Birthday Review: The Anthony Villiers Novels, by Alexei Panshin

Today is Alexei Panshin's 79th birthday. I wanted to highlight his work with a look at my favorites among his work, the Anthony Villiers novels. This is something I wrote back in 2001, though I don't think my perspective has really changed.

Long ago I read at least one of Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers novels, and I remembered the book with some affection.  I ran across all three of them in a used book store a little while back, so I bought them and decided to give them a reread.  I read the three books very quickly -- they are very readable books, witty, with nice characters that you root for, and considerable narrative momentum in the absence of particularly rigorous plots. The first book has an introduction by Samuel R. Delany, in which he calls the series a roman fleuve and compares it to A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell.  That qualifies as one of the less acute comments Delany has made, IMO.  Just because a series of books is a series doesn't make it a roman fleuve, and certainly just because a series of books is vaguely comic in tone and about the doings of bohemian and upper class sorts doesn't make it much like A Dance to the Music of Time (which is one of my favorite 20th Century works.)  That said, the description I gave above, "very readable, witty, with nice characters ..., and considerable narrative momentum in the absence of particularly rigourous plots" actually does apply fairly directly to Dance.  But let that pass -- the Villiers books don't really resemble Powell's great novel all that much, but they are very enjoyable.  Indeed, I was quite surprised by how much I liked them -- more than I expected by a long shot.

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

Star Well (1968) is the first.  Anthony Villiers (aka Viscount Charteris) is a 30ish man in a future Galactic Empire.  His father has despaired of him after Villiers divorced the woman he had been pushed into a quasi-political marriage with, and he has been given an allowance and apparently told to wander the less travelled parts of the Empire.  But, we immediately gather, he is a very talented man. (Indeed, though I don't really think Panshin necessarily had read Dorothy Dunnett back in 1968 when these books came out (though The Game of Kings dates to 1961, so he could have), in some ways Villiers recalls Lymond (with a bit less of an edge -- the books are comedies, after all).  Though as Sherwood Smith points out, more likely Villiers and Lymond both descend from such ancestors as the Scarlet Pimpernel and Lord Peter Wimsey.)  Villiers is slight, handsome, a great dresser, very polite, very intelligent, good with weapons, etc. etc.  He travels everywhere in the company of an alien Trog named Torve.  Torve is a philosophical being, in appearance a 6 foot tall furry frog, who composes "musical" pieces which sound like "Thurb".


Villiers finds himself on Star Well, an isolated planetoid in the middle of the Flammarion Rift, which is something of a tourist attraction -- basically an hotel/casino.  He is a bit short of cash, but partly by outfoxing the crooked casino operators, he is on his way to getting enough money to head to the planet where his father's allowance can be claimed.  On Star Well he discerns that something fishy is going on, particularly when he stumbles across a starship landing port that is not mentioned on most maps of the planetoid.  He also encounters a plucky 15 year old girl who is chafing at the thought of the four years her father (as it turns out, a friend of Villiers) means her to spend at a finishing school.  And he finds himself the target of a clumsy attempt at a scam.  Torve the Trog shows up in the company of a fat Mithraist priest named Augustus Srb, who may not be all he seems.  After some enjoyable capering about, we learn that Srb is an Inspector General, convinced that something nasty is going on behind the scenes a the casino.  Villiers, seemingly by accident, ends up helping out.  The ending involves a duel, and then a scary conclusion where Villiers' 15 year old friend stumbles into real danger and he manages to rescue her at the last minute.  It's handled with a nice very light touch, and lots of real cleverness, and dry humor.  Very enjoyable.

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

The Thurb Revolution (1968) finds Villiers and Torve on Shiawassee, a planet under a somewhat strict censorship regimen.  Almost any sort of art is forbidden, so, by mysterious means, Villiers ends up heading to another planet in the system, Pewamo, which is used only for camping and very limited tourism.  He influences some idle youth from Shiawassee to follow him, and almost by accident ends up starting a new artistic movement.  Plus he encounters his old friend Fred, who is fleeing an arranged marriage of his own (remember that Villiers had trouble with his arranged marriage).  One of the cute things Panshin does is never tell us who Fred really is in The Thurb Revolution -- but an offhand reference in Star Well makes it clear that he is actually the Emperor's second son.  Throw in an intelligent cloud that thinks it is God, an assassin, a gawky young woman disguised as a man, a set of acquaintances of Villiers engaged in an unusual form of Tag, and you have another feather light but very enjoyable book.

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

The third, and, sadly, probably last, of these novels is Masque World (1969).  The book closes with an announcement that the fourth, The Universal Pantograph, will be appearing soon, but it's been over 30 years now, with no sign of it. Apparently (at any I heard it on Usenet, so it must be true) Panshin was dissatisfied with his treatment at the hands of Ace, perhaps not surprisingly.  He still makes occasional noises that sound like he might eventually write it (and perhaps the up to three further books originally planned) -- but I fear that the 60ish Panshin would not write the book the 30ish Panshin would have, most likely to the detriment of the product. [Now that Panshin is nearly 80, I think all thoughts of another novel of any sort from him can likely be abandoned.]

At any rate, Masque World, which turns out to be the Villiers book I had read in my teens, is of a piece with the previous two. Light-hearted and clever, very fun to read.  The plot is hardly worth recounting -- it concerns a nobleman (and relative of Villiers) obsessed with melons, two Trogs (one real and one fake), a Christian historian, the phenomenon of peelgrunt, the Monists, the parents and sister of Louise Parini, and an incompetent bureaucrat and his alien supervisor.  Good solid fun.  And I gnash my teeth that I will never read the "real" Universal Pantograph.

All in all, these are three of the most purely enjoyable SF books I have read recently.  Not serious in plot or tone, they still allow room for meditation on serious topics.  And they are very nicely constructed with a very light but sure hand, and interlarded with funny bits -- sometimes farcically so, more often arch or subtle.  First rate -- on the evidence of these books, Panshin's near complete disappearance from the fiction writing world is just a damn shame.  (His only other novels are the Nebula-winning Rite of Passage (1968) and a fantasy co-written with his wife Cory Panshin, Earth Magic (1978).) Phoenix Pick published an omnibus edition of the three Anthony Villiers novels just this past June as New Celebrations.

Belated Birthday Review: Ward Moore

Belated Birthday Review: Ward Moore

Ward Moore (1903-1978) published five novels in the field, beginning with Greener Than You Think (1947). (He also wrote significant non-SF work, including Breathe the Air Again and Cloud by Day.) His most famous novel by far is Bring the Jubilee (1953), a very well-regarded alternate history in which the South wins the Civil War. He is also remembered for his last novel, Joyleg (1962), a collaboration with Avram Davidson, about a Revolutionary War veteran discovered to be still alive in the present time; and for a stunning post-Apolacyptic (or "during the Apocalypse") story, "Lot", along with its sequel, "Lot's Daughter". As a writer he started late and finished early, with the great bulk of his fiction appearing between 1947 and 1962 (though a few more stories appeared in the '70s). His second wife was Raylyn Moore, whom I remember for a fair amount of enjoyable SF stories from the '70s.

Here's a collection -- too short, I dare say -- of things I've written about some of Ward Moore's work. Moore's birthday was August 10, so this is a bit late. But I do want to keep emphasizing the work of these minor but interesting writers.

F&SF, May 1953

"Lot", by Ward Moore, is a quite remarkable post-Apocalyptic story. Arthur Jimmon has planned for nuclear war, and when it comes he and his family are ready to escape. But as they travel, with supplies, to Jimmon's planned refuge, his family complain and complain. Jimmon seems the true competent man, well-prepared -- and ready to coldly dispense with any interference. I won't spoil the ending, but it's truly shocking. The story is actually a bitter, horrified look at a certain kind of man -- it's something like satire, something like savage condemnation. It's a powerful story. There was a sequel, "Lot's Daughter", almost as strong. The two were the source material for the move Panic in Year Zero!, which apparently leached all the vicious power of the story from it.

F&SF, September 1955

Ward Moore's "Old Story" (6700 words) is quite good. An aging popular painter, also a philanderer, reflects on his unsatisfying life -- his failure to establish an enduring relationship with any of his three wives, and his lack of critical appreciation. If only he had chosen the right woman back then, he'd have stuck with "real" art ... Then he finds himself back in his younger self, at the critical point. And he chooses a different woman, and indeed life is very different -- he becomes a lionized artist, and a successful businessman as well. (Sort of a Wallace Stevens of the art world.) But he's the same person, which means that despite his tolerant wife, he can't stop fooling around. Still, he comes to the end of a happy life -- but then ... The twist is a good one, and quite forthrightly feminist.

Amazing, February 1960

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

"Transient" is a short novel complete in this issue. It didn't appear in book form until a small-press "Double" edition in 2013. And I think it's fairly easy to see why. It's a really odd story, ambitious to an extent, but mostly a mess and a failure, at least in my view. It's about Almon Lampley, currently the Governor of his state, by appointment after his predecessor's death. Lampley is beginning his campaign for re-election, when he sneaks out to a small town, and enters a hotel. Then things get strange ... and the rest of the novel is a phantasmagoria of weird, often horrific, events. Lampley encounters strange guests, wanders into what seem other worlds, a weird department store, caves. He encounters a race of tiny people, kidnaps one such woman, who grows larger, whereupon he rapes her. He rapes another (normal) woman along the way. There are hints that all this is in pursuit of some personal issues Lampley has to do with his relationship with his wife, and particular to the tragic history of their son -- though none of this is ever made clear. It ends up being boring and unpleasant, even as paragraph by paragraph a pretty impressive imagination is displayed. Worst of all -- the story basically just stops. It may be that I have totally missed the point.

(Cover by Ed Emshwiller)

Fantastic, March and April 1962

Joyleg, by Avram Davidson and Ward Moore, is an enjoyable novel about a man, Isachar Joyleg, who is discovered to be collecting a Civil War pension. As the war has been over for nearly a century, surely he's a fraud. Two congresspeople, a man and a woman, go to investigate (because which district his old village is in is unclear). They learn (not much of a spoiler) that Joyleg is as old as he claims, due to a concoction of his. We get to see life in this old town, and all this is amusing, and fairly on point. The congresspeople are decent characters too. That said, the story loses momentum along the way, and while it's well worth reading through, parts of the last half are a bit tired.

Birthday Review: Stories of Alan E. Nourse

Alan E. Nourse was a really important writer to me early in my SF reading. I read a number of his YA novels when I first encountered SF, such as The Bladerunner and, most memorably to me, The Universe Between. It was a pleasant surprise to me, decades later, to encounter "High Threshold" in a 1951 issue of Astounding, and realize that this was the novelette from which The Universe Between grew. (It's a cool story of entering another dimension with a different geometry -- it truly wowed me at age 12.) He would have been 91 today, and in his memory here's a (fairly random) selection of my thoughts about his short fiction from some 1950s SF magazines.

Astounding, February 1953

Alan E. Nourse's "Nightmare Brother" (9300 words) is about a man subjected to tortures -- simulated via electrodes in his brain. It seems he must be able to resist any level of torture to survive in deep space. I wasn't convinced.

Space Science Fiction, July 1953

The novelette this time around is "Infinite Intruder" by Alan E. Nourse (9500 words). Roger Strang is working on a project to build a barrier protecting the US from further nuclear attacks (New York has already been destroyed) by the Eurasian Combine. He finds his young son being attacked -- at first as if by accident, but then more directly -- but his son miraculously survives even point blank shots. Strang's investigations lead him to strange discoveries -- he himself has no past, and his best friends and wife seem implicated in the attacks on his son. Then he learns that he is from the future, and all this is a desperate attempt to change the past -- for the evil Dictator in the future is named Farrol Strang. But the past cannot be changed. Maybe, though, if they return forward in time the future (present) can be altered! I thought the story no better than OK.

If, June 1954

Alan E. Nourse's "The Link" (5800 words) is another far future story. Humanity has divided into two groups, a pacifistic group that has learned to live together and create great communal music, and a warlike group that has chased the pacifists from planet to planet over millennia. The Hunters are back again, and one couple from the good guys volunteers to stop running away, but to greet the Hunters and try to reform them. An OK theme, but the story doesn't quite sell it.

Orbit, July-August 1954

"My Friend Bobby", by Alan E. Nourse (3800 words) -- maybe the best story here, about a young boy with telepathic powers, who loves his dog (with whom he can communicate), but who is feared by his mother -- leading to a tragic ending. Nothing special, but solid work.

Galaxy, January 1956

"Brightside Crossing" might be Alan E. Nourse's best story. It's a solid if scientifically obsolete story about trying to cross the Brightside of Mercury (of course, as Larry Niven and the rest of us found out some 45  years ago, there is no "Brightside" of Mercury) -- told by the lone survivor of an earlier attempt to cross the Brightside to a man who wants to try again. The survivor's tale, fairly convincingly from a 1955 point of view, tells of the dangers of the attempt, and the heroic efforts to make it, ending as we know from the start, in failure and an ignominious return. The last line is really neat.

If, October 1957

"RX" by Alan E. Nourse posits a galactic community in which Earth's contribution is medical services. A team of a doctor and a surgeon respond to an emergency summons to a planet which has so far refused to sign a contract with Earth. The planet's ruler is dying, and the witch-doctorish methods of the locals aren't working. Their ethics require them to try to treat him, even though they risk death if they fail. The eventual solution is a bit trivial -- somewhat on purpose -- rather a minor bit of work, I thought.

Birthday Review: Stories of David R. Bunch

Today would have been David R. Bunch's 94th birthday. He was probably the most original writer of Cele Goldsmith’s tenure at Amazing/Fantastic. He has recently been brought back to print by of all organizations The New York Review of Books, via their NYRB Press imprint, with Moderan, a collection of his stories about the half-robots/half-men of Moderan. Bunch (1925-2000) was a Missourian, a graduate of Central Missouri State (where my son got his degree) and of Washington University in St. Louis. He also attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lived in St. Louis most of his life (though I never met him). He was a controversial figure to Amazing’s readers – the letter columns I’ve read featured plenty of screeds against him. But I find his short, very satirical, pieces continually intriguing, if at times a bit difficult.

Amazing, November 1959

David R. Bunch's “The Flesh-Man from Far Wide” is one of the earlier Moderan stories, and it probably serves as a decent introduction. The narrator, a typical psychotic man of Moderan, gets a visitor, who seems possibly to have no robotic “replacements” – no metal parts. And he has other strange ideas, about happiness – he wants to find Moderan’s Happiness Machine. But what do those of Moderan need with happiness?

Fantastic, December 1959

And Bunch’s “Was She Horrid?” is one of his first stories. He’s an author much associated with Goldsmith, though his first two pieces were in If, in 1957 and 1959. His first story for Goldsmith was in the November 1959 Amazing, followed by this one, a Moderan story, about a half-metal man visited by his daughter, ever suspicious that it’s all a plot by his wife in what seems an unending war.

Strange stuff, the essence of Bunch already from the beginning.

Amazing, July 1960

“Penance Day in Moderan”, one of Bunch's earlier Moderan stories, is one of the best, I think. It is told by a vain cyborg, on Penance day, when all the citizens of Moderan march out to shed fake tears. The narrator boasts of his accomplishments, and of what he will do when next they war against each other. It’s quite funny, and quite pointed.

Fantastic, June 1962

David Bunch's "Ended" is longer than most of Bunch's stories, but otherwise wholly characteristic. If you like Bunch -- and for my money he's such an original he demands reading, even though he's neither a comfortable read nor a consistently satisfying read -- you'll find this worthwhile. If not, not.

Fantastic, February 1964

The other is David R. Bunch, the wildly strange writer the great bulk of whose work was very short stories for Goldsmith. “They Never Came Back from Whoosh!” is a satire on commercialism and conformity, about a place said to be wonderful that everyone must visit but no one returns from. It’s one of Bunch’s better pieces I think.

Amazing, August 1964

David Bunch's "The Failure" is a Bunch story, more inscrutable than many, about a forlorn quest for the Final Truth.

Amazing, September 1964

About the Bunch ("A Vision of the King") once again I have nothing much to say -- it's fairly inscrutable as usual.

And, finally, I figured Darryl R. Groupe had to be a pseudonym, and it is, a fairly obvious one for David R. Bunch. Nobody would have been fooled for a second no matter what name was used: "2064, or Thereabouts", is a clearly a Bunch story, about people who are mostly metal, and paranoid, and one who lets an artist into his stronghold. Weird as one expects.

Fantastic, October 1964

Bunch’s “Home to Zero” is not a Moderan story, but it’s certainly a Bunch story, taking on a rather cosmic subject in inimitable Bunch fashion. No point explaining it – it simply needs to be read.

Fantastic, January 1965

David R. Bunch offers “Make Mine Trees” (1,200 words), very strange horror about a man whose wife left him for another man (a Spanish dancer) and who is raising his son alone while working on a formula to save the world. What the formula really does is slowly revealed… pretty effective.

(Cover by Gray Morrow)

Amazing, June 1965

From June, the cover story, David Bunch’s "The Walking, Talking, I-Don’t-Care Man", is a pure Bunch Moderan story, with the narrator, ruling his personal castle, encountering a man/robot who just keeps walking, and refuses to stop, even as his path leads him right through the narrator’s property. It works pretty well, really, in a somewhat talky way.

Fantastic, June 1965

Finally, the inimitable David R. Bunch’s very brief “The Little Doors” is, well, pure Bunch, hard to describe, but pretty effective. It’s about a sort of performance, with weirdly named “creatures” showing up and… well, no point in description. Needs to be read. It’s worth the 600 words.

[It's interesting that Bunch appeared in the last issue of both Amazing and Fantastic to be published by Ziff-Davis and edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli. One suspects she was rushing to get him published before Sol Cohen took over -- and that the cover honor on the last issue of Amazing was a special nod to him, and perhaps an implied rebuke to the new publisher.]

Eternity, 1979

David R. Bunch's "Through a Wall and Back" is impenetrable -- he's always on the thin edge of simply being irritating, and he goes over the edge here.

Birthday Review: Song of Time, by Ian R. MacLeod

Song of Time by Ian R. MacLeod (PS Publishing, 978-1-59780-094-5, $14.95, tpb, 253 pages) October 2008.

A review by Rich Horton

Ian R. MacLeod is one of the supreme SF writers of recent years, especially at novelette and novella length, and so it is something of a disappointment that his novels seem to have struggled to find an audience. His newest work is so far only out in the U. K. from the excellent but definitely small outfit PS Publishing. Yet in considering this book I am inclined to understand its failure (so far!) to attract a trade publisher. Song of Time is not a high concept book. Indeed it is difficult to capture it with a single thematic statement. (His two Ace novels, on the other hand, were distinctly about the magical substance aether and the ways in which its use paralleled the Industrial Revolution.) Thus it is, I imagine, a bit harder to “sell” the book. And I must also add that while that is not always a shortcoming, in the present case I think it is rather. About which more later. I must also add that it did win the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best SF Novel of 2008, and also the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Song of Time opens with an aging woman rescuing a drowning man from the ocean off her Cornish house. The man, whom she calls Adam, is a mysterious figure – he has no memory of himself, but he knows – or learns quickly – a great many things, some of which are quite unexpected. He is also a remarkably quick healer, and otherwise unusually constructed. Thus a puzzle is established – but really the book is not about this puzzle (though in the end it is solved, quite satisfactorily).

Instead, ostensibly as both a potential prod to Adam’s memories, and as part of a project she is undertaking before dying – or rather before “passing” to a virtual existence – the protagonist, Roushana Maitland, tells her life story to Adam. (And, in a sense, to herself.) And this is the subject of Song of Time – the life story of a woman of the 21st Century, and thus the story of that Century. And both her story and the century’s story are quite tumultuous. Her mother was born in England to Indian parents, her father is more conventionally “Anglo-Saxon”. Her beloved older brother inherits the English looks, and he is also a brilliant musical talent. But somehow his tragic early death unleashes hitherto unrevealed talent in the more Indian-looking Roushana, and she goes on to become a brilliant concert violinist. She marries one of the greatest conductors of the day, and they have a stormy but mostly loving marriage, two kids, and, too, plenty of tragedy.

The historical background is likewise eventful. We are treated to a variety of disasters – nuclear war, a supervolcano, political upheaval. Roushana’s husband is a black American who is heavily involved in French politics when they meet. Roushana’s mother becomes a central activist for the Indian poor. Roushana herself is more of a homebody in spirit – but her life gives us glimpses of ravaged India and American, and radically altered England. And her approaching death gives us glimpses of a strange future in which the dead live on in virtual space.

All of this is nicely done, but none of it is spectacular. In a way this is an unfair complaint – the imagined 21st Century is a mix of a number of not entirely new speculations – but isn’t this really in its way plausible? Yes it is, but somehow while the future we see is interesting it isn’t quite involving, or really terribly thought-provoking. For different reasons Roushana’s life, which is really the center of the novel, while it too holds the interest, doesn’t end up absorbing. I think in part the problem is one of cliché – her brilliant career just doesn’t convince, seems too easy, too old hat. The same with her stormy marriage – the sexy husband (and the great sex) plus the infidelities and the final tragedy are interesting but, alas, just that bit too melodramatic. And finally Adam’s story, only hinted at, is also interesting but too much of a side issue, and too lightly sketched in, to fully work.

Despite the caveats, I enjoyed Song of Time. It’s never boring, and it’s very nicely written. But it is, I think, in the final analysis a minor work.

Birthday Review: Stories of Paolo Bacigalupi

Today is the birthday of Paolo Bacigalupi, a very interesting writer of pretty hard SF, one of the most environmentally committed of our writers. Here's a look at my Locus reviews of his short fiction.

Locus, February 2004

I was very excited by two stories from newer writers in the February F&SF. Paolo Bacigalupi has already drawn attention with stories like last year's "The Fluted Girl". He is also showing considerable range -- each story I've seen has been different from the others. I think "The People of Sand and Slag" is his best so far. It's about a threesome of miners in the near future, and their encounter with a dog (thought to be extinct) in the environmentally devastated area about their mine. Stated so the story seems quite conventional, but Bacigalupi slowly springs some surprises, which I won't spoil -- but the effect is impressive.

Locus, October 2005

Paolo Bacigalupi remains one of the most consistently interesting young writers in the field. “The Calorie Man” (F&SF, October-November) is set in a future following a disastrous famine, which resulted in food production dominated by genetically modified new crops controlled by large corporations. This biotech dominated future is strange in other ways – “calories” are central to all energy, as fossil fuels have been replaced by kinetic energy generated by genetically engineered “mulies”. The hero travels up the Mississippi to Iowa to track down a man the agribusiness companies are very interested in, for all the obvious reasons. It’s a fun and thought-provoking story, though I confess one of the thoughts it provoked in me was that while corporate (and governmental) behavior is often scandalous, I wasn’t convinced that it would reach quite the murderous heights implied herein.

Locus, October 2006

Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the future of his celebrated story “The Calorie Man” with “Yellow Card Man” (Asimov's, December), about a once successful businessman, a Chinese man in Malaya, who has been expelled to Thailand, where he must grub daily for scraps of work. His feelings of degradation are sharpened by his interaction with a now more successful younger man, a man he had fired for fraud in his earlier life. This is a convincingly dark story, with redemption of a sort on offer but not easy for a fallen man to grasp.

Bacigalupi is also on hand in the October/November F&SF, with “Pop Squad”, a strong story about a man whose job is to eliminate illegal babies born to women who have foregone immortality treatments (which also cause sterility). The story is effective in depicting a future of unchanging immortals, but the emotional impact is blunted by a certain forced feeling to the protagonist’s brutality. I couldn’t believe society would accept this – I thought the author created this brutality to shock the reader. And, it must be said, the whole situation felt dated. In the end, a good story that I enjoyed reading, but not great.

Locus, May 2007

Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Tamarisk Hunter” (F&SF, May) is an effective and bitter look at water conflicts in the future, when California is more or less bleeding the mountain states dry, and the few who remain there eke out a living by such stratagems as accepting bounties for eradicating the stubborn, water-wasting, tamarisks.

Review of Fast Forward 2 (Locus, November 2008)

Paolo Bacigalupi is a must-read writer, and his new novelette “The Gambler” closes this book quite well. A young man from Laos escaped his country’s political upheavals and came as a boy to the US. Now he is a journalist, quixotically going after knotty political stories in a culture obsessed with celebrity. Under pressure to up his ratings, he agrees to interview another Laotian refugee, a young woman who has become an international pop star. She’s not quite the shallow person he expects, but she’s still much more of the culture than he is, and he finds himself forced to choose between his principles and the honeypot of great ratings and a potential relationship with a beautiful countrywoman. Good stuff, but a bit too moralistically obvious, and not quite as SFnally intriguing as Bacigalupi at his best.

Birthday Review: Time and Again, plus some short fiction, by Clifford D. Simak

Birthday Review: Time and Again, plus some short fiction, by Clifford D. Simak

(Cover by Paul Kresse)

Last year for for Clifford Simak's birthday I posted reviews of a couple of his Ace Doubles, plus the first short story collection in the eventually cancelled Complete Stories edition. So this year, I've scoured my reviews of old magazines for a few more short story reviews, plus his novel Time and Again, which was serialized in the first three issues of Galaxy as "Time Quarry".

Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1939

The other stories this issue are by Clifford Simak and Ray Cummings. Simak's "Madness from Mars" (6000 words) tells of a Mars expedition that returns with all its members either mad or dead. They also carry a live Martian animal. Is it the cause? Of course -- but Simak being Simak, not out of evil motives. Minor Simak, but not awful.





"Time Quarry", serialized in Galaxy, October, November, and December 1950

(Cover by David Stone)

"Time Quarry" by Clifford Simak was the first novel serialized in Galaxy, appearing in the first three issues (Oct, Nov, Dec 1950). I read it in the serialized version, but it is better known by its 1951 book title, Time and Again. It also had a paperback edition as First He Died.

As the novel opens, Earth tenuously rules a widespread interstellar empire.  Chris Adams of the Justice Bureau meets a strange man who claims to be his successor, from more than a century in the future, and who tells him that Asher Sutton, lost for 20 years, will return in a few days.  And that he must be killed.

The focus shifts to Sutton, on his return from the strange planet 61 Cygni VII. This planet, though very near to Earth, has never been visited before. Sutton has returned after 20 years -- in a ruined ship. Somehow he made it across 11 light years without air, food, or engines.

Sutton immediately finds himself threatened from multiple directions. He is carrying encoded notes for a book he needs to write -- based on what he learned from the entities on 61 Cygni VII.  But some people want to kill him, others want to control what he writes, and the beautiful woman Eva Barbour, and the android Herkimer, seem to just want to help him write his book. He trusts nobody, especially after Herkimer's owner thrusts him into a duel, which Sutton wins basically because of his enhanced body. Soon Sutton is on a chase through both space and time -- eventually going back to 20th Century Wisconsin, and the home of one of his ancestors, a farmer. (See -- it's a Cliff Simak book -- you just know there will be a pastoral interlude, referably in Southwest Wisconsin.) Sutton learns that the future is war torn, riven by fights between those who believe in Sutton's original teachings, and those who follow a distorted revision. He must find a way to write his book so that it cannot be misread.

(Cover by Walter Brooks)

The central message of the book is very well done -- that all life, humans, aliens, and androids, has an individual "destiny" -- thus that all such life has rights. The bad guys want to restrict all rights to humans. This is well put, and the story is exciting, but it's a bit marred by the silly science, and the feeling that Sutton's powers will let him do whatever the plot requires.

Space Science Fiction, September 1952

Clifford Simak's "The Fence" is a nice short story that touches briefly on one of my personal pet tropes, the time viewer, but which is really once again a paranoid sort of piece -- it seems that people in the future live lives of complete leisure -- so who is providing for us? And if so, why? Could we be ... pets?

Galaxy, October 1954

Clifford D. Simak's "Idiot's Crusade" (5200 words) is about a village idiot who is giving superpowers by an alien for some reason. The now intelligent guy begins by taking revenge on those who have treated him worst -- but then he realizes that revenge is empty. He decides to use his powers to force people to be good -- and, creepily, that seems perhaps worse. Pretty good stuff.

Galaxy, November 1954

All three novelettes are fine work. Clifford Simak's "How-2" (14,000 words) is a satirical piece about a future overtaken by the "do-it-yourself" spirit, which is then undermined when a "do-it-yourselfer" builds an experimental robot. Clever stuff -- and rather different from what people now think of as the standard Simak story.

Amazing, May 1965

"Over the River and Through the Woods", by Clifford D. Simak, is a simple and nicely told, if never surprising, story about a couple of children who come to stay with an old couple sometime late in the 19th Century. But there is something a bit odd about the children -- nothing that will surprise the reader. Not much to the story, but it’s worth the brief read.