Birthday Review: The Sinful Ones/You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber was born on Christmas Eve in 1910. He died in 1992. He was named an SFWA Grand Master in 1982, and received Lifetime Achievement World Fantasy and Balrog awards as well. He also won six Hugos, two for Best Novel, two for Best Novella, and one for Best Short Story, plus a curious special award for "the use of SF in advertising". He's one of my favorite writers, so I I'm doing this belated birthday review of one of my favorites among his novels, The Sinful Ones, and its earlier version, "You're All Alone." The reviews are very brief capsules, I will add.

(Cover by Robert Gibson Jones)

The Sinful Ones had an odd publication history. It began as a novella called "You're All Alone", slated for John Campbell's fantasy companion to Astounding, Unknown. When the World War II paper shortage killed Unknown, Fritz Leiber had to abandon it. (At this time he had to take a defense job, too.) After the war he rewrote his original idea from scratch, first as a 40,000 word novel called "You're All Alone", which was published in Fantastic Adventures for July 1950. He expanded it by about 50% and this version ended up at a rather sleazy house, Universal, who added some "spicy" sex scenes, in a way that embarrassed Leiber. (They also hung the not awful but not as good as "You're All Alone" title of The Sinful Ones on it.) That edition was published in 1953 as an omnibus with another novel, about bullfighting, Blood, Bulls and Passion. (Not by Leiber.)

Finally, in 1980, Leiber had a chance to reprint the novel at Pocket Books, but he no longer had his original manuscript. So he worked from the published version, but rewrote the sex scenes. Which ended up being a good idea, I think. They're pretty good scenes (I think Leiber is a good writer of sex scenes), and there's no way the Leiber of 1953 would have written those scenes.


The Sinful Ones is a very good urban fantasy, from before there were urban fantasies. It's about a man in Chicgao, stuck in a rut, with his ambitious girlfriend pushing him to get a better job. One day he meets a strange, scared, young woman, Jane Gregg. Something about this encounter kicks him out of his rut, and he realizes in essence that he and only a few other people, including Jane, are truly "alive". As long as he is out of his "routine", nobody else perceives him. The novel is spooky, and sexy, and thought-provoking, and scary. It's a real good read, too, and the portrayal of Chicago is fun as well.  The eventual resolution is only OK, not great, but it hints at better things.

(Cover by Michael Whelan)

I read "You're All Alone" for comparison's sake. It's quite significantly different from The Sinful Ones. For the most part, the longer novel is superior, in my opinion, though some of that may be because I read it first. The basic story is the same, though: Carr Mackay discovers that almost everybody is an unconscious part of a machine: only a few people are capable of independent action. Most people use this power to play awful games with the unconscious people, but Carr is discovered by a young woman, Jane Gregg, who will not act like this, and tries to hide from the rival groups of evil awakened people. After resisting the true nature of the world for a while, Carr finally gives in, falls in love with Jane, and at the end finds himself in a desperate battle with the villains.

It's an intriguing premise (reminiscent, to me, of the movie Dark City, which I happened to see at about the same time as I first read The Sinful Ones). The conclusion in both cases is OK, but a bit abrupt, and in neither case is any larger issue resolved, beyond Carr and Jane's immediate danger. (Which may actually be the more honest approach.) But the longer novel does work things out much better, and has some decent sex scenes (added in 1980, actually, so it might not be fair to criticize "You're All Alone" for its lack of same), and in general Jane and Carr are both more fleshed out. (The edition I have of You're All Alone is an Ace paperback including the 40000 word short novel and two novelets: "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" and "The Creature from Cleveland Depths", both very well worth reading as well.)

Old Bestseller: Lavender and Old Lace, by Myrtle Reed

Old Besteller: Lavender and Old Lace, by Myrtle Reed

a review by Rich Horton

Sometimes -- often! -- the life stories of the writers of these Old Bestsellers are more interesting, more lurid, than the stories in their novels. I've covered a couple of writers who were murdered in the past. Here's a writer who committed suicide at the age of 36, despite what seems to have been a fair amount of commercial success. To be sure, commercial success does not necessarily translate to personal happiness.

Myrtle Reed was born in 1874 in Chicago. Her father was a preacher and the editor of a literary magazine (the Lakeside Monthly), and her mother was a writer on theological subjects. Myrtle published juvenilia as early as the age of 10, and continued to write, though she showed signs of depression from early on, and did not attend college after a breakdown. Her first novel, Love Letters of a Musician (1899), went through at least 15 printings, and the book at hand, Lavender and Old Lace (1902) was also wildly successful. (My copy is a Grosset and Dunlap reprint from 1907.)

Reed married James McCullough, who worked in real estate, in 1906, after a courtship of some 15 years. Alas, the marriage does not seem to have been a success, and McCullough turned to drink, and spent considerable time away from home. Reed, long a user of Veronal, committed suicide in 1911. This quote, from her posthumous novel Threads of Gray and Gold, seems possibly only too personal: "The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it's a mushroom. If you die, it's a toadstool."

(Incidentally, as Greg Feeley divined, this title was what Joseph Kesselring was riffing on when he gave his play Arsenic and Old Lace its title.)

So, what of this novel itself? I have to say, I found it kind of a mess. A promising mess, in that the established situation could have resulted in a pretty neat story. But the novel fumbles things badly.

It opens with 25 year old Ruth Thorne coming to her aunt's house by the sea for a few months of rest. She's had some sort of health breakdown, and needs to take a few months off her job as a women's issues reporter for a newspaper. (Her job is presumably in New York, and her Aunt's house must be in, perhaps, Connecticut? Never made clear.) Oddly, though, Ruth's aunt, Miss Jane Hathaway (whom she has never met) has gone overseas on a suddenly planned trip. Ruth meets the maid of all work, Hepsley, and settles in to a very languid life, her only duty a strange one: to light a lamp and leave it in the window of the attic every night.

Soon Ruth has explored the attic and found some curious hints of an interesting past for her aunt. A seafaring man seems to have been important. And a man named Charles Winfield is mentioned. Along with a notice of Mr. Winfield's marriage to another woman, and that woman's death. But Rose is a gentlewoman, and refuses to snoop further.

Soon she encounters an old, but perhaps estranged, friend of Miss Hathaway, a Miss Ainslie. Miss Ainslie obviously has her own secrets, and she is considered very odd by the rest of the village. But Ruth and Miss Ainslie quickly become very close friends. More complications arise from M iss Hathaway's maid Hepsley's extended courtship by a local yokel; and then by the appearance of a young man who also works on a newspaper, and who also is on a rest cure -- in his case, his eyes have failed him. This man has the intriguing name of Carl Winfield. Before long Ruth is reading the daily newspaper to Carl, and as the reader expects, they begin to become close ...

The resolution is prompted by the sudden return of Miss Hathaway, who is no longer Miss Hathaway, but instead Mrs. Ball. Mr. Ball is named James, and he seems not too happy about his perhaps forced marriage. It seems he is the mysterious man in Miss Hathaway's past, who maybe ran away to sea to escape her clutches. Then what of the mysterious Charles Winfield? And the light in the window? And Miss Ainslie's past, not to mention her unusual interest in young Carl Winfield?

I'm sure you can all guess the answers to these questions. Alas, they are revealed in a terribly anticlimactic fashion. So the novel really disappoints. But there are lots of interesting elements. Hepsley and her beau, for example, are sometimes amusing comic foils. So too is James Ball, and his relationship with his new wife, the former Miss Hathaway, is also played, fairly effectively, for laughs. And the whole story of the light in the window, and Miss Ainslie's secret, is reasonable scaffolding for a cool mystery. But for all that, Reed just doesn't make the whole mix work.

Birthday Review: Stories of Michael Moorcock

Today's birthday review is of one of the most significant figures in SF history, SFWA Grand Master Michael Moorcock. Moorcock, who turns 80 today, was a hugely important editor, the man who helmed New Worlds through the mid to late 1960s, the very apex of the New Wave. He was also (is also!) a major writer, with contributions to heroic fantasy, to science fiction, and to literary fiction.

My reactions to Moorcock have been wildly varied. I loved Behold the Man when I read it as a novella at age 14 or so in a Nebula volume. I adored the Dancers at the End of Time series. But I never got on at all with his Jerry Cornelius stories. I read a few Elric novels and my reaction was more or less "Meh". And I've run across a few stories over time that I just hated. I compare him to James Blish as one of the few writers who could be just terrible on occasion, and absolutely brilliant the next time out.

Below I offer a set of review of some of his stories, mostly less well-known. Some are from Locus reviews, and some are from much earlier. Some of the stories are weak, some are very good. And it all opens with, of all things, a look at a letter he wrote very early in his career!

Retro-Review of Fantastic, July 1962

The letter column was quite irregular in Fantastic, but it's present in the July issue, for something of a special occasion, perhaps. Michael Moorcock, then a very young writer (his first story, in collaboration with Barrington Bayley, appeared in New Worlds in 1959, and his first solo work in 1961 in Science Fantasy), had read comments about Mervyn Peake and his Gormenghast books in Fantastic earlier that year, and he wrote to mention that Peake (whom he knew well) was seriously ill and unlikely to write another Titus Groan Book. He commends the anthology Sometime, Never to the Fantastic readership (which included good stories by Peake, William Golding, and John Wyndham). He disputes reader Pat Scott's contention that the Gormenghast books were "Gothic" (a common characterization), and instead suggests Peake's writing, despite the grotesqueries and "purple prose", is more objective -- more like Shakespeare than Dylan Thomas. He compares Steerpike to Richard III. He laments the likelihood (which proved true) that Peake would write no more. He praises Fritz Leiber highly (much better, he suggests, than Dunsany). And he finds time to praise Fantastic in particular.

Retro-Review of Science Fiction Adventures, November 1962

The lead "Short Novel" is Michael Moorcock's "The Sundered Worlds", at 24,000 words. The blurb for "The Sundered Worlds" reads "Michael Moorcock, a rising young London author, has been making quite a name for himself in our bi-monthly companion Science Fantasy. With a developing flair for other-world descriptiveness, we prevailed upon him to try a long science fiction story -- with the following surprising result." (I assume Carnell meant to ascribe the "developing flair for other-world descriptiveness" to Moorcock, though a strict reading of that sentence would suggest it concerns the means Carnell himself used to convince Moorcock to try SF.) I haven't read any of Moorcock's earlier stories, those that made him a "rising young ... author". Certainly his later career bears out Carnell's belief in him. But "The Sundered Worlds" does not!

"The Sundered Worlds" is, to put it mildly, a mess. It begins like a low-grade imitation of A. Bertram Chandler, and sort of makes up stuff as it goes along to get worse, trending towards a transcendent ending that would have been OK if it had been set up better. I was reminded, besides Chandler, of the sort of wild pulp flights of imagination that I associate with a much earlier time -- John Boston suggests Planet Stories, but I was thinking of something earlier and less pure adventure oriented. All this could certainly be made to work, after a fashion, but it doesn't work here. The writing is downright poor (at the sentence level), the imagination is slapdash, the characterization is arbitrary (and sexist), and of course the scientific rationale is nonexistent.

The hero is Renark, a powerful Guide Senser, who meets with his friends Talfryn and Asquiol, the latter a disgraced nobleman, on the isolated Rim planet Migaa. From this planet the three plan to transition to the "Shifter", a curious planetary system that apparently traverse several universes in an extra-dimensional path. Renark apparently believes he must learn the secret of the Shifter System, for, it transpires, the Human universe has begun to contract, and humanity must find another universe to inhabit. The three men, along with a beautiful young woman Asquiol has taken up with, Willow, make their way to the Shifter. After fighting off an attack from hostile aliens, they find the world colonized by humans who have made it to the Shifter. There Renark must find a mad woman called Mary the Maze, who has visited the strange planet called Roth, or Ragged Ruth -- a planet that exists simultaneously in many dimensions. There Renark will meet aliens who will lead him to the ultimate secrets of the nature of the multiverse, and the possible destiny of humans, if they can evolve themselves sufficiently. Or something like that.

In description it doesn't sound hopeless. But in execution it is. I really suspect Moorcock didn't know where he was going as he wrote the story. I also think he was still learning to write -- the prose seems to improve as the story continues (or else I became acclimated to the style). What was going on? Andy Robertson suggests that Moorcock was cynically working out his hatred of SF, by writing a story so bad that it would demonstrate the emptiness of the genre. I have to doubt that was really his intention. At any rate, he demonstrated rather that it was possible to write a really bad SF story -- but I think we knew that already. John Boston suggests more of an attempt to recreate an old style of superscience story, with a dimension-transcending fate for humanity, etc. etc. This seems closer to the mark -- the problem being that by 1962 such a story needed a greater degree of writing skill and imagination than may have been necessary in, say, 1936.

It occurs to me that I have perhaps been harder on this story than I would be if the same thing was written by someone I had never heard of. This may well be -- I expect more from a celebrated writer like Moorcock, and thus I may be more critical when my expectations aren't met. And the Moorcock of 1962 may simply not have had the skills that he eventually developed.

There is a sequel, "The Blood Red Game", that appeared in the last issue of Science Fiction Adventures, #32. I'll be reviewing that in a day or two. The two stories combined were published as a novel, under each title at different times: The Sundered World and The Blood Red Game.

Retro-Review of Science Fiction Adventures, May 1963

(Cover by Gerard Quinn)

"The Blood Red Game" is a direct sequel to "The Sundered Worlds". The protagonist of "The Sundered Worlds", Lenark, went down with the ship -- or universe -- at the end of that story, so this time around the nominal hero is Asquiol. He leads an expedition of humans to another universe, where they encounter inexplicably hostile aliens. It turns out the aliens believe in resolving conflict via games, and they agree to play the "Blood Red Game" of the title with humans in lieu of direct war. But the humans, not surprisingly, are losing anyway -- the game, a sort of telepathic battle of intimidation, was invented by the aliens after all.

Luckily a rebellious man named Roffrey fled the earlier space battle out of a combination of cowardice and orneriness. He makes his way to the Sundered World of the previous story, and there meets Asquiol's one time lover Willow, and Asquiol and Lenark's former associate Talfryn. Roffrey also tracks down Mary the Maze, the madwoman from the previous story. She turns out (that is to say, Moorcock's conveniently makes it up on the spot) to be Roffrey's estranged wife. The four head back to the other universe and -- surprise -- they turn out to be fabulously good players of the Blood Red Game. Naturals, you might say. Well -- 20 some thousand words later, the aliens are vanquished, Mary is sane, Asquiol is a god more or less, and "The multiverse ... delighted them ..."

Review of Leviathan 3 (Locus, May 2002)

I was less impressed with Michael Moorcock's "The Camus Referendum", a Jerry Cornelius story, to do with future corporatism and war, which frankly reduced me to pretty much reading sentences without assigning them meaning. This happened to me with a similar Jerry Cornelius story in Interzone a couple years back. I can only conclude that I am out of sympathy with Moorcock's aims here. There is also a Moorcock novel excerpt, "The Vengeance of Rome, Chapter 3", which is nicely written but which reads like a novel excerpt and not like a complete story.

Locus, April 2004

One very intriguing debut publication is Argosy, a magazine launched at least somewhat in the tradition of the early 20th Century magazine of that name, in that it will feature a "catholic" array of stories -- stories from all genres. One bit of welcome news is that each issue will feature a separately bound novella. The novella for January-February 2004 is Michael Moorcock's "The Mystery of the Texas Twister". Metatemporal investigators Seaton Begg and Taffy Sinclair investigate a dastardly plot to start an unjust war, involving Texas politicians. I was a bit disappointed, as the action was downright silly without really being very funny.

Locus, November 2007

Interzone’s July-August issue is a Michael Moorcock special. It includes an interesting extract from a memoir of Mervyn Peake that Moorcock is working on, a Guest Editorial, an interview, a novel extract, and one new story, “The Affair of the Bassin les Hivers”, a very entertaining story of a murdered prostitute and time travel, featuring as usual for Moorcock members of his multiversal repeating cast, such as Una Persson.

Review of Solaris 2 (Locus, February 2008)

Michael Moorcock’s “Modem Times” is a wild mélange of incidents across his multiverse – these stories have never been to my taste (perhaps I need to have read more of Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories to get them) – but I suspect this will appeal to devotees of the Cornelius branch of Moorcock’s storytelling. (For me, I’ll take more Seaton Begg and more Jherek Carnelian.)

Locus, June 2008

Another more traditional kind of weirdness is displayed in the long Elric story Michael Moorcock offers, “Black Petals” (Weird Tales, March-April). Elric is seeking a flower which blooms but once a century, and which he hopes will offer him a way to avoid using Stormbringer, the sword that when drawn must kill, and that he must use to sustain his life. He joins a party formed by a couple of sisters who wish to rescue their father, who was lost in the ruined city of Soom, where the flower blooms. It is reasonably conventional Sword and Sorcery – that is, conventional in the way the genre was redefined by the likes of Moorcock – and while it’s familiar stuff, it’s quite effective.

Locus, October 2010

There are plenty further excellent stories in Stories, for example Michael Moorcock’s novelette also called “Stories”, a roman à clef retelling the history of New Worlds as if it had been a mystery magazine instead of SF, and featuring thinly disguised versions of the likes of Tom Disch and J. G. Ballard.

Birthday Review: Stories of Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett would have turned 92 today. Last year I reviewed his Psi-Power trilogy with Laurence M. Janifer as by Mark Phillips, all serialized in Astounding, beginning with "That Sweet Little Old Lady". This year, a look at some of his short fiction, that I've covered in a number of my looks at old SF magazines.

Retro-Review of Space Science Fiction, May 1953

Garrett's "Instant of Decision" features an intelligence agent tracking down a saboteur who discovers a mysterious and invulnerable intruder. The agent recovers a device from the intruder which turns out to be instructions for students of a future Galactic Empire studying Ancient Earth. Was the intruder a time traveler? At the same time he is assigned to track down a spy from the "Eastern League", with the hopes of averting a nuclear war. But the spy gets away, and the agent follows ... leading to a tense confrontation and a rather ironic ending, Not a bad story, not a great one.

Retro-Review of Science Fiction Adventures, December 1956

The most amusing aspect of this magazine is the contents list. In particular, it includes one story by Robert Randall, who, as most know, was actually Chum Robert Silverberg in collaboration with Randall Garrett. It also includes a story by Calvin Knox and David Gordon. Well, Calvin Knox was Silverberg's nicely Protestant pseudonym, and David Gordon was a pseudonym for -- Randall Garrett! The Robert Randall story is "Secret of the Green Invaders", the Knox/Gordon story is "Battle for the Thousand Suns". There is also a story by Edmond Hamilton, "The Starcombers", and a short story by Harlan Ellison, "Hadj". So -- an all-star lineup -- though in 1956 Ellison's name surely wasn't that prominent, and "Robert Randall", "Calvin Knox", and "David Gordon" hardly had the clout that "Robert Silverberg" and "Randall Garrett" do in retrospect.

Robert Randall's "Secret of the Green Invaders" is a fairly cute story in the tradition of Eric Frank Russell and Christopher Anvil. Earth has been ruled by a series of alien overlords for about a millennium, after humans nearly destroyed the planet. Galactic politics have led to a confusing series of changes in the particular alien race that rules Earth, but for the past few years the green-skinned Khoomish have been in charge. Josslyun Carter is the leader of a small resistance group descended from the US Marines, but just as he is ready to launch a rebellion attempt, he is arrested. He expects death, but the Khoomish leader has other uses for him ... I daresay most readers will guess the ending twist fairly easily, but its still nicely enough done.

The other Silverberg/Garrett collaboration is rather more routine. In "Battle for the Thousand Suns" Dane Regan is the exiled son of the rightful King of Jillane, one star of the Empire of a Hundred Kings, which controls a thousand or so stars in a globular cluster. The kicker is that humans in this cluster have mutated so that certain males, who have become the nobility, can kill or injure non-nobles by thought. Dane returns to the cluster in disguise and becomes a successful member of the space navy, but attracting too much notice as an up-and-comer is dangerous, and he finds himself the target of duels and nefarious attempts at his life. So he disappears again and returns as a playboy, romancing the daughter of his hated rival, who is poised to become the new Emperor. The end of the story turns partly on a "tradition" pulled rather out of the authors' hat, and partly on a twist about the nature of the new Emperor that seems to in retrospect support the idea of this oppressive nobility ruling the Cluster. On the whole, a competently executed but very ordinary story.

Retro-Review of Imaginative Tales, July 1957

This issue features four stories by some combination of Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg, who, as I recall, were working together at the time, producing reams of fiction for the likes of Hamling. They often collaborated, and they shared pseudonyms. These stories are "Devil's World", by Garrett alone, "Hot Trip for Venus", listed on the TOC as by "Ralph Burke", bylined Garrett above the story's text, and possibly by both Silverberg and Garrett, though Silverberg doesn't remember -- perhaps it was Garrett alone; "Pirates of the Void", as by "Ivar Jorgensen", in this case, says Silverberg, was written by Garrett alone (the "Jorgensen" pseudonym was actually Paul Fairman's, but Hamling thought it was a house name, and to Fairman's distress, he used to slap it on stories by the likes of Silverberg); and finally "The Assassin", by Silverberg alone.

They're mostly fairly weak, though I did like "The Assassin". This is about a man who invents a time machine in order to stop John Wilkes Booth from killing Lincoln. The way his effort (inevitably) fails is very logical. The other stories are all pretty formulaic adventure, and each is at least a twist short of real interest. "Pirates of the Void" is the best of these, I suppose, about a sort of maintenance tech on an artificial satellite who happens to be their when pirates arrive. He has to hide, then find a way (unarmed) to subdue the criminals. I thought he had it a bit too easy ... "Hot Trip for Venus" probably has a more interesting setup, as a space pilot discovers that the spaceship line's owner and son are running drugs to the primitive inhabitants of Venus. He plans to return to Venus and find proof -- but his pilot license is pulled, so he implausibly impersonates another pilot ... and then on Venus it's just a short jaunt into the woods and he runs across the bad guy. Again ... just too easy. Likewise "Devil's World", where a man sent to investigate suspected crime on Mercury is caught and forced to work on the sunside. Again, his eventual turning of the tables was just too easy. And, in all of these stories -- not that it matters, really -- the scientific notions are just silly.

Retro-Review of Infinity, January 1958

"Beyond Our Control" is Randall Garrett at close to his worst -- no trace of his wit, no particular interest to the conception. Yardgoods. It's about a communications satellite that suddenly goes off orbit. It's vital to restore it to the proper place, so after some terribly unconvincing discussions of how it might have had its orbit altered, a robot probe is sent up -- and they find something surprising -- an alien. As I said, really a weak story.

Retro-Review of Fantastic, January 1959

“The Price of Eggs”, by Randall Garrett, is fairly silly SF, not uncommon for Garrett, with a distinct sexual aspect, unusual perhaps in SF of that day.

It is set on a planet occupied by a very humanoid race, which therefore humans decide, magnanimously, not to terraform. They are trying to negotiate a deal for an anti-cancer drug (available from a local plant), when one of the diplomats gets himself involved with a local princess. The problem is, the local species, for all that they are very humanoid (and the women very pretty), are egg-layers. And not, obviously, interfertile with humans.

The man in question is forced to marry the princess he’s gotten involved with, and if he can’t ensure the succession in a fairly short time, well, he’ll be executed. (Because of course divorce is unthinkable for a royal woman.) A sharp young Lieutenant is given the job of extricating the foolish man, and he comes up with a (reasonably science-fictional) solution.

As I said, it’s kind of silly, and it goes on too long for its (negligible) substance, but it’s entertaining enough anyway. (As I have noted before, the title of the “King” of the alien species here is “Shann,” and Garrett doesn’t miss the opportunity to originate a horrible pun that Roger Zelazny repeated in Lord of Light.)

Retro-Review of Analog, July 1961

The opening novelette is Randall Garrett’s “A Spaceship Named McGuire” (15200 words). A troubleshooter is hired to solve two problems for Mr. Ravenhurst, a leading spaceship manufacturer. One problem is that his new model spaceship, controlled by an AI (named McGuire, rather tritely as an abbreviation for the model number), has a problem – the AI keeps going insane. The other problem is that his daughter is intractable, and needs a bodyguard to make sure she gets to finishing school.

That the two problems are related is not a surprise – alas, the rather sexist working out of things is not a surprise either. This story had promise for a while, but flattened horribly at the end.

Retro-Review of Fantastic, January 1962

“Hepcats of Venus” is the sort of thing Randall Garrett could (and often did) toss off fairly casually, or so it seems to me: mildly amusing, a bit topical (if in this case by the time of publication probably a tad out of date), not too concerned with plausibility either as to scientific details or plot. Lord and Lady Curvert are supposedly British aristocrats but in reality they are Galactic Observers, charged with protecting the nascent Earth society from themselves and from nasty extraterrestrials. They notice that a jazz trio is making a splash at the Venus Club in New York… and that the the instruments seem to be part of the players’ bodies. Of course this all turns out to be a dastardly plot by shapechanging aliens…

Retro-Review of F&SF, February 1966

"Witness for the Persecution" is a fast-moving story in which a businessman attempting to introduce anti-gravity, and hence cheap space travel, is targeted for assassination by the Powers That Be -- but a mysterious visitor saves him almost against his will. Enjoyable enough, if minor.

Birthday Review: Stories of Philip K. Dick

Birthday Review: Stories of Philip K. Dick

Today would have been Philip K. Dick's 91st birthday. Here's a look at some of his short fiction, based on my reading or rereading them in old copies of SF magazine.

Retro-Review of Space Science Fiction, May 1953

Finally, "Second Variety" is justly one of the best known of Philip Dick's early stories. It was also made into a recent movie (Screamers (1996)). The US and Russia are fighting an endless war. Everyone is underground or on the Moon, and the war is continued by the means of robots, shaped like wounded soldiers, little boys, beautiful women, etc. The idea is that people try to help the wounded soldier, for instance, and it blows up after a certain time. The story turns on the real identity of a "Second Variety" of robots, which in the end is (inevitably) autonomous robots that will continue the war on their own, after having killed all the humans.

Retro-Review of Space Science Fiction, September 1953

The novella is another strong story, Philip K. Dick's "The Variable Man". It's very long indeed at about 26,000 words. In 2136, the Earth is engaged in a war with the Centaurian Empire, an ancient alien empire, somewhat decadent but still powerful, that is keeping Earth hemmed in from any expansion to the stars. The Security Commissioner, Reinhart, is looking for an excuse to launch an attack on Proxima Centauri to resolve the war, but he is waiting for the "SRB computers" to decide that the odds favor Earth. Finally, a promised super weapon, based on a failed FTL drive design, is almost ready. It will destroy the Centaurian base planet, making a human victory likely. He orders the attack, but two problems occur. First, it seems the delicate wiring of the bomb's circuitry is causing problems. Second, a time travel project has mistaken taken a man from the early 20th Century to 2136. The introduction of this "variable man" into the SRB computers' calculations makes reliable statistical estimation impossible. Reinhart tries to capture, then kill, the man, by the most over the top means imaginable. But the man is a "fix-it" guy, with an instinctual ability to sense how to repair machines, and the leader of the bomb project decides he needs the "variable man" to fix his bomb. Remember what the bomb was originally designed for? That kind of tells you how the story ends -- in some ways an oddly optimistic ending for Dick, after a story that rather cynically described humans acting mostly very badly.

Retro-Review of Science Fiction Stories #1, 1953

And Philip K. Dick's "The Eyes Have It" (1400 words) is a little bit of amusing paranoia about a man who realizes that aliens are invading masquerading as humans. How does he know -- basically, by reading a bunch of passages from Thog's Masterclass, in which body parts are shown to be able to do implausible things, as in the phrase "the eyes slowly roved about the room". Surely only an alien could send its eyes roving?

Retro-Review of Cosmos, July 1954

Dick's "Of Withered Apples" is a sad little story, to my mind somewhat uncharacteristic of Dick, a fantasy about a young wife who feels called to a withered apple tree, and what happens when she eats one of the apples.

Retro-Review of Galaxy, October 1954

The opening novelette is Philip K. Dick's "A World of Talent" (14800 words). This is an interesting story that is almost really good but falls just short. It's set on a colony of Proxima Centauri. The colony is dominated by Psis with various talents, though there are also "Normals" and "Mutes". The colony wants to be independent of Earth, partly because on Earth Psis are persecuted. The problem is, the Psis on the colony are ready to start persecuting Normals: and everybody persecutes Mutes. The protagonist is a Precog, Curt, trapped in a loveless marriage to another Precog. Their child, intended to be a super-Psi, instead seems to be a Mute, and to be obsessed with beings no one can see. Curt is one Psi who wants to work for a tolerant society, but the other Psis, including his wife, see that as treason to their class. But Curt has found a woman on another planet who as a new power -- she is an "Anti-Psi". He sees this an inevitable, and something to be encouraged, but of course his fellows want Anti-Psis eliminated. Moreover, Curt has fallen in love with her. The resolution turns on the very strange power that Curt's son turns out to have. It's kind of frustrating: the story seems very close to brilliance, but just doesn't quite work. Part of the problem is that I can't believe very easily in Precognition, and especially Curt's son's power is difficult to describe or represent. '


Retro-Review of Fantastic, February 1964

The most significant novelet, surely, is Philip K. Dick’s “Novelty Act.” This story mixes a strange set of notions, all very Dickian — the country is ruled, it seems, by an immortal First Lady (Nicole) who takes a new husband as President every four years, based partly on talent shows. There are also papoolas, natives of Mars, that everyone loves, perhaps because of their telepathic powers. And a jalopy dealer named Loony Luke with a plan to send people to Mars. And the central character, Ian Duncan, an aging resident of the Abraham Lincoln apartments, who plays classical music for a jug band and hopes to win a talent contest and meet the First Lady. Pretty weird stuff, really, and very much of the Philip Dick flavor, but perhaps, I thought, more of an undeveloped idea that could have been a novel than a truly successful novelet.

Retro-Review of Amazing, July 1964

The third novelet is by another major writer, the most significant in this issue, "A Game of Unchance", by Philip K. Dick, concerns a colony planet visited by a traveling carnival. They have the usual rigged games, but it turns out one of the colony boys has psi powers -- and he can detect that the carnies are using their psi to rig the games. He is able to overcome their efforts and win some valuable prizes -- but they turn out to be booby-trapped. The colony is in danger ... and then another carnival comes, with perhaps just what they need. And the same deal applies, and the young boy realizes he can outwit this carnival psi individual as well -- the colony is saved. But ... isn't it a bit convenient that his powers are always just enough to beat the carnival psi powers?

Birthday Review: Capsules of two novels by John Sladek

This would have been John Sladek's 82nd birthday. Alas, he died in 2000, only 62. Last year I reviewed his novel Bugs in this space, and I have also reviewed his novel Tik-Tok. I'll post links to those reviews below, but in addition, here are some very short capsule reviews of two more of his novels.

Review of Bugs

Review of Tik-Tok

The Reproductive System

When John Sladek died, I realized I had never read any of his novels, so I dug out a copy of The Reproductive System that I'd had for a while, and figured I'd read it.  (This novel was called Mechasm when Ace published it in the US: the British title is much much better, and makes much more sense.) This is a satirical novel about a company in Nevada (or maybe Utah) which hires a mad scientist who designs self-reproducing, intelligent machines.\ Soon the machines escape and threaten to take over the world.  The plot isn't the main interest, of course.  Indeed, the book isn't that well structured: there is an almost wholly unconnected subplot about Americans and Russians spying on French efforts to launch a rocket to the moon.  But though some of the humor is dated, most of it is still pretty incisive.  Parts of the book are laugh out loud funny, while also being observant and effectively satirical.  Definitely a worthwhile read.



Black Aura

John Sladek wrote a couple of mysteries in the 1970s, featuring as a detective an American living in London, Thackeray Phin.  (Sladek himself was at that time an American living in London, though I believe he moved back to Minnesota for the last several years of his life.)  I bought Black Aura, I believe the second of the series.  (I am not sure there were any more than two: the first book, I think, was Invisible Green.)  Thackeray decides to investigate a medium who is running a society called the Aetheric society (or something). He simply wishes to figure out her methods (which are conventional medium fraudulence), but while he is living with the society a couple of murders occur, which he ends up solving.  It's an OK read, and sometimes reasonably funny, but not nearly as funny as for example his SF novel Mechasm.  Plus, the plot is a bit implausible, and the solution to the murders is pretty clever, but as usual overcomplicated.  Good enough that I figure I'll try the other one, but nothing near as good as his remarkable SF satires.

Birthday Review: Julian Comstock, by Robert Charles Wilson

Julian Comstock, by Robert Charles Wilson (2009)

a review by Rich Horton

It strikes me about Julian Comstock that it's not very high-concept, which is a departure for Robert Charles Wilson, whose books are often built on quite striking SFnal ideas, such as the time-slowing barrier around Earth in Spin, or the weird reversion to prehistoric times of Darwinia. Julian Comstock, instead, has a fairly straightforward post-Collapse scenario. In the '50s a book like this would have been set after a nuclear war. Julian Comstock, instead, is set in the 22nd Century after an economic collapse caused at least in part by global warming. The United States, which now includes Canada, has devolved to essentially a religiously-dominated monarchy, though the "President" is still elected. The narrator is Adam Hazzard, ambiguously a member of the "leasing class". (American society has become formally divided into three classes: Aristos, leaseholders, and indentured laborers.) He lives on an estate in Athabaska, somewhere (I presume) in what is now western Canada but has become one of the 60 states of the U.S. His closest friend is Julian Comstock, the nephew of the President, sent to Athabaska to keep him out of sight of his Uncle, who is suspicious of any rivals, and who in fact had Julian's father executed when he seemed to be becoming too popular. Adam is an eager reader of boys adventure books, and indeed hopes to become a writer. (As it is clear he does, this book being purportedly his account of Julian's career.) Julian is also interested in books, but more particularly banned "Philosophy": that is to say, 20th and 21st Century science, now banned by the religious authorities.

The US is engaged in a protracted war with the "Dutch", who occupy Labrador. Adam and Julian end up conscripted into the Army, but Julian takes an assumed name to avoid his Uncle's attention. Much of the novel then follows their military career -- first in Montreal, then campaigns in Labrador. For Adam this is significant as he falls in love with a rather odd young woman, a singer, and gains her affection (ambiguously, perhaps) when he rescues her from her abusive brothers. Adam also meets a war reported who gives him advice on writing, meantime stealing Adam's firsthand accounts of battles and passing them off as his own work. This becomes particularly significant when Julian, in classic style, reveals his bravery and military brilliance -- and Adam's account becomes a bestseller, and they return to New York, to deal with Julian's Uncle.

The rest of the story concerns Julian's conflict with his tyrannical and insane Uncle, and his eventual plans for a better government. All this is complicated by his anti-religious attitudes, and by the enmity the established Church leaders have for him. Julian also becomes obsessed with bringing Philosophical ideas back, going so far as to sponsor the production of an adventure film about Charles Darwin. All this, of course, cannot end quietly.

I liked the novel a lot. Robert Charles Wilson is a wonderful writer. Adam and Julian are both interesting characters. Adam in particularly is almost absurdly naive, and that comes through in nearly every line of the book. Julian is more complicated, and his career, which in my brief synopsis looks clichedly heroic, is much more ambiguous -- and believable -- in Wilson's telling. It's a very fine addition to a really impressive corpus.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson turns 66 today. He's been one of the most consistently interesting SF novelists for over three decades, and he won the Hugo for Best Novel for Spin (2005). He's also won a Philip K. Dick Award, and a Campbell, and a few Auroras. Besides Spin I particularly liked his novel Darwinia (1998). He hasn't written as much short fiction, but that he has written has also been very impressive. Here's a set of my reviews of his short fiction.

From my summary of Original Anthologies from 2000

Of the novelettes, my clear favorite was "The Dryad's Wedding" by Robert Charles Wilson, from Star Colonies.  This is a sequel to his 1999 short novel Bios.  It deals with the colonization of the very "hostile" world featured in the novel, a couple of centuries later, and a young woman who has died and been revived.  She begins to sense the world trying to communicate with her -- Wilson's explanation for this is a bit mystical, definitely building on the mystical ending to Bios, but philosophically interesting.  And the resolution to the story is honest and sad.

Locus, March 2006

And the best story in FutureShocks is Robert Charles Wilson’s thought-provoking “The Cartesian Theater”, which finds a very appropriate way of speculating about machine rights, human identity, even the idea of a soul, in a well-framed and well-told story of a man in an ambiguously prosperous future telling his dead grandfather about a disgusting but legal staging of a simulated (or was it?) death.

Locus, January 2007

Robert Charles Wilson, in Julian: A Christmas Story, does very interesting work with what is again familiar material. In a way this is a story I’ve read, in one form or another, in many 50s magazines: a post-holocaust story, with an anti-science religious/political ruling party controlling the remnants of civilization, as a young man with heretical (i.e. pro-scientific) ideas bids to challenge the new orthodoxy. But the holocaust here is not nuclear but rather environmental, and the new political order is reflective of our contemporary politics. And the characters – primarily the narrator Adam and his aristo friend Julian, two boys about to be embroiled in an apparently ongoing war – are elegantly depicted. I’m not sure if this is the beginning of a longer story – I’d be glad to read it if so – or if the full “story” here is the subtly limned background and nicely hinted future – either way it is a wholly satisfying novella. [Indeed it did become a novel, and my review of that is posted at the link below:

Review of Julian Comstock]

Review of Fast Forward 1 (Locus, February 2007)

More solid work includes Robert Charles Wilson’s “YFL-500”, in which a not very successful artist who does not dream finds a way to create a great work of art when he gets access to another person’s dream (in a sense). Then he tracks down that person – leading to a wry ending. I particularly liked the nature of the art genre described.

Locus, April 2009

And then to Other Earths and Robert Charles Wilson, who offers a grim look at race relations in a US in which the Civil War was avoided, in “The Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe”. A white photographer accompanies a black historian trying to document the terrible events at a sort of work camp for freed black men that to us resembles the Nazi work camps. Wilson is as ever convincing and oblique, not settling for showing simply the horrible alternative history but showing us in the characters of the leads the way changed history affected real people.

Locus, January 2013

Finally, Gardner Dozois offers a first rate new anthology in audio form: Rip-Off!. The conceit is that each story begins with a famous first line, and goes on from there, presumably riffing on the story it's “ripping off”. The best two stories open and close the book. Robert Charles Wilson's “Fireborn” is based on a Carl Sandburg story. It's pastoral in mood, about a Onyx and Jasper, two “commoners” who encounter a fireborn “skydancer” – a woman who has lived multiple lives, trying to earn “transit to the Eye of the Moon”. The story slowly reveals the nature of the “fireborn”, and the ambitions of Onyx and Jasper, as Jasper is lured to become an apprentice to the skydancer. This is excellent “posthuman” SF in which the posthumans are just as human as the “commoners”.

Birthday Review: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt

Today is Tim Pratt's birthday. Last year on this date I published a set of reviews of his short fiction. Here's a look at his first novel. I'm tempted to say "He got better", which is true, but also unfair to this book, which is still quite enjoyable.

Birthday Review: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, by Tim Pratt

A review by Rich Horton

About The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl I think I can say, as I did with another novel: "this is a very promising first novel, and well worth reading, but also quite clearly a first novel." This book is Urban Fantasy, despite not being set in Seattle or Minneapolis or Newford. That said, it has an original flavor: the fantastical elements have an Old West manifestation.

The protagonist is Marzi (short for Marzipan: hippie parents), night manager of a coffee shop in Santa Cruz called Genius Loci. Marzi is an artist, having dropped out of UC Santa Cruz after a nervous breakdown a couple years previously. She draws a fairly successful underground comic called The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, about a woman who travels to a fantasy Old West and confronts weird villains. Her best friend is Lindsay, a talented bisexual artist still at UCSC. Lindsay keeps trying to set her up with men, but Marzi is skittish just now, after the breakdown. Then a new young man moves in above the coffee shop. Jonathan is studying Garamond Ray, a modestly famous artist who painted the walls of the coffee shop before disappearing during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Lindsay pounces immediately, and perhaps surprisingly has a bit of success pushing Marzi at him.

But at the same time the very strange artist Beej seems to go completely nuts, and starts talking about the Earthquake god. And another couple of artists, Dennis and his ex-girlfriend Jane, act oddly too. In particular Jane seems suddenly to be made of mud, and she seems to want to kill Marzi. All this seems perhaps connected with a locked storeroom, entering which precipitated Marzi's breakdown a couple years previously. That storeroom has an unknown Garamond Ray mural ... which means Jonathan is very interested.

So: Jonathan wants to get into the storeroom. Marzi is afraid, and especially afraid to let anyone else in. Dennis and Jane and Beej are starting to act very strange indeed ... Of course, Marzi will go in, and find a door -- a door that leads inevitably to a version of the Old West that is all too much like her comic. In particular, it holds a chaotic "god" called the Outlaw, who desperately wants to escape back to the real world, and do what he does best: destroy. So when Jonathan lets his curiosity get the best of him (with a little help ...) things go pear-shaped.

And it's up to Marzi to confront her fears, and to learn how to confront the Outlaw in the appropriate manner. Which of course she does, though not without some personal and general cost.

My main problem here was an ending that seemed abrupt and just a bit pat. Yet at the same time several innocent people are killed -- but somehow we are spared emotional involvement with any of the killings -- the characters who die are essentially redshirts, and I felt this a distinct failing. I also felt that the characterization of the villains -- well, Dennis in particular -- was rather lazy. Dennis is a cliche, and not a very interesting cliche.

But as ever when I cite what's wrong with a book I feel I'm overstating things. (Well, not "as ever", but in this case anyway.) The novel is a very engaging read. The good guys, Marzi and Lindsay in particular, are very well portrayed. It's well-written, and the magical elements are well-imagined. It's a good book -- a good first novel, and certainly promising good things to come.

Review: The Chaos Function, by Jack Skillingstead

The Chaos Function, by Jack Skillingstead

Houghton Mifflin (John Joseph Adams Books), 2019

a review by Rich Horton

I've enjoyed Jack Skillingstead's short fiction for a long time, but for whatever reason (mostly that I can't keep up with the SF field's novels that well) I hadn't yet read one of his novels. So when I saw a copy of his latest, The Chaos Function, at Sally Kobee's table in the Archon dealers' room, I figured it was time to remedy that situation.

The protagonist of the novel is Olivia Nikitas, a reporter addicted to what she calls "the Disaster" -- the ongoing crisis always present somewhere in our world. The book is set in the very near future (2029), and as it opens, Olivia is in Aleppo, shortly after the Syrian civil war has come to a shaky conclusion. She's ready to investigate a rumor of a torture cell in the Old City, and she ends up there with her Syrian guide and her current boyfriend, Brian, who is getting a little too important to her for her own comfort. And things go pear-shaped -- the guide and Brian are killed, and in the basement of an old madrassa, Olivia sees an old man die -- and something very strange happens. Something transfers from the old man to Olivia, and she has a vision of a slightly altered future, in which Brian survives. And that turns out to be the case -- only Olivia remembers anything different.

But otherwise the world is suddenly going even more to hell than usual. An apparently weaponized virus has been released, and a pandemic is sweeping the world (except, suspiciously, Russia.) Olivia and Brian return to her Seattle home. But Olivia, ever suspicious, realizes she's being followed ... and before long she's been kidnapped, and ends up in rural Idaho, a captive in a place called Sanctuary. Here she learns that she is now in possession of the ability to change the past -- an ability passed through a series of "Shepherds" since roughly the time of Christ. These Shepherds, now sheltered by a creepy cult-like organization, have tried to steer history onto relatively optimal paths ever since, though they are riven even now by a faction that insists on very conservative changes, and another faction that wants to do more radical things (including using the timeline changes for personal enrichment.) Now Olivia is the new "Shepherd", unless she is killed ... and anyway as a woman she's ineligible. Moreover, this latest crisis, the released bioweapon, may have resulted from her accidental alteration of events to save Brian's life.

Olivia manages to escape, with the help of a couple of discontented Sanctuary members. She's none too sure about the Shepherd rules, either -- there are hints that in the "past" they've not exactly chosen the most beneficial paths. (And "beneficial" is of course a fraught term.) What follows is a desperate chase across half the country and back, and then a return to Syria, as more and more people succumb to the bioweapon. Olivia of course is tempted to change the recent past again and again -- and the results seem more disastrous all the time ...

The endgame is in its broad outlines discernible from the start. The central philosophical questions -- what are the ethics of changing history? who does it benefit? how can it be controlled? -- are interesting, but all lead to a simple answer. In a way, this is disappointing to an SF reader: we have a tendency to want control, to want a path to utopia, to make things right. And Skillingstead wisely dodges this sort of resolution. The other key arc is the characters. Olivia remains interesting throughout -- she's a sharply portrayed protagonist. The other main characters, even Brian, don't quite come into the same focus (though a variety of minor characters convince in their short stays.) Olivia's personal journey is pretty affecting, however, if perhaps her final steps seem a tad pat.

This is a strong novel with its eye usefully aimed right at the current Disaster, outside the US. (The Disaster within our borders is oddly absent -- perhaps things have lurched positively between 2020 and 2029!) It's exciting, even gripping, throughout. I'm glad I finally got to one of Jack's novels.

(Mild disclaimer -- Jack and I once worked at the same company, though half the country apart, and we certainly didn't know each other. (We've met since, a few times.) I don't think that really means all that much, but it's always increased my interest in his fiction.)

The City in the Lake, by Rachel Neumeier

Books Considered: The City in the Lake, by Rachel Neumeier

I run into Rachel Neumeier fairly often at local conventions (she lives in outstate Missouri.) She's written a number of fantasy novels, for Orbit and Saga and other houses, YA and adult both. She gave me a copy of her first novel, The City in the Lake, after the first panel we shared, at Archon quite some time ago. Here's what I wrote about that back then.

It's a YA novel, a fantasy, in general outline a fairly conventional YA fantasy, but quite well done, and achieving real beauty at times. Some of it reminded me a bit of Le Guin, particularly the first Earthsea books, not in plot in any way, but rather something of the feel of the book. I liked it quite a bit, and I hope to see more from Neumeier.

It is set in a mostly peaceful kingdom. The King has two sons. The elder, called the Bastard, is the son of a mysterious woman who came to the City, more or less seduced the King, and then left after bearing his child. The younger is the son of the Queen, a much younger woman who married the King years later. The younger son is of course the heir, and he is widely beloved. The Bastard is instead widely feared, but it seems not for good reasons -- he is in fact an honest man, and very capable, and has no wish to supplant his half-brother as heir -- but people just assume he does. Then the younger son disappears, and no one can find him, and things in the Kingdom start to go wrong.

In a pleasant village remote from the central City, a girl named Timou grows up. Her father, Kapoen, is a wizard, a rather powerful wizard for such a small village, but he is accepted, and does well by the village. Timou never knew her mother, however. She grows up happily enough, learning from her father how to be a wizard, and making friends with the village children, but somehow remaining rather separate. When a young man, Jonas, begins to court her, she puts him off, though she likes him, because she has learned from Kapoen that wizarding and marriage do not mix. Then one spring, as Timou turns 17, disaster strikes: the animals fail to bear, trees won't bear fruit, and Timou's just married friends have stillborn children. The villagers learn that the Crown Prince has disappeared, and of course it is assumed that his disappearance is the reason for the disasters ... Kapoen decides he must travel to the City to help the court wizards find out what has happened, but he charges Timou to stay put.

Of course, after a while she decides she must go to the City as well ... to look for the Prince, or for her father, or for her mother perhaps? She must first travel through the strange forest between her and the City, and that is a strange journey indeed. Then she comes to the City, and also its parallel City, in the Lake, and finds something quite unexpected there. Meanwhile the King has also disappeared, and the Queen blames the Bastard ... And Jonas follows Timou, against her express instructions, and he finds that the path through the forest is different for all different people. Of course, all these people are key to the eventual solution, which is nicely handled, and resolved well, not without loss, but not sadly.

The magic in this book often seems arbitrary, but in quite effective ways. It comes across as magic, not just a different sort of science. The worldbuilding is undeniably rather thin -- at times the world seems to consist only of city/village/forest ... but this isn't a novel that rests on worldbuilding. It rests rather on the characters, and on a little familial tangle, and on magic -- and one some quite nice set pieces, some quite dramatic scenes. Very nice work.

Birthday Review: Stories of Jo Walton

Today is my friend Jo Walton's birthday. In her honor, then, here's a briefish collection of my reviews of some of her short fiction. I wish there could be more, but she is primarily a novelist, and an excellent one. But her short fiction is excellent too -- and there is a collection, Starlings.

Locus, August 2006

Best I think is Jo Walton’s “Down to Earth” (Absolute Magnitude), in which a somewhat naïve young woman from a space habitat travels to Earth to capture squirrels. Only she doesn’t know much about squirrels – or about Earth.

Review of The Best from Jim Baen's Universe from Locus, October 2007

There are other strong stories – Jo Walton’s “What Would Sam Spade Do?” is an amusing and sharp variation on the idea of cloning Jesus.

Locus, April 2009

Jo Walton’s “Escape to Other Worlds With Science Fiction” (Tor.com) is a brief pendant to her Farthing novels, set in the U. S. and quietly showing that it shared England’s darkness.

Locus, July 2009

But the clear standout in Firebirds Soaring is Jo Walton’s “Three Twilight Tales”, which begins with a girl making a man out of “two rhymes and a handful of moonshine” and continues into a tavern, where three separate but closely linked tales unfold, leading with retrospective inevitability to a king in search of a queen who finds something perhaps better.

Locus, May 2014

Jo Walton's “Turnover” (Lightspeed, March) is a strong generation ship story from a rather obscure recent source, a 2013 chapbook published by the UK convention Novacon.

Locus, October 2014

Jo Walton also contributes a strong story to Tor.com in August, “Sleeper”, in which Essie, a biographer in an all too plausible dystopian corporatist future, creates a simulation of her latest subject, Matthew Corley, a fairly famous televison director who had a couple of secrets – he was gay, and he was a Soviet “sleeper” agent. The simulation is ostensibly to help Essie understand her subject better, but the story subtly and almost sadly suggests another reason for her creation, in a dark 21st Century, of a computer simulation of someone who wanted a better world in the 20th Century.

Locus, June 2017

Tor.com in April features a Jo Walton story with a really absorbing central idea. In “A Burden Shared”, technology exists that allows one person to take on another’s pain. The main character, Penny, and her ex-husband take turns sharing their daughter’s pain – she has an incurable condition resulting in constant pain; and without this help her successfully career might be impossible. (Other uses of the tech are mentioned – apparently devoted fans of celebrities clamor to take their idols’ pain for a time – a nice touch, I thought.) But when Penny wakes up Ann’s pain seems worse than usual – and that points up a real issue with the notion: pain does have uses – and, also, if you are sharing someone else’s pain, what about your own? And indeed Penny soon learns that she has cancer – is it possible she missed the signs because she confused that pain for Ann’s pain? The interesting central idea aside, the story is also an effective look at Penny’s emotional landscape.

Birthday Review: Stories of L. Sprague de Camp

For the third straight day I can commemorate the birth of a major Golden Age SF writer (or just post Golden Age, I suppose, in the case of Poul Anderson.) Two days ago it was Anderson, yesterday Frederik Pohl, and today L. Sprague de Camp. All three were named Grand Masters by the SFWA. Here then is a shorter than usual compendium of things I've written about L. Sprague de Camp's short fiction, in this case all from the 1950s.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1951

(Cover by Bob Pepper)

But first, the best known writer and best known story in this issue, L. Sprague de Camp's "The Continent Makers". It's listed by the magazine as a "Complete Novel", which was often a gross exaggeration in pulps of this day, but it should be said that some of the pulps, the Standard Group notable among them, really did publish full length novels in single issues, up to 60,000 words. "The Continent Makers" is a bit shy of the Hugo and Nebula definition of "Novel" (40,000 words), but it's plenty long enough that it might have been published alone in book form, or as an Ace Double half. However, it was instead chosen as the title story of a collection of Viagens Interplanetarias stories first published in 1953, and perhaps for that reason, it's never seemed to me to get as much notice as some de Camp's other work in that series.

Lyon Sprague de Camp (1907-2000) was one of the great SF writers of the "Modern Science Fiction" period -- that is, of John Campbell's birthing, as it were. He was named a Grand Master in 1979. De Camp actually first appeared in Astounding in September 1937, the last issue before Campbell took over, but he quickly became popular working for Campbell, in both Astounding and Unknown, often in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt. His most famous collaborations with Pratt were the Harold Shea "Incomplete Enchanter" stories, and in fact the first two of those are among this years Retro-Hugo nominees. De Camp wrote several extended series -- the Shea stories, the Gavagan's Bar tales, and many more, but his most extended and arguably most popular series is a future history called Viagens Interplanetarias, set in a future dominated by the Brazilians, where Earth has ventured to a number of nearby star systems using only slower than light travel. De Camp wrote in this series to the very end of his career: his second to last novel, The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992) is a Viagens Interplanetarias story.

Many of his VI stories concerned the planet Krishna. The natives are egg-laying and have antennae, but otherwise are remarkably human appearing and in fact most of the stories concern at some level sexual attraction between humans and Krishnans. Krishna's technology is a couple of centuries behind Earth's, and politically they are divided into a variety of often warring states with differing political philosophies -- a lot like Earth, that is, except that by the time of de Camp's stories there is a fairly strong world government.

"The Continent Makers" is sort of a Krishna story, in that two of the main characters are from Krishna, but they are visiting Earth. They are Jeru-Bhetiru and her fiance, Varnipaz bad-Savarum, who is studying Earth law in order to help him in his role as essentially Attorney General for a small nation on Krishna. The main human character is physicist Gordon Graham, who is asked to escort Jeru-Bhetiru, or "Betty", around town while her fiance is away. Graham, of course, falls for the beautiful and habitually underdressed (by Earth standards) Betty immediately, and she seems to return the attraction, which is embarrassing when Varnipaz turns up. All is fine, though, as the Krishnans explain that marriage is purely a practical arrangement, having nothing to do with love, and anyway humans and Krishnans aren't interfertile so where's the harm?

This is really side issue to the main action, which begins more or less immediately with an attack on Graham. He and an unexpected ally, a World Federation cop, fight off the attack and Graham soon learns that the whole things has to do with a plot involving a project Graham has been assisting. There is a plan to set off some bombs under the ocean, causing a release of sufficient magma to form a new continent. This will help with the population on Earth (I shudder to think of the ecological consequences if such a thing could actually be done!), but it seems that the real estate laws (as Varnipaz is happy to explain) mean that the timing of the formation of the new continent is critical. A couple of alien races and some greedy humans have plans to profit by starting the process early. Graham and the cop, along with the brave Krishnans, run around for awhile figuring all this out, then go sailing off to an island at the center of the planned new continent, to foil the bad guys. It's all a bit strained, but that's not the point. It's a pretty fun romp most of the way, with lots of off the cuff grace notes like the "Churchillian Society", which attempts to prove that George Bernard Shaw could not possibly have written the plays attributed to him -- the real author must have been Winston Churchill.

Universe, December 1953

There are nine stories, two of them novelettes. First up is L. Sprague de Camp's "The Hungry Hercynian" (9500 words), the second of four stories he published about Gezun, a sort of comic version of Conan. This story is about a beautiful slave girl who is desired by three individuals (or maybe four): Lord Noish, who has promised her to the title Hercynian sorcerer in payment for help in eliminating a political rival, Derezong, an aging sorcerer who simply wants a biddable concubine, and of course Gezun (the Gadairan), a powerful but perhaps not exactly brilliant young man. Derezong buys her fair and square, but Gezun chivalrously frees her -- only to find that she might not value freedom and his vigorous young charms as much as she enjoys Derezong's less urgent desires and his comfortable home. Meanwhile Noish has a more sinister fate planned. It's pleasant light comedy, nothing special.

Future #28

The last story is a long short story, "Cornzan the Mighty" by L. Sprague de Camp, at 7500 words something that would surely have been labeled a novelette in most of Lowndes' publications. It's a humorous and cynical take on TV production. In this story the actors take a drug that makes them susceptible to suggestion, and they are imprinted to believe that they are really their characters. The "hero" is a writer, in love with the leading lady, who gets in trouble when an artificially enhanced snake threatens to kill some of the production crew after the lead actor mistakenly gets imprinted with Macbeth instead of the Tarzan-like character he's supposed to be. Hilarity ensues, followed by a cynical ending. Minor stuff, but well enough done -- de Camp at less than middle range, but still professional.

Galaxy, July 1955

The other novelet is L. Sprague de Camp's "Property of Venus" (7000 words), a fairly silly but mildly amusing story about a trio of avid gardeners who unwisely buy some seeds smuggled in from Venus. Of course, the Venerian plants have some unexpected properties. Again, minor.

Centenary Review: Short fiction of Frederik Pohl

Today is the centenary of Frederik Pohl's birth. We had a panel in his honor at WindyCon this year, particularly appropriate as Fred was a long-time Chicagoan. He is one of the oldest SF personages I've met -- I shared a panel with him at a Windycon in 2012 perhaps(?), not too long before he died (in 2013, just shy of his 94th birthday.) (The only SF people born before Pohl that I met were David Kyle (very briefly indeed, just a handshake at Chicon in 2012), and Bob Tucker (I was "smoothed" by him at ConQuesT sometime in the late '90s.)) In this honor, then, here's a compendium of things I've written about his short fiction (and one Analog serial) over the years.

Beyond, July 1954

The novella in the July issue is "No More Stars", by "Charles Satterfield" -- a name Frederik Pohl used quite often as a pseudonym, though this time, its first use, it's a Pohl/Lester Del Rey story. It's about a man snatched from death into a world in which some sort of Ptolemaic magic/astrology is true, and an attempt to save the literal firmament from destruction. Not bad, kind of original.

Galaxy, July 1955

The stories include installment 2 of the notorious contest-winning serial "Preferred Risk", by Edson McCann. McCann, of course, was actually Frederik Pohl and Lester Del Rey, who whipped out the novel on short order when Gold couldn't find a worthwhile novel by an unpublished writer to win Galaxy's first novel contest. This installment is about 14,000 words -- I have no other comment as I have never read the story.

The lead novelet is also by Pohl, "The Mapmakers" (12,000 words). Navigating hyperspace is very difficult, and can only be accomplished by especially trained eidetic memories called Celestial Atlases. The Terra II, thus, is in big trouble when a meteor kills their Atlas, and blinds another officer. They seem likely to be stranded thousands of light years from Earth -- unless they can find another way to navigate. Pretty minor Pohl, it must be said.

Galaxy, July 1958

The short stories are by "Paul Flehr", L. J. Stecher, Jr., and Arthur Sellings. "Flehr" is of course a pseudonym for Frederik Pohl. I first read "We Never Mention Aunt Nora" in Pohl's "Best of" collection back in the mid-70s, so the "Flehr" name never fooled me. I'm not sure why he used this pseudonym when he did -- for about 5 stories in 1958 and 1959. Earlier he had used "Charles Satterfield" and "James MacCreigh". (Though the Satterfield name was used at least once for a collaboration with Lester Del Rey (other times for solo stories). The MacCreigh name was used for collaborations with Judith Merril and with Isaac Asimov, but in those cases the story was credited to "James MacCreigh and collaborator".)

At any rate, I really like "We Never Mention Aunt Nora", a brief (3400 words) smart SF horror tale. Aunt Nora is the disreputable relative of an bachelor and his sister -- disreputable because she lost her virtue to a man who later disappeared. The sister falls suddenly in love with a handsome and rich young man, and her brother's objections to the sudden marriage are overcome by wealth and a nice prenup. The ending and the corresponding revelation of Aunt Nora's past are predictable, perhaps, but nicely sprung on the reader.

Galaxy, June 1959

The cover story, as mentioned, is by Frederik Pohl. "Whatever Counts" is a novella of about 22,500 words, and so listed on the TOC. (I think Galaxy was  one of the first SF magazines, if not the first, to use "Novella" as a length category.) A human ship has made it to the planet Aleph Four, with 58 people ready to colonize. But the grey, biped but rhino-like, aliens called Gormen have got their first. The Gormen refuse to communicate or negotiate with humans, and they are preternaturally fast and can control their own ships manually, while humans need computer help. The humans are imprisoned and subjected to experimentation, and their ship is destroyed. The ship's psychiatrist appears to be helping the aliens, leading to general hostility, even from pretty young Rae Wensley, who had previously been one of the few people who liked the man. The situation seems hopeless, but, it turns out, the psychiatrist had a plan all along. I don't think this is one of Pohl's better efforts -- the solution, though clever, is not really plausible, and the characters don't really come into focus.

If, November 1964

It also had one of Frederik Pohl's most sentimental stories, but a pretty effective one: "Father of the Stars", about a man who spent his life and fortune supporting a monumental effort to send Slower Than Light colonizing ships to likely stars, only to see this effort rendered obsolete by the invention of FTL. 

Odyssey, Spring 1976

Pohl's "The Prisoner of New York Island" is a rather obscure piece from him -- I can't find any evidence that it has ever been republished. (And a quick glance at The Years of the City indicates that it wasn't incorporated into that either.) Does anyone know any more about it? The story itself is OK, not great. It's about a couple from a group marriage in Tucson who come to visit the rather decayed New York, sometime in the middle of the 21st Century. Their mission is to find the body of their fiance, who died in an accident. To bury him? Nah, for genetic material.

Cosmos, May 1977

Pohl's "Rem the Rememberer" is a preachy story about a boy who may live in a utopian future and dream of a dystopian alternative, or vice-versa.

Analog, October/November/December 1997

(Cover by Bob Eggleton)

O, Pioneer! by Frederik Pohl is the serial from these three issues.  A computer hacker and his ex-whore lover for some reason decide to emigrate (WHY???) to Tupelo, the Peace Planet, where 5 alien races and humans are trying to build a peaceful society.  The hacker is elected mayor (WHY???), and finds some unpleasant things going on beneath the surface.  Pohl is a very easy writer for me to read: his ironic style keeps me interested throughout, but this seems, well, sort of half thought through, just thrown off in a few days for kicks. The characters are rather unconvincing, the villains are morons, the tech and the planet are not blatantly absurd but don't feel fully imagined either. I must say, it was still fun to read: a lot of that is just Pohl, though, one of those guys who can make laundry lists readable: pretty minor Pohl, though, all in all.  I will add that it's possible that this serialized edition is abridged, and that some of the holes might be patched over in a longer version.




Locus, October 2005

This is in many ways an aging field, and the September Asimov’s provides some evidence of that by featuring stories by two writers in their 80s. But both are close to the top of their form. Frederik Pohl’s “Generations” is a very cynical but also SFnally involving post-9/11 story, following several linked people from 2001 to a few decades in the future. At one level it is a depressing story of political decay, as the West becomes enmeshed in an ongoing war against Islam, with a concomitant decay of civil rights in the U. S. But there is another intriguing aspect, as a discovery about the nature of the universe pulls the foundations from under both science and established religions – but the replacement isn’t exactly nice. Solid work.

Short review of Turn Left at Thursday

(Cover by Richard Powers)

I like to read old short science fiction collections. This is one of the best ways to fill in knowledge of the field's past. Fred Pohl is a very consistently readable author: Turn Left at Thursday is one of his weaker collections, but still readable throughout. The long bookend stories are a bit odd for Pohl, mainly in that they are very Campbellian in their heroic Men against the Aliens themes. "Mars by Moonlight" concerns a group of prisoners on Mars, who have had all memory of their crimes erased. The twist to the story is obvious, and the whole setup is horribly undermotivated. "I Plinglot, Who You?" is better, about a shape-changing alien who plans to trick the nations of the world to solving the problem of Earth's population by starting a nuclear war. But the humans are smarter and especially more courageous than the aliens. OK stuff, nothing much.  Better are a couple of the shorts, "The Hated" and "The Martian in the Attic", which are neat setups with mordant endings.  The others are lesser stuff.  All very '50s in tone.

Birthday Review: Some Lesser Known Poul Anderson Stories

The great Poul Anderson would have been 93 today. I've reviewed several of his Ace Doubles in the past (as one does), so today, in his honor, I thought I'd go back and resurrect some stuff I wrote about some of his more obscure stories, either for Black Gate or in my blog. There are two (also fairly little-known) novels included too, both serialized in Cele Goldsmith's magazines, Amazing and Fantastic. One review is the only one I got to do of him for Locus, one of his last stories, published three years after his death.

Retro Review of Super Science Stories, November 1950

One of the better issues of Super Science Stories is probably the November 1950 issue. The lead novel is a rather well-known Poul Anderson story from this his most pulpy period: "Flight to Forever". For all its occasional silliness, the story impressed T. E. Dikty and Everett Bleiler enough that it was included in their first "Year's Best" collection of short novels: Year's Best Science Fiction Novels: 1952. (1952 is the year of publication of the book: the stories are mostly from 1951, with only "Flight to Forever" from 1950.) It's right about 20,000 words long.  It tells of Martin Saunders, who is part of a team that develops a time machine. He is sent forward in time, hoping to return and tell what he found. But the machine, he finds, cannot go back in time. He ends up going forward, farther and farther. He eventually falls in love with a lusty empress of a star federation far in the future, and helps her fight off her enemies. This despite that he still remembers his beloved Eve at home. Finally, in an ending that anticipates both James Blish's The Triumph of Time and Anderson's own Tau Zero, he goes so far into the future that he cycles back to the beginning of time, and he manages to "time" things so that he does indeed return to Eve. I read this as a teenager and perceived the preposterousness of most of it even then but I still liked it a great deal. It doesn't hold up fully to adult reading but it was still fairly fun to reread.

Retro Review of Worlds Beyond, February 1951

"The Acolytes" is one of a few stories Poul Anderson published set on Nerthus, a new colony planet. (Nerthus is mentioned in passing in Virgin Planet, so it presumably is set in that future.) ("The Green Thumb" is another, featuring the same character (Wilson Pete -- surnames come first in this world), and it was orphaned when Worlds Beyond ceased publication, only appearing a couple years later in Science Fiction Quarterly.). Wilson Pete is a boy staying with his Uncle, an old space hand, on his uncle's farm on Nerthus. Nerthus seems to be an idyllic world, but what are the little animals that seem to be trying to lure him into the woods? And what about those stories of other children who have disappeared? There is, of course, an ecological answer, and a heroic act by his uncle's alien former "batman". OK stuff, nothing special.

Review of Planet Stories, January and July 1951

Now, what were the stories like [in the first three issues of Planet Stories I ever bought]?  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  There aren't any enduring classics in the three issues I have, mind you.  The best known story is Poul Anderson's "Tiger by the Tail", the first Dominic Flandry stories.  In this piece Flandry subverts the aggressive leadership of a "barbarian" alien group of planets on the outskirts of the empire, by setting the leader's lieutenants against each other, fostering suspicion, etc.  In so doing he earns the love of a noble (and nubile!) alien woman, but of course he must leave her.  It's OK, but it's not Anderson at anything like his best: Flandry has things too easy, the time span is hard to believe, the aliens are profoundly unconvincing.

There are two other Anderson stories in the three issues I got.  Both are fairly pure sword and sorcery, though with nods to being on other planets, to make them "SF".  "The Virgin of Valkarion" is the weaker, in my opinion.  The demise of the "39th Dynasty" of Valkarion is at hand: the old King cannot get a child on his (nubile) young wife, the title character.  The corrupt priesthood is ready to take over as the King dies.  But a scarred barbarian mercenary shows up at the town. The "Virgin", who has disguised herself as a whore and let the barbarian have her services, pushes the Barbarian to hack his way to the throne, over the bodies of the priests, thus fulfilling an obscure prophecy.  Competent, in its way, but not original at all, and without any real twists. The other is "Witch of the Demon Seas".  Since it was printed in the same issue as "Tiger by the Tail", it appeared under a pseudonym, A. A. Craig.  It's about a pirate who is captured by the leader of a more civilized empire on another planet (which seems to be a typical Mediterranean-based Sword and Sorcery Ancient Earth setting).  In lieu of death, the pirate is freed by an old sorcerer and his granddaughter, the title witch, to lead them to the "Demon Seas", where the alien Xanthi fish-people terrorize humans.  The sorcerer claims to wish to gain their help in overthrowing the empire. Naturally, on the boat leading to the Xanthi area, the pirate falls in love with the nubile witch.  But when they get there, there is lots of fighting, and some double-crossing, and  decently twisty ending. (Though capped off by a pat, unconvincing, excuse to allow the leads to live happily ever after.)  Again, it's nothing of "enduring value", but it's a fun read.

While I was reading the Craig story I thought it was obviously by Anderson. I admit I knew that in advance, so I was looking for hints, but Anderson does have a pretty characteristic style, and I thought it was definitely in evidence in "Witch of the Demon Seas".  But for example A. J. Budrys, in his letter in a later issue, mentions the story and seems to think that Craig is somebody besides Anderson. (Though to be fair, maybe he did know the truth, but didn't feel proper mentioning it in the letter column, or Bixby might even have excised any such mention.)

Retro Review of Space Science Fiction, February 1953

On to the fiction. The February novelette, Poul Anderson's "Security", is set in a future America which has turned militaristic and oppressive after losing World War III. Allen Lancaster is a loyal scientist who gets recruited for a secret Project, so secret that "the left hand of Security doesn't know what the right hand is doing". After several heady months of successful engineering work, leading to success, he returns to his old job, but finds it unsatisfactory. And the fact that his secret Project involved collaboration with official undesirable types like Martians also begins to affect him. Then the Monitors come for him ... Well, the twist ending isn't much of a surprise. This is decent but not great early Anderson. It seems never to have been reprinted since. (I have a list of Anderson stories that as far as I know have not been reprinted. Would folks like to see it -- in particular, I'd be interested in anyone identifying reprints of some of the stories that I have missed.)

Retro Review of Science Fiction Adventures, July 1953

The novelette is "The Nest", by Poul Anderson (9800 words). To my knowledge, this story has only been reprinted once, in Anderson's Tor collection Past Times (1984). For all that, I think it's a pretty decent story. It's set in a citadel, the Nest, maintained by a Norman Duke who has stolen a time machine. The Nest is located back in time, and the privileged residents maintain a decent lifestyle by raiding other times -- for labor in the form of slaves, and for material, and for animals, such as the dinosaur that our hero, Trebuen, uses instead of a horse. Trebuen is a Cro-Magnon. He has not questioned the morals of the setup at all, but one day he rescues a girl slave from an abusive Nazi. Only it turns out it's not a real Nazi -- it's a wannabe, in the form of the Duke's son. And the rescue involved killing the man. So Trebuen is in trouble -- which raises his political consciousness right quick. He sets out to overthrow the Duke, with the help of a few friends, the slave, and a cute time travel trick. The story doesn't need a sequel, but one could have been written -- what to do with the Nest and the time machine after? As far as I know Anderson never returned to the setup though.

Retro Review of Cosmos, September 1953

"The Troublemakers" is a generation ship story. The hero is part of the aristocracy of the ship -- one of the hereditary Astrogators. But as the story opens, he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit, but might have -- rabble-rousing against the unfair treatment of the lower classes. His punishment is reduction in rank to the lower classes -- where he quickly establishes himself as a good worker, begins to advance, becomes involved to some extent with their revolutionary movement, becomes close friends with the guy who beat him up his first day there, etc. etc. But the corrupt Union boss drives him to a third group, the petty bourgeois -- and soon he is in the midst of a real riot perhaps leading to revolution. But what does all this have to do with getting to Alpha Centauri? The resolution is the sort of twist that would have just shocked and thrilled me at age 13, but which was a bit too easy to see coming at age 45. And indeed the story is a bit tendentious. One interesting recent story that seems to me to be commenting on it is Ursula Le Guin's "Paradises Lost". Not by any means Anderson at his best, but readable stuff.

Retro Review of Universe, December 1953

The other novelette is also light comedy: "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound" (9200 words), one of Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson's Hoka stories. I've never been as big a fan of the Hoka stories as many readers, though I think to some extent I burden the entire series with my dislike of the one late novel, Star Prince Charlie, which I think was quite poor. This story is decent enough, though not really great. The Hokas, of course, are teddy bear like aliens who love to imitate fictional models -- in this story, obviously, they are imitating Sherlock Holmes. Much to the distress of a human IBI agent who is tracking down a nasty alien drug runner who has chosen to hide near the Hoka equivalent of the Baskerville mansion.

Retro Review of Science Fiction Stories, 1953

The lead story is Poul Anderson's "Sentiment, Inc." (11200 words). This novelet has only been reprinted once, in the 1962 Ivan Howard anthology The Weird Ones. I'm not always entirely sure why those Anderson stories that he never collected remained such -- sometimes they are quite decent, though not likely absolute top-drawer. This is the case here. Perhaps he grew to object to the politics -- this story includes an offhand light-hearted jab at the Republican Party.

At any rate ... the story concerns a typical Anderson hero of the period -- a brilliant young man with Physics aptitude who sets up as an Engineer -- engineering being (it is implied) a more virtuous and manly pursuit than physics. He falls in love with an actress, stage name Judy Sanders (she "always wanted to live under the name of Sanders" -- a Winnie-the-Pooh reference that Anderson used himself in choosing his pseudonym Winston Sanders). All is bliss until she suddenly throws him over for a rich man who had also been pursuing her. She seems really, puzzlingly, in love with the other man. The hero gets suspicious and soon figures out that the rich man has found a psychologist with a machine that can more or less brainwash people. He does the "make the girl of my dreams fall for me" thing for rich patrons to get money, but it soon transpires that his real goal, apparently quite sincerely held, is to reform the world, to make everybody virtuous. Naturally, that will not do ... The resolution, actually, is rather too rapid and somewhat pro-forma, but the story does raise interesting ideas along the way.

Retro Review of Dynamic, January 1954

"The Chapter Ends" is Anderson in his melancholy mood. It's nominally one of his Psychotechnic League stories, though set very far in the future. Humanity has decided to abandon Earth, because it's politically convenient to cede the Solar System to some methane breathers. So they need to evacuate the few million remaining residents, who have regressed to a pleasant low tech life. But one stubborn man refuses to leave. I thought the motivations, and the characterizations, and especially the overwrought conclusion, were rather forced.

Retro Review of Cosmos, July 1954

The "Feature Story" this time is not the novella, unlike the other three Cosmos issues. Instead it is Poul Anderson's "Teucan", a short novelette at about 7500 words.

"Teucan" is a Coordination Service story. The Coordination Service pieces are sometimes listed with the Psychotechnic League stories. ("The Troublemakers", from the first issue of Cosmos, is a Psychotechnic League story, though not from the central group due to its setting on a generation ship -- however its emphasis on psychological elites molding society is very characteristic of Psychotechnic League stories.) It seems to me a bit controversial as to whether the Coordination Service stories should be considered part of the Psychotechnic League stories. However, it is true that the Winter 1955 issue of Startling Stories, containing the Pyschotechnic League story "The Snows of Ganymede", includes a timeline chart of Pyschotechnic League stories. Along with this there is an explanation, which lists several stories, "already written but not yet published", that also fit the same future history. One of these is "Star Ways" (retitled The Peregrine for the late 70s reissue), which if memory serves is a Coordination Service story. So if you include "Star Ways", you introduce other Coordination Service pieces, including Virgin Planet. (And as Virgin Planet mentions a world named "Nerthus", maybe you can also add "The Green Thumb" and "The Acolytes" -- Sandra Miesel does, at any rate.)

At any rate "Teucan" is really one of those stories that thinly disguises a version of a past Earth society as an alien society. In this case a Terran Trader finds himself marooned on a primitive planet. The very humanoid natives, it turns out, have a society very much like the ancient Aztecs. Complete with human -- well, in this case alien --  sacrifice. The Trader is soon recruited by be "Teucan" of this society -- the high king, basically. He swallows some revulsion at the prospect of officiating over the sacrifices, and enjoys a time of luxury. Unfortunately, he doesn't grasp another eventual responsibility of the Teucan ... I thought this a pretty minor story for Anderson.

Retro Review of Galaxy, February 1956

The Poul Anderson story, "The Corkscrew of Space", turns out to be a rare Anderson story that has not (as far as Contento and the ISFDB can tell me) been reprinted. It's a trifle, though entertaining enough.  A Martian colonist is in despair as Mars' economy seems to be in collapse, largely because of transportation costs.  His friend, a French (nationality significant!) physicist, has developed the concept of an instantaneous transportation system, but he thinks practical applications are 50 years in the future.  Is there anything that could motivate this Frenchman to somehow push those practical applications through much faster?  The answer is a fairly silly joke, but nicely executed.

Retro Review of Star Science Fiction, January 1958

Poul Anderson's "The Apprentice Wobbler" is a very minor story that reads like a Randall Garrett made-to-order-for-Campbell story, about psi. A corporation sends an engineer to investigate the sma company that has been producing machines that allow people to levitate a move objects and create energy, with the intention of discrediting them. In pure Campbell manner, the guy discovers that psi is a real power, but you can't use it if you have even a shred of disbelief, so the machine is just a placebo to make you think the power is coming from elsewhere blah blah blah. Competent, to be sure, it being Anderson, but not very good. I wonder why he didn't sell it to Campbell? Or maybe Campbell bounced it.

Retro Review of Fantastic, June and July, 1962

(Cover by Richard Powers)

Shield, obviously is a very short "novel" in this serialization. It was published in book form by Berkley in 1963. I have a copy of the 1970 reprint, also from Berkley. (Both editions have covers by Richard Powers, but different ones, and in fact the 1974 Berkley reissue has yet a third different Richard Powers cover.) That version is about 45,000 words long.

This is minor Anderson, but worthwhile reading. I remember liking it on first reading more than I did on this rereading -- that's either the result of several decades of additional experience on my part, or perhaps of the difference between the serial version and the book version. The hero is Peter Koskinen, who has just returned from Mars, with the secret of a personal body shield, learned with the wise old Martian natives. He soon realizes that his secret is coveted by several entities: the Chinese, the rather despotic rulers of the US, and the mob, more or less. None of these organizations seem all that interested in Koskinen's health, nor indeed in what's best for the world. Koskinen falls in with a femme fatale named Vivienne, whose motives are difficult to untangle. All leads to a conclusion where Koskinen, under siege from multiple sources, must make a decision consistent with his own values.

Retro Review of Analog, April 1963

"What'll You Give" is about 10,000 words long. It is one of Winston Sanders's Tales of the Flying Mountains, about an asteroid-based civilization. Sanders was of course a pseudonym for Poul Anderson. (Based on Winnie the Pooh: Winnie for Winston, P for Pooh, and Sanders because Winnie the Pooh lived "under the name of Sanders".) The stories were eventually collected as Tales of the Flying Mountains, under Anderson's name, in a paperback with one of the most Godawful '70s covers ever, from Collier.

In that collection this story is called "Que Donnerez Vous?", and I'm sure that was Anderson's original title. It's from a song one of the main characters sings, and of course it means "What'll You Give?". The story concerns miners of volatiles from Jupiter's atmosphere, volatiles intended for use in the asteroids. It's a very dangerous job, and when one miner's ship fails, three of his comrades plan to rescue him. But the man in charge cites economics as a reason the risky plan can't be tried. He is overruled, of course ... the conclusion, alas, slightly backs off from what had seemed a worthwhile conflict. It's decent middle-range Anderson.

Retro Review of If, May 1963

"Turning Point" is a neat little story. Kind of Cargo Cult in reverse. Humans come to an isolated alien planet, where the people apparently live primitive lives. But it turns out they are incredible geniuses, who simply never had the spur to develop technology. Once they see human tech, all bets are off.

Retro Review of Amazing, May and June 1965

(Cover by Gray Morrow)

The Corridors of Time is not one of Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories -- not that you thought so, necessarily, but I did, until I read it, years ago. It’s pretty decent stuff, though. It opens with American graduate student (in archaeology) Malcolm Lockridge in the company of the beautiful and mysterious Storm Darroway, in Jutland, Denmark. She guides him into a mysterious underground installation, and before he knows it they are battling people in anti-gravity sleds up and down the title "corridors". Soon she reveals that her people are in a battle with another group, led by the dangerous Brann, up and down the timelines. Storm is presented as an avatar of the Goddess of the Labrys, or of Diana -- in support of emotional reaction and against technology, while Brann’s people believe in rational organization of human life, and each tries to promote their side in various historical eras. But they all know that they have no sway in the far future, access to which they are forbidden.

(Cover by Tom Chibbari)

Lockridge is smitten with the incredibly beautiful Storm, but the reader soon realizes that she is dishonest and dangerous -- while her rivals are not as bad as she says, but much mistaken as well. Much of the story concerns Lockridge’s time in a peaceful Bronze Age culture in Denmark, where he meets a beautiful chieftan’s daughter, who falls for him – if only he could forget Storm. Lockridge finds his loyalties in this time war tested, as he is kidnapped by Brann’s people and made to see to what lengths Storm and her people will go. The resolution is interesting and effectively twists through time, as Lockridge and his Bronze Age princess eventually struggle to find a middle way, outside the timeline battles. Good solid middle-range Anderson.

The serial is accompanied by a note stating that an expanded version would be published later in the year by Doubleday. And indeed, the book version is significantly longer, about 70,000 words versus 50,000 or so for the serial, and the differences show up immediately, as the book opens with Lockridge meeting Storm Darroway in prison -- he’s been accused of murder because one of a group of local thugs who attacked him hit his head while falling and died. I noticed other spots in the serial where it seemed something had been skipped ... I would say this is a clear case where the book is to be preferred.

Locus, April 2004

The closing story in The First Heroes is also good, "The Bog Sword", by the late great Poul Anderson. The setup is taken from Anderson's 1957 story "The Long Remembering", about sending a man via his "ancestral memory" to experience some hours through the consciousness of a man of the past. Here the time experienced is the end of the Bronze Age in Northern Europe, as a Danish King reminisces about his youthful travels to the South, where he encountered the Celts and their new technology -- iron. He senses -- and the present-day character (as well as the reader) knows -- that this means the end of a culture.