Belmont Double Review: Father of Lies, by John Brunner/Mirror Image, by Bruce Duncan

Belmont Double Review: Father of Lies, by John Brunner/Mirror Image, by Bruce Duncan (Belmont, 1968, $0.60)

A review by Rich Horton

This is slightly embarrassing -- a couple of years ago I happened across this Belmont Double and bought it -- it was very cheap, and I have an interest in "Double books" and in John Brunner. I started in on it once or twice but didn't keep going. Then, after reviewing the sort of proto-Belmont Double A Pair From Space (Robert Silverberg's We, The Marauders paired with James Blish's Giants in the Earth) I decided I ought to get down to it and read this "real" Belmont Double to review it. Then I did a Google search -- and found the review below, that I did nearly two decades ago on rec.arts.sf.written. I had completely forgot that I already had the book and had read and reviewed it! Though in my defense my review suggests that it was pretty darn forgettable! So -- here's my old review, with some modest revisions.

I thought it might be interesting to look at another Double Book from a different publisher, to contrast with my Ace Double reviews. Belmont was a rather low end paperback publisher in the 50s and 60s. They did a number of Double Books, called simply enough Belmont Doubles, in the 60s. In general, these books seem to have been much less good than Ace Doubles. Indeed, I believe that Harlan Ellison thought so little of his Belmont Double (Doomsman, backed with Lee Hoffman's Telepower) that he was known to buy copies from fans for the purpose of destroying them. (Hoffman, I understand, was less than pleased with this stunt.)

The book to hand pairs a John Brunner story with a story by an author completely unknown to me, Bruce Duncan. The first difference to notice from the Ace Doubles is that the stories are not upside down relative to each other like Ace Doubles -- Brunner's Father of Lies comes first, and then Duncan's Mirror Image. (The Ace Double organization is properly called tête-bêche, though many people, myself included, have mistakenly called it dos-à-dos.) The price is actually the same as Ace Doubles of that period, 60 cents. However, the length is very different: Father of Lies is about 21,000 words, and Mirror Image about 22,000. Both stories, then, are shorter than almost every single Ace Double half. At 43,000 words, this book is very short for even single novels of that period. Most Ace Doubles were at least about 65,000 words combined, and usually longer. One of the shortest Ace Double is the late reprinting of two Jack Vance stories that had earlier been paired with different, longer, halves: The Dragon Masters/The Last Castle, which are about 57,000 words combined. (To be sure, that particular Ace Double may be the shortest, but it is also one of the very best!) (I have since realized that Belmont's practice was to pair two novellas -- never novel length stories -- and that these novellas were often (though not always) reprints.)

Brunner's Father of Lies was previously published in the British magazine Science Fantasy, #52, from 1962. (A significant issue, as it also included Thomas Burnett Swann's classic "Where is the Bird of Fire?".) It's actually a decent piece of work, though nothing special. It begins quite a bit better than it ends. A group of young people are investigating a mysterious spot on the map, where time seems to have gone backwards. When they blunder in there, modern technology stops working. And they discover an ogre, and later a dragon. Finally, one man discovers that another modern has wandered in by mistake -- a beautiful young woman whom he finds naked and tied to a stake, meant as a sacrifice to the dragon. In rescuing her he ends up captured himself, but fortunately his quick wits help maneuver them out. They (and his friends who come in after him) discover that the whole area is somehow reflecting Arthurian legends, if rather clumsily. The explanation is rather pathetic as it turns out, and as I implied above, though it's logical enough in its way I found it disappointing.

"Bruce Duncan's" Mirror Image, on the other hand, is utter garbage, definitely fit to stand with the worst "novels", or novellas more accurately, that I have ever read. I should note that "Bruce Duncan" is a pseudonym for Irving Greenfield (1928-2020) a prolific author of low-end paperbacks: soft porn, historical fantasy, and SF. I haven't read his other work, and it may well be better than this, though I doubt it's all that good. He may be best known for the Depth Force series, which seems to be techno-thrillers of a nautical nature. 

Mirror Image opens with a sailor on leave from an advanced submarine. He's received a Dear John letter, so he is ripe for seduction by the stripper at the bar he's visiting. But she turns out to be an android, operated by aliens. Soon the sailor is replaced by another android, and planted on the submarine. The idea is that the aliens will take over the Earth using the advanced weapons on the sub. And what do they want Earth for? Real Estate? No. Slaves? No. Natural resources? Not really -- instead, somehow they plan to suck energy (of unspecified form) from it, leaving it a ruined husk. Eh???

The android sailor clumsily takes over the ship, only to be foiled by the plucky humans, and luck, and auctorial convenience. There is also a subplot with a New York detective investigating the dead bodies of the real stripper and the real sailor when they turn up, but that goes nowhere -- just a way to fill up enough pages that the book could be published, I think. Ick -- a horrid effort.

Hugo Nomination Recommendations, 1960

Potential Hugo nominations for the 1960 Hugos (stories from 1959)

Here's my last planned post on potential Hugo nominees from the past. This is for the 1960 Hugos, for stories from 1959. Thus I close out the decades of the 1950s. Also, I was born in 1959, in October, and so this is a pretty important year for me! (Not that I remember it well!) The 1960 Worldcon was in Pittsburgh. I highlight the actual Hugo nominees and winners below.

I will once again mention Jo Walton's exeptional book An Informal History of the Hugos, in which she discusses the Hugo Awards from 1953 through 2000, including the nominees and potential additional stories to consider. I will also mention Richard A. Lupoff's What If? series of anthologies, which chose a single alternate story for each year (of story publication) from 1952 through 1973. 

Novel:

Time Out of Joint, by Philip K. Dick

Starship Troopers aka "Starship Soldier", by Robert A. Heinlein Hugo winner

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

A for Anything aka The People Maker, by Damon Knight 

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Hugo nominee

Other possibilities:

We Claim These Stars! aka "Hunters of the Sky Cave", by Poul Anderson

The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon

Dorsai! aka The Genetic General, by Gordon R. Dickson Hugo nominee

Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank

First to the Stars, by Rex Gordon

Providence Island, by Jacquetta Hawkes

"The Pirates of Ersatz" aka The Pirates of Zan, by "Murray Leinster" (Will Jenkins) Hugo nominee

The Beast Master, by Andre Norton

"The Sweet Little Old Lady" aka Brain Twister, by "Mark Phillips" (Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer) Hugo nominee

Wolfbane, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth

Level 7, by Mordecai Roshwald

My choice for the Hugo would be Time Out of Joint, one of my favorite Philip K. Dick novels. I don't mind the Hugo for Starship Troopers, however, as I think it an interesting and pretty well done novel (even if I don't approve of the political organization the novel suggests.) I haven't read the Jackson novel but it sure sounds like it is worthy of a nomination. The Sirens of Titan is quite good, too. A for Anything is a decent novel, but not great -- Knight wouldn't really figure out how to write a fully satisfying novel for a couple of decades at least. Based on what I've read about them, very possibly Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7 and Jacquetta Hawkes' Providence Island are also Hugo-worthy, and perhaps even The Manchurian Candidate.

This was the height of the Cold War, and the height of fears of Nuclear War, and that is emphasized by the popular success of out and out "End of the World due to Nuclear War" books like Level 7; Alas, Babylon; A Canticle for Leibowitz; and On The Beach, all published in this time frame. For that matter, Providence Island is about a lost race resisting the use of their island for nuclear tests, and The Manchurian Candidate is surely a Cold War novel to the max!

I list Pohl and Kornbluth's Wolfbane, but a shorter version (perhaps just novella length) appeared in 1957. I was amused to learn, in searching for it in the ISFDB, that the slight variant title Wolfsbane turns out to be a very oft-used title -- at least eight novels and a dozen or more short stories. Note also the two titles with exclamation points -- Dorsai! was the title of the Astounding serial, clumsily retitled, because Don Wollheim, for the Ace Double (which was also abridged.) And Anderson later collected We Claim These Stars! in Agent of the Terran Empire, retitled "Hunters of the Sky Cave" (and possibly revised.) Despite its presence in a collection, it is novel length by my estimate, 45,000 or more words.

Jo Walton suggests that Starship Troopers was going to win against this competition no matter what, and that despite its controversial aspects it's a major novel that has lasted. She hints that she might prefer either Eric Frank Russell's Next of Kin (which I mentioned in the post about 1958 novels in its slightly shorter form as The Space Willies) or Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

A couple of novels worth mentioning that don't quite qualify are Psycho, by Robert Bloch, which isn't SF or Fantasy (there's no supernatural element at all), and A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, which is a fantastic novel and a very worthy Hugo Winner -- in 1961! It is often cited (for example by the ISFDB) as a 1959 novel, but though it is copyrighted 1959 is was not published until February 1960. (Thanks to Denny Lien for the research that established this.) Likely the publisher originally scheduled it for late 1959 but delayed it until 1960 for marketing reasons (better chances to get reviews, something like that.) Reputedly Algis Budrys was bitter that his great novel Rogue Moon lost the Hugo to A Canticle for Leibowitz, which he thought ineligible due to the 1959 copyright -- but he had no case to complain, as the book really was a 1960 book.

Novella:

"A Handful of Stars", by Poul Anderson (Amazing, May)

"Sister Planet", by Poul Anderson (Satellite, May)

"The Whole Man", by John Brunner (Science Fantasy, April)

"Someone to Watch Over Me", by "Christopher Grimm" (Floyd C. Gale and H. L. Gold) (Galaxy, October)

"The Alley Man", by Philip José Farmer (F&SF, June) Hugo nominee

Another fairly thin novella list. I'd lean towards "The Alley Man" though I haven't read Brunner's "The Whole Man", which I assume is an early version of the novel of the same title -- the novel, at least, is strong work, and if the novella is as good perhaps it would have got my Hugo vote. The Anderson stories are solid work. The Christopher Grimm story is pretty enjoyable -- the Gold brothers (Floyd was Horace's brother, though he used Gale for his SF work, perhaps to avoid accusations of nepotism?) were a pretty strong writing team.

Novelette:

"The Waiting Grounds", by J. G. Ballard (New Worlds, November)

"Take Wooden Indians", by Avram Davidson (Galaxy, June)

"What Now, Little Man?", by Mark Clifton (F&SF, February)

"Jordan", by Zenna Henderson (F&SF, March)

"Flowers for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes (F&SF, April) Hugo winner

"Lean Times in Lankhmar", by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic, November)

Other possibilities:

"Brave to be a King", by Poul Anderson (F&SF, August)

"The Sky People", by Poul Anderson (F&SF, March)

"Despoilers of the Golden Empire", by "David Gordon" (Randall Garrett) (Astounding, March)

"What Rough Beast", by Damon Knight (F&SF, February)

"Wherever You Are", by "Winston P. Sanders" (Poul Anderson) (Astounding, April)

"The Silver Eggheads", by Fritz Leiber (F&SF, February)

"Dodkin's Job", by Jack Vance (Astounding, October)

"Cat and Mouse", by Ralph Williams (Astounding, June) Hugo nominee

Well, my vote for best novelette of 1959 goes to the obvious choice, the same choice the voters in 1960 made for the Best Short Fiction Hugo, "Flowers for Algernon". I will say that "Take Wooden Indians" is one of my favorite Avram Davidson stories; and "Lean Times in Lankhmar" is one of the best Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, and "What Now, Little Man?" is Mark Clifton at his bleak best, and "Jordan" is a major People story (indeed, as I recall, the "First Contact" story in that set) and "The Waiting Grounds" is one of the first J. G. Ballard stories to make a significant impact ... but, yeah, it's "Flowers for Algernon". (Jo Walton also endorsed the choice of "Flowers for Algernon".)

Of the other possibilities, one might note that "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" isn't really SF, though it's a bit of an, er, despoiler to say so. "Dodkin's Job" is uncharacteristic Vance, but it's pretty good. And I confess I know nothing about the Ralph Williams story, though Williams did do some interesting work.

Short Story:

"The Pi Man", by Alfred Bester (F&SF, October) Hugo nominee

"Dagon", by Avram Davidson (F&SF, October)

"Adrift on the Policy Level", by Chan Davis (Star #5)

"All You Zombies ...", by Robert A. Heinlein (F&SF, March)

"The Man Who Lost the Sea", by Theodore Sturgeon (F&SF, October) Hugo nominee

Other possibilities:

"A Man to My Wounding" aka "State of Assassination", by Poul Anderson (EQMM, December)

"The Shoreline at Sunset", by Ray Bradbury (F&SF, March)

"The Distant Sound of Engines", by Algis Budrys (F&SF, March)

"The Man Who Tasted Ashes", by Algis Budrys (If, February)

"The Montavarde Camera", by Avram Davidson (F&SF, May) 

"Angerhelm", by "Cordwainer Smith" (Paul M. A. Linebarger) (Star #6)

"Golden the Ship Was - Oh, Oh, Oh", by "Cordwainer Smith" (Paul M. A. Linebarger and Genevieve Linebarger) (Amazing, April)

"The Clone", by Theodore Thomas (Fantastic, November)

"Plenitude", by "Will Worthington" (Will Mohler) (F&SF, November)

Once again, a slam dunk for me, despite a very strong shortlist. "The Man Who Lost the Sea" is hands down one of the greatest SF stories of all time. I would have voted for it ahead of "Flowers for Algernon" for "Best Short Fiction" on the 1960 Hugo ballot. That said, "The Pi Man" is brilliant. "All You Zombies ..." is brilliant. "Dagon" is brilliant. I mean, heck, what a shortlist!

Richard Lupoff's choice for an "alternate Hugo" in his What If? series of anthologies was Bester's "The Pi Man". I note, by the way, that F&SF for the month of my birth -- October 1959 -- included three (!) great stories: "The Pi Man", "Dagon", and "The Man Who Lost the Sea".

There is plenty of good stuff in the "other possibilities" too -- notably a first rate Ray Bradbury story, some examples of Algis Budrys at close to his obsessive best, a neat biter-bit story from Avram Davidson, a couple of good early Cordwainer Smith stories, and a solid work by the nearly forgotten "Will Worthington".

Sturgeon's "The Man Who Lost the Sea" was selected for Martha Foley's The Best American Short Stories 1960. Indeed, under Foley's long editorship of that series, only two SF stories from genre sources were reprinted, the other being Judith Merril's "Dead Center" in the 1955 volume. Foley died in 1977, and after that the series had different guest editors each year, allowing, one presumes, a more diverse, more varied, perspective, and increasing the likelihood of genre pieces being selected. Offhand, I can think of four such stories making it: Harlan Ellison's "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" in the 1993 volume (guest editor Louise Erdrich); two from the 2005 volume, guest edited by the notoriously SF friendly Michael Chabon: Tim Pratt's "Hart and Boot" and Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game"; and Ted Chiang's "The Great Silence" from the 2016 volume, edited by another SF friendly writer, Junot Diaz. (Very possibly other SF/F stories have been chosen as well in recent years.) Note that there were occasional fantastical stories from traditional literary publications in the series all along, though not, I think, very many. But Karen Russell, for example, has appeared several times, with distinctly fantastical stories -- but always from publications like Granta and the New Yorker.

Hugo Nomination Recommendations, 1954

Potential Hugo nominess from 1953 (1954 Worldcon -- SFCon, in San Francisco)

Continuing my project of suggesting potential Hugo nominees (and winners) for the early years of the Hugos. The 1959 Worldcon was the first to settle on a year of eligibility (the calendar year prior to the year of the Worldcon) and on a nomination process. The nomination process, voting rules, and categories changed quite often over the next 10 to 15 years, before largely settling down, in the fiction categories, anyway. But at least to some extent, things were more comparable to present day rules beginning with the 1959 Hugos, for 1958 stories.

There were no Hugos awarded at the 1954 Worldcon -- and perhaps as a result, there has been some attention paid to potential Hugos from that year! And, indeed, there were Retro Hugos awarded at the 2004 Worldcon. 

Jo Walton's Informal History of the Hugos didn't really cover 1954, as there were no Hugos that year, though she suggested that Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human would have been a good novel winner. Richard A. Lupoff, in What If, Volume 1, chose Damon Knight's "Four in One" as a potential Short Fiction winner. And Noreascon 4, the 2004 World SF Cconvention, did award Retro Hugos, and there was a quite a plausible set of five nominees in each of the fiction categories. I've marked the nominees (and winner) with a bolded RH (not to be confused with my initials!) in the lists below. And, finally, I wrote an article for Locus Online back in 2004, suggesting potential nominees in the fiction categories. I've changed my mind some since then, and I also messed up some of the story lengths, but I still like what I wrote, which is here: The Best Science Fiction of 1953: A Look a Potential Retro Hugos.

Novels

The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov RH

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury RH winner

Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke RH

Mission of Gravity, by Hal Clement RH

More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon RH

Other possibilities:

The Big Jump, by Leigh Brackett

Revolt in 2100, by Robert A. Heinlein

Starman Jones, by Robert A. Heinlein

The Sinful Ones, by Fritz Leiber

The Green Millennium, by Fritz Leiber

You Shall Know Them aka Les Animaux Denatures, by "Vercors" (Jean Bruller)

Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore

Children of the Atom, by Wilmar Shiras

The Kraken Wakes aka Out of the Deeps, by John Wyndham

This was a remarkable year for SF novels, and the five that I list as nominees -- the same list the Retro Hugo nominators picked -- are all certified classics in the field. There some impressive alternate choices too -- among those I list, Leiber's The Sinful Ones (an expansion and in my opinion an improvement on his 1950 short novel "You're All Alone") is a personal favorite. In my Locus article I picked The Caves of Steel as the winner, but I'm really torn. Nowadays I might lean to either More Than Human, or to the Retro Hugo winner, Fahrenheit 451.

The Vercors novel, You Shall Know Them, was published in France in 1952 but I list it here for the first edition of its English translation (by Bruller's wife, Rita Barisse). (There were other editions of the English version (the same translation): The Murder of the Missing Link and Borderline.) It's a purposely controversial novel, and hard to take at times, but very interesting. My review: You Shall Know Them.

Novellas

"A Case of Conscience", by James Blish (If, September) RH winner

"The Rose", by Charles Harness (Authentic, March) RH

"Double Meaning", by Damon Knight (Startling, January)

"The Diploids", by Katherine MacLean (Thrilling Wonder, April)

"... And My Fear is Great", by Theodore Sturgeon (Beyond, July) RH

Other possibilities:

"Three Hearts and Three Lions", by Poul Anderson (F&SF, September and October) RH

"Un-Man", by Poul Anderson (Astounding, January) RH

"Sargasso of Lost Cities", by James Blish (Two Complete Science-Adventure Books, Spring)

"The Wanton of Argus", by John Brunner (as "Kilian Houston Brunner") (Two Complete Science-Adventure Books, September)

"Cue for Quiet", by T. L. Sherred (Space Science Fiction, May and July)

In this category my choice for the winner is still Charles Harness's "The Rose", an extremely strange, dreamlike, story of science vs. art. The rest of the ones I list as possible nominees are all strong, though, and any one would have been a good winner.

The "other possibilities" include two solid Poul Anderson stories ("Three Hearts and Three Lions" being a shorter version of the 1961 novel), one of several interesting T. L. Sherred stories from this time frame, an enjoyable but slight very early Brunner story (later reprinted as half of an Ace Double and also as part of his collection Interstellar Empire as "The Space-Time Juggler"), and an important Blish story that I had missed (thanks to Gregory Feeley for reminding me of it) that became part of Cities in Flight. Note the two novellas from the somewhat obscure (but often interesting) Two Complete Science-Adventure Books.

Novelettes

"The Wall Around the World", by Theodore Cogswell (Beyond, September) RH

"Second Variety", by Philip K. Dick (Space Science Fiction, May) RH

"Four in One", by Damon Knight (Galaxy, February)

"Lot", by Ward Moore (F&SF, May)

"Mr. Costello, Hero", by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy, December)

Other possibilities:

"Earthman Come Home", by James Blish (Astounding, November) RH Winner

"Belief", by Isaac Asimov (Astounding, October)

"Sam Hall", by Poul Anderson (Astounding, August) RH

"The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound", by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson (Universe, December) RH

"Time is the Traitor", by Alfred Bester (F&SF, September)

"A Way of Thinking", by Theodore Sturgeon (E Pluribus Unicorn; Amazing, October-November)

"What Thin Partitions", by Mark Clifton and Alex Apostolides (Astounding, September)

"Hide! Hide! Witch", by Mark Clifton and Alex Apostolides (Astounding, December)

"A Little Knowledge", by Judith Merril (Science Fiction Quarterly, November)

"The Third Guest" aka "Macario", by B. Traven (Fantastic, March-April)

"Eye for Iniquity", by T. L. Sherred (Beyond, July)

This is one of those categories  where I had a hard time narrowing down to five nominees. "Earthman, Come Home", "Sam Hall", and "Time is the Traitor" could easily have made my list. I should add that it's a reasonable guess that back in 1954, at least one of those Clifton/Apostolides stories would have been nominated. In my Locus article, I chose "Four in One" as the winner -- and so did Richard A. Lupoff in his What If? anthology. My second choice would probably be the Cogswell story, "The Wall Around the World". 

Short Stories

"It's a Good Life", by Jerome Bixby (Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2) RH

"Common Time", by James Blish (Shadow of Tomorrow; Science Fiction Quarterly, August)

"The Nine Billion Names of God", by Arthur C. Clarke (Star Science Fiction Stories) RH winner

"Specialist", by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, May)

"A Saucer of Loneliness", by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy, February; E Pluribus Unicorn) RH

"The Liberation of Earth", by "William Tenn" (Philip Klass) (Future, May)

Other possibilities:

"The Hypnoglyph", by "John Anthony" (John Ciardi) (F&SF, July)

"Disappearing Act", by Alfred Bester (Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2)

"Star Light, Star Bright", by Alfred Bester (F&SF, July) RH

"Testament of Andros", by James Blish (Future, January)

"Encounter in the Dawn" aka "Expedition to Earth" aka "Encounter at Dawn", by Arthur C. Clarke (Amazing, June-July)

"Impostor", by Philip K. Dick (Astounding, June)

"The Man With English", by H. L. Gold (Star Science Fiction Stories)

"A Bad Day for Sales", by Fritz Leiber (Galaxy, July; Shadow of Tomorrow)

"The Night He Cried", by Fritz Leiber (Star Science Fiction Stories)

"Crucifixus Etiam", by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (Astounding, February)

"All Cats are Gray", by "Andrew North" (Andre Norton) (Fantastic Universe, August-September)

"As Holy and Enchanted", by "Henderson Starke" (Kris Neville) (Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April)

"The Ruum", by Arthur Porge (F&SF, October)

"Seventh Victim", by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, April) RH

"Warm", by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, June)

"The Altruists", by "Idris Seabright" (Margaret St. Clair) (F&SF, November)

"The World Well Lost", by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy, June; E Pluribus Unicorn)

"DP!", by Jack Vance (Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April)

"Unready to Wear", by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Galaxy, April)

Long list of stories in this category! I included some more for secondary reasons -- I remain intrigued that the great poet and Dante translator John Ciardi was also an SF enthusiast (and a friend of Asimov's) who appeared in F&SF several times over the years. The Clarke story is the first iteration of the idea behind 2001. Robert Sheckley had an astonishing year, and probably three or four more stories could have been listed. I note that the three stories I do list come from consecutive issues of Galaxy. 

Note too the influence of Frederik Pohl as an editor. He published the first two volumes of his Star Science Fiction series of original anthologies, and also a excellent standalone original anthology (Shadow of Tomorrow). Also note that Sturgeon's collection E Pluribus Unicorn featured more or less simultaneous printings of three stories that also appeared in magazines. (I suspect perhaps Sturgeon had sold the stories to the magazines some time before, and publication was delayed enough that the book caught up!)

My choice for a winner in my Locus article was James Blish's "Common Time". I still think that's a good choice, though "A Saucer of Loneliness" is one of my very favorite Sturgeon stories and it would have been a good winner too. 

Ace Double Review: Castaways' World/The Rites of Ohe, by John Brunner

Another John Brunner birthday, another Ace Double review! John Brunner in his early super-prolific period (up through about 1965) was reliably entertaining and always thoughtful, if often also a touch, er, hurried.

Ace Double Reviews, 60: Castaways' World, by John Brunner/The Rites of Ohe, by John Brunner (#F-242, 1963, $0.40)

by Rich Horton

Another Ace Double pairing two John Brunner stories. Castaways' World is about 45,000 words, and The Rites of Ohe about 46,000 words. Amusingly, Ace had all kinds of trouble with the title of Castaways' World: the front cover has it Castaways World, no apostrophe, and the spine has Castaways' Worlds, an extra plural. I shouldn't carp, though: in an earlier review of Brunner's Zarathustra books (of which Castaways' World was the second), I got it wrong too: Castaway's World. The covers are by the two Eds: Valigursky and Emshwiller.

Castaways' World is, as I have said, one of Brunner's three Zarathustra Refugee Planet novels. These concerned the aftermath of the sun of a human-colonized planet in a future galactic polity going nova. A desperate effort resulted in a bunch of ships fleeing the nova in more or less random directions, settling new planets without much care as to their habitability. Castaways' World was revised and expanded in 1974 for a DAW edition called Polymath, to about 62,000 words. As with most of Brunner's many revisions of his novels, the changes are modest expansions and prose refinements throughout the book: no new scenes, no changes in the plot.

The book is set in the immediate aftermath of two ships from Zarathustra crashlanding on a planet. The viewpoint character is Lex, who turns out to have been in training to be a polymath. A polymath is an enhanced individual who serves at the point man for colonizing a new planet. Lex has many but not all of the skills a polymath would have -- what he mostly lacks is specific knowledge of this particular randomly arrived at planet. His starship crashed on the seashore. After a long winter his group has survived, outside the ship, and indeed their ship has foundered in the ocean. It is clear that they will have to make a permanent life on the planet, with limited resources.

The other group crashed inland, and they holed up in the ship over the winter. But as spring arrives it seems they have all died. The seaside group begins to set up the rudiments of a colony. There are stresses, many centered about a promiscuous young woman named Delvia. In particular, a teenaged girl has formed a Lesbian attraction to Delvia, only to be rejected when the older woman finds men available.

Then an expedition is sent to the site of the inland starship. It turns out this group has survived, but under terrible conditions. They continue to believe that they will be able to refurbish their ship and head for another, more hospitable, world. The Captain has basically enslaved the passengers. Naturally they resent the comparative success of Lex's group -- setting up a dramatic resolution. The novel is very enjoyable, often thought-provoking though at times a bit forced -- on the whole good stuff.

The Rites of Ohe opens with a young woman sneaking into a hotel room. It turns out she is convinced that something happened to her lover there a few months previously -- this was the last place he was seen before he disappeared. Nobody believes her, but then a chance confrontation with Karmesin, one of a small group of human immortals, changes things. Karmesin becomes convinced that something strange did happen.

Karmesin's investigations quickly focus on a the mysterious non-human, though very humanoid, residents of the planet Ohe (called that because it has no heavy elements). The residents of Ohe are regarded as experts in sociology, and they have been recruited to help diagnose something called the "Phoenix Mystery", a violent cult plaguing the human worlds. The Oheans are a much older civilization than humans, but hamstrung by their lack of heavy metal, they never really explored beyond their planet.

The mystery inevitably leads Karmesin to Ohe itself, and to some surprising discoveries about the real motives and real accomplishments of the people of Ohe. It's a pretty interesting book, though perhaps just a bit slight -- I think it might have worked better at about half the length. It's also, as with a fair amount of Brunner novels, a bit subdued in tone -- not quite morose but not triumphal, either. Solid work, though, and more evidence that you can will almost never fail to be entertained by a Brunner book.

Forgotten SF Collection: Now Then!, by John Brunner

As I've mentioned many times before, I quite enjoy early John Brunner. So, for this "Forgotten Books" outing, I thought I'd resurrect what I wrote about a fairly early Brunner collection of novellas. On the whole, it must be said, these are minor Brunner.

(Cover by Hector Garrido)

Now Then! is a John Brunner collection from 1965. It includes three unrelated novellas: "Some Lapse of Time" (24,000 words, from Science Fantasy #57, February 1963), "Imprint of Chaos" (17,500 words, from Science Fantasy #42, August 1960), and "Thou Good and Faithful" (19,000 words in this version, originally published as by John Loxsmith in Astounding, March 1953 -- the original version was a bit shorter at about 17,000 words).

"Some Lapse of Time" is a dour anti-Nuclear War story. A doctor discovers a dying tramp. The tramp turns out to have an unusual deficiency disease, and to be unidentifiable, and to speak an unknown language that might be related to English. The doctor begins to have terrible dreams as well. It turns out that the tramp has been sent back in time from a post-Holocaust world -- but will anyone believe this?

"Imprint of Chaos" is the first to be published of the "Traveler in Black" stories. I haven't read these stories, which appear to be rather popular. [I read them later.] This story involves the Traveler, who has many names, but one nature, traveling around his world giving people what they want. In this fashion he resists chaos. This story is somewhat episodic, but the bulk of it concerns an man who wanders into the Traveler's world from our world, and who is treated by the inhabitants of a certain city as a god (you see, they hadn't any gods, and they had decided they wanted one ...). I've got to say I found this pretty minor stuff -- I hope the other Traveler stories are better. [They are.]

"Thou Good and Faithful" was Brunner's first story for a major magazine, and for some reason he published it as by "John Loxsmith". Within a year it had been anthologized as by "K. Houston Brunner", the form of his name Brunner used most often in those days. For this collection, Brunner (as was his wont) revised the story, expanding it slightly from 17,000 to 19,000 words. It is a typical Brunner revision -- no change in plot, no added scenes, just a general reworking of the prose. The story concerns an exploring ship in a crowded galaxy that comes to a potentially perfect world. Beautiful climate, and no intelligent natives. But some robots are discovered -- who made them? Over time, the mystery is solved (well, not so much solved as the robots eventually just tell them what's up). The story is overlong -- it probably should have been about 10,000 words. It does have a fairly interesting theme concerning the ultimate destiny of intelligence.

Birthday Review: Stories (and a book review column) of Judith Merril

Judith Merril was born Josephine Juliet Grossman on January 21, 1923; and she died in 1997. She was one of the great clutch of fans/writers born in the years around 1920. She edited fanzines in the mid-40s, published her first story, "That Only a Mother" (which ended up in the SF Hall of Fame) in 1948, and she was a fairly active writer for the next 15 years or so, publishing four novels and some 25 short stories.

But by far her most significant contributions to the field of SF were as an editor and as a critic. In 1956 she began publishing a series of Best of the Year volumes, which ran for 12 numbers total. These books got more and more eclectic as time went on. By the end she was eagerly looking for content from non-genre sources, much of it kind of minor, even silly, but the general effect was positive, encouraging readers to broaden their ideas of what SF could do. She also published a major anthology highlighting the English New Wave, England Swings SF, in 1968, and if much of the contents (not to mention the title) haven't dated well, it was a significant moment in the New Wave era. Around that time she moved to Canada, and she was a major figure promoting SF in Canada, and Canadian SF, in ways such as introducing Dr. Who episodes, and editing the first of the long running original anthology series featuring SF by Canadians, Tesseracts.

Finally, from 1965 to 1969, she was the regular book reviewer for F&SF, and I discuss one of those book reviews below. I also discuss a few of her stories, and one novel -- alas, as with many of these reviews of work by older writers, my rather random selection process means that much of what I cover was among her weaker work.

Astounding, June 1948

Judith Merril's "That Only a Mother", about a woman who doesn't accept that her new child is severely mutated due to atomic radisation, was even scarier on rereading than when I first read it, though I don't really buy the premise, in fact, I reject it out of hand. Fathers love "disabled" children as well!

Future, March 1951

One thing I do with these old magazines is check the letter column for letters from writers -- either current as of that time, or fans who would later become pros. This issue had an interesting letter from Judith Merril, signed Judith Merril Pohl. Merril was complaining about Lowndes's review of one of her books in a earlier issue. Lowndes' reply was rather testy. That didn't stop him from printing a story by her in this very issue, though! -- "Woman's Work is Never Done!", a terrible, and quite sexist, short-short about a nagging mother complaining about her daughter messing up a shopping trip.

Galaxy, June 1951

(Cover by Chesley Bonestell)

Finally, "Mars Child" is the first of two novels that Cyril Kornbluth and Judith Merril wrote together. The other is Gunner Cade, serialized in Astounding in 1952. "Mars Child" was published in book form as Outpost Mars in 1952, and later as Sin in Space in 1961. That last reprint was by Galaxy/Beacon, which published a number of mildly racy SF books (such as Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet, and Laurence Janifer and Randall Garrett's Pagan Passions) -- I assume that possibly "Mars Child"/Outpost Mars was revised to add some additional titillation for this later publication. The two novels, along with Merril's first solo novel, Shadow on the Hearth, were reprinted in an omnibus by NESFA Press, Space Out!, in 2008. (Merril published only one other novel, The Tomorrow People (1961), and in all honesty I would have to say that the fact that her excellent reputation in the field rests mostly on her editing and criticism is quite fair -- she wrote a few decent stories, but no great ones that I've read, and her novels are minor indeed. [I should note again that I have not read all of Merril's work, and probably not her best work: Joachim Boaz, for example, recommends "Dead Center" (which I read long ago, age 15 or so, but don't remember), "The Shrine of Temptation", and three linked stories about a generation ship, "Survival Ship", "Wish Upon a Star", and "The Lonely".])

(Cover by Robert Stanley)

I've never read Outpost Mars (or "Mars Child") before, but I went ahead and read this second part of the serial. It's fairly standard Mars colony stuff -- there is a struggling series of colony cities on Mars, still highly dependent on Earth. Most cities are supported by industrial concerns and are in essence company cities. One city, Sun Lake, is a cooperative, focused on scientific research, especially on trying to adapt to Mars -- to make it possible to live on Mars without depending on supplies from Earth. This segment concerns an obviously trumped-up charge of stealing the addictive drug marcaine that might destroy Sun Lake, as well as the visit of a crusading journalist to Mars, and also the birth of a child on Mars who might actually survive. (Previous children have all failed to thrive.) It's really typical stuff, with politics perhaps a bit to the left of the usual ... I'm tempted to read the whole thing (actually I'm more tempted to read Sin in Space) ... but I doubt it'll be anything special.

Space Science Fiction, November 1952

Judith Merril's "Hero's Way" was a bit silly, I thought. (Should I also confess that I find most of her fiction pretty weak, and that considered as a writer (as opposed to editor or critic) I think her rather overrated?) It's about space explorers, and how being a hero might not be all it seems to be. Evidence in the story? Pretty thin. I did note that apparently Venus was explored decades before the Moon, which I find just that little bit unlikely.

Venture, March 1957

The first thing I thought when reading Rose Sharon’s “The Lady Was a Tramp” was, gee, “Rose Sharon” sure seems like a pseudonym! And sure enough it is – “Rose Sharon” was Judith Merril. I’m not sure why she used a pseudonym for this story – she collected it only three years later under her own name. According to the ISFDB, it’s the only time she used a pseudonym for a solo work. (Of course, she and Cyril Kornbluth published two novels (“Mars Child” aka Outpost Mars aka Sin in Space; and Gunner Cade) under the rather transparent pseudonym “Cyril Judd”.)

Anyway, “The Lady Was a Tramp” is about a talented graduate of the Space Academy, an IBMan (a curious term to our ears, apparently a computer programmer for the navigation system of the ship), named Terry Carnahan, who has been assigned, not to a gleaming new Space Navy Transport, but to a creaky “tramp steamer” sort of ship, the Lady Jane. He is disgusted by this, and even more disgusted to learn that of the crew of five one is a woman, the Medical Officer, who seems to freely offer her body to everyone on the ship. It turns out (not surprisingly) that this is part of her duty as Medical Officer – to keep the men on the ship psychologically in good shape. A horribly sexist idea, to my mind. Terry must either come to terms with this idea, or flush out of the service … Obviously, one thing going on here is conflating Terry’s feelings (and those of all the crewmen) for the ship (called a lady, obviously) with the Medical Officer. And both are, I guess, tramps. More sexism, I think! Maybe I missed something, maybe Merril was being satirical, but this story doesn’t work for me.

Galaxy, August 1961

And finally there is Judith Merril's "The Deep Down Dragon". A woman and her husband each replay the other's reaction to a virtual sequence in which the woman is menaced by a fierce alien beast on what seems to be Mars. Each comes off rather well -- and we learn the rationale behind it all. Not a bad story. (I note that I am often struck, in stories from the '60s and earlier, how women writers as much as men were fairly reflexively sexist.)

F&SF, January 1966

And there is a book review column by Judith Merril. She writes from London, in September of 1965, and her subject is how much better things are in England: the drinking, people's looks, the rock and roll, and the SF -- the New Wave SF (though Merril does not here use that term). She focuses on three major fairly young writers: J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and John Brunner. Brunner is, she notes, the most "conservative in terms of literary technique". Aldiss she calls the most versatile, and Ballard "unique". I'd say she was spot on all down the line. She also predicts that had Ballard been in the US he would have left the SF field "before he entered it" -- "not one in ten of his early stories would have sold in the States". She doesn't spend much time on specific books, though she does briefly touch on Brunner's Telepathist (aka The Whole Man), Aldiss's Greybeard, and Ballard's The Drought (aka The Burning World). Merril also makes the comment I noted in my look at the December Galaxy, about Brunner:"he might have become a ... Silverberg." As I noted then, and as I see, as Silverberg said himself in his wonderful eulogy for Brunner, in fact Silverberg and Brunner did have careers of quite similar shape -- Merril simply missed that Silverberg was growing just as Brunner was, and at the same time.

Ace Double Reviews, 49: The Beasts of Kohl, by John Rackham/A Planet of Your Own, by John Brunner

Today would have been John Brunner's 85th birthday. I've previously posted quite a few reviews of Brunner's Ace Doubles, but there are more to come! Here's one I wrote back in 2004.

Ace Double Reviews, 49: The Beasts of Kohl, by John Rackham/A Planet of Your Own, by John Brunner (#G-592, 1966, $0.50)

by Rich Horton

(Covers by Jack Gaughan)

I decided after having read a couple previous John Brunner Ace Double halves that I liked his early easygoing adventure stuff, and so I bought some more Brunner Ace Doubles. This book comes not too long before Brunner published Stand on Zanzibar, his huge, ambitious, Hugo winner. A Planet of Your Own is very short, at 30,000 words. The Beasts of Kohl is about 52,000 words long.

"John Rackham", as I have mentioned before, was a pseudonym for John T. Phillifent, who also published under his own name (mostly in Analog). The Beasts of Kohl opens with a man named Rang hunting on an alien world, in the company of a bird and a large dog, with both of whom he can speak telepathically. We soon learn that Rang is a "beast" of a superintelligent sea creature named Kohl. Kohl decides, of a sudden, that Rang is too intelligent to keep as a beast -- he must take him to his home planet, on which Kohl found him as a boy, and let him decide where is his real home. Kohl also fetches another beast much like Rang (well, except for the breasts): Rana, who has been in the keeping of one of Kohl's fellow sea beings.

It will be no surprise to the reader that the home planet to which Kohl takes Rang and Rana is Earth. The kicker, though, is that due to time-dilation or other effects of Kohl's method of star travel, tens of thousands of years have passed from the time of Rang and Rana's birth to the time of their return. They are, in fact, Cro-Magnons, and they return to roughly the present day -- or a bit in the future. Either due to Cro-Magnons being naturally superior, or due to Kohl's enlightened training, Rang and Rana are much better thinkers than the run of humans, not to mention the telepathic ability. Luckily, on their return, they quickly encounter the world's leading genius, Hector Raine (I assume the similarity of names between Rang, Rana, and Raine was on purpose), as well as Hector's beautiful and also pretty bright secretary, Meryl Martin.

The remainder of the plot turns on Rang and Rana and Kohl trying to "uplift", in a sense, Hector and Meryl, mixed in with Hector's sleazy business manager trying to sell his consulting services to the Soviets. A kidnap attempt ensues, followed by some derring-do and superpowers, and of course the eventual realization by Hector and Meryl that they love each other (despite Meryl's interest in Rang and Hector's in Rana) ...

Routine stuff, a bit below the previous Rackham stories I've tried, a bit disappointing on the whole.

A Planet of Your Own opens with Kynance Foy, a beautiful and intelligent girl from Earth, finding herself stranded on the planet Nefertiti. She has learned that her looks and education mean awfully little on the aggressive colony planets, and that the zygra pelt she had hoped to acquire cheaply off-Earth is just as expensive on Nefertiti, home of the Zygra Company, as anywhere. She has no money with which to buy passage home, so she jumps at the curious offer of a job with the Zygra Company. They need a supervisor for their operations of Zygra, an uninhabitable planet where the curious plant-like zygra pelts grow. Kynance is a bit leery of the job -- nobody else seems to jump at it -- but it offers a generous salary plus a free ticket back to Earth.

She soon learns that she will need to spend a year on Zygra, completely alone. And that her boss is a slimy sexual harasser. And that the Zygra Company has rigged the contract to be full of loopholes which will allow them to void it and thus not pay her or give her the ticket home. Luckily, one of her degrees is in law ... The reader soon learns, and Kynance shortly thereafter, that there are actually inhabitants of Zygra -- some of the previous Zygra Company reps, marooned there after their contracts were voided. She realizes that she will need to fight the Company with all her legal acumen if she is to survive, let alone get her trip back to Earth. And in a rather surprising rapid finish, she and the previous survivors cook up a plan ...

I thought this rather weak for Brunner. The hand of the author is all too evident in setting up implausible legalities and loopholes for Kynance to deal with and use. I can't believe the Company could so easily get away with their evil ways, nor that, given that, that Kynance could so (relatively) easily foil their plans. And many aspects of the setup were just too convenient, such as Zygra's year being just a few days longer than Earth's, which turns out to be legally significant. It's still a fast and breezy read, and you root for Kynance, but it's really not that good. Oddly enough, it showed up on the long list of Nebula nominees for Best Novel of 1966, the second year of the Nebulas. (By current rules, it would be a novella, and not eligible for nomination as a novel.)

Ace Double Reviews, 56: Meeting at Infinity, by John Brunner/Beyond the Silver Sky, by Kenneth Bulmer

I just figured it was time to post another of my old Ace Double reviews, this time one by a couple of very prolific Ace Double writers. This is a pretty short review compared to my usual.

Ace Double Reviews, 56: Meeting at Infinity, by John Brunner/Beyond the Silver Sky, by Kenneth Bulmer (#D-507, 1961, $0.35)

a review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Ed Emswhiller and John Schoenherr
(in a very Richard Powers-esque mode))

Meeting at Infinity is about 48,000 words long. This Ace publication seems to be its first -- I can find no evidence of earlier serial publication, nor of expansion from a shorter work. It's an odd work for Brunner, to my mind -- it strikes me as almost consciously a pastiche or imitation of someone like Charles Harness (or perhaps A. E. Van Vogt).

I admit I was surprised not to find a serial version, because the book shares with some serials a three part structure, in which the central "paradigm", as it were, changes each part. The novel opens with a policeman chasing a man he believes to be a murderer. The "murderer", Luis Nevada, desperately confronts a prominent man, Ahmed Lyken, with the phrase "Remember Akkilmar", and Lyken rescues him. Lyken, as it happens, has just learned that he is about to lose his franchise for a "Tacket world".

So what's going on? It turns out that the "Tacket Worlds" are alternate Earths. Franchise owners have monopoly control of trade with a given alternate world. This is economically vital for Earth, but dangerous, because in the past a plague came across from a Tacket World. Franchise owners have complete control of their worlds, even to the point of being allowed to shelter murderers. But why is Lyken so interested in "Akkilmar"?

The plot becomes recomplicated. A young street kid, working for a gangster boss, tries to sell his valuable information about Nevada and Lyken's confrontation to his boss, who asks him to find out more. But Lyken is planning to retreat to his Tacket World and fight. And what of Luis Nevada's horribly burned ex-wife and her desire for revenge? And the primitive but mentally powerful people of Akkilmar? And who is the hero of this book anyway?

As I said, Brunner keeps upping the ante, changing our expectations. It's kind of fun, though not terribly convincing at any step. Middle-range early Brunner, on the whole.

Beyond the Silver Sky first appeared, under the same title, in Science Fantasy, #43 (October 1960). The book version may be slightly expanded -- it's about 30,000 words long. I haven't seen the magazine version -- it apparently occupies about 60 pages, which would probably be about 27,000 words (but I may be off in that count).

It is set in a far future undersea society. The human residents of the society are somewhat adapted to undersea life -- they have gills, for example -- but they rigorously cull further mutations, such as webfooted children. They are hard-pressed by mysterious foes called the Zammu. They are also facing the dropping of the sea level -- or as they call it, the lowering of the "Silver Sky".

Keston Ochiltree is a young man with scientific training, but a volunteer in the military. He is recruited by his former professor for a mission to investigate what lies "beyond the silver sky". The novel simply tells of his expedition -- along with two professors, another young man, and two young women who are there only to provide not very convincing love interests for the young men. The expedition itself is also not very interesting, as no reader will be in the slightest surprised by the discoveries. (Gasp! Humans once lived out of the sea! Amazing!) The novel also ends quite abruptly, with no very satisfying resolution to the potentially interesting questions raised ("What are the Zammu?" "What will humans do in response to the lowered sea level" etc.) I wonder if Bulmer wrote either predecessors or successors to this story.

Birthday Review: Short Fiction of Damien Broderick

Today is the 75th birthday of Damien Broderick. Broderick has written some of my favorite short fiction over the past decade -- scientifically provocative, fun stories, in a variety of voices. (He's also a first rate novelist and writer of non-fiction.)

Here's a selection of my Locus reviews of Damien's short fiction over the past decade. While I'm here, I'd also like to recommend a particular favorite novella of mine, "The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead", first published in the Ursula K. Le Guin/Virginia Kidd anthology Edges in 1980, and reprinted by us at Lightspeed a few years ago, and also in Damien's collection Uncle Bones. I include my review of that story at SF Site below as well.

I'd also like to mention my recent review in Black Gate of Damien's updated version of John Brunner's 1950s novel Threshold of Eternity.

Locus, January 2009

Damien Broderick returns to short fiction with “Uncle Bones”, a YA-flavored zombie tale – and pure science fiction. Jim lives with his mother and his uncle, but his uncle is dead – and reanimated by nanotechnology: lucky enough – for certain values of “lucky” – to get an experimental and not wholly successful treatment – side effects include a terrible smell and flaky skin and worse. Jim knows another “Stinky” – the sister of one of his friends. He’s not sure what to think about the whole thing, but when it seems his Uncle might be involved in something shady, he tries to find out what’s going on … with unfortunate results. It’s an enjoyable story, if just a bit predictable and perhaps too convenient in its resolution.

Locus, May 2009

Damien Broderick’s “This Wind Blowing, and This Tide”, from the April-May Asimov’s, is a beautiful story about Sam Park, come to Titan to investigate a mysterious spaceship – complete with lizardlike pilot and flowers. A variety of theories are in play, mostly involving aliens, but Sam believes this ship was sent by intelligent dinosaurs, a theory that invites contempt from the mainstream scientists, contempt perhaps further fueled by his advocacy of paranormal powers – something reluctantly accepted by the scientists who witness teleportation and telepresence used in the investigation. This speculation, tied with discussions of the Fermi Paradox, is fascinating, but the heart of the story is Sam’s own character: a single father mourning his dead son (as signaled by the perfect title, taken from Rudyard Kipling’s “My Boy Jack”, a poem lamenting his son’s death in the Great War).

Locus, August 2009

At Asimov’s for August I was again very impressed by a Damien Broderick story. “The Qualia Engine” tells of a group of children whose parents were genetically engineered, way back in the 1950s, for enhanced intelligence. The children have inherited much of that intelligence (but not all: regression to the norm). The narrator, Saul, is close friends for life with three of his fellows. His “hard problem” is the nature of human emotions, and he works on the title “engine”, which will allow people to directly experience others’ emotions. But, as he reflects on his own life, his own feelings, the eventual success of the project is a two-edged sword indeed. The story is sharply told, very funny at times, and ultimately very powerful.

Locus, October 2009

Tor.com keeps publishing interesting work. .. Damien Broderick offers a story that appeals to nostalgia in a different way. “The Ruined Queen of Harvest World” explicitly invokes Cordwainer Smith in a tale of uplifted cats looking for freedom, and of a glorious romance between a science fictionally plausible Harvest goddess figure and a dead man (sort of). It’s fun stuff, but just a bit too arch, and it makes a good try but doesn’t quite succeed in echoing Smith’s “incantatory” style.

From my review of Uncle Bones (collection) at SF Site

The best two stories are those from the 1980s. "The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead" appeared in 1980 in Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd's original anthology Edges. (Le Guin is not thought of as an anthologist, but she and Kidd edited two impressive books around that time: Edges and Interfaces.) This is a bravura performance, spectacularly written and stuffed with SFnal ideas. The title character is an historian from the future, and an Ainu, sent back in time to observe the fall of the "Old Galactics," an empire of Neanderthals. It's often provocative -- incest is a major theme, for instance, and so is personal hygiene, and so is genocide. (Neither the Ainu depicted here nor the Neanderthals have attitudes much in sympathy with 21st Century Western attitudes.) As I mentioned, the writing is arresting, often quite funny (as with the depiction of the Emperor's robots, modelled on Karl Marx and Adam Smith), sometimes punny, sometimes bawdy. I think it rather a discovery.

Locus, February 2010

In the February Asimov's I also enjoyed Damien Broderick’s “Dead Air”. Broderick’s recent stories have been riffing on past masters of SF, such as Roger Zelazny and Cordwainer Smith, and here he takes on Philip Dick, with a pretty much pitch perfect pastiche, in a story that slyly also confronts some ideas of a less well-remembered SF writer, as it talks of “thetans” taking over people’s TV sets to deliver messages. And behind the wacky furniture lurks a sad story of a divorced man and his lost children.

Locus, August 2010

There is a lot more to like in the Spring issue of Subterranean – but my favorite story is by Damien Broderick. “Under the Moons of Venus” is another of his stories that riffs on a famous SF writer’s work – but Broderick makes the story entirely his own. The title seems to reflect Burroughs, and the last line echoes yet another famous writer, but the story really is in conversation with a third (who I won’t mention, though I think it will be clear enough to readers). Blackett lives, he thinks, on a nearly deserted Earth. He, along with much of humankind, was briefly on an alien-altered Venus, but he has been returned. He hopes to go back to Venus, and tries to find a way; while his psychiatrist tries to convince him he’s delusional. There’s also a talking dog, and an obese Turkish bibliophile. It is not clear to this reader whether Blackett or his psychiatrist has the right of it, and it doesn’t matter. It’s a very well written story, profoundly evocative, and whatever your interpretation of events, deeply moving.

Locus, May 2011

Damien Broderick’s sudden resurgence over the past three years or so has been simply a wonder. (Not that Broderick was not already a noticeably excellent writer, but he had never been all that prolific, especially at shorter lengths.) “The Beancounter’s Cat” (Eclipse 4) tells of Bonida, a humble woman – a beancounter – who suddenly acquires a talking cat. The woman lives in Regio City on a curious world perched under the “Skydark”, near the ancient “Skyfallen Heights”. There are cantrips for cleaning, and an Absent Goddess, Lalune, but it’s clear enough that this is a far future with Clarkean technology indistinguishable from magic. The story revolves around Bonida’s dead mother’s true nature, and Bonida’s destiny, which may be humanity’s. The themes are typical of Broderick, one of our prophets of the posthuman, and the telling, in a rather arch, formal, style, is lovely, and the SFnal mysteries are worthy of revealing – and revealed nicely.

Locus, December 2013

One of the interesting features of SF is the sometimes open collaboration of writers, one extending another's ideas. Robert Silverberg has enthusiastically participated in this sort of collaboration, for example extending Isaac Asimov's 1941 classic “Nightfall” to a full-length novel in 1990. Now he gets the same treatment, as Damien Broderick has written a long novella, “Quicken”, beginning more or less at the end of Silverberg's 1974 classic “Born With the Dead”. The two stories are published together as Beyond the Doors of Death. “Quicken” is a fully successful sequel, not betraying the original at all but recognizably Broderick's vision. (Indeed, at the beginning I thought of Silverberg, but by the end Van Vogt was in my mind.) “Quicken” is like “Born With the Dead” told from the POV of Jorge Klein, whose wife Sybille has been “rekindled” after her too early death. In the first story Klein was disappointed by Sybille's indifference – the dead are cold, above all (and Silverberg's prose perfectly captured this coldness). Now, in Broderick's story, Klein too has been rekindled, and he is similarly “cold”. But he finds himself recruited to be an ambassador from the Deads to the “Warms”, in an increasingly dangerous world where the still living resent the rekindled. The story begins a a slow pace, introducing Klein to his new state, but then begins to leap forward, into a future riven by war between the quick and the dead (if you'll pardon me), and then still forward, by century and millennium, to a somewhat transcendent resolution. I doubt this is what Silverberg had in mind with his original, but Broderick's take is consistent nonetheless, and quite fascinating.

Locus, April 2017

The big novella this March-April Asimov's is plenty of fun, a wild kind of superscientific ride. This is “Tao Zero”, by Damien Broderick. Shipton Dow is the son of Robin Dow and Robyn Dow, who were brilliant young teenagers when he was conceived. They also were lottery winners, and they used their winnings to start an industry devoted to learning how to manipulate the Way (the Tao), and to further understand the nature of intelligence. As a similarly precocious young teenager, he is at MIT when he begins to fall for another brilliant teenager, Felicity. Then suddenly an attack on the MIT campus puts Ship in great danger, and he is saved by a mysterious entity who whisks him away through a tesseract … and Felicity too is swept up into this action, along with her grandfather and eventually Ship’s parents, not to mention Ship’s AI companion, Bandaid. This is wacky stuff, told in short sections headed by quotations from the Tao Te Ching, clever, often funny, kind of sweet, kind of convoluted. In the end in a curious way I thought it a bit small-scale relative to the really grand implications of the super science described – though I’m not sure that’s a weakness or a reflection of the nature of the Tao.

Birthday Ace Double Review: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Ace Double Reviews, 85: Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany/The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott (#F-199, 1963, 40 cents)

A review by Rich Horton

(Covers by Jack Gaughan and Ed Emshwiller)

This Ace Double includes novels by two of the great writers in the field. "Wait!", you might say, "Samuel Delany I understand. But Keith Woodcott! I never even heard of him." Ahh ... but Keith Woodcott was a pseudonym for John Brunner. At any rate, neither of these novels is among their author's best, though Delany's is the promising work of a young writer who would get better, and who even here shows much promise, while the "Woodcott" is terribly disappointing work by a writer who had already done first rate work, and who could usually be trusted to be quite entertaining, even in his hackwork. He'd get better too -- but you can't say that The Psionic Menace provides any evidence of that. Captives of the Flame is the longer book, about 52,000 words. The Psionic Menace is about 38,000 words.

Captives of the Flame is Delany's second novel. It appeared when he was just 21 years old. It is the first of a trilogy, collectively known as The Fall of the Towers. It opens enigmatically, with Jon Koshar confused and lost ... we soon learn that he has been imprisoned for the past 5 years, despite his prominent position as the son of a leading merchant in the city of Toron. Toron is the island capitol of Toromon, a small "empire" on a future Earth, an Earth on which the inhabited parts (which seem to include Aptor, setting of Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor) are isolated by belts of radiation, the result of the "Great Fire". As the novel begins, Toron is lurching towards war with the mysterious people beyond the nearby radiation belt. The young King Uske, mostly a puppet, wonders what he is doing, declaring war. Jon Koshar's sister Clea, a brilliant mathematician, looks forward to her graduation party, and worries about her military boyfriend. The mysterious Duchess of Petra plots to kidnap the King's younger brother Let. A boy named Tel has landed on the island, and is immediately swept up in the Duchess's plot, along with the acrobat Alter, her aunt Rana, and Jon Koshar. Also involved is a giant from the slightly mutated forest people, who live near the radiation barrier.

If all this seems a bit busy, well, it is. And it stays that way, though it's mostly easy to follow and fun to read. The war starts on schedule. Economic chaos, partly driven by artificial fish production, and exacerbated by a poisoning of the fish supply, accompanies the war. (Delany includes some rather incoherent and unconvincing economic rants.) The kidnap plot comes off, and Prince Let is taken to the forest people, to learn how to be a better King than his ineffectual brother. Clea's mathematical abilities identify a way to end the war. Jon Koshar, with Alter and Petra, battles the alien Lord of the Flames, who seems to be behind the provocations that led Toromon to war. This battle takes them to numerous different planets, to inhabit different life forms, in a colorful sequence that reminded me of Harlan Ellison's very minor early novel The Man With Nine Lives. And ... well, the book pretty much stops. Good thing this is just part one of a trilogy!

In many ways this book is kind of a mess. But some of that might be resolved in the concluding novels of the trilogy, to be fair. (I've read the whole thing, but 40 years ago, and I don't remember it at all.) And as I said it's readable and fun throughout, with prosodic flashes that, while not wholly successful, point the way to the kind of writer Delany would become.

It should be noted that both Captives of the Flame and the second novel in The Fall of the Towers trilogy, The Towers of Toron, were significantly revised prior to publication of the omnibus edition of all three books. That's omnibus edition is what I read, back in 1975 or so, and maybe that's why I don't remember Captives of the Flame! (Or maybe not.) For one thing, it was retitled Out of the Dead City (a much better title) for the later editions. It is possible that some of the revision was restoration of cuts demanded by Donald Wollheim -- I have read that Delany's first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, had to be cut significantly to fit in an Ace Double, and that in the end, frustrated, he was just tossing out paragraphs more or less at random. I would say there is definite evidence in Captives of the Flame that scenes are missing.

The Psionic Menace, by contrast, is a bad book unrelieved by any indication of the possibility of better work to come. I wonder if Brunner purposely used the Woodcott name because he knew how bad the novel was. ("Keith Woodcott" wrote some 5 books for Ace, 4 of them Doubles -- the name also appeared on a couple of short stories. I haven't read any other "Woodcott" novels so I can't say if their quality was generally lower than the novels under the Brunner name. But certainly the other Brunner Ace Doubles I've read (under his name) were much better than The Psionic Menace.)

The book is set in a future in which a mostly peaceful and well-controlled Earth has isolated "psions". Conditions are worse for Psions in the interstellar confederation controlled by the "Starfolk", who live on starships (like Anderson's Kith or Heinlein's Free Traders). The main character, a "cosmoarchaeologist" named Gascon, is a psinul -- his thoughts cannot be sensed by psions. One night he encounters a runaway psion boy who is panicked by a broadcast psionic message warning of the "end of everything".

Meanwhile, on the Starfolk-dominated planet Regnier, a young girl, Errida, is chosen to be a Starfolk concubine. (It appears they need to refresh their genetic pool on occasion, and they do so by force.) But her brother is a psion and it becomes necessary for them to escape to an isolated alien city -- once home to a colony of the "Old Race"... alas, the rest of her family is swept up in a fomented anti-psion riot.

Gascon's academic field, cosmoarchaeology (study of the relics aliens have left on various planets), combined with his being a psinul, makes him ideal to send to Regnier in an Earth plot to solve the mystery of the psion panic about the "end of everything", and also to put pressure on the Starfolk. So he goes to Regnier, and meets Errida. The Starfolk, who have come to Regnier because a Starfolk ship has been lost and psions are suspected, get involved as well, and in a typically too rapid Brunner ending Gascon steals a Starfolk ship and follows clues to the location of the "Old Race" and to the, in the end very disappointing, solution to the mystery of the "end of everything".

It's just a book that didn't work for me at all. I wasn't engaged by any of the characters. I was thoroughly unimpressed by the SFnal aspects, particularly the lamish resolution to the central mystery. Brunner wrote a lot of his early stuff pretty fast, for the money, but he usually gave decent value. Not this time, though.

Birthday Review: PITFCS, by Theodore R. Cogswell

PITFCS, edited by Theodore R. Cogswell

a review by Rich Horton

Theodore R. Cogswell was born March 10, 1918, so he'd have been 101 years old today. (His hometown, Coatesville, PA, was also the home of the great writer W. M. Spackman, who was 13 years older than Cogswell.) Cogswell died in 1987. He was primarily an academic, at Ball State in the 1950s, and by the end an English teacher at a junior college. (Algis Budrys claimed he "couldn't be bothered to publish, and couldn't be bothered to get his Ph.D", which hampered his career.) He wrote some 40 SF stories between 1952 and 1981 (though the largest part by far appeared through 1962), plus one novel, a Star Trek tie-in, Spock, Messiah!, written with Charles Spano. He is still by far best remembered for one story, his first, "The Specter General", from Astounding for June 1952, and later reprinted in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume IIB. One more story is even better, I think -- "The Wall Around the World", from Beyond in 1953.

His writing career, then, never really took off, though as noted he did publish at least a couple really lasting stories, which is more than a lot of folks have done. But he did something else of real significance for the SF field. This was his editing of the "fanzine for pros" called Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, usually abbreviated PITFCS. This ran for 17 issues between 1958 and 1962, with one last issue published in 1979 but mainly printing stuff left over from 1962. He prepared this book, a collection of most of the material from PITFCS, in 1985, but Advent didn't publish it until 1993 (though it is dated 1992.) It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book.

As I said, this book is primarily the contents of PITFCS, though it includes one issue of another Cogswell fanzine, Digit, comprising mostly humorous poems by a number of SF writers riffing on the ambiguous pronunciations of names like Leiber, Boucher, and Poul (Anderson). Not all of PITFCS is included -- the Science Fiction Encyclopedia suggests that what is missing is discussion of a "particularly ugly controversy involving Walter M. Miller". (I have no idea what that controversy was -- I wouldn't be human if I wasn't curious about it, but I assume it was not included in the book for good and proper reasons.)

The book is huge -- 375 close packed 8 1/2 by 11 pages. (Something in me wishes the format was 7 by 10 in homage to the pulps!) Each issue after the first consists of a short editorial note and a series of letters from the subscribers (often, of course, in response to material from the previous issue.) The list of contributors is huge -- prominent names from within the field include Judith Merril, Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Rosel George Brown, Harlan Ellison, Randall Garrett, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, Damon Knight, Miriam Allen de Ford, Lloyd Biggle, Donald A. Wollheim, Sam Youd ("John Christopher"), John Brunner, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, etc. etc. There were several contributors known primarily for work outside the genre: Richard McKenna, Kurt Vonnegut, John Ciardi, Michael Frayn, and Kingsley Amis most obviously.

What was discussed? Some shop talk, for sure -- there was an exchange about the value of editors, some happy to do rewrites on request, others against it. There was discussion about controversial works of the time, notably for example Starship Troopers -- and, indeed, James Blish vowed to write a response to it in novel form. (This became Mission to the Heart Stars, one of Blish's worst books.) There was a fascinating exchange about Budrys' Rogue Moon, and how he cut it for the magazine publication, and possible alternate titles. There were political discussions -- for example, a bit about Chan Davis' encounter with McCarthyism (which is why his career as a Math professor took him to Canada.) There were versions of the age-old debate "Is Science Fiction Literature?" There were discussion of John W. Cambpell's enthusiasms, such as the Dean Drive. Perhaps most significant, there was extended discussion of the possibility of forming an SF Writers' Union -- discussions that were critical in leading eventually to the formation of the Science Fiction Writers of America. And of course there was gossip.

I'm not sure how wide the true audience for this book is -- I know I'm not the usual case. But I absolutely loved it. It's probably my favorite book "about" Science Fiction, and the Science Fiction community, of all time. And it's still available, from Advent Publishers (via NESFA.) So -- if you are part of the SF community, if gossip and elevated gossip about issues dating back 50 years is of interest to you, this is a wonderfully fun book to have. That said, these issues hanker back to ancient times, sort of, and for many people likely this won't mean much of anything, which is fine too, of course.

Birthday Review: Stories of John Barnes (and one novel, A Princess of the Aerie)

Today is John Barnes's birthday. I think he's one of the best pure SF writers of our time. In particular, The Sky So Big and Black is one of the best SF novels of this millennium -- and one of the scariest. Here's a selection of my reviews of his work in Locus, plus a review of his novel A Princess of the Aerie that appeared in the UK magazine 3SF.

Locus, November 2005

The November Analog features a novella by John Barnes, the latest in his Thousand Cultures series, which opened with a beautiful Analog novelette, “Canso de Fis de Jovent”. “The Diversification of His Fancy” reads like a bridge to a new novel. That said, it stands pretty well alone, though it may be a bit too long. Giraut Leones, the series’ hero, is now a celebrated musician (as well as a spy) – and he has also been a target of assassination attempts. His latest concert seems likely to be the venue for another attempt – and so we witness his “entourage” as they try to protect him. His entourage includes (among others) his ex-wife; his once dead friend; his father, who is now younger than him; and his lover. We learn little enough about the assassination plot (I presume that’s left for the novel?), but we learn a lot about the background of the Thousand Cultures, and especially about their somewhat imperfect immortality technology, which is based on recorded minds being downloaded into new bodies. (Hence the once dead friend and the younger father.) This story turns movingly on one of the central imperfections of this technology: not everyone can be saved and downloaded.

Locus, January 2006

The January-February Analog is also strong, indeed, one of the best issues in some time. There is good work in particular from Rajnar Vajra, Mark W. Tiedemann, and Richard A. Lovett, and an intriguing far future reverse take on today’s environmental controversies by Julian Flood, “Change”. But the best story is the longest: John Barnes’s “’The Night is Fine’, the Walrus Said”, a direct sequel to “The Diversification of its Fancy” (November 2005), and due to be followed by its own sequel in March. Indeed, it would appear that Barnes’s latest Thousand Cultures novel is perhaps being stealthily serialized in Analog, at least in part. I have no complaints! The stories work well enough on their own, though they are very clearly parts of a larger whole.  In this story Giraut Leones is again the subject of multiple assassination attempts as he tries to get his latest musical project finished. He seems to be the target of some faction of a group of illegal human colonies on distant planets. Things are further complicated when he begins to fall for a woman from his past – who seems to be connected to a representative of those colonies, and who is also a passionate Ixist. (The Ixist religion (introduced in an earlier book) being the subject of Giraut’s latest work.) The ending reveals some secrets, and sets the stage for much more to be revealed soon – involving AIs, aliens, the curious life-extension tech on this future, and of course the illegal colonies.

Locus, February 2006

John Barnes’s latest Thousand Cultures story continues in the March Analog with “The Little White Nerves Went Last”. A recording of Giraut Leones’s old boss Shan has been hosted in Giraut, and both are in the custody of rogue “aintellects”. Shan in particular had been a fierce opponent of AI rights, and this story consists mostly of his account of his childhood on a distant planet. The story reveals some important secrets of Barnes’s future – the source of his enabling “springer” (matter transmitter) technology, and the nature and motivations of a threatening alien civilization. This story is interesting and moving, if at times just a bit pat. The stage seems well and truly set for a pretty spectacular finish.

Locus, May 2006

I thought the best stories in the first issue of Baen's Universe were two longer novelettes. “Poga” by John Barnes, is a fantasy about a woman, Plain Old Goddamn Amy (or “Poga”), whose father was a struggling fantasy writer who suddenly made it big. In this world, Elfland is roughly Wyoming, and she lives in Colorado, near the border. She is struggling with a lonely life, and her dead father’s ambiguous legacy, and her uneasy relationship with the fantastical promise of Elfland.

Locus, November 2006

In October at Baen's Universe I thought two stories stood out – perhaps not quite what a reader of Baen Books would expect. ... Even better is John Barnes’s “Every Hole is Outlined”, set very far in the future, and essentially the life story of a girl sold from slavery into service on a starship. The small starship crew lives at a different rate, in essence, from planetbound people, and in a very different way as well. And there are mysteries – in particular the ghosts … Barnes’s heroine goes from a young girl more or less manipulated into marriage with an old man to the ship’s captain, and as we read of her life we learn fascinating snippets of the culture she inhabits. It’s quite a moving story, and it hints at a very interesting future.

Locus, February 2007

The new online magazine Helix offers a very good third issue. Among several strong stories I’ll mention particularly John Barnes’s “Rod Rapid and His Electric Chair” is a very mordantly funny send up of a Tom Swift-like series of books and more to the point the racist and fascist views expressed therein – which lead to the end of the world.

Locus, September 2007

The August Baen’s Universe includes another strong story from John Barnes, who had two of the best stories there last year. “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” is about a couple of documentary makers on Mars to record the impact of a comet as part of the terraforming effort. They have sort of a Red Mars/Green Mars conflict: Léoa’s point of view is to mourn the loss of the old Mars, while Thorby (a significant name in SF terms, but I admit I can’t figure out the reason for the nod to Citizen of the Galaxy) wants to celebrate the coming of a new Mars, and also wants to document Big Energy Release Events – that is to say, things blowing up. The story turns, however, on their more personal characters – Thorby’s lonely life, Léoa’s ambition – as plotwise it pivots on an accident on the surface of Mars.

Locus, January 2010

However, they (Jim Baen's Universe) do close 2009 with perhaps the best story they’ve published yet, and one of the great stories of the year: John Barnes’s “Things Undone”. Rastigevat is a highborn member of a rather darkly formed society. His partner is of lower class, but we learn quickly that they are in love, for which the lower born individual is liable to be executed. Their job is curious – they track down time travelers and try to minimize the damage they can cause. The story turns on several things – the feelings of the main characters (Rastigevat in particular, as he seems to be borderline autistic), eventual revelations about the true nature of this world – an alternate history – and why it’s different to our world, the rather subtle delineation of the extent of the differences (accompanied by some of the typical alternate history namedropping, but here employed to much better effect than usual), and of course a conspiracy … In the end it’s very moving, very involving – I was reminded of one of my favorite time travel stories of all time, John Brunner’s “The Fullness of Time”.

Locus, March 2011

Jonathan Strahan serves notice that 2011 may be as strong a year as the past few in original anthologies with Engineering Infinity. ... John Barnes closes the book with “The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees”. Stephanie and her husband Lars are part of an expedition to the Southern Ocean to investigate a curious feature: a mat of huge upside down “trees”. The nature of the trees and the reason for them is pretty neat, in an SFnal way. The story also has a fine character-based conflict, as Lars’s ex-wife, a humaniform android built for space exploration is also along on the trip; and Stephanie is fiercely jealous of her, a jealousy only complicated by her being as nice as she is physically and mentally superior. Fine work from a first-rate but I feel underrated writer.

Life on Mars Review (Locus, May 2011)

Finally the best two stories come from Ian McDonald and John Barnes. ...Barnes’s “Martian Heart” posits a condition that affects a significant subset of Martian colonists, whereby their heart fails due to the conditions on the planet. The “colonists” here are essentially indentured. For example, the narrator, Cap, and his wife Sam are homeless people on Earth, shipped to Mars in lieu of time in the army, hoping to earn their way back to Earth by prospecting. But the odds of a prospector hitting it big are minuscule – so they’re likely stuck on Mars. And things get worse when Sam’s heart begins to fail. The story is in a sense about how Cap – who is telling it decades later – finally hits it big – and why Sam is the reason he did. Sentimental stuff, I suppose, but in the best way, and it hit me right in the gut.

Locus, December 2012

Strahan also gives us a new anthology of stories set in the relatively near future Solar System, Edge of Infinity, which has a plethora of neat pieces. ... John Barnes's “Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh”, about an AI who gets involved (it's his job) with the relationship issues of a man and a woman – which ends up impacting the relationship of humans and  AIs quite profoundly.

Review of A Princess of the Aerie for 3SF, April 2003

Last year I was quite taken with John Barnes's novel The Duke of Uranium, a romp set in a well-inhabited 36th Century Solar System over That novel introduced Jak Jinnaka, a charismatic young man who, it is hinted, will achieve great (and perhaps sinister) power later in his life. Barnes seemed to deliberately sprinkle that book with references to Heinlein, and in many ways it read like a present-day Heinlein juvenile. But Barnes evidently has different things in mind, and the sequel, A Princess of the Aerie, is certainly not a Young Adult book. It is, however, an interesting and very enjoyable read, set in a politically and technologically fascinating future.

Jak's former girlfriend, Shyf, was revealed in the first book to be a princess of a nation in the Aerie, a cluster of space habitats located at the Earth-Sun L4 point. Jak lives in the Hive, at the L5 point, and he's studying at the Public Service Academy, with his friend Dujuv, a young man with panther-derived genes. Jak is looking for a class project, and at the same time he gets a message from Shyf, asking him for help and hinting at a resumption of their relationship. So Jak, Dujuv, and Dujuv's ex-girlfriend Myxenna, head for the Aerie. Once there, however, they find that Shyf claims not to have sent any such message. They also learn that Shyf is not the person they thought she was, instead she is a sex-mad, power-mad, spoiled brat. But Jak and his friends, partly because of what seems to be unusual luck on Jak's part, foil an attempt on the Princess's father's life. As a reward, they are sent to the hellish mines of Mercury, where they get involved with a revolution against a group angling to take control of Mercury's resources.

The story is exciting in itself, and furthermore it is fascinating in its cynical view of realpolitik as it applies to the 36th Century. Our view of Jak is complicated enormously in this second of his adventures: it's clear that he's not quite what he seems, but it's also clear that his friends (and former friends) don't understand him well either. I'm looking forward to further stories detailing the career of Jak Jinnaka -- and I do want to see what he makes of his life and times.