An Unjustly Little-Known SF Novel: Times Without Number, by John Brunner

An Unjustly Little-Known SF Novel: Times Without Number, by John Brunner

a review by Rich Horton


This is one of my favorite time travel/alternate history novels, and it's a novel that to my mind does not get the notice it deserves. The three stories that make up this novel appeared in consecutive issues of the relatively little-known UK magazine Science Fiction Adventures (a companion to New Worlds and Science Fantasy) in 1962: "Spoil of Yesterday" in #25, "The Word Not Written" in #26, and "The Fullness of Time" in #27. These three stories, with minor revisions, became half of an Ace Double, Times Without Number, also in 1962. As with many of his early novels, Brunner later revised and expanded Times Without Number, in 1969.

This book is about Don Miguel Navarro of the Society of Time. It is set in an alternate 1988/1989 in which the Spanish Armada succeeded, and established an Empire. The Moors reconquered Spain, but much of Western Europe, including England, remained under Spanish rule, and the independent Mohawk nation in North America was also allied to the Empire. In 1892 the secret of time travel was discovered, and under the auspices of the Pope the Society of Time was established, and a strict rule set up that history could never be altered, only observed. Besides the aspect of time travel, the Alternate History aspect is interesting -- it's noticeable that in many ways this future, described on the face of it sympathetically, is really quite undesirable -- slavery persists, for example, and the level of technology is much lower.

The first story, "Spoil of Yesterday", concerns a foolish noblewoman who has bought an expensive golden mask of Aztec workmanship -- obviously, Don Miguel deduces, an illegal theft from the ancient Aztec empire. Don Miguel take risk of offending a noblewoman and unnecessarily disturbing his superiors by reporting this theft. Then he becomes involved in solving the mystery of who actually is responsible for stealing the mask from history, and in returning it. It's a lesser story than the other two -- it doesn't seem to be about much, rather, it's sort of a scene-setting work.

"The Word Not Written" is set on December 31, 1988 and January 1, 1989 -- the Quatrocentennial Year of the Spanish Armada's victory is just concluding. Don Miguel is regretting his duty of attendance at a boring party hosted by the Prince of New Castile, younger son of the King and head of the Society of Time. He meets a pretty and intelligent girl, daughter of the Ambassador from Norraway, and they sneak out for a better time on the town. But on returning they learn that there has been a disaster -- a foolish official has fetched Amazons from history, to prove a point, and the resultant chaos has led to the death of the King and near certain war. Don Miguel is recruited to help solve this problem in a terribly dangerous way -- by creating a closed timelike loop, going back in time just a few hours to prevent the disaster. Thus, the story ends up not so much an adventure as a rather serious consideration of time paradoxes.


(I have the issue of Science Fiction Adventures in which "The Word Not Written" appeared. The 1969 revised novel version is expanded from the magazine version by about 2000 words, to 18,500. Many of the additions are at the sentence level -- slight filling out of descriptions and so on. There is also a fairly extended expansion at a critical point, in which Brunner goes into some more detail on the theoretical concerns about the actions taken to form the closed causative loop.)

The last story, "The Fullness of Time", is first rate, and brings the "novel" from "pretty good" to "really good" in my mind. (It is a novella I would dearly love a chance to reprint.) In it Don Miguel, on vacation in California, uncovers what seems to be evidence that the Eastern Confederacy, rivals to the Empire, have been mining in California in the distant past. This seems obviously a violation of the prohibition on altering the past, which is enshrined in the Treaty of Prague, but by some literally Jesuitical logic, it seems that possibly no violation has occurred. However, the mining is stopped -- but it turns out that something much more sinister is going on. There may be a plot to go back to the time of the Armada and alter history so that England wins. Don Miguel, among a host of others, is sent back to 1588 to try to stop this alteration.

The ending is purely brilliant, to my mind. Brunner faces the implications of time travel directly and honestly, and comes to the only sensible conclusion. And he doesn't shy away from that conclusion. (It's a pretty original view, to my mind, though there are correspondences with Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity.)

"The Fullness of Time" has only been reprinted as part of Times Without Number. I note that there have been a couple recent anthologies called "The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time" or something to that effect -- if I were to do one such, I'd try to include "The Fullness of Time", in among "The Man Who Came Early", "All You Zombies", "The Dead Past", and so on.

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015, Part III

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015, by Rich Horton

Part III: Friday

Friday was a dramatically smoky day -- smoke from the various forest fires blew in from wherever ... and the air was very clouded with it. It was very irritating to the eyes, nose, and throat. We saw bicyclists with gas filters and even something that looked like a full-on gas mask. The predictable joke was to call the city Smokane.

I had another 11 o'clock panel, so we began again by attending the Business Meeting, and again I ducked out after the first half hour or so. This time Mary Ann stayed for the whole thing. Much of it was concerned with setting the stage for the more controversial proposals: dealing with some fairly routine issues, for one thing, and introducing and scheduling debate on the more contentious issues.

My panel was on Writing About SF: Yesterday and Today. The subject was SF criticism, and how it has changed from the days of James Blish and Damon Knight to today. My fellow panelists were Gary Wolfe (again, and a very appropriate choice of course, as one of the very best critics of our time), Kameron Hurley, Michelle Sagara, and David Hartwell. I was particularly happy to meet Kameron Hurley, from whom we just bought a reprint for Lightspeed. The panel itself was OK, not quite as interesting as I might have hoped. I was a bit quieter than usual (maybe a good thing!) -- partly out of deference to David Hartwell, who knows a lot and who has a great history as both a critic and an editor in the field. I also have a sense that my non-academic background in criticism (and the fact that I do more reviewing than pure criticism) makes me less qualified to comment on such things.

After the panel I was delighted when the Chinese writer Tang Fei (or Fei Tang, as her badge had it -- I assume in deference to English language naming conventions) whose "Call Girl" I reprinted, came up and introduced herself, thanking me profusely for reprinting her story. My usual response to this is simple -- I'm much more grateful to the writers who give us stories I am so happy to reprint!

I should perhaps mention the Green Room, where program participants can congregate. It's a great place to meet people and talk for a bit, and I probably didn't use it enough (partly because Mary Ann technically wasn't allowed in there). I did get to talk to John G. Hemry (aka "Jack Campbell") -- a very fine writer of fairly traditional Analogish SF -- I remember being in the midst of a neat conversation and having to rush off to a panel, and we never got together again. The Green Room is also the only place I was able to meet (albeit very briefly) Guest of Honor Vonda McIntyre.

Scheduled against the Writing About SF panel was Reading Rare Books, a panel featuring one of my favorite people in SF, Jo Walton. As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I do have a certain interest in old and rare books, though I've got nothing on the books that Jo had to show off at the panel. (I dropped by on the way to my panel, to say hi to Jo and to get a hint of what they would be talking about.)

At noon there were some more conflicts. I had signed up for a Kaffee Klatsch with my friend Bryan Thomas Schmidt (who had managed to get caught up in the Sad Puppies controversy), but there were two separate panels I was interested in scheduled opposite it, one of Romance and SF, the other on Classic SF You Should Read. I caught up with Bryan and he said by all means go to the other panels -- for one thing, we get to talk pretty regularly at ConQuesT, for another thing, as it happens he was walking with a guy wondering if he could get into the Klatsch even though it was already fully subscribed -- so I ceded my position to him. I ended up going to the Romance panel (officially titled "The Ties Between Romance, SF, and Fantasy"). One reason is that one of the panelists was Sharon Shinn, a fellow St. Louisan who has written a number of well-received novels, including one I liked a lot, General Winston's Daughter. (Another panelist was Cynthia Felice, a Chicagoan who wrote some fine novels on her own (I remember in particular Eclipses from 1983), and three really delightful novels with Connie Willis: Water Witch, Light Raid, and Promised Land).

At 1:00 there was a panel called SpoCon Presents: Short Story Editors. I don't know what the SpoCon Presents meant -- I assume SpoCon is a regular regional con based in Spokane -- did they run a parallel programming track? Anyway, it featured my longtime friend Ellen Datlow and my boss at Lightspeed, John Joseph Adams, as well as Mir Plemmons, so I figured I'd go see it. It was in the Doubletree instead of the Convention Center, and I got lost on the way, and so I got there rather late. Anyway, it's a topic I've seen (and done) a lot before, and Ellen and John and Mir were sensible enough but I confess I've heard it all before. (Though I'm always glad to listen to Ellen and John anyway.)

The next panel of interest to me was on Baseball in Fantasy Fiction, and not surprisingly it included Rick Wilber as a panelist. along with Bradford Lyau, Pat Mc Ewen, Louise Marley, and Cat Rambo. It was a nicely done panel, but I found myself starting to really drag. I had a terrible headache, and my nose was stuffed, and my throat and eyes hurt -- all, I think, a result of the smoke in the air. Mary Ann and I decided to take a rest, and we headed back to the hotel. After a little while we figured we'd get an early dinner (or late lunch), and we settle on a place called Central Food. But first! -- we decided to look up some antique stores (one of our favorite pastimes). We found one pretty close to downtown Spokane, probably a bit more upscale than we normally prefer. The proprietor was a pleasant guy, asked us if we were in town for the convention "even though we don't look like the others" ... I suppose acknowledgement of the lack of a propellor beanie or equivalent on either of us. The other customers in the store were a couple about our age, and the husband had a University of Illinos shirt. That's my alma mater, so I asked if he had gone there. No, he said, my daughter went there. I got a laugh from that, as I'm more likely these days to be seen in a Clemson shirt than a U of I short, as our daughter went to Clemson. This couple were actually from the St. Louis area (East side, over in Illinois), and we had a nice conversation. Then we went to an antique store a bit north of our hotel. There I found a number of Ace Doubles. Most were kind of expensive (particularly a Philip K. Dick book for $20), but I did find a Robert Silverberg novel/collection for a more reasonable $7. It seemed fate that I should buy it, having just met him for the first time. (I reviewed it on this blog just this past Thursday.)

Then we finally headed to Central Food, in a new looking area just North of the river, on higher ground, amidst a bunch of fancy looking condos. This was quite a nice, and not overly expensive, restaurant. After our meal we spent some time outside, looking at as much of the river as we could see through the smoke. There was a bird's nest for a large bird (an eagle, perhaps?) on top of a pole quite near the restaurant. Then back to the hotel again.

After some rest, I was feeling better. I had run into James Van Pelt in the Dealers' Room, and he had invited me to the Fairwood Press launch party for his new novel Pandora's Gun (along with Ken Scholes' collection, and a couple of other books). This party was at an old hotel, the Davenport, a few blocks from the convention center. Mary Ann decided to stay at the hotel, and I went first to the SFWA suite at the Davenport Grand Hotel, just across from the convention center. I spent some time there talking to Matthew Johnson, a first rate Canadian writer whom I've reprinted a couple of times in my books. Then John Joseph Adams and Christie Yant showed up, and we talked in a group for some time, with several other folks. I also met Brian Dolton, Sonia Orin Lyris, and Cory Skerry (possibly some of these the next night -- things blur.). And others I have alas forgotten at this remove, shame on me.

On finally getting to the historic Davenport, I made my way to the Fairwood party. I ran into a few people I've met before -- Patrick Swenson, Jack Skillingstead, and James Van Pelt, but I spent most of the time talking to Ken Scholes, an excellent writer who I had not previously met. Ken talked about his writing, of course, but also about the intriguing experimental treatment he is taking for his PTSD. This last is pretty cool stuff -- Ken writes some about it on his website.

It got pretty late (though not so late (spoiler warning!) as Saturday night), and I negotiated the shuttle system to get from the historic Davenport back to the Red Lion River Inn. I have to say the shuttles worked very well indeed. One of the bus drivers discussed the whole facilities issue -- apparently the new Davenport hotel, the Grand, was only finished a couple of months prior to the convention. And the most famous previous event at this location was perhaps the Olympic Figure Skating trials where Tonya Harding was involved (it is alleged) in a scheme to injure Nancy Kerrigan.

Anyway, home late -- as it should be, at a con -- and so to bed.

Ace Double Review: The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg/Next Stop the Stars, by Robert Silverberg

Ace Double Reviews, 89: The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg/Next Stop the Stars, by Robert Silverberg (#F-145, 1962, 40 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

I don't really plan to do an Ace Double review every week, but this is what I've finished. And there's a story, or a couple of stories, behind this book. A couple of weeks ago I was in Spokane, WA, for Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. Naturally at the con there was a fine dealers' room, with a couple of booksellers who had Ace Doubles -- I always look at the Ace Doubles. But none seemed of particular interest. One of the days we had a bit of free time and decided to explore Spokane a bit, and we visited a couple of antique stores. One of them had a few Ace Doubles for sale -- most were pretty pricy ($20 for a Philip Dick book, which I guess is the way those things work), but they also had this Robert Silverberg double for a more reasonable price. As it happens, I had just met him for the first time in person at the con, and it seemed fated that I buy the book. (I would have anyway -- his books, even his early less mature works, are always at least professional and enjoyable -- one might compare him to John Brunner in that sense (though as I have said, I probably prefer early Brunner to early Silverberg, and later Silverberg to later Brunner).

Later on (at the pre-Hugo reception, in fact) I somewhat bumtiously approached Bob and asked him to sign the book(s), if that wasn't too gauche. It probably was rather gauche, but he kindly signed them anyway, and told me an interesting story about them. Ace, it seems, reported sales, and paid royalties, on each half of an Ace Double separately (makes sense, and usually they were by different authors). In this case, they issued statements saying that The Seed of Earth sold something like 80,000 copies, enough to earn out and make some royalties, but Next Stop the Stars sold only 40,000 (claimed Ace), not enough for royalties. Plausible enough, I suppose, as collections usually sell less than novels, except for the fact that the books are bound together! (Bob's agent was able to get Ace to buck up with the extra money for the second book -- to be sure, I suspect the sales numbers were wholly fictional anyway, and the book probably sold 150,000 or something!)

The novel half, The Seed of Earth, is a 1962 expansion of a 1957 story from Venture, "The Winds of Siros". After its expansion, it appeared (somewhat cut) as "The Seed of Earth" in Galaxy. The full version is about 50,000 words long.

The central conceit is that comfortable Earth has a hard time attracting people to colonize new planets, so a Colonization lottery has been set up, to which all healthy people between 19 and 40 are subject. The only way to get out of it is to have a very young child. If a husband or wife is selected, they must go, and their spouse can either choose to accompany them or abandon them. They are then sent in groups of 100 to a newly found planet -- apparently as the only colonists (seems a bit small of a group to me). The whole setup seems a bit implausible to me, well, actually a lot implausible, but it works as a framework for the story it tells. We follow a group of people involved with the latest selection: David Mulholland, the political appointee who runs the Colonization Bureau, as well as four of the latest selectees: Mike Dawes, a young college student; Cherry Thomas, an entertainer (by implication, a singer, stripper, or whore, as needs must); Ky Noonan, a big man who has tired of the boredom of Earth and who is a rare volunteer for colonization; and Carol Herrick, a painfully shy young woman (on the verge of becoming what was then called an "old maid").

The first few chapters detail the reactions of each of these characters to the selection, and to their short preparation time for the trip. Then they and the other 96 colonists make the journey, and upon arrival, quickly set up their colony and go through the wife-choosing process (no explanation of how gay people would react is offered). Mike has had his eye on Carol, and is fortunate to be able to choose her, while Ky perhaps predictably chooses the more flamboyant Cherry.

The conclusion involves a wholly unexpected development -- it seems that the very first intelligent species humans have ever encountered occupies this planet, and they kidnap the four main characters, who are penned up in a cave for a while, apparently for the aliens' entertainment. The stress reveals to each character something about their inner strengths and failings. This portion is a bit unexpected, and purposely attempts to avoid conventional resolutions to the characters' crises. It's not a particularly brilliant novel, but it has some original aspects, and it's readable enough.

The stories in Next Stop the Stars are all from quite early in Silverberg's career, and they are somewhat varied in tone. They seem to show a young writer trying new things, though for the most part they are fairly routine SF of the period. They are:

"Slaves of the Star Giants" (Science Fiction Adventures, February 1957, 15700 words)
"The Songs of Summer" (Science Fiction Stories, September 1956, 6300 words)
"Hopper" (Infinity, October 1956, 7300 words)
"Blaze of Glory" (Galaxy, August 1957, 5100 words)
"Warm Man" (F&SF, May 1957, 4500 words)

The first story concerns Lloyd Harkins, a man from about our time who is mysteriously thrust forward in time, to a much-altered Earth. He is capture by a huge, somewhat gentle, creature who takes him to a crude colony of humans. There are also, noticeably, likewise huge robots. And strange mutants with mind powers. Harkins soon is thrust into rivalry with the brutish leader of the colony, and the rest of the story is about his attempt at escape, and then his decision to take matters into his own hands. It's the pulpiest and weakest of the stories included here.

"The Songs of Summer" is also about a time traveler, in this case a slimy conman from 1956 who ends up in a pastoral future, and decides to upend the social structure of the gentle, somewhat telepathic humans he finds, taking one character's intended girlfriend as his own, introducing religion and economy, etc., until they find their own gentle way to stop him. Somewhat ambitious, not quite convincing.

"Hopper" also deals with time travel. Quellen is a functionary in a crowded future who has a secret: a hideaway in the jungle that he can teleport to whenever he wants. Then he is assigned to solve the problem of the "Hoppers", people being sent from this crowded future back in time, where it's less crowded and jobs are available. A mysterious man is behind all this, and Quellen tries to deal with him but is foiled by his own paranoia, his scheming subordinates, and his personal shortcomings. It's a cynical story, well enough constructed, but, again, not really convincing.

"Blaze of Glory" is a space story, about a somewhat brusque and violent spacer who hates aliens. He's assigned to a mission to a planet with gentle and innocent seeming aliens, and he's the only one who doesn't like them, and he acts very badly. But on the way home, he redeems himself with an act of heroism. The narrator, however, is left to wonder ... what really went on? And did the violent man know something about the aliens nobody else could see? This is OK if pretty minor work.

Finally, "Warm Man" is one of the best known of Silverberg's early stories, and deservedly so. It was the earliest story chosen for the 1976 Best of Robert Silverberg. It's in a sort of John Collier or Shirley Jackson mode, about a bachelor who takes a house in a typical suburb. He seems very friendly, and all the locals seem drawn to confide in him ... even embarrassments, such as their infidelities. This seems to make them better people, but they start to turn on him, before an incident with a troubled boy brings a shocking conclusion. I'd have liked it a bit better if the end was left a bit more mysterious -- there is an inconsistent couple of lines explicitly explaining what was going on, that didn't seem needed. Still, a fine piece.

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015, Part II

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015

Part II: Wednesday and Thursday

(Now the good stuff for those who want a con report.)

Wednesday morning we slept in just a bit, and decided to get to the convention and register before eating any breakfast. The hotel staff said the walk to the convention center would take about 10 minutes. It was more like 20 (admittedly we're not the fastest walkers, but I do think they scanted their estimate a bit). Very pleasant walk, right along the Spokane river, under the Division Street Bridge and then by hotels and offices including the other Red Lion (at the Park), then over a bridge to a nice little park, then over another bridge to the Convention Center.

Perhaps I should briefly describe our hotel ("but first", he said ...). It's pretty old, is the main thing. Only two stories, but stretching quite a long way along the river. The rooms are just fine, but the general look and feel is faded. We had signed up for a single king bed but they explained that the third party that the convention used for hotel bookings had messed up, and their were only a few king rooms ... so we ended up with two queens, which in the event worked just fine. And we had a little patio ... not that we ended up making much use of that. And you could walk right out to the river from the door at the end of our corridor.

Back to the con. After a rather interesting time figuring out how to get into the convention center (not helped by approaching it from the back), we had a rather interesting time finding the main exhibit hall where registration was conducted. This would be an ongoing theme through the con ... the convention center is split into two parts, with the attached Doubletree Hotel adding an extra fillip of confusion, Every time I decided I knew my way around I got lost again. I can't say it was awful, and I was never late for anything. It's more a matter of the sort of thing you can expect in a large venue.

The line for registration was very long, but it moved efficiently, and I have no complaints about the process. Once registered, as there was not much I really wanted to see at the con on Wednesday, the plan was to visit Idaho, to add one more state to our total. In the mean time I ran into Scott Edelman, only editor of the still much-lamented '90s magazine Science Fiction Age, and also a member of an active mailing list I'm on. Scott said he'd gone to Idaho as well, because he'd heard the barbecue there was better than in Washington. While as Missourians our expectations for barbecue outside of Missouri (and we'd allow Tennessee, Texas, and the Carolinas as well) were not high, barbecue sounded good. Spokane is only 20 or so miles from the Idaho border. So we got in the car and headed for Couer d'Alene, the semi-big city just about 15 miles into Idaho. The main place there seemed to by called Porky's, but the GPS took us to a Chinese restaurant instead (I assume Porky's is defunct). We also found a place called Porky G's, but it was not impressive looking (mind you, not necessarily an argument against a barbecue place). We decide to look at Lake Couer d'Alene anyway, and found views both downtown (in a very crowded park) and on the outskirts. Nice enough looking town, pretty mountain lake. (Mountain lakes, I deduce, look a lot like the manmade "wide spots in the river" that we have in Missouri, such as Lake of the Ozarks and Table Rock Lake, but they are natural, a product of the widely varying terrain in the foothills of mountains.)

(A side issue -- the town of Sandpoint, ID, is about 50 miles north of Couer d'Alene, on Idaho's largest lake, Pend Oreille. No big deal -- except Sandpoint is the childhood home of the great writer Marilynne Robinson, and it's the model for the lakeside city Fingerbone, setting for her magnificent first novel Housekeeping. Another side issue -- we also haven't ever been to Montana, and the Montana border is only about 50 or 60 miles east of Couer d'Alene, and we briefly considered driving that way, but decided that would be silly (especially as the first city of any note, Missoula, is a fair bit farther east.)

Having struck out on barbecue in Couer d'Alene, we headed back west to Post Falls, right on the border, and found Famous Willy's (which is also where Scott ended up). It proved to be a very satisfying joint, run by a couple from Texas, presumably the source of their BBQ chops. Then back into Washington.

There still wasn't an awful lot on the con schedule that evening, so we decided to explore the park area near the convention center. We walked over in very pleasant weather. There is a huge Radio Flyer wagon in a play area, with the handle serving as a slide. Not sure why ... Radio Flyer is a Chicago company, doesn't have anything to do with Spokane. I guess just for fun. We kept walking in search of yet another gondola ride (we'd been on two already, if you count the gondola like elements of the Ferris wheel in Seattle). This one was inexpensive and not crowded ... it offers a ride over the Spokane Falls. It was a pleasant ride, and the falls are a nice sight, and the sight of the city is pleasant as well. And that was all for that night.

So for me the convention proper started on Thursday. We got over at about 9:00 -- right when the doors open (indeed, we were a couple of minutes early). One reason was that we wanted to make sure we had a seat at the Business Meeting, which was expected to be crowded. But it turns out they had got a nice sized room, and though the meeting was very well-attended there was no problem finding seats. This first day was "preliminary", to a great extent involved with introducing people to parliamentary procedure. Chairman Kevin Standlee did an exemplary job at this ... and indeed throughout the four sessions, though he did lose his temper once or twice, mostly when fans got a bit too silly and wasted time. I'll discuss the business meetings more later ... a lot went on. Mary Ann sat through all four of them ... I had to miss much of them because of other commitments.

At the meeting I saw Chris Gerrib, a friend from Chicago, who was one of then main sponsors of the "4/6" Hugo Nomination proposal (which I supported, though I much prefer my suggested variant, "5/10", or a slight variation on that "5/8". I plan to discuss those more in another post.) (I later talked to Steven desJardins, another key sponsor of "4/6", whom I remember from the early SFF.net days.)

I had my first scheduled panel at 11:00. "Not Always Far Apart: The Mainstream Intersection with SF". My Locus colleague Gary Wolfe, one of the really outstanding critics we have, whom I had met and had some very enjoyable talks with at Chicon in 2012, was the moderator, and he did an excellent job. The other panelists were Elizabeth Anne Hull (whom I had met at a Windycon in the past), Rick Wilber, and Robert Silverberg. I had never met the latter two, and I was excited to meet both. Rick Wilber is a very fine SF writer, and he also has a St. Louis connection. His father, Del Wilber, was a Major League Baseball catcher who spent his first four years with the Cardinals, beginning in 1946. Del wasn't a great player by any means, but along the way I had heard of him. Rick Wilber's stories have occasionally had St. Louis settings, and he's also written the occasional baseball story (and edited an anthology of baseball related SF, Fields of Fantasy). As for Robert Silverberg, besides the fact that one of the very first SF books I read, probably at the age of 10 or so, was his first novel, Revolt on Alpha C, he's a member of an email list I'm on, so I've known him electronically (as it were) for some time, but this was the first time we'd met (I'd muffed a chance to meet him at Chicon).

The panel focused a fair amount on the history of mainstream/SF interaction, or lack thereof, and to a certain extent on the current modest rapprochement (SF stories in the New Yorker, etc.). I don't think we broke any particularly new ground, but I for one think it's always worthwhile to remind SF readers that there's a lot of good reading (some of it fantastika!) in the so-called "mainstream" field. (Worthwhile to remind "lit-fiction only" readers that there's a lot of good SF out there, too, but the likes of Sven Birkets don't often show up at Worldcons!) (By the way, the panelists pictured are, left to right, Rick Wilber, me, Gary Wolfe, Elizabeth Anne Hull, and Robert Silverberg.)

One of the really cool (and unexpected) things about panels is that people come up after them to meet you -- and I confess, I don't see myself as someone people are necessarily clamoring to meet. After this panel I as really happy when Susan Palwick, an exceptional SF writer, came up and introduced herself. Mary Ann was in the audience, and though I've read a lot of Susan's work since her first novel, foremost in my mind was the fact that Flying in Place, one of the most moving novels I've read, is one of the fairly few SF novels that I've recommended to Mary Ann and that she really liked. (Most of the rest are by Karen Joy Fowler, I think.) So I told her that ... and she was happy, I think, but in retrospect I remembered that sometimes writers want readers to mention their latest books, not their first!

After the panel I decided I wanted to see Mary Soon Lee's reading, largely to meet her -- she was an active member of SFF.net back in its most active days, as was I, so we knew each other that way. She also wrote a lot of very fine short SF (one of the best being "Pause Time", which was one of the first stories I recommended we reprint at Lightspeed, and which we did, in February 2013). Lately she's been concentrating on poetry, and her reading was of a number of linked poems from her latest book.

The previous night I had realized that the Kaffee Klatches (their spelling, I'd have said Klatsch) required signup, and I also realized that most of them were already full. It turns out Rick Wilber and Linda Nagata, two writers I was quite interested in talking with, had Klatches at the same time, and I wandered by to see if there was room ... I ended  up going to Linda's Klatch, partly because I had already talked to Rick (a bit) at the panel. I do like the Kaffee Klatch format, and Linda's conversation was very interesting, perhaps most notably in discussing what might be called her encounter with the dreaded "death of the midlist", a malady she has just begun to pull out of, largely by self-publishing a military SF novel she really believed in, against lots of advice.

We went across the street from the Convention Center to Azteca, a Mexican restaurant. It was perfectly fine, pretty standard Mexican.

It finally seemed time to hit the dealers' room. As always I visited Larry Smith's table. He asked me to sign the copies they had of my books, which was flattering. I bought a couple of books from him, notably Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. I also visited Patrick Swenson's Fairwood Press -- it was neat to meet Patrick, whose magazine Talebones was one of the really good small press 'zines back in the day. Fairwood publishes a lot of cool stuff -- original novels, story collections, and some reprints, including a lot of Michael Bishop. (And if there isn't better evidence of the problem of "the death of the midlist" than that someone as brilliant as Michael Bishop is relegated to the small press (though Fairwood is doing a great job with him, as far as I can tell), I don't know what the evidence would be.) By the end of the con, I had copies of James Van Pelt's new YA novel Pandora's Gun, and Ken Scholes' collection Blue Yonders, Grateful Pies, and Other Fanciful Feasts. I also visited a dealer (name forgotten, sorry!) who had a great collection of old SF magazines -- I bought a bunch of Amazings and Fantastics from the Cele Goldsmith Lalli era, a special interest of mine. In the dealers' room I also met Stefan Rudnicki, our podcast editor at Lightspeed, and Gabrielle de Cuir. And I went by the Locus table, and the delightful Francesca Myman insisted on taking my picture ... probably a good thing, as I have it on good authority that my current pictures, er, make me look fat. Also notable near the Dealers' Room was a display of historical Hugos -- by common consent the coolest of all was the Hugo from Japan, featuring Ultraman.

The next event that interested us was a Trivia Quiz, Pub Quiz style (similar to Trivia Night style, for the St. Louisans out there), hosted by Dave O'Neil in the Fanzine Lounge near the Dealers' room. The questions were fun -- they were often quite tough (partly because of the media focus, alas my weakness), but Mary Ann and I still finished second. I saw Dave later in the Business Meeting, and still later recognized him as a (very sensible) contributor to the comment threads at Black Gate ... small world, eh?

Neil Clarke had a Literary Beer (like a Kaffee Klatsch, but with beer!) right after that (actually Pat Cadigan had one the same time as the trivia, and I took the time to meet Pat and see my long time friend Ellen Datlow at the same time). I kind of crashed Neil's beer -- I hadn't signed up, but there was one opening, except shortly after the guy who had signed up showed up, so me and Sean Wallace ended up in a corner talking, and also listening to Neil and talking with him. This was the first time I had met Sean, who is my publisher at Prime Books, and also the first time I met Neil, editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, one of the very best online 'zines, and also the publisher of my anthology Unplugged. We had a real good conversation, and Neil was very interesting talking about the details of publishing Clarkesworld, not to mention his rather harrowing heart attack experience. (At a con, no less!)

Then it was dinner time, and Mary Ann and I explored downtown Spokane until we found Mackenzie River Pizza. This was OK but all things considered a mild disappointment. (It seems to be a small chain that started in Bozeman, Montana.) We had the pizza, nothing wrong with it, but nothing too special either. The sun was quite striking as well ... very science-fictional in how red it was. This was due to the smoke in the air from the wildfires throughout the Western US ... as became even more clear (pun intended) on Friday.

The one late night event I was most interested in was Trivia for Chocolate, something of a tradition at Worldcons, or so I understand. Steven Silver had been involved at Chicon, and I had managed to finish second. Steven was supposed to be involved at Sasquan, but he had to miss the convention due to back surgery. (I understand it went well and he is convalescing nicely as I write.) Mark and Priscilla Olson ran the trivia, and it was a good deal of fun. Once again, I finished second, by one piece of chocolate. Oh well, I have to admit, trivia is like a drug to me. Mark Olson, I should note, is a Chum on a mailing list I frequent, and I am embarrassed to admit I didn't realize until the next day that the two Mark Olsons are the same.

That was enough for that day, and, then, so to bed.

Worldcon and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015, Part I

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015

Part I: Seattle, and the drive to Spokane


(This part of the report will perhaps be of less interest to those who want to hear about Worldcon.)

I decided some time ago to attend Sasquan in Spokane, WA, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. As a convention-goer, I'm a bit of a homebody: I regularly go Conquest, Archon, and Windycon, which are, respectively, about 250 miles, 30 miles, and 275 miles from my home in Webster Groves, MO. The only Worldcon I've been to was Chicon III in 2012, also less than 300 miles away. I absolutely loved my time at Chicon, and I really wanted to make it to LoneStarCon in 2013 in San Antonio, but between my work schedule and the fact that a drive to San Antonio would have taken two days (even with a stopover in my brother's house in Dallas), I just couldn't make it. And Loncon in 2014 was simply not workable economically -- a great shame as we at Lightspeed won our first Hugo there. So I figured no matter what, I'd make the trip to Spokane work (helped, to be sure, by frequent flyer miles increased by that previously mentioned work schedule). This became even more urgent when Lightspeed was again nominated for a Hugo.

This trip was better than the one to Chicago because my wife Mary Ann came along. (Of course it was also better because I've been to Chicago a million or so times, considering I was born in the suburbs.) We decided to fly to Seattle first, for some pure quill tourism. We ended up flying in on Southwest fairly late on Saturday, arriving, well, early on Sunday, at 2:30 AM. This was partly due to Southwest: our first leg out of St. Louis was delayed for a couple of reason, finally because the plane was overweight and 16(!) passengers had to get off (in exchange for a dinner, night at a hotel, replacement ticket, and $300). We almost missed our connection in Denver -- fortunately the gate was only a couple down from our arriving flight, and even then we might have been late except the Denver to Seattle leg was late as well. We were staying in a Hampton in Tukwila, pretty near the airport (much cheaper than staying in the city).


The next day we got up (a bit late perhaps) and drove into the city, with the object of visiting Pike's Place Market. We had to park a bit of a walk from the Market, but we made it ... it's an enjoyable place to visit. They have a Left Bank Books (unrelated to the institution in the Central West End of St. Louis I assume) ... walked into that (a bit on the "crazy left" side if you ask me, and not a terribly impressive SF section, but there you are!). We ate at an OK restaurant in the Market, Pike's Place ... We were getting a bit tired, and the car was a bit of a hike, so I walked back to it and, after negotiating some slightly insane traffic, picked Mary Ann up on the waterfront and we headed back to the hotel, to veg out and watch the PGA.

Then we figured Tacoma, about 30 miles south, would be a nice change, so we wandered that way, and decided Point Defiance would be a nice place to visit. This is a peninsula jutting into the Puget Sound, just NW of Tacoma, all a park, with a zoo. We drove around the Point, stopping at several pullover places, with good views of the Sound and Vashon Island, and even at some points a view of the famous Tacoma Narrows Bridge (or, that is, its replacement). We ate at a restaurant just prior to Point Defiance, Duke's Chowder House. Very good.



On Monday we first went to the EMP museum, which was founded by Paul Allen, originally as a Science Fiction museum. It is now devoted to Entertainment, Music, and Pop Culture, but SF is a big chunk of the Pop Culture aspect. There was an exhibit of costumes from the Star Wars movies, sections devoted to SF and to Fantasy and to Horror, a small wall for the SF Hall of Fame. It was a bit too media-oriented, and too shallow for my taste. There were also exhibits on a couple of Rock music icons from Seattle: Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, and a fairly interesting guitar display. The Space Needle is right next door ... we contented ourselves with pictures. Then decided to visit Pike Place Market again, this time to do some slightly more devoted shopping. At a used book store I bought an omnibus of John Barth's first two novels, The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. We had lunch at Steelhead Diner, a place highly recommended by a couple who came to our church who had just moved to St. Louis from Seattle. It was very good. Then we took a ride on the Ferris Wheel on the waterfront, nice views of both the city and the sound.

Finally we took a sailboat ride into the Sound. It was a great deal of fun. The Seattle area is really pretty. I did also get a view of a restaurant I'd eaten at on a previous (business) trip, Salty's, which is across from the port part of the city. After that we were tired and ready to go back to the hotel, though first we drove to West Seattle just to see it.

I should mention parking perhaps ... only to say that it's pretty expensive. Not a surprise in a big city, of course.

So the next day was "drive to Spokane day", but we had plenty of time, so we decided to make a stop on the way for a good view of Mt. Rainier. (We'd already seen the mountain quite clearly from Seattle, to be sure.) We went to a ski resort (off season of course), Crystal Mountain. They let you ride up their gondola lift (for a price of course), to the top of one of their mountains (perhaps 7000 feet?), which gives an excellent view of Mt. Rainier and of many of the other Cascade volcanoes such as Mt. Adams. There's a restaurant at the top, a bit pricy for only OK quality, though I did rather like the wrap I had. Lots of ladybugs up there too.

We continued towards Spokane, taking the scenic route as a result of the diversion to Crystal Mountain. We went through Yakima (which is a larger town than I had imagined), before turning up to I90 then East to Spokane. The foliage in Eastern Washington is much different than in the west -- much much drier. And of course there have been fires in the area, though we didn't see anything on the drive (but later in Spokane the presence of fires became atmospherically clear!) Checked in at the hotel (Red Lion River Inn, right on the Spokane River, quite near to Gonzaga University). The hotel staff were effusive in their delight at having the Convention in town -- that's one thing in being in a middlish-sized city, you get a lot more attention from the locals.By then it was after 730, so we just went out to get dinner (Mexican food at a very loud place called Borracho -- not my favorite place, really), and so to bed.

Ace Double Reviews: Message From the Eocene, by Margaret St. Clair/Three Worlds of Futurity, by Margaret St. Clair

Ace Double Reviews, 88: Message From the Eocene, by Margaret St. Clair/Three Worlds of Futurity, by Margaret St. Clair (#M-105, 1964, 45 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

I guess I'll make it official ... I've gotten into reading Ace Doubles again ... a number of years ago I did over 80 Ace Double reviews, first at the great Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written (how I miss it -- I know it still exists, but the magic of the Golden Age (late '90s to early '00s) is gone), then posted at my webpage (www.sff.net/people/richard.horton). I'll still be doing reviews of Old Bestsellers here, but I don't have a backlog anymore, so I'll post them when I finish new (old) books, and interleave them with some more Ace Double reviews.

Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was one of the more noticeable early women writers of SF, but somehow her profile was a bit lower than those of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton. Perhaps it was simply that those writers did just a bit more, and were just a bit better (taken as a whole) than her, but it does seem that she's not quite as well remembered as perhaps she deserves. One contributing factor is that she published many of her stories pseudonymously, as "Idris Seabright". 20 or so of her 50+ short stories were as by Seabright, including some of the very best (such as "Short in the Chest" and "An Egg a Month from All Over"). She also wrote 8 novels (four of them published as Ace Double halves). Her career in SF stretched from 1946 to 1981. Her husband, Eric St. Clair, was also a writer (of children's books), and the two became Wiccans more or less when the Wiccan movement started.

This Ace Double appeared in 1964. I read the novel half, Message from the Eocene (which is about 43,000 words long), several years ago, planning all along to add it to my Ace Double Reviews page, but somehow I never got around to the story collection half. That leaves me in the slightly embarrassing position of not remembering the novel at all well. I remember a slow start, and fascinating middle, and a disappointing end. The start concerns a creature named, of all things, Tharg, struggling to protect a significant booklike object from evil rival aliens, on a planet we deduce is Earth of long ago. Tharg, having saved the book by throwing it in a volcano (or something), is killed but survives as a disembodied being until humans have evolved and reached a sufficient level of intelligence to benefit from the knowledge in the "book". The second section, which I recall being the best part of the book, is set in the near past, as Tharg "haunts" a house that becomes suspected of being a witch's abode (or something). One of the women ends up urging discovery of a mysterious object ... which of course is Tharg's "book". But its knowledge remains opaque. The resolution occurs in the future, as a spaceship is launched, Tharg is reembodied, and the humans realize that inimical aliens (Tharg's enemies) on Pluto must be destroyed, after which the "book" can be "read" ... and the novel ends more or less at this climax, which hints at coming transcendence but doesn't get there. Apologies for the vagueness!

I finally read the short story collection, Three Worlds of Futurity, on the plane heading to the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, Sasquan. It comprises 5 shorter works:

"The Everlasting Food" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1950, 12900 words)
"Idris' Pig" (first published as "The Sacred Martian Pig", Startling Stories, July 1949, 14300 words)
"The Rages" (first published as "The Rations of Tantalus", Fantastic Universe, July 1954, 14600 words)
"Roberta" (Galaxy, October 1962, 2500 words)
"The Island of the Hands" (Weird Tales, September 1952, 8600 words)

(The covers, by the way, and the interiors for the collection, are by Jack Gaughan.)

The title refers to the fact that the first three novelettes appear on, respectively, Venus, Mars, and Earth, I assume. As a whole the collection is pretty worthwhile work. Here's a look at each of the stories:

"The Everlasting Food" opens with Earthman Richard Dekker at the hospital where his Venusian wife Issa has been taken after an accident. It seems that she will die unless she has a brain operation, but that operation will remove her ability to "See" -- a special ability she has because she is one of the ancient "Sanedrin" (I don't know if the echo with "Sanhedrin" was intended). Dekker decides to insist on the operation. Issa at first is devastated by her loss of "Seeing", but somehow she has gained something else: the ability to be nourished by only energy. It seems that she has gained an ability perhaps held by the original (possibly non-Solar System based?) Sanedrin. She becomes remote, and after going to an ancient Sanedrin city she steals a Key and heads to a mysterious mid Ocean locale. Dekker follows her, with a pretty Earthwoman named Megan who is something of an expert in Venusian anthropology ... it turns out this Key, in the wrong hands, can lead to disaster, and Issa must face down her temptation to become as a god -- or perhaps yield? It's a decent story, not ever quite believable but interesting, with the Dekker/Megan dynamic serving as a perhaps convenient counterpoint to Dekker's loss of his wife ... By no means a great story, but entertaining.

"Idris' Pig" was my favorite story here. (I wonder if the title is a reference to her pseudonym?) George Baker, a spaceman on the Earth-Mars run, is inveigled into delivering a small object to a man on Mars. But as soon as he hits Mars, he is attacked, knocked out, and rescued by a pretty Martian girl. They end up on a wild adventure, involving Martian religion (and whether or not is should be taken seriously), the title pig, and some pretty bad drugs. And of course a pretty Martian girl! It's purely a romp, and really good fun.

"The Rages" is perhaps the most seriously intended story in the book. It's set in the fairly near future on Earth. Harvey is married to a beautiful woman, Mara, but they never have sex. And Harvey is addicted to the drugs everyone seems to take, which moderate burst of anger ("the Rages") and cause "Euphoria". He is running out, but has a friend who knows how to get more on the black market. Then that friend is taken to a hospital -- he seems to have gone made. Encounters with an older man whose research seems to suggest that the effect of the drugs over time might be deleterious, and an odd young woman who doesn't take the drugs, begin to make Harvey doubt his craving for more drugs ... the message is fairly obvious, and the story really never surprises, but it's nicely executed (St. Clair really was a skillful writer), and it's almost surprising H. L. Gold didn't buy it for Galaxy (not that I know he was offered it, mind you).

"Roberta" is short and effective SF horror, about a man named Robert and an alien named Mr. Dlaga, and a person named Roberta who keeps bothering Robert ... I don't know how well it really plays in today's world, though, because it's pretty drastically transphobic, enough to bother me even while I found its creepy execution entertaining.

Finally, "The Island of the Hands" concerns a man whose wife dies in a plane crash. Unable to accept his loss, he keeps searching for her, finally commissionaing an airplane to take him to the mid-Ocean area she crashed in ... where he and the pilots he hired also crash, becoming marooned on the title island, where he meets a woman who seems a perfected version of his lost wife. I thought the story and its resolution intriguing, and a good try, but somehow it never quite convinced me.

All in all, this is a fine collection of pretty obscure stories. Margaret St. Clair is a name that SF veterans still recall, but for all that her fiction is not well-remembered (except for a few "Idris Seabright" stories) -- and this is evidence that she is worthy of some rediscovery.

Old Bestsellers: The Vanishing Point, by Coningsby Dawson

The Vanishing Point, by Coningsby Dawson

a review by Rich Horton

I suppose this is another example of Canlit. Like a number of Canadian writers, Coningsby Dawson was born in England (in 1883) and moved to the United States. He began writing in the US, at first reports on Canadian subjects for English newspapers. He also published poetry and novels. When World War I broke out, he went to Canada and offered his service to that nation. He was commissioned as an officer after a period at a military college, and went to France in 1916. He served in the trenches, and was wounded twice.

After the war he wrote a memoir of his experiences, apparently intended in part as a reaction to the many very disillusioned memoirs of soldiers. Even so, his reaction did not slight on description of terrible conditions and events.

The Vanishing Point was published in 1922. Rather a strange novel, this one. Published just after the First World War, its subject is indeed the aftermath of the war. My edition is from Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, a venture associated with the magazine. It's probably a first. It is illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg.

The book opens with the American Philip Hindwood on a liner bound for England. He has been dallying with an exotic woman named Santa Gorlof, but he has a rival, Prince Rogovich of Poland. At the end she seems to choose the Prince, but when they disembark, the Prince is nowhere to be found. He and Santa soon find themselves on the run, for she at least is suspected of having murdered the Prince. Hindwood himself is still fascinated, but convinced as well that she may have done it.

He is engaged on a plan to sell food to the starving states of Central Europe in exchange for control of their railways. But soon he encounters Santa's husband, an Englishman who rescued her from dancing in an Indian temple, where she was raised as a half-caste orphan. He is forced to abandon her after she murders the man who kills their baby son, and in revenge of a sort, she has pursued a career as an exotic dancer, meanwhile killing the men she believes are responsible for the deaths of children, expecially those who promote war. The Prince, a monarchist displaced by the results of the War, is one such. Santa's husband reveals that he intends to bring her to justice, despite that he still loves her.

In a fool's errand trying to protect Santa, Hindwood ends up meeting another beautiful woman, Anna Varensky, the English wife of a saintly Russian fanatic. Her husband has disappeared, in another of his Quixotic attempts at martyrdom, always trying to prevent war and violence, this time in Bolshevik Russia. Soon Anna and Hindwood are in love, but both are too honorable to take action while Varensky lives. And indeed, Varensky returns, and Anna accompanies him back to famine-ridden Central Europe, which is on the brink of another war, provoked by monarchists, and the flames fanned by those fleeing the ruin of the Bolshevik dream. (The book seems to diverge a bit from history here ... perhaps it was actually set in the very near future to its writing?)

Hindwood and Santa also make their way to Austria then Hungary, with Hindwood's food trains to follow. He intends to complete his plans for control of Europe's railroads, but Santa urges him to act morally, and give the food away, and the sight of the starving masses begins to work on him. In Budapest things come to a climax, with people in pursuit of Santa arriving, with the monarchists plotting, the refugees and hungry swarming, and the Varenskys in the mix as well. The resolution is on the one hand heroic, on the other hand quite odd.