World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part IV: Day 3

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part IV: Day 3

I've finally got back to this report -- I have been distracted by things like Thanksgiving and the deadline for my most recent Locus column. Alas, that means my memory has gobbled up even more names of people I met, which stinks. I apologize to the many I've forgotten.

Saturday morning we skipped anything elaborate for breakfast, settling for snacking in the con suite. I also took the opportunity to work out, as we also did some laundry. The only other con member I recognized in the workout room was Tananarive Due, but I'm sure everyone else was there another time!

Mary Ann and I both wanted to go to the panel "Karen Joy Fowler in Conversation", an interview conducted by Kelly Link. (Fowler is one of Mary Ann's favorite writers.) This was very enjoyable and interesting. Karen talked about her -- somewhat idyllic-seeming -- childhood in Bloomington, IN and the way that was disrupted when her father took a position at Stanford when she was 11. [Coincidentally, we ate at a restaurant in Bloomington the Saturday after Thanksgiving, on the way back from my brother's house in Indianapolis, and visiting my son's gf in Elletsville, a town next to Bloomington.] She discussed her academic career, in which she took a Bachelors and a Masters in Political Science (the first concentrating on Southwest Asia, the second in East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) because UC Davis didn't have a program about Southwest Asia.) Her approach to a writing career was interesting -- she wanted to take ballet, and after injuries sustained courtesy of the police during a protest, she thought that impossible, but her husband bought her ballet lessons anyway, which she took until the presence of "16-year-olds who could touch their knees to their ears" got too frustrating. A writing group provided her a replacement evening to herself. Eventually she started selling her stories, and then her novels.

She discussed the difference between her stories and her novels, and some little stories about her experience with workshops, including Clarion; both as student and instructor; and also some stories about the public life of the writer. I was particularly struck by her mention of her original writers' group, which is still active. Alas, she said, all the members of the group are so concerned with rejection that they won't submit their stories anywhere, so they are writing, in essence, for an audience of seven.

After that, I had nothing until my own panel, my only one this con, at 3. That meant it was a good time for a Dealers' Room visit, and then lunch. I haven't mentioned the Dealers' Room much yet -- I actually visited it several times, though I didn't buy all that much. It was a really fine, very literary-oriented, room. I spent plenty of time at the Small Beer Press table, at Dave Willoughby's table, at Greg Ketter's Dream Haven Books table, at the Tachyon Books and Fairmont Press displays, and of course at Sally Kobee's booth. I am sure I am missing some, too ... -- yes, that's right, Larry Hallack as well. Talked at some length with Patrick Swenson, Richard Warren, Jim Van Pelt, and others.

For lunch we were determined to get Barbeque. John Joseph Adams had recommended a place, I think it was Rudy's Country Store, and we planned to try that but by the time we left we were running out of time, so we picked a closer place, the Big Bib. Once again we were vaguely disappointed by Texas Barbeque -- the Big Bib was OK, but nothing special.

We got back with just a little time to spare before my panel. I ran into Jack Skillingstead, whom I've met before a couple of times, and began talking to him, mentioning that I work at Boeing, as he once did. Jack looked a bit puzzled, then the light dawned. He hadn't recognized me (because of beard) -- and he said he thought to himself "The only guy I know in SF who also works at Boeing is Rich Horton ..." -- then the other shoe fell. Nancy Kress came out of the panel she'd been at about then, in which she had gotten into a bit of a heated discussion with one of the panelists. We talked for a bit, and it was time for my panel.

The subject was the best short fiction of 2017. I had printed a list of my favorite stories of the year, trimmed to include only Fantasy. In the event, we opened up the discussion to SF as well, but really we concentrated mainly on Fantasy. The other panelists were Ellen Datlow, Scott Andrews, and C. C. Finlay. I thought the panel went very well. I don't have a summary to give -- it would end up being too top-heavy on my choices, because my memory is crummy. Someone in the audience was recording it, I think, and others were taking notes.

The other two panels I wanted to see were in the evening. Mary Ann and I weren't terribly hungry -- if nothing else, the barbeque was filling. So we went down to the Riverwalk again to find the ice cream place recommended by Joe McDermott. I think it was called Justin's. At any rate, the ice cream was as good as advertised.

The 8 o'clock panel was called "Women Authors That Men Don't Read -- or Do They?". I think the panel title purposely overstated the notion that men don't read women writers. The panelists (F. Brett Cox, Lisa Freitag, Marta Murvosh, and Dave Smeds) most agreed, I think, and discussed a variety of worthy women writers, regardless of whether men read them or not. Brett and Marta both brought up some academic stats about how much certain writers are written about -- Margaret Atwood is (perhaps not surprisingly) the most cited fantastic-connected writer. Angela Carter was surprisingly little discussed until a fairly recent jump -- I suspect it coincided with her death. Ursula Le Guin does get a fair amount of academic attention.

At 9 o'clock there was a planned "roast" for Editor GOH Gordon van Gelder. Ginjer Buchanan conducted it, and made clear that it was more of a very light roasting, or "toasting", and that proved to be the case. There was a slide show with much discussion of Gordon's life and career. A wide variety of folks got up to talk, but mostly just to say nice things. Brad Denton did give a very funny presentation. Jack Dann gave a nice talk, and so did Kij Johnson, who mentioned shared Clarion experiences. Gordon complained that the roasting wasn't as hard on him as he had hoped. (I did get up in the audience participation panel and mentioned how shortly after I got a lifetime subscription to F&SF an issue arrived without any periods -- doubtless to save enough money to afford to offer the great deal Gordon gave me on the lifetime sub.)

That was the end of the programming, so it was time for another session at the bar. Lots more people to talk to ... I discussed Tina Connolly's chances at winning Best Collection with her (we both agreed another collection would certainly win, and we were both wrong about that one -- but, alas, Tina didn't win either). I talked about Canadian weather with Jerome Stueart -- it does get really really cold up there, in certain places. (Perhaps that's why Jerome is back in Ohio now.) I was able to talk briefly with Fran Wilde, and with Fred Lerner -- I learned that he has completed a novel related to his one published short story "Rosetta Stone". I really liked that story, so I'll look for the novel. Talked with Scott Andrews for a while. (There is a picture of Scott and I with our beards in the December Locus.) Mary Anne Mohanraj. And several further people, that my shabby memory is betraying me about.

Here are links to all five installments of this con report:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Another Obscure Ace Double: The Green Queen, by Margaret St. Clair/Three Thousand Years, by Thomas Calvert McClary

Ace Double Reviews, 109: The Green Queen, by Margaret St. Clair/Three Thousand Years, by Thomas Calvert McClary (#D-176, 1956, 35 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Here's another Ace Double featuring a Margaret St. Clair novel, the third such I have read. The flip side is the only Ace Double by Thomas Calvert McClary. There is one more St. Clair Ace Double to come, which might be more expensive, as it's backed with a Philip Dick title. (Indeed, the cheapest copy of Agent of the Unknown/The World Jones Made is about $16 at AbeBooks.)

I wrote before about Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) as follows: "she was one of the more noticeable early women writers of SF, but somehow her profile was a bit lower than those of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton. Perhaps it was simply that those writers did just a bit more, and were just a bit better (taken as a whole) than her, but it does seem that she's not quite as well remembered as perhaps she deserves. One contributing factor is that she wrote some of her very best stories pseudonymously, as "Idris Seabright". 20 or so of her 50+ short stories were as by Seabright, including some of the very best (such as "Short in the Chest" and "An Egg a Month from All Over"). She also wrote 8 novels (four of them published as Ace Double halves). Her career in SF stretched from 1946 to 1981. Her husband, Eric St. Clair, was also a writer (of children's books), and the two became Wiccans more or less when the Wiccan movement started."

I noted at that time that it seemed to me based on the two I had read by then that her novels were significantly weaker than her short fiction, and The Green Queen does nothing to change that impression. John Clute is kinder than I am in his Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry on St. Clair, and he does make her first novel (Agent of the Unknown) sound quite interesting. He also notes that St. Clair's work tends to exhibit "a singularly claustrophobic pessimism", and that is true, I think. The problem is that the interesting ideas and the refusal to bow to conventional pulp-era ideas about problem solving and heroic resolution are obscured by the occasional silliness of the plotting and of the scientific notions.

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

The Green Queen was originally published as "Mistress of Viridis" in the March 1955 issue of Universe. I haven't seen that version: it may be the same as the Ace Double, but I suspect the book version is somewhat expanded. The story is narrated to a Terran scientist by a man named Bonnar, as the planet Viridis is in a state of chaos.

Bonnar is a maskmaker, but the masks are obsolete. And the barrier between the city where the human colonists live and the radioactive surface of the planet is down. What are the masks? They seem to be a way to make their wearers see something different than the true world they live in. These are widely used to pacify the "Lowers", who live miserable short lives in the under parts of the City. Bonnar's latest mask had been in support of a myth of the Green Queen, who would find a special tree and, well, save the world. This seems to have had unusual power among the lowers.

(Cover by Virgil Finlay)

The ruling cabal hatches a plan to create a "Green Queen" to help better control the restless Lowers. And the woman they choose is Leaf, who happens to be, for a time, Bonnar's lover. He is ordered to break up with her, and he does ... and she does, under secret urging, begin to believe she is the Green Queen. But, strangely, her powers seem to be real. And she becomes increasingly popular. This is too much for the rulers -- and for Bonnar, who is insanely jealous of Leaf. They create a rival Queen, using a much less intelligent woman and some tech to imitate her powers.

There is a fair amount of political maneuvering, and a trip to the strangely abandoned human cities on the unprotected surface of the planet, and plots and counterplots, leading to a curious climax in which Leaf orders the city's barrier struck down, and flies to the "tree" that the prophecies said the Queen must visit -- and the true secret of the original Queen of Viridis is revealed. There is a ton of potential here, really, but I don't think St. Clair's execution quite matched the ideas. A strong rewrite, and I think this could have been pretty good, but as it is, it's kind of a mess.

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

But, not as much of a mess as Thomas Calvert McClary's Three Thousand Years. This was originally serialized (with an exclamation point in the title) in Astounding very early in John Campbell's editorial tenure, in the April through June 1938 issues. Indeed, this was the first serial published solely in Campbell's issues.  I do wonder if the novel was not actually purchased by Campbell's predecessor, F. Orlin Tremaine, who had purchased McClary's previous novel, Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot, which was in Astounding in 1934. (That said, Campbell certainly bought McClary's third and last novel in the field, The Tommyknocker, which was serialized in Unknown in 1940.)

Thomas Calvert McClary (1909-1972) wrote primarily Westerns, but he did publish those three novels and several short stories (many as by Calvin Peregoy) in the SF magazines, the latest story appearing in 1958. Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot had book publication in 1944 from Bart House, and the book version of Three Thousand Years was published by Fantasy Press in 1954, with this Ace Double version following two years later. The book is definitely revised from the serial, as a few mentions of the events of the Second World War are made.

(Cover by Howard V. Brown)

The story is ostensibly recorded by a huge computer invented by a scientist named Simon Gamble. It tells of the rivalry between Gamble and his boss, a ruthless businessman name Vincent Drega. Gamble believes all problems can be solved with science, and he has invented magic foods and clothes and metals and atomic power. Drega has suppressed these inventions because he believes they will ruin the economy, and that man can't live properly without the motivation of money. Both are aware that the world is in danger of imminent war, which will be terrible because of the horrible weapons that have been created.

The viewpoint character for the bulk of the story is a newspaperman named Lucky Flagherty. His girlfriend, the Lovelorn columnist, is named of all things Lulu Belle. Lucky has sold a story warning of the upcoming war -- and riots have ensued, when, all of a sudden, he comes to new consciousness, naked, filthy, with long hair and fingernails. What can have happened? Soon it is clear that some 3000 years have passed -- Simon Gamble, trying to avert world catastrophe, had put everyone in suspended animation.

Most people die (the suspension was only supposed to last a few decades, but Gamble miscalculated), but there are plenty of survivors. Lucky, along with Lulu Belle and his editor and others, ends up joining a group led vigorously by Drega. They begin to reestablish a society, under Drega's rule. Apparently all iron (but not other metal) has been destroyed by Gamble's efforts, but with the help of some elephants, and some fishing, things begin to improve, and they fight off the cannibals ... and then Gamble returns, with his carefully preserved magic tech. He offers these wonders to all who will accept living under his technocratic lead.

Drega refuses, and he sets up his colony in New Jersey, while Gamble stays in Manhattan. There are other groups of survivors throughout the world. Gamble is able to feed and cloth his people, but he runs into trouble. For one thing, he is unable to trade with the other groups because he has no concept of money. For another thing, his tech is based on an entire industrial base, and he finds it very hard to build that from scratch. And, finally, it turns out people really don't adapt well to a life of pure ease. So Drega emerges triumphant in the end.

That makes it seem like a philosophical novel -- which it is, to a great extent, if a very simplistic one, and one in which the author's finger is rather heavily on the scales. But that aspect is harmed, not just by the deck-stacking, but by the silliness of the scientific concepts, and by the crudeness of the prose, and of the characters. (And by the absurd sexism.) I was really very bored, and often very annoyed. This is a pretty awful novel.

A Mystery Ace Double: Maigret Has Scruples/Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses, by George Simenon

Ace Double Reviews, 33: Maigret Has Scruples, by Georges Simenon/Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses, by Georges Simenon (#F-166, 1962, $0.40)

by Rich Horton

My previous Ace Double reviews have mostly been of SF books, but the Ace Double series included books in many genres. So, I'm including this review in this series of otherwise SF reviews because it's a nice way to illustrate the fact that the Ace Doubles, for the first decade or so of their existence, featured not just SF novels but other genres -- mostly mysteries and westerns but other types as well (for instance, a couple of P. G. Wodehouse novels appeared in an early Ace Double).

About a decade ago I read every Georges Simenon Maigret novel I could find. I don't think I found quite all of those available in English, but I think I got pretty close. These two novels were among those I read, but I was happy to reread them. This Ace Double dates to 1962, but the novels were first published in French and in English translation somewhat earlier: Maigret Has Scruples in 1958, Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses in 1959. The novels are of almost identical length, at about 46,000 words (most of Simenon's Maigret novels were written to a consistent length). (The cover and spine list the title of the second book as Maigret and the Reluctant Witness, but the title page has the correct plural.) Both novels were translated by Daphne Woodward. The French titles are Les Scrupules de Maigret and Maigret et les témoins récalcitrant.

Maigret Has Scruples is constructed curiously. Instead of solving an already committed crime, Maigret is charged with preventing a potential crime. A man comes to see him, and tells him that he believes his wife is planning to murder him. He offers evidence in the form of some rat poison that he has discovered, but leaves before Maigret can question him further. Somewhat later the wife shows up, and tells her side of the story, basically admitting that she knows of her husband's suspicions, but thinks he is mad.

Maigret somewhat reluctantly begins to investigate, rather hamstrung by a bureaucracy that makes it hard for him to commit resources to investigation of a crime that has not occurred. He also makes a quick study of psychiatry, hoping to be able to understand if either the man or his wife is insane. His investigations quickly establish that the situation is more complicated: the wife seems to be carrying on an affair with her boss, while the husband is seeing his sister-in-law. And then there is the matter of the insurance policy the couple has taken out, to be paid to whichever spouse survives the other.
The situation seems easily enough solved: a divorce, followed by each taking up more formally with their preferred companion, but human nature being what it is, that solution isn't taken. Instead, despite Maigret's investigation, he is unable to prevent a murder, though he is readily able to solve the murder once it occurs. The actual mystery is all but negligible (and it depends on a geometrical solution that I don't think would have worked!), but the central interest of the story is in the people, and that works well, particularly the comparison of the damaged marriage of the two principles with Maigret's very successful marriage.

Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses is slightly more conventional. A man is murdered in a Paris suburb. He was the director of an old, failing, biscuit manufacturing company. (Biscuit = cookie -- I am pretty sure the translator, Daphne Woodward, was English. Sometimes separate American translations of Maigret's novels were made, but often enough (and sensibly enough) the American publishers procured the UK translation.) When Maigret arrives at the decrepit old house of the family that owns the biscuit company, he finds a surly and silent bunch, all seemingly unwilling to answer questions, and eager to promote the theory of a panicked burglar as the murderer.

Maigret must sort through the tangled, sad, story of a family declining from prominence and riches to grubby poverty. There is a senile old patriarch and his wife, a long-time maid, the murdered man's brother and his young, rich, wife, a bookkeeper, a possible boyfriend, and a long-estranged sister. As with many of the Maigret stories, the mechanics of the murder -- the timing and means and so on, are of little interest and not terribly "mysterious". The interest is in unraveling the psychology of the murdered man and those around him -- usually revealing a somewhat sordid story, with money and sex often entangled. I'd not rate this as one of the best Maigrets, but it is quite typical of the Maigret of the 50s, probably the archetypical period of Simenon's writing: certainly well-worth reading. (Much the same thing could be said in summary of Maigret Has Scruples.)