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 Doubles: Our Man in Space, by Bruce W. Ronald/Ultimatum in 2050 A. D., by Jack Sharkey

Ace Double Reviews, 92: Our Man in Space, by Bruce W. Ronald/Ultimatum in 2050 A. D., by Jack Sharkey (#M-117, 1965, 45 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

Ace Doubles again. Most of the previous Ace Double reviews I've done feature books I've chosen because I had at least some interest in one of the writers. This one was a lot more random -- basically, it was inexpensive and it was available at a dealer's table at a recent convention (can't remember which -- Sasquan, Archon, or Windycon). I had never heard of Bruce Ronald, and while I know Jack Sharkey's name well, from any number of stories in early 60s magazines, he's never been a particular favorite of mine. I actually have another (the only other) Sharkey novel, The Secret Martians, as part of an Ace Double I bought for a more usual reason: the other side is by one of my favorites, John Brunner. I'll get around to reviewing it eventually.

Bruce W. Ronald was an advertising man, born in 1931 in Dublin, Ohio, and still alive as far as I (or the Science Fiction Encylopedia) know. He published only this one novel, and no further stories; but he did write the book for a musical, in collaboration with Claire Strauch and the well-known SF/historical writer John Jakes. This was Dracula Baby!, in 1970. (The SFE says that Ronald was also an actor.)

So it turns out Jack Sharkey had another slight connection with Bruce Ronald: he became a playwright and one of his plays was called Dracula, the Musical?, which on the face of it sounds like it might resemble Dracula Baby! in more ways than having an unexpected punctuation mark at the end of the title. Sharkey wrote four short novels, three of them (including Ultimatum in 2050 A. D.) serialized in Cele Goldsmith's magazines, Amazing/Fantastic. He published about 60 stories in the field, almost all between 1959 and 1965. It may be that Goldsmith/Lalli's departure as editor influenced Sharkey's decision to switch fields -- she bought the great bulk of his stories. (She published no fewer than a dozen of his stories in 1959 alone!) His most famous story might be "Multum in Parvo", from Gent in 1959, and reprinted in Judith Merril's Fifth Annual Year's Best SF. He also wrote an Addams Family tie-in novel.

Our Man in Space is a very minor work of SF, but for much of its length it's amusing enough, before a somewhat too extended ending. It's about an actor, Bill Brown, who is hired as a spy for Earth, because of his acting skill and his resemblance to an Earth diplomat, Harry Gordon, who has been killed. Brown's job is to impersonate Gordon, and to travel to Troll, where Harry Gordon has been hired by the officials of Troll to find out when overpopulation pressures will cause Earth to explode. It seems that the Council of 16, a group of local planets, has refused new Galactic member Earth the right to colonize any planets.

Brown goes to Troll, on the way meeting a beautiful Galactic woman. (It seems that most of the planets in the Council of 16 have nearly fully human residents -- certainly sex is possible between these species.) On Troll he manages to complete his assignment, and also to make time with the beautiful Galactic, who eventually dumps him ... and Bill finds out as well that his superiors have betrayed him, and he will be killed. He escapes and kills a few Trollians, before sneaking onto a spaceship and heading for Grendid, a monarchy that it turns out is the leader of the aliens who are voting against Earth's pleas for colonization rights. On Grendid he again eludes attempts on his life, and again makes time with beautiful aliens, including a spy from a Matriarchy world, and against all odds he finds a way to save the King of Grendid from an assassination attempt, which should improve Earth's odds in the upcoming vote. But then we witness the Council of 16's deliberations, and more treachery is in store, from multiple planets, and it's up to Bill Brown to implausibly save the day again. And by the way meet up again with the first beautiful Galactic woman, for a passionate but all too brief reunion.

OK, this is really silly stuff. It doesn't make sense on any level at all -- scientific, political, plot plausibility, sociology, characterization. But it isn't really trying, and for a while it's pretty good fun, though it does wear out its welcome rather. (There are a few seeming nods to Heinlein -- the basic plot bears some points of resemblance with Double Star, and one character is called the local "Citizen of the Galaxy", and a character reminded me just slightly of Star, Empress of the Twenty Worlds ...)

As for Ultimatum in 2050 A.D., in the end it may be even sillier. It was first published in Amazing, in the June and July 1963 issues, under the title The Programmed People. Surprisingly, it has been reprinted recently, in 2010, as part of a Double Novel from an outfit called Armchair Fiction. (The other novel is Slaves of the Crystal Brain, by "William Carter Sawtelle" (a pseudonym for Roger Phillips Graham, who usually published as Rog Phillips).) The Armchair Fiction Double Novels seem to consciously imitate Ace Doubles (for example, with a similar color scheme), and also to concentrate on works at the pulpier end of the spectrum. The cover art for the Armchair Fiction edition of The Programmed People is the same as used for the June 1963 Amazing, by Ed Emshwiller, and not to my mind one of his better efforts. (Belatedly, I'll add that the covers for the Ace Double at hand are by John Schoenherr (for the Sharkey novel) and Ed Valigursky (for the Ronald novel).)

Anyway, Ultimatum in 2050 A. D. is set in the title year in "the Hive", a sort of arcology, a huge building in which 10,000,000 people live. Life is apparently good there, except for the strict rules about "readjustment", whereby one can be sent to the hospital for such things as voting the wrong way, not voting at all, or minor injuries. Lloyd Bodger is a normal young man, engaged to Grace Horton (nice name that!), occasionally in trouble for missing a vote or two ... despite being the son of the Secondary Speakster, the number two man of the Hive. One night he almost misses a vote, until a girl gives him her place in line. Shortly later it becomes clear that the girl is wanted for treason ... and against his better instincts, Lloyd decides to help her. Before long he finds himself embroiled in a resistance movement against the rulers of the Hive ... the girl, Andra, and her fellow conspirators Bob Lennick and Frank Shawn, make such crazy claims as that "Readjustment" simply means incineration -- to keep the population at the maximum 10,000,000.

So it goes for the first half of the book -- some frantic running around as Lloyd and Andra and the unwillingly roped in Grace try to avoid detection by Lloyd's father and his boss, the Prime Speakster Fredric Stanton. There is some treachery, some narrow escapes, and some loopy but almost fun ideas like the "Goons", robots that enforce the Hive's rules, and "Ultrablack", a scientifically implausible induced absolute darkness. There's a bit of sexual tension -- Andra seems a real potential rival for Grace, who loves Lloyd but who Lloyd seems unsatisfied with.

Then I think Sharkey got bored, or wrote himself into a corner, or something. The second half of the novel begins with a long piece of pure exposition, explaining in the most politically and scientifically absurd ways how the election of 1972 (only a decade or so after the novel was written!) led swiftly to the creation of the Hive, and to the establishment of it quasi-religious ruling structure and strict rules. After that there is the denouement, which never surprises except by the silliness of the action and resolution. I won't give away what happens, though, as I said, it's not really surprising at all. In the end quite a weak story.

Ace Double Review: The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg/Next Stop the Stars, by Robert Silverberg

Ace Double Reviews, 89: The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg/Next Stop the Stars, by Robert Silverberg (#F-145, 1962, 40 cents)

a review by Rich Horton

I don't really plan to do an Ace Double review every week, but this is what I've finished. And there's a story, or a couple of stories, behind this book. A couple of weeks ago I was in Spokane, WA, for Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention. Naturally at the con there was a fine dealers' room, with a couple of booksellers who had Ace Doubles -- I always look at the Ace Doubles. But none seemed of particular interest. One of the days we had a bit of free time and decided to explore Spokane a bit, and we visited a couple of antique stores. One of them had a few Ace Doubles for sale -- most were pretty pricy ($20 for a Philip Dick book, which I guess is the way those things work), but they also had this Robert Silverberg double for a more reasonable price. As it happens, I had just met him for the first time in person at the con, and it seemed fated that I buy the book. (I would have anyway -- his books, even his early less mature works, are always at least professional and enjoyable -- one might compare him to John Brunner in that sense (though as I have said, I probably prefer early Brunner to early Silverberg, and later Silverberg to later Brunner).

Later on (at the pre-Hugo reception, in fact) I somewhat bumtiously approached Bob and asked him to sign the book(s), if that wasn't too gauche. It probably was rather gauche, but he kindly signed them anyway, and told me an interesting story about them. Ace, it seems, reported sales, and paid royalties, on each half of an Ace Double separately (makes sense, and usually they were by different authors). In this case, they issued statements saying that The Seed of Earth sold something like 80,000 copies, enough to earn out and make some royalties, but Next Stop the Stars sold only 40,000 (claimed Ace), not enough for royalties. Plausible enough, I suppose, as collections usually sell less than novels, except for the fact that the books are bound together! (Bob's agent was able to get Ace to buck up with the extra money for the second book -- to be sure, I suspect the sales numbers were wholly fictional anyway, and the book probably sold 150,000 or something!)

The novel half, The Seed of Earth, is a 1962 expansion of a 1957 story from Venture, "The Winds of Siros". After its expansion, it appeared (somewhat cut) as "The Seed of Earth" in Galaxy. The full version is about 50,000 words long.

The central conceit is that comfortable Earth has a hard time attracting people to colonize new planets, so a Colonization lottery has been set up, to which all healthy people between 19 and 40 are subject. The only way to get out of it is to have a very young child. If a husband or wife is selected, they must go, and their spouse can either choose to accompany them or abandon them. They are then sent in groups of 100 to a newly found planet -- apparently as the only colonists (seems a bit small of a group to me). The whole setup seems a bit implausible to me, well, actually a lot implausible, but it works as a framework for the story it tells. We follow a group of people involved with the latest selection: David Mulholland, the political appointee who runs the Colonization Bureau, as well as four of the latest selectees: Mike Dawes, a young college student; Cherry Thomas, an entertainer (by implication, a singer, stripper, or whore, as needs must); Ky Noonan, a big man who has tired of the boredom of Earth and who is a rare volunteer for colonization; and Carol Herrick, a painfully shy young woman (on the verge of becoming what was then called an "old maid").

The first few chapters detail the reactions of each of these characters to the selection, and to their short preparation time for the trip. Then they and the other 96 colonists make the journey, and upon arrival, quickly set up their colony and go through the wife-choosing process (no explanation of how gay people would react is offered). Mike has had his eye on Carol, and is fortunate to be able to choose her, while Ky perhaps predictably chooses the more flamboyant Cherry.

The conclusion involves a wholly unexpected development -- it seems that the very first intelligent species humans have ever encountered occupies this planet, and they kidnap the four main characters, who are penned up in a cave for a while, apparently for the aliens' entertainment. The stress reveals to each character something about their inner strengths and failings. This portion is a bit unexpected, and purposely attempts to avoid conventional resolutions to the characters' crises. It's not a particularly brilliant novel, but it has some original aspects, and it's readable enough.

The stories in Next Stop the Stars are all from quite early in Silverberg's career, and they are somewhat varied in tone. They seem to show a young writer trying new things, though for the most part they are fairly routine SF of the period. They are:

"Slaves of the Star Giants" (Science Fiction Adventures, February 1957, 15700 words)
"The Songs of Summer" (Science Fiction Stories, September 1956, 6300 words)
"Hopper" (Infinity, October 1956, 7300 words)
"Blaze of Glory" (Galaxy, August 1957, 5100 words)
"Warm Man" (F&SF, May 1957, 4500 words)

The first story concerns Lloyd Harkins, a man from about our time who is mysteriously thrust forward in time, to a much-altered Earth. He is capture by a huge, somewhat gentle, creature who takes him to a crude colony of humans. There are also, noticeably, likewise huge robots. And strange mutants with mind powers. Harkins soon is thrust into rivalry with the brutish leader of the colony, and the rest of the story is about his attempt at escape, and then his decision to take matters into his own hands. It's the pulpiest and weakest of the stories included here.

"The Songs of Summer" is also about a time traveler, in this case a slimy conman from 1956 who ends up in a pastoral future, and decides to upend the social structure of the gentle, somewhat telepathic humans he finds, taking one character's intended girlfriend as his own, introducing religion and economy, etc., until they find their own gentle way to stop him. Somewhat ambitious, not quite convincing.

"Hopper" also deals with time travel. Quellen is a functionary in a crowded future who has a secret: a hideaway in the jungle that he can teleport to whenever he wants. Then he is assigned to solve the problem of the "Hoppers", people being sent from this crowded future back in time, where it's less crowded and jobs are available. A mysterious man is behind all this, and Quellen tries to deal with him but is foiled by his own paranoia, his scheming subordinates, and his personal shortcomings. It's a cynical story, well enough constructed, but, again, not really convincing.

"Blaze of Glory" is a space story, about a somewhat brusque and violent spacer who hates aliens. He's assigned to a mission to a planet with gentle and innocent seeming aliens, and he's the only one who doesn't like them, and he acts very badly. But on the way home, he redeems himself with an act of heroism. The narrator, however, is left to wonder ... what really went on? And did the violent man know something about the aliens nobody else could see? This is OK if pretty minor work.

Finally, "Warm Man" is one of the best known of Silverberg's early stories, and deservedly so. It was the earliest story chosen for the 1976 Best of Robert Silverberg. It's in a sort of John Collier or Shirley Jackson mode, about a bachelor who takes a house in a typical suburb. He seems very friendly, and all the locals seem drawn to confide in him ... even embarrassments, such as their infidelities. This seems to make them better people, but they start to turn on him, before an incident with a troubled boy brings a shocking conclusion. I'd have liked it a bit better if the end was left a bit more mysterious -- there is an inconsistent couple of lines explicitly explaining what was going on, that didn't seem needed. Still, a fine piece.

An Old Ace Double: Bow Down to Nul, by Brian W. Aldiss/The Dark Destroyers, by Manly Wade Wellman

Ace Double Reviews, 48: Bow Down to Nul, by Brian W. Aldiss/The Dark Destroyers, by Manly Wade Wellman (#D-443, 1960, $0.35)

by Rich Horton

Brian W. Aldiss, one of the greatest SF writers of them all, died August 19th this year (2017), having just turned 92. So I thought it appropriate to post my review (written some time ago) of one of his early novels that was published as half of an Ace Double.

Aldiss was born in 1925 to working class parents (his father a draper, his mother's father a builder). He was educated at Framlingham College and West Buckham School, and spent part of the Second World War in Burma. He worked at a bookseller after the War, and his first book was a lightly fictionalize account of a bookstore. He was an SF reader from an early age, and at the same time he was publishing his first mainstream book he was publishing his first SF stories in the magazines. Throughout his career he did distinguished work in SF and in mainstream fiction. I have found his work immensely enjoyable, and very varied in tone, style, subject matter, and structure. He also wrote a few memoirs, and I enjoyed the most complete of those, The Twinkling of an Eye, very much indeed.

The author of the other half of this book, Manly Wade Wellman, is less celebrated than Aldiss but still a widely respected writer. Wellman was born in Angola in 1903, and moved to the US at a young age. He was a good football player in his youth, and received a degree in Law from Columbia (his undergraduate degree was from Wichita State), but his goal was to be a writer, and in 1927 he sold his first story to Weird Tales. As this might suggest, his strongest work was in the weird fantastical mode, though he wrote SF, detective stories, comic books, and nonfiction as well. He died in 1986.

I have speculated in the past that Donald Wollheim may have occasionally paired Ace Double halves for thematic reasons. This is another such case -- both novels are about Earth under the domination of alien races. They are also both by fairly well-known, though very different, writers. Manly Wade Wellman became best known for his Appalachian fantasies, especially those about a character named "Silver John". I confess I never warmed to these (indeed, I confess that a good way to turn me off a story is to tell me it's an "Appalachian fantasy"). This novel is quite different -- but not in a good way. Aldiss of course is even better known -- an SFWA Grand Master, one of the best writers in the history of the field. Not surprisingly, this early novel is a lesser work -- though by this time Aldiss was already doing fine stuff such as Non-Stop. Bow Down to Nul is about 48,000 words, The Dark Destroyers about 36,000.

(Cover by Ed Emshwiller)

Bow Down to Nul has a slightly convoluted publishing history. It was originally a serial for New Worlds in 1960, under the title "X for Exploitation". The Ace Double is the first book publication. The Ace version is revised, though of about the same length -- there are some cuts but also some additions. By and large the two versions tell the same story. Later book publications sometimes used the much superior title The Interpreter. The later books mostly seem to have used the Ace text until the story was reprinted in The Brian Aldiss Omnibus. (Thanks to Phil Stephenson-Payne for this bibliographical information.)

The story opens with an aggrieved civil servant of the Partussian Empire complaining about how his threats to expose the corruption of a local administrator ended up in his getting fired. He sends his evidence to an incorruptible respected elder statesman back on Partussy. The statesman decides to investigate.

The planet under the rule of the corrupt administrator is of course Earth. The Partussians, called "Nuls", are three-armed, three-sexed, 10 foot tall creatures who breath hydrogen sulphide. They rule an extended empire. They look down in particular on all bipedal races, but aside from that, they are usually somewhat benevolent. But the ruler of Earth is skimming a lot of Earth's output for his own fortune, and otherwise brutally oppressing humans. Unfortunately for Earth, the two year travel time from Partussy to Earth gives Par-Chavorlem, their administrator, plenty of time to set up a sort of Potemkin Village to fool the investigator with.

The main part of the story concerns Chief Interpreter Gary Towler, one of the human liaisons with the Nuls. His job, directly working with Par-Chavorlem, lets him in for plenty of disdain from his fellow humans. He is in love with young Elizabeth Fallodon, another interpreter, but she seems a bit cool to him. However, Towler is secretly working with a rebel leader, and he agrees to reveal a crucial piece of evidence to the visiting investigator that will hopefully doom Par-Chavorlem.

However, the investigator's visit goes distressingly to the advantage of Par-Chavorlem. Towler is faced with some moral decisions: he doesn't trust the rebel leader, and he gets potentially attractive offers from various sides, but Elizabeth is finally warming to him. All leads to a curious and ironic ending. It's far from a great novel, considerably less good than for example Non-Stop, perhaps a bit too obviously a take on the British Empire. Still, not bad -- Aldiss is reliably at least interesting, at least at this stage of his career.


 

(Cover by Ed Valigursky)

The Dark Destroyers is an abridgement of an expansion of a 1938/1939 Astounding serial called "Nuisance Value". ("Nuisance Value", by the way, is also the title of a 1957 Astounding story by Eric Frank Russell, a 1975 Analog story by James White, a 1956 Authentic story by John Brunner, and a 1951 Amazing story by Walt Sheldon. I'm not aware of its use in any SF magazines not starting with the letter A.) When I say "abridgement of an expansion" I mean that in 1959 Wellman published The Dark Destroyers as a Thomas Bouregy hardcover, expanded from the serial. This 1960 Ace edition is marked "Abridged" on the cover.

The story is set some decades after Earth has been invaded by aliens called the Cold People, because they cannot tolerate high temperatures. Most humans are exterminated, but a few remain in the tropics. Mike Darragh is a young man living near the Orinoco, and when a group of local chiefs plan an attack against the Cold People, he urges that he be allowed to investigate one of their bases first. After all, human technology was hopeless against the aliens when they first invaded -- why will their reduced capabilities now do better?

Darragh bravely encounters the Cold People on a Caribbean island and mostly by luck manages to steal one of their air vehicles. He ends up flying to a Cold People dome in Chicago, where he is astonished to discover a colony of humans kept in a sort of zoo. There he tries to urge them to revolt, against the counsel of an elder who seems a bit too happy with the status quote. Fortunately, he instantly falls in love with a local girl, and naturally virtue triumphs.

A pretty minor piece of work, in other words. Not terribly plausible, not terribly interesting.

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.

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.

Another Old Ace Double: The Sun Smasher, by Edmond Hamilton/Starhaven, by “Ivar Jorgenson” (Robert Silverberg)

Ace Double Reviews, 99: The Sun Smasher, by Edmond Hamilton/Starhaven, by “Ivar Jorgenson” (Robert Silverberg) (#D351, 1959, 35 cents)

A review by Rich Horton

(cover by Ed Emshsiller)

This is a pair of Ace Doubles by two pretty big names in the field. Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) of course was an early legend of the field, mostly for his Space Opera, though he was also associated with Weird Tales, where his first story appeared. He wrote most of the Captain Future stories, and was a regular writer for DC Comics. And of course he was married to the great Leigh Brackett. Ivar Jorgenson is not necessarily so well known, until you realize that, in the case of this novel, he was Robert Silverberg, one of SF’s Grand Masters. (Jorgenson was a house name, but Silverberg used it quite often -- indeed, I asked him about his use of the Jorgenson name, and he explained this history in fascinating detail, given below.)

(cover by Ed Valigursky)

Each of these novels was published earlier in a single issue of a magazine, possibly (especially in the case of the Jorgenson novel) in shorter versions. The Sun Smasher appeared as “Starman Come Home” in the September 1954 Universe Science Fiction, while Starhaven appeared as “Thunder Over Starhaven” in Science Fiction Adventures for October 1957. (I suspect the Hamilton novel, which is the shorter of the two at about 30,000 words, probably is the same version as appeared in the magazine, but the “Jorgenson” story, some 40,000 words long or more, is expanded, as Silverberg discusses below.)

The covers of the magazine editions of these stories are something of a real delight, so I've reproduced them here. Thanks to bibliographer extraordinaire Phil Stephenson-Payne, and his exceptional site Galactic Central, for these images.

(cover by Barry Waldman)

I said Hamilton was best known for his Space Opera, and indeed he was nicknamed “The World Wrecker”. So The Sun Smasher seems a very appropriate title! And indeed it is Space Opera, though arranged to come to a slightly more thoughtful (if a bit too easily guessed) resolution than many such stories.

Neil Banning is a reasonably ordinary man working in New York City when he decides, on a whim, to visit his home town in Nebraska. But he is shocked when no one there remembers him or his parents, and his childhood home is gone – seemingly was never there. He is arrested, then rescued from jail by a man name Rolf who claims that Neil’s real name is Kyle Valkar, and he is the last remaining member of the line of Valkars, who ruled the Old Empire 90,000 years before. Earth is a forgotten world, and Rolf tells him that a villainous scientist of the usurping New Empire erased his memory and dumped him there. Soon Neil – or Kyle, though Neil refuses to believe Rolf’s story – is on his way to the ancient world where his family’s capitol had been.

Rolf’s plan is to kidnap Thoranya, the Empress, and to use her as a hostage to make the scientist Jommor restore Neil’s memory. Then Neil – or Kyle – will remember where to find “The Hammer”, a secret weapon which will allow him – and a small band of loyalists led by Rolf – to retake the throne.

(cover by Malcolm H. Smith)

The reader – and indeed Neil/Kyle – will have questions over who is really the good guy in this scenario. Indeed, the New Empire seems to be a fairly benign polity. And there are hints that Kyle’s past with Thoranya was marred by misbehavior on his part. And what is the Hammer anyway? And, 90000 years? Really? Anyway, the story proceeds as we might expect, if a little too rapidly, with Neil/Kyle returning to his home world, being accepted by the Valkar’s loyal spiderlike servant creatures, capturing an Empire ship and successfully kidnapping the beautiful red-haired Thoranya, leading to Neil regaining his memories. The Hammer is just what we guessed it might be (aided, to be sure, by the title of the novel and the cover illustration), and Kyle – or is he still Neil in part? – is driven to a crisis of conscience.

There are some good bits here, and some nice pieces of high-poetic pulp imagery, and the central issues is worthwhile to consider if a bit obvious. But the story is either too short (one never gets any sense of the real relationship between Thoranya, Jommor, and Kyle Valkar, or their history), or too long (a shorter story just focused on the central morality issue might have worked).

Starhaven is one of Robert Silverberg’s earliest novels. It was one of a rush of short novels that appeared between about 1957 and 1960, as part of his early prolific period, before his first “retirement” and later return with much more interesting and mature work. Silverberg’s early stories are reliably competent work, smoothly written, efficiently plotted, and often at least attempting to engage with interesting ideas, though usually a bit too rapidly and somewhat superficially. You can see him improving story by story, I think … and this book, as one of his earliest, is also one of his lesser novels.

I mentioned that I had asked Robert Silverberg about his use of the "Ivar Jorgenson" pseudonym, and about the history of "Thunder Over Starhaven"/Starhaven. His response is a fascinating look at some of the field's history. I’ll quote him at length, because I think this is all really cool stuff.

“Paul Fairman was the original Ivar Jorgensen, and note the spelling of the name, the Danish form ending in "-sen."  Fairman was a journeyman writer with no particular interest in SF, who did mainly western stories for the Ziff-Davis pulps.  When Howard Browne, a mystery writer who also had no particular interest in SF, replaced Ray Palmer as editor of the Z-D SF magazines in 1949, Fairman began to contribute stories to those as well.  In the summer of 1951 he had a novel in Z-D's Fantastic Adventures under the byline of "Ivar Jorgensen," quite a strong story, as I recall, and that issue ran a biography of Jorgensen, discussing his Scandinavian background and including a sketch of him as a slab-jawed two-fisted type (who looked nothing like Fairman.)  Fairman continued to contribute Jorgensen stories to Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures for a couple of years, then did a short stint as founding editor of If, and around 1955 came back to Ziff-Davis, where he eventually succeeded Browne as editor of the SF mags.

“In 1956 Bill Hamling, a former Z-D editor who had declined to follow Z-D from Chicago to New York and instead had begun his own SF magazines, decided to shift those magazines to the Ziff-Davis formula of pulp action fiction written to order by a small staff of pros.  Edmond Hamilton and Dwight V. Swain were the kingpins if this staff, and Randall Garrett and I, who were already part of Browne's Ziff-Davis stable, were hired to contribute 50,000 words a month of short fiction.  Hamling stuck whatever pseudonyms he felt like on these stories, mainly old Ziff-Davis house names, and in the mistaken notion that Jorgensen was a house name put that byline on some of our stuff, in one case spelling the byline "-sen" on the contents page and "-son" on the story itself.

“Also in 1956 Larry T. Shaw, who was editing the excellent new magazine Infinity, launched a space-opera magazine called Science Fiction Adventures, with stories modeled after the old  Planet Stories.  There would be two novellas per issue plus a few short stories.  Though he was open to free-lance submissions, and bought some novellas by Jim Blish, Harry Harrison, and John Brunner, the bulk of the magazine was staff-written by the ubiquitous me.  I had at least one long story in almost every issue, sometimes more.

“When Shaw's Science Fiction Adventures had been going for a year or so, he decided to vary the two-novella formula by putting out an issue that contained one 40,000-word story, and commissioned me to write it.  I gave him “Shadow on the Stars”, later published by Ace as Stepsons of Terra.  "Thunder Over Starhaven", however, was one of the shorter novellas (28,000 words).  I thought that Ivar Jorgensen was a house name that anybody could use, and stuck that byline on it.  Shaw used the "-son" spelling.  At this point Paul Fairman, who had already voiced his annoyance at Hamling's appropriation of what had been his exclusive penname, complained more strongly, both to Shaw and to me.  But the damage was done -- Jorgensen/Jorgenson no longer could be considered Fairman's property alone.

“During those prolific years I was also writing space-opera novels for Don Wollheim's Ace Books. Since "Thunder Over Starhaven" struck me as pretty much the same sort of thing I had been writing for him, I fattened it up and submitted it to him.  To my surprise Wollheim rejected it.  I don't think I ever knew why; it was the only book of mine he ever turned down.  The only other plausible markets then were Ballantine and Doubleday, neither of which would be interested in space opera, and so I salvaged the project by selling it to bottom-feeder Avalon Books, edited by my friend Bob Lowndes, for an advance of $350.  (Ace then paid $1000.)  He called it simply Starhaven and published it as by Ivar Jorgenson.  Avalon then amazed me by turning around and selling reprint rights to....Don Wollheim. Again, I never understood what had happened here, since he had rejected the book only a year before, but in the course of this fast shuffle I lost $150, Avalon keeping fifty percent of Ace's thousand bucks, netting me $500 plus the $350 Avalon advance.

“I never wrote as Jorgensen again.  Fairman did, and had three or four paperbacks published under that name, which are occasionally proffered to me for autographs at worldcons.  I don't sign them.”

[Back to my review.]
Johnny Mantell is a former armaments engineer who, frustrated by the failure of his company to support his ambitious designs, lost his job and turned to drink, and ended up a beachcomber living a subsistence life on a tourist planet. One day a tourist accuses him of stealing some jewelry, and one thing leads to another and the tourist ends up dead, and Johnny is on the run. He heads for Starhaven, an armored planet where criminals are welcome, and the Space Patrol is not.

Once there he meets the leader of Starhaven, Ben Thurdan, who rules as a somewhat benevolent tyrant, with only two rules: expect to be treated the way you treat others, and always obey Ben Thurdan. He is also intrigued by Myra Butler, Thurdan’s secretary and perhaps girlfriend. Johnny is happy to be back doing productive work, but he is not sure how he feels about Ben’s rule, especially when Ben kills a man who challenges him. But what can he do? He’s a wanted man in the rest of space. And this is a pleasant place, especially when you consider the alluring Myra.

Complications include his mysterious flashbacks which seem to suggest his memories may not be quite reliable – did something happen when he was psychprobed by Ben’s people? And is Ben’s rule really the best thing for Starhaven? And then Myra hints that some people have a different idea …

There is a twist or two on the way, and the twists are nicely handled. The political speculation isn’t really as effective, though. The scientific background is pretty silly, and Starhaven as a physical object doesn’t make much sense. It’s definitely a pretty minor piece of Silverberg’s oeuvre … but, as I’ve come to expect even from his earliest stuff, acceptable entertainment, competent work.

(And my next Ace Double review will be my 100^th!)

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