A Mostly Forgotten Ace Double: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 37: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner (#D-385, 1959, $0.35)

Today (August 11, 2018) would have been Alan E. Nourse's 90th birthday, so I've taken the opportunity to repost this review I did some time back of his Ace Double Rocket to Limbo.

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Robert E. Schultz)

This 1959 Ace Double pairs a once-popular writer best known for his juveniles with a writer who became one of the towering figures in the field. At the time Alan E. Nourse was surely the "headline" writer of the pair (which is not to say he was particularly well-known), but as of now John Brunner is clearly the more important figure. Rocket to Limbo is a reprint of a 1957 novel, originally published by David McKay. (There also seems to have been a version, possibly much shorter, published in Satellite Science Fiction in 1957.) It is about 50,000 words long. Echo in the Skull is from 1959: it was published in the same year in the UK magazine Science Fantasy. (I don't know which publication came first.) It's a longish novella at some 28,000 words -- I'm not sure if the Science Fantasy text is the same as the Ace Double, but I suspect it may be. It has been reprinted as "Give Warning to the World" according to the ISFDB, but I can't find any details of that.

One point about John Brunner's Ace Double career. I had previously listed a number of especially prolific Ace Double contributors. Somehow, I managed to forget Brunner: the most prolific of them all, I believe! He wrote 24 Ace Double halves, in 21 different books. A few of these were published under the name Keith Woodcott. (He also used this pseudonym for a few short stories -- I read one just today, "Fair" in the March 1956 New Worlds, a pretty fair story, I will say.)

I enjoyed several Alan E. Nourse novels as a teenager: he was one of the first few SF writers I read (with Asimov, Clarke, Norton, and Simak). In particular I recall The Mercy Men, The Bladerunner, The Universe Between, and Raiders from the Rings. (The last two novels were based on 1951 stories in Astounding -- the curious thing is that Raiders from the Rings is not based on a Nourse story, but rather "The Mauki Chant", by Nourse's sometime collaborator J. A. Meyer.) However the novel at hand is not to my mind as good as any of those.

Rocket to Limbo opens with a scene of Earth's first star ship, the Argonaut, blasting off en route to Alpha Centauri. It is a generation ship -- its primitive engines are expected to take as much as a century to reach the nearest star. Quickly we cut to the main action, some 350 years later. The faster-than-light Koenig drive as been in use for a few centuries, and the Earth has a burgeoning colony population. However, the Argonaut is not found at Alpha Centauri, nor at any other planet. Lars Heldrigsson (I thought I was in a Poul Anderson novel for a second after reading that name!) is a young man preparing for his first journey for the Colonial Service, under the command of legendary explorer Walter Fox.

Lars soon learns that what he thought was to be a routine trip to Vega will be something else entirely. The ship's launch is made under unusual security. And Lars's roommate, his former classmate Peter Brigham, a bitter young man, tells him of a mysterious cargo that seems to be illegal nuclear weapons. They are swiftly told the reason for the unusual procedures: another Colonial Service ship, investigating a newly discovered planet, disappeared after making planetfall. Their job is to investigate this mysterious disappearance.

Walter Fox, it turns out, has a bug in his brain about intelligent aliens. It seems humans have encountered no sign of them, but Fox is sure they must exist, and he wants first contact to be peaceful. But other people are afraid of the aliens, including many of the crew, some of whom plan a mutiny, charging that they have been illegally shanghaied to this secret mission, instead of the expected Vega milk run. Peter Brigham has other motives -- he blames Walter Fox for his father's death on a previous exploration mission. Lars, of course, is a loyalist, and he eventually turns Peter to the good side of the Force.

No prizes (after the opening scene of the book) for guessing what the divided crew actually finds on the strange planet. And no prizes for guessing that Lars and Peter, after a harsh struggle with the elements and with another mutiny, have a key role to play when they encounter strange beings in a strange city. And, finally, no prizes for guessing that Walter Fox's dream of discovering intelligent aliens comes into play as well.

I was rather disappointed by this novel. For one thing, it's put together rather carelessly. There are a number of quite unnecessary niggling inconsistencies (such as how far the Argonaut eventually seems to have travelled, or what sort of planet the mysterious planet is in terms of indigenous life). And the ending is an annoying attempt at transcendentalism via psi hogwash.

I enjoyed Echo in the Skull somewhat more. It's an extraordinarily fast-moving story, partly because it covers a very short time period -- perhaps twelve hours. Long enough to save the world with a love story thrown in. It's gripping and sets up an interesting mystery which is resolved acceptably. There are some short-cuts -- the hero jumps to some correct conclusions implausibly swiftly, for instance. It's not great work but it's good old-fashioned fun.

The story opens with Sally Ercott hungover and in despair. She is broke, filthy, living in a rundown flat, and at the brink of letting her landlord sell her as a prostitute in lieu of rent. She has vague memories of a much more comfortable life, but no specifics -- and more terrifyingly, she does have occasional very specific memories of other, much stranger, lives. These memories involve things like human sacrifice to a huge alien being, and barbarian invaders, and suchlike.

Then she is nearly run over by a young man, who insists on taking her to his house to at the very least clean up and get herself a good meal. Sally's landlord and his wife are depicted as furious at this development -- is their only motivation that of driving her to sufficient degradation to agree to "go on the street"? Or is something more sinister going on? The man who picks up Sally is named Nick Jenkins (it's probably only a coincidence that that is the same name as the narrator of one of the most important (and one of the best, and perhaps my favorite) English novels of the 20th Century: Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time).  Nick is an inventor, and a man with an open mind, and he promises to treat whatever strange stories Sally tells with respect. And when Sally tells him of her unusual memories of other lives, he asks her to draw scenes from them -- which elicits the information that the barbarian invaders from one scene had four arms; and that in another memory Sally's skin was scaled.

Nick arranges for a Doctor to treat Sally. Meanwhile the sinister landlord couple have tracked Nick down, and they are attempting to kidnap Sally back. Fortunately, another resident of Sally's rooming house has also become suspicious of the landlord and landlady. The conclusion moves rapidly, with Sally in deadly peril, even as she and Nick have figured out (perhaps too rapidly, as I suggested) just what's going on. But between Sally's new found confidence, and the help of Nick, the doctor, the other resident, and some reasonably intelligent policemen, all comes out OK.

A Little Remembered YA SF Novel: Raiders from the Rings, by Alan E. Nourse

A Little Remembered YA SF Novel: Raiders from the Rings, by Alan E. Nourse

a review by Rich Horton

Alan E. Nourse was born 11 August 1928 (he died in 1992), so I thought it might be a good time to resurrect this brief review of one of his YA novels, that I wrote for SFF Net a long time ago.

Alan E. Nourse was one of the SF writers whose juveniles introduced me to the field.  The Universe Between is the book I specifically remember: I was very impressed back in 1972 or whenever I read it.  I also read The Mercy Men and The Bladerunner.  (He got some money for the use of his title when the film came out, even though it had nothing to do with his book.)  His career mostly covered about 1951 to the early '70s, though he had a story in F&SF as late as 1990.  He died in 1992.  (He was an M.D., and his last name was pronounced "Nurse".)

A lot of his early work was for the regular SF magazines in the early '50s, then was revised into Young Adult novels later on: many of his YA books are from the '60s.  For instance, The Universe Between (1968) is an expansion/revision of two short stories from 1951 issues of Astounding.

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

Raiders from the Rings comes from 1962. It too is based on an older story from Astounding, but oddly enough the story is not by Nourse. It is "The Mauki Chant", by J. A. Meyer, from the June 1951 Astounding. Meyer was a friend of Nourse, and the two collaborated on a novel (The Invaders are Coming!, aka The Sign of the Tiger (which was the title of the 1958 Amazing story that the novel was based on).) Mayer also had three stories in Astounding, all in 1951.

Raiders from the Rings is a decent but not great YA SF novel -- which in the end describes much of his work.  He was no Heinlein, certainly, and not quite Andre Norton either (though apparently people used to mistake "Alan Nourse" for yet another Alice Mary Norton pseudonym, along with Andre Norton and Andrew North). He was much better than, say, the Silverberg of Revolt on Alpha C (possibly the first SF novel I read), or most of the "Winston" writers, and at least a bit better than Isaac Asimov writing as Paul French.  This novel posits a future solar system with fierce conflict between Earthman and Spacers -- a familiar subject.  Earthmen hate Spacers for some bad reasons -- they refused to join in the Atomic War that nearly wrecked Earth, thus they were traitors to one side or the other.  (The book's hero, Ben Trefon, is later revealed to be actually named Trefonovich -- which in 1962 was I'm sure supposed to be a shocking revelation -- The Good Guy is a COMMIE!)  They also have good reason to hate them -- Spacers periodically raid Earth and kidnap their women.  Spacers hate Earthmen, conversely, because they won't negotiate, and because they commit horrible atrocities whenever they happen to catch a Spacer ship.

It turns out there's a reason for the Spacer actions, and it also turns out that some Spacer fear of Earthmen, as well as most Earth fear of Spacers, is misguided, which is of course the message of the book.  The book begins with Ben participating in a raid on Earth, by mistake kidnapping not just a girl but her brother.  However, when Ben gets back to his home on Mars, he finds that the sneaky Earthmen have sent a suicide fleet and have blasted the Spacer homes to smithereens, killing Ben's father as well as many other Spacers.  He heads to "Asteroid Central" to join the doomed defense effort, but on the way he encounters a mysterious ship -- which seems to herd him to a strange asteroid.  There Ben and the two Earth kids learn a strange secret about the destiny of Earth, and they, having finally learned to trust each other, must find a a way to make the war stop, and to bring mutual trust between all Spacers and Earthmen.

As I said, it's decent but not great.  The science is actually not bad, and the plot, though it does turn on rather a deus ex machina, is still different enough to interest.  I could have used a bit more sexual tension -- but it was a YA book after all. And indeed any added sexual tension would have required a fuller portrayal of the women in the book, and a fuller engagement with the icky "wife kidnapping" theme.

A Significant Recent SF Novel: The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod

The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod
Ace, New York, NY, May 2003, 456 pages, Hardcover, US$23.95, ISBN:0-441-01055-5

a review by Rich Horton

Another review that I'm resurrecting because Ian MacLeod's birthday was yesterday -- but this seems a book that his slipped out of the general consciousness in the years since its publication, and that's just wrong -- it's a really significant book, and I hope it can be rediscovered. (I believe I may have first posted this review at rec.arts.sf.written in 2003.)

Anyway, as it seems in danger of being too soon forgotten, I'm featuring this is this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

Ian R. MacLeod is one of the finest writers in the SF field, known best for short fiction such as his World Fantasy Award winner "The Summer Lands", "Starship Day", "Breathmoss", "The Chop Girl", and "New Light on the Drake Equation". He is certainly one of my favorite writers. He has published only one previous novel, The Great Wheel, though I am told that a novel-length version of "The Summer Lands" exists.

The Light Ages has the feel of a steampunk novel -- that is, it is set in an England that resembles Victorian (or perhaps Edwardian) England, with magic that resembles rather grungy technology the motivating force in the background of the book. (Though if the book can be dated, it would seem to date to the late 20th Century -- I'm not sure if that is meant to be a comment on the magic and social organization of the world of the book retarding progress, or if rather it is a backhanded comment on our own society, or perhaps it is simply a mistake on my part.)

The book is told by one Robert Borrows. Robert grows up in a Yorkshire mining town. The substance mined at this town is "aether", a magical source of energy that is the driving force of the economy and technology of the world of this book. Accidents with aether can cause people to mutate into "changelings" or "trolls", and Robert's life changes when his mother begins to mutate. One result is a trip to a strange old woman, Mistress Summerton, a changeling herself, who lives with a beguiling ward called Annalise. Another result is, eventually, his mother's suicide. And yet a third result is his association with the Grandmaster of the local Guild, who is performing dangerous experiments on such things as electricity, and who seems perhaps to have been involved in a mysterious incident that may have caused Robert's mother's aether contamination.

Robert eventually escapes his home town and heads to London, where he becomes involved in fomenting a socialist revolution. He becomes a "mart", someone outside the Guild structure of England. The Guilds apparently control all the technology, and all the labour. Robert, thus, makes his living via the black market, or by simply stealing, and he also becomes a writer for a revolutionary newspaper. His focus is the injustices of the Guild structure, but all along we are also showed the maltreatment of the changelings.

In London Robert also again encounters Annalise, now calling herself Anna Winters. She has become attached to the upper classes, particularly via her friendship with Sarah Passington, daughter of perhaps the most powerful man of the realm. Robert's doomed attraction to the strangely glamourous Anna motivates him to continue to visit her when he can. He is both disgusted by the class inequalities revealed to him, and also of course attracted by the perquisites of the very wealthy -- not to mention such beauties as Sarah and Anna. He also again meets Mistress Summerton, as well as further figures from his past, and further changelings -- all slowly adding detail to our understanding of the terribly unjust social structure of this alternate England. Among all this, Robert runs into further hints of the secret behind his mother's accident, which turns out not surprisingly to be central to Annalise's history as well.

The book turns, finally, on revelations about the emptiness behind the aether-based power structure of the rulers of England, and an ambiguously successful "revolution". Robert and Anna learn much about their past -- and they are intimately involved with the opening of a new "Age". But the new Age is perhaps not all they might have hoped.

I had a complex reaction to this novel. It is for much of its length quite frustrating. The pace is glacial. MacLeod conceals important information (what is aether, really? what are changelings? etc.) for what in the end seems little reason. For too long almost nothing really happens. But it remains absorbing for the excellent writing (save a few slips that I think point to less than wonderful copyediting), and for the fascinating details of life in this alternate England. But what really redeems the book is the ending, which I found emotionally wracking, and honest, somewhat surprising, almost but not quite cynical. I was moved to tears -- I think honest tears -- and the final scene is perfect.

It is an ambitious novel. I cannot argue with anyone who gives up because of the pace -- it really is too slow in developing. For me, in the end the payoff was wholly worth it, though. While acknowledging that it could have been even better, I think I still concur with David Kennedy's view (expressed in another review on rec.arts.sf.written) -- "ridiculously good".

More Ian R. MacLeod:

My review of his first, quite excellent, story collection, Voyages by Starlight
And a compilation of some of my Locus reviews of his short fiction, plus a longer "SF by Starlight" piece on his great novella "New Light on the Drake Equation": Short Fiction of Ian R. MacLeod

A Major SF Story Collection: Voyages by Starlight, by Ian R. MacLeod

Voyages by Starlight, by Ian R. MacLeod
Arkham House, 1996, $21.95
ISBN: 0870541714

A review by Rich Horton

This review first appeared in Tangent, issue 20/21, in 1998. I'm reposting it mainly because it was not available online any more, but prompted by MacLeod's birthday, August 7.

Ian MacLeod seemed to emerge into the SF field almost fully-formed, as it were, with the publication in the Fall 1990 Weird Tales of his second story, "1/72 Scale", which was nominated for a Nebula. His first novel, The Great Wheel, has just been published; and Voyages by Starlight is his first collection.

His stories are very well-constructed, and characteristically rather quiet in tone. In this, in some of his themes, and in his ability to plant a subtle bombshell and explode it in the reader's face at a story's close, he reminds me of the excellent mainstream writer William Trevor. SF writers he reminds me of include Christopher Priest, M. John Harrison, and perhaps his fellow Ian, McDonald. MacLeod uses SFnal tropes, sometimes quite original ones, primarily as metaphors enhancing the story's themes, or as enabling devices to place his characters in revealing situations.

I've read all these stories in their original magazine publications, and MacLeod has established himself with me as a "must-read" writer. But rereading them in bulk in this collection enhances my sense of his virtues. His prose style is balanced and elegant. He is wonderful at evoking landscapes, either beautiful as in "The Perfect Stranger" and "Starship Day", or grotesque, as in "The Giving Mouth". His characters are closely described, and truly alive.

My favorite stories here are "The Perfect Stranger" and "Starship Day", which resemble each other a bit in setting (sun-drenched island), and in following a man in early middle age whose marriage is failing, in both cases partly because of guilt about a child. Otherwise the stories are wholly different. "The Perfect Stranger" opens with the protagonist meeting his wife at a lovely vacation island. The catch is, everyone's memories are erased at the start of the vacation, so they don't know each other. Idyllic scenes of the couple in love on the island are alternated with scenes of their harried life prior to the vacation, and our knowledge that their marriage was on the rocks prior to the vacation fills us with foreboding for their future once their memories return. Is it possible to start over again, and not make the same mistakes? (A question MacLeod considers elsewhere as well.) And at what cost came this vacation?

"The news was everywhere. It was in our dreams, it was on TV. Tonight the travelers on the first starship from Earth would awaken." So opens "Starship Day", as the lovely island town of Danous awaits the news from the starship. Owen, the narrator, is a psychiatrist, and rather cynical in his view of the news. He's more concerned with his failing marriage, and his failing relationship with his mistress, and his failure to cure a despondent patient. We follow him through a gorgeous day, and a sumptuous "starship party", until the transmission from the ship is revealed. A final twist gives the whole setting and story a sharply drawn meaning. A wonderful story.

Most of the rest of the stories are nearly as good. "Grownups", last in the book and longest, is set in what appears at a glance to be contemporary England. But soon odd differences are revealed: humans are of three sexes: men, women, and "Uncles", who live apart, and who appear to be the childbearers. In addition, adolescents "grow up" by a sudden, painful, physical transformation: thus there is a very sharp demarcation between "grownups" and children. MacLeod examines gender roles (more by exaggerating present-day gender roles) and also, more tellingly, examines the nature of childhood versus adulthood. Bobby, the protagonist, watches his brother "grow up" and get married, later he is pushed by his friend May to try to postpone or avoid "growing up". This is an excellent example of using an overtly SFnal idea to illuminate the mundane human character.

One of the more unusual pieces is "The Giving Mouth". This takes a couple of familiar fantasy storylines (noble son meets peasant girl, Queen orders hopeless quest against invading danger) and plays them out in an inverted, "industrial" fantasy world, full of slagheaps, oil slicks, mechanical but living horses, and a well-depicted atmosphere of brutality and degradation. The resolution is unexpected, and a nice twist on what had seemed a cynical take on "fairy tales".

I'll touch more briefly on the other stories. "Marnie" uses an idea Tiptree used a couple of times, time travel back along one's own thread of consciousness, to explore a man trying to set right his relationship with his lover. It's nice but predictable. "Green" is a very good "alternate fantasy", featuring a gardener for the King in a world where gardens are infested by brownies and fairies as well as ordinary pests. "1/72 Scale" tells of a young boy, whose older brother is dead, who tries to make a complicated airplane model to somehow prove to his parents that he is as worthy of their love as his brother. "Tirkiluk" features a British weather officer on Greenland during World War II. He befriends an outcast Eskimo, then undergoes a mysterious transformation after disaster strikes the weather station. "Papa", set in another of MacLeod's beautiful seaside locations, is a gentle exploration of a very old man, somewhat lost in the suddenly utopian future, missing his long dead wife, unable to connect with his son, and loving but not understanding his grandchildren. Finally, "Ellen O'Hara" (non-SF, as far as I can tell, though it appeared in Asimov's), is a strong story of a Catholic girl in Northern Ireland, who spends her life trying to come to terms with the murder of her pacific father, and finally meets her father's killer, giving her (and us) a bitter and ironic look at her life choices.

This is truly an outstanding collection of stories. If I had a complaint, it would be that they are all familiar to me: I like a collection to feature something new or obscure. (Perhaps one or two of MacLeod's Interzone stories (e.g. "The Family Football") would have been good choices.) But this is mere quibbling: and furthermore, these are stories that reward rereading.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Ian R. MacLeod

Short Fiction of Ian R. MacLeod

Ian R. MacLeod was born August 6, 1956. In honor of his birthday, I'm reposting a few of the reviews I've done of his stories over the year, including a somewhat longer piece I did on "New Light on the Drake Equation", which I still rank as the best novella of the new millennium.  Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the files for some of my more recent reviews, such as what I wrote about his wonderful 2016 novelette "A Visitor from Taured".

Tangent Online SF By Starlight Feature, June 2001

"New Light on the Drake Equation", by Ian R. MacLeod (SCI FICTION, May 2001)

One of the usually fatal story gimmicks in SF is to make the story be about SF itself. There is little more annoying than an SF story whose point is that SF is good to read. And even when the theme of the story is something more substantive, references to other SF often seem twee or in-groupish. But Ian R. MacLeod, in "New Light on the Drake Equation", his lovely new novella posted at SCI FICTION, manages to make his story be, in part, about SF, and to make that work. It works partly because that is only a small part of what the story is about -- partly because the way it is about "SF" is reflective of the other themes of the story -- and mostly because the central concern of the story, the Drake Equation, is so central to the yearnings of 20th Century science fiction.

The Drake Equation is described here: http://www.seti-inst.edu/science/drake-bg.html . Briefly, it attempts to estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy that we might communicate with, or at least detect. It combines terms representing the rate of formation of suitable stars, the proportion of such stars with planets, the proportion of such planets that will be habitable, the proportion of habitable planets on which life will actually develop, the proportion of life-bearing planets on which intelligent life evolves, and the period of time for which intelligent life might emit detectable signals. Not surprisingly, the values of most of these terms are not known, and indeed are rather controversial. It is one of the central dreams of SF that enough of those terms are of high enough value that there might be thousands, or thousand of thousands of species in our galaxy with whom we might communicate.

Many evaluations of the Drake Equation have been pretty optimistic. It really does seem plausible that there ought to be other intelligent life in the galaxy -- if nothing else, the Principle of Mediocrity suggests that we ought not to be all that special. But set against the Drake Equation is the Fermi Paradox: if all that life is out there: then where are they? Why haven't we heard from them?

The protagonist of MacLeod's story is Tom Kelly, a scientist who, by 2058, is pretty much the only scientist remaining who has any interest in communicating with aliens, or at any rate in searching for signs of alien radio signals. He lives a lonely, squalid life in a remote area of France. His life's work is trying to communicate with aliens, but he hardly communicates at all with other people -- this is nicely portrayed right at the opening as he struggles to get his mail from the elderly Frenchwoman who runs the post office, and it’s further emphasized, in a different way, by his impatience with the odd electronic postcards that are his actual mail. The squalor of his personal life is accentuated by his drunkenness. And to make things worse, medical science has adapted to the point that these conditions can easily be alleviated by what appears to be nanotech -- you can learn a foreign language by drinking a vial of the right stuff, and you can cure alcoholism. But Kelly, living in what appears to be a near utopian future, himself once an SF fan, presumably one who read about just such miracles, refuses such measures for himself.

The heart of the story occurs when Kelly returns from the post office to his mountainside home. In the village he thought he might have seen his former lover, Terr (short for "Terrestrial"?). Later in the night she comes walking up the mountain. Their long conversation is interspersed with flashbacks of their relationship. Terr and Tom were both students at the University of Aston in Birmingham, England. Terr never settled on a consistent field of study, while Tom became involved at this early time in his life work. So in many ways they weren’t compatible, yet the relationship is presented as fairly idyllic, but as inevitably ending. In the background we see hints of the developing future -- little things like hydrogen-powered cars, bigger things like a manned landing on Mars (no life!), and most importantly, the biological advances that lead to medical improvements like cures for alcoholism, and personal improvements like language learning, radical cosmetic alterations, and even, eventually, functional wings.

In a way, humans are becoming aliens themselves. And Tom Kelly drifts away from all that. Terr becomes a dedicated flyer, which seems to precipitate their breakup. Tom becomes more and more of a hermit, going from academic job to academic job, cadging what little grant money he can, eventually becoming regarded as a crank for still believing that there might be aliens out there -- indeed, for still even caring that there might be aliens out there.

The mood of the story becomes positively elegiac. Humanity, it seems, is doomed to loneliness. We are as alone as Tom Kelly, perhaps living in as squalid a place. I was reminded of two other significant stories on the same theme, "One" by George Alec Effinger, and David Brin’s Hugo-winner "The Crystal Spheres". And MacLeod ups the ante for SF readers by paralleling this idea of the death of hope for meeting aliens with the death of science fiction itself. SF, which Tom Kelly so loved when a child, is apparently no longer written. Its themes are 20th Century themes -- there is no place for it in the future. For me, at least, this resonated powerfully.

But MacLeod doesn’t leave us there. In part we are shown the contrast of Terr’s peripatetic life -- always looking for more and better flying. It’s not clear whether her life, her two failed (but not unhappy) marriages, her career in public relations, are to be seen as in any way better than Tom’s lonely obsessiveness. But they do represent a different way to live -- as do the happy, colorful young people all around Tom -- as do the flyers, physically different, almost aliens themselves. Is humankind itself enough? Do we really need to meet the aliens? The story ends calmly, with Terr’s visit to Tom rendered ambiguous (was it all a dream), but with Tom apparently changing his ways. But still listening.

This is a lovely story -- quiet and beautiful, thoughtful, elegiac and hopeful.

From Locus, May 2002:

Ian R. MacLeod is probably my current favorite writer of short SF, and it is a treat to see his huge novella in the May Asimov's, "Breathmoss". This is in the same milieu as his fine novelette, "Isabel of the Fall", the Ten Thousand and One Worlds, a future dominated by a much altered Islam, and in which there are very few men.

"Breathmoss" is a coming of age story about Jalila, a young woman on a planet with a rather long year. We meet her in spring as she moves with her three mothers from the mountains, where the air is so thin that breathing is assisted by "breathmoss" growing in the lungs, to a small seaside town. Her growing up takes us to winter. Jalila makes three significant friends. One, inevitably, is Kalal, the only boy in the town, perhaps on the whole planet. Another is a beautiful girl named Nayra with whom she falls in love. The third is an ancient "tariqua", a starship pilot, who lives alone near the town. As she comes to adulthood, she is forced almost willy-nilly to choose between conventional life with Nayra, an unconventional relationship with Kalal, and a completely different life as a tariqua -- but her choice seems inevitable, and precipitates a violent act, which leads Jalila towards even more self-discovery.

This story is lovely and fascinating, not least for such offhand details as the curious semi-mechanical hayawans. The thematic heart of the story, issues of identity, and time, and the "Pain of Distance" experienced by people who leave home for a nomadic life, is compelling. Still, I was a bit less satisfied than I might have been. The climactic violence seemed forced and almost a cliché. And the final revelation, if philosophically interesting, also seemed a bit old hat. Nonetheless, this is a fine novella.

From Locus, May 2007

The May F&SF features intriguing stuff throughout. The cover story is "The Master Miller’s Tale", by Ian R. MacLeod, set in the alternate fantastical history of his novels The Light Ages and House of Storms. Nathan Westover, we are told from the start, will be the last of the master millers on Burlish Hill. The story is then a recapitulation of the Industrial Revolution, though this time the new "industry" is magic -- using "aether", as we have seen in the novels. To be sure, the millers use magic as well, in particular to control the unpredictable winds. Nathan’s story is of an abortive fascination with an aristocratic girl, and then rivalry with her as she leads the movement to bring in aether-controlled factories, then involvement with the Luddite-analogues of this alternate world, then a very moving closure, in which both central figures figure sadly. In a way this story is too programmatic -- the Industrial Revolution parallels too crude -- but all is redeemed by the way the personal stories of the main characters work out.

From Locus, May 2008:

The June Asimov’s features another powerful novella from Ian R. MacLeod. "The Hob Carpet" is set in an alternate world in which humans share Earth with close relatives they call hobs, who lack the power of speech and who are enslaved. The religion of this culture is built on extravagant cruelty towards the hobs -- sacrifice, and sacrifice accompanied by horrendous torture, is central. But the narrator is no believer in the gods, and moreover he comes to believe that the hobs do much better work if treated well. But he is not quite a hero: he is curious and cold (both words having double meanings). His love life is quite stunted, and his beautiful wife leaves him. His treatment of the hobs runs him afoul of the authorities, especially amidst drastic climate change, blamed naturally on his apostasy. The resolution is familiar to SF readers: the world turned upside down, martyrdom, scientific heroism (including, in a bit of a misstep, MacLeod’s second recent use of an "alternate Darwin"), cool secrets revealed: but for all its familiarity it is moving and it works.

From Locus, June 2010:

All F&SF’s issues these days are "big double issues". For July-August I thought the best story was from Ian R. MacLeod. "Recrossing the Styx" is set on a grand cruise ship, that caters to the very rich, and particularly to one subset of the very rich: the dead. That is, the dead but revived -- zombies, in a science-fictional sense. The narrator is a crew member, who falls for the wife of one of those revived rich -- a beautiful young woman who has, it seems, traded her youth for wealth -- with a nasty twist revealed when any attempt at intimacy is made. But perhaps there is a way out for her? With the narrator’s help, of course. MacLeod, of course, has more surprises for us -- and it’s nice stuff, if not by any means MacLeod at his best. Speaking of zombies, there is another zombie story in this issue, and it’s pretty entertaining too: Albert E. Cowdrey’s "Mr. Sweetpants and the Living Dead", in which a successful writer hires a security firm to protect him after his latest lover comes after him for revenge -- after the breakup and also after the lover seemed to have quite conclusively died. Funny and in a number of ways oddly sweet.

A Classic Early Ace Double: Ring Around the Sun, by Clifford D. Simak/Cosmic Manhunt, by L. Sprague de Camp

Ace Double Reviews, 62: Ring Around the Sun, by Clifford D. Simak/Cosmic Manhunt, by L. Sprague de Camp (#D-61, 1954, $0.35)

a review by Rich Horton

This early Ace Double stands as one of the better pairings in the series' history. Both authors are SFWA Grand Masters. Both books are fine work, and very characteristic of the author. Neither story is quite a classic, and as such the book stands just shy of the very best Doubles (a couple of suggestions for the best: Conan the Conqueror/The Sword of Rhiannon; and, if one allows a "recombination", the late repackaging of The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle).

Ring Around the Sun is a Complete and Unabridged reprint of a 1953 Simon and Schuster hardcover, which was serialized beginning in December 1952 in Galaxy. It is about 75,000 words (one of the longest Ace Double halves). Cosmic Manhunt is called an "Ace Original", but it is a very lightly revised reprinting if De Camp's 1949 Astounding serial "The Queen of Zamba". It is about 50,000 words long.

Clifford Simak's first SF stories were more or less standard (but well regarded) pre-Campbell pulp adventures -- Isaac Asimov liked his first, "World of the Red Sun", enough to retell it aloud to his elementary school friends. (Asimov later wrote a harshly critical letter to Astounding about one of Simak's first stories for John Campbell, and Simak replied asking for advice on how to improve. Asimov abashedly reread the story and decided he was wrong and Simak was right.) He stopped writing for several years in the 30s, only to be lured back by John Campbell. Simak, with Williamson, Leinster, and a few others, was able to make the transition from 30s pulp to the more serious science fiction Campbell wanted. Simak made his biggest impression over the next decade with the series of stories that became his fixup novel City, which won the International Fantasy Award in 1953. He published two of the earlier Galaxy serials: "Time Quarry" (book title: Time and Again), which appeared in the first three issues of Galaxy (October through November 1950) and Ring Around the Sun. (He also had a novel published as a "Galaxy Novel" in 1951: Empire, a very little known book, by all accounts little known for good reason.)

Ring Around the Sun is an intriguing effort that I don't think quite comes off. The hero is Jay Vickers, a writer living in upstate New York. He lives alone, with apparently just one friend, a tastefully named old man named Horton Flanders. His agent is a lovely woman named Ann Carter, but her evident interest in him is hopeless: Jay can't forget his love for Kathleen Preston, a rich neighbor girl in his home town (presumably located in Southwestern Wisconsin, where Simak routinely set stories) who was sent away by her parents to keep her from poverty-stricken Jay's attention. Jay feels different in other ways: there is the memory of an enchanted valley he visited with Kathleen, and of a strange place he went to as a boy, by the agency of an old top.

Jay is called to New York to meet with a man who wants him to write an exposé of some new products that have been showing up. These are things like a razor blade that never wears out, a light bulb that never burns out, and, most radically, a car that will run forever: the Forever car. George Crawford represents an industry group that is afraid of the effect of these products on the world's economy, and he wants Jay to write articles about the danger. But Jay distrusts Crawford and refuses. Then his friend Horton Flanders disappears, and suddenly people seem suspicious of Jay himself. And of anyone involved with the Forever car and the other new products. It seems that there are "supermen" among us, and that Jay may be one of those who doesn't recognize his talents. Jay escapes a potential lynching and heads for his hometown to try to unravel the mysteries of his birth and upbringing, and of the enchanted valley he once visited.

The story gets a little stranger from there. It seems that there are not just supermen but androids involved. And parallel worlds -- possibly available for colonization. And messages from the stars. And multiple copies of the same individual. Horton Flanders is in on the whole thing. George Crawford's industry group is engaged in fomenting a war if that's what it takes to stop the incursion of these miracle products and to stop the subjugation of "normal" people by supermen. Ann Carter may be a superwoman herself. And, indeed, the destinies of Flanders, Vickers, Carter, and Crawford seem all to be most curiously intertwined.

This is a very imaginative and pretty thoughtful and ambitious story. Still, I don't think Simak quite brings off what he's trying. Vickers is a thinnish character, and his relationship with Ann Carter is thinner still. Simak's ideas, and his moral, are interesting, but not quite developed as well as I'd have liked. The conclusion is just a bit rapid. (Interestingly, he reused some of these ideas (not all!) in a later novelette, "Carbon Copy" (Galaxy, December 1957).)

Finally, I note that the novel is blurbed "Easily the best Science Fiction novel so far in 1953" -- New York Herald Tribune. I don't know when it appeared in 1953 (in book form), but that's a striking comment given that books published that year included The Demolished Man, Fahrenheit 451, Childhood's End, More Than Human, The Paradox Men, The Sword of Rhiannon, Second Foundation, and The Space Merchants. (This doesn't include serials from 1953 such as "The Caves of Steel" and "Mission of Gravity" that became books a year later.) 1953 was truly an annus mirabilis for the SF field, and Ring Around the Sun is a worthy supporting player among the long list of great work from that year.

Cosmic Manhunt, as I mentioned, is a slight revision of L. Sprague de Camp's 1949 serial "The Queen of Zamba". According to de Camp's foreword to a later reprint, the only change was in the name of the hero's sidekick. The Chinese name Chuen from the serial became Yano (Japanese, or more specifically Okinawan) in the Ace edition, due to Don Wollheim's concern that Chinese people were unpopular as a result of the Korean War. Otherwise the stories are identical as far as I can tell. The book was reprinted by itself by Ace in 1966, the title changed again, to A Planet Called Krishna. And it was reprinted in 1977, restored to the original text and title, in an Asimov's Choice paperback (from Davis Publications), with the Krishna novelette "Perpetual Motion" appended.

I believe this is the first of de Camp's Krishna novels. Quite a few followed, all with a Z place name in the title: The Hand of Zei (1951), The Virgin of Zesh (1953), The Tower of Zanid (1958), The Hostage of Zir (1977), The Bones of Zora (1983) and The Swords of Zinjaban (1991). These last two were co-written with his wife, Catherine Crook de Camp. (There is also a book called The Search for Zei which I assume is a retitling of The Hand of Zei. (It turns out that some editions split The Hand of Zei into two parts, with The Search for Zei being the other part.) The Krishna novels are the main part of his Viagens Interplanetarias series, which includes a number of other stories and the novel Rogue Queen (1951). The most recognizable gimmicks of the series are that the future Earth is dominated by Brazil, hence the lingua franca is Portuguese, and that space travel is restricted to light speed. De Camp claimed this was to keep the books SF: to violate relativity would make them fantasy. Maybe so, but the silly biology of the Krishna books seems equally fantastical.

In The Queen of Zamba (a title much to be preferred to Cosmic Manhunt in my view), private investigator Victor Hasselborg is hired by a rich man to track down his daughter, who has run off with an ineligible rogue. Hasselborg agrees to the job, then finds himself obligated to travel to Krishna, where the couple has apparently decamped (pun intended). Worse, he falls in love with the bad guy's abandoned wife, but she'll have to wait 9 years or so for him to return. (Krishna appears to be at Alpha Centauri or perhaps Barnard's Star, based on travel time.)

On Krishna, Hasselborg disguises himself as a Krishnan portrait painter. He follows the trail of the two lovers to one kingdom, where he meets the King (or Dour) and is rapidly slapped in jail. Before long he is fighting a duel for his life with the Dour. He escapes to another town, and falls in with the local high priest, also arranging to paint the Emperor's portrait. Unfortunately, the nubile (and oviparous) niece of the high priest takes a liking to him, and when he needs help the price is marriage. Meanwhile he runs into K. Yano (or Chuen), a ship companion who seems to be an Earth agent. They realize they are after the same people -- in Yano's case, because the bad guy is suspected of running guns to Krishna, with the object of making himself the planetary ruler. He has already taken over the island kingdom of Zamba (at last, the title becomes clear!). It is up to Hasselborg and Yano to foil the plot, and then resolve their conflicting requirements re the villains. (And in Hasselborg's case, worry about whether if he brings her husband to justice, his beloved will stay married to him, or ...)

It's certainly a pleasant adventure romp, with plenty of color and light-hearted humor. As SF, it's not really all that inspiring -- it could easily enough have been recast as historical fiction. Victor Hasselborg is enjoyable to follow, though his mixture of competence and what seems at times pasted on foibles and diffidence is not quite convincing. His romance is not too exciting -- the girl behind offstage for almost the entire book. Fun, worth your time, not an enduring classic.

A Little Known Ace Double: So Bright the Vision, by Clifford D. Simak/The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, by Jeff Sutton

Ace Double Reviews, 70: So Bright the Vision, by Clifford D. Simak/The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, by Jeff Sutton (#H-95, 1968, $0.60)

The Simak half is a collection of not terribly well-known longer stories, from the late 50s basically. The Sutton half is a novel by a very little-known writer. The Simak collection totals 63,000 words, the Sutton novel is about 50,000, making this a fairly long Ace Double.

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Gray Morrow)

The four stories collected in So Bright the Vision are "The Golden Bugs" (F&SF, June 1960, 16400 words); "Leg. Forst." (Infinity, April 1958, 17100 words); "So Bright the Vision" (Fantastic Universe, August 1956, 18900 words); and "Galactic Chest" (Science Fiction Stories, September 1956, 10600 words). They are all enjoyable, none really ranks among Simak's best work.

In "The Golden Bugs" a man discovers a strange sort of rock in his back yard, and soon also some very odd insects in his house. Insects that for a short time appear quite helpful ... In "Leg. Forst." an aging con man and stamp collector discovers a remarkable property of a curious stamp he receives from another planet, when said stamp is accidentally mixed with beef broth. The result is marketable as an efficiency enhancer, but it does so in somewhat surprising ways. The conclusion is a little bit unexpected in a sly way. "So Bright the Vision" is probably the best of these stories. It's set in a future in which Earth's only contribution to Galactic society is fiction -- it seems only humans among intelligent races can lie. The necessity to turn out product has led to automation of writing: actually thinking up plots and writing prose by yourself is taboo. A struggling hack gets in trouble with an alien race -- a couple of alien races, in the end. That the resolution will involve the possibility of actual writing, not just programming a writing machine, is predictable from the start, but Simak gets to that point in unexpected ways: and where he ends up isn't quite exactly the cliche ending we might have expected. Finally, "Galactic Chest", as with a number of Simak's stories, involves a newspaperman as protagonist. (Simak of course was a newspaperman himself.) This man is stuck writing the Community Chest column for a local newspaper when he runs a story about "brownies" causing runs of good luck and then realizes to his surprise that the story might actually be true. The solution, again, is mostly what we expect but just slightly different -- I'd say that in three of these four stories ("The Golden Bugs", my least favorite, excepted) the stories are distinguished by a slightly new resolution to a fairly familiar situation.

Jeff Sutton (full name Jefferson Howard Sutton) isn't a terribly well-known writer, but he did publish something in the neighborhood of 20 SF novels between 1959 and his death at the age of 66 in 1979. He also published a few short stories, one of which I read recently in an issue of the very obscure 1950s magazine Spaceways. A number of Sutton's novels were YA books, these written in collaboration with his wife Jean.

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow concerns an mysterious man who appears and suddenly becomes a financial tycoon, based on his uncanny knowledge of the future of the stock market. His vast fortune allows him to wield outsize influence politically, and he soon appears to be trying to control certain foreign countries by means of bribes. This naturally attracts the interest of the US government, which assigns an agent to him. Indeed the book opens with two curious scenes: one is of a mild-mannered mathematician waiting to assassinate a shiftless laborer, the other is of an agent waiting to assassinate the tycoon.

Then the book shifts back in time, following two threads. One concerns the tycoon, his appearance, and his early success, and his curious interest in a certain obscure branch of mathematics. The other concerns the mathematician we met at the opening. He is one of about 6 worldwide experts in the theory of multidimensional space. He is dating a beautiful arts professor, but then he loses her to the tycoon. He also notices that his expert colleagues are dying in mysterious fashion. And soon he seems to be under attack, as well as his friends ...

Well, we can all guess what's going on, I think. But it's resolved reasonably well. It's a surprisingly dark book, actually. It's no better than OK as a whole, and it doesn't really convince in its examination of time paradoxes, but there are some nice bits, and it's competently executed.

Some of Clifford Simak's Short Fiction

Eternity Lost: The Collected Stories of Clifford D. Simak, Volume I, by Clifford D. Simak (Darkside Press, 0-9740589-4-7, $40, 3302pp, hc) 2005.

Clifford D. Simak was the third person named a Grand Master by SFWA, in 1976. He won Hugos for "The Big Front Yard" (1958), Way Station (1963), and "Grotto of the Dancing Deer" (1980) as well as a Nebula for "Grotto of the Dancing Deer" and an International Fantasy Award for City. So his credentials as a revered writer in the field are unchallengeable, and it can't be said that he was not acknowledged during his lifetime. But it seems to me that, as with some other writers of his generation, he is in danger of slowly drifting out of the consciousness of SF readers, especially newer readers. In particular his short fiction is difficult to find – the current marketplace being so strongly biased towards novels, in contrast to the situation for the first couple of decades of Simak's career.

Thus Darkside Press's project to bring Simak's short fiction into print is particularly welcome. (It should be noted that the same house has published or is planning collections of work by other, generally less prominent, writers of roughly the same generation: Cleve Cartmill, John Wyndham, and Daniel F. Galouye among others.) The Simak books are edited by SF bibliographer extraordinaire Phil Stephenson-Payne, with introductions by John Pelan and brief story notes by Stephenson-Payne. These books are limited edition hardcovers, nicely produced with black and white artwork by Allen Koszowski – a bit pricy, perhaps, but fine products. (Alas, the Simak project stopped after the second volume.)

Unusually, the Simak volumes do not present the stories in chronological order, nor in any particular thematic organization. Rather, each volume will apparently be a representative selection of his short stories from throughout his career. In Eternity Lost the earliest story is "Sunspot Purge" from 1940, while the latest is "The Observer" from 1972. There is even a Western, "Way for the Hangtown Rebel!", from 1945. That said, the bulk of the collection is from the 50s (7 of 12 stories) and from one magazine, Galaxy (6 stories).

Simak is known most of all as SF's leading pastoralist – he loved the countryside, and many of his best known works (including the award winners City, Way Station, and "The Big Front Yard") were to a considerable extent set in the country, at the same time unequivocally SF. In this collection only a few stories really fit that template – including the first three. "How-2" is a satirical piece about a future overtaken by the "do-it-yourself" spirit, which is then undermined when a "do-it-yourselfer" builds an experimental robot. "Founding Father" is a spooky story of an immortal's long journey to another star system, and the surprise awaiting him after his arrival. The setup is powerful and evocative, and the creepy ending is truly effective. In "Kindergarten", a man who has retired to a farm waiting his death from cancer finds a strange device on his land that seems to give everyone exactly what they want. Surely this is an alien device – but what do the aliens want in return? The answer is gently humanistic in the purest Simakian sense.

But there are some strikingly different stories. "Way for the Hangtown Rebel!" is one, of course, being a Western – not terribly interesting to my mind, though, as it seemed routine pulp Western work. "Sunspot Purge", the earliest story, is rather dated too in style of telling – a wisecracking journalist being the narrator. (To be sure, Simak was a newspaperman.) The story is distinguished mainly be the unexpectedly dark ending – it opens simply enough with a rash of suicides, possibly linked to the sunspot cycle, but it takes a different turn when the newspaperman is sent forward in time. "The Call From Beyond" is another very pulpy story, with the protagonist coming to an implausible Pluto, where he finds the remants of a research team thought dead, and the dangerous discovery they have made.

The most recent stories are "Buckets of Diamonds" (1969) and "The Observer" (1972). The first is another story told in a somewhat folksy idiom, with a small-town lawyer defending his wife's raffish Uncle after he is found with a pail of diamonds and an unaccountably valuable painting on his person. Of course these treasures are a hint to something SFnal going on – and again Simak's resolution is a bit unexpected. "The Observer" is a quiet story of the very far future – not particulary original but effective in its Simakian tone.

The other stories are a mixed bag. "The Answers" is another far future story, with an mixed species expedition encountering a long lost remnant of humanity that seems perhaps to have found "the answers" to the hard questions of existence. I admit I found the ending banal. "Jackpot" seems almost an inversion of "Kindergarten", as a ship of explorers looking for a big find on an alien planet comes across something quite remarkable – an alien installation, library or school. Can they make a profit on this? And is it good for humanity? "Carbon Copy" is another satiric piece, with an interesting central idea: a real estate agent is approached to lease houses at absurdly low prices. The gimmick is really pretty clever, though the resolution doesn't quite realize the idea's potential. And finally the title story, possibly the best story here (unless that is "Founding Father"), is a sharp tale of a Senator who has had his life extended for centuries. Life extension is sharply restricted, and he faces the loss of this privilege as his Party seems to have decided he is no longer electable. His reaction is a curious combination of desperation and unexpected moral courage – with a rather ironic result. I found the story quite thought-provoking, if not always believable.

Simak's Grand Master status was thoroughly deserved. This collection is a bit unexpected for an opening collection, however – it doesn't really feature any of his very best stories. It does display a strong writer working mostly at the middle of his range – the stories are quite enjoyable, thoughtful, often taking unexpected turns. Thus – a book much worth reading, and in a way it's refreshing to think that even better stories await.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Marc Laidlaw

Marc Laidlaw was born on 3 August 1960. Another damn kid -- almost a year younger than me! He published a number of novels in the '80s and '90s, such as Neon Lotus and Kalifornia. He spent a lot of time in the gaming industry, before retiring a couple of years ago. He's continued to publish short fiction all this time, including a number of collaborations with Rudy Rucker, and a long and satisfying series about a bard with a stone hand named Gorlen and his companion, a gargoyle with a flesh hand named Spar.

For his birthday I decided to, as I've done for some other writers, compile a set of my Locus reviews of his short fiction. So, here goes:

Locus, February 2005

Finally, Marc Laidlaw's "Jane" (Sci Fiction, February 2005) is truly powerful, disturbing, an mysterious. Jane is a girl living in nearly complete isolation with her parents, her two older brothers, and her perpetually hooded younger sister. Then travelers stumble on their house -- and Jane's father takes shocking action, which leads to terrible repercussions. Nothing is fully explained, but the story hints at a momentous back story and an equally momentous future. The characters are darkly driven -- here there is power and tragedy. All in less than 4000 words. (I reprinted this story in one of my very first anthologies, Fantasy, the Best of the Year: 2006 Edition.)

Locus, August 2008

Contrastingly, Marc Laidlaw’s "Childrun" (F&SF, August 2008) is set in a fairly typical fantasy world, and it features his recurring character Gorlen Vizenfirthe, a bard with a stone hand. Here he comes to a remote town where, mysteriously, all the children save one seem to have vanished. And they each seemed to disappear when a visitor came -- which makes his arrival one regarded with suspicion. The resolution is interesting, and the story is engaging.

Locus, March 2009

In F&SF for March 2009 Marc Laidlaw continues his entertaining series about Gorlen, the bard with a stone hand, as Gorlen reaches a city which carved gargoyles -- and which has been much altered as the gargoyles have rebelled. And if Gorlen is human with a stone hand, what sort of gargoyle might he meet?

Locus, November 2013

And "Bemused", by Marc Laidlaw (F&SF, September-October 2013), is another story in his series about the bard Gorlen and the gargoyle Spar, forever linked because Gorlen has a stone hand (Spar's) and Spar a corresponding hand of flesh. Here they visit an eccentric music loving Lord, Ardentine Wollox, where they discover (to Spar's terrible loss) the menacing secret behind (or underneath) the Wollox fortune. These stories are consistently entertaining traditional fantasy, as we see again ...

in the September Lightspeed, with "Bellweather", another fine entry in the series, this time about an encounter in the mountains with an isolated farmer who saves Gorlen's life, only to incur the wrath of the bell-wielding monk from who he fled as a boy. Spar -- increasingly the moral center of the series -- insists that Gorlen and he help the farmer save his child from the vengeful monk. Again -- entertaining and imaginative work.

Locus, July 2014

I guess I'd consider Marc Laidlaw's adventures of the bard Gorlen and the gargoyle Spar not so much a stealth serialization than a true series of stories (admittedly with something of a narrative arc uniting them). In the latest, "Rooksnight" (F&SF, May-June 2014), they deal with a group of "knights" who are attempting to reclaim all of the vast treasure stolen from their mysterious Lord. The fantastical concepts, such as the intelligent rooks and what they are protecting, are pretty neat -- another good adventure fantasy.

Locus, May 2017

In the January-February 2017 F&SF I also quite enjoyed a couple of stories fitting in different ways into the "crime investigation" category. "Wetherfell’s Reef Runics", by Marc Laidlaw, follows used bookstore owner (I was sold already!) Ambrose Salala, as he gets entangled in the mysterious drowning of a man diving near his store in Hawaii.  Ambrose had meant to help an old friend of his by selling some books she had come across, but most of them are tat, except for a strange privately produced book called Reef Runics, by W. S. Wetherfell, the man who had drowned. His friend’s no-good son is involved somehow, as he had been the dead man’s guide; and the book itself is dangerously weird, involving Wetherfell’s conviction that he has discovered a powerful "geognostic network" underwater. It’s told in a leisurely and engaging fashion, with convincing (to me) local color, and a plausible sort of shambolic resolution. Fun stuff, and I hope this becomes a series.

Locus, January 2018

F&SF’s November/December 2018 issue features "Stillborne", a significant and as always enjoyable entry in Marc Laidlaw’s Spar/Gorlen series. The two join a caravan to a town where the Philosopher Moths are scheduled for there every seven years mating swarm. There they encounter Gorlen’s long-past lover, Plenth, whom Gorlen taught to play the eduldamer. Their reunion occasions some flashbacks that throw light on Gorlen’s history -- and that of the gargoyle Spar. In the present day they unravel a mystery entangling the Moths and the very popular local drink, as well as dealing with the complications of Plenth’s strange pregnancy. It’s good solid work, illuminating much, and, I suspect, laying the groundwork for a fuller resolution to this fine series.

Locus, May 2018

Marc Laidlaw’s "A Swim and a Crawl" (F&SF, March-April 2018) is about a man who has decided to swim out to sea off Hawaii to commit suicide, and who then decides not to, and makes it back to a curiously changed shore -- good existential, meditative, horror (if that’s what it should be called).


(I admit it was not until compiling this set of reviews that I realized all the Gorlen/Spar stories have single word titles! I believe Marc is working on a novel about the two -- I look forward eagerly to it!)

Old Bestseller: The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley

Old Bestseller Review: The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley

a review by Rich Horton

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was a clergyman in the Church of England and a novelist. He was a Christian Socialist, prominent in his opposition to, for example, child labor, but terribly inconsistent, in particular as he was quite noticeably racist, particularly as concerns Jews, Catholics, and the Irish, but also lots of other people. These general attitudes of course were not uncommon in those days, but Kingsley appears to me to have held them a bit more virulently than some. He was an early supporter of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, but to my eye (based on The Water-Babies alone), his ideas about evolution seem a bit simple-minded. Besides The Water-Babies his most famous novel is Westward Ho!, which I passed on as it seemed terribly sad on a quick skim. Shallow of me, I guess.

I'd been meaning to try The Water-Babies for quite a while. It was once an extremely popular children's book, but it has largely faded from notice in recent decades. I found a copy recently at an estate sale, and figured now was the time. My edition probably dates to the 1930s. The book was first serialized in Macmillan's in 1962/1863, and published in book form in 1863. My edition is inscribed "A Happy Birthday to Betty and much love from Benjamin Edwards. May 16-1934. Baghdad." It was published by Thomas Nelson, now well known as an American publisher of most religious material, but back then a more generally focussed English publisher. It is copiously illustrated by Anne Anderson. Anderson (1874-1952) was a Scottish illustrator, mostly of children's books.

The Water-Babies concerns the lives of Tom, who when we first meet him is a chimney sweep in the North Country of England. His master, Grimes, is a cruel man and a drunkard, and Tom can think of little but when he will become a master sweep and be able to treat his apprentices as cruelly as Grimes has treated him. One day Grimes gets as assignment to clean the chimneys of Sir John Harthover, an honorable and highly respected local judge. On the way they meet a mysterious Irishwoman, who objects to Grimes' treatment of Tom, and who tells them "Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be."

At Harthover Place, Tom manages to get lost in the maze on chimneys, and he ends up coming down into the fireplace of the daughter of the house, Ellie, who is about his age. He is supposed to be a thief, and he is chased out the window and runs away in a panic, making his way across the moors ot a secluded village, where he is treated kindly by a local schoolmarm, but ends up falling in the river and being transformed into a tiny "water baby". Soon after Sir John, having realized that Tom was innocent, organizes a search, and finds the husk of his body, so that he is presumed dead. (Not too long after that, Ellie also dies in a fall, and is herself transformed to a water baby.)

Tom's career as a water baby proceeds -- at first he makes friends with fish and water insects and so on, though he is also often cruel. All along, without his realizing it, fairies are helping him. Eventually he proceeds down river to the sea, and has further adventures and travels, making his way at last to St. Brandan's Isle, where the fairies Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and Bedonebyasyoudid try to show him a way to be a better person. He meets Ellie there as well, and learns that she goes to someplace special on Sundays. Eventually he is set a task -- to do something he doesn't want to do, and help someone he doesn't like -- and another quest ensues, ending up with him becoming worthy of Ellie, and both becoming human again, and (it seems, though the book denies this in a joking fashion (only princes and princesses get married in fairy tales)) getting married, while Tom becomes an engineer. It's not clear what their identities are in this new incarnation.

I've skipped over the bulk of the book, really, which is amusing descriptions of the lives of various water creatures and birds and so on, along with a number of, essentially, Just So stories. These are often fun, but they are also moralizing to a fault, and twee rather beyond a fault. This isn't a bad book, and I can see the appeal it must have had, but it didn't really work for me, and I can see why it has become largely forgotten.

Birthday Review: Cosmonaut Keep, by Ken MacLeod

Cosmonaut Keep, by Ken MacLeod

A review by Rich Horton

Today is Ken MacLeod's 64th birthday, so in his honor I'm reposting this review I did for my SFF Net newsgroup way back in 2000, when Cosmonaut Keep first appeared. (Some of the references are out of date, no doubt.)

(Cover by Stephen Martiniere)

Now as to Cosmonaut Keep.  I've rapidly become a huge fan of Ken MacLeod's.  His first four novels are all inter-related, representing two alternate branches of a future history which diverged in the middle of the 21st century. They are heavily political in content, and the politics is interesting stuff: a mix of somewhat utopian socialism, somewhat utopian libertarianism, and grittily realpolitik views of a decidedly non-utopian near future with a chaotic mix of extrapolations of all sorts of political trends.  The other major thread in those novels was the development of Artificial Intelligence, and in particular its potential dangers for ordinary humans.  Indeed, each of MacLeod's first four novels features what could be called a genocide of AI's. 

Those are good stuff, but MacLeod was pretty much mining the same vein with them.  So it's nice to seem him branching out somewhat with Cosmonaut Keep.  This book is set in an entirely different future.  Instead of AI's, there are several different species of aliens.  And while there is a near future depicted as a realpolitik drenched chaotic mix of extrapolations of political trends (mainly a revitalized Communism versus a reasonable extrapolation of U. S. Capitalism), the political stuff is in more in the background, more of a plot driver than a major focus of discussion.  The author who seems most present as an influence on Cosmonaut Keep is Poul Anderson: there are several direct echoes of Andersonian themes, and one or two passages that seem almost stylistic hommages to Anderson.

Like all of MacLeod's books up to this point (except his first), it's told in two timelines.  After a mysterious prologue, which only makes sense at the end of the book, we are introduced to Gregor Cairns, a student on the planet Mingulay, and his fellow researchers Elizabeth Harkness and Salasso.  Salasso is a saur: an intelligent dinosaur-like being.  Elizabeth and Gregor are of different social classes: Elizabeth, it seems, is a "native", while Gregor is a descendant of the "cosmonauts", who arrived at Mingulay some centuries earlier from Earth, in a starship which is now unusable.  Soon another starship arrives: this one bearing human traders from Nova Babylonia, traders who in some ways resemble Anderson's Kith (and Heinlein's Traders from Citizen of the Galaxy, and Vinge's Qeng Ho), though their starship is actually controlled by aliens called Krakens, who naturally enough are huge beasts that live in water.  Details about this future interstellar civilization, called the "Second Sphere", are slow to be revealed, and I won't reveal much here, but they are neat and clever and intriguing details.  At any rate, Gregor soon meets a beautiful trader girl and falls in love: but all this is complicated by questions as to what the traders really want from the people of Mingulay, and what Gregor's family and fellow "cosmonauts" wish to do: the Great Work, and on a personal level, by Elizabeth's concealed love for Gregor.

The second timeline follows a Scotsman named Matt back in the middle of the 21st century.  He's a manager of programmers: the actual programmers are either AI's or aging geeks who remember legacy code like DOS and Unix. He's got a thing for an American named Jadey who is involved with the Resistance movement in England: and before long she's giving him a disk with some very interesting information on it.  At the same time, an announcement stuns the world: the (Communist) European Union has been contacted by aliens in an asteroid they've been studying.  Soon Jadey is under arrest, and Matt is fleeing to Area 51, then to the asteroid, where they learn that the information Jadey had Matt smuggle out is plans for a spaceship and a space drive.  All this is highly destabilizing to the world political situation, which teeters on the brink of chaos while the scientists on the asteroid try to talk to the aliens and build the spaceship.  It's easy to see where this is going, given that it has to mesh with the other story, but it's still clever and suspenseful.

This is a very good novel, one of the best I've read in 2000.  It's got a nice, well-contained story, involving mainly Gregor and Matt's personal lives mixed with the Great Work (for Gregor) and with Matt's obvious destiny. At the same time this story is clearly a setup for potentially fascinating future books in its series.  (The title page says this is Book One of Engines of Light.)  It's full of nifty SFnal ideas.  Behind the scenes, just barely hinted at, are some really scary implications, and some really well-done half-evocations of deep time.  (Such as: what has happened on Earth since the starship left for Mingulay?)  Much is just sketched in, especially about the multiple-alien interstellar society of the Second Sphere, which will be expanded on, I assume, in future books.  MacLeod's prose continues toimprove: he has a habit of mostly just writing sound, clever, workable stuff, then every so often winding up to an emotional and even quasi-poetic peak. The characters are decently drawn, though not especially deep, and there is a certain sense that their romantic lives are resolved rather conveniently. (Which isn't to say necessarily happily.)   Mostly, this is just good solid Science Fiction, with plenty of sense of wonder inducing ideas.

Birthday Review: I Dare, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

I Dare, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Meisha Merlin, Decatur, GA, 2002, ISBN 1-892065-03-7, US$18.00, 472 pages

A review by Rich Horton

Steve Miller was born on July 31, 1950, and so I decided to resurrect this review I did for 3SF back in 2002. It's a fairly brief review, conforming to the format I used for 3SF.

[I should note that my favorite Liaden novels are a pair of books set a generation before the main plot line which was started in the first book (Agent of Change) and concluded in the book reviewed here, I Dare. Those books are Local Custom and Scout's Progress, books written in the early '90s but not published until 2001 by Meisha Merlin, and 2002 by Ace. Both have significant romance plots (unlike most of the Liaden books, which are more adventure oriented), and I really enjoyed them. I reviewed them for Dave Felts' small 'zine Maelstrom, but I've lost my copies of those reviews. (I have the Maelstrom issues somewhere, and maybe I'll retype them from the paper copies whenever I find them.)]

I will also add that Lee and Miller now publish with Baen, and I Dare and its immediate predecessor, Plan B, have been republished by Baen as Korval's Game.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller published their first Liaden books in 1989. The series was picked up by Meisha Merlin and continued in 1999. I Dare is the seventh novel, and it ends the long plot arc begun in the first book, though there is plenty of room for further books in the same universe.

This book follows Plan B, in which the powerful but controversial Clan Korval was forced by the machinations of the sinister Department of the Interior to abandon the Liaden main world, Liad. The current novel follows several threads. On the planet Erob, many of the main Korval Clan members are gathering to muster a force that can resist the Department, while back on Liad the wizard Anthora tries to maintain the home front. But Anthora may be getting help from an unexpected source … And the somewhat raffish gambler, Pat Rin, has been isolated from the rest of the Clan, and he gathers a beautiful gangster and some more friends and tries to set up another power base on an isolated, rather anarchic, world.

As the above summary might suggest, the book is rather busy, probably too much so. I think it could have benefited from judicious cutting, perhaps the complete excision of at least one thread. The authors also give the good guys such power (essentially magical powers) that too much suspense is leached from the conflict – they cannot lose. It's still exciting. I liked the sections with Pat Rin particularly. As usual, there is a heavy dose of romance to go along with plenty of action. It's by no means the best of the Liaden novels, and it's not a good place to start, but I Dare does resolve longstanding questions, and is should satisfy long time fans.

Birthday Review: Kalpa Imperial (and Trafalgar), by Angélica Gorodischer

Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was, by Angélica Gorodischer, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer Press, 2003)

A review by Rich Horton

[Angélica Gorodischer turns 90 today, and in honor of her birthday, I'm posting this review I did for Locus Online back in 2003, and I've added the snippet I wrote about her book Trafalgar for Locus (the print version) in 2013. The original Locus Online review of Kalpa Imperial is here.]

Here before me is a delightful book, Kalpa Imperial, by Angélica Gorodischer. It is a fantasy about "The Greatest Empire That Never Was", as the subtitle has it. Gorodischer is Argentine, and the translation from the Spanish is by Ursula K. Le Guin -- a recommendation in itself! A portion of this book was published in Starlight 2 a few years ago. The voice seems very reminiscent of Le Guin: hard to say if that's reflective of the original work or of her translation.

The book is a compendium of several separate stories, mostly told by a professional storyteller (who also has an important additional role in one story), concerning the history of "The Greatest Empire That Never Was". Most of the stories tell of Emperors and Empresses, some good, some bad, some mad -- how they came to power, how they fell from power, how they ruled. The stories are often romantic, but the romanticism is tinged by a sort of earthiness, and a realism that does not quite become cynical. The stories are nicely imagined, sometimes funny, sometimes brutal. The whole is billed as a novel, but the stories work fine separately, and are really linked only by geography and the voice of the storyteller, so it's more a linked collection of short fiction, in my view.

There are eleven stories, or chapters, arranged in two books. The opening piece, "Portrait of the Emperor", tells us that a good man now sits on the throne of the Empire, and then goes on to tell of the founding of the empire, by a weakling boy who learned a different kind of strength. "The Two Hands" is a fable-like story of an usurper who ended up spending twenty years confined in his bedroom. "The End of a Dynasty, or The Natural History of Ferrets" tells of a young Crown Prince, son of a cruel Empress and a deposed Emperor, who grows up torn between the evil influence of his mother and the countervailing touch of a couple of kindly workmen. "Siege, Battle, and Victory of Selimmagud" is an ironic tale of a thief and deserter and his encounter with the General besieging the title city. "Concerning the Unchecked Growth of Cities" is a lovely long description of the varying history of a Northern city, sometimes the capitol, sometimes ignored, sometimes something quite else.

Book two opens with "Portrait of the Empress", in which the storyteller who has been narrating these tales is recruited by the Great Empress to tell her of her Empire's history. She in turn tells him of the woman who rose from poverty to become the Great Empress. "And the Streets Empty" is a dark story of the vengeful destruction of a city by a jealous Empress. "The Pool" concerns a mysterious physician, and his encounters with those plotting to overturn the current dynasty. "Basic Weapons" is a colorful and macabre piece about a dealer in people, and a rich man, and obsession. "'Down There in the South'" is a long story of an aristocrat with a dark secret who is forced to flee from the ruling North to the rural South, and who is fated to change history when the North comes to invade. And "The Old Incense Road" tells of a mysterious orphan, a mysterious merchant, a caravan, and some "stories within the story", all eventually concerning another change of rulers.

The stories are full of humor and tragedy, of cynicism and romanticism, of secret identities, of wisdom and folly, of blood, of nobility. The fantastical elements are slim: this is perhaps what is called sometimes "Ruritanian" fantasy -- set in a different world that much resembles ours. At the same time the landscapes and characters and events are heightened in color, so that if there may not be overt magic, the ordinary seems magic enough. The feel is certainly fantastical.

It is often remarked that Americans (indeed, English language readers in general) tend not to read a lot of fiction in translation. This does seem true of SF readers -- we are happy enough to read books by Englishmen and Australians and even those wacky Canadians, but it tends to be hard to find books from other languages. I'm not sure this is entirely, or even largely, because Americans (or Englishmen or Australians or whomever) are particularly xenophobic. Rather, there isn't that much available in translation, for several reasons. Acquiring a foreign language book means the publisher (or author) must pay extra for a translator. Once translated the book is different from the original -- most likely not as good. (And a bad translation can do long-term harm, in part by making it harder still to obtain a good translation. (I have heard that the English publishers of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris have refused to contract for a new translation, even of such an important novel, even though the existing one is notoriously poor (apparently a two step job, Polish to French to English).)) Finally, the English language book market is pretty full of books in English -- perhaps publishers simply feel there are already enough books. (Perhaps in smaller countries there might be more pressure to find books published in other languages -- assuming the readers have the same appetite for fiction, but fewer writers to provide it.)

But even if our failure to read much SF in translation is understandable, it is nothing to be happy about. Thus I'm delighted to have a chance to praise a book from an Argentine writer. And I'm delighted that the translation reads wonderfully -- though to be sure I cannot speak directly to its accuracy. Kalpa Imperial is a lovely book -- praise is due Le Guin and to the folks at Small Beer Press for bringing it to our attention; and much praise is due Angélica Gorodischer for writing it.

[Added in 2018]

Happily, the amounted of translated SF available in the US has expanded tremendously, most notably evidence by Hugos for China's Cixin Liu and Hao Jingfang and for Dutch writer Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Indeed, short fiction in translation is a regular feature in magazines like Clarkesworld. As for Gorodischer, at least one more of her books has been translated into English, also SF: Trafalgar, back in 2013. Here's what I wrote about that book in the May 2013 Locus:

A few years ago Small Beer Press published the Argentine writer Angélica Gorodischer's lovely mosaic novel (or linked story collection) Kalpa Imperial (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin). Now they give us another linked collection from Gorodischer, Trafalgar. (This time Amalia Gladhart does the translation.) The stories are all about a merchant named Trafalgar Medrano, who has a spaceship he calls the Clunker, and who travels all around the Galaxy buying and selling things, and more importantly, encountering strange planets and stranger societies. There is a sort of club story feeling to the tales -- almost a resemblance to Dunsany's Jorkens -- and there is also a hint of Le Guin in the ethnography. The book is enjoyable throughout -- Trafalgar's voice is absorbing, and so is that of the narrator (who may or may not be the same person throughout) -- and the societies Trafalgar encounters are interesting and wittily presented. My favorite was "Trafalgar and Josefina", a tale told to the narrator through her somewhat eccentric old Aunt Josefina, very very funny in its framing (that is, in Josefina's comments on the story) and turning darker as we learn of Trafalgar's visit to a planet with a very strict caste system, ruled by a randomly chosen person of a lower caste, who makes the mistake of falling for a married woman.

Birthday Review: A Young Man Without Magic, by Lawrence Watt-Evans

A Young Man Without Magic, by Lawrence Watt-Evans (Tor, 2009)

a review by Rich Horton

Today is Lawrence Watt Evans' 64th birthday, so it seems appropriate to repost this review of a novel I really enjoyed a few years ago. Alas, the series this book started was canceled after the second volume.

Lawrence Watt-Evans' 2009 novel is A Young Man Without Magic. It is the first of a pair* -- not that Tor tells us that, as is too often their habit. It does end dramatically, and at a logical stopping point, but the story certainly isn't over. (And I really wanted to have the next book right then to continue reading!)

(*Actually, I believe seven novels were originally planned, but the publisher dropped the series after the second book.)

(cover by Scott Fischer)

Anrel Murau is the title character. Both his parents were sorcerers, who died in a magical accident. He was raised by his uncle, also a sorcerer, and the Burgrave of Alzur, a town in the province of Aulix, in the Empire of Walasia. In Walasia one becomes an aristocrat by displaying a talent for sorcery, and those of sufficient ability can become Burgraves (in control of a town) or Landgraves (in control of a province) or Margraves (in control of a border area). So Anrel is in an ambiguous state: he has grown up in an aristocratic milieu, but he is not one himself, and as the novel opens, after four years as a student in the capitol city, Lume, he is returning home and wondering what to do with himself. His best friend is his uncle's foster son, a child of commoners who showed sorcerous ability, Lord Valin. Lord Valin is a political firebrand who advocates more power for the common people, and as the current Emperor is apparently a fool, and has bankrupted the realm, his ideas have some currency, though Anrel thinks him foolish. At any rate, a Great Council is being called by the Emperor, and Valin hopes that real political change will result.

The local Landgrave, Lord Allutar, is a powerful sorcerer but, we are told, a rather nasty man. And soon we see him planning to execute a local commoner for a minor crime, thievery, in order to perform some black magic. Valin is furious, Anrel pragmatic, and Anrel's cousin, Lady Saria, oddly unmoved -- it seems she is scheming to marry Lord Allutar. Anrel finds himself trying to stop Valin from making an enemy of the much more powerful Allutar, with no success, all of which leads to a shocking event that drives Anrel to a curious action -- a political speech of his own, followed by a forced exile from his home province and a period of wandering with a group of witches (illegal sorcerers) until his path crosses Lord Allutar again, and the novel ends with an even more shocking event.

After a slightly slow beginning, in which we are perhaps told too much instead of shown. (For example, we are told that Lord Allutar is a bad man, but what we are shown at first is much more ambiguous.) But once Anrel is forced to take action of his own, the story picks up, and I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. And as I said, by the end I was fully absorbed and I really wanted to start the next book right away.

I've glossed over most of the plot to avoid spoilers, as there are some interesting revelations that I think should be left for the reader to discover, but that make it hard to discuss details. It is much of a piece with Watt-Evans's typical work -- a hero who is determinedly "ordinary" and forced, mostly against his will, to take a larger role in events; a generally commonsensical approach to all aspects of the world: magic is quite rule-based, and controlled; politics is treated rather pragmatically and almost cynically but not quite; love affairs even are sort of backgrounded. Good solid work from a writer who never disappoints.

A Forgotten SF Novel: The Hawks of Arcturus, by Cecil Snyder III

A Forgotten SF Novel: The Hawks of Arcturus, by Cecil Snyder III (DAW, 1974)

a review by Rich Horton

Cecil Snyder III was born 20 July 1948, and on his 70th birthday last week I thought I ought to resurrect whatever I wrote when I first read this novel a couple of decades ago. But I couldn't find that -- so, crazily, I went ahead and reread the book, and I've written up my current thoughts.

About Snyder almost nothing is known. (In fact, at first I thought he might be a pseudonym.) But his  Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry says "US author ... should not be confused with his father, Cecil K. Snyder, Jr., also an author". And that remains the sum total of my knowledge.

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

I used to cite The Hawks of Arcturus as one of the worst SF novels I have ever read, to stand with Jean Mark Gawron's Algorithm, or J. D. Austin's Second Contact, or Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars. So why reread it? As I said, crazy. But, curiously enough, for about half the book I was thinking, "Hey, this isn't so bad! It's not great, but it's kind of fun with a nice mystery ..." -- and, then, in the second half Snyder snatches awfulness from the jaws of mediocrity. He doesn' so much fail to stick the landing as bang the balance beam with his head on the way down and land flat on his back. But, that said, I think the vaguely promising opening lifts it from utterly awful to merely bad.

It opens on Earth, as the Arcturian Ambassador is confronted by one of his own people, En'varid, who demands that he support their warlike new Herald, Darlan, in a rebellion by Arcturus against the Dominions. The Dominions are an association of all the human worlds, which consist of a great number of human colonies on other planets, as well as Earth, which has been restored to life by the colonials in recent centuries. No actual aliens have ever been encountered. The Ambassador resists En'varid's request, because he knows that a war will be no good for anyone, and that Darlan is a dangerous man. En'varid himself, we learn, is plotting against Darlan, for his own advancement.

Then the POV shifts, to Chen, a young man who has just bought a new prospecting ship. He is hitching a ride on the large transport taking the Arcturans back home, and he soon encounters, and is enchanted by, En'varid's personal pilot, a beautiful woman named Alsar. Alsar takes him to a party thrown by the Arcturans, where he meets Darlan. And the next morning, Chen is arrested for the murder of En'varid ... it's clear he's being railroaded, as the murder must have been committed by someone from Darlan's delegation, for political reasons.

We learn Chen's own secrets ... he, an orphan, was raised by an old prospector named Inman, who had investigated a mysterious artifact made of crystallized helium. And Chen has a shard of crystal helium himself -- but he has no idea what it all means.

When they get to Arcturus Chen is rescued by Alsar, and taken to a remote location. He needs to hide from the Arcturan authorities, while Alsar returns to Darlan. But Chen is impatient, and escapes again, only to be picked up by Dominion authorities, and expelled from the planet.

Up to this point I was pretty interested. The Arcturan rebellion, trite as it was as a plot element, still showed signs of being interesting. Alsar -- femme fatale or true ally of the good guys? The mystery of the crystallized helium. Another mystery -- memories of strange past events that come to people (En'varid and Chen included) who use another mysterious artifact (that turns out to be helium too of course) -- these events seem to involved a group of humans escaping a system destroyed by a nova, and being pursued by the warlike enemy Andere.

But apparently Snyder didn't know where to go with this. Chen ends up pursuing clues about a series of novas and finds a strange planet. But somehow Darlan ends up there too, in an unusual ship. There is a star-busting weapon. There is a curious story concerning the histories of Inman, Darlan, and even Alsar and Chen. (There are more than a couple bits reminiscent of Star Wars, which, to be sure, came out three years after this novel -- I doubt any influence occurred in either direction.) Then a return to Arcturus, and a thoroughly unconvincing and weirdly unmotivated strange conclusion. I thought the prose deteriorated in the latter half as well -- I really wonder if Snyder didn't just lose interest in the whole thing.

I think the elements of the book could have made a middling decent light space opera -- nothing great, but something OK. But in the end it's a pretty bad light space opera.