A Forgotten SF Novel: Where I Wasn't Going (aka Challenge the Hellmaker), by Walt and Leigh Richmond

Where I Wasn't Going (aka Challenge the Hellmaker), by Walt and Leigh Richmond

A review by Rich Horton

I posted a review of Walt and Leigh Richmond's Ace Double Gallagher's Glacier/Positive Charge back in April on the anniversary of Leigh's birth. Today would have been Walt's 96th birthday, so so here's a review of the only thing else I've read by them, an Analog serial.

They were a husband and wife SF writing team, who wrote mostly for Analog in the 1960s: about a dozen short stories between 1961 and 1973, of which only one appeared in another magazine, If. They also wrote five novels for Ace. Three of these were parts of Ace Doubles.

It would be fair to say that they were "late John Campbell" writers, who really couldn't sell to anybody else (except Don Wollheim). And it would be fair to say, based on what I've read, that this was on merit -- they were pretty bad, luckily for them bad in ways that appealed to the idiosyncratic and often annoying tastes of John Campbell in the 60s. Some of the novels were republished by Ace in the 1970s as revised by Leigh after Walt's death.

There is a rather amusing story about their method of collaboration. I've seen this independently attested by several people who met them at the Milford workshops in the mid-60s. Apparently, Walt would sit in his chair and telepathically transmit story ideas to Leigh while she typed. I'll go way out on a limb and say that I personally think Leigh Richmond is the sole author of all these stories, with her husband's name attached for any of a number of possible reasons. (It may well be that the scientific (or pseudo-scientific) ideas behind the stories came out of mutual discussions, mind you.) Leigh was 11 years the elder, by the way, though Walt died in 1977, only 55 years old. (I suppose one might adduce that date as evidence that the collaboration story was true: after all, their last novel was published in 1977, with the 1979 Phase Two being an expansion of a 1969 Ace Double half called Phoenix Ship.) Leigh died in 1996, age 85.

Leigh published one other story without Walt, though that was also a collaboration: "There is a Tide", with R. C. FitzPatrick, in the January 1968 Analog, and then one much later novel, Blindsided, with Dick Richmond-Donahue, her second husband, with her name given as Leigh Richmond-Donahue, so I assume Dick was her second husband. That book came out in 1993 from the obscure publisher Interdimensional Sciences. In 1992 she also published (as by Leigh Richmond Donahue) a (pseudo-?) scientific paper called Field Effect: The Pi Phase of Physics, through the Centric Foundation, which she and Walt had founded, and which seemed devoted to very Campbellian crackpottery. (This foundation was based in Maggie Valley, NC, a town in the Appalachians which as it happens I've visited.)

(Cover by John Schoenherr)

I had bought a few of the early '60s bedsheet-sized Analogs, and I ended up with both parts of the serial "Where I Wasn't Going", from October and November 1963. This was later revised and published as Challenge the Hellmaker in the little-regarded second series of Ace Specials, in 1976.

"Where I Wasn't Going" is set on a major UN project, a space station. The station is just becoming operational. The hero is an American Indian, Mike Blackhawk. The villain is a straight-arrow American military type. The heroes allies include a Russian woman, a black woman, a Chinese man, and various other ethnic types. (And they are mostly portrayed as pure types, though the black woman is, I thought, fairly well and sympathetically described.) In that way it is somewhat non-Campbellian, but otherwise it's pretty pure Campbell.

(Cover artist uncredited, Vincent Di
Fate perhaps?)

As the station comes online, a plot is put into motion by the military types to take over. It seems that the UN has decided that a space station is too powerful not to control, and not to use to control and regiment humanity even more closely. But fortunately at the same time, and by sheer accident, the Chinese scientist invents a space drive, based on some incredibly hokey "physics". (If I read it right, and I admit I may not have, it worked by aligning all the electrons and protons so that the charges were in the same direction, and thus it would be pulled "North". In Earth orbit! So that North, in terms of a magnetic field, wouldn't seem to have much meaning.) Using the space drive, and plenty of derring do, the heroes manage to escape, and to set the stage for humanity to be free to explore new frontiers. But not before casually (though, it must be said, by accident) using a laser to burn a hole through the Greenland glacier and destroy Thule, killing hundreds. (Luckily, we later find, they were all in league with the bad guys, so that's OK.)

Needless to say, it's pretty bad. I haven't read the expanded later version, Challenge the Hellmaker, so I can't say if it's improved or changed in any way.

Birthday Review: Absolute Uncertainty, by Lucy Sussex (plus additional reviews)

 Today is Lucy Sussex' birthday, and in her honor I have posted this brief review I did of her short 2006 collection Absolute Uncertainty, followed by three short extracts from my Locus column reviewing her short fiction.

Absolute Uncertainty, by Lucy Sussex (Aqueduct Press, 1-933500-06-9, $9, 148pp tpb) April 2006.

A review by Rich Horton (from Locus, September 2006)

This collection from Australian writer Lucy Sussex is one of an intriguing series of short books from Aqueduct Press collectively called Conversation Pieces: brief books engaged in a “conversation” with feminist SF issues, including short fiction, essays, original and reprinted novellas and short novels, even a long narrative poem. Absolute Uncertainty is a collection of short stories dating as far back as 1994 and including some from 2006. The stories cover quite a range: some SF, some fantasy, some that could be called horror. “Absolute Uncertainty” is one of the better known, about a sort of virtual reality review of Werner Heisenberg’s life, particularly his controversial association with the Nazis, and his attempt to develop for Germany an atomic bomb. The new stories include “A Sentimental, Sordid, Education”, about a young man’s ambiguous sexual initiation, and an AI’s research into the wellsprings of creativity; “A Small Star of Cold”, a bittersweet ghost story about a much-loved “party facilitator”; and “Duchess”, a clever story about what seems to be the return of the notorious 17th Century woman Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, to the present day to comment (and blog) about fashion. “Kay and Phil” is a moving story imagining an encounter between Philip Dick and Kay Burdekin, a feminist novelist who wrote a spooky novel imagining the world after a Nazi victory, Swastika Night: possible source material for The Man in the High Castle. “Frozen Charlottes” concerns a couple rehabbing and old home who find some dolls that seem linked to a horrifying historical tale of a serial killer of poor children. And “Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies” is a retelling of the real history behind the Australian song “Waltzing Matilda”, from a rather different point-of-view. The collection is capped with an interview with Sussex, conducted by Maureen Kincaid Speller. Fine stuff all around.

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Here are three more short extracts from my Locus columns reviewing additional stories by Lucy Sussex:

Locus, March 2005

Some real neat stuff at Sci Fiction in February. It opens with Lucy Sussex's "Matricide", about a woman who locates and sells unusual objects. Her occasional boyfriend finds a strange doll, and two of her clients want to buy it, but he won't sell to them. She's also dealing with a difficult pregnancy – and she's unready or afraid of commitment. Then the disappointed clients take rather sinister steps to retaliate.

Locus, December 2007

More online news … Two interesting new publications originate in Australia, both under the aegis (at least in part) of Alisa Krasnostein. New Ceres is a shared world project. The planet New Ceres is artificially maintained at an 18th Century tech level. There are hints in the two issues so far that this is a controversial aspect of their society, and that changes may be coming. My favorite stories so far, however, have been a couple of mysteries about an eccentric high-society woman, La Duchesse, and her secretary, Pepin, who has a secret of his own. In Lucy Sussex’s “Mist and Murder” (from issue 2) they investigate a potential haunting at the house of a man whose wife left him some time previously. The plot is clever enough (based on an early Australian story) but it is the characters La Duchesse and Pepin who make it work and who bid fair to return for many interesting adventures.

Locus, May 2008

My favorites in the Australian anthology 2012 were “Apocalypse Rules, OK?” by Lucy Sussex, very amusing stuff about the real movers behind the various idiocies humans get up to

Birthday Review: Stories of John Crowley

Birthday Review: Stories of John Crowley

John Crowley, with Gene Wolfe my favorite living SF writer, turns 76 today. My favorite of his novels is Engine Summer (1979), and his novel from last year, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, is of similar quality. Indeed, his first novel, The Deep, which I discovered in the Doubleday hardcover edition at my local library around when it first appeared in 1975, is remarkable and original and strange. He may be best known for the atmospheric fantasy Little, Big (1981), and for the Aegypt sequence of four novels.

He has also written some of the most wonderful short fiction of the past four decades. Among my favorites are such stories as "Novelty", "Snow", "Great Work of Time", "Gone", and "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines", but really it is all wholly worth your time. As recently as this year he won an Edgar Award for "Spring Break" (which is SF, by the way, though the ISFDB doesn't know that). He has also won the World Fantasy Award thrice, for Little, Big, "Great Work of Time", and Life Achievement.

I've compiled a list of things I've written, some in Locus, others elsewhere or new to this blog, about his short fiction. It's weighted, naturally, towards more recent stuff. Let's begin with links to my earlier posts about his novels Engine Summer and Ka:

Review of Engine Summer;

Review of Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr;

Here then is my compilation of what I've written about some of John Crowley's short fiction:

Review of his 1985 story "Snow"

One of my favorite John Crowley short stories is "Snow", first published in Omni in 1985. I reread it today. It's told by a man who had married Georgie, a rich and somewhat older woman for her money, and then fallen in love with her. Her first husband (source of all that money) had bought a "Wasp", a drone of some sort that followed her everywhere, recording her life. Sounds creepy, but the intent is not surveillance, but a record, to only be accessed after death. The couple separates, but never divorces, and after Georgie's death, the narrator inherits the right to view her life history. But when he does so, he learns that the access is only random. Worse, over time it degrades -- the images have "snow" (that's not the only use of snow imagery in the story). And it degrades in other ways. It's a really moving story, and a tremendous meditation on the nature of memory -- personal memory, and historical memory -- and besides that a fine character study, and just a beautifully written piece.

SFF Net post on the best stories of 1996

I thought the best short story of the year was "Gone" (F&SF, September) by John Crowley, a fable-like story about aliens who send some people odd little helpers. The protagonist is a divorced woman who seems to need to learn trust. A strange, really moving, story. [This story went on to win the Locus Award for Best Short Story.]

Locus, February 2003

The best story in the book (Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists), perhaps the best new story I've read this year, is John Crowley's novella "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines". I should warn readers that this story is not remotely SF. But it is quite wonderful, about a boy and a girl who become friends while attending a Shakespeare festival in rural Indiana in 1959; and the curious way in which their lives remain linked. Mix some quite gorgeous prose with a mélange of such features as the Baconian heresy, photography, stagecraft, and an affecting and tragic love story – the result is simply wonderful.

Locus review of Ellen Datlow's Naked City

And John Crowley’s “And Go Like This” is a delightful fantasia on an idea of Buckminster Fuller's – that the entire population of the world could fit in New York City.

Locus, October 2017

John Crowley is the latest author featured in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors chapbook series, with Totalitopia. The original story here is “This is Our Town”, told by a girl who grew up in Timber Town, which, she tells us, can be found in a book called This is Our Town, part of the Faith and Freedom series of readers for 4th and 5th grade Catholic students. The story concerns faith, and loss of faith, and miracles, and guardian angels, and problematic family members – it’s a John Crowley story, which is really all the recommendation required.

Locus, March 2018

New Haven Noir is one of a very long series of original anthologies of crime fiction, each set in a specific place. The stories aren’t normally SF, but one is, this time: John Crowley’s “Spring Break” (which is currently on the short list for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story [it won]). It’s set a couple of decades in the future, when it seems universities are essentially virtual. As are books! The narrator goes on a “Spring Break”, to a real physical college (Yale, of course). And he encounters a real physical library, with real physical books. And a librarian, who has his own feelings about students who don’t read real books. Much of the charm in the story (which does feature a crime, but not one that is all that interestingly solved) is in the telling, in a convincing future slang – as well as the sort of behind the scenes meditation on the changing place of books in our culture.

Locus, December 2018

(This issue has just appeared. If you enjoy Locus, please consider subscribing, or visit the website and consider donating or supporting the magazine on Patreon.)

Gardner Dozois’ final (I presume) original anthology, The Book of Magic, is here, and it lives up to the high standards set by his previous work. The best work includes “Flint and Mirror”, by John Crowley, framed as notes for a novel by Fellowes Kraft (a character from his Aegypt sequence). The story concerns Hugh O’Neill, heir to the throne of Ulster, and his upbringing first in Ireland, and then in England (for political reasons), where he meets the alchemist Dr. John Dee; and find himself set between two enemies (and their magic): the “old ones” in Ireland, and the Queen of England.

Birthday Review: Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton

A review by Rich Horton

My friend Jo Walton turns 54 today. We've known each other online since the halcyon days of the Usenet newsgroups rec.art.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.composition back in the late '90s, and in person since Chicon in 2012. Recently I was fortunate to visit her in her town, Montreal, when she hosted a wonderful convention, Scintillation. I was thrilled to able to follow her evolution from an aspiring writer to a published writer to a winner of multiple awards, and I've reprinted some of her short fiction in my Best of the Year volumes.

Besides her best known novels -- the Hugo winner Among Others, the scary alternate history Small Change trilogy, beginning with Farthing, about a fascist England at the time of the Second World War, and her philosophical Thessaly trilogy about a project to create a city based on Plato's Republic -- I really like two of her lesser known novels: the World Fantasy Award winner Tooth and Claw; and the Mythopoeic Award winner Lifelode. I haven't written about Lifelode, but here's what I wrote about Tooth and Claw some time ago.

Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton's latest novel, is something quite different than her first three -- it is a fantasy set in a world in which dragons are real. And its plot is based on Anthony Trollope -- specifically Framley Parsonage. With the details of dragon physiology and culture cleverly molded to fit the Trollopian view of Victorian England.

One lack in Walton's first novels is wit, and any sense of lightness. To be sure the novels are all to an extent tragic in outlook. At the same time, though, Walton seems so immersed in her imagined world that she doesn't want to play with it at all -- the books are quite earnest in tone, often a bit too earnest, or even ponderous. But those who are familiar with Jo's Usenet postings (though alas of late she has abandoned Usenet for the Livejournal world) know that she can be very witty. (See her "Calamity Jane Austin" page for example.) Tooth and Claw, happily, is abundantly witty.

The novel opens as the old dragon Bon Agornin is dying. His son Penn, a clergydragon, hears his confession -- which is controversial according to Penn's religion. (It harks of the Old Religion -- setting up a conflict analogous to Victorian Era attitudes of Anglicanism towards Catholicism (and possibly a bit towards Methodism and other dissenting sects).) Bon's confession includes a shameful secret about his rise from a poor dragon to wealth and relative social standing. Then Bon dies, and his body is divided according to tradition, with his heirs each eating a portion. It seems that dragon meat is magically useful to dragons, allowing them to grow and thrive. However, against Bon's apparent wishes, his son-in-law, the Illustrious Daverak (equivalent to perhaps an Earl?), takes a large portion for himself and for his dragonets. This enrages Penn and his younger sisters and brother, and sets in play the main motivating force of the plot -- a lawsuit that Penn's brother will bring against Daverak.

Bon Agornin's children are the already mentioned Penn, Daverak's wife Berend, another son, Avan, who is establishing himself a position in the Civil Service, and two maiden daughters, Selendra and Haner. Penn has a living with a very high ranking dragon family, the Benandis. He is able to take in one sister, Selendra; but Haner must go live with the unpleasant Daverak. Daverak's bad nature consists of such things as abusing his traditional right to cull weaker dragons (for their meat), forcing his wife to get pregnant too often -- which can fatally weaken a female dragon, and mistreating his servants. This then is Haner's problem. Selendra's conflict is that her virtue is compromised by an oily clergydragon -- leaving it possible that she will not be able to get pregnant. Then it seems that the young Exalted Benandi (a Marquis?) is falling for her -- very much against the wishes of his stuck-up dowager mother. And Avan, back in the capitol city, has a live-in lover who has a couple of important and dangerous secrets of her own.

It all works out with the precision unwinding of the plot of a Victorian novel -- and in quite satisfying fashion. The real delights of the novel are the affectionately portrayed characters, the great fun Walton has mapping dragon physiology to her plot needs, and the wit. And small things like the offhand revelation of the origin of the name Yarge, which applies to the soft-skinned bipeds with whom the dragons have historically warred. I enjoyed Tooth and Claw as much as any novel I've read recently. It won the World Fantasy Award -- an award I am happy to endorse.

Birthday Review: Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery

Birthday Review: Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery

a review by Rich Horton

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born November 30, 1874, on Prince Edward Island, and died in 1942. She is of course best known for her series of novels about Anne Shirley, an orphan girl living on Prince Edward Island, which follow her through her life. (Montgomery herself was almost an orphan.) I read those aloud to my daughter starting in 1998, and in memory of Montgomery's birth date I have posted the very brief capsule reviews I did of most of the Anne of Green Gables stories back then, as well as of one other short novel, Kilmeny of the Orchard.

Via Wikipedia, I just learned something interesting about the genesis of Anne in Lucy Montgomery's mind. She saw a particular photograph of the model/actress Evelyn Nesbit, and used that photograph for her conception of Anne Shirley's looks, and of her "youthful idealism and spirituality". Let's just say that, if you look up Evelyn Nesbit's rather sad (and shocking) personal life (which has come up before on this blog), I think you'll be surprised at her association with a character like Anne Shirly.

As a teen I never read the Green Gables stories of Lucy Montgomery.  The reason is obvious enough: they are "girl" stories.  But I did feel, somehow, that I ought to be familiar with them.  Lately [in 1998] I've been reading long books aloud to my 9-year old daughter, Melissa.  This month I decided to try Anne of Green Gables.  As many of you no doubt know, it's about Anne Shirley, an 11-year old orphan, who is adopted by the sixtyish brother and sister pair of Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who wanted a boy to help on the farm but got a girl by mistake.  They live at the farm of Green Gables, in Avonlea on the North Coast of Canada's tiny province Prince Edward Island.  Anne is extremely talkative, extremely imaginative, extremely smart, and somewhat prone to getting in trouble.  (But not too much trouble.)  The story follows about 5 years of her life, from arrival at Green Gables to graduation from an Academy which certifies one as ready for college (if you can afford it), or teaching.  Teaching at the age of 16!  Plotwise the book is a bit episodic, and a bit manipulative, as Anne basically goes from scrape to remarkable triumph, again and again, until just at the end a couple of terrible blows are guaranteed to bring the reader to tears.  And Anne is in some ways just too much of a paragon.  But it's still a very enjoyable book, and even if I felt manipulated at times, it was very moving.  In addition, I thought the character and voices of Anne and her stepmother Marilla were extremely well done.  I felt particular empathy with Marilla, and by the end, when her love for Anne became clear even to her gruff self, I could hardly read any of Marilla's lines aloud for the lump in my throat.  A good book, and it's easy to see why it's an enduring classic.

The second Anne of Green Gables book is Anne of Avonlea.  This covers Anne's life from 16 to 18, as she is the schoolteacher at Avonlea.  She meets a young, rather cloying, American-born boy, who takes a fancy to her, and gets involved in the boy's widowed father's love life.  She tries to push the good folk of Avonlea into improving the village, along with her friends, especially, of course, Gilbert Blythe.  (It's been obvious to everybody: the readers, the other folks in Avonlea, Anne's friends, maybe even Gilbert, that Anne and he will marry, but Anne seems oblivious.  I'm not sure to what degree I buy this.)  She and her stepmother Marilla adopt orphaned twins, Davy and Dora, and the wild Davy becomes very attached to Anne as well.  And Anne befriends the mysterious, cranky, newcomer, Mr. Harrison. At the end, Anne is suddenly presented with an unexpected opportunity she had not thought to have.

These are enjoyable books.  I'm reading them aloud to my daughter.  (And I will say that Montgomery's prose holds up well to the stress of reading aloud.)  There is a certain lack of suspense, though Montgomery does spring a few surprises.  And to some considerable extent this book reveals its genesis as a serial.  (It is very episodic.)  The biggest weakness, I think, is that Montgomery doesn't seem to get men, at all.  I believed in Matthew Cuthbert, Anne's adoptive father, and Gilbert Blythe comes through OK, mostly because he is kept somewhat at a distance.  But characters like cloying young Paul Irving ("You know, Teacher."), his father Stephen, even the enjoyable Mr. Harrison, even minor characters like Thomas Lynde, don't convince at all.  Some of this may be cultural differences, some may be literary conventions, but I do think that Montgomery falls short in this area.  I still find the books worthwhile, though.

This month I finished reading L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Windy Poplars to my daughter.  This is the 4th in the series in internal chronology, but it's very late in order of writing.  (It was published in 1936, while the fourth book actually written comes from 1919 or so.)  The book shows the strain of being interpolated into the series: it's very episodic (I believe much of it was published as short stories), and there is no real tension in the plot, nor much development in Anne.  It tells of the three years after Anne and Gilbert became engaged, in which Gilbert was in medical school, and Anne was principal of the high school in Summerside, PEI.  There is a potted crisis for Anne to resolve in each year: in the first year she must win over the unfriendly Pringles, who dominated the town socially; in the second year she must win over the talented but bitter and unfriendly Katherine Brooke, one of her teachers at the high school; and in the third year she must save her little neighbor Elizabeth from the overly strict women who are raising her, and restore her to her father.  Still and all, the book remains enjoyable and worth reading.  Interestingly, this book was published in a longer version in England as Anne of Windy Willows.  Apparently, some of the incidents of which Anne hears (town history concerning some gruesome ancestors) were considered too intense for American kids. (The Willows/Poplars change was for another reason, I can't recall what.  I confess I think Windy Poplars (the name of the home in which Anne lives in Summerside) a much better name than Windy Willows.)

I've also finished reading the fifth novel in the Anne of Green Gables series to my daughter.  (Fifth in internal chronology, fourth in publication order.)  Anne's House of Dreams concerns the first few years of Anne and Gilbert's life in Glen St. Marys.  Gilbert sets up his practice, and Anne settles in as a housewife and has her first children.  The main conflicts concern a mysterious tragic young woman living close by.  The key new characters are this woman, Leslie Moore, and an old sailor named Captain Jim.  This book is still enjoyable, but Anne is in many ways less central, and a bit less interesting, than in earlier books, now that she's settled into her role as Gilbert's wife.   It's also extremely annoying in that LMM developed a late tic in her writing ... the constant ... unending ... use of ellipses.)

And, finally, I finished reading L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Ingleside to Melissa.  This is the last Anne novel LMM wrote, perhaps her last novel, period, written in 1939.  It's set at the turn of the century, pretty much, thus it's sixth of the eight Anne books in internal chronology.  It's also a good example of why internal chronology isn't always best.  For instance, there is one direct, and rather horrible, spoiler for a bad event from, I'm guessing, Rilla of Ingleside.  In addition, the story shows a lot of signs of struggling to squeeze in incidents without distorting the existing books.  For example, there are a couple of chapters about Jem's unsuccessful attempts to get a dog.  It's obvious that in an upcoming book, he will get a dog, and that in this book LMM needs to work around that.  It's very episodic, but then so are most of the Anne books.  Still, though, it's a fairly enjoyable read, with some nice touches. (It's also often annoying in that LMM developed a late tic in her writing ... the constant ... unending ... use of ellipses.)

Rainbow Valley is #7 in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series.  This book is set in, I suppose, 1905 or so.  Anne Blythe, Gilbert, and their children are really only side characters.  The book is mostly about the new minister of Anne's church, and his four children.  The minister, John Meredith, is a widower, and he is a very unworldly man.  As a result, though he loves his children dearly, he is not raising them very well.  Clearly, he must marry.  But complications ensue, of course, as we follow the escapades of the children, and the bumpy course of John Meredith's romance.  All works out in the end, naturally.  I liked this installment quite a lot, really.  I was convinced and moved by the central romance, and I liked the new kids.  Pretty good.

The other Montgomery book I read was Kilmeny of the Orchard, a very short novel, not one of her Anne of Green Gables books.  This story concerns a young man, heir to a well-off shopkeeper, who decides to spend a year after college in a remote Prince Edward Island town.  While there, he meets a beautiful young woman, who cannot speak.  In all ways she appears perfectly healthy, she can hear just fine, plays an excellent violin, but can't speak.  The story is quite melodramatic, as first we are told the story of her mother, who got married to a man who turned out, through no fault of his own (!), to already be married.  Then the young woman, Kilmeny, and the young man fall in love, but Kilmeny feels herself unworthy of marriage, because of her "defect".  The resolution involves Kilmeny's step-brother, an Italian orphan, who had also been in love with Kilmeny.  This feature reveals one of the more distasteful features of Montgomery's books: her racism (and classism). In the Anne books the racist bits are very minor, involving occasional remarks about the "French".  Apparently the French community of New Brunswick (the original Acadians -- many of whom moved to Louisiana and became the Cajuns (Acadian = 'cadian = Cajun)) were not highly regarded by the Scots and English inhabitants of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.  They seem to have been mostly employed as farmhands.  In Kilmeny of the Orchard it is made clear from the beginning that Neil, of Southern European birth, somewhat dark-skinned, and an orphan, is a lesser being, prone to emotional outbursts despite having been brought up from birth by Kilmeny's dour Scots Aunt and Uncle. Anyway, though Kilmeny of the Orchard has significant flaws, it is still an involving and enjoyable read.

Old Bestseller: The Cobbler of Nîmes, by M. Imlay Taylor

Old Bestsellers: The Cobbler of Nîmes, by M. Imlay Taylor

a review by Rich Horton

Back to a true Old Bestseller type book. That said, I don't think this book was a bestseller, and indeed I'm not sure Taylor ever had a big bestseller. But she was an at least mildly popular writer. Her full name was Mary Imlay Taylor, and that seems to be her maiden name (in that one contemporary notice I found refers to her as "Miss Mary Imlay Taylor"). She was known as something of an expert on Russian history, and several of her books were set in historical Russia, including one of her best known, On the Red Staircase. Another popular book was The Impersonator. Her dates were 1878 1938.

The Cobbler of Nîmes was published in 1901, when Mary Imlay Taylor was only 23. It is copyright 1900, suggesting perhaps an earlier serialization? The publisher is the Chicago firm A. C. McClurg. My edition has a note on the flyleaf: "12/25/06 Merry Christmas to Marmee [?] from Willie".

I've previously written about several historical novels set in 16th and 17th Century France, all by English or American writers. Some of these concerned the conflict between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots), which was theoretically resolved in 1598, when Henry IV promulgated the Edict of Nantes, granting significant civil rights to the Huguenots. (Henry IV himself was raised Protestant, but famously converted to Catholicism, saying "The Crown is worth a Mass".) These books are listed below, with links to my reviews:

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

The Edict of Nantes, however, was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685 via the Edict of Fontaineblue. This led to decades of persecution of the Huguenots, and violent resistant from them. This is the backdrop against which The Cobbler of Nîmes is set. Its action occurs in 1703. The Huguenot, or Camisard, stronghold is in the Cévennes region of Southeast France. The King's soldiers, led by Marechal Montrevel, have a policy of burning Huguenot villages, and either executing the men or sending them to be galley slaves, and sending the women to supposed nunneries, in which they are mistreated and often die. (The Camisards, it should be said, also committed atrocities against some Catholic villages.)

The title cobbler, M. Charlot, is a hunchback (called le Bossu), and a good Catholic. He sees the exhibition at a fair of a "damned person" -- a young woman who died of her mistreatment at the Tour de Constance. He notices a young man at the exhibition, who seems distressed, and offers him a place. He is François d'Aguesseu, a Huguenot and the brother of the dead woman. Charlot urges him to hide, and arranges for him to have a place at the chalet of Mme. de Saint Cyr, who lives alone except for a serving woman, Babet, and her granddaughter Rosaline. They are secretly Protestants, and all the rest of the family has died in the religious unrest.

The reader will not be surprised that François and Rosaline are soon in love. But there are problems. A local commander in the French Army, M. de Baudri, fancies himself in love with Rosaline, though his love seems sadistic and rather vile. He is ready to pressure her to marry him in exchange for protection for her family from persecution. Another vile individual, Mère Tigraine, a local fishwife and fanatic Catholic, has discovered François's hiding place at the chalet. Meanwhile, François has a chance to flee to England (where his family has some money), but he refuses to either leave the Saint Cyrs in danger, and also he wishes to join the Camisards and fight for Huguenot rights.

In the end it is up to Charlot, at great risk to himself, to arrange for the escape of François and Rosaline, despite the interference of Mère Tigraine. There are battles to come, and a desperate capture of Rosaline, and a magnificient sacrifice by Charlot, who of course is in love with Rosaline himself, hopelessly, though she has always, unlike almost everyone else, treatedhim kindly. The ending is pretty predictable, and to some extent it comes off a bit flat, though Charlot's actions are pretty affecting.

This is a pretty minor effort among the great rush of historical novels that appeared around the turn of the 20th Century. But it's not bad either -- Taylor was a writer with real ability, though not a great writer. She does seem to have been quite scrupulous in her attention to historical accuracy.

Birthday Review: Five Capsules on C. S. Lewis

Five Capsule Reviews of C. S. Lewis.

Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Clive Staples Lewis (who, famously, died on the same day in 1963 as another British writer known for SF/F work -- Aldous Huxley -- and, of course, as an American President.) In Lewis' memory I'm posting this set of five rather informal (and somewhat short) "reviews" (blog posts, really) from some time ago. The four Narnia posts are all from a reread I did back in 2001 or so. (I couldn't find the others.) I purposely chose art from a variety of different editions of the Narnia books. As a kid when I first read them, from the library, several times over, the editions were the mass market paperbacks much like image shown for Prince Caspian below.

C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce is a "novel" which serves really as a piece of Christian apologia.  It's very well done, fascinating reading, well-argued though I think attacking straw men in many cases. I don't see that it can persuade an atheist, but the advice herein seems very good for a Christian. In it Lewis has a dream in which he is waiting for a bus in a grey, rainy, city.  The bus takes him and a number of other passengers into the sky, then up a cliff onto a beautiful plateau, leading to a range of mountains.  He and the passengers seem insubstantial, but a number of beautiful, substantial, people come to try to help the passengers make their way to the mountains. This is Heaven, you see, and they have come from Hell. Lewis overhears a number of conversations between the souls in Heaven and the unsaved souls: in every case, the unsaved souls find excuses for not accepting joy and staying in heaven. Eventually Lewis meets George MacDonald, Lewis' great predecessor as a combination Christian apologist/writer of children's fantasies, and MacDonald becomes the mouthpiece for much Lewis' burden of teaching. For instance, the famous quote from this book, "there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done'" is attributed to the MacDonald character, though as far as I know it's not really a quote from MacDonald.

One of my rereading projects for this year is the Chronicles of Narnia. The second book (by order of publication, which is obviously the right order in which to read the books -- hmmmph!) is Prince Caspian.  The four Pevensie children return to Narnia a year after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Soon they realize that hundreds of years have passed in Narnia while only a year has passed on Earth.  The reign of the four children is legendary.  Narnia has been ruled for some time by humans called Telmarines, who came from another country.  They have oppressed the talking animals and dwarfs and so on, especially recently, under the rule of the evil King Miraz.

Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy manage to save a dwarf from execution, and he tells the story of King Miraz' nephew Caspian (who is actually not a prince but the rightful King of Narnia).  Caspian was raised by a kindly nurse and a half-dwarf/half-human tutor, who told him stories of the glorious time of the High King Peter and the other Pevensie children, when the animals could talk, etc.  Caspian becomes a partisan for returning Narnia to a juster rule, and he also learns that he is the true King: that his uncle killed his father and exiled any loyal knights while Caspian was an infant.  When Miraz' wife finally gives him an heir, Caspian escapes and begins a resistance effort, with the help of a number of dwarfs and talking animals.  It is he who has called the four children back to Narnia (by blowing the magic horn introduced in the first book), and so the children make a journey to the site of the desperate battle Caspian is fighting with the much superior forces of the usurper.  And, of course, Peter and the others, particularly Lucy who seems closest to Aslan, help vanquish Miraz (who is doomed also by his natural suspicion and the dissension in his ranks).

This is an enjoyable book to read, but I didn't like it as much now as I liked it when a teen.  Not because of the Christian symbolism, which I didn't notice back then but which is clear as a bell now: I actually think that stuff is well done.  The main reservations I have are, first, the worldbuilding: which is really quite thin.  For example, as far as I can tell from travel times, Narnia must be no more than say 50 miles on a side.  By the same token the plot is simple, with a somewhat contrived ending.  And finally, Lewis is very anti-industry, anti-modernism of any sort, and at times that is expressed in a grating fashion, such as when he intimates that bridges are bad things.

I jumped right back into my reread of the Narnia books.  I'd say that rereading the first two books they seemed diminished by time, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, not a favorite of mine when I was a teen, seemed better on rereading.  Edmund and Lucy, the younger Pevensie children, are staying with their nasty cousin Eustace.  Eustace has made fun of them for their belief in Narnia, but one day as the three children are looking at a picture of a ship, they find themselves once again in Narnia ... indeed, in the water next to the ship. They are rescued, and the ship turns out to be the Dawn Treader, on which King Caspian is sailing to the Eastern Ocean, trying to retrace the steps of the seven nobleman who had been loyal to his father, and who were exiled by the usurper King Miraz.  Also, Reepicheep the Talking Mouse wishes to travel all the way to the very end of the world (Narnia being flat), and to see what lies beyond.  The neat part of this book is the imaginative details of the various islands the travelers visit on the way.  In addition, the ending is beautifully handled, though it's got some of the same sadness as some of the other Narnia books, as Edmund and Lucy are told that this is their last visit.  Eustace has undergone some salutary learning experiences on the trip, but there are hints that he may return.  Caspian is paired off with a wife, and as a result I now see that Neil Gaiman's Stardust has a slight echo of Narnia in it.  (Though as I've said before, Stardust reminds me much more of Lud-in-the-Mist.)  The only drawback is Lewis' usual anti-modernity, but that rather comes with the territory.

Continued galomping through Narnia with The Silver Chair.  Eustace, from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and his schoolmate Jill Pole, fleeing bullies at their school, escape through a gate into Narnia.  Aslan sends them to Caer Paravel, telling Jill a series of things she must do to help find the Prince, Rilian, the son of Caspian.  Rilian was searching for the serpent who killed his mother, and for ten years has been lost.  Eustace and Jill, with the help of a marsh-wiggle, Puddleglum, set out to the North to find clues about Rilian.  Braving some evil Giants, they learn that  he is underground, and they end up in a realm of "Earthmen", or gnomes, ruled by a beautiful Queen, and her Prince.  They learn, as you have guessed, that the Prince is Rilian and the Queen an evil sorceress, and through cleverness and bravery they fight free and back to the surface.  This book holds up pretty well.  The underground kingdom is pretty cool, and well described, as is the city of the Giants.  And Puddleglum is a delightful character, one of Lewis' best.

I continued my Narnia rereading project with The Horse and His Boy.  This is sort of a pendant to the rest of the books, being set during the reign of the four children from the first book.  It is set in Calormene, a corruptly ruled country, of an Arabian flavor, someways south of Narnia.  A young boy, Shasta, cruelly treated by his adoptive father, escapes with a horse who turns out to be a talking horse (Bree) from Narnia.  The two soon fall in with a noble girl (Aravis), running from a forced marriage to the evil Grand Vizier, who also is accompanied by a talking horse (Hwin).  When trying to sneak through the capitol city of Calormene, Shasta is mistaken by King Edmund of Narnia (who is visiting with Susan, as the Crown Prince of Calormene wishes to marry her) for the prince of Archenland, a country on the border of Narnia and Calormene.  Taken to the palace, Shasta escapes after finding the real prince, while Aravis meets one of her friends by luck overhears a plot by the Crown Prince to invade Archenland and Narnia to attempt to force Susan to marry him.  Follows a desperate ride across the desert to try to warn the Archenlanders, complete with encounter with Aslan, and revealment of Shasta's true identity (not much of a surprise).

This was my favorite Narnia book when I was a kid, but in some ways it doesn't hold up as well as some others.  For one thing, the meme "White men good, Arabs bad" seems to be tacitly understood.  Granted that in Narnian terms this can be explained by the degree of worship of Aslan -- it still comes off as frankly racist.  Also, I think the plot is easier to see coming at this age -- I think I was more surprised when a kid by the twists.  But there is much that is good, as well, perhaps especially the characters of the talking horses.