The Rule of Three, by Lawrence Schoen

The less Lawrence Schoen writes about buffalitos, the more I like him.  The Rule of Three is a very clever YA level tale of alien contact.  The alien comes to Earth in a part of China that has almost no contact with the outside world.  The story is from the perspective of a man with roots there, but who lives in the west, working for the state department.  When he hears of the alien, he immediately goes there to be with his grandmother and see it. 

The alien's "macguffin" is that it only values, and can work with, things that have a close connection to their maker.  No more than three degrees removed.  I can make something, and I can give it to someone else, and that person can pass it along again.  After that, it becomes disconnected from life.  So all of our modern-sourced products are disconnected.

The cleverness is mixed up in the conclusion so I will not reveal it, but the story is well thought out and a solid choice as a Nebula award nominee.  Definitely worth the time.  Strong 3 stars.

Barsk: The Elephant's Graveyard, by Lawrence Schoen

Barsk is a Nebula award nominated novel, and I think it has one of the most interesting backstories so far.  But let's come back to that.

Barsk is a story of uplift, which of course reminds one of David Brin's Uplift series.  B, ut in this case the sentient species have left mankind long behind--there are no people left.  Most of the uplifted species live in an alliance, governed democratically.  But the main driver of the story is an advance two of these species has made--the Elephs and Lox (African and Asian elephants, loosely) have invented a drug that can allow certain users to contact deceased people.  They do this by way of "nefshons", particles of personality that each person disperses as they live.  Schoen does a nice job of explicating this and giving it means to drive the plot through the book.

But back to the drug.  It is a byproduct of the isolation of the Elephs--the other species find them ugly and banished them to a gloomy, rainy world.  Other species have not been able to reverse engineer it, and they are now more intent on finding the secret.  O.  ur protagonist, Jorl, is one of those who Speaks to the dead.  He and his friend Arlo become the key to the future as developments in the drug threaten society as it is.

There's a lot more to the plot, and it's a pretty interesting one.  This is not an action novel--rather, it is driven by the interplay of the science of "nefshons" and the prejudice against the Elephs and Lox.

According to Schoen this novel was 20 years in the making, and it shows--it has much more depth than other Schoen items I have read, though the only things I've read of his are the Buffalito stories.  Schoen is much more allegorical in this tale, and though his reasons for prejudice against the honorable Elephs and Lox are superficial they are unfortunately believable.  This is a novel to ponder and digest, as opposed to a page turner--it is engaging, but the moral imperatives behind the story are its interesting points.  Read this if you want to spend some effort--it is worthwhile, and as far as I am concerned a pretty strong entry, though I know it didn't win and I haven't read the winner yet.  3 stars from me.

Calendrical Regression, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Calendrical Regression is the latest novella in Lawrence M. Schoen's Buffalo Dogs series.  They've been garnering a lot of award nominations.  The latest one is, I would have to say the best so far.--

The Amazing Conroy has graduated to running a multimillion dollar corporation selling bootleg Buffalo Dogs--he escapes for a week to return to his former profession as a stage hypnotist.  He gets mixed up in a plot from his origin (I was mistaken, the previous post was the first one in the series but NOT the origin story).  The Svenkali are out to get the Uary, and the Uary are out to discover the origins of the Mayan calendar. 

The Buffalo Dog eats everything as usual, and the action is fun and interesting.  I would call these good journeyman SF stories, worth reading if you like it.  Not really breaking new ground in literature, but that's OK, not everything has to.

I give it three stars, and recommend it for Buffalo Dog fans and others looking for a good read.

Buffalo Dogs, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Lawrence M. Schoen has received his third award nomination for a Buffalito story.  This is not that story.  Rather, it's the origin tale for Buffalitos, or Buffalo Dogs.  And it's a nice little story, but really it's just an intro to The Amazing Conroy (journeyman stage hypnotist) and Reggie the Buffalito.  After this I'll read the award nominee.  This one, I give 2 stars for averageness.

Trial of the Century, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Trial of the Century is a tale for fans of old-school John W. Campbell style science fiction in the Analog days.  It is a novella bridging the first and second of Schoen's Amazing Conroy/Buffalito stories, though this one is very much Conroy's story.  Since the first novel wasn't award nominated and isn't in our local library, I've never read it.  This always puts me on the spot because it's hard to be fair to the work.  But since this novella recaps some of the early history in order to tell the story, I feel like I've caught up with the series better than when I read last year's award nominated novel.

Campbell was the first editor in SF to try to bend storytellers away from tales where aliens came in and killed/dominated earthlings wholesale.  Campbell wanted humans to be able to outsmart more technologically advanced species with local knowledge.  Schoen's novella delivers on this front in Conroy's unfortunate delivery back into the hands of the Arconi he stole Reggie the Buffalito from.  It's a successful story in that vein, so I'll not spoil it further.  But it's a good chance to go back in time and enjoy SF the way it was. Three stars from me

Barry's Tale, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Barry's Tale is the other Nebula nominee currently available online--hopefully there will be a couple of others.  This is more of a standard SF story, with hypnosis as its central science theme and a "buffalito" - a small sort of buffalo, but enhanced - as a sidekick.  Schoen has written several stories and novels featuring the Amazing Conroy and his buffalitos, but I didn't feel compelled to seek out the series.  Though it would not hurt, I think the stories would in fact work better read in sequence.  Anyway, Conroy and Reggie the Buffalito bull their way through the plot with good humor, saving the girl and getting a fine reward, so it's a fun read.  I do wonder if Schoen is familiar with schmoos and gobbleglops from Al Capp.  I give it three stars--nice, but probably won't come out on top. 

Schoen's writing reminds me of Jack McDevitt.  I have reviewed a few of his books.  If you like McDevitt you may well like Schoen, at least the science fiction.

The Moment, by Lawrence M. Schoen

This story started out in a way that made me think it was going to be silly. The aliens in it were sort of whacked. But as it went on, it grew on me. In the end, it has a message and a grip.

The problem here is, I think the message is incorrect. Spoiler Alert: The story ends with aliens in the far future visiting the Moon, viewing Neil Armstrong's boot print. "This is where humans jumped off".

I think not. I watched the Moon landing in 1969. I took it for granted that we would be going into space, in numbers, in the near future. Instead we got the space shuttle. And with the troubles we have, and the troubles coming, I see no way we will be leaving this planet's gravity well in my lifetime. It is a truly sad state of affairs.

3 stars for the story.