be said to have happy end but one plagued by regrets and suspicions of manipulation. What I liked about this story in particular is the pacing. Dozois and Swanwick build to the climax carefully and deliver a twist I didn't see coming until they wanted me to.

In A Special Kind of Morning (1971), the author explores the emotional scars on a veteran of a brutal war. The story is basically told as a monologue. The veteran is speaking to a younger man or boy but other than that we never learn anything about him. The setting feels like a far future story, one in which reliance on technology has reached such extremes that it leaves society wide open to attacks with the most primitive means. I guess this soldier discovers post traumatic stress all over again during his campaign. Given the publication date I wonder if the Vietnam war had anything to do with writing this story.

I guess A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (1999) matches A Special Kind of Morning in a way. The main character is also an old man, famous for making a political statement on the desirability of applying all kinds of technology to the human species to lengthen their lives, or to become in effect immortal, as well as the emergence of artificial intelligence. His message was a bit too subtle for the general public but his followers still hold him in high regard when his eightieth birthday approaches. Dozois uses what the main character things of as time travellers to impress the seriousness of the decision the main character will be faced with. Although it takes a few pages for this choice to become apparent, the author already builds the tension early on in the story. I also liked the rather ambitious ending of this story. It fits somehow. A story about the how a decision is made, rather than what the decision is.

As I mentioned earlier, I thought almost all of these stories were very well written from a technical point of view. They were very well paced in particular. Structured so as not to give the twist of the story away too early. The tone of most of them is very dark though, making When the Great Days Come a somewhat depressing read. That being said, I like the way in which Dozois delivers the punch of his stories. The endings are often ambiguous, yet fit the tales perfectly. They leave the reader to mull over the larger theme of the story, rather than the fate of the main character as often as not. Some readers may find his style a bit verbose at some points but that was not something that bothered me in any of these stories. When the Great Days Come is a great collection. It took me longer than I expected to make my way though it, but is was reading time well spent.

Book Details
Title: When the Great Days Come
Author: Gardner Dozois
Publisher: Prime Books
Pages: 359
Year: 2011
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-60701-278-8
First published: 2011