The Complete Works of Walter F. Moudy: No Man on Earth (plus stories, one other novel)

The Complete(?) Works of Walter F. Moudy

a survey by Rich Horton

Walter Frank Moudy was born in Cassville, Missouri, a very rural town in the Ozarks of Southwestern Missouri, near the Arkansas border, in 1929, and died in Kansas City in 1973, not yet 44 (I believe in a car accident.) I asked for help in learning more about him, and Paul di Filippo and Dave Hook came through, with an obituary from the Kansas City Star, and with the news that he had published at least a couple more stories in that newspaper's Sunday supplement, the Star Magazine, in 1972. Other details from the obituary: Moudy was a lawyer (as I had expected, based on internal evidence from his stories) and he went to the University of Missouri. He had a wife and three children, heightening the tragedy of his early death.

(The Star's obituary mentioned three stories for their magazine, but that seems to have been an error. For the third story was not by Moudy. "The Silver Dolphin" appeared in the September 17, 1972 issue of the Star Magazine, and the table of contents advertised it as short fiction by Walter Moudy. But the story itself is bylined Robert W. Bailey, and the brief profile of the author stated that he was a student at Northwest Missouri State. Something clicked in my head, and I looked up Robin Wayne Bailey, a Kansas City SF and Fantasy writer, former President of SFWA. (And someone I've met personally, shared panels with, talked with at various conventions.) Robin went to Northwest Missouri State, and was there in the early '70s. And his legal first name is Robert. So I asked Robin if that was his story -- and it was, his first professional sale. (It is not SF.) I just thought that a delightful coincidence -- in looking up Walter Moudy's publications, I chanced across the first published story by a writer I know pesonally.)

Walter Moudy published an SF novel, No Man on Earth, in 1964, followed by three stories in Cele Lalli's magazines, Amazing and Fantastic, in 1965, and an erotic (rather tamely so) paperback, The Ninth Commandment (set, by the way, in Kansas City) in 1966. His only other SF stories were "The Peddler", one of the Star Magazine stories, and "The Search for Man", published two years after his death. The Star Magazine also published one non-SF piece, "Please Wrap Separately". One of his stories, "The Survivor", is well-remembered -- it was anthologized in Judith Merril's best of the year book, and has been reprinted several times since. (His byline alternated somewhat randomly between "Walter Moudy" and "Walter F. Moudy".) I should add that given my late discovery that he had published some stories in a Sunday supplement, it's possible that there are other Walter Moudy stories out there somewhere.

Moudy had some real talent as an SF writer, mostly centered on a powerful imagination. He wasn't a hard SF writer, for sure. And his characterization skills were thin. His prose was fine -- nothing special, but competent. (That said, his last few stories, from the '70s, were a bit more slickly written than his earlier work.) A couple of his stories remain worth reading, the novel is uneven as heck, but often interesting -- indeed all of his SF is at least OK. (I'd probably skip the sleaze novel.) Could he have had a more prominent career had he lived longer, and spent more time on it? It's hard to say, but it's too bad he didn't get the chance to try. 

No Man on Earth (Berkley, 1964)

This is Moudy's only SF novel, and his first publication, from Berkley in 1964. There were two UK editions, a Whiting and Wheaton hardcover in 1966 and a Corgi paperback in 1967. Despite these three printings, the book is rather hard to find. It recently got some completely unexpected notice when the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks cited it as her "Favorite Book no one has ever heard of" in a New York Times profile. 

It is a curious and interesting if not exactly wholly successful novel. It is one of those novels that changes directions and focus multiple times. You get the sense of a writer with a lot of ideas he wanted to make sure made it into his book. 

It opens in a rural setting, with a young woman pregnant with a child resulting from her rape by a rumored "manwitch". (For people of a certain age, it's hard to see the word "manwitch" and not think of a certain Sloppy Joe mix.) Once born, the child, named Thad, is clearly some sort of superman, even though he and his mother live in deep poverty in what we learn is a reservation of sorts, where a sample of pre-20th Century humans live in conditions resembling, perhaps, the Ozarks as of 1910 or so. The boy's differences attract the attention of the local teacher -- who is of course a representative of the future society that has maintained this reservation. He soon realizes he must escape, and so he does, despite the precautions taken to isolate the reservation. And he lands in Kansas City, while the government tries to track him down after getting a report from the teacher. Thad is interested, by now, in finding his father to take revenge on the rape of his mother, and also in learning all he can about everything -- science in particular. And after various mild adventures, Thad is suddenly making some remarkable inventions, and building a successful business. This becomes a great concern to the government, which has maintained peace partly, it seems, by suppressing innovation.

But Thad's success continues, and he is clever enough to avoid the government's attempts on him. Soon he is engaged in building a starship, having figured out that the "manwitch" who raped his mother must have been an alien. He falls in love with a government spy, who reciprocates his affections and abandons her spy position. The primary POV character throughout this part -- and indeed most of the novel -- is a government agent, Lloyd Coleman, who takes a liking to Thad, but who struggles with the idea that perhaps it is best that he kill him -- for the sake of the human race. 

The upshot is that, after Thad's girlfriend is murdered, the government agrees to allow him to take his starship on a mission of exploration -- as long as he accepts Lloyd and two representatives of other polities -- a Russian woman and a Swedish man. So off they go into space, in search of Thad's father. There follow a few episodes -- almost in Star Trek mode -- as Thad and his crew visit various planets, having adventures such as being imprisoned by the local authorities and having to make a dramatic escape, or fetching up on a planet with very loose sexual morals and thus engaging in flings with the beautiful natives; eventually finding the major center of local galactic civilization, ever finding more and more evidence of Thad's father. The Swedish man and Russian woman, originally sworn enemies, naturally fall in love and decide to stay behind on one of the planets ...

I won't detail the ending. Of course it resolves in a return to Earth, after Thad has finally found his father. Thad decides on an appropriate "punishment" for that man -- only after Lloyd is finally able to work through his conflict about whether it is safe to allow Thad to live. And Thad faces his own destiny ...

This is not a great novel. There isn't a shred of scientific plausibility. The characters are cliches. The writing is competent but not exceptional. The sexual politics are laughable. The plot is a mess, structurally. But ... but ... my interest was maintained throughout. Moudy really had an intriguing imagination, and a clever way with the individual episodes. It's a fun if preoposterous read. 

Short Stories:

"The Dreamer" (Fantastic, April 1965) 3500 words

This is a very slight story, sort of a science fictionalization of a certain sort of fairy tale. It concerns a young failed merchant with a snarky talking parrot, who decides to take a starship to another world where there might be a market for his products. His laziness means he will fail there as well, but he does have one thing of value -- his parrot. And the efforts of his parrot, plus the young man's fortuitous bumbling with respect to a certain princess, do end up making his fortune, and more importantly that of the parrot. It's a trivial piece, but pleasantly enough executed.

"I Think They Love Me" (Fantastic, May 1965) 2000 words

There's a certain cranky get off my lawn aspect to this also rather slight satire of Beatlemania and the general passion showed by fans towards pop groups in that era, as the narrator tells the tale of his time as a pop star, beginning with training in somewhat military fashion for how to survive the raving crowds. Predictable end, and the satire kind of misses the point, but, again, tolerably well-written.

"The Survivor" (Amazing, May 1965) 10,800 words

This could easily have appeared, with trivial changes, in a 2016 magazine. It concerns what we would now call a reality show: a staged war in which 100 soldiers for the Soviet Union and the United States battle for economic benefits. The winning side gets a lot of money from the losing side, and any surviving soldier (the battle is over when all the soldiers on one side are dead) gets his own benefits: financial, no doubt, but mainly personal: he is now immune from prosecution for any crime. The story follows one American soldier, Richard Starbuck, as he experiences the battle, and, through sheer luck, becomes the only survivor, and therefore the reason the US wins. The denouement is inevitable, and shocking, and only too believable. The telling is effective, particularly in its depiction of the "expert" commentary. It’s an excellent story. It wasn’t ignored -- Judith Merril picked it for her Best of the Year book -- and it’s still remembered --Paula Guran reprinted it as recently as 2014. 

"The Peddler" (Kansas City Star Magazine, September 10, 1972)

This is an SF story, about a woman married to a successful man who seems maybe to be losing interest in her. Their house is automated -- '50s SF style automated house, or maybe Jetsons style. The husband leaves for work, warning her he'll be home late -- important meeting. Then a robot peddler shows up, with a special product -- a lie detector mesh to add to any chair in the house. And there's a free trial ... so she accepts the trial, and when her husband gets home late -- well, you can see what's going to happen, and that she'll keep the lie detector. A fairly trivial story, but professionally done. 

"The Search for Man" (In the Wake of Man) 16500 words

"The Search for Man" concerns a child named David Zimmerman, a robot in the far future, with a brain based on a mix of the brain material saved from 12 humans. It seems that humans have died out, but the robots who served them saved the brains of 12 of the best and brightest humans, and since then have made their children (robots do wear out) with intelligence derived from those humans. 

David grows up a particularly promising young man/robot, at first an eager adherent to the robot religion devoted to search for remnants of humans and human civilization. But as he grows older, he becomes disillusioned, and realizes that Man is truly dead -- and he becomes the Anti-Man, convinced that robots must throw off the influence of human history and make their own way. He lectures on this theme, until he meets a young woman who disputes his ideas -- she is the daughter of one of the robot religious leaders. David, against his will, is falling in love -- and he is drawn to meet the woman's father, who has a shocking revelation.

The upshot is that David and his lover head to Mars, where apparently a few humans tried to escape the catastrophe on Earth. And on Mars they find the remnants of those people, who live a horribly constricted life underground. David is able to offer them a return to their future Earth -- but the results of this will inevitably wholly change robot society. The resolution is curious -- inspiring in a way, but dark too, for if anything the Martian humans are more robotic than even the robots. But perhaps they have more room to change?

It's an intriguing and readable story, though also rather silly in places. Moudy, in general, seemed uninterested in scientific plausibility -- his stories and his novel could have almost the feel of 1930s SF. But the ideas behind them were solid and ambitious. He's an uneven writer, but his small oeuvre is worth reading.

Non-SF

The Ninth Commandment (Brandon House, 1966)

As far as I know, this was the only non science fiction book Moudy published. Brandon House was a major Los Angeles based publisher of what were called "sleaze paperbacks" (I apologize to the authors of those, a few of whom I know, who object that their books were not "sleazy" and were professional efforts, simply not publishable at that time by bigger publishers.) Milton Luros was the publisher. They did feature works by SF writers such as Philip Jose Farmer and Richard E. Geis.

This book, to my mind, fits on the tamer side of the category. It does have several sex scenes, including at least one out and out rape (of a 13 year old girl by her 14 year old cousin), but the scenes are not terribly (if at all) titillating, nor very explicit; and, really, Walter Moudy's intent here seems fairly serious. He really does seem to be attempting to portray the sexual problems of a mid '60s couple in a frank manner -- though the view of, in particular, female sexuality seems profoundly off track. 

The story centers on Norman Thurston, an up and coming Kansas City lawyer in his late 20s, and his wife Rita, a beautiful woman, something of a social climber, but (it seems) somewhat frigid (to use the term then common.) Their lives are disturbed by the return of Norman's older brother Jack, a gambler and rambler (to coin a phrase) who wrote a well-received Kerouacian novel but hasn't done much else with this life.

The setup and the title (the ninth commandment is "Thou shalt not covet thy brother's wife") make it clear that sooner or later Jack Thurston is going to have sex with his sister-in-law Rita, but the novel takes its time. We learn about the early, mostly unsatisfactory, sexual experiences of all three. Of Jack and Norman's upbringing in rural Caryton (which I suspect resembles Moudy's home of Cassville) with an abusive and very religious father, and very little money. Jack gets out as soon as he can and starts wandering, learning along the way that he can easily seduce women but can't stay with them. Norman uses his basketball ability to get to college and become a lawyer. Rita grows up in more established circumstances, her father a successful store owner, her mother part of KC society. But her mother is smothering, and her parents' marriage is all but sexless, and Rita's early experiences (the rape) don't help her either. Her mother clearly thinks Norman, despite his good job, is too low class for her daughter. Rita's efforts to establish herself in local society seem an attempt to both please, and escape, her mother, and to do something about her boring housewife life. (She has a degree from Stephens College in Columbia.)

Jack stays with them, gets into a relationship with an old girlfriend who has gotten divorced, but it goes nowhere. Jack and Rita talk a lot, but there's no hint of sex, until one weekend when Norman has a major trip to make which may make his career, but which means Rita can't go to the society party she coveted ... so she and Jack go out for dinner and dancing instead, and she gets drunk, and Jack takes advantage. Of course leading to an explosive conclusion when both her father and Norman eventually find out ...

I honestly think Moudy was trying for something mildly ambitous -- a portrait of a dying marriage between two basically decent but messed up people. But his characterization is clumsy and forced, and as I said his notions of female sexuality as portrayed here strike me as terribly off; and Rita really seems a cliche. And the sex scenes are dry squibs -- in a novel published by Brandon House I would have supposed the real payoff was supposed to be the porn part ... though as I haven't read any more of those perhaps it was all like this back then?

What made the best of Moudy's fiction work was mostly his imagination. And in this book, he really has no room to use it.

"Please Wrap Separately" (Kansas City Star Magazine, October 1, 1972)

This a brief lightly comic satrical piece about an engineering manager from Kansas City who has been promoted to the home office in New York. He has a pretty wife who went to Vassar, and a pretty mistress on the side. Their birthdays are coincidentally on the same day, so he buys them the same present (perfume), asking the clerk to wrap them separately. But when he gets to his mistress' apartment, there's someone else there ... so he keeps her present, and when he gets home he gives them both to his wife, forgetting the note to his mistress. But on the way in to his apartment he heard evidence of someone sneaking out ... And the story ends with he and his wife realizing what they've both been up to, and deciding they will live with it: it makes things simple for both of them. It's smoothly written, nicely done -- a minor work but not bad.

Here's the Kansas City Star's profile of Moudy, complete with photograph:

Hugo Nomination Recommendations, 1952

Potential Hugo nominess from 1951 (1952 Worldcon)

Here's my plan for the rest of these 1950s Hugo posts -- to round it off neatly, I'll end up doing one for each Worldcon of the 1950s, meaning stories from 1949 through 1958. I hadn't planned to do one for 1959 as that was the first year that eligibility was restricted to stories from the previous calendar year, and that there was a codified nomination process. The rest of these posts have been aimed at filling in years that didn't have fiction Hugos, either because there were no Hugos, or no Hugos in certain categories, or because the quirky eligibility rules meant that worthy stories were missed. 1958 was well represented at the 1959 Hugos, and so I wasn't going to bother, but I'll go ahead and do a post just to wrap up the '50s Worldcons, as it were. I also can't overemphasize that anyone interested in Hugo history should be reading Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos. Therein Jo discusses the winners and nominees, and potential alternatives, in all the categories (not just fiction), and also includes a number of essays discussing particular Hugo-winning books at length. Anything I write here is superfluous compared to what you can find in her book -- the hope is only to fill in some thoughts on the sparser early years of the Hugos.

The 1952 Worldcon was Chicon II, in Chicago, the tenth World Science Fiction Convention. (This year will be Chicon 8!) As noted, they gave no Hugo awards. The International Fantasy Award went to John Collier's Fancies and Goodnights, a remarkable book, though as a story collection not eligible for a Hugo in this or any year. There was also a non-fiction award, to The Exploration of Space, by Arthur C. Clarke.

Novels

Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

The Sands of Mars, by Arthur C. Clarke

Rogue Queen, by L. Sprague de Camp

Mars Child, by "Cyril Judd" (Judith Merril and Cyril M. Kornbluth)

House of Many Worlds, by Sam Merwin, Jr.

Other Possibilities

The Stars, Like Dust, by Isaac Asimov

The Starmen of Llyrdis, by Leigh Brackett

The Moon is Hell, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

Iceworld, by Hal Clement

The Hand of Zei, by L. Sprague de Camp

City at World's End, by Edmond Hamilton

The Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein

The Tritonian Ring, by Fletcher Pratt

The Weapon Shops of Isher, by A. E. van Vogt

Seetee Ship, by Jack Williamson

Young Adult

Between Planets, by Robert A. Heinlein

Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson

Prince Caspian, by C. S. Lewis

Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars, by Ellen MacGregor

Huon of the Horn, by Andre Norton

On the whole, what a dispiriting set of novels. I might vote for The Sands of Mars, which I enjoyed, though I haven't reread it in a long time. Alternately, I suppose Foundation is the most significant "novel" on the list, though I downgrade it as essentially a selection of stories from several years earlier, only "eligible" due to the (rather weak) opening section ("The Psychohistorians") which was written especially for the book. I suspect back then the winner might have been The Weapon Shops of Isher. Van Vogt just doesn't do it for me, but he's important to the field, and I can see why the final line of the "sequel" The Weapon Makers ("Here is the race that shall rule the sevagram.") thrilled readers. Of the YA novels, Huon of the Horn is possibly the very earliest Andre Norton I read, maybe only at age 10 or so, but I remember loving it.

Novellas

"Black Amazon of Mars", by Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, March)

"The Continent Makers", by L. Sprague de Camp (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April)

"The Fireman", by Ray Bradbury (Galaxy, February)

"Beyond Bedlam", by Wyman Guin (Galaxy, August)

"... And Then There Were None", by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding, June)

Other Possibilities:

"The Virgin of Valkarion", by Poul Anderson (Planet Stories, July)

"Witch of the Demon Seas", by Poul Anderson (Planet Stories, December)

"Earthlight", by Arthur C. Clarke (Thrilling Wonder Stories, August)

"The Road to the Sea", by Arthur C. Clarke (Two Complete Science-Adventure Novels, March)

"A Stitch in Time", by Sylvia Jacobs (Astounding, April)

"The Illusionists", by James H. Schmitz (Astounding, March)

"Overlords of Maxus" aka "Maxos", by Jack Vance (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February)

"... And Then There Were None" is the Science Fiction Hall of Fame story here, and it's a good story, and of course "The Fireman" is the first version of Fahrenheit 451, also very good: but my vote goes without hesitation to the more adventurous, more unusual story, Wyman Guin's "Beyond Bedlam"; which is truly brilliant. It's a story that has never precisely been forgotten -- it was immediately anthologized in the first Galaxy Reader, and again in the Amis/Conquest Spectrum II, and later in Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg's Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels -- but though it has a mild reputation it deserves even more -- among other things it achieves real tragedy. 

Beyond THAT, I confess again my fondness for ancient unserious but fun pulp by citing the two glorious planetary romance stories by Poul Anderson, and Jack Vance's little known "Maxos", to say nothing of Leigh Brackett's classic "Black Amazon of Mars", which was later expanded and radically altered (probably by her husband Edmond Hamilton) into the Ace Double half People of the Talisman.

Novelettes

"The Marching Morons", by C. M. Kornbluth (Galaxy, April)

"Dune Roller", by J. C. May (Astounding, May)

"Bettyann", by Kris Neville (New Tales of Space and Time)

"Angel's Egg", by Edgar Pangborn (Galaxy, June)

"The New Prime", by Jack Vance (Worlds Beyond, February)

"Self Portrait", by Bernard Wolfe (Galaxy, November)

Other possibilities

"Honorable Enemy", by Poul Anderson (Future, May)

"Breeds There a Man", by Isaac Asimov (Astounding, June)

"The C-Chute", by Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, October)

"Second Dawn", by Arthur C. Clarke (Science Fiction Quarterly, August)

"Venus Mission", by "J. T. M'Intosh" (James MacGregor) (Planet Stories, July)

"Casting Office", by Kris Neville (Astounding, March)

"The Universe Between", by Alan E. Nourse (Astounding, September)

"The Incubi of Parallel X", by Theodore Sturgeon (Planet Stories, September)

There was a time the obvious choice might have been "The Marching Morons" (an SF Hall of Fame story) but for me its eugenicism (and concomitant bad genetic science) as well as the way its cynicism has curdled have soured the story. I think now that "Angel's Egg" should be the winner. The author of "Dune Roller" is Julian May, then married to anthologist T. E. Dikty, who had a slow burning writing career until it exploded with The Many Colored Land. "Casting Office" would have been a good nomination possibility as well. (John Boston recently reminded me of this story.) "The Universe Between" along with "High Threshold" were years later turned into the YA novel The Universe Between, which wowed me at age 12. "Second Dawn" is another story I recall thrilling me at age 12. "Venus Mission" is a better than expected J. T. M'Intosh story -- exciting adventure, with a female character with real agency (undermined as usual by M'Intosh's conventional sexism.) The Anderson story, as I recall, is the first to feature Merseians. The Sturgeon story, despite its lurid title and lurid premise (giant women in another dimension), is actually not bad. John Boston suggested Bernard Wolfe's "Self Portrait", a cynical story about advances in prosthetics and artificial intelligence and their likely actual uses (including voluntary amputation and war by computer (as borrowed in a Star Trek episode), by the author of the still-remembered Limbo, a true SF novel published in the mainstream and called by J. G. Ballard the best SF novel of its time.

Short Stories

"The Quest for Saint Aquin", by "Anthony Boucher" (William Anthony Parker White) (New Tales of Space and Time)

"The Fog Horn", by Ray Bradbury (Saturday Evening Post, June 23)

"A Pail of Air", by Fritz Leiber (Galaxy, December)

"Survival Ship", by Judith Merril (Worlds Beyond, January)

"The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles", by "Idris Seabright" (Margaret St. Clair) (F&SF, October)

Other Possibilities

"Duel on Syrtis", by Poul Anderson (Planet Stories, March)

"Of Time and Third Avenue", by Alfred Bester (F&SF, October)

"The Sentinel" aka "Sentinel of Eternity", by Arthur C. Clarke (10 Story Fantasy, Spring 1951)

"The Weapon", by Fredric Brown (Astounding, April)

"Quit Zoomin' Those Hands Through the Air", Jack Finney (Collier's, August 4)

"Nice Girl with Five Husbands", by Fritz Leiber (Galaxy, April)

"Feedback", by Katherine MacLean (Astounding, July)

"Pictures Don't Lie", by Katherine MacLean (Galaxy, August)

"Hunt the Hunter", by Kris Neville (Galaxy, July)

"Brightness Falls from the Air", by "Idris Seabright" (Margaret St. Clair) (F&SF, April)

"Built Down Logically", by Howard Schoenfeld (F&SF, December)

"Betelgeuse Bridge", by "William Tenn" (Philip Klass) (Galaxy, April)

"Null-P", by "William Tenn" (Philip Klass) (Worlds Beyond, January)

A pretty good set of short stories, I think. Once again I'm torn -- Bradbury's classic, Boucher's SF Hall of Fame story, and Seabright's mordant piece all strike me as worthy winners. Merril's story has the most pointed message, but isn't as well developed as a story. The whole list of other possibilities are, I think, on nearly the same level, and any of them would have made a good nominee.

Obscure Classic Anthology: In the Wake of Man, edited (uncredited) by Roger Elwood

Obscure Classic Anthology: In the Wake of Man, edited (uncredited) by Roger Elwood

by Rich Horton

Roger Elwood published about 60 anthologies between 1964 and 1978, with more than 40 of them appearing in the three years from 1973 through 1975. This sudden outpouring, and its sudden cessation, led to a narrative that suggests that Elwood saturated the SF anthology market to an unhealthy degree in that period, and that that glut of books largely ruined the market. Elwood was also criticized for the low quality of his books, and for shady editorial practices.

I have felt for some time that these criticisms are overblown. Jonathan Strahan did a study of the quantity of anthologies published over time, and showed only a slight and temporary effect of Elwood's boom and following bust -- over time, the number of original anthologies stayed fairly constant. His editorial practices can fairly be criticized on a couple of grounds -- he was somewhat prudish, and apparently uncomfortable with depictions of homosexuality, or indeed with much sexual content at all. His series of novels, Laser Books (an imprint of Harlequin) did impose strict content restrictions, including a requirement for a happy ending, and very specific length restrictions. (It should be noted that these were not dissimilar to Harlequin's usual rules for their Romance novels.) Some have accused him of cheating authors -- if in fact this happened, of course it was wrong, but I have not seen any direct evidence of this.

The more interesting complaints, to me, concern the quality of the stories he published. I was buying books at that time, and I bought a lot of Elwood paperbacks. And I found them -- okay. They weren't great books, mostly, but they featured some good stories, among some mediocre stories, and some clunkers. As such they were comparable to -- I'd say, actually, somewhat better than -- Martin H. Greenberg's similarly massive outpouring of anthologies in the early 2000s. In no way were Elwood's books equal to the great anthology series of that era -- Orbit, New Dimensions, and Universe -- but they fit nicely at the next tier. He published a lot of new or unfamiliar writers, and regularly published some of the best writers of that time -- the likes of Gene Wolfe, Barry Malzberg, Edgar Pangborn, and R. A. Lafferty, for example. And a few of his books were a cut above. One example is the Continuum series -- four books each containing part of a series of stories by the same writers from book to book. Another example is his massive collaboration with Robert Silverberg, Epoch. And this book, In the Wake of Man, is a third example. 

It's a theme anthology of three novellas. The theme is, more or less -- what will come after man? The three stories all treat this theme in striking fashion, and in different ways. And they are all strong stories, with one of them a true classic. Two of the authors are all time greats, and the other is an obscure writer, who only published one SF novel and four shorter works. Herewith I'll discuss each story.

"From the Thunder Colt's Mouth" by R. A. Lafferty (27,000 words)

This is Lafferty at his most Lafferty-esque, to a fault at times, especially as the story opens. But by the end it coheres, and gains considerable power. It is set in New Orleans, some long time in the future, though none of this is at all clear at first, or for a very long time. We are introduced to an array of Lafferty eccentrics ... the stubborn and malodorous Zabotski ("He's about the last of them", people say, and only by the end do we understand), Margaret Stone, Mary Virginia Schaeffer, Absalom Stein, and, perhaps most importantly, Melchisedech Duffey, a very long lived person who owns an establishement called the Walk-In Art Bijou. This place has been overtaken by an organization called "The Society for Creative History" or "The Royal Pop Historians". Duffey doesn't know how this happened, and seems powerless to stop it, even as he notices that buildings seem to be mysteriously appearing and disappearing. 

The story continues -- rambles, of course it rambles, it's Lafferty -- as the people of this city attend the Pop History presentation (learning, for example, how to uncover past history as preserved in rocks) and discuss what's happening with each other and with some of the Pop historians. As with any Lafferty story, you need to be open to just absorbing his divagations, his wild descriptions, the strange events never explained; and to accept -- indeed revel in -- his elaborate tall-tale derived prose. And as we read on, more and more becomes clear, and indeed little things we saw at the beginning suddenly take on new meaning, such as the advertised Pop History topic "It Doesn't Matter, They're only Human". And, indeed, we learn that most of the characters -- certainly all the Pop Historians -- are not human, but some strange successor (?) species, perhaps imitating humans, and they are engaged in at last ridding the world of the malodorous unpleasant stench of Humanity.

In a curious way, I was reminded of a very different story, Samuel R. Delany's The Einstein Intersection -- not in theme at all, but in presenting what seem aliens impersonating -- in some fashion -- humans. This is just a passing resemblance, not truly a parallel, but it does seem to me that The Einstein Intersection fits the theme of this anthology very well. Also, I should mentioned that this story is part of Lafferty's extended Argos Mythos, in which one of the main characters is Melchisedech Duffey. It has not been reprinted in this form, but it seems to be part of one of the published Argos novels (More Than Melchisedech) and I suspect that in that context it will read somewhat differently thematically. (The only part of that long series I have read is The Devil is Dead, so it is hard for me to discuss it coherently.)

"Tracking Song", by Gene Wolfe (28,000 words)

"Tracking Song" is one of Gene Wolfe's great novellas -- like several SF writers (Damon Knight and Kim Stanley Robinson are other examples) Wolfe was magnficent at that length, and he wrote a great many of them. It's also one of his strangest and most difficult stories. Gardner Dozois used to say (in print and in person -- I heard him!) that he and Michael Swanwick spent an hour or more trying to figure out what really happened in "Tracking Song" and decided they'd failed. Me too, pretty much -- but it's still worth the effort. 

The story is told by a man called "Cutthroat" -- because he has a scar across his throat. He is living with a group of primitive people, who picked him up after finding him in the snow, shortly after the Great Sleigh passed by. He is telling his story into a recording device he has. It's clear his technology is advanced far beyond that of the people he is with. It's a cold place, and the Sleigh leaves tracks -- and Cutthroat decides to follow them.

Soon we realize (or should, perhaps on first reading it takes longer) that Cutthroat has been abandoned by the Great Sleigh, and the people he is with are actually uplifted animals. The Great Sleigh appears to continually circumnavigate this world, which seems much smaller than Earth. (Some readers suggest Mars (there are two moons), though to me it seems even smaller, perhaps an asteroid somewhere?) Cutthroat leaves the first group he is with, who seem to be wolf-derived, to try to catch the Great Sleigh. In the process he encounters a variety of different uplifted animals -- derived from pigs, deer, minks, birds ... He learns soon that the people of the Great Sleigh have revealed some things to the inhabitants of this world -- the world is warming, for one thing, and there are laws they must follow (though few do) -- particularly, they should not eat the meat of any intelligent being. (But the predator species still eat the prey!) A key person he meets is Cim Glowing, a woman who seems to be mink-derived. She is kidnapped and taken, leading to a key episode underground, in a city inhabited largely by robots of some sort, as well as some part-metal people, and one person, Mantru, who might be the "last man".

I don't want to keep synopsizing -- Cutthroat rescues Cim Glowing, fights Mantru, is seriously wounded, and back on the surface, keeps following the Great Sleigh, finally reaching it -- but perhaps on the point of death. The ending is obscure, perhaps transcendent, perhaps simply tragic (for Cutthroat, at least.) And what is really going on? My best guess, informed to be sure by reading several online discussions and listening to a couple of podcasts, is that humans -- possibly dying out, possibly simply unable to inhabit this particular world -- have done some degree of terraforming, and uplifted a variety of animals, and hope to leave the world to a cooperative group of varying uplifted species. Cutthroat's job -- unknown to him -- is to somehow evaluate the readiness of the uplifted species to be left alone.

It is, as I said, mysterious, strange, evocative, inspiring, frustrating. Wolfe's work remains essential to the SF field, and close examination of not just his great, also mysterious, novels, but his short fiction, remains fruitful

"The Search for Man", by Walter Moudy (16,500 words)

Walter F. Moudy was born in Cassville, Missouri, a very rural town in the Ozarks of Southwestern Missouri, near the Arkansas border, in 1929, and died in Kansas City in 1973, not yet 44 (I believe in a car accident.) He published an SF novel, No Man on Earth, in 1964, followed by three stories in Cele Lalli's magazines, Amazing and Fantastic, in 1965, and a sleaze paperback, The Ninth Commandment (set, by the way, in Kansas City) in 1966. His only other SF story was this one, published after his death. One of his stories, "The Survivor", is well-remembered -- it was anthologized in Judith Merril's best of the year book, and has been reprinted several times since.

"The Search for Man" concerns a child named David Zimmerman, a robot in the far future, with a brain based on a mix of the brain material saved from 12 humans. It seems that humans have died out, but the robots who served them saved the brains of 12 of the best and brightest humans, and since then have made their children (robots do wear out) with intelligence derived from those humans. 

David grows up a particularly promising young man/robot, at first an eager adherent to the robot religion devoted to search for remnants of humans and human civilization. But as he grows older, he becomes disillusioned, and realizes that Man is truly dead -- and he becomes the Anti-Man, convinced that robots must throw off the influence of human history and make their own way. He lectures on this theme, until he meets a young woman who disputes his ideas -- she is the daughter of one of the robot religious leaders. David, against his will, is falling in love -- and he is drawn to meet the woman's father, who has a shocking revelation.

The upshot is that David and his lover head to Mars, where apparently a few humans tried to escape the catastrophe on Earth. And on Mars they find the remnants of those people, who live a horribly constricted life underground. David is able to offer them a return to their future Earth -- but the results of this will inevitably wholly change robot society. The resolution is curious -- inspiring in a way, but dark too, for if anything the Martian humans are more robotic than even the robots. But perhaps hey have more room to change?

It's an intriguing and readable story, though also rather silly in places. Moudy, in general, seemed uninterested in scientific plausibility -- his stories and novel could have almost the feel of 1930s SF. But the ideas behind them were solid and ambitious. He's an uneven writer, but his small oeuvre is worth reading.

Black Gate Essays

Some of my most ambitious pieces are for Black Gate, John O'Neill's excellent online fanzine. I like to keep people aware of them, so here's a summary of some of the best from the past couple or three years.

A particular focus recently has been a series of close readings of short fiction. This began with a look at Samuel R. Delany's "The Star Pit", and most recently I wrote about Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain". Here's all seven of these posts to date, in reverse order of publication.

"Scanners Live in Vain", by Cordwainer Smith;

"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain", by James Tiptree, Jr.;

"Winter's King", by Ursula K. Le Guin;

"It Opens the Sky", by Theodore Sturgeon;

"Winter Solstice, Camelot Station", by John M. Ford;

Three Stories by Idris Seabright;

"The Star Pit", by Samuel R. Delany;

Other Black Gate posts (some reviews, a look at an old F&SF, and something slightly different):

Review of Aspects, by John M. Ford;

Review of Saint Death's Daughter, by C. S. E. Cooney;

Review of The Gentleman, by Forrest Leo;

Review of Underneath the Oversea, by Marc Laidlaw;

Snippet about finding a signed copy of the Twayne Triplet Witches Three;

Retro-Review of F&SF, Summer 1950;

Old Bestseller Review: The Five-Minute Marriage, by Joan Aiken

Old Bestseller Review: The Five-Minute Marriage, by Joan Aiken

by Rich Horton

I encountered Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and its sequels, such as Nightbirds on Nantucket, as a preteen and read them with delight. But I didn't really understand at that age that she was also a prolific writer for adults. I did read some of her sister Jane Aiken Hodge's romantic thrillers a few years later, and I knew that Joan and Jane and even their brother Branwell -- er, no, that's unfair, his name was John! -- were following in the footsteps, so to say, of their father Conrad Aiken, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. John and Jane were born in the US, but Conrad and his first wife Jessie moved to England in 1921, and Joan was born there. Each of the Aikens seemed to have a foot in each of the US and the UK throughout, though perhaps Joan was more completely a British writer. She was born in England in 1924, and her parents divorced in 1929, her mother remarrying in 1930. Martin Armstrong (who also wrote some fantastical stories) became Joan's stepfather. Joan Aiken died in 2004. 

I jested about John Aiken's status, but it's fair to say, I think, that he was the least known of the Aikens. Interestingly, he published early stories in Astounding and New Worlds, but later largely abandoned the SF field, until a couple of novels around 1970. Jane wrote a lot of a enjoyable romantic adventure, and a biography of Georgette Heyer. And Conrad won the Poetry Pulitzer -- but despite Conrad's early success as a poet, I think that by now his name is remembered but his poetry seems largely forgotten. And now that they all are dead, it is probably Joan Aiken whose latter day reputation stands highest. Her exceptional YA fiction -- the Wolves series primarily --  is her major legacy. But she also wrote a great many nice short stories, many collected posthumously in two volumes from Kelly Link and Gavin Grant's Small Beer Press publishing venture: The Serial Garden, and The Monkey's Wedding. It seems that her quite extensive short work may be her best -- the two books I mention above are all I've read but they are outstanding.

Her adult novels aren't as well known, I think. But some time ago I picked up an ex-lib copy of The Five-Minute Marriage, from 1977. This is a Regency romance; and it's a good example of the genre as it was in the 1970s. By good I mean both truly exemplary -- it exhibits the silliness of many of those novels back then (and now!) though also, as was traditional back then, there is no sex. And by good also I mean that if you can ignore the implausibilities it is pretty enjoyable.

The heroine is Philadelphia (Delphie) Carteret, who lives with her mother and teaches music to wealthy children to make ends meet. Her mother's health is shaky, and their economic position is perilous, for Mrs. Carteret, a widow, has been estranged from her family, even though her uncle is the Sixth Viscount Bullington.

One of Delphie's students is the daughter of a rich widower, not an aristocrat (he actually made his own fortune), and he learns of their straits and realizes he actually has made the acquaintance of Lord Bullington. He writes a letter of introduction and convinces Delphie to visit her Great Uncle and convince him to give her mother the very small income that seems fair. And Delphie makes the trip, in the company of a flighty young woman whose family owns the shop above which the Carterets live. The trip seems at first a disaster, as her young friend makes a scene by falling into the Bullington's moat. They encounter the two rather forbidding young men staying there -- in particular her second cousin Gareth Penistone, Lord Bullington's grandson and heir. But it turns out that Lord Bullington is about to die, and he has insisted that Gareth marry his great-niece or else he'll give away his fortune. The woman Gareth believes is his second cousin, a certain Elaine Carteret, cannot make it to the Bullington manor in time, so Gareth makes Delphie an offer -- she will pose as Miss Carteret, and marry Gareth, in exchange for a promise of a competence for Delphie's mother. All this is absurd, of course, but fun -- for of course Gareth is actually marrying the woman he should -- the other Miss Carteret is clearly an imposter. 

Any reader of romance novels knows where this is going from here! And so, I trust, do all of you. But the novel takes its enjoyable time getting there, setting up a bit of a mystery, establishing Gareth's character nicely, giving Delphie (and her mother!) alternate potential husbands, introducing a huge array of cute children, and resolving things with a fairly Gothic climax.

What can I say? There is nothing much plausible about this novel, but I thought it plenty of fun. The leads are worth rooting for, the comic relief is nice, the mysterious aspects, easily guessable as they are, are still intriguing. It's nothing special, but it's good entertainment. Of course I'll take just about any Georgette Heyer novel before it, but among the many many other Regencies I've read, this ranks in the upper 10 percent or so.

Hugo Nomination Recommendations, 1953

Potential Hugo nominees from 1952 (1953 Worldcon)

Continuing my project of suggesting potential Hugo nominees (and winners) for the early years of the Hugos. Here's a look at 1952. This is the year covered by the very first Hugos, from the 11th Worldcon, Philcon II, in Philadelphia, in September 1953. The only Fiction Hugo actually awarded went to Alfred Bester's novel The Demolished Man. Apparently there were plans to name a Short Fiction winner, but there were insufficient votes. The Best Magazine award was a tie between Astounding and Galaxy (that, plus the fact that The Demolished Man appeared in Galaxy, apparently enraged a segment of fans who preferred Astounding.) Best Cover Artist was also a tie, between Hannes Bok and Ed Emshwiller, and Best Interior Artist went to Virgil Finlay. All three of those artist awards make me happy, especially the one to Finlay, my favorite interior illustrator of all time. Philip José Farmer was named Best New Discovery (Writer or Artist), and Forrest J. Ackerman Favorite Fan Personality, while Willy Ley (another Galaxy contributor) won for Best Fact Articles. 

Philcon II provided a brief look at the state of the voting in their Progress Report IV, published a month or two ahead of the convention, I believe. Noting that these were early returns, only representing a subset of the members' votes, there are some fascinating details to glean. The second place novel in the voting at that time was The Long Loud Silence, by Wilson Tucker. Second place for Favorite Fan Personality was Harlan Ellison (!). Robert Madle was competing for Best Fact Articles, and Robert Sheckley was vying for Best New Discovery.

Jo Walton's Informal History of the Hugos discusses the novels, and mentions the International Fantasy Award nominees: Clifford D. Simak's City (the winner), Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, and C. M. Kornbluth's Takeoff. She also suggested Foundation and Empire as a potential alternative. For myself, I'm disqualifying City and Foundation and Empire because they were published some years previously, in Astounding (in multiple parts of course.) Richard A. Lupoff, in What If, Volume 1, chose William Tenn's "Firewater!" as a potential Short Fiction winner. 

I also counted, as best I could (and my count is full of likely errors) the number of short fiction pieces written by women, versus the total number. I came up with 98 stories by women out of some 1100. (I tried to eliminate duplicates, translations from earlier years, and non-genre stories, and I tried to identify pseudonyms, but all these processes are potentially error-ridden.) That comes to about 9%, which is consistent with similar counts by other people using different means for the early 1950s, which generally suggest that about 10% of the SF writers in the early 1950s were women. 

Finally, I note humbly that I haven't read everything from this period -- though I have read a lot! I'm including a few things that are so highly praised that I believe they deserve a nod even though I can't personally vouch for them, and I've added stories thanks to intriguing recommendations in the comments here and in other places. 

Novels

The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

Star Man's Son aka Daybreak 2230 A.D., by Andre Norton

The Space Merchants aka "Gravy Planet", by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth

The Sound of His Horn, by "Sarban" (John William Wall)

The Long Loud Silence, by Wilson Tucker

Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut

Other possibilities:

The Currents of Space, by Isaac Asimov

Jack of Eagles, by James Blish

Takeoff, by C. M. Kornbluth

Ballroom of the Skies, by John D. MacDonald

Ullr Uprising, by H. Beam Piper

The Blue Star, by Fletcher Pratt

Big Planet, by Jack Vance

Limbo, by Bernard Wolfe

Young Adult:

Vault of the Ages, by Poul Anderson

The Rolling Stones, aka "Space Family Stone", by Robert A. Heinlein

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis

The Borrowers, by Mary Norton

I think my vote would stay with The Demolished Man, but that is pending reading The Sound of His Horn and The Long Loud Silence, both of which are highly praised by people I trust, and which I haven't yet read. (The Long Loud Silence, at any rate, is on the way!) Certainly "Gravy Planet" would have been a good choice, and so would Player Piano. Star Man's Son is a favorite early Norton of mine and many others.

The mainstream produced one major candidate: Bernard Wolfe's Limbo. (Vonnegut was still being marketed, at least to a degree, as an SF writer.) And that set of what were then called "Juveniles" is interesting. Note that the Heinlein was serialized in Boys' Life. On my latest rereading of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader became my favorite.

Novellas

"Shannach -- the Last", by Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, November)

"The Specter General", by Theodore Cogswell (Astounding, June)

"The Lovers", by Philip José Farmer (Startling, October)

"Daughters of Earth", by Judith Merrill (The Petrified Planet)

"Baby is Three", by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy, October)

"Firewater!", by William Tenn (Astounding, February)

Other possibilities:

"War-Maid of Mars", by Poul Anderson (Planet Stories, May)

"Sargasso of Lost Starships", by Poul Anderson (Planet Stories, January)

"Three Day Magic", by Charlotte Armstrong (F&SF, September 1952)

"Tonight the Sky Will Fall!", by Daniel F. Galouye (Imagination, May)

"Bring the Jubilee", by Ward Moore (F&SF, November 1952)

"Blood's a Rover", by Chad Oliver (Astounding, May)

"Abercrombie Station", by Jack Vance (Thrilling Wonder, February)

"Chulwell's Chickens", by Jack Vance (Thrilling Wonder, August)

I will confess now that I've never warmed to "The Lovers" much, and I include it on the nomination list above for its historical importance, and also to acknowledge that contemporary readers likely would have nominated it as it was something of a sensation. "The Specter General" is in the SF Hall of Fame, Volume II, and it's a fun story, but it's another story I've long thought overrated (especially after a recent reread.) The best story on the list is probably "Baby is Three" (also in the SF Hall of Fame, Volume II), but as an alternate choice for the 1953 Hugo (and noting that "Baby is Three" is also part of the novel More Than Human) I'm tempted to suggest "Daughters of Earth". I think this story -- an account of six generations of women central to the human colonization of extraterrestrial planets -- has been underrated from the very start. In part this may be because it was first published in an anthology that, while somewhat famous, didn't seem to sell well; and was never reprinted until Merril's 1968 collection also called Daughters of Earth. Also, it's fair to say that a significant subplot involving communication with silicon-based aliens stretched my sense of plausibility a bit. But the character stuff, the portrayal of the women, really works. 

Actually all the "other possibilities" are personal indulgences, not serious Hugo candidates, except maybe for Chad Oliver's story, or perhaps Charlotte Armstrong's story, which comes recommended by Paul Fraser. Also perhaps Ward Moore's "Bring the Jubilee", a long novella that I mentioned for its slightly longer novel version in my 1953 post. The Anderson stories are early work, and very "pulpy" (though fun), and anyway I couldn't resist mentioning "Sargasso of Lost Spaceships" having listed James Blish's "Sargasso of Lost Cities" among the candidates from 1953. The Vance stories are linked, and were published as a fixup "novel" under the title Monsters in Orbit, an Ace Double half.

Novelettes

"The Year of the Jackpot", by Robert A. Heinlein (Galaxy, March)

"The Martian Way", by Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, December)

"Bridge", by James Blish (Astounding, February)

"Surface Tension", by James Blish (Galaxy, August)

"The Birds", by Daphne Du Maurier (Good Housekeeping, October)

"Ararat", by Zenna Henderson (F&SF, October)

Other possibilities:

"The Deep", by Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, December)

"Youth", by Isaac Asimov (Space Science Fiction, May)

"The Last Days of Shandakor", by Leigh Brackett (Startling, April)

"Star, Bright", by Mark Clifton (Astounding, July)

"Steel Brother", by Gordon R. Dickson (Astounding, February)

"What's It Like Out There?", by Edmond Hamilton (Thrilling Wonder, December)

"That Share of Glory", by C. M. Kornbluth (Astounding, January)

"Lover When You're Near Me", by Richard Matheson (Galaxy, May)

"Noise Level", by Raymond F. Jones (Astounding, December)

"Conditionally Human", by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (Galaxy, February)

"Delay in Transit", by F. L. Wallace (Galaxy, September)

In this category I think I have to choose "Surface Tension" as the winner. But Blish's other candidate, "Bridge", the first story chronologically in Cities in Flight (and thus the first part of They Shall Have Stars) is also excellent. "The Martian Way" is one of my favorite Asimov stories. "Ararat", the first of Zenna Henderson's People stories, is very good as well; and the Heinlein and Du Maurier stories are also excellent. Still, "Surface Tension" remains the best and most significant story of this bunch. (Note that the version in The Seedling Stars is a fixup of the Galaxy novelette and a much earlier story, Blish's first significant story, "Sunken Universe", from the May 1942 issue of Super Science Stories, as by "Arthur Merlyn" (talk about a pseudonym that screams "pseudonym"!) Blish significantly revised it for the novel version.)

From the other possibilities -- a pretty good list in itself -- I'll mention in particular Raymond F. Jones' "Noise Level", a pure quill Campbellian crank story, but one which I found very effective on a recent reread. Indeed, Jones is a writer worth a look, sort of in the Daniel F. Galouye or J. T. MacIntosh realm -- an uneven and sometimes irritating writer who could still be intriguing. And "Conditionally Human" is generally remembered as a novella, but the 1952 Galaxy version was a novelette, expanded for its reprinting in the T. E. Dikty anthology Year's Best Science Fiction Novels: 1953.) I should also add that "What's it Like Out There?" is quite a powerful story about an embittered spaceman returning from Mars -- it may be the best story Hamilton every wrote.

Short Stories

"A Sound of Thunder", by Ray Bradbury (Collier's, June 28)

"Hobson's Choice", by Alfred Bester (F&SF, August)

"What Have I Done?", by Mark Clifton (Astounding, May)

"The Analogues", by Damon Knight (Astounding, January)

"The Snowball Effect", by Katherine MacLean (Galaxy, September)

"An Egg a Month from All Over", by "Idris Seabright" (Margaret St. Clair) (F&SF, October)

Other possibilities:

"Beyond Lies the Wub", by Philip K. Dick (Planet Stories, July)

"Faq'", by George P. Elliott (The Hudson Review, Spring)

"The Foxholes of Mars", by Fritz Leiber (Thrilling Wonder, June)

"The Altar at Midnight", by C. M. Kornbluth (Galaxy, November)

"The Luckiest Man in Denv", by C. M. Kornbluth (Galaxy, June)

"The Fly", by Arthur Porges (F&SF, September)

"I Am Nothing", by Eric Frank Russell (Astounding, July)

Another set of pretty strong stories. I'm torn between "An Egg a Month from All Over", which is clever and mounts to a delightfully nasty ending; and "The Analogues", a brilliant and scary piece that became part of a less effective novel, Hell's Pavement. The George Elliott piece, which has been called Borgesian, is worth a look, from a writer who often touched on the fantastic.

Old Bestseller Review: The Happy Harvest, by Jeffery Farnol

Old Bestseller Review: The Happy Harvest, by Jeffery Farnol

by Rich Horton

Very early in my "Old Bestseller" project I reviewed Jeffery Farnol's Guyfford of Weare. It's an enjoyable novel, and so are the two that made Farnol's reputation, The Broad Highway and The Amateur Gentleman. Over time I've picked up a couple further Farnol novels, and I've just read a later one, from 1939, The Happy Harvest. Sad to say, it doesn't really work as well as those other novels.

John Jeffery Farnol (1878-1952) was born in England to a metal worker, and trained as an artist. He married an American girl in 1900 and they lived in the US for a while. Farnol worked as a scene painter at first, then turned to writing. His first novel appeared in 1907, and his first big success was The Broad Highway in 1910. He moved back to England around this time. He was a very popular writer (and indeed The Broad Highway was the bestselling book in the US in 1910), best known for romances, often set during the Regency (though some novels were contemporary and some set in other historical periods.) Farnol was a significant influence on the supreme writer of Regency romances, Georgette Heyer, who was a generation younger. 

The Happy Harvest fits into two separate sequences of novels. It is the middle book in a loose trilogy, with The Crooked Furrow (1937) and his last finished novel, Waif of the River (1952). (One more novel was substantially written by his wife from his notes following his death.) It is also one of a number of novels featuring the character Jasper Shrig, a Bow Street Runner who solves murder mysteries in many of these books. 

The events of The Happy Harvest take place about a decade after The Crooked Furrow. That book concerns two cousins, Roland Verinder and Oliver Dale. Their uncle proposes that they each live on their own means for a year to prove their worth, and they fall in love with the same girl, and have adventures, and Oliver ends up rescuing two young children from a life in the streets, while Roland wins the girl. As The Happy Harvest opens, Oliver, in his late 30s by now, is looking forward to the two children he rescued, Clia and Robin, who are now about 20, marrying each other. Clia, however, has other ideas. She has long planned to marry Oliver (shades of Heinlein's The Door Into Summer.) For that matter Robin, if basically a good sort, is rather rackety and undisciplined.

Complications ensue when a particularly nasty local man turns up murdered. This man had gotten another girl pregnant and abandoned her, leading to her suicide. He tried to rape Clia, though she escaped. Soon after he is found dead, and Robin is immediately the chief suspect. He escapes to London, and to Oliver's Aunt Rosamund, who runs a home with the object of helping the poor. Oliver, after some waffling, realizes that Robin must be innocent, and he asks his old friend Jasper Shrig to investigate. Meanwhile, Clia, already rattled by the realization that she wanted her potential rapist killed, is devastated to learn from a blackmailer that her father was also a murderer and her mother a suicide. 

There's not a ton of suspense, really. We know from the beginning that Oliver truly loves Clia and will submit to her desire that he marry her; and that Jasper Shrig will learn that she is not actually the daughter of a murderer; and that Jasper will also learn who really killed the bad guy. The solution to the latter mystery is pretty guessable. And to be honest I was really bothered by the book's tacit endorsement of Clia's belief that if her father (whom she never knew) was a murderer, so she must be as well. (To be fair, Aunt Rosamund opposes this belief, but no one else seems to.) Oliver and Clia are enjoyable characters I suppose, but not as interesting as say Sir Richard and Helen D'Arcy in Guyfford of Weare. And Robin, as well as cousin Roland, are rather tiresome and implausible. In his best books, Farnol's dialogue is pretty sparkling, but that's not really true here. Finally, the structure of the novel is partly built on a conceit -- that Oliver is writing it as the events unfold. This doesn't really hurt the novel too much, but it does seem strained. 

So, this seems a minor part of Farnol's oeuvre. It's not terrible, but it's far from great. I'll still likely try a few more of his books, though.