The Children of Men by P.D. James (1992)

We read P.D. James' dystopian science fiction novel, The Children of Men (1992) for my free-form book club (go DAFFODILS!). I was very into this choice since I (a) like dystopian science fiction and (b) really liked the movie version and figured if nothing else I could day dream about Clive Owen while reading it. I did end up really enjoying the book, although it has little in common with the movie version beyond the general premise and the character names.

The book takes place in 2021, 26 years after all the men on the planet became infertile. The last generation of humans, known as the Omegas, are beautiful nihilistic jerks and our narrator, Theo Faron, is a cynical and disconnected history professor who sometimes tries to teach them. Theo is divorced after his shaky marriage fell completely apart with the death of their daughter in a tragic accident that was his fault. He lives alone and is comfortable but dissatisfied. He is thrown into the politics of post-Omega England when he is approached by a young woman from one of his classes who asks him to talk to the Warden of England on behalf of her and a small group of protesters. They want to stop the government regulated mass suicides of the elderly, the mandatory fertility testing, the unsupervised prison islands, and the poor treatment of immigrants from other countries. Theo is in a place to help because his cousin, Xan, is the Warden -- a replacement for the prime minister and the King who makes all the decisions for the country, together with a small council. The meeting with the council doesn't go well, but now Theo has a cause and something to actually do, and he can't separate himself from the work of the rebel group. When the unimaginable happens, he finds himself willing to sacrifice everything for the cause.

This is a pretty philosophical and extremely British book with digressions on politics, theological implications, and moral and ethical tests of its characters and readers. While the plot and the action move the story along quickly, this is no sweaty Clive Owen action-filled story like the film. Wikipedia tells me that the late P.D. James was pleased with the film version even though it was so different from her original novel, and I can see why she liked it. It captures the world she created, but comes at it in a way that plays better on the screen. The novel, on the other hand, is the perfect way to explore the cold, intellectual, privileged mind of Theo and experience the slow warming and opening that he undergoes as he becomes more and more involved with Julian and her friends. Literary science fiction doesn't always work for me, but in this case, James really pulls it off. There is a lot to think about here, and it's a rewarding read.

And the cats! The cats!

The Reavers of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1976)

To round out the three-part adventures of Eric John Stark on the planet of Skaith (previously reviewed here), the ever-wonderful Leigh Brackett brings us The Reavers of Skaith (1976). While there is no way that the cover could match the perfect science fiction vision of the second book in the series, the third volume is much more satisfying both in terms of its action and in its use of the main female character, the seer Gerrith, who is once again part of the action and not just along for the ride.

Stark and his compatriots find themselves betrayed at the start of volume three when the freelancing starship captain who had promised to take their delegation back to Pax double-crosses them, ransoms the party, and begins attacking and pillaging the defenseless planet.

As an off-worlder, Stark is seen by many as the cause of their misfortunes, and while he sets off on a cross-planet quest to reach a transmitter and call for inter-galactic help, he and his followers find themselves besieged by all forms of the inventively weird people that inhabit the dying planet of Skaith.

And Skaith, by the way, is really really dying now. Summer was extra short and winter blows into the far north and south with a vengeance. Crops die and workers and Farers surge into the cities and the fertile belt around the equator looking for food and shelter. Looks like Stark's ships and promise of transport to another planet are really going to come in handy for the people of Skaith -- if they can just hold on that long.

Brackett's combination of old-school science fiction adventure and 1970s environmentalism doesn't disappoint. Even though the second volume in this trilogy was a little weak, I'd highly recommend all three to any science fiction fan. And while the connections were a little lighter in the second volume, I stand by my assertion that these novels must have been an inspiration for George R. R. Martin. Winter is coming, indeed.

The Hounds of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1974)

After reading and loving The Ginger Star, I did the unusual (for me) move of immediately ordering the other two books in the series. While in some ways the second volume, The Hounds of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1974), didn't quite live up to the first entry, it far surpassed every other book on the face of the planet with the awesomeness of its cover. There is a lot going on there, but it all makes perfect sense after you read the book.

As you may remember from the first volume, Eric John Stark (a human who was raised by the equivalent of wolves in an abandoned mining colony on Mars) travels to the dying planet of Skaith to rescue his foster father, Ashton. He does just that in volume 1, and now must lead his party back to the south of the planet to try and intercept a ship home before the leaders send them all away and destroy the space ports. Among his companions are Stark's lover Gerrith, a prophetess from Skaith; and a pack of scary Northhounds, vicious psychic dogs trained to kill with fear. Stark leads the group through dangers both environmental and Skaithian using his skills of independence, strength, confidence, and empathy. Along the way we are introduced to a whole new host of inhabitants of a planet that has grown diverse as living creatures struggle to reach into the few niches left for survival.

All that is perfectly great, and Brackett is just as good as writing sci-fi based adventure stories as ever, but where volume 2 disappoints is in the lack of involvement with Gerrith, the Skaithian seer who is a well-rounded and important female character in the first volume. It isn't because she doesn't feature in the story, because she is along for the ride almost the entire time, but somehow she is left out of almost all the dialogue and plot points except for a couple nights in bed with Stark and a brief scene at the end of the book. We can be thankful at least that that scene transitions us into the possibility of more Gerrith in volume 3. Let's hope that Brackett doesn't forget about her!

The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett (1974)

I have gushed about how much I like Leigh Brackett before, so I won't go over all her awesome qualities again except to say that she never disappoints. When I saw this copy of Brackett's The Ginger Star (1974) at a second-hand store in Omaha earlier this year, I grabbed it (along with a ton of Edgar Rice Burroughs' books) right away.

Eric John Stark was born in a mining colony on Mercury. When his parents and the rest of the humans died in an accident, he was taken in and raised by the native inhabitants of the planet. Later more humans came and killed all the "savage beasts" and took Stark as a curiosity. He was caged and humiliated until being rescued and taught English and human ways by Simon Ashton. Now Ashton, a representative of the interplanetary alliance, has disappeared on a little-known planet called Skaith and Stark will do whatever it takes to find him.

Skaith is an ancient and dying planet. Many thousands of years ago it had a vibrant artistic and scientific culture. Then planetary climate changes forced people to abandon the northern cities and resettle in the South. Much of their culture was lost in the struggle for survival and over the centuries pockets of people evolved into very different beings with very different ways of life. Over it all sit the Lords Protector -- unseen and ever present -- represented throughout the planet by their Wandsmen, wizards who maintain order and punish wrongdoing. Most of the planet scrapes by to support the lifestyle of the Wandsmen and the Farers, children of the Wandsmen who never work and only seek out pleasure in sex and drugs. But the sun that Skaith orbits is dying and the planet is gradually becoming more and more uninhabitable. A group of Iranese reach out to the interplanetary alliance and ask to be transported off the planet and resettled elsewhere. This threatens to destroy the world of the Wandsmen and the Farers and they fight back against Ashton and Stark.

Brackett is like a combination of Burroughs and Bradbury -- this is inventive, classic science fiction with an exciting action/adventure bent. As Stark traverses the planet looking for Ashton, we touch on the various inhabitants -- mer-people who had their genes altered centuries ago so they could survive the planetary changes by living under the ocean, people who join together in hypnotized religious pods before killing themselves as a group, Northern miners who harvest metal from long-abandoned ancient cities, and many more. Brackett gives each character a full description and a solid purpose but doesn't dwell on any one group, sticking instead with Stark, the ultimate instinctual outsider, as he works through his single-purposed quest.

This is the first book in a trilogy, and I liked it so much that I've already bought the other two. If you come across anything by Brackett at the used bookstore, pick it up right away -- you will not be disappointed.

***
P.S. I'm working on a theory that George R.R. Martin read and liked these Skaith novels because there are so many parallels with the Game of Thrones: a hero named Stark, a modern world reacting to an ancient and partially-forgotten past, a North/South divide, tiny mystical people called the Children who live in the far north, freaky giant wolves, an abundant use of the word Southron -- definitely something to think about!

4 for the Future, edited by Groff Conklin (1959)

In this science fiction anthology, 4 for the Future (1959), Groff Conklin, the prolific sci-fi editor (and possessor of an excellent name) brings together strong stories by Poul Anderson ("Enough Rope," 1953), Theodore Sturgeon ("The Claustrophile," 1956), Henry Kuttner ("The Children's Hour," 1944), and Eric Frank Russell ("Plus X," 1956).

While the stories run the gamut from an alien-filled space opera to a quiet story of love in a separate dimension, all four of the stories focus less on technology or exploration, and more on the humanness of the characters and the power of thinking your way out of a tight spot.

All four of these stories were very strong, but I particularly liked the family drama of personalities at the core of Sturgeon's "The Claustrophile," and the light touch of Henry Kuttner's very literary "The Children's Hour." The 1940s and 1950s are my favorite era of science fiction, and this collection doesn't disappoint. Also includes adorable anachronisms like an ink well tipping over in a futuristic office. If you like science fiction, you will like this.

[Equally awesome back cover available here if you are into that kind of thing.]

Mutants by Gordon R. Dickson (1970)

Way back last summer I had an extremely fun Eastern Nebraska / Western Nebraska / Fort Collins vacation and while we were wandering around in Fort Collins, I picked up this wonderfully covered collection of short stories by Gordon R. Dickson called Mutants (1970). It finally migrated up to the top of my very slow-moving reading pile, and I'm happy to announce that the contents are just as great as the cover.

While some of the stories are a little dated, there are some very strong contenders included in this collection. One of my very favorites is the sci-fi / western story "Roofs of Silver," where a group of scientists from the home planet check in on a community of settlers who colonized a new mining planet 100 years ago and have been living as a closely knit group since then. One of the scientists "goes native," marries a settlers daughter, and leads the group to believe that he is a rehabilitated "wild one" -- one of the humans on the planet who is not part of the settled community. When the scientists' scans show that the community is becoming inbred and unstable, our protagonist refuses to believe the evidence and tries to conduct his own experiments to prove that the instability is in the wild people on the planet, and not in his new family.

Other stories include galactic space opera style battles, small environmental morality tales, and a prim and proper spinster who is given super human powers by a chance visitation from a little dude from a different dimension who makes her clock strike 13.

Dickson is particularly great at the first few sentences of his stories:

But you know, I could sense it coming a long time off. It was a little extra time taken in drinking a cup of coffee, it was lingering over the magazines in a drugstore as I picked out a handful. It was a girl I looked at twice as I ran out and down the steps of a library. ["Of the People"]

Reru did not like to see humans eat. So he was waiting in the living room while Taddy and his parents finished breakfast. ["Listen"]

The last dog on Earth was dying. ["By New Hearth Fires"]

Miss Lydia Prinks was somebody's aunt. Not the aunt of several somebodies, but the aunt of one person only and with no other living brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, or nieces to her name. A sort of singleton aunt. It would be possible to describe her further, but it would not be in good taste." ["Miss Prinks"]

Well, it was about four in the afternoon. You know how it is that time of day at Savannah Stand, with most of the day-charter flyers back in the ranks. All the hanging around and talking and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, and the water stains drying back to the pale color of the concrete from the flyers that have just been washed down. You know what a good time of day that is. ["Home from the Shore"]

And it isn't just the beginnings of these stories that are good -- Dickson was a prolific and widely published science fiction writer, and there is no doubt that the man could write a solid story. While I have a slight preference for science fiction short story anthologies by a variety of authors, the stories in this collection are each unique and make up a very lovely book. With a very amazing cover.

[As an aside: My copy was printed in 1978 and it looks like it was printed last week. Maybe they used some super-special science fiction acid free buffered paper here, or maybe it came to Fort Collins from the fourth dimension!]

The Spot of LIfe (1932)

I bought Austin Hall's novel The Spot of Life (published serially in 1932 and first printed in book form in 1964) because it was only a dollar and it had this quote on the back: "But nobody had reckoned with the cunning brain of the ruler of that Other World, the weird warrior-king known as the Bar Senestro." Just say "Bar Senestro" a few times. Now don't you want to read it too?

When Detective Flanning sees an oddly dressed but very handsome man walking down the street in San Francisco, his curiosity overtakes him and he offers to show the man the way to an address he has written on a scrap of paper (the home of a professor and Spinoza scholar). The stranger causes quite a scene with the professor, so Flanning then follows him to a mysterious house that has given off weird vibes to everyone in the neighborhood for thirty years. After Flanning enters the house, things really start getting weird: Strange lights flash, bells toll, odd people are alive, then dead, then disappear completely. Then the Spinoza scholar is found dead, and Flanning finds himself teaming up with the professor's son -- a science whiz who is also the captain of the college football team. Together they hope to solve the mystery of the weird spot in the mysterious house, learn a few things about Life and Death, and save humanity from an inter-dimensional invasion.

Although it didn't mention anything about it on the cover of the book, The Spot of Life is actually a sequel to The Blind Spot, which Hall wrote with Homer Eon Flint and which was serialized in 1921. Flint died in 1924 under mysterious circumstances (he may or may not have been involved in a robbery and may or may not have been killed by gangsters), and Hall dedicates this sequel to his friend. I haven't read The Blind Spot, although I feel like I have since large sections of The Spot of Life involve characters finding bits and pieces of a manuscript (which is conveniently the earlier book) and reading them aloud.

The Spot of Life isn't great, but it is representative of a solid 1930s sci-fi serial with lots of action, a small amount of romance, and plenty of science.

Little Brother (2008)

Cory Doctorow's science-fictiony young adult novel Little Brother (2008) was my most recent read from dailylit (a site which emails me an easily digestible chunk of the book every day, and is actually a totally fun way to read something like this).

The book takes us through a not-so-distant future / alternate reality where Marcus Yallow and his group of friends geek out on computers, outwit the monitors at school, and have unrequited crushes on each other. Most of the fun futuristic technology stuff is in this section, and I thought that was the most entertaining and intriguing part of the book. All that changes, though, when Marcus and his friends are ditching school right as terrorists blow up the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and they get picked up as suspects when they flag down a van to try to get medical help for their injured friend. The DHS has taken over San Francisco, and they don't believe Marcus when he tells them he is just a high school kid and he has nothing to do with the attacks. Eventually (after some very harsh treatment) they let him go. First he is scared. Then he is mad. Then he starts fighting back.

This book is pretty heavy-handed, and some of the sections read like instructional boing boing posts on Cory Doctorow's interests (encryption, freegans, wireless signals, etc.). I didn't love it, but I think a junior high kid might. There is definitely some suspense and romance, and the narrative is quickly paced. Worth picking up if you have a hankering for some young adult science fiction, if you like the underdog, if you want to know what the fuss is about, or if you just feel like hating on the modern police state.

A for Anything (1959)

I recently bought Damon Knight's A for Anything (1959) because I liked the cover and it was fifty cents, completely forgetting that I read another book by Knight back in 2005 and loved it. Since Knight is such a strong writer, it should come as no surprise that I loved this nicely covered book as well. Sci-fi authors are lucky that they had such talented cover artists, or I don't even know how I'd decide what to read...

In A for Anything, it is 1971 (the not-so-distant future!) and a scientist invents a machine (a "Gismo") that can make an exact replica of anything else, including itself (and, eventually, people). The scientist is excited and sees this as the answer to all of humanity's problems -- why if no one had to work, go hungry, or want for anything, then what could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters the government tries to seize the invention before it causes the downfall of capitalism. On to their plan, the scientist mails out 100 pairs of Gismos to random addresses and then heads to his idyllic retreat with his family to await the utopia. It soon becomes apparent that his good-intentioned idea has resulted in anarchy, violence, and a huge power struggle between those who have the Gismos and those who don't.

Jump ahead to 2049:

Over half the population has been killed in a series of large-scale wars and small-scale battles for position. No scientific progress has been made since 1970. Huge swaths of the country have reverted to nature. And the country is divided up among a set of noble families who own slaves (which they call Slobs) and live lives of medieval decadence under the ever-present shadow of potential treason and overthrow by a rival family.

Our protagonist, who we never really like all that much, is Dick Jones, a young man who is next-in-line as the leader of a settlement in the Poconos. Just before he is about to fly to Colorado for his four years of military service at the Eagles, the gigantic court of a very big boss, he gets in an argument with his cousin that ends in a duel. But leaving his small pond in the Poconos for the oceanic grandeur of a Colorado mountaintop knocks Jones down a peg. In fact, much of the book is about Jones learning to navigate the complex levels of power that make up life in Eagles. As one might expect, this uneven society can't last forever, and when it finally explodes, Jones is right at the center of it.

I found tons of parallels between this book and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano -- a distopic society based on the saving grace of technology, the philosophical exploration of worker and owner (or slob and ruler), and the climax and ending of each book (which I won't give away here) are remarkably similar. Someone else should read this too, so we can talk about it!

[Very green back cover available here.]

War of the Worlds (1898)

I just finished my journey through The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898) courtesy of the daily bite-sized emails of DailyLit (which I love -- next up: Anne of Green Gables!). It is no secret that I love H. G. Wells, and The War of the Worlds continued his streak of exceeding my high expectations.

The War of the Worlds is such a popular novel that I felt like I already knew the whole story, even though I'd never read it, heard the radio version, or seen any of the movies. And yet, the original text contains plenty of surprises, enough science to keep it interesting, and a truly engaging story of human behavior. It's a fast read, and should be required reading for anyone interested in science fiction, war, outer space, or life as we know it.

And even if you don't want to read it, take some time to browse through this amazing collection of The War of the Worlds book covers and interior illustrations (like the one above by Edward Gorey) from the past 110 years.

[Oh, come on -- go read it right here! Or on Daily Lit! Or, you know, in book form.]

Men, Martians and Machines (1955)

I picked up Men, Martians and Machines by Eric Frank Russell (1955) at Half Price Books a few months ago because I liked the crazy space knight on the cover, it was only a dollar, and it looked like it needed rescuing. What a pleasant surprise to find out that it is also a pretty great book.

Men, Martians and Machines is a collection of four inter-connected stories of the adventures of the crew of the Marathon, a new-fangled super-spaceship that thanks to some hastily explained science is able to explore further out than ever before. Our unnamed narrator is the Sergeant at Arms for the ship, and the crew is made up of a fun mix of Earthlings and a handful of Martians (very large octopus-like beings who are obsessed with space chess, like low gravity, and need very little air -- making them perfect for external ship repairs. They also love making jokes about how bad humans smell.)

Our narrator guides us through the ship's near collision with the sun, a trip to a planet of killer machines (well they mostly just want to dissect you to figure out what makes your individualistic mind run, but that tends to involve killing), a world filled with surprisingly defensive plants, and a planet of hypnotic beings that can make you see whatever they want, but when threatened actually look like a bundle of writhing snakes.

These stories are light on science and heavy on adventure, with a playful almost pulpy-detective-story edge to the narrator's voice. Here's a couple awesome sample sentences for your reading pleasure:

On the left a tall, idiotic gadget faintly resembling a drunken surrealist's notion of a sober giraffe was running away with McNulty.

The Martians frequently tried to imitate the Terrestrial habit of significantly closing one eye; they kept on trying despite the dismal fact that it can't be done without eyelids.

There are some fun anachronisms (like a set of on-going gags between our narrator and the ship photographer who is constantly worried about his boxes of heavy and fragile photographic plates breaking -- although, [nerd alert!] to be fair, photographic plates were used in astronomical photography until fairly recently, which I know since I had to rehouse and describe a bunch of them in my last archives job. They are very heavy.) And some unsurprising but cringe-worthy anachronisms like the fact that the alien life forms are almost always compared to Asians (it seriously seems like half of all old sci-fi books do this), a lot of talk about how black the black doctor is, and no women are mentioned at all.

Still, anachronisms aside, this really is a fun book. The aliens are interesting and surprising and and the other planets are creative and nicely described. Add to that some very good action sequences and the occasional bit of snappy dialogue and you have a nice little read on your hands.

[Back cover is here, fools. Check it out to see the cutest little spaceship of all time!]

The Wizard of Venus (1941) and Pirate Blood (1932)

This 1970 volume posthumously publishes two of Edgar Rice Burroughs's novellas that were found after his death, The Wizard of Venus and Pirate Blood. It is obvious that neither one was ever shined up for publication -- although the Wizard of Venus, as a continuing volume in the Carson Napier novels, is more of a done deal than the rather bare bones pirate story.

The Wizard of Venus was written in 1941, fell prey to the changing nature of the pulp fiction market after the war, and was never published. It is a rather slight, but fun, story of Carson Napier, an American who has been conquering and living on Venus through a series of four books. He and his friend (a Venusian, I think, although I've never read any of the other Venus books, so I'm not totally sure), test out an airplane-type-contraption that Napier has invented. Sadly they get thrown off course and caught up in those crazy Venusian clouds. When they finally land, they find themselves in the middle of a war between several neighboring nobles, one of whom has convinced everyone that he is a wizard with the power to turn people into zaldars (which are kind of like pigs). [This is, by the way, apparently what he is trying to do to Napier on the cover of the book.] Because of this power, no one will eat a zaldar any more (because it might be family), and the wizard and his followers get all the good food.

One noble family has held out against the evil wizard, although their beautiful daughter has been captured and zaldarized. They confiscate Napier's ship and weapons and won't give them back unless he gets the wizard to turn their daughter back into a person. It isn't hard to figure out where this "Emperor's New Clothes" kind of story will go, but it is fun and the descriptions of the zaldar's are neat (even though the people seem to just be from the Middle Ages and not really from Venus).

Pirate Blood was written in 1932 and is an adventure story that loosely explores the nature vs. nurture question through the person of Johnny LaFitte, an ancestor of the famous pirate Jean LaFitte, who tries to ignore his bloodline and be a cop instead. It doesn't really work out for him. After a rather cool section where a bad guy takes off for the Philippines in a homemade dirigible with LaFitte on board, our hero finds himself second-in-command of a group of roughneck pirates and strangely attracted to the captive woman of his boss. There is a lot of excellent action and adventure in this one, although the second half is very choppy and Burroughs obviously meant to fill it out more before publication.

These are both very fun reads if you are into Burroughs, although if you are just checking him out for the first time I would delve into the Tarzan or John Carter of Mars series first.

[Yay to Choo for lending this to me!]

Skylark Three (1948)

Skylark Three (published serially in 1930 and in book form in 1948) by E. E. "Doc" Smith is the second in the Skylark series, and continues the adventures of the strong, smart and honorable Dick Seaton, his strong, smart, and honorable (and rich) friend Martin Crane, and their wives as they fly around the universe, help alien planets, try to thwart the evil DuQuesne, and ultimately battle for the survival of life as we know it. Naturally they manage to do all this without too much adjusting of their moral compasses, quibbling amongst themselves, or meeting any aliens they can't either see eye to eye with or obliterate.

Smith writes great science, although the scientific sections in this one sometimes get a little lengthy and confusing. Not as much romance (since everyone is already married) and really not that many battles either since much of the book is spent on compiling the best scientific minds from a group of widely dispersed planets in order to defeat a powerful foe from another galaxy. Fun devices that take the place of the all-powerful Lens in the Lensman series include an "educator" which is sort of a freaky-Frankenstein device that lets you transfer knowledge, thoughts and experiences from one brain to another. Selectively. And also from dead brains! So you know that is going to come in handy. They also develop a Projector that lets you see, hear, and physically appear in any location in the universe. Add that to your educator and you have the perfect tool both for collaboration and total upheaval. Plus there are water people who live on a watery planet and have webbed hands and feet!

So you see, science is exciting. And Choo is great for loaning me this book. I love the "Doc"...

The Skylark of Space, 1928

The Skylark of Space (1928) is the first in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series. He wrote the book between 1915 and 1921 with his friend Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of one of his college classmates, while working on his doctorate and later as a food chemist. The Skylark series is known as the first great space opera, and (as you might expect) it reads like a model of the genre.

Our handsome, smart, and honorable hero, government scientist Richard Seaton, accidentally discovers a powerful reaction when he mixes a newly discovered element X (distilled from a meteor) with some copper and some kind of unexplained force field -- when everything comes together, the copper tub in which he was experimenting with the materials shoots out of the room in a straight line, blasts a big hole through the wall, and heads for the horizon. Instead of worrying who might get hit with the super-powered tub, he does more experiments, and even though none of his lab buddies believe him, he knows he is on to something big.

Seaton sets up a business to explore the possibilities of this new discovery with his friend, and fellow handsome, smart and honorable guy, Martin Crane (who also happens to be a billionaire), and their first plan (naturally) is to build a spaceship that can be powered by their element X. They are supported by the beautiful, smart and honorable fiance of Seaton, Miss Dorothy Vaneman, who provides plucky attitude, practical advice, foodstuffs, and occasional violin solos.

Unfortunately, the two are hounded by the handsome, smart, and dishonorable scientist Marc DuQuesne -- a former colleague of Seaton who wants to monopolize the development of element X, and will go to any lengths to do so. After awhile Dorothy is kidnapped, another girl enters the story (don't worry, she is beautiful, smart, and honorable), and everyone one ends up billions and billions of light years from earth in an unidentified galaxy with no fuel.

That is where the fun starts.

It takes him awhile, but Smith is at his best when making up crazy new worlds and alternate near-human universes. The second half of the book is full of them, and he even throws in an exciting space battle.

And don't worry, things turn out okay -- otherwise who could we follow over to Skylark Three!

[Back cover available here for completest sorts.]

The House That Stood Still

Once again I was seduced into buying an A. E. Van Vogt book by the awesome cover. How could I resist this? The House That Stood Still was originally published in the 1950s, and it should be no surprise to you that this printing came out in 1971. Totally psychedelic, man!

As you may remember, I was not totally wowed by the only other Van Vogt book I've read (which I apparently read last February -- February is Van Vogt month in Spacebeer-land!), although I still thought it (and its cover) were worthwhile. The House That Stood Still was a much more enjoyable story and I give it an enthusiastic recommendation that goes beyond the awesomeness of the crazy rainbow-colored woman-house with an eye-bridge on the cover.

The most interesting thing about this book is that it is hardly a science fiction book at all, even though Van Vogt is one of the best known science fiction writers of the 40s and 50s. Instead, the book reads like a noir-y California detective novel. I have no problem with this since I happen to love noir-y California detective novels.

Our hero, Allison Stephens, is a lawyer for one of the oldest families in Almirante, California, whose ancestral home is an imposing marble structure that looks over the town and the ocean from a high hill. The head of the family dies and an unknown nephew takes his place -- but as soon as the new guy gets to town, strange things start happening to Allison. First he is confronted with an anonymous note claiming that the uncle's grave is empty. Then he comes across a strange Ancient-Mexican cult in one of the offices in the family-owned office building where he works -- he overhears some cryptic conversation and bursts in to stop them from whipping a beautiful woman. This woman ends up popping up unexpectedly into Allison's life over and over again and sleeping with him (in some of the truly vaguest and yet somehow salacious sex scenes ever). His desire for the mysterious woman, and his obligation to protect the interests of his client, lead him deeper and deeper into the secrets of the house, and into the world of a group of dozens of immortals that have lived in and near the house since the days when ancient Mexican civilizations ruled the California coast.

Oh, and there is also a thwarted nuclear attack and a robot spaceship, but I wouldn't want to give away too much.

Here is the back cover (with a rather misleading description of the book that makes it sound way more traditionally science-fiction-y than it really is). And here is the quite awesome personalized embossing I found in my copy. I would love one of those things. You better believe I'd be embossing everything in sight.

Masters of the Vortex

Aw shit, I finished the Lensman series last year! But what if I still want to read about the Lensman universe? What's a girl to do?

Why she just picks up a handy copy of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Masters of the Vortex, another action-packed tale set in the universe of the Lens, but without Kim Kinnison and our other favorites from the series (thanks, once again, to the lovely Choo for the book loan). The stories were originally published in the early 40s, and the hardcover came out in 1960 (a pretty detailed description of the publication process can be found here if you're interested).

In Masters of the Vortex our hero (Neal "Storm" Cloud) actually isn't a Lensman, instead he is a nuclear engineer with an amazingly mathematical mind. Cloud's family is tragically killed in a freak accident by a "flying vortex of atomic destruction" -- one of many vortices that have been a side-effect of the wide-spread use of nuclear energy and are terrorizing planets around the universe. Devastated by the loss of his family, Cloud takes a leave of absence from the Galactic Patrol, only to be struck with an idea for "blowing out" a vortex and stopping its path of destruction. It is rather technical (and Smith is soooo good at writing the technical stuff in a fun way), but the general idea is that Cloud's brain works so fast that he can calculate exactly where the center of the vortex will be at a moment in time and then hit it with a bomb that is set at the exact strength to dissipate the charge and save the world.

As you might expect, this works, and it makes Cloud a very popular guy.

Cloud's new job as the universe's one and only vortex blaster takes him from planet to planet where he and his (totally awesome) crew (of aliens) battle wits against drug dealers and freaky life forms, and where his heart eventually begins to heal and his eyes turn toward his sexy, super smart, and self-taught psychic co-worker.

This book is a very fun read and stands alone from the other Lens books (so no need to read them first if you haven't already).

[And rock out with the back cover here -- Runaway Vortex!!]

Pellucidar (1915)

Thanks to the book- hunting and lending skills of the lovely choo, I helped myself to a big helping of Pellucidar (1915) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. As you might know, Burroughs also wrote the Tarzan novels (which I love -- and I also super love the movies, of which there are about 500), and the John Carter/Mars/Barsoom novels, of which I've only read one, but I liked it quite a bit.

Pellucidar is actually the second in Burrough's hollow earth series that started with At the Earth's Core. I haven't read the first book in the series, but like many adventure novels, the action is pretty self-contained and references to happenings in the first book are explained.

Our hero, David Innes, invented a mining drill back in the first book, but when he drove it into the earth with his partner Perry, they quickly lost control of the drill and feared for their lives as they headed to the center of the earth. Boy were they surprised when, instead of encountering molten lava, they found an undiscovered world. There is a pretty complete description of Pellucidar's geography and inhabitants on Wikipedia, but the highlights are: There is no horizon since the land curves up to follow the interior curve of the earth; the sun hangs in the center of the sky and never moves, so there is no sense of time and there is never night; there is a moon that hangs in the sky, just one mile over the "Land of the Awful Shadow" which can never escape from the darkness of the stationary moon; the people are at a stone age level of development, and most live in caves; and freaky intelligent giant flying lizards terrorize the small and unorganized groups of humans and make them their slaves using the brute strength of a third race of semi-intelligent apes.

In the first book it seems that David and Perry began to organize the humans and fight the lizards, and David also marries one of the super lovely caveladies (Dian the Beautiful). But when David takes the mining machine back to the surface to get some 20th century materials to help in their revolution, a bad human kidnaps Dian and the alliance falls apart.

Pellucidar begins with David's return to the earth's core and follows him as he rescues his woman, fights the evil lizards, reunites the cave people, and teaches everyone about building boats, firing cannons, reading, and not enslaving captured prisoners.

The book is a fun read, as all Burroughs is, and the geography and people of Pellucidar allow for some pretty creative adventures. There are occasional slips into early 20th century racism, but only slightly cringeworthy and nothing too blatant. I would gladly return to the world of Pellucidar -- and I am particularly excited to see what happens when Tarzan goes there...

[Check out the back cover here. And if you are so inclined, just read the whole darn thing here.]

Children of the Lens

The last official book of the Lensman series (again, nicely lent by the lovely choo) is Children of the Lens (serialized in 1947/48, published in hardcover in 1954). In this book, the long work of the Arisian master race is finally realized with the off-spring of Kim and Clarissa Kinnison. Their son, Kit, and two sets of twin daughters (who of course all have red hair), are the world's only third-stage lensman, and with their combined powers have minds even stronger than those of their mentors.

As the novel opens, the fight between good and evil has really heated up the universe, and only the combined strength of the first, second, and third stage lensmen can save it, mostly through a series of interconnecting adventures. In one such quest, Kim Kinnison takes on the persona of Sybly Whyte, a hacky (but popular) author of space-opera novels and schlocky journalism. The section Smith gives us of one of Whyte's books is some of the best science-fiction satire ever:

Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship's plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall...

Children of the Lens is a little more disjointed than its predecessors, mostly because we are following the adventures and quests of five children, two parents, and three other second-stage lensmen, instead of focusing most of our attention on Kim Kinnison and his work. Spreading the adventure out among a larger cast of characters does nothing to lessen the excitement, however. Children of the Lens provides a satisfying and fun to read conclusion to the Lensman saga.

And there is still Masters of the Vortex, a seventh novel by Smith that takes place in the Lensman universe, but isn't part of the story arc explored in these first six books. And of course I'm going to read it.

Go Lensmen!

[Oooh, and you have to check out this fold-out ad for a science fiction bookclub that was tipped in to the middle of the book. My favorite part is the fold-together envelope that you use to send in your dime for your trial membership.]

Second Stage Lensmen

I love the lensman books. Love love love them. And I extra- special loved Second Stage Lensmen (1953), the fifth book in the series.

This book starts one second after the last book leaves off, with our hero Kim Kinnison and his lovely lady-friend, the brave and smart and beautiful Clarissa MacDougal basking in the glow of finally deciding to get married. Since Kim just saved the universe, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

Wrong.

Kim gets a mind-beam from his Mentor on Arisia telling him to think a little harder about his plan to get all the bad guys. It turns out they go much higher up than Kim had originally thought, and if he were to abandon his post and get married now, they would most certainly attack and destroy the earth.

So: Kim gets back to business. Clues first lead him to an Earth-like planet in an unexplored section of the universe. He gets ready to make a landing when he realizes that the entire planet is filled with women -- tall, beautiful, strong women, who don't wear any clothes, measure everything by its efficiency, have bred their men into a short animalistic subspecies that they use only for breeding, and have really bad haircuts:

But she wore no jewelry, no bracelets, no ribbons; no decoration of any sort of kind. No paint, no powder, no touch of perfume. Her heavy, bushy eyebrows had never been plucked or clipped. Some of her teeth had been expertly filled, and she had a two-tooth bridge that would have done credit to any Tellurian dentist -- but her hair! It, too, was painfully clean, as was the white scalp beneath it, but aesthetically it was a mess. Some of it reached almost to her shoulders, but it was very evident that whenever a lock grew long enough to be a bother, she was wont to grab it and hew it off, as close to the skull as possible with whatever knife, shears, or other implement came readiest to hand.

[This reminds me that I need a haircut.]

In order to obtain information about how this key planet fit into the schemes of the bad guys, Clarissa is made into the very first female Lensman. So at least the two of them can lens each other and have telepathic conversations across the depths of space, even if they can't get married....

All kinds of exciting things happen, and eventually Kim decides to go undercover and infiltrate the upper levels of the Boskonian bad-guy leadership. To do this he takes on the identity of a soldier that matches his body type. After some painstaking work to change the archival record (which is later tested for forgery by the head of the bad guys), plus some magic mind work on anyone who ever knew the ex-soldier, Kim takes his place, rises through the ranks, and does just about as well as you might expect the hero of a space opera to do.

Gray Lensman

Gray Lensman by E. E. "Doc" Smith (1951) starts us up right after the action of Galactic Patrol. Our hero, Kim Kinnison, is once again using all his resources, strength and smarts to try and infiltrate the drug- dealing, power- hoarding, Civilization- hating entity known as Boskone. In doing this, he will have to stretch his power with the Lens beyond that of any other lensman, and although he has a lot of help from his friends, most of the work can only be done by him alone.

Well, him and the brief help of the "trimly attractive blonde" librarian at the Library of Science. The library interaction happens around page 99 on my copy -- worth reading if you are a librarian, but not really worth quoting. The librarian helps Kinnison sort through the great thinkers of the world by running a set of data cards through their computer and selecting for the highest ratings of different criteria. Yay libraries!

There is a lot of great action in this one, and some very fun science (including the creation of a black hole [or a "negasphere"], the towing of a planet from one universe to the next, human regeneration of limbs, and an awesome climax where a key target is destroyed by slamming two uninhabited planets into it from opposite directions). Yay!

And of course, the sexy red-headed nurse, Clarissa MacDougal (the one with the perfect skeleton) isn't forgotten. The sexual tension continues to build through Gray Lensman and by the end it looks like those two crazy kids will finally get together. And breed more perfect skeletons!

[Finally -- isn't the spacesuit on this cover the greatest? If I could make one of these, I might wear it around all the time. I think it would bring me the respect I so greatly deserve.]