In an earlier year’s small press review column (September 2001), I remarked that

many novels are self-published or small press ventures for a reason… It’s hard not to suspect that the usual reason for a novel’s bing self-published is its being poorly written; but nothing would please me more than to have some novelist prove me wrong.

Happily, one of this year’s small press titles has done so. Richard Bellush’s short story collection Scum and Other Tales displays a number of real virtues that make it stand out in this year’s books.

Most basically, Bellush has a prose style. As I read the stories in this collection, I found myself wanting to read lines aloud. His natural voice is clever and a bit sarcastic, with an effect somewhat like early Robert Heinlein. Oddly, his dialogue sounds less natural than his descriptive and narrative passages; when he tries to take on someone else’s voice the result is sometimes a miniature lecture rather than a conversation. When he has two active participants in a conversation the effect is much livelier. Bellush’s voice suits his stories, which are often comedic or satirical. Most of his heroes are slightly alienated from the rest of humanity and deal with it in styles ranging from carelessness to manipulative opportunism. He seems to delight in the image of the sarcastic man puncturing the self-delusions of the people around him. This is a reliable old comedic formula that goes back to the ancient Greeks; Bellush carries it off successfully, though sometimes the irony is a little too obvious.

The plots of these stories are uneven, ranging from almost nonexistent to obvious to ingenious. Bellush seems to like the classic O. Henry model short story with a surprise ending; I would decry this as old-fashioned, but the story that does this most explicitly actually did surprise me. The story “Sex, Drugs & Rock and RoIl” has a slightly unusual structure with three somewhat parallel narratives; it also makes some of the most explicitly libertarian points. Several of the stories are interlinked in various ways, giving the book a somewhat cumulative effect. I found reading it an unexpected pleasure.

I’m sorry to say that I found Slog less persuasive. The humorous and satirical approach to characterization made it hard to take the action/adventure plot seriously—particularly having two important characters named George Custer and Ulysses Grant! And the servile man/self-centered woman pairing that appears in much of Bellush’s shorter fiction became annoying here. Slog has some clever ideas, but has trouble sustaining them at novel length.

Timeshift, by Phillip Ellis Jackson, falls far short of Bellush’s work. To start with, though nominally a science fiction novel, it builds on a “rubber science” premise, the existence of a second form of light, a parallel electromagnetic spectrum invisible to the human eye but, when made visible, revealing three-dimensional images of the past. (Conveniently, it also captures the sounds of the past, with none of the problems about converting sound waves into light that kept motion pictures silent until the l920s.) This might have done well enough for Edgar Rice Burroughs, or even A. E. Van Vogt, but science fiction writers have learned to find story premises in actual science, rather than scientific buzzwords, over the past half century.

This invention becomes the maguffin for a plot filled with complicated intrigues, based on the premise that criminal trials no longer need to present evidence or reasoning; they just play back the past. Apparently this is so strongly accepted that even when a putative record of the past is somewhat blurry and of extraordinarily poor quality, no one questions a verdict of murder based upon it. In a future setting where an Eastern United States and a Western United States share a ruined environment, this plot in turn leads into political intrigues that could threaten the future of humanity

What’s particularly unsatisfying about this novel is that it uses a bad scientific idea to explore themes that could just as well be explored with much more plausible technology. The current development of computer imaging techniques and related technology already is raising vital questions about the use of visual images as evidence. The distant future setting and ill-defined pseudoscience of Timeshift have no legitimate science-fictional purpose.

However, Freeman, by James Rushing, makes Timeshift look good. At least Timeshift actually is a novel. Freeman is more like a Platonic diaIogue, of the sort where young Athenian men say “Yes, Socrates...Of course, Socrates... Certainly, Socrates.” lts author is so focused on presenting ideas that he doesn’t manage to tell a story.

The ideas, in this case, are obviously strongly influenced by those of Ayn Rand, to the point of outright quotation of her favorite catchphrases. (Anyone who worships artistic creativity ought to be able to come up with a name phrasing for “benevolent universe.”) But Rand, with her years of experience as a scriptwriter, understood what makes a story work—not ideas, but conflict. In The Art of Fiction she made the useful distinction between melodrama, which shows a man in conflict with other men, and drama, which shows a man in conflict with himself. Rand clearly enjoyed melodrama; Atlas Shrugged is the greatest pulp novel of the 20th century. But she always tried to use the form of melodrama to express actual drama, and to show ideas in conflict within the minds of her protagonists. Rushing doesn’t even attain to the level of melodrama; in his story, libertarian ideas are so persuasive as to convert even oppressive government officials. Regrettably, it’s not that easy, and Rushing’s story is unrealistic; but worse, ideas that powerful can never face real conflict. Wish fulfillment may be satisfying. but it doesn’t make a good story.

So far as ideas go, aIl of these writers seem to be libertarians. But for libertarian fiction, ideas aren’t enough) we also need interesting stories based on those ideas, and told in a good prose style. Rushing completely fails in this goal; he seems not to know that the engine that drives a story is conflict. Jackson knows it, but his conflict is unconvincing and takes place in a poorly thought out setting. Bellush is uneven, but when he’s good he has the ideas, the conflict, and the style; his fiction made me want to keep reading. That makes this a good year.