Resurrected Review: Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark

Review: Aiding and Abetting, by Muriel Spark

by Rich Horton

The recent publication of a biography of the great British novelist Muriel Spark, Electric Spark, by Frances Wilson, has led to some welcome attention to the writer. And it reminds me that I should return to her -- I read about a dozen of her novel some decades ago, and I found them remarkable. My favorites are mostly among her earlier novels, such as Memento Mori (1959), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), and of course The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961); but she was writing first rate novels nearly until her death in 2006. Some of the sheer viciousness of her early novels was a bit dulled in her later works, perhaps, but they remained intriguing and ambiguously dark. Here's something very brief I wrote in 2001 (lightly revised here) about her second to last novel, which appeared in 2000.

Muriel Spark's Aiding and Abetting is another very short novel, at about 36,000 words.  This story is based on the true story of Lord Lucan, a dissolute English Earl who killed his children's nanny by mistake (thinking she was his wife) and then beat his wife, though she escaped.  Lucan fled prosecution, and was never found.  Many people think he is dead, but there were rumours and "Lucan sightings" for decades. Spark did take some liberties with the real life facts of the case in this book. (The crime occurred in 1974 and Lucan was not declared legally dead until 1999, just prior to the publication of Spark's novel.)

Spark creates an unusual psychiatrist named Hildegard Wolf, who has a criminal past of her own (also based on a true story, apparently). Dr. Wolf has a practice in Paris, and she gets two new clients, both of whom claim to be Lord Lucan.  Eventually they use their knowledge of her past as a guard against her exposing them to the police. She is disturbed by this: also she isn't sure which or either of the men may be Lord Lucan. Soon Wolf's lover is also involved in the search for the missing Lord, as are an old acquaintance of Lord Lucan and the daughter of another old friend of his.

These people end up on a merry chase, leading to a very satisfying resolution. The book is written in Spark's usual, very enjoyable, ironic/satiric voice. It is sharply but subtly moralistic about the attitudes of Lucan's class, and about the nature and persistence of guilt.  It is also a thoroughly enjoyable book to read.  Spark was a marvel, and this book, publishe in her early 80s, stands respectably in the company of her best work.

Old Bestseller Review: Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Thoughts on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

by Rich Horton

What to say about Great Expectations, one of the most famous English novels of all time? I don’t really have an awful lot to add to the voluminous critical views. I am still in a sense quite new to Charles Dickens. I’ve read five of his novels (if we call A Christmas Carol a novel): Nicholas Nickleby and A Christmas Carol in my teens, and David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, and now Great Expectations within the last couple of years. In that list I would rank Great Expectations second behind David Copperfield.

Great Expectations was serialized in Dickens’ own magazine All the Year Round in 1860 and 1861, and published in book form (three volumes) by Chapman and Hall in 1861. It is a long book by most measures -- about 500 pages in my edition, nearly 200,000 words. I say long by most measures -- it’s not nearly as long as some other Dickens novels -- David Copperfield is 800 pages or about 370,000 words, and Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House are both nearly as long as David Copperfield.

I’ll summarize the familiar story very quickly. There are some spoilers, though not for the very end, so skip this if you want, especially the third paragraph, which corresponds to the third volume of the novel. The hero is Philip Pirrip, called Pip for obvious reasons. He is an orphan who is raised by his rather abusive older sister and her very kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. As a young boy he meets an escaped convict who forces him to steal some tools from Joe so that he can free himself from his shackles, and he also gives the man some food. When Pip gets a bit older he is hired to regularly visit a strange woman, Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster (in her 40s or early 50s though she is often portrayed as elderly) and Miss Havisham’s beautiful but very cruel adopted daughter Estella, and Pip conceives an unrequited love for Estella.

When Pip grows near adulthood, he is given a mysterious gift that will allow him to go to London and learn to be a gentleman. He is assured that there are "great expectations" for his future. He is sure that Miss Havisham is his sponsor, and that she intends for him to eventually marry Estella. In London he makes friends with a couple of men -- Herbert Pocket, the son of his tutor Matthew, who is also a relative of Miss Havisham; and John Wemmick, the clerk to the lawyer Mr. Jaggers who handles Pip’s "expectations", as well as Miss Havisham’s business. Pip learns gentlemanly ways but doesn’t really learn to be a man -- he runs into debt, spurns his old friends such as Joe as well as Biddy, a sweet and honest country woman who had seemed to love Pip when they were younger. 

And then one night he is surprised by a strange visitor -- Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict he had helped as a young child. Magwitch had been transported for life to Australia, and had become rich there. He had vowed to help his young benefactor -- to see him become a gentleman. Pip is astonished, and at first repulsed, and vows not to accept any more money from Magwitch. But over time he realizes that for all Magwitch’s coarse ways, and his truly criminal past, he is a loyal and fundamentally honest man. Pip comes to appreciate his friend Herbert more as well, and is given examples in behavior by people like Wemmick as well; and his character begins to take a turn, even as his expectations dwindle. I won’t detail the climax, or the various revelations that tie the intricate plot together, but novel comes to a powerful (and slightly ambiguous) conclusion.

I was delighted as the novel closed to find myself having guessed right about how much of it would work out -- from such small things as John Wemmick’s marriage to Miss Skiffins to larger things like the eventual fate of Biddy. In certain novels this is a source of satisfaction -- these revelations should be on the one hand surprises but surprises that arise properly from what came before, so that eventually they are not surprises. If you see what I mean. And of course there is Pip’s fate -- which is honestly worked out, and which, as I hint, ends a bit ambiguously. (And, apparently, somewhat differently than Dickens originally planned.)

It’s a wonderful novel, it really is. I have said that I prefer David Copperfield, and I do. That novel is bigger and baggier, fuller, messier. As I put it, if a novel is a prose work of some length with a flaw, David Copperfield is a prose work of great length with great flaws -- and amazing virtues as well, and a great heart. There is just more there, and more that I love. 

But it must be said that Great Expectations is more unified, more tightly plotted, better structured. And there are the joys of Dickens’ eccentrics: John Wemmick and his father, "the Aged"; the expert lawyer Mr Jaggers; the hypocritical Uncle Pumblechook, a slightly less evil version of Mr. Pecksniff from Martin Chuzzlewit; the obsessed Miss Havisham herself; loyal and exceedingly honest Joe Gargery; Miss Havisham’s relatives and their "expectations"; Trabb's boy, Pip's tormentor but also a key helper at one point; the aspiring actor Mr. Wopsle; and the villainous Orlick.

My final question, for anyone who has gotten this far, is -- what to read next by Dickens? Bleak House is an obvious answer, and I’ll certainly get there. I also want to read some more of the Christmas novellas -- "The Cricket on the Hearth", perhaps? But what other novels? Dombey and Son? Oliver Twist? Little Dorrit? What do people suggest?

Recent Substack posts from me

Here are some links to recent posts on my Substack:

A look at a 1956 issue of Fantastic. Not a great issue, but it does have four stories by a very young Robert Silverberg. https://open.substack.com/pub/richhorton314252/p/the-bad-old-stuff?r=arrxg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

A parallel review of a science fiction magazine (Analog) and a mainstream little magazine (Zyzzyva): https://richhorton314252.substack.com/p/from-a-to-z-in-short-fiction-magazines

A review of Elizabeth Taylor's great novel Angel: https://richhorton314252.substack.com/p/satire-and-sympathy

A review of The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen: https://richhorton314252.substack.com/p/innocence-and-emptiness

Rich Larson's excellent new short story collection Changelog: https://richhorton314252.substack.com/p/review-rich-larsons-changelog

Resurrected Review: Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick

Another Resurrected Review, this one of Michael Swanwick's 2002 novel Bones of the Earth, which, it seems to me, isn't remembered as well as it ought to be.

Resurrected Review: Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick

A review by Rich Horton

I've read some solid SF novels in 2002 so far -- The Years of Rice and Salt, Permanence, Schild's Ladder. It hasn't been a bad year. But nothing that really threw me until this one. Bones of the Earth is, about halfway through the year, clearly my favorite SF novel of 2002. It combines several well-integrated (and rather original) SFnal ideas with some neat scientific speculation, interesting characters, a compelling plot, and a powerfully argued theme about the nature of science and the human urge to do science.

The novel concerns a program to send paleontologists back to the Mesozoic Era to study dinosaurs in their natural environment. As such it is both a dinosaur novel and a time travel novel. Perhaps unexpectedly, the thematic heart of the book is in the time travel aspect, though the dinosaur speculations are worthwhile and fun in themselves.

The story opens in 2012 when Richard Leyster, a young paleontologist, is approached by a mysterious man named Griffin,offering him a mysterious job. He can tell him nothing about the job, but he can show him something -- a fresh Triceratops head. And he seems oddly certain that Leyster will accept the job. Leyster does, of course, and several months later he finds himself at a strange scientific conference, attending presentations about field work in the Mesozoic, and being accosted by a mysterious older woman (though she was born later than he) named Gertrude Salley, who implies a past relationship. Thus we have met the three main characters -- Leyster, the brilliant and studious scientist; Salley, brilliant herself but manipulative and unbound by law or rules; and Griffin, the tormented administrator of the entire program.

One key plot thread concerns a scheme by Christian fundamentalists to sabotage the time travel efforts, which ends up marooning a number of paleontologists in the Late Cretaceous. Griffin and his assistants try to loop back and forth through time to forestall this sabotage, but they are frustrated by the insistence of the sponsors of the time travel program that no paradoxes be created: thus anything they know to have "already happened" they cannot stop from happening. The other key thread involves Salley's attempts to subvert that law -- right at the beginning we see hints that she is trying to cause paradoxes, and her attempts continue, though her motive remains unclear to the reader for some time.

The scenes in the Cretaceous involve some well-handled "primitive survival" scenes, and some fascinating speculation about dinosaur social life and about the real causes of their extinction. The other thread involves some very clever handling of time loops and paradox, and an eventual trip far into the future to meet the Unchanging -- the mysterious beings who have offered the boon of time travel to humans. The resolution is surprising, logical, and achingly sad, or at least bittersweet. Swanwick is convincing treating human curiosity, our love of science. He is convincing treating human reactions to the possibility of fixing our past mistakes. There are some lovely set pieces involving encounters with prehistoric beasts, and one involving a young girl fascinated by Mesozoic sea life. The characters are well-drawn, particularly Griffin and his boss, the Old Man. Leyster and Salley are well done as well but a bit less fully realized -- or pass too clearly idealized to fit their parts. The minor characters are interesting, too. I loved the book, and I was quite moved by it. I think it is one of the best time travel novels in all of SF.

Resurrected Review: The Blood of a Dragon, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Resurrected Review: The Blood of a Dragon, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

by Rich Horton

Lawrence Watt-Evans's Ethshar novels are uniformly enjoyable commonsensical light fantasy, somewhat in the mode of L. Sprague De Camp, set in a fantasy world distinguished by having multiple, mostly quite different, magical systems. I read through a number of them a few decades ago -- the first several appeared from Del Rey in the '80s and and '90s, a couple more came out from Tor, and Lawrence has continued them in the years since for Wildside Press -- about 15 novels have appeared to date. I ran into Lawrence for the first time in a while at Worldcon this year, and it seems a good time to resurrect this review of a novel from 1991.

Dumery of Shiphaven is a 12 year old boy, the son of a wealthy shipowner. It is time for him to choose a trade. He has no interest in the shipping business, and anyway his oldest brother will get the business. Dumery, at any rate, is interested in something else -- he wants to be a wizard. His father agrees to let him try -- but every wizard Dumery meets agrees that he has not a shred of magical talent. Dumery is frustrated and offended -- but then he happens to see a wizard negotiating with a seller of dragon's blood, which is an important ingredient is many spells. He realizes that if he can't be a wizard, he might get a measure of revenge by becoming a dragon's blood seller.

So Dumery tracks down the dragon hunter. Who, it turns out, has no interest in hiring an apprentice. Dumery decides not to give up. He decides to follow the dragon hunter to his home, and to insist on an apprenticeship. Thus, he ends up paying his way on a boat up the river, shoveling cow dung. His parents miss him, of course, and they hire a witch's apprentice to track him.

Both Dumery and the young witch end up following the dragon hunter to his home. The witch learns some secrets about witches and warlocks which (no pun intended!) seem a setup for a further book. Dumery, meanwhile, learns that the dragon hunter isn't quite what he seems. Also, that he still hasn't any wish for an apprentice. Dumery remains stubborn, and almost despite himself -- certainly not through any particular virtue of his own -- stumbles on a secret involving dragons, one in particular, that might just make his fortune.

It's an odd, interesting, book. There aren't exactly any heroes, nor really any villains. Dumery is certainly the central character, and he is in many ways quite an unpleasant young man. He is a thief, he's irresponsible, he's spoiled -- he's not by any means evil, but he's not good. The witch's apprentice is fairly appealing, but in the end a pretty minor character. The other characters are ordinary people, some of whom do pretty bad things -- but mostly through ignorance. The book is enjoyable reading throughout -- Watt-Evans is a very engaging writer. And the eventual solution is both logical (indeed, I thought of it much earlier ...) and in a way heroic.

Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of those writers who never fails to entertain. He's a Hugo winner (for the short story "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers"), and a writer who easily moves between Fantasy and Science Fiction. I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've read by him, and this book is a good example of what he does best: tell of pretty ordinary people, in an intelligently constructed fantastical world, dealing with problems in believable and sensible -- if not always successful -- fashions.

Review: Victims of the Nova, by John Brunner

Review: Victims of the Nova, by John Brunner (1962, 1963, 1965, revised 1969, 1974, 1981, omnibus edition 1989)

by Rich Horton

Early John Brunner novels, I have learned, are a wonderful source of thoroughly competent SF adventure. My experience with Brunner in my younger years was probably not atypical. I first read Stand on Zanzibar, because it was a Hugo winner, and I liked it a fair amount, respected it even more. I read another novel from his "late" period, Total Eclipse, and liked it also. I shied away from other "mature" Brunner novels, like The Shockwave Rider and The Sheep Look Up, mostly out of fear that they would be downers. 

I did read a couple shorter Brunner novels from the middle or late part of his career, The Dramaturges of Yan and The Infinitive of Go. Neither seemed all that ambitious, and I thought The Dramaturges of Yan decent and The Infinitive of Go thoroughly awful.

Then, as part of my Ace Double reading project, I encountered several early Brunner novels. I knew that he had been very prolific, and that his early work was regarded as hackwork. And so I suppose it is -- but it's extremely good hackwork. The early Brunner novels I have read have one characteristic in common -- they are fun. They do not entirely lack ambition, either -- usually they treat at least reasonably interesting issues, though often somewhat rapidly -- one might say superficially. One of these Ace Doubles included The Repairmen of Cyclops. This book is one of three novels about the aftermath of a nova which destroyed a colony planet called Zarathustra. A number of ships escaped, but with limited supplies and no well-defined destination. Some of these ships reached habitable planets, but the survivors tended to lapse into barbarism.

In this space I have previously posted reviews of Castaways' World and The Repairmen of Cyclops. I figured it was time to post a review of Secret Agent of Terra -- and why not just assemble all three into a review of the omnibus. So here we are!

The other two novels were Castaway's World and Secret Agent of Terra. Brunner later revised them both, retitling the first Polymath and the second The Avengers of Carrig. An omnibus of all three novels (The Repairmen of Cyclops very lightly revised) was published in the UK in 1989 as Victims of the Nova.

Polymath was first published in 1963 as Castaways' World (half of an Ace Double), and the revised version under the new title in 1974 by DAW. It is set in the immediate aftermath of two ships from Zarathustra crashlanding on a planet. The viewpoint character is Lex, who turns out to have been in training to be a polymath. A polymath is an enhanced individual who serves at the point man for colonizing a new planet. Lex has many but not all of the skills a polymath would have -- what he mostly lacks is specific knowledge of this particular randomly arrived at planet. His starship crashed on the seashore. After a long winter his group has survived, outside the ship, and indeed their ship has foundered in the ocean. It is clear that they will have to make a permanent life on the planet, with limited resources. 

The other group crashed inland, and they holed up in the ship over the winter. But as spring arrives it seems they have all died. The seaside group begins to set up the rudiments of a colony. There are stresses, many centered about a promiscuous young woman named Delvia. In particular, a teenaged girl has formed a lesbian attraction to Delvia, only to be rejected when the older woman finds men available. 

Then an expedition is sent to the site of the inland starship. It turns out this group has survived, but under terrible conditions. They continue to believe that they will be able to refurbish their ship and head for another, more hospitable, world. The Captain has basically enslaved the passengers. Naturally they resent the comparative success of Lex's group -- setting up a dramatic resolution. The novel is very enjoyable, often thought-provoking though at times a bit forced -- good stuff if short of great.

The Avengers of Carrig was first published in 1962 as Secret Agent of Terra. It was also an Ace Double half. Its revision came out in 1969 from Dell (there was also a later DAW edition).

This book is set several hundred years after the Zarathustra disaster. Carrig is a major trade center on one of the Zarathustra Refugee Planets. By this time the Corps Galactia has monitors on each of the ZRPs, trying to prevent ugly incidents like a planet being enslaved by its neighbors, but otherwise letting them develop at their own pace. 

One Trader Heron comes to Carrig in time for the yearly kinghunt, in which the leading young men of Carrig hunt a dragonlike local creature, the parradile. The one who kills the parradile king becomes the ruler of the city. This year a promising young man is favored to become the first new ruler in 18 years. But a mysterious visitor has come to town with Heron. First he kills the Trader (who is of course a Corps Galactia agent), then he uses his blaster (Galactic tech) to kill the parradile and take over. 

The death of Heron leads the Corps to investigate. Young probationer Maddalena Santos, whose unpleasant attitude has nearly led to her expulsion from the Corps, gets the job, but her ship is shot down. Luckily she lands near the northern sanctuary, which turns out to be the remnants of the original Zarathustra spaceship. There she meets the young man who had been expected to kill the parradile king -- he has had to flee the new rulers of Carrig, who have forced the population to labor in uranium mines. The two eventually hatch a plot to oust the new ruler of Carrig -- in the process, of course, achieving Santos's goal of hunting down the Galactic renegades. They also learn an important secret about the parradiles that will change Carrig forever.

The ending is a bit odd and abrupt -- overdetermined would be the word I'd use. Still, it's a fun novel. Probably the least of the three ZRP novels, but still a good read.

The Repairmen of Cyclops is the third ZRP novel. It was serialized in Fantastic, January and February 1965, and published as half an Ace Double a couple of months later. DAW's reprint appeared in 1981.

The novel is set about 20 years after The Avengers of Carrig. By this time 21 ZRP planets have been discovered by the human Galactic society. Interactions with those planets are kept to a minimum, however -- it is felt that allowing them to develop on their own is preferable from the point of view of encouraging vibrant new cultures and ideas. The flipside of course is that many people, especially on the more primitive of these worlds, live perhaps unnecessary lives of poverty and misery.

Cyclops is not a ZRP, but a citizen of Cyclops was involved in the scheme to harvest nuclear material using the people of Carrig. The government of Cyclops, led by the authoritarian woman Alura Quisp, now favors a policy of encouraging Galactic intervention in the ZRPs, ostensibly to uplift their inhabitants to Galactic civilization. This novel opens with Quisp's lover hunting a wolfshark, and losing a leg in the process. He is rescued by a local fisherman, and taken to the nearest hospital, which happens to be run by the Galactic Patrol, or Corps, instead of Cyclops. The Patrol has much better facilities, and they discover that the leg the wolfshark chewed off wasn't the man's own leg.

Maddalena Santos returns, now visiting her old boss (who also appeared in The Avengers of Carrig) at the base on Cyclops. She is bored after spending 20 years not interfering on a primitive planet. So she gladly gets involved in the mystery of the anomalous leg. Also involved are her boss, and the fisherman, really a boy, who rescued the shark hunter. We quickly gather what's really going on -- lacking regeneration tech, a doctor on Cyclops has instead been repairing patients with parts taken from people kidnapped from yet another ZRP. It is up to Maddalena and the others to stop these people -- a job complicated by the aging Alura Quisp's desire for a new young body, and by her willingness to take extreme political steps to interfere with the Corps.

As with so many novels from this period (Brunner's and others), it sets up the situation rather nicely, then rushes way too swiftly to a conclusion. And like The Avengers of Carrig, the ending is perhaps "overdetermined" -- by which I mean that the good guys win very easily, and as it were in multiple ways. I still quite liked it.

I continue to find "early Brunner" great fun. I don't really want to oversell his early work -- it's often rushed, the worldbuilding is not terribly impressive, there are plenty of implausibilities. We're not talking lost classics here, nor novels that were unfairly deprived of Hugos. But almost without exception, the several pre-Stand on Zanzibar Brunner novels that I have read in the past year or so have been unpretentious, somewhat original, thoughtful, and purely enjoyable. 

Review: The Blighted Stars, by Megan O'Keefe

Review: The Blighted Stars, by Megan O'Keefe

by Rich Horton

My latest read for the book club I'm a member of was Megan O'Keefe's 2023 novel The Blighted Stars, the first in a trilogy (collectively called The Devoured Worlds) which was completed rapidly with The Fractured Dark (2023) and The Bound Worlds (2024). The entire trilogy was written during the pandemic, and there is certainly an infectious agent driving much of the plot -- but O'Keefe says she doesn't think of it as a "pandemic novel" and I think in many ways she may be right. At any rate, I read the book quickly, with a fair amount of enjoyment and also lots of reservations. I will say however that encountering books like this is one of the benefits of being in a book club, because I doubt I'd have read it otherwise, and while I can't call it great I can say I was happy enough to read it. (I should add that I did a sort of hybrid reading -- the audiobook on my daily commute, but the print version at home. The audiobook is read, quite well, by Ciaran Saward.)

O'Keefe published her first novel, Steal the Sky, in 2016, part of a fantasy trilogy, The Scorched Continent. A space opera trilogy, The Protectorate, followed. So one might say she's a "trilogist"! (She's also published a couple of short stories, a couple of novellas (one set in the Scorched Continent universe), and, just this year, a standalone space opera, The Two Lies of Faven Sythe.)

The Blighted Stars opens with two starships, the Amaranth and the Einkorn, orbiting a world called "Sixth Cradle" -- as it is the sixth known Earthlike world that may serve as a "cradle" for humanity -- which, we soon realize, lives mostly in space after Earth and the other "cradles" have been overrun by "the shroud". Tarquin Mercator is the son of Acaelus Mercator, the leader of the Mercator corporation, one of the five MERIT companies that rule humanity. Tarquin is a geologist, a good scientist but painfully aware that he doesn't have the ruthlessness required to lead Mercator. He is on this mission planning to prove once and for all that the "shroud" that has blighted Earth and the other cradles was not caused by Mercator -- for Mercator's power is derived from their monopoly on the mining of relkatite, a substance critical for the warp drives of their starships, and for many other aspects of the technology that humanity uses.

There are some other key aspects of this future. One of the most important is the use of brain scans which can be download into "printed" bodies, achieving extended life spans in more or less young and healthy bodies -- though this process is limited because one must have died before being reprinted, and the repeated experience of death stresses the brain states enough that eventually one "cracks" -- goes insane. On the political side, this is a seriously class-based society, with family members of the corporations at the top, employees of the corporation at the next level, and so on -- and access to the reprinting options among other privileges is controlled by the corporations. 

Finally, there is a political opposition: Unionists and Conservators, respectively the more political and more revolutionary and violent branches of the people who want to overthrow the corporate ruling structure. And the Conservators, at least, are convinced that it is Mercator's mining of relkatite that has brought the "shroud" to all the cradle worlds. One of the Conservator leaders, Naira Sharp, had been Acaelus Mercator's "exemplar" -- essentially, a bodyguard -- until she had defected. She and her fellows have been blowing up starships and the like in the hopes of stopping the mining of relkatite. But Naira had been captured and put on trial, and Tarquin Mercator's testimony about the impossibility of the mining operations causing the shroud had led to her conviction.

So -- I've gone on for a while, but all of the above is backstory. At the opening there is a sudden crisis. The drones used to explore Sixth Cradle don't seem to be functioning. And then the Einkorn opens fire on the Amaranth. This is presumed to be a Conservator plot, and as the Amaranth is about to explode, the only options are to escape to the surface of Sixth Cradle, or to cast one's brain scan back home via ansible. Acaelus announces that he and Tarquin are going to cast home, while his new exemplar, Lockhart, will manage the rest of the crew. But Tarquin disobeys, seeing that Acaelus' plan is to abandon the entire crew. Instead, he helps as many people as possible onto a shuttle, and they desperately descend to the planet, with the help of Ex Lockhart. And we learn immediately that Lockhart is actually Naira Sharp, who has somehow managed to get her brain scan downloaded to the print meant for Lockhart.

(Most readers will realize immediately that among other things this is an "enemies-to-lovers" romance. This isn't a criticism -- that can be, often is, a very tired trope, but O'Keefe handles it quite well here, and there is a nice twist at the end.)

I've gone on longer setting up the novel -- and to some extent I'm trying to hint that the world O'Keefe has built for the trilogy is pretty complex -- and mostly interestingly so. And there are surprising realizations that arise during the story that alter our original expectations. (I did have a hard time making sense of the economics (a problem with lots of SF!) and I thought some of the science rather dodgy.) The bulk of the story, then, is set on the planet's surface. The survivors establish a camp, and Tarquin must navigate their natural suspicion of him as a Mercator heir, while trying to establish a rapport. The hope is to find a way to get to the Einkorn, but the Einkorn isn't communicating. Tarquin and Naira (who he still thinks is Lockhart) begin to reluctantly grow close. Tarquin makes some increasingly shocking discoveries about the planet, beginning with the fact that it too is infected by the shroud, and is thus dying. But there are other mysteries -- the tiny boreholes in the ground, the ore they find that is related to relkatite but not the same, the presence of other creatures that should not have any way of living there, and a realization that there was already a Mercator presence on the planet. Both Tarquin's and Naira's preconceptions about the nature of the shroud and the effects of Mercator mining are shattered. In addition, there are brief interludes from the point of view of the Einkorn itself, and from the point of view of Acaelus, in a new body back in the Solar system. There is the mystery of what happened to Tarquin's mother. And there is an extended (but not unduly so) resolution back home -- obviously a slingshot to the rest of the trilogy.

I am of two minds about this novel. On the good side, the world it is set in is intriguing, with some familiar ideas, yes, but well-handled ones. The central romance is pretty involving -- it kept my interest and I was willing to believe in it. And I would like to see how the political and personal issues are resolved by the end of the trilogy. On the other hand, it's a bit too long -- some judicious editing could probably have cut 20% without harming the novel. Part of this is excessive telling of the characters' thoughts -- this too seems an abiding problem with contemporary SF. (Tell not show isn't an absolute rule, but I think it is important in dealing with interiority, especially as many people don't really understand their motivations and feelings well enough to plausibly relate them the way they are done here.) The prose is solid but also probably needed one more cleanup pass. The characters outside of Tarquin and Naira don't come to life. In the end -- this is decent work but not brilliant. 

Review: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!, edited by Richard Wolinsky

Review: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!, edited by Richard Wolinsky

by Rich Horton

In 1977, the Berkeley, CA, community radio station KPFA began broadcasting a program called Probabilities Unlimited, aimed at interviewing science fiction personalities. Lawrence Davidson was the host, Richard Wolinsky the (accidental) engineer, and the guests were SF writers Richard A. Lupoff and Michael Kurland. Wolinsky quickly became a co-host, and Lupoff joined shortly later. That program still exists today, though after a couple of name changes, and a broadening of focus beyond science fiction and even beyond literature it is now called Bookwaves/Artwaves.

Davidson and Lupoff had a particular interest in veterans of the pulp era of science fiction (say, from the 1920s to the 1950s) and many of their subjects were writer, editors, and fans from that time. But many writers whose careers started much later were also included. The three original hosts (Davidson, Wolinsky, and Lupoff) had all left the show by 2001, but they discussed turning the interviews they had done into a book, which eventually became the book at hand. The book had a long and not entirely smooth road to publication, and in the interim Davidson died (in 2016) and Lupoff died (in 2020, after writing a few versions of his introduction to this volume.)

The book is not strictly speaking transcripts of the interviews that the program featured. Instead, at the suggestion of Bay Area science fiction writer Frank M. Robinson, it is organized by chronology, theme, and author, roughly, so that it ends up being a casual sort of oral history of the genre, from the point of view of writers, editors, and fans. The various entries reproduce excerpts from different interviews -- so that the interviewees can seem to respond to each other, and even contradict each other. This format works very well, really, and we get a fun, gossipy, look behind the scenes of (mostly) the SF magazines, but also books, and even some TV, up through roughly the 1960s. There is a very heavy focus on the pulp era. Lots of interesting anecdotes, at least some of which are true! (For example, Harlan Ellison claims he was at the gathering when L. Ron Hubbard decided to start a religion, which is a bit hard to believe as Ellison only moved to New York after 1953 when he got kicked out of Ohio State.)

There truly is a sort of three perspective view, though the perspectives intersect. All of the interviewees had some professional role in the science fiction (save perhaps Annette McComas and Phyllis White, who were married to J. Francis McComas and "Anthony Boucher" (William Anthony Parker White), the founding editors of F&SF.) But many of these people were fans first, and so the likes of Charles Hornig, Alva Rogers, Robert Bloch, Ted White, and Forrest J. Ackerman among others discuss that aspect. A significant thread follows the notorious fan group the Futurians.

Some of the interesting contributors were important editors as well as writers: H. L. Gold, Damon Knight, Frederik Pohl, and Larry Shaw. John Campbell died before these interviews started, but he does get a lot of mention -- much very respectful, and some a bit more negative. One publisher was interviewed: Ian Ballantine, the co-founder of Ballantine Books. There are several writers best known for work out of the SF field: Louis L'Amour, William Campbell Gault, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, and Walter Tevis (plus the likes of Alfred Coppel and Kurt Vonnegut, who are famous outside the field but definitely wrote a great deal of SF.)

Besides all those mentioned there are many expected names: Isaac Asimov, A. E. Van Vogt, Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, and Anne McCaffrey for example. And also a lot of now obscure writers, such as Ed Earl Repp, Stuart Byrne, Stanton Coblentz, W. Ryerson Johnson, Frank K. Kelly, Frank Belknap Long, Jane Roberts, Richard Tooker, and Basil Wells.

I've read a lot about the history of SF, and many of the stories retold here were familiar, such as Ellison's tale of the origin of Scientology, or the story behind Mickey Spillane's only SF piece, or how Philip José Farmer wrote a novel supposedly by Kurt Vonnegut's pulp writer character Kilgore Trout -- but even in this case the slant on the episodes, and the details, are new. And there were things I'd never heard of, as with Ellison's story about collecting money he was owed by stealing a typewriter, or E. Hoffman Price visiting H. P. Lovecraft in New Orleans, or Ray Bradbury forging Edgar Wallace's signature on a copy of King Kong in order to get enough money to take a girl on a nice date.

I can't say how big an audience there is for this book these days, though I think there's enough interesting stuff here that most people who care about SF would enjoy it. And for those of us -- of a certain age, perhaps -- who already knew a bit about the writers featured here, and the eras discussed -- this book is gold.

Old Bestseller Review: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Review: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (with Auguste Maquet)

by Rich Horton

The Three Musketeers is Alexandre Dumas's most famous novel, and for many readers it is their favorite. I read it over 50 years ago, in my teens, and all I really remembered is the part at the beginning where D'Artagnan agrees to duel each of Athos, Porthos, and Aramais; and a general sense that I liked it. I have just reread it -- a combination of listening to a (free) Librivox recording and reading the 1950 translation, by Jacques Le Clercq, in the Modern Library edition. (I actually suspect that the book I read as a teen was the Grosset & Dunlap Junior Illustrated Library version, which was the Le Clercq translation, but abridged to about half the length of the original.)

My quick reaction? It's a very enjoyable novel. But it's not nearly as good as The Count of Monte Cristo, which is one of the most purely fun novels I have ever read. 

The novel was first serialized in a newspaper in 1844. I doubt it has ever been out of print since. It's a long novel, about 600 pages in my edition, though even at that length it's only about half the length of The Count of Monte Cristo. As I said, much of my reading was in the Librivox recording, which was done using an older (so public domain) translation, and which was read by a wide variety of volunteers. All of the readers were acceptable, but to be sure they varied -- some, I thought, got a bit too dramatic in rendering different voices, others read perhaps a bit too quickly -- but on the whole it was a fine production. The Le Clercq translation was better than public domain one used for the audiobook, but not radically so. The Modern Library edition includes a brief bio of Dumas, and an introdcution by Alan Furst, plus some commentary by Margaret Oliphant, Brander Matthews, and G. K. Chesterton. The commentary -- dating to the late 19th and early 20th century -- is interesting, and discusses things like the authorship question, which even by then had been pretty conclusively resolved in favor of Auguste Maquet's significant contributions to the major Dumas novels.

I'll skip biographical information and instead link to my review of The Count of Monte Cristo, which does include a potted biography.

So, to the novel, fairly briefly. And there will be spoilers, as I assume the book is very familiar to many readers, but I'll put some space before the real spoilers.

At the opening, the 17 year old D'Artagnan, in 1825, leaves his native Gascony and heads to Paris, hoping to join the musketeers, who are commanded by one M. Treville, who had known D'Artagnan's father. On the way, he runs into a man at an inn, accompanied by a beautiful woman. The man casually insults him, and also steals the letter of introduction his father had addressed to Treville. D'Artagnan is ready to fight the man immediately, but is given no chance, and he is very intrigued by the woman.

In Paris he meets the three musketeers, as I noted, and manages to be introduced to Treville, who has him assigned to a lesser unit. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, who are already "The Inseperables", invited D'Artagnan into their circle after their scheduled series of duels was interrupted by Cardinal Richelieu's henchmen, allowing D'Artagnan and company fight the Cardinal's men instead, which gave D'Artagnan the chance to impress the others.

For the next while, the book is really involved in setting in motion the main plot. A lot of it deals with the financial precarity of the four men, and also with their "lackeys". This section -- indeed about the first third of the novel -- drags a bit. Still, these eight characters -- the four musketeers and the four lackeys, are nicely differentiated. There is some additional intrigue: D'Artagnan falls in love with his landlord's wife, Madame Bonacieux, who is in the service of the Queen, Anne of Austria. The Queen is in love with one of Charles I of England's main ministers, the Duke of Buckingham. (Buckingham is an historical figure, and it treated somewhat more kindly in this book than his real life story suggests. In real life he was a bisexual libertine, likely James I's lover, and a really bad minister who had a big role in making Charles' reign the disaster it was. While he did possibly dally with Anne of Austria, it was not the desperate affair depicted here.) Anyway, D'Artagnan ends up deputized to recover a gift of diamonds the Queen had made to Buckingham, because the Cardinal had discovered this and planned to embarrass the Queen, his enemy, by revealing that she did not have the diamonds, originally a gift from her husband, Louis XIII.) This is a fine adventure sequence, with the side effect is that D'Artagnan engenders the hatred of Milady Clark, a Frenchwoman who had married an English noble, but who spied for Cardinal Richelieu. And one result of this -- combined with Richelieu's suspicion of all four musketeers -- is that Madame Bonacieux is kidnapped. 

By roughly this time, it is 1628, and the musketeers will be part of the army that the King and Cardinal are sending to La Rochelle, a city held by the Huguenots. The Cardinal is done tolerating the presence of Protestants in France, which had been allowed openly since Henry IV (a Protestant who converted to Catholicism in order to become King ("the throne is worth a Mass")) had issued the Edict of Nantes. So La Rochelle is besieged, and the the English are ready to send ships to support the Huguenots, under Buckingham's command. The Cardinal schemes to stop this ... and our heroes are involved for a complicated variety of reasons, including Athos's personal history, D'Artagnan's multiple intrigues with women (at least three are involved to some degree) and their fortuitous overhearing of the Cardinal and Milady scheming ... All this is resolved in very exciting fashion, with some comic episodes, some breakneck chases, some surprising revelations, and some tragedy. 

I would add that while The Three Musketeers is not exactly punctilious in hewing to true history, some of the critical events in the book are taken directly from historical happenings, so I recommend not boning up in the history of the siege of La Rochelle and such until you finish the novel. (I waited, and I'm glad.)

Spoilers will follow ....

Things I found interesting, and maybe a bit disappointing. One is the way the chief villain morphs from Richelieu to Milady about halfway through the book. Richelieu is just a schemer, who is often sincerely working for the good of France, if in shady ways. But Milady is an out and out psychopath. That can be fascinating, but also a bit overdone. Secondly, you can't help but noticing that by the end, the musketeers for the most part completely fail. They are trying to save Buckingham. He is killed (an historical fact, to be sure.) They are trying to rescue Madame Bonacieux. She is killed. They are trying to foil Richelieu. He succeeds, and by the end realizes that even the execution of Milady is probably to his benefit. 

Indeed this is an oddly nonromantic novel. Athos' only attachment is to his wife -- Milady, who of course he hates. Aramis' love affair is essentially completely offstage. Porthos is involved with a not very attractive somewhat older woman, and his main interest is in her money. D'Artagnan falls for at least three women: Madame Bonacieux, Milady, and Milady's servant Kitty. Now mind you this probably consistent with his character. But he doesn't end up with any of them (and indeed we don't really know what happens to Kitty.)

And finally, the ending is kind of morose. There are two sequels to the novel, sometimes published in as many as five additional volumes. The only famous one of those is the section of the third novel that is sometimes published separately as The Man in the Iron Mask. But even though the story was continued, The Three Musketeers ends as if no sequel was planned or needed, and the four friends are separated. 

None of this means the novel was a failure. It's lots of fun. It's often funny, often exciting. It's a very good adventure novel. But I'll repeat -- The Count of Monte Cristo is peak Dumas. But I know many readers I trust rank them in the opposite order!

Review: Hidden Folk, by Eleanor Arnason

Review: Hidden Folk, by Eleanor Arnason

by Rich Horton

Eleanor Arnason is one of my favorite writers. She's been publishing excellent short fiction for over 50 years, including early highlights such as "The Warlord of Saturn's Moons", brilliant middle period work like "The Lovers", "Dapple", and "Stellar Harvest", and wonderful late stories like "Mr. Catt". She has published six novels as well, including two in her Hwarhath series, A Woman of the Iron People and Ring of Swords.

Arnason is of Icelandic descent, and a number of recent stories draw on her ancestry. Hidden Folk, a 2014 collection from Many Worlds Press, collects five of these, along with an absorbing introduction telling a bit about Iceland and its history, and also about Arnason's own ancestry. There is also an afterword giving "Notes on the Stories". Hidden Folk is available now (as of August 2025) for only $14 here. 

The five stories are all good reading, set at multiple times in the last millennium or so. They are characterized by a forthright presentation, with humorous undertones, taking the weird events and strange creatures completely at face value. They are variously clever, sweet, scary, violent, and simply odd. I'll quite briefly describe the stories:

"Kormak the Lucky" is an outstanding novella about an Irishman taken into slavery by Norwegian raiders. He ends up in Iceland, eventually in the household of the "Marsh Men", until the crazy grandfather of the family, scheming against his son, forces him to flee to an underground land of "light elves". This doesn't save him from slavery, but eventually he agrees to help a beautiful elf-woman escape --  first to the dark elves, then to the Irish fey. Arnason blends Scandinavian and Irish traditions with her own imagination -- the technological nature of some of the elves is particularly well thought out. The elves are unsympathetically and realistically presented, and the people much the same. The telling is deadpan, with Arnason's wit simmering underneath. Just an absorbing and original story. 

"Glam's Story" is essentially a reimagination of an episode from the sagas about a violent outlaw and great fighter called Grettir Asmundarson. Here he is engaged to battle the ghost of Glam, a slave owned by Thorhall Grimson. Grimson had murdered him, perhaps because he (Grimson) was a worthless husband and his wife seemed to like Glam a bit. The story is narrated by the wife in a very matter of fact tone, and in the end it's a much about her unhappy marriage and how that works out as it is about the somewhat epic battle of hero and ghost.

"The Black School" is about Saemundur Siguffson, a young man from Iceland, and his two companions, who go to Paris to attend the university there, in the 11th Century. Alas, they speak no French, and instead of the university they find themselves at the title school, and underground (literally) institution run by a sinisiter figure whom they learn is the devil. The school does offer instruction, which takes at least three years ... and at the graduation ceremony, the slowest graduate to leave is taken by the devil. The others seem likely to become black magicians. But Saemundur holds on to his faith and his principles, and works out a way to escape.

The first three stories, based on sagas and folktales, are set early in the second millennium, but the last two are set in the 20th Century. "The Puffin Hunter" concerns Harold, a divorced man living in rural Iceland, who hunts puffins and gathers their eggs. One day a puffin speaks to him, asking him not to wring its neck, but Harold wrings it anyway. And then is haunted by the puffin's ghost. It turns out the ghost puffin was an elf woman, who had changed into a puffin and now was stuck. The elves have found Gudrun, a human folklorist, who is helping them recover their lost one, and who works with Harold to that end. The story proceeds nicely on more or less the expected path. Their are comic bits such as the effects of a ghost puffin haunting you -- lots of guano -- and I also like the deadpan descriptions of elves in Iceland in more or less the present day.

"My Husband Stein" is a bit of a romance, about a Finnish journalist who takes a house in the remote East Fjords of Iceland, and finds herself the object of unwanted advances from a troll. Arnason's wrily humorous, poker-faced telling makes the story go -- but it's not just whimsy, there's an ecological subplot, and strong believable characters.

All in all, this is a first-rate collection. Arnason's stories are a treasure, wherever you find them, and not nearly as many of them have been collected in book form as should be. Snap this book up!

Resurrected Review: Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, by Damon Knight

[I'm getting ready to head to Seattle for the 2025 Worldcon, so I've resurrected a review I did in 2004 of a really fine novel by one of SF's true greats.]

Resurrected Review: Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, by Damon Knight

by Rich Horton

Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, was Damon Knight's last novel, published in 1996. It is a very strange book, reminding me somewhat of Gene Wolfe, and of Patrick O'Leary's The Impossible Bird, and of other afterlife fantasies like William Golding's Pincher Martin, or even Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Which is a hint that I regarded the book as an afterlife fantasy, though that interpretation is not entirely clear.

The book opens with the narrator, Wellington Stout, in an Italian hospital, recovering from a shot to the head. He had come to Italy for his beloved stepdaughter's wedding, but had agreed to ferry a mysterious package for his less than beloved older brother -- and in trying to deliver the package he seems to have been shot.

Stout is a salesman for a firm dealing in ladies' underwear. (A running joke -- or rather a detail of characterization -- is his obsession with women's breasts and with their bras.) He is 64 years old, an American long resident in England. We learn a bit about his past life -- a couple of marriages, one failed, one seemingly happy but ending with his wife's untimely death. Lots of affairs are implied. His relationship with his stepdaughter (actually his first wife's daughter by her second husband, whom Wellington raised after her mother fell apart) is loving but perhaps on the edge of impropriety. He seems a nice guy but far from perfect. 

However, after his injury, he appears to lose his grip on reality. Or perhaps reality has lost its grip on the world. There seem to be competing groups of aliens, and of powerful secret humans, vying for control of the world. Stout finds himself willy-nilly on a journey westward, from Italy back to England to his childhood homes in Pennsylvania and Oregon. At first it seems that an explanation for all the strange goings on may be forthcoming -- what is the message Stout was carrying? Are the aliens from the planet Mongo real? what do the strange voices Stout keeps hearing, muttering almost intelligible phrases, mean? etc. etc. But as Stout's travels continue, things get weirder and weirder. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, but I remain puzzled by it -- which is not necessarily a bad thing! We do get a pretty comprehensive portrayal of Wellington Stout, and of his life, in an odd fashion. (In a way it recalls a little known but quite remarkable timeslip novel, The Man Who Got Away, by Sumner Locke Elliott.) The weird events are continually interesting. But what it all means? I don't really know. It's easy enough to say that it could be an afterlife fantasy -- Stout hallucinating as he dies from the bullet in his head -- but even if that's true that's not much of a stab at what the novel really means ... Still, it keeps me thinking. A reread is in order -- and it's a reminder that Damon Knight was a magnificent writer at every length short of novel until late in his life -- and then in his last two novels he figure out that length, so Why Do Birds? and Humpty Dumpty: An Oval are true capstones to a great career.

Review: On Strike Against God, by Joanna Russ

Review: On Strike Against God, by Joanna Russ

by Rich Horton

I don't usually publish reviews of books by the same author back to back, but after finishing The Female Man I proceeded straight to On Strike Against God. My review of The Female Man is here. 

Joanna Russ wrote what she called her "coming out" novel, On Strike Against God, beginning in 1973. A first draft was complete by 1974, making it her first novel after The Female Man, though the final manuscript wasn't complete until 1977, by which time she had finished two other novels, We Who Are About To ..., and The Two of Them. On Strike Against God was placed with a Lesbian press, Out and Out Books, and publication was delayed until 1980 largely due to financial issues at the publisher. It was thus her last novel to see print.

It's a short novel, a bit over 40,000 words. Russ's novels are fairly short -- each of Picnic on Paradise, We Who Are About Too ..., and On Strike Against God are in the 40,000 to 45,000 word range; while her other three novels are roughly twice as long, between about 75,000 and 80,000 words. This is in no way an issue -- they are all the right length. On Strike Against God is also Russ's only non-SF novel, though she wrote a number of mainstream short stories.

This novel is told by Esther, a teacher at a college in upstate New York. Esther is in her late 30s, and divorced. She is beginning to realize that she doesn't like men much (she liked her husband OK, but didn't like sex), and she is falling in love with a younger woman at the school named Jean. At first she struggles -- society has told her for so long that heterosexual relationships are the only proper ones that she's not sure what to do about Jean. But she's also coming to her feminist consciousness, and is fiercely resisting the sexism that affects every other aspect of her life.

So ... she makes a tentative move on Jean, and Jean responds, and ... well, I won't tell the rest of the plotty stuff, but the relationships has ups and downs, but mostly, I'd say, ups. The sex scenes are simply beautiful -- not in any sense pornographic, but sweet, character-based, revelatory, emotionally honest. There are also reminiscences of earlier female friendships, scenes of men, good-intentioned or hostile, simply failing to comprehend her (or any women), and "coming out" scenes to friends -- a gay male friend, an older couple in the neighborhood, other women -- that painfully illustrate how hard it was to buck society's rules back then even with the most supposedly liberal people.

The book is profoundly feminist, with some passages quite similar to passages in The Female Man. And this is all powerful -- but much more powerful is the love story at the heart of the novel. It is real, it is emotionally convincing, and it's just -- good. This is a novel that a lot of SF readers have missed, I think. At any rate, I certainly had! It has had several editions: the Out and Out Books printing, a 1985 edition from The Crossing Press, and a 1987 edition from The Women's Press (a UK imprint.) I read it in the 2023 Library of America volume Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories. And the Feminist Press put out another edition in 2024. So, after a quarter century or so in which it was hard to find, On Strike Against God is again quite readily available, and I strongly recommend it.

Review: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Review: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

by Rich Horton

Joanna Russ finished The Female Man in 1971, and spent the next few years trying to sell it. According to Nicole Rudick, the editor of the Library of America edition in which I reread it (Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories), one reason was that Russ wished to place it with a "mainstream" publisher, instead of a science fiction imprint. Those publishers rejected it, says Rudick in her "Notes on the Texts", either because of Russ's established identity as a "science fiction writer", or because they had already bought their token feminist novel for that year. (I would add that Russ's identification with science fiction aside, The Female Man is pretty obviously science fiction in itself, no need to have the author's backlist confirm that.) Eventually she placed it with Frederik Pohl's line at Bantam, labeled "A Frederik Pohl Selection". This was, then, a definite concession for Russ -- it appeared from a science fiction imprint, and as a mass market paperback to boot. That said, the "Frederik Pohl Selection" label was an attempt at positioning the book as a sort of prestige imprint for SF, and indeed the month before The Female Man appeared in February 1975 the Frederik Pohl Selection was Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. (Having said that, the only "Frederik Pohl Selections" that seem to have lasted are The Female Man, Dhalgren, and another Delany novel, Triton.)

1975 was 50 years ago, and for that reason there have been some discussions of the major SF novels of that year, and in the process I have reread the top three such books: in terms of sales (I assume), notoriety (I am sure), and latter day reputation (I sense). These are The Forever War, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo; Dhalgren; and The Female Man. (The latter two did not appear on the Hugo shortlist, but were both on the (rather long) Nebula shortlist.) Back in 1976 I am pretty sure my Hugo vote went to The Forever War, though I did read both Dhalgren (the whole thing, honest!) and The Female Man. But here in 2025 I am pretty strongly of the opinion that the best SF novel of 1975 was The Female Man. All three novels are to a great extent, er, "products of their time" -- particularly in their treatment of sex and sexuality. But The Female Man remains much fresher today, certainly including that aspect.

I hinted at commercial success above. Frederik Pohl took a significant risk in publishing both Dhalgren and The Female Man -- but his risk definitely paid off. Dhalgren was a major seller, something of a sensation back then, and it still sells well now. The Female Man didn't make quite the commercial splash Dhalgren did, but it sold nicely, and it too has continued to sell consistently since then -- over 500,000 copies, according to Ludick. And on the face of it, The Female Man isn't a particularly "commercial" book. (Neither to be sure is Dhalgren.)

Part of the appeal -- and part of the difficulty -- of The Female Man lies in its structure. It's told from the points of view of three women ... or four ... or even five? Janet Evason was born on Whileaway, a world inhabited entirely by women, the men having died of a plague hundreds of years before. Jeannine Dadier lives on Earth, in 1969, in an alternate history in which a certain Herr Schickelgruber died in 1936. And Joanna ... who is Joanna? We see her first in Jeannine's timeline. She tells us she has turned into a man. We are invited to imagine that she is indeed the author, and she does seem to be from our timeline. Later we will meet Jael, who lives in another timeline in which men and women live separately and are engaged in a decades-long war -- in which Jael serves as a gleeful assassin. (And behind these women is a mysterious other -- the spirit of the author? The spirit of the book?)

Janet Evason has come to Jeannine's timeline, as the very advanced society of Whileaway has developed a means of interdimensional travel. Janet is acting as some sort of ambassador (though with what goals seems unclear.) Jeannine is in a long term unsatisfying relationship with a man named Cal. The plot -- and there is a plot though in no sense a conventional one -- follows Janet's time on Earth, during which she ends up collecting Jeannine and Joanna, and then the three of them go to Jael's timeline. That sounds a bit flat, but the novel isn't flat at all. 

Whileawayan society is described through Joanna's life story: in some ways almost utopian, though with dark streaks: duelling is common, and there is a distinct authoritarian aspect to its organization, though it's a rather communal and apparently benevolent authoritarianism. Their technology is high, and they live lightly on the land (partly due to a fairly low population.) By law, every woman has one child of her body (the goal seems to be a static population but in reality such a rule would lead to a continually declining population, as some people die before they can bear children.) There is advanced genetic science, allowing for their parthenogenetic reproduction and also for enhancements such as elimination of most diseases, and increased intelligence.

Janet's mission to Earth gives us a view of Jeannine's society, which is broadly very similar to ours in 1970 or so. Jeannine herself is a critical character -- evidently intelligent, but unable to use her intelligence due to sexism; unable to have a satisfying relationship due to sexism; unable even to quite understand that she isn't happy. Another woman allows us another perspective -- Laur is shown attracted to Janet, and able to break free of heteronormative constraints. 

The eventual transition to Jael's world is the most satirical, and the harshest, part of the book. It's also queasily funny, and Jael is a fascinating if horrible character. The men of Manland have made themselves a dystopia, complete with men deemed unworthy of manhood who are changed into women -- the fully changed can become "wives", the half-changed take on other traditionally so-called feminine roles. All this is horrific but it lands too, as a cruel exaggeration of male-dominated society that hits home as a funhouse mirror of our world. 

Throughout the novel there are powerful lines, expressing the frustration the author, her characters, and many women feel at the positions they are forced into by men, at the justifications offered by men, at the lack of listening, the lack of imagination, the lack of perception by men. These hit home, they hit hard, and it's hard for me as a man to respond in any way -- inappropriate even. I could argue -- and I would -- that in the 50 years since The Female Man was published there has been significant progress; but then perhaps that's not an argument I have the right to make. Finally I should say that angry as the book is -- justifiably angry -- it is also very funny. (One of the abiding virtues of Russ's writing is her wit.)

The last chapter is the best -- it's unexpected, it's powerful, it's moving. It reiterates many of the arguments set forth earlier (implicitly or explicitly.) It provides a conclusion -- not a wrapping up but an impressionistic hint -- for each of the book's four -- no, five! -- J's. It makes its point, it says goodbye, and it introduces itself -- the book -- to the world. It was four years late, perhaps, to first publication -- but 50 years later, the book still speaks strongly. 

Review: The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope

Review: The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

The Small House at Allington (serialized 1862-1863, in book form in 1864) is the fifth novel in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles. It is curiously disconnected from the other five novels -- not entirely so, by any means: the main character of The Warden appears in a very brief scene, and the de Courcys are a significant presence, as they were in Doctor Thorne. But for the most part, this is an isolated episode. And perhaps for that reason -- though perhaps on its own terms -- while I still very much enjoyed this book, I think I would rank it fifth of the five Barsetshire novels I've read so far.

The book revolves around Christopher Dale, the Squire of Allington, an aging bachelor, his widowed sister-in-law, Mary Dale, and her two daughters, Isabella (Bell) and Lillian (Lily). The Squire is an emotionally cold man, but loyal if a bit parsimonious. Mary and he have not really got along, as he disapproved of Mary marrying his brother. But he has let the dower house of his estate, the "Small House", to Mary and her daughters at no cost. The Squire has a notion that a marriage between Bell and his nephew and heir Bernard would be a great thing, but Bell thinks of Bernard as only a brother of sorts. 

The main action begins when a friend of Bernard's, Adolphus Crosbie, comes to visit. Crosbie is of no particular family, but he has a somewhat prestigious position in the civil service; and he has made a name as a man of fashion. His airs bowl over Lily, and her beauty and spirit make an impression on him, and they become engaged. A local boy, also in the civil service but at a lower level, John Eames, has been in love with Lily for some time, but she does not love him. After the engagement, Crosbie begins to have doubts. He is by no means rich, and Lily is merely the niece of a Squire, not aristocratic at all, and she has no fortune. He is acquainted with the Earl de Courcy. and on a visit he is seduced by the prospect of marrying an Earl's daughter -- and the eldest de Courcy daughter, Alexandrina, is rather desperate to be married -- so Crosbie jilts Lily Dale and marries Alexandrina.

Meanwhile John Eames is slowly but steadily making progress in his job, and is beginning to grow out of what Trollope call his "hobbledehoy" stage. Alas, he has foolishly gotten into a bit of mess with the daughter of his landlady. The Squire's desire that Bernard marry Bell encounters Bell's absolute refusal. While Lily is devastated by her rejection by Adolphus Crosbie, but refuses to confront his absolute lack of character. The novel then follows John Eames' growth -- helped by a fortuitous friendship with another Earl, the Earl de Guest; and also Crosbie's unhappy marriage and some struggles in his social life, not helped at all by a confrontation with Eames. Christopher Dale's relationship with his sister-in-law and her daughters reaches a breaking point. And John must find a way to disentangle himself from the vulgar woman he's gotten involved with. 

The novel -- intelligently, I think -- frustrates the reader with some of its developments -- certain plot expectations do not eventuate. Financial issues are certainly important, but not quite to the extent as in most of the other Barsetshire novels. 

There is an odd subplot, almost completely unrelated to the rest of the novel, in which Plantagenet Palliser is introduced. Planty Pall is basically the most important character in Trollope's other major series, the Parliamentary or Palliser books. His part of this novel concerns a dalliance with Griselda, Lady Dumbello, the very beautiful but essentially empty daughter of Archdeacon Grantly, whose marriage had been an important subplot in Framley Parsonage. The resolution of this subplot sets up a key thread of the first Parliamentary novel, Can You Forgive Her?, but seems out of place here. As Can You Forgiver Her? was the next novel published after A Small House at Allington, I wonder if Trollope was purposefully setting up a sort of transition between the two series.

Is this a good novel? Yes it is, and I enjoyed it greatly, But I don't quite love it the way I love the other Barsetshire novels I've read, nor the two Palliser novels I've read. There's a sense of manipulation to some of it -- Crosbie's punishment, for example, while satisfying to the reader seems perhaps a bit too pat. But no matter -- it's worth your time if you get into Trollope at all.

Review: Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner

Review: Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner

by Rich Horton

Alan Garner, born in 1934, established his reputation with a few fantasies generally marketed for young adults, though Garner rejects such a label, and his books are certainly read with enjoyment and often awe by adults. The best known are The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), its first sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), The Owl Service (1967), and Red Shift (1973). I read them 20 or more years ago and found them challenging, quite different from most supposedly YA fantasies. Most of his later work was more overtly aimed at adults, and often not fantastical at all. Treacle Walker is his latest "novel", published in 2021, and shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. I say "novel" but it is perhaps 18,000 words long -- those who complained about the brevity of Orbital should take note!

I am going to confess that while I enjoyed reading this book, and found several passages remarkable, I struggled to get a grip on what it really meant, indeed on what was really going on. I proceeded to read some reviews, and most of those were either blithely confident in an ill-described and unconvincing explanation (as in "It's about quantum physics"), or simply gave a brief synopsis and said they liked the book. Fortunately, I happened across a review by the late Maureen Kincaid Speller, one of the best critics to arise on our field over the past few decades, and clearly someone who had read Garner's work deeply and respects it greatly. Her reading of the book is better informed and deeper than mine, and both illuminating but confessing some of the same difficulties I had in understanding it fully. (Though undoubtedly she understood it better than I!) Her review, from Strange Horizons, is here.

I'll content myself, then, with the briefest of synopses. Joseph Coppock is a boy who has been ill. He has a bad eye over which he wears a patch, and he loves comic books, notably one about Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit and his antagonists, Whizzy the Wicked Wizard and the Brit Brothers. One day a man comes to his door, a rag and bone man, desiring to take a rag and bone from Joe in exchange for a pot and a stone. Joe gives him and old bit of his pyjamas, and a lamb bone, and chooses a stone and a pot of medicine -- the latter a cure-all seemingly from a past century. The rag-and-bone man is named Treacle Walker.

Over the next little while Joe encounters a strange man, Thin Amren, who came out of a bog at the bottom of the meadow; and visits the eye doctor, learning that his "good" eye and his "bad" eye see very different things -- including the comic he's reading seeming to come to life. At one time there are two Joes. There is ever a sense of weirdness, and indeed a sense of things happening at different times simultaneously -- Joe himself living at different time. It's interesting that there is no hint of his parents, nor indeed of anyone besides Joe, Thin Amren, Treacle Walker, and I suppose the eye doctor. Questions remain, like:  is Joe alive? Is Joe really Treacle Walker in some sense? Which eye shows truth, or do they both? And so on.

I was intrigued, but didn't really love the book. I do think I need to return to The Owl Service and Red Shift at some time. 

Review: The Case of the Late Pig, by Margery Allingham

Review: The Case of the Late Pig, by Margery Allingham

by Rich Horton

Margery Allingham (1904-1966) was one of the "big four" women writers during the so-called "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", the others being Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Her best known character was Albert Campion, an aristocrat using an assumed name who acts as a detective sometimes, sometimes a spy. She wrote 18 novels and many short stories about him, though in several of the novels he is a relatively minor characters. Her husband Philip Youngman Carter completed an unfinished novel after her death, and wrote two more; and some time after his death a novel he had left unfinished was complete by Mike Ripley, and Ripley has continued to produce about 10 more Albert Campion novels, the latest appearing as recently as 2023. There was a BBC series called Campion in the late '80s (shown on PBS in the US) which adapted a few of the books.

I believe I read one or two Campion novels back in my teens but I have no memory of them. Several years ago I reads one of Allingham's non-Campion mysteries, Black Plumes (1940), which I quite enjoyed. So when I ran across a 1989 reprint of the 1937 novel The Case of the Late Pig, which Avon published about the time it was adapted into an episode of the BBC series, I picked it up, and I read it this past weekend, mostly while on an airplane to Boston to attend Readercon.

The Case of the Late Pig is a rather short novel, around 40,000 words. In fact, it was originally published in a collection of Campion short stories, but soon reprinted in a standalone book. It's told in first person by Campion -- apparently the only book to feature him as narrator. As the book opens, he is in bed, reading an anonymous letter, which announces the funeral of one R. I. Peters. Peters -- called Pig -- was a bully at the school Campion attended, and went on to a criminal career. Campion hardly regrets his passing, but attends the funeral anyway, and is surprised to recognize another schoolmate, Gilbert Whippet, who, he learns, received a similar anonymous letter. But there was nothing suspicious about Peters' death, and Campion forgets about it until a few months later a friend of his, Leo Pursuivant calls him down to his estate to investigate a murder. And the victim is unmistakably Pig Peters, though the man is known to Leo as Oswald Harris.

What follows is a fast-moving evolution of multiple motives (Oswald Harris made enemies easily, and particularly in this little place, where he proposed to buy up a popular property and develop it vulgar ways), multiple identities, many suspects, and some real danger for Albert and some of his friends. There's a bit of oddly undeveloped sexual intrigue between Albert and Leo's pretty daughter Janet. (The book is written in a way that seems to suggest that Janet and Albert may have met in a previous story.) There is more than one criminal, and Gilbert Whippet reappears in a surprising way. The crime itself is resolved in a pleasurably enough way. 

As a mystery, it's fine but minor. The best parts of the book are the ironical portrayals of the characters. There are a number of fine comic bits, and as I said some suggestinon of real peril. Campion is an engaging narrator. His somewhat brutish servant, the ex-burglar Lugg, is a nice sidekick. The narration is rapid and easy, never particularly deep. I am told that Campion's character deepens in later novels -- this story is fine but no more than that. 

Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

by Rich Horton

Here I'm taking a look at some recent SF or Fantasy short stories I read recently. I'll begin by helping celebrate the 50th outing of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet -- this remarkable magazine, started in 1996, is still in print, in the traditional "zine" format -- saddle-stapled and all; the issues are very attractive to boot. The editors are Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, and the contents are an eclectic mix of fiction, articles (often about cooking!) and poetry, with the fiction loosely in the SF/Fantasy zone but with no boundaries. 

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet celebrates its 50th issue with a strong issue, including S. Woodson's "Dog in the Garden", about a woman in a near future highly repressive corporatized environment who follows a mysterious dog into a new world, full of magic. It's sweet -- the nearly but not quite utopian other world is lovingly portrayed. I did feel that things were a good bit too easy for its main character. Jessy Randall's "Remedial Kissing Class" is also sweet, with the narrator finding love by more or less flouting the title lessons. "White Band", by Guan Un, is a nicely written vignette, with the main character a bit upset that their friend is marrying the moon, and "Graceless Creatures", by Shaun Cammack, is pure horror, about an exhibit of what seem sirens, which can be visited by people with headphones so they won't hear the song. Dark and effectively ugly. And Marie Vibbert's "The Summer Kids and the Gemini" has Hannah ready to go to college making one last trip to the amusement park (Cedar Point, in Sandusky, Ohio), only to meet some intriguing young people who spirit her away, to what turns out to be life of endless literal "amusement", and the rides can transport one through time to different parks in different eras. Vibbert sharply interrogates the real consequences of such an existence, and Hannah is smart enough to resist it -- even realizing that her mother had once met the same kids and regretted not going off with them.

Those are all fine stories -- Vibbert's being the best, I think -- but the prize story is "The Path to Pembroke", by L. H. Adams. It's set in North Carolina in a climate-ruined future, with serial outbreaks of different plagues a prime risk. Quint is a young man living among a small group of people trying to survive in the woods -- but always facing the risk of wanderers who might carry a new disease. When one such group comes by, Quint is delegated to walk to the Pembroke Biological Research Station, to warn them of a potential new disease and perhaps get some medicine. Quint's trip is terrifying -- he has gotten sick himself, and he is chased by a group of what seem a sort of zombies, and the weather is harsh. The narrative is a powerfully tense story, basically a chase. That's nice enough but nothing special, but the story is elevated to another level by the narrator itself -- at first seeming just an authorial device, allowing us to follow Quint and also learning something of his and his family's past -- but there is a kicker of a sting in the story's tail, combined with some neat and scary revelations of the nature of one of the diseases threatening people in this future.

The next two stories were recommended to me by Will Waller, and I thank him for the pointer. The first is from the May-June issue of Uncanny, the multiple Hugo-winning online magazine edited by Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas. 

One common trick of fantasy stories is to use the fantastical element as a very literal, reified, metaphor for the real life problems of the characters. I sometimes find this too artificial, too much a mere trick, and even unnecessary. But done well it can be very effective, and I thought this strategy worked brilliantly in Anjali Sachdeva's "Vivisection". Eleanor has learned to hide vulnerable parts of her body from her partner Severine. Her heart is in the kitchen, her liver in a closet, and so on. We quickly realize that Severine is a pretty awful woman -- powerful, attractive, and also abusive and a cheater. And Eleanor copes -- by hiding parts of herself. And by nurturing a deer -- a hart -- from a fawn to adulthood -- not a pet, but a sort of a near friend by now. 

The story sets up the situation and lets it play out -- Eleanor's increasing desperation in trying both to please her lover and not to be hurt by her, Severine's inevitable discovery of Eleanor's hidden body parts, the eventual crisis. This is a story that could have been told straight, with no fantastical elements -- but the literalized metaphor in this case elevates it, makes every step more powerful. I really enjoyed this.

Now to GigaNotoSaurus, a webzine that has been publishing roughly a story a month since late 2010, when Ann Leckie founded it. The current editor is LaShawn M. Wanak. GigaNotoSaurus tries to publish longer stories -- their stated length is between 5000 and 25000 words. Sage Tyrtle's story "The Starter Family", from June, is about 10,000 words long. It really excited me, as it presents a powerfully affecting (and scary, and creepy) idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. It did remind me vaguely of Ian R. MacLeod's excellent 1992 story "Grownups". 

Charles narrates the story, beginning as he is eleven years old. His school is all boys, and they don't know anything about girls, except for their mothers. At turning eleven, they take the oath never to reveal the truths they will learn about boys and girls, men and women, and Starter Families. Charles becomes an adult, and is allowed to choose his Starter Wife, and they are happy together. Soon they choose a Starter Baby, whom they love. But some ominous currents are churning. Charles knows what awaits them in the future -- and he finds he can't deal with it.

This story is both really wrenching in presenting its central dilemma, and intriguing in the way it satirizes '50s-style families, conformity in general, the tendency to juvenilize women and straitjacket men. It really packs a punch, and it does not pull that punch at the conclusion.

Review: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

Review: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

by Rich Horton

David Mitchell is a personal favorite writer of mine, particularly for Cloud Atlas (2004) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010). I've been working through the rest of his novels with great enjoyment, and now I've come to the book that came between those two books, Black Swan Green (2006). 

Most of Mitchell's books are to some extent genre-adjacent -- Cloud Atlas, for example, incorporates historical sections, a thriller, and sections set far in the future (all intriguingly and metafictionally entwined.) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an historical novel set in Nagasaki at the turn of the 19th Century, and including an extended episode that reads like a pure pulp story in some ways. Slade House is straight horror, and The Bone Clocks extends from the present day into a climate-change-wracked future. Black Swan Green, however, seems quite straightforward: the first person narrative of a boy growing up in Worcestershire in 1982, with noticeable semi-autobiographical elements. Having said that, the novel does, as with all of Mitchell's novels, feature characters from other Mitchell novels, most obviously the main character's cousin Hugh Lamb, who is one of the central characters in The Bone Clocks.

There are 13 chapters, each covering a month, from January 1982 through January 1983. Jason Taylor turns 13 at the start of the novel. He lives in the village of Black Swan Green in Worcestershire, in the west of England near the Malvern Hills. His father is an executive at the Greenlands grocery story concern, and his mother is (for now) a housewife. Jason attends the local comprehensive school. He is -- like most 13 year olds -- intensely concerned with social status at school, himself maintaining a precarious position somewhere in the middle, complicated by him being a pretty good student and an aspiring poet (who has published poems in the parish newsletter, naturally under a (pretentious) pseudonym, Eliot Bolivar; and furthered by the fact that his family are outsiders, living in a nice suburban sort of house in a new development outside the village.

The chapters organize themselves around central episodes during that year -- Jason breaking his treasured watch; the Falklands War and its effect on the locals, particularly the elder brother of a classmate; a fight between two of the school bullies; Jason's crush on a girl who ends up with one of the bullies; Jason's getting a chance to join a gang; a dinner party in which Jason's parents host his mother's sister and her husband and their children (including Hugh Lamb, who is a bit older and a lot bolder than Jason); an encounter with some nearby gypsies (following a city meeting about the proposed establishment of a compound for the gypsies); Jason finding a lost wallet at a carnival/fair, with tragic consequences; a school dance with much happier results for Jason, etc.

Those are episodes, but the linking themes follow primarily the fundamental changes in Jason's life, and his family's fortunes. It's clear from the start that Jason's parents' marriage is in trouble. Jason himself is pretty normal -- liking the sort of music I remember from 1982 (though I'm a decade older than he and Mitchell), having crushes on a couple of girls, dealing with bullies and finally holding his own (I do have to say I found his school much fuller of sadists (including some teachers) than I remember from any of my schools.) Jason's sister Julia is presented as fairly idealized -- a good student and future lawyer, much desired by boys her age and pretty sensible about dealing with them, and clearly adored by her brother who would never admit that. And in the end Jason's life will undergo a significant -- though not exactly earth-shattering -- change.

It's a very enjoyable and moving novel. Parts of it are very funny -- the early dinner party is a highlight in that sense. Parts are quite dark. Parts are sweet, others are exciting. I really loved the chapter in which Jason gets advice about poetry, about reading, and about music, from an old, eccentric, and fascinating Belgian woman. The depictions of life in the village, of the local geography, of the main characters all truly land. The portrayal of a disintegrating marriage is convincing and affecting. Perhaps a couple of the episodes seem to work about a bit conveniently, though. Still a really nice book. I can't rank it at the top of Mitchell's output, but it's very much worth reading.