Ringworld – Larry Niven (1970)
‘With RINGWORLD, Larry Niven reaches full maturity as a writer of some of the most vivid and inventive science fiction the past decade has seen.
Niven has steadily constructed a logical and coherent piece of space all his own in a series of short stories of which Neutron Star, a Hugo Award Winner, was one.
Now, in RINGWORLD, he carries out the promise of the earlier structure and takes his familiar characters, the puppeteers, to a fantastically conceived scientifically logical world – the Ringworld of his title – a towering and beautiful concept. ‘
Blurb to the 1970 Ballantine Paperback Edition
Ringworld is undoubtedly a Landmark Science Fiction novel, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and possibly the definitive Big Dumb Object novel.
It’s a work which manages to succeed both as an ideas novel and as one of action adventure.
Niven is one of those SF authors who chooses to set the majority of his novels in the same fictional universe, in his case in a spherical region of space approximately seventy light years in diameter which is known to his readers as ‘Known Space’.
This one-author milieu is a common practice and works for both authors and readers since although the novels do not have to be directly linked, and may be set hundreds or thousands of years apart, the background is a familiar one for readers and allows authors to explore and develop aspects of already established elements.
‘Known Space’ for Niven had already been explored in short story format, anthology collections of which are available, and in the novels ‘A Gift From Earth’ and ‘The World of Ptaavs’, and so the background was already set for the ambitious ‘Ringworld’.
Louis Wu, a two-hundred year old pilot, kept young by the effects of a longevity drug, is recruited by the alien Nessus, a Pearson’s Puppeteer, thought to be insane by the standards of his ‘cowardly’ race (a species of two-headed, three legged highly intelligent creatures, driven by a racial urge of self-protection and avoidance of danger) to investigate an artefact surrounding a star far outside Known Space.
Along with a Kzin – a ferocious feline species – and Teela Brown – a human woman genetically predisposed to being lucky – Louis and Nessus set off to investigate the anomaly.
The synopsis, put so coldly, does not do justice to what turns out to be a far more complex tale of ingenious scientific extrapolation, alien psychology, hidden motives and sheer sense of wonder.
The artefact itself is a massive ring some ninety million miles in diameter surrounding a star (Niven uses the analogy of a strip of ribbon, fifty feet long, arranged on its edge in a hoop facing a candle at the centre of the circle created). The inner surface of the ring has walls a thousand feet high and contains what is essentially an Earth environment with enough room for three million times the surface of the Earth.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book is the relationship between the various alien races which is very much driven by the psychology of the races involved.
By the time this novel was written we had thankfully moved away from the prevalent idea that humans (usually American humans) were natural candidates if not to rule the galaxy then at least to guide its direction or dictate policy. In EE Doc Smith’s Lensman series for instance, Humanity is the chosen race, and certainly selectively-bred members of it are destined to take over as Custodians of The Galaxy. Niven has no such pretensions here. Humans, although having come out on top in a war with the rather Klingon-esque Kzin, are technologically inferior to other races with whom they have come into contact.
The Puppeteers seem at first to be somewhat comical creatures; small, white-furred, swan-necked, two headed beasts. They are pathologically cautious and seem harmless, but as the novel progresses, Louis and the rest of the crew discover not only their overwhelming technological strength, but their rather disturbing involvement in Earth and Kzin history.
Although altruistic, the Puppeteers will go to any lengths to protect their individual or racial safety, and describing them as ‘cowards’ is, as becomes clear, imposing a human value on an alien psychology. There is a parallel again here with Doc Smith’s Lensman series and Nadrek of Palain VII whose racial psychology was almost exactly that of the Puppeteers in that individual safety was the prime motivation of the Palainian psyche. Nadrek too, was also considered ‘‘mad’’ by members of his own race since he chose to expose himself to unwarranted danger by interaction with alien races.
Again, ‘Ringworld’ is also one of those novels that should have been left as a standalone piece. The sequels, although explaining the origins of the Ringworld, decline in quality as the series progresses. This, taken in isolation however, is a masterwork by a writer at the height of his powers.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K Dick (1968)
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‘War had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn’t ‘retiring’ them, he dreamed of owning the ultimate status symbol – a live animal. Then Rick got his big assignment: to kill six Nexus-6 targets for a huge reward. But things were never that simple, and Rick’s life quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit.’
Blurb from the 2001 Gollancz SF Masterworks paperback edition
From the first page when Dick introduces us to Rick Deckard and his wife, debating what moods to set for themselves on their Penfield mood organs, we are thrown into a world where what is real and what is fake is clearly a matter of one’s own perception. Perhaps of all Dick’s novels, this is the one where his examination of the concept of ‘the fake’ works on so many levels that the meaning of the phrase itself becomes hazy.
This is a depopulated and poisoned Earth, most of Humanity having emigrated to other planets, leaving a world of empty apartment-blocks and radiation damaged humans. Animals, having suffered the brunt of the radiation which has blighted the ecosphere, are a rarity, which makes a live animal of any sort a highly desired status symbol. Consequently, businesses have sprung up which manufacture life-like electric animals such as Deckard’s sheep, the electric sheep of the title.
Deckard is a bounty hunter, part of a team which hunt down androids, originally created as ‘slaves’ to work on pioneer planets, some of which escape and, for reasons which are not entirely clear, return to Earth to live freely, posing as humans.
The androids are the product of the Rosen association, whose work has developed to such a degree that their latest development, the Nexus-6 model, although synthetic, is virtually indistinguishable from humans, and can only be detected by psychological testing of their empathic reactions.
When Deckard’s boss is injured by one of a group of six Nexus-6 androids who have killed their owners and escaped to Earth, Deckard is giving the job of hunting down and ‘retiring’ them.
This is not a novel, however, which is as simplistic as the synopsis would suggest. Dick is using the medium to explore – as is often the case – the themes and concepts which fascinate him.
Many of the characters, for instance, are concerned with their own states of mind and their place in society. Rick’s wife, one of Dick’s trademark harpies, is seen at the start of the novel setting her Penfield Mood organ, a device which allows one to dial states of mind at will. Although used as a comic device initially, the point being made is a serious one. The Mood Organ is a metaphor for drugs, a device which allows one to experience whatever mood one chooses, and if one doesn’t have the desire to choose a mood, there is an option to dial 3 which produces a compulsive desire to dial a mood at random.
There is also a spooky foreshadowing of consumer gullibility of TV via the Buster Friendly show. Buster Friendly is a TV host who somehow manages to be live on air twenty four hours a day and also simultaneously produce a separate and quite different radio show. Most of the viewing public don’t question this, although it is obvious to the reader that Buster must be an android himself, something that is pointed out to JR Isidore later in the novel. This is something that comes as a shock to JR and – even given his chickenhead status within the novel – has disturbing parallels with contemporary society’s slightly hallowed view of TV celebrities and the media.
In terms of the novel, it is merely another fake which forces the reader – if not the characters involved – to question the reality of the world in which they have become immersed.
The novel has of course been overshadowed by its cinematic adaptation, ‘Bladerunner’. Although an excellent movie in its own right it employs the shell of the ‘DADOES’ narrative, abandoning some of the weirder aspects of the novel in favour of a Gibsonesque cyberpunk superficiality. Its success has to a certain extent served to turn ‘DADOES’ into the book of the film, which it most certainly is not.
Certainly it is in the top ranking of Dick novels, but those who come to it as a new read need to divorce themselves from comparisons with the movie and see Dick’s vision fresh and weird in a world in some way very like ours, but at the same time unsettlingly strange and filled with doubts with regard to various perceptions of reality.
Highly recommended.
Cantata 140 (vt A Crack In Space) – Philip K Dick (1966)
‘‘My first task will be to find an equitable disposition of the tens of millions of sleeping.’
It was 2080 AD – election year. Jim Briskin, candidate for the Presidency, was attempting to solve the unsolvable. Earth’s overpopulation crisis had driven millions into voluntary deep-freeze, to wait for better times. Now the pressure was on to wake them up – but where could they go? Eventually a solution presented itself from beyond the limits of human credibility.’
Blurb from the 1977 Methuen paperback edition
‘It’s the year 2080, and the Earth’s seemingly insurmountable overpopulation problem has been alleviated temporarily by placing millions of people in voluntary deep freeze. But in election year, the pressure is on to find a solution which will enable them to resume their lives. For Jim Briskin, presidential candidate, it seems an insoluble problem – until a flaw in the new instantaneous travel system opens up the possibility of finding whole new worlds to colonise.’
Blurb from the 2003 Gollancz paperback edition
For the sake of clarity the text of the 2003 Gollancz edition of ‘Cantata’ is identical to my copy of the Methuen 1977 ‘A Crack in Space’ (and presumably to the original 1966 text) although there was an original shorter novella called ‘Cantata 140’ published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in July 1964.
The title is taken from Bach’s ‘Cantata 140’ (‘Sleepers Awake’) and refers to the fact that in 2080 AD, Earth has a serious population problem and millions of people (mostly black) have gone into voluntary deep-freeze to be awoken when the situation has improved.
The cost of maintaining these sleepers however is prohibitive and Black Presidential Candidate Jim Briskin is under pressure to find a solution to the problem.(Jim Briskin, by the way, is also the name of a character in an earlier mainstream Dick novel)
Elsewhere, famous organ-transplant surgeon Dr Lurton Sands is being divorced by his wife Myra, an abort consultant, due to his affair with Cally Vale. Myra has hired Tito Cavelli, a black detective, to investigate her husband’s remarkable facility for finding organs at short notice for his transplants, and to find his mistress, who has disappeared without trace.
Dr Sands has left his Jiffi-Scuttler with Pethel Jiffi-Scuttler Sales & Service for repair, although there appears to be nothing wrong with it. It transpires that this particular Scuttler contains a flaw, a portal to a parallel and seemingly empty Earth where Sands has hidden his mistress.
When the crack is discovered, Birkin announces that the sleepers can be awakened to populate the new Earth, but it is soon discovered that this world is inhabited by Homo Sirianthropus.
The current president, Bill Schwartz, is keen to capitalise on the discovery and – in league with Leon Turpin – Head of Terran Development – initiates the migration despite the presence of the ‘Peking Men’.
Another interesting feature is an off-world brothel, ‘The Golden Door Moments of Bliss Satellite’ run by Thisbe Olt and George Walt. George Walt is a set of Siamese twins who share a common head, one of the bodies being George and the other, Walt. When Briskin threatens to close down the satellite George Walt escapes to the alternate Earth where the natives start to worship him as ‘The Wind God’
It’s one of Dick’s lesser novels and comes over as being not so much hastily written (as a lot of Dick’s good work was indeed hastily written) as not thought through. It suffers for one thing from an abundance of characters, some of whom are underused and seem to have no real business being in the novel, such as Phil Danville (Birkin’s speechwriter) and Don Stanley (Leo Turpin’s second-in-command). One gets the impression that Dick would have liked to have expanded on these characters but ran out of time or space.
The basic message seems to be that if we are faced with sharing the Earth with a different – if related – species, it puts humanity’s petty racist views into perspective.
The trademark Dick devices here are the strange names, the mutant/deformed human, the soulless corporate interest vs the regular Joe’s working in the small business (it is ironic that the gateway to the new world is discovered in the workshop of Pethel Jiffi-Scuttler Sales & Service), the strange device (the Jiffi-Scuttler) and the failed relationships.
Of ‘fakes’ (which manifest in most of Dick’s work) there is only George Walt who –although he may originally have been two people, is now only one, one half of him having died at some point in the past. This half was replaced with an artificial body so that George could maintain the illusion of his twin being still alive.
New Writings in SF 6 – John Carnell (Ed) (1965)
Contents
The Inner Wheel by Keith Roberts;
Horizontal Man by William Spencer;
The Day Before Never by Robert Presslie;
The Hands by John Baxter;
The Seekers by E.C. Tubb;
Atrophy by Ernest Hill;
Advantage by John Rackham. (John T Phillifent)
The Inner Wheel – Keith Roberts
The best story of New Writings in SF 6 is Keith Roberts’ ‘The Inner Wheel’ which takes up nearly half the book. It’s a highly poetic and stylised piece, reminiscent of Sturgeon’s ‘More Than Human’
A young man feels drawn to the town of Warwell, and once there, is struck by its sheer Stepford-esque banality, and the odd coincidences which are occurring, as if his desires are being granted by an unseen force.
When he meets a woman trying to escape from the town he becomes aware that he is a failed candidate, originally selected to become part of a gestalt, but the gestalt, (rather like Sturgeon’s) lacks a sense of guilt or conscience.
Horizontal Man – William Spencer
An immortal is locked into what is essentially a virtual reality machine and has explored and memorised all combinations of possible experiences to the extent that he is being driven insane by boredom. A bleak and rather dull exploration of the dangers of immortality and the nature of ennui.
The Day Before Never – Robert Presslie
Another bleak tale of Human Resistance and their fight against the Barbarians, aliens who have invaded Earth and massacred most of Humanity. It is well-written and atmospheric. An ambivalent ending allows one to read it as optimism or nihilistic fatalism.
The Hands – John Baxter
An excellent and enjoyable (if peculiar) little story, written sparsely and efficiently, which adds to its somewhat disturbing tone.
A group of astronauts returning from the planet Huxley (a brave new world indeed) disembark with additional limbs and organs sprouting from their bodies. It’s testament to the writer’s ability that this premise does not come over as at all ludicrous. The sense of alien-ness which emerges from the astronauts’ debriefing further adds to the surreality.
Despite its deceptive simplicity it hangs in the mind like a stubborn dream.
The Seekers – EC Tubb
Tubb’s view of Humanity is seldom a positive one. His Dumarest novels (despite their formulaic nature) inevitably shows Human society to be riddled with greed, corruption and violence.
In this story – very different in style from his 30-odd volume Space Saga – we see a group of men abroad a starship, having spent years in space. The Captain is dead and the crew have concentrated on their individual passions and obsessions, and have ceased to function as a team. Intalgo, an artist, struggles to create the right expression of the face of a crucified man, while the engineer minutely examines the workings of the ship. Delray spends his time in a VR environment, fighting.
When the discover an artefact on a barren planet, they land and become trapped by visions of what each of them truly desires.
Earlier in the story Intalgo remembers the Captain describing them as being ‘rats scuttling among the granary of the stars’.
Here is the trap.
The insignificance of Man is a theme we seem to have shied away from since the Sixties. Wells revelled in it. It’s high time it was revived.
Atrophy – Ernest Hill
An unmemorable tale about the concept of automation extrapolated to its logical conclusion. Inspired I suspect by Philip K Dick, it has, at the end of the day, nothing to say.
Advantage – John T Phillifent (as John Rackham)
An Army Major exploits the prescient talent of one of his soldiers to avert accidents whilst the Major is in charge of a construction project on a newly-discovered planet.
It’s an unexceptional piece which fails to exploit the basic premise (which is an interesting one) or the setting to maximum effect. The author missed the opportunity to pose the question of whether it was ethical to exploit one man’s freakish talent to his detriment in order to save the lives of perhaps hundreds of others.
Into The Alternate Universe – A Bertram Chandler (1964)
‘Others called their expedition a “wild ghost chase.” But for Space Commodore John Grimes and the beautiful Sonya Verrill who had initiated the project, it was strictly scientific research. Their trip along the rim of the galaxy in search of two men – two dead men – was also an investigation of the long-puzzling phenomenon of the Rim Ghosts. They would do this by penetrating into alternate universes.
There was only one real problem involved in this study – how to report its results. For once the breakthrough to an alternate world was achieved, there was no known way of getting out….’
Blurb from the 1964 Ace Doubles paperback edition
Commodore Grimes is bored being in charge of a spaceport, until he gets a visit from Sonya Verrill, a woman who can call on the resources of the Galactic Federation to mount a project to investigate Rim Ghosts. Rim Ghosts are (as the name would suggest) phantoms sighted on the Galactic rim and are thought to be visions of ourselves from the Alternate Universe. Verrill’s ulterior motive however is to reach the alternate universe and reunite with one of her dead lovers who may still be alive in the alternate reality.
Grimes selects a crew who have all had experience of sighting Rim Ghosts and they set off.
This is a minor work from Chandler, and contains some implausibilities (within the context of the internal reality) and unanswered questions.
Desperate to find some way of contacting the Rim Ghosts Grimes initiates a seance, to be run by Calhoun, a member of an odd spiritualist sect. They do indeed contact something, but it is a malign entity which flings them into a universe, empty but for the frozen remains of ancient seagoing vessels, aeroplanes and spaceships.
They spend the rest of the novel exploring their surroundings and trying to get back.
It comes across as a very hurried piece of work in which Chandler intended to go to the Alternate Universe (which they do, very briefly, before hopping back home) but got distracted by his dark Sargasso of Space place.
A Fall of Moondust – Arthur C Clarke (1961)
Clarke includes a foreword in which he explains that this was written before the Moon landings when some feared that the first ship, if not the astronauts, might sink into deep dust which in a vacuum may exhibit the same properties as water.
Thus Clarke envisions The Sea of Thirst, composed entirely of moondust across which a ship might conceivably ‘sail’. The vessel is The Selene which ferries rich thrillseekers across these strange oceans of dust.
No one, however, had reckoned on a vast bubble of gas which had been making its way to the surface for aeons. The release of such pressure causes a momentary whirlpool which sucks the hapless craft below the surface as the dust settles perfectly flat once again.
Now the lunar authorities must not only locate the ship and her trapped occupants but find a way to raise her to the surface.
One can tell that this is an early work from Clarke and one which has dated somewhat. The problem here is that Clarke has not given any consideration to social development or evolution. The social mores are very much rooted in the early Sixties. From today’s perspective it’s difficult to seriously consider the concept of passengers smoking in a trans-moon vehicle as well as which the ethnic mix of the passengers seems to be disappointingly anglo-saxon. The large number of characters which is comprised of the passengers and crew, the rescue team and the media, also causes problems since there is no effective exploration or development of any of the characters. This leaves the majority of the protagonists as a little one-dimensional.
Having said that, the scientific aspects are unsurprisingly well thought out and Clarke subjects his trapped human cargo to all the pitfalls that he has envisioned given the scenario.
Methuselah’s Children – Robert A Heinlein (1958)
‘The ‘Howard families’ were the product of a genetic experiment, an interbreeding program which had produced one hundred thousand people with an average life-expectancy of a century and a half.
Now, at last, their existence was known on Earth, and the entire world demanded to share the ‘secret of eternal youth.’
Blurb from the 1971 New English Library paperback edition.
Originally serialised in a shorter form in ‘Astounding’ in 1941, ‘Methuselah’s Children’ has an interesting premise, in that in the Nineteenth Century, Ira Howard, obsessed with the concept of longevity, set up a Foundation whose trustees were instructed to use the money to actively pursue the lengthening of the human lifespan. Unsure of how else to proceed, the trustees sought out individuals who had four living grandparents and informed them of a substantial settlement should they choose to marry one of a number of other individuals in the same position.
This odd and improbably successful initiative produced what was to become known as The Howard Families; a group of one hundred thousand people, living secretly within human society and interbreeding amongst themselves, many of whom were by now over a hundred and fifty years old.
Their calamitous decision to announce their presence to the general public results in the families being arrested and forced into a reservation, drugged and tortured to reveal what the public at large believed was a secret immortality drug.
To this point, despite some rather dated characterisation (Heinlein was never too good at anticipating social change, although his notions of future fashions were reasonably prophetic , since many of the men wear kilts and public near-nakedness is acceptable in some circumstances) the novel moves along solidly, but loses its way when Lazarus Long, a two-hundred plus year old maverick tough guy, masterminds the hijack of a new space-craft and escapes with the Howard Families in search of a new home on a new planet.
Putting aside the logistics of getting a hundred thousand people onto a ship, along with supplies, once the escape is effected the tension of the plot is lost.
In their quest to find a new home, the Families at first encounter a planet of benign humanoids who turn out to be nothing more than intelligent pets of a vastly more intelligent race. Moving on to the next planet they meet a race of highly advanced telepathic gestalt beings who create a paradise for the humans to live in.
The lesson is learned that humans deteriorate without the stimulus of challenge, and the ship heads back for Earth where, in the interim, the secret of longevity has been discovered, and all humanity is now part of the Howard Families.
Had Heinlein confined the story to Earth or at least The Solar System, and concentrated on the theme of persecution within one’s own culture, this would no doubt have been a more consistent and important book.
For some, it is one of Heinlein’s best, and despite the disjointedness and the rather cliched alien races, it is an enjoyable read.
Interestingly, Lazarus Long mentions having once met Pinero, the protagonist of Heinlein’s first published short story ‘Life-Line’, who attempted to establish the date of Long’s death, but finding the answer absurd, refunded Lazarus’ money.
Children of The Lens – EE ‘Doc’ Smith (1948)
Probably the quintessential Space Opera of its time, the Lensman series has dated – although not so badly as the work of some of his contemporaries – due mainly, in my opinion, to Smith’s rather one-dimensional characterisation, his dialogue and his depiction of female roles. Paradoxically, given the rather limited characterisation of the humans his aliens are sometimes truly alien. Indeed, the mindsets of some of the non-human protagonists are often far more skilfully depicted than their human counterparts.
Despite that, provided one bears in mind the social climate in which this was written and reads the novel in context, they can still be hugely enjoyable.
The term ‘Space Opera’ is actually used within the text at one point when Kim Kinnison – the hero of the series – goes undercover posing as a writer of the genre. Whether the alter ego was based on anyone in particular is not known.
This is the finale to Smith’s six volume saga. Smith was an early forerunner of today’s ‘Big Concept’ writers such as Greg Bear and Stephen Baxter, and though some of his scientific fabulations seem somewhat preposterous by today’s standards it was Smith and writers like him who created that ‘sense of wonder’ for many readers, not only when this was published as a magazine serial in the Nineteen Forties, but when republished in book form in the fifties and (for reasons unknown) enjoying an unexpected renaissance in the mid-seventies. The series has recently been republished by an independent publisher and hopefully will find a new generation of readers.
Smith’s strength lies in his ability to convey the vastness of Time and Space, his premise being that billions of years ago a race of humanoids – The Arisians – was born in our galaxy and evolved far beyond the point at which humanity now stands.
They learned that by observation and the calculations of their powerful minds they could predict the future to a certain degree. They knew that a galaxy was about to pass completely through their own galaxy, and that the gravitational pull of suns against each other would produce billions of new planets, upon which Life would evolve.
They also knew that another ancient race, the cruel and tyrannical Eddorians, had plans to dominate both galaxies and sate their immortal lust for power.
The Arisians only advantage was that the Eddorians were not aware of their existence, and so was set in motion a plan which was to span millions of years, taking us through the fall of Atlantis, the Roman Empire and thus through the Twentieth Century and beyond.
In essence, this is an epic war of ideologies, in that the Arisians represent democracy and free will, while the Eddorians represent a system of Hierarchical totalitarianism, enforced by a militaristic regime (In this respect it is interesting to compare the physical description of Smith’s Eddorians with Heinlein’s Puppet Masters, who themselves are a metaphor for the forces of Communism. Both are sexless, emotionless amorphous creatures, who reproduce by binary fission, with each new half retaining the memories and skills of the original).
The Arisians’ secret weapon is a selective breeding programme which has been in operation on four different planets since intelligent life evolved.
Only one of the four races can go on to produce the super-beings capable of defeating the Eddorians.
Humans, of course, win the ‘race’ race and the couple selectively bred to give birth to the Homo Superior children are inevitably white and North American.
This idea of selectively breeding humans rather puts a dent into the concept of Arisians as benign Guardians of Democracy, and although one can argue that it was the Arisians’ only option, it is never really addressed as a moral issue within the text.
The Children themselves are four girls and boy who, in their late teens, have to conceal that fact that they are the most powerful – if underdeveloped as yet – beings in the Universe. We are led to believe that the girls will ultimately become the wives of their brother, and the mothers of the race that will replace the Arisians as Guardians of Civilisation.
An oddly incestuous episode also ensues between Kit (the boy) and his mother in a strange scene where she – in need of brain-restructuring and training, for want of a better phrase – allows the mind of her son to enter hers, rather than submit to mental penetration by the Arisians (of whom she has an incurable phobia).
The description of this act is oddly violent and not a little sexual, made worse by the rather stilted professions of love between Mother and son before the procedure.
But Hell, this is Pulp Fiction. It never pretends to be Shakespeare, and despite its political incorrectness I still find it a nostalgic and stonking good read.
The Thing From The Lake – Eleanor Marie Ingram (1921)
Roger Locke is a successful New York composer of stage musicals and popular sings who decides to buy himself a farm as an investment. The house is decrepit and stands beside a stagnant lake. He decides to spend the night in his new home but awakens to find a woman in his bed beside him who holds a knife to him in the darkness while he in turn grips a braid of her hair. She warns him to leave the house and he realises that she has used the knife to cut off the braid of hair he was holding, and has disappeared.
Meanwhile, his young cousin, (who has overbearing parents with impossibly high standards) has married Verne, a young cabaret entertainer. Roger is initially appalled but decides to reserve judgment. As Verne is originally from a farming family he offers the couple the chance to run his farm for him and supervise the renovation of the house while he is in New York.
When he returns to the farm a collapsed dam has been rebuilt and the lake has widened and deepened. However, from then on he is visited by both the mysterious woman and an evil presence who claims that the woman belongs to him and vows that Locke will be destroyed.
It’s a very readable book with some engaging and interesting characters. Ingram certainly manages to produce an atmosphere of dread and unearthly unease when the thing (from another dimension, it appears) manifests itself, while at the same time establishing a growing bond between Locke and his mysterious – possibly immaterial – female visitor, slotting this novel into the tradition of supernatural romances. Indeed, there is much in this that echoes with Anne Rice’s novels of Lasher and the Mayfair Witches.
It’s also an interesting window on the subject of class distinction in the US at the time. Locke’s family appear to be well-to-do, if not fabulously wealthy. Locke himself is described as being the wealthiest in his family, although his money is self made.
Locke’s reaction to his cousin marrying a vaudeville entertainer might seem a little puzzling today but it’s clear that entertainers, particularly those that perform in bars or clubs were thought to be disreputable folk. Maybe Ingram was making a conscious effort to disabuse her public of that notion.
Her unconscious may well have been doing other things, since at the denouement, the main characters aim to flee the house in a car and escape the malign creature’s reach. No provision appears to have been made for evacuation of the domestic staff who would presumably have been left to their fate.
Brass Man – Neal Asher (2005)
‘On the primitive Out-Polity world of Cull, a latter-day knight errant called Anderson is hunting a dragon.
He little knows that, far away, another man – though now more technology than human flesh – has resurrected a brass killing machine called ‘Mr Crane’ to assist in a similar hunt, but one that encompasses star systems. When agentt Cormac realizes that this old enemy still lives, he sets out in pursuit aboard the attack ship Jack Ketch.
For the inhabitants of Cull, each day proves a struggle to survive on a planet roamed by ferocious insectile monsters, but the humans persevere in slowly building an industrial base that may enable them to reach their forefathers’ starship, still orbiting far above them.
They are assisted by an entity calling itself Dragon, but its motives are questionable, having created genetic by-blows out of humans and the hideous local monsters. To make things even worse, the planet itself, for millennia geologically inactive, is increasingly suffering from earthquakes…
Meanwhile, Mr Crane himself doggedly seeks to escape a violent past that he can neither forget nor truly remember. So he continues mindlessly in his search for sanity, which he may discover in the next instant or not for a thousand years…’
Blurb from the 2006 Tor paperback edition
Following on from the events in ‘Line of Polity’, Ian Cormac, and a coterie of AIs are on the trail of Skellor, a scientist fast becoming subsumed by viral Jain technology.
The Jain are an extinct Elder race whose resurrected biotechnology has proven so dangerous that the AIs controlling the Human Polity worlds are prepared to destroy entire Star Systems to contain the threat.
Skellor has fled to a world outside the Polity, colonised by humans who travelled to it in a generation ship. Also making a home for himself on this world is one of the four spheres which once made up the single entity known as Dragon.
Meanwhile, it appears that factions have appeared in AI society and certain artificial minds wish to embrace Jain technology in order to accelerate their evolution.
The central figure in Asher’s characteristically complex tale however, is the Brass Man of the title, Mr Crane, the insane android/golem who first appeared in ‘Gridlinked’. The tale of how Mr Crane came to become a big scary trophy-collecting serial killer is told in sequential flashback throughout the novel.
Crane, thought dismantled and buried, has been resurrected by Skellor to use as a tool to his nefarious ends, although the golem is constantly attempting to reconcile the fragments of his shattered mind in order to become whole and sane.
As always, Asher has produced a page-turning barnstormer of a book set within his Polity universe. Thankfully, the quality of writing and content is being sustained and he clearly leaves us with questions about this civilisation which need to be answered.
I’m also happy to see that we may not have seen the last of Mr Crane, one of my favourite literary creations.
The Golden Transcendence – John C Wright (2003)
‘Here at last is the dazzling conclusion of the masterpiece of far future space opera that began with ‘The Golden Age’ and continued in ‘The Phoenix Exultant’.
The time is imminent when all the minds of the solar system – human, post human, cybernetic, sophotechnic – will be temporarily merged into one supermind called The Transcendence. It is an awesome moment, but one when humanity will be helpless.
The mighty ship ‘Phoenix Exultant’ is at last in the hands of her master, Phaethon the Exile. He alone stands in the way of the eerie and deadly Lords of the Silent Oecumene, who seek to destroy the Inner System, man and machine alike, during this time of vulnerability. Phaeton (sic) dares to drive his ship into the heart of the Sun to stop them, but even that prodigious feat may not secure the human future.’
Blurb from the 2004 Tor paperback edition.
Wright brings his grand widescreen baroque vision to a triumphal end in the final part of this somewhat philosophical trilogy.
Phaethon, still exiled from the Golden Oecumene, finds himself on board his golden spaceship about, it would appear, to hand over control to the new owner, a mental combination of the Sophotech Xenophon and his friend Diomedes. Phaethon, again missing some of his memory, exposes the entity as an agent of the Silent Oecumene. The entity tries to convince Phaethon that his mission is a peaceful one and tells of the history of the lost colony of Cygnus X-1; how the Sophotechs, created with the limitless power of a black hole, took over the civilisation and eventually warred with each other. Humans still live, it would appear, but suspended within the event horizon of the black hole.
The entity is apparently defeated, but Phaethon, with the help of the resurrected Diomedes, his wife Daphne, his father Helion and Atkins, the embodiment of the perfect soldier, have to go to war against another Silent Oecumene agent, hiding in a ship beneath the chromosphere of the sun. The enemy, it is discovered, plans to attack during the Grand Transcendence, the millennial event when all the minds of the Golden Oecumene are linked together and at their most vulnerable.
At times wordy, complex, deeply philosophical and laced with a good ration of humour and in-jokes, this trilogy has to mark a milestone in the development of SF. Similar in style to the work of Wil McCarthy, Wright manages to hark back to the glory days of Alfred Bester and Charles L Harness while maintaining a cutting-edge grip on the Big Science aspects and orchestrating an enormous cast of Neo-Elizabethan grotesques in a baffling, complex and diverse interplanetary civilisation.
Prey – Michael Crichton (2002)
‘In California, odd things are happening to unemployed scientist Jack Forman. His children tell Jack that strange men have visited the house. And Julia, his wife, isn’t helping – she acts, even looks, somehow different.
Deep in the Nevada desert, in the laboratory where Julia works, matters are out of control. A swarm of rogue microbots, designed to reproduce and learn, is developing with a frightening speed that has the scientists battling to contain it.
Only when Jack is called in to help does he discover the shocking truth – the microbots have been programmed to behave as predators.
And Man is the Prey…’
Blurb from the 2006 Harper Collins paperback edition.
One cannot deny that Michael Crichton is a highly successful writer and holds the accolade for having had the number one book, film and TV series (in the US at least) all at the same time. He created ER for TV and is the author of ‘Jurassic Park’.
Like a number of successful US SF authors he knows his science and has certainly done his homework on the nanotechnology front. Actually, the point Crichton is making is that there will very soon be a merging of disciplines between nanotechnology, bio-engineering and software design which will see the serious development of artificial life.
There is a ‘but’ on the way though, and it is not an insubstantial ‘but’ since ‘Prey’ is let down by sloppy characterisation and a very pedestrian structure.
It feels as though one is reading a movie script and yes, it would make a decent enough movie but a novel is not a movie.
The basic premise is that Jack Forman, househusband, suspects that his wife Julia is having an affair. She is always home late and is behaving oddly. She is working out in the desert at a nanotechnology plant. One day their baby develops a rash and begins screaming. The hospital MRI scans the baby and breaks down. The baby then calms down but develops a uniform bruising across its body.
Then, Jack suspects that he sees a man sitting in the car with his wife. Shortly afterwards, the car crashes and she is hospitalised.
Jack is offered a job at the nanotech plant as something has gone very wrong. It appears that Julia and her team have been assembling nanomachines around e-coli bacteria and programming them with software programmes from Jack’s previous job. There he worked on designing swarm programmes based on the movements of bees, ants, birds, fish and predators, such as lions.
The nanomachines have been programmed with the predator software, but some have escaped and don’t respond to radio commands. They evolve very fast and now are reproducing in the wild, using mammals as raw material.
There is a lot wrong with the book otherwise though. There are some moments when Jack is confronted with evidence of the behaviour of the rogue nanobots and doesn’t equate this with events that occurred only hours or days before in his house.
Jack rings his sister Ellen at one point who insists (beyond all logic) that she is coming to stay with them as she is worried about Julia’s motives. Ellen is a bit of an obvious device since she can look after the kids and allow Jack to go off and save the world from nanopocalypse. Apart from a couple of phone calls she is never heard from again.
The book would also have worked better if we had seen a ‘normal’ Julia from the outset and then observed her increasingly mad behaviour which appears to start in the book when she refuses to allow Jack to buy yellow placemats.
On the positive side the technology, the science and the nano-evolution is handled flawlessly. I was particularly fascinated by the ‘emergent’ behaviour of shoals and flocks and how that is used in computer programming to run complex systems.
However, as I said before, a novel is not a screenplay.
Declare – Tim Powers (2000)
Powers provides a fascinating afterword (at least in the Kindle edition) detailing what made him want to write this novel and the research he undertook.
Essentially, powers has researched the life of infamous double-agent Kim Philby which has some rather curious incidents and coincidences, and has used this as the basis for a quite amazing supernatural espionage drama, whose narrative veers between the 1940s and the 1960s.
The central figure is Andrew Hale. The lives of he and his mother were saved by The Special Operations Executive, a shadowy branch of the Intelligence Services who determined that Hale was ‘on the rolls’ from childhood and would one day work for them.
The novel begins with Hale’s panicked escape from an operation on Mount Ararat in Turkey in 1948, and from there veers backwards and forwards in time, seeming initially to be a standard spy thriller until weirdness begins creeping in.
Hale is posted to France during World War II, ostensibly working for the Russians, and meets and falls in love with Elena, a Spanish Communist spy. They are separated, but their lives connect again later along with that of Kim Philby.
The narrative takes us to France, the Middle East, Turkey and Russia, and eventually becomes a rollercoaster of a ride, packed with intrigue, subterfuge, secret identities, spy recognition codes and the slow unveiling of the Intelligence Services’ involvement with supernatural forces; Djinn, to be precise, a large nest of whom is sited at the summit of Mount Ararat.
Operation Declare, which has been running for decades, has a mandate to destroy the djinn, and the key to that is Andrew Hale, for reasons which are made clear toward the end.
Certainly, the novel has a very slow start and it is a hefty journey, but the narrative picks up about halfway through and things get a great deal more interesting from then on.
The Return (Dumarest #32) – EC Tubb (1997)
Previously this was only available in a French Language edition, for reasons which Tubb explains in the introduction, as well as giving an interesting overview of the history of the saga since its beginnings in the 1960s.
This is not the denouement that some fans might have hoped for after 31 previous volumes and a wait of another twelve years for some kind of resolution. Once again Dumarest is stranded on a backwater planet after raiders have stolen the consignment of solar generators he was hoping to sell for a profit in another world.
Having captured a female raider, he persuades her to take him to the raiders who are based on a world where slavery is a way of life.
The Cyclan, who until now believed Dumarest to be dead, receive information to the contrary and so send a Cyber to investigate.
The Cyclan have been unable to replicate the secret formula that Dumarest holds, by which they could control the minds of puppet-leaders of world governments. Furthermore, the brains of cybers that have been stored in a vast underground linked network are going insane.
Thus, the cyclan scientists have been working on artificial minds in cloned bodies into which the consciousnesses of the brains can be transferred
Dumarest, winning the confidence of the raiders, tells them that there will be plenty of wealth to be found on Earth, and they set off in a raider ship.
There is a further volume (Child of Earth (2008)), the last, although whether it was planned to be the last remains to be seen.
Certainly Dumarest has finally reached Earth so his quest appears to be at an end, which seems to be at odds with Tubb’s thoughts in the introduction.
‘The Return’ is a disjointed piece, flawed by a lack of focus on the narrative. There is a seemingly irrelevant side-trip to a world where the human colony has become subservient to symbiotic lizard/insect beasties, a section of the novel which could have been put to better use developing the characters and setting up the scenes for a decent climax.
However it is to Gollancz’ credit that they have issued this and the following volume in Kindle format along with a whole host of back catalogue good stuff.
Lucky’s Harvest / The Fallen Moon – Ian Watson (1993 / 1994)
‘Lucky’s Harvest is the first in a two-volume epic – a work that rivals Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ in scale, richness and complexity.
Drawing his inspiration from the great Finnish saga the Kalevala, Ian Watson has created a totally realistic and wonderfully exotic alien world. On Kaleva, Earth’s first and only interstellar colony, the entire community is indebted to Lucky, whose encounter with the mysterious entity known as the Ukko transported them across space to a land of lake, sea and forest, Kaleva.
Unfortunately, by her 402nd birthday, Lucky is more than a little crazy, and an exiled daughter is seeking sanctuary.’
Blurb from the 1984 VGSF paperback edition.
Ian Watson, amongst other things, is probably for me the David Bowie of SF (If indeed Bowie himself isn’t already the David Bowie of SF) since he is consistently and proliferously creative, inventive and not afraid of changing his style, sometimes taking SF or fantasy conventions and reinventing them in interesting ways. This has often been seen in his short stories. His previous novels have been dense, complex and pushed the envelope of SF.
Here, in a two volume epic, Watson moves into another direction and takes the tropes of Science Fantasy to make his own.
The backstory: Lucky, a young asteroid miner, encounters an Ukko, an asteroid-sized ship with convoluted chambers and pathways resembling a giant ear. The Ukko takes a liking to Lucky and asks her for her stories. In return the Ukko gives her a fabulous gift, a world resembling the world of the tales she has been telling, plus the bonus of immortality for her and her chosen husband who are destined to be the rulers of this new world. Additionally the Ukko arranges for a shuttle service between Earth and the planet Kaleva, and bring settlers from Earth who in turn tell tales to the Ukko during their journey.
Watson’s narrative begins centuries later. Lucky is by now a little unbalanced, as is her husband, Bertel, tired of his unending life. Lucky has given birth to a succession of daughters, each of whom has Lucky’s gift of giving their husband immortality, although they themselves age normally and die.
Some years after the humans started colonising, the Ukkos began bringing the Isi to Kaleva; huge intelligent serpents with their humanoid slaves, the Juttahats. Their motives are unclear, but they like to meddle in human affairs.
The fantasy elements of ‘Lucky’s Harvest’ comprise of the combination of feudal society with the phenomenon of Mana, being a force that permeates the Northern hemisphere and allows certain people to perform acts of ‘magic’.
Osmo, one of the central characters, is a young proclaimer. By the use of his voice he can ‘bespeak’ objects and people. Prior to the start of the novel the young Osmo confronted the sadistic proclaimer tyrant Tycho Cammon and turned him tos tone. The staue was then kept in an alcove on osmo’s ‘keep’ and occasionally brought out for Osmo to depetrify Tycho’s face for the entertainment of his guests.
Osmo gains the enmity of the militant proclaimer Juke and his one-eyed sister Eyeno.
One of Lucky’s daughters, Jatta, has been seduced by a genetically engineered Juttahat in order that the Serpents can engender a human/juttahat hybrid. The resulting child is fast-growing and appears to have proclaimerlike powers.
Meanwhile, some people begin to suspect that the Mana force is emanating from an Ukko child which is buried somewhere on the planet and feeding on the stories and the drama of the world beneath which it is gestating.
Most of the characters, it seems, are seeking something. Lucky is seeking her true self, which she believes is still being held by the Ukko. Her husband Bertel is seeking death. Osmo is seeking immortality, as is Minkie, the lecherous young lord. The immortal Lord Beck is seeking a way of connecting with his long-dead wife Anna.
Eyeno is seeking a new eye, and her brother Juke is seeking victory over Osmo for reasons unknown.
Watching over all are the cat-eared green-scaled cuckoos that fly about the realm carrying gossip and news.
Those with some knowledge of Scandinavian mythology may recognise some of the elements being described here, since Watson has based this wonderful work on the Finnish saga of The Kalevala, something which also provided inspiration for novels by Emil Petaja and for Tolkien’s ‘Silmarillion’.
A Door Into Ocean – Joan Slonczewski (1986)
‘From the ocean world of Shora, Merwen the Impatient and Usha the Inconsiderate travel to Valedon, the world of stone. The Valans view with suspicion the ancient female race of Shora: with their webbed fingers, their withdrawal into ‘whitetrance’ and their marvellous arts of healing. Where the Sharers of Shora hope for understanding, they are met with aggression.
Joan Slonczewski pushes the moral and political philosophy of non-violence to its very limits in a powerful and gripping narrative. To read it is to see your own future in the balance.’
Blurb from the 1987 Women’s Press paperback edition.
In a far-future galaxy Humanity spread to a thousand worlds, but following devastating wars and a period of ethnic cleansing, the number of human worlds was reduced to ninety-seven, ruled by The Patriarch.
The Patriarch has forbidden certain technologies or sciences to be employed independently, such as nuclear power or genetic engineering, driven by the fear that it would lead to a further great war.
On the planet Valedon, two strangers appear in the town square; hairless women with violet skin who wish to ‘learnshare’ in order to discover whether the Valans are human. The stonecutter’s son, Spinel, becomes fascinated with them and eventually leaves with them for the ocean world of Shora.
Travelling with them is the Lady Berenice, a woman who has known the natives of Shora since she was a child and who is also being employed as a spy for the Valan government.
Her fiance, Realgar, is a General and a favourite of Takin, the ‘Protector’ of Valedon.
Valans have been trading peacefully with the Shorans for many years, but following a visit by the Patriarch’s envoy, Malachite, the Valans suspect that Shora may be either a very valuable resource or a terrible danger. Realgar is sent to Shora to ‘deal with’ the natives who have become increasingly restless since the number of Valans on their world increased and the ecological balance began to change.
Structurally we follow three couples, Merwen and Usha (the original two Shorans who visited Valedon), Berenice and Realgar, and Spinel and Lystra (the daughter of Merwen and Usha) who at first do not take to each other (or so they believe) but later both discover that the other is a very different person to the one they believed they loved.
On the whole, we see the drama unfold through the eyes of these six.
The natives of Shora are all female, at least to the average human observer, although a couple are able to conceive children between them. Their passive resistance and incomprehension of external societies which attempt to impose rules on them by force no doubt parallels the protests of the Nineteen Eighties by many women at such places as Greenham Common. The success of such protests is evinced by the fact that the very phrase ‘Greenham Common’ is familiar to most of us decades later, and that their message was relaid by the media and the world and changed us, to whatever degree, as a society.
The women here are protesting at first about environmental vandalism, and their almost genetic adherence to a non-aggressive resistance eventually pays off, though at a terrible price to their population.
The setting is an interesting one, albeit symbolic, since the very masculine patriarchal ‘stone’ world of Valedon is contrasted by the very female ‘water’ world of Shora. The women live on giant rafts of living vegetation in a world where every species (including themselves) is a vital part of the world’s biosphere. There have been similar waterworlds in the past, notably in CS Lewis’ ‘Voyage to Venus’ (or ‘Perelandra), where again the femininity of the sea is contrasted with the male rock of the island (in this case standing in for the Forbidden Tree of Knowledge in The Garden of Eden)
Jack Vance’s ‘The Blue World’ is almost the complete antithesis of Lewis’ since Vance uses his novel to demonstrate the absurdity and the detrimental effect on society of organised religion. As in ‘Door into Ocean’ Vance’s natives live a somewhat idyllic existence on island systems of giant lilypads.
Published by The Women’s Press it is not surprisingly a very female work in tone and theme, which does make a refreshing change. Although very Romantic in style, there is a solid structure and a healthy respect for the integrity of the internal scientific logic.
Interestingly, the Shoran philosophy is to live in harmony with the Ocean and its life, although Slonczewski has muddied the waters a little by letting us know that much of the flora and fauna was genetically engineered by the Shorans, even themselves.
And, there is an obvious political contrast between the patriarchal (literally ruled by The Patriarch and his ‘protectors’) society of Valedon and the leaderless Shorans who are, in essence, a collective.
Despite the perhaps heavy-handed symbolism it is nevertheless a beautifully crafted and important piece of work. I’m not sure how Gollancz picks or obtains works for its SF Masterworks series but this should certainly be on the Gollancz shortlist.
Although it’s published by the Women’s Press, men are allowed to read this. In fact, I’m pretty sure men would benefit more from reading this than women would. Women already know how bad men are at running the world.
God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert (1981)
The fans of ‘Dune’ and indeed the fans of Frank Herbert fall into two camps. There are those who are desperate for ever more tales of the universe in which Arrakis and its intricately structured interstellar society exists. Indeed, the likes of Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert are still churning out new ‘Dune’ material nearly fifty years after the first novel was published. Then there are those who feel ‘less is more’ and that ‘Dune’ should have been left as a quite extraordinary stand alone novel, undoubtedly a classic and arguably one of the top ten SF novels of the 20th century.
To be fair to Herbert, ‘Dune Messiah’ and ‘Children of Dune’ were not simply ‘more of the same’. They were stylistically pushing the boundaries of the first novel, but even so, lacked much of the complex structure and rich colour of the original.
This, the fourth novel, takes us three thousand years into the future. Young Leto, the son of Muad’dib. has entered into a symbiotic relationship with the larval forms of the giant sandworms. Having been encased within their bodies he has been slowly transformed over centuries until he is physically more worm than man.
Leto, being not only prescient but possessed of the memories of all his ancestors, is a difficult creature to assassinate, although people keep trying.
Where this novel fails is that the narrative is for the most part centred around Leto, and Leto is not a creature who is that mobile. Now and again he goes out on a cart, but not often enough.
Consequently there is a continual succession of scenes where characters are summoned to the Emperor’s presence, at which they have long – often meaningless – discussions, since Leto operates through the medium of riddles, or oblique comments which his guests and servants are expected to decipher.
Arrakis has been terraformed and there is now only one small desert left in which ‘Museum Fremen’ are allowed to dwell.
There is a shortage of spice – the ‘unobtainium’ that bestows longevity and gives the Guild starship pilots their ability to navigate hyperspace.
The Ixians, the Tleilaxu (who have provided a new Duncan Idaho for the Emperor after he killed the last one) and the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, are all suspicious of each other.
As with ‘Dune Messiah’ there is a sense of doomed Shakespearean inevitability about it all, particularly in view of the fact that Leto can – to a certain extent – see the future and knows what is going to happen.
There are some interesting points made both obliquely via the narrative and through Leto’s conversations and journals about politics and religion. However, Herbert is covering old ground here since ‘Dune’ had already examined quite subtly and in exquisite detail the complex overlapping boundaries of religion and government.
One would have to clarify, having said all that, that this is not a bad novel. It’s just not a good Frank Herbert novel. Herbert was a writer whose name figures largely in the pantheon of SF saints but, like Anne McCaffrey and Fred Saberhagen, seems to be doomed to be remembered for one book that spawned an industry of sequels and franchise, leaving his other work sadly neglected.
The Best of EE ‘Doc’ Smith – EE ‘Doc’ Smith (1975)
‘Few authors have made such an impact as EE ‘Doc’ Smith did at his first appearance in 1928, or have continued so long to delight a host of fans. Indeed, his novel ‘The Skylark of Space’ opened the door for the most extravagant excursions of super-science into the remotest regions and led the way for ‘space opera’. Even now the sweeping epics of ‘Skylark’ arte still relished for their sheer exuberance, their cosmic imagery and the rip-roaring adventure.’
Blurb from the 1975 Orbit paperback edition
To the Far Reaches of Space (from The Skylark of Space, 1928)
Robot Nemesis (Thrilling Wonder Stories 1939)
Pirates of Space (from Triplanetary)
The Vortex Blaster (from Vortex Blasters)
Tedric (Other Worlds Science Fiction Stories – Mar 1953)
Lord Tedric (Universe Science Fiction – Mar 1954)
Subspace Survivors (Astounding July 1960)
The Imperial Stars (from the Imperial Stars)
It was always likely to be a problem producing ‘Doc’s obligatory ‘Best Of..’ volume since although he published prodigiously in the usual American publications his writing was generally serialised and later ended up as various series of novels.
Thus the only piece of singular fiction here is ‘Robot Nemesis’.
Having said that, this volume is a fascinating overview of Smith’s work which is often disparaged by those who think that SF should be somewhat more intellectual, noble and ever-so-slightly sacred. Music fans hold generally the same prejudices, sneering at the work of Chuck Berry or Kraftwerk without knowing or caring that that had it not been for these people the music they currently enjoy might not exist, or would be at the very least, far less complex and diverse.
Ok, I have to confess I have a soft spot for Smith who gave me a whole universe to escape into during some very troubled teenage years, and I owe him for that, but in any case his legacy and influence was immense.
From 1928 when the Skylark first took flight he managed to open up the universe in a way that few writers of the time could manage (many don’t manage it today) and here is a selection of excerpts from most of his major works.
There is a wonderful introduction which gives an overview of Smith’s life. He was a man who suffered financial adversity at various times and who wasn’t afraid of physical work: a man who spent several years working on developing commercial doughnut mixes while all the time dreaming of his next scientifiction adventure story.
In a postscript Smith gives us his own account of how he goes about writing ‘space epics’ and very interesting it is too. It’s fascinating to discover for instance that when writing the Lensman series he used a group of SF fans as essentially a focus group, as well as some actual scientists and fellow SF writers.
Finally there is a very comprehensive bibliography which explains the rather complex publishing history and chronology of the Lensman saga in magazine terms which seemed to start in the middle, then go back to the beginning and was subsequently re-edited for book publication.
For today’s readers, the stilted dialogue and the wholesale transference of Nineteen Fifties American moral standards to Outer Space might seem either jarring or amusing, but the sense of wonder still holds, and I am surely not the only one who finds something very cosy and comforting about flitting out into the galaxy with Kim Kinnison into almost certain deadly peril.
The Hard Way Up – A Bertram Chandler (1972)
Seven short stories featuring the early career of John Grimes in the Survey Service, put together in a sequential fashion. They’re light-hearted fodder, and follow a fairly standard formula in which Grimes finds himself in a bit of a scrape, not always through his own actions.
With Good Intentions (Hard Way Up 1972)
Lieutenant Grimes joins The Pathfinder to ferry a party of surveyors to a planet where a primitive humanoid race is extant. The Survey Service has a ‘Prime Directive’ rule not to interfere, but Grimes can’t help himself.
The Subtracter (Galaxy August 1969)
Grimes takes control of ‘The Adder’ and is chartered to ferry a passenger from one planet to another. the passenger turns out to be an excellent chef and becomes popular with the crew, although his real profession is somewhat darker.
The Tin Messiah (Hard Way Up 1972)
Grimes’ next passenger is Mr Adam, a messianic android, who becomes a little irrational.
Sleeping Beauty (Galaxy February 1970)
‘The Adder’, under Grimes’ command, has to transport the Queen Egg of an insect race to a colony world. Due to delays en route, the egg hatches and the truculent young queen transforms the crew into her drones.
The Wandering Buoy (Analog September 1970)
Perhaps written in response to ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’ (1968), we see The Adder discovering a spherical object drifting in interstellar space, which turns out to be an autonomous machine designed to show primitive species how to make fire etc.
The Mountain Movers (Galaxy March 1971)
‘The Adder’ is grounded on a world the natives and culture of which John Grimes finds suspiciously similar to that of Australian aborigines. They even have their own version of Ayres Rock. AS it turns out, there is a reason for this.
What You Know (Galaxy Jan 1971)
John Grimes, in charge of ‘The Adder’ has to ferry a demanding female Commissioner along with her staff and robot attendants. The Adder, from lack of maintenance, breaks down in interstellar space and is forced to request help from Skandia, a ‘kingdom’ of Scandinavian humans, whose relationship with Earth is somewhat strained.
Grimes is forced at the end to resign his commission in the Survey Service.
The Runestaff – Michael Moorcock (1969)
Hawkmoon, determined to return to Europe, sets off to cross the ocean, but is driven back by dragon-like sea monsters and is marooned on an island, which he soon discovers is Dnark, home of the Runestaff itself. There he meets Orland Fank, the Hebridean ‘brother’ of The Warrior in Jet and Gold and Jehamia Cohnahlias, the Spirit of The Runestaff.
Regular Moorcock readers will recognise this as yet another variation on the name which reappears throughout his work ascribed to aspects of the Eternal Champion, its most famous manifestation being Jerry Cornelius, Moorcock’s experimental literary antihero whose reality is as fluid as his sexuality and gender.
Hawkmoon and D’Averc find they are not alone in Dnark, for the Dark Empire of Granbretan, now employing the new engines designed by Kalan of the Serpent Order, have reached Amarekh, and have sent the evil and corpulent Shenegar Trott to claim the Runestaff for King Huon.
Following a battle in the city of Glowing Shadows in which Hawkmoon invokes the Legion of the Dawn, Shenegar Trott and the Warrior in Jet and Gold are both slain, and Hawkmoon is urged to take the Runestaff back to Europe.
Meanwhile, there is dissidence within the halls of Granbretan, where Baron Meliadus is planning a coup and the death of the immortal King Huon. His plan is to marry Flana Mikosevaar, Huon’s only surviving relative and crown her Queen, giving him more or less absolute rule over the Earth.
The scenes within Granbretan itself are by far the most interesting and inventive, from King Huon’s chaotically coloured, windowless palace, where – in his immense throne room – he is guarded by a thousand mantis-masked warriors, to Lord Taragorm’s Palace of Time. There Lord Taragorm – in his helmet composed of a working clock – is surrounded by thousands of timepieces, and pursues his arcane experiments into the nature of Time itself.
His current invention is a clock whose striking will cause such vibrations throughout the dimensions that the crystal machine in Castle Brass will be destroyed, returning the rebels and their castle back to their original plane.
By the time this is achieved however, The Granbretanians are in the midst of civil war and while the ‘Beasts Begin to Squabble’ Count Brass and his meagre forces, with Hawkmoon and the Runestaff at the forefront, march on Granbretan itself.
There are ironic in-jokes hidden within the text, some of which I regret I cannot decipher. In Book Three, Chapter Five, ‘The Fleet at Deau-Vere’ for instance, Moorcock describes the ships of the Granbretanians.
‘There were panels in their sides, each carrying an intricate painting depicting some earlier sea victory for Granbretan. Gilded figureheads decorated the forward parts of the ships, representing the terrifying ancient gods of Granbretan – Jhone, Jhorg, Phowl, Rhunga, (John, George, Paul, Ringo) who were said to have ruled the land before The Tragic Millennium – Chirshil. the Howling God (Churchill); Bjrin Adass, the Singing God; (Brian Aldiss) Jeajee Blad, the Groaning God (JG Ballard) and Aral Vilsn, the Roaring God, (Harold Wilson) Father of Skvese and Blansacredid, the gods of Doom and Chaos.
As is to be expected, the Dark Empire is defeated and the balance is restored, but temporarily, as Moorcock is always at pains to point out, since the forces of Order and Chaos are always at work, and the Runestaff seeks only to maintain the balance and ensure that neither force has too great an influence.
The Man Without a Planet – Lin Carter (1966)
‘WHO HOLDS THIS NEBULA CAN SWAY THE GALACTIC IMPERIUM
MISSION TO AN EMBATTLED NEBULA
When Raul Linton, Commander of Space Navy, returned from the bloody Third Imperial War in 3468 A.D. he was a disillusioned hero. Defiantly stripping off his medals and ribands, Raul roamed the Inner Cluster of stars in search of some meaning.
But close on his trail was the Imperium Government spy, Pertinax – known as the Snake – who was out to prove Raul a traitor.
And then Raul Linton met up with Sharl of the Yellow Eyes, who proposed a daring scheme of intergalactic action which would at once restore the Sharl’s exiled Queen Innald to her rightful place on the throne of Valadon – but to join this mission, Raul would have to fight openly against his own government…
Another swashbuckling adventure by the author of Thongor of Lemuria and The Star Magicians.’
Blurb from the 1966 G-606 Ace Doubles edition.
Lin Carter was a prolific author of SF, Sword and Sorcery and the odd hinterland of Science Fantasy that lay between.
This novel is SF at heart. but set within a baroque Herbert-esque galaxy where swords and feudal systems exist quite happily alongside starships and laserguns.
Raul Linton is a jaded soldier who distinguished himself in an interplanetary war that need not have been fought. Since leaving the service it seems he has been spied upon by some sections of a paranoid government, particularly the spy Pertinax.
While buying a sword one day, Linton is approached by Sharl of the Yellow Eyes, and finding himself being tailed by Pertinax, who had placed a transmitting device in his cloak, he takes up an offer from Sharl and they leave for a lonely planet, deep in the heart of a Nebula.
It’s very enjoyable hokum, if a tad sexist. Linton is called upon to restore a young queen to her rightful throne which the Earth government have handed to her idiot brother.
She is intelligent and educated, but she is just a woman after all and she needs a man to command her armies, since they would never follow a woman.
Somewhat near the end our hero has to tell the young queen that she must trust his decisions and basically to shut up and let him get on with it. In Carter’s world this sort of behaviour brings out the best in women.
‘But when she got her breath back and had a few moments to digest the swift-moving flow of events, a half-smile warmed her lips. What woman, however aggressive, does not secretly desire to meet a man capable of mastering her? Before long a small dimple showed at the corner of her wonderful mouth, and the bright hardness of her eyes turned soft, almost dream-full, as she stared meditatively at the door through which he had just passed…’ p 93
It’s a fast-paced tale, enjoyable enough in its own way and although an obscure – to most – bit of pulp fiction is nonetheless quite interesting in terms of style.
Rogue Ship – AE van Vogt (1965)
‘A mighty space cruiser coasts through the dreadful emptiness of space on its voyage of human survival. Multimillionaire Averill Hewitt built her, crewed her with handpicked men and women, and had her launched on a one-way trip to the planets clustered around Centaurus.
But he had not counted on radical changes developing in the social hierarchy on board – on mutiny and revolution, on the madness of space – nor on the astounding scientific advances made in that awful isolation…
A tension-packed novel of interstellar adventure and intrigue’
Blurb from the 1975 Panther paperback edition.
Reading some of van Vogt’s work becomes increasingly surreal as the decades pass. In his day he was a major force in SF and a unique writer, painting his visions of space on huge Technicolor canvasses and peopling them with creative, stylish aliens, various forms of superhumans with improbable if quite believable bizarre philosophies, or intelligent machine life. Sadly, his extrapolations of the future were often a little slapdash and seldom extended to social change, particularly in relation to the status of women. In the first section, ‘Centaurus II’, there are no female characters at all, and any mention of women is in terms of subservient wives who have no say, it would appear, in any aspect of their lives. One could argue that the whole crew of ‘The Hope of Man’ is in the same position, the premise being that the ship is heading for the Centaurus system hoping to find a habitable planet after scientific predictions suggest that the solar system is about to be destroyed. Once into space it is discovered that the journey is going to take far longer than expected, something which causes increasing unrest among the crew. Although financed by a multimillionaire, the ship is technically under military rule. The Captain has therefore set up a hereditary hierarchical system, and foils at least two attempts at mutiny.
‘The Expendables’ is a section in which a later Captain attempts to abandon rebels on an alien planet, but only succeeds in allowing a machine-intelligence to infiltrate the ship. van Vogt here employs his trademark character of the logical rational scientist, in this case John Lesbee, the great-great grandson of the original Captain. By virtue of some fantastic gadgets, Lesbee outwits both the alien machines (who have in the meantime conveniently reconfigured the ship’s engines to achieve near light speed) and the usurping Captain.
In the ‘Rogue Ship’ section there is another onboard coup and Lesbee is deposed. The ship, heading back for Earth, is thrown beyond lightspeed and travels back in time to arrive six years after it left.
It is here that female characters briefly appear, the four subservient Captain’s wives. Hewitt, the multimillionaire, eventually finds himself on board his long lost ship and is shocked by the social system that has developed.
‘Ruth next indicated the sullen young brunette beauty at the table. ‘Marianne is Captain Gourdy’s first wife. Naturally, Ilsa and I will now be taken over by him.’
Hewitt was discreetly silent. But as he glanced from one to another of the women and saw their agreement with what Ruth had said, he felt an inner excitement of his own.
These women, he realized, amazed, were the male fantasy come alive. Throughout history, men periodically manoeuvred the State so skilfully that women were motivated to accept multiple wife roles, at least in connection with the top leaders. A percentage of men dreamed of having a harem of compliant females all in the same household, at peace with each other, free of that jealous madness which men normally found so painfully ever present in women outside of their own fantasies. The desire for so many women was probably some deep psychological need, which those who were possessed by it did not even want to have explained.
Hewitt had never had such needs as an adult. So he could look at these women as would a scientist confronted by a phenomenon of nature.‘
van Vogt seems to be trying to make a moral point (if a rather patronising one) about this polygamy, but what his point is in reality is harder to determine since other books such as ‘The War Against The Rull’ have portrayals of women as being naturally subordinate and inferior.
Again we see the recurrence of the rational, logical leader figure, in control of his emotions.
For a van Vogt novel it is interesting only in that we see this recurring archetype, a concept which van Vogt exploited brilliantly in ‘The World of Null-A’, less brilliantly in ‘The War Against the Rull’, and here very poorly indeed.
It’s also interesting from an academic point of view to see the progression of quality of the writing (none of it anywhere near van Vogt’s best) improve from the 1947 story, through to the 1950 section and on to the 1963 denouement.
Also published in Ace Double F-253 as ‘The Twisted Men’
The Towers of Toron – Samuel R Delany (1964)
‘Beyond The Invisible Barrier
“We have received warning. The Lord of The Flames is loose on earth once more.”
Once before the Lord of The Flames has been driven halfway across the universe. His return would mean a new era of chaos and conflict for the populace of Earth.
The Lord of The Flames was a strange adversary – a force of evil devoid of physical substance. He sought warmth in unpredictable places: creeping into the soul of a worm or the stem of a flower or into the mind of a man.
Unless his hiding place could be discovered, the Lord of The Flames could crumble the world once more to ashes. But finding him was not a simple matter. Evil is everywhere and the thing from space only lurked in one being at a time.’
Blurb from the 1964 Ace Doubles edition F-261
An early work from Delaney, demonstrates his poetic flare and individual voice. Set on a future Earth and within an oddly feudal society it is the sequel to ‘Captives of The Flame’ in which a group of people battled The Lord of The Flames and drove him off across the Universe. The Lord of The Flames is an amoral extraterrestrial entity who habitually hides within humans and conducts experiments. The humans have been helped by a tri-partite entity who is also an enemy of the Lord of The Flames. There is of course, an immediate connection to be made with the Holy Trinity and Lucifer, although there is little other religious reference in this particular novel.
Due to radiation left over from an ancient atomic war, there are various human mutations such as the Neanderthals, a dim-witted and clumsy race, and the Forest Guards, a race of taller humanoids who appear to exhibit different mental processes and some of whom are telepathic. One can’t help wondering if Delaney meant to translate the concept of dwarfs and elves to an SF setting.
The plot is oddly van Vogt-ish. The LOTF has returned and the Prime Minister has been murdered. The king died of natural causes some time later. The Crown Prince has been living among the Forest Guards and is sent for at once. Meanwhile, the ones aware of the LOTF’s presence try to flush him out.
Toron is currently at war with an enemy beyond the barrier they have not yet seen.
One of the protagonists, Tel, is conscripted and sent off to the war to fight alongside a Forest Guard and some Neanderthals. His sister, Alter, tracks down John’s sister Clea, a genius disabled by depression and the loss of her dead lover. Alter somehow raises her spirits and persuades her to join a circus as an accountant (after having already been offered a job as a dancer herself.)
Clea, it appears, did some work for the government and has hidden a secret away in her own head, hidden away even from herself. It is a secret about the war, a secret that could change everything.
The Man in The High Castle – Philip K Dick (1962)
This is possibly the most fascinating and interesting alternate history novel of the Twentieth Century, set as it is in a world where World War II was won by the Nazis and Japan. It works in the main because Dick has avoided the cliche of going into extreme detail about the differences and concentrates on the lives of his creations in this odd alternate USA.
The plot revolves around a handful of loosely connected characters, most of which are not what they seem, but this fits nicely in with Dick’s perennial theme of the fake.
Frank Frink, for instance, at the outset of the novel works in a company where he produces fake antiques for sale due to the lucrative demand from the occupying Japanese for original antique American handicrafts (such as .44 revolvers and Mickey Mouse watches). Added to this, Frink’s name is really Fink, and he has had surgery to hide the fact that he is a Jew.
Having left his employment, Frank sets up a business with his co-worker, Ed McCarthy, making contemporary American Folk Art, based on Ed’s designs. (i.e. ‘real’ artifacts)
Robert Childan is not pretending to be anything he is not, although he runs a business dealing in ‘genuine’ US artifacts, many of them supplied to him by Frink’s employers.
One of Childan’s customers is Mr Tagomi, a Japanese businessman, who is seeking a gift for a new client.
This client is a Mr Baynes, ostensibly a Swedish businessman on a trip to discuss mould-injection processes, although in reality he is a German Counter-Intelligence agent on a mission to warn the Japanese of German plans to bomb their home islands.
Frink’s ex-wife Juliana, is a judo instructor who meets up with an Italian truck driver, Joe, who moves into her apartment and her life and persuades her to take a trip to meet Hawthorne Abendsen, the author of a banned book called ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’.
Both ‘Grasshopper’, which is set in a universe where the Axis powers lost, and the I-Ching run through the MITHC like a thread. It should be noted that ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’ does not depict our reality since one aspect of it talks of Hitler’s trial, something which obviously did not transpire in our timeline.
The Italian, Joe, himself is a fake since in reality he is an agent on a mission to assassinate Hawthorne Abendsen.
At the time of writing, Dick, it appears, was heavily into Oriental philosophy and employed The I-Ching to determine the plot of The Man in the High Castle, and explained
“I started with nothing but the name, Mister Tagomi, written on a scrap of paper, no other notes. I had been reading a lot of Oriental philosophy, reading a lot of Zen Buddhism, reading the I Ching. That was the Marin County zeitgeist, at that point; Zen Buddhism and the I Ching. I just started right out and kept on trucking.” In the event, he blamed the I Ching for plot incidents he disliked: “When it came to close down the novel, the I Ching had no more to say. So, there’s no real ending on it. I like to regard it as an open ending”.
“Hour 25: A Talk With Philip K. Dick”. philipKdick.com. Formerly posted at http://www.philipkdickfans.com/frank/hour25.htm.
There are strange connections between these characters, such as those between Mr Tagomi and Frank Frink, who never meet. Mr Tagomi buys a piece of Frank’s jewellery from Robert Childan (who was initially planning to swindle Frink and McCarthy) who has discovered from a Japanese client that the jewellery contains ‘wu’ or inner truth.
This leads Mr Tagomi, meditating on the jewellery, to shift temporarily to either the ‘grasshopper’ world or our world, a world where the San Franciscans are not deferential to the Japanese.
Later, Frank Frink is arrested when the authorities find out he is a Jew, but he is unexpectedly freed by Mr Tagomi, who orders his release merely to make a point to the local German authorities.
Highly recommended.
Death Robots From Mars 
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