Blue Apes

by Phyllis Gotlieb

From the title piece, "Blue Apes" - a story of discovery, loss and betrayal on a distant planet - to "Sunday's Child"- an account of an alien born to human colonists - Phyllis Gotlieb's short fiction explores issues and passions that are deeply human, even when her characters are not. Gotlieb writes in the American SF tradition from a decidedly Canadian perspective.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Canada, Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 1995

About the author

Phyllis Fay Gotlieb, née Bloom, BA, MA was a Canadian science fiction novelist and poet.

The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel, Sunburst. Three years before Sunburst was published, Gotlieb published the pamphlet Who Knows One, a collection of poems. Gotlieb won the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1982 for her novel A Judgement of Dragons.

She was married to Calvin Gotlieb, a computer science professor, and lived in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book after reading Gotlieb's novel 'Flesh and Gold' and being VERY favorably impressed with it. This is a collection of some of her short fiction.
It is, again, VERY impressive.
This book has the notable distinction of being the VERY FIRST book I have read from a small press that I would say is absolutely excellent. Kudos to Tesseract books.
Looking them yup, I notice that another severly underestimated Canadian sf author is involved with the imprint - Candas Jane Dorsey. What is up with the US not pushing excellent authors from Canada, anyway? Another who comes immediately to mind is Pauline Gedge - her books are amazing, but just try finding them in the US!
I dunno. It's certainly not the case w/ Margaret Atwood, and I'm sure there are other exceptions!

Anyway, the stories are:

"Among You," an excellent, powerful story that reminded me (can't really say exactly why) of Theodore Sturgeon. The main character is an alien shapeshifter - but one who knows nothing of his past or culture - a ship full of infants of his kind landed on Earth, and they have been raised here, semi-intergrated into our culture, but still alone and lonely. The individual here works using his shape-changing ability as a therapist - helping humans, but who is there to help him?

"Tauf Aleph". Also an impressively excellent story. On an alien planet, the last Jew alive petitions GalFed to send someone to perform his last rites so he can die in peace. But there is no one qualified. Finally, GalFed programs an outdated robot with knowledge of Judaica and sends the robot. The Jew does not find the robot acceptable - but it does become a help when the man finds himself protecting and caring for a group of aliens - whom he finds repulsive, but feels compassion toward as well. Against his will, these aliens look to him as their spiritual leader, and wish to become Jews themselves... very moving - but the last line totally rescues it from sappiness! Amazing.

"The Other Eye" Short, painful but good story of a drudge working in an alien society. She goes blind in one eye - but that eye sees visions (or hallucinations?) of another, better life... but her society does not look kindly upon such aberrations.

"Mother Lode" More of a space-adventure, dealing with humans and other sentients who live and work within the bodies of giant tunneling worms. But schedules are off, things are becoming odd, the worms may be becoming hostile. A GalFed investigator has been sent to see what might be happening.

"The Military Hospital" Not my favorite piece here, but still good. More of a study in an ambiance rather than a plot-driven work, it deals with the temporary director of an automated hospital dealing with wounded veterans in a dystopic, chaotic, violent future.

"Body English" very short piece, again more ambiance than plot, giving us people who, for money, let the elderly and ill mentally "switch bodies" for brief amounts of time, letting them experience youth and health - while they in turn bear the excruciating, exhausting pain.

"Monkey Wrench". A mystery-in-space. A wealthy-but-ugly man on a small space station is found dead, and his young wife is missing. When crew from a nearby station come to investigate, they find a maze of clues in the computer, showing a web of mystery and insanity - and one of their team seems to know too much as well. Entertaining, and a well-done mesh of two genres.

"Sunday's Child". On a future earth, the climate is cold and life is harsh. Ominous aliens vaguely threaten humanity's feeble grasp on the earth. and now, in a small, Eskimo-like community, an amnesiac woman is mysteriously pregnant.... And most of the people start feeling an unexplained urge to leave...

"We Can't Go On Meeting Like This". Another short-short story, again on the theme of using technology to achieve mental transfer. Here, lovers avoid 'adultery' by paying to enter the minds and bodies of zoo animals.

"The Newest Profession". another emotionally rough story - extremely well-done. Here, women with few options are paid by a corporation to incubate and give birth to genetically altered, animal-like children, to be used experimentally with the aim of colonizing foreign planets with workers adapted for alien environments.
The plot centers around one woman's legal defense of another, who dies in the course of this work - but the real center of the story is the situation, and the bigotry against and oppression of these women...

"Blue Apes". The final, title, story deals with a GalFed investigator who goes to see what has become of of a failing space colony. The former investigator was killed, and he is the last hope. He finds a degenerate group of mentally-disabled adults, cared for by their bright, normal children - who know that they in turn will become like their parents.
But can he give these children hope - or simply a more terrible revelation?
It reminded me of that Star Trek episode where all the adults die of a disease - and the children are equally precocious and dangerous - but this is done with much more depth and emotion...

Excellent, excellent anthology. I'm upgrading Gotlieb to absolutely one of my favorite authors! Already ordered more of her stuff... of which there's actually a lot.

[Sara]

Among you
the field wide
the bird tell in the morning
that the daith cant come back
but pep fight over the stone
over the tree
over everything and want the died come back
to tell the earth was green
to explane
to applogiz
to fight another time
iam here
clawn to be
alien to see
what y whant ican be
just tell the words
the wide was road
its nt joke
its same gitar tone
that afternone
lille wate to seen
i will be yr mirror thowgh
money like snow run
music has done
pep love was poem to be

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotlieb's second and final short story collection is an odd compendium. It repeats some stories included in her first collection while leaving several of her other unprprinted stories (including some excellent ones) to oblivion. What's doubly puzzling is that several of the previously uncollected ones included here are pretty short and minor; better discard them for some of the more substantial unreprinted stuff. Nevertheless, several of Gotlieb's strongest and most ambitious stories are here, and onlyone or two of the other sare clunkers, and they tend to be very short (e.g. "The Other Eye," which just seems underdeveloped). If you want a bit of an eclectic taste of Gotlieb, this is a good starting place.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue Apes (1995) is Phyllis Gotlieb’s second volume of short stories and her penultimate science‑fiction book, preceding Birthstones (2007). In the dedication, Gotlieb notes that Blue Apes is her first science‑fiction book published in Canada—an astonishing circumstance for an icon of Canadian SF so late in her career.

Several stories in Blue Apes were previously included in her first short‑story collection, Son of the Morning (1983): “Tauf Aleph,” “The Military Hospital,” “Sunday’s Child,” and the title story, “Blue Apes.” Seven additional stories, previously published only in magazines, are also collected in Blue Apes.

All of Gotlieb's novels except the first, Sunburst, are set in the GalFed universe, and the same is true of most of her short fiction. In Blue Apes, the GalFed stories are “Tauf Aleph,” “Mother Lode,” “Monkey Wrench,” “Sunday’s Child,” and again the title story, “Blue Apes.” We can add “Phantom Foot,” from Son of the Morning, as another GalFed tale; and of course “Son of the Morning” itself is set in GalFed, being one of the four stories that form A Judgment of Dragons, the first book of the Ungrukh Trilogy.

“Phantom Foot,” published in 1959—before even Sunburst—may be Gotlieb’s first GalFed story. However, she wrote seven further science‑fiction stories that appeared in magazines but were never collected in either of her two short‑story volumes. These were written between 1964 and 1998, the year Flesh and Gold, the first book of the Lyhhrt Trilogy, was published.

Since I am particularly interested in GalFed and its sentient aliens who are “human”—in the sense that all sentient beings are effectively “human” in Gotlieb’s universe—I need to track down the magazines containing these uncollected stories. Among the seven, I would expect to find several additional GalFed tales.

It is curious how Gotlieb chose the stories that make up Blue Apes. So late in her career, did she select the ones she considered her best? It is difficult to say. For example, I would rank “Gingerbread Boy”—included in Son of the Morning but not in Blue Apes—as one of her finest science‑fiction stories.

Nevertheless, Blue Apes contains some truly marvellous short fiction. “Tauf Aleph,” appearing in both collections, tells of the last follower of Judaism in GalFed—a rabbi on a distant planet who cares for the walrus‑like Cnidori with the help of the Golem, a sentient machine. The Cnidori convert to Judaism, and the story is a gentle, affectionate account of their history. “Sunday’s Child” tells of the demon‑like Shar using a Solthree mother to give birth to their next emperor. “Blue Apes” recounts a genetic experiment gone wrong on the planet Vervlen, and it too is gentle and affectionate—qualities that distinguish nearly all of Gotlieb’s science fiction. All three of these outstanding stories appear in both Blue Apes and Son of the Morning.

Several other stories in Blue Apes but not in Son of the Morning are also worth noting. “Monkey Wrench,” a piece of hard SF from 1968, features a mad AI partly constituted from a human personality. It’s worth noting that the AI is obsessed with playing games, either Chess or Go. The story reminded me a little of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was published later that same year. Did Arthur C. Clarke draw any inspiration from “Monkey Wrench”? Probably not, but it is an intriguing speculation. “The Other Eye” is written from the first‑person perspective of an alien; “The Newest Profession” concerns Solthree mothers giving birth to children genetically altered to survive in harsh alien environments; “Among You” tells of Thorbian aliens stranded on Solthree and forced to assimilate.

Gotlieb’s writing is certainly what might be called literary science fiction. Her novels may be challenging until the reader becomes acclimatized to her technique and voice. Her short stories, however, are easier to grasp, and I would recommend that newcomers to Phyllis Gotlieb begin with Son of the Morning or Blue Apes. The blurb on the back of Blue Apes states: “Phyllis Gotlieb’s collected short fiction explores issues that are deeply human, even when her characters are not… Gotlieb writes in the American SF tradition with a uniquely Canadian viewpoint.” I think it is fair to say that GalFed is a multicultural universe in the Canadian tradition

[Brian Gaston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notable book since it by a pioneer of Canadian science fiction writing.

[Mely · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Tau Alef" is one of my favorite short stories ever. (Jewish sf!) But I don't remember much about the rest of the stories.