Old Bestseller Review: The Chauffeur and the Chaperon, by C. N. and A. M. Williamson

Old Bestseller Review: The Chauffeur and the Chaperon, by C. N. and A. M. Williamson

a review by Rich Horton

Back at last to the original purpose of this blog -- Bestsellers from the first half of the 20th Century. C. N. and A. M. Williamson were a husband and wife team (Charles Norris and Alice Muriel) who had two books appear on the Publishers' Weekly list of bestselling novels of the year, The Princess Passes in 1905 and Lord Loveland Discovers America in 1910. They published most of the their novels first as serials, and, as Richard Rex, in his biography of Alice M. Williamson, suggests, book sales aren't the only measure of popularity. Rex's book quotes the Leeds Times: "who is the most popular serial writer? ... a few voted for Hall Caine, Ian Maclaren had also a fair share of support, but the verdict of the majority was given to Mrs. Williamson." And, indeed, the Williamsons wrote not just for magazines like Smith's, or the Grand, or the Delineator, or the Strand, but also for weeklies like Lloyd's, and daily newspapers like the Daily Mail.

The Williamsons were an interesting couple for other reasons. Both were journalists. C. N. was an editor, of a magazine called Black and White. A. M. sold a piece to C. N. soon after she came to England. Which hints at another interesting feature of their association -- Alice was an American. She came to England in 1892. After they became professional comrades, they married, around the turn of the century. And much of their married life was spent travelling, and as journalists, they wrote about their travels. According to Alice's memoirs, their first collaborative novel came about after the magazine they had contracted with for a travelogue of one of their trips folded, and they decided to wrap a story about their travel account and sell it as a novel.

Their dates were 1869-1933 for Alice, and 1859-1920 for Charles. Alice published some short stories in the United States before moving to England, and continued to publish fiction after Charles' death. She was once quoted as saying "Charlie Williamson could go anything except write stories, and I could do nothing but write stories." This suggested a question as to who was the real writer of their collaborative works? It's notable that several of their stories (the novel at hand included) featured both American and British main characters, and indeed sections written from those different points of view are features of several of these novels. It was assumed aty the time that Charlie wrote the sections from the POV of men and/or English people, and Alice the sections from the POV of women and/or Americans.

Richard Rex, however, comes to a different conclusion, that I find convincing. He believes that Alice was the actual writer of all their collaborative fiction. Charles probably contributed stuch stuff as notes about their travel itinerary (critical to their rather travelogish books), and he may also have taken a key role in the business side of writing. One thing Rex discovered was a couple of stories first published as by Alice Livingstone in the US, and later republished under different titles as by C. N. and A. M. Williamson in the UK. Clearly those were Alice's work alone.

The story gets more interesting however, in Rex's accounting, when he digs into Alice's history in the US. Apparently her actual maiden name was Kent, and she married, very young (about 16) a man named Hamilton. Her marriage was not a success, and she became an actress, first as Alice King Hamilton. After a divorce, she changed her name to Alice Livingstone (presumably adopting her maternal grandfather's surname), and over time all mention of her earlier career was elided from her accounts of her life. She represented herself in her autobiography as 17 years old when she came to England in 1892 (in fact she was 23), and apparently Charles never knew of her previous marriage.

All fascinating stuff -- and I recommend Richard Rex's book, Alice Muriel Williamson: The Secret History of an American-English Author, to anyone interested in more details. In the end, it seems that Alice made a very satisfying life for herself, and that Charlie Williamson was happy as well. I can't blame her if she told a few fibs along the way.

So what of this novel? My edition was published by the McClure Company in 1908. A short story called "The Chauffeur and the Chaperon" was published in the Delineator for October 1906, while a serial called "The Botor Chaperon" appeared in The Grand Magazine (the first true British pulp) between August 1906 and January 1907. (It's not at all certain that "The Botor Chaperon" and The Chauffer and the Chaperon are the same story, but it seems plausible.) The Chauffeur and the Chaperon is copyright 1906/1907.

(Cover by Arthur H. Buckland)

My edition is illustrated by Karl Anderson, and the cover illustration is by Arthur H. Buckland.

As for the story -- two girls, stepsisters living in England, come into a small legacy. The girls' parents were an American woman and a British man, who remarried after their first spouses died. Then they died themselves. The two young women live together, making do with income from the American's serial writing, and the Englishwoman's typing. The American girl is Helen (Nell) van Buren, and the Englishwoman if Phyllis Rivers. Their inheritance is a couple hundred pounds and a boat in Holland. Nell insists that the claim the boat and make a tour of Holland.

(Interior illustrations by Karl Anderson)

When they get there they find the boat has already been let to an American painter, Ronald Lester Starr. A compromise is reached -- Ronald will hire a chauffeur, and ask his Scottish aunt, Lady MacNairne, to act as chaperon, and they will tour Holland together. Unfortunately, Lady MacNairne is hard to find, and Ronald engages an impostor. Nell van Buren's Dutch cousins learn of her existence, and sparks fly immediately between Robert van Buren and Phyllis.-- but Robert is all but engaged, to a rather unattractive and unpleasant woman, Freule Menela. The chauffeur Ronald engages is one Rudolph Brederode, a wealthy and very privileged Dutch Jonkheer, who has fallen head over heels for Nell. Meanwhile, Ronald is sure he is in love with one of the girls, though whether he prefers Phyllis or Nell seems uncertain. And Nell has unaccountably taken a dislike to Jonkheer Rudolph.

The novel continues, following their journey through the canals of Holland. We see any number of cute Netherlands cities -- this really is, to a great extent, a travelogue, and reasonably enjoyable on those terms. There is in addition the romance plot -- Robert van Buren is in love with Phyllis, and Jonkheer Rudolph Brederode is in love with Nell. And Ronald Lester Starr loves both girls. But who do the girls prefer? And what of Robert's intended, Freule Menela? And for that matter, what of the mysterious faux Lady MacNairne?

It's actually quite a fun book. The writing is downright sprightly -- Alice Williamson (assuming it was she) was a very accomplished popular writer. The resolution of the romance is obvious from the word go, but it's nice enough anyway. The travelogue aspects are interesting enough as well. This is really pretty good popular fiction of its time.

A Forgotten Ace Double: Endless Shadow, by John Brunner/The Arsenal of Miracles, by Gardner F. Fox

Ace Double Reviews, 86: Endless Shadow, by John Brunner/The Arsenal of Miracles, by Gardner F. Fox (#F-299, 1964, 40 cents)

May 20, 1911, was the birthday of Gardner F. Fox, hence this reposted Ace Double review.

Here I continue my exploration of the minor works of John Brunner via Ace Double. Which is a good way to do it, I think -- Brunner wrote a lot of short novels, many of them published as Ace Doubles, and they tend to be entertaining but fairly obviously dashed off quickly.

(Arsenal of Miracles cover by Ed Valigursky)

So, this Ace Double includes Endless Shadow, a very short (about 31,500 words) novel from Brunner. The other side is a novel by Gardner F. Fox. Fox (1911-1986) is a fairly legendary figure in the history of comics. He was a lawyer who turned to writing fairly early, and by 1939 was already writing comics, inventing the character the Sandman. He worked mainly for DC, it seems. He was one of the earliest writers of Batman stories, and he created the Flash. All that is very well, but what about Fox the prose writer? Fox wrote a fair amount for pulps in many genres, but he was an avowed fan of SF (beginning with Burroughs). My previous experience with him was a story or two for Planet Stories. I thought them truly awful, among the worst stuff I read in Planet. The Arsenal of Miracles is the only Ace Double I know of by him, though he did do some pseudonymous work, so perhaps he wrote others under different names. It's about 52,000 words long.

Endless Shadow isn't one of the better John Brunner Ace Doubles I've read, but it is better than the last one, "Keith Woodcott"'s The Psionic Menace. This novel uses an idea most familiar to me from John Barnes's Thousand Cultures series: a number of planets have been colonized using STL methods (or perhaps slowish FTL methods) and have progressed in isolation over the centuries, but teleportation technology has been developed (called here the Bridge System) and slowly authorities on Earth are establishing instantaneous links to the various colonies. I'm sure I've seen this idea explored elsewhere than in Brunner or Barnes, but I can't offhand call up examples. Anyone have any ideas? I suppose in a weird way C. J. Cherryh's early novels beginning with Gate of Ivrel resemble this idea. (On the other hand, the notion of STL colonies being united by later-developed FTL spaceships is fairly common.)

The problem of course is that some of the colonies have developed some pretty weird, potentially rather vile, cultures. The immediate problem faced by Bridge System Director Jorgen Thorkild is Riger's World, which has engendered a cult of snakehandlers which threatens to spread to Earth. But that problem can be solved ... Thorkild's more serious issues are personal. He is obsessed with gaining the favors of his previous boss's mistress, Alida Marquis. But Alida has no interest in him, even though her lover, and Jorgen's boss, is out of the picture, having committed suicide.

It turns out Jorgen's real problems are internal -- he, like his predecessor, is losing his sanity. This particular issue is brought to a head when a new planet named Azrael is contacted. The chief religion on Azrael is rather nihilistic -- death is prized as the ultimate experience, and it is best achieved by murdering another person, which act is punishable by death. The "programer" (Brunner's spelling of "programmer" -- I confess I had to pronounce it pro-Gray-mer) in charge of figuring out Azrael culture is himself murdered. A brilliant young programer, Hans Demetrios, is assigned to Azrael.

Azrael's representative comes to Earth and quickly rejects Earth's offer of a link to the Bridge System. This act somehow drives Thorkild over the edge to insanity. Meanwhile Alida Marquis has fallen in love with Hans Demetrios, who has gone to Azrael to take a desperate risk which should bring Azrael into line -- perhaps at the cost of his own sanity. And Thorkild, in the asylum, meets a naked young woman with her own problems. Somehow her nakedness signals that Thorkild must fall for her ... but her dilemma -- how to find meaning in the overly abundant culture of Earth -- gives him the keys to his own similar problems.

It all never really makes sense. Brunner is clearly trying to write a philosophically engaging novel -- at times it reads a little bit like Ayn Rand -- but the ideas at the center don't ever convince. Perhaps the book is simply too short -- it is certainly at the beginning very confusing, and perhaps a chapter or two of backstory would have helped. It is for an Ace Double oddly free of real action -- it truly does turn on the philosophical issues, not on action or derring do or even, really, politics. I didn't dislike it, but neither did I really like it.

It sometimes seems like Don Wollheim chose the novels paired in Ace Doubles because he could find links between them. The Arsenal of Miracles isn't very much like Endless Shadow, but it does have one slight link: it turns to an extent on the discovery of "gates" between worlds otherwise only linked by much slower (though in this case still FTL) spaceships. In this case the gates are a legacy of a long vanished race. The novel opens with Bran Magannon, the "Wanderer", losing a dice throw to a mysterious woman on the planet Makkador. His penalty: she owns his service. She is, naturally, his long lost lover, Peganna of the Silver Hair. Peganna is the Queen of a humanoid race, the Lyanirn, that had opposed humanity years before. Bran was the commander of the human forces, and he figured out how to beat them, and then worked on a deal to let the two races co-exist -- while he fell in love with Peganna. But a jealous subordinate purposely undermined the deal, and the Lyanirn fled to an isolated planet, while Bran, relegated to a humiliating desk job, resigned and began "wandering". His secret was the gate system he found, left by the long-vanished Crenn Lir.

I enjoyed the opening -- it seemed to set up a potentially quite enjoyable, if very pulpy, story. But things aren't resolve very well at all. Bran and Peganna, reunited, travel through the gates and soon stumble on the key to a treasure trove of Crenn Lir technology. But the bad guys -- Peganna's brother, who wants to be King, and the evil man who succeeded Bran as head of Earth's space forces -- conspire to capture the two, and to control the Crenn Lir tech themselves, relegating the Lyanirn (who it appears are just like humans -- both descendants of the Crenn Lir). Everything comes to a head with a trial, at which the two are condemned to death. Until a miracle happens. In other words, a totally implausible ending saves the day. It just doesn't work.

Happy Birthday, Rob Chilson

Today is Kansas City writer Rob Chilson's birthday. I felt like I ought to honor Rob, whom I know a bit from my regular visits to KC for ConQuesT, but, alas, he just missed the window for publishing Ace Doubles, and as it happens I've not read any of his novels. So I don't have a novel review to post. But I've read a lot of his short fiction, almost always with considerable enjoyment. So I thought I'd reproduce here a selection of the reviews I've done over the years of his short fiction, arranged in chronological order. I'd also like to mention one of my favorite Chilson stories, from a time before I was regularly reviewing: "This Side of Independence", from the February 1998 F&SF, and which was reprinted in both Gardner Dozois and David Hartwell's Best of the Year volumes.

From a piece I did for Black Gate a while back that discussed two issues of Analog from the very end of John W. Cambpell's editorial term and the very beginning of Ben Bova's term:

Robert Chilson, as it happens, is someone I know personally, though not terribly well -- he lives near Kansas City, and we’ve talked a few times at ConQuest, as well as shared the occasional panel. He began publishing in 1968, with "The Mind Reader" in Analog. He has published a great many short stories since then, with Analog and F&SF his primary markets.  He published as by "Robert Chilson" for about the first decade of his career, and mostly as "Rob Chilson" since then. He has also published some seven novels.

"Compulsion Worse Confounded" is about an IT person, as we’d say now. Raleigh is in charge of the "Archimage," a cluster of seven computers that does the processing for Wilder and Wilder, a food company. But the computer is acting up. For one thing, it wants to fire the secretary (who is, natch, beautiful, and who, natch, wants to get together with Raleigh -- this is Analog, after all). It also is ordering the company to acquire a rival -- but the rival seems to be doing something foolhardy. Is Wilder and Wilder’s computer behind that, as well? A fairly amusing story, turning on the computer’s inability to understand human desires, and its rather literal interpretation of orders.

From the April 2006 Locus:

The May issue of Analog does feature one very enjoyable and charming story that is very much pure Analog: Rob Chilson’s "Farmers in the Sky". The title signals a certain debt to Heinlein, as do the chapter headings. Shanda is a young woman from an asteroid farming family who has been studying on Earth, and has fallen in love with an Earthman. She returns home, convinced she’s lost her Earth boyfriend forever, but to her surprise he follows her Out. From this point the story could take a couple of obvious turns (there is also a local boy in the picture), but Chilson finds a kind of middle way that’s pretty satisfying, and that nicely illustrates the theme. And without making anyone a villain! Really, this shows many Analog characteristics very well: the space boosterism, the not terribly subtle explanation of the SFnal ideas by telling them to the visitor character, the hint of didacticism. Exaggerated, all these would be failings: in this story, they are handled pretty well, and for a long time SF fan like me the story is quite fun.

From the July 2012 Locus:

"The Conquest of the Air", by Rob Chilson (Analog 7/8/2012), takes on another fairly familiar idea -- aliens who live undersea -- but does so with some well done wrinkles. Humans are trying to mine the alien's planet -- because they don't know there are intelligent being  under the ocean; while the aliens are mostly skeptical, and fearful, of the idea of intelligent life on land, let alone from other planets. Naturally the story centers on a brave group of explorers who have designed a ship to "conquer the air". Effective and enjoyable work.

From the August 2015 Locus:

Probably my favorite this issue (Analog, 7/8/2015) is another story in an old-fashioned mode, this one reminding me of Jack Vance a bit: "The Tarn", by Rob Chilson, focusing on the Mayor of Firkle Fountain, a remote village known for nothing much, until a rumor spreads the treasure of an old philosophont (or wizard) can be found in a nearby pond. This brings a lot of visitors -- and chaos -- to the town, but the Mayor is convinced that it's all a fraud, and he has a prime suspect too. It's a bit meandering, but nicely told, and with some nice color and hints of an intriguing long history.

From the August 2017 Locus:

The highlights of the July-August Analog are a couple of stories whose protagonists live in relatively low-tech areas in far-future settings with plenty of exotic tech, which stretches a point to compare Maggie Clark‘s "Belly Up" and Rob Chilson‘s "Across the Steaming Sea". ... "Across the Steaming Sea" is the latest of a number of stories Chilson has published set on Earth in the very far future, in which a wide variety of "mankin" coexist among the remnants of some very exotic tech. Luro is the lowly youngest son of his village’s Asireman, and so he gets drafted to accompany one Kangahan on a dangerous trip to Melgol, where Kangahan claims he can find the Empyrean, a place of wonders, if only the Asireman will finance the trip. Luro’s greedy father is happy to lend the money and his son’s services, and Luro is happy enough to leave his home, especially when he meets the beautiful Zoritha. To no one’s surprise, though, Kangahan absconds with the money -- but Zoritha agrees to accompany Luro on an attempt to find the Empyrean anyway. So there’s good -- it seems the Empyrean might really exist -- and bad --Zoritha shows no interest in Luro, and the trip gets more and more dangerous. It’s all fun reading, with a nicely wrapped-up ending. Old fashioned stuff, sure enough, and sometimes that’s just the ticket.

(I see, by the way, that just as James Patrick Kelly used to always appear in the June issues of Asimov's, and Robert Reed and Albert Cowdrey used to always appear in, er, every single issue of F&SF <grin>, Rob Chilson seems to be appearing in most every July-August issue of Analog.)

Another Ace Double: The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen/We, the Venusians, by John Rackham

Ace Double Reviews, 81: The Water of Thought, by Fred Saberhagen/We, the Venusians, by John Rackham (#M-127, 1965, 45 cents)

Here's an Ace Double from the recently deceased Fred Saberhagen [I wrote this review first in 2007], backed with one from regular John Rackham. Saberhagen wrote one other Ace Double half, The Golden People (1964), while Rackham was a regular under that name and his real name, John T. Phillifent, contributing 16 total "halves". The Water of Thought is about 44,000 words long, and We, the Venusians is some 53,000 words.

(Covers by Jerry Podwil and Jack Gaughan)

Fred Saberhagen was born on May 18, 1930, in Chicago (hence this reposting of the review), and died in 2007. After stints in the Air Force, at Motorola, and with the Encylopedia Britannica, he became a full-time writer in the mid-70s. He began publishing in 1961, and from very early in his career he was writing about the inimical machine intelligences called the Berserkers, which remain his most enduring contribution to SF. His post-apocalyptic fantasy-flavored novels beginning with the Empire of the East trilogy are also well regarded, and I quite enjoyed his singleton novel The Veils of Azlaroc. As ever, the Science Fiction Enyclopedia entry is very useful: here.

The Water of Thought is set on a world, Kappa, only tenuously colonized by humans, who live behind a forcefield. They have only limited, but generally benign, contact with the intelligent natives, called Kappans. The main character is a "planeteer", Boris Brazil, who is spending a brief vacation, in the company of a local girl named Brenda. He is called back to the colony for an emergency -- it seems another planeteer, Eddie Jones, has gone nuts and killed a Kappan and run off to the hinterlands.

So Boris, in the company of Brenda, heads to the interior to investigate. Their copter is sabotaged, and they are rounded up by Jones and his Kappan friends. They quickly learn that Jones believes that the humanlike Kappans are on the cusp of evolution to full sentience, and he hopes to guide them on the next step, with the help, perhaps, of "the water of thought", a druglike substance that has transformed his consciousness. Alas, it affects Boris differently -- makes him a slave to Jones's every command.

Boris and Brenda are taken to a Kappan village, eventually to be subjected to a brutal initiation ceremony. But Boris escapes, and begins to learn the true secrets behind things. The Kappans aren't the only sentients on the planet, for one thing. And the colonists aren't all so innocent, for another -- it seems the sometimes hallucinogenic properties of the "Water of Thought" have attracted the attention of interstellar druglords. The resolution involves a meeting with the "real" Kappans, a more primitive (supposedly) race ... complete with learning the (somewhat icky) true nature of the Water of Thought. Basically, it's not terrible work, but nothing very special either.

An expanded version of The Water of Thought was published in 1981, but I have not seen that.

John Rackham's real name was John T. Phillifent (1916-1976). He also began publishing in the early '50s, though much less prolifically. He ended up producing something north of 20 novels as well as a fair amount of shorter work, under both the Rackham and Phillifent names.

I've rather enjoyed some John Rackham Ace Doubles, so I approached We, the Venusians with some optimism. And the opening is at least mildly promising. Brilliant pianist Anthony Taylor is approached by an influential Venusian colonist. He wants to take him, and a couple of other musical artists, to Venus, apparently to raise the cultural level of the colony. There is a small colony on the planet, but very rich, because they raise a plant, with the unwilling help of the subhuman local "greenies", that confers immortality and health on people.

Anthony Taylor has a secret, however, He is a half-Greenie himself, and takes "anti-tan" pills to hide this fact. So too does the Aussie singer Martha Merril who is also recruited to travel to Venus. But she is in denial. (The weird thing about all this is that it is taboo to take those pills, apparently because they would allow black people to "pass".) So -- an interesting setup, as they head to Venus, with the obviousl plot being the liberation of the Greenies.

Which is pretty much what happens, only somehow much less interestingly than I had hoped. For one thing, Taylor and Merril seem not necessarily to be half-breeds, but perhaps full Greenies, who were adopted by human parents. And the Greenies communicate mystically by telepathy ... not one of my favorite plot devices. And the whole Greenie society is a letdown -- particularly the bit about how they abandon their defectives, who turn out to be the slaves used to harvest the immortality bean ... All in all, a mess of a novel. (I was intrigued to note that this is one of at least two Rackham novels featuring beautiful and perfectly humanoid alien women with green skin -- the same trope turns up in Danger From Vega.)

A Forgotten Ace Double: The Stars are Ours!, by Andre Norton/Three Faces of Time, by Sam Merwin, Jr.

Ace Double Reviews, 36: The Stars are Ours!, by Andre Norton/Three Faces of Time, by Sam Merwin, Jr. (#D-121, $0.35, 1955)

Rather a disappointing Ace Double, this one. Andre Norton's The Stars are Ours!, about 66,000 words long, was first published by World in 1954 -- presumably as a juvenile. Three Faces of Time was published, possibly in a shorter version, as "Journey to Misenum" in Startling Stories, August 1953. The Ace Double version is about 47,000 words.

Andre Norton published 15 Ace Double halves. Many of her early Ace Doubles were reprints of novels first published in hardcover and marketed to the "juvenile" segment (i.e., lots of library sales). This appears to be the case with The Stars are Ours!. The hero is a standard sort of hero for a juvenile SF book, a teenaged boy. There is no sex, not even a hint, not even a suggestion of interest. (That didn't stop Ace from featuring a gorgeous (or so I assume the artist intended) redhead on the cover -- this illustrates a scene that doesn't occur in the book, though it does semi-accurately reflect something that must have happened offstage -- a redheaded woman being awakened from a coldsleep chamber. As one of the women mentioned in the book is redheaded, and was in coldsleep -- well, she was awakened sometime!)

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

The Stars are Ours! opens on Earth after a catastrophe, blamed incorrectly on a hereditary Scientist caste, has led to the remnants of the human population being ruled by thuggish fascist types, who are trying to root out all the remaining Scientists. Dard Nordis is our teenaged hero, and his lame many years older brother is a Scientist, trying to develop some mysterious formula. When their evil neighbor alerts the bad guys that something suspicious is going on, they are forced out, and Dard's brother is killed, but not before entrusting his secret to Dard. Dard and his very young niece must escape in the snow, but fortunately they are able to rendezvous with a representative of the one remaining settlement of Scientists.

It turns out the Scientists are building a starship. Dard's brother's secret is one of the last bits of information they need. Rather implausibly, Dard, despite his youth and unfamiliarity, is allowed to go on a dangerous mission to the bad guys' city to gather the last bit of information before the starship can launch. And so the first half of the novel ends with a last-second escape.

The second half occurs centuries later, when the starship at last arrives at a new planet, and it covers, rather less interestingly, their arrival and discoveries on this planet, which turns out to have a history in some ways reminiscent of Earth's.

I really don't think this is one of Norton's better efforts. The two part structure is not dramatically successful -- it's much more two linked stories than a single novel. Even granting that it's a 50s novel, some of the science is just too silly for me; and the action is just not very convincing.

(Cover by Earle Bergey)

Just recently at Black Gate John O'Neill featured the 1983 Ace Omnibus edition of Sam Merwin, Jr.'s The House of Many Worlds, which combines that short novel with its sequel, Three Faces of Time, as a Vintage Treasures feature. I told John that I'd enjoyed "The House of Many Worlds" in its Startling Stories appearance, but that I hadn't read the sequel. But I lied -- I had, in this Ace Double edition, which I'd completely forgotten.

(Cover by Walter Popp)

Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-1996) was a relatively forgettable writer, but a significant and underappreciated editor in the SF field, particularly for his time at Startling Stories and its sister magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories, from 1945 through 1951. He also edited for brief periods Fantastic Universe and Satellite Science Fiction, among other publications. And his father was a fairly accomplished writer and editor as well, and I reviewed his novel The Road to Frontenac a while back on this blog, here.

Three Faces of Time is a sequel to a short novel called The House of Many Worlds, which I read a few months ago [as I first wrote this review]. The House of Many Worlds appeared, apparently in full, in Startling Stories for September 1951. The two stories have been collected together as The House of Many Worlds (Ace, 1983). I rather enjoyed The House of Many Worlds -- it's a parallel worlds story in which Elspeth Marriner and Mack Fraser, a magazine writer and photographer respectively, stumble into a mysterious organization that travels between multiple parallel worlds, trying to maintain peace. Elspeth and Mack (who turn out not to be from our world, in a classic trick of Parallel Worlds novels) enter a world slightly "behind" ours and theirs in development, and forestall danger from a more evil set of parallel world types.

The fact that I mildly enjoyed The House of Many Worlds is one reason I read this Ace Double, not otherwise of too much interest. I figured the sequel was worth a look. But it turns out to be a much lesser novel, much sillier, less interesting all around.

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

To begin with, I just couldn't get over the stupidity of the main setup. A space cloud of some sort has retarded development on a newly discovered world, so that it is only at the level of First Century Rome. OK, I don't have a problem with that. BUT, somehow, this version of "First Century Rome", even though it's REALLY 20th Century, just technologically behind, somehow has the exact same set of historical personages as our history. Vespasian is the dying Emperor, Titus his successor, Berenice Agrippina is Titus's lover, Domitian is Titus's ambitious younger brother, Pliny the Elder is the "Resident Watcher". Also, it's the equivalent of 79 AD, a pretty important date for a certain nearby volcano ...

Elspeth, because of her classical education, is sent to this version of Rome to study the culture -- things like figuring out if anyone's school of Latin pronunciation was right. She's also to ferret out any suspicious anachronisms that might point to other bad guys from the "present day" operating. Sure enough, a slimy guy who is putting the moves on her drops in a few references to modern devices, and she ends up submitting to his advances (despite him being a little, er, short in a certain department, as Merwin allows a slave girl to rather frankly hint) in order to get clues. She also meets up with a hidden army her group has on hand, and learns that another parallel world, this one 2000 years in advance of our time, is fooling around in this Ancient world -- apparently to replenish their supply of uranium, which they have exhausted in blowing up their own world. This other world is a matriarchy -- leading inevitably to Elspeth meeting up with Mack again, who makes her jealous because he has (in the line of duty, of course) attracted the attentions of the beautiful redheaded Amazon leader of this "future" world. But this Amazon has better ideas still -- she hopes to seduce the Emperor-to-be, Titus, and take over the Ancient Rome world, as a springboard to a Parallel Worlds Empire.

So, it's up to Elspeth and Mack to save the day, complete with a trip to the Silesian woods, a trip inside Mt. Vesuvius, and a somewhat abrupt, unconvincing, and unsatisfying ending. Really a slapdash piece of work all around.

A Not Forgotten Recent Novel: A Virtuous Woman, by Kaye Gibbons

A Not Forgotten Recent Novel: A Virtuous Woman, by Kaye Gibbons

a review by Rich Horton

This novel doesn't really fit my blog's various viewpoints at all: it's not Old; it wasn't a Bestseller (though it sold pretty well, I imagine, after it became an Oprah Book Club Selection); it's not Forgotten (helped, again, by Oprah); and it's not Science Fiction. But I was looking for a bit of a change of pace as I was working my way through all the 2018 Hugo Nominees, etc., and when I came across this book at an estate sale I thought it looked intriguing. And indeed, I enjoyed the novel a great deal.

Kaye Gibbons was born May 5, 1960, so she's seven months to the day younger than me. (And, this post is a few days late to be a Birthday Review.) She was born and educated in North Carolina, and still lives there. She's probably best known for her first two novels, Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman.

A Virtuous Woman is a very short novel (perhaps just a bit over 30,000 words). It's told in two voices: that of Blinking Jack Stokes, who is mourning the death of his wife Ruby, aged only 45, and trying to figure out what he'll do with himself; and that of Ruby, in the last few months of her life, after she is diagnosed with lung cancer. Their voices are those of rural North Carolinians, colloquial, often funny, just avoiding bitterness.

Jack is twenty years older than Ruby, a poor tenant farmer, skinny and homely, but honest and sweet and not too bad a drinker. Ruby is the child of a somewhat wealthy farmer, and beautiful. But when she was 18 she ran away with a violent and abusive migrant worker, who beat her, and taught her to smoke, and was unfaithful and a terrible drinker. While working at the Hoover farm, where Jack lives and works for the Hoovers, Ruby's husband gets into trouble and is knifed in a bar fight, and dies. Jack has fallen hard for Ruby, whom he sees as way out of his league, but he asks her to marry him -- and Ruby, too ashamed to go home, and just wanting someone to care for her and treat her right, agrees.

Their narrations reveal both the bare few events of the months before and after Ruby's death, but also their back story. Ruby's upbringing and first marriage, of course, but also an outline of their life after their marriage. It is informed by their inability to have children (either Jack is unable to, or Ruby (perhaps due to some violence of her first husband's doing), or both); and by their love for Jack's friend Burr's daughter June, who was the younger child of Burr's horrible wife Tiny Fran, the daughter of Jack's boss Mr. Hoover, who married her off to the most convenient local man when she got pregnant. Their life is externally not terribly comfortable -- Jack never gets the land he wishes for, so they never have much money; Tiny Fran and her first son Roland are dreadful people, and so are others of their milieu; they are unbelievers in a Christian community -- but it's clear they love each other desperately (but quietly), and they find a way to be happy.

The novel is often funny (if gaspingly so), often very moving, and pretty harshly honest about rural poverty. I liked it a great deal. Perhaps every so often we see the author's hand on the scale a bit in favor of her protagonists. Perhaps some of the bad people -- Tiny Fran in particular -- are treated somewhat cruelly. On the other hand -- such people exist, both good, like Jack and Ruby, and bad, like Tiny Fran and Roland. In the end: I was both amused and very very moved. (The chapter in the middle, about their love for June, and their realization they won't have children, and their feelings for their dogs, is just devastating.) I recommend it.

Another Brunner Ace Double: Listen! The Stars! (backed with The Rebellers by Jane Roberts)

Ace Double Reviews, 52: Listen! The Stars!, by John Brunner/The Rebellers, by Jane Roberts (#F-215, 1963, $0.40)

Jane Roberts was born 8 May 1929, hence this reposted Ace Double review.

This Ace Double backs a decent, if rather short, John Brunner novel with one of the worst novels I have ever read. Brunner's Listen! The Stars! is about 28,000 words, Jane Roberts's The Rebellers is about 51,000 words.

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Ed Emshwiller)

I've said many times recently that early John Brunner is reliably fun -- and usually pretty thoughtful too. Listen! The Stars! is fairly satisfying on both counts -- though it's not quite as purely fun as other Brunner. It was first published in a shorter version (about 20,000 words) as the cover story of the July 1962 Analog, under the same title. A later version was published under the title The Stardroppers, and I believe this version was expanded even further. The Ace Double version, about 8000 words longer than the Analog story, does not contain a single extra scene. The additions are words here and there, often an additional sentence or two, occasionally a couple of paragraphs -- but they are pervasive. It's hard for me to say which version is better -- I read the Analog story then quickly skimmed the Ace Double. The additions don't read like padding, I will say, but I can't really comment on how the pacing was affected. I have no idea if Brunner cut his original story for the Analog appearance, or if he expanded it to be long enough for an Ace Double half.

Dan Cross comes to London to investigate a strange, perhaps ominous, new phenomenon, stardropping. He represents a mysterious organization, but he is pretending to be a new enthusiast. Apparently stardropping is much more popular in England, where it was invented, than in the US. What is it? Well, with some simple electronics it seems one can tune into mysterious signals -- information theory shows they are real signals and not noise. The signals are oddly attractive. Some people get addicted, some people go mad, and there are rumours that some people even disappear.

Cross is able to meet with a local cop, with a young girl addict, with the proprietor of a store selling the equipment, and even with the inventor of the effect, whose son is one of the people who seems to have disappeared. Cross himself tries stardropping, with little effect. But he gets closer and closer to an explanation ... The explanation turns out to be neat enough, with some reasonably well thought out geopolitical implications. The story is just a bit thin, however -- and in a way it seems to end just as the real action should be starting.

Jane Roberts (full name Jane Roberts Butts), published a few short stories, mostly in F&SF, between 1956 and 1964. The Rebellers was her first novel (not counting a "complete novel" in F&SF that was novella length). Her only other novels, according to the ISFDB, were a trilogy about "Oversoul 7", between 1973 and 1984, and a juvenile. She died in 1984, aged only 55. I had never read anything by her. Some of her short fiction seems well regarded, and she was the first woman to attend the Milford Conference of SF writers.

However, she became far more famous in another context. She claimed to have received messages from a supernatural being called Seth, and published a series of books about Seth, perhaps most notably Seth Speaks. These were bestsellers in the 1970s, as I recall, and apparently they remain influential in New Age circles. I will be honest -- at the time, and to this day, I considered these books of a piece with much other spiritualist and New Age stuff -- that is, either completely fraudulent, or possibly a sincere (but silly) result of a mental breakdown. I know others take this seriously, and so be it.

Perhaps my current feelings are partly a result of my reaction to this novel. The Rebellers is set in a grossly overpopulated, plague-ridden, future. Gary Fitch is an artist -- he has lived his life confined in a high-rise in Elmira, New York, part of the Contopolis, making copies of old paintings. This art is deemed important in motivating the workers to help produce the food everyone eats. But Gary is convinced the system is failing, and he dreams of escape.

When rioters attack his building, he takes his chance. After a scary encounter with a government "Doctor" who is ready to put him in suspended animation, he is rescued and taken to the Rebellers -- people who live underground and who are convinced that the system is bad and ought to be changed. But the charismatic Rebeller leader's ideas don't seem just right to Gary either -- and soon he is back in the city, trying to promote a more sensible political organization -- but all seems lost when a newly virulent plague strain breaks out.

Oh, I can't go on. The entire story makes no sense at all. The extrapolation is idiotic. The prose is indifferent. The characters change randomly depending on the needs of the plot. Nothing holds together -- it's economically cockeyed, politically moronic, psychologically silly. And it's boring.

A terrible, terrible, novel.