Ace Double Reviews, 113: Android Avenger, by Ted White/The Altar On Asconel, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 113: Android Avenger, by Ted White/The Altar On Asconel, by John Brunner (#M-123, 1965, 45 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

The occasion for this Ace Double review is Ted White's 81st birthday today, February 4, 2019. Ted White is a true SMOF. He published a fanzine beginning at age 15. He won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1968. He was co-Chair of the 1967 Worldcon, and his fannish credits could likely go on for pages.

He is probably best known to the casual SF fan (at least, fan of my age) as an editor -- an assistant at F&SF from 1963 to 1968, then for the next decade editor of Amazing and Fantastic, where he affected an improvement from the depths of the years right after Sol Cohen took over the magazines, to something at times approaching the Cele Goldsmith Lalli levels. (These were the years -- 1974-1978 at least -- that I subscribed to those magazines, and I appreciated Ted's rather pugnacious approach to them.) He then became an editor at the American magazine Heavy Metal (based on the French graphic magazine Metal Hurlant.)He was also a disk jockey for a time, and he is an accomplished musician.

(Covers by Ed Valigursky and Gray Morrow)

And he is an SF writer, producing more than a dozen novels and a couple of dozen short stories (the most recent in 2017, so he's still at it.) One collaborative story got a Nebula nomination, but I'll confess that I've not really been overly impressed with the occasional story I've seen. But I hadn't read a novel, and I ran across this Ace Double, with Android Avenger, so I figured it was worth a try. (I admit I really bought the book for the Brunner novel.)

So, what is Android Avenger about? Well, it's about 40,000 words or a bit more! Sorry ... It's set in New York in the relatively near future of 2017 -- oh, wait a minute, that's the past now! Life is calm in this near future, apparently, mostly because anyone who shows unruly attitudes -- Deviants, that is -- is detected by automatic scanners, and executed. The narrator, Bob Tanner, is serving his periodic (every couple of years) duty as Executioner -- a thousand people gather in an arena, and press a button, one of which randomly activated the electric charge to kill the Deviant. This time, however, Bob is oddly affected by the execution, and he ends up going into sort of a fugue, which causes him to be picked up and scanned. The scanner finds nothing, but an X-ray determines that his bones are metal. Surely this will brand him a Deviant, so he escapes, using violence, which is certainly Deviant.

Soon he encounters a beautiful redhead, who warns him to be careful. Then he's attempting to return home -- but his home is too dangerous. And suddenly he finds himself gripped by a compulsion he can't control -- and he runs without volition (and at implausible speed) to a building wherein he finds and kills a man. Before long he's confronted by the sister of the dead man (another beautiful redhead!), and he learns that the original redhead is named, oddly enough, Hoyden. And then he is possessed by the mysterious force again and kills the sister.

By now you can see who the android avenger of the title is, though not why he's "avenging". The story continues at some pace, through some sudden changes of tone and scenery. He meets up again with Hoyden. They have sex. They fight. Then he runs away to another borough, takes on a new identity, and starts to live with the poor people there, who are outside the controlled system of the main part of New York. And things get stranger, and Bob, trying to understand his nature and purpose, finally comes to a confrontation with the being behind his problems ... Plus he gets his reunion with the lovely Hoyden.

It's all a bit -- maybe a lot -- silly, and disjointed. There are occasional nice bits of speculation, as for example about the moving roads in future (past, now) Manhattan. There's a certain ambition behind some of it, lost in the end by the need for action and by the hard to take ending. So -- not a particularly memorable book. There was a sequel, called Spawn of the Death Machine -- I almost wonder if White wrote it just so he could use that gloriously pulpish title.

(Cover by McKenna (not for The Altar at Asconel)

I've written a lot about John Brunner before, so I won't reiterate that. He is a favorite of mine, and I generally really like his early, shorter, less serious novels. The Altar On Asconel is in that category, but it's a bit late -- 1965, after he had begun producing work of more obvious ambition, such as The Whole Man from 1964. This novel is part of his so-called Interstellar Empire series, which also includes an early novella, "The Wanton of Argus", which became the very short Ace Double half The Space-Time Juggler; and another novella, "The Man from the Big Dark". The ISFDB also claims that his first novel, Galactic Storm (written when he was 16 or 17, and published as by "Gill Hunt") is part of that series. (I've not read that book, and I gather it's not easy to find.) It's about 55,000 words long. It was serialized in If, April and May 1965, as "The Altar at Asconel", in a cut version, about 42,000 words. I have the serial as well, and the cuts seem to be pervasive but rather minor -- a few sentences here and there, spread throughout the book. I don't know if Brunner or Frederik Pohl made the cuts.

The main character of The Altar on Asconel is Spartak, an academic on Annanworld, which was the university planet of the old interstellar empire. The empire has mostly collapsed, after 10,000 years, with many planets having reverted to barbarism, but a few, such as Annanworld, still retaining a decent tech level. Spartak's specialty is the history of the empire -- he knows, for example, that the starships humans use were all made by a previous, now disappeared, race -- and especially the history of one prominent world, his home, Asconel, which also has retained some technological underpinnings.

Spartak, along with his half-brothers Vix and Tiorin, agreed to leave Asconel on the ascension of their older brother Hodak to the position of Warden -- in order to avoid the possibility of clashes over the succession. But now, 10 years later, Vix has shown up on Annanworld with terrible news -- their brother Hodak has been assassinated, and a strange man named Bucyon has taken over as Warden. And he, with the beautiful Lydis and the misshappen Shry, rule the planet in the name of a god -- Belizuek, who demands human sacrifices. And it seems that nearly the whole population of Asconel has been conditioned, so that they accept their oppression happily.

Vix, along with his latest woman, Vineta, head to Delcadoré, near the heart of the old empire, to look for Tiorin. And they find him, but they also are shanghaied into transporting a mutant girl, rumored to have mental powers, into exile on the Galactic rim. This is accomplished by a crude conditioning, so they cannot even think about going to Asconel to try to free their planet from Bucyon and Belizuek. But the mutant girl's powers come in handy -- she is able to undo their conditioning, and after some struggle, she agrees to help them get to Asconel.

Once there they find the world in even worse shape than they thought. And then they encounter Belizuek, who seems a megalomaniac telepathic being. Vix and Tiorin are read to attack, but Spartak, with the help of the mutant girl, comes up with a more sneaky plan ... And, well, you know more or less how it ends. There is, of course, a revelation as to what or who Belizuek really is, and there's a final, fairly logical, fate for Spartak and the mutant girl (who is quite young -- there's no suggestion that Spartak fancies her).

All in all, this isn't one of Brunner's best efforts. I wonder if he really didn't have much interest in the project. There is less speculative interest, less original thinking, than in most of Brunner's early books. The plot is not very tightly constructed, and things are really too easy for Spartak and company. The end is rushed a bit, and also comes off rather flat.

Ace Double Reviews, 42: Dr. Futurity, by Philip K. Dick/Slavers of Space, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 42: Dr. Futurity, by Philip K. Dick/Slavers of Space, by John Brunner (#D-421, 1960, $0.35)

by Rich Horton

On the 90th anniversary of Philip K. Dick's birth, I thought I'd repost this review I did long ago of one of his early Ace Doubles.

A pairing of two of the best writers to have been regular Ace Double contributors. John Brunner wrote more Ace Doubles than any other writer (24 halves, under his own name and as by Keith Woodcott). Philip K. Dick wrote 7 Ace Double halves, two of which were later reprinted together.* Dr. Futurity is about 50,000 words, Slavers of Space about 42,000.

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

I think Dr. Futurity is the earliest of Dick's novels that I have read, though I have read quite a few of his early short stories. [Since writing this review in 2004 I have read two earlier novels: Eye in the Sky and Time Out of Joint.] It seems uncharacteristic of much of Dick's output. His primary themes, as I see it, are the untrustworthiness of memory, the mutability of reality, suburban life, and paranoia. This book really doesn't take on any of these themes, though it does involve time travel, which Dick uses in some of his other work. On the whole, it strikes me as a rather conventional book for him, though I thought it fairly good -- if by no means as good as the best of Dick's work, rather better than the run of Ace Doubles. It is an expansion of a novella, "Time Pawn", which appeared in the Summer 1954 Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Jim Parsons is a 30ish doctor in about 2012, with a pretty wife and apparently a good life, near San Francisco. Driving into the city in his automatic car one day, he is suddenly in what seems to be an accident. But when he comes to, he finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings. He is, of course, in the future. And it's a strange future -- everyone looks the same, more or less a blend of races (with perhaps an American Indian dominance), and very young. The language is a half-familiar mixture of several other languages. And the first driver he encounters tries to run him over, and appears shocked when Parsons is upset by this.

It turns out that this future society is obsessed with eugenics and physical perfection. All babies are produced from a pool of eggs and sperm saved in something called the Fountain, based on the perceived values of various "tribes". And since disease and injuries are evidence of imperfection, there is no medical treatment, and people routinely offer themselves to be killed. Parsons soon finds himself in trouble for saving the life of a young woman who has been injured. Before long, he is on a spaceship to Mars, to some sort of prison colony.

But then things get a little strange. The spaceship is intercepted, and after some travail, not to mention some time travel, Parsons is in the control of a rebel group of sorts, people of a specific genetic type, including a very beautiful woman. It turns out that these are the people who snatched him out of time, and they want him to use his rare medical knowledge to save one of their leaders. From this point the novel becomes more a time travel book, with several loops through time, and with plots to kill Francis Drake and prevent the English settlement of North America, to the benefit of the Indians. It's all a bit twisty, and reasonably well done, somewhat sweet, pretty interesting. I don't think it all quite works as a whole, and the book strikes me as two different stories uneasily married, but I did enjoy it.

I also find myself enjoying the early John Brunner stories I have encountered in Ace Doubles. The form forced Brunner, it would seem, to concentrate on telling a fast-moving story. This isn't always the best thing, but I think it's something Brunner could do very well. Slavers of Space is a pretty enjoyable short novel, though to be honest it is hampered by an overly rapid resolution. I should note that there is apparently a 1968 expansion called Into the Slave Nebula, which I am rather interested in learning more about.

The book opens with a man called Lars Talibrand (a name I kept misreading as "Taliban", rather unfortunately) being tracked down and murdered in a hotel room on Earth during the planetwide Carnival. A rich and bored young man named Derry Horn discovers his body, and also that of an android who was apparently killed with him. Derry's unexpectedly sympathetic reaction to the android's death impresses another android, the hotel secretary, who pushes him to investigate further. He learns that Talibrand was a "Citizen of the Galaxy", a title unknown on Earth but apparently well respected in the settled planets of the Galaxy. He also finds himself suddenly under attack -- a man challenges him to a duel for no obvious reason.

Derry's family makes robots, which are traded to the colony planets for the more intelligent blue skinned androids, which are made by a monopoly somewhere in the colonies. In retracing Talibrand's steps hoping to find clues to his murder he begins to learn details about the robot/android trade, and some disquieting (and I should add, easily guessed) secrets about android manufacture. He finally comes to Talibrand's home planet, where the news of Talibrand's death comes as a shock to most, who admired him, but somehow doesn't seem so displeasing to Talibrand's brother ... And Derry is suddenly in real trouble

The secret of what's really going on, as I suggested, is pretty simply figured out. And the plot resolution is just way too rapid and easy -- I think the book simply needed to be longer, which would make Derry's eventual triumph more emotionally satisfying. I wonder if such changes are part of Into the Slave Nebula. But it was a fast moving and pretty fun book.

I noted that parallel with Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, as well, including the explicit use of the phrase "Citizen of the Galaxy", as well as a hero who is the scion of a rich Earth family, and a concern with slavery. I cannot but imagine that at least some of this was on purpose.

*The two Dick novels reprinted by Ace in a later Ace Double were this book, Dr. Futurity; and the later novel The Unteleported Man. The Unteleported Man has an interesting publication history: it was originally written as a serial for Amazing or Fantastic. Don Wollheim requested an expansion, but didn't like the result, so chose to publish the shorter serial version as half an Ace Double. Dick returned to the expansion much later, apparently making further changes, and an expanded version was published in the US and UK in the early 80s. I gather that both versions are different, and neither was Dick's preferred text -- Dick had died before the books came out, and some of his changes were lost. The UK version did change the title to Lies, Inc. Only now, in 2004, have Dick's actual final changes been found (evidently misfiled in his estate's papers with the manuscript of another book), and a fairly "official" version of Lies, Inc. has just appeared.

A Little Known Ace Double: The Atlantic Abomination, by John Brunner/The Martian Missile, by David Grinnell

Ace Double Reviews, 65: The Atlantic Abomination, by John Brunner/The Martian Missile, by David Grinnell (#D-465, 1960, $0.35)

I'm reposting this Ace Double review on the occasion of Donald A. Wollheim's birthday: he'd have been 104. Alas, I'm not very nice to his book, but, then, it's not a very good book.

This one qualifies as a rather randomly chosen Ace Double -- on the one hand, I like Brunner, on the other hand, here's an opportunity to review Donald Wollheim (who used "David Grinnell" as a pseudonym for much of his fiction) back to back.

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Ed Valigursky)

Both of these novels are about 43,000 words long. As far as I know this is the first publication of The Atlantic Abomination in any form, though I may have missed a shorter magazine version under another title. The Martian Missile was first published in 1959 by Thomas Bouregy and Co. Which means some other editor evidently approved of it -- good thing! since I would have been pretty annoyed had Wollheim chosen his own piece of utter garbage! (That other editor would like have been Robert A. W. Lowndes.)

The Atlantic Abomination opens with an alien being panicking as his world seems to be falling apart. We soon gather that Earth, long ago, has been dominated by a few aliens of a species with special telepathic powers. But geological catastrophes are ruining this early human "civilization", and at least one alien escapes to a specially prepared lair.

Fast forward to the 20th Century, and an deep ocean expedition, using special technology to allow exploration of the ocean bed. The explorers happen upon a mysterious installation, which of course is the lair of the evil alien. The rest of the novel is readily enough predicted -- the alien awakes and takes over as many humans as he can. He proceeds to the East Coast of the US and enslaves thousands. An international effort attempts to stop him, with some success, but the alien seems to be figuring things out. Our hero is enslaved, but his new wife (both oceanologists from the original expedition) remains free, but he manages somehow to escape. Does humanity survive? Well of course.

I am being somewhat sarcastic, a bit unfairly. This is certainly nothing special as a novel, but in following its very predictable path, it does entertain. Brunner was just a damn good writer of, for lack of a more precise word, pulp. He always gave value for money. I enjoyed the novel, though I don't think I'll remember it or reread it.

The Martian Missile can also be described as "pulp". 30s pulp. Really BAD 30s pulp. I suppose Wollheim may have written this in 1958 or so, but it sure reads, with its scientific and astronomical stupidities, like it was written in 1931.

A small-time criminal, hiding out in the desert, happens across a crashed alien spaceship. He rescues the alien, only to have the alien implant a bomb or something that will go off in a few years if he doesn't take a special message to the alien's fellows. Naturally he figures that this "message" might mean no good for humanity, but he doesn't see an alternative.

So he sneaks aboard a Russian rocket, and manages to get to the moon. He is able to rendezvous with various planted alien ships, and he proceeds to Mars, Jupiter, and finally to Pluto. Needless to say the description of the conditions on these planets are scientifically ridiculous. Our hero becomes aware of a cosmic battle between good, bad, and indifferent aliens, and he is able to figure out a way to play them off against each other and both save Earth and save his skin.

On the whole this is pretty much SF at its worst. I've read other Wollheim/Grinnell novels, and none of them make me think Wollheim's writing career is anything to be rediscovered, this has to qualify as below his usual standard.

A John Brunner Ace Double: The Repairmen of Cyclops/Enigma from Tantalus

Ace Double Reviews, 50: The Repairmen of Cyclops, by John Brunner/Enigma From Tantalus, by John Brunner (#G-115, 1965, $0.45)

Today would have been John Brunner's 84th birthday. He was one of my favorite writers of Ace Doubles, so in his memory, how about a repost of an Ace Double review I did of two of his novels back to back.

More John Brunner! These two novels were both serialized in Cele Goldsmith's magazines, Enigma From Tantalus in Amazing, October and November 1964, and The Repairmen of Cyclops in Fantastic, January and February 1965. Enigma from Tantalus is about 31,000 words, The Repairmen of Cyclops about 45,000 words.

(Covers by John Schoenherr and Jack Gaughan)

The shorter novel, Enigma From Tantalus, is set on a planet called (not surprisingly!) Tantalus. A group of scientists is studying the one intelligent inhabitant of the planet, a distributed mind. This mind uses telepathy to control its components. It breeds/evolves components for various functions -- notably, since the arrival of humans, who brought the potential of mining for metals to its attention, it has begun to breed mining creatures. Despite all their efforts, scientists have not been able to directly communicate with the creature, or to understand its telepathy, despite bringing humans thought to have telepathic potential to the planet.

One such human has, in view of his annoying personality, just been sent back to Earth, in a specially diverted spaceship. After the ship has gone, the scientists discover that one human has become part of the Tantalan's waste, and they jump to the conclusion that the Tantalan has bred a human replica to send to Earth -- for what purpose they cannot guess. The spaceship is arrested in Earth orbit, and one of the Masters of Earth, highly intelligent and imaginative people, goes up to the ship to interview the motley bunch of passengers and decide which one is the replica.

Brunner throws in some cute ideas, though they tend to be a bit half-baked. He considers the nature of a future Earth in which all major decisions are ceded to machines -- by implication, humans themselves are almost part of a distributed intelligence like the Tantalan, under control of machines. The basic mystery is not terribly interesting, nor solve all that brilliantly, though there is a beautiful sting in the tail of the story. On balance, I would say that this would have made a pretty good novelette at some ten or fifteen thousand words, but at thirty thousand it seems padded.

The Repairmen of Cyclops is one of three Brunner novels about the Zarathustra Refugee Planets. These are planets colonized by humans fleeing the nova of Zarathustra's star, far in the future after some sort of Galactic society has been established. 21 such planets have been discovered by the human Galactic society. Interactions with those planets are kept to a minimum, however -- it is felt that allowing them to develop on their own is preferable from the point of view of encouraging vibrant new cultures and ideas. The flipside of course is that many people, especially on the more primitive of these worlds, live perhaps unnecessary lives of poverty and misery.

Cyclops is not a ZRP, but (in a previous novel) it was involved in an underhanded scheme to harvest nuclear material from one of the ZRPs. The government of Cyclops, led by the authoritarian woman Alura Quisp, now favors a policy of encouraging Galactic intervention in the ZRPs, ostensibly to uplift their inhabitants to Galactic civilization. This novel opens with Quisp's lover hunting a wolfshark, and losing a leg in the process. He is rescued by a local fisherman, and taken to the nearest hospital, which happens to be run by the Galactic Patrol, or Corps, instead of Cyclops. The Patrol has much better facilities, and they discover that the leg the wolfshark chewed off wasn't the man's own leg.

Maddalena Santos is a Patrol member visiting her old boss at the base on Cyclops. She is bored after spending 20 years not interfering on a primitive planet. So she gladly gets involved in the mystery of the anomalous leg. Also involved are her boss, and the fisherman, really a boy, who rescued the shark hunter. We quickly gather what's really going on -- lacking regeneration tech, a doctor on Cyclops has instead been repairing patients with parts taken from people kidnapped from yet another ZRP. It is up to Maddalena and the others to stop these people -- a job complicated by the aging Alura Quisp's desire for a new young body, and by her willingness to take extreme political steps to interfere with the Corps.

I thought the story lots of fun, though, as with so many from this period, it sets up the situation rather nicely, then rushes way to swiftly to a conclusion. I still quite liked it, and I intend to seek out the other ZRP stories. They have a somewhat complicated history: the first, Secret Agent of Terra (1962), was republished in revised form as The Avengers of Carrig in 1969; and the second, Castaways' World (1963), was revised as Polymath in 1974. All three (with The Repairmen of Cyclops also apparently revised, though lightly, and not retitled) came out in a UK omnibus in 1989 as Victims of the Nova.

A Mostly Forgotten Ace Double: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 37: Rocket to Limbo, by Alan E. Nourse/Echo in the Skull, by John Brunner (#D-385, 1959, $0.35)

Today (August 11, 2018) would have been Alan E. Nourse's 90th birthday, so I've taken the opportunity to repost this review I did some time back of his Ace Double Rocket to Limbo.

(Covers by Ed Emshwiller and Robert E. Schultz)

This 1959 Ace Double pairs a once-popular writer best known for his juveniles with a writer who became one of the towering figures in the field. At the time Alan E. Nourse was surely the "headline" writer of the pair (which is not to say he was particularly well-known), but as of now John Brunner is clearly the more important figure. Rocket to Limbo is a reprint of a 1957 novel, originally published by David McKay. (There also seems to have been a version, possibly much shorter, published in Satellite Science Fiction in 1957.) It is about 50,000 words long. Echo in the Skull is from 1959: it was published in the same year in the UK magazine Science Fantasy. (I don't know which publication came first.) It's a longish novella at some 28,000 words -- I'm not sure if the Science Fantasy text is the same as the Ace Double, but I suspect it may be. It has been reprinted as "Give Warning to the World" according to the ISFDB, but I can't find any details of that.

One point about John Brunner's Ace Double career. I had previously listed a number of especially prolific Ace Double contributors. Somehow, I managed to forget Brunner: the most prolific of them all, I believe! He wrote 24 Ace Double halves, in 21 different books. A few of these were published under the name Keith Woodcott. (He also used this pseudonym for a few short stories -- I read one just today, "Fair" in the March 1956 New Worlds, a pretty fair story, I will say.)

I enjoyed several Alan E. Nourse novels as a teenager: he was one of the first few SF writers I read (with Asimov, Clarke, Norton, and Simak). In particular I recall The Mercy Men, The Bladerunner, The Universe Between, and Raiders from the Rings. (The last two novels were based on 1951 stories in Astounding -- the curious thing is that Raiders from the Rings is not based on a Nourse story, but rather "The Mauki Chant", by Nourse's sometime collaborator J. A. Meyer.) However the novel at hand is not to my mind as good as any of those.

Rocket to Limbo opens with a scene of Earth's first star ship, the Argonaut, blasting off en route to Alpha Centauri. It is a generation ship -- its primitive engines are expected to take as much as a century to reach the nearest star. Quickly we cut to the main action, some 350 years later. The faster-than-light Koenig drive as been in use for a few centuries, and the Earth has a burgeoning colony population. However, the Argonaut is not found at Alpha Centauri, nor at any other planet. Lars Heldrigsson (I thought I was in a Poul Anderson novel for a second after reading that name!) is a young man preparing for his first journey for the Colonial Service, under the command of legendary explorer Walter Fox.

Lars soon learns that what he thought was to be a routine trip to Vega will be something else entirely. The ship's launch is made under unusual security. And Lars's roommate, his former classmate Peter Brigham, a bitter young man, tells him of a mysterious cargo that seems to be illegal nuclear weapons. They are swiftly told the reason for the unusual procedures: another Colonial Service ship, investigating a newly discovered planet, disappeared after making planetfall. Their job is to investigate this mysterious disappearance.

Walter Fox, it turns out, has a bug in his brain about intelligent aliens. It seems humans have encountered no sign of them, but Fox is sure they must exist, and he wants first contact to be peaceful. But other people are afraid of the aliens, including many of the crew, some of whom plan a mutiny, charging that they have been illegally shanghaied to this secret mission, instead of the expected Vega milk run. Peter Brigham has other motives -- he blames Walter Fox for his father's death on a previous exploration mission. Lars, of course, is a loyalist, and he eventually turns Peter to the good side of the Force.

No prizes (after the opening scene of the book) for guessing what the divided crew actually finds on the strange planet. And no prizes for guessing that Lars and Peter, after a harsh struggle with the elements and with another mutiny, have a key role to play when they encounter strange beings in a strange city. And, finally, no prizes for guessing that Walter Fox's dream of discovering intelligent aliens comes into play as well.

I was rather disappointed by this novel. For one thing, it's put together rather carelessly. There are a number of quite unnecessary niggling inconsistencies (such as how far the Argonaut eventually seems to have travelled, or what sort of planet the mysterious planet is in terms of indigenous life). And the ending is an annoying attempt at transcendentalism via psi hogwash.

I enjoyed Echo in the Skull somewhat more. It's an extraordinarily fast-moving story, partly because it covers a very short time period -- perhaps twelve hours. Long enough to save the world with a love story thrown in. It's gripping and sets up an interesting mystery which is resolved acceptably. There are some short-cuts -- the hero jumps to some correct conclusions implausibly swiftly, for instance. It's not great work but it's good old-fashioned fun.

The story opens with Sally Ercott hungover and in despair. She is broke, filthy, living in a rundown flat, and at the brink of letting her landlord sell her as a prostitute in lieu of rent. She has vague memories of a much more comfortable life, but no specifics -- and more terrifyingly, she does have occasional very specific memories of other, much stranger, lives. These memories involve things like human sacrifice to a huge alien being, and barbarian invaders, and suchlike.

Then she is nearly run over by a young man, who insists on taking her to his house to at the very least clean up and get herself a good meal. Sally's landlord and his wife are depicted as furious at this development -- is their only motivation that of driving her to sufficient degradation to agree to "go on the street"? Or is something more sinister going on? The man who picks up Sally is named Nick Jenkins (it's probably only a coincidence that that is the same name as the narrator of one of the most important (and one of the best, and perhaps my favorite) English novels of the 20th Century: Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time).  Nick is an inventor, and a man with an open mind, and he promises to treat whatever strange stories Sally tells with respect. And when Sally tells him of her unusual memories of other lives, he asks her to draw scenes from them -- which elicits the information that the barbarian invaders from one scene had four arms; and that in another memory Sally's skin was scaled.

Nick arranges for a Doctor to treat Sally. Meanwhile the sinister landlord couple have tracked Nick down, and they are attempting to kidnap Sally back. Fortunately, another resident of Sally's rooming house has also become suspicious of the landlord and landlady. The conclusion moves rapidly, with Sally in deadly peril, even as she and Nick have figured out (perhaps too rapidly, as I suggested) just what's going on. But between Sally's new found confidence, and the help of Nick, the doctor, the other resident, and some reasonably intelligent policemen, all comes out OK.

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.

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.

A Forgotten Ace Double: Siege of the Unseen, by A. E. Van Vogt/The World Swappers, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 66: Siege of the Unseen, by A. E. Van Vogt/The World Swappers, by John Brunner (#D-391, 1959, $0.35)

April 26 was A. E. Van Vogt's birthday, so here's an A. E. Van Vogt Ace Double! Siege of the Unseen is about 30,000 words long. It is apparently the same story as "The Chronicler", a two-part serial from Astounding, October and November, 1946. I'm not sure if the story was revised in any way for the 1959 reprinting. It was also reprinted once as "The Third Eye of Evil", a really pulpy title that actually is the only one of the three that has much to do with the story. As for John Brunner's The World Swappers, it is about 43,000 words, and I don't know of any earlier or different publication.

(Covers by Ed Valigursky)

Siege of the Unseen is rather uneasily framed by a series of extracts from the coroner's report on the death of the protagonist, Michael Slade. Slade's mutilated body was found on his land -- identifiable by his third eye. I have to say I was never really worried about Slade's fate, though!

Michael Slade is a successful businessman who gets injured in a crash and suddenly develops a third eye on his forehead. He eschews treatment, and instead tries to learn to see from the third eye. As a result his wife divorces him and he is generally shunned. But when he does learn to see well with all three eyes (curing his previous two-eyed astigmatism in the process), he finds that he can transport himself to another world, apparently coexistent with Earth. This world is inhabited by three-eyed people, including a beautiful naked woman.

Before long, and somewhat against Slade's will, the woman has recruited him to come to her world and join her in a battle against the evil oppressor Geean. She dumps him in a gloomy city and says he must survive for a day. He finds that the city is inhabited by three-eyed vampires, who are apparently normal (if three-eyed) people who have been corrupted by Geean. A young woman befriends him, and tries to get him to lead an attack on Geean, but Slade doesn't feel ready -- especially when the woman asks him for a drink of blood.

Slade returns to Earth only to be recalled again, where he meets a nicer group of people, apparently primitives, but actually people living in superior harmony with nature. But they prove rather passive as to the evil Geean, and soon Slade is on his own again, before being captured by Geean forces. But Slade finds an unexpected ally, leading to his eventual confrontation with the evil leader (not to mention, of course, meeting the beautiful leading lady again ...)

It's a truly silly book, but at times the silliness is inspired. I can't say I liked it much, but I liked it more than I expected. Van Vogt could be so strange that you just had to play along at times. In John Boston's wonderful phrase, he "was the Wile E. Coyote of SF. He ran off the cliff in 1939 and looked down sometime in the 1950s."

The World Swappers is about a secret group of long-lived people plotting a better future for humanity. Which is a familiar enough idea, but Brunner uses it a bit differently than many others. It opens with a man, Saïd Counce, lying in wait for a powerful businessman. He confronts the businessman with his plan to rule the galaxy (that is, the smallish local group of planets humans have colonized). Earth, it seems, is a very nice place to live, but it is becoming overpopulated. Opening new colonies is not feasible, so the businessman plans to promote emigration to the existing colonies -- but they all resent Earthmen. Counce suggests that the businessman, Bassett, is going about things just a bit wrong, and offers his group's help, then disappears.

Then we meet others of Counce's group, on a distant unoccupied planet. They have discovered evidence of aliens, the Others, evidently humanlike but adapted to slightly different types of planets. They fear that humanity is not ready to meet the Others. Finally, we go to Ymir, the least pleasant of the human colonies, ruled by a very repressive religious sect. There we meet a rebellious young woman, Enni Zatok.

We quickly gather that Counce leads a group of people devoted to the interests of all humanity, as opposed to people like Bassett, interested only in themselves. Counce's group is desperately trying to arrange for humans to be welcoming to the aliens. In part they hope to solve the problem of Ymir -- especially as they have a plan for Ymir.

One aspect of the story I liked was the early use of matter transmission as a means of practical immortality, much as with Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol stories. (That is, a record of the copy of a person created when he is transmitted is saved (and possibly edited even, as with McCarthy's stories) and then the person can be recopied if his "original" dies.) That's the earliest use I can think of of this particular wrinkle on matter transmission.

On the whole, its an enjoyable novel, though a bit wobbly towards the end in particular. It tries to do too much too fast, perhaps. The noble central motivations are nicely presented, too. On the other hand, the ideas and events are often a bit strained, not quite convincing. Not Brunner at his best, at all, but as ever with him it is a decent read.

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part V: Day 4

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part V: Day 4

Last day. I'll begin with some mentions of people I talked to earlier, whom I had forgotten when doing previous writeups. I talked to Michael Damian Thomas for some time -- about his and Lynne's recent move to Champaign (where I went to college), and (with Sarah Pinsker, as previously mentioned) about music -- Tom Petty, and other concerts we've attended, and other people who are, well, getting on a bit (as are we all). Of course I've known Michael for years and years. I also had a good talk with Tegan Moore, who had a really good story in Asimov's last year ("Epitome"). She mentioned some frustration with selling her recent work, which sounds pretty ambitious -- I think she'll make it, and pretty impressively, before long.

I also had a good talk with Brad Denton, and Caroline Spector, and I managed to put in a request for a song at "Roomcon", the traditional room party at ConQuesT where Brad (as "Blind Lemon") and Caroline play excellent music. (The request was for another song about a Texas city: Robert Earl Keen's great "Corpus Christi Bay".) Others I met (some quite briefly) included Robert V. S. Redick, Jenn Reese, Caroline Yoachim, Rajan Khanna, Greg van Eekhout,  Gary Wolfe, and doubtless several more I'm embarrassed to have forgotten.

Sunday morning I came downstairs and ran into (not literally) Charlie Finlay, along with three of his F&SF writers: Austin Habershaw, G. V. (for Gemma, I think) Anderson, and Nebula winner William Ledbetter. Ledbetter's Nebula was for a story in F&SF last year, and I was impressed with stories by Anderson and Habershaw in the same quite recent issue. Indeed, Anderson went on to take the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story later that day. I had forgotten that story, perhaps because the title is in German: "Das Steingeschöpf", but I looked it up again (it was in Strange Horizons late last year, and I first read it on a morning walk when I was in Southern California for work about a year ago), and it's pretty impressive. We talked about things like the San Antonio climate and baseball.

We skipped breakfast (grabbed a snack in the Con suite), and there were panels at 10 and 11 I wanted to see. The first was on Pulp Era Influences: The Expiration Date. Panelists were James Stoddard, Gary K. Wolfe, Betsy Mitchell, and Jeffrey Shanks. Most agreed that lots of Pulp Era writers remain influential, and they mentioned as well some contemporary work explicitly in the "Pulp" mode. Betsy mentioned her ebook project, Open Road, which brings a lot of out of print work back at least electronically.

The second panel was on the Best Fantasy Novels of 2017. Willie Siros, Liza Groen Trombi, Jim Minz, and Joe Monti were the panelists. I always find these worthwhile, and there was a good discussion. I also had a good talk with Joe after the panel.

Finally, we attended Karen Joy Fowler's reading, from her upcoming novel about the John Wilkes Booth family. It was very intriguing. I did get a chance to introduce Mary Ann to Karen a bit later -- as I've mentioned before, Mary Ann doesn't read much SF, but she does read Karen Joy Fowler.

I took one more swing through the dealers' room, but didn't buy anything more. I was quite restrained this Con as far as buying books: the Crowley chapbook ("An Earthly Mother Sits and Sing"), Kij Johnson's The River Bank, Walter Jon Williams' Quillifer, a couple of old magazines, one Ace Double; and a couple of books given to me (Threshold of Eternity by Brunner and Broderick, and Tales from a Talking Board, featuring a Joe McDermott story).

So we headed out. One goal was to eat at Schlotzky's, long a favorite sandwich place of ours. Alas, the St. Louis franchises all closed over a decade ago. We've been to one in Seneca, SC (near Clemson) a few times, and to one in Joplin, MO, a few times, but we had noted that Texas, including San Antonio, has Schlotzky's, so we stopped at one on the way out of town. The sandwiches were a bit disappointing: sloppily prepared, and they were out of onions. Hey, I know there's great food in Texas (and we had some pretty good food!), but we had some disappointments too.

While at Schlotzky's, we saw on TV the news about the shootings at the church in Sutherland Springs, only about 40 miles away from the restaurant. I'll avoid any overtly political statements in this forum, however.

We headed up to Dallas, this time saving 20 minutes is Austin by taking a huge loop around the city. We also avoided a long delay in Waco thanks to our GPS guiding us off the highway to the frontage road to miss an accident-caused backup. We got to Dallas early enough to go out for pizza with Paul and Diane and the twins, David and Christopher. I can't remember the name of the pizza place -- the food was good but the service was incredibly slow. (The people at the table next to us made a bit of a scene about that.)

In the morning, first we had another of Diane's spectacular breakfasts. We decided we had time for one antique mall, and we (more or less randomly) picked one in Sherman, TX. It was a fine place, and I found a copy of Black Alice, by Thom Demijohn (Thomas Disch and John Sladek). Alas, a Book Club edition -- apparently the true first is pretty rare. We took the more normal way home, through Oklahoma to I-44, then into Missouri. We stopped in Joplin at Schlotzky's again -- it was better than the San Antonio one.

We had been playing various different Pandora stations along the way, some of mine and some of Mary Ann's, and we ended, for most of the way across Missouri, by playing a station I have intended to focus on show tunes -- based on my fondness for big cheesy tunes like "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "I Dreamed a Dream", not to mention lots of Sondheim. Mary Ann tried to prove that the phone listens to us by asking for songs from the likes of My Fair Lady -- and sure enough, not long after, "I Could Have Danced All Night" popped up -- the for Disney song, which took a while longer but eventually the phone got the hint and played something from The Little Mermaid.

We got in latish but not too late. I have to say, World Fantasy Convention lived up to what many people have told me -- that's it's a favorite convention of a whole bunch of people, for its literary and professional focus, and its relatively small size. I had a really wonderful time. As ever, the key to any Con is the people you meet -- old friends and new -- the conversations. I'll be back again as soon as I can swing it. (Alas, Baltimore next year might be hard, given we already have plans to go to San Jose for Worldcon, and to Montreal for Jo Walton's Scintillation.)

Finally, I need to mention the World Fantasy Award winners. We missed the award presentation, but here are the nominees and winners. Congratulations to them all, and I am particularly happy with Kij Johnson's award for the utterly magnificent Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe. And I should also add special congratulations to Neile Graham, another old friend from the much-missed Golden Age of the SFF.Net newsgroups. I did have a chance to finally meet Neile in the flesh, and talk with her for a bit.

BEST NOVEL

• The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
• Borderline by Mishell Baker
• Roadsouls by Betsy James
• The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

BEST LONG FICTION

• The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
• Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
• “Bloodybones” by Paul F. Olson
• A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

BEST SHORT FICTION

• “Das Steingeschöpf” by G.V. Anderson
• “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander
• “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar
• “Little Widow” by Maria Dahvana Headley
• “The Fall Shall Further the Flight in Me” by Rachael K. Jones

BEST ANTHOLOGY

• Dreaming in the Dark edited by Jack Dann
• Clockwork Phoenix 5 edited by Mike Allen
• Children of Lovecraft edited by Ellen Datlow
• The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 edited by Karen Joy Fowler & John Joseph Adams
• The Starlit Wood edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe

BEST COLLECTION

• A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford
• Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie
• On the Eyeball Floor and Other Stories by Tina Connolly
• Vacui Magia by L.S. Johnson
• The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

BEST ARTIST

• Jeffrey Alan Love
• Greg Bridges
• Julie Dillon
• Paul Lewin
• Victo Ngai

SPECIAL AWARD, PROFESSIONAL

• Michael Levy & Farah Mendlesohn, for Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction
• L. Timmel Duchamp, for Aqueduct Press
• C.C. Finlay, for editing F&SF
• Kelly Link, for contributions to the genre
• Joe Monti, for contributions to the genre

SPECIAL AWARD, NON-PROFESSIONAL

• Neile Graham, for fostering excellence in the genre through her role as Workshop Director, Clarion West
• Scott H. Andrews, for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Malcolm R. Phifer & Michael C. Phifer, for their publication The Fantasy Illustration Library, Volume Two: Gods and Goddesses
• Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny
• Brian White, for Fireside Fiction Company

Here are links to all five installments of this con report:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part III: Day 2

World Fantasy Convention, 2017, Part III: Day 2

For breakfast on Friday we had the brunch buffet at the hotel restaurant. Waffles, bacon, omelettes, all the usual stuff. It was OK, nothing all that special. But convenient.

I was particularly interested in Friday's "Engaging Our Theme" panel, entitled "What is Alternate History?". This mainly because one of the panelists was Damien Broderick (who lives in San Antonio). I've known Damien online for quite some time, and I've really enjoyed his fiction (and I've reprinted a few of his stories, and even wrote the introduction to one of his collections), but I'd never met him in in person. The other panelists were Fred Lerner, Daryl Gregory, and S. M. Stirling. The discussion was stimulating. The panelists considered things like overfamiliar jonbar points; the notion that in reality even small changes would likely mean that there would be no common people -- that is, that most people would even be born in alternate histories, due to their parents' not meeting (Stirling described in this context the very unlikely events leading to his parents and grandparents all meeting each other), or even if their parents met, changes in, oh, when they happened to conceive their children; favorite Alternate Histories, etc. Damien mentioned Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, one of the most interesting and different (and problematic!) literary alternate histories. Afterward, I did get a chance to meet Damien, and he gave me a copy of his latest novel, his revision of one of John Brunner's more ambitious 1950s novels, Threshold of Eternity (a novel which I read and reviewed in its Ace Double edition a few months ago). He also introduced me to another Australian writer, Russell Blackford (and later I met Russell's wife Jenny, whose work I had read and reviewed previously, which she remembered).

Our Noon panel was "My 12 Favorite Works by Karen Joy Fowler". Brian Attebery moderated the panel, and the other participants were Eileen Gunn, Elizabeth Engstrom, Rachel Neumeier, and Gordon van Gelder. As you might have guessed, the discussion centered around a whole bunch of Fowler's works. There wasn't any real consensus on the "best" (nor did I expect one!) -- though a fair amount of people seemed to pick We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves as a favorite. Rachel Neumeier's approach was interesting, and, it seems to me, a good reaction to being placed on a panel for non-obvious reasons. For, she confessed, she had not previously read Fowler. (I don't actually know if Rachel requested this panel or just got stuck there.) So she read a whole bunch of Fowler's work in the past couple of months, which gave her a pretty fresh perspective.

I did introduce myself to Brian Attebery after the panel, and we discussed -- at this time and on a couple further occasions where we could talk at greater length -- a variety of things, including Brian's major current project, curating the Library of America editions of Ursula Le Guin's work.

Next was a reading by John Crowley, from his new novel Ka. The reading was certainly interesting, though really I'm just waiting to get the novel (which I already have). John went over time a bit, because he had assumed that he had an hour, but readings at this con were only 30 minutes. I introduced myself to John afterwards -- I've known him for a while on Facebook, but this was the first time we'd met in person. Crowley is absolutely one of my favorite writers, but I restrained myself from gushing (I assume writers get tired of that, as it doesn't seem to me to lead to actual conversation). Instead I mentioned my friend Will Waller, who was one of John's students, and Will's admission that John found his work frustrating. John laughed a bit ruefully, and agreed that he had found Will a bit frustrating as a student, but said that his more recent work has gotten a great deal better.

I skipped the David Mitchell reading at 1:00. Which leads to one of my real regrets -- this convention featured three of my absolute favorite writers: Crowley (as noted), Fowler, and David Mitchell. I had no problem introducing myself to Crowley and Fowler. But I never did speak to Mitchell. Partly, no doubt, that's because I have corresponded with both Crowley and Fowler, and bought stories from them for reprint. But partly I think that's because I know they are both embedded in our field -- in a sense, they are "one of us". That said, they straddle the genre lines quite the same as Mitchell does. (On reflection, that may be a reason I like all three!) Really, that's on me. I did hang around the dealer room by the Small Beer table on Sunday, as we were about to leave, because Mitchell was there. But he was in what looked like an absorbing conversation with Ted Chiang, and I felt like it would have been terribly rude to butt in.

There was one more panel, "History: Secret, Hidden, or Otherwise", featuring Fran Wilde, Ian Drury, J. L. Doty, John Crowley, and Mary Anne Mohanraj. I will confess I don't remember the panel well, but I did take the time to introduce myself to Fran Wilde, whom I had missed at Boskone earlier this year.

Mary Ann and I went to a nearby Mexican restaurant, the original Blanco, for lunch. It was OK, but didn't really strike me as special. I have two favorite Mexican restaurants in St. Louis -- when I want Americanized Mexican food, I like Chevy's, which advertises itself as Tex Mex. This was for a while the most popular Mexican chain in St. Louis, but they are down to perhaps two stores now. When I want more authentic Mexican food, I go to Pueblo Nuevo, which was opened by a couple from Guadalajara in 1982, shortly after I came to St. Louis. I first went there that year, I think, for lunch (it's fairly close to where I work). For many many years, a group of us went every Thursday for lunch, and we got to know the owners -- the husband has died, alas, but his son took over -- I remember him as a child, sitting at one of the tables and doing his schoolwork. That stopped a few years ago when the day job got too intense to take long lunch breaks, plus a couple of our regulars retired. And on another visit just recently, one of the regular waiters greeted me by wondering where I'd been -- it had been three or four years, and I had a beard I hadn't had back them. Which is just to say, sometimes places become like home.

Diversion over. Back at the hotel, after some time in the Dealers' room (I'll discuss the Dealers' room in a later post), we ran into John Joseph Adams, the chief editor at Lightspeed (where I am the reprint editor). John was meeting his sister Becky, a teacher now living in North Carolina, who was coming to her first World Fantasy. Becky's daughter lives in San Antonio, and she was providing a convenient base of operations for both of them. They were heading to dinner soon, and we went along with them. To another Mexican place, as it happens -- Acenar. Actually, it was just fine to go to another Mexican place -- Acenar had more of an upscale vibe, with some interesting takes on "Street Tacos", for example. (Reminds me a bit of a visit to Chicago several years ago, when Mary Ann and I met up with my brother Pat, who lives in the city. He took us to a fancy Mexican place, and when we blanched at the notion of paying $25 for an enchilada, he said that's fine, I made a couple of different reservations, and we left and went to the other place ... Acenar wasn't as expensive as that! (And John actually picked up the tab -- thanks again!)) And, I should say, the food was really nice. Probably stands as the best food we had in San Antonio. The conversation was good as well, with some family stuff -- comparing Becky's teaching experience with our daughter Melissa's, for example; and some discussion of things like John's publishing ventures include the Best American SF anthologies he does.

Back at the con, it was time for the signing session, which at World Fantasy is a mass event, with everyone lined up at tables in a big event space (that turned out to be beneath the hotel's parking garage, so a bit of a walk). I thought that really worked out nicely. I didn't realize that I could have grabbed a name "tent" and sat down myself -- I thought it was by invitation only. No matter -- I don't think I'm a particularly hot name for signatures, and I was glad to wander around meeting people. I got just one thing signed, a chapbook of "An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings" by John Crowley. I talked to quite a few folks, though, including James Alan Gardner (who finally has a new novel out); Darrell Schweitzer, whom I had not previously met; Alex Irvine; Bill Crider; Christopher Brown, whom I bumped into a few more times -- I have been familiar with his interesting fiction for a while, but I was intrigued to realize he's a lawyer who spent some time working with Congress (for example, as one of the "behind the scenes" guys at the hearings you see on CSPAN); Joe McDermott, whom I had met at Boskone, and who, as he's local, gave us a good recommendation for an ice cream place on the Riverwalk; Kij Johnson, whom I've known for a little while now (I had bought her novel The River Bank at the Small Beer Press table but was too clueless to remember to bring it to the signing session); and Steve Rasnic Tem.

After that was over, it was back to the bar, which meant quite a few more stimulating conversations. Keeping in mind that my memory will confuse which night a particular conversation took place -- I remember meeting Sarah Pinsker, and we had a really good talk about music, particularly as I recall Tom Petty, and how fortunate Mary Ann and I feel that we got to see him on his last tour. I had just read Sarah's very strong novelette "Wind Will Rove" in Asimov's, which is about music (and a generation ship!), and a sort of music I like a great deal (old-timey folk, basically). That conversation was with other people, and I'm being an idiot by not remembering who -- was it Scott Andrews? Or Derek Künsken? And somebody else too? I know I did spend some time talking to both Scott and Derek. (I finally remembered who else was in the conversation: Michael Damian Thomas.)

I also ran into Arin Komins, whom I had met (along with Richard Warren) at a previous Windycon. Arin and Rich were at that time winding up their bookselling business, so I was surprised to see them in the Dealers' room -- but they were helping out another Chicago bookseller, Dave Willoughby, from whom I have bought a number of books over the years. I did discuss with Richard the fact that his name is the same as that of my ancestor who came over on the Mayflower. With Arin we recalled our dinner at Windycon at an Indian restaurant, which everyone enjoyed except Mary Ann (she hates Indian food!)

I spent considerable time talking to F. Brett Cox too, whom I had known online back in the SFF.net days. We talked about Maine, and about Joy Division -- Brett had a Joy Division t-shirt on, and they are a band I have liked since my college years -- among numerous other subjects.

And I recall talking a bit to Peter Halasz as well, and reminding him to keep an eye out for a new novel next year from a new Canadian writer -- Todd McAulty. I really liked Todd's stories for Black Gate back in the day, and I got a chance to read an advance copy of his first novel, The Robots of Gotham, which is due from John Joseph Adams' imprint next June. (Check out advance notice about it here.)

More on next rock ...


Here are links to all five installments of this con report:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V