The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / Robert Louis Stevenson ; wood engravings by Barry Moser ; foreword by Joyce Carol Oates.—Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, c1990.
157 p. : ill. ; 17 cm.
ISBN: 0803292406

1. Good and evil – Fiction. 2. Horror fiction. 3. Science fiction.

823.8

While out for a Sunday walk, Mr. Utterson, a very respectable lawyer, and his cousin Mr. Enfield pass by a door on a back street. The door is worn, blistered, discolored, and neglected. When he sees it, Enfield starts to relate a very odd story to his cousin about the occupant that lives behind the door, a Mr. Hyde. One late night he was walking along this street, he witnessed the collision of two pedestrians, Mr. Hyde and a young girl “of maybe eight or ten who was running as fast as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into each other naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground … it was hellish to see.” Enfield and the child’s family accost Hyde and confront him with his cruel indifference. Seeking to buy them off and avoid a scandal he offers to pay restitution of one hundred pounds. He unlocks a door on the street, the very one that reminded Enfield of the story, steps inside, and returns with ten pounds in coin, and a check for ninety pounds drawn on the account of a very prominent citizen, whom Enfield would prefer not to name to his cousin. The amazing thing to Enfield was that the check, which he assumed must be a forgery or a fake, is honored by the bank the next morning.

Mr. Utterson, however, already knows the name on the check. He knows because he knows that the door morally deformed Mr. Hyde unlocked is the rear entrance to the home of his friend and client, the upright citizen, Dr. Henry Jekyll. He returns home, and from his safe he takes out the will of Dr. Jekyll, and rereads the very strange instruction, “in the case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc. all his possessions were to pass into the hand of ‘his friend and benefactor, Edward Hyde’” not only that, “but in the case of Dr. Jekyll’s disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,’” Hyde would also inherit all. What is the hold that this grubby little man has over Jekyll? Utterson is determined to find out.

The Gone-Away World

The gone-away world /Nick Harkaway. -- New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
497 p. ; 24 cm.
ISBN: 9780307268860
1st American ed.

1. Adventure fiction. 2. Dystopias. 3. Love stories. 4. Science fiction.

823.92

Wu Shenyang, Master Wu of the Voiceless Dragon School of gong fu has a dry wit. He tells his English students in Cricklewood Cove to study the chi of Ella Fitzgerald and gong fu of Isaac Newton. He has them practice to the music of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers and Mozart. He tells them there are no Secret Teachings, no Iron Skin Meditation to turn aside weapons, no Ghost Palm Strike that cannot be avoided or deflected. “The truth is not hidden. It is simple.” But to humor his students he’s willing to tell them a story and make up a Secret Teaching. He also tells them to beware of his sworn enemies, the ninjas of the Clockwork Hand Society.

A decade or so later, these fighting skills are very useful to the SpecialOps forces (of which the narrator is a member) bogged down in a proxy war in Addeh Katir. It’s a small middle-eastern county and an Elective Theater in a very muddled conflict (or un-war) between the six powers involved. If the motives are vague, the high explosives are not. When the narrator is gouged by shrapnel (friendly fire variety) he is sent behind the lines to a blissful encounter with a very beautiful, if not particularly skillful, nurse named Leah. But romantic bliss is interrupted by the fortunes of war. In defiance of the Geneva Accords, someone attacks using poison gas. When news of this atrocity reaches the ears of the government at home the order comes down to use the new secret weapon in retaliation. While the new bomb is not a nuclear device, it does operate by using some basic forces of the universe, but not with a messy explosion—it just make the enemy (and anything surrounding it) Go Away. The enemies, the landscape, the atmosphere just cease to exist. It’s quite a surprise when the bombs go off. It’s followed by another surprise. The enemy also has these bombs, and soon large parts of the planet cease to exist.

Harkaway gives credit to three authors for his story: P. G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Alexandre Dumas. But, to me, his exuberantly witty prose, social commentary, and strong characters read like Charles Dickens.

Interstellar Pig

Interstellar pig / William Sleator.—New York : Dutton, c1984.

197 p. ; 22 cm.

ISBN: 0-525-44098-4

1. Board games – Fiction. 2. Science fiction.

813.54

The beach house Barney’s parents have rented for two weeks is too far from town for him. There’s no one for a sixteen-year-old to hang out with. He’s been staving off boredom by re-reading his old science fiction books, but then the landlord stops by and tells them that people used to say that the house was haunted, but before he finishes his story he rushes off to greet the new tenants of the house next door – tenants that were extremely disappointed when they learned that the house Barney’s staying in was already rented.

They make quite a favorable impression on his parents, who think that Zena, Manny, and Joe, are older and more sophisticated then Barney does; he thinks they may be college students. They’re all in excellent physical shape, but all they seem to want to do is play a board game called Interstellar Pig. It’s a science fiction role-laying board game. Each player is dealt a card with an alien character, you might be an arachnoid nymph from the planet Vavoosh or a species of carnivorous lichen from Mbridlengile, or an octopus-like gas bag, or a water-breathing gill man from Thrilb. Once you have your character you travel from planet to planet until the timer signals the end of the game, collecting cards for laser guns or for hyperspace drive, or a card to boost or lower your intelligence, or to force you to land on a poisonous planet. But the most important card is called the Piggy, and if you don’t have it in your hand at the end of the game, your planet is sucked out of existence and your species exterminated. It’s a cool game, with a very realistic board, by Barney doesn’t understand why his new neighbors are so obsessed with it, that is, until they all take a day trip to a nearby island and he finds a small box containing a small pink object. On it is carved a smiling face with one eye. “The vertical iris, inlaid in bright silver, gave the eye a piercing alertness. Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive. And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary eye, that made the face so repellent.”

Interstellar pig is a deliciously creepy read, like the chill you might get from an ice cube drawn down your sunburned back.