God, Jesus, Samuel Clemens, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, Bob Ingersoll, Lao Tze, Gautama, and many others discuss the foolishness, bigotry, cruelty and stupidity of humanity in these satirical, erudite and deeply humanistic pieces written for Max Eastman’s The Masses during World War I. Funny and still, sadly, relevant.
If you like storytelling, if you enjoy Italo Calvino or Borges or Neil Gaiman, you will love this little book of tales. Each is a perfect little postmodern fairy-tale, charming, frightening or enlightening. The tone is illustrated nicely by the Tale of the Eldest Princess, who, realizing she is in a story and not liking the role she is playing (“I do not want to be the princess who fails and must be rescued” and she cries), decides, after much reflection and with the brusque encouragement of a dangerous guide, to leave the road and abandon the story and create her own. Along the way she sees sometimes an old woman walking behind her, or ahead of her on the path. Much later she learns that there is always an old woman ahead of you or behind you… and I’m sure she will someday be the old woman to another young woman who chooses to make her own path.
Should be savored in small doses.
A couple of centuries after devastating wars on Earth, Humanity has made it to the stars with FTL ships and communications, and Artificial Intelligences. Katmer Al Shei is captain of a mail packet, and Evelyn Dobbs is a professional Fool who has signed on to her crew. Reminds me of Cherryh - normal folk shoved into the middle of a clash of cultures; sympathetic characters, and lots of twists in the plot. Recommended.
Sarah Zettels’ Website and a dead link at the late lamented SFF.