Birthday Review: A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park

Birthday Review: A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park

a review by Rich Horton

Paul Park turns 64 today, and in honor of his birthday, I'm posting this review I did back in 2005 on SFF Net. As it happens, I reviewed the second and third volumes of the series this novel starts for SF Site. Not the last, though.

Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, from 2005, is the beginning of his tetralogy also called A Princess of Roumania. In a way this seems a departure for Park, previously the writer of an audacious SF trilogy, The Starbridge Chronicles; a difficult SF novel, Coelestis, and two very religiously-focussed historical novels, The Gospel of Corax and Three Marys. None of these books (with the arguable exception of his first trilogy) were terribly commercial. Indeed, none were fantasies, though they are hardly traditional SF, nor traditional historical fiction. By contrast A Princess of Roumania is certainly fantasy, and arguably Young Adult fantasy (the Washington Post compares it (not terribly sensibly) to Harry Potter and Oz); and on the whole I would say it has more commercial potential than his previous books. But in so saying I do not mean to say it is less ambitious than his earlier works, or less imaginative -- indeed, it is a very fine novel, and promises to open a fascinating series.

Miranda Popescu is a 15 year old girl in a college town in upstate New York in about the present day. She was adopted from Romania in the chaos following the uprising against Ceausescu. As the novel opens she befriends a lonely one-armed boy, Peter Gross. Her other special friend is a popular girl named Andromeda. Soon they meet a sinister group of teenagers who have just moved to their town, and suddenly their school is set afire, risking Miranda's special keepsakes from Romania: some coins and jewelry, and in particular a remarkable book called The Essential History, which describes world history from an unusual viewpoint.

In a completely different world we meet the Baroness Nicola Ceausescu, formerly a prostitute then a successful actress and dancer, who became the second wife of a much older man. This man was involved in an intrigue which led to the execution of Miranda's father, the exile of her mother to Germany, and the financial ruin of her Aunt, Princess Aegypta Schenk von Schenk, half-German and half a descendant of the White Tyger, Miranda Brancoveanu, who saved Roumania centuries before.

It seems to be Aegypta's hope that Miranda Popescu is the new White Tyger, who will save Roumania from her corrupt current Empress, and from the threat of German invasion. Both Aegypta and Nicola are sorceresses, and Aegypta, we soon gather, has created an artificial world, our world, in which she has hidden Miranda, as well as two loyal retainers, who have been incarnated as Peter and Andromeda.

Nicola has managed to send some people to that world, to find Miranda and bring her back -- both realize that if she is the new White Tyger, control of this teenager will be critical. Nicola, furthermore, is intriguing with a German envoy, thus betraying both her nominal political ally, the Empress, and of course her longtime enemy, the Princess Aegypta.

Nicola's schemes succeed in a limited manner, and Miranda, Peter, and Andromeda all end up in the "real world": our world, and its creating book, having been destroyed. (Apparently.) But they are marooned in the wilds of America, inhabited mainly by savage refugees from earthquake-shattered England. Nicola, however, loses control of her plans, and is forced to turn against her erstwhile German friends, though she does come into possession of a powerful gem, Kepler's Eye, a tourmaline. (It is surely significant that volume II of the series is called The Tourmaline.) She finds herself accused of a murder she didn't commit, while racked with guilt over a murder she did commit. Miranda, in dream contact with Aegypta, a woman she doesn't know, struggles to make her way with Peter, Andromeda, and an obsessed tool of Nicola's, Major Raevsky, to Albany and eventually to a ship to Roumania. Or, she hopes, perhaps back to "our" world. The German Elector of Ratisbon, an illegal sorcerer himself, is trying to find Miranda, and also the tourmaline.

It's a thoroughly interesting novel. In particular, the characters of the villains are wonderfully realized, especially Nicola Ceausescu, who is a certainly a bad person, but at the same time a person with whom we sympathize: and someone who is sometimes on the "right" side. The magical parts are very original, believable (in context), and impressive. There is no real resolution -- this is after all the first of a tetralogy. But I'll be eagerly reading on.

Birthday Review: Theodora Goss stories

Birthday Review: Short Fiction from Theodora Goss

Theodora Goss is one of my favorite SF/F writers, bar none; and especially so if you consider writers of short fiction who began publishing in this millennium. (Add Genevieve Valentine and C. S. E. Cooney to that list, and I note that those are all women without comment.) Today is her birthday, and so here is my compilation of most of the reviews I've done of her work for Locus.

(Locus, April 2002)

I reviewed her first story, "The Rose in Twelve Petals", from Realms of Fantasy, for Locus, in the third monthly column I ever wrote. I am always proud when I realize the potential of a new writer from the beginning -- though the pride belongs to them! Alas, my electronic copy of that review is corrupted, and I can't read it. But here's the excerpt from the Small Beer Press page:

One of the most impressive debuts I can recall. Fairy tale retellings are a dime a dozen, and Sleeping Beauty ones probably as common as any, so this story has to be special to stand out, and special it is.

(Locus, January 2004)

Theodora Goss's "Lily, With Clouds" (Alchemy #1) tells of a woman coming home to her sister's house to die, accompanied by her dead husband's mistress, and her husband's paintings. Mostly it's simply of picture of three woman: the conventional, prudish, sister; the once rebellious dying woman; and the rather odd mistress -- but the ending is just beautiful, an inevitable surprise.

(Locus, May 2004)

In Polyphony 4, Theodora Goss continues to impress with "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm", in which a girl takes violin lessons from a German newly arrived at her Southern town. She learns he has a strange desire -- to make a flying machine and reach the flying city of Orillion. Goss blends a heartfelt depiction of a girl growing up with a lovely portrait of a man's dream, and at the end adds darker strands to her tapestry.

(Locus, September 2005)

Theodora Goss offers "A Statement in the Case" (Realms of Fantasy, August). An old man tells a policeman of his friendship with an apothecary. The apothecary is an immigrant, and he runs an old-fashioned store: one might say "charming". All this changes when he marries. Slowly we learn the apothecary's strange secrets, his sadness, and why the policeman is interested.

(Locus, December 2005)

First, Strange Horizons -- which, however, is no longer exactly "less prominent". But they do feature one of the best stories of the month -- indeed, of the year: Theodora Goss’s "Pip and the Fairies". Philippa’s late mother wrote children’s books about a girl visiting fairyland. Philippa (Pip?) is now a successful actress, and she has bought the house her mother and she lived in, in poverty, while the books were written. These books, lately popular, were based on her childhood -- or were they? Stories she told her mother, or stories her mother made up, or real magical experiences, or some sort of fictional distillation of the problems a single mother and her child faced … Goss intertwines Philippa’s memories of her childhood, her imperfect relationship with her mother, her present day relationship with fans of the book, and passages from her mother’s books. The material is perhaps familiar but the treatment is powerfully affecting.

(Locus, April 2006)

The second issue of Fantasy Magazine has appeared. Disclaimer first -- I contribute short book reviews to this magazine. Even so, I don’t think I am wrong to praise Theodora Goss’s "Lessons With Miss Gray", in which five young women, four close friends and an outsider, take lessons in magic from the title character, who has appeared in other Goss pieces. The girls learn real magic, and they also learn (or we learn) about their characters how these (and their futures) are affected by race, class, and gender. It’s witty and involving and clearheaded -- another triumph for Goss.

(Logorrhea review, Locus, May 2007)

Theodora Goss’s "Singing of Mount Abora" plays with Coleridge instead of Tolkien -- recasting the inspiration of "Kubla Khan" in weaving together a story of an Ancient Chinese woman trying to win a dragon’s hand, a contemporary woman studying Coleridge, and Coleridge himself, in Xanadu of all places.

(Locus, June 2007)

The June Realms of Fantasy closes with a lovely Theodora Goss tale, "Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon", about a Princess who is really a baby found by a childless royal couple in the woods, and her ordinary childhood, and ambitions, and what happens when she finds her real mother. Here again is a story that captivates first -- perhaps it is not especially profound but it is great fun. I thought first of George MacDonald's The Light Princess.

(Locus, December 2007)

And to a true survivor in online SF: Strange Horizons. In October I liked best Theodora Goss’s "Catherine and the Satyr". It’s set in Regency England. Catherine is unhappily married, and has left her husband. The Earl of Aberdeen has a zoo, and the zoo has a satyr. Catherine finds the satyr surprisingly well-educated, and attractive, and so ... but Goss is a subtler writer than that, and the story, in the end, suggests that marriage in a society like Catherine’s could be a cage -- like the satyr’s cage, perhaps, or even like the servitude endured by a servant Catherine unwittingly causes harm to.

(Locus, May 2009)

Apex Online’s March issue is also strong, with a couple of thematically related original stories. ... "The Puma", by Theodora Goss, returns to the famous early exemplar of human/animal chimera stories, with a survivor of the events of Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau confronted by the beautiful puma woman who plays on his guilt to support her efforts to continue Moreau’s work, but with more control ceded to the chimeras.

(Locus, March 2010)

Last year Theodora Goss explored the aftermath of Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau in a fine story called "The Puma". Now, at Strange Horizons in January, she gives us "The Mad Scientist’s Daughter", which features six "daughters" of mad scientists, among them Moreau’s creation Catherine, as well as Rappaccini’s daughter, and a creation of Dr. Frankenstein, and a hitherto unrevealed pair of daughters of Jekyll and Hyde. The story details their lives together, their difficulties with their unique histories and characteristics, and so on, in a very witty and intelligent fashion. [Gee, wouldn't a novel on this subject be nice? :) ]

(Locus, October 2010)

Another online magazine, Apex, unveils a new editor in August, Catherynne M. Valente. Her first issue features a lovely story from Theodora Goss, "Fair Ladies", about Rudi, a rather callow young R/u/r/i/t/a/n/i/a/n Sylvanian man who is compelled by his father to take up with an older woman -- in fact, we soon gather, his father’s old mistress. The oddly alluring woman has a secret, of course, a magical and sad secret. It’s a familiar story, but given particular resonance by the slightly dissonant angle of telling, and by the ominous historical events looming the background -- the rise of the Third Reich.

(Locus, July 2011)

"Pug", by Theodora Goss (Asimov's, July), is set in the background of one of the most famous novels of all time -- readily enough recognized though I’ll not mention which it is. But the title dog (who seems perhaps to have escaped from another novel by the same author!) has a unique characteristic -- he can travel to other worlds, and eventually the heroine of this story, a rather colorless and sickly girl, can follow him. Which perhaps gives her a life otherwise denied her. The story nicely elaborates on the circumstances of its heroine, and is just fun to read for Goss’s prose, and for the pleasure of unpicking the relationship with its source material.

(Locus, September 2012)

Finally, in the August Asimov's, I really liked Theodora Goss's "Beautiful Boys", a short piece about a certain class of young man -- "bad boys" one might call them as well as beautiful, prone to brief affairs with vulnerable women followed by abandonment. It's told by a woman researcher, and she has an explanation for them -- a science fictional one, so that the story becomes both a subtle and slightly sad look at her life, and a somewhat Sturgeonesque bit of Sfnal speculation.

(Locus, January 2014)

And "Blanchefleur", by Theodora Goss (from Paula Guran's anthology Once Upon a Time), is a long and quite traditional but very satisfying tale of a young man, regarded as the village idiot, who instead is part Fairy, and who eventually is summoned to his other family's place, where there seems to be lots of talking cats... and too a variant on the traditional three tasks. This is subversive or post-modern or revisionist, really -- but it's beautifully told and often funny and original and, well, nice.

(Locus, July 2015)

The other story I really liked in the July Lightspeed was "Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", by Theodora Goss, in which a group of post-docs and grad students write about an imaginary country, creating history, religion, culture, etc., from scratch; then somehow find that it really exists. Did they create it? One of them ends up marrying a daughter of the Khan, and that is even stranger, as she has an identical twin who is ignored by everyone (as in Cimmeria, twins have no independent souls), but who follows them everywhere. Very Borgesian, of course, and very fine.

(Locus, January 2017)

More traditional in form, from The Starlit Wood, is "The Other Thea", by Theodora Goss, which takes the central idea of Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Shadow" (that a person might become disconnected from their shadow, which is sort of an other self, an alternate version of them), and makes a new story of it, related a couple of her best earlier stories, "Miss Emily Gray" and "Lessons with Miss Gray". Thea (surely a significant name choice!) has been drifting through life in the months since graduating from Miss Lavender’s School of Witchcraft, and she ends up drifting back to the school, where she is told that she must find her shadow, which had been cut off by her grandmother when she was just a child. So she travels to the Other Country, and, of course, does find her shadow -- or it finds her -- but who says the shadow wants anything to do with her? It’s a beautifully written story, and great fun, but perhaps a bit thin next to the Samatar story, and to my other favorite in the book.

(Locus, May 2017)

The best recent story in Tor.com comes from Theodora Goss. "Come See the Living Dryad" is told by a contemporary woman, Daphne Levitt, a scientist writing about historical "freaks", like the Elephant Man. Her motivation is her great-grandmother, who was an exhibit in the 1880s as "the Living Dryad". In reality, this woman, Daphne Merwin, suffered from Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, a real condition that can lead to branch-like growths on peoples’ skin. Dr. Levitt ends up investigated her great-grandmother’s murder, for which, she learns, a man was falsely convicted. The real story turns on a familiar tale of jealousy and abuse and charlatanage. A moving story, well-framed (and, if truth be told, not really SF or Fantasy, but very much worth reading).

A Late But Little Known Ace Double: Life with Lancelot, by John T. Phillifent/Hunting on Kunderer, by William Barton

Ace Double Reviews, 23: Life With Lancelot, by John T. Phillifent/Hunting on Kunderer, by William Barton (#48245, 1973, $0.95)

a review by Rich Horton

This is one of the last true Ace Doubles, having been published in August of 1973, the last year for the "dos-a-dos" style doubles. It features one author's first novel and only Ace Double. And it features nearly the last novel by one of the most prolific of Ace Double contributors. William Barton's Hunting on Kunderer is the "first novel", a fairly short one at some 34,000 words. John T. Phillifent wrote 16 different Ace Double halves, fourteen under the name "John Rackham", and Life With Lancelot is one of four novels he put out in 1973, the last year he published any novels. It is about 40,000 words long. One interesting note is the cover to Life With Lancelot, which is by Ed Valigursky. Valigursky was an extremely regular cover artist of Ace Double in the first decade of the series, but his last before this one was in 1965. Nice to see him return one time right at the end of the series (and indeed he did another in 1973, for Mack Reynolds' Code Duello). This was also mostly the end of his SF illustrator career, though he continued to do work for places like Popular Mechanics until he retired some time in the 1990s, and he also did some fine art.

(Covers by Harry Borgman and Ed Valigursky)

William Barton has become fairly well known in recent years for a number of reputedly extremely dark and cynical novels, featuring lots of violence and lots of sex (sometimes rather icky sex). He often writes in collaboration with Michael Capobianco. I myself have not read any of his novels, but I have read a number of novellas in places like Asimov's and Sci Fiction, and the novellas are indeed often extremely dark and cynical, and they tend to feature plenty of violence and (sometimes icky) sex. They are also often very good -- in particular I like his two most recent Asimov's novellas: last year's "The Engine of Desire" and this year's "Off on a Starship".

Hunting on Kunderer has some sex, though it's not very icky (a bit maybe), and some violence. It's not what I'd call dark, but it is rather cynical. It's really not very good, though, not even close to as good as his later work -- the writing is at best routine, at worst clumsy, the plotting is perfunctory, the setting a bit ordinary.

Kunderer is a planet apparently consisting largely of jungles, with huge trees, and with a dominant predator much resembling a tyrannosaur. A small group arrives on the starship Wandervogel to take a hunting trip. These include Scott MacLeod, a space navy officer on leave; Uri Baruch, a 300 year old Jewish man who has just been ousted as long-time first minister of the Vinzeth Empire, and who has had his sexual organs restored to him after nearly 300 years as a eunuch; Pashai anke Soring, an alien who has been studying human sexuality; and Maryam, a whore who has been assisting Soring in his researches.

On arrival the four go off into the jungle with a guide named of all things Gilgamesh. Meanwhile, the starship has been sabotaged, and apparently only good luck got them safely to Kunderer. The captain quickly decides that one of the four passengers committed the sabotage, and he engages another guide and follows them in order to interrogate each suspect.

The action consists of a bit of hunting of the tyrannosaurs, a bit of ineffectually questioning by the Captain, a rather more effective investigation by the people repairing the starship, and other niceties such as the alien Soring trying to get Maryam to be seduced by or seduce other passengers in order to advance his scientific studies. There are a few deaths, a solution of sorts to the sabotage mystery, and a curiously upbeat (one might almost say, pasted on) ending.

I can detect traces of the future Barton in this book, but for the most part there is no indication that he would become the writer he did. A weak effort, with a couple of minor interesting touches but mostly not -- forgettable, on the whole.

In 1961 John T. Phillifent published a story called "The Stainless-Steel Knight" in If, under the "John Rackham" name. That story is the first part of the novel Life With Lancelot, which is padded out with two more stories of similar length. As far as I can tell, the two additional stories were not published elsewhere. In this book the three stories are called "Stainless Knight", "Logical Knight", and "Arabian Knight".

All three stories are set on a "Vivarian" planet, consisting of three continents, each a reserve for people living in imitation of a certain historical period. The hero is Lancelot Lake, who is given a back story in which he, a lowly spaceship technician, attempts to save a doomed spaceship, and fails, crashlanding on an alien world. He is posthumously awarded promotion to Prime G, the highest rank in Galactopol. Unfortunately for Galactopol, the aliens have super medical powers, and great interest in humans, and they save Lancelot's life, and give him extra physical strength and an alien companion, called the Shogleet. They can't do much for his brains, though.

Lancelot demands assignments worthy of his position, and as each continent is becoming destabilized -- failing to maintain their historical culture -- he goes to each one in turn. The first is a medieval culture, menaced by the appearance of a "dragon", and Lancelot must vanquish the knight who found the dragon, and then destroy the dragon (which is actually something else, as the reader readily guesses). This he does with the considerable help of the Shogleet, at the same time enjoying himself with several wives and a beautiful maiden who falls in love with him. The second is an Ancient Greek culture which has rejected the Gods, and Lancelot's job is to go down disguised as Apollo, and perform a few miracles to rekindle faith. But he and his lovestruck female technician companion end up in trouble, and the Shogleet must come up with another solution, inspired by a famous Greek comedy. The third culture is Arabian, and it is menaced by a renegade Galactic who is using the high-tech androids, afreets, and so on to rule a fictional Baghdad. Lancelot and a beautiful but sexually repressed fellow agent visit Baghdad disguised as Iskander and the Queen of Sheba, hoping to use the woman agent's charms to distract the bad guy. Unfortunately, the rat doses her with an aphrodisiac. Naturally, Lancelot ends up benefiting from her sudden compulsion for sex, while the Shogleet (with it must be said Lancelot's considerable assistance) again saves the day.

All in all, these are pretty weak stories. The core ideas are hackneyed, and Phillifent does very little new with them. The sex is a bit embarrassing -- the first story has only hints of it, but the later two, presumably written much later, both feature repressed women who fall for the alien-enhanced Lancelot, and who spend most of the story buck naked, and much of it begging for his attention. The plots are rudimentary, solved mainly by the Shogleet's conveniently scaled powers. Lancelot's character shifts a lot, too -- the basic setup is that he is a nebbish, more or less, stupid and way out of his depth and not much physically either. But by the last stories he has become somehow quite a bit more intelligent, and he seems to be rather more a physical specimen (even discounting the alien mods) than originally described.

I'm also a bit puzzled by the use of the Phillifent name. The original story was published as by "John Rackham", and "Rackham" was the name he used for all of his other Ace Doubles save one, and that one, Hierarchies, was originally an Analog serial as by "Phillifent" (which name he generally used only for his Analog stories (and some Man From Uncle tie-ins).)

Old Bestseller Review: The Bright Face of Danger, by Robert Nielson Stephens

Old Bestseller Review: The Bright Face of Danger, by Robert Nielson Stephens

a review by Rich Horton

Back to a true Old Bestseller, though not a top bestseller. But certainly of that ilk.

Robert Nielson Stephens (1867-1906) was a journalist, theatrical agent, playwright and novelist, originally from Pennsylvania, later in New York, and then England, where he died before his 40th birthday. (He had long been ill.) He was a fairly popular writer in his time, and his best known work was a play, a novel, and later a movie, An Enemy to the King (1896). The book at hand, The Bright Face of Danger (1904), is a distant sequel to An Enemy to the King, concerning the son of the hero and heroine of that novel. My edition appears possibly to be a first, from L. C. Page, though it's inscribed "Paul Johnson, Salem Ill, from Tommy. Dec. 25, 1913", which suggests it was a Christmas present in that year. It's in fair to poor condition. It is illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

I have noticed that my reading of historical novels written around the turn of the 20th Century has included a number of novels about 16th and 17th Century France. Here's a summary (note that When Knighthood Was in Flower is primarily about England, with a short segment in France, but an historically significant segment):

1515: When Knighthood Was In Flower, Louis XII

1530: Under the Rose, Francis I

1593: The Helmet of Navarre, Henry IV

1608: The Bright Face of Danger, Henry IV

1630: Under the Red Robe, Louis XIII

(Each title is a link to my review of the novel in question. I should add that An Enemy to the King (which I haven't read) is set in about 1588, during the time of the Three Henries (Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry I of Guise).)


The novel itself is only peripherally about historical matters (and, oddly, one could argue that the faction of the bad guy in the book ends up winning, as Henry IV was assassinated in 1610). It opens with Henri de Launay, a rather bookish young man, deciding that he must set out to Paris to prove his courage and maturity, partly because his bookish ways sometimes excite comment in his fellows, partly because of his admiration for his father, the Sieur de Tournoire, and partly because the girl he fancies he loves has mocked his mustaches as negligible in comparison to one Brignan de Brignan. So he sets out on his way, with his father's somewhat hesitant approval, accompanied by one servant and with some advice from his father's old retainer.

But at his very first stop, he meets another young man, a bit of an annoying braggart, and the two come to words, and then to a duel. Henri wins (naturally, or we wouldn't have much of a book!) and on the person of the dead man discovers a letter -- a plea for help from a woman who says "come at once, my life and honour depend on you". Henri decides he must try to find this lady and offer what help he can, so he sends his servant home to beg his father to negotiate a pardon for him (for the dueling death) from the King, and Henri sets on alone.

He manages, partly by happenstance, to discover who and where the lady in question is. She is the young wife of an old man, the Count de Lavardin. It seems the Count is insanely jealous of his wife (whom he married from a convent), and he must have decided that she had cuckolded him with the man Henri has killed. Fortuitously, Henri meets another man trying to get into the Chateua de Lavardin, and the two arrange a scheme: the Count is known to be a chess fanatic. They will masquerade as chess players, hoping to get an invitation to the Chateau.

Of course this all works. Henri's new friend is the better chess player, and he manages to beat the Count. Meanwhile, Henri wanders the Chateau, and ends up meeting the Count's beautiful wife, and her resourceful maid, Mathilde. It is quickly clear that the Countess, a devout Catholic (Henri is a Huguenot), is completely faithful to her husband, not because she loves him (he is rather a monster), but because of her marriage vows. But as the man Henri killed is not available to clear her name, she is likely to be severely punished. And indeed Henri will likely engender further jealousy from her husband, especially as his evil boon companion, the Captain de Ferragant, seems insistent on fostering such feelings in the Count. (De Ferragant either has designs of his own on the Countess, or perhaps he is himself jealous of her.)

So we can see where this is going. Henri of course is smitten with the Countess, who returns his feelings but will not betray her vows. This does Henri no good, as he is soon imprisoned by the Count, and threatened with death. Henri manages to discover evidence that the Count is plotting against the King (which explains the mission of his erstwhile chessplaying friend, who has disappeared). The magnificent Mathilde, and her local boyfriend, offer some daring help to allow Henri to escape -- but when the Countess is imprisoned herself, he must try to rescue her. And soon he is recaptured, and about to be executed ... when a sort of deus ex machina (though not really -- it is reasonably well explained) saves the day.

It's fun stuff, light of course, implausible, but I liked it. It must be said that the Countess comes off as a bit of a milquetoast -- her maid Mathilde seems the better woman! Indeed, Henri, while certainly proving his bravery -- kind of messes things up himself. Though he does end up with the mustaches of Brignan de Brignan!

A John Brunner Ace Double: The Repairmen of Cyclops/Enigma from Tantalus

Ace Double Reviews, 50: The Repairmen of Cyclops, by John Brunner/Enigma From Tantalus, by John Brunner (#G-115, 1965, $0.45)

Today would have been John Brunner's 84th birthday. He was one of my favorite writers of Ace Doubles, so in his memory, how about a repost of an Ace Double review I did of two of his novels back to back.

More John Brunner! These two novels were both serialized in Cele Goldsmith's magazines, Enigma From Tantalus in Amazing, October and November 1964, and The Repairmen of Cyclops in Fantastic, January and February 1965. Enigma from Tantalus is about 31,000 words, The Repairmen of Cyclops about 45,000 words.

(Covers by John Schoenherr and Jack Gaughan)

The shorter novel, Enigma From Tantalus, is set on a planet called (not surprisingly!) Tantalus. A group of scientists is studying the one intelligent inhabitant of the planet, a distributed mind. This mind uses telepathy to control its components. It breeds/evolves components for various functions -- notably, since the arrival of humans, who brought the potential of mining for metals to its attention, it has begun to breed mining creatures. Despite all their efforts, scientists have not been able to directly communicate with the creature, or to understand its telepathy, despite bringing humans thought to have telepathic potential to the planet.

One such human has, in view of his annoying personality, just been sent back to Earth, in a specially diverted spaceship. After the ship has gone, the scientists discover that one human has become part of the Tantalan's waste, and they jump to the conclusion that the Tantalan has bred a human replica to send to Earth -- for what purpose they cannot guess. The spaceship is arrested in Earth orbit, and one of the Masters of Earth, highly intelligent and imaginative people, goes up to the ship to interview the motley bunch of passengers and decide which one is the replica.

Brunner throws in some cute ideas, though they tend to be a bit half-baked. He considers the nature of a future Earth in which all major decisions are ceded to machines -- by implication, humans themselves are almost part of a distributed intelligence like the Tantalan, under control of machines. The basic mystery is not terribly interesting, nor solve all that brilliantly, though there is a beautiful sting in the tail of the story. On balance, I would say that this would have made a pretty good novelette at some ten or fifteen thousand words, but at thirty thousand it seems padded.

The Repairmen of Cyclops is one of three Brunner novels about the Zarathustra Refugee Planets. These are planets colonized by humans fleeing the nova of Zarathustra's star, far in the future after some sort of Galactic society has been established. 21 such planets have been discovered by the human Galactic society. Interactions with those planets are kept to a minimum, however -- it is felt that allowing them to develop on their own is preferable from the point of view of encouraging vibrant new cultures and ideas. The flipside of course is that many people, especially on the more primitive of these worlds, live perhaps unnecessary lives of poverty and misery.

Cyclops is not a ZRP, but (in a previous novel) it was involved in an underhanded scheme to harvest nuclear material from one of the ZRPs. The government of Cyclops, led by the authoritarian woman Alura Quisp, now favors a policy of encouraging Galactic intervention in the ZRPs, ostensibly to uplift their inhabitants to Galactic civilization. This novel opens with Quisp's lover hunting a wolfshark, and losing a leg in the process. He is rescued by a local fisherman, and taken to the nearest hospital, which happens to be run by the Galactic Patrol, or Corps, instead of Cyclops. The Patrol has much better facilities, and they discover that the leg the wolfshark chewed off wasn't the man's own leg.

Maddalena Santos is a Patrol member visiting her old boss at the base on Cyclops. She is bored after spending 20 years not interfering on a primitive planet. So she gladly gets involved in the mystery of the anomalous leg. Also involved are her boss, and the fisherman, really a boy, who rescued the shark hunter. We quickly gather what's really going on -- lacking regeneration tech, a doctor on Cyclops has instead been repairing patients with parts taken from people kidnapped from yet another ZRP. It is up to Maddalena and the others to stop these people -- a job complicated by the aging Alura Quisp's desire for a new young body, and by her willingness to take extreme political steps to interfere with the Corps.

I thought the story lots of fun, though, as with so many from this period, it sets up the situation rather nicely, then rushes way to swiftly to a conclusion. I still quite liked it, and I intend to seek out the other ZRP stories. They have a somewhat complicated history: the first, Secret Agent of Terra (1962), was republished in revised form as The Avengers of Carrig in 1969; and the second, Castaways' World (1963), was revised as Polymath in 1974. All three (with The Repairmen of Cyclops also apparently revised, though lightly, and not retitled) came out in a UK omnibus in 1989 as Victims of the Nova.

Birthday Review: With the Lightnings, by David Drake

Birthday Review: With the Lightnings, by David Drake

On the occasion of David Drake's birthday, here's my review of the first of his Leary/Mundy novels, which I have found very enjoyable.

David Drake's With the Lightnings, from 1998, is the first of a space opera series featuring Lieutenant Daniel Leary of the Republic of Cinnabar navy. As far as I can tell there have been two further books (Lt. Leary Commanding and The Far Side of the Stars) with a fourth in the series, Some Golden Harbor, due this year. [Many more have followed.] The model here is clearly naval adventure fiction resembling Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, or perhaps C. S. Forester's Hornblower series. I can't tell if the correspondences with Hornblower might not be closer than with O'Brian, but there are definitely points of comparison with the Aubrey/Maturin books.

Daniel Leary is a junior lieutenant from a powerful family on the planet Cinnabar, leader of a group of human-colonized worlds. His father is one of the leading politicians on Cinnabar, but Daniel and his father are not on speaking terms. Leary is assigned to a small diplomatic mission to the independent planet Kostroma, which has historically been neutral but favoring Cinnabar in an ongoing rivalry with a fairly evil seeming group of worlds, the Alliance. A new Elector has taken over on Kostroma, and it's necessary to make sure the Alliance doesn't sway this Elector's opinions.

Leary has an interest in natural history (thus Drake takes a "Maturin" characteristic and transfers it to his "Aubrey"-analog), and he makes his way to the Elector's Library. This library is run by Adele Mundy, who has spent 15 years or so in Alliance space learning to be a great librarian. (Er, information retrieval specialist.) But Adele is actually part of a once influential Cinnabar family, the Mundys of Chatsworth, most of whom were brutally murdered when they were accused of treason. The accusations were made by ... Corder Leary, Daniel's father. (It seems that the accusations were correct to an extent -- some of the Mundys were traitors, though not Adele, but the resulting punishment, murdering everyone connected with the family including Adele's 10 year old sister, was excessive.) Adele, basically apolitical, survived by virtue of being away in Alliance space. But when Adele realizes who Daniel is, she insults him gravely. Daniel's only recourse, he feels, is to fight a duel, but he finds a graceful way out of this and the two become friends of a sort.

But then, after a very long time setting things in place, all heck breaks loose. An Alliance spy has planned a coup, and the Elector is overthrown by a man in league with the Alliance. Most of the diplomats are summarily murdered, but Daniel escapes, along with a crew of "sailors" he has assigned to make shelves for Adele's library. And of course, Adele, a crack shot and a great hacker too, comes along.

There follows a series of hair-raising adventures, both on surface ships and space ships. Daniel Leary is shown (surprise!) to have brilliant leadership capabilities, while Adele proves a very resourceful communications officer type. (She seems well placed to take the Maturin role of non-Naval sidekick who will have a secret job as a spy on future missions.) And in the end Daniel more or less single-handedly (well, double-handedly with Adele, and also with the help of his 20 or so sailors) takes over a space ship and saves the day against amazing odds.

So, yes, it's basically pulp, but in the best way. The main characters are impossibly brilliant. The bad guys do some sneering. There are class assumptions, and servant/master relationship assumptions, that I have a hard time swallowing. The whole thing is pretty implausible. I know all that -- but I still enjoyed it immensely. It's just nice light fun. The main characters are engaging and easy to root for. (And so far as I can tell not destined for each other. (Adele is about a decade older than Daniel, and seems to be not interested in romantic relationships of any sort, while Daniel is very interested in short-term (i.e. one night) romantic relationships with girls who are much prettier than Adele.))

(I note that the cover of my 1999 Baen paperback has a Publisher's Weekly quote that refers to "Cassian and Mundy" -- I wonder if Leary's name wasn't Cassian in a prepublication version of the book. There is no Cassian in the book as published.)

Birthday Review: Corrupting Dr. Nice, by John Kessel

Corrupting Dr. Nice, by John Kessel

a review by Rich Horton

Today is John Kessel's birthday, and in his honor I'm reposting this review I did long ago of his novel Corrupting Dr. Nice. It was posted on SF Reader.

A cheap answer to the question "When did I know I would like Corrupting Dr. Nice?" would be to say "When I saw the name John Kessel on the cover." After all, I consider Kessel’s first solo novel, Good News from Outer Space, to be one of the best (and oddly neglected) SF novels of the past decade, and stories such as "Not Responsible! Park and Lock It!", "Another Orphan", "The Big Dream", "The Pure Product", "Buddha Nostril Bird" and "The Miracle of Ivar Avenue", among others, are part of a remarkable, memorable, corpus of short fiction. But to be fair, I really knew I’d like Dr. Nice when Kessel dropped in a brief "explanation" of the multiple universes which result from time travellers interfering with the past: it seems that there are a finite number of "moment universes" originating one each 1/137.04 second, 137.04 being the "fine structure constant".

This may mean no more than that I have a Physics degree, and that I’ve always thought that the fine structure constant is a really cool number. But I suspect it also reflects Kessel’s sure touch in giving his SF premise a plausible-sounding (though actually nonsensical) underpinning, even though we don’t really believe in the premise. This sort of thing is one marker, for me, of a "real" SF novel, even if it is, as in this case, a screwball comedy in which the extrapolative element is not central to the theme of the story.

Kessel’s most familiar mode, it seems to me, is satire, often quite savage, as in "The Pure Product" or the well-known Good News outtake "Mrs. Shummel Exits a Winner", but he can also wax lyrical, and passionate (see "Invaders" or "Buffalo", for instance). And lately he has shown a distinct flair for out-and-out comedy, as in his explicit Preston Sturges hommage from 1996, "The Miracle of Ivar Avenue". Corrupting Dr. Nice is in this latter mode, a screwball comedy, also dedicated to Sturges (as well as a host of other screwball directors). It is quite successful on those terms, as well as being successful as SF, with a well-expressed core message (over-simplified, that people in the past are still real people) which is resolved in a satisfactory manner.

The story opens by introducing August and Genevieve Faison, a father-daughter team of time traveling con artists. They have just completed a successful scan in revolutionary Paris, and are escaping into the past, when the canonical "meet-cute" occurs, as the very rich Paleontologist Owen Vannice (nicknamed "Dr. Nice") literally stumbles out of a time-machine in Jerusalem, 41 C.E., and into the arms of Genevieve. Owen is transporting a baby apatosaurus (echoes of Bringing Up Baby strictly intentional, I trust) back to his present (2062), but time travel equipment problems strand everyone for a while in 41.

An appropriately wacky plot ensues, involving August’s plan to steal the apatosaurus, Owen and Genevieve falling in love, and a plot involving Simon the Zealot and a band of Hebrew revolutionaries trying to expel the time travelers. All these threads collide nicely, various disasters occur, and the main action winds up with a courtroom scene featuring two historical heavy-hitters (to say the least).

The novel is very entertaining, a fast and funny read, yet with a core of serious thought about the exploitation of the people in the past by those of the future. The characters are well-realized, particularly Owen and his AI security implant Bill, Genevieve, and Simon the zealot (and his son). The resolution to the plot threads are satisfactory, and honest, though the courtroom scene may have gone a bit over the top. The weaknesses of the novel are to some extent endemic to the screwball comedy form: the characters are well-enough realized that their motivations for the acts that propel the plot sometimes seem thin (and Owen and Genevieve don’t quite convince me as a likely pair: this in particular seems common in screwball comedies), also, things move so fast that not everything quite makes sense. I could quibble, for instance, about some holes in the time-travel setup: though as I said, Kessel talks a good enough game to let us ignore these while reading. I must say, though, that these quibbles and weaknesses are basically excused by the constraints of the form Kessel is working in (that is, screwball comedy). Things aren’t necessarily supposed to make sense.

In summary, highly recommended. A first-rate comedy, and a fine SF novel to boot.