Golden
Reflections opens with the most complex story in the collection, a
reprint of Fred Saberhagen's 1979 novel Mask of the Sun. This
story of time-traveling warriors, a golden mask that can help predict,
or perhaps cause, the future, and a resurgent Incan empire serves as the
inspiration for the remaining seven stories. For those who have
read Mask of the Sun before, the story holds up quite well and
uses a variety of time travel and multiple timeline tropes which have
been used many times since its initial publication, frequently to lesser
effect. For those who have never read the novel, it retains a
freshness and stands strong among the subsequent stories which it
inspired, collected here in memory and as a way of thanking Saberhagen
for his importance to the field of science fiction and fantasy.
Walter
Jon Williams places the mask in an alternative Ptolemaic Egypt in
“Fate Line.” Rather than focusing on the way the Pharaoh uses the
mask, Williams depicts Demetrios, a future warrior who must travel back
in time and across timelines to a world in which Egypt has managed to
remain strong, in no small part due to the presence of a mask. Demetrios
quickly learns that he can’t act in too obvious a manner for fear that
the mask will work against him, but he still has his duty to complete.
Williams does an excellent job portraying a man who has
everything to lose and few resources.
Williams also takes a little known period of Egyptian history and
twists it in a new direction, providing the reader with the necessary
background to understand not only what is happening, by how it it
different from what actually happened and why it is important.
Daniel
Abraham describes the
making of the Mask-case for the goggles in “Wax, Clay, Gold.”
Perhaps more interesting is the debate by a team of agents in hiding who
are discussing the question of intentionality behind what the Mask shows
its owners. What is most perplexing to one of their members who was
present when the mask was made, was the fact the wearing the mask
apparently didn’t improve the life of the mask maker in any way,
although improvement is in the eye of the beholder.
John
Maddox Roberts depicts a vision in which the Mask of the Sun finds its
way into the Nazis’ hands in “The Conquistador’s Hat.” Beginning
with the almost comic figure of Juan de Cervantes who steals the mask
from Cortés, the action jumps to a future world in which the Nazis were
successful in World War II and have brought all the world’s great art
together in the Museum of Aryan Culture, where one of the curators, Herr
Muller, is trying to get a “loan” of art from the Vatican, one of
the few places which has managed to retain its collection.
Roberts’s focus on art allows him to ignore the worst excesses
of the Nazi regime, although he hints at them in the background.
Harry
Turtledove’s “Eyewear” is a secret history of the Cabeza de Vaca
expedition through Texas and New Mexico.
Using the slave Estevánico as his protagonist, Turtledove
outfits the four survivors of the expedition with a pair of magic
spectacles which allows the slave to suggest the best course of action
and eventually lead the men to safety before setting off on a journey to
find Cibola, and the city of Hawikuh, where the historical Estevánico
was killed. Because Estevánico
is a slave, there is little room for growth in his relationships with
anyone, but instead the story is presented as a puzzle for him to figure
out the best use of the eyewear as he is guided by a time traveler who
can only provide him with the vaguest of clues.
The story ends, almost feeling as if it were a placeholder to
provide
“Like
the Rain,” by Jane Lindskold, opens with a look at the hypocrisies and
contradictions in the way Christianity was presented to the
Mesoamericans as Po’poy, a senior priest of Ohkay, is suffering
flagellation at the hands of Christians as a punitive punishment for the
sins of a stranger. Po’poy’s treatment at the hands of the
Castillians interlopers leads him to foment rebellion using the powers
of the golden mask, even when that revolt may have disastrous effects on
his own personal life. When
the concept of rebellion is first broached by the time-traveling Tleume,
Po’poy is asked if he can be ruthless, indicating that the Mask will
help those who are willing to follow it in everything it asks and shows,
regardless of consequences.
“Remember”
is set at an Alamo which is heavily populated by time travelers waiting
for the inevitable attack, not by Mexicans, but by Incans. Dean Wesley
Smith focuses on the time travelers with hardly a thought about the
actual mask as Vietnam vet Dennis Holcomb trades in his meaningless
death by cancer in 1981 for a glorious death in battle in 1836 in an
attempt to preserve a timeline that isn't even his own. In the
process, Holcomb mingles not only with his fellow time travelers, but
also with Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and William Travis, although the
historical figures are mostly barely cameos..
David Weber portrays a complex alternative world in
which “Washington’s Rebellion” failed.
However, rather than just portray one world, Weber creates multiple
worlds in which the rebellion failed, each with different political
outcomes. His protagonist, Dunstan Carmichael, is morning the
death of his children and his wife, who is in a coma, when he is first
given the Mask of the Sun and later the opportunity to travel to an
alternative world to help with the cross-dimensional battle between the
Incans and the Tenocha, and, possibly, the care his wife needs to
recover from her massive injuries. Weber's story is a reminder that
while history might seem inevitable, that sense of inexorableness only
comes with hindsight.
Not
only does Golden Reflections offer readers seven stories, but it
also provides a new and interesting introduction to a classic work of
science fiction. Although the ideas of new authors writing stories
in the worlds of classic science fiction and fantasy novels runs the
risk of the law of diminishing returns, in this particular case, the
authors Saberhagen's widow and Robert E. Vardeman have chosen to include
manage to reach a quality that is indicative of the fact they they are
clearly writing these stories in response to their friendship with
Saberhagen and their memories of first discovering his work.
