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Cold Hands and Other Stories

Jeff Duntemann

(Five out of Five Stars)

No disclaimer here. I bought a copy of this book as soon as Jeff announced it was in print. The fact that it's taken me this long to review it is kind of embarrassing, but it's been a busy summer.

Jeff Duntemann has been a science fiction writer for a long time, and his body of work spans decades. Collected here are stories first published in 1974, at the very beginning of his writing career, extending up through the present, with three stories that have not appeared in print before. Where Souls in Silicon anthologized his work on AIs, Cold Hands and Other Stories anthologizes his other topics.

And what a range of topics. The eponymous story, Cold Hands, tells the story of Ed Graczyk, a space pilot, who has lost his arms in an accident. He is offered new cybernetic arms and his old job back by the Combine, the government/corporation he worked for, but such offeres always have a price. Dark, future-paranoid, and all too cogent of the flaws inherent in government-for-profit.

Our Lady of the Endless Sky is an unabashedly Catholic story about the religion of personnel aboard a damaged lunar base. No miracles, at least not in the Hollywood sense, but as a deep connectedness between people struggling to survive and trying to make sense (and perhaps hope) out of their technological world that is threatening every moment to fail them. Sophisticated and utterly human. Don't let the subject matter and title scare you off.

In space, nothing stands still. Inevitability Sphere is the tale of two guys who are pilots in different eras, both of them rapidly being put out of work by the Low Road, a kind of hyperspatial highway generated from Earth. The Captain, as he's referred to, used to fly fast courier ships. Old Tom Hoyt was a fighter jock in World War II, and makes his living flying, in this case, the Captain to the far end of the Low Road, which bounces around the atmosphere of the planet Grit like a cat toy in the wind. Hoyt's job: catch it and fly into it. It's a tale of adaptation, of the democratization of space, and how that democratization tends to leave the pioneers without the ability to do what they love. Subtle and fun.

Whale Meat is a weirdo. Jeff isn't known for his fantasy work. This is the only one he's ever sold. But such an intriguing idea. What if calculus gave you a way to frame magic? And what of the near-immortal witches who never learned to count? While I have some problems with the naming of spells in this story, it's a very small matter. An interesting story, and should Jeff ever tire of Sci-Fi and technical writing, I'm convinced he could do well with this genre too.

Born Again, with Water. This story is very much the flip-side of Our Lady of the Endless Sky. Catholicism is so very human, that the very comforts it offers in Our Lady cause huge problems when it is clumsily grafted onto a completely alien culture by well-intentioned missionaries. If Our Lady is about everything that's right with deep-seated religion, Born Again with Water encapsulates everything that is wrong with it. Challenging to read, because the point of view and narration are from a rather alien point of view.

Next up, Drumlin Boiler. Space-wrecked settlers on the planet Valinor have undergone a frustrating technological regression due to the short lifespans of the consumer electronics all their cultural knowledge was stored on, and are slowly clawing their way back into the steam age. Complicating this are artifacts on Valinor called thingmakers that can make anything you want, if you know the drum pattern to call the thing up. The two different technological spheres collide in a frenzied build and race of steam locomotives, one built of iron, the other of drumlins - parts that were drummed up. A little Junkyard Wars, a little post-singularity civilization, and hey, a locomotive race. Fun story, and a great introduction to the Drumlin world.

Drumlin Wheel is set in the Drumlin world as well. What if some guy named Roper happened to drum up something really useful? Like, perhaps, a wheel that turns on its own? And what if the guy writes down the drum rhythm and sells the things? And what if that put this ordinary guy squarely between the forces that champion the two ways of technology on Valinor, the Bitspace Institute on the side of conventional, Earth technology, and the Grange on the side of Drumlin technology. And of course, every pickpocket and thug who'd like to turn a dishonest gold hand on the stolen rhythm of an ordinary guy named Roper. Another peek into the complex world that churns under the agrarian surface of Valanor.

Roddie is a short, short story, again in the Drumlin world, about one man's encounters with an enigmatic drummer of drumlins who is looking to drum up some deeper understanding of everything. And there's a creeping, disturbing sense that he has it.

Also in Cold Hands is an excerpt from The Cunning Blood, Jeff's 2005 novel set in the same universe as the Drumlin stories, but on other planets where no thingmakers exist. I review this entire novel here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12388...

All told, a rich collection of short stories that you'd expect to be the work of half a dozen different authors. A wide range of ideas, varying styles, varying outlooks on the universe. Part of this can be explained by the gulf of years between some of these stories' creation and this publication. It's not often you can see the author evolve in an anthology, but because he's collecting the fiction of decades of work, you can. A good book. Lots of good stories. Highly recommended.

Cold Hands and Other Stories, by Jeff Duntemann, is available from Copperwood Press http://www.lulu.com/copperwood