Birthday Ace Double Review: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Ace Double Reviews, 85: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott (#F-199, 1963, 40 cents)

A review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Ed Emshwiller)

This Ace Double includes novels by two of the great writers in the field. "Wait!", you might say, "Samuel Delany I understand. But Keith Woodcott! I never even heard of him." Ahh ... but Keith Woodcott was a pseudonym for John Brunner. At any rate, neither of these novels is among their author's best, though Delany's is the promising work of a young writer who would get better, and who even here shows much promise, while the "Woodcott" is terribly disappointing work by a writer who had already done first rate work, and who could usually be trusted to be quite entertaining, even in his hackwork. He'd get better too -- but you can't say that The Psionic Menace provides any evidence of that. Captives of the Flame is the longer book, about 52,000 words. The Psionic Menace is about 38,000 words.

Captives of the Flame is Delany's second novel. It appeared when he was just 21 years old. It is the first of a trilogy, collectively known as The Fall of the Towers. It opens enigmatically, with Jon Koshar confused and lost ... we soon learn that he has been imprisoned for the past 5 years, despite his prominent position as the son of a leading merchant in the city of Toron. Toron is the island capitol of Toromon, a small "empire" on a future Earth, an Earth on which the inhabited parts (which seem to include Aptor, setting of Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor) are isolated by belts of radiation, the result of the "Great Fire". As the novel begins, Toron is lurching towards war with the mysterious people beyond the nearby radiation belt. The young King Uske, mostly a puppet, wonders what he is doing, declaring war. Jon Koshar's sister Clea, a brilliant mathematician, looks forward to her graduation party, and worries about her military boyfriend. The mysterious Duchess of Petra plots to kidnap the King's younger brother Let. A boy named Tel has landed on the island, and is immediately swept up in the Duchess's plot, along with the acrobat Alter, her aunt Rana, and Jon Koshar. Also involved is a giant from the slightly mutated forest people, who live near the radiation barrier.

If all this seems a bit busy, well, it is. And it stays that way, though it's mostly easy to follow and fun to read. The war starts on schedule. Economic chaos, partly driven by artificial fish production, and exacerbated by a poisoning of the fish supply, accompanies the war. (Delany includes some rather incoherent and unconvincing economic rants.) The kidnap plot comes off, and Prince Let is taken to the forest people, to learn how to be a better King than his ineffectual brother. Clea's mathematical abilities identify a way to end the war. Jon Koshar, with Alter and Petra, battles the alien Lord of the Flames, who seems to be behind the provocations that led Toromon to war. This battle takes them to numerous different planets, to inhabit different life forms, in a colorful sequence that reminded me of Harlan Ellison's very minor early novel The Man With Nine Lives. And ... well, the book pretty much stops. Good thing this is just part one of a trilogy!

In many ways this book is kind of a mess. But some of that might be resolved in the concluding novels of the trilogy, to be fair. (I've read the whole thing, but 40 years ago, and I don't remember it at all.) And as I said it's readable and fun throughout, with prosodic flashes that, while not wholly successful, point the way to the kind of writer Delany would become.

It should be noted that both Captives of the Flame and the second novel in The Fall of the Towers trilogy, The Towers of Toron, were significantly revised prior to publication of the omnibus edition of all three books. That's omnibus edition is what I read, back in 1975 or so, and maybe that's why I don't remember Captives of the Flame! (Or maybe not.) For one thing, it was retitled Out of the Dead City (a much better title) for the later editions. It is possible that some of the revision was restoration of cuts demanded by Donald Wollheim -- I have read that Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, had to be cut significantly to fit in an Ace Double, and that in the end, frustrated, he was just tossing out paragraphs more or less at random. I would say there is definite evidence in Captives of the Flame that scenes are missing.

The Psionic Menace, by contrast, is a bad book unrelieved by any indication of the possibility of better work to come. I wonder if Brunner purposely used the Woodcott name because he knew how bad the novel was. ("Keith Woodcott" wrote some 5 books for Ace, 4 of them Doubles -- the name also appeared on a couple of short stories. I haven't read any other "Woodcott" novels so I can't say if their quality was generally lower than the novels under the Brunner name. But certainly the other Brunner Ace Doubles I've read (under his name) were much better than The Psionic Menace.)

The book is set in a future in which a mostly peaceful and well-controlled Earth has isolated "psions". Conditions are worse for Psions in the interstellar confederation controlled by the "Starfolk", who live on starships (like Anderson's Kith or Heinlein's Free Traders). The main character, a "cosmoarchaeologist" named Gascon, is a psinul -- his thoughts cannot be sensed by psions. One night he encounters a runaway psion boy who is panicked by a broadcast psionic message warning of the "end of everything".

Meanwhile, on the Starfolk-dominated planet Regnier, a young girl, Errida, is chosen to be a Starfolk concubine. (It appears they need to refresh their genetic pool on occasion, and they do so by force.) But her brother is a psion and it becomes necessary for them to escape to an isolated alien city -- once home to a colony of the "Old Race"... alas, the rest of her family is swept up in a fomented anti-psion riot.

Gascon's academic field, cosmoarchaeology (study of the relics aliens have left on various planets), combined with his being a psinul, makes him ideal to send to Regnier in an Earth plot to solve the mystery of the psion panic about the "end of everything", and also to put pressure on the Starfolk. So he goes to Regnier, and meets Errida. The Starfolk, who have come to Regnier because a Starfolk ship has been lost and psions are suspected, get involved as well, and in a typically too rapid Brunner ending Gascon steals a Starfolk ship and follows clues to the location of the "Old Race" and to the, in the end very disappointing, solution to the mystery of the "end of everything".

It's just a book that didn't work for me at all. I wasn't engaged by any of the characters. I was thoroughly unimpressed by the SFnal aspects, particularly the lamish resolution to the central mystery. Brunner wrote a lot of his early stuff pretty fast, for the money, but he usually gave decent value. Not this time, though.

Birthday review: Stories of Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald turns as old as I am today (as he does every year). He's another of my favorite contemporary writers. My favorite of his novels is not as well known as most of his other novels, this is Ares Express. I've reviewed that here already: Ares Express review. Anyway, here's a selection of my reviews of his short fiction from Locus, but beginning with a post I made of a story that is sort of a precursor to Ares Express.

Blog post about "The Catharine Wheel"

I noticed that Ian McDonald's first published story, "The Catharine Wheel", seemed to be related to Ares Express (probably my favorite McDonald novel).  It was published in the January 1984 issue of Asimov's, which I have, so I fished out my copy. And then of course I read the rest of the issue.  "The Catharine Wheel" is the story of the last run of the Catharine of Tharsis, the big train that also features in Ares Express, and also the story of the decision of Kathy Haan, the tortured girl from Earth who operates Martian "manforming" equipment remotely, to kill herself on Earth while her mind is uploaded into the Martian equipment, so that she will never have to return.  Thus she becomes St. Catharine of Tharsis. It's a good story, but I think Ares Express is better.  In the book the trains are well established -- I don't think there will be a "last run", and Catharine becomes Catherine, and details of Kathy Haan's life are changed.

Locus, November 2002

"The Hidden Place", by Ian McDonald (Asimov's, October-November) is an impressive novelette. Fodhaman is a sort of nanny to Prebendary Shodmer, the envoy of the Clade, a starfaring civilization which has contacted the world Fanadd. Shodmer is at the same time a six-year old girl (in a cloned body), and an adult, programmed with the mind of Clade member. Fanadd us unusual in that people are almost always born in twin pairs, and the twins grow up with a telepathic link, and generally live together their whole life, marrying another twin pair, etc. The setup recalls Ursula Le Guin both by its exploration of an interesting and different human society based on a biological change, and by the back story: many worlds have been seeded by humans in the past, and are slowly recontacted, somewhat as in Le Guin's Hainish civilization. Fodhaman must deal with enforced separation from her twin, with the difficult situation of Prebendary Shodmer, both personally and politically, and with questions of loyalty: to her nation, her world, or all of humanity.

Constellations review (Locus, March 2005)

Ian McDonald contributes my favorite story here, "Written in the Stars". This is set in a world where astrology seems literally true. People get horoscopes several times a day, and plan their lives by them. Banbek Shaunt (a curiously Vancean name) is a functionary in the Distributions and Deliveries department of the Astrocratic service. His current worries include his daughter's objections to the man the stars have said is right for her, and a horoscope that predicts trouble for him at work. But his worries reach a different level when he receives an incomprehensible horoscope. It turns out to be another man's, and he decides to visit this other man, who is of all the shocking things an astronomer. This warm and humanistic story is at heart about freedom in a deterministic world – and, perhaps, about the origins of determinism.

Locus, June 2005

The other standout in the June Asimov's is Ian McDonald's "The Little Goddess", about a Nepalese girl selected to be a goddess, and as such raised in isolation in a palace. Only by the intervention of a sympathetic servant does she gain any knowledge of the outside world (the story is set in the next few decades). When, inevitably, her reign is over, she is abandoned to a fractured future India. The shortage of women (caused by sex-selection of children) gives her one marketable quality – the potential to become a wife. But another future complication – genetically enhanced rich people – leads to a distressing choice of husbands, and the heroine is forced to a dangerous alternate way of making a living – ferrying illegal AIs to another Indian state. The story is a sort of pendant to McDonald's Hugo-nominated novel River of Gods, and it offers a fascinating look at an intriguing and plausible near future.

Locus, June 2006

Asimov’s for July features a long novelette from Ian McDonald, “The Djinn’s Wife”, set in the same future India as his wonderful novel River of Gods and last year’s excellent Asimov’s story “The Little Goddess”. Both of those became Hugo nominees, and “The Djinn’s Wife” has a chance as well. An older woman tells a story about a beautiful dancer who married a djinn. But human/djinn relationships never turn out well. So is this a fantasy? No, for the “djinn” here is an AI, capable of interacting with people’s phones/PDAs (or “’hoeks” in the story’s idiom) to project images, talk, and even make love. The backdrop is the water war that was central to River of Gods. The dancer and her AI lover are from the two rival countries, Awadh and Bharat. Their love affair is played out against the backdrop of that coming war, and of threats against the continuing existence of high-level AIs, and inevitably one or the other or both will be tempted to betrayal. It’s a strong and moving story driven by both human problems and by intriguing SFnal ideas. I did feel, just a bit, that its impact was lessened for one who has already read the novel: but it remains a first rate piece.

Galactic Empires review (Locus, June 2008)

Finally, best by far is Ian McDonald’s “The Tear”, which as Dozois’s introductory material notes has sufficient ideas and plot for many writers to make a trilogy from. It’s set in a future McDonald has visited before, in which the Galaxy (and perhaps beyond) has been colonized by the Clade – a vast variety of beings, all apparently based originally on Homo Sapiens, but with genetic modifications (and sometimes more extreme changes) to allow human life to spread to many different environments. On Ptey’s planet most people develop different “aspects”: completely separate personalities that take over when needed. Ptey – or the aspects he has become – play a vital role in a crisis involving a curious group of beings fleeing an implacable enemy. The story keeps leaping to radically different futures, following different aspects of Ptey, through parallel love affairs, centuries long space journeys and battles, meetings with new branches of humanity – it is fascinating, tragic, hopeful, imagination-stuffed, and powerful. One of the stories of the year.

Fast Forward 2 review (Locus, November 2008)

Ian McDonald returns with yet another of his tales of future India. “An Eligible Boy” is trying to attract the attention of any sort of woman in a culture in which sex selection has led to an overabundance of marriageable men. The central SFnal aspect is an AI assistant who helps the young man present himself to women. But the women, of course, have AI help of their own. And the AIs may have motives, too … The human center of the story is rather subdued, as we are always noticing the involvement of the main character’s roommate in things.

Life on Mars review (Locus, March 2011)

Finally the best two stories come from Ian McDonald and John Barnes. McDonald’s “Digging” has something of the flavor of his Martian novels, particularly Ares Express, in telling of a girl on the cusp of adulthood, part of one of several families working on digging a huge hole in Mars, a short of shortcut to terraforming at least a bit of the planet. Tash is invited to accompany her revered “In-Aunt” Mihala on a trip to the top of the hole, where she unexpectedly is pressed to deal with an emergency – and ultimately, to deal with a traumatic change in her family’s circumstances.

Locus, January 2014

A different slant comes in Ian McDonald's “The Queen of Night's Aria” (Old Mars), in which an over the hill singer is touring a Mars which Earth has invaded in revenge for a Wellsian Martian invasion. The singer's tour takes him dangerously close the to front, and an unexpected fan. The story is near farce at times, and very well told, through the voice of the singer's accompanist.

Locus, June 2014

Other good stories in Robot Uprisings include Ian McDonald's “Nanonauts! In Battle with Tiny Death Subs”, in which a self-absorbed remote operator of nano-machines tries to pick up a woman with tales of his battles to save the President from bad nanotech. A nice mixture of humor, a look at a dark side of nano-enhancement, and a subtle closing twist.

Locus, May 2015

Ian McDonald's “Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” (Old Venus)
is a nice take on the traditional Victorian adventure story, with the hero (heroine, in this case) exploring untrodden places. The title Countess is a widow (of a rather bad man), and also a noted artist, of papercuts of flowers. She has come to Venus with her companion (and presumed lover, though with Victorian restraint such details go unmentioned) the Prince Latufui, ostensibly to make papercuts of the Venusian flora, but it seems more likely to track down her rascally brother, perhaps to solve the mystery of the theft of their family's valuable jewel, the Blue Empress. The story is, then, something of a travelogue, and a lovely one: the flora she records by the by are intriguing, the politics revealed, and the history of Venus (including a very early colonization from Earth!) is fascinating, and the Countess is a wonderful character.

Locus, July 2018

And finally, a Tor.com novella from Ian McDonald, Time Was. This is told by Emmett Leigh, a used bookseller with an interest in history, who comes across an old book of privately printed poems with a letter from a WWII soldier inside. He begins to investigate, finding curious evidence of the presence of the soldier, Tom Chappell, and his lover Ben Seligman, in other conflicts at widely disparate times. We get glimpses of Tom and Ben as they first meet, and Emmett gets involved with an earthy Lincolnshire woman with a tenuous link to Tom and Ben. Are Tom and Ben immortals? Or time travelers? And by what means? The story is sweet and interesting and becomes something even more impressive as Emmett becomes more and more entangled, less of an observer. This fits the “time-slip” genre, beloved by non-SF writers – I was reminded just a bit of Robert Nathan’s wonderful Portrait of Jennie.

Birthday Review: Stories of Rich Larson

I am surprised that the first story I review here is from 2015. Rich Larson has been publishing stories with Robert Reed-like frequency -- and also with Reed-like quality and range, since 2012 or so. His first novel, Annex, appeared last year. Today is his birthday -- I haven't checked how old he is, but I have a feeling he's younger than my kids! [Okay, I checked -- he's younger than my daughter, but (slightly) older than my son.] Here is a selection of my reviews of his short work, a remarkable set of stories.

Locus, April 2015

Beneath Ceaseless Skies' issue of February 5 has two strong stories. “The King in the Cathedral”, by Rich Larson, features an exiled royal brother, and his automaton guard, playing endless games in the desert until a woman sent as a temptation to him offers instead to help him escape. She hopes he will take the crown back from the usurper – but he is getting old, and not terribly interested in the burdens of rule (and gay anyway, so unswayed by her temptations). The story is in its outlines and even resolution quite familiar, but Larson's telling, and the little variations he plays, make it work.

Locus, February 2015

Rich Larson continues to impress with a nice variety of SF and fantasy stories in his newish career, and I quite liked “The Delusive Cartographer”, in the November 24 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Crane and Gilchrist come to an island prison in search of a map that a dying cartographer suggests is in the cell with a certain prisoner. The map perhaps leads to treasure, though for the cartographer it brought him only, we learn, to shipwreck and prison time. We follow Crane’s disguise as a prisoner, and his attempts to get to the map, while Gilchrist waits with the cartographer, and learns his real story. Neat fairly traditional cynically-toned fantasy in a mode somewhat resembling Joe Abercrombie or perhaps Scott Lynch.

Locus, April 2016

In Lightspeed’s March issue I liked a sweet romantic story by Rich Larson, “Sparks Fly”, in which the fantastical element is that a significant amount of people, including the protagonist, are “sparkheads”, who cause anything electronic to fail in their presence, at least when they lose control. Of course, emotions engendered in a romantic relationship make maintaining control a challenge – certainly for Arthur. Not to mention his worry about rejection. So his date with Christina goes swimmingly – but he won’t tell her his issue, and he tries to keep himself under control, until, well, “sparks fly”. It’s not the deepest of stories, but it’s sweet and fun and another indication that Larson has not just talent but considerable range.

Locus, July 2016

Finally, the best piece in the May-June F&SF might be “The Nostalgia Calculator”, by Rich Larson, which posits that the cycle of nostalgia is spiraling up, so that people are becoming nostalgic sooner about more recent things. It turns out this is a bad thing, especially when used by corporations for evil, as Noel finds out when while working for his Uncle’s company notices the problem and tries to take (clumsy) action. Clever Galaxyish stuff.

In Clarkesworld there are as usual a couple of strong stories. Rich Larson’s “Jonas and the Fox” is a fine story set on a colonized planet that has just been through a revolution. Jonas is a young boy and the Fox is his brother – sort of – we learn quickly that the brother died but that the recorded mind of an aristocrat, on the run from the revolutionary authorities, has been implanted in his. The story turns on a chance for true escape for the Fox, and on who really needs the opportunity. The furniture is, to be sure, fairly familiar, but the execution is strong, and the conclusion emotionally convincing.

Clockwork Phoenix is back, and its fifth number is another tasty mix of stories that test the borders of genre. So my favorite story, again from Rich Larson (author of the month, for sure!), is really pure SF, though weird enough to fit in. “Innumerable Glittering Lights” is about the battle of a scientist to keep his investigations going while dealing with cynical and budget-conscious politicians and radical know-nothings. So far, so familiar – and, indeed, the conceptual revelation, that this story is set among intelligent sea creatures under an ice sheet, is really fairly familiar. But Larson executes it well – the names (Four Warm Currents, Six Bubbling Thermals, etc.) are a nice touch, and the milieu is believable: and the conclusion really nails it.

Locus, August 2016

Rich Larson’s “Masked” (Asimov's, July) perhaps extrapolates just a tad more, as three rather privileged girls get together after one of them has had to have a “virus” removed from her social interaction software – software that controls her “Face”, quite literally in that it affects how others see her, and also affects what she sees of the world and news and gossip. The moral is kind of obvious from the word go – as indeed it is in Cypess’ story. So these are nice and effective stories, but not surprising enough to be more than “nice”.

Locus, December 2016

The Asimov’s Double Issue for November/December includes yet another strong story from Rich Larson. “Water Scorpions” is about Noel and his new “brother”, Danny, who is actually an alien child, rescued from a ship that has crash-landed in Chad. Noel’s mother is a xenobiologist working with the aliens, and somehow Danny has bonded with her. Noel resents this, perhaps mostly because he associated Danny’s arrival with his dead sister, and the story plays out as a sad character-driven piece, about two lost children.

Locus, January 2017

In the November/December Interzone, who should turn up but Rich Larson! “You Make Pattaya” is a fine caper story. Dorian is a grifter in the tourist town of Pattaya, Thailand. He concocts a scheme with a prostitute he’s taken a bit of a fancy to, involving blackmailing a pop star in Thailand on a sex vacation. The story is straightforward and slick noirish near-future crime, with minimal but well-placed SFnal elements (a bit of gender ambiguity, some plausible surveillance tech).

Locus, April 2017

Two other stories I liked in the March-April Asimov's are both, in very different ways, about the future of dating. The more cynical is “Cupido”, by Rich Larson, about Marcel, who makes a living by creating tailored pheromones, that will cause the targeted person to fall in lust with Marcel’s client. Marcel himself has a pretty sad love life, and so the story turns on what happens when he falls for one of his “targets”. The moral issues here are straightforward – and Larson navigates them effectively.

Locus, September 2017

Rich Larson is back as well in the July-August Asimov's, showing off his stylish caper/adventure mode. “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” concerns Girasol, who has gotten involved with a radical group (sort of Occupy ramped up to full terrorist mode). She has agreed to help them kidnap Severyn Grimes, a very rich man who can afford to download his mind into young bodies. So far, so familiar, but the story goes in interesting directions, not taking any hackneyed sides, and also features some cool tech, as Girasol can download her own consciousness, dangerously, into intelligent systems. Girasol has her own motives, of course, if no very clear path to realizing them. The story is fast-paced, intelligent, and exciting.

Locus, October 2017

Apex in July features another new Rich Larson story, “L’Appel du Vide”, a solid thriller in which Pau, who is working on a promising project for Ceylan Industries is kidnapped – even though his brain is locked down in way that nothing can be extracted from it. He eventually learns who his kidnapper is, which leads to the rather wrenching motive, predictably closely tied to the nature of the research project. By this time experienced readers can more or less plot the rest of the story – but that doesn’t matter all that much, as Larson, if indeed working familiar territory, handles things very well.

Locus, January 2018

The really exciting news in the magazine field is the long-anticipated Omni revival, with Ellen Datlow returning as fiction editor. The first issue has a time travel theme, for both the nonfiction and the fiction. Rich Larson’s “Verweile Doch (But Linger)” is a fine story about a man who can freeze time. Cesar has used this ability throughout it adolescence and early adult years to help him come up with neat comebacks or to steal money, but he is tortured by his failure to save his mother from an accident – and, it becomes clear, to have a real relationship with two other women: his sister, and a high school crush. Solid work.

Locus, April 2018

The 2/15 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies had a couple of intriguing pieces. Rich Larson’s “Penitents” portrays a wholly ruined future Earth, in which the more privileged live underground. Mara is one of those, and she’s come to the surface with the help of the wily Scout, to try to rescue her friend Io from the spooky alien creatures who have captured her – it seems these aliens attach to humans they find on the surface and, apparently, take over their minds and send them on forced marches. But Scout knows how alluring the attraction of these aliens is – and Mara eventually learns just why, which gives the story (and its title) its moral point.

Locus, May 2018

In Asimov’s for March-April I was most impressed with a few of the shorter stories. Rich Larson’s “In Event of Moon Disaster” is fine work about a two-person team investigating a mysterious crevasse on the Moon, when all of a sudden a second copy of one the team members appears – followed by a third, and so on. There are obvious existential questions here (echoes of course of Rogue Moon!), but also practical questions, as their shuttle can only take so many people.

Locus, June 2018

Clarkesworld’s April issue includes a somewhat simple but really effective story from Rich Larson, “Carouseling”. Ostap is an artist, and his lover Alyce is a physicist. She and her team are in Mombasa, ready for a major experiment involving something called the Slip. While they’re apart, they use a virtual reality sort of system, linkwear, which allows them a semblance of conflict, even to the point of dancing. Ostap wants to ask her to marry him, but it’s not fair right before the experiment – but he does suggest she brink the linkwear with her to the lab. I think the reader can see where this is going – the experiment is a disaster, and the lab destroyed with no survivors – and Ostap is devastated, but – well, as I said, the next revelation is obvious. Larson handles it beautifully and steers the story to a proper and touching ending.

Birthday Review: Stories of Elizabeth Hand

Today is Elizabeth Hand's birthday. I first noticed her work with "Snow On Sugar Mountain" in Full Spectrum 3, then with "Last Summer at Mars Hill", in the August 1994 F&SF. But for me I think she started taking off with the stories below, and she has gotten better and better (from a a pretty impressive starting level), to the point when I realized that she had become on of my favorite writers.

Putting this list together, I noticed that she is extremely good at the novella length (like several other great SF writers, notably Kim Stanley Robinson, Gene Wolfe, and Damon Knight, off the top of my head). The two stories I mention above are a very long novelette and a novella, and most of the stories below are novellas (up to the length of short novels with "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol" and Wylding Hall. At any rate -- search these out -- this is a great list of short fiction.

Sci Fiction summary post, 2000

"Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol", by Elizabeth Hand, is a moving story about an alcoholic lawyer, Brendan, dealing with his divorce, his autistic kid, and the sudden intrusion of his old friend Tony, a former rock star down on his luck.  (Tony "Maroni"'s rock band seems modelled very closely on the great punk band The Ramones.)   It's set in the present day, and it has only a very minor fantasy element.  The story turns on the death of Chip Crockett, the star of an early '60s kids' TV show, and Tony's sudden obsession with him.  Brendan is driven to distraction by Tony's websurfing and Christmas-special watching, but somehow Tony seems to connect, just a bit, with Brendan's young son.  Brendan himself is sort of a combination Ebenezer Scrooge/Bob Cratchit (with his kid an obvious Tiny Tim).  I liked the story, and I was very moved by it.

Review of Redshift (SF Site, 2002)

The other novella is Elizabeth Hand's "Cleopatra Brimstone." This is beautifully written, line by line, a very pleasing read, about a woman, studying insects in college, who goes to London to recuperate from a rape, and finds that she has developed a curious sort of alter ego with a strange power. The story is absorbing throughout, if I thought the ending a bit telegraphed.

Locus, February 2003

The rest of the book is almost an anticlimax, but to say so is unfair: all the stories are worth your time, and several more are very strong, for example Elizabeth Hand's "The Least Trumps" is another beautifully written novella, about a woman tattooist who grows up on the coast of Maine, and her relationship with her mother and with love.

Locus, December 2007

Finally, and rather belatedly I’d like to mention Illyria, a lovely novella by Elizabeth Hand, from PS Publishing. Maddy and Rogan Tierney are cousins – closer than cousins, as their fathers were twins, and they grew up in the same family subdivision in Yonkers. They become teenage lovers and also show interest in the stage, like their great-grandmother, a famous actress. Both these meet with family disapproval, except perhaps from their eccentric aunt. The story is fairly simple, with a minimal fantastical element. The heart is of course the two main characters, beautifully portrayed, and their doomed love and not quite so doomed artistic dreams.

Locus, August 2009

I also enjoyed (in Conjunctions #52) Elizabeth Hand’s “Hungerford Bridge”, about a strange and beautiful creature a man is privileged to see – with a curious condition.

Locus, October 2009

This is F&SF’s big double issue, and there’s a lot here. Robert Silverberg offers a very enjoyable Majipoor story, Elizabeth Hand’s “The Far Shore” is a fine fantasy of an aging dancer discovering a strange boy at an isolated cabin;

Locus, October 2010

There are plenty further excellent stories in Stories ... My favorite piece, along with the Gaiman story, is the longest in the book, “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon”, by Elizabeth Hand. It’s about a group of old friends who once worked together at the Smithsonian. A former associate director of one of the museums is dying, and one of the friends, her former lover, recruits the others to help him recreate a controversial snippet of film that purports to show a very strange airplane flying on a remote South Carolina island two years before the Wright Brothers’ success at Kitty Hawk. That secret history aspect is intriguing, but the heart of the story is the fraught history of the men at the center of the story – the main character a mess after his wife’s death; the other two men with different problems in the midst of generally more successful lives. Lovely writing as ever for Hand, with that frisson of mystery and sadness and loss that is central to secret history, I think.

Locus, February 2012

As I've noted before, the literary magazine Conjunctions has a history of engagement with the fantastic. The latest issue, on the subject of kin, includes a nice Elizabeth Hand story, “Uncle Lou”, about Nina and her raffish title Uncle, with whom she's had a good relationship for a long time. He's getting old now, and a last invitation reaches her, to accompany him to a party at the zoo. We gather quickly enough where this is going – what we and Nina will learn about Lou – so there aren't really any surprises here, but what matters is the grace of the telling.

Hand also appears in the anthology A Book of Horrors, with a strong novella, “Near Zennor”. The protagonist, an architect named Jeffrey, has just lost his wife suddenly, and in going through her stuff he finds some letters she wrote to a children's author as a teen. Intrigued by a mystery from her past, he travels to the author's old place, near Zennor in Cornwall. It turns out this writer, whose children's fantasies were odd and very dark, had been accused of child molestation. Jeffrey's wife and some of her friends had tried to visit the man, and one of them later disappeared. All this points in a disquieting direction, but Jeffrey's visit reveals something quite different, and terrifying (and sad) in another way entirely. Again Hand's prose – and its balance and control – is one delight, as is her depiction of place; and here too, a well portrayed central event.

Locus, February 2016

Elizabeth Hand offers a long novella, Wylding Hall, about the British folk revival of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, in particular about one ephemeral band, Windhollow Faire, and their great album, named after the title Hall, a strange and quite sinister country house. The story is told from the point of view of the surviving band members and a few others, decades later, and it brilliantly captures the creative spirit around that recording session, and the various characters, especially the band’s leader, who it is clear is absent – something to do with a very strange girl who shows up. The shape of the resolution to that central mystery – who was the girl and what happened to her and the band’s leader – is pretty clear to any fantasy reader from the start, but the eeriness of the events, and the combined fear and wonder that affects all those around, is beautifully evoked.

[I read this last story at a time when I was rediscovering the great band Fairport Convention, and especially their great lead singer Sandy Denny. (I have followed Richard Thompson's career forever, but I sort of let my Fairport listening slip. Windhollow Faire, of course, is presented as part of the same English Folk Revival movement as Fairport Convention -- and it was really neat to read this fictional treatment at the same time as I was devouring such albums as Unhalfbricking.]

Birthday Review: Ash, by Mary Gentle

Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle

a review by Rich Horton

Today is Mary Gentle's birthday, and in her honor I've resurrected this review I did of Ash back when it first came out. I will mention that I reviewed the first two volumes of the American mass market paperback edition for SF Site, and that review is here: A Secret History/Carthage Ascendant.

I finished Mary Gentle's massive novel Ash.  (I estimate it's about 590,000 words).  I bought the English trade paperback, too impatient to wait until December or whenever the last volume of the four American mass market paperbacks is to come out.  This is a very impressive novel indeed.  I've mentioned the first two volumes before, which seemed at first like fantasy, set in an alternate past.  In the end, though, Gentle gives a rationale for her setup which to my mind makes the book Science Fiction, though it will doubtless become another borderline case for those who worry overmuch about definitions. (Like me!)

Ash is a 20 year old female mercenary captain in Europe in about 1476. As the book goes on, we realize her Europe is oddly different from ours: the dominant religion is an altered Christianity (with Mithraic elements, and reference to the "Green Christ", etc.).  Carthage is a significant power, and more intriguingly, the area around Carthage never sees sunlight.  Ash also has strange powers: she hears a voice in her head which gives her tactical advice: this has been a great aid in her career.  Much of the book is concerned with the details of military action and general military life in this time period, and this is all described with gusto, and realism.

The plot is fairly involved, and significant spoilers would be hard to avoid. So, just to sketch things: Ash's company becomes involved in the defense of Burgundy against an invasion from Carthage.  As Carthage invades, the area without sunlight expands.  It seems they must be stopped lest all of Europe become Dark.  But Carthage is aided by strange devices, basically robots made of stone, and they are led by a woman who might be Ash's twin. Ash is captured and taken to Carthage, but her company comes to rescue her.  While in Carthage, Ash learns the secret behind her twin, the voice in her head, the source of Carthage's powers, and the mysterious "Wild Machines" outside Carthage.  After her rescue, she returns to Burgundy, which is mysteriously vital in the defense against the darkness.  The last half or so of the novel describes a nearly hopeless siege, with Ash and her company and the remnants of Burgundy's army penned inside Dijon.  The only hope may be to learn what the "Wild Machines" really want.

This summary misses much of Ash's personal life: her marriage to a charismatic nobleman whom she lusts after but can't stand in person.  Her surgeon, a woman masquerading as a man, who turns out to be related to the royal family of Burgundy, with significant plot effects.  Her priest, who stays with her even after death.

There is also a frame story, involving a modern archaeological effort in Tunisia, which mysteriously begins to uncover hints of the Carthage of Ash's story, as well as the a new translation of manuscripts about Ash's life, which suddenly reveal details of Ash's strange history which had never been suspected.  The modern day investigators, archaeologist Isabel Napier-Grant, translator Pierce Radcliffe, and his editor Anne Longmans, start to feel that the very structure of reality is in flux.  Gentle manages to make all this pull together, to make it all work, and to give it all a fairly rational and thematically meaningful explanation.  It's very satisfying, definitely one of the best books of the year.  (Though there is a vaguely cute postscript to the story that didn't quite work for me.)

Birthday Ace Double Review: The Alternate Martians/Empress of Outer Space, by A. Bertram Chandler

Ace Double Reviews, 77: The Alternate Martians, by A. Bertram Chandler/Empress of Outer Space, by A. Bertram Chandler (#M-129, 1965, $0.45)

a review by Rich Horton

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born March 28, 1912, in England. He was a merchant seaman for many years, and indeed was the last Captain of the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (on sort of a technicality). He became an Australian citizen in the 1950s. His first stories appeared in Astounding in the mid-40s, including his best-known shorter work, "Giant Killer", but it wasn't until 1959 or so that he began writing more regularly, and also begain publishing novels. Most of his novels were set in the "Rim Worlds" of a future heavily human-colonized Galaxy, and many of those feature a main character named John Grimes, commander of spaceships. Chandler, naturally, used his own experience as a seaman and ship officer in describing life aboard his fictional spaceships. Chandler died in 1984.

(Covers by Jerome Podwil)

This book pairs two non-Grimes novels by Chandler. Both are fairly loopy. Both are also parts of other small series by Chandler. The Alternate Martians (42,000 words) is the sequel to The Coils of Time, another Ace Double (#M-107, 1964). Empress of Outer Space (41,000 words) is the first of three books about the Empress Irene of the Galaxy (or at least the human controlled galaxy.) The sequels were also published in Ace Doubles: Space Mercenaries (#M-133, 1965) and Nebula Alert (#G-632, 1967). I know of no prior publication of any of these stories.

In The Alternate Martians Christopher Wilkinson has returned from a trip to an alternate Venus, this one a lush inhabitable version, where he found an alternate version of his dead fiancée, Vanessa. In her timeline, Wilkinson had died, so the two are available for each other. They are ready to be married, done with galumphing about the "coils of time" (it is Chandler's conceit that the trips to what seem alternate worlds are really time travel, and that time is a sort of helix or "coils", repeating with alterations). But Wilkinson is offered command of a spaceship that will travel to Mars, where scientists wish to see what the alternate Martian past might resemble. One believes it is likely to include real life versions of fictional representations of Mars: his idea is that writers such as Wells and Burroughs had sort of ancestral memories, somewhat garbled, of the different versions of Mars on other "coils of time".

Wilkinson and Vanessa are not intended to travel to the alternate Mars, but of course they do, after a bumbling engineer violates orders and activates the space drive will the time travel unit is being tested. They explore what seems to be a pumping station from the Martian poles, a la Barsoom, but one group is captured by a "tin octopus": clearly a version of Wells' Martians. Wilkinson and Vanessa end up with a group of wild humans, including a Delia Doris (i.e. "Dejah Thoris") as well as a Tars Tarkas. They are resisting the rule of the decadent blood-sucking Wellsian Martians. But the Martians capture them. Luckily, their superior Earth (and Venus) strength comes in handy, as does the superior tech of those remaining at the spaceship/timeship, who finally come to the rescue ...

As I said, loopy stuff. But in its limited way, kind of fun. Chandler never cared a whit, as far as I can tell, for stuff making sense, or for consistency, or, well, for anything but the next colorful incident. I find that exasperating, on the whole -- others may not care as much.

In Empress of Outer Space, a Terran spaceship Captain, Mortimer Jones, has been captured after he took over a world and set himself up as Chief Priest of a silly religion. The Empress Irene has taken charge of the criminal proceedings. Benjamin Tafford, who had formerly worked with Jones, is working for Naval Intelligence. But Jones escapes, along with one of Irene's doubles. He sets up as a pirate, and Irene insists on leading the chase, dragging Tafford along as captain in name only.

Unfortunately some aliens mistake them for Jones's pirates, and shoot up their ship. They crashland on an uninhabited planet -- or so it seems. But when they go out to investigate, they seem to find themselves on a planet that is a weird combination of Oz and Barsoom, with James Bond thrown in for good measure. Tafford and Irene go through some harrowing adventures. In the process, they fall in love, despite Tafford's previous frustration with Irene's highhanded ways, and her frustration with what she saw as his interference.

But then ... well, I won't reveal what happens. Another confrontation with Jones will of course result, and Tafford and Irene will cement their budding relationship, and, well ...

On the whole I don't think this story held together quite as well as The Alternate Martians. Minor work, I think, but I suppose it will appeal reasonably well to Chandler's fans.

Birthday Review: Flannery O'Connor's two novels: Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away

Birthday Review: Flannery O'Connor's two novels: Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away

Mary Flannery O'Connor would have been 94 today. Alas, she died, not yet 40, in 1964, of complications of lupus, the same disease that killed her father. She was a truly remarkable and original writer, of a couple of dozen short stories and two novels. In her memory, then, here is what I wrote for my blog some long while back about her two novels.

Wise Blood

I'm not really a big fan of Southern fiction in general, though I make exceptions. "Southern Gothic", in particular, always seemed a mode that I wouldn't necessarily find congenial. (This whole prejudice of mine may be no more that a prejudice, formed from equal parts overreaction to William Faulkner's reputation as presented to me in high school (I hope I have got over that sentiment since then), disdain for Confederate apologists (which, mind you, doesn't necessarily describe any of the writers I might have considered), and dislike for occasional perhaps nontypical examples such as Fanny Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes. I should note that I think John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces utterly brilliant, and Walker Percy's The Moviegoer pretty darn good. But I had formed the idea that if I was going to try such a writer, it ought to be Flannery O'Connor. (Perhaps because she was Catholic -- and though my Catholicism is rather lapsed, I do often find Catholic writers sympathetic. Note that Percy and Toole were Catholic.)

So, I read O'Connor's first novel, a rather short book called Wise Blood. It is quite thoroughly strange, full of basically unattractive characters, acting in obsessive ways, coming to bad ends. Yet it's a remarkable, rather moving, strikingly written book that really sticks in the mind.

Hazel Motes is a young man from rural Tennessee who has just got out of the Army. (The book, published in 1952, appears to be set immediately after the Second World War.) He's had no contact with his family, what's left of it, for 4 years, and when he comes home he finds his home abandoned and in decay, and everyone dead. We meet him on the train to the "city", I assume a fictional place somewhere south of Tennessee. (And a reasonably small town for all that.) He's an unpleasant man, baiting the black porter, pushing his lack of belief in Christ on all and sundry.

In the city, he wanders somewhat aimlessly, encountering first a prostitute, then a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his "daughter" Sabbath, then another confused young man named Enoch Emery. Hazel (whose grandfather was a circuit-riding preacher) sets up as a preacher himself, preaching the "Church Without Christ", and advocating blasphemy and sin. He pursues and is pursued by Sabbath Hawks, and also Enoch Emery. Motes is continually unpleasant to all around him. After Hazel rebuffs a confidence man's attempt to cash in on his preaching, he finds himself confronted by a "twin", Solace Layfield, the false prophet, who preaches of "the Church of Christ Without Christ", and who wholly perverts Hazel's nihilistic "message". Meanwhile the pathetic Enoch is trying to steal a "new Jesus" for Hazel, while Sabbath, barely a teen, is successfully seducing Hazel. The end is grotesque and strange -- Hazel becomes a murderer, Enoch a thief, Sabbath is sent to a home, Asa runs off -- and the final two chapters show Hazel mortifying himself, apparently searching for redemption. Whether his redemption is real seems an open question to me, though O'Connor seemed to think it was.

The novel is ostensibly a comedy, and I suppose it is, but a very black comedy. It's full of images and objects and actions heavily weighted with symbolism -- Hazel's decrepit Essex automobile, the gorilla suit Enoch steals, the mummy that is to be the "new Jesus", the blind preacher's eyes, and Hazel's, and much more. The writing, as I said, is striking, with any number of quite memorable phrases, such as the woman whose hair looked like "ham gravy dripping down her head" -- descriptive, and accurate, and very Southern in feel to me. This is a strange and quite compelling novel.

The Violent Bear it Away

I liked Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, which I mentioned here a month or two ago.  I read her only other novel, The Violent Bear it Away, just this past week. It is also striking, involving, oddly comic, ultimately dark if arguably suggesting redemption for its mad, violent, main character. It's really a lot like Wise Blood in a number of ways. Both books feature a young man (actually a teenaged boy in this case) who has been raised by a fiercely Protestant old man who is some variety of preacher/prophet. Both main characters try to reject the influence of this father figure, but ultimately are forced, under gothically violent circumstances, to take on the mantle of their "father"'s religion  Both books feature rather shocking murders at the climax: murders that in the final analysis lead the murderer to accept Christ (it would seem, though other readings are certainly possible). It's odd (as O'Connor herself noted) that a Catholic writer would deal so obsessively with Protestants, and with a gothic and almost hysterical flavour of Protestantism.


The Violent Bear it Away opens with the death of Francis Marion Tarwater's great uncle. Tarwater (as he is called) was basically kidnapped by this strange old man shortly after his birth: at his birth his mother and her mother (the old man's sister) both died, and the boy was left in the care of the old man's nephew, Rayber. Rayber had also been "kidnapped" by the old man but was brought back to his mother. In both cases, the old man, who fancies himself a "prophet", aimed to baptize the boy he kidnapped and raise him to succeed him as a prophet. Rayber has rejected his uncle's teachings and become a radical secular materialist. Tarwater struggles to reject both his uncle's and his great uncle's teachings, and the book is basically about his struggles.

The opening chapters comically and grotesquely describe the old man's death and Tarwater's failed attempts to bury him, as well as setting up the strange family situation in flashbacks. Then Tarwater heads to the city, where Rayber lives with his idiot son, a boy a few years younger than Tarwater who is severely brain-damaged. It was the great uncle's desire that this idiot boy be baptized by Tarwater, and it is his father (Rayber's) desperate desire that Tarwater not baptize him and instead reject religion and start attending school and become "normal". But all this comes to naught in a harsh, strange, end, with a murder followed by a rape, followed by a somehow "cleansed" (perhaps) Tarwater heading back to the city to take up his duties, whatever they may be.

This is all told in a very striking voice, reminding me somehow of an American take on the language of the King James Version. (The title quote, by the way, is from Matthew 11:12, but naturally enough for a Catholic of O'Connor's time, the translation she used is the Douay.) The language, the diction, also reminded me somehow of Irish writers, particularly perhaps Flann O'Brien. It's a remarkable strange book, very readable, if a bit difficult to come fully to grips with.