More on the Best Editor, Short Form, Hugo

I recently made a post on potential Hugo nominees in which I briefly discussed potential Best Editor nominations. I mentioned John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Trevor Quachri, C. C. Finlay, Sheila Williams, Andy Cox, Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, Scott H. Andrews and Brian Thomas Schmidt. And in all honesty, I think any of those people would be wholly worthy nominees. They have all done first-rate recent work.

But that said, let's be honest, I was being a bit timid. Who would I really vote for? I wanted to be a bit more forthright, and plump for a few folks I am really rooting for. Full disclosure, here -- this is a tightly linked field, and I know almost all of these people personally, and I work for several of them. I've had dinner on multiple occasions with Ellen Datlow and Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I've met most of the rest, excepting only, I think, Trevor Quachri and Andy Cox and, oddly enough, Jonathan Strahan. (But I've talked with Jonathan on the phone (or Skype) and had countless email exchanges with him, so I still consider us friends, even if we haven't met face to face -- and I trust we'll rectify that soon enough.)

So, to continue. As I said, each of these people would be good choices. But I'm rooting for two people in particular, this year, and promoting a third. The "rooting" is partly because they haven't yet won a Hugo in this category, and others on this list (not all of them, to be sure) have -- which isn't fair, no doubt, but there you are. But it's mostly because I really think they have done tremendous work -- and that's why the third person (already a multiple Hugo winner in the Editor category) is on this list.

And, of course, as already hinted, I need to disclose that I work for two of them. Jonathan Strahan is my editor at Locus. And John Joseph Adams is my editor at Lightspeed. Well, so be it. I think one way or another I am equally biased in favor of numerous other people I listed -- as I said, this is a tightly linked field -- most of us know each other, for good or ill (mostly good, if you ask me).

So, what are their credentials?

Jonathan Strahan's primary 2015 credential is as editor of likely the single best original anthology of the year, Meeting Infinity. This includes 8 stories on the Locus Recommended Reading List, two of them included in my upcoming Best of the Year anthology: "My Last Bringback" by John Barnes, and "Drones" by Simon Ings; and also "In Blue Lily's Wake", by Aliette de Bodard; "Rates of Change", by James S. A. Corey; "Emergence", by Gwyneth Jones; "The Falls", by Ian McDonald; and "Pictures From the Resurrection", by Bruce Sterling. Meeting Infinity is one of a series of pure SF original anthologies he's been doing that have been consistently excellent. Perhaps for 2015 they don't officially come into play, but consistency is important too. And of course Jonathan has edited numerous other brilliant anthologies, including the New Space Opera books (with Gardner Dozois), and the "Fearsome" set of Fantasy-oriented books, and well as the Eclipse original anthology series. Jonathan has also been editing Best of the Year anthologies since 2004, and this curatorial role is perhaps not as flashy as that of bringing us new fiction, but (not surprisingly!) I still think it's pretty important. His curatorial role also extends to bringing some outstanding single author collections to us, including Best Of''s for Bruce Sterling, Joe Haldeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, and (in 2015) Alastair Reynolds; and also a series of collections of Jack Vance's early stories (with Terry Dowling), including 2015's Grand Crusades.

In the case of John Joseph Adams, his first credential is obviously as editor of Lightspeed. I think the stories we publish are outstanding, and this year I am using four stories in my book: "The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red, Red Coal", by Chaz Brenchley; "Time Bomb Time", by C. C. Finlay; "The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club", by Nike Sulway; and "You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead", by Brooke Bolander. But John is also a prolific produce of excellent original anthologies, three of which appeared in 2015: Operation Arcana (from which I'm using "The Graphology of Hemorrhage" by Yoon Ha Lee), The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey), and Press Start to Play (with Daniel Wilson). John also does reprint anthologies, represented in 2015 by Wastelands 2 (apocalypse stories) and by Loosed Upon the World (climate change stories). And finally, he too does a Best of the Year anthology, in his case the SF entry in the "Best American" series -- the first entry appeared in 2015, guest edited by Joe Hill.

Finally, it is incumbent on me to mention Sheila Williams, simply because I believe that her magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, was the single best SF magazine of 2015. No fewer than 14 stories from Asimov's appear on the Locus list this year, and I am using three in my book: "Mutability", by Ray Nayler; "Twelve and Tag", by Gregory Norman Bossert; and "Acres of Perhaps", by Will Ludwigsen. I am abashed to confess that as I drafted this post I thought of her last -- only because she was won this award multiple times before. But that's unfair, wrong thinking -- the award should go to the Best Editor each year -- there should not be a sense of "taking turns".

So -- the three people above will be on my nomination ballot this year, along with two more from the long list of very worthy editors I mentioned in the first paragraph. And whoever wins will be very deserving.

A Not Quite Forgotten SF Novel: The Ginger Star, by Leigh Brackett

A Not Quite Forgotten SF Novel: The Ginger Star, by Leigh Brackett

A review by Rich Horton

Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) was one of the greatest pulp-era SF writers. She began in Astounding in the February 1940 issue with “Martian Quest”. Throughout the ‘40s and to the middle of the ’50s she published a great deal of SF, much of it in the planetary romance subgenre. Right about 1955 – exactly as the pulp era came to an end with the disappearance of Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Planet Stories – she slowed down. Only about a half-dozen further SF stories appeared, and no new novels – until 1974, and the book at hand.

To be sure, SF wasn’t all she did. She wrote crime novels – some quite highly regarded, though I haven’t read any. Most appeared in the ’40s, but her last, Silent Partner, came out in 1969. And she wrote screenplays, some in the ‘40s (most notably, The Big Sleep, with William Faulkner (and Jules Furthman)), but quite a few more beginning in 1959 with Rio Bravo, and continuing to such well-known movies as Rio Lobo and The Long Goodbye. Her final credit, perhaps the most famous of all, was The Empire Strikes Back (though by most accounts much of her screenplay was gone by the time the film was released). It seems likely that the screenwriting was what drew her away from SF.

Her husband was Edmond Hamilton, one of the most celebrated writers of pure Space Opera. They almost never collaborated, except on a posthumous story, “Stark and the Star Kings”, which mixes Brackett’s most famous character with some of Hamilton’s most famous; and, most think, on the 1963 Ace Double The Secret of Sinharat/People of the Talisman, which is revised and expanded versions of two of Brackett’s Stark stories for Planet Stories – the generally accepted view is that Hamilton did the revisions. Brackett died of cancer in 1978, shortly after turning in the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back to George Lucas.

So … in 1974 she had been relatively inactive in the SF field for some two decades. The Ginger Star represented a return to the field. It was serialized in two parts in If in 1974, and published in book form by Ballantine/Del Rey. Two sequels, The Hounds of Skaith and The Reavers of Skaith, followed in 1974 and 1976. (Around this time she also edited two books for Ballantine/Del Rey that emphasized her Space Opera/Planetary Romance roots: The Best of Planet Stories Volume 1 (alas, there was never a second volume) and The Best of Edmond Hamilton.)

I adore the great Brackett stories of the late ’40s and early ‘50s, particularly The Sword of Rhiannon, one of the great pure planetary romances; and other stories in the same loosely developed future (though The Sword of Rhiannon is really set in the past): “The Halfling”, “The Dancing Girl of Ganymede”, “Mars Minus Bisha”, “Shannach – the Last”, for example. Other SF was also very fine, most notably The Long Tomorrow, a post-Apocalyptic novel; but also The Big Jump and The Starmen of Llyrdis. Her slightly later story from Venture, “The Queer Ones” (aka “The Other People”) is excellent, and not terribly well known. The Eric John Stark stories fit into her Mars/Venus/etc. future – and they are quite enjoyable as well. Stark is portrayed as a nearly savage man, raised as an orphan on Mercury, and rampaging through Venus and Mars in the most prominent pieces.

The Skaith novels feature Stark as the protagonist, but they are set on a planet in another Solar System, Skaith. I had assumed that she set them there because the Mars and Venus of the earlier stories was no longer astronomically plausible, and perhaps that is the case, but it should be noted that in these books she does still portray Stark as a native of Mercury – also a highly implausible thing. Anyway, I had ignored the Skaith novels until now partly because of a feeling that they would be pale latter-day imitations of the earlier stories, weakened by the forced relocation. And to an extent I think that’s true enough, though The Ginger Star is still fairly fun.

Eric John Stark comes to Skaith as a somewhat unofficial representative of the Galactic Union. His mission is mostly personal: his mentor, sort of adopted father, Simon Ashton, has disappeared from the chief city of Skaith, and foul play is suspected. Skaith, an ancient planet turning colder as its Sun dies, is ruled by a shadowy group called the Lords Protector, via the Wandsmen, who control most of the city states, largely by a sort of bread and circuses policy whereby the shiftless “Farers”, or it might be, “welfare cheats”, leech off the productive citizens. Stark more or less randomly begins to look for Ashton, and finds hints that he may be in the harsh North, perhaps at the mysterious Citadel of the Lords Protector. He makes an enemy of the local Wandsman, and then heads to Irnan, another city where a faction is trying to get passage via the Galactics to another planet, to escape the rule of the Lords Protector. There he assists in the beginning of a rebellion, and finds himself declared the subject of a prophecy, that a “Dark Man” would come to bring people to freedom. That the prophecy is delivered by Gerrith, a beautiful and tough Wise Woman, who insists on accompanying him in his journey to the North, is only a bonus.

Stark continues north, meeting with treachery at almost every turn, and with further prophecies. But it is clearer and clearer that he is coming closer to Ashton, and to the Lords Protector, whom he (somewhat reluctantly) sees as his responsibility to unseat. And, too, the only way out seems to be through. His increasing feelings for Gerrith are a factor as well. So we get to a final confrontation with the mysterious Lords, and to a meeting with Ashton … and then … well, it’s the first book of a trilogy, and so it stops. It’s pretty clear that the story set up at the beginning will take all three books to resolve.

There’s a lot to like here. The various different peoples, all varieties of human, some more mutated than others, are pretty cool. Stark is Stark, though a bit different – more thoughtful, I suppose – than in the earlier stories. There’s the usual tough guy attitude, and when needed, action and violence, though often enough Stark is the victim and not the perpetrator. It was – I guess – OK, but as I had feared, just a bit thin, and bit less emotionally intense, than the Martian stories. And Skaith comes off as a cliché – a somewhat pale imitation of a ‘40s pulp milieu. Still, not bad – but not the true quill Brackett … for that, go to The Sword of Rhiannon!

(A note on my edition, shown above -- this is the second edition, from 1979, with a Boris Vallejo cover. The original cover from 1974 is by Jim Steranko, and to my mind it is much better, with a depiction of Stark much closer to my image of him.)

Hugo nomination possibilities, short fiction

Okay, then, let’s just get right to it. Hugo nomination recommendations in short fiction. (I haven’t read enough 2015 novels to speak sensibly on that category.) This is, indeed, mostly the contents of my Best of the Year collection, with a few added that I couldn’t use for one reason or another (length, contractual issues, etc.). And let's add the obvious -- I miss things! Even things I read. There have definitely been cases where a story I didn't pick seemed to me on further reflection to be clearly award-worthy.

Novella:

The Two Paupers, by C. S. E. Cooney (Fairchild Press)

“Gypsy”, by Carter Scholz (Gypsy plus …, F&SF)

“The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred”, by Greg Egan (Asimov’s)

“The Bone Swans of Amandale”, by C. S. E. Cooney (Bone Swans)

“The Boatman's Cure”, by Sonya Taaffe (Ghost Signs)

Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand (Open Road/PS Publishing)

Penric's Demon, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Penric's Demon)

Teaching the Dog to Read, by Jonathan Carroll (Subterranean)

Sunset Mantle, by Alter S. Reiss (Tor)

In all these cases the order is semi-meaningless -- possibly the top couple are likely to make my nomination list, beyond that, I'm pretty torn! This list, I will say, seems highly tilted to Fantasy – only the Egan and Scholz stories are SF, but they are both brilliant SF, the hardest stuff, and highly politically charged. Indeed, politics are also central to Cooney’s “The Bone Swans of Amandale” and Reiss’s Sunset Mantle. Perhaps it’s in the air? Besides politics, wonderful prose is a key feature of several – both Cooney stories, and also Taaffe’s and Hand’s. (Which is not to say the others aren’t well written, but the prose isn’t as front and center in them.)

Novelette:

“Twelve and Tag” by Gregory Norman Bossert (Asimov’s)

“Acres of Perhaps” by Will Ludwigsen (Asimov’s)

“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld)

“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan” by Ian McDonald (Old Venus)

“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Analog)

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear (Old Venus)

“This Evening’s Performance” by Genevieve Valentine (The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk)

“And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed)

“Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfang (Uncanny)

“My Last Bringback” by John Barnes (Meeting Infinity)

“The Deepwater Bride” by Tamysn Muir (F&SF)

So this list has, by my definition, only three Fantasy stories as against eight SF stories. And not so much directly political work as the novellas, either, nor as much prose-besotted work. (Though Valente’s certainly qualifies, in a very, er, colorful way!) The impacts are different – as they should be – Bossert is twisty hard SF, Ludwigsen is moving contemporary fantasy, McDonald and Valentine are steam- (or diesel-) punkish, though not traditionally so. Muir evokes Lovecraft – not something you see too often in my lists of favorites! Bolander is non-stop, and pretty violent, noirish action adventure, but with pretty cool SF ideas as well.

Short Story:

“Mutability” by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s)

“Capitalism in the 22nd Century” by Geoff Ryman (Stories for Chip)

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link (Strange Horizons)

“The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red, Red Coal” by Chaz Brenchley (Lightspeed)

“Hello Hello” by Seanan McGuire (Future Visions)

“Consolation” by John Kessel (Twelve Tomorrows)

“The Daughters of John Demetrius” by Joe Pitkin (Analog)

“Unearthly Landscape by a Lady” by Rebecca Campbell (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

“The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club” by Nike Sulway (Lightspeed)

“Little Sisters” by Vonda M. McIntyre (Book View Cafe)

“Asymptotic” by Andy Dudak (Clarkesworld)

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld)

“Today I Am Paul” by Martin Shoemaker (Clarkesworld)

“Drones” by Simon Ings (Meeting Infinity)

“The Graphology of Hemorrhage” by Yoon Ha Lee (Operation Arcana)

“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson (Tor.com)

“The King in the Cathedral” by Rich Larson (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

“Time Bomb Time” by C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed)

The one story this year that came out of nowhere to stun me was “Mutability”, for what that’s worth. Again, not as much Fantasy. Beyond that, all I can say is – these are a bunch of outstanding stories. Read them!

Some Hugo Nomination Suggestions

For the past few years I have avoided the sorts of posts I used to routinely make, listing my favorite stories of the year and making suggestions for Hugo nominations. There are several reasons – one is simply that I thought my Best of the Year Table of Contents served such a purpose by default, more or less, another is time. And a third, of course, is a feeling of skittishness about the controversy that has arisen, from several directions, on the appropriateness of nomination lists, or, Lord preserve us, “slates”.

But hang it all, almost all I’ve been about for my time writing about SF is promoting the reading of good stories. Why should I stop? Why should anyone? I don’t want people to nominate based on my recommendations – I want people to read the stories I recommend – and lots of other stories – and nominate the stories they like best. I don’t want to promote an agenda. I don’t want to nudge the field towards any set of themes or styles. (Except by accident – I don’t deny that I have conscious and unconscious preferences.) In fact, I’d rather be surprised – by new ideas, by new writers, by controversial positions, by new forms, by revitalization of old forms.

I’ll begin on a somewhat personal note, and I apologize in advance for a tiny bit of self-promotion that might result. I have, as part of the editorial team at Lightspeed Magazine, won Hugos each of the past two years, for Best Semiprozine. We’re very proud of that – I’m quite confident I can speak for my co-conspirators, John Joseph Adams (our leader), Wendy Wagner, Stefan Rudnicki, and Christie Yant, in that sense. But we’re not going to win one this year: we have graduated from the ranks of Semiprozines. I might add that in a crowded field for Best Professional Editor (Short Form), I’ll be rooting for John – I truly think his work at Lightspeed and as editor of numerous anthologies, is fully worthy of a Hugo. (It would be remiss of me not to mention the many other worthy possibilities: Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Trevor Quachri at Analog, C. C. Finlay at F&SF, Sheila Williams at Asimov’s, Andy Cox at Interzone and Black Static, Neil Clarke at Clarkesworld, Sean Wallace at Clarkesworld and The Dark, Scott H. Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, anthologist Brian Thomas Schmidt, ). In long form I would mention book editors like Toni Weisskopf of Baen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor, though there are many further worthy possibilities. And in a too little too late sense, the great David Hartwell, who died in January, has been worthy of a Hugo both as an acquiring book editor and as an anthologist for many years.

(For myself, I can gingerly note that I am eligible as a fanwriter, for my work at Black Gate and at this blog (Strange at Ecbatan), not to mention my Locus reviews (for which last I should add I am paid). (I’m technically eligible as an editor, but I would not mention myself, particularly as an editor of reprint anthologies only, in the company above.))

Indeed, mention of Black Gate lets me segue to a brief discussion of the Best Fanzine category. Black Gate was controversially nominated last year, largely because they were placed on the Rabid Puppies slate. Black Gate withdrew from consideration for that award in protest, as did one of their best contributors, Matthew David Surridge, who was nominated for Best Fanwriter. But the whole process highlighted something I had not even thought of – Black Gate, in its current incarnation, really is a fanzine. And in my admittedly very biased opinion, a fanzine worthy of consideration for a Hugo. Of course it’s not the only worthy site, or print ‘zine. File 770, edited by Mike Glyer, comes immediately to mind. Unfortunately Steven Silver’s excellent Argentus (to which I contribute regularly) didn’t publish a 2015 issue, so it’s not eligible this year.

From fanzine to semiprozine makes sense, eh? Previous Hugo nominees Apex and Lightspeed are no longer eligible as of this year. Who’s worthy? In all honesty, any controversy over some nominations aside, I thought all the ‘zines that made last year’s Hugo Ballot worthy, including the withdrawn Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. The others were Abyss and Apex, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Right below the nomination borderline were The Book Smugglers, Interzone, and Pornokitsch. All are fine ‘zines. Neil Clarke maintains a fairly comprehensive list of eligible ‘zines here: http://semiprozine.org/semiprozine-directory/. Of that list, I’d particularly like to direct people’s attention to Giganotosaurus, which has been publishing intriguing longer form fiction for a few years now; Kaleidotrope, which has been consistently featuring fine stories, first in print, now online, for a while as well; and a new entry, Uncanny Stories, which has really had an impressive first year.

I have little enough to say about Dramatic Presentation. I think we all suspect that Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will win easily. I enjoyed the movie, but with severe misgivings. My choice for best SF movie of the year is The Martian, and I haven’t yet seen Deus Ex Machina or Mad Max: Fury Road (both are on the Netflix queue) – by all accounts, both are excellent.

As for the other categories (besides the fiction), I either have only a couple of longtime favorites (as with Best Artist), or I am simply ignorant (as with Best Graphic Story and Best TV Episode – er, sorry, Dramatic Presentation, Short Form).

And perhaps that’s enough for now – I’ll get into the fiction next time.

A Forgotten SF Anthology: Great Science Fiction Adventures, edited by Larry T. Shaw

A Forgotten SF Anthology: Great Science Fiction Adventures, edited by Larry T. Shaw

A review by Rich Horton

It was once common for SF magazines to occasionally put out anthologies of the best stories from their pages. There was a very long series called The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, and shorter series from Galaxy and Analog. The more obscure magazines were perhaps less likely to explicitly publish a book with their name in the title, as their brand wouldn’t necessarily sell books, but there were many examples of anthologies drawing exclusively from such magazines. This book is arguably an example, though its title does in fact reflect its source magazine.

Science Fiction Adventures was a fairly short-lived digest. It was edited by Larry T. Shaw, the first issue dated December 1956, the last June 1958. There were 12 issues in all. (At the same time Shaw was editing the fine magazine Infinity.) It was preceded by an unrelated magazine that ran between 1952 and 1954, edited by Lester Del Rey. There was also a UK incarnation, that for five issues reprinted stories from the Shaw incarnation of Science Fiction Adventures, but continued for a total of 32 issues between 1958 and 1963. This magazine was edited by John Carnell, and was a companion to New Worlds and Science Fantasy. The Shaw magazine was, naturally, specifically devoted to adventure-oriented SF, and also to longer stories, typically featuring two long novelettes or novellas (billed as “novels”) each issue. Carnell’s incarnation had a similar focus and length mix.

The anthology at hand was published by Lancer Books in 1963, with an Ed Emshwiller cover, and if it’s not necessarily a “Best of”, it is a quite representative selection. The four stories are all long, and all certainly adventure stories. All the authors are quite prominent, though three of them are represented by early work, published before they had made their names.

The TOC is:

“The Starcombers”, by Edmond Hamilton (December 1956, 17500 words)

“Hunt the Space-Witch”, by Robert Silverberg (January 1958, 18000 words)

“The Man from the Big Dark”, by John Brunner (June 1958, 19500 words)

“The World Otalmi Made”, by Harry Harrison (June 1958, 13000 words)

Edmond Hamilton was the veteran of this group, a favorite of SF readers since the 1920s. “The Starcombers” is a rather dark story in which a somewhat unsavory star travelling band, mostly a mix of a couple of families, that makes its living scavenging, finds a nearly dead planet with signs of massive ancient structures. There is a curious deep rift on the planet, and in it they find the remains of a once impressive human civilization. The few devolved survivors offer to trade their high-tech relics for food, but their real goal is betrayal. The main character is a cynical drunk, already disgusted with the way the slatternly wife of the captain is throwing herself at him. But he is forced to attempt to save the captain and others when they are taken by the nasty locals … leading to a desperate rescue attempt, and more betrayal … as I said, quite dark and cynical. Just an OK piece.

“Hunt the Space-Witch” was originally published as by “Ivar Jorgenson” – Silverberg was the most prolific contributor to Science Fiction Adventures, under his own name, as well as “Ivar Jorgenson”, “Calvin M. Knox”, "Ralph Burke", and “Alexander Blade”. Most of his contributions were novellas or even novels, and some ended up as Ace Doubles. He also did some book reviews. This story is a bit better than the Hamilton, if in the end about as dark and cynical. Barsac is a big dumb starship crewman, who comes to the planet Glaurus determined to rescue his blood brother, who missed the ship on their previous stop there. But he soon learns that his friend has joined the Cult of the Witch. Barsac blunders around trying to find him, but runs afoul of the local authorities (some of whom are also cultists), and eventually ends up captured by a circus owner, and works for him for some months. This interlude has some noticeably Vancean moments. Eventually Barsac is able to return to his quest, and eventually find his blood brother, and confront the Witch. There are some colorful passages here, though the plot is never really surprising.

The best of these stories is Brunner’s “The Man From the Big Dark”. It’s still pretty conventional, but it grabbed me. It’s one of three pieces set in the same loose galactic future, eventually collected in the book Interstellar Empire. (The other two are “The Wanton of Argus”, one of Brunner’s first stories, originally published in Two Science Fiction Adventure Books for Summer 1953 as by Killian Houstan Brunner, and later as an Ace Double under the title The Space-Time Juggler; and The Altar of Asconel, a 1965 If serial also published as an Ace Double.) This story opens with a pirate’s starship coming to the planet Klareth, just this side of the “Big Dark”. The pirate disappears before the authorities find a murdered girl on his ship. We then follow the pirate, Terak, who, we learn, is out for revenge against the man really responsible for the girl’s murder, his former boss, Aldur. He is trying to find Janlo, who has been leading the local effort to suppress a rebellion. Terak ships on a ship captained by a beautiful woman, and soon finds himself entranced by her and her world … but still wanting revenge on Aldur, who has plans to take over this world. Nowhere does this story surprise, and in the end it doesn’t make too much sense, but it’s effectively told and I like it.

Finally, the weakest story is “The World Otalmi Made”. It’s about a member of the “Profession”, who has been hired to stop a man named Otalmi from his control of his planet. Otalmi seems to be using some sort of mind control. Our hero, Brek, in the company of a beautiful doctor, accomplishes this, of course, in pure thriller fashion. The SF elements here are not really important, and the story never makes much sense.

All in all, a not inappropriate representation of Science Fiction Adventures. I might have included Thomas N. Scortia’s “Alien Night” or C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Slave” instead of the Harrison, or indeed Algis Budrys' “Yesterday’s Man” or one of a couple of Harlan Ellison novellas. But the book is what the magazine was: adventure-oriented long SF stories, not terribly great but often decent fun.

A (mostly) Forgotten SF Novel: ... And All the Stars a Stage, by James Blish

... And All the Stars a Stage, by James Blish

a review by Rich Horton

James Blish was one of the most influential writers and critics of SF in the midcentury. He was born in 1921, and his first story appeared in 1940 in Super Science Stories, placing him in a remarkable constellation of writers born about the same time who began publishing at the same time as well: Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, and Damon Knight among them. Blish, like all of those writers, was a member of the sometimes controversial fan group the Futurians. His work throughout the ’40s had little impact – perhaps most important were a couple of stories that he reworked later into more significant pieces: “Sunken Universe” (1942, as by “Arthur Merlyn”) and “The Weaknesses of R. V. O. G.” (1949, with Knight). His first novel appeared in 1951 (“Sword of Xota”, in book form as The Warriors of Day), followed very quickly by many more. Many of his most famous stories appear in two series: the Okies stories, of star-traveling cities, began in Astounding with “Bridge” in 1952, and the Pantropy stories, collected as The Seedling Stars, begin with “Sunken Universe”, but took flight with “Surface Tension”, in Galaxy in 1952. His novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo in  1959 – it was expanded from a 1953 If novelette. So 1952/1953 was pretty important for Blish, especially when you add his seminal 1953 short story “Common Time” to the ledger.

He also wrote a great deal of criticism, originally in fanzines, as by “William Atheling Jr.”. I don’t think the pseudonym was ever much hidden – still, Blish did on occasion review his own work, not sparing it: he criticized his 1957 Astounding serial “Get Out of My Sky!” for its abrupt turn to a psionics theme – he accused the author of pandering to editor John W. Campbell’s tics, and I suppose he knew! (It’s quite obvious that something like that happened when you read the story, which starts out wonderfully and falls to silly pieces in the second half.) Blish’s criticism was collected in three books: The Issue at Hand, More Issues at Hand, and The Tale That Wags the God.

Blish was also an early advocate of an SF writers’ organization (which led eventually to the Science Fiction Writers of America). A perhaps less-noted influence was his Star Trek books: he began a long series of “novelettizations” of Star Trek (original series) episodes in 1967 (though the latest books, even though they appeared under his name were written by his wife Judith Ann Lawrence and (some say) her mother). He also wrote the first Star Trek novel aimed at adults, Spock Must Die! (1970).

All in all, a career that certainly would have culminated in a Grand Master award, but alas he died aged only 54, in 1975, of lung cancer. (He was a heavy smoker, and indeed spent some time working for the Tobacco Institute.)

I have, along the way, read nearly his complete novels – omitting only Dr. Mirabilis, Spock Must Die!, and his two collaborations (The Duplicated Man (1953), with Robert A. W. Lowndes; and A Torrent of Faces (1965/1967), with Norman L. Knight.) I’ve also read much of his short fiction. He was an extremely uneven writer – I love his best work (for me, The Seedling Stars, A Case of Conscience, and such short stories as “Common Time”, “A Work of Art”, “Tomb Tapper”, “Beep”, and the late “A Style in Treason”). And much of the rest of his stuff was very enjoyable as well, including Cities in Flight, VOR, and the engaging if silly juvenile Welcome to Mars. But he also wrote some truly dreadful stuff: the paired juveniles The Star Dwellers and Mission to the Heart Stars, the non-SF juvenile The Vanished Jet, The Warriors of Day, and perhaps especially The Night Shapes are each nearly unreadable, and sometimes downright offensive. Only Michael Moorcock among significant SF writers seems to me to show such a puzzling range of quality.

I read … And All the Stars a Stage when I was quite young, probably 14 or 15, in the 1971 Doubleday edition. I remember enjoying it, and being impressed by the notion of a matriarchal society and how it arose (birth control and sexual selection of children, basically), but not much else. So when I got a copy of the June 1960 Amazing Science Fiction, with part 1 of the serial version of the book, I figured I’d reread it in that form. I searched out the July issue, and read both parts. In the process I noticed something interesting: the serial is accompanied by a notice: “This novel will be published in the fall by Signet Books under the title Crab Nebula”. I had never heard of a Blish novel with that title. Had they decided to stick with the original title after all? But I checked the ISFDB: no mention of Crab Nebula, nor any book publication of … and All the Stars a Stage until 1971.

So what happened? I asked around, and Gregory Feeley, first-rate SF writer and critic and an authority on Blish, told me that the book had been commissioned by Truman Talley at Signet, but that Talley didn’t like it and rejected it. Eventually it sold to Doubleday. There was an edition from Faber and Faber in England, and a 1974 Avon paperback. Late in his life Blish wrote an essay, “A Bad Idea Trampled to Death by Ducks”, about the troubled publication history of the book, which was not one of his favorites among his work. (The essay was published in Vector 9 years after Blish’s death.)

I found a copy of the Doubleday edition (formerly the property of the U. S. Army!) to compare with the serial. The copyright page says that a “somewhat abridged version of this novel first appeared in Amazing”, however, I could find no obvious changes in comparing the book and serial, and a quick and dirty word count suggest the two are about the same length (a bit over 50,000 words). Greg Feeley has seen Blish’s manuscript that went to Doubleday, and says it was mostly just the tearsheets from Amazing, with perhaps a few small additions. The title is a bit inconsistently presented: on the cover of the Doubleday edition the ellipsis is omitted, but it's back on the title page, and apparently it's entirely gone in the Avon edition.

So, I’ve gone on and on about Blish, and about the publication history of this novel. What should I say about the novel itself? It’s probably fair to note that it really isn’t, in the end, all that interesting, though to my mind much better than his worst books.

It opens with Jorn Birn, a young man in a matriarchal society, depressed over his status as a drone in a world in which the only real opportunity for a man is to join the harem of a powerful woman. He notices an ad for a mysterious sounding job, and on impulse he decides to apply. He gets the job, after learning that it’s a dangerous one: testing an interstellar spaceship. One of the leaders of the project is a beautiful woman who seems to immediately hate Jorn. We can see where THAT is going, though Blish totally underplays it: much later in the book come the sentences: “Jorn and Ailiss were married the next day. Somehow, there was nothing else to do.”

Soon after he joins the team working to form crews for the spaceships being built, he learns that there is a driving reason for this project: scientists have learned that the Sun is about to go nova. They plan to build a huge armada, but their plans are disarranged when it becomes clear that the Sun will explode much sooner than originally expected. Between the compressed schedule, and the rioting that occurs when the world’s population learns how few people will be able to escape, only a small subset of the originally planned fleet is built, and they just barely escape and head into space.

Here I must make a confession: all along I thought this book was set a couple centuries in the future on Earth. There is no reason in the first half or so to doubt this (except maybe the unlikely notion that our Sun would become a supernova … but was this that well known in 1960? I can’t remember.) But after the armada sets off, we learn that in fact Jorn’s world was much different than Earth (only not really): one of a system of 116 planets orbiting a blue giant (yet with a Moon much resembling our Moon, on very brief description). That fact, along with the originally planned title of the novel, Crab Nebula, pretty much gives away where the book will end.

Anyway, things continue to go poorly on the desperate flight. Some of the other spaceships fail or one reason or another. Others go out of contact as the armada spreads and spreads. Potentially habitable planets are rare. We do get extended episodes exploring two promising planets, both the homes (or once the homes) of fully human people, but both end in utter failure for quite different reasons (interesting but implausible in the first case, less interesting and slightly more plausible in the second case). As society aboard the spaceship declines – it’s not really a generation ship, because Jorn’s people have developed much extended lifespans – it becomes clearer and clearer that any landfall must suffice, and … well, I won’t give away the ending, but it is easy enough to guess in some ways, though there is a bit of a dying fall to Blish’s execution.

It’s an odd exercise. Blish throws away some fairly interesting ideas, such as the “familiars” that most men on Jorn’s planet have become attached to. He seems thoroughly uninterested in the social and personal interactions of the characters, except occasionally to make a point. Structurally there’s a somewhat uneven division in two: the first half about the project to build the starships, the second about their somewhat depressing actual flight. I don’t really think any of Blish’s notions ever cohered into a real novel: the end result is not unreadable, but a very minor part of his overall oeuvre.

Old Bestsellers: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

Old Bestsellers: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

a review by Rich Horton

When I say I'm reviewing an "Old Bestseller", the usual implication is that I'm looking at a book, probably from the first half of the 20th Century, that has met the fate of most books, even bestsellers, and has been forgotten. But sometimes even great novels become bestsellers. Edith Wharton, indisputably a great novelist, had two books end up on Publishers' Weekly's list of the ten bestselling novels of their year: The House of Mirth (1905) was 8th in 1905 and 9th in 1906; while The Age of Innocence (1920), which (somewhat controversially*) won the Pulitzer Prize, was 3rd in 1921.

Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in 1862 to a wealthy New York family. She was raised much in the manner of wealthy young women of her time, plenty of travel, a private education (tutors and governesses), and the expectation of an appropriate marriage. She rebelled to an extent, writing from an early age (she tried a novel at 11, completed a novella when 15, and published a translation of a poem anonymously at 15). She married an older man, Edward ("Teddy") Wharton, when she was 23. The marriage foundered, largely, it appears, because of Teddy's mental illness. They divorced in 1913, but Edith had begun an affair with Morton Fullerton several years earlier. She lived primarily in France from about 1908, and she died in 1937.

Wharton published a few short stories and poems in the '80s and '90s. Aside from a privately printed collection of poems, her first book was non-fiction: The Decoration of Houses, in 1897, which is indeed about interior decoration. Eventually she published quite a number of books of that nature, and also travel books. Her first book length fiction was a novella, The Touchstone, in 1900. Another novella and a full-length novel appeared before The House of Mirth, which was her first major success. Wharton was, obviously, from an extraordinarily privileged background, yet finances were often a difficulty for her, no doubt in part because of her husband's illness and their eventual divorce; also no doubt because her style of life was expensive. Thus, the fact that her books sold well, and that one could get paid quite nicely for magazine publications as well in those days was important.

I wrote in a previous blog post that I sometimes, when trying major writers, shy away from longer works. So it was with Wharton -- many years ago I read her 1911 novella Ethan Frome. And I liked it immensely, though I soon realized it is quite uncharacteristic of her body of work. Ethan Frome has a curious place in her oeuvre -- it was, it seems to me, definitely her most famous book when I was growing up. One assumed, or at least I did, that it was her masterpiece. But of course it is not -- in the most technical sense, that is The House of Mirth, which is her first fully accomplished novel. And there are two more novels that stand head and shoulders above Ethan Frome in the consensus estimation: The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920). For all that I never did try another Wharton novel until now, though I did see the well-regarded 1993 Martin Scorcese film of The Age of Innocence. (The House of Mirth was also made into a movie, in 2000, directed by Terence Davies, starring Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart.)

On my sadly unplanned trips back and forth to my parents' home in Naperville, IL, last month, I was looking for something to read on our iPad (because I can't read my Kindle, or a paper book, in the dark).  Various classic novels are available for free from iBooks, and I lit on The House of Mirth. When we got back home I looked up a print version, eventually settling on a used copy of the Scribner Library of Contemporary Classics trade paper edition, complete with detailed underlining and notes from, one imagines, a college student. Scribner's, by the way, serialized the novel first (in Scribner's Magazine), and also published the first book edition. (For that matter, I have a bound volume of Scribner's Magazine for 1902, which includes some of Wharton's writing on travel and gardens, and also a poem of hers. I had carelessly assumed she was a major writer condescending to publish occasional pieces when I first saw that, but actually this work came quite early in her real career.)

The House of Mirth opens with Lawrence Selden unexpectedly encountering Lily Bart in Grand Central Station. She accompanies him for tea in his quarters (at that time, probably 1895-1905, this was faintly scandalous), and we gather that she and Lawrence are attracted to each other, but that he isn't quite rich enough for her, and anyway perhaps he is a bit shy of marriage. She hints that she has her eyes on Percy Gryce, a very rich young man, also a straitlaced crashing bore. Soon she is heading to the country house of her friend Judy Trenor for a visit, where she expects to bring Percy around.

We soon learn Lily's real situation: she was born into the highest social class, but her father's financial errors and her mother's character faults have left her impoverished, but unable to imagine any life other than to be the wife of a sufficiently rich man of her class. Her parents are dead, and she lives with a fussy old aunt, when she's not staying at her friends' houses, doing little social chores for them as a sort of rent. Lily Bart is amazingly beautiful, but she is 29, having already refused a couple of offers of marriage. She senses on the one hand that she is trained only to be a man's ornamental wife and social director; but she has a certain native intelligence, and taste, and independence, and so she, at the least opportune times, tends to kick up her traces. Which is what happens at the Trenors' house party -- she stands up Percy Gryce in favor of a walk with Lawrence Selden, who has turned up unexpectedly; and before she knows it Gryce is snared by another girl. And Lily, her finances truly strained, and unable or unwilling to ask her aunt for help (in part because one of her issues is gambling debts), has agreed to let Gus Trenor give her some financial "tips" ...

At about this time I realized I was reading something truly special. Part of it is Wharton's prose, which is carefully controlled and perfectly elegant. Part of it is her wit -- this is a tragic novel but at times it is quite comic. Much of it is Wharton's precise view of her characters, from both the inside and the outside. The descriptions are dryly ironic, and wholly believable even as the characters act in ways that we find curious today. I'll content myself with one quote, from later in the novel, Selden criticizing (to himself) Lily's resignation to striving in society: "It was before him again in its completeness -- the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance."

Lily Bart is a remarkable character. In many ways she is reprehensible: she is uneducated, she is scornful of people of other classes, she is complicit in the cynical behavior of her set even though she sees how wrong it is, she is financially careless. You could say she deserves, in a sense, what she gets. But we still root for her, we still hope she can find happiness. Wharton makes us believe in her beauty, and believe that there is a real Lily Bart who deserves that happiness, even as she is contrasted with perhaps her closest friend, plain Gerty Farish, an old maid who is unfailingly loyal, and also charitable and honest and able to live within her limited means.

The novel, from one point of view -- quite a sensible one -- is about a woman trapped by society's rules, and particularly their unfair impact on women, especially single women. But even within those constraints, Lily Bart is something of a special case, for she could have married very well any number of times, and she could have married for love and lived comfortably enough, and she could even have saved herself and gotten a well-deserved revenge on a bad woman ... but was too honorable to do so. In a way, even as she rebels against her class's notions of proper behavior (to an extent), she also obeys them more completely than the more conventionally successful people in her circle. This makes her fall the more moving, even as we can still see that she too is at fault.

Spoilers will follow ...

So Gus Trenor's "investments" give Lily financial freedom for a short while, until she realizes that in fact Trenor had just given her the money, and that he expects a sexual quid pro quo in exchange. She rejects him, and determines to repay him, ironically losing another chance at real intimacy with Selden when he assumes the worst of her relationship with Trenor at the very moment she is rejecting him. Meanwhile Lily is pursued by Simon Rosedale, a Jewish man whose wealth has given him an uncertain entree into society. He hopes on the one hand that a beautiful and socially established wife will ease his way -- on the other hand he truly seems to love Lily. But she cannot love him, nor see an arrangement with him as anything but a crude business contract -- as, really, all her marriage proposals have been, which is probably why she has rejected them all. (The portrayal of Rosedale is the one unpleasant aspect of this book -- it is rather anti-Semitic in tone, for sure, though mitigated in a few ways: for one, it is an accurate (as far as I know) depiction of how people of that society really felt about Jewish people; for two, Wharton seems to recognize that a big part of Rosedale's character and attitudes are formed in reaction to prejudice; for three, most of the rest of New York society gets treated as harshly as Rosedale. But ... but ... there are still some distinctly anti-Semitic passages, especially when Rosedale's character is regarded as characteristic of his "race" -- again, that's no doubt what a socialite of Lily Bart's class would have felt, but it does jar one.)

Lily ends up fleeing to Europe in the company of Bertha Dorset, who wants her to distract her husband while she pursues an affair with a young poet. Lily fulfils her role admirably, and is shocked when Bertha betrays her by falsely accusing her of adultery as a way of getting leverage to prevent her husband from divorcing her. This precipitates Lily's essential banishment from society, which is only exacerbated when Lily returns home to find that her aunt has died and also that she has been disinherited because of her aunt's disgust at the rumors of adultery. The rest of the novel describes Lily's further descent: a couple of attempts at rehabilitation by taking up with people from a rung or two below her on the social ladder, only to have these torpedoed either by Bertha Dorset's vindictiveness or by Lily's own scruples. Things get worse and worse, and when Simon Rosedale offers her a final way out she is tempted, but (wholly justifiable) revenge against Mrs. Dorset is an important aspect of this offer, and even though that would be wholly just it would still be mean in a way Lily can't quite manage, and the end comes, arguably a bit melodramatic but to my mind fully and honestly prepared for, and quite moving. And we are given no surcease ... no one, not Gerty, not Lawrence, ever knows of the proof of Bertha's wickedness, nor of Lily's essential innocence of most of the sins laid at her door.

Really, I loved this novel. I don't feel that I've done it justice ... so I just suggest you read it.

* As for the "controversial" Pulitzer to The Age of Innocence -- apparently the Pulitzer committee wanted to give it to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, but the President of Columbia University overruled them. Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which seems important in itself, but more to the point, I would think that posterity has ruled: Wharton is, to my mind, a more interesting and lasting writer than Lewis, and The Age of Innocence seems -- not having read it, I ought to emphasize! -- intrinsically more interesting than Main Street.