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[June 16, 1960] Skimming the Cream (Robert Sheckley's Notions: Unlimited)

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As a rule, I don't review anthologies.  By definition, they are composed of stories already published elsewhere, and since I cover the magazines regularly, chances are I've already seen most of an anthology's contents.

I make an exception for Bob Sheckley.

Sheckley is the master of the science fiction short story.  They are sometimes humorous, sometimes terrifying, never bad.  And since the novel I'd planned on reading, Mark Clifton's Eight Keys to Eden bored me right out of the gate, I gratefully picked up a copy of Sheckley's new anthology Notions: Unlimited.

Here's what I found:

Gray Flannel Armor features a young man within whom, behind his drab gray exterior, beats a heart yearning for romance.  This cute little story gives a sneak preview into the world of commercially arranged dating.  It's a cynical story, but not so much as his earlier works dealing with romance.  This makes sense: it was published in 1957, after his marriage to his second wife.

The Leech, and Watchbird are of a kind, though their plots differ widely.  In each, a problem is presented, a solution is found, and it then turns out that the solution makes everything worse.  Both are older stories.  The former is better than the latter.

A Wind is Rising is a good, evocative piece about a colonist who gets stuck out of shelter during one of its frequent super-hurricanes.  As someone who used to live in the windy desert, where sandstorms would turn the landscape into something from Mars, I can empathize with his situation.

Morning After deals with one of my favorite subjects of science fiction: just what will we all do for a living once everything has been mechanized?  In this case, we all become freelance voters, tossing our ballot for the candidate who schmoozes us the most.  And when that ceases to be of sufficient interest, we go elsewhere…

Native Problem is a fun story in the classic silly Sheckley mold.  A social misfit decides to colonize his own planet on the frontier.  His life is a lonely paradise until a new bunch of colonists, arriving via generation ship sent out decades before, makes planetfall. 

Feeding Time is another older story, a very short piece about a young, inexperienced bibliophile who takes up gryphon-rearing.  As is well known, the gryphon feeds only on young virgins.  The results are… predictable.

I'd never read Paradise II before, about a pair of space explorers who come across a planet rendered lifeless by biological warfare, such destruction being triggered by intense resource competition, particularly squabbling over limited food stocks.  Upon investigating a station orbiting around the planet, one of them is absorbed by the structure's brain, and the other finds himself a linchpin solving the planet's food problem.  It's a dark story, and rather ridiculous, a little bit like what Ellison has written late last decade.

Back to the fun ones, Double Indemnity involves an unscrupulous time traveller attempting to collect on a particular clause of his insurance that pays out when one finds oneself duplicated in the course of a chronological excursion.  It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it is a pleasure to read.

Almost all of these stories came out in Galaxy, Sheckley's prefered home, so I was surprised to discover that the next one, Holdout was published in F&SF.  It involves a dramatically multi-racial crew, and the one intolerant fellow who refuses to work with a person of a particular ethnic background.  Of course, the mystery of the story, not revealed until the end, is the identity of that ethnicity. 

Dawn Invader, another F&SF story, pits a human and an alien against each other in symbolic mental combat.  It's a bit like Ellison's The Silver Corridor, which had been published in Infinity the year before, but with a happier ending.  I like happy endings–they are harder to write.

Finally, we have the excellent The Language of Love, in which a young suitor refuses to marry his sweetheart until he can find the exact words to express his feelings toward her.  The punchline is hilarious, and it has been much bandied about my household ever since my wife and I read it.

Of the four collections Sheckley has published to date, Notions may be my least favorite.  That is not to say it is bad; it's just his least good.  It's still well worth reading, and I zoomed through it quite quickly and enjoyably.

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[May 25, 1960] Getting there is half the problem (Judith Merril's The Tomorrow People)

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Every novel is a kind of contract with the reader, a promise that ideas, events, and characters will be presented in the beginning such that, by the end, they will have facilitated a satisfying story.  A corollary to this is that a writer must ensure that all of a story's scenes are interesting to the reader.  Lesser authors pound their keys trying to get "to the good parts," stringing together pearls of interest with thread of mediocre space-filler. 

Judith Merril has managed to break the above-described contract in spectacular fashion, by publishing a story solely of the thread between the pearls. 

Let me explain.  The Tomorrow People, released this month, promises to be quite a book.  Not only is it by Merril, who has proven that she can write on prior occasions, but within the first 30 pages, we get a set up that includes: humanity's first Mars mission, on which one of the crew commits suicide for reasons unknown; the suggestion that life was found on Mars; the possibility of telepathy and/or clairvoyance; the suggestion of an active espionage ring on the American moonbase.  Merril also tempts us with the veneer of a mature piece with discussion of adult topics like closeted homosexuality, menstruation, polyamory. 

The problem is that Merril never delivers on any of these threads (except for a few perfunctory pages at the end).  Instead, we get hundreds of pages of the sort of stuff one hammers out for the sake of hammering out.  Most of the book is presented in quotation marks and italic print.  Pointless dialogues between men done in an overly breezy, almost caricature style.  Endless angsty conversations between characters punctuated by italicized internal monologues (that's right!  You tell 'em!) Dysfunctional relationships between the one female character, the lovely dancer, Lisa, and… virtually every male character in the book (the astronaut who returns from Mars, his psychiatrist, the Moon's chief psychiatrist, random lunar laborers).  Endless depictions of drinking, drunkenness, romantic quarrells.

I don't know if Merril is trying to be avante garde, or if she simply doesn't know how to make a book out of a trilogy's worth of ideas but a novella's worth of action.  The result is an uphill slog.  It's too bad as there is stuff to like.  There is a thoroughly modern feeling about the portrayed universe, a feeling that Merril really does try to convey the world of the mid 1970s, technologically and socially.  I enjoyed the bits about the adaptation of classical dancing to the lunar setting.  And I appreciate a story that doesn't just present the bones of a plot, with the characters playing second fiddle, as is often the case in science fiction. 

Merril's The Tomorrow People, however, is an invertebrate.  Its characters meander about with no plot bracing them into an enthralling narrative.  Maybe that's the point.  Maybe life is like that, and Merril is just trying to capture that feeling of naturalistic randomness.

Or maybe she had a deadline, a page quota, and insufficient inspiration.

Two stars.

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Magazine/Anthology

[May 13, 1960] Second Lightning Strike (Out Like a Light)

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by Freas

I poke a lot of fun at John Campbell's magazine, Astounding for its overfeaturing of psionics and Randall Garrett, two things of which I've gotten very tired–so imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying a serial that intimately involves both!

For the last three months, Astounding's serial has been Out Like a Light, the sequel to the actually-not-bad That Sweet Little Old Lady.  Both stories were co-written by the team of Randall Garrett (who seems to be getting better these days, at least prose-wise) and Laurence Janifer (who may be the real talent behind the operation).  Together, they go by the monicker of "Mark Phillips." 

Lady introduced two investigating agents of the FBI in the nearish future, Malone and Boyd, who are stand-ins for the authors.  I think.  Boyd certainly shares Garrett's physical similarity to Henry VIII as well as his penchant for girl-chasing.  And Janifer, if he cut his hair into a Mohican, would look a bit like Malone.  Their first misadventure involves tracking down a gaggle of psychics and enlisting their aid to fix a security leak in the government.  The sanest of the bunch or telepaths, despite believing herself to be the not-so-late ex-Monarch, Elizabeth I, ends up being the lynchpin to the agents' success.  As the title suggests, she really is a sweet little old lady.  Who can read minds.

Out Like a Light is essentially a solo adventure, with Malone sleuthing around after a spate of carjackings.  All of the cars are red Cadillacs, and the investigating officers tend to get nasty bumps on the side of the head.  Yet, no trace of the perpetrators is ever seen.  Of course, psionics are involved, and Her Majesty serves an important supporting role in solving the mystery. 

It's about 10% too long in the droll recounting of things, but it moves swiftly and entertainingly, features a couple of strong female characters (shock!) and is a reasonably executed "how-dunnit."  I say "how" since the "who" is determined fairly early on. 


by Freas

I found myself actively looking forward, each month, to reading more of the story.  It's not literature for the ages, but it is genuinely amusing.  If my meter allowed for half increments for individual stories, I would give it three and a half stars.  Since it doesn't, I suppose I'll be generous and give it four. 

Astounding can use the charity, especially after the non-fiction "article" featured in this month's issue… but more on that later.

Pick up a copy, and enjoy!

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Book

[May 3, 1960] Sharpening Up (Poul Anderson's Brain Wave)

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It's tough to be a smart person in a dumb world. 

When I was in 4th grade, I had a miserable, mean teacher named Mrs. Middleton.  She was the sort of lady who wore a smile on her face that had a depth of about a micron—she certainly didn't have a pleasant soul.  I remember many incidents that caused her to rank in the lower tiers of my instructors, but the one that sticks out the most went as follows:

I had done or said something that displayed my somewhat above-average intelligence, and Mrs. Middleton took umbrage.  She sneeringly asked me, "You think you're so smart!  How would you like it if everyone was as smart as you?"

I answered, quite innocently, "I would love it.  Then I'd have people to talk to."

Perhaps this is why Poul Anderson's 1954 novel, Brain Wave, which explores the aftermath of an event that causes every living thing with a brain to become about four times smarter, resonates so strongly with me. 

I recently saw a reprint of this masterpiece at the local bookseller, so now is a good time to take a second look.

Brain Wave opens with the change already in progress.  It occurs quickly and universally.  Within a week, normal folks have IQs in the 300s, and the world begins to fall apart.  After all, who wants to do the menial jobs that society requires to keep functioning?  In the meantime, every animal with an intelligence above that possessed by, say, a goat, develops full sapience.  Many remain docile creatures; others become a menace.

There are really two parallel stories.  One involves a physicist who is captivated by his new talents and applies them to building an interstellar spacecraft (once automation allows humanity to apply itself solely to intellectual pursuits).  His is not an entirely happy story; his wife finds her new brilliance difficult to handle, and their marriage suffers for it.

The other thread, and perhaps the better one, involves a mentally handicapped man who develops a (by pre-change standards) a supergenius IQ.  He forms a sort of commune with a pair of chimpanzees, an elephant, and a dog.  Perhaps the most affecting scene in the book comes when the man must slaughter a sheep, now nearly human in intelligence, to survive the winter. 

The latter plot is more approachable as it features characters whose thought processes are not too unlike our own.  On the other hand, Anderson manages to portray super-intelligence in a plausible and engaging manner.  The newly brilliant communicate in an almost telepathic shorthand.  After the initial anarchy, world peace is achieved since humans are now better able to understand each other.  Wishful thinking?  Maybe, but I happen to like my stories upbeat, and I can certainly subscribe to the idea that the world could do with a bit more smarts to go around.

I understand that the book started out as a magazine serial.  This makese sense–there is a change in tone about halfway through, right around the time a team of astronauts head into space.  The highlight of this section is their first starship voyage, wherein the cause and galactic ramifications of the change are discovered. 

I shan't spoil the rest.  Go ye and purchase a copy.  After reading it, you will understand why I stuck with Anderson for so long even though most of what he wrote in the mid-'50s was comparatively lousy.

And then send me a letter or two–so I have people to talk to!

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Book

[April 17, 1960] Stiff Upper Lips (Fletcher Pratt's Invaders from Rigel)

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It is said that dead men tell no tales; but don't tell that to Fletcher Pratt, who has managed to publish a book four years after his death!

I must confess, I did a double-take when I recently saw Invaders from Rigel at the bookstore.  The beloved Fletcher Pratt, one of the genre's titans, and inventor of one of the first playable naval wargames, passed away in 1956.  Yet, here was a brand-new book with Pratt's name on the cover.

Well, not really.  As I began to read the Avalon hardcover, I felt a pang of deja vu.  Not only was I certain that I'd read the tale before, but the writing struck me as belonging to an earlier era—more Savage Pellucidar than Starship Troopers. 

Sure enough, when I went through my voluminous collection, I found the story in the Winter 1932 Wonder Stories Quarterly, edited by the renowned Hugo Gernsback.  It was originally titled Onslaught from Rigel, and surprisingly little modification was made for its novelization, which I suppose honors Pratt's memory.

The story, in brief: It is 1962, and a mysterious comet has crashed into the North American continent.  The virtual entirety of the populace and animals are converted to lifeless iron.  A handful of folk find themselves transformed into metal parodies of human beings.  They are now essentially invulnerable, require no food, air, or water—just an occasional dose of electric charging and lubrication.  The first third of the book is a post-apocalyptic picking up of pieces story.  The remainder details the struggle of these metal men and their blue-skinned allies from the Southern Hemisphere against the elephantoid Rigelians.

It is a ludicrous story written in the pulpiest fashion, and the "science" bits at the end are egregious.  My readers know what a literary snob I am, so I must have hated the book, right?

Actually, I quite enjoyed it.  Sure, it was silly in the extreme, and the battle scenes were a trifle overlong, but three things made the book a worthy read, though perhaps a guilty pleasure:

1) It is well-written and pleasantly rip-roaring.

2) It reads like a cross between Burroughs and a comic book, and I like Burroughs and comic books.

3) It quite intentionally, and rather subversively, has strong female characters.  In both senses of the word "strong."  You see, with both men and women made of tough metal, there is no nonsense about the "weaker" sex.  Instead, you've got the plucky Victoria, who is a better shot than any of the men and becomes the gunner/engineer on a rocket-plane.  And you've got the quippy, tough Hungarian dancer, Marta Lami, who is not only fun to read, but an integral part of the struggle against the aliens.

After reading story upon story featuring nothing but male characters, with the existence of females usually only implied, Invaders from Rigel was a refreshing switch.

Now, because I had both versions of the story, I can tell you what editing was done.  For the most part, it was confined to "updating" the science-y bits.  For instance, the book mentions atomic weapons and jet planes.  At one point, a helicopter is substituted for an autogiro.  The original story took place in 1946.

On the other hand, the editing was not terribly consistent or rigorous.  For instance, in 1962, the Dutch still own Batavia.  Also, airplanes revert from jet to rocket power later in the book.  The editors also took out some of the purpler bits of prose from the original.  I'm still not decided on whether this is an improvement or not.  There's not much cutting, in any event.

Do I recommend picking up a copy of the book?  That's up to you.  It's a quick read, and I enjoyed it, but you may turn up your nose at it, and I wouldn't blame you for it.  Alternatively, you might pick up Judith Merril's Out of Bounds or Agent of Vega, by James H. Schmitz; both are anthologies that came out this month.

Next up, a slew of exciting space news.  Stay tuned!

—

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Book

[April 7, 1960] Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair (The Haunted Stars)

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From the stars comes a warning… and a challenge.

Time permitting, I like to read a new science fiction book at least once a month.  The digests are reliable sources of good stuff, but there is only so far a writer can develop an idea in the space of a novella or short story.  Sure, there are occasionally serials in the magazines, but then one has to wait three months to see how they turn out. 

There were three science fiction books released last month, so far as I can tell.  One was a collection of Murray Leinster stories called The Aliens.  I understand its best story is the eponymous lead novella, which I reviewed earlier.  Louis Charbonneau released a science fiction horror called Corpus Earthling that I haven't had a chance to pick up.

And then there was The Haunted Stars, by Edmond Hamilton.  Hamilton is a bit of an elder statesman when it comes to science fiction.  He wrote for the pulps as far back as the 20s, and his writing is stylistically rather archaic. 

An example from Stars:

"Fairlie looked up at the sky as he followed Hill.  Orion strode mightily toward the zenith, followed by the upward-leaping stars of Canis Major, and all the heavens were sown with constellations that wavered wind-bright.  He remembered what Christensen had said, that both long-ago enemies had conquered interstellar space, not just interplanetary."

Not that this is a bad thing.  I grew up on Burroughs and Howard and Lovecraft, and I can go for some purple prose every so often.

His latest novel stars urbanite linguist, Robert Fairlie.  When alien artifacts are found in 30,000 year old ruins on the Moon (in 1965—Hamilton is an optimist), Fairlie is tapped as part of a deciphering team.  The alien language is translated with remarkable speed after Fairlie, on a whim, uses Sumerian as a guide.  It turns out that the aliens are completely human, and it is likely that terrestrial humanity are the race's descendants.

Along with this discovery comes a chilling revelation: the aliens did not abandon the stars willingly.  Rather, some other faction wiped out their star empire to a planet, and then admonished them never to attempt star travel again.

Well, who can resist a challenge like that?  Thus, our government works feverishly to develop a starship using alien technology for a mission to the alien's home star of Altair. 

Stars is actually quite reminiscent of Raymond Jones' book, The Aliens.  My favorite part of both tales is the linguistic challenge in the beginning.  One of my very favorite stories, H. Beam Piper's Omnilingual, is only about the translation of an alien tongue.  A similar nonfiction example is presented in C.W. Ceram's recent book, The Secret of the Hittites.

I suppose most readers will not be sated by long discussions of phonology and vowel shift, however.  Hamilton does deliver the literary goods in a punchy, articulate fashion.  While the plot is paint-by-numbers and the characters largely forgettable, there are some masterful touches that make the book worthy reading.

Hamilton takes the time to convey everyday feelings: cold, boredom, fatigue.  These mundane bits are often foregone.  There is a particularly good, almost stream-of-consciousness, passage through most of Chapter 11 as a trepidatious Fairlie packs for his star trek to Altair.  The descriptions of an alien world, superficially similar to Earth but subtly wrong are well done.

There is interesting technology, too.  At one point the scientists all marvel at these little alien recording spheres.  They don't utilize analog magnetic patterns (as one sees in wire and tape recorders) but rather some kind of etched information, perhaps digital, read with some kind of narrow beam.  I've never seen this concept before; it's very exciting yet plausible.

All in all, I rate the book a solid 3 stars out of 5.  It's not literature for the ages, but it is competent and fun stuff.  Pick it up while it's in the bookstores, and send me a letter telling me what you think.  I'll post it in this column, of course.

—




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Book, Magazine/Anthology

[Feb. 9, 1960] Fighting the World (Harry Harrison's Deathworld)

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Every now and then Astounding (excuse me–"Analog") surprises me.  The end of last year saw some of the worst issues of the digest ever, with stories as poor as any that used to populate the legion of now-defunct science fiction pulps.

Then along comes Harry Harrison, a brand-new writer, so far as I can tell, with one of the best serial novels I've read in a long time. 

Ever get the feeling that the world is out to get you?  What if it were literally true?  This is the premise of Harrison's interstellar adventure, Deathworld, in which the psychically gifted (and crooked) gambler, Jason dinAlt, is contracted by the ambassador from the planet Pyrrus to win a tremendous sum of funds to finance a war.  It turns out that the war is against the planet, itself, which seems to have mobilized all of its biological forces to wipe out the colony there.

Pyruss is deadliest of planets.  With its high gravity, eccentric orbit and overactive vulcanism, its physical qualities alone would be enough to deter any would-be exploiters.  But Pyrrus is also home to a highly inimical set of flora and fauna whose sole purpose is to eradicate humans.  It is a nightmare assortment employing fang, talon, and poison, continually evolving to make life impossible for the colonists. 

For the Pyrrans, it has been centuries-long struggle of increasing difficulty, maintained in the hope of eventual victory.  For dinAlt, with a fresh outsider's prospective, the fight is an exercise in futility—and a paradoxical puzzle to be resolved.  After all, what motive force could impel an entire ecosystem to direct its fury against one small group?

There is a great deal of physical scope to this story, from the gambling halls of Cassylia, to the drab city of the Pyrran colony, to the vast wilds of the Pyrran hinterlands.  There is also an impressive amount of emotional scope.  This is not, as one might expect within the pages of John Campbell's magazine, the story of a muscular ubermensch's victorious combats against the savage brainless monsters of Pyruss.  Rather, it is the story of the weakest man on a planet trying to effect a peaceful solution to a problem that appears, on its face, insoluble.  Deathworld is also supported by a fine cast of characters, particularly the tough Pyrran ambassador, Kerk, and the self-reliant and liberated space pilot, Meta. 

I don't want to spoil any more of the novel for you.  Go ye and read it.  You'll be glad of the time invested.

—

Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Book, Magazine/Anthology

[Dec. 22. 1959] Put a finer point on it (Starship Troopers)

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It is common practice for serials published in science fiction digests to get turned into stand-alone novels. Not only does this constitute a nice double-dip for publishers and authors, but it offers the writer a chance to polish her/his work further.  Sometimes, the resulting product ends up something of a bloated mess.  In the case of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, the novelization of Starship Soldier (which appeared in F&SF a couple of months ago), the opposite is the case.  Heinlein’s expanded story has turned a flawed gem into a masterpiece.

Left virtually intact are the first two acts as presented in F&SF.  Johnny Rico is a bright but rather callow youth who joins the "Mobile Infantry" without much forethought.  After an intense and vividly portrayed Basic Training, Rico becomes versed in the art of combat from within a suit of powered armor with enough power to destroy a 20th Century tank company.  He then goes off to fight an interstellar war against the "Bugs," a hive-mind race of Arachnoids, and their co-belligerents, the humanoid "Skinnies."  There is precious little depiction of combat, however, with the exception of a well-executed first chapter (Basic Training is described in flashback).

It was all well done, but the serial just sort of ends without much resolution or pay-off.  The novel includes a full third act wherein Rico is involved in a mission to capture one of the Bug "brains" for interrogation/experimentation purposes.  This is what the novel needed, and I have to wonder if Heinlein intended it to be there all the time, but was limited by space constraints.  It makes the book a must-have, and it is possibly the best thing Heinlein has written to date.

Of course, there is a bit more of the jingoistic, even Fascist pro-militarism speeches issuing from the mouths of various officers and professors.  I imagine a number of impressionable young folk will be motivated to enlist after reading the book.  I can only hope that we don't fight any major wars over the next decade or two, though so long as the minute hand on the F.A.S. Doomsday Clock remains at two minutes to Midnight, that seems wishful thinking.

Then again, so long as there are just 120 seconds to Armageddon, the next major war is likely to be very short.

Note: If you like this column, consider sharing it by whatever media you frequent most.  I love the company, and I imagine your friends share your excellent taste!

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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[Dec. 02, 1959] The Menace from Earth!

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With only four science fiction digests coming out per month (really three if you count Galaxy and IF as one monthly magazine instead of two bi-monthlies), I often fill my reading time with anthologies and novels.  Robert Heinlein has a new anthology of his works out, The Menace from Earth, which largely features stories I hadn't previously read.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Year of the Jackpot came out in Galaxy nearly eight years ago!  It was rightly anthologized in the 1952 Galaxy Reader as the lead story.  Statistician Potiphar Breen plots a trend to the increased silliness in the world and concludes that the Apocalypse is nigh.  Along with Meade Barstow, whom Potiphar meets while she is stripping bare at a bus stop (one datum of silliness), the unlikely hero manages to escape catastrophe when nuclear war breaks out.  But out of the frying pan…

I found By his Bootstraps, detailing the adventures of a time-looping fellow who crosses his own path several times, to be rather tedious.  There is an art to telling such stories so that one does not repeat the same scene over and over, just from different viewpoints.  This story was written before Mr. Heinlein developed that art. 

I'm sure I've read Sky Lift before, I think in Imagination.  A hotshot pilot is tasked with bringing fresh blood to a plague-ridden Pluto base.  He only has about a week, which means he'll have to pull nearly four gees of acceleration the entire way.  Will he make it?

Goldfish Bowl is a sad tale in which giant pillars of unknown origin appear in the Pacific Ocean, their tops lost in the stratosphere.  Two men explore the pillars only to be abducted and placed in the extraterrestrial (or perhaps hyperterrestrial) equivalent of a fishbowl—with only one way out.  Who are these aliens?  What do they want with us?  And can humanity be warned if and when the prisoners answer these questions?

The worst of the bunch is unquestionably Project Nightmare, a ridiculous tale in which the Soviets plant several dozen bombs in our biggest cities and hold the country hostage.  Only a team of psychics, working 'round-the-clock can save the day.  And then, just for kicks, blow up the Russkies.  Terrible.

Water is for Washing, about an earthquake causing the Imperial Valley to flood, is near and dear to my heart seeing how I grew up in its setting.  The Valley a miserable, desolate place—120 degrees in the summer and 25 degrees in the winter.  Yet it is an agricultural marvel, and there are good people who reside there.  If you've ever read The Winning of Barbara Worth, you'll get a good sense for what it's like, and you'll know why the place at which the protagonist stops for a drink early in the story is called the Barbara Worth Hotel!

I've saved the best for last.  The eponymous The Menace from Earth is simply a tour de force.  Told convincingly from the viewpoint of a 15-year old girl living on the moon, it is a story of teen love, angst, jealous, and low-gravity aerodynamics.  I gave the book to my 10-year old daughter so she could read this story, and she “loved it.” She asked if Heinlein wrote more stories like it, to which I had to reply in the negative.

I hate to leave things on a down note, however.  Do you know any stories written in a similar style?  Juveniles from the female point of view?  Please share!

All told, Menace is a book worth getting even though many of the stories have melancholy endings.  If you're still in the mood for Heinlein after this large portion, you can try picking up the other recently released anthology: The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.  But that's a review for another day…

Note: I love comments (you can do so anonymously), and I always try to reply.

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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[Oct. 22, 1959] Fiat Libro! (A Canticle for Leibowitz)

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Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a melancholy masterpiece.

Every so often, a science fiction novel comes around that transcends the genre and gives lie to the assertion that non-mainstream fiction is somehow literarily inferior.  When this happens, the field gains a bit of respectability and, hopefully, attracts more great authors to its fold.

Miller’s three-part novel was originally published as three separate stories in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and I am given to understand that they have been much improved in book form.  In brief summary, Canticle tells the story of seventeen centuries of history after an atomic apocalypse nearly destroys humanity.  The protagonists are monks associated with an abbey of the Catholic Church which, as it did in the Dark Ages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, keeps the flame of knowledge kindled even as the world sinks to barbarism around it.

In the first part, Fiat Homo, a 26th century novitiate discovers a fallout shelter that bears relics of the long-departed, venerable Leibowitz, in whose honor the novitiate’s abbey has been founded.  It is more of a mood piece than anything else, and if not for the setting, could have been a tale of any 7th century monastery.

Fiat Lux is a 32nd century story tale that takes place during a Renaissance.  As abbey monks re-invent the arc light, a natural philosopher from a would-be continental empire visits the compound to conduct research.  His coming presages an invasion by the empire’s ruler as prelude to a bid for American conquest.  This was my favorite section of the book, capturing that flush of excitement that accompanies a great scientific leap forward.  It also has, I think, the best-drawn characters.

Part 3, Fiat Voluntas Tua, takes place in the 37th century.  Humanity has surpassed the achievements of the 20th century, with robot highways and interstellar colonies.  Yet the old rivalries between East and West remain, and the Superpowers are just a hair-trigger away from a second Diluvium Ignis.  The Church stands ready to launch an mission (of the religious variety) to the stars to preserve itself through the impending catastrophe.  I enjoyed this part the least, though it is by no means unworthy.

Canticle moves at a majestic, unhurried pace, and yet also a page-turner–no mean feat.  Throughout is this feeling of inexorability, that humanity is doomed to a certain cycle of events so long as we remain human.  The book is the embodiment of Santayana's now-famous aphorism, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."  My wife found the premise depressing, but I saw (and I think Miller intended us to see) that sliver of hope in the Church's final peregrine mission.  Canticle's Church is the one element of humanity whose purpose was to preserve humanity's memories, after all. 

Miller makes liberal use of Latin, which is translated directly, obliquely, and sometimes not at all.  For those of us who took college Latin, it poses no great difficulty, but the new breed of uncultured students may find it challenging.  It cannot be denied that it lends a distinct and authentic flavor to the proceedings.

Interestingly, one character (aside from the erstwhile Leibowitz) appears in all three parts of the book: Lazarus, the Wandering Jew.  Wry and wistful, he lends an earthy element to otherwise rather majestic proceedings as he carries the virtual entirety of the mantle of Judaism as he waits for Him to return to Earth.  I liked Lazarus, but I may be a little biased on the matter.

In sum, Canticle is a superb piece of fiction: spiritual, daring, by turns tense, prosaic, horrifying, and humorous.  I'll be very surprised if it isn't nominated for next year's Hugo.

(By the way, this article marks a full year since I began this column!  Many thanks to those of you who have stuck with me.  You keep me writing.)

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P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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