Resurrected Review: First Lensman, by E. E. "Doc" Smith

I wrote this review back in 2001, for posting at my newsgroup on SFF Net, and probably on rec.arts.sf.written as well. I was prompted to do so by its Retro-Hugo nomination that year. It was my first encounter with Doc Smith. I wasn't impressed, but, as I note, perhaps it would have been different if I read him at my "golden age".

First Lensman, by E. E. "Doc" Smith

a review by Rich Horton

I had never previously read anything by Doc Smith.  I didn't encounter him when I was 12 or 14, and by the time I knew his name as an SF legend I also had some notion of his reputation, and he didn't seem likely to appeal to me.  It may well be that First Lensman is a poor choice as a first Smith book to read.  It was the last of the "main sequence" of Lensman books to be written.  (I believe the "Vortex" books are technically in the Lensman universe, but outside the main plot line.)  That isn't necessarily bad, but the book is chronologically an interpolation into the previous sequence of books, and that usually is bad.  IMO, later books are best to be pure sequels, or to be unrelated efforts in the same universe.  When they are "prequels" that's dangerous, because they are so constrained by the weight of known events that they can seem programmed -- still, that can work.  But to slip a book into a chronological gap, as with this book -- that seems most dangerous of all.

As I understand the publishing history of this series, the first book was first chronologically, "Triplanetary", a serial in Amazing Stories in 1934.  However, that may not have been intended as a Lensman book -- certainly (if First Lensman is to be believed) it had no actual Lensmen.  (It probably had the villain Gharlane of Eddore, though.)  The next serial was "Galactic Patrol", in 1937, which featured already anointed Lensmen. There followed some sequels -- "Second-Stage Lensman", "Children of the Lens", maybe one or two more.  I believe these were all serials in Astounding.  By the late '40s, the serials began to be published in book form.  When "Triplanetary" was published as a book (1948, I think), it included some additional material to more explicitly link it to the later Lensman books.  Finally, in 1950, First Lensman was published, not as a serial but as a book from the first.  

This book presents, in terribly episodic form, the decision by the disembodied brains who collectively form Mentor of Arisia, to bring the incorruptible Virgil Samms of Earth to Arisia and award him a Lens, which will give him some special powers, particularly telepathy.  This will aid him in forming his dream of a Galactic Patrol, sort of a Galactic police force with army powers, which will unite the beings of the Galaxy in "Civilization".  The best, most incorruptible, beings of all species will travel to Arisia and get Lenses.  Smith makes clear that all species have the potential to be Lensmen, but that humans are the best -- he does so in a fairly inoffensive fashion, however.  And no women need apply, but that's a feature (of women, that is): something necessary and good and essentially feminine in their nature is incompatible with having a Lens.  Then the story follows Virgil and his incredibly beautiful daughter Virgilia (Jill), and his good friend Rod Kinnison and Rod's incredibly handsome son Jack Kinnison (who for Arisian eugenic reasons is prevented from being attracted to Jill, who has to settle for electronics genius Mason Northrop for a lover) as they set up the Galactic Patrol, are resisted by the evil Senator Morgan and his minions (all controlled, if you follow the chain of command far enough, by the Eddorians), break up a thionite ring, break up a pirate ring, and win an election.  Oh, and find a far off planet, convince its human-like inhabitants to spend something less than five years in building, in secret, a huge fleet which will vanquish the somewhat smaller fleet the Eddorians have caused to have built.  

It's bad.  Really.  I know lots of people love this stuff, and I can imagine the possibility that I would have lapped it up if I encountered it as a teenager, but seeing it now, I can't call it anything but bad.  Oh, there are hints of a nice imagination, like the description of one alien race that partly lives in the "fourth dimension".  And the rah-rah characterization is actually less cloying than it might seem: Smith seems so wholly to believe in his people that, while they are not three-dimensional, they are at any rate two-D, and they are distinguishable one from the next.  But the plotting is random, and sometimes makes no sense at all, and the science is just too silly, but worse, there is no suspense.  Also, the Lensmen don't win because of heroism, nor because of cleverness, nor even because of virtue, but because of overwhelming, ridiculously overwhelming, force.  Pure and simple.  Which is just boring.

It's quite possible, I acknowledge, that many of my problems with this book are intrinsic to its interpolated position -- his references to the Eddorians, for example, particularly to Gharlane, seem pro forma, thrown in to satisfy fans, but have little to do with the story at hand.  And the lack of suspense is partly explained, I suppose, by the fact that it all had to dovetail with the existing story of "Galactic Patrol".  So I'd be happy if anyone could indicate if any of the other books in the series are better.  But the Retro Hugo nomination for this book can only be due to people voting for fond long ago memories, and probably for fond long ago memories of the whole series, not this individual book.

Review: Terrace Story, by Hilary Leichter

Review: Terrace Story, by Hilary Leichter

by Rich Horton

Terrace Story is a short novel (a bit over 40,000 words by my count) -- Hilary Leichter's second novel. Like her first, Temporary (2020) it is perched somewhere within the bounds of fantastika, and at the same time it dances in and out of those bounds. It is sometimes funny, sometimes sweet, sometimes achingly sad. The fantastical and SFnal elements are real, and useful, and important -- but they won't, I think, disconcert readers unused to genre. In that sense there's a hint of, say, Emily St. John Mandel. But a writer I thought of even more is Kelly Link, not just in the deft use of the fantastic for human concerns, but to an extent in the voice.

It is structured in four parts, called Terrace, Folly, Fortress, and Cantilever. At first glance the parts are unrelated -- separate stories -- but the reader quickly gathers that they are connected -- some characters recur, and some are related to each other, and some events are viewed from different points of view. Yet the timing of the action is disconnected, and even the worlds in which events take place are not always the same.

We open with Edward and Annie, a young couple with a new baby, Rose, moving into a tiny apartment due to financial stresses. They struggle to make it work -- and they are happy with each other, at least -- and then, one day, they discover a strange thing -- a door that once opened to a closet opens to a lovely terrace. This only happens occasionally, and only when Annie's work friend Stephanie visits, but it's a relief, and something special, even as Annie's job position become precarious -- and suddenly there's a shocking finish.

The next sequence is also about a couple with a baby, and a curious house with a folly on the property. And, eventually, it's about adultery, and also about stories -- the story of a King, a Queen, and the hermit living in the folly. And then in Fortress we meet Stephanie, as a child, and learn her strange power -- to expand things, rooms, yards, people. But there's cost, that Stephanie eventually learns -- where there is expansion, there's contraction somewhere too. Including in her family -- wrenched by her sister's death as a child. Finally, in Cantilever, we are in space, with another family, Rosie and Kyle, and another case of expansion -- humanity into space, but the cost, of course, has been the loss of almost every other animal as humans expanded across the Earth. 

I haven't, I think, shown what is so lovely about this book. It is, above all, about family. About marriage. About children. About families growing, and contracting, and breaking. About hurt and love. The connective tissue is stories. The "Terrace Stories" Edward and Annie tell. The story of the King and the Queen and the Hermit. The stories Stephanie wants to be true, about her lost sister, about her friend Will, about her own life. It's arch at times, real at times, deeply affecting, beautifully written. 

Trip Report: Montana, 2023

The Davidsons visit Montana, 2023

My wife and her brothers have an interesting extended family. Their father -- named Harley Davidson! -- was born in Missouri, but moved to California during the depression to find work. He married a woman there, and had four children. The marriage foundered, and Harley moved back to Missouri, and married Mary Ann's mother, whom he had known before he went out west. Mary Ann and her three brothers were born between 1955 and 1961, but the family was always poor, and their mother died in 1970. Harley was not able to take care of the children, so they were raised by their aunts. Harley died in 1980. I met Mary Ann in 1982, so I never met either of her parents.

Mary Ann and her brother met their half-sister Myrna a couple times over the years, and in 2017 we all went out to California to stay with Myrna for a week. Their other half-sister Linda was there as well, but their half-brother Carl wasn't able to make it, because his wife Sandy had had a fall and couldn't travel. Myrna died a couple of years later. So as of this year, Mary Ann had never met her oldest half-brother. Carl lives in Montana, in Connor, a small town in the Bitterroot valley, not too far from the western border of Montana with Idaho, perhaps an hour south of Missoula. This year we made plans to visit Carl at his home -- Mary Ann and I; Mary Ann's brother Mark and his wife Becky; her brother Dwight and his wife Terrie, and her brother Scott, his daughter Rachel, and granddaughter Caitlyn. 

Mary Ann and I left on Wednesday September 20, taking a flight to Salt Lake City. We wanted a nonstop flight, and to travel in easy stages to Connor. We stayed in Farmington, Utah, after a bit of an adventure with the rental car. (The first one didn't have working Bluetooth, so we had to return it, in the process meeting a guy who had moved to Salt Lake City just three weeks before -- from Lahaina, Maui. His house -- built by his great-grandfather (I think) in the late 1800s -- had just burned down) We chose Farmington because the hotels were cheaper and because it's reasonably close to Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake. (It is now only ambiguously an island, because the lake has lost so much water that you could, as of late last year, walk to land (though I imagine it would be a marshy walk.) It's got about 5 feet of depth back in the past few months, but needs about 7 or 8 more feet to be truly healthy.) Antelope Island is a Utah State Park. It's best known, I think, for its population of bison, which were imported in the late 19th century. We saw plenty of bison, but alas no pronghorn, which are native to the island. I was happy to visit the island, but it's not the most impressive natural place in the world, it's fair to say.

We then drove up to Idaho Falls, Idaho. September 21st is our anniversary (38 years!) and we had a nice steak dinner at a restaurant called Stockman's. There's not really that much more to see in Idaho Falls except the falls, and even they aren't all that spectacular. It was of interest to me because my Dad used to visit there regularly on business -- he worked at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, and Idaho Falls is home to Idaho National Laboratory. (On the way we drove by Pocatello, home of Idaho State University, and of the first-rate SF/Fantasy scholar and editor, Brian Attebery. I did wave on the way back, Brian!)

On Friday we went the rest of the way to Connor, and indeed to Hamilton, the somewhat larger city 30 or so miles from Connor where we had rented an Airbnb. This is in the Bitterroot Valley, between the Bitterroot mountains to the west (which pretty much form the border with Idaho) and the Sapphire Mountains to the east. The southern end dips slightly into Idaho, and the northern end bumps into Missoula. The Bitterroot River runs up the valley, which is around 4000 feet above sea level. The mountain peaks are over 10,000 feet. Lewis and Clark followed the Bitterroot River north in 1805. The primary Native American tribe was the Salish, though the Nez Perce lived nearby and in fact we drove by one of the more shameful battle (massacre) sites in American history, Big Hole, which is a bit east of the Sapphire mountains.

The area is currently modestly famous for being the key shooting location for the TV show Yellowstone. Indeed, the ranch from the show is just a couple miles north of Connor, and a shootout scene in one episode was filmed on Carl's street. The population of Ravalli County, which makes up most of the valley, is just over 40,000 people. 

Our Airbnb was very nice. We had nine people staying, and five bedrooms, three baths, plus a "bonus room" over the garage with another bathroom, a large TV, a pingpong table and a pool table. There were two ponds on the property, and a pickleball court. There were elk and deer outside (and cows!) Lots of magpies, too, a bird I'd never really seen -- they are quite striking, black and white and fairly large.

Much of the next few days was occupied in visiting with Carl and other family members. Myrna's daughter Robin and her husband Keith, who are spending much of their retirement traveling the US in their RV, had arranged to be there. And Jimmy Garcia, a cousin, also lives in the Bitterroot valley. (He and Carl encountered each other in a bar many years ago, neither having any idea the other lived there.) Most of this was conversations, stories -- Carl telling about his life, and his brothers telling about theirs, comparing notes about their mutual father, etc. Some literal war stories. Stories about high school, about working life (Carl spent much of his career working on dredges), about hunting, so on. It was really striking, really moving, to see a family growing, expanding. And Carl is a damn good storyteller (so is Jimmy.) 

We shared dinners too. Caitlyn made soup for one dinner. Sandy and Carl cooked lunches and dinners. Becky and I did most of the breakfast cooking. We explored the valley some. One day driving down to Carl's we had to stop because the hay bales had fallen off a hay truck and blocked the highway. I got out with most of the other drivers and helped sweep the road. We went into Hamilton proper one day, did some shopping. The bookstore there, Chapter One, had a nice used book section where I bought some books (pictured at the bottom) -- the owner mentioned having visited St. Louis and in particular Left Bank Books. Another town, Darby, had some nice stores as well, including a candy shop and another used book store -- this one running on a book exchange model plus donations, no prices. One day we drove over to Wisdom, east of the Valley, about 45 minutes away (near the battle of Big Hole site) in search of highly recommended pizza. Alas, the place was closed -- the owner had fallen and wasn't in any condition to operate the restaurant. We also played pickleball, and fished (with no success) in the ponds. (Pickleball is exhausting!) And of course we luxuriated in the scenery -- it is really beautiful country. 

By Tuesday it was time to head out. The goal was to get to Yellowstone. We were staying in Island Park, Idaho. We slept in a bit, did a final cleanup of the Airbnb, and left by 10 or so. The drive to Island Park took about 5 hours, with an only too interesting final stretch, over an extremely rough gravel road, followed by an even worse rutted dirt road. But at last we got there. It was just a bit too late to explore any of the park, so we just checked in. I did run up to West Yellowstone, the Montana town right outside the park, and went into a bookstore there (not that impressive a bookstore.) 

Wednesday morning we did go to the park. We had a pleasant surprise entering it -- we are over 62, so we qualify for the senior discount, which is pretty good -- $20 gets you unlimited entrance to any National Park (or Monument) for a year, and $80 is good for the same for life. We realized pretty quickly that one day -- less than a full day -- isn't nearly enough to see the whole thing. We'll have to try to get back some time. What did we see? Some nice scenery -- the Madison River, in particular. And the Gibbons River, especially Gibbons Falls, which is pretty cool. (Apparently it's where the river cascades down into the caldera of the supervolcano.) I walked around the Norris Geyser area, with lots of fumaroles and such, and some geysers, none of which erupted. Pretty cool scenery, really, lots of strange colors and boiling mud and all that. I went by Steamboat Geyser, the tallest in the world. It erupts roughly every 30 to 40 days, and it had been 30-some days since the last eruption, so ... there was a chance? But no luck. I did chat for a bit with an Australian guy, there with his wife and two kids -- he said he was from Brisbane. I said I was "in the SF field" and one of my friends (Jonathan Strahan) lives in Perth (which of course is about as far from Brisbane as San Francisco from New York!) The guy said something like "I never knew there was an SF field!"

Those were a bit to the northwest of the Park, and then we headed south, to the Fountain Paint Pads -- more geysers and fumaroles and hot springs -- then to Old Faithful. We got there with about an hour to go before the predicted next eruption, so we grabbed some (very indifferent lunch) and then waited for the eruption. But Old Faithful was a bit of a strumpet, and didn't go off until a minute or so later than the latest time it was supposed to erupt. (That is, it was predicted to go at about 2:29, with a plus or minus 13 minute margin, and it went off at 2:43 ...) It's pretty impressive, I have to say. There were also bison wandering around, causing the park rangers to keep moving people away from them. 

Then we checked the driving time to our hotel -- and we realized that we really had to leave pretty much right away. We had hoped to stop in at Grand Teton too -- and there just wasn't time, plus it would have made the drive longer to go south first, as we were staying in Farmington again. Really poor planning on our part. We probably should have stayed another day. 

The trip back was mostly uneventful. Everything at the airport went smoothly, the flight was fine. And we got home to find -- a huge tree limb in the driveway! (Actually, a neighbor had warned us.)

It was really a wonderful vacation. Mostly for the family aspect, but also, Montana is a beautiful place, and Yellowstone is a treasure. We saw some fall changing colors, though not a lot -- we were probably a week early. If there was one mild disappointment, we didn't see quite as much cool wildlife as we hoped. Lots of deer, lots of bison. Only one pronghorn. No elk, no bears, no wolves. (Apparently there was a large crowd watching a grizzly bear eating an elk, but we missed that.) So we know the wild creatures are there -- but no luck for us. But that's not really a complaint -- we had a great time.

Review: Ursus of Ultima Thule, by Avram Davidson

Review: Ursus of Ultima Thule, by Avram Davidson

by Rich Horton

Avram Davidson is one of my favorite writers, and I have up to now read almost all of his SF/Fantasy novels. (Though for all I know Seth Davis is set to publish some more -- he's already put out at least one previously unpublished non-SF novel, Beer! Beer! Beer!.) But there were two I hadn't got to -- Ursus of Ultima Thule (1973) and Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (1988, with Grania Davis.) Recently I learned that my old friend from the glory days of Usenet, David Goldfarb, with whom I have again connected due to another shared interest (trivia), had recorded, for Wildside Press, an audiobook version of Ursus of Ultima Thule. I figured that would be a great opportunity to catch up with that novel, and so I bought it and listened to it. (David does a fine job reading it.)

Then I looked into the publication history of the novel, which is kind of interesting. It was originally published in (sort of) three parts. The first half or so of the novel was a novella in If, August 1971, called "Arnten of Ultima Thule". The remainder of the novel appeared the following year, in a two part serial in Fantastic, August and October 1972, called "The Forges of Nainland are Cold". The full novel was published by Avon in 1973. The quasi-serialized version is roughly 55,000 words, and the book version is about 65,000 words, due to an interesting chapter interpolated between the end of "Arnten of Ultima Thule" and the beginning of "The Forges of Nainland are Cold". 

The full novel was reissued in 2000 by Wildside, with the audiobook coming out in 2011. An outfit called Prologue Books published an ebook in 2012, and Gateway/Orion also did an ebook, for the UK market, in 2013. Finally -- I'll remark that my personal favorite title is "The Forges of Nainland are Cold" -- but I fully understand that Ursus of Ultima Thule is the more commercial title, and probably more representative of the whole book. 

The novel has been called "a tale of an Arctic Atlantis", and so Ultima Thule -- the original Ultima Thule -- is said to be a land now buried under the Arctic ice. This story is set in the far past, when Ultima Thule was warmer. We open with the hero, Arnten, still a boy. He is not accepted by most of his fellows for a couple of reasons -- his absent father, who is said to have been a bear; and also perhaps his unusual intelligence and curiosity. But he is allowed to come on a hunt of the wild horses, partly because Tall Roke, the band's best young hunter, is one of those who tolerates Arnten. But the hunt goes terribly wrong when they encounter a mammont, and most of the hunters are killed -- and Arnten is wrongly blamed. So he runs away, having been urged by his uncle to find his father.

In the mean time, the whole Kingdom of Ultima Thule is in trouble. The iron their society depends on -- especially for weapons -- is "sick" -- it quickly decays. The Nains who mine and forge it (Nains are essentially the same as the dwarves of Norse myth) don't know what to do. The king, Orfas, is likewise becoming sick -- there seems to be some sort of link between the health of the iron and the health of the king. And as his power declines, his cruelty and misrule worsens. 

Arnten does discover his father, Arntat, who is indeed a bear -- or, rather, sort of a were-bear. Son and father forge a bond, with Arnten realizing that he too has the bear nature within him. He also learns his father's back story -- he is a half-brother of the king, and eventually a rivalry grew, and Arntat was exiled. He has maintained his freedom by staying a bear -- but as he and Arnten travel together in human form, they are soon captured by Orfas' men, and sent to the mines to work with the Nains. 

That is the first part of the novel. In the second part, after Arnten has escaped the mines, with his father's, and the Nains', heroic assistance, he makes his way back to his home village. Soon he -- now coming into his manhood -- forms an alliance with Tall Roke, who has come back (mostly) from near death, and with others, including his uncle, a shaman of sorts. And they come to the realization that their weird is to travel to the land of the wizards, and feed the wizards -- and have the wizards break the spell on the iron. All this is accomplished -- the scenes with the wizards are deliciously strange, and inevitably the novel moves toward the already forecast climax, with Arnten claiming his true birthright.

It's an enjoyable novel, but it's not really Davidson at his best. His prose has the slant rhythms and odd turns of phrase and delight in unveiling of esoteric knowledge that we expect, but for me it doesn't quite sing here like the best Davidson prose. There are neat scenes -- an interlude with a strange creature called a "perry" (peri, I assumed?), the scene with the wizards, the stories of Arntat's adventures with Orfas, and some more. The plot is pretty straightforward, and doesn't really surprise much. I liked it, and I'm glad I read it finally -- but it's a fairly minor part of the Avram Davidson canon.

Review: Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov

Review: Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov

by Rich Horton

I'm not sure I need to say much about Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) in introduction. He's one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century -- this doesn't seem remotely in dispute. And he can claim that both in English and in Russian. His lack of a Nobel Prize is a scandal only matched, I think, by the lack of one for Jorgé Luis Borges.  

Pnin was his fourth novel written in English (not counting Laughter in the Dark, the much-revised translation he did of Camera Obscura) but the third of those to be published in the US, due to the difficulties Nabokov faced getting Lolita into print. Lolita was finished in 1953 or early 1954, and Nabokov began writing the sections of Pnin in January 1954. Some of the chapters of Pnin were published in the New Yorker, though the final novel is significantly revised. It appeared in 1957, and was quite successful -- finally resolving Nabokov's finances. (Lolita appeared in 1958 in the US, though a somewhat corrupt version had been published in France in 1955.) I read Pnin and loved it decades ago, and this is an overdue reread.

Timofey Pnin is a teacher of Russian at Waindell College. We meet him on the way to deliver a lecture at a women's club. Alas, he has gotten on the wrong train -- and when he realizes this his attempts to get back on course also go wrong, and he loses his lecture notes. Things work out, more or less, but we know our man by now: an often clumsy person, not entirely fluent in English, probably a true expert in Russian literature but so focussed on his own obsessions that he is treated more as a figure of fun than a serious scholar.

The chapters continue, detailing Pnin's adventures in his classes, his difficulty finding satisfying housing, his struggles keeping his teaching position amid a certain amount of academic politics. There is a weekend at a house in the country, with a number of other Russian emigrés.  We also learn something of his history -- his youth in Russia, his escape to Europe and then to the US, and especially his marriage, to the psychiatrist Liza Bogolepov. He is divorced as the novel opens, and we learn that Liza has remarried, and has had a child, who Pnin is willing to accept as his own. Indeed, Pnin truly does act as a father to the boy, who by the end of the novel is an adult, and an artist of real promise.

Pnin is very funny -- Timofey's troubles are mostly quite comic to everyone but him (and sometimes to him.) But behind the comedy there is real pain (the name Pnin is purposely only one letter away from pain.) At the heart of the book, I think, is Pnin's relationship with the wholly unworthy Liza, even though it takes up a relatively small proportion of the pages. Also critical is the identity of the narrator -- who intrudes only rarely until the final chapter. Then he comes front and center, and certain allusions -- to the Russian writer Sirin, to another emigré named Vladimir Vladimirovich who is an expert on butterflies -- are suddenly not cute references but critical to the story. I won't detail what we learn -- but by the end this is not so much a comic novel as a wrenching tragedy with comic overtones. Needless to say, it's also gloriously written. It's one of the most moving novels I know, it is one of my favorites of that sometimes tired genre, the academic novel; and it is sometimes my favorite of Nabokov's novels. 

Review: Supernatural Tales, by Vernon Lee

Review: Supernatural Tales, by Vernon Lee

by Rich Horton

Vernon Lee was the name used by Violet Paget (1856-1935), an English writer who lived her entire life on the continent -- born in France to English parents, she eventually settled in Italy. Her primary interest was esthetics, and she wrote extensively on the subject, influenced by Walter Pater and then by her lover, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. She also wrote on travel, a couple of novels, and a great many supernatural stories. She was very prominent in intellectual circles in her life, and was friends with the likes of Edith Wharton, Henry James, and her exact contemporary John Singer Sargent (who was a very close childhood friend, and who much later painted her portrait.)

While Lee's intimate relationships were always with women, and were quite "open", she refused the term Lesbian, and given that she used the name "Vernon Lee" not just as a pseudonym, but in her personal life as well, it is tempting to wonder if in contemporary terms, she might have identified as a trans man, though who can say? Her most controversial view, in her day, was her very passionate pacifism, which formed the thematic basis for her 1921 novel Satan the Waster. These views were very unpopular in her time, and seem to have contributed to her declining reputation late in her life. I recently wrote about Rose Macaulay, who was likewise a fierce pacifist during the first War, and who changed her views with the rise of Hitler. It’s interesting to wonder if Lee might also have moderated her views had she lived longer.

It is her supernatural stories that are best known in the present day, and after some long period of relative neglect, I sense that in the past few decades her work has achieved a significant reputation among aficionados of "weird fiction". The book at hand was assembled in 1955 by her executrix, Irene Cooper Willis, collecting six of her better known Supernatural Tales. Willis also contributes an introduction, discussing Lee in quite personal terms (they were close friend from 1911 until Lee’s death) and also including some words from Lee herself about a few of the pieces. My edition is a 1987 reprint.

I'll briefly consider each story:

“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” (18,000 words, originally in the July 1896 issue of The Yellow Book, collected in Pope Jacynth, 1904)

This is one of Lee’s most famous stories, and it was published in one of the most central (and controversial) periodicals of the 1890s. The Yellow Book may be best known for the illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and others; but the literary contents were also significant – they published the likes of Max Beerbohm, H. G. Wells, Henry James, and W. B. Yeats. They were famous for a highly esthetic approach (surely much in sympathy with Vernon Lee’s views) and for an attitude of decadence.

Prince Alberic is the grandson and heir of Duke Balthasar. The Duke is a vain and arbitrary man, and when he redecorates his Red Palace, he notices for the first time that Alberic’s chambers are hung with an old-fashioned tapestry, and he replaces it with a new one. But the boy had loved the older tapestry, which showed his ancestor, also named Alberic, and the half-snake/half-woman Oriana. Young Alberic destroys the new tapestry, and the Duke, in fury, exiles him to a remote estate. This backfires, however, for Alberic had hated the Red Palace, and became much happier in the new place, especially after he made a pet of a grass snake, and also met an older woman who visited him for an hour each day and instructed him.

It’s easy enough to see where this is going, though the story rather takes its time getting there. The Duke’s rage at his heir’s behavior increases, and the Duke’s three chief counsellors, who each hate the others, begin to compete to either be in position to take credit for Alberic’s death if the Duke so desires, or to be in the boy’s favor if things to in a different direction. But mysteriously, all their efforts are trumped by another influence. Eventually, financial pressures force the Duke to try to find an advantageous marriage for his heir – but by this time, Alberic, now a young man, has no interest in other women – for, of course, he has fallen in love with Oriana. There is a back story for the Snake Lady, and a dark resolution for everyone. It’s a fine story, though I felt it might have been a bit better if a bit shorter, and I also found the prose a touch too fussy – which is not the case for the other stories collected here. All that said, on reflection the story still seems to me quite powerful – perhaps it deserves a reread.

“A Wedding Chest” (4200 words, from Pope Jacynth, 1902)

This is a short and very dark story, rather nicely structured. It opens with a description of a 15^th century front panel painting on the subject of “The Triumph of Love”, used for a wedding chest, and continues to describe the circumstances of its painting. The chest was for the wedding of a powerful man, Messer Troilo. The painter, Desiderio, had refused to use the beautiful Maddalena as a model, for she was to be his wife – which incensed Troilo, who already had his eye on her … and who proceeded to kidnap and rape her. The end result is very dark – it’s a striking story, a conte cruel, in my opinion one of the best in the book, though there is no real supernatural element. I was reminded of the incident that drives the plot of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed (a novel Lee certainly must have known), and there is also a reference to the plague, though I’m not sure the same plague that features in Manzoni’s novel is intended.

“Amour Dure” (14000 words, from Hauntings, 1890)

My favorite of these six stories. It’s presented as extracts from the diary of Spiridon Trepka, a young Polish professor working in the Archives of a small Italian town, Urbania. He is interested in the history of the town, but distracted by the modern day annoyances of life there. But he becomes obsessed with the story of Medea di Carpi, a young woman born in 1556, with a somewhat legendary scandalous history, in that her various husbands and lovers all ended up murdered, either by her or some other mischance. And as Spiridon learns more, he begins to receive strange letters, on ancient paper, urging him to visit a certain decrepit church … and soon he is convinced that it is Medea herself, begging him to free her from her ghostly existence. His fate is easily guessed! But the story gets to that end very effectively.

“A Wicked Voice” (11,000 words, from Hauntings, 1890)

This story concerns a late 19^th century composer, a devotee of Wagner, who has nothing but contempt for the music of the 18^th century, and especially for the singers of that time. His project is an opera based on Ogier the Dane, but he ends up, to his disgust, an expert on an 18^th century singer named Zaffarini, and on a legend concerning this man, who apparently could sing so beautifully that he could make any woman fall in love with him, and then kill her with his song. Inevitably, the composer begins to hear a mysterious singing voice, and the voice overwhelms his inspirations for his opera, completely taking over his true ambitions.

“The Legend of Madame Krasinska” (10,500 words, from Vanitas, 1892)

Another favorite of mine. Madame Krasinska is an American woman, still quite young though a widow (she had married a wealthy Polish man.) She is an idle woman, given only to frivolous amusements, not even to love affairs. And then, for a costume ball, she decides to go as Sora Lena, a mad old woman well known around town, who constantly visits the train station, waiting for her sons to return from the war – alas, they had been killed in the war decades ago. Madame Krasinska’s cruel impersonation is a hit – but soon after Sora Lena commits suicide. And then Madame Krasinska becomes increasingly unhappy, and feels more and more that she is a different person – she begins wandering to the train station, and starts to think her real apartments are somewhere else. The climax, in the abandoned room where Sora Lena had lived, is beautifully done, with an effective surprise. There is a bit more of a moral here than with many of these stories.

“The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” (11000 words, from For Maurice, 1927)

The only one of these tales not set in Italy, this story begins in Grenada, with a depiction of the Church of Our Lady of the Seven Daggers (including criticism of the architecture.) Then we go back to the late 17^th century, during the reign of Charles II, “the Melancholy”. Don Juan Guzman del Pulgar is introduced as a man of extreme wickedness, in many ways but particularly in his treatment of women, in particular his seduction and/or rape of seven beautiful women, including, most scandalous, a nun. Now he has become obsessed with the legend of a surpassing beautiful Moorish Princess, buried alive by her father as the Moors retreated from Spain, and supposedly kept alive by magical means. He begs forgiveness from his patroness, the Virgin of the Seven Daggers, for all his previous sins and for whatever sins he might commit in his effort to penetrate to this Princess’s tomb, and claim her for his latest mistress. This leads to a dangerous descent into the depths, where her tomb lies, and his battle to reach the tomb, in which he commits further atrocities. Only to reach the Princess, and wake her – and have her demand of him one thing … the conclusion is logical and queerly moving in the context of the story.

This is truly a very fine collection of stories, effectively “supernatural” in a very 19^th century manner. I will be making an effort to hunt down some more examples of Vernon Lee’s fiction.

Review: Lord of the World, by Robert Hugh Benson

Review: Lord of the World, by Robert Hugh Benson

A review by Rich Horton

Robert Hugh Benson was born in 1871, the son of E. W. Benson, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Robert Hugh Benson’s older brothers and his sister were all writers, the best known of them being E. F. Benson, author of the Mapp and Lucia novels. The younger man also became a writer, of 15 novels, most historical, several quite popular. He was close friends with a couple of notorious characters – the novelist known as Baron Corvo, and Oscar Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. But he died only 43 in 1914, and is all but forgotten today.

I’ve elided the most dramatic event of his life, however. In 1903, he converted to Catholicism, and was ordained a priest the next year. This was a bit of a shock to the Anglican establishment, given his father’s position. And in 1907 he published Lord of the World, the most determinedly Roman Catholic of his works, which was a sensation of sorts when published, then largely forgotten, but which has received some notice of late, as the two most recent Popes, Benedict and Francis, have both recommended that Catholics read it.

But how about SF readers? Because Lord of the World is science fiction, set perhaps a century in Benson’s future. There are technological advances, those these are somewhat minor. Some cities have moved underground, and, more importantly, air travel is common, via what are called volors, and they are used in war to drop bombs, to the point of destroying cities. Much more important are the sociological changes. Religion has been largely abandoned, in favor of socialism and humanism – the latter eventually an explicit belief that humanity as a whole is god. Euthanasia is common. As the action opens, the world is roughly partitioned in three parts – the Eastern Empire, the American Empire, and Europe. Catholics, seemingly the only religion tolerated at all, are but a tiny fragment of their former population, though they have been ceded Rome and its environs.

The book follows two viewpoint characters. Oliver Brand is a young MP, who becomes an important acolyte of a new figure, Julian Felsenburgh, who comes from America but throughout the book increases his influence, eventually accepting a position as leader of the entire world. Oliver’s political success seems overwhelming, but his personal life is roiled, as his mother converts to Catholicism and he has her euthanized, and his wife, at first an enthusiastic supporter of he and Felsenburgh, becomes disillusioned and leaves him and heads to a euthanasia center.

The other key character is Percy Franklin, an English priest who over time becomes a more and more important figure in the Church. He becomes a leader in the Church’s response to Felsenburgh – who, notably, looks very similar to Franklin. His faith at first wavers and then is strengthened, and towards then end, after Rome is bombed to destruction, Percy becomes Pope, moves to Palestine – indeed, to Megiddo, and in the end awaits the final battle. 

This is a curious book, quite powerful on its own terms, and to my mind convincingly portraying a chilling dystopia, and resolving in an arresting fashion. And there are some striking passages and images, one for example showing a volor travelling over the Alps – the view from the air truly convinces. On the other hand, the rigorous insistence on Catholic theological truth (and a pretty conservative version of such) will not sell to everyone. One feels that a middle ground between the dystopia portrayed, and the vision Percy Franklin has for the world, might be available.