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

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

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a brief review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stories in Off Center are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Floating Opera, by John Barth

a review by Rich Horton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015, Part IV

Convention and Vacation Report, Sasquan 2015

by Rich Horton

Part IV: Saturday (and the Hugos) and Sunday

Saturday morning we figured we'd get a real breakfast. My preference is to find a good local place, instead of a chain. So while there was a Perkins near the hotel (which would have been fine), we used the smartphone to find a place called Waffles Plus. It was a bit of dive decor-wise, but the service was fast and the food was fine. Then we went back to the convention. First stop of course was the business meeting. There were to be preliminary presentations on the major proposal (EPH, 4/6), and an attempt to clear out the rest of the business. Again I couldn't stay long but Mary Ann stayed for most of it. The proposal to eliminated the 5% requirement to get on the ballot, a longtime bugaboo of mine, did pass, fairly easily. I can't remember the order of actions, but for the most part discussion of EPH and 4/6 was put off until Sunday. I should mention that the Site Selection winner for 2017 was announced (most people had heard this the night before): Helsinki, Finland; a very popular choice. (I'm happy with it winning, though I will almost certainly not be able to afford to attend.)

I had signed up for James van Pelt's Kaffee Klatche, at 10, so I rushed out pretty quick to make it. James (as mentioned) has been a long-time friend online, from SFF.net days and such, and it was a privilege to watch his career develop (and reprint some of his best work). He has a new YA novel out from Fairwood Press, Pandora's Gun. There was a nice group there, and a lot of what James discussed was working writer stuff: how long it takes him to write a story, the marketing process. James has over time (sometimes a long time!) sold a remarkable percentage of his stories. I spent a certain amount of time (perhaps too much, but they asked!) talking about things from the reviewers' side, the state of the market and so on. A good talk.

Next up for me, at 12, was the panel "How to Edit Anthologies", with John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, and Mike Resnick. I've done this panel a few times before at various cons, and so too I know have John, Ellen, and Mike. I admit to feeling a bit tired of the whole concept and not really looking forward to it much, but the panel actually went quite nicely. I've been on panels with all of these folks before, and by now I know them all fairly well (Mike Resnick perhaps a bit less well, but I've talked with him at length too -- or should I say mostly listened -- he's an excellent storyteller, in person as well as in print). I don't know if that helps on a panel -- I think maybe it does, though I'm always excited to meet new people too. We discussed the usual things: story order, open vs. closed anthologies, reprint vs. original, etc. Not sure we broke any new ground, but as I said it seemed to go well.

I seemed to be in a rush, and the next panel I was interested was "The Future of Online Magazines", but between running into people for a chat etc. I got there pretty late. The panelists were Anaea Lay (Strange Horizons), Scott Andrews (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), John Joseph Adams (Lightspeed, of course), Mike Resnick (the late lamented Baen's Universe), and Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld). So, a good, representative set. I was happy to meet Anaea and Scott, neither of whom I had yet run into.

My next panel was at 3:00, so I figured I'd run over to the Hugo Ceremony rehearsal, which ran from 2 to 4 -- it was advertised as just taking 5 or 10 minutes for a quick runthrough. Alas, to begin with the theatre space they were using (the INB) was locked, and finally someone found us (about 10 or 15 people had shown up) and took us in a back door. Things were a bit disorganized -- I think the director and the presenters (David Gerrold and Tananarive Due) had expected this time to be mainly for their rehearsal. David gave us a nice talk, about how to walk on the stage and all that, and what to expect. (There was some distinct tension noticeable, to do with worrying about the possibility of boos, and No Awards, etc.) It ended up taking nearly the whole hour -- indeed, I ducked out a bit in advance of any actual practice (unnecessary anyway, I think) in order to make the Space Opera panel at 3.

This was in a room I hadn't been in before, not as large as some of the others, and the room was absolutely packed. The front table was tiny, so the five had to rather squeeze in and around it. I joked "biggest crowd and smallest front table at the con". The five panelists were me as moderator (on the strength of my Space Opera anthology, I suppose) with four writers who have definitely done Space Opera: Doug Farren, Jeffrey Carver, Charles Stross, and Ann Leckie. Being a moderator is not necessarily as easy as it might seem, though my fellow panelists were certainly helpful. In all, I think the panel went well. We discussed the history of Space Opera, of the so-called "New Space Opera", Bob Tucker's invention of the term, the revitalization of it by the likes of, in different ways, Brian Aldiss, Samuel R. Delany, and M. John Harrison ... followed of course by Banks and co. Also the experiences of each of the authors writing Space Opera ... often without really considering what they were doing Space Opera at the time.

Then it was back to the hotel room to relax a bit and then change for the Pre-Hugo Reception. The reception (for the nominees, presenters, and guests) featured drinks and appetizers -- a pretty nice spread. They dragged us off for pictures during the process. We ran into a number of people, of course -- I was able to introduce Mary Ann to Ann Leckie, who was there with her high school age son. We had a nice conversation about Webster Groves schools -- as our kids and Ann's all went to Webster Groves High School, and Mary Ann worked at the grade school where Ann's kids went (though she left there for another job in the district before Ann's kids would have been in the class she worked at).

I also got to talk to Brent Bowen, a friend of some years (from the KC area), who was a Hugo nominee for his fine podcast Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. He had just got in town after first seeing a long-planned concert by the Foo Fighters. This is also when I asked Robert Silverberg to sign the Ace Double I had bought. Talked some as well with Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace. And other people too, but one of the problems with waiting so long to write all this up is that I forget things. (That's probably one of the problems with being 55, too.)

At just about 8 we were escorted to the INB for the ceremony. We had assigned seating, in part to keep the nominees close to the stage for easy access should we win. The Lightspeed crew were seated in something like the sixth row. John Scalzi was just a few seats to my left. Naturally I started to get a bit nervous.

The ceremony took a while to get going -- they showed the "Pre-Hugo" show being streamed at Ustream (which would stream the ceremony), and the folks on the show made some broad comments about how much stretching they were having to do. David Gerrold and Tananarive Due did a really nice job throughout the ceremony. It opened with a bit of Star Trek schtick, amusing enough. Robert Silverberg came up and performed a special "Blessing of the Hugo", based, he said, on encounters with the Hare Krishna at a long ago Worldcon. The entire audience sang along to the Hare Krishna chant. Connie Willis also gave an amusing talk. Alas, I have already forgotten her jokes ... It's that 55 thing again.

The awards part of the ceremony began with a series of non-Hugo awards. A special award was presented to the late Jay Lake, a Northwest-based writer who died of cancer in 2014. Jay was a super writer, and a really good man. He was special to a lot of people, and for me to to claim to be close to him would be wrong, but I always felt close, because we were both writing for Tangent at the same time, back in the late '90s, and we corresponded a fair bit. Because of the Tangent connection, I followed his rapidly burgeoning career closely, and I was delighted as he progressed from a very prolific, and always interesting, writer of short stories for mostly small 'zines to a Hugo-nominated writer to a Campbell winner to a prolific novelist. I was thrilled to be able to reprint some of his stories. I finally met Jay at Chicon in 2012, when he was in remission from his cancer. The award was accepted by his sister, and it seemed totally appropriate to me.

The First Fandom award went to Julian May, who was born in 1931, and was active in fanzines in the late '40s. Her first SF story was the excellent novella "Dune Roller", which appeared in 1951 in Astounding, but after only one more story she left the field. She married the anthologist T. E. Dikty, editor of the first Best of the Year series. She kept writing in ensuing years, including a series of juveniles, and later some media tie-in sort of work as by "Ian Thorne". She returned to the field in 1981 with The Many-Colored Land, which made a huge splash, and since then has published quite a few further novels. She's still alive, but was unable to attend the convention.

The Sam Moskowitz award went to David Aronowitz, a collector and bookseller.

And the Big Heart award went to Ben Yalow. I was thrilled by this award as well. Ben is a SMOF, of course, and a very nice guy. I've known him for quite a while, though not all that closely, but we've talked on a number of occasions at smaller cons. The first time I met him I remember asking if he was related to Rosalyn Yalow, who won the Nobel Prize in 1977, while I was a student at the University of Illinois, where she got her Ph.D. (so naturally they made a big deal of her). Ben, of course, is Rosalyn's son. A very deserving winner.

The final "non-Hugo" is an award that lots of people, I suspect, think of as a Hugo, because it is nominated and voted for in the same process: the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The winner was Wesley Chu, a very deserving winner as well. He won from a shortlist otherwise dominated by "Puppy" nominees, and No Award finished second, a bellwether for the Hugos, no doubt. That said, I think Chu was a likely winner against any field of nominees, though Andy Weir, author of The Martian and the first person left off the ballot, might have given him a run for his money. (The next writer on the long list of people just short of a nomination who really would have excited me was Sam J. Miller, who wouldn't have made the ballot regardless of the slates ... which is not to say that the writers ahead of him are at all unworthy.)

So, it was finally time for the Hugos. I won't post the whole list, because it's readily available. Most notable acceptance speech was by James Bacon, one of the winners for Best Fanzine (Journey Planet), though perhaps I give him extra credit for his Irish accent. (One of his fellow-editors at Journey Planet, Chris Garcia, is famous for one of the best Hugo acceptance speeches of all time after he won for another fanzine (The Drink Tank) in 2011 -- indeed, James gave a good portion of that speech (which was actually nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) the following year.) I would say that from my perspective the choices for the Hugo were good choices, not always what I voted for but worthy work in context.

Jumping around a bit, I'll add that the most funny part of the ceremony was the Dalek that presented the Dramatic Presentation awards. Great fun. There were, of course, moments of great controversy. The first involved the now notorious asterisks. These are little wood coaster sized things that were sold (in slightly smaller versions) to benefit one of Sir Terry Pratchett's favorite charities, The Orangutan Foundation. The full-sized versions were given to all the Hugo nominees. Of course it was a joke suggesting that there might be an asterisk associated with the awards this year -- which one would have to be a dolt not to have noticed. I believe it was intended as a light-hearted, affectionate joke, and it should have been taken that way, but many people weren't ready (may never be ready) to accept that. Gerrold gave a presentation saying that the six arms of the asterisk were exclamation points -- celebrating the many records Sasquan set, such as most Hugo voters.

The other major controversy occurred in the categories where No Award won. In each case, there was a lot of cheering, which I thought regrettable. No Award was probably appropriate in most of these cases, certainly understandable as a rebuke to the slate tactic, but it was nothing to celebrate. As it happens, I chose not to vote No Award first myself in any category, but that said, I felt the nominations in each case were tainted by the slate support, and the overall shortlists much much weaker than usual. Except for the editor categories, I did not feel I was voting for candidates that were truly Hugo-worthy -- I was voting for solid and enjoyable stories that I didn't feel would besmirch the Hugos.

Anyway ... (as Washington native Joel McHale might say) ...

The cool part -- for me! The award for Best Semiprozine was presented by TAFF (Transatlantic Fan Fund) representative Nina Horvath, from Austria. (One of several she presented.) She read the name of the category as "Seamy Prozine", which (as David Gerrold noted) seemed a nice way to put it! I will confess now that while I had tried to tell myself all along that we had at best a 1/3 chance of winning, I was actually kind of confident, on two grounds: we won last year, and the (limited) set of posted ballots seemed to favor us. Oh, and I think we're pretty deserving! (Which is not to say that the other nominees, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Abyss and Apex, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine aren't outstanding as well.)

So anyway, as the announcement came -- well, I was thrilled, that's all I can say. The five of us went up, and got like three Hugos to share on stage (the other two we got backstage, and sorted them out according to nameplate.) We all got to talk for about a minute and a half. I don't think I quite made a fool of myself, but I was a bit stiff. One thing that a lot of people noted from previous ceremonies is absolutely true -- you cannot see the audience at all from the podium.

We went back to our seats, and saw the rest of the award presentations. Then we hung around for a while for official photographs, taken on stage. The photographer, the excellent John O'Halloran, herded us cats into place, and took his pictures, then audience members were allowed to take their own.

Then it was time for the afterparties. We went first to the traditional Hugo Losers' Party, which this year was just called the Post-Hugo Reception or something like that, at Auntie's Bookstore in downtown Spokane. As usual, this was hosted by next year's Worldcon (in Kansas City, and thus run by a number of friends of mine). The gift was barbecue tongs. There was a nice crowd, and drinks, and some food. I talked to several people, including new F&SF editor, and first-rate writer, C. C. Finlay; the lovely Wang Yao, who writes as Xia Jia, and whose work I have reprinted; and Ken Burnside, a nominee for Best Related Work whose "The Hot Equations" was broadly regarded as the best of the nominees, and which indeed did finish second (to No Award). We talked at some length -- Ken was sensible, a bit upset about the way the Puppies were treated but somewhat understanding as well, and quite convinced that things are only going to get worse for the Hugos.

I had heard that George R. R. Martin (who, with Gardner Dozois, started the Hugo Losers' Party tradition back in the '70s) was hosting a Losers' Party somewhere, but I didn't get an invitation. (Possibly because I wasn't a Hugo Loser, who knows?) It sounds like it was a good time. As far as I know, none of the Lightspeed crew made it there, though I know he was trying to find John Joseph Adams, who did qualify as a Hugo Loser because he was one of those knocked off the ballot (in Editor, Short Form) by the slate candidates. As it was I stayed for a while at Auntie's, hoping to link up with the rest of the crew, but only saw Stefan Rudnicki, our Podcast Editor.

Mary Ann was getting a bit tired, so we went back to the hotel, then I went out again (on foot and by bus), and first made my way to the SFWA Suite. It was fairly empty, but I was fortunate to strike up a long conversation with Brian Dolton, a fine writer (we've actually shared a TOC, in the Spring 2011 Black Gate), who was serving the Scotch. So we talked about Scotch, and about Iain Banks (who was an expert (of the "fan" sort) on Scotch, wrote a book about it), and about Thorne Smith, and about Roger Zelazny.

After some time in the suite, I went down to the bar on the first floor. There was a nice crowd there as well. I spent some time talking to the fine writer Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, who is one of those I also know from a mailing list. The Lightspeed crew also showed up, and was able to talk for some time to Christie and Wendy and John. Annie Bellet was there, showing off her Alfie, awarded by George R. R. Martin at his party. I am distressed that I am forgetting some of the other folks I talked with -- partly because it's late, but also, alas, I took too long to get around to writing this. One of them (could it have been Ramez Naam, another fine young writer?) shared a drink with me after the bar closed. Anyway, I had a great time -- lots of great conversation, the key (in my opinion) to any con.

(Not that winning a Hugo didn't help!)

It was about 4, as I recall, that I went back to the hotel.

So then Sunday, time for the trip home. But first, back to the con for one more panel, and another swoop through things. We did first go to the Business Meeting again, where the two major Hugo Reform proposals were considered, EPH and 4/6. Both passed, EPH by a wide margin, 4/6 on a very close vote. That was preceeded by a series of votes aimed at selecting which variant of 4/6 would be the official one (5/10, 5/8, etc.) My suggestion was 5/10, but I would have been happy with 5/8, which alleviated one problem with 5/10 (a perhaps too long short list). 5/8 failed without a count, on the chair's ruling. I will be honest and say that I thought it was too close to rule it out without a count, but I wasn't quick enough (or brave enough) to ask for a count. I will add that I strongly believe 5/8 a far better option. I should note (as was noted at the meeting) that EPH and 4/6 (or its variants) are not mutually exclusive. I will also add that I actually got up and spoke (in favor of 4/6) at the meeting. I suppose you could see me on You Tube, if you wanted. (I haven't.)

There were a couple of 11 o'clock panels I had some interest in: Historical Fiction for SF Readers and The Role of the Critic. It was rather late when I left the Business Meeting, and I opted for The Role of the Critic, because it featured Liza Groen Trombi, editor of Locus, and also Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (and Alan Stewart, whom I don't know, but who was a good panelist as well.) I only caught the last 15 minutes or so, then was able to say Hi to Liza.

That was about it -- we had a 3:00 flight to catch, and so figured we'd leave about 1:00. I did take the time to pick up a Hugo box, to run through the Dealers' Room one more time, and also to go by the Green Room. Then it was off to the airport.

I like small airports, and Spokane's qualifies. It was easy to navigate, and the lines were short. (I forgot to mention earlier that on leaving St. Louis the lines to check baggage were horrendous, and so I actually paid a skycap to do it for us.) Naturally TSA took great interest in the Hugo, but not terribly suspicious interest. They did unpack it, and rub it down to see if there was explosive residue. It may have helped that another con attendee was in line with me, and he eagerly told the agents what to expect.

The flight back was tolerable. I read most of the Silverberg Ace Double. Both planes were delayed, making us 4 for 4 on the trip. We got in well after midnight -- so it was a good thing I had planned all along to take Monday off.

Final analysis -- I had a wonderful time. The stopover in Seattle was very enjoyable (boat trip probably the best part). The trip up Crystal Mountain to view Mt. Rainier was neat. The convention was great (even accounting for the tension surrounding the Hugo controversy). Best restaurant: Steelhead Diner in Seattle. Best in Spokane: Central Food. I don't think I mentioned meeting Andy Porter before -- editor of Algol (later Starship), one of the very first fanzines (or really a semiprozine) that I ever bought, and a wonderful 'zine -- also editor of SF Chronicle, and a Hugo winner and Big Heart winner. Lots of other folks met, hopefully not too many forgotten in this report!

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.