Review: The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler

Review: The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler

by Rich Horton

First -- an apology to Ray Nayler. I read an advance copy of this way back in October -- and I dithered about writing up a review because I didn't want to post it until the book came out, in January. Then January came, and I couldn't find the print copy, and I got too lazy to look through the electronic copy I had (flipping back and forth is much harder on a Kindle than a physical book.) And now it's May -- but, hey, I did just do a major cleanup of my "office" and guess what? I found the physical copy! So here's a review -- later than optimal, but I hope it will push a few more people to read the book.

Ray Nayler's first novel, The Mountain in the Sea, has been extravagantly -- and deservedly -- praised. His short fiction to date has also been remarkable. Now comes a novella, from Tor.com, The Tusks of Extinction. It's also a powerful book, and very much worth reading, if not, to me, quite as science fictionally scintillating as the novel.

The Tusks of Extinction opens with Damira tracking a blood trail to find a dead ammother -- and then goes back in her memory years to when she was working for a group trying to stop elephant poachers, and she had come on the remains of several murdered elephants. And, we are told, not long after, Damira was murdered herself by poachers. And quickly the other shoe drops -- Damira's mind, by some process, has been uploaded into a mammoth, as part of a project to restore mammoth populations using recovered DNA, and help from experts (such as Damira) inhabiting a mammoth body to teach them mammoth ways of life, or the best guess at that.

That's the big science fictional hook -- the familiar idea of "resurrecting" mammoths using DNA from frozen remains, enhanced by the concept of uploading human minds to some mammoths. The book follows three tracks -- Damira's experience, both her human life and her time as a mammoth, and that of a young Russian man dragooned into mammoth poaching, and then that of a man whose boyfriend bought a trip to see the mammoths on the newly established mammoth preserve -- and to hunt them. All three threads are interesting, and in sum truly wrenching. There is desperate violence, and human betrayal, and maybe a tiny thread of hope.

This is a first rate novella, and like much SF it is not really about its extrapolation, but about the present. And in that sense it is a powerful cry against our human predation of elephants (and by moral extension, many animals.) It shares with The Mountain in the Sea an interest in the minds of non-humans, and also a concern with the violence and environmental destruction caused by humans. 

The Stories and Novels of T. L. Sherred

The Stories and Novels of T. L. Sherred

Thomas L. Sherred (1915-1985) was an autoworker, who began on the factory floor but ended up in the technical writing department. His politics were clearly on the left, and he often wrote about working men. Not surprisingly for an autoworker, he lived in Detroit, and his stories (and the novel Alien Island) were often set there. Most of these stories -- including Alien Island -- had a distinctly cynical edge to them. 

It was revealed, when his short-short "Bounty" appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions, that he had suffered a stroke in 1971 and was unable to continue writing. His last novel was a collaboration with Lloyd Biggle, Jr., an SF writer who also lived in the Detroit area. (Biggle was a professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, a Detroit suburb. My mother, also a Detroit native, was a graduate of Eastern Michigan (then Michigan Normal) and her time there intersected with Biggle's, though she never had a class with him.) After his stroke, Sherred lived until 1985, and was able, I assume, to see that final novel accepted for publication, though he died before it appeared.

Here is a look at his relatively small output -- at least, everything I could find: five SF stories, the two novels, and one mainstream story.

"E for Effort" (Astounding, May 1947)

This was Sherred's first sale and it remains by a very wide margin his best-known story, and (in my opinion) also his best story. It has been anthologized many times, notably in Groff Conklin's Big Book of Science Fiction (1950), in John Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction Anthology (1952), in Damon Knight's A Century of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1965), and, perhaps most importantly, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IIB (1973). The story is perhaps 19,000 words long.

Ed Lefko, in Detroit for his father's funeral, stumbles across a showing of a very amateur-looking but impressively realistic historical movie. He asks the theater's proprietor for more information, and the man, Miguel Laviada, tells him that he has invented a machine that can take moving images of any place on Earth at any time in history. But Laviada can't figure out how to make money with it ... Lefko, a bit more unscrupulous, can, and they start out with blackmail (images of rich men fooling around.) Then they proceed to making grand historical movies -- by using actual footage. This is successful for a while, but their idealism takes over -- they realize that "any time in history" includes right now, and they start spying on the most powerful men in the world, and are disgusted by what they find. They decide that the best course to take is to find a way to make the technology ubiquitous, with the idea that universal surveillance will make war impossible. But ... well, the ending is logical and cynical and grimly honest. (Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past" is another great Time Viewer novella which is clearly in conversation with "E for Effort".)

This is obvious not a typically Campbellian story, and for that reason there is a theory that the story was selected by Campbell's assistant while he was on vacation. I doubt that personally -- that's not something that Campbell would likely allow, and anyway, he published a lot more "anti-Campbellian" fiction than his critics credit, and he also chose to reprint the story in the Astounding Science Fiction Anthology.

"Cue for Quiet" (Space Science Fiction, May and July 1953)

Sherred's "Cue for Quiet" was serialized in these two issues of a fairly short-lived digest edited by Lester Del Reay. The combined story is about 28,000 words long. It's about a man who suddenly develops a curious power. He can stop machinery just by thinking about it. He begins by knocking out TVs and radios in reaction to his irritation at all the noise. He indulges himself ruining various annoying machines, but soon draws the attention of the police, and then the government. Could he possibly be used in war -- to destroy the opponent's machinery? But what will make him cooperate? And won't he be a target? Eventually he learns to safely destroy atomic bombs, and the story ends, a bit sadly, with the man hidden away on a desert island, living a lonely life while guarding the world from the prospect of nuclear war. It's not a great story, but a fairly decent effort, with a sort of grim common sense side to it that seems perhaps to be characteristic of Sherred.

"Eye for Iniquity" (Beyond, July 1953)

This story appeared in the first issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction, a companion magazine to Galaxy that H. L. Gold started with the intention of doing something like what John W. Campbell did in Unknown -- publish fantasy in a style not dissimilar to that of the primary magazine. I like Beyond -- I have the entire run of 10 issues -- and "Eye for Iniquity" is a decent example of the sort of thing Gold liked. It is about 9,500 words long.

The narrator tells how, one day, he made a ten dollar bill -- by looking at another one and just creating a copy out of thin air. His family are struggling a bit to get by, and so of course he spends the bill -- and some more bills that he makes, and things go on fine for a while until the Internal Revenue Service and the Secret Service figure out that something funny is going on, and they track him down. He ends up cutting a deal with them -- as they can't prove he actually copied the bills -- there's no counterfeiting equipment or anything. So he agrees to stop doing it, with the proviso that if they ever catch him again he goes right to jail. And that's his story -- he ruefully admits he misses the extra money but knows he can't take the risk of making more. But there's a tiny, obvious in retrospect, little twist ... It's a nice story, minor but efficient, and rather more lighthearted than anything else Sherred wrote.

"Cure, Guaranteed" (Future, August 1954)

"Cure, Guaranteed" (13200 words) is a curious story for an SF magazine. It is marginally SF, but really it would have fit much more neatly in, say, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. A private investigator working for a Detroit area association of doctors looks into a guy promising to cure the common cold, expecting to find a quack as usual. But before long he realizes the guy is for real. But the doctors still want him shut down ... He comes up with a reason to do so eventually, a bit unrelated to medicine, but nicely enough revealed. An amusing enough piece, maybe a tad too long. Not really memorable, though.

Sherred's only collection, First Person, Peculiar (1972), comprises the above four stories. (And I have to say, that's a distinctly awful cover!)

"See for Yourself" (Escapade, June 1961)

This is the fourth and last of Sherred's stories to have a letter (in some form) followed by the word "for" as the start of the title. It's also the only non-SF story I know by him. Escapade was a "man's magazine", a sort of second-tier Playboy, and as with most of those magazines it featured a fair amount of fiction, and, it turns out, fiction of, often enough, some ambition.

"See for Yourself" (5500 words) is about Howard, a public relations man, whose job seems to be making sure his company's clients are happy. In this story he's entertaining Charley, a particularly unpleasant, but valuable, client, who is, it's soon clear, hoping to get lucky. Howard, after calling his wife to warn her he'll be late, takes Charley to a bar, and then starts calling the many among his list of call girls, realizing that Charley will want him to play along too. And then it turns out Charley has found a woman by himself -- so Howard cancels one of his women, and they head to a motel, and, well, things go as they might. And as the morning comes, Howard bundles Charley into his plane, sends the girls home in cabs, and goes home to his wife. And they have a pointed conversation. There's a bit of a twist here (that I guessed) and the talk with his wife is honest and moving and pretty well done. This is on the one hand the sort of story you might expect to find in a magazine like Escapade, but it's also quite a good one. This may be my second favorite Sherred story.

"Not Bach" (Outworlds, January 1972)

Outworlds was a very highly respected fanzine edited mostly by Bill Bowers, which ran from 1970 to 1998. It received six nominations for the Best Fanzine Hugo. It was a genzine, and I don't know how much fiction it published, but in the January 1962 issue it did feature this brief story (about 1200 words) by T. L. Sherred. 

It's really a pretty minor piece, about a time-travelling academic visiting, in the early 20th Century, a composer -- not named but easily identified as Victor Herbert -- and urging him to abandon his "serious" operas and write more "light" work like Babes in Toyland, presumably because in our day nobody thinks anything Herbert did in his more serious mode is worth remembering. There's not much substance or SFnal interest to the piece -- it seems more like Sherred indulging a little fantasy about a composer he admired. (Herbert does get a mention in another Sherred story, "Eye for Iniquity".)

"Bounty" (Again, Dangerous Visions, 1972)

The dangerous vision in Sherred's story is pretty dangerous -- a private entity of some sort starts offering a bounty for killing anyone involved in armed robbery (or, presumably, other crimes.) This very short story quickly extrapolates the consequences, and it's either a very ugly story endorsing vigilant justice or a satire of that attitude -- but, if the latter, I think it a bit off the mark.

Alien Island (1970)

This is Sherred's only solo novel, from Ballantine Books in 1970. It is an odd bird, deeply cynical and ultimately utterly dark. It has never been reprinted, though it did have a German edition.

It's narrated by Dana Iverson, who works for the CIA. We learn quickly that Iverson's department is tasked with keeping track of UFO sightings and tamping down public interest in them. As the novel opens, Iverson is sent to Detroit to work at a bar at which a spaceship actually landed -- and a local machinist, and notorious drunk, wandered in.

It's soon clear that the jig is up -- this spaceship won't be ignorable. The drunk, one Ken Jordan, returns in the spaceship shortly, and the aliens reveal themselves, specifically in the person of the Captain, an astonishingly beautiful woman named Lee Lukkari. Ken Jordan reveals that he has learned the alien language by having melded minds with Lee Lukkari. And Lee Lukkari, after describing the alien mission -- they are representatives of an interplanetary society called the Regan Group -- states that Ken Jordan will be the the Regan Group's ambassador to Earth.

This early part of the novel seems cynical but funny. However, once the Regan Group starts dealing with Earth, the various governments of Earth squabble over the spoils. Iverson infiltrates Ken Jordan's organization, but soon is conflicted. The story turns darker and darker, leading to a completely bleak conclusion -- a conclusion that I didn't really feel was quite earned. There are problems with pace, problems with tone, some weird character development, and dated sexual politics (though Sherred tries hard, especially with one particular trick he plays on the reader.)

Alien Main (1985) (with Lloyd Biggle, Jr.)

I confess that I have not yet read this book, though I have a copy. Apparently Sherred had some ideas for a sequel to Alien Island, set a couple of centuries after that book ended. Sherred died in April 1985, and the book was published in August, so it seems likely that Sherred engaged LIoyd Biggle to complete the novel some time before his death, and he probably knew about the sale of the novel (to Doubleday) before he died. Sherred did write, in a terribly sad foreword to the novel, "A few days before yesterday a structural defect permanently removed any desire or capability to write. The things of merit in this book belong to Lloyd Biggle. I'm very grateful for Lloyd's taking over to finish this book and it never would have been finished if he hadn't done all the work." It involves the alien civilization returning to Earth to investigate the disaster that is portrayed at the end of Alien Island. Reviews suggest it isn't an entirely successful novel, but not without aspects of interest, and with a somewhat more hopeful mood than the first novel. I don't know if that was in Sherred's original plans, or if Biggle, generally a more optimistic writer than Sherred, influenced that.

Steven Rowe pointed me to indexes of T. L. Sherred material at Kansas University, and according to that, Sherred had written at least 7 or so chapters of Alien Main prior to his stroke, and soon after the stroke, he asked Laurence M. Janifer to collaborate on finishing the novel. It seems that they finished it and submitted it to Ballantine, but apparently it was not accepted. (There is mention of them working on editorial comments, and also of a delay due to the very early death of Steve Treibich, with whom Janifer had collaborated on three Ace Doubles.) It would be interesting to compare Janifer's work with Biggle's.

That material also refers to a story written in 1960 or so called "X for Breakfast", a "science-fiction romance". It must not have sold. Amusingly, Robert Silverberg mentioned that Randall Garrett had suggested jokingly that Sherred should write a story with that title. I have no idea if Sherred was responding to Garrett, or if the titles were parallel inventions. I would love to see the Sherred story.

Review: Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

I didn't really mean to read another Trollope novel so soon, but I bought a few of his books at a used bookstore, and I opened Can You Forgive Her? and before long I was hooked. This novel, from 1864/1865, was the first of the Palliser (or Parliamentary) novels to be written. 

It is a very long novel, over 800 pages. Supposedly Stephen King wrote, in his book on writing, that it should have been called Can You Even Finish It?, which seems a bit rich coming from a guy who wrote at least two novels of more than 1100 pages. (It's also by no means Trollope's longest novel -- I believe at least The Way We Live Now and possibly The Last Chronicle of Barset are longer.) I will say that my edition maintained the original two volume structure and pagination (bound in a single volume, though) and I was very confused when I got about 200 pages in, looked at the page number at the end of the book and saw 416 or so, but realized I clearly wasn't close to halfway through. And, to be fair to critics of its length, while I enjoyed this book, it's probably my least favorite of the Trollope novels I've read to date. It is fair to say that not much really happens in the book relative to its length. But Trollope being Trollope, it remains absorbing.

It is built around two very carefully paralleled stories of women torn between two men. The main character -- the one we must try to forgive -- is Alice Vavasor, a woman of 24, of a decent but declining county family, with (from her mother's side) a modest fortune, some £10,000. As the novel opens, she is engaged to a very fine and honest, but perhaps rather boring, man, John Grey. She had previously been engaged to her first cousin, George Vavasor, a more ambitious and perhaps interesting man than John Grey, but also a less trustworthy man, and she had broken the engagement when he went through a "wild period". (It takes a long time, but we do finally learn that he had kept a mistress, whom he left in terrible straits when he was finished with her.) Her cousin Kate, George's brother, believes George is better suited as a husband for Alice, partly because George's new interest -- he wants to stand for Parliament -- is something that interests Alice; but also because Kate wants to see her brother made financially sound, and Alice's money might do that.

In parallel is the story of Lady Glencora, a very wealthy somewhat distant connection of Alice, who had wanted to marry a dissolute but very handsome member of an aristocratic family, Burgo Fitzgerald. But Glencora's family thought Burgo would be a terrible husband, and they put pressure on her her to break off with Burgo and instead marry Plantagent Palliser, the son of the Duke of Omnium. Plantagenet is a highly regarded MP, in line to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he is also somewhat boring (and quite hard working) and there are no real sparks between he and Glencora.

So -- that's the parallel: two well off young women, either married to or engaged to rather staid men, but still attracted to their previous, more exciting but less moral and less dependable, lovers. The parallels aren't exact -- Alice is more intelligent, and more strictly moral, than Glencora, and in fact she had refused to assist Glencora when she was tempted to elope with Burgo. But both women are much importuned by the pressure that older people (mostly women) put on them to do the expected thing. And very quickly, Alice shockingly breaks off her engagement to John Grey. Soon, as well, Glencora is driven to despair by Mr. Palliser's coldness, and by his apparent tendency to blame her for not getting pregnant with an heir. (The contemporary reader can't help but wonder if Mr. Palliser's habit of staying up late working instead of sleeping with his wife might have some effect on their chances at pregnancy!) Burgo's scheming Aunt cooks up a plan to rescue Burgo -- who is nearly ruined financially -- by having him run away with Lady Glencora. And eventually Alice decides to accept George's renewed offer of marriage, but soon realizes she does not love him, and out of guilt offers to contribute her fortune to aid George's Parliamentary ambitions, while refusing to set a date for their actual marriage.

There is a third thread about a woman choosing between two men, this one played for comic relief. It involves Alice's Aunt Greenow, a very rich widow, who is being courted by a wealthy but somewhat crude farmer, and by an impoverished ex-Navy man. In a way all three of these threads highlight aspects of an important question that informs almost any love story, or marriage story, from that era: what can a woman do with her life? And her money? Professions were not open to women, nor was politics, and most women lost control of any money they did have upon marriage. Trollope does not exactly buck against this social rule, but he does acknowledge it, and here we have three women, all somewhat wealthy.* One (Lady Glencora) is not really interested in any non-traditional female role: she just wants her husband to show affection, and she wants to show off her wit and sense of fun in social circles, and I suppose she wants children. Aunt Greenow wants to be in control of her money, and her husband -- and she is savvy enough to know how to do this. And Alice -- in some ways Alice is the sadder case, because she really does have suppressed ambitions to take a more active role in matters of state -- to at least be her husband's true partner; and by the end it's not clear she will quite be able to do that. (It is fair to say that Trollope shows her eagerly discussing matters like the price of sugar with her husband, but it also shows her telling herself that due to her earlier mistakes she realizes she must let her husband be the master in everything.)

I won't tell how things work out, though I don't think many readers will be surprised at the resolution. There is a certain amount of actual melodrama, it turns out. And a fair amount of Trollope's lightly ironical moralizing. As I said, it's not my favorite Trollope novel, but I still quite liked it. I'll be reading more and more Trollope, no doubt -- though the interval before I read the next book (probably Doctor Thorne) will probably be a bit longer. 

*(Obviously the prospects of women who were in addition to being disbarred from professional ambitions but who also had no money were even worse, and though in this novel Trollope does not much deal with that, he does touch on it in his other novels.)

Review: The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn, by Algis Budrys

Review: The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn, by Algis Budrys

by Rich Horton

Algis Budrys only wrote eight novels in a writing career that spanned over 40 years. Five appeared between 1954 and 1960 (with a revised version of the first appearing in 1961). Michaelmas came out in 1977. Hard Landing in 1993. And what of the interval between 1961 and 1977? A very strange novel, serialized in If in 1967 as "The Iron Thorn", published in paperback that year as The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn. (Later reissues have been titled just The Iron Thorn, implying that that was Budrys' preferred title, but I confess a fondness for the longer title under which I first read the novel.)

I read the paperback many years ago, and enjoyed it, but my memory of details was lacking. So I have just reread it in the serial version. This appeared in four parts, January through April of 1967. Four parts is a long serial, usually, but in fact these parts are fairly short, and the complete serial runs about about 50,000 words, by my rough estimate. The book version says "A shorter version of this novel appeared in If magazine", and indeed by my best estimate, the book is slightly longer, at perhaps 55,000 words. A cursory comparison of the texts does show slight cuts in the magazine version -- no missing scenes, but a sentence here, a clause there. And a couple of word choice changes -- for example, in the magazine, the Amsirs call humans "damp things" but in the book it's "wet devils". The overall substance of the novel is essentially the same, though I will say I think the book version is slightly better. I don't know if the changes were cuts editor Frederik Pohl made, or the result of revisions Budrys made before book publication.

The story concerns a young man named, variously, Honor White Jackson, Honor Secon Black Jackson, and Honor Red Jackson. Jackson is a member of a small society of humans living in a strange environment, consisting of a small fairly fertile valley surrounded by desert -- and with the atmosphere unbreathable outside their home. The "Iron Thorn" is a tower in the middle of their valley. "Honors" are a privileged caste, who venture out in to the desert to hunt the strange human-sized flying creatures called Amsirs. And the opening extended scene shows Honor White Jackson on his first Amsir hunt, or "hon". The hunt is successful, of course, and Jackson returns, ready for his welcome to the full privileges of an Honor (including the name of "Black" -- with "Secon" meaning that he is the second in his familty to become a Honor.) But Jackson is disturbed, for he has learned that Amsirs can talk -- there are not dumb animals, but intelligent. And he soon realizes that the more intelligent Honors, including the "Eld" who rules the society, are aware of this, but unwilling to change. Jackson, as a Honor, can take any woman he wants, but it's soon clear he's only interested in one -- Petra Jovans, who is as independent minded as he.

So, the novel at this point seems reasonably conventional. Jackson will foment some sort of revolution, perhaps make peace with the Amsirs, make a life with the lovely Petra, etc. etc. etc. But Budrys has no interest in such a conclusion at all. (And, indeed, Petra never again appears in the novel.)

In the second section, Jackson does decide to confront the Amsirs. He goes back into the desert, pursued by another Honor who suspects his plans, and after dispatching that threat he waits for an Amsir -- and when one comes, he yields to it, and is taken to their home valley. There he encounters the Amsir "Eld", and learns that they are rather more advanced in understanding than the humans, but that they too are constrained to a small area. But besides their thorn, there is a smaller tower -- a tower with a door in it ...

From this point, spoilerphobic readers may wish to stop. Suffice it to say that the two remaining sections feature more revelations, some predictable, some unexpected, and Jackson makes more radical journeys, and learns a great deal about this strange future. But -- uncompromisingly -- though he learns much he remains unable to truly make effective change: this world is the world as it will be, and its people are not of much import.

This isn't one of Budrys' best novels -- my ranking is Rogue Moon, then Hard Landing, then Michaelmas and Who? But it's an effective and interesting novel, with some nice ideas, some unexpected twists, and a dark and unyielding view of humanity. There is some silliness, and the science doesn't work, and the gender political are awfully retro. But it's worth reading, refreshing, very strange.

So, after spoiler space,

.

.

.

The smaller tower in Amsir space is of course a spaceship. The door will not admit any Amsirs who try to enter, and indeed it kills them. But humans it tolerates, though they still cannot enter. The Amsirs capture humans in an attempt to find one who can open the door -- and Honor succeeds. But, naturally, he proceeds immediately to commanding the spaceship to take off -- and soon learns that he is on Mars, and the humans -- and also Amsirs, who are humans modified to better tolerate Martian conditions -- have been placed there as a research project. And, apparently have since been forgotten. Part 3 of the book (and serial) concerns his trip back to Earth, including a simulated time in college (at Ohio State of all places). And Part 4, then, is about what he finds on Earth. I'll leave the revelations about that for the reader to learn -- suffice it to say that the environment on Earth is not much to Jackson's liking, but there is little enough he can do about it. He won't revolutionize decadent Earth, he won't rescue the abandoned Mars people, neither Amsirs nor humans, he won't return to Petra.

(The relatively short four parts of the serial are easily explained -- each section of the novel neatly fits a serial section, and it hardly would have made sense to divide it up differently.)

Review: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Review: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

by Rich Horton

[I wrote this for my blog back in 2009. I will confess that I haven't yet read the sequel, The Wise Man's Fear. I am aware that he has written a few more short pieces after that -- including a novella, "The Narrow Road Between Desires", in 2023 -- but not the much awaited third novel. So be it -- I am not one to resent writers who are having difficulty finishing their long-awaited series -- I'm not in their shoes, but I do know it can be hard to get things just right, especially as time passes and people change.]

The Name of the Wind is Patrick Rothfuss's first novel, from 2007. This is the first of a series, the Kingkiller Chronicles, presumably at least a trilogy. The Name of the Wind itself is well over a quarter of a million words long -- which is to say, it's a Fat Fantasy, sure enough. And I don't usually read Fat Fantasy Trilogies, more because of time than any particular reason. But I read and greatly enjoyed and decided to reprint in my Best of the Year book his story "The Road to Levinshir". (Some people told me that that story is an excerpt from The Name of the Wind, which is simply false. It does feature Kvothe, the hero of The Name of the Wind, and perhaps the story, in some form, will show up later in the series. An early version of it was included in a Writers of the Future anthology.) So I figured I ought to try the novel.

Right from the start I was enthralled by The Name of the Wind . It is in some ways hard to exactly pinpoint what makes the book particularly good. Is it fabulously original? No, not really, though the magical system, while based on familiar principles, is well depicted. Is it full of edge of the seat action? Not really, though there are some nice sequences. Is the plot gripping and/or brilliantly constructed? Well, it may end up that way, but this is book one of a trilogy, and nothing is really resolved. Is the villain compelling? Well, we haven't exactly met the principal villain yet -- or perhaps we have, but only tangentially -- and the minor villain that occupies much of the action is just that, a minor annoying twit. Is the story amazingly romantic? Well, the main character, about 16 at the end of the action, remains a virgin, and the girl he seems to love is always with other men ... I dissemble a bit, here, because the love story (so far) in this book is interesting, but it is surely not at all resolved.

So, what did I like, then? I guess the main thing is the central character -- well, and the characters in general. The main character is very well depicted, and very likable, though (as with so many novels in this genre) he is rather the amazingly talented superhero: superintelligent, an amazing musician, attractive to women, brilliant at magic. (In this, as in the complete villainy of the bad guys (to the extent we encounter them), and the fabulous looks of the women, the novel does hew closely to convention. I didn't like this book because it did anything especially new, just because it did what it does very well.) The side characters are closer to types, but engaging types. I should also mention that the world -- only lightly touched on so far -- while again quite a conventional secondary world, still gives a feeling of realness. And, too, Rothfuss has that storytelling touch -- you always want to turn the page. Perhaps one thing he does is make even small events interesting. 

Well, then, what's the book about. It is fairly nicely framed. In a remote country town there is evidence of sinister events, such as spiderlike, almost mechanical, magical things attacking. In this context we meet the owner of a not very successful inn, who seems to know a bit more than one might expect about magic, and the spiderlike beings. This could be a setup for events just about to happen -- but then appears a wanderer who calls himself Chronicler, and who is looking for the real story of a legendary hero -- who, it appears, is the barman, Kote, better known to history and legend as Kvothe. After some prodding, Kvothe agrees to tell his story to Chronicler, and also to Kvothe's assistant/apprentice, a Fae named Bast. 

And in this book we learn of the first decade and a half or so of Kvothe's life. His childhood with the gypsy-like travelling performers, the Edema Ruh, where he learns to act and sing and play the lute. His early exposure to magical principles. And then the shattering murder of his entire troupe by the almost legendary evil figures, the Chandrian.

Kvothe vows to find out more about the Chandrian, perhaps at the University, to which his magician mentor had urged him to go when he came of age. But first the boy spends three hard years in the slums of a large city, learning basically at the school of hard knocks. Finally he becomes old enough, and gets the opportunity, to travel to the University. There he encounters further financial issues (it turns out schooling costs money!), difficulty with some hidebound professors (but help from others), and rivalry with a vile upperclass twit (who we know is especially vile because he abuses women). He begins to learn more about magic, but not much about the Chandrian. He plays a lot more music. And he meets an enchanting girl, a couple of years older than him, named Denna, who is hard to keep track of ... And, at the end, he tracks down rumors of the Chandrian, and an actual dragon. Though not quite a dragon as we might think of them!

In the end, what I assume to be the primary plot of the trilogy was only barely introduced. But that's OK really -- perhaps this novel is at one level scene setting, but it's very good scene setting, very absorbing -- and I think perhaps spending the first novel setting a scene might be a way to avoid middle novel problems!

Review: Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Review: Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin

by Rich Horton

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote over 20 novels (adult and YA and some that could be either) and of course many many shorter works. I had read all the fiction she published (except some stories for younger children: the Catwings pieces and Leese Webster) -- with one exception, a pretty big one: Always Coming Home. Le Guin is one of my favorite writers, and many of her stories are absolute favorites of mine, in particular the novels Lavinia and The Left Hand of Darkness, and stories like "Nine Lives", "Winter's King", "The Stars Below" and "Another Story; or, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea."

So -- why not Always Coming Home? I've owned a copy of the boxed trade paperback edition, complete with the cassette tape, since the novel came out. I've leafed through it, I know the main story is about a woman called Stone Telling, I've listened to the cassette (once!*) ... Why not read the whole book? 

Well, it's kind of intimidating, or it was then. It is, by some measurements, her longest novel.** More to the point, it's very unusually structured, as sort of a fictional anthropological study of the people called the Kesh, living centuries in our future in a much altered Northern California (specifically the Valley of the Na.) This didn't grab me, to be honest. It seemed like a case of a writer including her study notes. (And, to be sure, she literally does -- in the final section, some 100 pages, called "The Back of the Book". I should emphasize, by the way, that this work is a collaborative project, significantly enhanced by the music Todd Barton wrote for the Music and Poetry of the Kesh; and by the drawings by Margaret Chodos. (Le Guin credits many further contributors in the Back of the Book.)) And so, for nearly forty years, it's moldered on my bookshelves.

But no longer! Almost on random impulse, I finally decided to read it. And what did I think? Well, two things. One, I was pretty much right in many ways. It does read, to a great extent, like a writer deciding to include all her notes. Mind you, I am certain that Le Guin did this with full intention. (And no doubt she had MANY more notes!) And the anthropological bits are illuminating. That said, they are also kind of boring (to me.) They make the book rather a slog. There are also a great many poems, of, to my mind, varying quality. Le Guin is trying, I think, to capture the voice and viewpoints of people of the Valley, the Kesh. Which is sensible. But I don't think the poems stand with Le Guin's best poems, either. There are also snippets from the point of view of "Pandora", a stand in for the author or the future anthropologist who is recording all this data -- and these, too, though they give some context, aren't gripping. 

But -- there is also plenty of narrative. These include some fiction and drama of the Kesh, some folk stories, some quasi-biographies, and one long autobiographical piece, in three parts, about a woman named Stone Telling. The stories include "Romances" -- mostly cautionary tales about sexual transgression; "life stories" -- narratives about actual people's lives, sometimes fictionalized; and an excerpt from a "novel" -- which is to say a piece of realistic fiction. Most of these are effective, quite involving. Stone Telling's narrative is wonderful, the novel excerpt, "Dangerous People", is quite good, and so are some of the shorter pieces, particularly "At the Spring of Orlu", "The Third Child's Story", and "The Visionary".

What is the basic outline? The novel is set a long time in the future, after environmental collapse and war has led to a great reduction in the human population. There has also been geological change, noticeably in the setting of the book, so that there is an "inland sea" in the San Francisco area, which is where the Valley of the Na is located. The Kesh live very lightly on the land, though, it becomes clear, with somewhat sly assistance from fairly advanced technology. Their society is very egalitarian, yet with distinct (but not always rigid) divisions between men and women. There is birth control by social means -- their culture frowns strongly on any couple having more than 2 children. (I've never understood that in SF novels -- the implication is that that will lead to a constant population, but instead it means a continually declining population (because of people who can't or won't have children, and children who die before adulthood.)) Animals are considered people too, and live interwined with humans (though the Kesh are by no means vegetarian.) 

Behind all that, only lightly referred to, is a wider world, which includes a fair amount of high technology, notably the "Exchange", a vaguely internet-like system apparently maintained by AIs, and which has a network that extends well into space. We never learn much about other societies on Earth, with one exception, but it is an interesting question: how many other polities are there? How many different ways of living? This wasn't Le Guin's interest in that novel, and that's OK -- but it does interest me. The one other society we see is a pretty terrible one, and we learn of it through Stone Telling's story. She was the daughter of an outsider, a "Condor" who married her mother on a sort of scouting mission. Stone Telling ends up leaving with her father when he returns in her teens -- for reasons, including that she was in some ways not fully accepted due to her half non-Kesh ancestry, and also for reasons tied to her adolescence. But what she finds in his city -- and the fact that it is a city is significant -- is horrifying: it is a wholly hierachical community, ruled by a paranoid leader, tied to a fanatical religion, with women definitely at the bottom of the heap: confined to a sort of purdah, not allowed to read, etc. The problem with this depiction is not that it's wrong -- it's that it's so exaggerated as the only other society we see that it seems more a construct than an honest portrait of that future.

What's my final verdict? I'm glad I read Always Coming Home. And parts of it I truly loved. Stone Telling's narrative is really involving and moving, and so were many other narratives. The poetry is a mixed bag -- it's interesting but it rarely, to my ears, truly sings. The ethnographic bits -- and they are not just "bits" -- are intellectually intriguing, but, really, often a struggle to read. It is in the end a novel (or "book" or "construct" or whatever) that is more impressive than it is involving. It's a book I feel like Le Guin had to write, had to grapple with -- but the best of her work is elsewhere. And yet -- it's a book you ought to read.

There are a couple more things that I am reminded of by Always Coming Home. Both are post-Apocalyptic works, set in societies devoted to living more lightly on the land. One is even set fairly close, geographically, to Always Coming Home. This is Carrie Vaughn's Bannerless saga, comprising two novels and several short stories. I do wonder how much Vaughn was influenced by Always Coming Home (if at all). That society does portray an interesting future California, with in particular careful birth control, and other social adapations. It's both less impressive an intellectual creation that Le Guin's, and in some ways more convincing. The other novel I'd like to mention is John Crowley's Engine Summer, which certainly was not influenced by Always Coming Home (it was published six years earlier.) But it is profoundly more powerful -- fully as fascinating a society, embedded in a far more effective story. This isn't to denigrate Le Guin's work -- it's simply to say that something very good is worthwhile, but something truly great -- Engine Summer is one of my favorite SF novels of all time -- is at another level. (A level Le Guin reached in other work, I'll add.) For all that, I think comparing Carrie Vaughn's future with Le Guin's and all with Crowley's is a worthwhile enterprise.

*My comment that I listened to the cassette just "once" comes off, I know, as dismissive, and that does capture my attitude in 1985. But I listened to it again for this reading, and I have much greater appreciation for it now. It's a bit New-Agey, to be sure, but that isn't necessarily bad. I don't think it will become a regular part of my music background, but it's worth hearing.

**I might add that the Library of America edition, from 2019, is labeled "Author's Expanded Edition", and it runs to 800 pages, suggesting that it really is significantly expanded. I haven't seen this version, so I don't know much about it, though my review implies that I might not think an expansion a great idea.

Review: The Scarab Mission, by James L. Cambias

Review: The Scarab Mission, by James L. Cambias

by Rich Horton

The Scarab Mission is one of what may become a series of books set some 8000 years in the future, in a very diversely populated Solar System, collectively called "The Ten Billion Worlds". There is a fundamental divide between the inner system and outer system -- the former dominated by AIs, the latter heavily populated by humans with a large admixture of AIs. Much of this goes back to a war in the Fourth Millennium, which led to the depopulation of Venus and Earth and nearly to the extinction of humans. I read and reviewed the first, The Godel Operation, a little while back -- The Scarab Mission, from 2023, is the second. I should emphasize that when I say "series" I don't mean that the books are closely linked -- really, they share only the setting and one character, though that character is less important in this book than in The Godel Operation (in which he was the narrator.)

This novel opens with a team of five approaching a derelict habitat, Safdaghar, in Jupiter's orbit. The team comprise the spacecraft itself, Yanai; an uplifted crow named Atmin; an intelligent dinosaur, Pera; a cyborg name Utsuro; and Solana, who was some years previously rescued from another habitat where she was raised to be a sex slave. Their mission is to stabilized Safdaghar's spin, to set it on a path where it will be slingshotted into deep space for later salvage, and to harvest whatever resalable stuff they can find on the habitat (mostly original works of art -- Safdaghar had been particularly devoted to supporting artists of all sorts.) One important artist who was believed to be on Safdaghar was a dissident poet from Deimos ...

There is more going on, of course. There is a great mystery as to how, and why, Safdaghar became derelict -- it had been a sudden catastrophe, years before. And Utsuro, the cyborg, was rescued in space and reconstructed as a cyborg, but with most of his memories lost -- and he is convinced he came from Safdaghar, and he hopes to find out something about his past.Once the team gets onto Safdagher and starts collecting stuff, things get trickier. There are occasional attacks -- as if someone else is still on the habitat, or if booby traps set back at the time of the disaster are still active.

Then another group arrives, apparently intent on salvaging stuff to resell as well. Taking the course of least resistance, Yanai and company allow them to come, agreeing to split the salvage. But this group, led by a creepy woman named Jaka, who seems to have means of controlling all her fellows, is much more dangerous, and violent, than they expect. In particular Jaka is a danger to Solana, as she gets off on dominating, essentially enslaving, others -- exactly the situation Solana had been rescued from. Things go from bad to worse, as Jaka slowly builds control, and as Utsuro begins to learn slight details of his past, and especially when it becomes clear that some very dangerous entity has survived on Safdaghar and is ready to attack members of both salvaging teams.

The novel builds to a long tense concluding chase, and there are powerful revelations about what really happened on Safdaghar, and what dangers still remain, and who may want all this knowledge hidden. It's an exciting action novel, with some terrible villains, and flawed heroes who learn to realize they can be villains too; and with worthwhile speculation about the nature of politics in this fascinating and complex and splintered future. It's fun, scary, and moving. More novels in this milieu will certainly be welcome!

Old Bestseller Review: Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope

Framley Parsonage is the fourth of Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, following The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), and Doctor Thorne (1858), and succeeded by The Small House at Allington (1863) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Framley Parsonage was first serialized in Cornhill Magazine in 1860/1861, and published in book form in the latter year. (Serialization of novels was common in that period, and three of the Chronicles were first published in magazines, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and The Small House at Allington.) The earlier Barchester novels were quite successful, but apparently Framley Parsonage was even more so.

I read The Warden when I was a teenager, and I read Barchester Towers last year (review here). I intended to continue reading the Chronicles in order, but I made a mistake, and got a (free!) audiobook version of Framley Parsonage and started listening to it before I realized I should have read Doctor Thorne first. (No big deal, I think -- I can certainly figure out much of what happened in Doctor Thorne from what I learned in Framley Parsonage, but Trollope's pleasures like very much elsewhere from the simple progressions of the plots.) The narrator of my version was Timothy West -- I note that Audible also features versions by Simon Vance, by David Shaw-Parker, and by Flo Gibson. I can only say that I think West did an excellent job.

The novel proceeds in several closely related threads. The primary thread concerns Mark Robarts, the Vicar of Framley Parsonage. Mark is a pleasant enough man in his late 20s, who became friends as a child with a boy of the same age, then the son of Baron Lufton, though Mark's friend, Ludovic, has succeeded to the title at the time of this novel. Lord Lufton's mother, Lady Lufton, is a benevolent woman, and she helped Mark Robarts get an excellent education, and sponsored him for the living at Framley Parsonage (a very good living) and even introduced him to his wife, Fanny. Mark is thus in a good situation, with a wife he loves, and children he loves -- but he does feel that he is too much in Lady Lufton's debt, and thus under her control. And so, as the novel opens,  he accepts an invitation from a new friend of his, whom he met through Lord Lufton -- Nathaniel Sowerby, who owns a house near the seat of the Duke of Omnium. The point here is that the Duke of Omnium is a Whig, and Lady Lufton is a Tory, and so Lady Lufton will not be happy. In addition, the Duke is reputed to be a very immoral man, and, in fact, Mark already knows that Mr. Sowerby is an unstrustworthy man, at least in financial matters, for he has already led Lord Lufton into debt, by rather shady means. Very soon, then, Mark finds himself agreeing to sign a bill for Mr. Sowerby, to help tide the man over some financial difficulties -- though the reader (and, soon enough, Mark) realizes right away that Mr. Sowerby will not be able to raise the money to pay off the bill, and the burden will fall on Mark. 

So, this thread is entwined throughout the novel: we realize quickly that Mr. Sowerby is on the road to complete financial ruin, and that he will bring Mark with him. Mr. Sowerby is the MP from the Duke's part of Barsethire (chosen by the Duke) and part of the book follows some political upheaval -- the Whigs gain control of Parliament. This allows Sowerby to angle for a plum appointment for Mark -- a Prebendary stall in Barchester -- which again, will only entangle Mark more damningly with Mr. Sowerby. (Trollope was keenly interested in politics and once stood for office himself.) This is the most political of the Barchester novels I've read, with plot lines involving multiple governments being formed (Trollope has great fun calling the Whigs "Gods" and the Tories "Giants" in an extended metaphor), and concerning the fortunes of not just Mark Robarts, but his brother John (who holds a minor position in a government department), and of Archdeacon Grantly (who stands to gain a Bishopric if a bill creating two new sees is passed), and Mr. Harold Smith, a pompous Whig (and brother-in-law to Mr. Sowerby) who wants a Cabinet position.*

The key romantic thread involves Mark's sister Lucy, who comes to live with Mark and Fanny, and thus meets Lord Lufton. The two fall in love, but Lady Lufton and the Archdeacon's wife Mrs. Grantly have long intended that Lord Lufton marry Griselda Grantly. Lucy is aware of that, and tries to hide her attraction to Lord Lufton, but any reader can see the way the wind blows. This is all resolved very nicely, even powerfully -- and Griselda Grantly, it must be said, is a terribly comical character in her almost imprenetrable self-conceit and lack of passion or intelligence. 

There is another significant thread, involving Mr. Crawley, a desperately poor clergyman with a meager living in a remote part of the county. Mr. Crawley was very briefly introduced in Barchester Towers as the friend of Mr. Arabin, who in that book became the new Dean of Barchester. Mr. Crowley and his wife have four children, and they can barely support them, but Mr. Crowley's pride is so extreme that he refuses all help, though Mr. Arabin as well as Fanny and Mark Robarts try to help, and sometimes manage to sneak treats to Mrs. Crowley. Mr. Crowley is a deeply flawed man, but a very honest and sincere one, and he serves as a moral corrective to Mark when he begins to stray. But the Crowleys face a severe crisis when Mrs. Crowley contracts a severe fever (probably typhoid fever), and Fanny and Lucy Robarts (especially Lucy) come to the rescue. (I understand that Mr. Crowley becomes the key character of The Last Chronicle of Barset.)

I have failed to mention many of the characters, some already familiar to readers of the previous books: the Bishop and Mrs. Proudie, the delightful heiress Miss Dunstable, Dr. Thorne of the book named for him; and well as such new characters as Mrs. Harriet Smith (Mr. Sowerby's sister), and the journalist Mr. Supplehouse.

I won't detail the plot any further -- likely I've already said too much. I just wish to say how thoroughly enjoyable the novel is -- indeed, I'm beginning to understand, how thoroughly enjoyable Trollope is. The novel -- as I understand it, most of his novels -- is told from an omniscient author point of view -- that is, the voice of the author is prominent, and he knows everything, and lets us in on a lot of what he knows. This sort of thing is unfashionable these days, and it is fraught with danger, but in skilled hands -- and Trollope's hands are very skilled indeed -- it is delightful. The author comments extensively on the events of the story, on the motivations and feelings of the characters, and on the moral and political lessons to be derived; and he does so with a beautifully ironic tone. The novel itself is at once gently satirical, and profoundly affectionate to all the characters, even a villain like Mr. Sowerby. It is very funny at times, and really moving at times. It is popular fiction -- of the highest order, but still popular -- and there is a sense that the author arranges that things turn out more or less for the best for the characters we like. But we do also learn, and think, about the society of which Trollope writes, and its social, economic, and political organization.

In summary -- this is a lovely book, and I recommend it highly. Likely it is best read after reading the earlier Barsetshire books -- but that should be no burden, they are quite enjoyable.

*(I understand that the Palliser novels -- originally called the Parliamentary novels -- are much more concerned with political maneuverings. They are also closely linked to the Barsetshire novels -- indeed, Palliser is the family name of the Duke of Omnium.)

Pseudonyms Quiz Answers

 Pseudonyms Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to the quiz:

1.  Two 19th century women writers, named Mary Anne Evans and Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, each chose a pseudonym with the same traditionally male first name. Give both full pseudonyms in either order (first and last name.)

George Eliot, George Sand (Sand, by the way, spelled the first name "George", no s)

2.  Lincoln Perry was the first Black actor to have a featured credit in a Hollywood film, and to make over $1,000,000 in movies. His characters, such as Joe in Show Boat, and Gummy, in Hearts of Dixie, came to be known as "The Laziest Men in the World": arguably a harmful stereotype, though some Black scholars argue that he was more of a trickster figure, and Perry was awarded an NCAAP Image Award. What was the stage name Perry might be said to have walked up and taken?

Stepin Fetchit

3.  An important political activist and religious figure was born with the surname Little, and had the surname el-Shabazz at his death, but is more generally known by which name (first and last name please)?

Malcolm X

4.  Richard Patrick Russ was a successful writer of boy's stories, appropriate in that his first book, Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, appeared when he was 15. But he changed his name in 1945, keeping his middle name as his new first name, and gained great success decades later as the author of a revered set of stories set during the Napoleonic Wars, a couple of which were adapted into the film Master and Commander. Give the new surname under which his later books appeared, and the surnames of the main characters in this series. 

O'Brien, (Jack) Aubrey/(Stephen) Maturin

5.  Name the writer who adopted the pseudonym V. Sirin, a reference to a Russian mythological bird, for their early works published in Germany, such as their first novel, Mary. This writer later published under their own name, and was wont to use versions of their name, such as Vivian Darkbloom, as characters in their novels.

Vladimir Nabokov

6.  One of the most famous pseudonyms in contemporary literature is that of the author of the Neopolitan novels, a four book series beginning with My Brilliant Friend. This author still refuses to reveal her true identity, leading to many speculations, including one that she was actually a man, a claim the author strongly denies. Under what name are the Neopolitan novels published?

Elena Ferrante

7.  Sometimes authors choose a pseudonym when they write in a different genre from their usual. Which renowned mystery writer published such novels as Absent in the Spring and The Rose and the Yew Tree, which were not mysteries but general fiction (with occasional romantic themes), as by "Mary Westmacott"?

Agatha Christie

8.  Many actors use names that differ from their birth names (think Marion Morrison and Norma Jean Mortenson) but this seems less common for directors. However, one John Martin Feeney became one of the most celebrated directors of all time, winner of four Oscars for Best Director. If his pseudonym was intended to conceal his Irish ancestry, surely he risked exposing that with one of his better known films, The Quiet Man. What was the name John Martin Feeney used professionally?

John Ford

9.  A woman possibly named Fujiwara no Kaoriko wrote a long novel generally regarded as one of the first novels in history. By what name is this author usually known, a descriptive name, bestowed on her during her service as a lady-in-waiting?

(Lady) Murasaki/Murasaki Shikibu

10.  The great French singer born Edith Gassion presumably did not regret adopting this pseudonym, which is usually translated as what bird in English, based on French slang? (Give either the pseudonym or the English word for the bird.)

Edith Piaf (the Little Sparrow)

11.  A common reason for using a pseudonym is to conceal your side hustle from your main employer. P. M. A. Linebarger was a professor in Asiatic Studies at Johns Hopkins, a reserve Army officer, and an expert in psychological warfare (but never a shoemaker nor a metalworker!). He also wrote some of the most individual science fiction of the 20th Century, such as "Scanners Live in Vain", under which pseudonym (first and last name please)?

Cordwainer Smith

12.  The woman born Paulette Williams rejected her patriarchal name (Paulette) and slave name (Williams) and took a new name, based on Xhosa and Zulu words meaning "She who comes with her own things" and "She who walks like a lion". Give this new name, under which she wrote novels such as Liliane, poetry, and plays like the 1975 Emmy- and Grammy-nominated "choreopoem" for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

Ntozake Shange

13. The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, author of More Than Human, was born with a different name. Give his last name at birth -- a name which may have been the inspiration for the title character's name in a certain story by Sturgeon's friend Robert Heinlein -- and Heinlein's character's name became an English word for remote handling devices.

Waldo

14. Portugal's Fernando Pessoa may have used more pseudonyms than any other writer, though he regarded them as individuals of their own, with different biographies and views, and he called them "heteronyms". One of the most famous of his heteronyms even inspired a novel by another of Portugal's greatest writers, called The Year of the Death of [redacted]. Give either the redacted name of this particular heteronym, or the Nobel Prize winner who wrote the novel.

Ricardo Reis/Jose Saramago

15. Science fiction and crime writer Stephen Robinett published his first several stories and the serial version of his first novel (Stargate) as by "Tak Hallus", a name derived from a Persian, Urdu, and Hindi word (itself imported from Arabic) which has what appropriate meaning?

Pseudonym/Pen Name

16. A Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master published some stories and a few of her novels as by "Andrew North", presumably because her audience for these books was felt to be boys. Ironically, her first name was also traditionally male -- because she had adopted it at first as a pseudonym for her early novels, but then legally changed her name? What was her full name, either at birth, or after her name change?

Alice Mary Norton/Andre Norton

Pseudonyms Quiz

Pseudonyms Quiz

As I've mentioned before, I'm in an online trivia league, and I have occasionally written quizzes for that league. My previous quizzes were very Science Fiction-centric, but this year I did one that focuses more generally on pseudonyms -- including, in some cases, names that people chose for themselves and legally adopted. The quiz as presented included the first 12 questions here, but I've added four more questions, rejected during the prep stage in part because they might have played too hard (for a general audience) and in part because I wanted to avoid having too many SF questions.

Most of these questions are about writers, but there are some from the film world, one singer, and one more politically-oriented individual. I'll have answers in a couple of days. If you wish, leave your guess in the comments. [The answers have now been posted here.]

1.  Two 19th century women writers, named Mary Anne Evans and Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, each chose a pseudonym with the same traditionally male first name. Give both full pseudonyms in either order (first and last name.)

2.  Lincoln Perry was the first Black actor to have a featured credit in a Hollywood film, and to make over $1,000,000 in movies. His characters, such as Joe in Show Boat, and Gummy, in Hearts of Dixie, came to be known as "The Laziest Men in the World": arguably a harmful stereotype, though some Black scholars argue that he was more of a trickster figure, and Perry was awarded an NCAAP Image Award. What was the stage name Perry might be said to have walked up and taken?

3.  An important political activist and religious figure was born with the surname Little, and had the surname el-Shabazz at his death, but is more generally known by which name (first and last name please)?

4.  Richard Patrick Russ was a successful writer of boy's stories, appropriate in that his first book, Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, appeared when he was 15. But he changed his name in 1945, keeping his middle name as his new first name, and gained great success decades later as the author of a revered set of stories set during the Napoleonic Wars, a couple of which were adapted into the film Master and Commander. Give the new surname under which his later books appeared, and the surnames of the main characters in this series. 

5.  Name the writer who adopted the pseudonym V. Sirin, a reference to a Russian mythological bird, for their early works published in Germany, such as their first novel, Mary. This writer later published under their own name, and was wont to use versions of their name, such as Vivian Darkbloom, as characters in their novels.

6.  One of the most famous pseudonyms in contemporary literature is that of the author of the Neopolitan novels, a four book series beginning with My Brilliant Friend. This author still refuses to reveal her true identity, leading to many speculations, including one that she was actually a man, a claim the author strongly denies. Under what name are the Neopolitan novels published?

7.  Sometimes authors choose a pseudonym when they write in a different genre from their usual. Which renowned mystery writer published such novels as Absent in the Spring and The Rose and the Yew Tree, which were not mysteries but general fiction (with occasional romantic themes), as by "Mary Westmacott"?

8.  Many actors use names that differ from their birth names (think Marion Morrison and Norma Jean Mortenson) but this seems less common for directors. However, one John Martin Feeney became one of the most celebrated directors of all time, winner of four Oscars for Best Director. If his pseudonym was intended to conceal his Irish ancestry, surely he risked exposing that with one of his better known films, The Quiet Man. What was the name John Martin Feeney used professionally?

9.  A woman possibly named Fujiwara no Kaoriko wrote a long novel generally regarded as one of the first novels in history. By what name is this author usually known, a descriptive name, bestowed on her during her service as a lady-in-waiting?

10.  The great French singer born Edith Gassion presumably did not regret adopting this pseudonym, which is usually translated as what bird in English, based on French slang? (Give either the pseudonym or the English word for the bird.)

11.  A common reason for using a pseudonym is to conceal your side hustle from your main employer. P. M. A. Linebarger was a professor in Asiatic Studies at Johns Hopkins, a reserve Army officer, and an expert in psychological warfare (but never a shoemaker nor a metalworker!). He also wrote some of the most individual science fiction of the 20th Century, such as "Scanners Live in Vain", under which pseudonym (first and last name please)?

12.  The woman born Paulette Williams rejected her patriarchal name (Paulette) and slave name (Williams) and took a new name, based on Xhosa and Zulu words meaning "She who comes with her own things" and "She who walks like a lion". Give this new name, under which she wrote novels such as Liliane, poetry, and plays like the 1975 Emmy- and Grammy-nominated "choreopoem" for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

13. The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, author of More Than Human, was born with a different name. Give his last name at birth -- a name which may have been the inspiration for the title character's name in a certain story by Sturgeon's friend Robert Heinlein -- and Heinlein's character's name became an English word for remote handling devices..

14. Portugal's Fernando Pessoa may have used more pseudonyms than any other writer, though he regarded them as individuals of their own, with different biographies and views, and he called them "heteronyms". One of the most famous of his heteronyms even inspired a novel by another of Portugal's greatest writers, called The Year of the Death of [redacted]. Give either the redacted name of this particular heteronym, or the Nobel Prize winner who wrote the novel.

15. Science fiction and crime writer Stephen Robinett published his first several stories and the serial version of his first novel (Stargate) as by "Tak Hallus", a name derived from a Persian, Urdu, and Hindi word (itself imported from Arabic) which has what appropriate meaning?

16. A Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master published some stories and a few of her novels as by "Andrew North", presumably because her audience for these books was felt to be boys. Ironically, her first name was also traditionally male -- because she had adopted it at first as a pseudonym for her early novels, but then legally changed her name? What was her full name, either at birth, or after her name change?

Review: Lady Into Fox, by David Garnett

Review: Lady Into Fox, by David Garnett

by Rich Horton

David Garnett (1892-1981) was part of the Bloomsbury Group. His mother was the Russian translator Constance Garnett, and he married Virginia Woolf's niece, rather scandalously (she was over a quarter-century younger than him, and he had met her as an infant, and she was the daughter of his one time lover Duncan Grant.) He published his first novel during the Great War under a pseudonym. Lady Into Fox (1924) was his second novel, or, really, a novella -- it's not much over 20,000 words long. He wrote quite a few more books, of which the best known is probably Aspects of Love (1955), the source material for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of that title.

The book was illustrated in woodcuts by R. A. Garnett -- David Garnett's first wife. My edition is the 2004 reprint from McSweeney's, which reproduces R. A. Garnett's illustrations. 

It's the story of a young woman, Silvia Tebrick (maiden name Fox) who one day suddenly turns into a fox. Her husband Richard is despondent -- they were a truly loving couple -- and takes his vixen home with him, and tries to make a life with her in her transformed state. He dismisses his servants, and tries to feed her at the dinner table, and have her sleep in the bed with him, and she even plays piquet.

But over time her urge to be outside dominates, and she loses interest in piquet, and wants to eat food she's caught herself. Eventually Richard must set her free, which only leads to further difficulties for him. She has a litter, and he finds himself desperately worrying about the local fox hunts. There is still a relationship -- and Richard dotes on some of the foxes in her litter, though he's jealous of the father. But the arc of the story is clear, and the tragic ending inevitable.

It's a rather neat story, at once tragic, but a bit arch. Is it an allegory of a woman's desire to have her own life? That's certainly one way to read it. But perhaps it's just a "beast story", or something unexplainable. There is never any reason to doubt the true affection of Richard and his wife, no question of cruelty. But her independent life as a vixen seems something she values as well. A fine novella, and best at this lenght -- any longer and it would have overstayed its welcome.

(Vercors' 1960 novel Sylva, the first book in translation to be nominated for a Hugo, was apparently in part a response to Lady Into Fox, as it's sort of the reverse story -- Sylva is a woman raised by foxes, or perhaps a fox that has become a woman. (I haven't actually read the book.))

Old Bestseller: The Constant Nymph, by Margaret Kennedy

Old Bestseller: The Constant Nymph, by Margaret Kennedy

by Rich Horton

Margaret Kennedy (1896-1967) was a British novelist and playwright, with at least 16 novels and a number of plays to her credit, as well as criticism and memoirs. She seems to have been quite successful in her lifetime, signaled in part by several movie adaptations, but, like many writers, her reputation went into eclipse for a time, but she has been somewhat rescued in recent years. Her family was, as a whole, quite literary -- Joyce Cary was her cousin, and one of her daughters and one of her granddaughters are also novelists.

The Constant Nymph, her second novel, from 1924, is definitely her best remembered book. She turned it into a play in 1926 (with Basil Dean) -- this was very popular, with the lead originated by Noel Coward, who was replaced by John Gielgud. There were four screen adaptations, in 1928, 1933, 1938, and 1943. The latter version, starring Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith, and Brenda Marshall, was quite successful, with Fontaine getting an Oscar nomination. (Having said that, a reading of the plot according to Wikipedia suggests to me that some of the most affecting parts of the novel were excised -- admittedly, in part likely because they'd have been pretty controversial.)

The story opens with a brief introduction to the expatriate British composer Albert Sanger, who left his home early for life on the continent, producing mostly operas that were only appreciated by a rare few, living in various places, with various wives and mistresses, and seven acknowledged children plus some illegitimate ones. We meet one of his protégés, another Englishman, Lewis Dodd, coming to visit him at his ramshackle place in the Austrian Tyrol. This section is called "Sanger's Circus", and Dodd, along with a Russian choreographer named Trigorin, arrive at the house, in which Sanger's seven children -- two by his first wife, four by his second wife, an Englishwoman named Evelyn Churchill, and one by his current mistress live, along with Sanger and the mistress, Linda. Lewis Dodd is another fabulous composer, also mostly unappreciated. The immediate crises are two -- Sanger's 16 year old daughter Toni has disappeared, and Sanger's health is precarious. Toni soon emerges -- she has run off to München, and has been seduced by the Jewish impresario Jacob Birnbaum. It's quickly clear that the even younger Tessa (14) is in love with Dodd, who has just enough self control not to sleep with her. And then Sanger dies.

Toni's situation is normalized, to some extent, when she marries Jacob. The two oldest Sanger children are talented musicians, and old enough to go off on their own. But what to do with Evelyn Churchill's remaining children, Tessa, Lina, and Sebastian? Evelyn's brothers, Robert and Charles, realize they must take custody, and soon Robert and Charles' daughter Florence come to the Sanger home to manage the estate, and to pack the children off to school in England. But Florence -- already an admirer of Lewis Dodd's music -- falls desperately in love with him, though it's really pretty clear they are not well suited. Lewis is entranced as well, due to Florence's beauty and sophistication, and they quickly marry. 

Then to the closing sequence, which involves the inevitable collapse of the Dodds' marriage, and the terrible difficulty the Sanger-Churchill children have adapting to English school ways. Florence is overcontrolling, and fiendishly jealous of Tessa. Tessa is still in love with Lewis -- and Lewis with her, though it's not clear how much of his response is to be trusted (and it's certainly a bit creepy.) Lewis (of course) is a compositional genius (and also a great conductor) -- and Florence sees him as a career to manage, while Tessa is more of a muse ... The novel careens from what at the beginning is an almost comic -- and quite believable -- portrayal of a chaotic if somewhat loving household to a full on -- and quite believable -- tragedy.

It's not a perfect novel. The brilliance of both Sanger and Dodd as composers seems at times a plot device. The portrayal of Jacob Birnbaum is very antisemitic, though one could argue that it is simply portraying the standard antisemitism of the era. The ultimate plot resolution turns in part on what seems a sort of convenient health problem. But for all that -- it really works. It's deeply affecting, and much of the family dynamics, for all their chaos, or perhaps because of the chaos, ring true. Florence perhaps is in the end too much of a villain -- but also we kind of believe that, and she's a villain but for -- well, not good reasons but understandable ones. It's -- it's a novel eminently worth reading, and quite powerful in its way. And, you know, the ending the reader kind of roots for (but doesn't get) is in many ways just so wrong -- but ... kind of right? I've seen the book compared to Lolita, but it's not really like that at all -- Tessa is not at all like Dolores Haze, nor so horribly abused, and Lewis Dodd, though not really an admirable man, is no Humbert Humbert. And Kennedy gets into Tessa's head in a way Nabokov never did with Dolores.

By the way, I had not known that Kennedy wrote a sequel, The Fool of the Family, concerning two of the Sanger boys, and (of course) their horrifying romantic convolutions. (The Constant Nymph is essentially all about the girls.) It seems to have been a success, and was adapted by Kennedy into a play, Escape Me Never, which in turn was twice filmed, in the UK in 1935, and again in the US in 1947. (The British film seems well-regarded, but the US film was apparently quite poor, despite starring Errol Flynn and Ida Lupino.)

Review: Stone, by Alter S. Reiss

Review: Stone, by Alter S. Reiss

by Rich Horton

A few years ago Alter S. Reiss published a novella for Tor.com called Sunset Mantle, set in a fictional but non-fantastic world. I liked it a great deal, and so I was happy to notice that he has published another story, a novella or short novel, in the same world (though with different characters.) This is Stone, from 2023. As far as I can tell it's ebook only.

The main character is Rael, a young woman in Taraf the City, an independent city-state in what seems a roughly Middle Eastern setting and culture, analogous to our world two or three millennia ago. She is a strong woman, learning to be a stone worker, like her father. The city is building a strong new gate, in the face of threats from a man who has set himself up as a King and conquered several other city-states. Rael's father is a greatly respected stonemason, "of the line of Peor". She has two brothers and a sister. The plot is set in motion when her younger and more mischievous brother Tei is murdered by one of the Red Scarves -- a group of bandits living in the desert wastes, that had recently been declared anathema by Taraf the City's somewhat fanatical new scholar-priest after they had stolen some gold from a caravan.

Rael blames herself for Tei's death, for she had not stopped him from confronting the Red Scarves. Her mother, meanwhile, is bitter that no revenge is being taken. And the loss of Tei puts more pressure on their family to supply urgently needed stoneworkers. Rael's brother is more interesting in being a soldier, and her sister is not well-suited to the work, so they invite a couple of cousins from another city. And the two young men, as Rael quickly realizes, are not actually her cousins -- but her mother insists they maintain the fiction, because their labor is much needed. 

Rael, though disturbed by the lie, soon comes to like the two men, who are good workers, and who even teach Rael some things she didn't know. Indeed she starts to have feelings for one of the men, Arith, which are clearly reciprocated. And the work on the gate continues, until another accident strikes, injuring a friend of Rael's and also one of her false cousins. With his fellow hurt, Arith asks Rael's assistance on something -- taking a mysterious cask in to the desert. Rael knows this must be something questionable, but she trusts Arith.

And so, the resolution marches forward, a beautifully engineered moral tragedy, as the various missteps -- even those with understandable motivations -- come back to haunt most of the characters, and especially Rael and her family. This is complicated by the expected incursion of the ambitious King, and by a religious showdown of sorts, with the laws and rules of their society, and their consciences, propelling the characters to a crushing end, with heroic acts, treachery, surprises, and deep honesty all swirling together. It's a profoundly moving story, and I recommend it highly.