The July Amazing is fronted by John Pederson, Jr.’s second cover, an agreeable Martian-ish scene, reminiscent of nothing so much as . . . Johnny Bruck on a good day. So maybe the new commitment to domestic artists isn’t quite the boon I thought it was. We’ll see.
by John Pederson, Jr.
The non-fiction this month is a bit less gripping than usual. White’s editorial recounts his unsatisfactory encounter with a woman who wanted to write an article about SF fandom, but apparently never did (or it never got published). He then segues to a discussion of Dr. Frederic Wertham and his campaign against comic books which culminated in his book The Seduction of the Innocent. Then, finally, to the point: Wertham is now saying he too will write about SF fandom and White doesn’t think it will be any good. He’s probably right, but until we see what Wertham produces, discussing it is a little pointless.
The letter column remains contentious but is getting a little repetitive; at this point it’s hard for anyone to say anything new about New Wave vs. Old Farts, and no more inviting topic has emerged. The fanzine reviews are as usual, and the book reviews . . . are missing, damn it! To my taste they have been about the liveliest part of the magazine. I hope the lapse is momentary.
But speaking of SF fandom, I’ll take this lack of much to talk about as an occasion to mention something fairly striking about the magazine’s contents under Ted White’s editorship: there is an unusually large representation of Fans Turned Pro, authors who have—like White—been heavily involved in organized SF fandom. This issue features Bob Shaw, a leading light of Irish fandom and heavy contributor to the celebrated fanzines Slant and Hyphen, who later won two Hugo Awards as best fanwriter among other distinctions; he also had a story in the second (7/69) White-edited issue. Greg Benford (once a co-editor with White of the also-celebrated fanzine Void) has one of his co-authored “Science in Science Fiction” articles (the fifth) in this issue, and three stories to boot in White’s eight issues, as well as regular appearances in the book review column. Robert Silverberg, who published a slightly earlier well-known fanzine Spaceship, supplied an impressive serial novel and has a story in this issue. Terry Carr, another renowned fan editor, had a story in the last issue. Alexei Panshin is not to my knowledge a fan publisher but has won the Best Fan Writer Hugo for his prolific contributions to others’ fanzines. Harlan Ellison (short story in 9/69 issue) published the legendary Dimensions in the 1950s. Joe L. Hensley (same) is a member of First Fandom and published a fanzine in the 1940s.
And what does it all mean? The floor is open for sober analysis and wild speculation.
Due to the distinctive headgear worn by some of the construction workers, the incident has become known as the Hard Hat Riot.
In the chaos that ensued, with an estimated twenty thousand people in the streets near Federal Hall, the counter-protestors attacked the anti-war demonstrators while police did little to stop the violence.
The pro-war crowd later marched up Broadway and threatened to attack City Hall. They demanded that the building's flag, flown at half-mast in commemoration of the Kent State killings, be raised to full mast. In an example of grim irony, the hard hats and their allies also attacked nearby Pace University, a conservative business school.
About one hundred people were injured, including seven police officers. Six people were arrested. Only one of them was a construction worker.
With all of this going on, it's tempting to escape from the real world and allow our imaginations to run wild. As we'll see, however, the latest issue of Fantastic contains as much violent conflict as reality.
Apollo 13 coverage starts tonight and goes on for the next two weeks! Don't miss a minute. Check local listings for broadcast times.
by John Boston
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
The May Amazing presents a new face to the world. That is, the cover was actually painted for the magazine, as opposed to being recycled from the German Perry Rhodan. It’s not by one of the new artists editor White was talking up in the last issue, but rather by John Pederson, Jr., who has been doing covers on and off for the SF magazines since the late 1950s. Ditching the second-hand Europeans is a step forward in itself, though this particular cover is not much improvement: a slightly stylized picture of a guy sitting in a spacesuit on a flying chair with a disgruntled expression on his face, against an improbable astronomical background.
by John Pederson, Jr.
But it is an interesting development for a couple of reasons. First, in the letter column, White goes into more detail than previously about the European connection, in response to a question about why the covers are not attributed. White says: “The situation is this: an agency known as Three Lions has been marketing transparencies of covers from Italian and German sf magazines and has sold them to a variety of book and magazine publishers in this country, including ourselves. These transparencies were unsigned. One of our competitors credited its reprint covers to ‘Three Lions;’ we felt that was less than no credit at all. Therefore, unless the artist’s signature was visible, we omitted the contents-page credit. As of this issue, however, Amazing returns to the use of original cover paintings by known U.S. artists.”
So much, then, for Johnny Bruck, and a hat tip to the diligent investigators who have identified all his uncredited reprint covers as they were published. In addition to Pederson, White says, he’s obtained covers from Jeff Jones and Gray Morrow, and in fact a Jones cover is already on last month’s Fantastic. Further: “I might add that, beginning with our last issue, the art direction, typography and graphics for the covers of both magazines has been by yours truly.” So White has pried one more aspect of control of the magazine from the grip of Sol Cohen, presumably all to the good, though the visible effect to date is limited.
Folks living in certain parts of southern Mexico and the eastern coast of the United States and Canada were treated to a spectacular sight in the sky a few days ago. On March 7, there was a total eclipse of the sun visible from those areas of the globe.
The sun is about to completely disappear behind the moon.
I live in the southeastern corner of Tennessee, so I missed this extraordinary event. Let's see; when do astronomers think a total solar eclipse will be visible from my neck of the woods? Let me check my almanac.
August 21, 2017. Holy cow, close to half a century to go.
While I'm waiting, I can spend the time reading. Just as a solar eclipse causes the Earth to cool down, at least for a moment, the latest issue of Fantastic features a new novella from one of the masters of imaginative literature that is dominated by a sense of cold. Grab a cup of hot chocolate, wrap yourself up in a blanket, and join me as we dive into its icy pages.
That's a question that you can answer with more confidence than before, if you're willing to shell out a whole bunch of bucks. On Christmas Day the Japanese company Seiko introduced the world's first quartz wristwatch. (There have been clocks using quartz crystals, but not anything this small.)
As I understand it, quartz crystals vibrate in a precise manner when voltage is applied to them. Thus, the tiny bit of quartz inside the watch, powered by an itty-bitty battery, provides an unvarying pulse that supplies extraordinary accuracy.
The Quartz Astro 35SQ keeps time to within five seconds per month, which is said to be about one hundred times better than a mechanical watch of good quality.
The catch? You have to pay 450,000 yen for it. That's well over one thousand dollars. You can buy a nice new car for the price of two watches.
Quite a stocking stuffer.
If you like, you can use your fancy new timepiece to measure how long it takes to peruse the latest issue of Fantastic.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
Or maybe the publishers can measure how much time they saved by copying the cover art from yet another issue of Perry Rhodan instead of waiting for an artist to create a new one.
The title translates to The Cannons of Everblack. Note the use of English for what I presume is the name of a planet.
The January 1970 Amazing continues in its newly-established course—“ALL NEW STORIES Plus A Classic”—though it’s fronted in the all-too-long-established manner, with another capable enough but generic cover by Johnny Bruck, reprinted from a 1965 issue of Perry Rhodan. Editor White has acknowledged this practice and, I suspect, is looking to end it when circumstances and the publisher permit.
by Johnny Bruck
The usual complement of features are here, starting with a long editorial meditation about the Moon landing, reactions to it, the progress (or lack thereof) of technology generally, and a note of cogent pessimism about the future of the space program: we can do it, but will we? The book reviews continue long and feisty, with White slagging James Blish’s generally well-received Black Easter, concluding: “At best, then, Black Easter is not a novel, but only an extended parable. At worst, it is a tract. In either case, it pleads its point through the straw-man manipulations of its author in a fashion I consider to be dishonest to its readers.” The milder-mannered Richard Delap says that Avram Davidson’s The Island Under the Earth “isn’t a horrid book like some of the dredges of magazine juvenilia we’ve seen recently; it’s soundly adult and imaginative but just too uneven and incomplete to be a good one.” Damning with faint praise, or the opposite? New reviewer Dennis O’Neil, a comic book scripter and “long a friend of SF, and a one-time neighbor of Samuel Delany,” compliments Thomas M. Disch’s Camp Concentration: “Of all the adjectives which might be applied to Camp Concentration—‘artful,’ ‘brilliant,’ and ‘shocking’ come to mind—maybe the most appropriate is ‘heretical.’ ” He then reads the book in terms of Disch’s assumed religious background. “Catholicism is a hard habit to kick. James Joyce didn’t manage it, and neither does Tom Disch.”
The regular fanzine reviewer, John D. Berry, is on vacation, so White turns the column over to “Franklin Hudson Ford,” apparently a pseudonym of his own, for a long and praiseful review of Harry Warner’s fan history All Our Yesterdays. The letter column is even more contentious than the book reviews, with one correspondent addressing “My Dear Mr. Berry: You and your coterie of comic-stripped idiots” (etc. etc.). John J. Pierce, he of the “Second Foundation” and denunciations of the New Wave, explains that he really does have some taste: “If the romantic, expansive traditions of science fiction are to be saved, they will be saved by the Roger Zelaznys and the Ursula LeGuins, not by the Lin Carters or the Charles Nuetzels”—a point I had not realized was in contention. William Reynolds, an Associate Profession of “Bus. Ad.” at a Virginia community college, tries to correct White about the operation of the Model T Ford and provokes a response as spirited as it is mechanical. One Joseph Napolitano complains about “new wave stories”: These new wave writers “don’t want to work. Its [sic] not easy to come up with an idea for a story and they just don’t want to take the time and use what little brains they have to do this.” (Etc. etc.)
After all this amusing contention, it is unfortunate to have to report that the fiction contents of this issue are pretty lackluster.
I’m a great admirer of Philip K. Dick’s best work, and some of his less perfect productions as well. So it’s painful to report that A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, is a bust. It has its moments, but there aren’t enough of them and they don’t add up to much, even though the novel’s themes reflect some of Dick’s long-standing preoccupations.
Protagonist Louis Rosen is partner in a firm that manufactures and sells spinet pianos and electric organs. But now his partner Maury is branching out into simulacra—android replicas of historical persons, designed by his daughter Pris. They’ve started with Edwin M. Stanton, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War. How? “. . . [W]e collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain.” Ohhh-kay.
More importantly, why? Because Maury thinks America is preoccupied, in this year of 1981, with the Civil War, and it will be good business to re-enact it with artificial people. Pris is now working on a Lincoln simulacrum.
by Michael Hinge
Staying over at Maury’s house, Louis meets Pris, recently released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Mental Health, which provides free—and mandatory—treatment for people identified as mentally ill per the McHeston Act of 1975. Louis mentions that one in four Americans have served time in a Federal Mental Health Clinic. Pris was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and committed, in her third year of high school.
Louis asks her to stop her noisy activities because it’s late and he wants to go to sleep. She refuses, and says, “And don’t talk to me about going to bed or I’ll wreck your life. I’ll tell my father you propositioned me, and that’ll end Masa Associates and your career, and then you’ll wish you never saw an organ of any kind, electronic or not. So toddle on to bed, buddy, and be glad you don’t have worse troubles than not being able to sleep.” Louis thinks: “My god. . . . Beside her, the Stanton contraption is all warmth and friendliness.”
In a later encounter: “Why aren’t you married?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a homosexual?”
“No!”
“Did some girl you fell in love with find you too ugly?”
In addition to this finely honed nastiness, Pris is also capable of considerable depression and self-pity. After the Lincoln is completed:
“Oh, Louis—it’s all over.”
“What’s all over?”
“It’s alive. I can never touch it again. Now what’ll I do? I have no further purpose in life.”
“Christ,” I said.
“My life is empty—I might as well be dead. All I’ve done and thought has been the Lincoln.”
Louis is shaken by these encounters. He sees a psychiatrist and gives a paranoid account of events to date, threatening to kill Pris. Further: “I was not kidding when I told you I’m one of Pris’ simulacra. There used to be a Louis Rosen, but no more. Now there’s only me. And if anything happens to me, Pris and Maury have the instructional tapes to create another.” Later he reiterates, in a conversation with the Stanton: “I claim there is no Edwin M. Stanton or Louis Rosen any more. There was once, but they’re dead. We’re machines.” The Stanton acknowledges, “There may be some truth in that.”
And if you’ve missed the point about humans and simulacra, here it is from the other direction. The Stanton says he would have liked to see the World’s Fair. Louis says: “That touched me to the heart. Again I reexperienced my first impression of it: that in many ways it was more human—god help us!—than we were, than Pris or Maury or even me, Louis Rosen. Only my father stood above it in dignity.”
The characters get involved with Sam Barrows, a rich guy who is the talk of the nation, in hopes of a profitable business relationship. Barrows is selling real estate on the Moon and other extraterrestrial locations. He sensibly trashes Maury’s idea of Civil War re-enactment, but his proposal is hardly an improvement; he wants to create simulacra of ordinary folks to go live in his off-planet housing developments and make them seem homier to potential buyers. (Sounds very practical, right?)
Pris then takes up with Barrows and begins calling herself Pristine Womankind. Meanwhile, Louis is getting progressively crazier, propelled by his obsession with Pris, and eventually winds up committed to the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—and is glad. There are a few more events and revelations I won’t spoil.
So, what follows from this prolonged but foreshortened precis?
First, this is not a very good SF novel, because it doesn’t follow through on its SFnal premises and also doesn’t make a lot of sense in general. It starts with the premise that historical replicas can be convincingly manufactured, and can exercise volition and easily adapt to a world a century in their future. OK, show me. But Dick doesn’t. We actually see relatively little of the Stanton and the Lincoln over the course of the novel. Further, we’re told that these artificial people are variations on models developed by the government. For what? And where are they and what are they doing? There’s no clue about the effects of this rather monumental development, other than allowing an obscure piano company to tinker with it.
The novel’s envisioned future doesn’t add up either. We’re told the setting is the USA in 1981, but there is routine space travel and colonization of the Moon and planets. More mind-boggling, there is the Federal Bureau of Mental Health—created by statute in 1975!—under which the entire population must take mental health tests administered in schools, and those deemed mentally ill are committed to a mental health clinic. As already noted, a fourth of the population has been committed at some point. And what political or cultural crisis or revolution has not only countenanced such an authoritarian regime, but also come up with the money for such a gigantic system of confinement?
Dick also seems to have made up his own system of psychiatry. Louis is diagnosed with a mental disorder requiring commitment through the James Benjamin Proverb Test. While interpretation of proverbs is sometimes used in psychiatric diagnosis, I can’t find any indication that this Benjamin Test exists anywhere besides Dick’s imagination.
Louis is asked to interpret “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
“ ‘Well, it means a person who’s always active and never pauses to reflect—’ No, that didn’t sound right. I tried again. ‘That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral statute won’t grow stale.’ He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, ‘I mean, a man who’s active and doesn’t let grass grow under his feet, he’ll get ahead in life.’
“Doctor Nisea said, ‘I see.’ And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.’”
Turns out the correct answer—which Louis says he really knew—is “A person who’s unstable will never acquire anything of value.” But if any of the other interpretations of this deeply ambiguous platitude—or acknowledgement of its ambiguity—proves one a schizophrenic, I guess I’d better turn myself in. (Cue soundtrack: “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.”)
The doctor goes on to explain that Louis has the “Magna Mater type of schizophrenia”:
“ ‘The primary form which ‘phrenia takes is the heliocentric form, the sun-worship form where the sun is deified, is seen in fact as the patient’s father. You have not experienced that. The heliocentric form is the most primitive and fits with the earliest known religion, solar worship, including the great heliocentric cult of the Roman Period, Mithraism. Also the earlier Persian solar cult, the worship of Mazda.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding.
“ ‘Now, the Magna Mater, the form you have, was the great female deity cult of the Mediterranean at the time of the Mycenaean Civilization. Ishtar, Cybele, Attis, then later Athene herself . . . finally the Virgin Mary. What has happened to you is that your anima, that is, the embodiment of your unconscious, its archetype, has been projected outward, unto the cosmos, and there it is perceived and worshipped.’
“ ‘I see,’ I said.”
Now, nowhere is it written that an SF writer can’t invent future psychiatry, any more than future physics or sociology, or alternative history. But plopping this scheme down in the America of 12 years hence, without support or explanation of how we got there from here, is incongruous and implausible. And the nominal date of 1981 is not the issue. The novel is firmly set in the familiar USA of today or close to it, with androids, spaceships, and psychiatry based on ancient religions in effect stuck on with tape and thumb tacks.
Of course, absurdity and incongruity are far from rare in PKD’s work, but they generally appear in the context of madcap satire or grim lampoon (consider Dr. Smile, the robot psychiatrist-in-briefcase in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, whose function is not to cure, but to drive the protagonist crazy so he can evade the draft). But that’s not what’s going on here. This novel, though it has its witty moments, presents overall as thoroughly sober and serious, assisted by Louis’s flat first-person narration.
So, if it’s not good SF, is it good anything else? Editor White said in the last issue, “It’s more of a novel of character than any previous Philip K. Dick novel, and in writing and scene construction it approaches the so-called ‘mainstream’ novel.” Pris is an appallingly memorable character, both for her conduct and for her effect on others, and her part of dialogue is finely honed. A novel that closely examined her and her effect on those around her might be quite impressive. But in a novel that starts out with android historical figures and ends up in a national coercive mental health system, with spaceships and moon colonies along the way, there’s too much distraction for Pris and her relationships to be adequately developed.
The bottom line is that the author has mixed up elements of SF and the “mainstream” novel without developing either satisfactorily or adequately integrating them.
In the last chapter, the author makes a conspicuous effort to bring the novel’s disparate elements together, and winds things up in the most quintessentially Dickian fashion imaginable. In fact, it all seems a little too pat. But wait. Remember editor White’s cryptic statement in last issue’s editorial that this serial was not cut, but was “slightly revised and expanded” for its appearance here? There’s a rumor that this last chapter was not actually written by Dick, but was added by White. True? No doubt we’ll find out . . . someday.
A readable failure. Two stars.
Moon Trash, by Ross Rocklynne
Ross Rocklynne (birth name Ross Louis Rocklin) started publishing SF in 1935 and became very prolific in the 1940s, placing more than 10 stories most years through 1946, many in the field leader Astounding Science Fiction, but most in assorted pulps. After that his production fell off, he disappeared from Astounding, and ceased publishing entirely from 1954 to 1968, when he reappeared with a burst of stories in Galaxy. He was a heavyweight by production, but seemingly a lightweight by lasting impact. Only five of his stories were picked up in the explosion of SF anthologies of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, and to date he has published no books.
by Ralph Reese
Moon Trash is a contrived piece about young Tommy, who lives on the Moon with his cranky old stepfather Ben Fountain; his mother seems to be dead though it’s not explicit. Tommy has bought the official ideology of keeping the Moon spick and span, and Ben gets annoyed when Tommy picks up things that Ben has dropped along the way. Then Tommy finds a bit of trash that somebody dropped about a million years ago, and it leads them to a cave full of artifacts of an alien civilization, including precious gems.
Ben’s not going to tell anybody and is going to see how he can make money from this find, but in his greed he pulls a heavy statue over and it kills him. Tommy reports that Ben fell down a crater wall, returns the artifact Ben had taken to the cave, tells no one about it, and resolves he’s going to work and become a big shot on the Moon. The obvious subtext of the title is that even on the Moon there will be people who are down and out or close to it—people like Ben are the Moon trash, though young Tommy is a class act. Three stars, barely.
Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, by John Jakes
John Jakes had been contributing to Amazing and other SF magazines, mostly downmarket, since 1950, to little notice or acclaim until he devised his Conan imitation Brak the Barbarian for Fantastic. In his very short Merry Xmas, Post/Gute, an impoverished author tries to get the last remaining book publisher to read his manuscript, only to be told it is closing its book division as unprofitable. It’s as heavy-handed as it is lightweight. Two stars.
Questor, by Howard L. Myers
Howard L. Myers—better known by his very SFnal pseudonym, Verge Foray—contributes Questor, a semi-competent piece of yard goods of the sort that filled the back pages of the 1950s’ SF magazines. Protagonist Morgan is part of a raid brigade attacking Earth, without benefit of spaceships, which are passe in this far future. He’s a Komenan; Earth is dominated by the Armans; it's not clear why we should care. Morgan is special; his assignment is to pretend to be a casualty and fall to Earth; but he’s hit by a “zerburst lance” and both he and his transportation equipment are injured. He lands in a Rocky Mountain snowbank and emerges, after some recuperation, to find himself in a valley he can’t climb out of.
by Jeff Jones
But all is not lost. A talking mountain goat, named Ezzy, appears (intelligence and fingers engineered by long-ago humans), and offers to help him out. We learn just what Morgan is looking for on Earth—it’s called the Grail! Or, the goat says, “it can be called cornucopia, or Aladdin’s Lamp—or perhaps Pandora’s Box. . . . The only certain information is that it has vast power, and has been around a long time.” Morgan later adds, “We only know it appears to assure the survival and success of whatever society has it in its possession.” Can we say pure MacGuffin? And of course there is a wholly predictable revelation at the end involving the goat. Two stars for egregious contrivance.
The People of the Arrow, by P. Schuyler Miller
by Leo Morey
This month’s “Famous Amazing Classic” is P. Schuyler Miller’s The People of the Arrow, from the July 1935 Amazing, and it does not impress. Kor, the leader of a migrating prehistoric tribe (having recently dispatched his elderly predecessor), returns with a hunting party to discover that their camp has been attacked by ape-men (he can tell by their footprints). They have wreaked terrible carnage and have carried off the women they did not kill. So the hunting party pursues the ape-men and wreaks terrible carnage on them with their superior armament (see the title). Miller does make a credible attempt to suggest the workings of Kor’s mind and his appreciation of the changing landscape he traverses, but it’s all pretty badly overwritten and mainly notable as a large bucket of blood. Miller—now best known as book reviewer for Analog and its predecessor Astounding—did much better work later. Two stars.
The Columbus Problem: II, by Greg Benford and David Book
Last issue’s “Science in Science Fiction” article asked how difficult it would be to locate planets in a star system from a spaceship traveling much slower than the speed of light. This issue, they ask how difficult it would be from a spaceship traveling much faster—say, a tenth of light-speed. (The authors say flatly: “To the scientific community, . . . FTL is nonsense.”) Then they take a quick turn for several pages of exposition about how an affordable and workable sub-light spaceship could be designed. The Goldilocks option, they suggest, is that proposed by one Robert Bussard: a ramscoop (magnetic, since it would need about a 40-mile radius) to collect all the loose gas and dust floating around in space and channel it into a fusion reactor.
Sounds great! Once you solve a few technical problems, that is. And then finding planets is a breeze. They’ll all be in the same plane, as in our solar system—it’s all in the angular momentum. Approach perpendicular to that plane, and Bob’s your uncle. Then a fly-by can reveal basics of habitability—gravity, temperature, what’s in the atmosphere—but looking for existing life and habitability for terrestrials will require landing, preferably by remote probes of several degrees of capability.
This one is denser than its predecessor, but as before, clear, clearly well-informed, and aimed at the core interests of, probably, most SF readers. Four stars.
Summing Up
So, assuming one agrees with me about the serial, there’s not much of a showing here for this resurrected magazine, though it’s far too early to be making any broad judgments. Promised for next issue are (the good news) a serial by editor White, who has demonstrated his capabilities as a writer, and (the bad news) a story by Christopher Anvil! No doubt a Campbell reject. Let’s hope the promising overcomes the ominous.
[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]
The collection of Middle Eastern folktales known in English as Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights is familiar to folks all over the world. Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the recent Japanese animated film Senya Ichiya Monogatari, which is loosely based on the collection.
Japanese poster for the film. I don't know if it will ever show up elsewhere.
I should point out that this is not a cartoon intended for children. Like the work which inspired it, it contains considerable erotic material. If it ever gets released in the USA, it might get the infamous X rating.
I bring this up because the latest issue of Fantastic contains the first part of a new novel inspired by the same source as the film.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck
As is often the case lately, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.
Die Herrscher der Nacht (The Ruler of the Night) is the title of the German translation of Jack Williamson's 1948 novel Darker Than You Think.
Editorial, by Ted White
The editor begins by telling us how the magazine's lead serial (see below) fell into his hands. Long story short, it failed to find a publisher, got reviewed in a fanzine, Ted White read it and liked it. He then goes on to relate the big changes in Fantastic and its sister publication Amazing. My esteemed colleague John Boston has already discussed this in detail, so let me give you the Reader's Digest version. Higher price, more words, only one reprint per issue. Nuff said.
No rating.
Hasan (Part One of Two), by Piers Anthony
Illustrations by Jeff Jones.
More than half the magazine consists of the first installment of this Arabian Nights fantasy adventure.
Hasan is a rather naive and foolish young man, living in Arabia around the year 800 or so. He meets a Persian alchemist who demonstrates how to turn copper into gold. His mother warns him not to trust this fire-worshipping infidel, but Hasan's greed overcomes what little common sense he possesses.
The wicked Persian kidnaps him and takes him on an ocean journey to the island of Serendip. (We call it Ceylon nowadays—the magazine provides a helpful map).
Despite this, Hasan still trusts the alchemist enough to perform the dangerous task of being carried to the top of a mountain by a roc, in order to gather the stuff needed to transform copper into gold. The poor sap doesn't realize that the Persian intends to leave him stranded on the peak, where he'll starve to death.
Suffice to say that, with a lot of dumb luck, Hasan makes his way to an isolated palace inhabited by seven beautiful sisters, who adopt him as their brother. He goes on to witness birds change into even more beautiful women, one of whom he is determined to have for his bride. (She has little say in the matter.)
Seeing her naked while she is bathing makes him fall madly in love.
Without giving away too much, let's just say that the further adventures of Hasan and the bird woman will appear in the next issue.
The author appears to be well acquainted with One Thousand and One Nights, given his accompanying article on the subject (see below.) As far as I can tell, he captures the flavor of this kind of Arabian folktale in a convincing way. Despite the fact that the hero is kind of a dope, and that the female characters (except Hasan's long-suffering mother) mostly exist to be alluringly beautiful, this half of the novel makes for light, entertaining reading.
Three stars.
Morality, by Thomas N. Scortia
Illustration by Bruce Jones.
It's obvious from the start that this is a science fiction version of the myth of the Minotaur, although the author doesn't make this explicit until the end. The legendary monster is an alien stranded on Earth, forced to serve an ambitious king while trying to contact his own kind.
There's not much more to this story than its retelling of the old tale. It plays out just as you'd expect.
Two stars.
Would You? by James H. Schmitz
A wealthy fellow invites an equally rich acquaintance to make use of a magic chair. It seems that it has the ability to allow the person seated in it to change the past.
I hope I'm not revealing too much to state that neither man chooses to alter his past, preferring to leave well enough alone. That seems to be the point of the story. A tale of fantasy in which an enchanted object is not used is unusual, I suppose, if not fully satisfying.
Two stars.
Magic Show, by Alan E. Nourse
A couple of guys watch a magic show at a cheap carnival. One of them heckles the magician, who invites him to take part in his greatest feat.
You can probably see where this is going. No surprises in the plot. I have to wonder why a real, powerful magician works at a lousy little carnival.
Two stars.
X: Yes, by Thomas M. Disch
An unspecified referendum always appears on the ballot in every election. Everybody knows that the proper thing to do is vote No. A woman chooses to vote Yes, just as children vote Yes during their mock elections.
Can you tell that this is an odd little story? I'm not sure what the author is getting at, unless it's something about conformity and rebellion. At least it's not a simple, predictable plot. Food for thought, I guess.
Three stars.
Big Man, by Ross Rocklynne
The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this wild yarn.
Cover art by J. Allen St. John.
I can't argue with the accuracy of the title. A gigantic man — he's said to be one or two miles tall — walks through the Atlantic Ocean to Washington, D. C. The behemoth is under the control of a Mad Scientist, who intends to take over the United States government and run things the way he thinks they should be run.
Illustration by Robert Fuqua.
It's up to a heroic pilot and his girlfriend (who, in an incredible coincidence, turns out to be the sister of the young fellow who was transformed into the giant) to defeat the Mad Scientist and end the reign of terror of the Big Man.
Boy, this is a goofy story. I think the author saw King Kong too many times. The premise is, of course, absurd, and it's treated in the corniest pulp fiction manner imaginable.
One star.
Alf Laylah Wa Laylah — A Essay on The Arabian Nights, by Piers Anthony
As part of the magazine's Fantasy Fandom column, this article is reprinted from the fanzine Niekas. It discusses One Thousand and One Nights in detail, comparing English translations and offering examples of the kinds of tales it contains. Copious footnotes, some serious and some playful. The author clearly knows his subject.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books by Fritz Leiber and Fred Lerner
Leiber quickly gives a positive review of Captive Universe by Harry Harrison, praises Walker and Company for reprinting science fiction classics in handsome hardcover editions, defends the use of strong language in Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, gives thumbs up to A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, and talks about Eric R. Eddison's fantasy novels. He ends this rapid-fire essay by comparing the way that Heinlein, Spinrad, and Eddison describe a woman's breasts. (The latter excerpt is a really wild bit of outrageously purple prose.)
Lerner, in an article reprinted from the fanzine Akos, talks about two nonfiction books about J. R. R. Tolkien. He dismisses Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings by William Ready as poorly written and overly interpretive, and praises Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings by Lin Carter for its discussion of epic fantasy in general.
No rating.
… According to You, by various
The letters from readers offer both praise and criticism. One of the editor's replies reveals that sales of the magazine went down when Cele Goldsmith was in charge, even though the quality of fiction improved. I hope that's not a bad omen for the way Ted White is taking the publication.
No rating.
Worthy of Scheherazade?
Not a great issue, although Anthony's novel and related essay are well worth reading. The new stuff is so-so and the reprint is laughably poor. It might be better to watch an old movie instead.
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.
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.
West Germany has a new president, the seventy-year-old Social Democrat Gustav Heinemann, who up to now was secretary of justice in the grand coalition cabinet. Heinemann was elected with the narrowest of majorities, beating his conservative opponent by only six votes.
West Germany's new president Gustav Heinemann is sharing a laugh with Social Democratic floor leader Helmut Schmidt.
The West German president is mainly a ceremonial figure; he has very little political power. The president is also elected by the members of the West German federal and state parliaments rather than the people. Apparently, we cannot be trusted to elect our own president, because our parents and grandparents elected Paul von Hindenburg more than forty years ago.
But even though I had no chance to vote for Gustav Heinemann, I welcome his election, because I've come to know Mr. Heinemann as a highly principled politician who stands for peace and justice and opposed the rearmament of West Germany.
In his first speech after his election, Gustav Heinemann promised that he wanted to be a president for the people, even if the people did not get to elect him. Personally, I believe that he is exactly the right president for these difficult times.
More than just Conan
When Lancer started reprinting the adventures of Conan the Cimmerian three years ago, exactly thirty years after Robert E. Howard's untimely death, they not only pushed the already simmering revival of the genre Fritz Leiber called sword and sorcery into overdrive, but also opened the floodgates for other vintage fantasy stories and novels to come back into print.
No longer do you have to sift through the crumbling pages of Weird Tales or Unknown or pay extortionate prices for Gnome Press or Arkham House hardcover reprints to track down an early adventure of Conan or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. On the contrary, the heroes of yesteryear are right there in the spinner rack of your local newsstand, gas station, grocery store or bookstore, sporting striking covers by talented artists like Frank Frazetta or J. Jones. The sword and sorcery revival has truly been a boon for fans of vintage weird fiction.
Among the authors of yesteryear coming back into print is none other than Robert E. Howard himself. For while Howard will probably always be associated with Conan first, he was extremely prolific, penning more than two hundred stories in various genres in his short life. In this article, I want to take a look at some of the other Robert E. Howard heroes whose adventures you can find on the shelves right now.
The Philosophical Atlantean: King Kull
Spurred on by the success of their Conan reprints, Lancer made a foray into the rest of Howard's oeuvre and reprinted the adventures of Howard's other Barbarian hero, Kull of Atlantis.
Like Conan, Kull is a wandering adventurer who winds up becoming king of the civilised kingdom of Valusia after slaying the previous ruler. Kull only appeared in two stories in Weird Tales, though the ever enterprising L. Sprague de Camp found several unpublished and sometimes unfinished Kull stories in Howard's trunk (and I have it on good authority that it really is a trunk), had Lin Carter finish the incomplete stories and assembled King Kull.
Because of his superficial similarities to the Cimmerian Barbarian, Kull is considered a prototype Conan. But that would be unfair, because even though they are both adventurers turned kings, Kull is a very different character from Conan, quieter, more introspective, more philosophical, more – dare I say it – gullible.
The Conan stories cover the entire spectrum of Conan's career, from teenaged thief to middle-aged king. The Kull stories, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on his time as King of Valusia – with one exception. Because for Kull we get something we never got for Conan: the story of why he left his home Atlantis in the first place. And no, it's not for the reason you think.
"Exile of Atlantis" introduces us to a teenaged Kull, an outsider adopted into a tribe of Atlantean barbarians. Most of the story is given over to a hunting expedition as well as a dream sequence, where Kull sees his future as king. But what spurs Kull into leaving home is seeing a young woman from his village about to be burned at the stake for daring to fall in love with a Lemurian pirate. Kull is disgusted by this and mercy-kills the woman before the flames can reach her. Then he flees, pursued by furious tribespeople.
"Exile of Atlantis" was never published during Howard's lifetime and it's easy to see why—it's more vignette than story. But it does set the tone for the adventures that follow and introduces Kull both as a perpetual outsider as well as someone who is willing to question and defy tradition, if necessary. Finally, forbidden love as well as Kull's firm believe that love should trump tradition, custom and law is a recurring theme throughout the stories, as Kull helps several young couples to get together with their one true love, against legal and parental opposition.
"The Shadow Kingdom" was the first of the two Kull stories published during Howard's lifetime in the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales and very much sets the stage for what is to follow. The story introduces us to King Kull, as he is watching a parade in his honour, while musing about identity, the nature of reality and the great questions of life.
However, Kull has more immediate problems to deal with, because the Pictish ambassador, Ka-nu the Ancient, warns him of a conspiracy in his own court and sends one of his warriors, Brule the Spear-Slayer, to aid and protect Kull. Those who have read the Conan stories have encountered the Picts before. Based on the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, the Picts reoccur throughout Howard's work, though Howard's Picts bear no resemblance to their historical counterparts.
Kull is initially irritated by Brule, who seems to know the royal palace better than Kull himself. But the two men quickly become fast friends, when Brule informs Kull that an ancient pre-human race of shapeshifting Serpent Men has invaded the kingdom and the royal palace and are quietly replacing guards, courtiers and councillors and are planning to murder and replace Kull, too.
Hugh Rankin's interior art for "The Shadow Kingdom" shows Kull and Brule battling the Serpent Men.
"The Shadow Kingdom" is a chillingly paranoid story reminiscent of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" and the 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though it predates both. Apparently, there are folk who believe that the Serpent Men from "The Shadow Kingdom" really existed and still exist today, similar to how some people believed that the Shaver Mysteries which infested Amazing Stories some twenty years ago were real.
After their ordeal in "The Shadow Kingdom", Brule remains Kull's constant companion and frequently has to rescue his friend from conspirators and assassins as well as from Kull's own gullibility and tendency to get lost in his thoughts. In "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune", the only other Kull story published during Howard's lifetime, Kull becomes fascinated with the House of Thousand Mirrors inhabited by the wizard Tuzun Thune and keeps gazing into those mirrors, wondering whether he is real or merely a mirror image himself. Just as Kull is about to be sucked into the mirror completely, Brule appears, kills the wizard and smashes the mirrors.
Brule has smashed the mirror and the wizard, once again saving Kull, in the interior art for "The Mirrors of Tusun Thune".
"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" will seem familiar to anybody whose ever visited a hall of mirrors at a fun fair or carnival. The story "Delcardes' Cat" also clearly appears to be inspired by travelling fun fairs and fraudulent sideshow attractions. This time around, Kull becomes fascinated with Saremes, an ancient and wise talking cat owned by the noblewoman Delcardes who asks Kull's permission to marry a commoner. Kull has deep and philosophical discussions with Saremes and never once wonders why this regal feline is always carried around by the masked slave Kuthulos.
Things come to a head, when Saremes informs Kull that his friend Brule is in danger and that Kull must dive into a lake inhabited by an ancient amphibian race to rescue him. Brule, however, is not in danger, but once again has to rescue Kull from a plot by his archenemy, the skull-faced wizard Thulsa Doom. As for the cat, she may be wise and ancient and beautiful, but she obviously cannot speak. Instead, her voice was provided by the masked slave Kuthulos. It's easy to imagine Howard witnessing a similar performance in a small carnival somewhere in rural Texas in his youth.
"By This Axe I Rule!" features yet another plot against Kull, instigated by disgruntled noblemen and a rabble-rousing poet. Kull himself, meanwhile, is depressed that some people still mourn the tyrannical king Borna whom Kull slayed and replaced and that even the Cult of the Serpent Men still has worshippers. Kull is also frustrated that even as king he is still constrained by the ancient laws of Valusia, such as a law which forbids free men to marry slaves, even though a young nobleman petitions Kull to allow him to wed the slave girl Ala with whom he has fallen in love. Not long thereafter, Kull meets Ala herself and confesses to her that even as a king, he is still slave to Valusia's cruel ancient laws.
The conspirators strike that night and invade Kull's bedchamber. Kull fights them off with battle axe, but there are too many of them. However, he is saved in the nick of time, because Ala overheard the plot against the king and sounded the alarm. Grateful, Kull takes his battle axe to smash the stone tablets containing Valusia's outdated laws and declares that he is the law now. Then he personally sees to it that Ala and her lover are allowed to marry.
If "By This Axe I Rule!" seems a little familiar, that's maybe because it is. For after the story failed to sell, Howard rewrote it as "The Phoenix on the Sword", the story which introduced Conan the Cimmerian to the world. But while "The Phoenix on the Sword" is a great story, I still prefer "By This Axe I Rule!" because the touching love story between Ala and the young nobleman and the scene of Kull taking his battle axe to the outdated laws of Valusia are sadly absent from the Conan story.
It is notable how many of the Kull stories are concerned with forbidden love and how Kull is clearly frustrated by outdated marriage laws keeping lovers apart until he literally smashes those laws to pieces. Considering that the US Supreme Court struck down state laws forbidding mixed race marriages in several southern states only two years ago (not using a battle axe), I for one can only cheer on Kull and his creator.
But while there is a lot of romance in the Kull stories, Kull himself has no romantic entanglements with women – very much unlike Conan – and even muses at one point that the love of a woman is not for him. One can see homoerotic undertones in Kull's relationship with Brule, though Howard could not clearly spell this out in the late 1920s. Or maybe Kull just prefers celibacy.
It may be blasphemy, but I prefer Kull to Conan. Everybody who enjoys the adventures of the Cimmerian Barbarian should pick up King Kull.
Five stars.
The Avenging Puritan: Red Shadows
J. Jones' striking portrait of Solomon Kane for Red Shadows.
Another Robert E. Howard character who predates Conan is Solomon Kane, a sixteenth century Puritan who is on a mission from God (or so he believes) "to ease evil men of their lives". The idea sounds fascinating, but once again the Solomon Kane stories are only found in forty-year-old issues of Weird Tales and have never been reprinted. Until now.
Luckily, my friend Bobby, who shares my interest in the works of Robert E. Howard and other Weird Tales authors of yesteryear, sent me a copy of Red Shadows, a collection of all the Solomon Kane stories, including those that were never published and sometimes not even finished during Howard's lifetime. Red Shadows is a hardcover volume with interior illustrations by J. Jones published by the small press Donald M. Grant Publisher Inc. which also published two collections of Howard's humorous westerns about a very big, very strong and not very bright hillbilly named Breckenridge Elkins and his chaotic family. Sadly I don't own either of those.
The Solomon Kane stories, however, are excellent, mixing historical adventure of the sort that used to be found in the pages of the pulp magazine Adventure with horror elements. Unlike with Kull, we never learn why Solomon Kane does what he does. There are hints, particularly in the poems included in the collection, that Kane was always a violent man and sailed with Sir Francis Drake, but we never learn how Solomon Kane came by his strong religious convictions or how he came to believe that he is on a mission from God.
Early stories show Solomon Kane wandering around England and later the Black Forest in Germany, tangling with pirates and observing several cases of vengeance from beyond the grave. These are fine adventure stories and suitably spooky gothic morality tales. But then Solomon Kane's wanderings literally take him into the heart of darkness with the novelette "Red Shadows", first published in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales.
C.C. Senf's cover for the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales shows the villainous Le Loup murdering a young woman.
"Red Shadows" begins in France, where Solomon Kane finds a mortally injured young woman by the side of the road and comforts her as she dies. Before she draws her final breath, the woman tells Kane that she was assaulted and left for dead by a bandit named Le Loup. "Men will die for this," Kane vows darkly and embarks onto a hunt for Le Loup and his associates which will take him several years and across the world.
Kane finally tracks down Le Loup in a village in the darkest heart of Africa. When the opponents finally come face to face, Le Loup asks Kane whether the woman he murdered was Kane's bride, wife, or sister and is stunned when he learns that Kane had never met the young woman before that fateful day.
In the course of "Red Shadows", Kane also meets and befriends N'Longa, an African shaman, a so-called juju man. Though a sympathetic character, N'Longa initially appears to be an outdated and racist stereotype speaking broken English. However, as Solomon Kane and N'Longa share further adventures, it gradually becomes clear that N'Longa is much more than a mere stereotype. Not only is his magic real, he is also clearly the smartest person in the Solomon Kane stories. Indeed, N'Longa even calls out Kane on his prejudices at one point. Finally, N'Longa also gives Kane a magical weapon, an ancient juju staff, which turns out to be the biblical Staff of Solomon, now wielded by his latter day namesake.
Pulp fiction set in Africa is often full of offensive and downright racist caricatures. Howard does not completely manage to avoid these pitfalls, when describing Kane's wanderings through Africa, encountering vampires, harpies, hidden cities and monsters sealed away in ancient tombs. However, it is also notable that Solomon Kane himself makes no racial distinctions between the people he helps and is as willing to save an angelic blonde English girl from being sacrificed to an ancient god as he is to protect an African village from winged monsters and liberate African slaves from their Arab captors.
Hugh Rankin's colourful cover art for the June 1930 issue of Weird Tales illustrates the Solomon Kane story "The Moon of Skulls", where Kane rescues the kidnapped English girl Marilyn from the African vampire queen Nefari.
During his wanderings through Africa, we also see Kane's religious convictions gradually crumbling. As a devout Puritan, he initially abhors magic, but he also sees that N'Longa's magic, though not even remotely Christian, is nonetheless a force for good as is the Staff of Solomon, which predates both Judaism and Christianity.
Solomon Kane is a complex and fascinating character. He has the religious zeal of Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, memorably portrayed by Vincent Price (who would be perfect to play Solomon Kane) on film last year, only that he is a heroic figure, whereas Hopkins is the darkest of villains.
Gothic horror at its very best.
Five stars.
The Time and Space-Displaced Fugitive: Almuric
Almuric is an oddity even for Robert E. Howard's extremely varied oeuvre. It's his sole foray into Burroughs style planetary romance and one of only two novels Howard wrote. Almuric was serialised posthumously in Weird Tales from May to August 1939 and reprinted by Ace in 1964.
Taking his cue from Burroughs' Barsoom novels, Almuric opens with a framing story. The scientist Professor Hildebrand recounts his meeting with Esau Cairn, whom the Professor describes as "definitely not a criminal", but "a man born in the wrong time". Cairn stumbles into Hildebrand's observatory while on the run for murdering the corrupt politician Boss Blaine (don't worry, he had it coming), the police hot on his heels. Cairn is determined to go down fighting and die in a shootout with the police just like Bonnie and Clyde, who to Howard were not just the subject of a popular movie, but outlaws who operated in his home state of Texas and were shot dead not far from his hometown Cross Plains. Luckily, Professor Hildebrand has a better idea and uses a machine he invented to teleport Cairn to the planet Almuric.
Once there, Cairn takes over as the narrator and has the sort of adventures you would expect from a Burroughs style planetary romance. He encounters the local wildlife as well as a species of ape men named the Guras. After putting his boxing skills to good use and proving his mettle, Cairn is adopted into a tribe of Guras and falls in love with Athla, daughter of the chief. Lucky for Cairn, female Guras look like regular human women.
More adventures follow, as Cairn is captured by a rival tribe, has to fight various monsters and must rescue Athla from a species of winged humanoids called the Yagas whose queen Yasmeena not only has carnal designs on Cairn, but also wants to sacrifice Athla to her gods.
In theory, Robert E. Howard would seem to be the perfect writer for a Burroughs style planetary romance. In practice, however, Almuric is the weakest work by Howard I've read so far. The novel feels choppy and disjointed and there are lengthy passages where Cairn gives us all sorts of information about the world of Almuric and its inhabitants. This is very uncommon for Howard who normally doesn't resort to lengthy encyclopaedic descriptions, but integrates the information into the plot. It almost feels as if Howard's private notes about the world of Almuric, similar to "The Hyborian Age" essay which details the world of Conan, had somehow ended up in the novel itself.
So why is Almuric so different from Howard's other works? The answer is simple. Almuric was published posthumously and very likely remained unfinished at the time of Howard's death and was completed by another writer. We do not know who this writer was, since Weird Tales does not credit them. A likely suspect is fellow Weird Tales author as well as Howard's literary agent Otis Adalbert Kline, who penned several planetary romances himself. Alas, Kline died in 1946, so we will never know for sure.
Even a weak novel by Robert E. Howard is still better than those by many other writers at their best.
Three and a half stars.
Lovecraftian Terrors: Wolfshead
Following the success of their Conan reprints, Lancer is gradually branching out into other works by Robert E. Howard and brought us not only King Kull, but also Wolfshead, a collection of seven horror stories by Robert E. Howard with a striking cover by Frank Frazetta.
Unsurprisingly, the titular story, which appeared in the April 1926 issue of Weird Tales, published when Howard was only twenty years old, is a werewolf story and apparently the sequel to another story, which Lancer in their infinite wisdom chose not to include. "Wolfshead" is not a bad story by any means, though very much the work of a beginning writer.
"Wolfshead" was the first Robert E. Howard story to make the cover of Weird Tales, illustrated by E.M. Stevenson.
In "The Horror From the Mound", first published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales, Howard puts his unique spin on that other classic monster of modern horror, the vampire. However, his vampire is not residing in a coffin in the bowels of a castle in Transylvania, but much closer to home (at least from Howard's point of view) in an Indian burial mound in Texas, which a white rancher unwisely disturbs after having been warned not to do so by his Mexican neighbour.
The cover of the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales features a vampire, but not Howard's vampire.
The remaining stories are clearly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos and feature mysterious tomes of black magic and unspeakable monsters from beyond. The Lovecraft influence is not that surprising, since Lovecraft and Howard did not just both write for Weird Tales, but were also pen pals who kept up a voluminous correspondence, much of which apparently survives and will hopefully see print someday.
But even though they influenced each other, Robert E. Howard was a very different writer than H.P. Lovecraft and also brings a very different sensibility to his stories. For while Lovecraft's protagonists tend to be driven mad by their encounters with the unspeakable, Howard's protagonists usually fight the monster or die trying, though the poet Justin Geoffrey, protagonist of "The Black Stone", does go mad after an encounter with a cursed stone, an unspeakable cult and a terrifying monster.
The cover of the November 1931 issue of Weird Tales does not illustrate "The Black Stone", but it's still a great cover.
Howard's stories also have a wider range of settings from Texas via Ireland, France and Hungary all the way to Middle East, which is the setting of "The Fires of Asshurbanipal", which combines Lovecraftian horror with the high adventure of the Conan stories.
The cover of the December 1936 issue of Weird Tales by J. Allen St. John illustrates Robert E. Howard's "The Fires of Asshurbanipal"
"The Valley of the Worm" and "The Cairn on the Headland", include two more subjects that are dear to Howard's heart, reincarnation and Norse mythology. "The Valley of the Worm" features James Allison, a terminally ill man on his deathbed, remembering a previous life as Niord, a Norse tribesman who fights a giant snake in a scene strikingly illustrated by Frank Frazetta on the cover and later takes his revenge on a monstrous Lovecraftian entity that slaughtered his tribe. The Picts, another subject that clearly fascinated Howard judging by their repeated appearances in his stories, also show up. Apparently, Howard wrote several stories about James Allison remembering his past lives and I hope that all of them will eventually see print again.
"The Cairn on the Headland" is set in Ireland, where the two-fisted scholar James O'Brien not only relives the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 AD, in which he took part in a previous life as the Irish warrior Red Cumal, but also has to save Ireland from the wrath of the Norse god Odin who took part in said battle disguised as a Viking chieftain and lies buried in the titular Cairn, which O'Brien's villainous companion unwisely disturbs. Howard has Irish ancestry and was clearly fascinated by the history and mythology of his forebearers.
Wolfshead includes but a small selection of the many horror stories that Howard wrote, but it also offers a taste of how varied Howard's works were. I hope that this is but the first of many collections of Robert E. Howard's horror stories to come.
A great and varied horror collection by a true master of the genre.
Four and a half stars.
There's Gold in Them Pulps and in That Trunk, Too: Other Howard works we may hopefully see again soon
The untimely death of Robert E. Howard is one of the great tragedies of our genre. Whenever I read a Howard story and marvel at what a great writer he was, I also mourn all the stories he never got to write, all the tales that remain untold. Howard pivoted to the more lucrative western market towards the end of his life, but would he have returned to Conan or even Kull or Solomon Kane later in life, just as his nigh contemporary Fritz Leiber keeps returning to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? We will never know.
However, the success of the Conan reprints is giving us the chance to explore the rest of Howard's work. Another Howard hero, Bran Mak Morn, last king of the Picts who defends his people against Roman occupiers, is set to be reprinted later this year. There is still so much more to discover such as the tales Howard wrote for Weird Tales' sister magazine Oriental Stories and other adventure-focussed pulps like Top-Notch or Thrilling Adventure, featuring the adventures of the American treasure hunter Kirby O'Donnell and the Texan gunfighter Francis Xavier Gordon a.k.a. El Borak in Kurdistan and Afghanistan at the turn of the century. For Oriental Stories, Howard also wrote several historical stories set during the Crusades, which are allegedly excellent.
Francis Xavier Gordon a.k.a. El Borak is a cover boy for the December 1936 issue of Thrilling Adventures.Donald von Gelb's striking cover art for the February 1931 issue of Oriental Stories illustrates Robert E. Howard's "Red Blades of Black Cathay", co-written with his friend Tevis Clyde Smith.
For the infamous shudder pulps, Howard penned several tales featuring the occult investigator Steve Harrison and for Weird Tales, he wrote the Fu Manchu type thriller "Skull Face". Howard also had a funny side, which is in full display in the humorous westerns featuring the big and dumb hillbilly Breckenridge Elkins as well as his stories featuring the boxing sailor Steve Costigan, which first appeared in the pulp magazine Fight Stories. I've read one of the Steve Costigan stories and it was hilarious. I hope that eventually we will get to read them all.
This gruesome cover of the February 1936 issue of Thrilling Mystery illustrates Robert E. Howard's story "Graveyard Rats".
And then, of course, there is also Howard's trunk of unpublished stories. Who knows what gems still lurk in there?
Belgian Italian singer Salvatore Adamo is not only the second bestselling musician in the world after The Beatles, but also adorns the cover of the latest issue of the West German teen magazine Bravo.
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