Review: Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki

Review: Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki

by Rich Horton

Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars won the 2021 Otherwise Award for Best Novel (in a tie with Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomon.) It was also a 2022 Hugo Award nominee, and garnered several other spots on award shortlists. I have just "read" it, in the audiobook version, narrated very nicely by Cindy Kay.

The central character in the novel is Katrina Nguyen, a teenaged trans girl in California who has run away from home -- from an abusive father and a not very supportive (and also abused) mother -- as the book opens. She takes only a few things with her, most especially her violin, for playing violin is her one joy (and it is predictably not supported by her father, who resents everything that suggests she's not the boy he had thought she was.) She fetches up in Monterey Park, CA (which in a horrifying coincidence was the site of a mass shooting just as I started reading the book -- in another horrifying coincidence, major characters in the novel share a surname with the shooter in that incident.) Katrina stays with a boy who had previously been nice to her, but this is terribly unsatisfying -- the boy is not very welcoming, and a lot less nice than she had thought. She makes money by doing sex work for people who are excited by a trans girl -- though they hardly accepting of her. Things are getting worse when she encounters Shizuka Satomi, a world famous violin teacher, while playing to herself in a park. Shockingly, Shizuka decides to take this almost wholly untrained player on as a student -- she hears something special even when Katrina is playing simple training exercises. Katrina moves into Shizuka's house, and into the care of Shizuka's housekeeper Astrid.

This would be absurd except for what we know about Shizuka (the novel follows four different major points of view.) She is called the Queen of Hell -- her previous six students all became world famous violinists, and then died in suspicious fashion. We learn that she sold her soul in exchange for her violin prowess -- and then cut a deal -- if she can train seven more violinists to be masters, then deliver their souls to hell, she will save her own soul, and (perhaps more importantly to her) free her music, which has mysteriously been erased from the world.

Shizuka makes another, very different, connection -- she meets the proprietor of a donut shop, Starrgate. Lan Tran seems a normal (if very attractive) Asian-American woman, with five children, all of whom work hard at the shop. But Lan too has a secret -- she and her family are aliens, escaping from a war, and from the terrible Endplague. They are trying to build an actual stargate in the big donut that advertises their shop, ostensibly to attract tourists to visit Earth when a gamma ray burster arrives in a few hundred years. All of Lan's donuts are replicated from original versions the previous owners cooked, so that her family can concentrate on the stargate. But her Aunt Floresta, and her son Edwin, are intrigued by the prospect of actual cooking ...

All this is a rather wild combination of not very plausible science fiction, fairly standard fantasy, and the all too plausible (and very well depicted) life of an Asian trans girl in an Asian community in the Los Angeles suburbs. (And I haven't even mentioned Lucia Matia, the violin repairer who wants to become a true master luthier (like the family her name is an anagram for ...)) It's tremendously involving  and readable, as Katrina absorbs Shizuka's teaching -- and Shizuka tolerates her desire to play gaming music for You Tube; while Shizuka and Lan become closer and closer, and even learn to accept the other's dark secrets. The demon who controls Shizuka's contract has other ideas, of course, when Shizuka seems to get too invested in Katrina as a person instead of as a soul to be delivered to hell. Lan, too, has family issues ... 

The novel builds to a truly powerful and moving conclusion -- I was brought to tears. (There are multiple, almost Lord of the Rings movie-like codas, that while arguably important to the reader, also drain some energy from the conclusion.) The depiction of Katrina's life and personhood, and her struggles, is wholly believable (to this white cis-male reader) and quite wrenching. Details like Lucia's secrets of violin making are fascinating (even as I'm not sure those sections of the novel were entirely necessary.) Even the donut shop details convinced me -- I have spent a lot of time in the LA area on business, and I make it a point to visit small family-owned donut shops, and I think the Southern California donut scene is awesome. 

Does it seem like there's a but coming? Well, there is. The novel is moving as I said, and often quite effective. The central theme, about transgender identity and struggles, is really well delivered. But there are significant flaws -- they don't by any means ruin the book -- it's still a joy to read, and the good parts do outweigh the flaws. Still -- it is very much a YA novel, with the trope of the mistreated teenager who becomes the most awesome in the world at her chosen art. The characterization is inconsistent -- Katrina is spot on, I think, and Lan and Lucia are well enough done. Shizuka is kind of a mess though -- the evil Queen of Hell when it suits the novel, but otherwise evenhanded and totally perfect as a teacher and guardian. Other characters are either cliches or ciphers. The whole SF part is pretty ridiculous, and my willing suspension of disbelief could not hold up. And there are a couple of structural or plot missteps, most damagingly a have your cake and eat it too bit at the end when a major character is shown making a tremendous sacrifice which is later revealed as a) unnecessary, and b) as something the character KNEW wasn't really going to be a sacrifice at all. (This last was wholly unneeded, and I think the book's editor should have intervened. A tiny change, and that could have been fixed.)

I don't want to complain too much. Yes, there were many moments that I said to myself "Now, wait a minute!" But I never stopped being fascinated, and I really was wholly invested in the climax, and, as I said, brought to tears. This is a good book, very much worth reading. If it's not perfect -- well, to quote a character in famous gender-fluid scene from another medium, "Nobody's perfect."

Old Bestseller Review: Dangerous Ages, by Rose Macaulay

Old Bestseller Review: Dangerous Ages, by Rose Macaulay

a review by Rich Horton

Rose Macaulay (full name Emilie Rose Macaulay) was born in 1881. She was educated at Oxford, and turned to writing after leaving school. She wrote perhaps 20 novels, three volumes of poetry, and a good deal of nonfiction, including several memoirs. Her most famous novel by far was her last, The Towers of Trebizond. She was a Christian, of the Anglo-Catholic strain, and always struggled to reconcile her attraction to mystical Christianity with her other beliefs, and especially with her long term relationship with Gerald O'Donovan, a former Jesuit priest -- the two never married. She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1957, not long before her death at the age of 77. Of her novels, The Towers of Trebizond has remained popular since its publication, but her other novels have not gotten as much attention, though more recently some of them have been reprinted, some by Virago, others (including Dangerous Ages) by the British Library. What Not, from 1918, is science fiction, and I will be reading it soon! (My copy of Dangerous Ages was a lucky find at an estate sale, a possible US first, from Boni and Liveright, no dust jacket but otherwise in probably Very Good- condition.)

Dangerous Ages appeared as Rose Macaulay turned 40. It was also just after the Great War, a time of great transition in England (and of course in all the warring countries) -- driven in part by a certain despair at the collapse of the pre-War balance of power, and relative peace, in part by mourning over lost lives, in part by an apparent feeling (shown most prominently perhaps in The Waste Land) of a failure of "civilization". This novel opens on the 43rd birthday of Neville Blendish. Neville is the wife of Rodney Blendish, a Labour politician. She is deciding to return to the medical studies she abandoned upon marriage. Now her two children, Kay and Gerda*, have grown to adulthood, so she feels she has time again, and she feels the need for an independent role now that her primary role as the children's mother is past. She doesn't want to become like her mother, Emily, who is in this novel always called Mrs. Hilary. Mrs. Hilary never did feel independent of her husband -- and when he died young she began to diminish. Neville wants to avoid a fate like her mother's -- though Mrs. Hilary is rather a stupid person, while Neville is quite intelligent -- perhaps that will be enough for her.

At this point I confess I thought the story was to be entirely about Neville, but instead it shifts and keeps shifting. It is instead a story about several generations of women in the Hilary/Blendish family: Mrs. Hilary; her mother-in-law, only called Grandmama; her daughters Neville, Nan, and Pamela; her daughter-in-law Rosalind; and her granddaughter Gerda. (There is another daughter-in-law, the wife of Mrs. Hilary's eldest son Jim, but she doesn't come into the story.) The book takes place over about a year, and we see all these women, interacting with each other, with the men in their lives (or the woman in her life in the case of practical Pamela, who is clearly a Lesbian, though, as with much fiction of this era, this is never openly acknowledged.) The novel is not a very plotty novel, though much of the action is driven by Nan's decision to finally marry her long-time lover Barry Briscoe, only to have him fall in love with Gerda after he misinterprets Nan's brief avoidance of him to make sure she's made up her mind as a rejection. 

The women are all beautifully and honestly depicted. Mrs. Hilary is, as noted, rather stupid, and also rather prejudiced. She hates modern novels but also hates to have it known she doesn't read much. She hates psycho-analysis but then is driven to take it up when she realizes she's depressed. And she has little idea how to treat her children, though she fairly sincerely loves them. Grandmama, a fairly minor character, is a sensible and knowing woman, thoroughly a creature of the late Victorian era, and mostly just ready to die whenever her time comes. Neville -- to me the most sympathetic character (along with Nan) struggles with her new studies, loves Rodney but in some ways doesn't fully respect him, does her best to help her children while letting them make their mistakes. Pamela is, as noted, solidly practical, and she has only a minor role in the novel (and her partner even less), though she gets the last word. Rosalind is truly an actively nasty person, a gossip, serially unfaithful to her husband Gilbert, vulgar, always ready to hurt her family members, and also an unintellectual woman who takes up fad after fad (including psycho-analysis.) Gerda is young and pretty and enthusiastic, a poet but not a very good one, an eager but not necessarily effective worker. And Nan -- Nan -- in her 30s, with a reputation of going from man to man, a novelist (a modern one!), often sarcastic, never sure of herself enough to commit ... she's the one I rooted for. 

As I suggested, the novel is to some degree plotless (but in a good, readable, way) -- but in the end coalesces around the arc of Nan and Gerda vying for Barry's affections. This involves Gerda working for Barry for a while, and then a vacation for Nan and Gerda and Barry and Kay, in which inevitably the athletic Nan goads the frailer Gerda into a sort of competition -- with of course a shocking ending that only hurts Nan's chances -- followed by Nan running off to Rome where another man is fleeing his wife ... it would all be melodramatic but in fact the narration -- at times sardonic, at time humorous, at times sympathetic -- never gives off that feel. 

The "Dangerous Ages" of the title are really any age -- at least for women -- though the quote in the book is directed at Nan's age. But the book is interested in all the women, and it is deeply feminist without being quite overtly so. But for all the book's women -- even the foolish Mrs. Hilary or the foul Rosalind -- their culturally defined roles are a burden. And they battle it -- Grandmama with her resignation, Mrs. Hilary with her fads and depression, Neville most explicitly, with her desire for an independent life (without ever wanting to leave Rodney), Nan with her cynicism and her pain, Rosalind with her sleeping around and her nastiness, and Gerda with her optimism about social change, and her hesitation at the idea of marriage. Perhaps only Pamela -- in some ways the most "modern" of all, living with a woman, making her own living -- has escaped her milieu's strictures. I hope I'm not making the novel seem ponderous or tendentious -- it is not that at all -- told with a light touch, ever interesting, its characters well portrayed, their fates revealed honestly. It is not perhaps a great novel, but it's a very good one, and a book that deserves attention now, a century and a bit after it was published.

(*The names of the Blendish children, of course, are the same names as the children in Hans Christian Anderson's classic tale "The Snow Queen", but I confess I don't see a real parallel between them and Anderson's characters. Perhaps the only meaning is to suggest something about how Neville and Rodney chose to name their children.)

Review: "And God Created Woman", by Simone Colette

Review: "And God Created Woman", by Simone Colette    

by Rich Horton

The last book I read, Erasmus -- with Freckles, was made into a movie, Dear Brigitte, with Brigitte Bardot. So I figured why not read this book I've had hanging around for a while: "And God Created Woman", a 1961 novelization of the 1956 movie that made Bardot a star, Et Dieu ... Crea La Femme. The "author", Simone Colette, was likely a house name for an American writer working for Popular Library, which at that time published three novelizations of notorious foreign films: Ecstasy, the 1933 German-Czech film starring Hedy Lamarr; The Lovers, the 1958 French film starring Jeanne Moreau, which was the subject of the case in which Justice Potter Stewart declared of pornography "I know it when I see it"; and this movie.

The book itself is competently written, though the signs of movie novelization are all over it. The story concerns Juliette, an 18 year old orphan just discovering the effect she has on men, and accustomed to sunbathing nude and such. As the book opens a rich older man, Eric Carradine, who is angling to build a hotel in St. Tropez, is trying to make Juliette his mistress. She is interested, but her real attraction is to Antoine, the oldest of three brothers in a family that owns a failing boat repair business on property that Carradine needs for his hotel. Antoine's father is dead, Antoine is working in Toulon, and his younger brothers, Michel and the teenaged Christian, maintain the boatyard. 

Juliette's guardian, the prudish Mme. Morin, threatens to send her back to the orphanage, and Juliette looks for refuge, first with Eric, but then she encounters Antoine, who is back in town dealing with Eric's attempt to buy his family's property. After a couple of days seeing Antoine and dancing with him, while Antoine and his family refuse Eric's offer. Antoine hints that Juliette might accompany him back to Toulon, but he ends up avoiding her (he's got the boss's daughter to marry, even though she's cross-eyed.)

Juliette, again tempted by Eric, but still threatened with the orphanage, shockingly decides to marry the meek middle brother Michel. Meanwhile, Antoine is back in town, because Eric made an alternate offer -- Antoine can run Eric's boatyard, with he and his brothers drawing generous salaries. Juliette is trying to be a good wife to Michel, but Antoine is a constant temptation. Things come to a head with a storm, and an emergency at the boatyard, and Juliette and Antoine taking off in a boat and running into trouble. After they reach the shore, the inevitable happens (described (by Juliette, and also as written in the book) as a rape, though the Wikipedia entry on the movie claims Juliette seduces Antoine -- is the movie different?) ... leading to a confrontation with Michel -- which, ambiguously perhaps, seems to resolve in his favor.

It has to be said that whatever shock Juliette's actions might have provoked in 1956 seems all but gone now -- she's just a young woman playing around a bit, not betraying anyone really (until the end) -- and, actually, she hardly ever actually has sex. The movie (and novel) is very much a product of its time. Really, based on descriptions (I've seen none of the three movies Popular Library novelized as mentioned above) the actions in Ecstasy and The Lovers were somewhat more transgressive and a lot more interesting. 

As I said, the novel clearly reads like a novelization, often with a by the numbers feel as the scenes pass by. And the sensuality which was obviously a big part of the movie's appeal just doesn't come through. Add the fact that the Eric Carradine character was shoehorned into the movie at the last minute, because the financiers wanted a role for Curd Jurgens -- and the novel just can't really adequately account for his oddly insignificant role. The movie is probably entertaining -- and to be fair the novel is well enough done that its readable -- but I do think it's a case where what was need was the presence of actors to sell the story. 

Review: Erasmus -- with Freckles aka Dear Brigitte, by John Haase

Review: Erasmus -- with Freckles aka Dear Brigitte, by John Haase    

by Rich Horton

I came across this book at an estate sale, for pennies (100 pennies, to be exact) and it was intriguingenough that I picked it up. The author is John Haase. He was born in Germany in 1923, and his family emigrated to the San Francisco in 1936, to escape the Nazis. He became a dentist in the Los Angeles area, apparently a successful one (his clients included Conrad Hilton). He wrote about a dozen novels between 1958 and 1983. They were fairly successful, and at least two of them became movies. Erasmus -- with Freckles, from 1963, was made into Dear Brigitte in 1965. The movie flopped, but seems to be remembered with some fondness. Me and the Arch Kook Petulia, from 1966, was made into Petulia in 1968. That movie flopped as well, but its reputation has grown enormously over the decades. (John Haase was one of the people who hated the movie.) The original screenplay, by Barbara Turner, was to be directed by Robert Altman. But that deal fell apart, and Richard Lester took over the project, with Lawrence Marcus rewriting the script, and Nicolas Roeg as cinematographer. Julie Christie and George C. Scott starred. Those are names to reckon with, and indeed the movie is now considered (by some) one of the great movies of the 1960s. (Roger Ebert predicted this at the time -- his first review gave it 4 stars.)

Well, I don't mean to write about Petulia. Because I had never heard of the film, nor of Dear Brigitte, nor of John Haase or any of his novels. And, really, I think he -- as a novelist -- has been nearly completely forgotten -- though perhaps that's my ignorance showing. I will say that if Petulia was changed as much from its source material as Dear Brigitte was changed from Erasmus -- with Freckles I'm not at all surprised that Haase hated it. Anyway, Erasmus -- with Freckles is a charming little book, though very slight. The movie looks to me like it might also be charming, but in an entirely different way -- and it too is clearly slight. (On description, Petulia is NOT slight.)

So, what about the novel Erasmus -- with Freckles? (My copy, I should note, is called Dear Brigitte -- a movie tie-in, of course.) It's about Robert Leaf, a poet and a Professor at the University of Caronia, in San Francisco. Robert has a beautiful and loving wife named Vina, and five children. The second youngest child is a boy named Erasmus. Names are given to the other four, but honestly they have no presence in the novel. The Leafs live on a converted ferry, long beached in San Francisco Bay. There is lots of room in the ferry, and so Robert and Vina also host a horde of young poets. Robert does have rules -- calisthenics every morning, French horn practice for his five children, etc. He's clearly a loving father and a loving (and loved) husband, and an engaged Professor. He's also involved in a constant war against the modern world, especially anything to do with Engineering or Math. And he's in the way of causing trouble for his college, with stunts like giving a test to all the students, essentially asking them the last two lines of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn", and expelling them when the fail (the college's Chancellor not excepted.) He has one close friend, a retired Anglican Bishop named McGonigle, who lives on the neighboring boat.

The crisis arises when Erasmus suddenly reveals a savant-like ability in mathematics. Robert hates this on principle -- he detests anything to do with math or science or engineering or logic. (He's really rather a nutcase about this.) But there are practical reasons to dislike this -- numerous organizations -- banks, IBM, the US government -- want Erasmus to work for them. Also, Erasmus can no longer play the French Horn. (My French Horn playing engineer friend will question the logic of this!) 

The other curious thing about Erasmus is that he is desperately in love with Brigitte Bardot. And he sends her a letter every night. Robert Leaf is fairly tolerant of this quirk.

The true crisis comes when Leaf's college starts pressuring him to offer Erasmus' services to the government. (They are likewise under pressure.) Leaf refuses, and is fired. Around the same time Bardot actually answers one of Erasmus' letters, and invites him to France. But now Leaf has no income. The Bishop, however, has a solution -- sell one of the boats, and sail the other to France! But there are complications (money remaining one of them). The solution I will leave to the book to reveal -- it is, frankly, absurd. But really in this light book that's not a drawback.

Really, this novel is a lot of fun. And it is often very funny -- downright hilarious in spots. I haven't mentioned some of the incidents -- Bishop McGonigle playing his harpsichord at the "coffee house" Robert Leaf's poet hangers-on offer to start to raise money for him is one delight. Leaf's battles with his college are great fun as well. It's a minor novel, no doubt, and a short one, and it doesn't bother to make much sense, but it's a fun read. 

The movie, I should say, seems quite different. Mostly, I think, it shifts a lot of the focus from Robert Leaf to Erasmus (who is actually a somewhat minor character in the book.) The other children get bigger roles, too, especially the eldest daughter, Pandora. The way the plot works out is quite changed as well -- presumably partly to make sure there's an onscreen role for Brigitte Bardot, who would presumably have been a draw at the box office. James Stewart is one of my favorite actors, but this movie is a late one, and by this time he seems to have been more or less finished as a major actor. (I suppose his last great film was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, from a couple of years earlier.)

Review: Aliens From Space and Lost Race of Mars, by Robert Silverberg

Review: Aliens From Space and Lost Race of Mars, by Robert Silverberg      

by Rich Horton

I continue my journey through the early novels of Robert Silverberg. These are both first contact novels, though otherwise they don't resemble each other much. (Though they both feature important characters who are Professors at Columbia, which was Silverberg's university.) Aliens from Space was published in 1958 by Avalon, as by "David Osborne", and has never been reprinted. It's definitely an adult novel, though a slim one at some 40,000 words. Lost Race of Mars was published in 1960 by John C. Winston. Between 1952 and 1962 Winston published many SF books aimed at younger readers -- the "Winston Juveniles", but this doesn't seem to be officially one of those. The Winston Science Fiction books were numbered -- there were 35 in all. Lost Race of Mars isn't labeled as one of those -- probably because it is aimed at an even younger audience, it's more of a middle grade book, and quite short at about 20,000 words. In 1964 it was reprinted by Scholastic in paperback, and was reissued many times. Both editions were illustrated by Leonard Kessler.

I mentioned that Aliens From Space was never reprinted. There is an ebook edition from Gateway/Orion, but that is only available in the UK. I ordered it through Interlibrary Loan, however; and I also tracked down an audio edition, part of a series produced by Blackstone called Galaxy Trilogy -- four volumes, each with three novels, all of them from the same period, mostly the 1950s, and most quite obscure. I listened to the audio version and as it finished, the library called -- they had my book! Which does help in writing the review! 

It's 1989. Jeff Brewster is a Professor of Sociopsychology at Columbia (which was Silverberg's university.) One day he gets a call from a certain Colonel Chasin, from UN Security. He is needed in Washington immediately. Jeff complies, of course, even while wondering what they want with a mere 32 year old assistant professor ... As the title has already hinted, Jeff quickly learns that a spaceship has landed, with three aliens, from a very advanced species. The UN has decided to set up a multinational negotiating team, and Jeff has been tabbed due to his theories about communication. 

I'll stop here to fill in the world situation. After Sputnik in 1957 (presumably when the book was being written) humans reached the Moon in 1959, Mars in 1968, and Venus in 1970. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1965, and the world is largely at peace, though the US and Russia remain the superpowers, and don't entirely trust each other. Also, in 1989, a really fancy lunch cost five dollars. But, hey, we can make all the fun we want of the missed predictions of SF in any era -- ours will do just as poorly, I'm sure!

Brewster learns that the aliens seem to have previously visited both Venus and Mars, based on artifacts -- with writing -- found there. But that was centuries or millennia ago -- not they are here. They are called Morotans, and they propose an alliance of friendship -- and they offer immense technical and scientific knowledge in exchange for the right to build a base in Antarctica, and an agreement to be their allies against the maximally evil (because reptilian, natch!) M/e/r/s/e/i/a/n/s Zugloorans. Brewster's academic understanding of nuances of communication, however, leads him to suspect the Morotans are a bit too eager for an alliance: but can the Earth risk defying them? He has an ally in the Russian scientist Pirogov, and a foe in the blustery American Senator Morris ... and then a Zuglooran ship lands in Russia, and quickly makes a similar offer to Earth.

The general shape of the resolution is fairly obvious, but it's also fairly honest and decent, so I wasn't disappointed. That said, the novel is really pretty minor work. Even though it's quite short, it still feels padded -- things like careful description of Brewster's morning routine at the opening, or of meals later on, are clearly there to get to the 40,000 words or so that make it saleable as a novel. There are other bits that are sheer cliché, such as the notion, often seen in SF, that humanity's short lifespan compared to certain aliens (those in this book live hundreds of years) will prove an advantage -- so, here, the aliens are shocked that the world they visited a few thousand years ago which had barely started living in cities now has space travel. There is really only one female character with any lines -- Brewster's wife Mari -- and she is really a cipher and a rather overtypical '50s wife. It's easy to see why Silverberg has not chosen to reprint this book, and it is not something I really recommend you hunt down, but, for all that, I enjoyed the quick read. Silverberg, from the very beginning, had that knack. 

I'll consider Lost Race of Mars here just for convenience. I really am not, at my age, the audience for this book -- and I probably wasn't except at about age 10, when I discovered Silverberg's other Scholastic book, Revolt on Alpha C. (And even that book seems pitched a a slightly older age group than this one.) In this book, Dr. Chambers, a Professor of Biology at Columbia University (again!), gets permission to take his family to Mars to study the local flora and fauna. Alas, he won't be able to study the Old Martians, as they have surely gone extinct! Jim and Sally are 12 and 11, and they and their mother will accompany Dr. Chambers. When they get to the small colony of Mars, they find that they are greatly resented by the other members of the colony, because they are only going to be there for a year. But things improve when they fortuitously get to adopt a Mars kitten -- a new discovery. And then Jim and Sally hatch a foolish scheme to help their father -- convinced that there is more to see in the Old Martian ruins -- perhaps even Old Martians! -- they steal a Mars rover and go looking around ... with no success, until a dust storm kicks up, and they get lost, and their Mars kitten escapes and runs to a cave ... complete with, you'll never guess, Old Martians (who only allow themselves to be discovered because the kids are in danger and they seem to have treated the kitten well.) You can see where this is going ...

As I said, I'm not really the audience for this book. I might have loved it in 1970 when I was 10. Nowadays it's truly negligible -- for one thing, the didactic elements (sneaking in scientific facts (as of 1960) about Mars, mainly) are both out of date, and not really that interesting anyway. The plot is implausible and too rapidly developed (and even at that, it doesn't really get going until over halfway through the book.) This is one for completists only. But, hey, it is what it is, and it was adequate, I suppose, for its time, though I don't really think this age group was Silverberg's strength. (I do remember some of his books for older teens, such as Time of the Great Freeze and The Gate of Worlds, with great affection based on my reading at 12 or so.) 

Review: Sometime, Never, by William Golding, John Wyndham, and Mervyn Peake

Review: Sometime, Never, by William Golding, John Wyndham, and Mervyn Peake       

by Rich Horton

In my recent survey of potential Hugo winners and nominees from the 1950s I realized that this book was a major gap in my reading. It includes three original novellas, by major British writers. Of these three only John Wyndham (1903-1969) was part of the SF genre, and had a good deal of visibility to the general public -- books like The Day of the Triffids had been bestsellers. (His full real name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, and he used all of his names in various permuatations as pseudonyms, but it was John Wyndham that had the most success.) Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) was an artist and novelist, best known for the Gormenghast Trilogy, an eccentric fantasy masterpiece. And William Golding (1911-1993), of course, was most famous for Lord of the Flies, but wrote other SF-adjacent work such as Pincher Martin and The Inheritors. He won the Nobel Prize in 1983. 

In a sense Sometime, Never is a precursor to the many three novella original anthologies that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. No editor is credited. It's quite a remarkable book, though, and it seems to have sold very well, as it had numerous reprints in its Ballantine paperback edition. Its first edition, in 1956, was a UK hardcover from Eyre and Spottiswoode. Ballantine published simultaneous hardcover and paperback editions in the US in 1957. 

The three stories are "Envoy Extraordinary" (about 22,000 words), "Consider Her Ways" (about 25,000 words), and "Boy in Darkness" (about 23,000 words.)

The opening story is William Golding's "Envoy Extraordinary". This is set in the Roman Empire. The old Emperor and his bastard son Mamillius agree to see a petitioner. This man, Phanocles, is accompanied by his sister. He has offerings for the Emperor, created based on his brilliant scientific insights. But it is only his sister Euphrosyne's beauty that interests Mamillius, who calls her the Tenth Wonder of the World -- a term Phanocles would apply to his steam engine, his pressure cooker, or his cannon. But Mamillius' infatuation with Euphrosyne is enough to allow the indulgent but skeptical Emperor to support a trial. Things are complicated, however, by the Emperor's legitimate son, Posthumus, who is impatient to take the throne, and jealous of his father's apparent preference for his bastard son. Once Posthumus hears rumors of a fantastic new ship, he makes his move ... with terrible consequences for many ... This is a darkly satirical story, and slyly funny. The message is an old one: scientific and engineering advancements must wait for a society ready for them. A simple message in its way, but well conveyed, and supported by Golding's portrayal of the Emperor and his variously foolish sons; and by the cynical Emperor's treatment of Phanocles and his sister -- not cruel but opportunistic.

Wyndham's "Consider Her Ways" opens with the narrator waking to a thoroughly confusing situation -- surely an hallucination. She is in a grotesquely huge body, recovering from what she soon learns was a pregnancy, resulting in four daughters. Her nurses are tiny women, who call her a Mother, and they are perturbed by her confusion, and her evident belief that this is not real -- it must be a dream of some sort. She is taken to a home -- on the way she sees nothing but women, of various body types. Over time her memory returns -- she knows her real name, Jane Waterleigh, and knows that her husband Donald has been killed in a plane crash. But what is this hallucination? Finally her case brings her to the attention of an older woman, an historian, who explains the situation -- this is the future, after an engineered plague which killed all males. The surviving women managed to preserve society, partly by creating several "castes", based on ant society: Mothers (or Queens), Workers, etc. Jane remembers that she had agreed to experiment with a new drug, hoping it would help her depression over the death of her husband. Instead, her mind was cast out of time into that of Mother Orchis. Her interlocutor, the historian, explains how superior their society is -- largely because there are no men to control -- to own -- women. Jane resists, but her arguments seem weak. (That said, the future society as portrayed seems -- to present day eyes, at least -- quite awful; and no woman, I would think, would sign up for the role of Mother in this society.) It's a pretty decent, again rather satirical, exploration of an idea, but I have to say I think it might have been more convincing if written by a woman -- partly because I suspect this future society would have been more interesting and would have portrayed a more convincing woman only future.

Finally, "Boy in Darkness" is fairly clearly a pendant to Peake's Gormenghast series, and the title Boy is surely Titus Groan, the protagonist of that series. Here, the Boy (who is occasionally called Titus) rebels against the constant ceremony of life in the castle, especially on this day, when he turns 14. At the end he escapes, and makes his way to the countryside, and a river, and a terrifying encounter with two odd creatures -- a Goat and an Hyena. These are both in thrall to a certain Lamb -- and we gather that the Lamb somehow has the power to turn humans into his idea of their essential animal nature. The Goat and Hyena have been searching for a long time for another human to offer to their lord, the Lamb -- and the Boy is at last a possibility. But the two are also sworn enemies, and the Boy is able to use that enmity to resist the peril he faces in his encounter with the Lamb. It's a very strange story, very dreamlike, but really quite impressive. Dark, yes, and weird in the best way. 

Review: Two Obscure Early Novels by Robert Silverberg

 Review: Two Obscure Early Novels by Robert Silverberg

by Rich Horton

I mentioned recently that I am very close to having read all of Robert Silverberg's early novels -- that is, the novels before his remarkable transformation, early in the 1960s, from a skilled but rather shallow, and very prolific, writer to a quite powerful and interesting writer (still prolific but less so than before.) There are two novels that are either unavailable (in the US) or too expensive used for my blood. These are Aliens from Space and Invisible Barriers. I had an idea for an end run around this problem -- Silverberg very often published shorter versions of his novels as novellas in the many magazines of the period. I found a couple of novellas cited as progenitors for these books. So, I went ahead and got copies of the novellas. These are "We, the Marauders" (Science Fiction Quarterly, February 1958) and "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" (If, December 1957.) I fairly quickly figured out (and Silverberg confirmed) that "We, the Marauders" is a short version of yet another novel: Invaders From Earth, first published as half of an Ace Double in 1958. Naturally, I bought that full novel as well.

In this review, then, I consider "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down", "We, the Marauders", and the novel Invaders From Space. Aliens from Space will have to wait for later, as will the full version of Invisible Barriers. (For those who wonder, the other early Silverberg novels I am missing are the very slight juvenile (really a middle grade book) Lost Race of Mars; another 1958 Ace Double, Lest We Forget Thee, Earth, that is a fixup of three novellas from Science Fiction Adventures, and which was reprinted a decade or so ago by Paizo Press as The Chalice of Death; and the 1964 novel Regan's Planet. I have copies of all those, and I have an audio version of Aliens From Space.

So -- first "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down". This novella (some 25,000 words long) is about John Amory, a successful television director in the year 2021 -- almost now! But he's a dissatisfied man -- the scenarios he directs are always heavily rewritten, with the object of pleasing the advertisers and suppressing any knowledge of places outside the US. For there are "Walls", as the novella has it; or "Invisible Barriers", as the novel's title puts it, between the countries of the world. Originally this was sold as a means of preserving peace. 

Amory, with several of his friends, including some of the better writers in his circle, regularly attends parties at which smuggled foreign films are shown, and this night there is another. He attends and enjoys the film, amateurish as it is -- but suddenly he falls unconscious. Evidently he was drugged! When he wakes, he is in the presence of a very strange looking being. evidently an alien -- who puts a curious proposition to him: the aliens are visiting Earth to make copies of the great art humans have produced. This seems odd but interesting -- but by chance Amory sees a piece of paper that reveals the aliens' true goal -- the cultural harvest is simply prelude to eliminating humans. Amory is shocked, but almost resigned. Do humans really deserve to survive? But he realizes -- a unified Earth, instead of the enforced isolationist Earth of the "invisible barriers", might be able to resist the aliens, and also could throw off the censorship regime that reinforces the "barriers". But how to do this? The plan -- necessarily accomplished while seeming to cooperate with the aliens -- is to sneak some anti-isolationist messages into his TV shows. This can't last long -- but maybe he can reveal the presence and motives of the aliens before he's caught ...

The story continues as Amory develops his next program. But things don't go quite as he hopes -- and there is, in the end, a shocking twist, that probably won't surprised most readers. Still -- it's an effective enough story, readable throughout, with a decent message. That said, I think the story is about the right length -- or even a bit too long. I don't know how Silverberg padded it for the book version; but I don't quite see how that would have improved it.

"We, the Marauders" came next in my reading. (I read this in a 1965 reprint, from Belmont Books, an edition combined with a James Blish novella, "Giants in the Earth", as A Pair from Space.) And I quickly realized it had some parallels with "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down". The first story is about a TV director, whose productions are essentially propaganda; and slanted to please the sponsors. "We, the Marauders" is about an advertising man, Tom Kennedy, who creates campaigns that are similarly propaganda, to please his clients. Also, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" is about aliens coming to Earth, and using their cultural campaign to excuse their eventual invasion. We soon learn that "We, the Marauders" is about humans visiting Ganymede, realizing that the natives resent their presence, and using an advertising campaign to convince Earth that the Ganymedeans are dangerous and need to be exterminated.

Tom Kennedy is in his 30s, rising in the firm of Steward and Dinoli. One day he is summoned to a top level meeting -- it seems the company's newest client is the corporation exploring Ganymede. They have learned that the Ganymedeans don't like humans, and certainly won't let them mine the valuable radioactives. Steward and Dinoli are charged with creating a campaign that will convince Earth people that a war is justified ... and it is Tom who has the key idea: invent a fake human colony on Ganymede, and eventually show the Ganymedeans slaughtering the (nonexistent) colony residents. The client is delighted, and the campaign goes into motion. But Kennedy's wife is appalled, as is one of Kennedy's deputies ...

Eventually Kennedy is sent to Ganymede, to gather some convincing local color. (I have to say this plot device doesn't convince.) While there, Kennedy, already a little uneasy because of his wife's resistance, illegally learns some of the Ganymedean language, and after meeting some of them, realizes what they are really like, and has a crisis of conscience. He manages to get one of the Corporation's staff to help him, and brings the Ganymedeans some arms ... but is inevitably arrested and sent back to Earth. The resolution involves an unconvincing escape, and an even more unconvincing return to New York, where he steals some damning documents, and manages to arrange a dramatic reveal at a UN meeting. In the end, he realizes the only right future for him is on Ganymede ...

As hinted, a pretty implausible story in many ways, but pretty effective in its way, with a resolutely anti-colonial message. I learned that the novel version, Invaders from Earth, is significantly longer (Silverberg states that he wrote that version originally, and cut it by some 10,000 words for the magazine, though by my estimate the novel is maybe 52,000 words, as against about 38,000 for the magazine version. He cannot remember at this date how much editorial suggestions from Science Fiction Quarterly's editor, Robert A. W. Lowndes, affected the shape and plot of the novella. He does credit Lowdes for the title "We, the Marauders".) I decided I needed to compare them.

To my surprise, the novel's changes are quite radical, and actually a significant improvement. (One change is the name of the main character: Ted Kennedy, instead of Tom. I realized that the change from Ted to Tom was actually made for the 1965 reprint of "We, the Marauders", and I assumed (and Silverberg confirmed) it was due to the newly prominent politician named Ted Kennedy.) Some are just a paragraph here and there -- a bit more fully developed, and more cynical, presentation of the life of the Kennedys -- such as the need to eat real meat, not synthetics, and also a slightly more finished indication of stresses in their marriage. But about halfway into the novel, the plot changes a good deal. Kennedy's involvement with the Ganymedeans is more complete, and they teach him their philosophy of life, which serves to change his views. He doesn't give them arms -- they wouldn't use them. His actions on the return to Earth are less implausible -- he's in more danger, his escapes, though still a bit of a stretch, are less absurd. And the final confrontation is better handled. The resolution of his personal issues is perhaps a bit too pat -- I think I believed his wife's character more in the novella than the novel -- and I won't say this is a particularly great novel. But it's not bad. And it is interesting to look at the way Silverberg rewrote the novel. The message of the two stories, I should add, is pretty much the same. 

 

Review: 51, by Patrick O'Leary

Review: 51, by Patrick O'Leary

by Rich Horton

Patrick O'Leary published three impressive novels a couple of decades ago: Door Number Three, The Gift, and The Impossible Bird; but has been silent since a story collection, The Black Heart, appeared in 2010. So it was very exciting to see his new novel appear in 2022: 51, from Tachyon Press. O'Leary says in the afterword that it took 16 years to write, which in itself accounts for his "silence" the past decade plus. 

The novel opens in 2018 in Detroit. The narrator, Adam Pagnucco, or Nuke, is coming home from an AA meeting when he sees a tall old black man, a bum, stops to help, and the man recognizes him. This man is Winston Koop, and Nuke was the best man at his wedding. It's clear that both of them have fallen on rough times (and drink seems to be involved) and Nuke takes Winston home, to get him warm and get him some food. And then, over the next little while, Koop tells him a story. A crazy story. But it's a story that Nuke was also involved with ...

The title, 51, tells us pretty much what the story is about -- a secret Air Force base in Nevada. But of course it's about much more and stranger things than that. The novel, in short chapters, bounces back and forth and around in time -- back to 1947 of course, and to Nuke's and Winston's childhoods a bit later than that, and to the 1970s when they both end up working together at that Air Force base, and to Winston's career since then. 

The central story concerns -- maybe? -- what really happened in the late 1940s at Area 51. The alien visitor story, you see, was a coverup. Or, sort of. The visitors are real, but they come through a portal apparently opened by a atomic bomb test. They are called Imaginary Friends, or IFs -- because not everyone can see them, and because they, or at least some of them, seem desperately to want friendship. Over the decades all Presidents get to meet them, and there's a hint of technological secrets they offer; but there is also plenty of danger. And what the IFs really want is -- something we refuse to give them.

All this is assuming we believe Koop's story. There is a human story here, too. About Koop and Nuke's friendship. About Koop's wife -- and Nuke. About Koop's apparent job -- to track down anyone who knows anything about the IFs and who isn't under Air Force control and erase their memories. (Wait a minute -- what about Nuke? ...)

It's a confusing story, entirely on purpose, in part because of the atemporal arrangement, in part because of the unreliable nested narrators -- and maybe mostly because the IFs are confusing period. But it's fascinating, and compulsively readable, and cumulatively quite moving. O'Leary's first three novels proved he is a major writer in our field -- and 51 shouldn't change anyone's mind about that!

Review: Starman's Quest, by Robert Silverberg

Review: Starman's Quest, by Robert Silverberg

by Rich Horton

Recently I was glancing through the ISFDB entry for Robert Silverberg, looking mainly at his early novels (written in the 1950s), and I realized that I had read nearly all of them. It is perhaps a silly thing to be completist about -- trying to read the products of a young and very prolific writer who had not yet fully mastered his craft, and, worse, who was not yet writing with real ambition -- instead, by his own account, spending much of his time producing yardgoods to fill magazines under a contract whereby the editor would accept a certain number of words per month essentially sight unseen. (It should be said that Silverberg in this period was already sufficiently competent that this early work remains consistently readable, and occasionally interesting, but it is never outstanding.) Indeed, when I mentioned to him that I was having a hard time finding a couple of his early books, he suggested it would be much more rewarding to reread Downward to the Earth instead -- and likely he was right.

(For that matter, even if I finish all these early SF novels, the ones by Silverberg as well as by "Calvin Knox" or "David Osborne", there will still be rafts of work from other genres, such as the crime fiction and soft porn he wrote under such names as Don Elliott, Loren Beauchamp, and Stan Vincent.)

All that said, I did find a copy of Silverberg's 1958 novel Starman's Quest, published by Gnome Press, for a reasonable price. (The novel had a 1969 reprint, and a more recent trade paperback edition is available, which may make used books more affordable.) It seems to be the only form of this story -- many other Silverberg novels were originally published as novellas. (Indeed, sometimes one version was under Silverberg's name, and the other as by one of his pseudonyms, which made the pseudonyms pretty open! (I don't think Silverberg minded.))

Starman's Quest begins with an introductory fictional quote from an essay, discussing the Lexman Spacedrive, which allowed what Ursula Le Guin later dubbed NAFAL ("Nearly as fast as light") travel between stars; and also mention one James Cavour's failed attempt at a hyperdrive. Thus, in the year 3876, the settled worlds are linked by a fleet of starships, crewed by "Starmen", who typically live their entire lives on ship. Due to the Fitzgerald Contraction -- that is, more familiarly, time dilation -- their lives extend for hundreds of years objective time, but only a normal span subjectively. As the novel opens, the Valhalla is returning to Earth from a trip to Alpha Centauri. Alan Donnell is just turning 17. His father is the Captain. Alan himself is a twin, but his brother Steve jumped ship the last time they were at Earth. Alan wants to track down his brother, against his bitter father's wishes, though he knows that Steve is now nine years, subjective, older than him. Alan is also obsessed with the research of Cavour -- what if Cavour's discoveries really could lead to a working hyperdrive?

All this, really, is potentially fuel for a fascinating book. The sociological effects of the slower than light travel, the Starmen who are always years out of date when they come to a new planet, are worth exploring. The effects of a sudden change to hyperdrive, were it too happen, are also worth a look. There are other worthy ideas -- Alan's ratlike "pet", actually an intelligent alien from Epsilon Eridani, is one. The horribly crowded and cramped society on Earth is another. Alan's relationship with his father and his "older" twin brother could be interesting, and so too the surely unusual society of the starships -- with just a couple of hundred or so people on each. Thing is, Silverberg really doesn't do justice to any of these aspects, and the only one he tries to cover is Earth society.

Anyway, Alan decides to leave the Enclave where the Starmen stay, and go look for Steve. Alas, finding one person in a huge city is all but impossible. Especially as Alan doesn't understand Earth customs at all. Luckily, he is saved from jail or a beating or worse by a guy named Max Hawkes, who turns out to be an expert gambler. It seems that gambling is about the only job available for people not born into a profession. Max helps Alan find Steve (rather luckily) and then gives him an offer -- stay on Earth, and he'll teach him how to gamble ... and Alan takes him up on it (after returning Steve to the Valhalla) -- largely because Alan thinks that on Earth he can study James Cavour's work and maybe find more hints ... To be sure, though, Max will exact a price for his assistance ... 

Things work out a) pretty much as you will have expected; and b) involving a lot of sheer ridiculous luck. Leading to a cute enough if all too convenient conclusion, and leaving all the interesting questions I had about this future society unanswered. 

So -- is it a good novel? No. Is it readable? Yes -- Silverberg was from the beginning a competent writer who could keep your interest. Does it hint at the writer Silverberg became? Not really, except in that it does have the seeds of some pretty worthwhile ideas. 

Review: Trouble the Saints, by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Review: Trouble the Saints, by Alaya Dawn Johnson

by Rich Horton

The 2021 winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel was Trouble the Saints, by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Johnson attracted my attention with some excellent short fiction -- I have used two of her stories in my Best of the Year books. Yet I hadn't heard of this novel until it won the World Fantasy Award -- but then, I miss lots of novels. Still -- it's a book that deserves your attention.

The novel is told in three sections, each from the POV of a different character. It opens with Phyllis Le Blanc, a black woman who can pass for white, talking with her white lover, a dentist. It seems her -- boss, I suppose, a mobster named Russian Vic, wants her to do another job for him -- and we realize that Phyllis is a hitwoman for Vic, his Angel of Death -- and that this is related to her preternatural skill with knives, a skill she believes is "Saint's Hands", a supernatural gift that has come to occasional people in her family (and, we later learn, people in other black families.) The woman she is supposed to kill actually shows up at her door the next morning -- but Phyllis, or Pea, is still hoping she can avoid do this job, as she has declined Vic's requests for months.

The rest of this section reads largely as noir: we are submerged in Russian Vic's world, which includes the dentist; and Tamara the Snake Dancer, and Pea's old lover Dev, a mixed race man with an English mother and a dead Indian (from India) father; and Vic's top assistant, Walter Finch, called Red Man. We learn that Vic is obsessed with "Saint's Hands", and has tried to acquire as many as he can, by killing their owners; and the Pea's belief that Vic will only assign her hits of people who really deserve it is absurdly naive; and that Pea's job has estranged her, to a degree, from her sister and her niece and nephew; and that a war is coming -- the book is set in 1941/1942. The noir aspect seems to point to a confrontation between Pea and Russian Vic, but that comes suddenly, and early, with somewhat shocking results.

So the second part is told by Dev, after he and Pea get back together, and leave the city, to a house Dev owns in upstate New York. Both are trying to stay separate from their criminal past (though Dev, it should be noted, was actually a policeman informing on Russian Vic, though at the same time protecting some of his friends.) But the outside world intrudes -- Dev is drafted, and (as a pacifist, despite his involvement in many murders, which tortures his conscience) he doesn't feel he can serve -- but the only ways to solve that problem involve asking for help from either the police or his criminal associates. Pea is also fighting her guilt over her killings, her feeling that her "hands" are angry with her, and, eventually, a difficult pregnancy. The toll of America's racist system hangs heavy as well, embodied here by the corrupt family that has ruled this small town for decades, and their treatment of their maid, and her son, who has Saint's hands as well. This part too ends with a bang.

The final section is told by Tamara, as Dev (and also Tamara's actor boyfriend) are off at war, and Tamara is staying with Pea. Here (and, really, throughout the book) we learn about the past of all three characters, and we learn more about how racism, in both the South and North, has driven their lives. Pea's pregnancy is fraught, the men at war are constantly in danger, and Tamara is taken up with her own guilt, both about her past association with a criminal organization, that she tried to rationalize away, and her present failure -- maybe? -- to fully help Dev and Pea and their coming child. Again, the ending is shocking, though in a different way, as a racist system is exposed even more fully, even while there are hopeful hints that Dev and Pea's child, Durga, is fated to be involved in the future battles against oppression.

My description, I feel, scants the real power of the book. Yes, there is (in section one) a noirish atmosphere, and criminal violence, and there is intrigue in the other parts as well. There is also jazz, and dancing, and descriptions of the black theater scene in the segregated South. (The North, theoretically less segregated, is shown as effectively as bad.) But the real heart is interior -- as each character battles with their past, their conscience, their present struggles, their supernatural powers. The characters are wholly believable, and the prose is strong. The other characters are well depicted, too, particularly Walter Finch, Vic's sidekick and eventual successor, truly a violent criminal but also, at heart, a moral man (who knows he sins) and a great friend. It's a very powerful novel, angry, deeply, wrenchingly sad, with a seed of hope.

I will confess that I thought another novel that year would win the World Fantasy Award -- Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. (And I will admit that I would still have chosen Piranesi, even now.) But it seems to me comparing those two novels reveals the fundamental issue behind all awards: there is no absolute scale on which we can rate art. These are two novels, published in the same year, and each indubitably Fantasy. But there are as different to each other as could be -- in setting, theme, tone. Piranesi's greatest strength is beauty and mystery. Trouble the Saints is darker (though Piranesi is dark enough it its way) and far angrier, and it presents real (and wretched) history far more directly and convincingly. There is no reason to choose one or the other -- read them both!

I'll add one more note -- I have both the Kindle version, and, for my recent read, the audiobook. And the audio version is outstanding -- it's read by Shayna Small and Neil Shah, and both narrators capture the multiple voices (and accents) beautifully.

Old Bestseller Review: Miss Buncle's Book, by D. E. Stevenson

Old Bestseller Review: Miss Buncle's Book, by D. E. Stevenson

by Rich Horton

I recently reviewed two relatively obscure novels by D. E. Stevenson (1892-1973), a very popular British writer of the last century (and a cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson). I had problems with both of these books -- Rochester's Wife and The Empty World -- though it was clear despite that the Stevenson had strong narrative gifts. I decided I should read one of her more popular books, and as I already had a copy of Miss Buncle's Book, which Stevenson enthusiast Scott Thompson, of the Furrowed Middlebrow blog, calls one of his favorite books of all time, I decided that would be next. And, not to bury the lede -- that proved to be a good choice. Miss Buncle's Book is much better than the other two I read, very funny, very sweet, a delightful read. 

Miss Buncle's Book was published in 1934. It was D. E. Stevenson's third novel. The first, Peter West, from 1923, doesn't seem to have made much of an impact. The second, Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (1932), based to a great extent on her diaries from her time as an Army wife, was much more successful (and indeed four more Mrs. Tim books followed.) Miss Buncle's Book was also a success, and indeed by this time Stevenson was established as a popular writer.

Miss Buncle's Book is set in Silverstream, a small English village. Miss Buncle is a fortyish woman, a spinster, and as the book opens in some financial distress -- the investments she lives on have collapsed, pretty much, due the to the depression. So she has written a novel, set in a village called Copperfield, very closely based on Silverstream, and she has sent it off to the first publisher she found alphabetically, Abbot and Spicer. 

I'll pause here and note that Miss Buncle is almost exactly the same age as D. E. Stevenson (at that time). And D. E. Stevenson's first success (Mrs. Tim of the Regiment) was based very closely on her real life. The similarities, perhaps, end there -- for one thing, Miss Buncle is a spinster at 40 or so, and Stevenson married in her mid 20s. But it's still an amusing thing to note.

Miss Buncle, the day the book opens, gets a letter from Abbot and Spicer -- they wish to publish her book! The novel's point of view switches from character to character throughout, and we get the viewpoint of Mr. Abbot, who loves the book, but isn't sure whether the author is a simple writer who has no idea what he's done (the book is signed "John Smith") or a clever man who has written a satire. But he knows the book will be a success. Especially after he changes the title from Chronicle of an English Village to Disturber of the Peace. The book consists of a first part carefully depicting various residents of the village, and their everyday life. Then a "Golden Boy" appears, and his influence causes the villagers to step out of their normal routine, doing unexpected things -- romance, travel, etc.

Miss Buncle's Book -- that is, Stevenson's novel -- also portrays the residents of the village, Silverstream, going about ordinary life. And the disturber of their peace is the publication of Miss Buncle's novel. The characters include the new vicar, Ernest Hathaway; the doctor, John Walker, and his wife Sarah; Vivian Greensleeves, an avaricious widow; Colonel Weatherford; his neighbor Dorothea Budd; the stuck up Mrs. Featherstone Hogg and her henpecked husband; old Mrs. Carter and her granddaughter Sally; two unmarried women, Miss King and Miss Pretty, who live together; an aspiring writer, Stephen Bulmer, who is very abusive to his wife Margaret and their two children; and several more. Miss Buncle's novel has more or less the same set of characters (even including herself, as the somewhat more glamorous Elizabeth Wade), and her keen eye has ferreted out some secrets, including Mrs. Featherstone Hogg's past as a chorus girl; Stephen Bulmer's abusiveness; and the appropriateness of a match between Colonel Weatherford and his neighbor.

Sarah Walker is the first to read the novel, and she recognizes her home village quickly, and delights in the depiction of her fellow villagers. But of course those who are depicted less flatteringly eventually discover the book (which becomes a bestseller) and their reaction is less happy. (Notable is the reaction of Miss King and Miss Pretty, who in Disturber of the Peace head off to Samarkand together -- they are actually sympathetically portrayed by both Miss Buncle and D. E. Stevenson, but the clear implication that they are Lesbians disturbs them (a reference is made to a recent scandalous book, presumably The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall. When I read Rochester's Wife I wondered if one character, who at the end heads to India with her intimate friend, was intended to be read as a Lesbian, and back then I doubted Stevenson meant it, but now I think maybe she did, and I'd say her attitude is pretty positive on the whole.) 

The rest of the book ,then, involves the efforts of some of the villagers to uncover the real identity of "John Smith", with the object of some sort of punishment. Other aren't so unhappy, and some of them manage to change their lives for the better, either directly following what happened in Disturber of the Peace, or in reaction to it. And some characters -- including Miss Buncle! -- have quite unexpected developments.

Well, none of that really gets much at what makes the book enjoyable. Part of it is Stevenson's narrative gift. She simply could, as they say, tell a story -- make you want to keep reading. And her characters come to life (if sometimes they are fairly clearly "types".) But more than that -- this book is often really very funny. Neither of the other Stevenson books I have read were in any sense comic (and there's no reason they should have been) but Miss Buncle's Book is, and very successfully so. If some of the plot developments are a tad convenient, or easy -- the good people get nice things, the bad people either learn the error of their ways or are punished (somewhat gently.) The book does have its classist side -- the servants, for instance, though coming across as real people, do seem to know their place. And there is one romance that bothered me just a bit -- between a man in his mid to late 20s and a 17 year old girl. In 1934 I daresay that wouldn't have raised eyebrows. 

There are sequels to this book, and they seem worth a try. And I have a couple more Stevenson books on hand, and I just ordered a couple more from the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Books. So this won't be the last D. E. Stevenson book I read.

Review: High Times in the Low Parliament, by Kelly Robson

Review: High Times in the Low Parliament, by Kelly Robson

by Rich Horton

Here's another look at a recent novella.

I was delighted to get a chance to talk with Kelly Robson and her wife Alyx Dellamonica at Windycon recently, and I also came away with this new novella from Kelly, High Times in the Low Parliament. She discussed its writing on a panel -- she wrote it as a sort of way to cope with the pandemic, so it's explicity a rather -- well, extremely! -- lighthearted novel. Despite that, it's set in a time a crisis! I guess there's a message there.

Lana Baker is a scribe in London, and also part of a big family, which, alas, doesn't much appreciate her lack of interest in the family trade (baking, natch!) and her significant interest in spending times in pubs or in the arms of any pretty woman who catches her eyes. She also has a talent for getting in trouble. And one day, her love of kisses doom her -- as a pretty women convinces her to write a letter and take it to Masterwort, the fairy who is the Director Legate of the Low Parliament Delegation from Angland. This is a trick -- as the Delegation needs a scribe, and before she knows it, Lana is the new scribe.

We gather that this version of Earth is a bit different from ours -- everyone is a woman, for one thing, and fairies live among humans, and pretty much seems to rule. One reason is that humans are quarrelsome and warlike, and fairies don't like that. (Though they seem pretty quarrelsome too!) But the members of Parliament -- which seems a pan-European body -- are all humans, though under the supervision of fairies. Parliament is located on an island of sorts in the sea, and Lana soon learns that there is a problem -- a big one. If the members of Parliament can't come to agreement on the questions they consider, Parliament will be dissolved -- more or less literally, as the sea will overrun it, dooming all there. And lately every question has ended in a hung vote.

Lana, however, is unable to be anything but cheerful, optimistic, and lusty. She takes up her role as scribe for Angland, recording the proceedings. And before long she has somehow made friends with the irascible fairy Beauty Bugbite. And she is also infatuated with one of the deputies from this world's France-analog, a beautiful dancer named Eloquentia.

The rest of the story follows Lana's attempts to seduce or be seduced by Eloquentia, with the reluctant help of Bugbite. At the same time she is slowly learning something about the problems in Parliament, which seem to an extent to be caused by the Anglish Deputy from Berkingmiddleshire. But all efforts by the more reasonable members of Parliament are frustrated by silly rules and obstructionism. Can Lana, Eloquentia, and Bugbite save the day? Well, of course, but not without plenty of setbacks.

It's all gleefully and lushly written, sexy as heck in a very sweet way, and a fun romp (in more ways than one, especially for Lana!) There isn't really a ton of worldbuilding (I felt like I'd have liked to learn more about the world's history, and that of the fairies, for exampel), and the solution comes as something like a deus ex machina. But the characters are fun to spend time with, the writing is enjoyable, the action is spiced with comedy, the final resolution quite appropriate and sweet. A fun diversion indeed.

Review: The Long Game, by K. J. Parker

Review: The Long Game, by K. J. Parker

by Rich Horton

I'm planning to post occasional reviews of short fiction here, given that I'm not writing for Locus any more. (Mostly -- I do plan to contribute the occasional piece there.) Here's my first in that series.

I'm a big fan of "K. J. Parker"'s stories and novels, mostly set in his somewhat vaguely described quasi-Romanish, Byzantinish, fantasy milieu. ("Parker", of course, is a pseudonym for Tom Holt.) In his shorter works Parker tends to use this setting to explore fairly philosophical questions, often turning on the nature of magic (though with the magical system constructed, seems to me, to allow him to explore more broadly applicable questions.) By contrast, Parker's novels, though not without philosophical conundrums to ponder, often spend more time explicating questions of logistics, engineering, politics, or the relationships between men and women. The Long Game, a 2022 novella, available in a very nice (if expensive!) edition from Subterranean Press, is a great example of his shorter works.

The narrator is a magical adept, trained at the Studium. However, his abilities in the field mean that instead of the cushy desk job, with prospects for advancement, that he coveted, he is doomed to a life as a field agent, traveling constantly, mainly sort of "exorcising" demons from people. Demons, we learn, are entities devoted to what the narrator is convinced is "Evil", and his job is to oppose them, for the sake of "Good". This being a K. J. Parker novel, it's clear that "Good", at last, however good it may be at some level, is represented largely by incompetent schemers, who, if they are trying to improve the world, are making rather a hash of it.

He's in the remote town of Sabades Amar when he notices a woman reading a book upside down. And, somehow, she seems to be an adept of some sort -- but everyone knows women can't be adepts! He challenges her, and learns that she is from Idalia, a nearly legendary distant place. He also learns that her powers are at least his equal, and possibly superior to his. But what is she after?

Then a local prior turns up murdered, and the woman is the obvious suspect. But things don't add up. And the narrator reflects on  a long-running adversary of his -- a demon -- who by know he considers almost a friend. This demon keeps showing up -- and we learn more and more about the demon ... and more and more about the narrator's entanglement with it (or him, as the narrator insists on perceiving it.) Of course, it's soon clear that the demon is involved with the murder of the prior -- and also that the Idalian woman has an assignment of her own, which might have pretty terrible implications.

Parker is really, in the end, concerned, as I hinted, with philosophical issues, and with the "long game" implied by the title. The story is appropriately twisty; and, because Parker is Parker, able to make, as they say, a shopping list intriguing reading, the book is compulsively fun and readable. All that said, I ended up thinking that the philosophical speculations -- which are pretty worthwhile -- really could have been handled in a quarter the space. But I didn't mind -- the novella is fun reading throughout. It doesn't rank at the top of Parker's ouevre at all -- not even close -- but I was glad to read it.

Old Bestseller Review: The Fabulous Clipjoint, by Fredric Brown

Old Bestseller Review: The Fabulous Clipjoint, by Fredric Brown

by Rich Horton

Here's another review of a postwar crime novel, in this case a very pure example of "noir" fiction (though am I supposed to use noir in talking about books rather than film?) The Fabulous Clipjoint was first published as "Dead Man's Indemnity" in Mystery Book Magazine in 1946, the same year as my previous crime novel, Crows Don't Count, by "A. A. Fair". The book version, expanded and with an infinitely superior (and less spoilery) title, came out from E. P. Dutton in 1947. It won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel in 1948. My copy is the second printing of the Bantam paperback, from 1953. (The first printing was in 1948.) The inside copy credits the cover to Ed Grant, but I think that's for the first paperback printing (reproduced below.) The signature on this one looks different -- I'm not sure who did the cover. 

Given that the hardcover had two printings, and there was a Unicorn Mystery Book Club edition, and the paperback got a reprint as well, the novel must have sold acceptably, though it wasn't a true bestseller. 

Fredric Brown (1906-1972) has long been well known to me as a Science Fiction writer -- his story "Arena" (possibly the source material for the Star Trek episode of the same name) appeared in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and he wrote many other fine short stories, including a great many short-shorts; and also several fine SF novels (The Lights in the Sky are Stars, What Mad Universe?, Martians Go Home.) But he wrote in many genres, and arguably he was at his best writing crime fiction -- or, so I have been told. I decided I'd read one of his mystery novels, and started with The Fabulous Clipjoint, which was, as noted, his first. (Indeed, the two detective characters, Ed Hunter and his uncle Ambrose, appeared in several further novels.) 

Ed Hunter is 18 years old, having just started working at the printer's where his father works in Chicago. His mother is long dead, and his father has remarried, and he has a stepsister, Gardie, who is 14 but trying to act 18 or more. He knows his father isn't happy, his stepmother always on his father's case. And this morning his father hasn't come home, after his usual routine of having a beer or two or three at several bars. And then the police come -- his father has been found murdered in an alley. 

Ed's first move is to visit his uncle Ambrose, a carnie, up in Wisconsin. And, perhaps to Ed's surprise, Ambrose comes with him back to Chicago; and before long he's convinced Ed they need to try to find his father's killer. After all, the police are sympathetic but have no real leads -- people are killed for their wallets every night in Chicago, it seems. Ambrose has hidden depths -- it turns out he was once a private investigator. And he has stories about Ed's father, Wally, and their youthful escapades in places like Mexico, including romantic stuff like a duel and an affair with a married woman. 

The novel, then, follows the course of their amateurish investigation. Along the way we learn more about Wally's desperation, his unhappy second marriage, the reason he moved from Gary, Indiana to Chicago. There are hints of a past involvement with gangsters. Ambrose teaches Ed how to act as they interrogate Wally's last contacts, such as a shady bartender, and his best friend at the printer's, etc. Meanwhile Gardie comes on to Ed; the police begin to show interest in Ed's stepmother as a suspect, and a gangster and his hired heavies show up. And, tracking one lead, a mysterious phone number, Ed comes into contact with a beautiful older woman ...

This is all pure noir -- if noir is the right word for a novel, not a film. The depiction of Chicago's meaner streets is excellent. The characters of Ed and Ambrose are well-portrayed, if the women -- the grasping stepmother, the sluttish stepsister, the "heart of silver (not quite gold)" gun moll -- are perhaps a tad clichéd. The mystery is appropriately twisty, though it turns to an extent on a slightly improbable psychological quirk. But on the whole it convinces. And the final chapter, where at last we learn the meaning of the title, is simply beautiful. This is a wonderful novel -- post war noirish crime fiction at its peak. 

Here's the cover of the first paperback edition, by Ed Grant:

Old Bestseller Review: Crows Can't Count, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Old Bestseller Review: Crows Can't Count, by "A. A. Fair" (Erle Stanley Gardner)

by Rich Horton

When I was a teenager I came across a couple of paperbacks of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason books and tried them -- they didn't really interest me much. And a while back I read a science fiction story by him which was simply dreadful. But I knew of his other major series -- the Cool and Lam stories, written under the name "A. A. Fair", featuring an atypical pair of detectives -- the 60ish widow Bertha Cool and her employee, later partner, Donald Lam, a smallish man in his 30s. These books seemed interesting.

Gardner (1889-1970) was trained as a lawyer and practiced for a while, mainly representing poorer people and immigrants. Later he founded the Court of Last Resort, sort of a prototype for later organizations such as the Innocence Project -- aimed at getting fair treatment for people convicted without proper represenation. He turned to writing in the '20s and after his first Perry Mason books was published he quit practicing law, but his experience, obviously, was central to his writing.

Recently I've bought a few of the Cool and Lam books -- some in the Hard Case Crime reprint series at Worldcon, others at an estate sale recently. I decided to try one of the earlier books in the series, Crows Can't Count, from 1946. (The first book appeared in 1939 and he ended up publishing 30 Cool and Lam novels, writing them until the end of his life.) My copy is a 1960 Dell reprint with a beautiful cover by Bob McGinnis, one of the great illustrators of paperbacks.

The book opens with the agency being hired by one Harry Sharples, who wants them to find out what happened to an emerald necklace that ended up in the possession of a local dealer. It seems Sharples and a certain Robert Cameron are co-trustees for the heirs of Cora Hendricks, who had owned a gold mine in Colombia. The heirs, both in their 20s, are Shirley Bruce and Robert Hockley. Hockley is apparently a gambler, and to keep him under control the trustees have limited their disbursements to both heirs. Very quickly Lam and Sharples visit Cameron -- only to find that he's been murdered. And the there is a necklace -- sans emeralds -- on his table. And his pet crow is missing. 

Things get complicated quickly. Shirley Bruce is visited, and she immediately puts the moves on Lam -- who knows by then that Sharples is a bit more attracted to her than appropriate for his position as a 50ish man with a quasi-fatherly relationship. Another young woman is put forward as owner of the necklace. It's made clear that Colombia controls much of the world's emerald supply, and strictly limits exports. A former servant of Cora Hendricks, Juanita Grafton, and her artist daughter Dona are involved as well - and Dona is caring for the crow. Harry Sharples wants Donald Lam to act as his bodyguard, and Lam refuses, infuriating the avaricious Bertha Cool. Pretty much everyone heads for Colombia to see what's up at the mine -- and the Colombian authorities take an interest ...

There are some nice bits here. Gardner's very sympathetic portrayal of Colombia and its people is interesting, and Dona Grafton, the young artist, is a nice character. Donald Lam, the narrator, comes off well enough. Bertha Cool struck me as a somewhat sexist caricature, alas. The other characters barely come into real focus. The mystery is highly complicated -- perhaps too much so -- and is revealed too much by telling and not really showing. There is a worthwhile twist that's kind of fumbled. The solution makes reasonable sense but seems overcomplicated.

Which all means, I guess, that I wasn't wholly thrilled with the book. I'll read some more Cool and Lam books, but this one doesn't really work, on the whole.