A Fairly Obscure Ace Double: Space Captain by Murray Leinster/The Mad Metropolis by Philip E. High

Ace Double Reviews, 106: Space Captain, by Murray Leinster/The Mad Metropolis, by Philip E. High (#M-135, 1966, 45 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

(Cover by Gray Morrow)

Here's another fairly obscure Ace Double, distinguished mostly by the presence of one of SF's Old Masters: Murray Leinster, called the Dean of Science Fiction. "Murray Leinster" was a pen name for William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975). Jenkins was a true professional writer, working in numerous fields. His first story appeared in H. L. Mencken's The Smart Set in 1916, when he was only 19. His first SF story, "The Runaway Skyscraper", appeared in Argosy in 1919. He wrote regularly for Astounding and Analog, beginning in 1930, with his last appearance in Analog coming in 1966. (He retired from writing at about that time: his last non tie-in novel appeared in 1967, his last short story in 1968.) Most of his SF was as by "Murray Leinster", though some was as by "William Fitzgerald" and a few as by "Will F. Jenkins". His romance novels were as by Louisa Carter Lee, and his Westerns and Mysteries as "Will F. Jenkins". He also wrote for radio, television, and the movies. And he was an inventor, most notably of the front projection system used in special effects composite photography. He also won the Hugo for Best Novelette in 1955 for "Exploration Team". In all, quite a remarkable career.

(Cover by Jack Gaughan)

The other writer in this pair, Philip E. High, had a reasonably interesting career himself. He lived from 1914 to 2006. His primary job was as a bus driver. He wrote 14 novels and a number of short stories, mostly for British publications, between 1955 and about 1980, with a number of additional short stories showing up in later years, in publications devoted to venerable UK SF writers.

Murray Leinster, to me, was in his latter years a dependable producer of enjoyable but undistinguished SF, mostly somewhat adventure-oriented. That said, he wrote some truly significant stories earlier in his career, most notably "Sidewise in Time", an influential alternate history story; "A Logic Named Joe", which famously foreshadowed something like the Internet; and "First Contact". The novel at hand, Space Captain, fits in the "enjoyable but undistinguished" category.

(Cover by Kelly Freas)

It was first published in the October and December issues of Amazing, the second and third to be published by Sol Cohen and edited by Joseph Ross (after Ziff-Davis sold Amazing and Fantastic, and Cele Lalli stayed with Ziff_Davis (wisely, no doubt).) Thus I wonder if the story was bought by Lalli or by Ross -- I suspect the latter (though I suspect as well that possibly such stories as Cordwainer Smith's "On the Sand Planet" (December) and the Robert Young and Keith Laumer stories from August were Lalli acquisitions). The serial version was called "Killer Ship", and Amazing, as was their habit, acknowledged the forthcoming book version, and its new title. The copyright page for Space Captain claims that the magazine version was shorter, but I made a cursory comparison of the two versions and I think the serial was actually a bit longer. The differences are mostly rather minor editorial changes, with a few extra sentences here and there.

The protagonist is a certain Captain Trent. Much is made of his ancestry -- he is descended from a series of English ship captains (as well as some spaceship captains and explorers), and many of his actions in this book are compared to his ancestors' heroism with sailing ships. Trent is hired by a group of merchants who have been losing money because of the activities of a group of pirates in a rather isolated area of the Galaxy. His new ship, the Yarrow, will be augmented by a special weapon, which will be controlled by its inventor, an engineer named McHinney. But, Trent tells the merchants, he doesn't hold with gadgets. Nonetheless, he is compelled to take McHinney and his new weapon.

The rest of the novel, then, is a somewhat episodic account of Trent's various encounters with the pirates -- usually preceded by the spectacular failure of McHinney's weapon, after which Trent does things the way he wanted too. In one case he rescues the daughter of an influential politician, and he starts to feel responsible for her. And she seems quite interested in him. That changes Trent's emotional involvement when the politician, assuming the pirate problem has been solved, lets his daughter travel again. So Trent (all along claiming to be a gruff unsentimental ship captain) heads out on a final mission to finally take on the pirates at their planetary base, and once and for all eliminate them.

It's all, well, what you expect. The love story is perfunctory, really, but it has its cute aspects. The science doesn't really bear close inspection. The plot details, and the battles, are pretty implausible. Certainly this is not Leinster at anything close to his best. He's enough of a pro that I still kind of enjoyed the story -- but it's pretty minor work, no doubt.

Philip E. High's stories had a tendency to be very weird, and to be a bit shoddily constructed. I think that applies to The Mad Metropolis. It opens with Stephen Cook, a Prole in an overcrowded future, being pushed out of his home building to the street. Streets, it seems, are near certain death for the unprepared, and Cook, in terror, is nearly a plaything of an upper class woman ready to torment him with psychic weapons -- until he is rescued by the Metropolis' private police force, the Nonpol. He is soon released, with almost no money, after an investigation hints that his intelligence is higher than a Prole's should be.

Things spiral from there, in a somewhat Van Vogtian fashion. We soon learn that Stephen Cook is a superman whose intelligence has been artificially restrained. Cook is soon involved in a multi-sided battle for the fate of the world. It involves Mayor Tearling of his home city, and other politicians just trying to maintain the status quo, as one side; the Nonpols as another side; a group of super intelligent people called Oracles; and, perhaps most importantly, a computer (called Mother) that has been taking over the world in "With Folded Hands" fashion -- keeping people safe from themselves to an excessive degree. Oh, and the mob too. And a love interest for Cook.

It's quite a strange and overwrought book. There are some neat ideas, such as the hypnads that mediate everyone's access to their senses, such that a decrepit city can appear glorious, and such that most people look beautiful. There is also a sense of moral ambiguity -- Cook, for example, is brought to realize that his super powers are being manipulated in potentially dangerous ways. But on the whole the story is really just too much of a mess to work. High could be interesting -- though he was never exactly good -- but I think this book rates as one of his lesser efforts.