Ace Double: Rocannon's World, by Ursula K. Le Guin/The Kar-Chee Reign, by Avram Davidson

Ace Double Reviews, 10: Rocannon's World, by Ursula K. Le Guin/The Kar-Chee Reign, by Avram Davidson (#G-574, 1966, $0.50)

by Rich Horton

Ace Doubles have a fairly declassé image. One doesn't tend to look for all time classics or Hugo candidates among them. Though as previous reviews in this series have shown, there were first rate novels and novellas published as Ace Double halves, such as Jack Vance's Hugo winner "The Dragon Masters". (That was, however, a reprint.) But even so, seeing that Ursula K. Le Guin's first novel was an Ace Double came as a mild surprise to me, some time back when I encountered this pairing. Since then I've realized that that wasn't really that rare, for example, Samuel R. Delany also had early novels published as Ace Doubles, as did many other great writers.

 Rocannon's World is about 44,000 words long. It was expanded from a 7700 word story, "Dowry of the Angyar", which was in the September 1964 Amazing. This story appears unchanged as the prologue to Rocannon's World (called here "The Necklace"), and it has latterly been reprinted by itself under Le Guin's preferred title, "Semley's Necklace".

If Ursula Le Guin is a mild surprise as an Ace Double author (her second novel, Planet of Exile, was also an Ace Double half), so too might be Avram Davidson. Though it should be noted that Davidson's early novels were fairly routine, rather pulpish, not terribly characteristic of his best work. The Kar-Chee Reign is a 49,000 word novel, a prequel to his 1965 Ace novel (not an Ace Double half!) Rogue Dragon. Rogue Dragon itself was nominated for a Nebula Award, but The Kar-Chee Reign, a lesser work, to my mind, was not. The two novels were reprinted together in 1979, in a volume bannered "Ace Double", but not a true Ace Double. That is, it was not published in dos-a-dos format, and not part of a regular series. Rather, Ace essentially put out a few single author "omnibus" editions of two novels at about that time, and called them Ace Doubles in a nod to their past. (I have another such book pairing A. Bertram Chandler's Into the Alternate Universe and Contraband From Otherspace.)

In retrospect, Rocannon's World is a curious novel. It is a "Hainish" novel, thus fitting into Le Guin's main "future history", but it doesn't seem wholly consistent with novels like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. What it mainly is is a fantasy novel with SF trappings. Except for the prose, which is excellent as one might expect from Le Guin, it feels strikingly pulpish. The plot and feel would not have been out of place in an early 50s issue of Planet Stories. Perhaps the influence of Leigh Brackett or Andre Norton can be detected. The ultimate effect is mixed -- the plot is just not terribly plausible in places, and some of the setting and trappings are a bit old hat. But as I said the prose is fine, and the romantic and melancholy overtones are extremely effective.

Fomalhaut II is a planet which has only been lightly explored by the League of All Words (in later novels, the Ekumen). The League does not even know how many intelligent races live there -- three for sure, but perhaps two more. One non-humanoid race is not even encountered in the book. The main races are the Liuar (basically "humans"); and the now split Gdemiar (Clayfolk -- dwarf-analogues) and Fiia (elf-analogues). The League has been promoting the advancement of the Gdemiar to an industrial society, and extracting taxes from them and the Liuar, but after the ethnologist Rocannon encounters Semley (an aristocrat of the Liuar) in the prologue, he decides the world is not well enough understood, and he mounts an expedition to study it. But disaster strikes -- an enemy race is there as well, and they find and destroy Rocannon's spaceship, marooning him with none of his equipment.

He then must travel, with the help of Semley's grandson and a small band of locals, to the mysterious Southwest continent where the enemy is located, hoping to find an ansible and call for help. Their journey, mostly on rather unlikely flying "horses", or windsteeds, is full of adventure -- they encounter various different sorts of outlaws, and danger from the weather, and a scary quasi-intelligent race, and finally an unconvincing "Old One" who grants Rocannon special powers, helping him finally accomplish his mission. All this is entertaining but as I have said faintly pulpish and not very plausible. But the final resolution is achingly bittersweet, deeply romantic and very melancholy. Certainly a novel worth reading, though of course Le Guin has done much better things.

I haven't read The Kar-Chee Reign in some little time, so the following summary may be a bit lacking. It is set far in the future. Humans have colonized other stars, and have forgotten Earth. Earth itself is, as Davidson puts it "flat, empty, weary and bare". A few humans remain, apparently living a low-tech style of life. Then the insectlike aliens the Kar-Chee come, to mine the Earth for its remaining metals, with the help of huge beasts called Dragons by the humans. The Kar-Chee hardly care about humans, displacing them without much thought or worry. Humans have come to cower away from the Kar-Chee, avoiding them in hopes of escaping notice.

The Rowan family lives in fair comfort on an isolated island that the Kar-Chee have not yet reached. When the aliens finally do come, certain of the locals seem to have forgotten the policy of avoiding them at all costs, and a series of attacks are mounted. These attacks meet with initial success, but then the Kar-Chee are irritated, and reprisals occur. But a group led by one Liam decides to continue to take the fight to the Kar-Chee. It will not be a great surprise that they are eventually successful, and Liam becomes a celebrated hero. The Kar-Chee depart, but they leave some of the Dragons behind (setting up Rogue Dragon, set some time further in the future). There is also an indication that contact with the human-colonized worlds will resume, and that Earth itself will be revitalized.

It's far from a great novel, and it's far from Davidson at anything like his best. Still, I do recall enjoying it, though I thought the action in general routine (and sometimes confused), and much of the setup a bit silly. The prose shows only hints of pure Davidson.

Old Bestsellers: The Damnation of Theron Ware, by Harold Frederic

Old Bestsellers: The Damnation of Theron Ware, by Harold Frederic

a review by Rich Horton

For some reason the name of this novel has stuck in my head for a long time without me knowing anything about it. The reason is that James Blish used "Theron Ware" as the name of the sorcerer in his novel Black Easter. (I also have a friend named Theron, but that is by the by.) Undoubtedly Blish's choice of name was purposeful (after all, he named the good monks in his novel after SF writers). At any rate, when I ran across  a copy of this book at an estate sale I decided I had to read it.

It was something of a bestseller when it first appeared in 1896, at least for a novel of decided literary ambition. However it seems to have faded from wide attention in the decades after its release (perhaps partly due to its author's untimely death only two years later), only to be eventually restored to a position as a "minor classic" of American literature, of the most determinedly realistic form, in an era devoted to realism.

Harold Frederic (originally Frederick) had an interesting life. He was born in 1856 in Upstate New York (where his best-regarded books, including this one, were set). His father died in an accident when he was 18 months old. He became a journalist, and at a young age was the editor of papers first in Utica, then in the state capitol, Albany. He supported Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, for the Governorship, despite the Republican-leaning tendencies of his readers, a stance that eventually cost him his job. But the friendship of by then President Cleveland served him well when he moved to England to become the London correspondent for the New York Times. He spent the rest of his life in England. He had married in 1877, and had five children with his wife, but the marriage foundered after the move to England, and he set up house with his mistress, another American, Kate Lyon, and they had three more children. Alas, Lyon was a Christian Scientist (it's not clear if Frederic agreed -- he was born a Presbyterian, raised Methodist, and was generally skeptical of religion) -- and after Frederic suffered a stroke she refused medical treatment for him and he died in 1898.

Frederic was a journalist until his death, but beginning in 1887 he began publishing fiction with the novel Seth's Brother's Wife, and eventually he wrote 10 novels and a number of short stories. His work seems to have been generally well-received at the time. The Damnation of Theron Ware (called Illumination in England) was even then surely his best-regarded novel, and it is the only one of his novels to survive in any real sense today.

The novel opens in about 1880 with the annual Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a gathering at which new assignments for ministers are made. Young Theron Ware makes the biggest sensation with an impressive sermon, but instead of the prosperous placement he expects, he is sent to the somewhat struggling church in Octavius, somewhere in Upstate New York. We soon learn that Theron and his pretty and vivacious wife Alice got into a bit of money trouble in their previous posting, and soon they learn that the trustees of the church in Octavius are a rather miserly bunch.

Theron's early months in Octavius are a bit of a struggle, thus. Along the way he makes the acquaintance of the local Catholic priest, Father Forbes, and his crotchety friend Dr. Ledsmar, and perhaps most significantly, Celia Madden, the beautiful daughter of the richest man in town. All these people introduce Theron to a rather more skeptical view of religion than any he has yet encountered. Theron's faith is rather swiftly threatened. And Theron is inappropriately attracted to Celia. Suddenly Alice seems less attractive to him than she had -- and her various acquaintances in Octavius take on a suspicious tone.

The troubled Methodist Church takes the step of hiring a couple of people to conduct a sort of revival service that turns into an attempt to force the church members to contribute additional money -- enough to settle the Church's mortgage and to give Theron a much-needed raise. The two people involved -- Brother and Sister Soulsby, a middle-aged couple, probably not techically married, former actors -- are among the most intriguing characters in the book, Sister Soulsby in particular. She is pragmatic and mostly good hearted, if a bit cynical, and it seems Theron might be saved. But he snatches defeat from the jaws of a sort of victory -- unable to regain his faith, unable to cynically pretend faith and keep his job, and fatally attracted to the beautiful, sensual, and artistic Celia.

The novel rather overtly sets up a conflict between what one might call small town "American" ways (and religion), and more cosmopolitan (Celia says "Greek"), more decadent even, ways (and religion), and also, in the person of Dr. Ledsmar, a more scientific view. And it doesn't necessarily insist on a right answer (though Theron Ware's inconstancy is surely wrong): Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, Celia Madden, even Sister Soulsby (in some ways the "best" person in the novel, unless that's Alice Ware), all have obvious shortcomings.

It's by no means a perfect novel. Except for Theron Ware, and perhaps Sister Soulsby, none of the characters quite ring true. In particular, Celia Madden seems a construct created to lure Theron to his damnation -- acting at times (as do Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar) in a quite unmotivatedly malicious fashion. Alice Ware is far more sympathetic, but again her portrayal seems to vary depending on the requirements of the plot. But Theron Ware comes through quite perfectly -- a man who shines in a limited orbit and is revealed as quite inadequate outside of his native scope -- a selfish man, sometimes needlessly cruel, not very intelligent but only too convinced of his gifts -- and yet plausibly a man we are disposed to sympathize with at the opening, and even, really, at the end. I would say The Damnation of Theron Ware deserves its current reputation -- a "minor classic", undeniably a period piece, but a period piece that is worthy of examination, of continued reading.

(Oh, and by the way, just for the record, the Wikipedia entry for The Damnation of Theron Ware is pretty terrible.)

I'll note one more thing, having nothing to do with the novel, but illustrating an occasional feature of buying used books. This book, a Rinehart trade paperback from about 1960, was evidently owned by a student at Washington University (St. Louis' great private university). And this student (probably a woman based on the handwriting), didn't like the book, and especially didn't like Wash U. The marginal notes are often things like "I hate W. U." or "I hate this course!". Amusing.

Ace Doubles: Conan the Conqueror, by Robert E. Howard/The Sword of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett

Ace Double Reviews, 30: Conan the Conqueror, by Robert E. Howard/The Sword of Rhiannon, by Leigh Brackett (#D-36, 1953, $0.35)

a review by Rich Horton

It's Thanksgiving so I don't have time to write something new, so I'm posting something I wrote a while back, about one of the most famous Ace Doubles ever. Doesn't really qualify as "Forgotten", I suppose, especially not the Howard. I sometimes worry that the star of the great Leigh Brackett is dimming just a bit, though.

This is one of the very earliest Ace Doubles, from the first year any were published, 1953. It is also one of the most significant -- both novels are classics, both very important to the history of the field and both also still very enjoyable reading. The novels resemble each other in being classifiable as "Sword and Sorcery" (though I don't believe the term was coined for another decade or so). Indeed, Conan the Conqueror is surely one of the earliest exemplars of genre Sword and Sorcery -- in its way nearly as influential as Tolkien on its particular subgenre of Fantasy. The Sword of Rhiannon is nominally Science Fiction, and is set on Mars, but it is quite as Fantastical, quite as brimming with swords and with sorcery, as anything. And it is my feeling that Brackett, among her other virtues, was one of the purest conduits for Lord Dunsany's influence.

Conan the Conqueror is very long for an Ace Double, the longest I've seen at some 74,000 words. It is a reprint of a 1950 Gnome Press edition. The original story was published as "The Hour of the Dragon", a 5-part serial in Weird Tales, from December 1935 through March 1936. (The story is often dated 1935. including on the copyright page of this Ace Double, but the technical publication date should be 1936, as that is when the complete story was first available.) I have not seen the Weird Tales version (and I'm not likely to): I assume that it is substantially the same as this later version. (The Ace Double claims to be "Complete and Unabridged", but that may only mean relative to the 1950 hardcover.)

As the story begins Conan has been King of Aquilonia, a country of the ancient past of Earth, for some years, having risen from his origins as a Cimmerian barbarian and later a pirate to take over the country from a corrupt royal family. The deposed heir, Valerius, is plotting with the King of neighboring Nemedia, with a powerful Baron, and with a sorcerer to use a jewel called the Heart of Ahriman to raise to life a 3000-years dead mummy named Xaltotun, who was a powerful high priest in the evil kingdom of Acheron. With Xaltotun's help they will use black magic to vanquish Conan's army, and install Valerius on the Aquilonian throne, making Aquilonia a puppet of Nemedia.

And so indeed it goes. But Conan miraculously escapes death while his army is routed. Xaltotun has uses for him and takes him to Nemedia, but due in part to the lack of mutual trust between the various plotters, and in part to the help of a beautiful slave named Zenobia, Conan escapes and returns to Aquilonia. There he learns that despite the hatred engendered by Valerius's misrule, his people are too cowed by the threat of Xaltotun's sorcery to rise up. Fortunately, he learns that the Heart of Ahriman has again been stolen from Xaltotun, and that if he can claim it, his allies will be able to counteract Xaltotun's magic. So he sets off on a dangerous journey following the thief who has the jewel. Things aren't quite so simple, however, and Conan must track several changes of "ownership" of the Heart, as well as fighting off various attempts on his life. Eventually he makes his way to Stygia, and an encounter with another revenant mummy ...

I had never read Robert E. Howard before. He is really very much as advertised. The story is absolutely jam-packed with action, much very excitingly told. My plot summary above misses many twists and turns and fights -- the story does not go very long without some sword, knife or ax-work. The prose is vigorous but unrefined and at times silly (comparison with Brackett's prose is instructive -- both are pulpy and energetic, but Brackett achieves beauty at times -- Howard is often stimulating at the prose level but never beautiful). The plot is certainly coincidence-driven, but still holds the interest. The magic is of minor interest, not really very original. The worldbuilding is Xena-like: there is a mishmash of influences: for example, Aquilonia is faux-Roman, Stygia is faux-Egyptian. There are many sword-and-sorcery clichés here, such as the perhaps obligatory time spent as a galley slave (which shows up in The Sword of Rhiannon as well), but very likely Howard was originating some of these clichés, not stealing them.

It is what it is, most certainly with the faults of its pulp genre, but very successful on its own terms. Conan, I would say, earned his status in the field, and his many reprintings.

The Sword of Rhiannon is about 50,000 words. It is a reprint (apparently identical or nearly so) of "Sea Kings of Mars", published in the June 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

This is probably the most famous of Brackett's Martian stories, and justly so. It is different from her Eric John Stark stories (such as those paired in the Ace Double People of the Talisman/The Secret of Sinharat) in that it is predominantly set in the distant Martian past, when the planet was verdant and its seas were full. It still manages to evoke the sense of ancient mystery, and the sense of something wonderful now lost, that is so central to the other stories.

Matt Carse is a 35-year old archaeologist and thief, born on Earth but living on Mars from the age of 5. He encounters a true Martian thief in the old city of Jekkara, who shows him a great treasure, the Sword of Rhiannon, the Cursed One. Long ago Rhiannon, one of the human but very powerful Quiru, had sinned by giving forbidden technology to the serpent-like Dhuvians. For his crime he was imprisoned in a tomb while the rest of the Quiru left Mars for greater things. Carse realizes that the other thief must have found the entirety of Rhiannon's tomb, and eager for more riches he forces the other to take him there. But Carse is betrayed, and he ends up pushed into a mysterious black sphere, from which he emerges into a different Mars.

Hardly believing what has happened to him, he is soon imprisoned by the agents of Sark and their warrior princess Ywain. He and a chance-met fat thief named Boghaz are sentenced to be galley slaves on Ywain's ship. But Ywain recognizes his sword, and she and the sinister Dhuvian accompanying her soon try to extract the secret of Rhiannon's tomb from Carse. Only something unique about Carse -- his Earth heritage? or perhaps the dark voice clutching at the back of his brain? -- allows him to resist, and eventually lead a mutiny. Carse is able to lead his fellow slaves back to the Sea Kings, free rivals to the empire of Sark. But even there, he is not trusted. The lovely Emer, who consorts much with the Sky people and Sea people of Mars, senses something sinister in Carse. And when his offer to reveal the location of Rhiannon's tomb leads to disaster, only a desperate strike by Carse can save the people of Mars from the oppression of the Dhuvians. And Carse must still confront his fears of the presence lurking in his brain ...

It is really wonderful pulp Sword and Sorcery, pitch perfect, beautifully written, twistily plotted. The resolution is deeply romantic, with a shadow of true sadness. Yes, the plot itself depends on some coincidence, and some implausible action -- but so goes the form. The characters are two-dimensional, but highly colored -- if it is hard to believe in Ywain, and her combination of villainy and bravery and loveliness, or Carse's bluntness and untrained heroism and crude sexiness, still we like to make ourselves believe. And the prose -- purely within the pulp tradition, but using that tradition to produce real beauty: "Lean lithe men and women passed him in the shadowy streets, silent as cats except for the chime and whisper of the tiny bells the women wear, a sound as delicate as rain, distillate of all the sweet wickedness of the world.", or "Now, over the bones of Mars, Carse could see the living flesh that had clothed it once in splendor, the tall trees and the rich earth, and he would never forget. He looked out across the dead sea-bottom and knew that all the years of his life he would hear the booming roll of surf on the shores of a spectral ocean." Mariner stole that from us, I suppose, and Kim Stanley Robinson showed a differently beautiful Mars -- but I will always love Brackett's Mars, the purest SFnal Mars of all.

Old Bestsellers: The Space Pioneers (A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure), by Carey Rockwell

Old Bestsellers: The Space Pioneers (A Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure), by Carey Rockwell

a review by Rich Horton

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, was one of the first Science Fiction TV shows, running from 1950 to 1955 variously on all four of the TV networks then operating in the US. (NBC, CBS, ABC, and Dumont.) It has often been assumed to be based, if loosely, on Robert Heinlein's juvenile novel Space Cadet, but it appears that the series was instead based on a comic strip developed by Joseph Lawrence Greene but never published. Heinlein was paid in order to forestall any questions about copying his work, it appears.

There were a total of 8 novels published by Grosset and Dunlap (and a couple of picture books as well). The plots were apparently taken from either the TV series, the short lived radio show (from 1952), or the comic strip. The books were bylined "Carey Rockwell", certainly a pseudonym. The actual author has not been identified. It seems likely that Joseph Lawrence Greene (NOT to be confused with the later SF writer Joseph Green) had a hand in at least developing the plots -- I suspect another writer or writers did the actual novelizations. Richard Jessup, who apparently wrote for the TV show, has been suggested as one candidate. (The copyright in my edition is attributed to Rockhill Radio.)

It has occurred to me that I should perhaps be a little circumspect in reviewing juvenile novels of a certain age -- possibly the flaws I see as a 56 year old man in 2015 are the sort of things an eager 10 year old reader in 1953 (or in 2015 for that matter) might simply not notice. So I apologize for what I am going to say about this book -- but I do have to add, I have read other juvenile SF novels from the same era, not all of them by Robert Heinlein, and they were a lot better. And the problems with this book are not just with the science, but with the plot as well. (The characters, dialogue, and prose are none of them anything worthy praising, but probably do fall within the normal (low end of normal) for books for young readers.)

So, anyway -- this novel is in contention for the worst book I have ever read. It's worse than Roy Rockwood's Through Space to Mars (though it's a close thing, and this book is less racially offensive). It's just appalling.

Willy Ley, by the way, is listed as Science Consultant. I can only assume he was not actually "consulted", or if he was, he was ignored. (Which, as I have heard from other "Science Consultants" for media projects, such as John Scalzi, is not at all rare, to this day.)

The Space Pioneers is the fourth Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure. My edition is a possible first (there is no way to tell). It's illustrated by Louis Glanzman (decently enough). As the novel opens, Tom and his friends Roger Manning (radioman extraordinaire) and Astro (rather slow but big Venusian with a talent for atomic engines) are still just Space Cadets, not full members of the Solar Guard, despite apparent previous successes. So naturally, when a project is started to colonize a planet of Wolf 359 (named Roald), the three of them are assigned to vet the prospective colonists. Seriously? You want to choose 1000 colonists for a brand new colony and you choose them based on the decisions of three adolescents? (Well, I suppose maybe they are around 20.) In the process they reject a few candidates, and they are surprised when the prospective Governor, Christopher Hardy, overrules them in a few cases, particularly the slimy Paul Vidac, whom Hardy chooses as Lieutenant Governor.

The Cadets are chosen to lead the way to Wolf 359 in their ship, the Polaris. The convoy includes 1000 ships, which seems odd as there are only 1000 male colonists plus their families. On the way there are more strange happenings, particularly the failure of their messages to their mentor, Captain Steve Strong, to ever reach him. Hardy and Vidac become ever more tyrannical, taking actions such as charging the colonists for their food on the trip, against a share of their homesteads.

Once they reach Wolf 359, or that is the planet Roald, there is a disaster: some strange effect plays hob with the electronics on the ships. Only Tom's heroics, after Vidac, the dastardly coward, loses his cool, save the Polaris. 400 of the 1000 ships crash (though apparently with no loss of life). Naturally only a heretofore undiscovered seam of pure uranium could have caused this! The colony is quickly established -- for example, the "atmosphere plants" go up in three days. (Everyone can breathe OK before this, mind you.) But Vidac and Hardy continue their evil ways, charging the colonists even more. The irascible but brilliant Professor Sykes is assigned to find the uranium, while Vidac, realizing that the three Space Cadets are onto him, plots to frame them for Sykes' murder.

And so on. The plot is just absurdly silly throughout, and then the ending is botched, occurring largely offstage: after all the work to set up the villains, the climactic foiling of them, and their arrest, is all but elided. The attitudes towards women are purely as chauvinistic as you would expect for a grossly cliche version of the 1950s (though there is a brief mention of a beautiful astrophysicist, Dr. Joan Dale, who was a apparently a significant character in the TV show). Different races are simply ignored (to be fair, one might suppose, if one wanted, that the mostly undescribed minor characters represent the full panoply of humanity, but that is certainly not shown).

And the science. Oh my gosh. The uranium stuff. The space travel -- apparently it takes about 4 days (at speed) to go 8 light years, with no mention of hyperspace. (It took a lot longer for the whole colony convoy to get there, to be sure.) The asteroid dodging. The math -- apparently Wolf 359 is 50 billion miles away, which is only off by three orders of magnitude. (It's actually some 46 trillion miles away -- a bit less than 8 light years. 50 billion miles won't even get you to the Oort Cloud.) And lots more. This is really dreadful stuff, and executed with obvious contempt for the readership. It's possible, I am sure, that the TV shows were able to kind of slough over some of this stuff, to make it less obviously dumb. And it's likely that had I encountered these books age 10 or so I'd have missed much of the silliness, though I'm damn sure I'd have recognized that these weren't anywhere near as good as, say, Andre Norton, or Alan E. Nourse, or for gosh sakes Danny Dunn!

Old Bestsellers: Marietta: A Maid of Venice, by F. Marion Crawford

Old Bestsellers: Marietta: A Maid of Venice, by F. Marion Crawford

a review by Rich Horton

Another really nice discovery in the ranks of hoary old bestsellers. Francis Marion Crawford was an American novelist, born in 1854 to Thomas Crawford and Louisa Cutler Ward. His father was a sculptor, and his mother's sister was Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". His sister Mary was also a novelist, writing as Mrs. Hugh Fraser. Both Mary and Francis were born in Italy and spent much of their lives abroad (Mary's husband was a British diplomat). Francis, after spending time in India and Germany, settled permanently in Italy in 1883. By this time he was a successful novelist (his first novel, Mr. Isaacs, set in India, was a big seller in 1882). Crawford continued to publish an extraordinary number of novels for the rest of his relatively short life (he died in 1909). His novels were set in many places, but in the final analysis he is best known for his books set in Italy, especially the Saricenesca series. (One of these novels, interestingly, was called Corleone: A Tale of Sicily, and has been called the first major treatment of the Mafia in literature.) Crawford also published a number of well-received shorter supernatural stories, of which by far the most famous is "The Upper Berth" (1885), considered one of the great ghost stories of all time. (I read it when it was reprinted in Weird Tales in 2004.)

Marietta is one of his Italian historical novels, though not part of his major series, and apparently not one of the best remembered. It was published in 1901, and my copy seems to be part of the fifth printing (February 1902), by which time 38,000 copies had been printed. The publisher is Macmillan.

For all that it doesn't seem to stand in the first rank of his works, I really enjoyed this novel. It is unabashedly a romance, in the old sense (and new). The characters are engaging and interesting but not quite fully realized. The plot is a bit implausible, at times faintly (though not dreadfully) melodramatic. But it moves rapidly, is quite nicely written (in rather an old-fashioned style), and there are a couple of moments of real power and beauty.

It is based, a bit loosely, on a true story: the establishment of the Ballarin family of glassmakers in Murano, Italy, in the 15th Century. Zorzi (or "George") Ballarin was an apprentice of the great glassmaker Angelo Beroviero, and it is widely believed that he stole his master's secrets (originated by Paolo Godi) and set up shop on his own, while also marrying Beroviero's daughter Marietta. A descendant of Zorzi Ballarin, Giuliano Ballarin, is even now a renowned Murano glassmaker. The novel tells the story of Zorzi and Marietta, focusing on their love story, and suggesting that Zorzi did nothing so crass as stealing his master's secrets.

Murano is an island very close to Venice (nowadays technically part of Venice), where the already famous glass shops were moved because of the risk of fire. As it happens, I had heard of Murano (and not just because I used to own a Nissan Murano): there is a brief episode in Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series involving Murano and its glassworks, set a few years before the action of this novel. So much we learn from historical novels!

The novel is set in late 1470. Zorzi is a young Dalmatian, an apprentice to Angelo Beroviero. As a Dalmatian, he is forbidden to actually make glass, but he has worked with Angelo for years, first as just a laborer, but Angelo trusts him, and he has learned the trade, indeed in some ways surpassing his master. Angelo appreciates him because he is a true artist, unlike Angelo's sons, who are only interested in the money they can make. Angelo has a beautiful daughter, Marietta, whom he has indulged to the extent that she too understands the artistry of glass. She and Zorzi have fallen in love, though neither believes the other shares their feelings. And Angelo has plans for Marietta: he wants to marry her to Jacopo Contarini, the son of one of Venice's ruling Council of Ten. He enlists Zorzi to take a message to Jacopo, arranging an encounter between he and Marietta, so both can assess the other.

In the process Zorzi stumbles on a secret meeting hosted by Jacopo, plotting, rather sillily, revolution. Zorzi is forced to pledge his loyalty to Jacopo and his fellow conspirators (otherwise, they will kill him). This pledge, to Zorzi's mind, means forsaking all hope of any future with Marietta, as she is, in his mind, pledged to Jacopo. But Jacopo is a weak and venal man, who has purchased a slave woman from Georgia, Alisa. Alisa and her true lover, the Greek sailor Aristarchi, plot to steal any money Jacopo makes, which will mostly be Marietta's dowry.

This sets in motion the plot, which is propelled by Angelo's son Giovanni discovering that Zorzi is actually a skilled glassmaker, which is against the laws of Venice (as he is a foreigner). Giovanni insists that Zorzi be arrested, while trying to steal his father's secrets once Zorzi is out of the way. Thus Zorzi faces exile, but Marietta works to save him, at risk of ruining her own reputation. Happily (and implausibly) ... well, no fair revealing the resolution, though it's hardly a surprise.

The conclusion is perhaps a bit overhasty, and has aspects of deus ex machina. And there is no denying that the novel is "of its time" in its view of the nature and natural relationships of men and women (even as Marietta is portrayed as something of a feminist, in 15th Century terms anyway). But the book is just lots of fun. It's easy to root for Marietta and Zorzi, and to like gruff Angelo and the servants Nella and Pasquale, and to hate Jacopo and Giovanni, and to queasily admire Alisa and Aristarchi. And, as I said, there are passages of real power, particularly one towards the middle when we see Zorzi creating true beauty in glass. (Some of the depiction of the process of glassmaking is quite well done as well.)

A pure entertainment -- and Crawford in fact published a book defending his approach to the novel -- that is, his philosophy that entertainment comes first. And quite an effective entertainment.

Ace Doubles: The Plot Against Earth, by "Calvin M.Knox" (Robert Silverberg)/Recruit for Andromeda, by Milton Lesser

Ace Double Reviews, 91: The Plot Against Earth, by "Calvin M.Knox" (Robert Silverberg)/Recruit for Andromeda, by "Milton Lesser" (Steven Marlowe (Milton Lesser)) (#D-358, 1959, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton


Ace Doubles again. This one features two writers working under pseudonyms, though in rather different ways. Robert Silverberg, in his most prolific period, often used a variety of pseudonyms and house names, the most common being his "Protestant" pseudonym, "Calvin M. Knox". Milton Lesser, on the other hand, was the writer's birth name. He began publishing SF in 1950, at the age of 22. He changed his name legally to Stephen Marlowe in 1956, a name he had first used as a pseudonym in 1951. Eventually he turned primarily to mysteries, mostly published under the Marlowe name. He continued to publish a great deal of SF until 1960, mostly under the names "C. H. Thames", "Darius John Granger", and "Adam Chase", in addition to Milton Lesser. His total output in the 1950s in SF was over a hundred short stories and about a half-dozen novels. After 1960 he wrote mostly crime fiction. He was never all that highly regarded in SF, but his mysteries gained some notice, as did some fictionalized biographies of Christopher Columbus and others. He died in 2008.

Recruit for Andromeda is rather a mess of a novel, haring off in a few different directions to no particular ultimate result. It opens presenting an idea reminiscent of that in Silverberg's The Seed of Earth, reviewed here recently: a lottery to select people for mandatory space travel. We meet Kit Temple and his girlfriend Stephanie -- it's Kit's last year of eligibility. Noone has ever returned from the "trip to Nowhere" (including Kit's brother): but Kit is chosen as well. We also meet Alaric Arkalion, Jr., a rich man who hires a mysterious Mr. Smith to impersonate his son Alaric III and take his place on the trip. And we meet a Russian woman, Sophia Petrovich, who volunteers for the lottery, even though women are not subject to it, in order to escape her drab life.

Kit soon leaves (after one night of passion with Stephanie), and during his training he makes friends with the fake Alaric Arkalion III, even while realizing there is something odd about him. Sophia, meanwhile, is taken to Jupiter, for special Soviet training that will make her a superwoman (due to Jupiter's gravity). All then head to Mars, and then the mysterious trip to "Nowhere", via some sort of matter transmitter. On this planet they find a somewhat flourishing planet, full of aliens of all sorts of species, and they learn that the whole shebang his hosted by an ancient race, nearly extinct, that wishes to choose the most worthy possible race to succeed them. Kit meets his brother again, who has become the leader of the Earth city on Nowhere. And soon they learn that the aliens wish to choose an Earth representative from among the two human factions: American and Soviet, and that they must be recent arrivals, so Kit and Sophia are assigned to battle it out for human supremacy. Meanwhile, back home, Stephanie is campaigning for women to be allowed to follow their loved ones on the "trip to Nowhere" ... but will Kit still be waiting for her, especially after he gets to know the beautiful and capable Sophia? ... and there is another twist or two waiting. In some 35,000 words.

It reads like three or four short story ideas mashed together, and not all that successfully. The prose is competent, and one or two of the numerous SF ideas introduced are kind of cool (the rest are just silly) ... but on the whole, this is a pretty bad book.

Stephen Marlowe was prolific, but Robert Silverberg was far more prolific in the mid to late '50s. He also left the field, more or less, in the early '60s, turning mostly to nonfiction, but returned towards the middle of the decade with some much more impressive work, a remarkable series of novels and shorter works that garnered numerous award nominations and awards, and eventually led to his highly deserved designation as a Grand Master of SF. As good as his best work is, his early work was much less so -- yardgoods, one might say, though almost always quite competent and entertaining yardgoods. In this company, The Plot Against Earth is typical, and indeed not really early Silverberg at early Silverberg's best.

The hero is Lloyd Catton, an Earthman who has been sent to Morilar, home of the Interworld Commission on Crime, ostensibly to join a pan-Species investigation of the illicit traffic in hypnojewels. Catton's real mission is to ferret out the presumed plot by the three leading humanoid species, the Morilaru, Skorg, and Arennadilak, against the upstart Terrans. Catton, using time-honored human private eye methods, quickly tracks down a major center of hypnojewel smuggling. He also encounters the daughter of the Terran Ambassador, who confesses she wants to run away with her lover, a Morilaru man, and can Catton check this Morilaru out? Of course he turns out to be one of the hypnojewel smugglers, but the girl has eloped before he can warn her.

Catton arranges to follow leads gleaned from the smugglers to Skorg, where at least some hypnojewel activity originates. But his ship is sabotaged, and he and a small group of various aliens are marooned and must trek to the nearest rescue beacon. But his surprise reappearance destabilizes things, and he is able to follow further leads to a planet of chlorine breathers, and by the by rescue the ambassador's daughter ... More private eye methods (i.e. beating up people and making lucky guesses) lead Catton to the real villain of the piece ... not much of a surprise.

Silverberg being Silverberg -- never less than a pro -- this crackles along well enough. But it's not much of a novel, really, either as SF or as a crime novel. It is, indeed, yardgoods, and must stand as one of the least of Silverberg's many novels.

Old Bestsellers: The Count's Millions, by Émile Gaboriau

Old Bestsellers: The Count's Millions, by Émile Gaboriau

a brief review by Rich Horton

This is, I think, one of the happier and more unexpected discoveries I've made prowling book sales and antique stores for forgotten old books. I found this volume at the annual charity book sale at West County Mall in St. Louis County, the Greater St. Louis Book Fair. I had never heard of the author, but the book looked potentially interesting.

My edition is from Scribner's, published in 1913. Good condition, no DJ. Illustrated by John Sloan. Inscribed on the flyleaf "Dan R. Bissell, Jr., Xmas 1913".

I looked into Émile Gaboriau and found that he was actually a rather well known French writer in the middle of the 19th Century. He was born in 1832, died in 1873. He started publishing novels no later than 1861, and made a splash in 1866 with L'Affaire Lerouge, his first novel to feature Monsieur Lecoq, a detective. Gaboriau wrote several more novels about Lecoq, who was a very popular character, perhaps the most popular detective character prior to Sherlock Holmes. He died (of apoplexy, oddly enough the same way a major character in the novel at hand dies) aged only 40, but according to Wikipedia his novels kept appearing until at least 1881, leading me to suspect that perhaps the Lecoq series was continued by another writer. The Count's Millions appeared in 1870. (It is not a detective novel.)

The story opens with the rather unpleasant servants of the Count de Chalusse awaiting their master's return, one night in the 1860s. (Dates are given as 186-.) But a cabdriver comes to the house, announcing that his passenger has had a fit ... he is brought into the house, still alive, but in much distress. A doctor is summoned who can do little, and the vigil begins, attended by his ward, the beautiful 18 year old Marguerite, and by the grasping set of servants.

We quickly learn that Marguerite is a mysterious girl -- she only showed up a couple of years previously, and most assume she is the Count's illegitimate daughter but there is no proof. And a whole raft of people are soon snooping around, most interested in somehow getting their hands on the Count's "millions". There is the Marquis de Valorsay, a scoundrel who has squandered his money and needs to marry a rich heiress. There is Isidore Fortunat, a rascally businessman who has been helping Valorsay keep up the pretense of solvency while he tries to persuade Chalusse to let him marry Marguerite. There is the General de Fondege, who wants Marguerite for his son. The servants want their share of the estate. Much depends on whether or not the Count survives -- for there is no will, and if Marguerite is not shown to actually be his daughter, she will get nothing -- a blow to Valorsay, and indeed to Fortunat, who hatches a back up scheme: perhaps he can find Chalusse's long-estranged sister and represent her in an attempt to receive what would be her rightful inheritance.

Finally we are introduced to an industrious young lawyer, Pascal Ferailleur. Unlike everyone else we've met (save Marguerite), he seems a genuinely good person: a hard worker, raised by a mother who was cheated of her husband's money after his untimely death, Pascal has become a fairly successful lawyer. But he makes a terrible mistake: he accompanies a friend to a gambling house run by the beautiful middle-aged Lia d'Argelès, where he has a run of luck. But suddenly he is accused of cheating ... and there seems to be proof. Of course, as we have already gathered, Pascal's "friend" was actually a scoundrel hired by Valorsay to ruin him by planting evidence of cheating. And why? That's easy to guess -- Pascal has fallen in love with a young woman, none other than Marguerite, and the Marquis must get him out of the way.

And so it continues, with continued recomplications. We learn of Marguerite's difficult life before the Count found her and took her in. We learn of the reason for the Count's break with his sister: she had a foolish love affair, eloped, and was abandoned. We meet a vile couple running a little grocery, who turn out to have had a previous connection with the Count. Pascal plans to go into hiding while trying to recover his good name. Marguerite rejects the advances of the likes of Valorsay, with only a kindly magistrate to help her. The Count's money has somehow disappeared. And more, and more.

Much of the story is told through the point of view of peripheral characters: the scheming Fortunat, his surprisingly honest assistant Victor Chupin, the Count's servants, especially the slimy housekeeper Madame Leon, the Marquis de Valorsay, and so on. Gaboriau's attitude is throughout quite cynical. He gives details of a variety of marginally legal money-making enterprises. It's not a comedy -- it's a romantic thriller of sorts -- but it is often kind of funny.

And then the end of the book approaches, and it becomes clear that there is no way to resolve all the tangled threads of the plot, and ... the last page announces: "The conclusion of this exciting narrative will be found in the volume called Baron Trigault's Vengeance."

Well, I shouldn't complain -- in the novel was in fact published in two volumes. The full title was La Vie Infernale, with the two parts called Pascal et Margeurite and Lia d'Argelès. I'm not sure why the English titles for the two volumes became The Count's Millions and Baron Trigault's Vengeance. (Though the first chapter is headed "Pascal and Margeurite" in my book -- I thought it just a chapter title but then no other chapters had titles.) I do want to know what happened -- who Marguerite really is, and more about the Count's sister, and how Pascal redeems himself (if indeed he does) ... So I've already ordered the sequel. That's not to overpraise the book -- it's very melodramatic, as should be obvious, and coincidence rules. And the characters are only two-dimensional, but as I said still quite amusing. It's popular fiction of its time -- but pretty good popular fiction of its time.

A Forgotten Ace Double: Warlord of Kor, by Terry Carr/The Star Wasps, by Robert Moore Williams

Ace Double Reviews, 90: Warlord of Kor, by Terry Carr/The Star Wasps, by Robert Moore Williams (#F-177, 1963, 40 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Okay, here's another Ace Double. This one qualifies as pretty forgotten, and mostly for good reasons. (Though the covers are, as far as I can tell, by Jack Gaughan, a pretty significant artist.) But it does feature a major major SF figure, Terry Carr. Carr is not widely known as a writer, but he was a hugely significant editor of Science Fiction. He was born in Oregon in 1937, and died terribly young in 1987. He was first a major fanwriter and editor, winning a Hugo for Best Fanzine in 1959 (for Fanac, coedited with Ron Ellik), and another for Best Fanwriter in 1973. He became an editor for Ace Books in the early 1960s, where he was especially known for coediting the World's Best Science Fiction series with Don Wollheim (the most important Best of the Year anthology of its time, the few years following the decline and eventual demise of Judith Merril's iconic series), and for creating the first series of Ace Specials, paperback original novels that included great work such as Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. He left Ace in about 1971 to go freelance. He continued editing a Best of the Year anthology, for Ballantine/Del Rey, which was, in my perception, the leading such book when I was first buying SF books. He also edited one of the all time great original anthology series, Universe, which ran from 1971 to his death in 1987. In the 1980s he revived the Ace Specials, and published first novels by William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Swanwick, and Howard Waldrop among others. He won Best Editor Hugos in 1985 and 1987.

Oh, and while he didn't write a whole lot of fiction, some of it was very good, including an admired novel (Cirque (1977)), and such stories as "Hop-friend" (1962), "The Dance of the Changer and the Three" (1968) and "They Live on Levels" (1973). But what of his first two novels? He seems to have mostly repudiated those, both of which were Ace Doubles. One was a collaboration with Ted White, under the name Norman Edwards: Invasion from 2500 (1964). And the other was the book at hand, Warlord of Kor.

In all honesty, Warlord of Kor isn't all that bad, though it's not all that great either. It's pretty short (about 34,000 words), and it's pretty rushed in places. The writing is competent but nowhere special. But the central idea is pretty effective, and the characters are tolerably well done. The working out is only OK. As a first novel, it strikes me as nothing to be ashamed of.

The protagonist is Lee Rynarson, something of an archaeologist who is studying the only intelligent race humans have ever found in their expansion through the Galaxy (or perhaps multiple galaxies). These are the Hirlagi, sort of a horse/dinosaur mix on Hirlaj. There are only 26 Hirlaji surviving -- they seem a tired an decadent race. They have a long racial memory, and Rynarson, in talking with one of them, hears stories of a warlord in the distant past, who united much of the planet, only to decide, after "communing" with the mysterious god Kor, that the Hirlaji must abandon not just war but science.

The situation on Hirlaj is complicated by a local strongman who wants to be named governor of this planet of the "Edge" of human exploration. In addition, there are the relics of the "Outsiders", an ancient race of aliens who have disappeared. Rynarson realizes after some time that the old Hirlaji temples he sees in their memories (once he gains telepathic contact with this mostly telepathic race) resemble Outsider ruins. The other major characters are Mara, the love interest, and an eccentric Earthman who preaches a religion he doesn't believe.

It's all resolved in an overly violent conclusion, revealing the true nature of the god Kor (easily guessed), and hints of the fate of the Outsiders, as well as a resolution to the putative governor's ambitions. As I said, the novel as a whole is nothing special, but it's not terrible either. Nothing I'd recommend making a special effort to find, but a reasonable first effort.

Robert Moore Williams was never for me really a name to conjure with, though I gather his Jongor series of Tarzan derivatives got some notice, and he did receive some praise as well for his early fiction, particularly "Robots Return", from Astounding in 1938, which was included in the all but definitive early SF anthology Adventures in Time and Space. He was born in Farmington, MO (not too terribly far from where I live) in 1907, and died in 1977. He began publishing in the pulps in 1937, and published stories and novels fairly regularly until the early '70s. I don't think he was ever regarded as much beyond a hack, though I'd say the two Ace Doubles I've read by him reveal a writer of some mild ambition and imagination, but not enough talent to make that work.

The Star Wasps (a title I suspect was conferred by Don Wollheim -- the words are never used in the novel) is about 45,000 words long. It's set in a corporately regimented Denver in 2470. The world's economy is controlled by Erasmus Glock, owner of Super Corporation. His childhood acquaintance, John Derek (later the husband of Bo! -- not!) is the leader of a resistance movement, urging people to strive for freedom. As the book opens, Derek turns a corporate flunky, in the process gaining the attention of Glock. He also meets and immediately falls in love with Jennie Fargo.

However, things are complicated by the presence of the "viral", alien electricity creatures who have been unwittingly attracted to Earth by the experiments of a physicist, Joseph Cotter. Glock has been using the viral as some sort of spies, but he loses control of them. The plot follows John Derek and his crew of freed criminals as they try to foment a revolution, but then realize that the viral might be the greater danger. Joseph Cotter and Jennie Fargo end up on the Moon, researching a solution to the viral problem, while John Derek confronts Erasmus Glock with his criminal shortcomings; and things come to a head as the evil blue viral begin killing people indiscriminately. Can Joseph Cotter disover a countermeasure? Can Erasmus Glock be brought to see the error of his ways? Will John Derek and Jennie Fargo get together?

It's a confused and silly mess of a novel. And it's a rampantly sexist novel as well, with a number of passages celebrating a woman's natural desire to be dominated (and cook for) a strong man. But Williams was really, at heart, an ambitious and idealist writer, and there are passages here that show him trying really hard to hit poetic heights, and to make serious philosophic points. Alas, he simply didn't have the talent to pull it off. A curious case.

Another not so old Non-Besteller: Norwood, by Charles Portis

Another not so old Non-Besteller: Norwood, by Charles Portis

a review by Rich Horton

This blog is aimed first at books from, let's say, at least a half-century ago which were bestsellers, and also, sometimes, at books that have been "neglected" or "forgotten". I remember mentioning somewhere that one of the writers who is sometimes called "neglected" is Charles Portis, when he really isn't. In fact, for a writer with only five novels to his credit, the last of them published almost a quarter-century ago, Portis gets a pretty fair share of attention. To be sure, that's mostly because of one book -- True Grit -- and the two (both excellent) movies made from it. And the likes of Roy Blount, Jr. and Ron Rosenbaum did yeoman work, back in the day, to keep Portis in people's minds when few people remembered anything but the John Wayne movie. All that said, by now, all five of his novels are in print (from Overlook Press), and he is certainly on the general literary radar. (Which makes it a bit of a shame that he seems to be retired ... I don't know of anything new he's done this millennium, actually.)

Portis was born in 1933, and is still alive. He grew up in Arkansas, fought in the Korean War, and got his degree in Journalism from the University of Arkansas, then worked on papers in Arkansas and New York, before turning to fiction. Norwood was his first novel, published in 1966. It was followed by True Grit in 1968, which was made into the famous John Wayne movie in 1969. Norwood was filmed, much less successfully, in 1970, starring the other two featured actors from True Grit, Glen Campbell and Kim Darby. (Obviously, the wrong two actors to choose!) The movie also featured Joe Namath, of all people, and radically altered the novel's plot.

The novel opens with Norwood Pratt getting his discharge from the Army, around 1960, because his father has died and his sister can't be trusted on her own. Norwood comes home to Ralph, Texas (on the Arkansas border), obsessing a bit over the $70 his friend Joe William Reese still owes him. He goes to work at a gas station, and soon has to deal with an annoying and idle man that his sister marries. Norwood himself dreams of becoming a country music star. He runs into a man named Grady Fring, who has his hands in a number of different money-making pies. Fring hires him to drive a couple of cars (one towing the other) to New York ... and to take a young woman with him.

This doesn't go too well, and Norwood ends up in New York with neither the cars nor the woman, and he begins to make his way back home by bus. He runs into some interesting folks on the way, including a chicken, a British midget, and a pretty girl named Rita Lee. Norwood hooks up with Rita, particularly once her supposed fiance deserts her, and Norwood pays a visit to Joe William Reese to retrieve his $70, before saying farewell to the midget and returning, with Rita Lee, to Ralph.

And that's about all there is to the plot -- which tells you damn little about the novel. It's a road novel (obviously enough). (So too is Portis' The Dog of the South, and, if you think about, even True Grit. I haven't read Portis' other novels, Masters of Atlantis and Gringos.) The delights of the novel -- which are considerable -- lay in the voices of the many characters we encounter, and in the depiction of a certain side of American life. It's a very funny novel. Norwood is an intriguing character -- something of an innocent but not entirely so -- indeed also something of a rascal. The people he encounters are likewise rascals, with their innocent sides (mostly -- perhaps not so much Grady Fring). The book is short, probably just as long as it needed to be, and it doesn't come to any conclusions, because there's no need for conclusions. I liked it just fine, though it's not the masterwork that True Grit is, to my mind. But Portis is indeed a writer who deserves our notice.

Nabokov's First Two English-language Novels: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Bend Sinister

Nabokov's First Two English-language Novels: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and Bend Sinister

a brief review by Rich Horton

These are two novels, the first two in English* by the incomparable Vladimir Nabokov, that can hardly be called "forgotten" -- Nabokov's stature is such that none of his novels are remotely forgotten. However, these novels are less known than his later novels, and even less known than his major Russian novels such as The Gift, Glory, and The Defense. And they certainly weren't bestsellers -- it was not until Lolita that Nabokov had a commercial success.

(*Though there are some that suggest that Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov's 1938 translation of the 1932 Russian novel Camera Obscura, is sufficiently revised so as to count as a "new" novel in its English version. (Nabokov was motivated in part by his disdain for the first English translation.))

(And, yes, you can tell when I'm not quite ready to write about my latest "Old Bestseller"!)

Nabokov, of course, was born in Russia, in 1899, to a wealthy family from the liberal side of the nobility. After the Revolution, the Nabokovs moved to Western Europe. Vladimir took a degree at Cambridge, but the family settled in Berlin, where his father was murdered in 1922, ironically by a Russian monarchist. Vladimir began writing fiction and poetry in the emigre community, under the name V. Sirin. He married a Jewish woman, Vera Slonim, and after Hitler's rise they were eventually forced to leave Germany, first for France, then, in 1940, for the US. (Nabokov's brother Sergey, however, an outspoken opponent of Hitler, and a homosexual, died in a concentration camp.)

In the United States Nabokov taught at Wellesley and Cornell (among his students was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) After the financial success of Lolita, he moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1977. I have read all his English language novels and many of his Russian novels and stories (in translation, to be sure), and he has long been a favorite writer of mine. All his "big four" novels, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, and Ada; are remarkable -- I confess a fondness among them for the shortest, Pnin, both the funniest and the saddest of his novels.

Vladimir Nabokov's first English language novel was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941). He wrote it in Paris, and it is indeed set to some extent in that city. It concerns a Russian novelist who wrote in English. The novelist has just died (in 1936), and his brother is going through his papers and becomes obsessed with learning the truth about his life, and in particular his tortured final love affair. The story follows both "Knight's" life from his birth in Russia in 1899, his parents' divorce and his father's remarriage to his brother's mother, his father's death as a result of a duel defending Sebastian's mother's honor, his school years in Russia, then his University years at Cambridge, and the composition of his five books. He has two significant affairs -- a happy one with a nice English woman; followed by an apparently stormy one with a mysterious woman. The novel's structure is roughly chronological in this sense, and also in following the brother's investigations, as he tries to interview various people from Sebastian's past, and especially as he tracks down the mysterious lover.

In part Nabokov seems to be satirizing literary criticism and biography, especially through descriptions of an opportunistic book written by a former literary secretary of Knight's, but also through the brother's loving descriptions of each of Knight's rather odd novels. But he's also interested in the mysteries of identity presented by "Knight" (never given a real last name), by his brother (given only the initial "V"), and by the various different women who might be the mystery lover who ruined Knight's life. At the end, as the brother rushes to Knight's deathbed, he curiously seems to become Knight himself. A striking and beautifully written book, though not to me as engaging or satisfying as such later novels as Pnin and Pale Fire.

His first novel written in the US, and his second in English, was Bend Sinister (1947). Like one of his later Russian-language novels, Invitation to a Beheading, it is explicitly political, in a way generally foreign to Nabokov. (Indeed, to write a "political" novel was rather against Nabokov's usual artistic philosophy, and in his 1963 Introduction to this novel, he takes pains to point out that the focus of the novel is the main character's relationship with his son, not the repressive political conditions which drive the novel's plot.) Bend Sinister opens with the death of Olga Krug, beloved wife of philosopher Adam Krug. Krug is left with an 8-year old boy, David, in a country torn by a revolution led by an oafish schoolmate of Krug's, Paduk, called the Toad by his fellows at school. The new regime attempts to gain Krug's support, offering both the carrot of a University presidentship and the stick of veiled threats conveyed by the arrest, over time, of many of Krug's friends. The brutal climax comes when the new regime, almost by accident, realizes that the only lever that will work on Krug is threats to his son, then, due, apparently, to grotesque incompetence, manages to fumble away that lever.

The novel is (one is tempted to say "of course") beautifully written. Passage after passage is lushly quotable, featuring Nabokov's elegant long sentences, lovely imagery, and complexly constructed metaphors; as well as his love of puns, repeated symbols, and humour. The characters are well-portrayed also -- Krug, of course, and his friends such as Ember and Maximov, as well as villains such as the Widmerpoolish dictator Paduk and the sluttish maid Mariette. The novel, though ultimately quite tragic, is filled with comic scenes, such as the arrest of Ember, and comic set-pieces, such as the refugee hiding in a broken elevator. As Nabokov asserted, the relationship between Adam Krug and his son is the fulcrum on which the novel turns, and it is from that the novel gains its emotional power. But much of the novel is taken up with rather broad satire of totalitarian communism. The version portrayed here is of course an exaggeration of the true horror that so affected Nabokov's life, but it still has bite. The central philosophy of the new regime is not Marxism per se, but something called "Ekwilism", which resembles the philosophy satirized in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" -- it is the duty of every citizen to be equal to every other, and thus great achievement is unworthy. (It is not to be missed that Paduk was a failure and a pariah at school.) All this is bitterly funny, but almost unfortunate, in that it is so over the top in places that it can be rejected as unfair to the Soviet system which it seems clearly aimed at. That's really beside the point, however -- taken for itself, Bend Sinister is beautifully written, often very funny, and ultimately wrenching and tragic.

Old Bestseller: Dora Thorne, by Charlotte Mary Brame ("Bertha M. Clay")

Dora Thorne, by Charlotte Mary Brame ("Bertha M. Clay")

a review by Rich Horton

OK, back to an Old Bestseller, a really old one this time, with an interesting (to me) publication history. I found this book, as with so many, in an antique store, and it looked like it would be an interesting, if not necessarily good, example of Victorian popular fiction. And so it proved to be.

My copy seems to date to around the turn of the 20th Century. The publisher is Donohue, Henneberry and Co., from Chicago. The title page simply reads Dora Thorne, by Bertha M. Clay. There is no copyright notice, no dating, no pictures, no author information.

I looked up Bertha Clay and found that it is a pseudonym, for Charlotte Mary Brame (1836-1884). Brame was an Englishwoman, who married a jeweler and had nine children (only 4 of whom survived to adulthood). Her husband was a drunk and a poor businessman, and Brame turned to writing fiction to help make ends meet. She had published some poems and Catholic themed short stories for a Catholic magazine, the Lamp, beginning in her teens. Her first commercial publications were a couple of books collecting these and similar stories, in the late '60s. Brame also began selling less uplifting tales to the Family Herald, a long running magazine (or story paper) aimed at middle- to lower-class readers. At first these were short stories, but soon she was placing serialized novels with them. She also sold series to similar markets such as Bow Bells, Young Ladies' Journal, and the Family Reader. This last was, beside the Family Herald, her most important market. Eventually she seems to have signed an exclusive contract with the Family Herald, and her subsequent fiction in other markets appeared anonymously or under ambiguous bylines.

She was quite remarkably prolific, publishing over 60 novels and quite a few short stories and novelettes in a career that lasted less than two decades. She made a reasonable amount of money from this (though less than she deserved, as we shall see) -- perhaps 2000 pounds per year or more at her peak. However, due to her husband's dissolute ways, and medical expenses, the family was in financial stress throughout, and indeed Brame's husband committed suicide a couple of years after Charlotte's death.

So, why "Bertha M. Clay"? It seems this was a pseudonym concocted by her American publishers (the initials, of course, are Charlotte M. Brame's initials backward). The first publisher to use "Bertha M. Clay" was Street & Smith (familiar to SF readers as the original publishers of Astounding), but they lost control of that pseudonym quickly. Indeed, after Brame's death, the Clay name became something of a house name, though perhaps not for any specific house, and quite a number of novels by other hands were published as by Clay, or even, in some cases, as by "Dora Thorne".

In fact, the name Bertha Clay has appeared in this blog before -- in my review of T. W. Hanshew's Cleek of Scotland Yard I quoted a newspaper article from the time of Hanshew's death debunking the apparently common rumor that he was the person behind the ""Dora Thorne" books by "Bertha Clay"".

More importantly, it seems likely that Charlotte Brame was never paid for the American editions of her books. Its worth noting that the US in those days was no respecter of foreign copyrights. Brame's books were apparently very good sellers in the US, but she didn't benefit from that. (Her brother-in-law, George Brame, who had moved to Canada, did complain about this after her death.)

I should credit my main source for most of this information, a bibliography compiled by Graham Law, Gregory Drozdz, and Debby McNally in 2011, available here . This sort of research is really wonderful, and I thank the compilers for it.

Well, after all that, what about the novel? Dora Thorne was always Charlotte Brame's most famous novel (as hinted by such things as the use of "Dora Thorne" as a faux pseudonym after Brame's death). It first appeared in the Family Herald in late 1871. It's the story of the disastrous marriage of Ronald Earle, the only child of Lord Earle of Earlescourt; to Dora Thorne, the pretty daughter of the lodge-keeper. Lord Earle banishes Ronald over the marriage, and the couple sets up in Italy, where Ronald becomes an only moderately successful painter. He quickly tires of the uneducated Dora, and the marriage breaks up over Dora's jealousy of a beautiful woman that Ronald's family had wished him to marry. Ronald's most successful painting uses this woman as a model, and even though they never truly betray Dora, they act suspiciously enough that Dora's anger is understandable, especially in light of Ronald's mistreatment of her. She leaves him, after some hard words on both sides, and takes their twin girls, Beatrice and Lillian, back to England, to live with her parents (who have moved away from Earlescourt).

Ronald vows never to see his wife again, and hares off to South Africa. Dora raises her two girls, oddly enough finally attaining the education she had previously lacked. Beatrice grows up a great but wilful beautfy, while Lillian is the more saintly character. And the lonely Beatrice, turning 16, makes a terrible mistake, promising to marry a young ship captain, much below her station as the daughter of a soon to be Lord, upon the captain's return from his next voyage.

The final third of the novel, then, comes after Lord Earle's death, and Ronald's return to claim his inheritance. His daughters move to Earlescourt, and become great successes. Beatrice falls in love with a very eligible Earl, while Lillian falls in love with a cousin, the heir to Earlescourt since Ronald has no son. (Convenient, that!) But Beatrice lies to everyone when asked if she has any past incidents that may cause future trouble. So of course when the ship captain returns to claim her hand, a terribly melodramatic conclusion is set up.

Of course Beatrice could have solved her problems by telling the truth at almost any time ... but by and large most of the problems are cause by stiffnecked and overly rigid men. Indeed, though the text of the novel seems to blame Beatrice (and before her, Dora) for the problems in their love lives, common sense tells any reader that the elder Lord Earle, his son, and indeed Beatrice's noble lover, Lord Airlie, as well as the ship captain who presumes on a 16 year old's promise; are much more to blame. The bibliographers suggest that Charlotte Brame's sympathies also lie with the women, but that she was to an extent writing to her particular market (the Family Herald), and they note that the stories she wrote for the Family Reader took a somewhat more feminist tack.

Anyway, Dora Thorne isn't by any means a great work. It's very melodramatic, and the characters are difficult to believe (though Beatrice, at least, comes somewhat to life). The prose is actually not bad, though a bit overwrought at times, and over descriptive fairly often. The novel's structure is loose, rather flat -- probably to a considerable extent reflecting its origins as a serial. As with so many books in this series of reviews -- it's not hard to see why it found a wide readership, but it's not likely to every again find much popularity.

Another Ace Double: The Sun Saboteurs, by Damon Knight/The Light of Lilith, by G. McDonald Wallis

Ace Double Reviews, 24: The Sun Saboteurs, by Damon Knight/The Light of Lilith, by G. McDonald Wallis (#F-108, 1961, $0.40)

I decided to revise this post, and add a post on another old Damon Knight Ace Double, in part because Damon Knight's name came up recently in conversation, and it was suggested that Knight was a great writer of short fiction, but never figured out novels. I disagree -- I think Knight's late novels (most notably Why Do Birds? and Humpty Dumpty: An Oval) are exceptional. But in reality, his earlier novels are not nearly as good as his early short fiction. What is noticeable, however, is that he wrote a number of truly brilliant novellas, a few of which he expanded to short novel length. Arguably the best of these novellas -- one of the great novellas in SF history -- is "The Earth Quarter", which, expanded, became The Sun Saboteurs.

Knight (1922-2002) of course is one of the great figures in SF history, a Grand Master. He might have been named Grand Master solely for his critical work (some collected in the seminal book In Search of Wonder), and his editorial work (most notably the Orbit series of original anthologies), and indeed also his organizational work (founder of the Milford writer's conferences as well as the chief driving figure behind the formation of the Science Fiction Writers of America (and their first president). But he was was a first rate writer as well, with such stories as "The Handler", "The Country of the Kind", "Masks", "Stranger Station", "Four in One", "I See You", "A for Anything", and "Fortyday" serving as highlights besides those I've already mentioned. (And that's not even bringing up joke stories like "To Serve Man", "Eripmav", "Cabin Boy", and "Not With a Bang".)

 The Sun Saboteurs was the second of four Ace Double halves by Knight (three separate books). The original novella, "The Earth Quarter", appeared in If  in 1955. The book version is about 37,000 words long (the magazine version was less than half that length).

G. (for Geraldine) McDonald Wallis is almost unknown in the SF field -- this novel and her 1963 Ace Double half Legend of Lost Earth are her only in-genre publications. However, she had an extensive career under the name "Hope Campbell". In the 1940s she published a number of stories in romance magazines, with titles like "Marriage of Inconvenience" and "Forbidden Female"*. Then from the late 60s into the 80s she published, also as by Campbell, a number of middle-grade and YA novels, such as Peter's Angel (aka The Monsters' Room), Mystery at Fire Island, and Why Not Join the Giraffes?. (There was also apparently a YA-marketed edition of Legend of Lost Earth under the "Hope Campbell" name.) She was born in 1925 -- thus her first story (that I know of), published in the January 1943 All-Story Love magazine, appeared when she was only 17. She was raised, according to the front matter of The Light of Lilith, in Hawaii and the Orient, and she had a career as an actress. As far as I know she is still alive. The Light of Lilith is about 45,000 words long.

(*It is just possible that the 1940s romance stories were by a different "Hope Campbell".)

I don't really think that Don Wollheim (or whoever else selected Ace Double pairings) necessarily chose stories that were thematically or otherwise related, but every so often it happened. This is a particularly striking case. Both The Sun Saboteurs and The Light of Lilith share a strikingly anti-Campbellian theme. In both, humans are presented as evil warmongers amid a generally peaceful Galaxy. In both, humans are forced to accept their inferiority to many alien species, and in both, many or most humans simply fail to do so. In both, humans are faced with isolation in the Solar System, and eventually with extinction. That said, one novel is far better than the other.

Probably to no one's surprise, the better of the two is The Sun Saboteurs. In this book a smallish colony of humans is confined to "the Earth Quarter" on the home planet of the insect-like Niori. Other similar enclaves are located on other alien planets, while humans on Earth itself have descended to barbarism amid the ruins of technological society. The viewpoint character is Laszlo Cudyk, 55 years old, a writer and jeweler, and one of the most respected citizens of the Earth Quarter. Other key characters are the mayor, Min Seu; the gang boss, Mr. Flynn; the Orthodox priest Astareo Exarkos; the mad old man Burgess, who believes that humans dominate the Galaxy, and his differently mad daughter Kathy, who keeps losing lovers to one fanaticism or another; and finally the evil Rack, who plots to rebel against the aliens, killing as many as he can.

The action is precipitated by the visit of one Harkway, from the Minority Peoples League, which works for accommodation with alien rule -- either by pushing for human equality on alien planets, or for alien help in restoring Earth. The MPL is bitterly opposed by the likes of Rack, who believe that aliens are inferior vermin, and that any truck with them is treason to humanity. The charismatic Rack controls a group of thugs, and one of them beats Harkway to death. This is a particular problem because the aliens cannot conceive of murder, and their sufferance of the Earth Quarter is predicated on human obedience to their laws. But Rack forces the issue by announcing that he has formed a navy, and will be taking the battle to the aliens, and that those humans who refuse to follow him are traitors too.

Cudyk observes this all, intervening in virtuous but ineffective ways when he can. But he is only a spectator when Rack's plans lead to truly incomprehensible evil actions. The final resolution turns on an ironically small action, perhaps Cudyk's though really almost anyone's.

The novel is very well written -- from the first it is clear we are in the hands of a real writer, even though this dates, especially in its first version, to quite early in Knight's career. (To me the contrast with the writing of the Wallis novel was particularly marked.) Cudyk is a very well depicted viewpoint character. The others are more types than fully rounded characters, but well-chosen and nicely portrayed. The action is mostly in a minor key, and the entire feel is both sad and bitterly cynical -- perhaps just a bit too much so -- humans aren't really this bad, and moreover I don't believe in aliens as "good", as sin-free, as those he shows us. There are some missteps -- the general SFnal background is only lightly sketched, and not awfully believable, but that doesn't matter that much. (I was particularly bothered that the action is apparently set in 1984, 20 years after the colonies were established on the various alien planets -- even in 1955 I don't think anyone could believe that men would have reached the stars, fought a barbaric interstellar war, and destroyed Earth by 1964.) The book's bitter argument against humanity is overstated and almost shrill over 37000 words -- I think it worked better in the novella --  but still it is worth reading. Knight later collected "The Earth Quarter" (in Rule Golden and Other Stories), which might signal that he preferred the shorter version as well -- although I am not sure that version is not actually the expanded version under Knight's preferred title.

As for The Light of Lilith, it is a pretty awful novel, one of the worst novels I've read in this Ace Double review series. As I mention, the theme is basically similar to the Knight novel, but with a bit more hope in the end. Not really a bad theme, but, unfortunately, a theme doesn't make a novel -- it helps to have believable characters, a consistent and entertaining plot, and interesting SFnal ideas. This book does OK on the first part, at least by the standards of the day in SF, but it fails ridiculously as to plot, and as to scientific ideas.

The hero is Russell Mason, a "reporter" for the Earth Federation. He has been trained from the age of 6 to be a spaceman, and his particular job is to visit human-colonized planets and report on conditions. He is coming to Lilith, an "experimental" planet. Experimental planets are unusual places, with no indigenous life (not counting plants or lower animals -- basically, no potentially intelligent life as I read it, though that's not what Wallis wrote), on which humans perform certain experiments, ostensibly into physical laws. Lilith itself is particularly interesting because, get this, it has colors not found in the normal electromagnetic spectrum. Oh.

When Mason arrives, he finds the spaceport deserted, and feels himself gripped by a terrible fear. He stumbles across one survivor, who dies soon but after warning Mason -- "our fault". Mason manages to make his way to the remote lab, where the remaining humans have retreated. It seems their experiments have somehow caused changes in the light of Lilith, potentially very dangerous.
Mason allows himself to be exposed to a curious manifestation of the light, and he is transformed. He seems to travel in time, and he sees a vision of Man's future, a terrible vision that suggests that humans will be punished by the rest of the intelligent races in the galaxy. Is there something he can do to change things? Then he discovers what sort of research has really been going on on Lilith (weapons research, naturally), and he also discovers other secrets about Lilith and the experimental planets program that disgust him. He must try to obtain help from mysterious aliens, and persuade humans to give up their doomed experimental planet research.

The problem, basically, is a fairly random plot, a compendium of not well integrated incidents; and, worse, a whole bunch of just plain silly so-called scientific ideas, such as the "light" of Lilith. I really thought it a stupid book.

Just for fun, I'm going to append another review I did long ago of an Ace Double with Damon Knight contributing both halves:

Ace Double Reviews, 4: The Rithian Terror, by Damon Knight/Off Center, by Damon Knight (#M-113, 1965, $0.45)

The Rithian Terror is a short novel (or novella), of about 36,000 words. It was originally published in Startling Stories for January 1953 -- probably in a shorter version, but I will note that 36,000 words was by no means an unusual length for a story in Startling. The Rithian Terror was first called "Double Meaning" -- indeed, I believe the only time it appeared as "The Rithian Terror" was in this Ace Double.** It was later published as half of a Tor Double (under the title "Double Meaning") and backed with another Knight short novel, "Rule Golden"). As far as I can tell, the only other stories to be both Ace Double halves and Tor Double halves are two by Jack Vance: "The Last Castle" and "The Dragon Masters"; and two by Leigh Brackett: "The Sword of Rhiannon" and "The Nemesis from Terra". (Norman Spinrad's "Riding the Torch" was both a Tor Double and a Dell Binary Star half.) Off Center is a story collection, with 5 stories, totalling about 44,000 words. It should not be confused with the UK collection Off Centre, which consists of the contents of Off Center plus "Masks", "Dulcie and Decorum", and "To Be Continued".

As it happens, both The Rithian Terror and its erstwhile Tor Double companion, "Rule Golden", featured superior (both morally and physically) aliens coming to Earth. I liked The Rithian Terror a fair bit. It features a far future (said to be 2521, felt like 2050 at most) Earth-based Empire, which has a policy of crushing alien races which it encounters. The latest are the Rithians, and after some years of covert harassment by Earth, the Rithians have snuck a spy team onto Earth itself. The story is told from the point of view of the Security man who leads the effort to find the last remaining Rithian, and the points of interest are his relationship with an "uncivilized" member of a breakaway human planet which has good dealings with Rithians, and his courtship of an upper-class woman. Again, the story is fast-moving and enjoyable, with a sound moral point, and the resolution of the main action is nicely calculated, though there is an unconvincing character change pasted on.

The stories in Off Center are:

"What Rough Beast" (10,800 words, from the February 1959 F&SF) -- a man has the power to change the past (involving reaching into parallel universes), thus preventing bad things from happening. Is this a good thing?

"The Second-Class Citizen" (2800 words, from If, November 1963) -- a man who teaches dolphins tricks escapes underwater when the holocaust comes.

"By My Guest" (24,500 words, from Fantastic Universe, September 1958) -- a man drinks a mysterious vitamin and suddenly he can "hear" the ghosts that possess him. This story read to me as if it were Knight trying to do Sturgeon. I liked it, though the ending wasn't quite up to the buildup.

"God's Nose" (800 words, from the men's magazine Rogue in 1964) -- not really SF, a meditation on what God's nose would be like, with, perhaps, a cute but naughty punchline.

"Catch That Martian" (5000 words, from the March 1952 Galaxy) -- there is an epidemic of people being shifted to another dimension, and a policeman theorizes that the cause is a visiting Martian who punishes rude or annoying people in this fashion.

All in all, a very solid brief story collection. "What Rough Beast" is particularly strong, and moving.

(**Remember, it was said of Don Wollheim that if the Bible was published as an Ace Double he'd change the titles of the Old and New Testaments to War God of Israel/The Thing With Three Souls.)

Middling Old Non-Bestseller: The Floating Opera, by John Barth

The Floating Opera, by John Barth

a review by Rich Horton

I've been doing Ace Double reviews lately, and this could have been another one, as my copy of The Floating Opera is part of an omnibus edition of John Barth's first two novels (the second being The End of the Road). But I haven't yet read the second book, so I'll stick with The Floating Opera, first published in 1956, though revised (restoring Barth's original ending) in 1967. (Barth's introduction to this edition (perhaps also to the 1967 edition) reveals that the original publisher balked at the darkness of the original ending, and that Barth agreed to a modest alteration -- only to read reviews that criticized that ending!)

Again, a book that is not particularly old (though it was written 60 years ago, so old enough), not a bestseller (indeed, the publisher declined the next book), and yet not forgotten. But not as well remembered as most of the author's oeuvre. Though it is worth remembering that it was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 1957.

John Barth was born in 1930 (making him pretty much my parents' age) and is still alive, having published a novel as recently as 2011 (Every Third Thought). His best known novels are probably The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and Giles Goat-Boy (1966). Both novels are long, both are arguably SF, both are experimental. Indeed Barth is particularly known as an postmodern novelist, and his 1967 essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion", is a critical postmodern document. The Sot-Weed Factor was his third novel, however, and his first two novels were more traditional and realist, though their themes are noticeably nihilist.

The Floating Opera is the story of one important day in the life of Todd Andrews, a lawyer in Cambridge, Maryland (Barth's home town). We are told from the start that Andrews is writing this memoir sometime in the mid-50s (about when the novel was written), which takes a certain sting from his announcement early in the book that, this day, either June 21 or June 22, 1937, he has decided to commit suicide.

The main action of the novel follows that day. Andrews wakes up next to his mistress, Jane Mack, the wife of his good friend Harrison Mack. He meets a couple of friends at his residential hotel ... two old men, one who defends the value of life to the very end, the other who rails against the depredations of age. Todd -- for reasons probably unrelated to anything the old men say -- comes to the conclusion that this is the day he should kill himself. He completes his day, nothing unusual -- dealing with a lawsuit he is conducting for Harrison Mack (which will either give his friend or his friend's estranged mother the estate the elder Mr. Mack has left), taking the Macks' 3 year old child on a tour of the showboat that gives the book its title, etc. Then he and the Macks attend the performance of Jacob Adam's Floating Opera, and Andrews makes his decision about his suicide attempt ... well, I need reveal no more about that.

But of course, as with most novels ostensibly set over a day there is much more going on. We learn about Todd Andrews' affair with Jane -- actually instigated by Jane and Harrison, partly as a means of celebrating their friendship. We learn that the Macks' daughter may actually be Todd's daughter. We hear about Todd's father's suicide. About Todd's experience in World War I, and especially his encounter with a German soldier. About Todd's career at Johns Hopkins, and about his first sexual experience, with a local girl who later became a prostitute. About the lawsuit between Harrison Mack and his mother, which turns for one thing on his mentally deficient father's habit of preserving his feces late in life. About Todd's physical problems: a heart condition, that may kill him any day; and a prostate infection, that makes him sometimes impotent. And we learn of Todd Andrews' life work, his Inquiry, which began well before that June day in 1937 and continues into the mid-50s.

This is essentially a comic novel, and indeed it can be quite funny, in a blackish way. It's also a somewhat philosophical novel, the central philosophy being Todd Andrews' nihilism, his belief that life has, at its core, no meaning. Todd's life is on the one hand satisfying enough -- he's a very successful lawyer, he makes plenty of money, he has a beautiful mistress. But on the other hand, his life is pretty sad: he has a mistress, but not a wife; he sometimes can't perform in bed; his father committed suicide; he lives in a hotel; his attitude towards the law is that it is a cynical game, etc. The end result of all this -- and of the Inquiry that is his life's work, and the nature of which we only learn towards the novel's end -- is the decision he makes on this fateful morning, and the other decision he makes at the end of that day.

I was reminded of another novel I've covered in this series of reviews: Philip Wylie's Finnley Wren. The two novels share a protagonist born in 1900, a philosophical and often cynical bent, and an oddly inconclusive (but really quite conclusive) resolution, as well as a certain ribaldry. That isn't to say that the novels come to similar conclusions about their philosophies, nor that the advertising man Finnley Wren and the lawyer Todd Andrews are all that similar -- but there certainly are correspondences.

I liked the book a fair bit. It really is quite funny, and always readable, and the dark underside is an effective counterpoint to the surface comedy. I've had a copy of Giles Goat-Boy for decades, and I've long been intimidated by its length. I'm certainly intending to finally tackling that book sometime in the fairly near future -- and be that as it may, The Floating Opera is worthwhile on its own terms.