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 compentent 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 a 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.

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 trasnport 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 though 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. 

Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

by Rich Horton

I really enjoy Iain M. Banks' SF novels, particularly Use of Weapons, one of his Culture novels. I have also generally enjoyed those of his mainstream books I've read. This is a short look at one of those. Espedair Street is held in fairly high regard by Banks fans. It is also usually called one of his happier novels.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback, then, when the book opened with the narrator declaring that he had decided to kill himself. To be sure, he quickly assures us that he has decided to live after all.

It being a Banks book, it's told on two timelines. Fairly traditionally: one timeline recounts the last few days in the life of Danny Weir, while the other tells the story of his life from his late teens to the present (age 31). Danny Weir, we soon gather, was the bass player and songwriter for a huge 70s/80s progressive rock band, Frozen Gold. His nickname was Weird (for Weir, D., obviously enough). The band seems to have ended under rather distressing circumstances, which don't become clear for a long time.

In the present day thread, we learn that Danny is living a pointless existence in a mock cathedral in Glasgow, drinking his life away with Communist liquor, spending time with three not-quite-friends -- a young man, a rather older man, and a prostitute. He still writes music, but not very seriously -- film scores and commercial jingles. He gets drunk enough to have no idea what crazy things he might have done. He also doesn't tell any of his friends who he really is -- letting them think he is just the caretaker for Danny Weir's property.

The other thread tells the story of Frozen Gold: how Danny more or less forced himself on the band as a songwriter (they were talented players of cover tunes), his resentment of the middle-class origins of the other members, the meteoric success of the band. Danny is extremely tall (6'6") and he describes himself as ugly. The leaders of the band are Davey Balfour, a supremely talented guitarist, and Christine Brice, a wonderful singer. We soon gather that Davey's risk-taking may have something to do with the band's collapse, though Danny blames himself. There is also some sexual dynamics -- Davey cheating with Danny's girlfriend, and Danny responding with an affair with Christine (she and Davey having been a couple). 

It all comes to a head when Davey is pushed to resume his career (it seems that his solo album is unexpectedly a success), but then learns some more devastating news. He feels that there is simply no point to his life -- but then he -- well, leave it to the novel to reveal. Yes, though, it is at least a hopeful ending, if not unambiguously happy.

I rather enjoyed the book, but with reservations. Mostly they turn on a feeling that it's all too easy. Above all, Espedair Street seems facile. It's hard to believe in Frozen Gold -- in their success, in Danny's brilliance as a songwriter. It's hard to believe the tragedy that precipitates the action of the book. (The tragedy that ruined the band, on the other hand, though absurd, is believable in a weird way.) Danny's redemption also comes too easy. The more I think about this book, and about Banks's other books, I suspect that he is perhaps a supremely talented writer but not a great writer -- that his instinct leads him too readily to facile, constructed, ultimately shallow resolutions. It may be that at his best he can transcend this -- a reread of Use of Weapons may be in order -- but I suspect that in the long run this facility, this tendency to neatness and to easy solutions (even the sad endings, on reflection, are "easy" in a sense) is a limit to his range. (One illustration -- the nature of the human character in his Utopian Culture. The Culture is a wonderful place to live, but Banks has shied away from presenting a place inhabited by actual humans. Instead, they have been genetically engineered to be more tractable.)

Resurrected Post: A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo

"A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo" 

by Rich Horton

Back in 2001 I spent some time going over as many potential candidates for the Retro Hugo that year -- for works published in 1950 -- and I published my thoughts in several iterations, mostly on my SFF Net newsgroup. (Newsgroups! Those were the days!) I first commented on what I thought were worthy nominees. I updated it as I read more stories, and then as the nominees were announced, and then after the winners were announced.

Then, a few years ago, I went through an exercise to look back at the Hugos for the whole decade of the 1950s, I made a new post on what I thought were good choices for stories from 1950. That post is here. It echoes a lot of what I did way back in 2001 -- about which at that time I had completely forgotten! Today I had reason to look up things I had said about Fritz Leiber's classic story "Coming Attraction" -- and I came across this old post! So I decided to reproduce it here, in its original form (mostly) -- my later post linked above does mention a couple pieces I missed earlier. 

(And, hey, for more of my recent Hugo neep, here's my Substack post about the 2025 Hugo Short Story ballot.)

Anywhere: here is that old post:

I've been calling this a work in progress. Now, however, I have to say it's complete: the Retro Hugos have been awarded, and this latest revision includes commentary on the actual choices. I note that I have read all the actual Retro Hugo nominees. So, this essay considers the works I considered the most likely nominees for the 1950 Retro Hugos, to be awarded by the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention, the Millennium Philcon. Nominations for the Retro Hugos, and for the 2001 Hugos (for works published in 2000) are complete, and have been announced, as have been the winners. Interested people should check out the Millennium Philcon home page. In this latest revision to this essay, I will still list the stories I thought deserved consideration, adding the few examples that didn't make my list but which were nominated, and discussing the nominations, and the eventual winners.

(Incidentally, a someone different version of this essay, with pictures!, and with more prose and fewer lists, is available at SF Site, 1950 Retro Hugo Candidates).

I'd like to mention first that I'm aware of the arguments against awarding Retro Hugos, and I think they are pretty sound. There is no way we, in 2001, can reasonably simulate what voters in 1951 would have chosen as the best work of 1950. For example, stories by writers who established reputations that endure to this day will almost undoubtedly have an advantage over stories, possibly equally good or better, by writers who are forgotten or nearly forgotten 50 years later. But given that Retro Hugos are going to be awarded, the best we can do is try to find as many good 1950 stories as we can, read as many as we have time to, and vote accordingly. That's the goal of this essay: to list the novels and stories that I have found that I believe deserve consideration for Retro Hugo nominations. It's worth noting that the eventual winners, in my opinion, support the position of those who find the awards flawed -- particularly the non-fiction awards, which include such inexcusable results as Bob Silverberg winning Best Fan Writer, and Kelly Freas winning Best Pro Artist.

I began simply by checking the Internet Science Fiction Database's list of stories from 1950. The ISFDB isn't complete, but it's a pretty good resource. My memory is even less complete, but I have read a lot of old SF. I made a list of potential stories and novels, and posted the list on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, as well as on my personal newsgroup at SFF-Net, and at Dueling Modems. I got some suggestions for additions, mostly from the estimable John Boston, who knows far more about old SF than I do. I acquired a couple more anthologies to check out additional stories, and I even bought some magazine from 1950 (not a hardship: I love those old SF magazines). Dave Truesdale also made some suggestions, on SFF.Net. I also did some more research, at William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections. Basically, I remembered that Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty's seminal Best of the Year collections were coming out in those days. So I looked up the contents of their Best Science Fiction Stories: 1951 (which was published in 1951 but selects stories from 1950) in the Contento Index. While many of the stories I had already listed were in that book, there are a few more. They seemed to restrict themselves to novelettes and short stories. They did do a short-lived series of Best Science Fiction Novels which collects novellas. (Typically, magazines in those days called things of roughly novella length "Short Novels", though their length standards varied: Planet Stories seemed to call anything longer than about 16,000 words a "novel", while the examples I find in Astounding are closer to 20,000 words (and for example the two Lawrence O'Donnell stories below were listed as novelettes and are each over 18000 words). The Standard Publications/Better Publications pulps (Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, and, later, Space Science Fiction) published much longer "novels": 30,000 words was typical, and I have one issue of Startling with a novel called The Dark Tower by Wallace West that is nearly 60,000 words! At any rate, the first (1952) Bleiler/Dikty collection of Best Novels included the Poul Anderson story, "Flight to Forever", that I list below, even though that story dates to 1950, and the rest of that book collects 1951 pieces.

Anyway, I figure that to be fair I ought to add the Bleiler/Dikty selections to the list: they were what people at the time thought were the best. (And at least two of their selections are first rate stuff I had unaccountably missed in my earlier lists: Kornbluth's "The Mindworm" and MacLean's "Contagion".) In addition, I've discovered an anthology edited by Groff Conklin, Possible Worlds of Science Fiction, published in 1951, which had about 8 stories from 1950, many of them very good, such as Schmitz' "The Second Night of Summer", MacLean's "Contagion", van Vogt's "Enchanted Village", and Arthur C. Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark". I've gone ahead and listed all the 1950 stories that Conklin chose, just for kicks, though I haven't read "Exit Line" by Sam Merwin, and I think St. Clair's "The Pillows" and Fyfe's "In Value Deceived" are just OK. And, finally, I reread Ray Bradbury's seminal collections (quasi-novels), The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, both of which include several worthwhile 1950 stories.

So, here goes. Revised and expanded list of 1950 novel and short fiction Retro Hugo Candidates. I've marked [BD] next to stories from the Bleiler/Dikty collections, and I've also listed original magazine publications where possible. I've marked stories I've read with a *. And I've alphabetized the stories by author.

NOVELS: (this list includes at least three that should perhaps better be regarded as linked story collections: The Martian Chronicles, The Dying Earth, and The Voyage of the Space Beagle. I purposely didn't include another linked story collection first published in 1950, Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, simply because I subjectively think of it as more purely a short story collection than the other examples I list -- I concede without demur that reasonable people may disagree.) (I've just recently added Heinlein's juvenile Farmer in the Sky, which is not my favorite among his juveniles, but any of the RAH juveniles deserve mention!)

*"... And Now You Don't", Isaac Asimov (of course this is the second part of Second Foundation, but it was serialized in Astounding ending in January 1950, and it's about 50,000 words)

*Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov

*The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

*Needle, Hal Clement (This was serialized in 1949, but the 1950 book version is expanded to about twice the length of the serial)

*Farmer in the Sky, Robert Heinlein

*"You're All Alone", Fritz Leiber (though I prefer the 1953 (rev. 1980) expansion, The Sinful Ones, which is apparently actually Leiber's original, which he cut to get published in 1950)

Genus Homo, P. Schuyler Miller and L. Sprague de Camp (orig. 1941 but a revised version was published in book form in 1950)

*Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

*"Time Quarry", Clifford Simak (first ever serial in Galaxy, this is better known by the title of the 1951 book, Time and Again)

*First Lensman, E. E. Smith

*The Dreaming Jewels, Theodore Sturgeon

*The Dying Earth, Jack Vance (not really a novel but a collection of stories, and not really closely linked stories for the most part: still and all, what better book was published in-genre that year?)

*"The Wizard of Linn", A. E. Van Vogt

The Voyage of the Space Beagle, A. E. Van Vogt, a fixup of a bunch of short stories, several of which I have read. I'm not sure if the book version had additional material, which would make it eligible -- I believe it does involve significant revisions to some of the original material. .

I nominated the Bradbury, the Peake, the Vance, the Sturgeon, and the Leiber. The eventual nominations were for Pebble in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, The Dying Earth, First Lensman, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This last story, at 38,000 words, is actually a novella, but the Hugo rules allow the administrators to move stories of over 35,000 words into the novel category if they deem that sensible. I think that's a reasonable choice for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which after all is only known as a book. I plan to vote for The Dying Earth. I really think the remainder of the nominations are less than great. I don't quarrel with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I do think it one of the weaker Narnia books. Neither Pebble in the Sky nor Farmer in the Sky is anything like its author's best work. And I have just read First Lensman, the first "Doc" Smith novel I have ever read, and I thought it was quite bad.

The actual winner was Farmer in the Sky. I don't think this is at all a great choice, but it's defensible -- people have pointed out that The Dying Earth isn't really a novel, and that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is by no means the best Narnia story. And I have no argument with those who like it better than the Asimov or Smith stories -- after all, so do I! Certainly the Vance, Smith, and Lewis stories are immeasurably more influential than Farmer in the Sky -- one might say, more important -- but the award is for "best", not "most influential". Farmer in the Sky is not in my opinion one of Heinlein's best juveniles, but it's a solid and enjoyable work, and its award isn't a disgrace.

SHORT FICTION: (categories based on my wordcount, when I had the story at hand, otherwise I'm guessing)

Novella: (of this list, several works were originally published in book form, perhaps unusual in 1950. The Vance is from The Dying Earth, the Heinlein from the collection also called The Man Who Sold the Moon, and the Lewis, of course, was published on its own as a book.)

*"Guyal of Sfere", Jack Vance (20,000 words)

*"Flight to Forever", Poul Anderson (20,000 words) [BD] (Super Science Stories, Nov)

*"The Man Who Sold the Moon", Robert A. Heinlein (36,000 words)

*"To the Stars", L. Ron Hubbard (37,500 words) (Astounding, Feb and Mar)

*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis (at about 38,000 words, this is a novella by Hugo rules, though to be sure it was nominated as a novel)

*"Paradise Street", Lawrence O'Donnell (i.e. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, in this case reputedly mostly Moore) (18,200 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"Heir Apparent", Lawrence O'Donnell (also apparently mostly by Moore) (18,800 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Last Enemy", H. Beam Piper (24,000 words) (Astounding, June)

I nominated "Guyal of Sfere", "Paradise Street", "The Man Who Sold the Moon", The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and "Flight to Forever". The actual nominations I find rather controversial, indeed improper, though perhaps not worthy of too much fuss. They are, I am sure, the longest cumulative set of novella nominations ever. They include two novella-length stories that could have been moved to novel, though it's fine that they weren't, of course: "To the Stars" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon". There is also the Piper novella "Last Enemy", which I have just reread, and which I consider rather weak for a nominee, but that's not an issue either. The issue is that two full-length novels, above the word limit for movement down to the novella category (that limit is 50,000 words) were nominated: Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels, and Asimov's "... and Now You Don't". The first of these was nominated based on its appearance in the February 1950 Fantastic Adventures. The assumption seems to have been, any story that appeared a single issue of a magazine can't be a full-length novel. Well, that just isn't so. The pulps of that era were pretty generous as to word count, and novels of up to 60,000 words did appear in single issues. Oddly, Fantastic Adventures actually included word counts in their table of contents! (Something I've seen in few other '50s magazines, but none more recent.) They had "The Dreaming Jewels" at 55,000 words. As for "... and Now You Don't", I assume the rationale for calling it a novella was "it's only part of a novel, Second Foundation, so it must just be a novella". Not so again! It is well over half that novel, it was published as a three part serial in Astounding, and it's about 50,000 words long. Moreover, the precedent from the previous Retro Hugos (awarded in 1996) is illustrative: Asimov's "The Mule", a part of Foundation and Empire, also some 50,000 words long, was the novel winner for 1945. At any rate, my vote will go either to "The Man Who Sold the Moon", which I suspect will win, or The Dreaming Jewels, which is probably the better story, but which isn't a novella. I like "... and Now You Don't" fine, it ranks third. "To The Stars" is, on the one hand, reasonably well-done and pretty absorbing, an interesting read; and, on the other hand, morally disgusting. On the gripping hand, it ranks below "No Award". "Last Enemy" is not, in my opinion, one of Piper's better stories. I can't rank it very highly either.

As I predicted, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" won. I can't quibble -- as I've said, I voted for the Sturgeon novel, but the Heinlein novella was next in my list.

Novelette: (Note that the Blish stories are part of his series Cities in Flight, I believe part of the novel Earthman Come Home. The Kornbluth and Smith stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"The Helping Hand", Poul Anderson (10,500 words) (Astounding, May)

*"Bindlestiff", James Blish (16,000 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"Okie", James Blish (Astounding, Apr)

*"The Dancing Girl of Ganymede", Leigh Brackett (13,800 words) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb)

*"The New Reality", Charles Harness (15,500 words) [BD] (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dec)

*"The Little Black Bag", C. M. Kornbluth (10,000 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Contagion", Katherine MacLean (11,900 words) [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"Dear Devil", Eric Frank Russell (15,000 words) (Other Worlds, May)

*"The Second Night of Summer", James H. Schmitz (11,000 words) (Galaxy, Dec)

*"Scanners Live in Vain", Cordwainer Smith (13,000 words) (Fantasy Book #6)

*"The Stars are the Styx", Theodore Sturgeon (16,000 words) (Galaxy, Oct)

"Forget-Me-Not", William F. Temple [BD] (Other Worlds, Sept)

*"Not to be Opened --", Roger Flint Young (14,600 words) [BD] (Astounding, Jan)

My nominations went to the Harness, Kornbluth, MacLean, Schmitz and Smith stories. The final ballot consists of "The Helping Hand", "Okie", "Dear Devil", "The Little Black Bag", and "Scanners Live in Vain". Not at all a bad ballot. I'll vote for "Scanners Live in Vain", with "The Little Black Bag" second, "Dear Devil" third, and "The Helping Hand" fourth.

This award went to "The Little Black Bag". I think that's not right -- but, once again, it's defensible. "Scanners Live in Vain" is indisputably more important -- one of my personal favorites. But "The Little Black Bag" is a strong story, and definitely was much admired in its time.

Short Story: 

(Note that of the Bradbury stories, "Ylla", "Usher II", "Way in the Middle of the Air", and "There will come Soft Rains" are in The Martian Chronicles, while "The Fox and the Forest" and "The Veldt" are in The Illustrated Man. Note all the variant titles, too. The Leiber and Matheson stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"Quixote and the Windmill", Poul Anderson (3600 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"Trespass!", Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson [BD] (Fantastic Story Quarterly, Spring)

*"Green Patches" (aka "Misbegotten Missionary"), Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Oddy and Id" (aka "The Devil's Invention"), Alfred Bester [BD] (6400 words) (Astounding, Aug)

*"There Will Come Soft Rains", Ray Bradbury (2500 words) (Collier's, 6 May)

*"Ylla" (aka "I'll Not Look For Wine"), Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (MacLean's, 1 Jan)

*"The Veldt" (aka "The World the Children Made"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Saturday Evening Post, 23 Sept)

*"Usher II" (aka "Carnival of Madness"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Apr)

*"The Fox and the Forest" (aka "To The Future", aka "The Fox in the Forest"), Ray Bradbury (6500 words) [BD] (Collier's, 13 May)

*"Way in the Middle of the Air", Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (Other Worlds, July)

*"The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", R. Bretnor [BD] (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

"The Star Ducks", Bill Brown [BD] (F&SF, Fall)

*"The Last Martian", Fredric Brown [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"A Walk in the Dark", Arthur C. Clarke (Thrilling Wonder, Aug)

*"Summer Wear", L. Sprague de Camp [BD] (Startling, May)

*"A Subway Named Mobius", A. J. Deutsch (6500 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"In Value Deceived", H. B. Fyfe (4300 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"To Serve Man", Damon Knight [BD] (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Not With a Bang", Damon Knight (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

*"The Mindworm", C. M. Kornbluth [BD] (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

"The Silly Season", C. M. Kornbluth (F&SF, Fall)

*"Coming Attraction", Fritz Leiber [BD] (5000 words) (Galaxy, Nov)

"Two Face", Frank Belknap Long [BD] (Weird Tales, March)

*"Spectator Sport", John D. MacDonald (2000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Feb)

*"Born of Man and Woman", Richard Matheson [BD] (1000 words) (F&SF, Summer)

"Exit Line", Sam Merwin, Jr. (Startling, Sept)

*"The Sack", William Morrison (6000 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"The Pillows", Margaret St. Clair (4800 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Jun)

*"Liane the Wayfarer" (aka "The Loom of Darkness"), Jack Vance (4400 words) (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

*"Enchanted Village", A. E. Van Vogt (5800 words) (Other Worlds, Jul)

"Process", A. E. van Vogt [BD] (F&SF, Dec)

My nominations went to the Leiber, the MacDonald (which I recently read in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories issue), and three Bradbury pieces ("There Will Come Soft Rains" ,"Ylla", and "Usher II"). The actual nominations went to the two SF Hall of Fame stories, "Coming Attraction" and "Born of Man and Woman", as well as to three rather frivolous pieces, "To Serve Man", "The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", and "A Subway Named Mobius". While this isn't a bad nomination list, it does have a dreadful, disgraceful, lack. Where is Bradbury? My best guess is that he had so many fine stories that the votes were split. Secondarily, many people might not have realized which stories from The Martian Chronicles were eligible, and indeed, may not have regarded those stories as separate stories. At any rate, it's a terrible shame. That said, my vote, as I always intended, will go to "Coming Attraction", which, it seems to me, should be the overwhelming winner. (The other four stories rank more or less even with me -- I suppose the Knight, because the joke is a really neat joke, goes second on my ballot, or perhaps "Born of Man and Woman".)

The actual Retro Hugo went to "To Serve Man". Truly, this award is shocking. It may be unfair of me to suggest this, but I would hope that Damon Knight, with his outstanding critical sense, at least considered refusing it. "To Serve Man" is a fun, biting, story. But it's a trifle. "Coming Attraction" is a masterpiece, and it's a story that says something. Something besides "It's a cookbook", for crissake. I am forced to the conclusion that "To Serve Man" won not for Best Short Story, but for Best Twilight Zone Episode -- a clear example of what can go wrong with an award like the Retro Hugo -- where a story can benefit from a years later TV adaptation.