A (Mostly) Forgotten SF Novel: Born Leader, by J. T. McIntosh

A (Mostly) Forgotten SF Novel: Born Leader, by J. T. McIntosh

a review by Rich Horton

J. T. McIntosh (real name James Murdoch MacGregor (1925-2008)) was a Scottish writer of curious interest. McIntosh began publishing SF in 1950, and was remarkably prolific for most of the next three decades, then fell silent -- only about 54 when he quit writing. The great bulk of his work was of novelette length, though he published almost 20 novels (some assembled from series of novelettes). He's a writer I find persistently interesting and persistently frustrating. He achieved a certain popularity in the '50s which diminished through the '60s. Time might have passed him by, or he might have run out of ideas, or his faults might have overwhelmed his virtues.

(Cover by Richard Powers)

In dealing with him I must account for the fact that when I encounter a McIntosh story in an old magazine (there were no collections) I will happily read it, and also with the fact that I will often be annoyed with the stories. But -- entertained. The reasons for these facts are multiple -- for one, McIntosh really did have a smooth and engaging narrative style; and for two, he was really interested in, more than anything, social dynamics, especially as impacted by an SFnal change in circumstances. So that's good. But the problem is, he had a tendency (largely on purpose) to reduce his social speculation to a single change, amid a society otherwise indistinguisable from the Western society of the '50s. Moreover, he sometimes seemed to force his views on the effect of his SFnal change on society on the reader, instead of letting them arise (with perhaps surprises) from the external changes posited. Laid upon all that was a distinct flavor of the clichéd sexism of that time. (That said, he did feature women in prominent roles, with plenty of agency, to a degree not necessarily very common at that time.)


Put another way, McIntosh's futures, and his other worlds, were not "through-composed" -- one aspect of the world changed, and everything else was unaltered, in implausible ways. And the novel at hand, Born Leader, for all that it seems one of his better regarded earlier works, seems to me to exaggerate his faults and minimize his virtues.

Born Leader was first published by Doubleday in 1954. My edition is retitled Worlds Apart, and seems to have been issued in 1958 from Avon. Both titles are reasonable for the book.

(Cover by Richard Powers)

We open on the world Mundis, which was colonized a generation or so previously by a starship from a collapsing Earth. (Rather shockingly, all the colonists are white ... and this is presented as a choice which was made and acquiesced to by the entire Earth population in order to avoid conflict in the new settlement.) The colony is essentially split into two groups -- the older people, who were adults when they left Earth, and the younger generation, born on Mundis. (There is a big gap, due -- quite sensibly -- to no children being taken on the ship (nor, I think, born en route).) The "born leader" of the original title is Rog Foley, the most influential man of the younger generation. He is planning to leave Lemon, the single town of the colony, and form a new settlement. At the same time he is arranging the marriages of several of his friends (marriages on Mundis are temporary), as well as planning to marry one Alice Bentley himself. (Coincidentally, Alice Bentley is the name of the long time owner of an excellent SF bookstore on the north side of Chicago, The Stars Our Destination. Alice is now, I believe, running Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, with Greg Ketter.) One of the main issues of contention between the younger and older generations is the older people's absolute taboo on any knowledge of atomic energy (because that's what destroyed the Earth -- in an extremely silly fashion as described in the book.)

Soon we learn that there is a second planet in the system, called, imaginatively enough, Secundis. (Mundis and Secundis, then, are "worlds apart".) It was colonized by a later ship, which was run in a very authoritarian and paranoid fashion. An expedition is being sent from Secundis to Mundis, with plans to conquer the latter planet. Phyllis Barton is the key character here -- a woman of influence, a lieutenant, in a society in which women are regarded almost exclusively as breeders, quite literally lesser beings. She is involved in various schemes to undermine her peers and enhance her position in the hierarchy.

So we see the main conflict of the novel: can the Mundans unite sufficiently to, in their loosy goosy way, resist the invasion of the Secundans. You hardly need ask that question without knowing the answer. You can guess some other things, like who Phyllis Barton will end up with after she realizes that on Mundis she is allowed to be a woman. And how the rigidity of Secundan society, and the paranoia engendered by it, is key to the resolution. The plot itself, while a bit featureless (much like the surface of Mundis) is fitfully interesting, particularly the escape of an older man involved in a taboo relationship with one of the younger women, and their eventual capture by the Secundans.

I have to say I liked the other early McIntosh novels I read rather more than this one. (Most particularly World Out of Mind and One in Three Hundred.) Born Leader goes on rather too long, and not enough really goes on in the novel. It bored me, and most of McIntosh's early novels, and novelettes of almost any period, avoid that. I can't really recommend it, even as I suggest that an omnibus of, say, World Out of Mind, One in Three Hundred, and a selection of a dozen or so of his best stories would be worth rediscovering.

A Strange Mystery Novel: Essential Saltes, by Don Webb

A Strange Mystery Novel: Essential Saltes, by Don Webb

A review by Rich Horton

Don Webb was born on April 30, 1960 (which makes him younger than me! Sigh). He is a prolific writer of intriguing stories, often with a horror cast. He has written three novels, ostensibly mysteries but with weird aspects, for sure, all of which I enjoyed -- but also, none in over fifteen years. But in honor of his birthday, I thought to repost this review I did of Essential Saltes, his seond novel. The first was The Double, the third Endless Honeymoon.

The dedicated SF reader does well to scrounge other then the Science Fiction shelves. Many books are hard to categorize, and many books are categorized for marketing reasons rather than any formal genre definition. (Which is fine with me, genre definitions being so hard to come by.)

Essential Saltes seems to be marketed as a mystery, and indeed it is one. It’s also arguably speculative fiction, though it’s open to multiple readings. But it’s definitely good, and filled with outrageous content that ought to satisfy our desire for the strange.

Don Webb has published boatloads of short stories. As a writer, he is weird, often funny, often strange, always interesting, and Texan. As a book, Essential Saltes is all of those things.

The protagonist is Matthew Reynman, a used-book dealer in Austin. His wife was murdered two years prior to the action, and now her ashes have been stolen. Matthew had promised to keep them and arrange for his and her ashes to be mixed and shot off in fireworks after his death. This really annoys him, and, much worse, his wife’s murderer has been released from prison in a bureaucratic snafu. Matthew tries to find the thief of his wife’s remains, and at the same time avoid being killed by his wife’s murderer.

The story involves many very odd characters, and a mix of subjects that in its eclecticness reminds me of Robertson Davies (though it’s not a very Davies-like book): fireworks, sex, race, alchemy, used books, codes and code-breaking, mental illness, polyamory, and more. There are also some tantalizing hints of a story involving Matthew’s brother John, which is the subject of Webb’s first novel, The Double, also recommended. Essential Saltes is continually interesting just for the strange characters, the odd subject matter, and the well-described sex. The plot is full of action, but at times a bit discursive, and almost too strange for me. That is, the motivations of the very strange individuals involved were perhaps a bit too odd to always hold my interest. But the rest of the book was strong enough to keep me going, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Definitely worth reading.

A Forgotten Ace Double: The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster/No Truce With Terra, by Philip E. High

Ace Double Reviews, 40: The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster/No Truce With Terra, by Philip E. High (#F-275, 1964, $0.40)

a review by Rich Horton

This Ace Double review is posted in memory of Philip E. High's birth, on April 28, 1914.

To be honest, this particular Ace Double really didn't excite me prior to reading. Murray Leinster (a pseudonym for Will F. Jenkins) was a respected old pro, but he's never been a particular favorite of mine. Philip E. High is an English writer who never became prominent: he's not really very good, but I find him something of a guilty pleasure. Leinster published 9 Ace Double halves in 8 separate books (plus a later reprint of the one Ace Double that featured him on both sides). High published 6 Ace Double halves. The Duplicators) is about 46,000 words long, and No Truce With Terra is about 34,000 words.

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Jack Gaughan)

Will F. Jenkins was 68 when The Duplicators was published. He retired from writing just a few years later. His first SF story appeared way back in 1919 in the legendary all-sorts-of-fiction pulp Argosy: this was "The Runaway Skyscraper", a decent story that was reprinted in the first year of Amazing, and also a couple of times since then. He also had some mainstream success under his own name. He also had success as an inventor, holding two patents involving significant movie special effects technology. Jenkins died in 1975.

The Duplicators is an expansion of a novella called "Lord of the Uffts", from the February 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow. It takes on the idea of the matter duplicator, and like Damon Knight in A for Anything, Leinster concludes that this would be disastrous. The story begins with a rather rackety young spaceman named Link Denham getting drunk and in lots of trouble, and as a result (pretty much) signing on as astrogator on a beat up old ship owned by a disreputable and dislikable man named Thistlethwaite. Thistlethwaite is convinced he is about to make his fortune at a mysterious planet he has rediscovered.

On arrival at the planet, called Sord Three, Thistlethwaite immediately manages to be sentenced to hang, for the crime of being unmannerly. Link lasts a bit longer, but when he gives a speech to the indigenous intelligent race, the "uffts", the Household head, Harl, who has met the spaceship reluctantly decides to hang him too, despite his relatively good manners. But when Link gets to the Harl's mansion, he soon realizes that the entire economy of the planet is based on using some decaying "dupliers": duplicating machines. As a result, no human does any work, and what little work is needed is done by the uffts, in exchange for beer. But the uffts are getting restless. Worse, perhaps, the duplicating isn't working very well -- if you don't provide the right elements as raw material, the duplicated thing won't work. For example, steel knives don't duplicate very well if only iron ore is available; and electronic equipment doesn't duplicate well without, for instance, germanium for transistors. Harl has a beautiful sister, Thana, who is intelligent enough to realize the problem and try to work around it -- and Link has some ideas too. Naturally they fall in love and manage to avert his execution.

Link, perhaps a bit implausibly, quickly cottons to the disaster that dupliers have been for Sord Three, and he realizes that he must prevent the discovery of this tech by the rest of the Galaxy. He also befriends the uffts and starts to try to figure out a way to better their lot. The story, then, involves his sponsoring of an ufft revolution, his eventual solution (almost totally unbelievable) to the duplier problem, and of course his love affair with Thana. It's a breezily readable, if not plausible, novel. It's often somewhat funny. Not really very good, but not bad for half of 40 cents, I suppose.

No Truce With Terra was Philip E. High's second novel (at least according to the ISFDB), his first having been published as a single book by Ace earlier in 1964, The Prodigal Sun. Highbegan publishing short fiction in with "The Statics" in Authentic in 1955, and published quite a few short stories, mostly in UK magazines, through 1963. In 1964 he switched over almost entirely to novels, publishing some 14 through 1979. He seemed to retire at that time (he also retired from his day job, as a bus driver), but a spate of new short fiction began appearing in the Fantasy Annual series of original anthologies featuring mostly Carnell-era veterans, and other places, a total of more than thirty additional stories in the last decade of his life. He died in 2006, aged 92.

This novel begins with a scientist returning to his home only to find it impregnable -- apparently occupied by some strange being, quickly identified as an alien. These aliens seem to be metallic in nature, and to use electricity as a motivating force. They also seem all-powerful, capable of vaporizing attackers. They come in many rather terrifying forms. Soon all of England, and by extension the world, is under threat.

The scientist and a couple of friends, however, are able to analyze the aliens' means of transport, some sort of interdimensional warp gate. They copy the technology and by hit or miss open a gate to yet another planet. Their main thought is to hope at best for a lucky solution to the invader problem, or at least possibly to use this new planet as a refuge. This planet is at a low-tech developmental state, but it is also being monitored by some very advanced aliens, who soon detect the humans. These aliens make contact with the humans, and quickly offer their help. There is also a surprise about these aliens -- easily guessed in advance (I certainly did), but still I'll leave it at that.

Meanwhile, back on Earth the battle against the electronic invaders is going poorly. Even nuclear weapons are useless. But the new aliens do have some ideas ... Well, there aren't really any surprises coming.

High's prose style is fairly individual to him, and a bit shoddy. The plot here is implausible, as are the SFnal ideas ... but ... but ... The story is fast-moving and really kind of fun. The resolution is convenient but still interesting. There is one personal story that stretches belief but that I still found sweet. This is a good example of how Philip E. High could be a pleasure to read, albeit a guilty one.