Review: On Strike Against God, by Joanna Russ

Review: On Strike Against God, by Joanna Russ

by Rich Horton

I don't usually publish reviews of books by the same author back to back, but after finishing The Female Man I proceeded straight to On Strike Against God. My review of The Female Man is here. 

Joanna Russ wrote what she called her "coming out" novel, On Strike Against God, beginning in 1973. A first draft was complete by 1974, making it her first novel after The Female Man, though the final manuscript wasn't complete until 1977, by which time she had finished two other novels, We Who Are About To ..., and The Two of Them. On Strike Against God was placed with a Lesbian press, Out and Out Books, and publication was delayed until 1980 largely due to financial issues at the publisher. It was thus her last novel to see print.

It's a short novel, a bit over 40,000 words. Russ's novels are fairly short -- each of Picnic on Paradise, We Who Are About Too ..., and On Strike Against God are in the 40,000 to 45,000 word range; while her other three novels are roughly twice as long, between about 75,000 and 80,000 words. This is in no way an issue -- they are all the right length. On Strike Against God is also Russ's only non-SF novel, though she wrote a number of mainstream short stories.

This novel is told by Esther, a teacher at a college in upstate New York. Esther is in her late 30s, and divorced. She is beginning to realize that she doesn't like men much (she liked her husband OK, but didn't like sex), and she is falling in love with a younger woman at the school named Jean. At first she struggles -- society has told her for so long that heterosexual relationships are the only proper ones that she's not sure what to do about Jean. But she's also coming to her feminist consciousness, and is fiercely resisting the sexism that affects every other aspect of her life.

So ... she makes a tentative move on Jean, and Jean responds, and ... well, I won't tell the rest of the plotty stuff, but the relationships has ups and downs, but mostly, I'd say, ups. The sex scenes are simply beautiful -- not in any sense pornographic, but sweet, character-based, revelatory, emotionally honest. There are also reminiscences of earlier female friendships, scenes of men, good-intentioned or hostile, simply failing to comprehend her (or any women), and "coming out" scenes to friends -- a gay male friend, an older couple in the neighborhood, other women -- that painfully illustrate how hard it was to buck society's rules back then even with the most supposedly liberal people.

The book is profoundly feminist, with some passages quite similar to passages in The Female Man. And this is all powerful -- but much more powerful is the love story at the heart of the novel. It is real, it is emotionally convincing, and it's just -- good. This is a novel that a lot of SF readers have missed, I think. At any rate, I certainly had! It has had several editions: the Out and Out Books printing, a 1985 edition from The Crossing Press, and a 1987 edition from The Women's Press (a UK imprint.) I read it in the 2023 Library of America volume Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories. And the Feminist Press put out another edition in 2024. So, after a quarter century or so in which it was hard to find, On Strike Against God is again quite readily available, and I strongly recommend it.

Review: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Review: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

by Rich Horton

Joanna Russ finished The Female Man in 1971, and spent the next few years trying to sell it. According to Nicole Rudick, the editor of the Library of America edition in which I reread it (Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories), one reason was that Russ wished to place it with a "mainstream" publisher, instead of a science fiction imprint. Those publishers rejected it, says Rudick in her "Notes on the Texts", either because of Russ's established identity as a "science fiction writer", or because they had already bought their token feminist novel for that year. (I would add that Russ's identification with science fiction aside, The Female Man is pretty obviously science fiction in itself, no need to have the author's backlist confirm that.) Eventually she placed it with Frederik Pohl's line at Bantam, labeled "A Frederik Pohl Selection". This was, then, a definite concession for Russ -- it appeared from a science fiction imprint, and as a mass market paperback to boot. That said, the "Frederik Pohl Selection" label was an attempt at positioning the book as a sort of prestige imprint for SF, and indeed the month before The Female Man appeared in February 1975 the Frederik Pohl Selection was Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. (Having said that, the only "Frederik Pohl Selections" that seem to have lasted are The Female Man, Dhalgren, and another Delany novel, Triton.)

1975 was 50 years ago, and for that reason there have been some discussions of the major SF novels of that year, and in the process I have reread the top three such books: in terms of sales (I assume), notoriety (I am sure), and latter day reputation (I sense). These are The Forever War, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo; Dhalgren; and The Female Man. (The latter two did not appear on the Hugo shortlist, but were both on the (rather long) Nebula shortlist.) Back in 1976 I am pretty sure my Hugo vote went to The Forever War, though I did read both Dhalgren (the whole thing, honest!) and The Female Man. But here in 2025 I am pretty strongly of the opinion that the best SF novel of 1975 was The Female Man. All three novels are to a great extent, er, "products of their time" -- particularly in their treatment of sex and sexuality. But The Female Man remains much fresher today, certainly including that aspect.

I hinted at commercial success above. Frederik Pohl took a significant risk in publishing both Dhalgren and The Female Man -- but his risk definitely paid off. Dhalgren was a major seller, something of a sensation back then, and it still sells well now. The Female Man didn't make quite the commercial splash Dhalgren did, but it sold nicely, and it too has continued to sell consistently since then -- over 500,000 copies, according to Ludick. And on the face of it, The Female Man isn't a particularly "commercial" book. (Neither to be sure is Dhalgren.)

Part of the appeal -- and part of the difficulty -- of The Female Man lies in its structure. It's told from the points of view of three women ... or four ... or even five? Janet Evason was born on Whileaway, a world inhabited entirely by women, the men having died of a plague hundreds of years before. Jeannine Dadier lives on Earth, in 1969, in an alternate history in which a certain Herr Schickelgruber died in 1936. And Joanna ... who is Joanna? We see her first in Jeannine's timeline. She tells us she has turned into a man. We are invited to imagine that she is indeed the author, and she does seem to be from our timeline. Later we will meet Jael, who lives in another timeline in which men and women live separately and are engaged in a decades-long war -- in which Jael serves as a gleeful assassin. (And behind these women is a mysterious other -- the spirit of the author? The spirit of the book?)

Janet Evason has come to Jeannine's timeline, as the very advanced society of Whileaway has developed a means of interdimensional travel. Janet is acting as some sort of ambassador (though with what goals seems unclear.) Jeannine is in a long term unsatisfying relationship with a man named Cal. The plot -- and there is a plot though in no sense a conventional one -- follows Janet's time on Earth, during which she ends up collecting Jeannine and Joanna, and then the three of them go to Jael's timeline. That sounds a bit flat, but the novel isn't flat at all. 

Whileawayan society is described through Joanna's life story: in some ways almost utopian, though with dark streaks: duelling is common, and there is a distinct authoritarian aspect to its organization, though it's a rather communal and apparently benevolent authoritarianism. Their technology is high, and they live lightly on the land (partly due to a fairly low population.) By law, every woman has one child of her body (the goal seems to be a static population but in reality such a rule would lead to a continually declining population, as some people die before they can bear children.) There is advanced genetic science, allowing for their parthenogenetic reproduction and also for enhancements such as elimination of most diseases, and increased intelligence.

Janet's mission to Earth gives us a view of Jeannine's society, which is broadly very similar to ours in 1970 or so. Jeannine herself is a critical character -- evidently intelligent, but unable to use her intelligence due to sexism; unable to have a satisfying relationship due to sexism; unable even to quite understand that she isn't happy. Another woman allows us another perspective -- Laur is shown attracted to Janet, and able to break free of heteronormative constraints. 

The eventual transition to Jael's world is the most satirical, and the harshest, part of the book. It's also queasily funny, and Jael is a fascinating if horrible character. The men of Manland have made themselves a dystopia, complete with men deemed unworthy of manhood who are changed into women -- the fully changed can become "wives", the half-changed take on other traditionally so-called feminine roles. All this is horrific but it lands too, as a cruel exaggeration of male-dominated society that hits home as a funhouse mirror of our world. 

Throughout the novel there are powerful lines, expressing the frustration the author, her characters, and many women feel at the positions they are forced into by men, at the justifications offered by men, at the lack of listening, the lack of imagination, the lack of perception by men. These hit home, they hit hard, and it's hard for me as a man to respond in any way -- inappropriate even. I could argue -- and I would -- that in the 50 years since The Female Man was published there has been significant progress; but then perhaps that's not an argument I have the right to make. Finally I should say that angry as the book is -- justifiably angry -- it is also very funny. (One of the abiding virtues of Russ's writing is her wit.)

The last chapter is the best -- it's unexpected, it's powerful, it's moving. It reiterates many of the arguments set forth earlier (implicitly or explicitly.) It provides a conclusion -- not a wrapping up but an impressionistic hint -- for each of the book's four -- no, five! -- J's. It makes its point, it says goodbye, and it introduces itself -- the book -- to the world. It was four years late, perhaps, to first publication -- but 50 years later, the book still speaks strongly. 

Review: The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope

Review: The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

The Small House at Allington (serialized 1862-1863, in book form in 1864) is the fifth novel in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles. It is curiously disconnected from the other five novels -- not entirely so, by any means: the main character of The Warden appears in a very brief scene, and the de Courcys are a significant presence, as they were in Doctor Thorne. But for the most part, this is an isolated episode. And perhaps for that reason -- though perhaps on its own terms -- while I still very much enjoyed this book, I think I would rank it fifth of the five Barsetshire novels I've read so far.

The book revolves around Christopher Dale, the Squire of Allington, an aging bachelor, his widowed sister-in-law, Mary Dale, and her two daughters, Isabella (Bell) and Lillian (Lily). The Squire is an emotionally cold man, but loyal if a bit parsimonious. Mary and he have not really got along, as he disapproved of Mary marrying his brother. But he has let the dower house of his estate, the "Small House", to Mary and her daughters at no cost. The Squire has a notion that a marriage between Bell and his nephew and heir Bernard would be a great thing, but Bell thinks of Bernard as only a brother of sorts. 

The main action begins when a friend of Bernard's, Adolphus Crosbie, comes to visit. Crosbie is of no particular family, but he has a somewhat prestigious position in the civil service; and he has made a name as a man of fashion. His airs bowl over Lily, and her beauty and spirit make an impression on him, and they become engaged. A local boy, also in the civil service but at a lower level, John Eames, has been in love with Lily for some time, but she does not love him. After the engagement, Crosbie begins to have no doubt. He is by no means rich, and Lily is smeary the niece of a Squire, not aristocratic at all, and she has no fortune. He is acquainted with the Earl de Courcy. and on a visit he is seduced by the prospect of marrying an Earl's daughter -- and the eldest de Courcy daughter, Alexandrina, is rather desperate to be married -- and Crosbie jilts Lily Dale and marries Alexandrina.

Meanwhile John Eames is slowly but steadily making progress in his job, and is beginning to grow out of what Trollope call is "hobbledehoy" stage. Alas, he has foolishly gotten into a bit of mess with the daughter of his landlady. And the Squire's desire that Bernard marry Bell as encounters Bell's absolute refusal. While Lily is devastated by her rejection by Adolphus Crosbie, but refuses to confront his absolute lack of character. The novel then follows John Eames' growth -- helped by a fortuitous friendship with another Earl, the Earl de Guest; and also Crosbie's unhappy marriage and some struggles in his social life, not helped at all by a confrontation with Eames. Christopher Dale's relationship with his sister-in-law and her daughters reaches a breaking point. And John must find a way to disentangle himself from the vulgar woman he's gotten involved with. 

The novel -- intelligently, I think -- frustrates the reader with some of its developments -- certain plot expectations do not eventuate. Financial issues are certainly important, but not quite to the extent as in most of the other Barsetshire novels. 

There is an odd subplot, almost completely unrelated to the rest of the novel, in which Plantagenet Palliser is introduced. Planty Pall is basically the most important character in Trollope's other major series, the Parliamentary or Palliser books. His part of this novel concerns a dalliance with Griselda, Lady Dumbello, the very beautiful but essentially empty daughter of Archdeacon Grantly, whose marriage had been an important subplot in Framley Parsonage. The resolution of this subplot sets up a key thread of the first Parliamentary novel, Can You Forgive Her?, but seems out of place here. As Can You Forgiver Her? was the next novel published after A Small House at Allington, I wonder if Trollope was purposefully setting up a sort of transition between the two series.

Is this a good novel? Yes it is, and I enjoyed it greatly, But I don't quite love it the way I love the other Barsetshire novels I've read, nor the two Palliser novels I've read. There's a sense of manipulation to some of it -- Crosbie's punishment, for example, while satisfying to the reader seems perhaps a bit too pat. But no matter -- it's worth your time if you get into Trollope at all.

Review: Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner

Review: Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner

by Rich Horton

Alan Garner, born in 1934, established his reputation with a few fantasies generally marketed for young adults, though Garner rejects such a label, and his books are certainly read with enjoyment and often awe by adults. The best known are The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), its first sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), The Owl Service (1967), and Red Shift (1973). I read them 20 or more years ago and found them challenging, quite different from most supposedly YA fantasies. Most of his later work was more overtly aimed at adults, and often not fantastical at all. Treacle Walker is his latest "novel", published in 2021, and shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. I say "novel" but it is perhaps 18,000 words long -- those who complained about the brevity of Orbital should take note!

I am going to confess that while I enjoyed reading this book, and found several passages remarkable, I struggled to get a grip on what it really meant, indeed on what was really going on. I proceeded to read some reviews, and most of those were either blithely confident in an ill-described and unconvincing explanation (as in "It's about quantum physics"), or simply gave a brief synopsis and said they liked the book. Fortunately, I happened across a review by the late Maureen Kincaid Speller, one of the best critics to arise on our field over the past few decades, and clearly someone who had read Garner's work deeply and respects it greatly. Her reading of the book is better informed and deeper than mine, and both illuminating but confessing some of the same difficulties I had in understanding it fully. (Though undoubtedly she understood it better than I!) Her review, from Strange Horizons, is here.

I'll content myself, then, with the briefest of synopses. Joseph Coppock is a boy who has been ill. He has a bad eye over which he wears a patch, and he loves comic books, notably one about Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit and his antagonists, Whizzy the Wicked Wizard and the Brit Brothers. One day a man comes to his door, a rag and bone man, desiring to take a rag and bone from Joe in exchange for a pot and a stone. Joe gives him and old bit of his pyjamas, and a lamb bone, and chooses a stone and a pot of medicine -- the latter a cure-all seemingly from a past century. The rag-and-bone man is named Treacle Walker.

Over the next little while Joe encounters a strange man, Thin Amren, who came out of a bog at the bottom of the meadow; and visits the eye doctor, learning that his "good" eye and his "bad" eye see very different things -- including the comic he's reading seeming to come to life. At one time there are two Joes. There is ever a sense of weirdness, and indeed a sense of things happening at different times simultaneously -- Joe himself living at different time. It's interesting that there is no hint of his parents, nor indeed of anyone besides Joe, Thin Amren, Treacle Walker, and I suppose the eye doctor. Questions remain, like:  is Joe alive? Is Joe really Treacle Walker in some sense? Which eye shows truth, or do they both? And so on.

I was intrigued, but didn't really love the book. I do think I need to return to The Owl Service and Red Shift at some time. 

Review: The Case of the Late Pig, by Margery Allingham

Review: The Case of the Late Pig, by Margery Allingham

by Rich Horton

Margery Allingham (1904-1966) was one of the "big four" women writers during the so-called "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", the others being Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Her best known character was Albert Campion, an aristocrat using an assumed name who acts as a detective sometimes, sometimes a spy. She wrote 18 novels and many short stories about him, though in several of the novels he is a relatively minor characters. Her husband Philip Youngman Carter completed an unfinished novel after her death, and wrote two more; and some time after his death a novel he had left unfinished was complete by Mike Ripley, and Ripley has continued to produce about 10 more Albert Campion novels, the latest appearing as recently as 2023. There was a BBC series called Campion in the late '80s (shown on PBS in the US) which adapted a few of the books.

I believe I read one or two Campion novels back in my teens but I have no memory of them. Several years ago I reads one of Allingham's non-Campion mysteries, Black Plumes (1940), which I quite enjoyed. So when I ran across a 1989 reprint of the 1937 novel The Case of the Late Pig, which Avon published about the time it was adapted into an episode of the BBC series, I picked it up, and I read it this past weekend, mostly while on an airplane to Boston to attend Readercon.

The Case of the Late Pig is a rather short novel, around 40,000 words. In fact, it was originally published in a collection of Campion short stories, but soon reprinted in a standalone book. It's told in first person by Campion -- apparently the only book to feature him as narrator. As the book opens, he is in bed, reading an anonymous letter, which announces the funeral of one R. I. Peters. Peters -- called Pig -- was a bully at the school Campion attended, and went on to a criminal career. Campion hardly regrets his passing, but attends the funeral anyway, and is surprised to recognize another schoolmate, Gilbert Whippet, who, he learns, received a similar anonymous letter. But there was nothing suspicious about Peters' death, and Campion forgets about it until a few months later a friend of his, Leo Pursuivant calls him down to his estate to investigate a murder. And the victim is unmistakably Pig Peters, though the man is known to Leo as Oswald Harris.

What follows is a fast-moving evolution of multiple motives (Oswald Harris made enemies easily, and particularly in this little place, where he proposed to buy up a popular property and develop it vulgar ways), multiple identities, many suspects, and some real danger for Albert and some of his friends. There's a bit of oddly undeveloped sexual intrigue between Albert and Leo's pretty daughter Janet. (The book is written in a way that seems to suggest that Janet and Albert may have met in a previous story.) There is more than one criminal, and Gilbert Whippet reappears in a surprising way. The crime itself is resolved in a pleasurably enough way. 

As a mystery, it's fine but minor. The best parts of the book are the ironical portrayals of the characters. There are a number of fine comic bits, and as I said some suggestinon of real peril. Campion is an engaging narrator. His somewhat brutish servant, the ex-burglar Lugg, is a nice sidekick. The narration is rapid and easy, never particularly deep. I am told that Campion's character deepens in later novels -- this story is fine but no more than that. 

Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

Recent Short SF/F Fiction Reviews

by Rich Horton

Here I'm taking a look at some recent SF or Fantasy short stories I read recently. I'll begin by helping celebrate the 50th outing of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet -- this remarkable magazine, started in 1996, is still in print, in the traditional "zine" format -- saddle-stapled and all; the issues are very attractive to boot. The editors are Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, and the contents are an eclectic mix of fiction, articles (often about cooking!) and poetry, with the fiction loosely in the SF/Fantasy zone but with no boundaries. 

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet celebrates its 50th issue with a strong issue, including S. Woodson's "Dog in the Garden", about a woman in a near future highly repressive corporatized environment who follows a mysterious dog into a new world, full of magic. It's sweet -- the nearly but not quite utopian other world is lovingly portrayed. I did feel that things were a good bit too easy for its main character. Jessy Randall's "Remedial Kissing Class" is also sweet, with the narrator finding love by more or less flouting the title lessons. "White Band", by Guan Un, is a nicely written vignette, with the main character a bit upset that their friend is marrying the moon, and "Graceless Creatures", by Shaun Cammack, is pure horror, about an exhibit of what seem sirens, which can be visited by people with headphones so they won't hear the song. Dark and effectively ugly. And Marie Vibbert's "The Summer Kids and the Gemini" has Hannah ready to go to college making one last trip to the amusement park (Cedar Point, in Sandusky, Ohio), only to meet some intriguing young people who spirit her away, to what turns out to be life of endless literal "amusement", and the rides can trasnport one through time to different parks in different eras. Vibbert sharply interrogates the real consequences of such an existence, and Hannah is smart enough to resist it -- even realizing that her mother had once met the same kids and regretted not going off with them.

Those are all fine stories -- Vibbert's being the best, I think -- but the prize story is "The Path to Pembroke", by L. H. Adams. It's set in North Carolina in a climate-ruined future, with serial outbreaks of different plagues a prime risk. Quint is a young man living among a small group of people trying to survive in the woods -- but always facing the risk of wanderers who might carry a new disease. When one such group comes by, Quint is delegated to walk to the Pembroke Biological Research Station, to warn them of a potential new disease and perhaps get some medicine. Quint's trip is terrifying -- he has gotten sick himself, and he is chased by a group of what seem a sort of zombies, and the weather is harsh. The narrative is a powerfully tense story, basically a chase. That's nice enough but nothing special, but the story is elevated to another level by the narrator itself -- at first seeming just an authorial device, allowing us to follow Quint and also learning something of his and his family's past -- but there is a kicker of a sting in the story's tail, combined with some neat and scary revelations of the nature of one of the diseases threatening people in this future.

The next two stories were recommended to me by Will Waller, and I thank him for the pointer. The first is from the May-June issue of Uncanny, the multiple Hugo-winning online magazine edited by Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas. 

One common trick of fantasy stories is to use the fantastical element as a very literal, reified, metaphor for the real life problems of the characters. I sometimes find this too artificial, too much a mere trick, and even unnecessary. But done well it can be very effective, and I though this strategy worked brilliantly in Anjali Sachdeva's "Vivisection". Eleanor has learned to hide vulnerable parts of her body from her partner Severine. Her heart is in the kitchen, her liver in a closet, and so on. We quickly realize that Severine is a pretty awful woman -- powerful, attractive, and also abusive and a cheater. And Eleanor copes -- by hiding parts of herself. And by nurturing a deer -- a hart -- from a fawn to adulthood -- not a pet, but a sort of a near friend by now. 

The story sets up the situation and lets it play out -- Eleanor's increasing desperation in trying both to please her lover and not to be hurt by her, Severine's inevitable discovery of Eleanor's hidden body parts, the eventual crisis. This is a story that could have been told straight, with no fantastical elements -- but the literalized metaphor in this case elevates it, makes every step more powerful. I really enjoyed this.

Now to GigaNotoSaurus, a webzine that has been publishing roughly a story a month since late 2010, when Ann Leckie founded it. The current editor is LaShawn M. Wanak. GigaNotoSaurus tries to publish longer stories -- their stated length is between 5000 and 25000 words. Sage Tyrtle's story "The Starter Family", from June, is about 10,000 words long. It really excited me, as it presents a powerfully affecting (and scary, and creepy) idea that I don't think I've ever seen before. It did remind me vaguely of Ian R. MacLeod's excellent 1992 story "Grownups". 

Charles narrates the story, beginning as he is eleven years old. His school is all boys, and they don't know anything about girls, except for their mothers. At turning eleven, they take the oath never to reveal the truths they will learn about boys and girls, men and women, and Starter Families. Charles becomes an adult, and is allowed to choose his Starter Wife, and they are happy together. Soon they choose a Starter Baby, whom they love. But some ominous currents are churning. Charles knows what awaits them in the future -- and he finds he can't deal with it.

This story is both really wrenching in presenting its central dilemma, and intriguing in the way it satirizes '50s-style families, conformity in general, the tendency to juvenilize women and straitjacket men. It really packs a punch, and it does not pull that punch at the conclusion.

Review: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

Review: Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

by Rich Horton

David Mitchell is a personal favorite writer of mine, particularly for Cloud Atlas (2004) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010). I've been working through the rest of his novels with great enjoyment, and now I've come to the book that came between those two books, Black Swan Green (2006). 

Most of Mitchell's books are to some extent genre-adjacent -- Cloud Atlas, for example, incorporates historical sections, a thriller, and sections set far in the future (all intriguingly and metafictionally entwined.) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an historical novel set in Nagasaki at the turn of the 19th Century, and including an extended episode that reads like a pure pulp story in some ways. Slade House is straight horror, and The Bone Clocks extends from the present day into a climate-change-wracked future. Black Swan Green, however, seems quite straightforward: the first person narrative of a boy growing up in Worcestershire in 1982, with noticeable semi-autobiographical elements. Having said that, the novel does, as with all of Mitchell's novels, feature characters from other Mitchell novels, most obviously the main character's cousin Hugh Lamb, who is one of the central characters in The Bone Clocks.

There are 13 chapters, each covering a month, from January 1982 through January 1983. Jason Taylor turns 13 at the start of the novel. He lives in the village of Black Swan Green in Worcestershire, in the west of England near the Malvern Hills. His father is an executive at the Greenlands grocery story concern, and his mother is (for now) a housewife. Jason attends the local comprehensive school. He is -- like most 13 year olds -- intensely concerned with social status at school, himself maintaining a precarious position somewhere in the middle, complicated by him being a pretty good student and an aspiring poet (who has published poems in the parish newsletter, naturally under a (pretentious) pseudonym, Eliot Bolivar; and furthered by the fact that his family are outsiders, living in a nice suburban sort of house in a new development outside the village.

The chapters organize themselves around central episodes during that year -- Jason breaking his treasured watch; the Falklands War and its effect on the locals, particularly the elder brother of a classmate; a fight between two of the school bullies; Jason's crush on a girl who ends up with one of the bullies; Jason's getting a chance to join a gang; a dinner party in which Jason's parents host his mother's sister and her husband and their children (including Hugh Lamb, who is a bit older and a lot bolder than Jason); an encounter with some nearby gypsies (following a city meeting about the proposed establishment of a compound for the gypsies); Jason finding a lost wallet at a carnival/fair, with tragic consequences; a school dance with much happier results for Jason, etc.

Those are episodes, but the linking themes follow primarily the fundamental changes in Jason's life, and his family's fortunes. It's clear from the start that Jason's parents' marriage is in trouble. Jason himself is pretty normal -- liking the sort of music I remember from 1982 (though I'm a decade older than he and Mitchell), having crushes on a couple of girls, dealing with bullies and finally holding his own (I do have to say I found his school much fuller of sadists (including some teachers) than I remember from any of my schools.) Jason's sister Julia is presented as fairly idealized -- a good student and future lawyer, much desired by boys her age and pretty sensible about dealing with them, and clearly adored by her brother who would never admit that. And in the end Jason's life will undergo a significant -- though not exactly earth-shattering -- change.

It's a very enjoyable and moving novel. Parts of it are very funny -- the early dinner party is a highlight in that sense. Parts are quite dark. Parts are sweet, others are exciting. I really loved the chapter in which Jason gets advice about poetry, about reading, and about music, from an old, eccentric, and fascinating Belgian woman. The depictions of life in the village, of the local geography, of the main characters all truly land. The portrayal of a disintegrating marriage is convincing and affecting. Perhaps a couple of the episodes seem to work about a bit conveniently, though. Still a really nice book. I can't rank it at the top of Mitchell's output, but it's very much worth reading. 

Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

Review: Espedair Street, by Iain Banks

by Rich Horton

I really enjoy Iain M. Banks' SF novels, particularly Use of Weapons, one of his Culture novels. I have also generally enjoyed those of his mainstream books I've read. This is a short look at one of those. Espedair Street is held in fairly high regard by Banks fans. It is also usually called one of his happier novels.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback, then, when the book opened with the narrator declaring that he had decided to kill himself. To be sure, he quickly assures us that he has decided to live after all.

It being a Banks book, it's told on two timelines. Fairly traditionally: one timeline recounts the last few days in the life of Danny Weir, while the other tells the story of his life from his late teens to the present (age 31). Danny Weir, we soon gather, was the bass player and songwriter for a huge 70s/80s progressive rock band, Frozen Gold. His nickname was Weird (for Weir, D., obviously enough). The band seems to have ended under rather distressing circumstances, which don't become clear for a long time.

In the present day thread, we learn that Danny is living a pointless existence in a mock cathedral in Glasgow, drinking his life away with Communist liquor, spending time with three not-quite-friends -- a young man, a rather older man, and a prostitute. He still writes music, but not very seriously -- film scores and commercial jingles. He gets drunk enough to have no idea what crazy things he might have done. He also doesn't tell any of his friends who he really is -- letting them think he is just the caretaker for Danny Weir's property.

The other thread tells the story of Frozen Gold: how Danny more or less forced himself on the band as a songwriter (they were talented players of cover tunes), his resentment of the middle-class origins of the other members, the meteoric success of the band. Danny is extremely tall (6'6") and he describes himself as ugly. The leaders of the band are Davey Balfour, a supremely talented guitarist, and Christine Brice, a wonderful singer. We soon gather that Davey's risk-taking may have something to do with the band's collapse, though Danny blames himself. There is also some sexual dynamics -- Davey cheating with Danny's girlfriend, and Danny responding with an affair with Christine (she and Davey having been a couple). 

It all comes to a head when Davey is pushed to resume his career (it seems that his solo album is unexpectedly a success), but then learns some more devastating news. He feels that there is simply no point to his life -- but then he -- well, leave it to the novel to reveal. Yes, though, it is at least a hopeful ending, if not unambiguously happy.

I rather enjoyed the book, but with reservations. Mostly they turn on a feeling that it's all too easy. Above all, Espedair Street seems facile. It's hard to believe in Frozen Gold -- in their success, in Danny's brilliance as a songwriter. It's hard to believe the tragedy that precipitates the action of the book. (The tragedy that ruined the band, on the other hand, though absurd, is believable in a weird way.) Danny's redemption also comes too easy. The more I think about this book, and about Banks's other books, I suspect that he is perhaps a supremely talented writer but not a great writer -- that his instinct leads him too readily to facile, constructed, ultimately shallow resolutions. It may be that at his best he can transcend this -- a reread of Use of Weapons may be in order -- but I suspect that in the long run this facility, this tendency to neatness and to easy solutions (even the sad endings, on reflection, are "easy" in a sense) is a limit to his range. (One illustration -- the nature of the human character in his Utopian Culture. The Culture is a wonderful place to live, but Banks has shied away from presenting a place inhabited by actual humans. Instead, they have been genetically engineered to be more tractable.)

Resurrected Post: A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo

"A Look At the Candidates for the 1950 Retro Hugo" 

by Rich Horton

Back in 2001 I spent some time going over as many potential candidates for the Retro Hugo that year -- for works published in 1950 -- and I published my thoughts in several iterations, mostly on my SFF Net newsgroup. (Newsgroups! Those were the days!) I first commented on what I thought were worthy nominees. I updated it as I read more stories, and then as the nominees were announced, and then after the winners were announced.

Then, a few years ago, I went through an exercise to look back at the Hugos for the whole decade of the 1950s, I made a new post on what I thought were good choices for stories from 1950. That post is here. It echoes a lot of what I did way back in 2001 -- about which at that time I had completely forgotten! Today I had reason to look up things I had said about Fritz Leiber's classic story "Coming Attraction" -- and I came across this old post! So I decided to reproduce it here, in its original form (mostly) -- my later post linked above does mention a couple pieces I missed earlier. 

(And, hey, for more of my recent Hugo neep, here's my Substack post about the 2025 Hugo Short Story ballot.)

Anywhere: here is that old post:

I've been calling this a work in progress. Now, however, I have to say it's complete: the Retro Hugos have been awarded, and this latest revision includes commentary on the actual choices. I note that I have read all the actual Retro Hugo nominees. So, this essay considers the works I considered the most likely nominees for the 1950 Retro Hugos, to be awarded by the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention, the Millennium Philcon. Nominations for the Retro Hugos, and for the 2001 Hugos (for works published in 2000) are complete, and have been announced, as have been the winners. Interested people should check out the Millennium Philcon home page. In this latest revision to this essay, I will still list the stories I thought deserved consideration, adding the few examples that didn't make my list but which were nominated, and discussing the nominations, and the eventual winners.

(Incidentally, a someone different version of this essay, with pictures!, and with more prose and fewer lists, is available at SF Site, 1950 Retro Hugo Candidates).

I'd like to mention first that I'm aware of the arguments against awarding Retro Hugos, and I think they are pretty sound. There is no way we, in 2001, can reasonably simulate what voters in 1951 would have chosen as the best work of 1950. For example, stories by writers who established reputations that endure to this day will almost undoubtedly have an advantage over stories, possibly equally good or better, by writers who are forgotten or nearly forgotten 50 years later. But given that Retro Hugos are going to be awarded, the best we can do is try to find as many good 1950 stories as we can, read as many as we have time to, and vote accordingly. That's the goal of this essay: to list the novels and stories that I have found that I believe deserve consideration for Retro Hugo nominations. It's worth noting that the eventual winners, in my opinion, support the position of those who find the awards flawed -- particularly the non-fiction awards, which include such inexcusable results as Bob Silverberg winning Best Fan Writer, and Kelly Freas winning Best Pro Artist.

I began simply by checking the Internet Science Fiction Database's list of stories from 1950. The ISFDB isn't complete, but it's a pretty good resource. My memory is even less complete, but I have read a lot of old SF. I made a list of potential stories and novels, and posted the list on the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written, as well as on my personal newsgroup at SFF-Net, and at Dueling Modems. I got some suggestions for additions, mostly from the estimable John Boston, who knows far more about old SF than I do. I acquired a couple more anthologies to check out additional stories, and I even bought some magazine from 1950 (not a hardship: I love those old SF magazines). Dave Truesdale also made some suggestions, on SFF.Net. I also did some more research, at William Contento's Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections. Basically, I remembered that Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty's seminal Best of the Year collections were coming out in those days. So I looked up the contents of their Best Science Fiction Stories: 1951 (which was published in 1951 but selects stories from 1950) in the Contento Index. While many of the stories I had already listed were in that book, there are a few more. They seemed to restrict themselves to novelettes and short stories. They did do a short-lived series of Best Science Fiction Novels which collects novellas. (Typically, magazines in those days called things of roughly novella length "Short Novels", though their length standards varied: Planet Stories seemed to call anything longer than about 16,000 words a "novel", while the examples I find in Astounding are closer to 20,000 words (and for example the two Lawrence O'Donnell stories below were listed as novelettes and are each over 18000 words). The Standard Publications/Better Publications pulps (Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories, and, later, Space Science Fiction) published much longer "novels": 30,000 words was typical, and I have one issue of Startling with a novel called The Dark Tower by Wallace West that is nearly 60,000 words! At any rate, the first (1952) Bleiler/Dikty collection of Best Novels included the Poul Anderson story, "Flight to Forever", that I list below, even though that story dates to 1950, and the rest of that book collects 1951 pieces.

Anyway, I figure that to be fair I ought to add the Bleiler/Dikty selections to the list: they were what people at the time thought were the best. (And at least two of their selections are first rate stuff I had unaccountably missed in my earlier lists: Kornbluth's "The Mindworm" and MacLean's "Contagion".) In addition, I've discovered an anthology edited by Groff Conklin, Possible Worlds of Science Fiction, published in 1951, which had about 8 stories from 1950, many of them very good, such as Schmitz' "The Second Night of Summer", MacLean's "Contagion", van Vogt's "Enchanted Village", and Arthur C. Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark". I've gone ahead and listed all the 1950 stories that Conklin chose, just for kicks, though I haven't read "Exit Line" by Sam Merwin, and I think St. Clair's "The Pillows" and Fyfe's "In Value Deceived" are just OK. And, finally, I reread Ray Bradbury's seminal collections (quasi-novels), The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, both of which include several worthwhile 1950 stories.

So, here goes. Revised and expanded list of 1950 novel and short fiction Retro Hugo Candidates. I've marked [BD] next to stories from the Bleiler/Dikty collections, and I've also listed original magazine publications where possible. I've marked stories I've read with a *. And I've alphabetized the stories by author.

NOVELS: (this list includes at least three that should perhaps better be regarded as linked story collections: The Martian Chronicles, The Dying Earth, and The Voyage of the Space Beagle. I purposely didn't include another linked story collection first published in 1950, Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, simply because I subjectively think of it as more purely a short story collection than the other examples I list -- I concede without demur that reasonable people may disagree.) (I've just recently added Heinlein's juvenile Farmer in the Sky, which is not my favorite among his juveniles, but any of the RAH juveniles deserve mention!)

*"... And Now You Don't", Isaac Asimov (of course this is the second part of Second Foundation, but it was serialized in Astounding ending in January 1950, and it's about 50,000 words)

*Pebble in the Sky, Isaac Asimov

*The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

*Needle, Hal Clement (This was serialized in 1949, but the 1950 book version is expanded to about twice the length of the serial)

*Farmer in the Sky, Robert Heinlein

*"You're All Alone", Fritz Leiber (though I prefer the 1953 (rev. 1980) expansion, The Sinful Ones, which is apparently actually Leiber's original, which he cut to get published in 1950)

Genus Homo, P. Schuyler Miller and L. Sprague de Camp (orig. 1941 but a revised version was published in book form in 1950)

*Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

*"Time Quarry", Clifford Simak (first ever serial in Galaxy, this is better known by the title of the 1951 book, Time and Again)

*First Lensman, E. E. Smith

*The Dreaming Jewels, Theodore Sturgeon

*The Dying Earth, Jack Vance (not really a novel but a collection of stories, and not really closely linked stories for the most part: still and all, what better book was published in-genre that year?)

*"The Wizard of Linn", A. E. Van Vogt

The Voyage of the Space Beagle, A. E. Van Vogt, a fixup of a bunch of short stories, several of which I have read. I'm not sure if the book version had additional material, which would make it eligible -- I believe it does involve significant revisions to some of the original material. .

I nominated the Bradbury, the Peake, the Vance, the Sturgeon, and the Leiber. The eventual nominations were for Pebble in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, The Dying Earth, First Lensman, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This last story, at 38,000 words, is actually a novella, but the Hugo rules allow the administrators to move stories of over 35,000 words into the novel category if they deem that sensible. I think that's a reasonable choice for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which after all is only known as a book. I plan to vote for The Dying Earth. I really think the remainder of the nominations are less than great. I don't quarrel with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I do think it one of the weaker Narnia books. Neither Pebble in the Sky nor Farmer in the Sky is anything like its author's best work. And I have just read First Lensman, the first "Doc" Smith novel I have ever read, and I thought it was quite bad.

The actual winner was Farmer in the Sky. I don't think this is at all a great choice, but it's defensible -- people have pointed out that The Dying Earth isn't really a novel, and that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is by no means the best Narnia story. And I have no argument with those who like it better than the Asimov or Smith stories -- after all, so do I! Certainly the Vance, Smith, and Lewis stories are immeasurably more influential than Farmer in the Sky -- one might say, more important -- but the award is for "best", not "most influential". Farmer in the Sky is not in my opinion one of Heinlein's best juveniles, but it's a solid and enjoyable work, and its award isn't a disgrace.

SHORT FICTION: (categories based on my wordcount, when I had the story at hand, otherwise I'm guessing)

Novella: (of this list, several works were originally published in book form, perhaps unusual in 1950. The Vance is from The Dying Earth, the Heinlein from the collection also called The Man Who Sold the Moon, and the Lewis, of course, was published on its own as a book.)

*"Guyal of Sfere", Jack Vance (20,000 words)

*"Flight to Forever", Poul Anderson (20,000 words) [BD] (Super Science Stories, Nov)

*"The Man Who Sold the Moon", Robert A. Heinlein (36,000 words)

*"To the Stars", L. Ron Hubbard (37,500 words) (Astounding, Feb and Mar)

*The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis (at about 38,000 words, this is a novella by Hugo rules, though to be sure it was nominated as a novel)

*"Paradise Street", Lawrence O'Donnell (i.e. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, in this case reputedly mostly Moore) (18,200 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"Heir Apparent", Lawrence O'Donnell (also apparently mostly by Moore) (18,800 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Last Enemy", H. Beam Piper (24,000 words) (Astounding, June)

I nominated "Guyal of Sfere", "Paradise Street", "The Man Who Sold the Moon", The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and "Flight to Forever". The actual nominations I find rather controversial, indeed improper, though perhaps not worthy of too much fuss. They are, I am sure, the longest cumulative set of novella nominations ever. They include two novella-length stories that could have been moved to novel, though it's fine that they weren't, of course: "To the Stars" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon". There is also the Piper novella "Last Enemy", which I have just reread, and which I consider rather weak for a nominee, but that's not an issue either. The issue is that two full-length novels, above the word limit for movement down to the novella category (that limit is 50,000 words) were nominated: Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels, and Asimov's "... and Now You Don't". The first of these was nominated based on its appearance in the February 1950 Fantastic Adventures. The assumption seems to have been, any story that appeared a single issue of a magazine can't be a full-length novel. Well, that just isn't so. The pulps of that era were pretty generous as to word count, and novels of up to 60,000 words did appear in single issues. Oddly, Fantastic Adventures actually included word counts in their table of contents! (Something I've seen in few other '50s magazines, but none more recent.) They had "The Dreaming Jewels" at 55,000 words. As for "... and Now You Don't", I assume the rationale for calling it a novella was "it's only part of a novel, Second Foundation, so it must just be a novella". Not so again! It is well over half that novel, it was published as a three part serial in Astounding, and it's about 50,000 words long. Moreover, the precedent from the previous Retro Hugos (awarded in 1996) is illustrative: Asimov's "The Mule", a part of Foundation and Empire, also some 50,000 words long, was the novel winner for 1945. At any rate, my vote will go either to "The Man Who Sold the Moon", which I suspect will win, or The Dreaming Jewels, which is probably the better story, but which isn't a novella. I like "... and Now You Don't" fine, it ranks third. "To The Stars" is, on the one hand, reasonably well-done and pretty absorbing, an interesting read; and, on the other hand, morally disgusting. On the gripping hand, it ranks below "No Award". "Last Enemy" is not, in my opinion, one of Piper's better stories. I can't rank it very highly either.

As I predicted, "The Man Who Sold the Moon" won. I can't quibble -- as I've said, I voted for the Sturgeon novel, but the Heinlein novella was next in my list.

Novelette: (Note that the Blish stories are part of his series Cities in Flight, I believe part of the novel Earthman Come Home. The Kornbluth and Smith stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"The Helping Hand", Poul Anderson (10,500 words) (Astounding, May)

*"Bindlestiff", James Blish (16,000 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"Okie", James Blish (Astounding, Apr)

*"The Dancing Girl of Ganymede", Leigh Brackett (13,800 words) (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb)

*"The New Reality", Charles Harness (15,500 words) [BD] (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dec)

*"The Little Black Bag", C. M. Kornbluth (10,000 words) (Astounding, July)

*"Contagion", Katherine MacLean (11,900 words) [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"Dear Devil", Eric Frank Russell (15,000 words) (Other Worlds, May)

*"The Second Night of Summer", James H. Schmitz (11,000 words) (Galaxy, Dec)

*"Scanners Live in Vain", Cordwainer Smith (13,000 words) (Fantasy Book #6)

*"The Stars are the Styx", Theodore Sturgeon (16,000 words) (Galaxy, Oct)

"Forget-Me-Not", William F. Temple [BD] (Other Worlds, Sept)

*"Not to be Opened --", Roger Flint Young (14,600 words) [BD] (Astounding, Jan)

My nominations went to the Harness, Kornbluth, MacLean, Schmitz and Smith stories. The final ballot consists of "The Helping Hand", "Okie", "Dear Devil", "The Little Black Bag", and "Scanners Live in Vain". Not at all a bad ballot. I'll vote for "Scanners Live in Vain", with "The Little Black Bag" second, "Dear Devil" third, and "The Helping Hand" fourth.

This award went to "The Little Black Bag". I think that's not right -- but, once again, it's defensible. "Scanners Live in Vain" is indisputably more important -- one of my personal favorites. But "The Little Black Bag" is a strong story, and definitely was much admired in its time.

Short Story: 

(Note that of the Bradbury stories, "Ylla", "Usher II", "Way in the Middle of the Air", and "There will come Soft Rains" are in The Martian Chronicles, while "The Fox and the Forest" and "The Veldt" are in The Illustrated Man. Note all the variant titles, too. The Leiber and Matheson stories are in the SF Hall of Fame.)

*"Quixote and the Windmill", Poul Anderson (3600 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"Trespass!", Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson [BD] (Fantastic Story Quarterly, Spring)

*"Green Patches" (aka "Misbegotten Missionary"), Isaac Asimov (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Oddy and Id" (aka "The Devil's Invention"), Alfred Bester [BD] (6400 words) (Astounding, Aug)

*"There Will Come Soft Rains", Ray Bradbury (2500 words) (Collier's, 6 May)

*"Ylla" (aka "I'll Not Look For Wine"), Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (MacLean's, 1 Jan)

*"The Veldt" (aka "The World the Children Made"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Saturday Evening Post, 23 Sept)

*"Usher II" (aka "Carnival of Madness"), Ray Bradbury (6000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Apr)

*"The Fox and the Forest" (aka "To The Future", aka "The Fox in the Forest"), Ray Bradbury (6500 words) [BD] (Collier's, 13 May)

*"Way in the Middle of the Air", Ray Bradbury (5000 words) (Other Worlds, July)

*"The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", R. Bretnor [BD] (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

"The Star Ducks", Bill Brown [BD] (F&SF, Fall)

*"The Last Martian", Fredric Brown [BD] (Galaxy, Oct)

*"A Walk in the Dark", Arthur C. Clarke (Thrilling Wonder, Aug)

*"Summer Wear", L. Sprague de Camp [BD] (Startling, May)

*"A Subway Named Mobius", A. J. Deutsch (6500 words) (Astounding, Dec)

*"In Value Deceived", H. B. Fyfe (4300 words) (Astounding, Nov)

*"To Serve Man", Damon Knight [BD] (Galaxy, Nov)

*"Not With a Bang", Damon Knight (F&SF, Winter/Spring)

*"The Mindworm", C. M. Kornbluth [BD] (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

"The Silly Season", C. M. Kornbluth (F&SF, Fall)

*"Coming Attraction", Fritz Leiber [BD] (5000 words) (Galaxy, Nov)

"Two Face", Frank Belknap Long [BD] (Weird Tales, March)

*"Spectator Sport", John D. MacDonald (2000 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Feb)

*"Born of Man and Woman", Richard Matheson [BD] (1000 words) (F&SF, Summer)

"Exit Line", Sam Merwin, Jr. (Startling, Sept)

*"The Sack", William Morrison (6000 words) (Astounding, Sept)

*"The Pillows", Margaret St. Clair (4800 words) (Thrilling Wonder, Jun)

*"Liane the Wayfarer" (aka "The Loom of Darkness"), Jack Vance (4400 words) (Worlds Beyond, Dec)

*"Enchanted Village", A. E. Van Vogt (5800 words) (Other Worlds, Jul)

"Process", A. E. van Vogt [BD] (F&SF, Dec)

My nominations went to the Leiber, the MacDonald (which I recently read in the original Thrilling Wonder Stories issue), and three Bradbury pieces ("There Will Come Soft Rains" ,"Ylla", and "Usher II"). The actual nominations went to the two SF Hall of Fame stories, "Coming Attraction" and "Born of Man and Woman", as well as to three rather frivolous pieces, "To Serve Man", "The Gnurrs Come From the Voodvork Out", and "A Subway Named Mobius". While this isn't a bad nomination list, it does have a dreadful, disgraceful, lack. Where is Bradbury? My best guess is that he had so many fine stories that the votes were split. Secondarily, many people might not have realized which stories from The Martian Chronicles were eligible, and indeed, may not have regarded those stories as separate stories. At any rate, it's a terrible shame. That said, my vote, as I always intended, will go to "Coming Attraction", which, it seems to me, should be the overwhelming winner. (The other four stories rank more or less even with me -- I suppose the Knight, because the joke is a really neat joke, goes second on my ballot, or perhaps "Born of Man and Woman".)

The actual Retro Hugo went to "To Serve Man". Truly, this award is shocking. It may be unfair of me to suggest this, but I would hope that Damon Knight, with his outstanding critical sense, at least considered refusing it. "To Serve Man" is a fun, biting, story. But it's a trifle. "Coming Attraction" is a masterpiece, and it's a story that says something. Something besides "It's a cookbook", for crissake. I am forced to the conclusion that "To Serve Man" won not for Best Short Story, but for Best Twilight Zone Episode -- a clear example of what can go wrong with an award like the Retro Hugo -- where a story can benefit from a years later TV adaptation.

Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

by Rich Horton

This is the first novel I read by Marilynne Robinson, which I suspect is true for many readers. Shortly before it appeared, in 2004, I read an excerpt from this novel in the New Yorker and was quite taken by it. Otherwise I might not have read the full book, though perhaps the praise of it by friends like Greg Feeley would have persuaded me. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Fiction of 2004, but I have a tendency to dismiss Pulitzer winners. (No doubt I am partly influenced by the common mistrust of genre readers for mainstream literary awards (though I've tended to like the Bookers), also I am influenced by a book I read long ago criticizing the first few decades of Pulitzer fiction choices.) The clincher was when I saw a friend of mine from church reading the book, a friend with whom I have traded the occasional book in the past (The Time Traveler's Wife, for instance, and Jasper Fforde's novels). She lent me the book on finishing it -- so I had to read it! And a good thing, too. To cap this discursive little paragraph, just a bit later I saw a copy of the New York Times with a profile of a reader's club, in which they cited five favorites (including The Time Traveler's Wife) and 4 books they disliked. One of these latter was Gilead ("watching paint dry") but I was heartened that another they disliked was The Master and Margarita, which I think is a spectacular novel.

I will add that after reading Gilead I of course continued to her only other novel then published -- Housekeeping, from 1980. And I will tell you that it is very different from Gilead -- and, for me, it is even better. It is one of my favorite novels of the 20th Century. Robinson has gone on to publish three further novels, each very closely related to Gilead: Home, Lila, and Jack. And of these I think Home is also magnificent, and I'd rate it too as better than Gilead. Which is only to say that Robinson truly is a great writer, to have written three such remarkable novels. (And the other two are also strong, though to me not quite at the level of the first three.)

Gilead is presented as a long series of letters from a man to his son. The letters are intended to be read after the man dies, and after the son is an adult. The letter writer is John Ames, a pastor in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, near the Kansas border. John Ames is an old man, 76 as the book opens (in 1956), and he has heart problems and doesn't expect to live long. He married very late in life to a much younger woman, and his son at the time of writing is only 7. In part the letters are an attempt to replace the years of fathering he guiltily feels he is depriving his son by his expected death.

John Ames is the son and grandson of preachers of the same name. His grandfather was a fiery abolitionist, an associate of John Brown, who came to Gilead as a Free Soiler, and who maintained in "Radical Iowa" a safe house for Brown and other abolitionist fighters and too for escaped slaves. The middle John Ames, by contrast, was a pacifist, who fought in the Civil War but was disgusted by it. Each pair of father and son became estranged -- the grandfather eventually returning to Kansas in the 1890s to preach and soon die. The estrangement between John Ames's father and himself is never clearly explained -- there is reference to a letter from father to son which the son burned, and a hint that the father may have lost his faith, or may have been simply offended by his son's refusal to ever move from Gilead.

But I digress. The letters from the younger John Ames to his son are partly a mixture of meditations on such subjects as the joys and disappointments of life, the life of a pastor, and theology. That doesn't seem like a novel, and perhaps if that's all the book was it wouldn't be a novel. (Though it could still be very enjoyable.) But the letters also tell stories, mainly on two subjects. One is the eldest John Ames, the wild abolitionist grandfather, who would steal from the collection plate in order to give money to the poor, and who apparently shot and possibly killed a Federal soldier to save John Brown from capture, and who had visions of Jesus coming and talking to him face to face. The other is Jack Boughton, John Ames Boughton, the ne'er-do-well son of the younger John Ames's best friend, a fellow pastor. Jack Boughton returns to Gilead from St. Louis during the book, but John Ames is suspicious of him, partly because of his dishonorable past actions, and partly because he seems to be just a bit too nice to John's wife, who is Jack's age, and to John's son, with whom Jack is able to play in a way that now frail John cannot. But Jack's story is more complex than John Ames first understands, and he presents John with a problem of faith, forgiveness, and honesty. As well as closing the novel with an involving story that resonates well with the historical motivations of John's grandfather.

The novel, then, is profoundly a moral meditation. At times it concerns the moral tug between pacifism and just causes such as ending slavery. At times it deals with this country's racial history. At times it concerns the responsibilities of parents to children, or of pastor to flock. At times it is, quite beautifully, a celebration of the wonders of life, and of the beauty of very simple things. Sometimes it is a love letter to a son and a wife. To an extent it is a depiction of life in a small town in American in the 1950s -- and earlier. And it is very much a religious novel, and concerned with the John Ames's sincere and humanistic religious beliefs. Ames's voice is wonderfully maintained. The prose is just remarkable, very balanced and measured, not spare but not ornate, and quite often striking without any sense of showiness. A great novel, I think, or at any rate a novel that over time will be a candidate for "greatness". 

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

by Rich Horton

Pat Murphy's new novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, is a clever mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes -- the one sentence elevator pitch might have been "Sherlock Holmes is engaged to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Darling children." In a sense this reminded me of her Max Merriwell trilogy (1999-2001), which I absolutely loved: three books linked in clever metafictional ways and also referencing classic texts such as the Odyssey, Tarzan, The Jungle Book, "The Hunting of the Snark", and The Hobbit*. Those three books (There and Back Again by Max Merriwell, Wild Angel, and The Adventures of Max Merriwell) are at one level simply great fun, offering the reader enjoyable plots, engaging characters (including Pat Murphy herself!), and the chance to play "catch the clever references". But at another lever they are after something deeper -- the metafictional (and "pataphysical"!) games have a serious point, and there is an abiding concern with gender roles and personal identity choices. The Adventures of Mary Darling does indeed do some similar things, though the levels of metafictional complexity aren't as extensive (partly in that there is only one book here) while the overtly serious aspects -- an examination, again, of gender roles, but also of British colonialism, with a soupçon of American and Canadian mistreatment of indigenous populations -- are more explicitly foregrounded (not always to the novel's benefit.)

I suppose I'll have to unpack some of that a bit later. But not to bury the lede -- in the end I was immensely entertained by The Adventures of Mary Darling. It's simply lots of fun -- and the more "serious" aspects after all do hit home: Victorian ideas about women's roles and rights were terribly unfair, the British Empire routinely and offensively misunderstood and oppressed the native inhabitants of their colonies, and the treatment of indigenous tribes in both Canada and the US was horrifying, particularly portrayed here regarding the attempts of Indian schools to erase tribal identities. One other aspect of the novel that works is a skeptical deconstruction of the character of Sherlock Holmes.

But maybe I should talk about the novel itself more! The story is ostensibly told by Mary Darling's granddaughter (so Wendy Darling's daughter) in an attempt to set straight the story of Peter Pan, given that J. M. Barrie got so much wrong, and left so much out. It begins with the night of the disappearance of Wendy, John, and Michael Darling. Naturally the parents, George and Mary Darling, are distraught. But Mary's uncle (and foster father) is a certain Dr. John Watson -- and before long Sherlock Holmes has agreed to help investigate the apparent kidnapping. However, Mary Darling is not impressed by Holmes, and is even less happy when her husband seems ready to commit her to a "rest cure"**, even though if anyone needs psychiatric care it's surely George. So Mary decides to set off for Madagascar herself -- partly based on the one clue Sherlock Holmes found -- a leaf from a tree native to the Indian Ocean. 

Thus John Watson realizes he must follow his niece -- and he has encountered an ally, Sam Smalls, a native of the Solomon Islands, who is involved with the criminal side of London society, but is an educated and intelligent man. And -- he turns out to have known Mary Darling -- and her brother Tom -- from their childhood. Much of the next long section of the novel, then, expands on the back stories of the characters -- Mary Watson Darling in particular, but also Sam Smalls, George Darling, and even Captain Hook. We learn about Mary's childhood in Australia, with her artist mother Alice, who drew pictures of fairies. We learn about Sam's childhood in the Solomons, the son of an English missionary and a native woman.  We even see an extended portrayal of the origination of the "Red Indians" in Peter Pan, who turn out to have been members of the Kanien'kehá:ka nation, living on the St. Lawrence River, who escaped the prospect of seeing their children sent to Indian school by joining a circus act, and eventually setting out on their own, only to shipwreck on Neverland.

These back stories all give information but I wonder if some of them should have been curtailed a bit. The history of the Kanien'kehá:ka band is pretty much dropped, for example, which makes their section seem largely unnecessary. And there is a sense of over-idealization of some of the indigenous characters -- their characterizations and attitudes don't fully convince. Some of the back stories seem a bit contradictory, but I think that may have been intended -- we see a slow unraveling of the layers of both well-intended deceit, and of not always reliable memory, as the story continues. And there are unresolved issues -- Mary's mother's true fate, for instance. These sort of things are just fine, and add realism to the novel. I was also intrigued by a couple of namedrops -- Mary's mother is named Alice, for example, and another important character is named Hawkins, and I wonder if Murphy intended sly references to Wonderland and Treasure Island thereby. 

The book is fun throughout but it really takes off when we start to follow the parallel journeys of Mary Darling on one ship; and of John Watson, along with Sherlock Holmes, Sam Smalls, and George Darling on another. I won't detail what happens -- suffice it to say that Watson and George are confronted with some blind spots they have developed, and that they change as a result, and that Holmes too is confronted by his blind spots, and stubbornly retains his blindness. Mary Darling is resolute and of course ultimately successful, and she is allowed to fully integrate some previously conflicting elements of her life -- she is happy to be a wife and a mother, but she also wants to be an independent and powerful woman -- and she finds a way to have it all, in a sense. Perhaps unresolved is the problem of Peter Pan himself -- but one can't have everything!

I really enjoyed this novel. It combines a fun and involving story with some probing deconstruction of 19th century adventure literature, and of the colonialist attitudes behind much of that literature. The characters of Mary Darling and John Watson in particular are delightful, and the sharp examination of Sherlock Holmes' character is bracing (even if a bit of it is unfair -- Holmes' skepticism about the existence of fairies is, after all, justified -- and one incident in which he described the unreliability of photographic evidence hits home in particular when we remember how Arthur Conan Doyle himself was taken in by the "Cottingham Fairies".) (I will say that George Darling remains a bit hard to credit.) Less central characters such as Lady Hawkins, the disgraced doctor Rumbold, and Sam Smalls are also interesting. Recommended.

*While the Tolkien estate's predatory behavior in defense of their copyright is not so evil as that of the Doyle estate, they do often go well overboard in using their access to legal defense, and the way they caused the suppression of There and Back Again by Max Merriwell was disgraceful, in my opinion.

**Sometimes I wonder if I read the same articles an author read while researching their story, as not long ago I encountered a piece on the inventor of the "rest cure", Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, which described that rather horrifying treatment. (Mitchell was a very prominent American doctor, and a decent writer of fiction, and his work outside the rest cure was apparently quite impressive.)

Resurrected Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

Another resurrected review -- this was on my SFF Net blog in 2002.

Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

by Rich Horton

China Miéville's second novel, Perdido Street Station, was published in the U. K. in 2000, and in the U. S. in 2001. It made the 2002 Hugo shortlist --the beneficiary of a then recent Hugo eligibility change, whereby a book can be eligible for a Hugo nomination based on the first publication in the location of a given year's Worldcon. 

The novel is set in New Crobuzon, a large city in a fantasy world. New Crobuzon seems overtly modelled on London, and the fantasy world, the rest of which geography is rather vague, is somewhat "steampunk" in nature. There is considerable magic, openly recognized, even systematized, operating side-by-side with tech of a somewhat Victorian feel (but on the whole more advanced than that: for instance, the computing tech is ostensibly based on Analytical Engines a la Babbage, but the level of computing power is comparable at least to say 1980s electronic computing). The city is controlled and mainly inhabited by humans, but there are also a number of different alien (or "xenian") races (all to some extent humanoid): the water-dwelling vodanyoi, the cactus-like cactacae, the flying garuda, and the bug-headed khepri.

Isaac der Grimnebulin is a human scientist living in a rather bohemian quarter. He is in love with a khepri artist named Lin, though because interspecies relationships are looked on with much prejudice they keep their affair a (rather open) secret. One day they each get a valuable commission. A garuda named Yagharek, who has had his wings ripped out for some terrible crime, asks Isaac to find a scientific means of giving him back the power of flight. And a radically Remade crime boss named Mr. Motley asks Lin to sculpt him (the Remade are surgically altered people, usually altered for punishment, but apparently sometimes for enhancement: Motley's alterations are extensive and chaotic). 

Isaac's investigations into the possibilities of flight lead him to a potentially world-changing scientific discovery. Unfortunately, they also result in him accidentally releasing another sort of flying being on New Crobuzon, something called a "slake-moth", which preys on sentient beings' dreams, in the process literally sucking out the sentient part of their mind.

The major portion of the plot turns on Isaac's attempts (with a small band of friends and temporary allies: the garuda Yagharek, a radical journalist named Derkhan Blueday, a criminal named Lemuel, a spontaneously generated AI, and an extradimensional spider-like creature called the Weaver) to track down and destroy the slake-moths. These intersect the similar attempts of the city authorities to deal with the slake-moth threat, and with Mr. Motley's interests, which are more ambiguous: he had been keeping slake-moths in captivity because they secreted a valuable drug, and he resents what he sees as Isaac attempting to horn in on his business.

The plot itself is interesting, though probably not worthy of over 700 pages. It is reasonably well worked out, though. Miéville's imagination is fecund, however, and his descriptions of New Crobuzon and the various alien inhabitants are continually fascinating. His political parallels are often rather crudely drawn, but not fatally so. Isaac and Lin and Yagharek and Derkhan are good characters, people we learn to care for. The prose is sound but not spectacular, and it does stumble in places. The book's structure does have one mild flaw: it is framed with Yagharek's story, and the eventual revelation of his crime is rather anti-climatic, and by ending with the resolution of his story things seem to go on beyond the proper end. But all in all this is a fascinating novel, an involving read that only rarely drags over 700+ pages, a very worthy award nominee.

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

by Rich Horton

The Essence of the Thing is a very short novel (about 47,000 words), by Madeleine St. John. It was published in 1997 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. St. John was born in 1941 in a suburb of Sydney, moved to the US with her husband, and then to London after a divorce. She wrote four novels between 1993 and 1999, the first (The Women in Black) set in Sydney, that latter three forming a loose trilogy set in London's Notting Hill neighborhood. The Essence of the Thing was the middle book in this set, and became the first book by an Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker. I bought in on impusle, and found it a rewarding read. My brief review follows. 

Nicola is a 30ish Londoner living with a lawyer named Jonathan. She fully expects that they will marry, but one day she walks into their flat and Jonathan tells her coldly that he has decided they must part. He seems surprised that she is devastated by this.

The rest of the novel follows her and Jonathan's reaction. Despite her friends' advice, Nicola still feels devastated by the breakup, and still feels in love. But she slowly disconnects. She leaves the flat, which was originally hers but which she can't afford to keep. She moves in first with married friends, then with friends of these friends who have a little girl and a spare room. She applies for a job she has no belief she can get. At the same time Jonathan only slowly tells anyone, despite visiting his parents for a weekend and being given his mother's engagement ring to give to Nicola. He is shown realizing that his shirts aren't magically getting ironed, and that he misses other aspects of Nicola's presence. There are also some very witty scenes with Nicola's various friends -- lots of supple and clever and believable conversation. The final resolution is fairly predictable, though aspects are (wisely) left open ended. A slim but quite enjoyable novel.

Hugo Best Novel Final Ballot Thoughts, 2025

My latest Substack post covers my thoughts on the current Hugo Best Novel final ballot: https://open.substack.com/pub/richhorton314252/p/the-2025-hugo-best-novel-ballot

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

by Rich Horton

A year or two ago I happened across this book in an antique store. It's a novel I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I was a bit taken aback, though, by the series is appeared in: The Winston Clear-Type Popular Classics. This was a set of novels apparently aimed at teen-aged readers -- what me might call YA today. These books are almost all very well known -- novels and collections often originally aimed at adult readers, but deemed (correctly) to appeal to younger people. Examples include several classic books that I read as a teen: Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott; Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, by Mary Mapes Dodge; and Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell. Other entries were familiar as well: the Lambs' Shakespeare; Pinocchio; Heidi; Robinson Crusoe; collections of stories from the Bible, from the Arabian Nights, and folk tales and fairy tales. Indeed, of all the books listed in the series I knew of everyone -- EXCEPT The Wings of the Morning. 

Well, I had to buy it! I should note in passing that the publisher, John C. Winston, was long known for books for young readers -- SF fans of a certain age might remember the Winston Juveniles from the 1950s. As best I can tell this particular set of books was published in the early '20s. All the books were reprints -- the novel at hand was first published in 1903. But -- who was Louis Tracy? As often with such older popular books, tracking down information about the author proved as interesting as the book itself.

Louis Tracy was born in 1863 and died in 1928. He is often said (on Wikipedia, for example) to have been born in Liverpool, but Steve Holland did some rigorous research and traced his birth to Ireland, and established his name at birth as Joseph Patrick Treacy. The family moved to England not long after -- likely first to Liverpool then to Yorkshire, where his father was a police officer. His name was changed at some point to Louis Tracy. He became a journalist, working in Durham and Yorkshire and eventually London. His first novel was science fiction, The Final War (1896), one of a number of "future war" books he published. He also collaborated with M. P. Shiel, particularly on a number of mysteries under the name "Gordon Holmes". Tracy published mysteries under his own name as well.

But it seems that his most popular novel was indeed The Wings of the Morning. This was first published by Ward Lock in the UK as Rainbow Island, in 1904. That same year it was published in the US by Edward J. Clode as The Wings of the Morning. Clode reprinted the book multiple times (and the copyright notice in my edition is under Edward J. Clode.) Editions are readily available on Abebooks. There were illustrated versions, including one using stills from a 1919 silent film. As far as I can tell, the John C. Winston Popular Classics edition dates to 1924, and it is illustrated by the once prominent American artist Mead Schaeffer, in nice colored plates. I have found two different covers for that edition on Abebooks, and I've seen it stated that different editions include additional Schaeffer paintings -- mine has only four.

(I need to credit Steve Holland, Douglas Anderson, David Langford, Mike Stamm, and the late John C. Squires for providing most of the information on Tracy and his works.)

The book itself? It's really quite fun. (I'll note in advance that it features some out and out racist depictions of Malay pirates ("Dyaks") as well as of one virtuous but cringily portrayed Indian character.) As the original title might hint, it's a "Robinsonade" -- that is, the main characters are marooned on a deserted island, just like Robinson Crusoe. (And the characters mention both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson.)

It opens on the Sirdar, a steamer owned by Sir Arthur Deane, heading from Hong Kong back to England. The passengers include Sir Arthur's daughter Iris. However, a typhoon is threatening, and after a brave battle with the elements, the Sirdar, after a collision with a junk and then a crash on a reef, is destroyed, and everyone on board dies except Iris and one sailor, Robert Jenks, who managed to grab her and bring the two to safety on an island. 

Robert, fortunately, has considerable experience -- Iris quickly gathers that he was in the military. He and she are able to rescue some supplies from the wreck of the Sirdar, and to find water on the island -- first from pitcher plants and then after discovering a well. The well represents signs of habitation, and they soon realize that the island had been visited by people from nearby islands, and well as some Chinese and at least one European, but all perished due to a volcanic emanation of poison gas. They find a cave that will serve as shelter while they hunker down and wait hopefully for rescue.

The novel continues as you might guess. Robert Jenks, who doesn't talk or act like a common sailor, has a secret, which Iris soon winkles out of him. She herself is supposed to marry a certain Lord Ventnor, but she's never really liked him. Propinquity, along with Iris' beauty and Robert's many manly virtues, does its magic, and they are soon chastely promised to each other. And Robert has a made a dramatic discovery that may change their future fortunes. But there are severe dangers, particularly a threat of the Dyak pirates who haunt the area -- and even if they are rescued, will Iris' father consent to her marrying a poor seaman ...

There follows some dramatic action, some sweet domestic scenes, more dark secrets balanced by some rather lucky revelations. It's an adventure novel of its time, for good and bad; and it's the sort of thing I'd have enjoyed as a teen, and still quite enjoyed now. I don't really know why its reputation has diminished so much in the past decades, except that it's a good enough book but it's not great -- it's not at the level of Stevenson, certainly, nor of the very different Alcott, nor even Defoe. And to be sure its racist elements do make it a hard sell nowadays -- and, frankly, deservedly so. For all that, I'll probably try another of Tracy's novels along the way -- maybe one of his mysteries. 

(And here's one more cover -- of the sort you often see on early 20th Century books: just slap a Gibson-style pretty woman on the cover, no concern for representing the book.)