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Owl Time
A collection of fiction by M. A. Foster.
The Man Who Loved Owls (1985)
Leanne (1985)
The Conversation (1985)
Entertainment (1981)
The Man Who Loved Owls (1985)
Leanne (1985)
The Conversation (1985)
Entertainment (1981)
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
25 people want to read
About the author
M.A. Foster
20 books28 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
US writer, former data-systems analyst and sequentially a Russian linguist and ICBM launch-crew commander to the US Air Force; he is also a semiprofessional photographer. After some poetry, released privately as Shards from Byzantium (coll 1969 chap) and The Vaseline Dreams of Hundifer Jones (coll 1970 chap), he began to publish sf with the ambitious Ler trilogy about a race of Supermen created by Genetic Engineering whose social structure is built around a form of line marriage here called a braid.
The Gameplayers of Zan (1977), a very long novel formally constructed on the model of an Elizabethan tragedy, describes a period of climactic tension between the ler and the rest of humanity, and is set on Earth. The Warriors of Dawn (1975), published first but set later, is a more conventional Space Opera in which a human male and a ler female are forced to team up to try to solve a complexly ramifying problem of interstellar piracy. The Day of the Klesh (1979) brings the ler and the eponymous race of humans together on a planet where they must solve their differences.
The Morphodite/Transformer sequence which followed comprises The Morphodite (1981), Transformer (1983) and Preserver (1985), all three assembled as The Transformer Trilogy (omni 2006), and similarly uses forms of meditative Shapeshifting to buttress complex plots, though in this case the alternately male or female, revolution-fomenting, protagonist dominates the tale as assassin, trickster and Superman.
Waves (1980) rather recalls Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961) in a tale of political intrigue on a planet whose ocean is intelligent. The four novellas collected in Owl Time (coll 1985) are told in challengingly various modes, and derive strength from their mutual contrast.
More recently, the author has been involved with the writing of storylines for Acme comics http://www.acmecomics.com/node/69.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
US writer, former data-systems analyst and sequentially a Russian linguist and ICBM launch-crew commander to the US Air Force; he is also a semiprofessional photographer. After some poetry, released privately as Shards from Byzantium (coll 1969 chap) and The Vaseline Dreams of Hundifer Jones (coll 1970 chap), he began to publish sf with the ambitious Ler trilogy about a race of Supermen created by Genetic Engineering whose social structure is built around a form of line marriage here called a braid.
The Gameplayers of Zan (1977), a very long novel formally constructed on the model of an Elizabethan tragedy, describes a period of climactic tension between the ler and the rest of humanity, and is set on Earth. The Warriors of Dawn (1975), published first but set later, is a more conventional Space Opera in which a human male and a ler female are forced to team up to try to solve a complexly ramifying problem of interstellar piracy. The Day of the Klesh (1979) brings the ler and the eponymous race of humans together on a planet where they must solve their differences.
The Morphodite/Transformer sequence which followed comprises The Morphodite (1981), Transformer (1983) and Preserver (1985), all three assembled as The Transformer Trilogy (omni 2006), and similarly uses forms of meditative Shapeshifting to buttress complex plots, though in this case the alternately male or female, revolution-fomenting, protagonist dominates the tale as assassin, trickster and Superman.
Waves (1980) rather recalls Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961) in a tale of political intrigue on a planet whose ocean is intelligent. The four novellas collected in Owl Time (coll 1985) are told in challengingly various modes, and derive strength from their mutual contrast.
More recently, the author has been involved with the writing of storylines for Acme comics http://www.acmecomics.com/node/69.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 23, 2021
The standout in this collection of novellas is "Entertainment" (1981), which is a remarkably prescient and well-written story, intended to be in the style of Jack Vance. In the far future, a city of artists exists by creating art-works, organizing salons, and selling art -- and themselves -- to other citizens and fellow-artists. All with the aid of the Master Entertainment Computer, which also keeps track of accounts. Citizens must maintain a positive balance, or else face return to the House of Life, which is The End for them.
The main characters are Cormen Demir-Hisar, a rising young artist, and Faeroe Sheftali, a newcomer from the House of Life. Cormen's major work is a Robinson Jeffers poem, "Roan Stallion", set to music and performed by Genesis. They meet and fall in love. The story is intensely romantic: Faeroe says to Cormen "we will go to my house now, and you will be my lover, yes, and I will be yours, yes."
The story has a weak ending, but up until then, it's great. Worth seeking out, especially if you're a fan of well-done sfnal romance. Rating and review is just for this story. I didn't reread the others, but recall them as weaker.
The main characters are Cormen Demir-Hisar, a rising young artist, and Faeroe Sheftali, a newcomer from the House of Life. Cormen's major work is a Robinson Jeffers poem, "Roan Stallion", set to music and performed by Genesis. They meet and fall in love. The story is intensely romantic: Faeroe says to Cormen "we will go to my house now, and you will be my lover, yes, and I will be yours, yes."
The story has a weak ending, but up until then, it's great. Worth seeking out, especially if you're a fan of well-done sfnal romance. Rating and review is just for this story. I didn't reread the others, but recall them as weaker.
October 4, 2014
I finished the first "novel" THE MAN WHO LOVED OWLS. It was supposedly in the style of J. G. Ballard. It was this story about a guy in a band that did blues covers in a beach town after, I think, most of the best people went up to live on some kind of space station. Then he and his girlfriend meet this weird artist, who drives them up the beach on this vehicle that's made out of a crane, and they hang out with him and he shows them a giant owl. And then there's a lot of philosophical talk that seems more like drug ramblings. So, let's hope the rest of the book is better.
Okay, the second story, LEANNE, is supposed to be in the style of Bradbury or Ellison. Are they actually interchangeable? I'm not sure. But this one did have a strong Bradbury vibe, in my opinion. Nothing groundbreaking (esp. considering this was published in the 80s). It would have been right at home on the 80s version of the Twilight Zone, you know, with the Grateful Dead doing the theme music. It's basically the story of a guy whose son starts having dreams about a girl in another dimension. These two have a strange relationship, and talk to each other in a really stilted prose. Also, I get the feeling this is set in some kind of dystopia that isn't really delved into sufficiently. We get the idea that there are no jobs (at least for the guy's son), but it is hinted that some changing event has transpired in the world to make it a generally crappier place to live (kind of like in the first story). LEANNE showed a lot more promise, and I'm eagerly anticipating the next story, which claims to be a mix of Borges, Kafka, and Nabokov.
The third story, THE CONVERSATION, is definitely the best so far. It's the meta telling of an author writing a story about a character that he cannot control. The story within the story is set in a faux-Slavic communist state. The main character is a woman who works for one of the government's ministries involved in implementing a giant computer system--the first of its kind in this spartan land. The Author wants the story to be a comment on technology, but the character is much more precocious than he expects. Being a simple country girl, she should not be as perceptive as she is, seeing that the computerization will result in mass unemployment, so the story becomes a critique of corrupt bureaucracy. Not only that, but the character starts to investigate the nature of reality, uncovering a theory that all reality is a fiction created by an indifferent and imperfect author. This is not the first story of its kind (I'm pretty sure this is a poor man's attempt to turn Miguel de Unamuno's Niebla into a sci-fi tale). The author claims that the story blends Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov. The Kafka is evident in the menacing but indifferent nature of both the workings of the State and the Author creating a world he doesn't want to exist. The Borges must be the meta nature of the thing, showing the process of the Author, as well as its unintended result. The Nabokov is primarily in the method of description the Author uses to characterize the world and the character, and in the bleakness of the resolution. Overall, it's not a bad story, sort of Pop Pomo, if there is such a thing. It makes some interesting comments about reality and art, and I'm sure most hardcore sci-fi fans won't really like this.
The final novella, ENTERTAINMENT, is the longest, and said to be in the style of Jack Vance. Right away Foster establishes the Vance connection by including several footnotes about terminology in this strange society.
Basically, this is the story of a man, Cormen, who lives in the distant future, in a City that is peopled with artists. They each have to do a small amount of work to maintain the supercomputer that runs the city, but each person is allowed to live in the City only so long as they have a positive balance of credits. They earn these credits in really one of two ways: either by giving out their "call code" which allows others people to summon a Simula of them to have sex with, or by selling art/entertainment to others.
Since you can just punch in a code and have sex with an exact double of any person that has ever existed in the history of the City or of Time (more on this in a minute), romantic relationships do not develop between Primes (the original people upon which the Simula are based).
The art these people create is typically done by accessing the super computer, which can look at any point in time-space. If a person stumbles upon an artist or work of art first, they can claim it, and anyone who requests a copy of the artwork pays credits into the owner's account. But that's not the coolest part. The computer can produce Originals, the actual works created by an artist/composer/filmmaker during their historical lives in Time. But it can also create Projections-the works the artist would have produced had they continued to live longer, into other eras of history. Also, people can deliberate cross media and use the poetry of a certain poet as libretto for a rock opera performed by a certain band (such as Genesis, of whom the author clearly a fan). People who are really good at making these Projections can make a lot of money, and live, theoretically forever. People who spend more money (for food, clothes, sex, and art of others) than they make, have to go back to the House of Life - which is apparently different from physical death, presumably just ceasing to exist.
Okay, so that's the basics of the world. I don't want to get into the specifics of the story. But it involves Cormen meeting a "new arrival" (people come out of the House of Life as adults, but need to be educated about how to live in the City, so they have a 13 week grace period before they need to show a positive balance of credits). This new arrival is a woman called Faero who is just his type. But she's obviously not a common Prime. And Cormen is not either. He's actually ventured outside the City, and is obsessed with finding out where the City is in Time (he can't find it in the computer database). So there's almost a "virtual reality" aspect to this story. Again, not the first of it's kind, but the author notes that this story in some for existed since the early 70s (possibly explaining the obsession with Gabriel-era Genesis).
All in all, I really liked this book. Sure, it's campy and dated, and all the dialog reads like a movie from the 50s. But there's something really fun about the way this guy plays with BIG CONCEPTS in dime store sci-fi packaging.
I kind of want to be M.A. Foster.
Okay, the second story, LEANNE, is supposed to be in the style of Bradbury or Ellison. Are they actually interchangeable? I'm not sure. But this one did have a strong Bradbury vibe, in my opinion. Nothing groundbreaking (esp. considering this was published in the 80s). It would have been right at home on the 80s version of the Twilight Zone, you know, with the Grateful Dead doing the theme music. It's basically the story of a guy whose son starts having dreams about a girl in another dimension. These two have a strange relationship, and talk to each other in a really stilted prose. Also, I get the feeling this is set in some kind of dystopia that isn't really delved into sufficiently. We get the idea that there are no jobs (at least for the guy's son), but it is hinted that some changing event has transpired in the world to make it a generally crappier place to live (kind of like in the first story). LEANNE showed a lot more promise, and I'm eagerly anticipating the next story, which claims to be a mix of Borges, Kafka, and Nabokov.
The third story, THE CONVERSATION, is definitely the best so far. It's the meta telling of an author writing a story about a character that he cannot control. The story within the story is set in a faux-Slavic communist state. The main character is a woman who works for one of the government's ministries involved in implementing a giant computer system--the first of its kind in this spartan land. The Author wants the story to be a comment on technology, but the character is much more precocious than he expects. Being a simple country girl, she should not be as perceptive as she is, seeing that the computerization will result in mass unemployment, so the story becomes a critique of corrupt bureaucracy. Not only that, but the character starts to investigate the nature of reality, uncovering a theory that all reality is a fiction created by an indifferent and imperfect author. This is not the first story of its kind (I'm pretty sure this is a poor man's attempt to turn Miguel de Unamuno's Niebla into a sci-fi tale). The author claims that the story blends Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov. The Kafka is evident in the menacing but indifferent nature of both the workings of the State and the Author creating a world he doesn't want to exist. The Borges must be the meta nature of the thing, showing the process of the Author, as well as its unintended result. The Nabokov is primarily in the method of description the Author uses to characterize the world and the character, and in the bleakness of the resolution. Overall, it's not a bad story, sort of Pop Pomo, if there is such a thing. It makes some interesting comments about reality and art, and I'm sure most hardcore sci-fi fans won't really like this.
The final novella, ENTERTAINMENT, is the longest, and said to be in the style of Jack Vance. Right away Foster establishes the Vance connection by including several footnotes about terminology in this strange society.
Basically, this is the story of a man, Cormen, who lives in the distant future, in a City that is peopled with artists. They each have to do a small amount of work to maintain the supercomputer that runs the city, but each person is allowed to live in the City only so long as they have a positive balance of credits. They earn these credits in really one of two ways: either by giving out their "call code" which allows others people to summon a Simula of them to have sex with, or by selling art/entertainment to others.
Since you can just punch in a code and have sex with an exact double of any person that has ever existed in the history of the City or of Time (more on this in a minute), romantic relationships do not develop between Primes (the original people upon which the Simula are based).
The art these people create is typically done by accessing the super computer, which can look at any point in time-space. If a person stumbles upon an artist or work of art first, they can claim it, and anyone who requests a copy of the artwork pays credits into the owner's account. But that's not the coolest part. The computer can produce Originals, the actual works created by an artist/composer/filmmaker during their historical lives in Time. But it can also create Projections-the works the artist would have produced had they continued to live longer, into other eras of history. Also, people can deliberate cross media and use the poetry of a certain poet as libretto for a rock opera performed by a certain band (such as Genesis, of whom the author clearly a fan). People who are really good at making these Projections can make a lot of money, and live, theoretically forever. People who spend more money (for food, clothes, sex, and art of others) than they make, have to go back to the House of Life - which is apparently different from physical death, presumably just ceasing to exist.
Okay, so that's the basics of the world. I don't want to get into the specifics of the story. But it involves Cormen meeting a "new arrival" (people come out of the House of Life as adults, but need to be educated about how to live in the City, so they have a 13 week grace period before they need to show a positive balance of credits). This new arrival is a woman called Faero who is just his type. But she's obviously not a common Prime. And Cormen is not either. He's actually ventured outside the City, and is obsessed with finding out where the City is in Time (he can't find it in the computer database). So there's almost a "virtual reality" aspect to this story. Again, not the first of it's kind, but the author notes that this story in some for existed since the early 70s (possibly explaining the obsession with Gabriel-era Genesis).
All in all, I really liked this book. Sure, it's campy and dated, and all the dialog reads like a movie from the 50s. But there's something really fun about the way this guy plays with BIG CONCEPTS in dime store sci-fi packaging.
I kind of want to be M.A. Foster.
April 29, 2025
Everyone should look up “entertainment”, this M.A. Foster predicted AI generator slop 40 years ago
June 21, 2019
Once the word "mediocre" is applied to this book, little more remains to be said. Some of the themes presented in the stories would be interesting to explore, but Foster only presents them; the exploration is superficial.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews