My Best of the Year book

I thought I should mention that my new book is out, The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016 Edition. It's always fun to see the book in print, and to celebrate a whole bunch of great stories.

I dedicated this book to my late father, John Richard (Dick) Horton.

Apropos of that, I recently put together a spreadsheet detailing all the contributors to my books over the past 11 years. This series began in 2006 as two books: Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition; and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition. There were three years in that format, and in 2009 we switched to the bigger combined format, with both SF and Fantasy. (I should note that each edition -- 2006, 2016, whatever -- collects stories from the previous year.)

So here's this year's cover:

So, as I said, I put together a combined spreadsheet, of 11 years of these book. One of the things I was interested in was how many times I published new writers -- that is, writers whom I hadn't previously published in this series. I confess, I was partly motivated to investigate this because of an accusation by Eric Raymond that I kept choosing authors from the same pool. That seemed on the face of it blatantly false -- I've always prided myself in choosing a lot of unfamiliar writers. Naturally I have favorites, and there are some writers who appear over and over again (most obviously, Robert Reed, though he's not in this year's book!) But I had a feeling I always included a lot of new (to me) voices.

And I think the statistics back me up. Bottom line -- 62% of the stories in all my books combined were by writers who were appearing first in that year's book. But that's distorted, because of course for the first few years most of the writers were, by default, firsts. The numbers seem to settle in around 50% new writers each year beginning in about 2011 -- the percentages from 2011 through 2016 are 54%, 43%, 61%, 49%, 29%, 53%, 62%. The cumulative total percentage since 2011 is 48% new writers.

So, about half the writers in a typical book of mine have never before appeared in one of my Best of the Year collections. That seems pretty good! And, in fact, a quick comparison with at least one other editor suggests that my percentage of writers new to me is significantly higher. (Which isn't to say the other books aren't also excellent -- they are!)

One more set of numbers: I have published 354 stories by 219 writers over the 11 years of this series. 143 of those writers have appeared in my books only once. The writers who have appeared most are Robert Reed (10), Elizabeth Bear (6), Kelly Link (6), Theodora Goss (6), C. S. E. Cooney (5), Yoon Ha Lee (5), Holly Phillips (5), Genevieve Valentine (5), Rachel Swirsky (5), and Peter Watts (5). (Some of these totals might be slightly affected by how I treated collaborations.)

The Only Novel by a Great Playwright: Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, by Tom Stoppard

The Only Novel by a Great Playwright: Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, by Tom Stoppard

a review by Rich Horton

Something a bit different this week -- a fairly little known though probably not forgotten novel by a great great writer -- but a writer known for his plays. This is something I wrote some years ago, a rather brief review, but I like the novel, and Stoppard is such a great writer I thought it worth bringing one of his more obscure works a bit of attention while I finish my latest true "Old Bestseller". (I should perhaps add that K. A. Laity discussed this in a Friday's Forgotten Books post some half-dozen years ago.)

Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler in Czechoslovakia in 1937. His Jewish family fled Czechoslovakia as the Nazis invaded, ending up in Singapore, then India. His father was killed in a Japanese attack or perhaps as a prisoner of war, and after the war, his mother remarried an Englishman, Kenneth Stoppard. He became a journalist at age 17, fortuitously becoming a theatre critic soon after, which lead to an ambition to write plays, He wrote some radio dramas in the '50s, and his first stage play was completed in 1960. He wrote the first version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with the help of a Ford Foundation grant in 1964, and it was first produced in 1966, making him a star. He has written many many plays since then, and also translated many, written some screenplays including work on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Empire of the Sun, Brazil, and Shakespeare in Love.

And one novel, very early in his career (1966): Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon.  I've read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Real Inspector Hound, and a few more plays. I've seen a television version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but never seen a Stoppard play live, which I'll have to fix sometime. I've really enjoyed every play I've read by him.

Stoppard's plays are known for virtuoso word play, and this is a feature of Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon as well.  (Add Stoppard to the list of English-language writers who grew up hearing another language (Czech, in his case) and who write flashy or otherwise special English prose. (Others: Conrad, Nabokov, Rushdie.))  The story is told mostly from the viewpoint of Mr. Moon, a rather hapless young man in London in 1965 (at the time of Churchill's funeral). He hopes to write a histoy of the world, but isn't making much progress and needs the money, so he takes a job as a professional "Boswell" to Lord Malquist, who desperately wants something to be named after him, in the manner of the Earl of Sandwich or the Duke of Wellington, or MacAdam.  Malquist wants Moon to record his bon mots, and indeed Malquist's speech is quite witty.

Mr. Moon has a rich wife, who refuses his sexual overtures, but seems to give herself to pretty much anyone else, and who seems to be running their house as a sort of brothel, for which purpose she has engaged a pretty French maid.  Into this mix are thrown Malquist's alcoholic wife, his black Jewish coachman, and an Irishman who claims to be the Risen Christ. Oh, and a lion, and a bomb. It's very funny, though very blackly so, and all is resolved quite inevitably.  I really enjoyed it. It does seem though, that with the nearly simultaneous success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard abandoned novel-writing for plays -- apparently a good decision!, though I for one would enjoy seeing more novels from him as well as the plays.

An Old Ace Double: The Ultimate Weapon/The Planeteers, by John W. Campbell

Ace Double Reviews, 97: The Ultimate Weapon, by John W. Campbell/The Planeteers, by John W. Campbell (#G-585, 1966, 50 cents)


a review by Rich Horton

Here's another Ace Double featuring an extremely significant figure in SF history. John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) was born in New Jersey, and lived there most of his life. He attended MIT (getting to know Norbert Wiener) but finished his degree (a B. S. in Physics, the same degree I hold) at Duke in 1932. (At Duke Campbell met J. B. Rhine and apparently participated as a subject in Rhine's ESP studies -- an interesting fact given Campbell's later obsession with parapsychology.) In 1930 he began publishing SF with several stories in Amazing. Early in his career he was known for stories of super-science. He also published a number of quieter and more thoughtful stories as by "Don A. Stuart", including the classics "Twilight" and "Who Goes There?". In 1937 he became the editor of Astounding Stories, and he is probably the most significant editor in the history of SF. It would be fair to say that he moved SF away from his "John W. Campbell" writing persona and toward his "Don A. Stuart" writing persona, though of course that's an oversimplification. He died in the saddle, as it were, in 1971.


After taking over Astounding Campbell essentially ceased writing fiction. His last published story as an active writer came in 1939, with perhaps the exception of "The Idealists", which appeared in the 1954 Raymond J. Healy original anthology 9 Tales of Time and Space (thanks to John Boston for alerting me to that story, which I think I'll have to seek out). There were a number of pieces written in the 30s but published later, such as The Incredible Planet (1949), and perhaps most interestingly, "All", published in 1976 in a collection called The Space Beyond -- but twice rewritten by major SF writers: as Empire by Clifford Simak, and as Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein.


I have quite enjoyed most of the Don A. Stuart stories I've read, and I've been much less impressed by the Campbell stories. This book represents my first fairly extended look at him in that mode.


The Ultimate Machine is actually a longish novella, a somewhat typical size for an Ace Double half at about 31,000 words. It was first published in the October and December 1936 issues of Amazing Stories as "Uncertainty". As it happens, I saw a copy -- may have bought a copy -- of one of Sol Cohen's horrible reprint magazines shortly after I started buying SF magazines: the July 1974 issue of Science Fiction Adventure Classics, which reprints "Uncertainty" in full.


It opens with an Earth scout ship out near Pluto, where they detect an alien ship with very powerful weapons, that easily overwhelms the mines on Pluto and destroys a couple of ships. Buck Kendall, a rich man and great scientist/engineer who has enlisted in the Space Navy, is one who escapes, and he immediately raises the alert. But his Navy bosses ignore him, brushing off what he saw as human space pirates, so he resigns, goes back to private industry, and arranges for some funding from the only smart man in the Navy, Commander McLaurin, to set up a lab on the Moon and start working on better weapons. He has deduced that the aliens are from Mira, and that they will be back at Earth in two years.


We switch to the viewpoint of the alien commander, Gresth Gkae. His race are looking for a stable system to take over, because Mira is a variable star. His ship is one of many assigned to look for new planets, and having found the Sol System he races back to Mira, to organize and then lead an invasion force.


The rest of the story is easy to figure out. Kendall and his cohorts put together some amazing new weapons and ships in an impossibly short time -- the aliens return and are surprised at the resistance they find, but they still seem likely to prevail, until Kendall figures out a way to use the Uncertainty Theory as the Ultimate Weapon. The conclusion is a slight twist, helped by a ridiculous deus ex machina.


All that said, I liked a fair amount of the story. Except for the stupidity about the Uncertainty Theory, the scientific inventions are at least on the border of plausibility (well, across the border, but at least backed by actual 1930s physics) -- Campbell mentions, for example, a weapon much like the neutron bomb. You can kind of see him working the direction he would ask his authors to take at Astounding.


The Planeteers is a collection of 5 stories about Ted Penton and Rod Blake. The stories are:

"The Brain Stealers of Mars" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1936) 8300 words

"The Double Minds" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1937) 11500 words

"The Immortality Seekers" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1937) 11700 words

"The Tenth World" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1937) 10100 words

"The Brain Pirates" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1938) 7400 words

Penton and Blake have invented atomic power, which is illegal on Earth. (Due to an accident that took out 300 square miles of Europe.) Exiled, they fly their atomic powered ship, which no on can match, all over the Solar System, looking to get rich. They keep encountering strange and intelligent aliens who always turn out to have their own interests that run counter to Penton and Blake's. Penton is the smart guy, Blake the foil.


In "Brain Stealers of Mars", they encounter creatures on Mars that can exactly mimic other creatures, and end up having to decide which of a dozen or so copies of Penton and Blake are the true ones. In "The Double Minds", a race on Callisto that has learned to use the two halves of their brain separately, increasing their mind power but reducing their coordination, has enslaved another Callistan race. Penton and Blake help out the revolution, with unexpected consequences. In "The Immortality Seekers", set on Europa, a fairly benign race turns out to need the Beryllium from which Penton and Blake's ship is made to assist what seems to be nanotech in making them immortal. Another clever creature is enlisted to help Penton and Blake. Then they head out beyond Pluto, to the Tenth World, very cold but inhabited by a very intelligent energy eater that can't control its urges to grab energy from anything hotter. Finally, on the moon of the Tenth World, surprisingly warm compared to its primary!, they encounter a creature that can eat almost anything.


These are silly and kind of annoying stories. The science -- mostly on purpose, to be sure -- is just too stupid, and the supposedly comic interactions of Penton and Blake came off pretty flat too me. Very minor work. Campbell surely made the right decision switching to the editor's seat.

Old "good" seller: Coronation Summer, by Angela Thirkell

Old Bestseller: Coronation Summer, by Angela Thirkell

a review by Rich Horton

I don't think Angela Thirkell was ever really a bestseller but her books, it appears, sold steadily over the years, in a career that last from about 1930 to her death in 1961. She still has a strong coterie of fans -- indeed, the Angela Thirkell Society will have a convention in Kansas City this year just the week before the World Science Fiction Convention.

She was born in 1890, the daughter of John Mackail and Margaret Burne-Jones, thus Rudyard Kipling's first cousin once removed, and Edward Burne-Jones' granddaughter. J. M. Barrie was her godfather. Her brother Dennis was also a novelist. Angela Mackail married James McInnes in 1911, and had three children with him befor divorcing him. (He was bisexual, and an adulterer.) She married again in 1918, to George Thirkell, a Tasmanian man, and the couple moved to Australia. But Thirkell hated it there, and left Thirkell in 1929, taking her son Lance and returning to England. Perhaps because she need the money, she began to write (she had done some journalism in Australia), and her first novel appeared in 1931. Some 40 books followed until her death (the last completed by another hand). The great majority of her books were set, curiously, in Barsetshire, the fictional county invented by the 19th Century novelist Anthony Trollope. Thirkell's books were contemporary, imagining Barsetshire as it would have been in the '30s-'50s. Many of her books, especially the later ones, were fairly conventional romances in plot structure. But as far as I can tell, her virtues were never plot, but instead a cheerfully satirical view of her characters and their milieu, and a great ear for dialogue.

The book I chose (partly simply because it was the book I encountered) is not quite characteristic of her work. Coronation Summer is an historical novel, set in 1838 when Queen Victoria was crowned. It was first published by the Oxford University Press, presumably reflecting the novel's rather educational aspect. It was reprinted in 1953 by her usual publishers, Hamish Hamilton in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the US. (My copy is the latter.)

Part of the book is sort of a travelogue and description of London life in 1838. Period illustrations are included: things like reprints of opera tickets. And there are numerous events: the Coronation, of course, but also a canoe race, a ceremony at Eton called Eton Montem, an opera, dress buying, and the occasional party.

There's a plot, too, if a fairly thin one. The story is presented as Mrs. Fan Darnley, as of 1840, writing up her memories of her summer in London the year of the Coronation, 1838. It opens with her and her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Emily Dacre, opening a book intended for Fanny's husband Henry Darnley. The book is Ingoldsby's Legends, and they wonder if the author, Thomas Ingoldsby, is the same Tom Ingoldsby whom they met in London. (Ingoldsby's Legends is a real book, once quite famous, though there was no Tom Ingoldsby -- that was a pseudonym.) Fan decides to write about her and Emily's visit to London.

In London they meet a couple of eligible men -- Mr. Vavasour, a rather pretentious author; and Henry (Hal) Darnley, a friend of Fan's brother Ned from his time at Cambridge. Hal and Ned are in London partly to prepare for a race. As we know from the beginning of the book that Fan's married name is Darnley, there's not a ton of suspense (not that there would have been -- in the way of romance novels it's pretty obvious from the start that Mr. Vavasour is not a suitable candidate). Meanwhile, Emily and Ned fall quickly in love. The two young women spend the next few weeks seeing what they can in London, while Fan's father, Mr. Harcourt, risks his family's solvency by gambling. Fan shows some interest in Mr. Vavasour, but really from the start she clearly prefers Hal Darnley. They meet a number of famous people, including the novelist Benjamin Disraeli (well, he's a politician too!) and the controversial poetess Caroline Norton, of who Fan cannot approve as she has left her husband. (This was a scandalous case in 1830s London, eventually leading, through Norton's efforts, to improvements in the rights of women in cases of divorce, especially as to custody of their children. Her husband was a bad person, abusive and financially reckless, so she was widely sympathized with.) Anyway, things come to a head at the end with Hal Darnley apparently convinced that Fan prefers Mr. Vavasour, and with Mr. Harcourt ruined (and Mrs. Harcourt, back home, on her deathbed). But all is resolved happily (largely because Hal Darnley is a very rich man).

In reality, then, the plot is of minor interest, and the sort of travelogue aspect is, while somewhat interest, not really that fascinating. But the book is still great fun -- why? The dialogue, and the portrayal of the characters. It's quite funny throughout. Mr. Harcourt (Fan and Ned's father) is very amusing: a blowhard of sorts, generous to a fault while pretending to be close with his money, a reflexive and unthinking Tory who hates Frenchmen especially. Fan is a bit of a prig and thus is always disapproving of Emily, who is slightly more relaxed, and Fan's exasperation with Emily is delightfully portrayed.

Coronation Summer is a short novel, and a slight one, but it's really rather delightful in sum. I'm not sure I'll get around to any of Thirkell's Barsetshire novels, but I'm quite sure I'd enjoy them if I tried them.

Old Bestseller: Peter, by F. Hopkinson Smith

Old Bestseller: Peter, by F. Hopkinson Smith

a review by Rich Horton

Here's a very true Old Bestseller -- this novel was published in 1908, and was 8th on the Publishers' Weekly list of the top ten sellers of that year, and again 9th in 1909. And the author had the top sellers of 1896 (Tom Grogan) and 1898 (Caleb West). Tom Grogan seems particularly interesting -- about a woman whose husband dies, and who then dresses as a man and does his work in order to keep earning his paycheck.

Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915) was a true polymath. He was a renowned civil engineer (perhaps most famously building the foundation for the Statue of Liberty, and the Race Rock Lighthouse). He was a major artist, noted mostly for landscapes done in charcoal or watercolor. He was a descendant of Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. And of course he was a prolific novelist, writer of multiple bestsellers, beginning with his first successful novel, Col. Carter of Cartersville (1891). He had a reputation as a chronicler of the Old South, but I should note that none of the other bestsellers I mention -- Tom Grogan, Caleb West (about the building of the Race Rock Lighthouse), nor Peter, are particularly about the South. Autobiographical elements did creep regularly into his novels -- as with Caleb West, as already noted. Also, The Fortunes of Oliver Horn deals with the artist life, and portrays versions of a number of Smith's artist colleagues, and a number of Smith's heroes (including the hero of Peter) are natives of Smith's own home state, Maryland.

Peter was first published in 1908 by Charles Scribner's Sons. My edition is also from Scribner's, a 1913 reprint. There are four illustrations by A. I. Keller.

The novel is subtitled: "A Novel of Which He is not the Hero". It opens in New York, with the narrator, or Scribe, called only the Major, coming to Peter Grayson's worksplace, a distinguished old bank, the Exeter. Peter is about 60 years old, a teller. He is a bachelor, and he has a maiden sister, Felicia. The time is late in the 19th Century. The first couple of chapters slowly introduce Peter and his morals -- his belief in honest work, his devotion to his modest job, and the respect he is held in by numerous people. Peter and the narrator make their way to Peter's apartment, where they find an invitation to a party given by the architect Holker Morris for his employees. (It has been suggested that the character Morris was based on the famous architect Stanford White, a friend of Smith's, who had been murdered in 1906 by the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, an actress and one of the Gibson Girl models, who had apparently been seduced by White while only 14 or 16 (her birthdate is in question). I should add that the portrayal of Holker Morris in Peter gives no suggestion of White's scandalous history.) At Morris' party, he awards a prize to Garry Minott, a young star at the firm. Peter, however, is more impressed with Garry Minott's friend, John Breen, and he decides to take an interest in him.

Breen is an orphan, who has been taken in by his uncle, Arthur Breen. John (or "Jack") is working in his uncle's financial firm, but he has become concerned over what he thinks are potentially shady dealings -- nothing illegal, but immoral. The last straw comes when an acquaintance is ruined due to Arthur's maneuverings. Jack is also slightly importuned by Arthur's stepdaughter, Corinne, a vaguely pretty but spoiled girl who seems to regard Jack as her rightful property. And as Jack grows closer to Peter Grayson, he is offended that Corinne -- and Garry Minott, who has begun to see Corinne socially -- seem unimpressed, to the point of rudeness, with the old man. With some subtle prompting by Peter, Jack quits his uncle's establishment, leaves his house, and looks for a job -- eventually finding one with the engineer Henry MacFarlane -- who, as it happens, has a beautiful daughter, Ruth, whom Jack had met and been entranced by at a party given by Peter and his sister Felicia.

The story begins to jump forward, with Jack Breen beginning to do good work for Henry MacFarlane, and beginning to get closer to Ruth. Peter Grayson stays in contact, and so does his sometimes meddling sister Felicia. Ruth and Jack are clearly in love, but Jack's pride stands in the way of marriage. Then a dramatic disaster threatens Henry MacFarlane's life and livelihood, and Jack is instrumental in saving the day. Meanwhile, Garry Minott has married Corinne and started his own business.

Jack and Ruth finally plight their troth, but they need to wait to get married until Jack is financially able. He does have one piece of property, though it is apparently worthless. Arthur Breen also has an interest in a neighboring property. And Garry and Corinne's marriage seems troubled -- Garry is under a great deal of stress. Things come to a head with a melodramatic suicide, and a noble effort by Jack to save his friend, or at least his friend's reputation. Arthur Breen again proves his moral weakness, and also his stupidity -- and Jack is helped at the last minute by an unexpected agent -- Peter Grayson's friend Isaac Cohen, a Jewish tailor. Jack is given a lesson in the wrongness of his reflexive anti-Semitism, but things turn out, in a slightly deus ex machina fashion, quite wonderfully ...

This is by no means a great novel, or even a very good one, but it's not a bad read. There is one point to make -- this book was published 3 years after Edith Wharton's great novel The House of Mirth. Wharton's novel is almost infinitely better -- but it is noticeably accepting of its period's anti-Semitism, and Smith's novel is quite pointedly critical of that attitude. There is another point of connection with The House of Mirth -- each novel features a slightly ambiguous suicide, by the same means (chloral hydrate).

Peter Grayson, as noted in the subtitle, is not officially the "hero" of Peter, but he is the linchpin: a highly moral character, dismissive in particular of those who lust after money. He is a good friend to Isaac Cohen, even as his whole set (including his beloved sister Felicia) automatically reject him due to his religion. Peter is certainly an implausibly saintly character, but he's interesting and someone we like. Ruth and Jack are also implausibly wonderful people, but that's the way this sort of novel goes.

There are noticeable details that reflect Smith's own life. Henry MacFarlane, the engineer, surely resembles that aspect of Smith to a degree. There is a short section discussing artists that seems to comment on Smith's views of art, and his place in the art world. None of this comes off as tendentious -- rather, Smith's clear knowledge of both milieus gives the book a certain believability. Once again, this is a novel that seems quite plausibly a bestseller of its time -- but not a novel that especially demands our attention over a century later.

A Couple George MacDonald Books: The Light Princess and The Golden Key

The Light Princess and The Golden Key, by George MacDonald

A review by Rich Horton

Looking for a book to cover this week, and not wanting to dip again into my trove of Ace Double reviews, and not quite finished with my latest Old Bestseller, I figured I'd cover a couple of lovely children's fantasies by the great George MacDonald.

 George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish clergyman of the latter part of the 19th Century, rather Universalist in his views, a significant influence on C. S. Lewis (to the extent that Lewis made him a character in The Great Divorce), and the author of several excellent children's fantasies, and some fine work for adults as well. My favorite of his books has long been At the Back of the North Wind. Other fine children's work includes The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie (the first of which was made into a (so-so) animated movies a few years ago), and Lilith is a fine adult novel. Phantastes, which I have not read, also has a reputation as a good adult fantasy. As with Lewis, most of his work is at least partly Christian allegory, or at any rate heavily imbued with Christian themes, though MacDonald could be much stranger than Lewis. 

In the late 1960s, Maurice Sendak illustrated a couple of shorter MacDonald children's stories (about 10,000 words apiece). These were The Light Princess and The Golden Key. Thus these aren't really forgotten: indeed MacDonald has settled into a fairly established place in the canon of 19th Century religious fantasists. The Light Princess is very light-hearted and funny, while The Golden Key is a mystical and lovely fairy tale. 

The Golden Key is the story of two children, a boy and a girl, who live (not together) on the border of Fairyland. The boy has been told that at the end of the rainbow he can find a golden key -- it is not to be sold, and no one knows what door it may open, but it will surely lead somewhere wonderful. One day he sees a rainbow, and decides to follow it into Fairyland, where it seems the end of it might be -- and there he finds the golden key. Meantime, the girl, much mistreated, wanders into the forest of Fairyland, following a strange owl-like flying fish. Soon she meets a beautiful, ageless, woman, and she learns that she and the boy must journey together, looking for the keyhole into which the golden key will fit. Their journey is long (though the story is short), and quite wonderful. They meet some strange and wise old men, and encounter many beautiful and curious sights. At last, of course, they find the doorway with the keyhole.

The ending is unexpected and quite moving and beautiful. It is tempting to try to analyze this story -- is it an allegory of marriage? or the story of a joint journey to salvation? Perhaps, though, as W. H. Auden suggests in an essay published as an afterword to this edition, it is best to simply let yourself be absorbed by the story, to enjoy its lovely and haunting images.

The Light Princess is the tale of a princess who is cursed by a mean, jealous, witch so that she has no gravity. The book is full of puns, so MacDonald makes much both of her weightlessness, and the lack of gravity in her character. Naturally her parents are upset and try to have her cured, but to no avail (although the efforts of a couple of Chinese philosophers to provide a cure are rendered amusingly). However the Princess is quite happy with her "light" state (of course it is in her nature to be always happy). In the way of things, a Prince appears, and falls in love with the Princess. Then the witch realizes that her curse has failed to make the Princess unhappy, so she takes further steps, which are thwarted by the selfless behavior of the Prince, and which result in the Princess recovering her gravity: not an unmixed blessing, but one which her new maturity allows her to realize is best in the long run.

This is a delightful story, told with just the right mixture of whimsy and mildly serious moral comment. The characters are lightly and accurately drawn (the Princess` parents and the Chinese philosophers in particular, are delightful), and the story is predictable but still quite imaginative, with a number of nice touches to do with the Princess` weightlessness.

My first post on the 2016 Hugo Final Ballot

Over at Black Gate I have made a post about the 2016 Hugo Final Ballot, and its problems. This is all fairly familiar ground, mind you. I'm planning another post sometime in the next few months which will review the ballot category by category, with my thoughts on how I'll vote, but that'll have to wait until I read what I haven't read yet.

Anyway, the post is The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh ...

Another Ace Double: Empire of the Atom, by A. E. Van Vogt/Space Station #1, by Frank Belknap Long

Ace Double Reviews, 96: Empire of the Atom, by A. E. Van Vogt/Space Station #1, by Frank Belknap Long (#D-242, 1957, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Both authors of this Ace Double are fairly significant -- Van Vogt of course is a legend, and an SFWA Grand Master. Long is less prominent, but he did win a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he has -- or had -- a significant reputation as a Horror writer, and a disciple of H. P. Lovecraft. Both were also very long-lived.

A. E. Van Vogt was born in 1912 in Canada, and died in 2000. He worked for the Canadian Ministry of Defence, doing some writing on the side, beginning with true confessions stories, and turning to SF in 1938, inspired by John Campbell's classic "Who Goes There?". His first sale, to Campbell at Astounding, was "Black Destroyer", still considered a classic. He made a huge splash in 1940 with the Astounding serial Slan, and another splash with "The Weapon Shop" (1942), which was fixed up into a novel, The Weapon Shops of Isher. (The term "fix-up" was, I believe, a Van Vogt coinage.) His most famous novel is probably still The World of Null-A (serialized in Astounding in 1945). He became a full-time writer in the early '40s, and moved to California in 1944. He was an early adopter of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (later Scientology), though he apparently left the movement around 1961.

There is no denying Van Vogt's immense importance and influence in the field of SF, and I certainly don't dispute that he deserved the Grand Master award. But I confess I've never much liked his work. By and large I agree with the points Damon Knight made in his famous essay on The World of Null-A. I've generally found Van Vogt's work illogical, not very well-written, downright slapdash on occasion. But a lot of people I truly respect really love his work, so I admit without reservation that I am missing something important. Sometimes that's the way it is.

So I approached Empire of the Atom with some caution. It is another "fix-up", though a fairly coherent one, comprising five novelettes first published in Astounding in 1946 and 1947. It was published in hardcover by Shasta in 1957, followed the same year by this abridged Ace Double edition. (It's still fairly long for an Ace Double at some 56,000 words.)

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the book: I quite enjoyed it. One reason is that the plot is more controlled, more logical, than in other Van Vogt books, only veering off in a Van Vogtian direction right at the end. There's a reason for that -- I realized immediately that his had to be a retelling of some portion of Imperial Roman history, but my knowledge of that history was not sufficient for me to recognize the exact correspondences. But Wikipedia helped immediately -- the story is based on the life of the Emperor Claudius, most specifically as portrayed by Robert Graves in I, Claudius. This anchoring in actual historical events, I feel, kept Van Vogt on course, as it were.

It is set some 10,000 years in the future, after humans have colonized the planets of the Solar System, and then been reduced to barbarism on each of these worlds. A city-state, Linn, arose, and in the recent past it conquered the world and began to try to annex the barbarians on Venus, Mars, and even outer satellites such as Europa. The ruler, or Lord Leader, is a vigorous man but getting older. A new child is born to his scheming second wife, Lydia. (These are, of course, analogues to Augustus and Livia.) The new baby, named Clane, turns out to be a mutant -- Lydia was accidentally exposed to radiation -- this society uses radioactive metals (and worships the "Atom Gods") but has no idea how they work. As a mutant Clane should be killed. However, a leading Temple Scientist wants to raise him and show that mutants, if treated properly, have the same potential as anyone. So Clane is raised, somewhat isolated, and becomes an unusual but very intelligent young man.

The succeeding episodes show Clane learning how to function amidst his scheming relatives, the worst of whom is Lydia, whose prime desire is to place her son by a previous marriage, Lord Tews, on the throne. Clane has no wish to rule, but he does wish Linn to do well, and he does have relative favorites among his relatives, and so he helps one of his Uncles to win a great triumph on Mars, only to have the maneuvering of Livia and Lord Tews mess things up. The dueling continues, as a rebellion on Venus is also crushed, as Clane makes some significant discoveries, and as Tews finally achieves his goals, only to be threatened by an unexpected barbarian incursion from Europa -- a crisis that at last forces Clane to the forefront. Here at the denouement the book finally takes its Van Vogtian turn, but I actually found that aspect kind of cool. There is a sequel, The Wizard of Linn, serialized in Astounding in 1950.

Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994) began publishing in 1920 and his 1921 story "The Eye Above the Mantel" attracted Lovecraft's attention. He published quite a lot of horror-tinged fiction in the next couple of decades, contributing to Weird Tales from its first year (1923). His most famous story might be "The Hounds of Tindalos". He also wrote a fair amount of SF, and he wrote in several other genres (including comics, some Ellery Queen stories, a Man From Uncle story, and Gothics).

I first encountered Long with the Doubleday collection The Early Long, from the mid-'70s, part of a number of books that followed Isaac Asimov's The Early Asimov, in featuring early stories by well-known SF writers along with extensive material about the early careers of these writers. Even then I thought Long a curious choice for such an anthology, and I admit I've felt that way more and more as time goes by -- I've been very unimpressed by everything I've read from him. But I must admit that his reputation in the Horror field is actually pretty good -- I'm not really a Horror reader, so I must defer to those who really love that genre, and especially those who love Lovecraft. The most interesting SF story I've read by Long is "Lake of Fire" (Planet Stories, May 1951), not because it's all that good, but because it is a very direct prefiguring of Roger Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes".

Space Station #1 is some 55,000 words long. This appears to be its first publication (and it may be Long's first novel-length fiction). It opens with a certain Lieutenant David Corriston in a desperate fight for his life in the bowels of the title Space Station. It turns out that this fight is the result of a murder he had witnessed just a few minutes earlier, and perhaps more to the point, of his conversation with Helen Ramsey, the daughter of Stephen Ramsey, who controls the uranium mining on Mars, apparently by oppressing the colonists. There follows a somewhat wild sequence of events, as Corriston meets Helen, the two fall instantly and implausibly in love, Helen's bodyguard is killed, she disappears, Corriston barely survives his fight, a uranium freighter coming to the station suddenly loses control and veers to the surface of Earth in a terrible disaster, Corriston is imprisoned by the station's Captain, he discovers that a number of people, including Helen and the Captain, are wearing very sophisticated masks ...

For several chapters I found this quite entertaining, but somewhere along the way it went wildly off the rails. It devolves into a silly and implausible (but of course!) battle for the soul of Mars, as Corriston must convince the Martians that neither the oppressor Stephen Ramsey nor the thug they have hired to oppose him are worth respecting ... only, it turns out, Ramsey sort of his (if mainly for having a wonderful daughter) ... And Corriston proves his worth by trekking across Mars and beating up a guy and etc. etc.

It really reads like Long started writing and every so often lost his way and just hared off in a new direction until he had written a novel's worth of words and then resolved things. The hero gets the girl, the villain(s) are vanquished, and, oh, by the way, at the last second he introduces Martian lampreys just because he needed to extend things a few thousand words more. Oh well.

Old Bestseller: Two Black Sheep, by Warwick Deeping

Old Bestseller: Two Black Sheep, by Warwick Deeping

A review by Rich Horton

I knew, when I started to write about old bestsellers from the early 20^th Century, that sooner or later I would cover a Warwick Deeping book, but I have to confess that I could never get interested in the copies I saw of his most famous novel, Sorrell and Son (1925), even though it’s marginally Science Fiction. So I waited until I came across another novel – Two Black Sheep, from 1933. My edition is from Grosset and Dunlap. There is a curious note on the dust jacket: "The issuance of this new edition at a reduced price is made possible by a) use of the same plates made for the original edition, and b) the author's acceptance of a reduced royalty". The "reduced price" was 75 cents! As noted, the dust jacket, and the binding, indicate Grosset and Dunlap. However, the reuse of plates from the original edition extends to an internal designation as "A Borzoi Book, Alfred E. Knopf", and the copyright page says "Published September 8, 1933. First two printings before publication. Third Printing, September 1933.", which must also be from a Knopf printing. This does suggest it sold fairly well. The G&D edition must have been not too much later, as the back page listing of other Deeping novels shows none later than Two Black Sheep.

The first UK edition was from Cassell’s, earlier in 1933, and the novel was serialized (as “Black Sheep, Black Sheep”) between September 1932 and February 1933 in the Hearst magazine International-Cosmopolitan. There was apparently a movie version, called Two Sinners.

Warwick Deeping (1877-1950) was an English writer, originally a Doctor (apparently following in the footsteps of his father). He began publishing novels in 1903, but continued in his practice for some time. He served in the Royal Medical Corps in the First World War. Not long after that he stopped practicing medicine to concentrate on fiction.

He was very prolific, publishing some 70 novels and over 200 short stories. From the mid-‘20s to the ‘30s  he was remarkably successful, with a novel on the Publishers’ Weekly list of the 10 bestselling novels of the year for 7 consecutive years between 1926 and 1932. (So that it seems that Two Black Sheep may have been the one to break the streak!) The first of these huge bestsellers was Sorrell and Son, third on the list in 1926 and again fourth in 1927 (in which year his Doomsday was third). His literary reputation was never very high – he was disparaged for his melodramatic plots, his somewhat platitudinous beliefs, his sometimes strained views of sex and indeed of women, and, as George Orwell wrote, as one of those writers who simply “don’t notice what is happening”. That said, his novels were interested in significant and controversial social issues: the Wikipedia entry lists themes such as rape, euthanasia, women posing as men to achieve equal rights, slum conditions, pollution, and a wife justifiably killing her husband because of abuse.

I found a really delightful blog about Deeping, My Warwick Deeping Collection (warwickdeeping.blogspot.com). The writer became obsessed with collecting Deeping just a few years ago, and has copies of each of his books, and some of the periodical versions as well. He includes a brief description of each book, with some useful details on publication history as well, including sometimes serial versions, and also picture of multiple editions. Just my thing! With the blog owner's permission, I've reproduced a couple of those images here, one the original Cassell edition dust jacket, and the other the cover of the Sunday Ledger reprint.

Two Black Sheep opens in about 1915 as Captain Henry Vane, on leave from the front, visits a certain Mr. Belgrave, pulls a gun on him, and shoots him. Vane turns himself in immediately, and is sent to prison for 15 years. It seems that Mr. Belgrave had been fooling around with Mrs. Vane while Captain Vane was fighting in France, and got Mrs. Vane pregnant.

Now in 1930, Henry Vane has been released from prison. He’s an engineer, but has no job prospects due to his record. Luckily, he’s quite well off, and he decides to travel, figuring his case will be unknown outside of England. He ends up in Rome. Meantime, Elsie Summerhays, a woman in her late 20s, and her mother have been impoverished after the death of Mr. Summerhays (a writer) revealed a mountain of debts. Elsie decides she must take a position, and is hired as a governess by a spoiled and vulgar young widow, Mrs. Pym. Mrs. Pym and a friend are planning to spend some months in Europe, and she needs a woman to look after her daughter while she fools around with whatever men she fancies. So, Elsie too ends up in Rome, in the Pym entourage, dealing with young Sally Pym, a terribly spoiled little girl. As it happens, her room is next to Henry Vane’s, and they meet while relaxing on neighboring balconies.

Over the next couple of months, Elsie and Vane begin to fall in love. And Elsie, after much difficulty, seems to be making progress in taming Sally Pym. But a couple of disasters happen – first, Vane confesses his criminal history to Elsie, and she reacts in shock. Before she has a chance to reconsider and to talk again to Vane, Mrs. Pym, embarrassed both financially and romantically, runs off to the Riviera. And Elsie learns that her mother is dying. She asks Mrs. Pym for her salary, which that nasty woman refuses her, claiming she has no money on hand. When Elsie finds a bunch of cash that Mrs. Pym was saving for the casino, she takes enough for a ticket home (way less than she is owed), and is arrested, and thrown into jail – Vane having tracked her down just a day or so too late!

The rest of the novel is a depiction of Vane building a home for the two in the South of France while waiting for Elsie to serve her time – and it never surprised from that time forward, despite a couple of manufactured crises (a local woman has her eye on Vane, and Elsie falls sick in prison). I found the ending, thus, a bit lacking in tension, a bit overextended. I was also disappointed never to learn what became of Mrs. Pym (one hoped for a comeuppance for her), nor of Sally (one hoped for redemption for her) … but to be fair to Deeping, this aspect was fairly realistic and avoided convenient clichés, such as Sally ending up a happy adopted child in the Vane family.

All in all this was a reasonably entertaining piece of popular fiction of its time – somewhat melodramatic, somewhat sentimental, a plot based on coincidence, yes, all that, but still enjoyable enough. The depiction of Elsie and Vane’s romance is noticeably sexless, but rather nicely depicted in their conversations. Not a very good novel, and in this case not even really interested in any of the social issues that Deeping sometimes tackled – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you! One of those cases where it’s easy to see why a writer sold well in his day, and easy to see why he’s decidedly a niche interest now – though, I think, less forgotten than many of his contemporaries.

A Significant Ace Double: The Genetic General/Time to Teleport, by Gordon R. Dickson

Ace Double Reviews, 95: The Genetic General, by Gordon R. Dickson/Time to Teleport, by Gordon R. Dickson (#D-449, 1960, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

So this time an Ace Double featuring a pretty significant novel in SF history, by a pretty significant writer. The Genetic General is much better known as Dorsai!, the title under which it was serialized in Astounding in 1959. The first couple of book editions were called The Genetic General, but the original (and in my opinion far better) title was restored, permanently I think, in 1971. The book version is also abridged (not uncommon for Ace Doubles), and apparently a full version didn't see print (except for the serial) until the mid-'70s.

The book on the reverse was also by Dickson, a short novel (really a long novella) called here Time to Teleport, though as far as I can tell the original magazine title was "No More Barriers" (Science Fiction Stories, September 1955). In this version it's about 37,000 words (quite possibly the same as the original, or just slightly longer). The Genetic General is perhaps 65,000 words. The Eds were responsible for the covers, Valigursky for The Genetic General, and Emshwiller for Time to Teleport.

Dorsai! was the first major story in Dickson's central series, called The Childe Cycle. (A short story, "Act of Creation", preceded it in 1957, and another possibly related story, "Lulongomeena", appeared in 1954.) The Childe Cycle was a very ambitious undertaking that Dickson never finished. It was to consist of three historical novels, three present-day novels, and six SF novels. Only the SF part ever appeared, the six novels, as well as some shorter pieces, and some pendant novels, including one finished after Dickson's death by his long time assistant, David Wixon. The central theme of the cycle was the three central human traits, Courage, Faith, and Philosophy. One story, "Soldier, Ask Not", from 1964, won a Hugo, and was later incorporated into the novel of the same title.

The Genetic General is about a young man of the Dorsai people, from the planet called Dorsai, orbiting Fomalhaut. The Dorsai are mercenaries, and Donal Graeme, as the book opens, is a very young man just ready to go out into the wider human civilization and take on his first assignment. Immediately he encounters a beautiful but scared woman, Anea, the Select of Kultis, one of the Exotic worlds. She has taken a contract to be an escort for the powerful merchant William of Ceta, and wants Donal to get rid of it. He of course realizes that would be a crime and a mistake, and so refuses, but he is set on a collision course with William.

The novel continues, to an extent a travelogue of human interstellar society. Donal take a contract as a Mercenary for Harmony, one of the Friendly worlds (religiously oriented). After doing his job there too well, he takes another contract, and has another spectacular success ... and he continues to gain experience and knowledge, for one thing spending time with the powerful and mystical Sayona the Bond, one of the most important people of the Exotic worlds. And things come to a head as William's maneuvering seems poised to deliver him power over the entire human civilization, and as he chooses Donal as one of his game pieces in this effort -- but naturally he has again underestimated Donal.

There are broad swathes of cliche to this plot arc, and indeed (as I noted elsewhere), a number of points of contact with the story of Miles Vorkosigan -- odd young man from a militaristic world becomes a mercenary, along the way attaches a nearly-psychopathic man to him as a loyal retainer, supplying the man's conscience ... To be sure, Graeme's ultimate fate is more grandiose that Miles's (very much more grandiose, as I understand from summaries of the remaining Childe Cycle books). And it's early Dickson, not as well done as some of his later work. But it is quite exciting, and Donal's military feats make good stories. And Dickson's ambition is quite apparent -- he is interested in deeper themes than just good adventure. I quite enjoyed the book.

Time to Teleport, the other half, is an earlier work of course. Indeed, in a sense it's Dickson's first novel, even though not quite novel length, as its magazine publication preceded any other Dickson story ever published as a book. It's set in a future in which humanity is divided based on the types of work people do; groups like Transportation, Atomics, and Metal. Eli Johnstone is the head of one of the smaller groups, Underseas, but he has managed to be a power broker, maintaining a tenuous political balance between rival factions.

One of the main controversies facing the world involves a group of philosophical researchers who call themselves Members of the Human Race. They are hoping to understand the evolution of new human powers, psi powers, as part of the next step in human evolution. But their opponents fear them, believing that "normal" humans will be swept aside.

Now Eli wants to retire, just as his main rival, Tony Sellars of Transportation, is stepping up rhetoric against the "Members". But Eli is ready to volunteer for an experimental operation, that will replace his worn out body parts with new ones. And so he leave, while Sellars increases his pressure, and makes his move to take over the world. At the critical moment, Eli must finally face his true nature ... which is not so hard to guess!

This is a minor work, but still somewhat interesting, and still showing Dickson interested in deeper philosophical themes. It was clunky enough to not quite work, but it's still an moderately enjoyable story.

Old Bestseller: The Perfume of the Lady in Black, by Gaston Leroux

Old Bestseller: The Perfume of the Lady in Black, by Gaston Leroux

A review by Rich Horton

Back to the original focus of this blog with a true Old Bestseller, though this book’s best sales might have been in France. Gaston Leroux (1868-1927) was a native of Paris who inherited a lot of money and earned a law degree. But by about 1890 he was broke and working in journalism. He became an international correspondent for Le Matin, most significantly covering the 1905 Russian Revolution (one that didn’t stick). He began publishing fiction as early as 1887, and his first novel appeared in 1904 (La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet, known as The Double Life in English). He quit journalism in 1907, more or less simultaneously with his first major novelistic success, The Mystery of the Yellow Room. That was the first of ultimately seven novels about a young journalist who acts as a detective, Joseph Rouletabille. He is of course best known for his 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera), which has been made into numerous films and one very famous musical.

The Mystery of the Yellow Room was a locked-room story, and is still regarded as one of the best locked room mysteries of all time. The book at hand, La Parfum de la Dame en Noir (The Perfume of the Lady in Black), from 1909, is a direct sequel to The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and it is also a locked-room mystery. Of necessity, the following will involve spoilers for the first book.

The novel is narrated by M. Sainclair, an older friend of Joseph Rouletabille, who seems fairly openly a Watson figure. We begin in a shabby church in Paris, as Mlle. Mathilde Stangerson marries M. Robert Darzac. We gather that Mlle. Stangerson and M. Darzac were involved in the events of the previous book. Mathilde’s father, Professor Stangerson, had been accused of a murder, investigated by a detective, Frederic Larsan, with the assistance of Joseph Rouletabille. At the end, Rouletabille proved that the actual killer was in fact Larsan, a master of disguise who was also known as Ballmyer and as Jean Roussel, under which name he had married Mlle. Stangerson in America. She had a child with him, who died young, but had become estranged, and fell in love with M. Darzac. After Larsan is convicted of murder, he escapes, and flees to America, but falls overboard and drowns on the way there, freeing his ex-wife to marry M. Darzac.

The book is interrupted for some extended exposition about the childhood of Joseph Rouletabille, where we learn that he was actually the supposedly dead son of Frederic Larsan and Mathilde, who ended up at a strict boarding school, before he was expelled on a false charge of theft. Living on his own, he managed eventually to work his way into journalism.

The scene thus set, the newly married couple head off on their honeymoon to the South of France. But on the way, Mme. Darzac is shocked to see Larsan. Sainclair and Rouletabille follow them to their destination, a curious castle/island just on the Italian side of the Riviera, owned by Mr. Arthur Rance, an American, and his wife Edith. Mr. Rance, it seems, was once desperately in love with Mlle. Stangerson, and Edith is terribly jealous of her. Their party consists, then, of the Rances, the Darzacs, Sainclair, Rouletabille, Edith’s uncle, Old Bob, an anthropologist who believes he has discovered the oldest human skull of all time, and occasionally a neighbor, Prince Galitch, a Russian who is a rival  of Old Bob, and who also seems inappropriately close to Mme. Edith. Other players are several servants, and, all fear, the mysterious specter of the apparently not really dead M. Larsan – whose continued survival would invalidate the marriage of the Darzacs.

All this takes a long, and frankly tedious, time to set up. Then the action commences, with strange behavior by Old Bob, flirtation and jealousy from Edith, and eventually a shooting, and the apparent disposal of the victim in a potato sack. But is he really dead? And, despite all Rouletabille’s efforts to make the castle impregnable, has Larsan found a way in? And how did the “extra body” somehow make his way into the Darzac chambers? And who was actually shot? And who is responsible for the death of one of the servants?

The whole thing is kind of convoluted and, as I suggested, often tedious. The characters never really come to life – it’s hard to much like any of them. (Part of this, to be sure, is because each character – even the narrator, Sainclair -- has to be presented as plausibly Larsan in disguise.) Leroux painstakingly describes, with diagrams!, the layout of the castle and of some key interiors. Things eventually come to a head, leading to a traditional wrapping up, with the detective gathering everyone in a room and explaining who is guilty – and with the bad guy, as is traditional, removing him- or herself  from an inconvenient potential trial by some precipitate actions …

The mystery, I suppose, is nicely enough solved, if it does depend rather too much on Larsan’s incredible ability to disguise himself. But beyond that, the novel just doesn’t work – it’s too long, too boring, with an uninteresting set of characters. Some of this, I suppose, might possibly be laid at the door of the translator. My edition, I should add, is a 1909 edition, probably a first American, from Brentano’s (I assume possibly related to the bookseller). There are numerous illustrations (including the diagrams). The illustrator and translator are both uncredited. (I note that the science fiction writer Brian Stableford, who had translated an immense amount of French popular fiction from the 19^th and early 20^th Century, has translated at least one of the Rouletabille books.)

I have no idea if other Leroux books are better – I’m not terribly likely to try any. I have, of course, seen a couple of versions of The Phantom of the Opera – the musical, at least, is very good.

The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin

The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin

an appreciation by Rich Horton

My favorite poet is Wallace Stevens, but my favorite British poet, I think, is Philip Larkin. Larkin (1922-1985) was a long-time friend of Kingsley Amis, one of my favorite novelists. He was a rather sad man, somewhat by choice I’d suggest (though I’d caution of course that that’s just me projecting my feelings on an outside view of his life), and on the evidence perhaps not a very nice man, certainly not above (in private letters) expressing some queasily racist notions, and also some rather sexist notions. He doesn’t seem to have treated the women in his life very well either. His longest relationship was with Monica Jones (sometimes suggested as the model for the awful Margaret Peel in Amis’ Lucky Jim) – it lasted from 1950 to the end of his life, though they never married: but Larkin had significant relationships with several other women in this time period, indeed at one time juggling three affairs at once. Larkin’s primary job was as librarian, most importantly at the University of Hull. He seems to have been highly regarded there, both for his work and as a colleague. Despite mostly living fairly modestly, in the end he accumulated a significant fortune, enough so that his primary beneficiary, Jones, left an estate of over £1,000,000 at her death in 2001.

Larkin’s early poems were primarily imitative of W. H. Auden, with other significant influences such as Thomas Hardy and W. B. Yeats. (Larkin was to some extent responsible for the rehabilitation of Hardy’s poetic reputation relative to his novelistic reputation.) His first book of poems was The North Ship (1945), which was all but ignored and has remained but a minor part of his oeuvre in the minds of most readers. To be sure, he was only 23. In the next decade he found his true voice, partly in association with the “Movement” poets (such as Amis, Donald Davie, Elizabeth Jennings, and Robert Conquest). His three major slim collections were published at intervals of roughly a decade: The Less Deceived in 1955, The Whitsun Weddings in 1964, and High Windows in 1974. After that book he was all but done as a poet, even though he was only 54 – “Aubade” and “Love Again” are the only significant poems written later, the rest being often occasional poems, or unfinished. (I am also quite fond of an earlier uncollected poem, a bit of a joke based presumably on the sexual exploits of either Amis or Conquest, “Letter to a Friend about Girls”.) He refused an offer to be named Poet Laureate in 1984, a year before his death.

Larkin’s reputation suffered some blows after his death, mostly to my mind a result of score settling by rivals and by those whose poetic philosophies differed, and as a result of the publication of his letters and other revelations of some quite racist expressions. It certainly seemed to me that some second-raters were happy to suggest “Don’t read him, read me!” – as if anyone with sense would read their anodyne lameness. (OK, so I took some of that controversy a bit hard!) Larkin’s reputation has recovered, however, largely to my mind because people actually read the poems instead of obsessing about the personal life. It is probably fair to say that Larkin’s range was somewhat narrow, but I’m not sure that matters. And his rather po-faced attitudes can sometimes seem almost self-caricature. But within that range, and understanding the point of view he expresses, his poetry is stunning: lyrically expressive, syntactically complex and interesting, emotionally intense if not flamboyantly so.

Of his three major collections, I think the best is the middle one, The Whitsun Weddings. There are 32 poems, including several of my very favorites: “Faith Healing”, “Water”, “The Whitsun Weddings”, “MCMXIV”, “Dockery and Son”, “Reference Back”, “Wild Oats”, and, to close the book, possibly Larkin’s greatest poem, “An Arundel Tomb”. (There are of course other candidates for that title: “At Grass”, “Church Going”, “If, my Darling”, “High Windows”, even “This be the Verse”.)

I think best perhaps is to quote some lines …

From “Faith Healing”, I am always devastated by “That nothing cures.”

From “Water”: “A glass of water/where any-angled light/would congregate endlessly.”

From “MCMXIV” – another candidate for my favorite Larkin poem – and a poem which makes me think of Christopher Priest’s great story “An Infinite Summer” – the last stanza:

“Never such innocence,

Never before or since,

As changed itself to past

Without a word – the men

Leaving the gardens tidy,

The thousands of marriages

Lasting a little while longer:

Never such innocence again.”

From “Dockery and Son”, the famous final four lines:

“Life is first boredom, then fear.

Whether or not we use it, it goes,

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,

And age, and then only the end of age.”

From “Reference Back”:

“They show us what we have as it once was,

Blindingly undiminished, just as though

By acting differently we could have kept it so.”

And, finally, “An Arundel Tomb”. That of course has a very famous last line: “What will survive of us is love.” So often quoted as a cloying sentimental truism. Which is to ignore the previous line: “Our almost instinct almost true:” – so undermining of the sentiment in the final line.

It’s just such a lovely poem, from start to finish. The first stanza loosely describing the somewhat faded tomb, with the crucial detail: “The little dogs under their feet.” The second stanza, revealing the most critical element of the carven tomb: “His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.” “What will survive of us is love”, eh?

But then the next line, opening the third stanza. “They would not think to lie so long.” Is this a pun? To be sure, the Earl and his Countess are not thinking of “lying in state”, as it were, for centuries. But are they also not thinking of the “lie” the sculptor tells?

The next two stanzas suggest the changes wrought by time – both just by decay, but also by changes in attitude. I just love the fifth stanza (beginning at the end of the fourth):

“Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

The endless altered people came”

And, sure, let’s quote the great final lines:

“Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.”

Surely the point here is that the love of the Earl and his Countess – real as it may or may not have been, is not what survives. What survives, over centuries, is our hope, our sentimental hope, that our love will survive – that love is the most important thing, despite the possibility that the love was not real.

A Little-Known recent novel: The Language Nobody Speaks, by Eugene Mirabelli

A little-known recent novel: The Language Nobody Speaks, by Eugene Mirabelli

a review by Rich Horton

OK, this wasn't a bestseller -- not even close. And it's not all that old. It might be sort of forgotten, alas. The real reason I'm covering it is, well, that I like Eugene Mirabelli (and his work), and that I hadn't finished my latest "Old Bestseller" (a novel by Gaston Leroux that I'm find hard going) and that I just finished my latest Ace Double (a Gordon Dickson pairing).

Eugene Mirabelli has written a number of mainstream novels ... the first of them dating all the way back to the my year of birth, 1959. (Indeed, he was born in Massachusetts in 1931 -- as was my father!) He came to my attention with a number of quite lovely SF/Fantasy stories, in F&SF, Asimov's, and Not One of Us. I used a couple of them in my Best of the Year books, and we've reprinted another at Lightspeed. I figured I ought to try one of his novels, and I picked The Language Nobody Speaks, which dates to 1999. I supposed I must admit that I was partly convinced to choose this one by the cover photograph, of a very beautiful and not very clothed woman.

The story is set in about 1956 for the most part. The narrator is Bart, a young mathematician. His car breaks down in Albany, NY, and he happens to run into Erin, a girl he had met and become very attracted to at a wedding a year or so before. She has a little time, so she agrees to have lunch with him. At lunch they happen to sit with a somewhat older married couple, Hollis and Lida, who seem quite taken with them. The older couple (not really that much older -- Bart and Erin are presumably in their mid- to late-20s, and Hollis and Lida in their 30s or perhaps early 40s in Hollis's case) convince the younger pair to accompany them on a brief excursion to Saratoga. Bart and Erin quickly realize they are falling in love, and they end up staying the night at a hotel in Saratoga, with Hollis and Lida in the neighboring room.

By various happenstances, the stay is extended a bit. Bart and Erin sleep together, talk a lot, about things like Bart's disenchantment with mathematics, and about how people can really know each other, and so on. They also witness by accident some of Hollis and Lida's sex life, which seems to have an S&M element. But though they are disturbed by this, they enjoy the older couple's company in the days, as they visit various New York locations. Inevitably, they are drawn closer and closer to Hollis and Lida, eventually visiting their home in the Berkshires, where certain variously ominous events occur -- some sleeping around, of course, and revelations about Lida's past (she was a Czech refugee who ended up in Italy at the end of the War, where her mother apparently became a collaborator, and where Hollis met her), and further revelations about Hollis's habits, and about their marriage, which is not nearly as strong as had first appeared. The question is, can Bart and Erin's relationship survive all this, even prosper, or will it founder on all this stress. Or will something more sinister happen?

I enjoyed this short novel a fair bit. It's reasonably erotic without being pornographic at all by my lights. It's very well written, and quite well observed. The denouement has elements of patness, but really it makes sense, it's believable -- just not, as the narrator even observes, entirely what the shape of the narrative may have seemed to promise. Good enjoyable work.

Mirabelli's other novels seem worth a look as well. He often writes on Italian or Italian-American subjects, and occasionally ventures into fantastical territory. He's still writing, and a new novel is due sometime this year.

Another Obscure Ace Double: Sanctuary in the Sky, by John Brunner/The Secret Martians, by Jack Sharkey

Ace Double Reviews, 94: Sanctuary in the Sky, by John Brunner/The Secret Martians, by Jack Sharkey (#D-471, 1960, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton


I've read some weak Ace Doubles lately, so I tried to improve my fortunes by picking one with a John Brunner half. I can almost always count on Brunner for entertainment with a thoughtful edge. Brunner (1934-1995) of course was one of the field's greats, a Hugo winner for Stand on Zanzibar (1968). He had a bifurcated career a bit like Robert Silverberg's: beginning around the same time as Silverberg he was extremely prolific early in his career, publishing a lot of quickly executed and competent work; and then sometime in the early to mid '60s seems to have consciously raised his level of ambition, beginning with novels like The Whole Man and The Squares of the City, and continuing to his famous quartet of long novels, beginning with Stand on Zanzibar, then The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. But that distorts the case a bit -- for he remained very prolific, producing a whole series of shorter novels at the same time, some highly regarded (I like Total Eclipse a great deal, for instance), and some not as good (I was quite disappointed by The Infinitive of Go). He died fairly young, and shockingly -- at the 1995 World SF Convention in Glasgow.


As for Jack Sharkey, he was a near contemporary of Brunner's, born three years earlier and also dying three years earlier. He began publishing in 1959, and was active only until about 1971, publishing four novels, an Addams family novelization, and a fair quantity of short stories, many for Cele Goldsmith's magazines (Amazing and Fantastic). Indeed, his career in the field really ended in 1965, when Goldsmith (by then Cele Lalli) left the magazines after they were sold. Sharkey only published three further SF/Fantasy stories. Apparently he concentrated on plays after that.

The cover to the Sharkey novel is by Ed Valigursky, I don't recognize the artist on the Brunner novel -- it's not really a good representation of any scene in the book, looks almost Flash Gordon-like, or trashy TV serial anyway. The ISFDB tentatively suggests Basil Gogot, a name I've never seen, though Todd Mason informs me that they must really mean Basil Gogos.

I have said before that in comparing Brunner and Silverberg, I like early Brunner better than early Silverberg, but late (or middle) Silverberg better than late Brunner. I really do enjoy Brunner's early novels, many of them Ace Double halves -- they are all of course quite short, and sometimes show signs of hastiness (especially in their conclusions), but they are generally good fun, with interesting ideas and some real thoughtful speculation. Sanctuary in the Sky isn't one of my favorites of this group, alas, but it isn't bad either.

A group of people from different planets come by spaceship to Waystation, a huge space station serving as a sort of neutral point between a group of competing planets. The planets are Cathrodyne, a warlike planet which oppresses the people on Lubarria and Majkosi; Pagr, a likewise warlike matriarchy which oppresses Alchmida; and neutral Glai, which controls Waystation. The people are Ferenc, a fanatical Cathrodyne officer; Ligmer, a Cathrodyne scientist; Dardaino, a Cathrodyne assigned as a priest to the Lubarrians; Mrs. Iquida, a Lubarrian; Toehr, a Pag of high status; Vykor, a young Majko steward; and, most important, the mysterious Lang, who comes from "out of eye range" -- that is, a planet whose Sun is not visible from any of this local group of planets.

The main character is Vykor, who is working as a spy of sorts for the Glaithe people, hoping that this will lead to independence for his Majko people. Vykor is also sort of in love with Captain Raige, the Glaithe woman who is heading the Waystation staff and who is Vykor's contact. But most of the action is set in motion by Lang, who has the knack of mysteriously appearing almost anywhere, and of asking the sort of questions that greatly discomfit his listeners. We get glimpses of the political questions central to this planetary group; and of the scientific questions, mainly centering on the question of "Who made Waystation"; and of the odd nature of Waystation, with its reconfigurable spaces and secret passages. (I was strongly reminded of Robert Reed's Great Ship*.)

The plot mainly turns on the chaos caused by Lang, and on the question of his true identity (which is pretty easily guessed, mind you). The resolution, as usual for early Brunner, is a bit rapid, but it's also fairly thoughtful, and to some extent easy answers are avoided. As I said, not really one of my favorite Brunner stories, but decent work.

The Secret Martians, on the other hand, is a pretty silly mess. It opens promising to be a bit of a romp, and as such it might have been OK. Sharkey worked for a while in advertising, and his hero, Jery Delvin, is an advertising man. His special talent is as a "spotter" -- he can always see through the deceptive claims of advertising. Except when distracted by beautiful girls. Evidently that talent gets him chosen, by the Brain, a huge computer which helps run the government, to be sent to Mars along with the Amnesty, a badge that gives him authority to do anything, and with a collapsar, the weapon reserved for governement Security, in order to solve the problem of the disappearance of a bunch of Space Scouts -- young boys who had been on a trip to Mars.

His main problem is a gorgeous girl with the implausible name Snow White, elder sister of one of the presumably kidnapped Space Scouts. Her ability to distract him allows her to steal his Amnesty, and he vacillates between anger at her and helpless lust. He keeps trying to solve the main problem, even without his Amnesty badge, and he ends up encountering some of the lizardlike aliens, the sugarfeet, who are regarding as mere animals. Of course, they aren't, and the plot descends into real stupidity, with the Devlin, Snow, the sugarfeet all cooperating to some extent, and with the title "Secret Martians" assuming a somewhat ambiguous role, while the villains are a rather obvious group. Will the Space Scouts be found? Will Jary and Snow get together? Will the sugarfeet get the recognition they deserve? Will the bad guys be thwarted? Will anything make sense, either plotwise or science-wise? Do you really need to ask?

So -- in the end, another pretty mediocre Ace Double, but just sufficiently redeemed by the fairly decent Brunner novel.

*SPOILER for Sanctuary in the Sky





... it turns out that Waystation is even more like the Great Ship than we originally realize. I really do wonder if this novel might have been at some level an inspiration for Reed's conception.