Review: A Mourning Coat, by Alex Jeffers

Review: A Mourning Coat, by Alex Jeffers

by Rich Horton

Alex Jeffers first came to my attention wtih two stories in the Robert Silverberg/Karen Haber anthology Universe 2, from 1992: "(from) The Bridge", and "The Fire, The Fire". I didn't realize it then, but I had seen stories from him more than a decade earlier, beginning with "Mask", from New Dimensions 6, edited by Silverberg, through "The Celebrants", from Universe 12, edited by Silverberg with Marta Randall. There's a reason I didn't make that connection -- these stories were published as by Donnan Call Jeffers, Jr. (Alex's birth name) and Peter Santiago C. Indeed, Jeffers' first 8 SF stories were published in anthologies edited by Robert Silverberg, which ought to remind us that Silverberg's contribution to the field as editor, not just writer, has been profound. (Though to be sure Silverberg's co-editors, Randall and Haber, deserve credit too.) 

But this isn't about Robert Silverberg! It's about Alex Jeffers. I loved those stories in Universe, and his name stuck with me, and I was delighted when I saw more stories from him some 15 years later: "Firooz and his Brother" in F&SF in 2008 (and reprinted in my Best of the Year anthology) and "Jannicke's Cat" in M-Brane in 2009. Christopher Fletcher, editor and publisher of M-Brane (and a fellow St. Louisan) also published a short novel by Jeffers in 2011, The New People. (Which I reviewed here.) Jeffers has also published two non-fantastical novels, Safe as Houses (1995) and Do You Remember Tulum (2009), as well as a couple more novels, Deprivation; or, Benedetto furioso: An Oneiromancy (2013) and That Door is a Mischief (2014), as well as a Lambda Award winning erotic novella, The Padisah's Son and the Fox (1996, expanded 2013). And as to the name -- yes, Alex is the grandson of the great American poet Robinson Jeffers.

Jeffers has continued to publish delightful stories, including some set in a fantastical world called Kandadal's World. I reprinted one of these ("The Tale of the Ive-Ojan-Akhar’s Death") in my Best of the Year volume. A Mourning Coat is likewise set in that world. (It's a world about which you can say "in" not "on".)

Therre, the narrator, is mourning his father's death. He had been his caretaker for five years, as his father descended into a cranky senility. And so his feelings are complicated -- this made his life terribly difficult (for one thing he broke up with his long time lover to devote his full attention to his Dada.) And his family history was tricky too -- his father, a famous actor, moved from the mainland, Kyrland, to the large island Yf for his career, taking Therre with him, but abandoning Therre's mother and older sister, who wished to stay home. Therre has grown up to be a highly respected costume designer for the movies, and that career, too, has been put on hold as he cares for his Dada. But for all that, Therre truly loved his father.

There are to be two ceremonies -- a private one for Therre and close friends, and a more public one for his father's industry connections. Therre makes a special, rather flamboyant, mourning coat for these ceremonies. And, somewhat unexpectedly, this creates a sensation -- his career as a designer is definitely back on. But is this what he wants?

There are significant personal elements -- his ex-lover, now married, accompanies him to the private ceremony, and though their sexual relationship is not on anymore, they can still be friends -- and she, a lawyer, will represent him in a case brought by his father's former lover, contesting the will. Add to that a mild rekindling of Therre's relationship with his sister, and most importantly, the prospect of a new lover -- an actor he had worked with on an eventually abortive film project before his father's illness. 

In many ways, recounting this plot, it seems like the stakes here are small. And perhaps they are -- but then how small are the stakes when we are mourning a parent? or starting a new relationship? No, Therre's choices aren't going to change the world -- but they will change his life in ways that matter. And recovering from grief is also emotionally vital to anyone -- and Jeffers' depiction of Therre's grief is beautiful and convincing. 

I haven't discussed the prose, which is graceful and beautiful. Nor have I discussed the context -- this world, and the magic, the gods, which are de-emphasized here because Yf has no gods -- but magic still plays a significant role here. And we see too the history -- recounted in part by describing movie projects for Therre and his father. There is a real sense of reality, of deep time, of history as it is remembered. This is truly a lovely story, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

I'll add, quickly, details of the publication. This edition is from dave ring's imprint Neon Hemlock. It's a pretty book, with nice cover (by Jeff Kristian) and interior illustrations (by Matthew Spencer.) It's available at www.neonhemlock.com. 

Review: Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon

Review: Cold Welcome, by Elizabeth Moon

by Rich Horton

I really enjoyed Elizabeth Moon's Aunts in Space*, er, Familias Regnant Space Opera series, 7 books published between 1993 and 2000; and I also loved her Vatta's War books, five more Mil SF/Space Opera stories published from 2003 to 2008. (Ky Vatta's universe is not the same as that of Heris Serrano and Esmay Suiza, but it does feature one formidable (Great) Aunt.) So I was quite glad, back in 2017, to see that she was publishing sequels to the Vatta's War books -- Cold Welcome in 2017 and Into the Fire in 2018. I didn't read the books right away -- too much other stuff on my plate -- but my wife (not an SF reader) did tackle Cold Welcome. And now I finally have gotten around to it.

Ky Vatta, after the events of the Vatta's War books, has been named the Admiral of the Space Defense Force, a multi-planet peacekeeping organization. And now she is returning to her home planet, Slotter Key, for some ceremonial reasons, and also to clean up the ownership status of the Vatta family business. Her redoubtable great aunt Grace is the Rector of Defense for Slotter Key, her cousin Stella is the primary leader of the Vatta businesses, though she's now based on another planet (Cascadia), her sometime lover Rafe, a criminal who has gone more or less straight as the head of ISC, is also off planet. And pretty much as soon as she enters Slotter Key's atmosphere, her shuttle is shot down over the far southern seas of the planet, as winter approaches.

Ky and the 20 or so survivors manage to survive ditching into the ocean, and to get into a couple of rafts. Ky, with the able help of a veteran Master Sergeant Marek, and with the less able presence of her Cascadian personal assistant Jen Bentik, organizes things to eventually bring them to shore on the deserted continent of Miksland, abandoned as a terraforming failure. Her job is to find a way to survive for a few months until the weather makes it possible for a rescue mission to get to them; and at the same time chivvy the other survivors into becoming a disciplined team, and dealing with the malcontents and a potential traitor.

Meanwhile Grace Vatta and Stella and Rafe and other mobilize to deal with making sure a rescue effort is mounted, to find out who is responsible for the attack on the shuttle, and to give what help is possible to Ky, which is precious little except for one bit of magic secret tech that Ky and Rafe share. (This tech was introduced in the previous series.) There are bad guys on Slotter Key, and on other planets. There is political maneuvering, such as people who want Ky declared dead so they can assume her powerful position. And there are some mysteries -- the continent of Miksland isn't quite what it seems, and there are unexamined secrets about the history of Slotter Key, such as who terraformed it and why and where are they, that only now start to come to light. 

The novel is just lots of fun. Elizabeth Moon is a first rate adventure writer, and I found it gripping throughout. She also makes the political intrigues, well, intriguing. The bad guys, mind you, are really evil, to the extent we see them. And Ky has some superpowers (or it comes off that way) and a lot of luck. But that comes with the territory for this sort of book. I also found the ending just a bit disappointing, though I think this is largely because room was being made for the sequel. In particular, some of the new questions the books raises -- particularly the mystery of the terraformers -- are dangled in front of us but never addressed. That will come later in the series, I trust! 

*Full credit should be given to James Davis Nicoll for coining the term "Aunts in Space".

Impressions of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Impressions of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

an essay by Rich Horton

I can't call this a "review" -- reviews are pointless for a classic a century and a half old. Calling it an essay is probably overblown, but there you are. Just think of this as my impressions. I'll be rambling a bit -- a lot! -- and I'll repeat myself. Apologies! 

Anna Karenina was serialized between 1875 and 1877, and first published in book form in 1878. Tolstoy considered it his first true novel -- note that War and Peace appeared in 1869! Those two novels, of course, are considered among the two greatest novels of all time. William Faulkner famously answered, when asked to name the three best novels, "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina". Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote many other stories, and works like The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Hadji Murat are also very highly regarded. He was also a profoundly influential thinker -- a radical Christian, a pacifist, a vegetarian (nearly a vegan). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in both Literature and Peace multiple times, and it seems a crime he never received it, though to be fair it was early days for the award. For all that, I had not read him, at all, and I knew I ought to. And it became clear that Anna Karenina was likely a novel I would have great sympathy with.

I'm not going to worry too much about spoilers -- I knew the (very minimal) basics when I started and I imagine most readers do. And it's not a plotty novel, though there is a plot, and a resolution, probably guessable from about 100 pages in. But I also won't go into details. The novel opens with the famous line "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That's from the en vogue contemporary translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, which is the one I (mostly) read. The first American translation, from 1887, by Nathan Haskell Dole, reads "All happy families resemble each other, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Constance Garnett's long standard translation renders the first line: "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy fmaily is unhappy in its own way." Rosemary Bartlett's long popular translation of the line is the same as P&V's. I'm not sure the point I'm making -- there isn't that much difference here, and there seems to have been a fairly reasonable convergence. I think the line is a nice aphorism, and profoundly wrong, as is even illustrated in the novel. Most assuredly the Karenin family (Anna and her husband Alexei and their son Seryozha) is unhappy; and differently so than the Oblonskys -- Stiva and Dolly and their several children; and differently so than the arrangement Anna and her lover Vronsky and their all but ignored young daughter Annie end up in. But the happy families portrayed (Levin and Kitty and their daughter, and that of Kitty's parents, the Shcherbatskys, and the glimpses we see of one or two muzhik families) are also differently happy.

Well, no matter. What is the novel about? Well, it's a long novel -- some 800 pages, about 350,000 words -- so it's about a lot of things. Of course it's about marriage and adultery, but it's also about farming, and about war, and about religion (and philosophy in general), and about economics, and about the difference between life in Russia and life in Europe; and, in a large way, about how to live a life, and whether the life we live is the result of our choices, or of fate. There are a great many characters: some important: Anna Arkadyevna Karenina, her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, her brother Stepan Arkadyich "Stiva" Oblonsky, his wife Dolly (Darya Alexandrovna), her sister Kitty (Katernina Alexandrovna) Scherbatsky, Kitty's eventual husband Konstantin Dmitrich Levin, and Anna's lover Alexei Vronsky. And there is a host of lesser characters, some critical, such as Levin's brothers Nikolai and Sergei, or Anna's son, and some minor but beautifully portrayed, such as the lawyer Karenin approaches about a divorce. 

The plot is arranged basically in two threads. One concerns Anna Karenina, unhappily married but a loving mother and an admired society wife, who meets Alexei Vronsky, who had been courting Anna's sister-in-law Kitty Shcherbatsky, and falls head over heels for Anna. Vronsky at first sees her as yet another diversion -- much as Kitty was, though Kitty thought he was serious and on those grounds refused Konstantin Levin when he proposed. (Some people suggest that Anna "stole" Vronsky from Kitty, but it's clear that Vronsky had no intention of marrying Kitty, and that he would have made her a dreadful husband (he's a cad, for one thing, though a charming and superficially accomplished one.)) Anna and Vronsky's affair becomes quite serious -- very much to Vronsky's discomfort -- and a child results, leading to separation from Karenin (but no divorce, a critical point) and to social exile, and for a time real exile to Italy. I won't say how this ends though I suppose most know -- certainly not happily. The second thread concerns Levin, who retreats to his farm after Kitty's rejection, and works on his book about farming, and tries to make the farm a success while treating his workers fairly (who are, after the freeing of the serfs which occurred about a decade earlier, tenant farmers.) But he doesn't forget Kitty, and after a time, and a bit of a crisis in Kitty's life, they realize they should be together -- and they get married and have a child, and all the while Levin -- a happy man, wholly in love -- continues to philosophize about the meaming of life, and about why he, an unbeliever, was brought to prayer during Kitty's labor, and so on.

The bald elements of this plot are pretty basic, but there is so much more to this novel -- the devil is in the details. The characterization is remarkable (with, as I suggest, the exception of that of Anna.) There are wonderful brief bits -- Levin at a friend's house, convinced that the friend's wife wishes him to marry her sister, and thus convinced that this pretty sister is wearing a particularly low cut dress just to ensnare him, and yet unable to keep his eyes from her bosom, for just one example. Levin's inner life throughout is utterly convincing to me, and really interesting despite (or because of) the digressions into farming techniques, or agonizing about suicide despite his happiness. (To be sure, Levin is a pretty obvious stand in for Tolstoy, which perhaps made Tolstoy's job easier.)

On the other hand, we see Vronsky's dilettantish approach to practically everything -- his early career in the military, his later stab at painting, his attempt to set up as a country landowner, his horses. He is intelligent and educated, but not truly dedicated, and it's clear that he can be pretty good at things but never really good. And, honestly, that's more or less true of his relationship with Anna. (We presume he's at least good in bed (or on the couch!), though to be honest, after Karenin, maybe anyone would suffice.) I see some readers viewing him as a romantic figure, or even a victim of Anna's, which is absurd. He's a cad -- his purposeful dallying with Kitty with no attention of marriage is the early indication, but we see it throughout -- his hard ways with his workers, his impatience with Anna, his need for her to have a child even after she nearly died bearing their daughter, and his basic mediocrity (in Nabokov's term.) 

As for the question of the place of women, and of wives, in this society -- of course Anna is herself a key figure, but Dolly Oblonsky is maybe the less dramatic but more convincing example. The novel opens with her threatening to leave her husband because he's having an affair with the governess, and (ironically) it is Anna who convinces her to stay. But Dolly is much put upon -- despite his vow to reform, Stiva continues dalliances with dancers and actresses and such (while spending money that puts the household finances in serious jeopardy) while Dolly keeps having children, takes the lead in raising them of course, worries about her declining looks, worries about money ... And then there's a remarkable long passage when she wishes she could have done what Anna did, wishes she had never had children, rages against the place of women in this world -- and ends up realizing she doesn't have an alternative. 

I could go on -- Kitty too is nicely captured, Karenin is a truly pathetic figure, almost one we sympathize with but a mean and  small-minded man, Levin's brothers, especially the academic Sergei, are precisely depicted, Kitty's almost holy friend Varenka, in a small somewhat sad role is believable, Stiva's bonhomie and charm along with his sheer fecklessness is just spot on. 

And then Anna. I've said I don't believe Tolstoy got her inner life. For me, it was easy to believe that her life with Karenin was miserable, and that her love for her son was real. But I was never wholly convinced by her seemingly obsessive love for Vronsky. And what we see -- a fair amount -- of her thought, of her inner turmoil, just didn't ring quite true. She is shown to be a brilliant woman -- at least the intellectual equal and, really, the superior, of both the men in her life. She writes a book! She is ready to help with Karenin with his government duties, but he (20 years her elder) shuts her out -- and later she studies to learn the things Vronsky is interested in -- and he too, without seeming to realize it, shuts her out. Hey, she reads English novels -- early in the book we see her reading a novel that is obviously, if not actually, meant to be by Anthony Trollope. All this I am happy to believe, but it never translates into understanding her disastrous affair. You could say she had bad taste in men, but it's clear that her scheming mother forced Karenin to propose, without any thought of Anna's personal happiness; and once in a loveless marriage her options were limited. 

It's not fair to criticize other's takes on the book too much, but I will say I read one blogger who read the novel in 1000 word chunks, one per day, so the book took a year. Which is fine, mind you. Her take on the novel was basically that she hated it, and that she advocated that you should just read what you like, don't beat yourself up if you haven't read a classic novel like Anna Karenina. Well, that's fine too, even if I think her reading was way off. But if you're going to say "read what you like", and then turn around and make it clear that if what you like is SF or Fantasy, well, you're a worthless stupid reader (perhaps I exaggerate her take, but it sure seemed like that's what she thought) then maybe I won't take you too seriously.

Anyway -- bottom line -- Anna Karenina is a beautiful novel, an absorbing novel. It's worth reading, it's worth understanding, it's worth arguing with. Tolstoy was an intriguing thinker -- but that doesn't mean he was always right! Ranking great novels is a silly endeavor -- all middle range novels are pleasant in a similar way, but all great novels are great in their own way, one might say. Still -- this is close to the top! Does it top, say, Middlemarch in my mind? Maybe not. But it's in the conversation!

Review: Across a Billion Years, by Robert Silverberg

Review: Across a Billion Years, by Robert Silverberg

a review by Rich Horton

I am making my way through Robert Silverberg's early ouevre, and I've realized that in a way this stretches all the way to about 1970. What I mean is, Silverberg to some extent abandoned the SF field in the early 1960s, partly because of a collapse in the magazine markets, and he turned to popular science, and to some pseudonymous work in other genres. Some of his earlier work kept appearing in book form until about 1965, but more ambitious short fiction started showing up in 1963 with stuff like "To See the Invisible Man" and "The Pain Peddlers". His first novels that I would called "middle period" came out in 1967. But a few outliers showed up as well -- I think all really YA (perhaps excepting Regan's Planet.) These are The Gate of Worlds (1967), Across a Billion Years (1969) and the diptych Regan's Planet (1964) and World's Fair 1992 (1970). One might also add Time of the Great Freeze (1964) and Conquerors From the Darkness (1965). For my own reasons I think of these as more akin to his early work, largely because, though very professionally executed, these novels just don't seem to have the ambition of his middle period work. But perhaps that's unfair -- perhaps the only real difference is market -- YA versus adult. (And I will say that I greatly enjoyed Time of the Great Freeze and The Gate of Worlds when I read them at age 11 or so, from my junior high library.)  

I believe I also read Across a Billion Years at the same time, but I really hardly remembered it. So I bought a copy, and read it anew. The first thing I'll say is that I call it YA, but it's possible it wasn't really marketed as such. There is a fair amount of reference to sex in the book (including a near rape scene) if nothing explicit. But it features a young protagonist who acts his age, and needs to grow throughout the novel. And it was published by The Dial Press, not Silverberg's usual publisher. And, I have to say, though I thought it a decent read, it clearly doesn't stand with the great work Silverberg did in this period -- work like Thorns, Dying Inside, Downward to the Earth, A Time of Changes, Nightwings, and more.

The novel is narrated by Tom Rice, a newly hatched extraterrestrial archaeologist, who is recording his experiences on a new expedition in order to send them to his sister Lorie. We quickly realize that Lorie is severely disabled -- confined to a hospital bed. But she is also a telepath, and part of the network of "TPs" that allow faster than light communication in this future. For, in 2375 A. D., Earth and a few alien races form a loosely united polity, and in joint expeditions, they explore relics on other planets. They are mostly interested in the High Ones, a very powerful alien civilization that left traces on numerous planets, roughly a billion years ago. But the High Ones seem to have been gone for 800,000,000 years or so.

Tom's group includes three professors, and eight junior members, mostly humans but with a few aliens mixed in, and one pulchritudinous android (depicted with Tom on the paperback cover above, as they make their great discovery.) They are exploring High Ones deposits on Higby V. Much of the early part of the book includes a bit of background on the High Ones, and what they've left behind, and a lot of description of the odd natures of the alien members, and of Tom's obsession with sex. (As well as his exceedingly uncharitable evaluations of the non-human members of the expedition, all of whom, he is at first convinced, are there just to check diversity boxes.) Tom is aware, of course, that the beautiful android is not programmed to be interested in sex, but soon he's intrigued by the one human woman in their group, Jan, who is about his age. But Jan seems more interested in an older man on the team; and there is another man who is very creepily interested in Jan as well. Which leads to an attempted rape -- with Tom showing little concern about it (he even trots out the old "you can't be raped if you aren't at some level willing" canard.) To be somewhat fair, this is all presented as Tom being an insensitive and rather juvenile jerk, and he does do some growing up. But it's all quite awkward -- I don't know how it played in 1970 but it's kind of disgusting now.

As for the SFnal aspects -- they make a great discovery (with Tom at the center, though really more for random reasons) -- a High Ones artifact that shows detail views of life in ancient High Ones cities, and of a robot left on an asteroid. The team decides to find the robot, which leads to more discoveries, and another trip across the galaxy ... with an ending hinting at transcendence ...

None of this is really original, or, truth be told, all that fascinating. But it is well told, so I read it with interest throughout. But a lot of it is four finger exercises -- enjoyable but never new, with perhaps one exception. The depiction of Tom's relationship with his sister, and his slow understanding of her inner life, is effective and quite moving. 

As to what we learn about the High Ones -- similar ideas are very common in SF. (Andre Norton's Forerunners, for just one example of very many.) And to be honest they work OK as a mystery -- but the mystery revealed almost never works. Silverberg's solution here is -- not bad. It's not amazing, but it's believable and not a cheat. 

In summary -- a minor work by a major writer. Readable, but not really important.

Review: Behold the Ape, by James Morrow

Review: Behold the Ape, by James Morrow

a review by Rich Horton

Behold the Ape is the latest book from James Morrow, one of the SF field's great satirists. Yet to say "satirist" shortchanges his range: he does sharp SF speculation, straight humor, moving and dramatic fantasy ... but, yeah, he's a pretty funny writer, and usually with a wickedly sharp edge. This book is published by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta's WordFire Press, and it's a lovely object, illustrated with a number of cartoons published about Charles Darwin when The Origin of Species first appeared, and also about the Scopes trial.

In this novella the main character is Sonya Orlov, a young woman who has become a queen of low-budget horror films. She's making a good money, she loves her work, and she has a pleasant relationship with a screenwriter, Homer. Her brother Vasily is a lot less stable, however, and now he's a sort of self-taught surgeon. She's supported him financially, and now he wants some more direct help. For his latest surgical effort was to transplant a human brain into the skull of a gorilla. More specifically, he's transplanted the left hemissphere of Charles Darwin's preserved brain into a gorilla named Zorlag. But he's having regrets after finding that Zorlag is being forced to work as a sideshow exhibit run by a fanatical opponent of the teaching evolution. Long story short -- Sonya, Vasily, and company manage to kidnap Zorlag, steal the other half of Darwin's brain and finish the full brain transplant, and voila! -- Darwin is resurrected in an ape's body, and of course he's horrified at the anti-scientific messages he was forced to promulgate.

The story continues with Sonya and Darwin collaborating on a series of Ape Woman movies, with the two of them playing both halves of a Jekyll and Hyde ape character -- combining scientific messages about evolution with lurid horror plots; thus making great use of both Sonya and Darwin's talents. But their fundamentalist opponents are not ready to give up, and they continue to threaten the Ape Woman franchise. When Sonya pivots to a movie based on Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau, just as Pearl Harbor is on the horizon, the stage (or screen!) is set for a wild climax.

The story is a good deal of fun, between jokes at the expense of Scopes Trial era protesters, affectionate hommage to '30s horror movies and other pre-Code delights, and implausible biological hybridization. It's not as satirically potent as Morrow's Bible Stories for Adults, or novels like Towing Jehovah -- the targets are sort of fish in a barrel -- but it's enjoyable, funny, sweet, and sometimes quite moving. 

Review: Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith

Review: Norstrilia, by Cordwainer Smith

by Rich Horton

I last read Cordwainer Smith's only novel, Norstrilia, when it was first released in its "full" form, back in 1975, so almost 50 years ago. And I must confess, I remembered almost nothing -- Rod McBan from Old North Australia (Norstrilia), C'Mell, stroon ... that's about it. I had intended to reread it for a long time, and, happily, my book club chose it as one of our readings this year. Which finally got me off the schneid.

I went ahead and bought the NESFA Press edition, which is by a wide margin the best one to get. This version takes the 1975 Ballantine text, and adds some material from both the novella length magazine publications ("The Boy Who Bought Old Earth" and "The Store of Heart's Desire") and the two short novels expanded from those (The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople), in the process smoothing over some discontinuities introduced during the complicated road to publication. This edition also includes an introduction by Alan Elms, and an appendix giving the alternate texts from the other versions, and detailing the way in which the various texts were stitched together. There is also a 2006 Baen collection called We the Underpeople, which comprised the three key stories related to Norstrilia ("Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons", "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"), the novella "The Dead Lady of Clown Town", and Norstrilia itself. I do not know what text the Baen edition uses.

I'll discuss the textual variations between the various versions in more detail later, but first let's get to the novel itself. John J. Pierce put together a speculative timeline for Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind future history. Pierce places Norstrilia at right about the most critical period of Instrumentality history: The Rediscovery of Man. It's part of a cluster of five stories set in about 16,000 A. D. (I use the abbreviation A. D. advisedly -- Smith was a committed (if somewhat heterodox) Christian, and the Instrumentality stories ultimately had quite overt Christian themes -- noticeable in Norstrilia if muted, but more explicit later.) These five stories are "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons", "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", Norstrilia, and "A Planet Named Shayol". Two of these ("Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" and "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell"), along with Smith's first story, "Scanners Live in Vain", are my three favorite Cordwainer Smith stories.

Roderick Frederick Ronald Arthur William McArthur McBan the 151st, hereafter called Rod, is the heir to a wealthy estate on the planet of Old North Australia, or Norstrilia. Norstrilia's wealth is derived from stroon -- the immortality drug that can only be produced there. As the novel opens, Rod is 16, or perhaps 64, as he has lived the first 16 years of his life four times, in the hopes that his congenital defect will be cured. This defect means he cannot "spiek" or "hier", which is to say telepathically communicate. Otherwise he's a pretty intelligent young man. And this is his fourth chance at the test which will determine if he lives or dies -- for on this somewhat inhospitable planet the population is rigorously controlled. It is thought that his handicap will doom him -- but his examination goes in an unexpected direction. However, there are still people who think he ought to be killed. The only solution seems to be to leave Norstrilia -- but those who leave cannot return. But with the help of an ancient computer, Rod finds a sort of loophole -- he plays games with his enormous wealth to buy the entire planet known as Manhome, or Old Earth.

His troubles are hardly over. Such wealth makes him even more of a target, on Norstrilia, on Old Earth, and in between. He does have allies, and they find a way to sneak him to Mars, and then, in the disguise of a C'Man, married to the beautiful girlygirl C'Mell, he gets to Earth, along with a number of robots disguised as him. And here on Old Earth, he will find his heart's desire, meet E'Telekeli, the most powerful of all the animal-derived "underpeople", escape multiple attempts on his life, get psychiatric treatment, live a long life with C'Mell, and finally realize his real destiny.

I don't really want to say more about the plot. There is at the same time a lot going on, but in an odd way not that much. Some of it seems a bit arbitrary, some doesn't quite convince, and some is fascinating. But still it all pretty much works. The novel isn't at a level with Smith's greatest works, but parts of it are. At time it reaches the incantatory heights Smith could achieve, and it hints throughout at a really important story -- the story of the Underpeople (which is also central to "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell", and which perhaps is ultimately key to the entire Instrumentality future history.) But Rod isn't an Underperson (though of course C'Mell and E'Telekeli are), so that story is kind of told in the margins. We like Rod, but he doesn't shake the universe, in a way. This is a good novel, and it's an important part of the future history created by one of the oddest and most powerful SF writers of all time. But to fully grok Cordwainer Smith, you need to read his short fiction -- and for doing so you will be richly rewarded.

I promised a bit more about the textual history of Norstrilia. It was written as a single novel, but Smith couldn't sell it in whole. He divided it roughly in half, and cut versions of each half were published in Frederik Pohl's magazines Galaxy and If. (Pohl was Smith's primary editor.) The two novellas were published in the April 1964 issue of Galaxy ("The Boy Who Bought Old Earth", about 38,300 words) and the May 1964 issue of If ("The Store of Heart's Desire", about 23,300 words.) Paperback editions of both novellas, expanded to short novel length, appeared from Pyramid: The Planet Buyer (1964, about 53,000 words) and The Underpeople (1968, about 42000 words). These books presumably restored cuts to Smith's original manuscript that had been made to fit the magazines' space restrictions, but also included additional material to make each book stand alone to some extent. Alan Elms' introduction implies that Smith's manuscript was about 75,000 words. The combined length of the novellas is almost 62,000 words. The Pyramid paperbacks come to about 95,000 words. The NESFA edition is about 89,000 words, based on an electronic count kindly supplied me by Jim Mann of NESFA, not counting the introduction or the appendices, and the Del Rey edition is about the same. I suspect my estimate for the Pyramid books is off just a bit, and the two books probably are similar to the complete Norstrilia, after accounting for the additional text added to each to smooth out the transition between the two volumes, set against a somewhat restored text from Smith's manuscripts (or so I assume) that is found only in the "complete" version. 

My suspicion is that Smith's original manuscript was about 90,000 words, and was cut significantly for the magazine publication, and mostly restored (plus some bridging material) for the first books. Alternately, Smith wrote a 75,000 word version first (as Elms suggests) but expanded it later to the final 90,000 words, hoping to sell it as two novels. (At Pyramid in particular, novels of 45,000 words or so were not uncommon.) It would be interesting to know for sure which of these two possibilities is true, and if so which parts were added later. It is worth noting that The Underpeople didn't appear from Pyramid until 1968, while The Planet Buyer came out in 1964, just a few months after the novellas. Smith died in 1966, so it is at least possible that he made some revisions after the first publication of The Planet Buyer.

Review: Hope-in-the-Mist, by Michael Swanwick; "Paris", by Hope Mirrlees

Hope-in-the-Mist, by Michael Swanwick; "Paris", by Hope Mirrlees

a review by Rich Horton

A couple of years ago, at a Kaffeeklatsch at Boskone I think, Michael Swanwick discussed (among many other things) Hope Mirrlees, and in particular her poem "Paris". I read Mirrlees' novel Lud-in-the-Mist a couple of decades ago and thought it wonderful, and so I was intrigued by "Paris", which Michael described in part as a modernist poem in the mode of "The Waste Land", and possibly an influence on that poem. (Mirrlees absolutely knew T. S. Eliot well, and it's very plausible that Eliot read "Paris" as he was composing "The Waste Land".) I also discovered that Swanwick had written a short biographical piece on Mirrlees, called Hope-in-the-Mist, and published in 2009 by Henry Wessells' always intriguing small press Temporary Culture. ("Paris", to be sure, was also published by an enterprising small press, Hogarth Press, run by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. So was "The Waste Land", by the way.) So I bought that book, and found a copy of "Paris" online (there are many.))

I finally got around to reading Hope-in-the-Mist. It's a nice looking book (as I expect from Temporary Culture.) There's a delightful foldout illustration by Charles Vess, an introduction by Neil Gaiman, useful endnotes, and "A Lexicon of Lud" -- an explanation of many of the terms used in Lud-in-the-Mist.

But the heart of the book of course is Michael Swanwick's mini-biography of Helen Hope Mirrlees, which is 60 pages long. She was born in 1887, and her family was quite wealthy. She attended Newnham College at Cambridge, and studied Classics. There she met Jane Harrison, a very important Classicist, almost 40 years her senior. They became very close, and in the years after Mirrlees left Newnham, she and Harrison began living together, on and off, mostly on, until Harrison's death in 1928. Swanwick considers the question of whether or not they were lovers, and wisely chooses to be agnostic. Certainly both women came fairly close to marrying men (Harrison at least three times); and there is plenty of evidence that for Harrison, financial reasons might have been sufficient to choose to live with a wealthy and sympatico friend. But we really cannot know one way or the other.

Swanwick's book engagingly follows Mirrlees' life, at first concentrating on her literary efforts, which in essence comprise four significant works: "Paris: a Poem" (1920), and three novels: Madeleine (1919), The Counterplot (1924), and Lud-in-the-Mist (1926). Apparently she was under contract for one more novel, but it's not clear how much of that she may have written. After Harrison's death she worked primarily on two biographies: one of Harrison, which she never finished; and one of Robert Bruce Cotton, of which only the first volume has ever been published. She also privately printed a couple of very short books of poems.

Swanwick is very interesting on Mirrlees' literary work. Madeleine doesn't sound like a novel worth reading, but I admit I'm intrigued by The Counterplot. The Cotton biography sounds excessive, and her late poems seem negligible. But Lud-in-the-Mist is wonderful -- and I really do need to reread it. And "Paris" -- well, I'll get to that in a bit.

Hope-in-the-Mist also discusses the rest of Mirrlees' very long life (she died in 1978 at the age of 91.) Lin Carter, when he reprinted Lud-in-the-Mist in 1970 in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, wasn't aware that she was still alive, though he apparently tried to locate her, but published the book anyway, as it was in the public domain in the US. And to be fair, this reprinting was vital to bringing Mirrlees' work back to attention. Mirrlees had moved back and forth between France and England, spending much of the war years in London with her mother -- and also with T. S. Eliot, who boarded with them (and wrote much of the Four Quartets there.) Later, Mirrlees moved to South Africa for a considerable time. 

She seems to have been in many ways a difficult person, but also intriguing. She was quite a beauty as a young woman, but it is repeatedly said that she "lost her looks" as she aged. Swanwick's book includes anecdotes and other testimony from friends and relatives, that present a portrait of an interesting and rather contrary individual. As noted, she largely stopped writing -- certainly stopped writing interesting stuff -- after Jane Harrison's death. Swanwick suggests, plausibly, that her relative financial security, due to her family's wealth, was a reason that she didn't have to write. At any rate, it's a loss for readers that she never wrote anything more after producing something as wonderful as Lud-in-the-Mist. But -- nobody owes us readers anything. Also central to Mirrlees' life was her conversion to Catholicism in the late '20s.

Now, to "Paris". I have read it through a few times. It is a long poem, at about 600 lines. And it is undeniably a work that will remind any reader of "The Waste Land". It is thoroughly plausible that it influenced Eliot, or at least that it sprang from the same wellsprings of inspiration. Which is not to say that it's about the same things, or that either poem is a copy of the other.

"Paris" is a fascinating read, definitely worth the time of any reader of poetry. There are arresting lines:

"Paris is a huge home-sick peasant,

He carries a thousand villages in his heart."

Or this passage, which struck me just now as I am reading Anna Karenina:

"Désouvrement, 

Apprehension; 

Vronsky and Anna

Starting up in separate beds in a cold sweat

Reading calamity in the same dream

Of a gigantic sinister mujik....

Whatever happens, some day it will look beautiful:

Clio is a great French painter,

She walks upon the waters and they are still.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stand motionless

and plastic mid the flames."

It's also full of typographical experiments, and experiments with noise. It's a poem that's trying to be special, and new, and often succeeds. I don't think it's the equal of "The Waste Land", but that doesn't really matter.