Subject: Modesitt: Of Tangible Ghosts

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 05:23:06 GMT

L.E. Modesitt Jr. is a highly uneven writer of science fiction and
fantasy, sometimes producing innovative and enjoyable books and sometimes
falling short.  In "Of Tangible Ghosts", he turns his efforts to alternate
history, with uneven results.

The year is 1993, in a world that has turned out differently than ours.
Instead of a fundamentally English USA, for instance, there is a
fundamentally Dutch Columbia.  The most important difference is the
existence of ghosts:  People who die unnatural deaths leave ghosts behind
for a few years or decades.  The strategic significance is that war leaves
behind enough ghosts to render conquered territory unusable for decades.
In this world, as a result, a conflict corresponding to World War II (the
aggressors are the Austro-Hungarians) has been sputtering along in slow
motion for decades.  Research on ghosts is of great strategic importance.

Superimposed upon this background is a low-key cloak-and-dagger story that
(with some details changed) could as easily have taken place in our world.
Johann Eschbach is a retired minister of the environment (this world is
somewhat Greener than ours) who is now teaching at a small New England
(not called that) university.  He's also a retired agent of the secret
police (not called that).  When a murder takes place at his school, it
becomes apparent that two factions in Washington (not called that) are
planning to pin it on him, each in order to discredit the other.

The two stories don't interact well.  The author has gone to a great deal
of work in constructing his alternate history, and is constantly intruding
upon the story to let us know it.  The story itself is resolved with a bit
of cloak-and-daggering, but mostly through the use of a couple of plot
devices -- a gadget that was in the right place at the right time, and a
ghost ditto.  It's a well-realized world, and the cloak-and-daggering is
understated and interesting.  The book doesn't end, though, so much as
peter out.

Wait for the paperback.

%A Modesitt, L.E. Jr.
%T Of Tangible Ghosts
%I Tor
%C New York
%D October, 1994
%G ISBN 0-312-85720-9
%P 381pp
%O $22.95

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked] 

   "You have the reputation of being one of the nicest guys in the field.
    We both know you're a hyena on its hind legs.  How have you fooled
    everyone?"  "By keeping my mouth shut when I read garbage" -- Gene Wolfe