My favorite author, Philip K. Dick, has a new novel out this month. His previous novel, Ubik, was one of my favorite works by him. Ubik was an explosive look at reality and history and happiness and travel and so much more, one of his rich tapestry books which feels beguilingly simple until you pull back the layers and discover the complexity of the world Dick made.
Dick’s new novel is called Our Friends from Frolix 8. Frolix is not as good as Ubik or many of PKD’s other novels. In fact, Dick mentioned to the fan press that this book was a quickly-written attempt to raise cash in a hurry.
But Our Friends from Frolix 8 is not a bad novel, not at all.
Cover by John Schoenherr
As always, Dick centers his novel around a miserable male protagonist. Nick Appleton is a classic Dickian schlub. He works at the ignoble job of tire regroover, a job his dad had before him, and his grandfather before his dad. But Nick has dreams. No, not for himself. That would be futile in an uncaring world.
Nick has dreams for his son Bobby. As we meet Nick, teenage Bobby is taking the civil service exam in the chance to become an employee of the current Terran government. The government is run by the New Men, evolved superhumans with uncanny abilities to read minds, perform telekinesis, and perform other incredible skills. Bobby has some ability to read minds, so Nick has hopes…
…which are dashed by an uncaring bureaucracy and by the mediocrity of Bobby’s abilities.
In one of the more heartbreaking scenes in a Dick novel, two petty government bureaucrats don’t even bother to look at Bobby’s test scores because they simply don’t care about the boy. The Appletons are Under Men, ordinary people with no ability to advance at all in their society; consequently, there’s just no reason for the bureaucrats to care about this faceless family.
Nick gets more and more angry about Bobby’s fate, in a classic Dickian scene. We feel Appleton’s impotent fury as he literally rages against City Hall to his uncaring wife. As Nick leaves the house to try to figure out how he can help Bobby, Nick begins meeting people who are radicalized to oppose the structure of this impossible world. Through them, he begins to learn about Eric Cordon, leader of the resistance. He soon becomes involved with a group which plans to break Cordon out of government prison.
From there Frolix 8 spins in a few surprising Dickian directions: for one, we meet a council ruler who has the power of telepathy but hates his wife. For another, we spend time with the great Thors Provoni, a man who went into space to learn how to restore Old Men to power and returns to Earth ready to overturn everything that had happened prior to these events. And we witness revolutions and falls from grace and a whole lot of complex existential angst.
This is almost a great novel. Frolix 8 shows all the signs of having been written fast. There are several distracting continuity errors in the book, and this novel demonstrates how Dick often improvises his books rather than working from an outline. That aspect gives this novel the feeling of veering from one storyline to the next, seldom pausing to consider what happened or to give context.
But in its tale of a perversely arranged society, in its tale of a simple man whose smallest dreams are thwarted, in its wildly imaginative tale of Thors Provoni, this actually is a pretty good Dick novel. I found myself upset when Nick was upset, found myself raging mentally about his family's raw deal, and found myself grooving on the way PKD seems to pinball from one idea to the next, scarcely giving me the chance to catch my breath.
Even average Dick is pretty great.
4 stars.
by Brian Collins
Until a couple years ago, I had no idea who D. G. Compton was. I don't keep up with the British writers as much as I ought to; you could consider it an unconscious tendency, sprouting from the Irish part of my heritage. But Compton has written about one novel a year over the past five years and one or two have fallen through the cracks. I have yet to read Synthajoy or Farewell, Earth's Bliss, but I do have his latest, The Steel Crocodile. This is a ponderous and only nominally SFnal novel, but these qualities are mostly to its advantage.
Matthew and Abigail Oliver have hit a snag in their marriage, or rather a few related snags. Matthew is a sociology professor who takes a job working for the Colindale Institute, an international institute of scientists responsible for controlling (advancing as well as sometimes restricting) scientific discoveries in Britain and mainland Europe. The Colindale has come under fire from the CLC (Civil Liberties Committee) over ethical quandaries, including corruption within the institute. One of these CLC guys, Edmund Gryphon, was an old college buddy of Matthew's, and so Gryphon wants Matthew to find out what he can about the Colindale once he's inside. Mere hours after their meeting, police find Gryphon dead—apparently murdered with a laser weapon. The news is a shock to the Olivers, not least because Abigail used to have romantic feelings for Gryphon. Abigail herself is a devout Catholic while Matthew is basically an agnostic, the latter admitting that his faith in the God of Abraham is weak, and also filtered through his wife's genuine devotion. Without Abigail, Matthew would not believe in God.
We're met with a murder mystery in the first chapter, but it turns out that John Henderson, Matthew's predecessor at the Colindale, also died under suspicious circumstances. We have two deaths, as if we're in a detective novel—only there's no detective, no Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe on the case. We do eventually get answers as to who or what killed these men, but Compton is far less interested in solving his own mystery than observing the slowly crumbling relationships of the characters involved in said mystery. The novel is structured such that we alternate between Matthew and Abigail's perspectives, from scene to scene, showing that despite their marriage appearing happy on the surface these are two very different people with different ideas as to what might be happening at the Colindale. Abigail's plot is complicated by her younger brother, Paul, being a wide-eyed revolutionary who has rejected both Matthew's company-man attitude and Abigail's Christian pacifism. These are characters with conflicting loyalties; in other words, they're a lot like real people.
I don't recall there being a given year for the events of the novel, but The Steel Crocodile could just as likely take place a decade from now as anywhen. Compton's near-future Britain is troubled—maybe only slightly more than the Britain of today. There is, of course, a big and very SFnal threat, in the form of the Bohn 507, a super-computer housed at Colindale headquarters. The Bohn is not akin to HAL 9000, but rather is shown to be little more than a tool for the Colindale's director and his dreams of producing what I guess I could describe as a surrogate for God. Ah yes, a computer thinking itself God, I'm sure we haven't heard that one before; but the same time, the point of the Bohn is not to develop a God complex but to provide what all the religion and ethics classes in the world could not. Much like how The Steel Crocodile is a detective novel without a detective, the world of the novel is undoubtedly a Christian one—only God is nowhere to be found. He seems to have gone out for lunch. This is a problem that disturbs Abigail, naturally, although despite SF's tendency towards atheism (or at least indifference at the idea of the Biblical God), Compton does not make light of Abigail's beliefs or taunt her for it. Abigail is indeed one of the best female characters I've read in an SF story as of late, by a considerable margin.
There is also, unfortunately, the sense that The Steel Crocodile does spin its wheels occasionally; at just over 250 pages it could have been trimmed here and there. There is also the sense, between all the internal monologuing (which there is a lot of) and the debates between characters, that Compton really wants his novel to be About Something; luckily for him, it is. We rarely get religiously serious SF novels (Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, James Blish's A Case of Conscience and more recent Black Easter, plus a few others), but if Graham Greene were to write an SF novel (it's possible, but unlikely), it would look something like The Steel Crocodile. I would say, as someone who is not a Catholic or even a Christian, that this is a high point of praise.
I know we’ve all read what feels like a million stories about time travel, but Jack Finney’s latest novel, Time and Again, strips the genre to its skeleton and assembles a different sort of story around it, one that presents a compellingly alternative way to tell a story driven by time travel. Si Morley, a sketch artist working in advertising in New York City, is jolted out of his respectably ordinary life by representatives from a top-secret government project. He has been determined to be the perfect specimen to test a truly surreal hypothesis: that if given enough training, and with a little push from hypnotic suggestion, it might be possible for a person to force themselves back to a specific point in time through willpower alone. To my surprise, this actually works, and Si finds himself trying to navigate the NYC of 1882 in order to solve a decades-old mystery.
Every author who uses NYC as a backdrop at least attempts to pin down a likeness of the city true to their own perceptions, and no good likeness is ever the same as another, but somehow they all feel accurate. I think it's endlessly fun to experience how yet another writer is going to bring to life such a multitudinous city, and here we get two! Finney produces a modern-day NYC that feels suffocatingly huge, a giant on the verge of collapsing under the weight of progress. By contrast, his 1882 NYC is a near-perfect tableau of glittering galas and horse-drawn carriages.
I am not the sort of person to be easily convinced to romanticize New York in the 1800s – the smallpox and smell of horse manure alone is enough to remind me how grateful I am to live in a more comfortable age. But Si has an artist’s eye, and Finney brings his perspective to life so vividly that I really felt like I was seeing this old world through him with no time to dwell on any annoying practicalities. The book is beautifully illustrated with Si’s sketches and photos, and the way he sees the old New York makes a perfectly romantic backdrop for a well-paced mystery.
Absurdly, the book chooses not to elaborate almost at all on the mechanism of time travel, audaciously rejecting the fancy machines and sciencey jargon of other works in the genre. When the explanations I was waiting for did not come, I realized that the story was asking a lot more of my imagination than I was used to. It almost feels too dignified to dirty its hands with pseudo-technical exposition, leaving more room to explore the philosophical and ethical concerns that crop up in the process of trying to engineer human history. If time travel were invented today, exciting as it would be, I do actually think I would be less concerned with how it was made possible and more worried about those with access to it running amok through the past trying to tweak things in their own image. At the very least, I hope that whoever gets to time travel first reads this book and fancies themselves a Si Morley.
Five stars; this one made a believer out of me.
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
This month saw such a bumper crop of books (and a bumper crop of Journey reviewers!) that we've split it in two. This first one covers two of the more exciting books to come out in some time, as well as the usual acceptables and mediocrities. As Ted Sturgeon says: 90% of everything is crap. But even if the books aren't all worth your time, the reviews always are! Dive in, dear readers…
When I was a boy, someone gave me Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. For many years, I would occasionally look at the pictures, but never bothered to read it. I finally did when I was 14 or 15, and I was hooked.
All things Arthur became an obsession. I wasn’t satisfied with modern retellings and hunted long and hard for a decent modernization of Sir Thomas Malory. That led to Continental poets who wrote about Arthur, like Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes. Once I had access to a university library, I discovered the Welsh legends and then the early Medieval and Dark Age historians who mentioned him by name or indirectly. Suddenly, my obsession with King Arthur merged with my obsession with ancient history, and I was off again.
Eventually my ardor cooled due to a lack of new things to learn and the demands of being an adult, but for 15 or 20 years I lived and breathed this stuff. And now, Mary Stewart has brought it all back.
The author is better known around these parts for his sword-and-sorcery yarns about Brak the Barbarian, firmly in the tradition of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan. This new novel is a horse of a different color.
Cover art by Richard Powers
The planet Missouri had a revolution some time before the story begins. Advanced technology and a bureaucratic form of government were replaced by nineteenth century ways of doing things and fierce individualism.
In other words, the place now resembles Hollywood's fantasy of the Old West. There are some so-called savages who play the role of American Indians. Towns are full of outlaws and dance hall girls. There are sheriffs around, supposedly to maintain law and order, but they aren't very effective.
Our long-suffering hero is Zak Randolph, a minor government worker who ekes out a living by supplying souvenirs (such as miniature outhouses) to tourists and staging phony shootouts to entertain visitors from other worlds. He also arranges to have local badmen sent to more civilized planets to amuse those who hire them.
This latter function gets him in trouble. One of the leased gunfighters heads back to Missouri before his contract runs out. Zak has to track him down or risk losing his position. (What keeps him on the wild-and-wooly planet at all are his girlfriend and the presence of native plants that supply minerals that can be made into jewelry. Otherwise, he's a peaceable sort who hates the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later culture of the place.)
Along the way, he has to deal with ruffians who despise him as a coward. There's also the mystery of a legendary gunfighter called Buffalo Yung. Zak isn't sure this terrifying figure really exists. Then he gets reports from various places that he's been shot dead, apparently more than once. And what does this have to do with the disappearing bodies of lawmen killed by Yung?
As luck would have it, the first three novels to be reviewed this month were all by women! They all have something else in common—they each have both merits and demerits that sort of cancel out…neither Brown, Russ, nor Norton quite hit it out of the park this time at bat.
by Victoria Silverwolf
In Memoriam
An unavoidable note of sadness fills this review of a newly published novel. The author died of lymphoma in 1967, at the very young age of 41. With that in mind, let's try to take an objective look at her final novel.
This is a direct sequel to Sibyl Sue Blue. My esteemed colleague Janice L. Newman gave that novel a glowing review. In fact, our own Journey Press saw fit to reprint it in a handsome new format.
Sibyl Sue Blue is back. She's a forty-year-old police detective and a widow with a teenage daughter. She's fond of cigars, gin, fancy clothes, and attractive men.
Two new science fiction novels that fell into my hands are similar in many ways. Both are by British writers and might be classified as action-packed adventure yarns. Each features a rather ordinary hero who gets involved in a secret scientific project of epic proportions. Both protagonists fall in love along the way. Each has a touch of satire and a cynical attitude about politics.
The main difference is that one takes place in the present and the other is set some centuries from now. Let's take a look at the first one.
Our hero has just lost his job and his live-in girlfriend. He worked as a security expert at a research facility, but certain parts of it were off limits to him. A fellow claiming to work for the United Nations hires him to do some unofficial investigating of the place.
I should mention at this point that everybody the protagonist meets refuses to tell him everything that's going on. I suspect this is a way for the author to keep the reader in suspense. It's also worthy of note that the hero, who is also the narrator, casts a jaundiced eye on the world around him.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and members of the Warsaw Pact send troops into Czechoslovakia to suppress the liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring. This part of the novel is torn straight from the headlines.
As the Cold War heats up, things get complicated. There's an accident at the facility that causes two ambulances to rush away from the place, although there's apparently only one victim. The hero runs into a mysterious woman who knows more about the situation than she lets on (like a lot of characters in the novel.) She's also suffering from some kind of disease she won't discuss. As you'd expect, love blooms.
Add in a gigantic hidden complex of underground tunnels and automated submarines. The big secret behind everything involves Mad Science at its maddest. The protagonist and a few allies battle to stop World War Three from breaking out, and we'll finally learn what the numerical title means. (I suppose it's also an allusion to George Orwell's famous novel 1984, but that's not all.)
Not the most plausible plot in the world. You have to accept the fact that there could be a secret project extending over many miles without anybody finding out about it. If you can suspend your disbelief, it's a very readable page-turner.
Let's jump forward hundreds of years. People are rigidly assigned to different levels of society, with their jobs chosen for them. They can't even marry until the powers that be allow them to do so. There are some folks living in the wilderness outside this system. If the previous novel tipped its hat to 1984, this one owes something to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Our hero works for what seems to be the planet's only news agency. His job is only vaguely described, but it seems to be some kind of editing or proofreading position.
The daughter of the boss fancies herself one of those Spunky Girl Reporters from old black-and-white movies. (That's my interpretation, not the author's.) Somehow she came across a reference to something called (you guessed it) the Weisman Experiment. This happened a few decades ago, and the government has repressed all knowledge of it.
The boss tells the protagonist to help his daughter investigate the mysterious experiment. As soon as they set out, somebody tries to kill them. Whenever they track down one of the few surviving people who remember the Weisman Experiment, that person is murdered.
The hero and the daughter (who will, of course, eventually fall in love) are separated by the powers that be before they get too far. The protagonist goes through some brainwashing to straighten him out, but it doesn't quite work.
The rest of the novel takes us to North Africa, where the hero acquires an ally. (This character is a bit embarrassing, as she speaks in an accent and ends almost all her statements with I theenk.) Next we go to an underwater facility, where he's reunited with the daughter. Eventually, we wind up at the estate of an incredibly wealthy fellow, where we finally find out what the heck the Weisman Experiment was all about.
Like the other novel, this is a fast-moving tale with something to say about the way society is set up. Worth reading once.
Three stars.
by Brian Collins
We have two short novels from very different authors, one being a promising young writer and the other one of the more reliable workhorses in the field. Neither novel is all that good, but at the very least I needed something less demanding after I had recently covered Macroscope.
Vinge has written only one or maybe two short stories a year so far, but all of them have been interesting, if not necessarily good. Grimm’s World, his debut novel, is itself an expansion of the novella “Grimm’s Story,” which appeared in Orbit 4 last year. The novel is split into two parts, with the first being “Grimm’s Story,” which as far as I can tell Vinge did not change significantly. If I was just reviewing the first part, I would say it’s fairly good, certainly in keeping with Vinge’s other short fiction. High three to a low four stars.
Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there.
The short of it is that Svir Hedrigs is an astronomy student who gets roped into a scheme by the notorious Tatja Grimm and her crew, those who make the speculative fiction (although here it’s called “contrivance fiction”) magazine Fantasie, a publication that is so old (centuries old, in fact) that its oldest issues seem to have been lost to time, if not for maybe a handful of collectors. The world is Tu, a distant planet that, like Jack Vance’s Big Planet, is vast and yet poor in metals. (Indeed this reads to a conspicuous degree like a Vance pastiche, albeit without Vance’s sardonic humor, and thus it’s not as entertaining.) Something to think about is that characters in an SF story are pretty much never aware that they’re inside a work of SF, and indeed SF as a school of fiction is rarely mentioned, much like how characters in a horror story are often blissfully unaware (for the moment) that they’re birds in a blood-red cage. Yet in Grimm’s World, what we call speculative fiction these days is held as the highest form of literature. It’s a curious case of characters in SF basically realizing that their world itself is SFnal, and therefore the possibilities are near-endless.
Of course the scheme to rescue a complete collection of Fantasie turns out to be a ruse, with Grimm usurping the tyrannical ruler of the single big land mass on this planet, on the falsehood that she is descended from the former monarchy. It’s at this point that the first part ends, and there’s a rather gaping hole in continuity between parts, the result feeling more like two related novellas than a single work. The second part is considerably weaker. What began as a nice planetary adventure turns into something more military-focused, as the people of Tu are terrorized by a race of humanoid aliens, whom Grimm may or may not be in cahoots with. Said aliens take sort of a hands-off approach with the Tu people, provided that their technology doesn’t become too advanced (a high-powered telescope, “the High Eye,” becomes increasingly an object of fascination as the novel progresses), and also that the Tu people reproduce at a rate to the aliens’ liking. What the aliens intend to do with the human surplus is absurd and raises some questions which Vinge never answers. There’s also a love triangle (or perhaps a love square) that I found totally unconvincing, if only because Svir seems to get a hard-on for whatever woman is within his field of vision.
I liked the first part but found the second part a bit of a slog.
Anderson’s writing is comfortable and comforting: rarely surprising, but often (not always) a mild stimulant that can help one during trying times. Just when I think everything might be going to shit, there’s a new Poul Anderson novel—possibly even two of them. The Rebel Worlds is short enough that it could’ve easily made up one half of an Ace Double, except this is from Signet. A few years ago we got Ensign Flandry, which saw the early days in the career of Dominic Flandry, clearly one of Anderson’s favorite recurring characters (although he’s not one of mine). The Rebel Worlds takes place not too long after Ensign Flandry, with Flandry now Lieutenant Commander and with more responsibilities, but still very much the playboy.
Hugh McCormac, a respected admiral of the Empire, is imprisoned, only to break out and go rogue, taking those loyal to him along for the ride. The prison breakout blossoms into a full-on rebellion across multiple worlds, which is a rather big problem for the Empire. Flandry, despite knowing that the Empire is on the brink of collapse and that “the Long Night” will begin soon enough, stays aligned with those in power—perhaps a sentiment Anderson himself shares, given he supports the war effort in Vietnam despite said war effort turning more sour by the week. Indeed Flandry’s seeming contradiction, between his extreme individualism and his allegiance to what he knows is a dying government, is both the core of his character and something he shares with his creator. We also know, from other Flandry stories, that the Empire will in fact soon collapse and that the Long Night, a centuries-long era of barbarism and disconnect across many worlds, will soon commence. And we know that Flandry is in no imminent danger, for better or worse. The real tension, then, lies in McCormac and his wife Kathryn, who has been taken captive by the Empire on the basis that she might cough up valuable info on her husband.
Something I admire about Anderson, despite sharply disagreeing with his politics, is that he’s evidently fond of anti-heroes (Flandry, Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn, Gunnar Heim), but he also sometimes concocts anti-villains, in that these characters are technically antagonists but meant to be taken as sympathetic or noble. Despite being a thorn in the Empire’s side, McCormac is basically a good man who cares about those who work for him, never mind he also loves Kathryn very much. Much less sympathetic is Snelund, a planetary governor who is horrifically corrupt, and who also wants to put his filthy hands on Kathryn while she is his prisoner; yet this man also watches over Flandry’s assignment. It should not come as a surprise then that Flandry rescues Kathryn and hides out with her on the planet Dido, which has some unusual alien life. It also shouldn’t be surprising that the two fall in love, although understandably Kathryn still cares for McCormac and isn’t eager to be swept off her feet. (I also must say Anderson tries what I think is a 19th century Southern aristocratic accent with Kathryn, and it’s a bit odd.)
So business as usual for Flandry.
The major problem with The Rebel Worlds is that it’s too short. This is a problem Anderson’s novels sometimes have, but it seems to me that scenes and maybe entire chapters that would have fleshed out the conflict are simply not here. Sure, the plot is basically coherent, but we’re far more often told about things than shown them, to the point where I wonder if Anderson was working with a deadline that he struggled with, even with his near-superhuman writing speed. It’s a fine novel that could have easily been better, with some more time.
A solid three stars.
by Cora Buhlert
A New Chancellor and a New Era
Willy Brandt is sworn in as chancellor of West Germany.
In my last article, I mentioned that West Germany was about to have a federal parliamentary election. Now, that election has come and gone and has led to sweeping political change. Because for the first time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, i.e. twenty years ago, the chancellor is not a member of the conservative party CDU.
Since 1966, West Germany has been governed by a so-called great coalition of the two biggest parties, the above mentioned conservative CDU and the social-democratic party SPD. The great coalition wasn't particularly popular, especially among young people, but due to their large and stable majority, they also got things done.
When the election results started coming in the evening of September 28 and the percentages of the vote won by the CDU and SPD respectively were very close, a lot of people expected that this meant that the great coalition would continue. And indeed, this is what many in the CDU and even the SPD would have preferred.
At home with the Brandts: West Germany's new chancellor Willy Brandt with his Norwegian born wife Rut and their youngest son Matthias.
However, SPD head Willy Brandt, former mayor of West Berlin and West German foreign secretary and vice chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's great coalition cabinet, had different ideas. And so he chose to enter into coalition negotiations not with the CDU, but with the small liberal party FDP. These negotiations bore fruit and the 56-year-old Willy Brandt was sworn in as West Germany's fourth chancellor and head of a social-democratic/liberal coalition government on October 22.
West German president Gustav Heinemann and the new chancellor Willy Brandt shake hands.
Personally, I could not be happier about this development. I've been a supporter of the SPD for as long as I've been able to vote for them (sadly, I spent the first years of my voting age life under a regime where there were no elections) and I have liked Willy Brandt since his time as mayor of West Berlin. What is more, Willy Brandt is not a former Nazi like his predecessor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger, but spent the Third Reich in exile in Norway and Sweden. Of course, "not a former Nazi" should be a low bar to clear, but sadly West Germany is still infested with a lot of former Nazis masquerading as democrats. And indeed, the one blemish on the otherwise positive results of the 1969 federal election is that the far right party NPD, successor of the banned Nazi Party, managed to gain 3.8 percent of the vote, though thankfully the five percent hurdle keeps them out of our parliament.
Willy Brandt and his (very male) cabinet pose for a photo on the steps outside Villa Hammerschmidt, seat of the West German president.
In one of his first speeches as chancellor, Willy Brandt said he and his government want to "risk more democracy" and promised long overdue reforms. He also wants to initiate talks with East European governments to thaw the Cold War at least a little. I wish him and his cabinet all the best.
A Magical Mystery Tour: The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland
During my latest trip to my trusty import bookstore, I came across an intriguing looking paperback in the good old spinner rack called The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland. From the title, I assume that this would be a fantasy tale along the lines of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The Unicorn Girl, however, is a lot stranger than that.
The Unicorn Girl starts off not in a far-away fantasyland, but in a place that – at least viewed from this side of the Atlantic – seems almost as fantastic, namely a coffeehouse cum performance venue called the Trembling Womb on the outskirts of San Francisco. Our hero Michael (a.k.a. Michael Kurland, the author) is sitting at a table, trying to compose a sonnet, while his friend Chester (a.k.a. Chester Anderson, the author of The Butterfly Kid) is performing on stage, when all of a sudden the girl of Michael's dreams walks in – quite literally, because this very girl has been appearing in Michael's dreams since childhood.
Michael does what anyone would do in that situation: he gets up and talks to the girl. Turns out that her name is Sylvia and that she's looking for her lost unicorn. Michael understandably assumes that Sylvia is playing a joke on him, especially since he had addressed her in the sort of pseudo-medieval language you'd hear at a Renaissance Fair. Sylvia, however, is deadly serious. She tells Michael and Chester that she's a circus performer and that her unicorn Adolphus ran away, when they stepped off the train. There's only one problem: train service into San Francisco ceased six years before. As far as I can ascertain from this side of the Atlantic, this isn't true and San Francisco does have train service, as befits a major metropolis, all which suggests that Michael and Chester live in the future, even though their surroundings seem very much like something you could find in San Francisco right now.
When Michael and Chester ask Sylvia, what year it is, she replies "1936", so Michael and Chester assume that time travel is involved. However, the truth is still stranger than this, for Sylvia seems to have no idea where she is. True, San Francisco today is very different from San Francisco in 1936, but you'd assume that Sylvia would at least recognise the name of the city. The fact that she keeps calling California "Nueva España" is also a clue that Sylvia hails from further afield than our version of 1936.
When Michael, Chester and Sylvia head out to look for the missing unicorn, they are met by some Sylvia's circus friends: Dorothy, an attractive but otherwise normal human woman, Giganto, a cyclops from Arcturus, and Ronald, a centaur. Upon seeing this strange trio, Michael and Chester immediately assume that they are experiencing drug-induced hallucinations – as do two random bystanders. It's a reasonable assumption to make, though two people normally don't experience the same hallucinations, even if they took the same drugs. And Chester swears that he hasn't slipped Michael any drugs…
Methinks we're not in Kansas – pardon, San Francisco – anymore
Before our heroes can get to the bottom of this mystery, they split up to search for the missing unicorn, only to find a flying saucer. There is a mysterious blip and Michael, Chester, Sylvia and Dorotha suddenly find themselves elsewhere and elsewhen, namely in the early Victorian era or rather a version of it that is very reminiscent of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories. I guess they should count themselves lucky it wasn't "The Queen Bee" instead.
The sojourn in the Victorian era according to Randall Garrett ends, when our heroes find themselves falsely accused of jewellery theft (and the way the true culprits accomplished those thefts is truly fascinating). During their escape, there is another blip and our heroes find themselves in World War II in the middle of a battlefield…
For most of its pages, The Unicorn Girl is a picaresque romp through time, space and dimensions. Literary allusions abound, for in addition to the Victorian era according to Randall Garrett, our heroes also briefly visit J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's all great fun, though eventually, there needs to be an explanation for this weirdness. And so, Michael and Sylvia, who have been temporarily separated from Chester and Dorothy, figure out – with the help of Tom Waters, a friend of Michael's and Chester's who'd disappeared earlier – that the blips always happen in moments of danger and crisis. They provoke another blip and finally land in a world that at least is aware that there is a problem with visitors from other times and universes showing up in their world, even if they have no idea why this is happening.
Turns out that all the different time lines and universes are converging, which may well mean the end of this world and any other. Luckily, there is a way to fix this issue and send everybody back to their own universe. The drawback is that solving the problem will be very dangerous. What is more, Michael, Chester and Tom on the one hand and Sylvia, Dorothy and the unicorn (with whom Sylvia has been reunited by now) on the other will return to different universes, even though Michael and Sylvia as well as Chester and Dorothy have fallen in love amidst all the chaos…
A Trippy Delight
The Unicorn Girl is not the sort of book I would normally have sought out, since I'm not a big fan of psychedelic science fiction. However, I'm glad that I read this book, because it's a true delight.
The novel is suffused with humour and wordplay, whether it's the tendency of the Victorians from the Randall Garrett inspired world to speak in very long, very complicated sentences or Michael parodying a wine connoisseur by evaluating plain water. The dialogue frequently sparkles such as when Sylvia asks, "Do you not travel to far-off planets?" and Chester replies, "We barely travel to nearby planets."
Unusually for the Galactoscope, our monthly round-up of new science fiction publications, we're starting this article with a stop press. It's simply too big an item to ignore.
If you read the papers this morning, you know the big news was that the Mets played the winning game of the World Series last night, against the Orioles. Competing for inches on the front page was the largest, the most coordinated, the most widespread anti-war demonstration this country has yet experienced.
Demonstrators in Washington
One million people, in every state of the union, participated in Vietnam Moratorium Day. Originally planned as a nationwide strike, instead, attendees made highly their protests highly visible—and peaceful. A quarter of a million marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation's capital, echoing Dr. King's march on Washington in 1963. 100,000 gathered in Boston, with similar numbers protesting in New York (where Mayor John Lindsay is rumored to have given tacit support) and Miami. My local rag reported that there were counter-protests, too, but I have to wonder how big they were.
Closer to home, 1,500 gathered in Los Angeles to burn their draft cards. And at Palomar Community College, just ten minutes from my home, hundreds of students gathered for a "Teach-In". When word got out that protestors might take down the flag in front of the student union, a squad of football players was stationed at its base. No altercation occurred.
Protestors at Palomar
Will this demonstration alter the course of a war, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese? A spokesman for Richard Milhouse Nixon said last night, "I don't think the President can be affected by a mass demonstration of any kind." Comedian Dick Gregory retorted to the crowd in New York, "The President says nothing you kids do will have any effect on him. Well, I suggest he make one long-distance call to the LBJ ranch. "
Card-burners in Los Angeles
In any event, this may be just the first salvo fired in a peace offensive. Washington protest organizer Sam Brown said last night, "If there is no change in Vietnam policy, if the President does not respond, there will be a second moratorium."
And now on to book news—are this month's science fiction titles as noteworthy?
Copies of Ranger and Look and Learn from my collection inside the official binders
Regular readers of the Journey will probably know I am a big fan of British comic books. They may even recognize the name Look and Learn due to it containing the multi-Galactic Star winning Trigan Empire (formerly of Ranger).
However, I have not talked much about Look and Learn itself. It is by far the most expensive comic book on the market at 1/6-, almost triple the price of your standard copy of June or TV Century 21. In spite of this it has retained a significant market presence by presenting itself as an educational magazine for young people, in contrast to the naughtiness of Dennis the Menace, or the pulp space adventures of Dan Dare.
This, however, is not merely a trick. They have both some of the best comic strips on the market and non-fiction articles–better than you see in most magazines aimed at adults. Looking at the contents of a June issue we have:
Ongoing comic book adaptation of Ben-Hur
How to prevent forest fires and how to apply for a career in forestry
A short story on a Gypsy boy winning the Natural History Prize
The life of the current Prince of Wales
An interview with a Chicago police officer on what crime fighting was like in the 1930s
Story of the ship Emile St. Pierre in the American Civil War
How the Magna Carta came to be
Regular series of identification of coins, planes, stamps and trains
Rob Riley comic: Adventures and daily life of English school boys
Laugh with Fiddy: Short uncaptioned humour comics
Wildcat Wayne: Action adventures of a troubleshooter for an oil company
Trigan Empire: Tales from the history of an interstellar empire, centering around its ruling dynasty
Dan Dakota – Lone Gun: Western comic
Origin and meaning of the saying The Widow’s Mite
Diary entries from James Woodforde in 1786
The history of RADAR in British aviation
Ongoing prose serialization of The Mark of the Pentagram, a tale of slavery in the 18th century
How tea came to be imported to Britain
Marsh land reclamation efforts on river estuaries
How William and Dorothy Wordsworth influenced each other’s work
Picture series on how heavy loads have been transported over the centuries
Feature on the novel Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell
About the game Takraw
Picture series on Iceland.
As such, it is much easier for a kid to justify dropping their pocket money on this each week when they can also show their parents a page on the lifecycle of a butterfly and give them a series of facts from the life of Jane Austen between reading about spaceflight and the adventures of cowboys.
Example illustations for I Am David (left) and Tarka the Otter (Right) (uncredited)
However, outside of the comic strips Space Cadet and Trigan Empire, SF content is rare inside. Keeping to its educational mode, it tends towards historical fiction or uncovering the natural world. With serials tending to be works like The Silver Sword, Tarka The Otter or I Am David.
In fact, I cannot recall any prose serials that have been science fiction, before now. As such, with adult responsibilities getting the better of me, I hadn’t paid too much attention to these pieces. It was only when flicking back through them recently that I perked up at the name Peter Dickinson.
Last year he published The Weathermonger, a book that was much enjoyed by the folks here. This was not only by the same author but Heartsease also takes places in England under The Changes. It was serialised in 10 parts (from 8th March to 10th May 1969).
This is set in an earlier time in the history of this world. Whilst Weathermonger is set when The Changes are a well-established way of life, this is in the earlier stages of these events. As we are told at the beginning:
This is a story about an England where everyone thinks machines are wicked. The time is now, or soon; but you have to imagine that five years before the story starts, because of a strange enchantment, people suddenly turned against tractors and buses and central heating and nuclear reactors and electric razors. Anybody who tried to use a machine was called a witch or stoned or drowned.
Illustrator uncredited
In the Cotswolds, Margaret and her cousin Jonathan live with her Aunt Alice and Uncle Peter, plus two servants Lucy and Tim, the latter of which is unable to speak. Near their village, an outsider is found using a radio and is sentenced to be stoned as a witch.
The horror of witnessing the stoning seems to break Jonathan out of the hatred the adults have, so he works with Margaret, Lucy and Tim to free the man condemned for witchcraft. Hiding him he reveals his name is Otto, he is an American sent to investigate the situation in Britain when he was caught. The children agree to get him back to his ship.
However, the local Sexton, Davey Gordon, is still on the hunt for Otto. What’s more he is suspicious of Lucy and Tim, given the latter’s disability. They all form a plan to help him escape using an old tugboat called Heartsease.
Illustrator uncredited
I can understand why this would appeal to the editors of Look and Learn. With the removal of technology, it resembles historical fiction and does not have the magical elements of The Weathermonger. In addition, it contains information on how locks work, so it can be marketed as educational.
It is a much smaller tale than The Weathermonger, just about young people trying to do the right thing as they get caught up in horrific events. But, for that, it becomes a bit of a deeper tale. As well as having plenty of adventure, it looks at how we treat others and posits some darker reasons why things may be happening than is revealed in the prior novel:
“…they’ve done so many awful things they’ve got to believe they were right. The more they hurt and kill, they more they’ve been proving to themselves they’ve been doing God’s will all along.”
Gollancz book edition. Unknown illustrator
Based on some fag-packet-maths I estimate the word count here is somewhere between a third to a half of what is in the book version, so there is likely more story to be told.
But for this serialized form, I will give it Four Stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Bigger and Better?
Two novels that are expanded versions of earlier, shorter works fell into my hands recently. Will this added verbiage improve them? Let's find out.
Anonymous cover art. Human and pterodactyl number one.
This book started life as a novelette called Beyond the Ebon Wall in the October 1964 issue of Fantastic. I reviewed it at the time, giving it two stars. That's not a good omen, but let's not give up hope.
Our hero is inside an experimental starship. He winds up near a planet that seems to be missing an entire hemisphere. Forget all this science fiction stuff, because the rest of the book is pure fantasy.
Landing on the weird world, the guy finds out that the place is divided in half by a gigantic wall. He sees two naked men fighting and an elderly fellow with a scarred face. The latter seems very familiar, which is a clue as to the novel's major plot twist.
The protagonist passes through the seemingly solid wall as if it weren't there. He meets a double for the elderly guy and hears a huge magpie recite an enigmatic poem. This begins an odyssey that involves becoming a galley slave, taking part in a hunt for a gigantic beast (which develops a bond with a hero), and battling a pirate captain allied with a sorcerer. It all winds up where it started.
This is the plot of the novelette, so what's new? The middle section of the novel, detailing the hero's adventures as a galley slave, is much longer. There's a vivid scene of the protagonist and his shipmates climbing down a gigantic cliff.
The new version is a slight improvement on the old one. The explanation for what's going on, involving multiple continua and time travel, still doesn't make much sense, but it's a little less incoherent that before.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Human and pterodactyl number two.
A shorter version of this novel appeared in 1962 as half of an Ace Double, under the title Secret Agent of Terra. It was reviewed by my esteemed colleague Rosemary Benton, who gave the twin volume four stars as a whole.
The setting is a planet settled by human refugees from a nova that wiped out another colony world many centuries ago. The survivors have evolved into a medieval, feudal kind of society. Carrig is the dominant city-state. The place has an ancient ritual of choosing its leaders in an unusual fashion.
Contenders for the title of regent board gliders and try to kill the biggest and strongest specimen of the giant flying beasts that inhabit the planet. (The winner is called a regent because the creature is considered to be the true king.) If nobody slays the animal, which definitely puts up a good fight, the former regent retains the title.
A couple of strangers show up, one of whom easily kills the so-called king with what is obviously highly advanced technology. It's clear to the reader, if not the locals, that they're from another world. Along the way they kill a fellow who discovers their nefarious plan.
The victim was secretly an agent for the folks who keep an eye on refugee planets like this one, being careful to avoid interfering with their natural development, but also making sure other people don't take advantage of them.
When the dead man stops sending messages back to his superiors, they send a fledging agent, along with an older, more experienced one, to the planet to find out what happened. (The young agent is something of a snob and unpopular with the others, so this is one last chance for her to prove herself during what is supposed to be a routine mission.)
They don't know the bad guys are there (they think the deceased agent has gone silent for some other, less sinister reason) so they're taken completely by surprise when an enemy spaceship attacks. The young agent winds up in a frozen wasteland. We don't find out what happened to the older man until later.
As luck would have it, she joins forces with the fellow who was the favorite to become the next regent. Both of them win an unexpected ally in the form of one of the flying creatures, who turns out to be a lot more intelligent than they thought.
Like MacApp's novel, this is strictly an adventure story. The big difference is that Brunner offers a tighter, more unified plot (even if it does depend on some remarkable coincidences.) It's not a complex, ambitious work like Stand on Zanzibar or The Jagged Orbit, but it's highly competent entertainment.
Last year I reviewed the first book in Alexei Panshin's "Anthony Villiers" series, Star Well . I praised the book for its wry, often post-modern take on heroic fiction, digging Panshin's frequent absurd sidebars and silly takes on events.
Now the third book of the Villiers series is out, and Masque World offers much the same as his earlier book: it's absurd and wise, clever and sometimes frustrating, and a pretty delightful "shaggy dog" story.
cover by Kelly Freas
This time Villiers and his pal, the Trog named Torve (a deliberately odd alien creature who is thoroughly uncanny for most people) have found their way to Delbalso, "a semi-autonomic dependency of the Nashuite Empire," as the introductory text informs us. When there, the duo gets deeply involved in all kinds of affairs in the kingdom, many centered around Villiers's uncle Lord Semichastny who is obsessed and addicted to melons (did you know there are over 100 different types of melons? Semichastny can tell you all about that topic, and many more, as if he's some sort of savant or young child in adult form).
Cultures are games played to common rules — for convenience. The High Culture, while not superior to very much, is a fair-to-middling game, and that is all.
There's also an angry robot bulter who seems to resent his subservient role and who tells spooky stories to the other mechanical creatures in Semichastny's castle, and there's a Semichastny friend who gets transformed when he puts on a costume, and there's a cult who seem incredibly happy – perhaps too happy for their own good.
Monism promises only one thing, to make you very very happy. There is a catch, of course. To be happy as a Monist, you must accept Monist definitions of happiness. If you can — you have a blissful life ahead of you. Congratulations.
A lot of this story, therefore, centers around the idea of identity, how to shed identity and how to transform identity; how identity conforms to crowds and how identity stands alone. This all does a wonderful job of showcasing Panshin's elusive commentary on the human condition. As becomes clear by the end, it's the humor and commentary which matter here, not the story.
Do places dream of people until they return?
For the longest time I kind of fought this book, trying hard to make sense of the twists and turns of its plot. Until, that is, I realized that plot is meant to be arbitrary and somewhat confusing. Its twists and turns reflect the mindset of Mr. Panshin, and that and his wordplay – highlighted here as excerpts – are the key things he wants to share with readers.
Holidays are no pleasure for anyone but children, and they are a pleasure only for children only because they seem new. Holidays are no pleasure to those who schedule them. Holidays are for people who need to be formally reminded to have a good time and believe it is safer to warm up an old successful party than to chance the untried.
Masque World is very loose and fun, a bit arbitrary and silly, and I enjoyed it alright. The book feels a bit indulgent at times, and Panshin's having a bit of a goof, but it's well worth 60¢ and 3 hours of your time.
The ending promises a fourth book in the series, to be called The Universal Pantograph. I do hope we get to spend more time in this wildly discursve world of the one and only Anthony Villiers.
I had never encountered any works of fiction written by Margaret St. Clair before reading The Shadow People. The story’s premise is wonderfully dark and imaginative but the reader’s sense of wonder is drowned out by the book’s glaring faults.
cover by Jeff Jones
Aldridge, our hero, descends into a strange and alien underworld in search of his girlfriend who has gone missing. He finds her while navigating this strange dimension, but something about her has been irrevocably altered. Even so, Aldridge seeks a way back to the human world for himself and for the love of this life. When he/they finally returns to the surface, he finds that during his absence, human civilization was twisted into a dark, futuristic dystopia where people are now heavily policed and managed like cattle.
The fact that a female author would center a male character in her work feels like some kind of betrayal. I understand that science fiction tends to be a male-dominated genre, where only men can be the heroes and only men are expected to save the day. But Carol is the one who disappears into the fae realm first. Why does she need to sit on her laurels and wait for The Man to come and save her?
Furthermore, Carol is transformed into a mindless shell of a human, devoid of any ability to express any will of her own or even think for herself. Ultimately, The Man must dictate the woman’s fate. So much for the Women’s Rights Movement. There is a part of me that expects female authors to push back against such demeaning notions and St. Clair, in very bad taste, seems to capitulate to this male chauvinist ideology. Perhaps it was this bias that made it impossible for me to resonate with this story’s protagonist.
Aldridge is a canned character. He is everything a heroic male protagonist “ought” to be and possesses very little depth or complexity in personality. He responds “correctly” to every situation and never seems to doubt or question himself. This leaves a discerning reader with little choice but to question his humanity.
Another possible reason the story rankled was the way elves are portrayed in The Shadow People. St. Clair's version runs counter to the commonly held mental image of elves, portraying them as grotesque and malevolent, instead of beautiful, good-willed, and elegant. St. Clair’s elves are more like the lesser known spriggans of elven lore. This, I agree, is very clever of St. Clair but still, broadly classifying these beings as “elves” felt like needlessly shattering the average reader’s fanciful notions about fae-kind.
There are some disconcerting allusions here to the alienation and institutionalized oppression of the Negro people. As a black woman, I felt that there was a certain lack of sensitivity in drawing these parallels while also side-stepping the cruel reality plaguing modern society.
The imagery in The Shadow People is visceral and draws the reader into every moment. The events of the story are quite dramatic and would make a great film. For some reason, though, none of this resonated with me. I could not fully appreciate or enjoy reading this book nor could I quite rid myself of the vague suspicion that this author had to be a man, a misogynist at that, writing under the guise of a female author.
2.5 stars.
West of Sol
by George Pritchard
Postmarked the Stars
Cover by R. M. Powers
There is a phrase, deja vu, which refers to feeling or seeing something that you have not interacted with before, yet seems intensely familiar. These are now believed to be psychic echoes, but it is a useful term for Andre Norton's latest work, Postmarked the Stars. I was excited to begin this, as the last thing I read of hers was Star Man’s Son, which I enjoyed deeply and still own a copy of.
I want to emphasize that I did not hate this book, nor did I find it incompetent, but reading Postmarked feels like watching a piston engine. Smooth and efficient and automatic, but always quite obviously a machine. This is the fourth entry in the Solar Queen adventures, although no previous books need to be read to understand this one. The previous book in this series came out a decade ago, but I am not particularly familiar with what interest there was, or is.
Dane Thorson, assistant cargo master to the Free Trader ship Solar Queen, discovers that a strange, radioactive box on board is causing the creatures near it to change, becoming larger and more intelligent. Before the crew can figure out what to do with this information, the ship is caught in a tractor beam, and they are dragged to the planet’s surface. Dane, Tau the medical officer, and the psychic cat end up separated into a search party. A group of dead miners are found, an enormous insect monster is battled, before another tractor beam drags them and the planetary ranger onwards towards a secret base in unexplored territory. It all seems to be connected to that strange, radioactive stone!
Is there indeed gold in them thar hills?
One thing I have always enjoyed about Norton's writing, particularly given the genres she works in, is the equal footing she gives to non white characters. Even the names she gives to background characters vary in ways that speak to strength in differences amongst the stars — names from the Indian subcontinent right alongside Welsh, Jewish, and Chinese! For another example, a prospector type is introduced, and it's only mentioned half a chapter later that he is dark-skinned.
This story is a space Western, plain and simple. The recent movie, Moon Zero Two [review coming out October 18] is my immediate point of comparison, but this has been a rich vein in the genre for a long time. The potential for racism in the story is, for better or worse, replaced by that dullest of Westerns, the claim jumper plot, combined with the Pony Express or stagecoach robbery.
Norton has been publishing continuously for almost two decades at this point. Maybe she needs a break, taking a chance to look at the New Wave trends and use them for her own. I know that, given time, she can make them shine the way Star Man’s Son pushed the boundaries of boy’s adventure novels. Norton can do better, and has, but Postmarked the Stars does nothing at all.
[And now, for your reading pleasure, a clutch of books representing the science fiction and fantasy books that have crossed our desk for review this month!]
by Victoria Silverwolf
Ye Gods!
Two new fantasy novels, both with touches of science fiction, feature theological themes. One deals with deities that are now considered to be purely mythological, the other relates to one of the world's major living religions. Let's take a look.
Fourth Mansions, by R. A. Lafferty
Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.
The title of this strange novel comes from a book written by Saint Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Christian mystic of the sixteenth century. This work, known as The Interior Castle or The Mansions in English, compares various stages in the soul's spiritual progress to mansions within a castle. From what I can tell from a little research, the Fourth Mansion is the stage at which the natural and the supernatural intersect.
(I'm sure I'm explaining this badly. Interested readers can seek out a copy of Saint Teresa's book for themselves.)
I understand that Lafferty is a devout Catholic, so this connection between his latest novel and what is considered to be a classic of Christian literature must be more than superficial. Be that as it may, let's see if we can make any sense out of a very weird book.
Our hero is Fred Foley, a reporter who is said to be not very bright, but who seems to have some kind of special insight or perception as to events beyond the mundane. (A sort of Holy Fool, perhaps.) He gets involved in multiple conspiracies of folks, who may be something other than just ordinary human beings, out to change the world.
There are four such groups, said to be not quite fit for either Heaven or Earth. Each one is symbolized by an animal.
The Snakes, also known as the Harvesters, are a group of seven people who blend their psychic powers to influence the minds of others. They are intent on bringing about a sort of hedonistic apocalypse. Their connection to Foley and other characters allows for telepathic communication, and sets the plot in motion.
The Toads are folks who are reincarnated, or somehow take over new bodies. (It's a little vague.) Foley's investigation into one such person starts the novel. They intend to release a plague, wiping out most of humanity and ruling over the survivors.
The Badgers are people who are something like spiritual rulers of a kind of parallel world that most ordinary people can't perceive. Foley pays a visit to a couple of these seemingly benign people for information. In one case, this involves a trip to a mountain in Texas that shouldn't be there.
The Unfledged Falcons are would-be fascists, military leaders trying to take over the world by force. Only one such person appears in the book, a Mexican fellow named Miguel Fuentes. He gets involved when the Snakes try to influence an American named Michael Fountain (see the connection in names?) and wind up entering his mind by mistake.
I would be hard pressed to try to describe all the bizarre things that happen. Lafferty has a way of describing extraordinary events in deadpan fashion. (We're very casually told, for example, that one character brought a dead man back to life when he was a boy. One very minor character is a demon, and another one is an alien.)
The book's combination of whimsey and allegory is unique, to say the least. There's a lot of dialogue that sounds like nothing anybody would ever say in real life. Did I understand it all? Certainly not. Did I enjoy the ride? Yep.
Four stars.
Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny
Cover art by James Starrett.
Zelazny's recent novel Lord of Light offered a futuristic twist on Buddhism and Hinduism. This one makes use of ancient Egyptian gods, as well as a bit of Greek mythology. There are also a lot of original concepts, making for a very mixed stew indeed.
The time is the far future, when humanity has settled multiple planets. Don't expect a space opera, however.
We begin in the House of the Dead, ruled by Anubis. He has a servant who has lost his memory and his name. Anubis gives him the name Wakim, and sends him to the Middle Worlds (the physical realm) to destroy the Prince Who Was A Thousand. Meanwhile, Osiris, who rules the House of Life, sends his son Horus on the same errand.
You see, Anubis and Osiris keep the population of the Middle Worlds in balance, bringing life and death in equal amounts. The Prince threatens this system with the possibility of immortality. Although the two gods have the same goal, they are also rivals, so their champions battle each other as well as the Prince.
This is a greatly oversimplified description of the basic plot. A lot more goes on, with many equally god-like characters. There's a sort of scavenger hunt for three sacred items, with the protagonists hopping around from planet to planet in search of them.
Zelazny experiments with narrative techniques, from poetry to a play. There's some humor, as demonstrated by a cult that worships a pair of shoes. (They actually play an important role in the plot.) The pace is frenzied, with plenty of purple prose.
Full understanding of what the heck is really going on doesn't happen until late in the book, when we learn the actual identities of Wakim and the Prince. Suffice to say that this requires a lengthy description of apocalyptic events that took place long before the story begins.
Some readers are going to find this novel disjointed and overwritten. Others are likely to be swept away by the richness of the author's imagination. I'm leaning in the latter direction.
Roger Zelazny’s been busy this month! His new novel Damnation Alley expands his novella of the same name into an action piece which is exciting enough but ultimately unsatisfying, a sort of postapocalyptic pony express with futuristic vehicles and implausible characters.
Cover of Damnation Alley by Jack Gaughan
The story is set in a relatively near-future USA after a nuclear war which has split it into isolated states within a radiation-ravaged wasteland, the only relatively safe passage through which is a corridor known as Damnation Alley. There are pockets of radiation, giant mutant animals and insects, tornadoes and killer dust storms. The descriptions of these is the book’s real strength, with some of them verging on the genuinely poetic. Our protagonist is Hell Tanner, a former Hell’s Angel who is offered a pardon for his crimes by the State of California, if he’ll deliver a shipment of vaccines to Boston, which has been hit by an outbreak of plague. Of course, this necessitates driving through Damnation Alley, but never fear, Tanner is also driving a super-tough vehicle bristling with weaponry.
The whole thing is almost laughably macho in places, and I say that as someone who really quite likes both cars and adventure stories. Tanner is that implausible archetype, the bad guy who nonetheless somehow has other people’s best interests at heart. However, there’s also some nice contrasts set up between Tanner and the criminal world he inhabits and the much more normal parts of society he encounters on his journey, where people seem to be on the whole generally decent and kind, making Tanner’s casual violence seem all the more out of place.
The book has a lot of problems. Some are clearly the result of padding it out to novel length, with several episodes which go nowhere and add little to the story. The characterisation of everyone aside from Tanner is weak to nonexistent. In particular, the main female character, Cordy, is a frustrating cipher: she is a woman who Tanner essentially abducts, and yet she shows none of the emotions one might expect under the circumstances, while Tanner seemingly comes to think of her as his girlfriend despite neither of them making any moves in that direction.
However, the biggest problem is that there are too many holes in the story for it to stay afloat. Despite the devastation of the land around it, the state of California somehow still has the resources to build giant armoured cars bristling with every kind of weapon from bullets to flamethrowers. Only two human beings are apparently capable of making the trip from California to Boston, which is surprising given the aforementioned level of technology and that there is clearly no shortage of young men with a death wish. Tanner makes it almost to Boston before encountering anyone who makes a serious effort to steal the vaccines, which I also find somewhat implausible. And so on, and so on.
Damnation Alley held my attention for the duration of a train journey and had nicely surreal, well-paced prose in places, but it was just too unbelievable for me to really enjoy it. Two and a half stars.
by Brian Collins
Since he returned to writing some half a dozen years ago, Robert Silverberg has tried to reintroduce himself as a more “serious” writer. This is not to say his rate of output has slowed down in favor of more refined work; if anything the past few years have been the busiest for him since the ‘50s. This year alone we have gotten enough novels from Silverberg that a bit of a catch-up is in order. The first on my plate, Across a Billion Years, hit store shelves a few months ago, from The Dial Press (I believe this is Silverberg’s first book with said publisher), and it seems to have flown under the radar—possibly because there’s no paperback edition, and also it might be aimed at younger readers. The second book we have here, To Live Again, is from Doubleday, and it too is a hardcover original; but unlike Across a Billion Years, To Live Again is a new release, fresh out of the oven.
It’s the 24th century, and humanity has not only spread to other worlds but encountered several intelligent alien races along the way. Tom Rice is a 22-year-old archaeologist on an expedition to find the ruins of a bygone race called the High Ones, who apparently lived a billion years ago (hence the title) but who have since vanished. Whether or not the High Ones have gone extinct is one of the novel’s core mysteries, although Silverberg takes his time raising this question. The novel is told as a series of diary entries, or rather messages Tom sends to his sister Lorie. In a curious but also frustrating move, Lorie is arguably the most interesting character in the novel, yet we never see or hear her, as she’s not only away from the action but stuck in a hospital bed for an indefinite period. Lorie is a telepath, and enough people are “TP” to make up their own faction, although telepathy only works one-way and Tom himself is not a telepath. The one positive surprise Silverberg includes here is finding a way to tie telepathy together with the mystery of the High Ones, but obviously I won’t say how he does it.
As for bad surprises, well…
Even taking into account that Tom is a young adult who also has personal hang-ups (his father wanted him to enter real estate), his treatment of his colleagues is abhorrent in the opening stretch. He dismisses the aliens on the team as mostly “diversity” hires and has a standoffish relationship with Kelly, the female android on the team, whom he more than once compares to a “voluptuous nineteen-year-old.” Why someone of Tom’s age would make such a comparison is befuddling…unless you were really a lecherous man approaching middle age and not a recent college graduate. There are a few other humans here, but the only human woman present is Jan, whom Tom gradually takes a liking to—just not enough to do anything when he sees Leroy, a male colleague, sexually assault Jan near enough that he could have intervened. This happens early in the novel, and I have to admit that Tom’s indifference regarding Jan’s wellbeing, a weakness in character he never really apologizes for, cast a cloud over my enjoyment of the rest of the novel. I kept wondering when the other shoe would drop. That Tom and Jan’s relationship turns romantic despite the former’s callousness only serves to rub salt in the wound. The bright side of all this is that while some of Silverberg’s recent work has bordered on pornographic, Across a Billion Years is relatively tame, almost to the point of being old-fashioned.
Indeed, this feels like a throwback to an older era of SF, even back to those years when Silverberg (and I, for that matter) had not yet picked up a pen or used a typewriter. In broad strokes this is a planetary adventure of the sort that would have been serialized in Astounding circa 1945. We’re excavating alien ruins on Higby V, a distant planet where High Ones artifacts have been supposedly found. During a drunken escapade one of the alien diggers stumbles upon (or rather breaks into) a piece of High Ones technology, something akin to a movie projector, not only showing what the High Ones look like but revealing a clue as to the location of their homeworld. This should sound familiar to most of us, and I suspect Silverberg knows this too, because this novel’s biggest problem and biggest asset is how it uses perspective. We’re stuck with Tom as he sends messages to Lorie, recounting events in perhaps more detail than he has to, knowing in advance that his sister won’t receive these messages until after the fact. As with a disconcerting number of Silverberg protagonists, Tom can be annoying, and honestly quite bigoted; and since he is the perspective character we’re never relieved of his oh-so-interesting remarks. But, and I will give Silverberg this, he does put a twist on the epistolary format very late in the novel, which does the miraculous thing of making you reevaluate what you had been reading up to this point.
In other words, this is not an exceptional novel, but it does have its points of interest, and with the exception of an early scene and its ramifications (or lack thereof), nothing here made me want to throw my copy at a nearby wall. For the most part this is inoffensive—possibly even decent. Three stars.
Those who want a bit more sex with their science fiction can do worse than this one, which looks to be the fourth (or maybe fifth—I’ve lost count) Silverberg novel of 1969. It’s the near-ish future, and the good news is that for those with enough money, death is not necessarily the end. Courtesy of the Scheffing Institute, a person can have their memories stored periodically, making copies or “personae” of themselves, which can be transplanted to the brain of a living host. The host and the persona will cooperate, lest the latter erase the former’s personality and become a “dybbuk,” using the host’s body as a flesh puppet.
The infamous businessman Paul Kaufmann has recently died, with his persona waiting to be claimed. Paul’s nephew, Mark, and Mark’s 16-year-old daughter Risa each see themselves as ideal candidates for Paul’s persona, but one of the rules at the Institute is that close family members can’t host each other’s personae: the implications of, for example, a teen girl hosting her grandfather’s persona, would be…concerning.
While we’re on the lovely topic of incest, let’s talk more about Risa, who must be one of the thorniest of all Silverberg characters, which as you know is a tall order, not helped by the fact that Silverberg describes, in almost poetic detail, every curve of this teen girl’s nude body—and she does strut around naked a surprising amount of the time. Risa is such a depraved individual, despite her age, that she at one point tries seducing an older male cousin and rather openly has an Electra complex (they even mention it by name), which Mark is understandably disturbed by—with the implication being that Mark has lustful thoughts about his own daughter. This is the second Silverberg novel I’ve read in two months to involve incest, which worries me.
The only other major female character is Elena, Mark’s mistress, whom Risa sees as a rival for her father’s affections and who (predictably) starts conspiring against Mark. Not content to ogle at just 16-year-olds, Silverberg also takes to describing the nuances of Elena’s body in wearying fashion, which does lead me to wonder if he was working the typewriter one-handed for certain passages. It’s a shame, because there’s an intriguing subplot in which Risa acquires her first persona, a young woman named Tandy who had died in a skiing accident—or so the official record claims. Tandy, or rather the persona of Tandy, recorded a couple months prior to her death, suspects foul play. Of the women mentioned, Tandy is the least embarrassingly written, but then she is only tangentially related to the plot and, what with not having a physical body, Silverberg is only able to ogle at her so much.
I’ve not even mentioned John Roditis and his underling Charles Noyles, business rivals of Mark’s who are clamoring for Paul’s persona. You may notice that this novel has more moving parts than Across a Billion Years, and certainly it’s the more ambitious of the two, the problem being that its shortcomings are all the more disappointing for it. Silverberg raises questions that he can barely be bothered with answering, and he alludes to things that remain mostly unrevealed. Much of To Live Again is shrouded in speculation, which is to say it uses speculation as a night-black cloak to cover things we sadly never get to see.
Another rule at the Institute is that a persona has to be of the same gender as its host, a rule that characters mostly write off as bogus. And indeed why not? Why should a male host and female persona not be able to coexist? Or the other way around. The prohibition has to do with transsexualism, which is certainly uncharted water for the most part. There has been very little science fiction written about transsexualism or transvestism—the possibility of blurring and even crossing gender lines. Unfortunately the novel does little with the ideas it presents. There are multiple references to religion and mythology (the word “dybbuk” refers to an evil spirit in Jewish mythology), including lines taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. There’s a minor subplot about white Californians appropriating Buddhist practices, in connection with the Institute, but this is so tangential that the reader can easily forget about it.
Finally, I want to mention that I was reminded eerily of another novel that came out this year, Philip K. Dick’s masterful and deranged Ubik, which I have to think Silverberg could not have known about when he was writing To Live Again. Both take cues from the Buddhist conception of reincarnation, although in Dick’s novel people who have died are kept in a state of suspended animation called “half-life,” whereas Silverberg’s characters die the full death, or “discorporate,” only that their personalities (up to a point) are kept intact. Not to make comparisons, but given that Silverberg’s novel is longer than Dick’s I have to say he does a fair bit less with the shared material. Of course, these are both talented writers, who at their best do very fine work indeed. Silverberg has become a major writer, but sadly he is not firing on all cylinders with either of the novels I’ve covered.
This book made me think of a Bulwer-Lytton novel for the Space Age.
This book could make Damon Knight take back everything he said about van Vogt.
This book made me long for the complexity of Commander Cody shorts.
This book’s style is so out of date that I think it fell out of the TARDIS.
This book wishes it had the character depth of a Lin Carter work.
And yet, I can't hate it the way I hated Light A Last Candle. That book was one mass of forgettable hate, but The Glass Cage is not hateful. It's incompetent at every turn, from line editing to plot development (I really don't know how it got the hardcover copy I received), but the overall effect is an oral record of a children's game.
There's this guy, Stephen, he’s twenty! He's a neophyte to the priests of the computer, TAL! It keeps life going in the city beneath its glass dome! Stephen is a perfect physical specimen, and his only flaw is being too curious about things. But that's because he’s secretly a spy for the Rebellion outside the glass dome!
The sentences are short and rarely have the benefit of internal punctuation. The characters are, generally, exactly how they appear — wicked characters with their close-together eyes, good characters with their strong jaws, straightforward manner, and perfect blonde hair. If this is chosen for adaptation, Tommy Kirk is made for the lead part.
The treatment of nuclear power seems to come from another time, where the leaders of interstellar development are in the Baltimore Gun Club rather than NASA. The giant computer, TAL, is attached to a nuclear bomb, to go off at a certain date, destroying the whole glass dome and the people within! No need to worry, though, Stephen and his various Rebellion people get most everyone out in time, except for the bad guy head priest of TAL, who is determined to die with his machine. Stephen and the gangster leader of the in-Dome Rebellion try to get him out, but to no avail! The nuclear bomb is about to go off, so the two of them hop on their air-sled, turn it skyward, and smash through the glass dome, just as the nuclear bomb goes off! Luckily, the nuclear bomb just pushes them a few miles away from the blast, where they are safe and unharmed.
One point of the book that is surprisingly forward-thinking is its treatment of one of the main characters being severely disabled. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down, he is a leader of the Rebellion, commanding through his immense psychic ability. But that cannot keep me from giving it…
Two stars
[A bit of a downer note to leave on, but at least there's some fine stuff upstream. See you next month, tiger!]
Two very different novels by women fell into my hands this month. Just about the only thing they have in common is a downbeat mood. Even that, however, is treated in highly dissimilar ways by the authors. Let's take a look.
Anonymous cover art. Woman running away from a mansion that has a light in one window? Must be a Gothic Romance.
The setting is Connecticut in 1895. The narrator is a nineteen-year-old woman named Cassandra whose mother has just died. Her father died soon after her birth, and she spent almost of all of her life in boarding school. Returning for her mother's funeral, she is dismayed by the fact that the only other mourners are her mother's second husband, who left her some years ago, and her mother's faithful Gypsy companion.
Her mother had the ability to predict the future. The villagers thought of her as a witch. Adding to their superstitious fear was a mysterious light that appeared in the sky at the time of her death.
Cassandra (an appropriate name, as we'll see) settles into the family home with the Gypsy and her stepfather. In true Gothic fashion, she wanders into the cellar in order to investigate a noise, only to barely escape being strangled by an unknown assailant. It soon turns out that Cassandra also has precognition, which she considers to be a curse rather than a gift.
Other Gothic elements include a séance conducted by the Gypsy, a secret room in the mansion, and a murder. Since this is also a Romance, we have a handsome young stranger show up.
The novel definitely follows the pattern of a Gothic Romance. Fans of that genre, or of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows will find it satisfactory, if less than original. It's a quick, easy read, suitable for light entertainment of an enjoyable spooky nature.
The narrator is a young man named Pelham, known as Pel. He is also called Rat. In a dystopian near future, he and his father run their home as a combination boarding house and brothel. His cousin Frijja shows up, having barely survived a brutal attack. You see, the aliens told him to take her in.
The aliens? Yes, it seems that gigantic extraterrestrial spaceships hover over the British Isles. A force field isolates the inhabitants from the rest of the world, leading to a breakdown in society. The aliens send messages to people in the form of small talking spheres, something like ball bearings. Failure to obey their orders leads to disintegration.
The aliens put various parts of London under the control of gangs, some Communist and some Fascist. Early in the book, Frijja defends the home from an invasion by the Fascists in a violent way. That doesn't prevent them from taking over pretty soon anyway.
The other major character is Connor, one of the Fascists. Pel is obsessed by him, although he tells the reader that it's not in a sexual or romantic way. (Frankly, methinks the fellow doth protest too much.) In turn, Connor is obsessed by Frijja. This triple relationship is complicated, blending love and hate in strange ways. It's also the heart of the book.
Without going into the myriad plot complications, let's just say that this unlikely trio goes on an odyssey through a transformed England. Along the way we get more violence, rape, sexual blackmail, and cannibalism.
This is a very grim book, as you can tell, although it's also got moments of bitter humor. Despite the aliens, who never show up in person, it's much more like A Clockwork Orange than Childhood's End. The narrative style is dense and eccentric, so this is a book that requires careful reading.
I usually love writing for this column. I have tremendous fun exploring the work of promising new writers, or obscure works to which I can provide some attention, or even to celebrate the work of an acknowledged science fiction master.
But it provides me no joy to discuss The Three Faces of Time by Frank Belknap Long.
Mr. Long, born in 1901, has a long and distinguished career in science fiction and horror. He's published dozens of books which often sit in the uneasy and unsettling boundary between science fiction and horror. His many short stories were foundational in the golden years of the classic Weird Tales pulp, often sitting side by side in a given issue next to his close friend H.P. Lovecraft and exploring similar mythos and settings.
I frankly love the classic work of Messers. Long and Lovecraft for their gothic, creeping horrors and their inescapable dark energy.
But that work was released 30 plus years ago, and I'm sad to say that Mr. Long, now well into his Social Security years, is no longer the writer he used to be. Or, more accurately, he's too much like the writer he used to be.
The Three Faces of Time is, frankly, a bore. The writing is turgid, characters are wafer thin, and the plot simply refuses to become interesting.
A flying saucer has landed in a small suburban town. When people go to investigate the thunderous sound the spaceship makes, they become lost in a maze of incomprehensible pathways and confusing signposts, which all serve to alienate all the people from their environments.
We follow Susan Wentworth as she tries to find her husband and her children in such a space, where she does eventually catch up with the family – and some mysterious aliens. The strange creatures then transport the humans thousands of years into the future in search of some sort of truth about human immortality – or something like that. I think that's what happened; my attention kept wandering as I tried to make my way through endless thickets of run-on sentences, inhuman dialogue and exhausting conceptual obtuseness.
This would be a fun book in the hands of a more modern writer like Ellison or Brunner, who would highlight the confusion or the characters' existential doubt. Dick would have made the leads more full of angst, and LeGuin would have chonicled the beauty of the aliens' worldview. But Long is not of the newer generation. He reads like a man who's 68 years old and who time, sadly, has left behind.
After my frustrating experience with Mr. Long's book, I was anxious for something that felt fresh, breezy and contemporary.
The Wizards of Senchuria by Kenneth Bulmer was just what I needed.
I've had mixed experiences in the past in reading Mr. Bulmer's fiction. But this book was pure joy for me.
Senchuria is a breezy and bright story. It's a kind of updated version of the high-adventure stories which accompanied work by Lovecraft and Long in the old pulps, but updated for a more modern audience.
Scobie Redfern is a guy in his 20s on the way home from a game of tennis at a Lower Mahattan gym on a cold and snowy night. Scobie calls a cab, but at the same moment another man jumps into the taxi with him. The cabbie talks them both into sharing the vehicle, but quickly odd things start happening. Scobie catches a glimpse of a strange creature who seems to attack the car, and when his fellow passenger persuades Scobie to stop for a drink, a burger, and an explanation, so begins the wildest experience of Scobie's life.
Scobie soon finds himself in an adventure he hardly could have imagined, involving strange portals, terrifying creatures, love, hate, fear, battles on a grand scale, and the kind of nonstop adventurous life that would make a Robert E. Howard character feel exhausted.
This is one of those books where each chapter ends in a cliffhanger before the tension and silliness of the story rachets up even further, a wild, high-tension ride which gets much of its power from the reader wondering how much longer Bulmer can sustain his high-wire act.
Rest assured that everything in Kelly Freas's delightful cover actually happens in the book!
Maybe this book hit me so hard because I was so disappointed in the F.K. Long book above, but this was a thorough delight. The Wizards of Senchuria won't contend for a Hugo, but it's a nearly perfect half of an Ace Double.
Author Margaret Atwood and I are nearly the same age (she has a couple years on me). But she has published 5 books of poetry, and written a libretto–so far–and I'm sure she'll keep ahead of me. She has also just published this, her first novel. I've been wanting to read her work, especially since it (a) smacks of feminism at first glance, and (b) was written by a native of Canada, a country to which my husband and I aspire, and which we may yet reach as we slowly move north.
by John Schoenherr
I am a proud Stanford University alumna thanks to that university’s help finding me the money to go to school (student loan, job). As I understand it, the faculty have always believed that the school is not just there to teach about what students are going to do in life, but also help them discover what kind of person they will become. Clearly, as far as Atwood’s fictional alumna, Marian, is concerned, the school she attended (University of Toronto by the geographical and environmental clues) failed on both counts.
She is lost and feels formless, trying to understand what is required of her and fit into the molds offered. Every now and then she attempts to escape, finding some ease from the pressure of becoming a woman in today's society by running off the rails.
People in her life are mostly in a similar state of becoming and are extremely puzzled when she tries to run away–with one exception, a man she seeks without realizing she is looking for him. Clearly he has run off the rails himself and is possibly dangerous. But for Marian, sometimes danger is preferable to the destination of the tracks, perceived by her as motherhood (of which she is frightened) within marriage (although her roommate is at first set on motherhood alone), a job that is boring and expected to disappear with marriage, a life as a consumer of products such as girdles (worn by "vulcanized" women), and meals of real-life, killed animals.
Starting with strong reactions to types and cuts of meat reminiscent of the living beast, she begins crossing foods off her list of possible edibles as she tries to stay the course to the arms of her fiancé and their upcoming wedding. In a supermarket she “resents” the music because she knows it is only there to lull consumers like her into a euphoric state in which they will buy anything; her own fingers twitch to reach away from the market basket and pick up something–anything–with a "bright label." (I particularly identify with this: not only do I dislike the music itself, but I wish they would leave my mind alone, and I start talking to the speakers and gloomily thinking about bringing wire cutters and stair steps to the store.) After awhile, most foods are eliminated from her diet until she makes something she can eat.
Atwood’s book is funny with a dark humor, growing darker and funnier as Marian’s story unfolds. I give it 5 stars. Beautifully done.
The Biblical book of Revelations foretells of the final battle between Good and Evil. In this second book by Mark S. Geston (author of Lords of the Starship, which seems to be something of a prequel), Armageddon was just the first of climactic battles, subsequent ones being told of in the Book of Survivors, the Book of Eric, the Dialogues of Moreth. Thousands of years later, the diminishing forces of Earth, spurred on by crusading fury, continue to clash. The last ships, the remaining aircraft, the pitiful remnants of humanity are all drawn, sooner or later, to fight what will hopefully be the last fight at "The Meadows."
Born into this world is Amon VanRoarke, an aimless naif who finds motivation when the prophet Timonias comes to town on an ancient, motor-powered merchantman. The holy man's words fill VanRoarke with the urge to sail to The Meadows, not necessarily to fight, but simply to discover what has happened to the battered Earth, what consumes men to combat to the end.
So he sails on the Garnet, along with the drunken and dying veteran, Tapp, the religion-crazed Yarrow, and the half-sane ex-librarian Smythe, the last of whom has some borrowed knowledge of what the world was, though not why it's become what it has. Eventually, they arrive at The Burn that borders The Meadows, where a mighty army is encamped and ready to fight. There too is the "rim army", a force of strangers, origin (as yet) unknown. The stage is set for…something, but not what you expect.
Dragon is very much a mood piece, a commentary on the futility of war, and perhaps even of humanity (or at least, this cast of humanity). If Ballard were to write a catastrophe book, where the catastrophe is the red-steeded Horseman of the Apocalypse, this might well be the result. It's downbeat, descriptive, brooding, and more than a little surreal. It reminds me a little of the endlessly warring tankers of the Great Plains in John M. Foucette's post-apocalyptic The Age of Ruin, but more compelling, more deliberately written.
It's not a happy book, but it is an interesting one, and I had no trouble tearing through most of it in a single reading.
3.5 stars—others might rate it higher.
by George Pritchard
Rip-Roaring and Rollicking
As I have heard mixed reports about Lin Carter, it gives me great joy to report that his newest collection, Beyond the Gates of Dream, is simply delightful. The collection is written as a deliberate throwback to serial fiction and the heyday of Weird Tales, and in that sector, Carter (what a suitable name!) thrives. In this era of the New, Carter's writing can often seem antediluvian, so it is a joy to see those fins and gills be used as they were meant to be.
by Jeff Jones
My favorite story was actually the first, “Masters of the Metropolis”. Written with Randall Garrett, it describes the main character going from New Jersey to New York City in the modern day, except that he has “Wonder-sense” — the ability to see the incredible wonder that exists all around us.
Four stars.
“Keru” is one of the shortest stories in the collection, a Floridian horror story right out of Weird Tales. It has one of two female characters in the book, which is both accurate to the era Carter is recreating, and to Carter's sensibility as an author. Its racial politics are somewhat muddled, but it is leagues ahead of what Campbell is putting out.
Four stars.
The closest to New Wave that Carter gets is in “Owlstone”, but it's firmly in the slow, thoughtful realm of New Wave, rather than anything close to sexuality and gender. I enjoyed it, particularly the ending. The story is from the perspective of a slave creature, who is used by the leader of Earth to fly through space and meet with the leaders of other planets. Called to communicate with the computer who commands the universe, the leaders discover they are being replaced by computers. But what will happen to the slave creatures?
Four stars.
“Harvey Hodges, Veebelfetzer” is an attempt at a SFF comedy epic short story. There is potential in it, but it is all so tangled up with early-author nonsense that should have been trimmed back long ago that even said author apologizes for its existence. It is not bad in a way that makes me angry, but it needed considerably more work, that it did not necessarily justify. It’s definitely the weakest of the lot.
Two stars.
There are two sections of unfinished stories, which I am not rating. The stories are not finished, so it does not seem fair to judge them just yet.
Admittedly, this collection is best taken in slowly, as Carter's joy coming through the pages can often be overwhelming if read for long periods. I was reminded of interacting with a particularly exuberant horse, or a large puppy, in book form. If frequent fannish winks, nods, and asides fill you with annoyance and dread, I do recommend avoiding this book. He writes such notes at the beginning and end of each story, and at the beginning and end of the book, like a joyful Rod Serling, from Worldcon rather than the Twilight Zone, and hopped up on PDQ chocolate powder.
3.5 stars if you like this sort of thing, one star if you don't.
But why shouldn't Carter be excited? He was allowed to finish a posthumous Conan story, and that tale, “The Hand of Nergal”, takes up the majority of the book. I enjoyed it as a Conan story, and was glad to see Carter avoid the numerous potential pitfalls that Howard set up in his world and writing style. This is a place where Carter’s weaknesses in the New Wave become strengths in the old. Lucky for the reader, despite Conan’s supposedly barbarous nature, he has little interest in the beautiful servant girl who briefly crosses his path, before going to destroy the demonic vampires threatening the world! I wonder if this is related to Conan’s mighty thews in any way, after the revelations in Sports Illustrated back in June regarding the significant use of steroids in professional sports.
3.5 stars.
”So close your waking eyes/And picture endless skies” — and wonder!
Aside from the stray short story I have to admit I had not read any of John Jakes’s novels, of which there have been many as of late—so many, in fact, that we folks at the Journey have not been able to cover every new Jakes book. Just this year alone we’ve gotten three or four Jakes novels, with at least one more already in the can as I’m writing this. So consider this a bit of “catching up,” for the both of us. Jakes started a new science-fantasy series a couple years ago with When the Star Kings Die, and this year he has put out not one, but two more entries in this series. For the sake of not overwhelming the reader, though, let’s just keep it to the first two entries… for now.
Humanity has spread across the stars in what is called II Galaxy, with a planet-spanning league of aristocrats called the 'Lords of the Exchange' (the titular star kings) keeping things in check. The star kings are supposed to live for centuries, being near-immortal, but something has been leading these long-lived aristocrats to early deaths. Maxmillion Dragonard (a name I certainly did not pull out of a hat) is a Regulator, one of the enforcers for the star kings, who starts out imprisoned for a bout of intensely violent behavior but is soon freed on the condition that he investigates why the star kings are dying young. He soon travels to the planet Pentagon, a backwater home to little in the way of technology or civilization, but which seems to house the answer to the mystery; and there he gets involved with a group of rebels who go by the 'Heart Flag'. Dragonard’s sense of loyalty gets split between his allegiance to the star kings, personified by a mischievous spy named Kristin, whom Dragonard quickly falls in love with, and the leaders of the Heart Flag group, Jeremy and his sister Bel.
If you read certain passages out of context you might think you’re reading an adventure fantasy yarn in the Robert E. Howard mode, which Jakes is no stranger to, but overall this is much more evocative of Leigh Brackett’s planetary adventures—low on scientific plausibility but high on swashbuckling action. We have swords and daggers, but also blasters and “electroguns,” not to mention spaceships. Another thing carried over from both Howard and Brackett is this heightened sense of sexuality—or to put it less charitably, the fact that there are only two female characters of note in this novel, and both of them want to jump Dragonard’s bones. Jakes also can’t help himself when it comes to focusing on the women’s breasts, especially Kristin’s. In fairness, Dragonard is a man who has just been broken out of prison, and ultimately this is not a very serious novel. When the Star Kings Die was published in 1967, although the Journey didn’t cover it then; but if not for the publication date you might think it was printed in 1947, possibly as a “complete” novel in the likes of Startling Stories and other bygone pulps. It seems deliberately retrograde, but it’s unobtrusive so far as that goes.
This is a short novel, such that I’m actually surprised Ace didn’t bundle it with another short novel or novella. Even so, with just 160 pages Jakes is able to give us a future world, somewhat believable power dynamics among the parties, a few good villains, and a climactic battle that manages to take up a good chunk of the text. Kristin, despite being Dragonard’s main love interest, is absent for much of the novel, but to compensate his growing admiration for Jeremy and budding affection for Bel are given ample room to develop. The trio’s tenuous but promising relationship at the end of the novel is undermined, however, by the fact that when we did get a follow-up to When the Star Kings Die it was not a sequel, but instead a distant prequel.
This novel does a few things well, but not exceptionally well; and, let’s face it, we’ve been here before. It’s fine, but nothing special.
Jakes’s ode to the sword-and-spaceship adventures of yore continues with The Planet Wizard, published just this year, although given that it’s about the same length as When the Star Kings Die I’m still a bit surprised it was not released as one half of an Ace Double. The Planet Wizard has a more focused narrative, and more than its predecessor it heavily uses the fantasy elements of the pulp material it’s clearly taking cues from; but even so it feels less like a full novel (certainly now that we have behemoths like Dune and Stand on Zanzibar in the field) and more like a somewhat constipated novella. I very much enjoy novellas myself, but not so much when they look bloated and could use a laxative.
Say goodbye to all the characters from that first novel, since here we’re jumping back over a thousand years in time; conversely all the characters featured in The Planet Wizard will have been long and safely dead by the time we get to When the Star Kings Die. Some cataclysmic event has pushed civilization across planets almost back to medieval times, with the planet Pastora having only a semblance of civilized humanity, with its sister planet Lightmark faring even worse. Superstition has taken over the minds of the masses. Swords and daggers have replaced firearms. Instead of spaceships we have “skysleds.” Magus Blackclaw (another name I did not just pull out of a hat) is a middle-aged “wizard” who lives with his beautiful daughter Maya. The problem is that Magus isn’t really a wizard, for magic doesn’t really exist in this world. Whilst on the run the two cross paths with a tenacious swordsman named Robin Dragonard, who as you may guess is an ancestor of the Maxmillion Dragonard of the first novel. Magus gets captured and put on trial, as a fraud; but the High Governors, the pseudo-Christian religious leaders of Pastora, have a proposition for Magus: go to Lightmark and rediscover the fallen commercial house of Easkod, and maybe these charges will be dropped.
Not only does Magus have to deal with the “Brothers” of Easkod, a league of mutated and vicious humans who watch over Easkod City, but the job to exorcize Easkod of its “demons” quickly turns into a race. Philosopher Arko Lantzman wants his hands on Easkod as an alleged treasury of technology that got lost after the cataclysm, while William Catto, a descendant of one of Easkod’s higher-ups (so he claims), wishes to return the house to its former glory. Given that this is a prequel to When the Star Kings Die, and thus knowing the basic history of the star kings themselves, you can guess the broad trajectory of The Planet Wizard. Given also that Robin (who sadly lacks the charisma of his descendant) will contribute to a bloodline that persists over a thousand years later, it’s safe to guess as to his fate. What keeps the tension alive is that unlike some prequels, wherein we already know the fates of the cast (a kind of dramatic irony granted to the reader), we’re unsure if Magus and Maya will come out of this ordeal unscathed. While Robin is a flatter character than Maxmillion, Magus is a rather fun protagonist, being a middle-aged confidence man who nonetheless does care deeply for his daughter, and goes above and beyond to rescue her when she inevitably gets kidnapped.
In a sense The Planet Wizard complements its predecessor, and I’m not sure if Jakes intended one to be the other’s both opposite and equal. Not better, nor worse, but at least different enough to not feel like a repeat. I do recommend both—if you can find copies below the retail price.
Three stars.
by Victoria Silverwolf
Initial Response
Two rip-roaring novels of space adventure fell into my hands recently, both by authors who use two initials instead of first and middle names. (Yes, I notice trivia like that.) Let's take a look.
Prolific British writer Edwin Charles Tubb (E. C. to you!) has been reviewed several times by Galactic Journeyers, including your not-so-humble servant. He usually earns three stars, once in a while a bit more. Will his latest novel earn him another C or C+ on his report card?
Wordiest cover I've ever seen. Pardon the lousy image.
I must have held the cameras at a bad angle.
A project to launch the first starship is under way, funded by the American government. What the boys and girls in Washington D. C. don't realize is that the folks behind the project believe that humanity is doomed to be wiped out by radioactivity. (There are hints that there have been a few limited nuclear wars, as well as a lot of atomic tests.) They plan to escape and find a world to colonize.
Meanwhile, a would-be dictator and his followers plan to stop the starship, by force if necessary. Don't worry about this subplot, because the vessel manages to leave Earth very early in the book, not without a lot of bloodshed.
(This brings up an odd thing about the book. The protagonists are just about as bloodthirsty as the antagonists. They're ready to destroy an entire community in order to launch the starship. Besides that, a lot of the folks aboard were literally kidnapped, forced to be colonists against their will.)
Pretty soon the escapees find a livable planet, which they name (with heavy irony) Eden. In addition to huge, deadly animals, the place has something in the atmosphere that ensures that any woman giving birth and her child will die.
The book has still barely started. A lot more goes on. There's an attempt at mutiny. There's the mysterious disappearance of the first probe to land on the planet, and its equally mysterious reappearance.
The author throws a lot at the reader, often at random. Some subplots don't lead anywhere. For example, we've got an attempt to activate the brain of a dead scientist in order to extract his knowledge. This is just dropped, and doesn't change anything. The whole thing reads as if it were written as quickly as possible, with a completely improvised plot.
American writer C. C. MacApp also has a fast hand at the typewriter, often showing up in If. He's been reviewed a lot here, generally getting three stars. Sometimes less, sometimes more. (Sounds a lot like Tubb, doesn't he?) Will his latest novel be below average, above average, or just plain average?
Cover art by John Berkey.
Wait a minute! I hear you cry. I thought we were talking about MacApp, not this Capps person!
Yep. C. C. MacApp is actually Carroll Mather Capps in real life. If you'll open the book, you'll see it's been copyrighted in the name of C. C. MacApp. Don't ask me why his real name is on the cover.
Anyway, our hero is an Earthman who caught an alien disease somewhere in space. Before killing him, it's going to make him blind. The good news is that some friendly, semi-humanoid aliens are willing to take him to a place where he can be cured, if he undertakes a mission for them. (The aliens recently arrived in the solar system and have the knowledge of faster-than-light travel, but haven't let humans in on the secret.)
His mission is to track down a renegade alien who kidnapped an alien scientist and stole a powerful piece of ancient technology from a species of extraterrestrials who vanished long ago. In order to do this, the aliens take him to a planet without a sun (hence the title) which is able to support life due to its internal heat.
His contact is a multi-tentacled space pirate with two snake-like heads. This roguish character takes him to a hospital, where a spider-like surgeon operates on his eyes.
Wouldn't you know it? There's a catch. The pirate blackmailed the surgeon into doing something to our hero's eyes so that he needs routine treatment with a certain chemical in order to keep his vision. As a side effect, the operation gave him the ability to see clearly in almost total darkness, even able to perceive radiation. This makes him a very useful tool of the pirate on this planet without natural illumination except starlight.
The guy goes along with the pirate, while also spying on him. Meanwhile, the local inhabitants of the planet spy on both him and the pirate. (There's a lot of spying in this book.) The renegade alien and the kidnapped victim show up, as well as other aliens intent on conquest.
I've only given you a synopsis of maybe half the novel. There are plenty of complications in store. The hero winds up on yet another planet, and finds out about the ancient vanished aliens.
The main difference between Tubb's book and this one is that McApp's is much more tightly plotted. There aren't any pointless subplots. As a bonus, the octopus-like pirate is an enjoyable character, usually several steps ahead of the hero. Not the most profound story ever told, but competent entertainment.
The Palace of Eternity is the first of Bob Shaw’s works that I’ve read. Shaw is a man of many talents, having worn a myriad of hats from taxi-driver to structural engineer and aircraft designer. He has added writing fiction to his repertoire with works such as The Two Timers, Night Walk, and his breakout short story, "Light of Other Days."
The Palace of Eternity is set in a distant and turbulent future where humanity has discovered FTL space travel, taken to the stars, and struggles to weather the onslaught of violent attacks from an alien species known as the Pythsyccans.
The protagonist, Mack Tavernor, is a battle-hardened former soldier who had been orphaned when the Pythsyccans devastated his childhood home. Naturally, Tavernor doesn’t view the Pythsyccans in a positive light but he also seems disillusioned enough with humanity to keep his own kind at arm’s length.
The Pythsyccans attack Mnemosyne, an idyllic, almost utopian world dubbed a haven for writers, artists, and other creators of varied talents. Tavernor, naturally, takes up arms against the invading enemy and dies in battle. This is where the story takes an interesting turn.
After shucking this mortal coil, Tavernor encounters the egons, a non-corporeal race of cosmic beings whose very existence is threatened by the proliferation of humanity’s FTL-ramjet technology, the Butterfly Ships. Tavernor, the newest egon, gets another lease on life, inhabiting the body of a newborn human child named Hal. The goal of his mission, to somehow interfere in the war between the humans and Pythsyccans in order to save the endangered egons.
The Palace of Eternity is a fantastic and eloquently written and fast-paced story that fires on all pistons where the things about science fiction that excite me are concerned. And yet…somehow, though, this book failed to move me. For all its eloquence and imaginativeness, I found myself unable to feel strongly about the characters and events of this story. It failed to fill me with a sense of wonder, even amidst the wondrous imagery. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why.
It wasn’t just that much of the story felt glossed over—and probably should have been explored in greater detail. My main source of dissatisfaction was with the story’s main character’s development.
Mack Tavernor is admirable. He's truly a man's man in all the ways a man ought to be a man. Yet, I could not bring myself to either like or dislike him. At no point did I become emotionally invested in the things that happened to and around him. In short, as a protagonist, Mack falls flat. Lacking the kind of depth and complexity that makes fictional characters feel real in my mind, he is like soda pop that has lost its fizz.
Had Mr. Shaw given The Palace of Eternity the extent of thought and care it deserved, the book could have turned out to be a true phenomenon. It is, indeed, still an excellent and worthy read. Even so, I feel it's almost a tragic waste of the author's very clear intellect and truly wondrous imagination.
This is my first encounter with the fiction of the British cosmologist Fred Hoyle. A prominent astronomer with a long tenure at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Hoyle is perhaps best known for a slew of rather controversial opinions. For instance, Dr. Hoyle has rejected the idea of the Big Bang, and for many years has promoted the idea that life on Earth began in the stars.
Yes, he is an eccentric, but Dr. Hoyle is quite a genius, really; a thoroughly unique figure and someone I would really enjoy meeting.
Dr. Hoyle is also a prominent science fiction writer. In collaboration with his son Geoffrey, he recently authored Rockets in Ursa Major, a thoroughly entertaining, if too brief, science fiction yarn reminiscent of the sort of thing which John W. Campbell might have published. If your kind of space fiction involves brilliant and fearless scientists battling bueaucracy and evil aliens, Rockets in Ursa Major is your kind of book.
I kind of giggled a bit when I realized the main characterof Ursa Major is a deeply accomplished and slightly eccentric scientist and that the book is told in first person – do you look in the mirror a bit too much, Dr. Hoyle? As the story begins, the genius Dr. Richard Warboys is at a very boring professional conference when surprising news pops up on the telly: a spaceship which has been lost for thirty years has suddenly reappeared, streaming towards Earth’s atmosphere.
Only a brilliant scientist can help the ship land! And only a brilliant scientist can help discover the ship's great secret of invading alien species! And only a brilliant scientist can fly a seeming suicide mission to battle those invaders! And only a brilliant scientist can figure out a complicated way to use solar flares to defeat those invaders! And, you guessed it, only a brilliant scientist can then fly towards the sun, release those solar flares and save our planet.
Are you shocked if I tell you that scientist's name is Dr. Dick Warboys?
So, yes, the plot of Rockets in Ursa Major is pure wish fulfillment: the 54-year-old Dr. Hoyle cast a genius scientist aged in his mid-30s as the man who basically singlehandedly saves Earth. And it’s all rather silly.
Dr. Hoyle
But Rockets is all tremendously fun, too, in that marvelously light-hearted way one might imagine Campbell publishing next to a Heinlein juvie or van Vogt brain-twister. I’m not sure if it’s the influence of the younger Mr. Hoyle the author, but this book moves at a kinetic speed, with almost too many twists and turns in its breathless style (I’m not sure why we needed a sequence in which Dr. Warboys breaks into the research college by stealing a boat and running through tunnels, for instance).
At the end of this book, the Hoyles hint at the possibility of a sequel. I would enjoy another thoroughly light-hearted and thoroughly indulgent visit with Dr. Warboys.
John Brunner is one of the most prolific science fiction authors of the latter half of this decade, to the extent that it sometimes feels hard to keep up with his work. I’ve always enjoyed Brunner’s work, which often manages to tread a fine line between smart concepts and exciting action. And I was a huge fan of his grand step into literary science fiction, the remarkable Stand on Zanzibar.
This month sees the release of a new Brunner, called Timescoop, but the zines are already reporting the autumn '69 release of another Brunner novel, called The Jagged Orbit [Actually, it's already been released—the Autumn release is a re-release (ed.)]. Based on the blurbs, Orbit sounds like another book of strong literary ambitions.
Timescoop, however, is not a novel of strong literary ambitions. It’s a goof, a novel in which Brunner played with some clever ideas and delivered a quick little satirical piece. Timescoop clears the palette between works of deep seriousness.
Our protagonist here is one Harold Freitas III, a self-obsessed inheritor of his family’s fortunes who is looking to live up to the legacy his father, recently deceased, has left to him.
Fortunately for Freitas, an amazing invention called the Timescoop has been invented, and he has control of it. The Timescoop can bring anything forward in time and allow it to live in the book’s present. Thus the Venus de Milo and Hermes of Praxiteles can exist – with their original arms – and so can people.
Imagine the Hermes – with arms – in a private house near you!
Looking to make a mark with publicity, Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors in time and brings them to a family reunion broadcast throughout the galaxy. After all, men of the past were men of great virtue and character and the future world can learn from their insights. But… as one character states prophetically… “How much do we really know about these people? One always looks at the past through rose-colored –"
So Freitas brings forward nine of his ancestors – a steadfast medieval king and a medieval Crusader and a 17th century British merchant and a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a female cowboy, among others – and readies them to face the world and make Freitas famous.
But be careful what you wish for, and especially be careful what you create. Because these ancestors are not the good people Freitas wishes they could be. They are pederasts and nymphomaniacs, gluttons who are covered with filth and who have ancient racist attitudes. One even indulged in the slave trade.
Mr Brunner
Most of this is played for laughs, and it’s easy to imagine someone like Peter Sellers or Alec Guiness playing all the roles in a film adaptation, taking on silly voices while someone like Peter Cook keeps rolling his eyes at the chaos.
But there is also a small element of satire, a small joy at bringing down the rich and pompous and allowing their obsessions to blow up in their faces.
Timescoop is another quick little novel, and at a mere 156 pages it doesn’t wear out its welcome. But this is clearly Brunner relaxing and doing a small warmup for his next literary work.
In my first conversations with the Traveller, I was warned that some of the works I would cover here would be unpleasant. This is my first, and it does not even have the decency to be memorably terrible (Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard), or bland yet competent (One Against Herculeum by Jerry Sohl). Light A Last Candle is knockoff Heinlein, wrapped in knockoff Doc Smith and shot through with attempts at imitating Bester.
Our main character is one of the few remaining humans on a planet. There’s “Mods” — modified humans — which our main character doesn’t like. Like a low-energy Gully Foyle, he doesn’t like anyone or anything very much. He doesn’t have a name, our main character, nor does “the girl”. She’s lucky, as all other female figures are called Breeders. The character our main character can stand the most is an old, fatherly figure simply referred to as Rutherford. They are the only two original humans, Free Men, left on the planet, which is mostly under the mind control of the Aliens, and their Mod slaves…or are they?
Social commentary is attempted, as are twists, and like in The Devil’s Own by Nora Lofts, the revelations provided to the reader are ultimately shallow. The more they appear, the more insignificant they are revealed to be. The Devil’s Own is in fact a rather poor comparison; since that is a fine book. In truth, the story Light A Last Candle most reminds me of is Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), with its clunky twists, bland characterization, pervasive male chauvinism, and failing to convey travel in a story that is ostensibly all about traveling. Distance is compressed like an accordion, details are skipped over, days pass offhandedly when we could be learning more about anything we are reading. This ultimately becomes a paucity of both showing and telling, which certainly is new to me. Like Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton, the book centers around bringing the reader to encounter different cultures in this alien future. Like The Weirdstone of Brisigamen by Alan Garner, that travel also takes place in tight, dangerous caves. In both of those books, however, distance and time were characters in themselves. You felt the pressure of travel, the hard work the characters put in, their sense of purpose.
The only talent that really appears throughout the work is a pervasive sense of disgust, of fleshy horror that I know William Hope Hodgeson in The Derelict and Arthur Machen in The Three Imposters did better sixty years ago. I think it's this author's first book, but his grouchiness is beyond his years.
I am writing this review as quickly as possible, because after finishing this book less than a half an hour ago, it is rapidly leaving my mind. I have filled this page with references to other works, so that the reader may enjoy books much better than this one.
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![[May 2, 1970] Gaudy Shadows in the Crystal Cave (May 1970 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/700502covers-672x372.jpg)
![[April 16, 1970] Junk Day for Ice Crowns (April 1970 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/700420covers-672x372.jpg)
![[March 6, 1970] <i>The Waters of Centaurus</i>, <i>And Chaos Died</i>, and <i>High Sorcery</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/700306covers-672x372.jpg)
![[November 16, 1969] Fun, Frivolity, and Flandry (<i>The Unicorn Girl</i> and more!)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/691116covers-672x372.jpg)
![[October 16, 1969] The March Goes On (<i>Heartsease</i>, <i>Masque World</i>, <i>The Shadow People</i>, <i>Avengers of Carrig</i>…and more!)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/691016covers-672x372.jpg)
![[September 16, 1969] September 1969 Galactoscope](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/690916covers-672x372.jpg)
![[August 16, 1969] Soaring high and low (August 1969 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/690816covers-672x372.jpg)
![[July 16, 1969] Not all Jake(s) (July 1969 Galactoscope)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/690716covers-672x372.jpg)
