_Monitor Found in Orbit_, Michael Coney
James Nicoll
Michael G. Coney
DAW SF [1974]
172 pages
Someone in KW died or dumped his collection recently. I was
able to greatly flesh out certain gaps in my collection, Aldiss,
Ballard and also Michael G. Coney. I was not a fan of his until
Jo Walton recommended _Hello Summer, Goodbye_, which had an ending
which was in retrospect logical but which I had not expected at
all. I've been picking up his stuff as I come across it.
_Monitor Found in Orbit_ is a collection of short stories
dating from between 1970 and 1973, at least in the cases of the
stories whose original print date is given. There are nine stories
here and an introduction,a respectable output for such a brief time,
with a pretty fair range of markets, the only notable exception being
Analog.
SPOILERS
"The True Worth of Ruth Villiers" [New Writings in SF, 1970]
In a "darwinian" system where each citizen may only expect such
aid from the State as their income allows, a young woman is trapped in
a cave in. Unfortunately for her, her value to the State is about 1,500
social credits, but the cost of removing her is 1551 cr. Obviously
she can't be got out but they can afford to dig a narrow hole to her
and give her enough air and supplies to keep her alive for the better
part of a year. She manages to find a equitable solution which allows
her to escape.
Decent read, huge plot gaps: why can her boyfriend not toss in
the extra 50 cr? Why are there no bank loans or the equivalent? Why
doesn't Charlie's wife just give him the nickel with his lunch [Sorry,
different thread]. Amusing enough but the financial version of _The
Cold Equations_ and doesn't bear thinking about.
"The Manya" [F&SF, 1973]
Time travel is possible but only into the future. One man
attempts to get over a tragic love affair by taking a one way trip
to the distant future. This turns out to be ill-considered but he gets
drawn into the inter-tribal politics of the distant future, as does
another time traveller.
Again, decent enough read.
"Hold My Hand, My Love" [Worlds of Tomorrow, 1971]
A transcript of the testimony of a suspect in a murder case.
The SF bits were a bit simplistic and the ending is far too close to
'and it was all a dream' for my tastes.
"Beneath Still Waters" [Worlds of If, 1971]
A minor morality piece set in a small Cornish fishing village
[Possibly one in Cornwall, Earth]. The narrator comes into contact
with a doctor who on the one hand believes all human action is/should
be entirely selfish but who on the other hand has a Down's Syndrome
child he still loves. The humans are being studied by a much older
species who have achieved something like a group mind. Eventually
the alien on site attempts to rebut the doctor's philosophy through
an apparently selfless and un-repayable act of charity.
I am sure parts of this were incorporated into a later
novel. The narrator was quite passive, come to think of it. The
real conflict is between the doctor and the alien.
"The Unsavory Episode of Mrs. Hector Powell-Challenger" [?]
A weird little tale about a child interacting with a collection
of odd upper-class ladies. For some reason it is set in the future, with
various props, but it needn't have been, being about as intrinsically
futuristic as _Cold Comfort Farm_. Amusing and creepy, fairly close to
my memories of being a small child around the peculiar giants adults, esp
old ladies, were back then.
"Monitor Found in Orbit" [New Worlds Quarterly 2, 1971]
A stream of consciousness story with an in story reason for being
told this way. Appears to be competently constructed but did nothing for
me.
"The Mind Prison" [New Writings in SF 19, 1971]
Years after some nuclear catastrophe, the small but growing
population of humans is slowly being forced to expand their habitat.
There are two competing schemes for dealing with the situation, divided
neatly into male and female groups. The men, terrified of the outside,
try to enforce strict population control while the women have apparently
reacted to the restrictions on sex by having increasingly large litters.
Hrm. One doesn't read Coney for the scientific content, I am thinking.
In an utterly unsurprising end, the Outside proves to be less hostile to
life than previously thought, although the phobias of the population
are enough to kill some of them when they encounter the outside air.
"R26/5/PSY and I" [New Writings in SF, 1970]
A depressed young man is given a robot whose purpose is to
force the fellow out of his depression. Eventually, the machine
is so annoying the man is forced to drive it out of his life, and
having done so is able to function socially again.
Odd future: they have human level robots but food is
rationed. They have robots but not antidepressents. The cost
of the unasked for robot comes directly out of the man's income,
nothing like advanced medical payment systems or even the primitive
versions found in the US.
There's a twist at the end which did nothing for me
but others might find amusing. It doesn't seem to be supported
by the text.
"Esmeralda" [Galaxy SF, 1972]
Two old ladies, twin sisters, await their 65th birthday
with ultimately misplaced enthusiasm. Seems to be related to the
Brontomech stories as there is a Brontomech [to current agricultural
equipment what a Bolo is to a Sherman tank] featured in the story.
Except for "Monitor", all of these are competently written
at the words and paragraph level even if some of the background
assumptions don't seem to stand up to close inspection. This might
seem like damning with faint praise but I do not intend to do so.
It is a rare modern anthology which has this high a fraction of
readable prose, and dodgy world construction is still just as
common as in the 1970s. I would recommend this collection to
any Coney fan.
James Nicoll
--
The Canadians were a hospitable and tolerant desert people,
living on the edge of a wilderness of snow and permafrost. Winnipeg,
Regina and Saskatoon were cities of the northern desert, Samarkands
of ice. J.G. Ballard
Jo Walton
jdni...@panix.com "James Nicoll" writes:
> Monitor Found in Orbit
> Michael G. Coney
> DAW SF [1974]
> 172 pages
I read your reviews, and I noticed you didn't mention the story about
the last spaceship, a Hetherington spaceship, the one that the narrator
had wanted to see to make up his set, like trainspotting, and which he
manages to see only after spaceships are obsolete.
So I picked up the book to see the title, I never remember titles, and
_it isn't there_!
So, where did I read it? I don't have another Coney collection, I'm not
sure there is another Coney collection. Can I have read it in a magazine
or anthology and misremembered it being in _Monitor_? I suppose I must
have.
> SPOILERS
>
> "Beneath Still Waters" [Worlds of If, 1971]
>
> A minor morality piece set in a small Cornish fishing village
> [Possibly one in Cornwall, Earth]. The narrator comes into contact
> with a doctor who on the one hand believes all human action is/should
> be entirely selfish but who on the other hand has a Down's Syndrome
> child he still loves. The humans are being studied by a much older
> species who have achieved something like a group mind. Eventually
> the alien on site attempts to rebut the doctor's philosophy through
> an apparently selfless and un-repayable act of charity.
>
> I am sure parts of this were incorporated into a later
> novel. The narrator was quite passive, come to think of it. The
> real conflict is between the doctor and the alien.
No, no, it's not Cornwall, it's the same planet (and some of the same
characters, Streng for sure) as _Syzygy_ and _Brontomek_.
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk
Locus Recommended First Novel: *THE KING'S PEACE* out now from Tor.
Sample Chapters, Map, Poems, & stuff at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
James Nicoll
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <9dp9p8$fbc$1...@panix6.panix.com>
> jdni...@panix.com "James Nicoll" writes:
>
>> Monitor Found in Orbit
>> Michael G. Coney
>> DAW SF [1974]
>> 172 pages
>
>I read your reviews, and I noticed you didn't mention the story about
>the last spaceship, a Hetherington spaceship, the one that the narrator
>had wanted to see to make up his set, like trainspotting, and which he
>manages to see only after spaceships are obsolete.
>
>So I picked up the book to see the title, I never remember titles, and
>_it isn't there_!
>
>So, where did I read it? I don't have another Coney collection, I'm not
>sure there is another Coney collection. Can I have read it in a magazine
>or anthology and misremembered it being in _Monitor_? I suppose I must
>have.
If it helps, the isfdb only lists one collection by Coney,
this one. It must have been in a magazine or another multi-author
collection.
Niall McAuley
[snipppage]
>Michael G. Coney. I was not a fan of his until
>Jo Walton recommended _Hello Summer, Goodbye_, which had an ending
>which was in retrospect logical but which I had not expected at
>all.
That is the only book by Coney I've read, and very good young
adult stuff it is.
It is also a segue into another old thread, since the edition
I read was titled:
Hello Summer, [in red print]
Goodbye [in black]
Michael Coney [ditto]
--
Niall [real address ends in ie, not ei]
The Walkers
[...]
> . . . . I would recommend this collection to any Coney fan.
As the possibly apocryphal little old lady's book review is said
to have run, "this is the sort of book you will like if you like
this sort of book."
Having been enticed by positive remarks about Coney into wasting
time and money on reading this book, I feel no further urge to
any of his other books. One man's opinion.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker
Owlcroft House
Shaad M. Ahmad
The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> . . . . I would recommend this collection to any Coney fan.
>
>As the possibly apocryphal little old lady's book review is said
>to have run, "this is the sort of book you will like if you like
>this sort of book."
>
>Having been enticed by positive remarks about Coney into wasting
>time and money on reading this book, I feel no further urge to
>any of his other books. One man's opinion.
For what it's worth, I wasn't overly thrilled by Coney's "Monitor
Found in Orbit", but I was rather impressed by his "Hello Summer, Goodbye",
when I was a child. It was an endearing mix of a war story (or, more
accurately, a story about the effects of war on civilians), a love story,
an end of the world story, and a story about a civilization near the
beginning of an industrial age.
If you do ever change your mind and feel like trying another Coney,
that would be the one I'd recommend. Note that I believe that it has also
been published in the US under the title "Rax".
Regards.
sh...@leland.stanford.edu - Shaad -
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/
the deviant biologist
"Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial
to take it with a spoon than with a shovel."
-- Mark Twain
James Nicoll
The book still served a purpose: it saved you the money you might
wasted on other MGC books. I'd still recommend _Hello SUmmer, Goodbye_.
I don't suppose you could go into detail about what you didn't
like about the collection?
The Walkers
>
> In article <3B00C560...@owlcroft.com>,
> The Walkers <wal...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> >James Nicoll wrote:
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >> . . . . I would recommend this collection to any Coney fan.
> >
> >As the possibly apocryphal little old lady's book review is said
> >to have run, "this is the sort of book you will like if you like
> >this sort of book."
> >
> >Having been enticed by positive remarks about Coney into wasting
> >time and money on reading this book, I feel no further urge to
> >any of his other books. One man's opinion.
>
> The book still served a purpose: it saved you the money you might
> wasted on other MGC books. I'd still recommend _Hello SUmmer, Goodbye_.
>
> I don't suppose you could go into detail about what you didn't
> like about the collection?
I would if I could. Unfortunately (or perhaps not), time has blurred the
memory--mind, that time is only a few months at most, so the blurring may
have a cause--but in general I just found them unappealing in each of my
four standard measures: plot, language use, characterization, & setting.
They weren't really terrible or anything, just rather blah and
uninteresting (and, clearly, unmemorable).
I will make an entry--there, just did it--in my look-at-eventually list
for _Hello Summer, Goodbye_. With trepidation.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Paul Fraser
>for _Hello Summer, Goodbye_. With trepidation.
Well, good on you for giving the guy another go.
I would note (as no-one else seems to have) that the stories in
Monitor were very early Coney and, while I still enjoyed some of them,
many of his later stories are much, much better.
In particular I would recommend The Girl with the Symphony in her
Fingers, (Galaxy, 1?-74), Bartholomew & Son (and the fish-Girl), (New
Writings in SF 27, 1975), The Cinderella Machine, (F&SF 8-76),
Catapult to the Stars, (F&SF 4-77), Oh, Valinda (NWISF 20, 1972), Snow
Princess, (Galaxy, 1-71), Bulldog Drummond and the Grim Reaper, (F&SF
1-96) and Werewolves in Sheep's Clothing, (F&SF 9-96) if you can get
hold of second hand magazines and books.
I think it's a shame that there are no other collections of this
writer's work.
Shaad M. Ahmad
Paul Fraser <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>In particular I would recommend The Girl with the Symphony in her
>Fingers, (Galaxy, 1?-74), Bartholomew & Son (and the fish-Girl), (New
>Writings in SF 27, 1975), The Cinderella Machine, (F&SF 8-76),
>Catapult to the Stars, (F&SF 4-77), Oh, Valinda (NWISF 20, 1972), Snow
>Princess, (Galaxy, 1-71), Bulldog Drummond and the Grim Reaper, (F&SF
>1-96) and Werewolves in Sheep's Clothing, (F&SF 9-96) if you can get
>hold of second hand magazines and books.
>
>I think it's a shame that there are no other collections of this
>writer's [Coney's] work.
Another possible NESFA book? Is Michael Coney still alive, BTW?
- Shaad
Richard Horton
wrote:
Still publishing short fiction. A few pretty decent stories have
appeared in F&SF over the past few years, and a story called "Poppy
Day" appeared this year in Spectrum SF #5.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Paul Fraser
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>Still publishing short fiction. A few pretty decent stories have
>appeared in F&SF over the past few years, and a story called "Poppy
>Day" appeared this year in Spectrum SF #5.
I've got another coming in an upcoming issue: 'Mehitabel's Memories'.
Another 'Peninsula' story like four or so of the ones I listed.
Paul Fraser
Spectrum SF #5: original fiction from Eric Brown, John Christopher, Michael Coney and Alastair Reynolds!
www.spectrumsf.co.uk
Michael Caldwell
> SPOILERS
> "Beneath Still Waters" [Worlds of If, 1971]
> A minor morality piece set in a small Cornish fishing village
>[Possibly one in Cornwall, Earth]. The narrator comes into contact
>with a doctor who on the one hand believes all human action is/should
>be entirely selfish but who on the other hand has a Down's Syndrome
>child he still loves.
Note that there are a couple of philisophical theories under which
this is an entirely plausible thing to happen. I'm blanking on the name
of the main one, but it's "psychological <something>". Basically the
"selfishness" involved is measured in personal happiness, and if
doing charitable things makes you happy, then it's perfectly all right
to do it. The psychological something system goes further, saying
that all charity, and indeed every other act *is* selfish in practice.
It's impossible to act unselfishly under this conception, any opinion
otherwise is mere cognitive dissonance. You don't remember if
anything like this was mentioned do you? Stories illustrating philisophical
points (or at least specific schools of serious non-pop philosophy) are
rare as hen's teeth, and if it mentioned something along these lines
I'd probably try to track it down...
--