Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 56

Retro Review: “The Winged Man” by E. Mayne Hull and A.E. van Vogt

[image error]“The Winged Man” is a novel by E. Mayne Hull and A.E. van Vogt. It was first serialised in the May and June 1944 issues of Astounding Science Fiction and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here and here. There is also a paperback version, which has apparently been expanded from the magazine version. However, I don’t have the paperback, so this review is based on the magazine version alone. The review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

“The Winged Man” opens in the present day, i.e. 1944, aboard the US Navy submarine Sea Serpent in the Pacific. The Sea Serpent is currently above water and one night, First Officer William Kenlon chances to observe a very large bird flying past. There is only one problem: The Sea Serpent is more than one thousand two hundred miles from the nearest atoll, so where does the bird come from? Furthermore, the bird Kenlon saw is considerably larger than an albatross, the largest bird who could fly more than a thousand miles.

Kenlon discusses this mystery with the Sea Serpent‘s third officer, one Lieutenant Dan Tedders, who almost never sleeps. However, he is asleep when Kenlon rouses him to annoy him with questions about the exact position of the Sea Serpent (which any officer worth his salt could have determined himself). And since this is a story published in Astounding, that conversation is full of infodumps and clumsy “As you know, Bob…” dialogue about albatrosses and the size of the Pacific.

After the infodump, Kenlon decides to take another look outside. The moon breaks through the clouds and Kenlon chances to see the bird again. Only that it isn’t a bird. It’s a man with wings.

Shortly thereafter, Tedders shows up to apologise and technobabble some more about what Kenlon might have seen. Lucky for the reader, Kenlon and Tedders are interrupted before they can launch into another infodump, because the winged man has landed aboard the Sea Serpent and is attaching something to its hull. Kenlon and the winged man fight, before the winged man takes off into the night.

Now we’re in for another endless round of technobabble and infodumping, while Kenlon attempts to remove the device the winged man has attached to the hull. Alas, the device cannot be removed. Though the radio operator of the Sea Serpent is fairly that it’s not a bomb, but some kind of radio device.

Kenlon and submarine commander Jones-Gordon decide to capture the winged man, for otherwise they would never be believed. They succeed, too, but not before the winged man has attached a second device to the hull of the Sea Serpent. The devices cannot be removed and emit a light so bright that the bones of the crewmen aboard the Sea Serpent become visible (I had flashbacks of The Day After at this point, though the device is not a nuclear weapon)

Interrogating the winged man proves to be difficult, for he speaks a language no one aboard can identify, let alone understand. Finally, they begin to communicate via drawings in a notebook.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Sea Serpent suffers various misadventures. One man drowns as Kenlon and several other crewmen fall into the sea. Later, they spot a bleak grey shoreline on the horizon, even though there shouldn’t be any land in more than a thousand miles. An attempt to explore the mysterious landmass causes two more crewmen to die, when they sink into quicksand.

Kenlon, who has a knack for languages, tries to learn the winged man’s language and teach him English. The effort is successful enough that they can communicate. The winged man, whose name is Nemmo, informs Kenlon that the Sea Serpent has been brought a million years into the future via the strange devices Nemmo attached to the hull. It’s amazing that no one aboard the submarine noticed this before Nemmo told them. You’d think they would at least notice that they have lost contact with their command and that no new orders are coming in.

The land is uninhabitable due to “water that fell from space” and created the treacherous quicksand. The winged people were genetically engineered to survive under the new conditions, as were their sworn enemies, a race of amphibious humans, while the regular human died out. The winged people live in a floating metal city in the sky, the amphibian men live in metal citadel under the sea. The two races have been at war for a long time now. Somehow, Nemmo’s people managed to bring a WWII submarine into the far future. They want the Sea Serpent to destroy the citadel of their amphibian enemies, then they will return them to their own time.

Commander Jones-Gordon has no intention of helping the winged people. The US Navy will not be drawn into a private war in the far future. And besides, the only hostile act – kidnapping the Sea Serpent and her crew – was committed by the winged people.

The Sea Serpent finally reaches the island city of the winged people. Kenlon spots other craft in the water around the island. He asks Nemmo about this. Nemmo tells him that other winged people have been sent through time to bring back war machines to defeat their amphibian enemies. However, the amphibians have not been idle either and drag Commander Jones-Gordon down into the sea. Thus ends part one.

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Astounding’s covers in the 1940s were hit and miss, but this one definitely falls on the “hit” side of the equation.

Part two begins with Kenlon, now senior officer aboard the Sea Serpent, staring at the spot where Jones-Gordon was dragged into the depths. Kenlon initially wants to go after Jones-Gordon and his kidnappers with the submarine, but quickly realises that’s futile, because Commander Jones-Gordon is surely dead by now, while the amphibians are headed for their underwater city. Kenlon plans to head there as well, catch up with the kidnappers/murderers of Commander Jones-Gordon and torpedo them. However, Nemmo claims not to know the coordinates of the undersea city. Only the council of the winged people knows the exact location.

Kenlon’s interrogation of Nemmo is interrupted by a delegation from one of the other ships the winged people have brought through time. This delegation consists entirely of women, who are escorting a political figure called the Sessa Clen to her wedding. Their ship comes from ten thousand years in the future. Luckily, the commander, a woman named Dorilee, speaks English that Kenlon can understand (though it is very unlikely that the English language will remain even remotely understandable even a thousand years into the future, let alone ten) and also implies that Americans are the only civilised people of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, Dorilee and her squad of Joannas are the only female characters in the story so far and they only appear partway into part two.

Kenlon is quite smitten with Dorilee, while Dorilee infodumps all over him. She explains how her own flying ship works (magnetism), gives him a rundown on the other ships the winged people abducted and also informs Kenlon that Nemmo has been in constant contact with the other winged people. Then Dorilee abruptly decides to take command of the Sea Serpent, because she believes that only a submarine can carry out the winged people’s mission. Kenlon pulls his gun on Dorilee who takes him out with some paralysing crystals.

“A woman was about to capture a fully armed, fully manned United States submarine”, a desperate and paralysed Kenlon muses, while at least this reader cheered Dorilee on, because she is a lot more interesting than the rather dull and bland Kenlon.

Meanwhile, Kenlon is still standing like a statue in his own control room, while musing about the humiliation he just experienced and how this will disgrace him in the eyes of the crew. He is also furious that Dorilee doesn’t even seem to care about the mortal wound she dealt to Kenlon’s honour, because women just cannot understand such things. At this point, my eyes rolled so hard that I almost sprained them.

But Van Vogt and his wife E. Mayne Hull are not yet done with the casual sexism. For when Dorilee, who apparently also likes infodumping to people who can’t answer, informs Kenlon that they need to return to their own time quickly, for otherwise the Sessa Clen whom they are escorting to her marriage will be replaced by her sister, Kenlon muses that a woman on her way to her wedding is more tigress than human being. At this point, my view of Kenlon changed from “bland nonentity, who unfortunately happens to be the protagonist” to “sexist jerk”.

By now, the second and third officer, who were both up on deck, realise what is going on. The second officer tries to retake the control room, only to fall to the paralysing crystals. Third officer Tedders, however, is manning the Sea Serpent‘s anti-aircraft gun and will not stand down. Dorilee now gives Kenlon a device that neutralises the paralysing effect and tell him to order Tedders to stand down. Kenlon, fearing bloodshed, does so.

Once Dorilee and her Joannas have taken over the Sea Serpent, they are eager to set off and destroy the underwater city. However, the winged people are no more willing to give her the coordinates than they were willing to give them to give them to Kenlon. For it turns out that the council of the winged people is still undecided on the plan to destroy the stronghold of their enemies. This is a problem, because the council is supposed to be omniscient. And so the council demand to see Kenlon first. They do not ask to see Dorilee, at least not now. But then, Van Vogt and Hull have been referring to the winged people as the “winged men” throughout. Apparently, sexism is still a thing one million years in the future.

Kenlon is taken to the city of the winged people and now Van Vogt and Hull finally remember that where there are winged men, there will be winged women as well. None of them get any lines – all we get are some descriptions of Kenlon ogling them, before he decides to ogle the flying city instead.

But before Kenlon gets to meet the council, he first finds his consciousness transferred into the body of a winged being. Kenlon experiences the wonders of flight and joins in with the winged people sunbathing, singing and dancing high above the clouds that now envelop the Earth. But before Kenlon can actually talk to anybody, he suddenly finds himself underwater swimming, his consciousness suddenly transferred into the body of an amphibian person. The amphibians are on a shark hunt with Kenlon along for the ride. And then, once the shark has been captured and killed, Kenlon finds himself taken to the underwater city. He notes that the amphibians are all busily working, whereas the winged people prefer to flit about, while singing and dancing. Kenlon also learns a little about the main problem facing the amphibians – more and more of their number are succumbing to the lure of the sea and deserting the city – and meets an amphibian woman. This one even gets a few lines, mostly to berate the amphibian menfolk for their fascination with the sea and to inform us that women who take to the sea can never return to the city. Whether in the air or under water, sexism is clearly alive and well in the year 999999 A.D.

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This psychedelic cover for The Winged Men dates from 1970.

The scenes of Kenlon experiencing the joys of flying and swimming are nigh hallucinatory. In fact, it is striking how many scenes there are in golden age SFF that read like transcripts of drug trips. I always assumed the association of SFF and drugs was mainly a product of the New Wave, but it was already a thing in the 1930s and 1940s.

Just before Kenlon is returned to his own body, he witnesses several amphibians dragging the limp body of Commander Jones-Gordon through an airlock into the underwater city and announcing that he will be easy enough to revive. So Jones-Gordon is alive after all.

However, Kenlon doesn’t have time to muse about this, before the council of the winged people asks him to decide which of the two humanoid species on this far future Earth – the amphibians or the winged people – should survive. For both species believe that the Earth is not big enough for both of them and are planning to destroy the other. The amphibians have the better chance, because they have powerful tractor beams that are slowly dragging the flying city into the sea. However, the winged people have Kenlon and a submarine.

There is no real reason why this weighty decision should fall to Kenlon other than that he is the protagonist and currently in command (at least in theory) of the lone vessel that can destroy the underwater city. The council of the winged people also make it very clear that they don’t want an alliance with Dorilee and her all-women troop of Joannas (who actually are in command of the Sea Serpent), for only Kenlon can resolve their dilemma. Gee, I wonder why.

Once the council of the winged men have said their piece, they return Kenlon to the Sea Serpent where a furious Dorilee is waiting for him. Turns out that Kenlon has been gone for three days, not a few hours as he initially assumed. It also turns out that Dorilee did not get the amazing drug trip of flying with the winged people and swimming with the amphibians, when she was questioned by the council. Instead, she was merely taken to a room with what sounds like a primitive computer.

Dorilee is eager to attack the undersea city, so they can all return to their own times. Kenlon, however, does not want to attack the city, because that would mean killing Commander Jones-Gordon. Of course, Kenlon doesn’t even particularly like the man, but he still feels dutybound to rescue him. Furthermore, Kenlon finds that he does not want to exterminate an entire species, even though his commanders are planning to do the same thing to the Japanese.

It is depressing that by the standards of Astounding Science Fiction in 1944, a character realising that genocide is bad is a step forward. After all, in Fredric Brown’s “Arena”, published in the same year, genocide was the solution to the protagonist’s dilemma. It’s also disturbing how many science fiction stories published in 1944, mainly in Astounding, but also elsewhere, feature two species so different and hostile to each other that the universe/galaxy/solar system/planet is only big enough for one of them. Yes, I know it was in the middle of World War II, but fanzines from the same era often contain musing about how science fiction can bring about a better and peaceful world for everybody, so why were the prozines so genocidal?

However, Dorilee is still bound on destroying the undersea city and the amphibians. The hatches are closed and the engines start up. However, Dorilee and her Joannas have made a fatal mistake. They use the Diesel engines not the electrical motors. And the Diesel engines require so much oxygen that they quickly exhaust the entire submarine’s air supply. One by one, the Joannas pass out. Kenlon, however, was lucky enough to grab an oxygen tank just in time. He disarms the Joannas, strips them nude, because they might have weapons or shields hidden in their underwear (yes, honestly, that’s the reason given in the story) and locks them in the torpedo room. However, Kenlon has regained his honour and standing in the eyes of his crew and that clearly matters more than the fact that he just stripped and groped more than forty women.

No sooner has Kenlon regained control of the Sea Serpent that the amphibians return Commander Jones-Gordon. It turns out that Jones-Gordon made a deal with the amphibians. They will return the Sea Serpent to its own time, if Jones-Gordon destroys the city of the winged people, using the warheads from the torpedoes as bombs and the submarine’s onboard sea plane to launch them. Kenlon wants nothing to do with this, after all he has just come to the conclusion that genocide is bad.

Luckily, Kenlon speaks the language of the winged people and Jones-Gordon does not. And so he tells the winged people to seize Jones-Gordon and himself. Then he sets course for the undersea city and fires torpedoes into the city’s central computer a.k.a. “council” and the tractor beam emitter, while leaving ninety-five percent of the city intact. This way, the amphibians no longer pose a threat to the winged people.

Jones-Gordon forgives Kenlon for his mutiny and the Sea Serpent is returned to 1944 – without Nemmo and the Joannas, of course.

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An impressive minimalist cover for “The Winged Man” from 1967.

Short fiction rather than novels was the beating heart of the science fiction genre during the golden age. As a result, the novel category at the Retro Hugos is often full of left-field finalist. However, pickings were truly slim in 1944 for The Winged Man to make the Retro Hugo ballot. For the novel is, to put it politely, not very good.

For starters, it’s much too long. There is no reason that this story needs to be novel-length. It would have worked just as well as a novella or even novelette. But as it is, The Winged Man feels padded. A large portion of the novel is being taken up by Kenlon musing about his commander, whom he dislikes because Jones-Gordon is too rigid and unimaginative, Kenlon nursing his wounded masculinity, after Dorilee takes over his ship, and Kenlon wondering whether to commit genocide and how to extract himself and his ship from the dilemma in which they find themselves. As a result, we spend an awful lot of time in the head of Kenlon, who’s simply not a very likeable character. He’s dull, bland and a raging sexist.

The same description could also apply to the novel as a whole. For while pulp science fiction can be many things, it rarely is boring. The Winged Man, however, is just dull. For large stretches of the story, very little happens. And even if something happens, it isn’t particularly exciting. Even action scenes are dull. What little happens is also quite often confusing. There were several moments where I thought, “Wait a minute, what just happened? Did I miss something?” The pacing of the novel is simply off.

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This German cover from 1967 accurately illustrates the story for once.

Submarines were a popular subject for pulp fiction from the 1930s well into the 1950s and beyond, not just in the US but in Germany as well. As a result, I have read my share of submarine adventures and none of them manage to make life and battle aboard a submarine as dull as The Winged Man. For SFF stories about submarines published in 1944 alone, “Undersea Guardians” by Ray Bradbury is much better than this turkey.

But while part I is merely dull, part II is so suffused with glaring sexism that it’s hard to imagine that The Winged Man was co-written by (and in the magazine version, solely credited to) a woman, E. Mayne Hull, A.E. van Vogt’s first wife. I forgive Hull and Van Vogt for not including any women in the first part, because there were no women on submarines of any nation during World War II. However, the treatment of Dorilee and her Joannas in part II is unforgivable. Yes, the idea of an all-women military unit was revolutionary in 1944 (and there are still plenty of people in the SFF genre today who have issues with the idea of women soldiers). And to be fair, Dorilee isn’t particularly likeable – after all, she does commandeer the Sea Serpent after taking out her crew, though she doesn’t want to kill anybody, if she doesn’t have to. She is also fully willing to commit genocide, but then so is Commander Jones-Gordon.

However, Kenlon’s blatant dismissal of Dorilee’s motives grates. Yes, it’s only a wedding, but Kenlon himself admits that he has no idea how weddings work and what they mean in the future world from whence Dorilee hails. It’s well possible that the failure of the bride to appear at her wedding might mean summary execution for the bride and her retinue. It might mean that the bride’s home country is bombed into submission – after all, it’s clearly a political wedding. We don’t know the consequences of the bride missing her wedding and neither does Kenlon. Nonetheless, he is convinced that the Sessa Clen, the woman Dorilee serves, is merely a bridezilla willing to do whatever it takes to get her perfect wedding.

The fact that Dorilee and her Joannas are defeated by their lack of knowledge about how WWII submarines work grates as well, even though the text makes it clear that the reason for their ignorance is the fact that the technology is so old that any knowledge they have about it is spotty. Nonetheless, there is an unpleasant undertone of “women are just too stupid to understand science” here, especially since oh so superior Kenlon manages to stay conscious, because he knows how his own submarine works.

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I assume the woman on this 1980 cover is Dorilee, but why are the men dressed like extras from Battestar Galactica, when they should be wearing Navy uniforms?

But the most annoying thing is being treated to pages upon pages of Kenlon nursing his wounded masculinity and worrying that the crew will no longer respect him, now he has been beaten by a woman (Dude, I’m pretty sure the crew can’t stand you anyway, because you’re an insufferable prick). And then we get Kenlon whining that Dorilee will never understand how she has humiliated him, because she is just a woman. Never mind that Dorilee is a military commander as well and therefore Kenlon’s equal and would probably understand his worries about losing the respect of his subordinates. Most likely, it simply never occurs to her that the fact that she is a woman would be a problem for Kenlon. And don’t even get me started on Kenlon personally stripping every single Joanna aboard naked. But he doesn’t do it because he enjoys it (yeah, I bet he doesn’t), but because the Joannas might have hidden weapons or shields in their underwear. Honestly, the supposed hero of this story gropes and strips more than forty unconscious women. I cannot imagine such a scene flying anywhere in modern SFF.

All of the above could be blamed on the fact that the POV character of the novel just happens to be a sexist jerk. However, the sexism in The Winged Man is not just in Kenlon’s head – no, the whole novel is suffused with casual sexism. It begins with the fact that the two species competing for dominance on the Earth of the far future are referred to as the winged men and the fishmen throughout the novel. And while we do meet females of both species, the winged women never get any lines at all and the lone amphibian woman only gets to nag the menfolk for being too enamoured with the sea. Finally, there is the fact that it is Kenlon of all people who is asked to make the final decision about the fate of the winged people and the amphibians. Not Dorilee or Commander Jones-Gordon or the Sessa Clen or any of the people aboard the other ships that have been abducted into the future, but Kenlon, whose only distinguishing qualities are that he is an annoying jerk who happens to be the protagonist.

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This cover of “The Winged Man” depicts the citadel of the winged people.

Talking of which, I also find it extremely unlikely that a WWII submarine, even a particularly advanced one, is the mightiest weapon to be found in one million years. That’s like claiming the Wilhelm Bauer, the most advanced submarine of its time (which – though still powered by both diesel engines and electrical motors – was a lot less likely to accidentally suffocate its crew than the Sea Serpent) built in the last days of WWII, was the mightiest weapon in all of creation. Yes, if you want to destroy an underwater city, a submarine is a good bet. And while the military usefulness of submarines will eventually decline – though I suspect that the aircraft carriers the Americans love so much will be gone before submarines – grabbing a nuclear submarine with nuclear warheads from a couple of decades later would have been much more effective. And yes, Van Vogt and Hull had no way of knowing this. But claiming that a WWII submarine is the most mightiest weapon of all time is extreme even for John W. Campbell’s well known superiority complex.

So far, I have been very harsh on The Winged Man and frankly, the novel deserves it, because it really is not very good. However, there were some aspects about the story that I liked, so let’s focus upon them: For starters, I like the fact that genocide is not the answer in this novel. Yes, I know that “Genocide is bad” is a low bar to clear, but there are 1944 SFF stories (as well as many later ones) which fail to clear even that low bar (“Arena”, cough). I also like that Commander Jones-Gordon is initially unwilling to get involved in the conflict between the winged people and the amphibians, because it’s not the US Navy’s job to get involved in other people’s wars. Of course, Jones-Gordon still goes fully genocidal at the end and the US would get involved in other people’s wars plenty of times over the next seven decades, but by 1944 standards “Genocide is bad” and “We keep out of other people’s conflicts that we neither understand nor do they have anything to do with us” are remarkably progressive statements.

Another thing I liked about The Winged Man is that the plot largely makes sense and is free of the random plot twists every 800 words or so that Van Vogt was so fond of. I suspect that this is the influence of E. Mayne Hull.

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This Dutch cover from 1974 is probably my favourite of all the many covers “The Winged Man” has had over the decades.

I also liked some of the worldbuilding details such as the fact that the winged people’s numbering system has a base of nine rather than ten. The descriptions of the citadels of the winged people and the amphibians respectively are suitably alien and yet make perfect sense for the beings that inhabit them. Van Vogt and Hull also at least considered the biological implications of the humanoid beings they introduce, e.g. the winged men have hollow bones to allow them to fly and the amphibians are bigger than regular humans and have gills.

However, the few good aspects don’t make up for the fact that The Winged Man is a slog and simply not a good novel. If not for the fact that there are still many fans who like Van Vogt’s work, I doubt it would have made the Retro Hugo ballot. Cause it’s just not Hugo-worthy in my opinion (unlike Van Vogt’s much better “Far Centaurus”). If it wins, I shall be very cross, especially since both Shadow Over Mars and Sirius are much better.

 

 

 

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The Return of Richard Blakemore and a Long Overdue Multiple New Release Announcement

It has been a while since I had a new release announcement, even though I have had new releases in the meantime. However, some of the vendors were really dragging their feet in getting the books up. Still, better late than never.

In May, I – or rather, Richard Blakemore – published two new Thurvok sword and sorcery stories. Both stories grew out of last year’s July short story challenge. Talking of which, July is around the corner. I’m planning to continue the tradition and do another short story challenge this year, though it will probably be truncated, especially with Worldcon taking place at the end of the month.

But now back to Thurvok: The first story has Thurvok, Meldom, Sharenna and Lysha facing off against a swamp monster and rescuing a damsel in distress.

So buckle up and accompany Thurvok, Meldom, Sharenna and Lysha, as they battle…

The Thing from the Dread Swamp

[image error]While travelling through the Dread Swamp, Thurvok, the sellsword, and his friends, Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, Meldom’s sweetheart Lysha and the sorceress Sharenna come across an overturned wagon and the terrified merchant Polyxo who babbles that a monster has taken his daughter Cerissa. Because they are heroes – and because Polyxo has offered them a sizeable reward – the quartet of adventurers offers to rescue Cerissa from the thing that lives in the Dread Swamp.

This is a short story of 5300 words or 19 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

More information.

Length: 5300 words

List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio, 24symbols and XinXii.

In the second new Thurvok story, Thurvok and the gang take to the high seas go in search of a legendary treasure. Unfortunately, it happens to be guarded by a Lovecraftian horror.

So prepare to face…

The Tentacled Terror

[image error]Thurvok, the sellsword, and his friends Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, the sorceress Sharenna and Meldom’s sweetheart Lysha set sail for the sunken city of Nhom’zonac, looking for the lost treasure of the Sea Kings. But they have to get past the Lovecraftian horror guarding the city first.

This is a short story of 5300 words or 19 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

 

 

More information.

Length: 5300 words

List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio, 24symbols and XinXii.

But Richard Blakemore hasn’t only been busy writing. After all, he still has his other career as the masked vigilante known only as the Silencer going on. I actually published a new Silencer story in late January and only now realised that I never officially announced it. With everything that happened this year, I just forgot to announce that story.

The story in question is called The Heavy Hand of the Editor and I have described it on Twitter as “The Silencer meets John W. Campbell – ’nuff said.”

The inspiration for that story was that – inspired by the Retro Reviews project – I was planning to write some deliberately retro style science fiction adventures (more on that soon). And since I already had a pen name for retro SFF, I thought, “Why not credit those to Richard Blakemore as well? He was a multi-genre author, after all, so why wouldn’t he have tried his hand at science fiction?”

That got me thinking what sort of science fiction Richard Blakemore would have written. He would probably have written the sort of adventure oriented SF that you used to find in magazines like Planet Stories, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, because I couldn’t imagine Richard writing the sort of infodumpy hard science fiction found in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. And even if he had tried to write for Astounding, John W. Campbell‘s rewrite requests and general personality would have quickly driven Richard up the wall to the point that Campbell might well have found himself staring into the Silencer’s silver-plated twin .45 automatics.

And then I thought, “Actually, that’s a great idea for a Silencer story.” And this is how The Heavy Hand of the Editor was born.

Though The Heavy Hand of the Editor doesn’t feature the actual John W. Campbell, but a stand-in called Donald Angus Stuart, editor of an upstart new pulp magazine called Stunning Science Stories. Don A. Stuart was of course the pen name Campbell used to publish what is probably his most famous story, “Who Goes There?” Several other science fiction and pulp writers of the era appear as well.

So prepare to accompany Richard Blakemore a.k.a. The Silencer as he tackles…

The Heavy Hand of the Editor

[image error]New York City, 1938: Richard Blakemore, hardworking pulp writer by day and the masked vigilante only known as the Silencer by night, has faced many a horror in his day. But few of them can match the terror of the blank page. Especially since Donald A. Stuart, the upstart young editor of an upstart young magazine called Stunning Science Stories, has already rejected Richard’s story “The Icy Cold of Space” four times.

Stuart demands changes that Richard does not want to make. Worse, he also holds Richard’s story hostage. Unless Stuart permanently rejects the story, Richard cannot sell it elsewhere.

There are a lot of shady practices in the pulp business, but Stuart’s actions are beyond the pale even for the wild west of publishing. And so the Silencer decides to pay Stuart a visit to put the fear of God into an editor who believes himself to be one.

This is a novelettes of 10800 words or approx. 38 print pages in the Silencer series, but may be read as a standalone.

Any resemblances to editors, writers and magazines living, dead or undead are entirely not coincidental.

More information.

Length: 10800 words

List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP

Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio, 24symbols and XinXii.

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Rogue One Revisited

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story happened to be on TV last night. I had spent the afternoon putting up bookshelves, only to be interrupted by a neighbour dropping by, when I was just about finished, so I was too tired to do more than watch TV. And I hadn’t seen Rogue One since it was in theatres three and a half years ago, I decided to give it another watch.

Do we need a spoiler warning for a three and a half years old film? In that case, consider yourselves warned.

Rogue One was always a bit of an oddity among the Star Wars movies. It was the second new Star Wars movie made after Disney took over Lucasfilm and the first (unless you count the two Ewok movies of the 1980s, which most people don’t consider official Star Wars films) that only tangentially touched on the core storyline of the saga of the Skywalker family, even though two members of that family appear in the movie.

The original idea behind the movies marketed as “A Star Wars Story” was to fill in gaps and holes in the ongoing saga of the Skywalker family and focus on side characters from the main saga. It’s not a bad idea at all – one of the things that makes the Star Wars universe so rich as that every character, including the person (in the loosest sense of the word) who just walked into the frame in the top right corner, as their own name and backstory and that story will likely be a compelling one. Fanfiction and the various tie-in novels quite often filled that gap – after all, even the guy seen running through Cloud City carrying what looks like an ice cream machine (The Mandalorian revealed that it was really some kind of secure storage box) for about five seconds in The Empire Strikes Back got to have his own story.

Nonetheless, Rogue One‘s choice of narrative gap to plug is a weird one, because “Just how exactly did the rebels come by those Death Star plans?” was not exactly high on the list of burning questions about the original trilogy that Star Wars fans had. Never mind that the underwhelming prequels showed that the answer to such questions is often better left to the imagination.

As a result, I initially wasn’t particularly excited about Rogue One and neither – as far as I recall – was anybody else. The Force Awakens had come out barely a year before and had revigorated the franchise better than anybody could have hoped. Rogue One, by comparison, felt like a step backwards, yet another prequel that no one had asked for. I did become more interested once the trailers came out and looked pretty good. I also went to the see film in the theatre, because hey, it was Star Wars. I also recall that I liked Rogue One quite a bit at the time.

However, when I rewatched it last night, I realised that I remember comparatively little about the movie apart from the basic plot and the end. Particularly a lot of the scenes on Jedha and Eadu had completely escaped my memory. And considering that I can quote much of the dialogue of the original trilogy by heart, me having only vague memories of a Star Wars film is certainly unusual, even if I’ve only seen it once.

Rogue One was darker than I remembered, both literally (it’s dark in little’s Jyn’s hiding place, dark in Saw Gerrera’s hideout on Jedha, dark and rainy on Eadu, dark in the Rebel HQ on Yavin IV, dark in Darth Vader’s citadel, dark in the Imperial installation of Scarif) and figuratively.  Of course, I remembered that Rogue One was not exactly a happy Star Wars film. After all, every single character in the film who’s not someone we have seen elsewhere in the Star Wars saga dies. Even Bail Organa, whom we have seen in the prequels, also portrayed by Jimmy Smits, will only go back to Alderaan to die.

Nonetheless, I remembered more banter and more jokes between the various characters than there actually were in the movie.  Hell, even the trailer had more banter than the actual movie.  But then, many of the scenes shown in the trailer don’t actually appear in the movie. Jyn Erso’s first meeting with the council of the Rebellion is quite different (and IMO better) in the trailer. I recall that Rogue One was extensively reshot, which may be the reason for the disparity between the trailers and the actual movie.

The main characters – Jyn, Cassian Andor, Chirrut Imwe, Baze Malbus, Bodhi Rook and K-2SO – are all compelling, which makes it even more of a pity that they all die, before we can get to know them better. Jyn, being the protagonist, is the most developed. Cassian and K-2SO clearly have an interesting backstory. And since Disney is working on a Cassian Andor TV series, we may well get to see more of his life and his missions pre-Rogue One. Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus make a delightful couple (and come on, we know they are a couple, since it’s bleeding obvious) and I really wish we would have seen more of them. As for Bodhi Rook, I mainly remembered him as a plot catalyst, but I had forgotten how good Riz Ahmed is in the role, perfectly conveying the fact that Bodhi is likely shitting his pants throughout the entire movie and does what needs to be done anyway. Forest Whitaker is always good, though he doesn’t get  a whole lot to do as Saw Gerrera. Also, it’s notable that the main crew the movie is named after consists of four men of colour, a white woman and a droid, making Rogue One the second Star Wars movie in a row after The Force Awakens featuring not a single white man among the main heroes. The Last Jedi would make that three movies in a row the following year, causing the usual suspects to completely lose their shit.

On the Imperial side, Ben Mendelsohn is brilliant as Director Krennic. Yes, Krennic may be the villain, but he’s also a lot of fun to watch as he barks orders and struts around the Death Star or the Imperial bases on Eadu and Scarif, cape swooshing. Mads Mikkelsen only briefly appears as Galen Erso, Death Star chief engineer and father of Jyn, but he’s always worth watching. Peter Cushing returns from the grave (literally) as Grand Moff Tarkin and is his usual cadavrous self. Darth Vader shows up as well – including a scene sans armour where he’s in the bath, which is not something I needed to see. Vader’s scenes are only brief, but he does get to force-choke Krennic and single-handedly take out an entire battalion of rebel soldiers. And yes, I know that I shouldn’t consider a scene where Darth Vader kills approximately fifty of the good guys cool, but damn it, that scene is cool.

The production design of Rogue One has been much praised, because it takes great pains to mimic the look of the original trilogy, particularly the movie now known as A New Hope. And indeed, Rogue One looks like a lost 1970s Star Wars movie – more than the prequels or the sequels or Solo ever did. The actors who plays the various Rebel leaders uncannily resemble their counterparts in the original trilogy, though the addition of a black woman Rebel leader is a welcome update. The technology is deliberately dated as well, whether it’s Cassian Andor’s headphones, the primitive computer graphics of the Death Star plans that match the then revolutionary graphics in the 1977 orignal, the fact that the plans are stored on what looks like a hard drive and are retrieved via a Waldo or the fact that a tense scene which gets three main characters killed involves physically plugging a cable (stored on a cable drum, no less) into a socket. It’s obvious by now that the Star Wars films take place in an alternate universe where technology progressed very differently. Rogue One embraces this fully and I for one love how retro it looks and feels.

Rogue One has also been described as a war movie set in the Star Wars universe. It’s not a description I would use – and indeed Rogue One is not that much more military than many other Star Wars movies, though it does focus on regular Rebel fighters rather than Jedi knights and the Rebel leadership. And war films have always been part of the genre mix that makes up Star Wars. The aerial dogfights in Star Wars were famously inspired by the 1955 war movie The Dam Busters. And indeed Rogue One delivers plenty of the space battle action that we have not only come to expect from the Star Wars saga, but that Star Wars apparently made a lot more popular in the space opera genre than it used to be. For more about the connection between Star Wars and war films, let’s not forget that the movie George Lucas initially wanted to make after he finished A New Hope was Apocalypse Now, a Vietnam war movie. But with the mega success of A New Hope, then only known as Star Wars, Lucas focussed on The Empire Strikes Back instead and handed Apocalypse Now over to his good friend Francis Ford Coppola. And indeed, there are some parallels between Apocalypse Now and Rogue One. Both focus on a desperate mission behind enemy lines and both involve the (illegal) order to take out someone who has become a problem. Furthermore, the original trilogy was strongly influenced by the war in Vietnam, so it’s only fitting that the same influence shows up in Rogue One. Though I still wouldn’t call it a war movie. Maybe we can settle on military science fiction.

In my massive Star Wars post-mortem post following the release of The Rise of Skywalker, I noted that even though there are so many romantic sparks flying between various characters in the sequel trilogy, every single one of the main characters is alone at the end, even if they are at leats alive – unlike the protagonists of Rogue One.  Just as the sequel trilogy pretty much proves that there are no happy romantic relationships anywhere in the Star Wars universe, unless we count two elderly lesbians briefly hugging at the end of The Rise of Skywalker. Rogue One cements this trend, for even though Cassian and Jyn are clearly attracted to each other – and it’s pretty obvious that the reason that Cassian does not shoot Jyn’s father is because he liked Jyn a lot, not because he suddenly had an attack of conscience (but why, oh why doesn’t he shoot Krennic?) – they never get beyond smouldering looks, holding hands and hugging. Yes, I know that they die in the end, but would one kiss have been too much to ask? For that matter, a kiss between Chirrut and Baze would have been lovely as well, though I know there was no chance of seeing that, considering that the characters were specifically supposed to appeal to the Chinese market, where a same sex kiss would likely have been cut anyway. And talking of LGBTQ characters in the Star Wars universe, two of the rebel soldiers who join the fight in the end are implied to be a couple as well, though we only see it when one of them is killed and the other holds his body.

In fact, one thing that really irritates me about the Disney era of Star Wars is the complete lack of any kind of romance, especially since Star Wars never was like that during the George Lucas era. The relationship between Han and Leia is one of the best parts of the original trilogy and the romance between Anakin and Padme, though handled badly, lies at the heart of the prequel trilogy. Romance has always been a part of space opera in general and Star Wars in particular, so its complete absence in the Disney Star Wars movies is baffling. What makes it even more baffling is that there would have been plenty of possibilities to inject a bit of romance. Was Disney worried about the fanboys who want no romance in their science fiction? But then, those fanboys don’t really exist. I have never seen anybody object to the Han/Leia romance and the romance between Padme and Anakin was widely decried, because it was badly handled, not because the fans didn’t want romance in their Star Wars.

Another thing that has drastically changed between the Lucas and the Disney era of Star Wars is the portrayal of the Rebellion. In the Lucas era, the rebels were generally good and heroic people, even if we didn’t see a whole lot of rebels not named Luke, Leia or Han. In Rogue One, on the other hand, the Rebellion is not just far from heroic – Cassian Andor is basically a hired killer for the Rebellion – but also bloody incompetent. They not only manage to bomb their own team and almost kill them on Eadu – no, when faced with news about the Death Star, half of the rebel council doesn’t believe Jyn and the other half wants to surrender at once. Jyn, Cassian and the rest of the Rogue One team only make the eventual victory over the Empire possible, because they explicitly ignore orders and go off to Scarif on their own. The Rebel fleet eventually comes to their aid, but it’s too late and every single member of the Rogue One team dies. And they don’t even get a posthumous medal, all they get is a “May the Force Be With You” from Admiral Raddus (the Mon Calamari commander who’s not Admiral Ackbar), before Raddus dies as well. How exactly did this bunch of incompetents triumph over the Empire again?

That said, the different portrayal of the Rebellion in the original trilogy and Rogue One isn’t as irreconcilable as it seems at first glance. For in the original trilogy, we mainly see the Rebellion through the eyes of Luke and Leia, both of whom are young, idealistic and true believers. Luke was a naive farmboy anyway and Leia was likely sheltered from the nastier aspects of the Rebellion such as the fact that the Rebellion sanctions assassinations of people who are not enemies such as Galen Erso and the guy Cassian kills in the beginning. Han Solo likely had a more cynical or more realistic view of the Rebellion – after all, he only joined out of friendship for Luke and love for Leia and not for any political reasons – but the original trilogy does not choose to show us his point of view. It’s also interesting that Rogue One reverses the Han/Leia dynamic. In Rogue One, Cassian Andor is the one who have been a supporter of the Rebellion since childhood – though his life is far less sheltered than Leia’s – whereas Jyn is the cynical opportunist and petty criminal who is initially only out for herself, before she sees the light.

Rogue One was the first Star Wars movie which gave us a less than glorious image of the Rebellion and did set the tone for later stories in the Star Wars universe. I suspect we might never have had the delightful Cara Dune, former Rebel shocktrooper turned mercenary in The Mandalorian, if we hadn’t had Cassian Andor first. In fact, here is an idea for the Cassian Andor TV show: Have Cassian and Cara team up for a mission.

Rogue One also reinforces the portrayal of the Star Wars universe as a truly horrible place that permeates all of the Disney Star Wars movies. Not that the Star Wars universe was exactly a happy place in the original trilogy, but then it was a galaxy suffering under a brutal dictatorship (which actually seems more brutal in Rogue One and the sequel trilogy, because instead of blowing up Alderaan from a distance and a blink and you’ll miss it look at the charred corpses of Owen and Beru Lars, we get plenty of scenes of people getting killed and tortured on screen). However, the original trilogy allowed us the illusion that the Star Wars universe was a better place once and would be a better place once again. Even the prequels did not destroy that illusion, because they were clearly set during the decline of the Old Republic rather than at its height. The sequel trilogy, on the other hand, showed that everything Han, Luke and Leia fought for in the original trilogy was for naught in the end. The Empire was never fully beaten after all, but reared its ugly head again as the First Order. And our heroes were not allowed to find personal happiness either. Even Palpatine did not have the decency to stay dead. With the sequel trilogy, the Star Wars saga changed from the story of the fall and rise of the Republic and the extermination and rebirth of the Jedi Order into an endless cycle of misery. As I wrote in my massive Star Wars post-mortem last December:

The Star Wars universe is a crappy place, always was and always will be.

Furthermore, Rogue One demonstrates once again the biggest problem of the Star Wars universe, namely the huge number of orphaned and abandoned kids created by the endless wars and the complete lack of any kind of social services infrastructure to take care of those kids. Luke and Leia were the lucky ones, since they found loving and stable homes homes with Owen and Beur Lars or Bail Organa and his unnamed wife respectively (and though Bail Organa appears to have been a good father, he did drag Leia into the Rebellion and almost got her killed), whereas Han Solo grew up as a nameless street kid. Baby Yoda got lucky, too, since he found himself a good Mandalorian Dad. And Mando himself didn’t fare too badly either, because the Mandalorians do seem to genuinely care for the orphaned kids they take in, even if they turn them into soldiers following their warrior religion, because “this is the way”. The Jedi, meanwhile, don’t even have the decency to take only orphans – instead they take kids away from their families to turn them into warrior monks. And while the Jedi didn’t fail every kid they took in, they certainly failed Anakin and they also failed those Force sensitives they mysteriously missed like Chirrut Imwe. And honestly, how did the Jedi miss Chirrut Imwe, considering he must have been about thirty when the Republic fell and thus would have been of Jedi training age when the Old Republic was still doing well? And because snatching kids from their families worked so well for the Jedi, the First Order decided to do the same and snatched kids like Finn and Janna from The Rise of Skywalker to turn them into Stormtroopers. Jyn Erso, meanwhile, loses both her parents in the opening scenes of Rogue One and is an orphan for all intents and purposes, even though her father is still alive. She does get relatively lucky, because she is taken in by Saw Gerrera. Alas, Gerrera trains her to be a soldier in his radical rebel splinter cell and later abandons her as well (supposedly for her own good), when Jyn was only sixteen. I remembered this bit of the movie, but I did not remember that Cassian Andor was an orphan, too, inducted into the Rebellion at the tender age of six! Jynn and Cassian are basically former child soldiers, as are Finn, Anakin, Mando, Janna and basically every Mandalorian or Jedi we see. And frankly, the proliferation of child soldiers in the Star Wars saga is disturbing, especially since the narrative never comments on this, because “this is the way”. The Star Wars universe is basically one huge failed state, which first creates countless orphans due to its endless wars and then proceeds to turn said orphans into cannon fodder for those same wars.

But whereas the sequel trilogy – even though I like the individual movies – changed the whole dynamic of the Star Wars saga to a cycle of endless misery, Rogue One being a dark and depressing movie – probably the most depressing of all Star Wars movies – is actually appropriate. Because Rogue One is not just set at the height of the Empire’s power, it literally represents the darkest hour that comes just before the dawn, that dawn being A New Hope. And indeed, Rogue One ends just before A New Hope begins, with Princess Leia being given the Death Star plans.

Even though the above may sound a little harsh, I still like Rogue One. Visually, it comes as close to the late 1970s aesthetics of the original trilogy as no other Star Wars film has ever come. The story is solid and the characters are likeable and compelling, even they die before we can really get to know them. Rogue One was also the first attempt of the live action part of the Star Wars franchise to move away from the Skywalker family, the Jedi and stories focussed on them, paving the way for the delight that is The Mandalorian. Of course, Rogue One also shares many of the issues I have with the Disney Star Wars movies. Nonetheless, in retrospect it’s amazing that a movie like Rogue One that tells a story no one was particularly interested in was made at all, especially since other planned Star Wars anthology movies like one focussed on popular characters like Obi-Wan or Boba Fett have long been scrapped or relegated to TV. In the end, Rogue One may have done more to move the Star Wars saga forward than the entire sequel trilogy.

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Retro Review: “A God Named Kroo” by Henry Kuttner

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This cover has nothing to do with “A God Named Kroo” and instead illustrates “Venusian Nightmare” by Ford Smith

“A God Named Kroo” is a novella by Henry Kuttner, this time writing under his own name. It was first published in the Winter 1944 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

“A God Named Kroo” begins with Kroo, a minor village god in the Himalayas. Kroo has a problem, for his last worshipper died fifty years before. Ever since then, Kroo’s temple has lain abandoned, avoided by the villagers. Now the only follower that Kroo has is a yak, which wandered onto the temple grounds one day in search of food and now belongs to Kroo according to ancient tradition.

And so Kroo would eventually have faded away for lack of attention and worshippers, if American archaeologist and ethnologist Dr. Horace Danton hadn’t come along in dire need of a yak, for two of his have died and the rest are exhausted. The villagers are reluctant to sell Danton the yak, for it belongs it Kroo, but eventually the almighty dollar wins out. Danton now has a yak and Kroo has a new acolyte.

The point of view shifts to Danton now. We learn that he has been travelling the Himalayas for two years, cut off from all news. Idly, he wonders how the European war (what we would call World War II) is doing, unaware that the war is purely European no longer (and frankly never was in the first place, though Danton views the war between Japan and China as a separate conflict).

Kroo first makes his presence felt, when his sacred yak falls into a ravine and Kroo levitates it to safety. He also follows Danton and his native guide Jieng in the form of a thundercloud. When Danton mentions the mystery of the floating yak to Jieng, Jieng points out that he initially assumed the yak was a magician or a god in disguise, but when he questioned the yak, the yak did not answer. Jieng also noticed the thundercloud long before Danton did (but then Danton is your typical absent-minded professor type rather than Indiana Jones) and suggests that Danton may have become a living buddha. When Jieng mentions the goddess Kali whom he worships (Kuttner does not explain why a man with a vaguely Chinese name worships a Hindu goddess), there is a sound of thunder, which Jieng takes for a sign that another god is present. Danton, being a sceptical westerner, will have none of this.

Before the debate can go any further, Danton and Jieng are interrupted by a native attack. However, Kroo will not lose his newfound acolyte and so he picks off the attackers with well-aimed lightning bolts. And as if all this were not yet strange enough, Danton and the yak are suddenly lifted into the air and briefly find themselves sitting upon the thundercloud. And once Kroo sets them down again, he suddenly begins speaking through the very confused Danton, demanding the Jieng and the rest of the expedition worship Kroo or suffer the consequences.

Kroo also declares Danton his high priest. A conversation between Kroo and his new high priest follows, even though Danton is basically talking to himself. Danton understandably thinks that he is having a mental breakdown and also drinks a lot of whiskey, while Kroo tries to convince Danton that he is real. But only when Kroo levitates Danton into the air again and threatens to fly him halfway to the Moon does Danton relent. Kroo now demands that his high priest provide him with a temple. Danton meanwhile tells Kroo that he doesn’t want to be his high priest, because he has no idea what to do. All he wants is to go home to the States. Kroo asks where the States are and Danton says eastwards, ever eastwards. He is clearly confused by the experience, because New York, where Danton wants to go, is west of Tibet. Nonetheless, Kroo obliges and flies Danton and the yak eastwards.

However, Kroo is weakened and so he only gets as far as Burma (nowadays, we would call it Myamar) to a town called Myapur (likely fictional, at any rate no town by that name exists in modern day Myamar), where he decides to find a temple, evict the resident god, if necessary, and rest awhile. However, the “temple” upon which Kroo decides is really a power station and it is guarded by Japanese soldiers who have taken over the formerly British colony of Burma. Kroo dumps off Danton and yak inside the power station and goes in search of the resident god to challenge him to a duel.

Danton, meanwhile, finds himself confronted by some very angry Japanese soldiers. But though Danton speaks Japanese, he has no idea that the US are at war with Japan now. The Japanese soldiers assume that Danton is a spy, arrest him and take him to their commander, one Captain Yakuni. There he also meets another western prisoner, a young woman named Deborah Hadley, who came to Burma as a singer in a travelling show. Deborah is no wilting wallflower. She smokes, wears pants, curses (in Gaelic, so not to upset the censors), knows how to fly a plane and banters with Yakuni and Danton (whom she calls Dan, because she dislikes the name Horace). At one point, she tells Yakuni to have the hapless Danton shot, because he obviously doesn’t have the brains to be a spy. Imagine Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall playing her in a movie and you’ve got the idea.

When Yakuni qustions Danton, Danton manages to put himself perilously close to the wrong side of a firing squad. He politely asks Yakuni for transport, because he urgently needs to get his specimens and data back to the US, which goes down about as well as you’d expect. Yakuni also wants to know how Danton got from Tibet to Burma. Danton obviously cannot tell the truth, so he claims he was hypnotised and only came to in the power station.

Yakuni decides not to shoot Danton for now and instead asks Deborah to show him around. Deborah takes Danton to a bar and catches him up on recent events. She also tell Danton that Yakuni needs the power station, because he is manufacturing bombs from a special, electrolytically created superexplosive. Deborah wants to either get word to the allied forces or destroy the power station herself and enlists Danton’s help. Danton also tells Deborah about Kroo, but naturally she doesn’t believe him.

Kroo picks just that moment to return and work another miracle. He levitates Danton and the yak into the air and has Danton order Burmese and Japanese (and Deborah) alike to worship him. The Burmese comply, the Japanese try to shoot down Danton and get fried by lightning bolts for their trouble. Deborah procures a dead goat as an offering to Kroo, which pacifies him for now.

Yakuni, on the other hand, is not at all pacified. He has Danton arrested again and demands to know what exactly is going on. Danton of course can’t explain and then Kroo starts speaking through him again, demanding that Yakuni worship him. And when Yakuni refuses, Kroo starts to curse him using Danton’s voice. As a result, Kroo almost gets his high priest shot by the furious Yakuni, but luckily he decides that discretion is the better part of valour and teleports Danton and Deborah to his “temple”, before Yakuni can pull the trigger.

At the “temple”, really the power station, Kroo makes Deborah his priestess, informs Danton that he has gotten rid of the men who defiled the temple (Japanese soldiers who were supposed to repair a broken dynamo, before Kroo reduced them to piles of ashes) and demands that they prepare the temple for a sacrifice. Kroo departs and Deborah and Danton discuss what to do now. They both realise that the Japanese will shoot them, should they find them in the power station. Deborah suggests wrecking the power station and Danton grabs a sledge hammer that is conveniently lying around and proceeds to smash the dynamos. This brings Kroo back, who considers the dynamos his altars and will not have them touched. Deborah persuades Kroo that this was all part of the ritual. Kroo relents and demands that Danton go outside the temple to bring Kroo’s commandments to the people.

“I’ll tell the Japanese what you want”, Danton tells Kroo, “But they won’t listen. They’ll just shoot me.”

Kroo confidently replies that he will protect his priest. So Danton goes out and promptly finds himself starring into the barrels of dozens of Japanese rifles. Yakuni orders his soldiers to shoot Danton, but Kroo intervenes and freezes them. He then declares a holiday in his honour and demands that his worshippers celebrate. A Burmese man points out that they don’t have any food, because the Japanese took it all, so Kroo promptly raids the Japanese stores and teleports that food into the street, much to the delight of the Burmese and the chagrin of Captain Yakuni.

Kroo finally unfreezes the Japanese soldiers and demand that they join in the celebration. And just to make a point, he incinerates several Japanese soldiers who advance upon the power station. So Yakuni and his soldiers pretend to go along and join the festivities to honour Kroo. Several soldiers try to seize and shoot Danton, but once more Kroo intervenes, incinerates the soldiers and then erupts into a thunderstorm. He also lifts Yakuni up into the air and has Danton order him to worship Kroo or be incinerated. Then Kroo orders a tournament to be held to determine the chieftain of his tribe, which Kroo personally will oversee while inhabiting the body of the yak.

Left alone at the power station, Danton and Deborah decide to steal some of Yakuni’s bombs and blow up the power station, even if that will infuriate Kroo. However, they find that Kroo’s taboo is too strong. Nor can they radio for help, because Yakuni has disabled the radio. Danton is also certain that Yakuni has not truly given in, even though he is pretending to go along with Kroo for now.

Over the next few days, Danton proceeds to manipulate Kroo. First, he persuades Kroo to make Danton and Deborah invulnerable. Kroo does grant them invulnerability, but only if they remain near the sacred yak. Next, Danton persuades Kroo to have the people build a floating temple, which conveniently doubles as a raft. Finally, Danton persuades Kroo that in order to become a better and more legendary god, he needs to symbolically die and be reborn.

So Kroo goes into hibernation. Danton and Deborah take the chance to board the floating temple together with the yak, claiming to make a sacrifice to Kroo in a secret place. They also tell the Burmese that if they do not return within two days, the town of Myapur is a taboo place in order to protect the Burmese from a possible allied bombing as well as the enraged Kroo.

Danton and Deborah get away from the village without incident and travel down the river on their raft. However, they fail to find an Allied base. Worse, Kroo awakens from hibernation to find Myapur deserted, his high priest, priestess and worshippers gone and his “temple” desecrated, since the Japanese took the dynamos with them, when they left. So Kroo seeks out his faithless priest and priestess, fully determined to kill them for the sacrilege. However, Deborah and Danton manage to persuade Kroo that it was the Japanese who desecrated the “temple” and that Deborah and Danton were just trying to get help. This satisfies Kroo for now, though he demands that Danton get his “shining altars” – the dynamos – back.

Danton deduces that Yakuni must have transported the dynamos downriver and that he must have set them up near a waterfall to utilise water power. So he asks Kroo to fly them down the river to search for Yakuni and the missing dynamos. They finally find Yakuni’s new power station, which is fully operationally. The dynamos are up and running and Yakuni is manufacturing bombs again.

Confused, Kroo asks what happened to his temple and his altars. Danton tells him that an evil god has taken up residence in the temple, an evil god worshipped by the Japanese, and that Kroo should challenge this god in battle. Kroo promptly flies off to do that and succeeds in blowing up the dynamos, the Japanese and himself. The yak drops dead the moment Kroo does. Danton and Deborah are finally free. They mourn Kroo, who may have been a barbarian god, but wasn’t a bad sort overall. An allied plane comes to investigate the explosion and Danton and Deborah are rescued at last.

The point of view now switches to Kroo again, who finds himself on the rainbow bridge to Asgard – pardon, Godheim, the afterlife for deceased gods. Kroo is confused, because Godheim is for great gods and Kroo was just a Tibetan village god who never had the chance to grow to greatness. However, the other gods inform him that Kroo was brave enough to go up against a mighty deity whom none of them have ever dared to face. And even though he was slain in that battle, this more than qualifies Kroo for a place in Godheim. Is the point here that science and technology are more powerful than any of the gods of old? Or am I reading too much into this?

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I have no idea which story this cover illustrates, but it’s not “A God Named Kroo”

“A God Named Kroo” is a charming and highly entertaining adventure story. The plot moves at a brisk pace and so the story feels shorter than it actually is. Occasionally, SFF novellas from the golden age can feel padded and overly long – the authors were paid by the word, after all. I never had this feeling with “A God Named Kroo”.

Thrilling Wonder Stories was mainly a science fiction magazine, but “A God Named Kroo” is pure fantasy without even a hint of science fiction. I could easily imagine it in John W. Campbell’s Unknown – the science versus religion angle would have appealed to Campbell and Unknown published a lot of contemporary fantasy and also published lighter and more humorous stories than Weird Tales – and maybe that’s what the story was intended for. Alas, Unknown fell victim to World War II paper rationing the year before and so “A God Named Kroo” wound up in Thrilling Wonder Stories instead.

Danton, Deborah, Kroo, Yakuni and even the yak are all fully developed characters with their own goals and motivations. I liked the fact that Danton – though brave and intelligent – is also something of a bumbler. Nor is he technically proficient – he is an archaeologist and ethnologist, after all, not an engineer. Deborah is a great example of a 1940s take on a strong female character, written by a man no less. I bet she’d get along just wonderfully with Mayo McCall from Leigh Brackett’s Shadow Over Mars. Even Kroo, village god with an inferiority complex, is a remarkably sympathetic character – especially considering he is a barbarian god with a taste for blood sacrifices and the tendency to incinerate recalcitrant worshippers.

Considering how many American works of the WWII era portray the Japanese as grossly racist caricatures (e.g. last year’s Retro Hugo winning Wonder Woman comic or the Retro Hugo nominated Batman serial), it is a pleasant surprise that Yakuni, though the antagonist, is still very much a human being. Nor is Yakuni portrayed as pointlessly cruel, which is even more of a rarity. Yes, he plans to shoot Danton, but that’s actually understandable given the situation. He also does not sexually harass Deborah, though one of his subordinates does. But then, Earth’s Last Citadel, a 1944 Best Novel Retro Hugo finalist by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, has two main characters who are Nazi spies and only contains one offensive scene. Kuttner and Moore do not dehumanise their antagonists, which makes me like their fiction even more.

That’s not to say that there aren’t several moments in “A God Named Kroo” that will make a modern reader roll their eyes or grit their teeth. Because there’s quite a bit of casual racism in the story. Jieng, Danton’s guide, is described as monkeylike. The Burmese and Tibetan people are described as superstitious and backwards, even though they are generally sympathetic characters. The Japanese are repeatedly described as “yellow-skinned” (Has Kuttner ever seen a Japanese person? Or any Asian person, for that matter?) and referred to as “Japs” or “Nips” in the dialogue throughout.

Furthermore, Kuttner also seem to be an adherent to the Lester Dent method of writing adventure stories in foreign settings. Foreign words are scattered throughout the text to evoke a sense of authenticity, whether the terms make any sense in that setting or not. Jieng is described as Hindu, even though he appears to be Chinese or Tibetan and would therefore most likely be Buddhist. Finally, Kroo manifesting as a thundercloud and striking down his enemies and insufficiently worshipful followers with lightning bolts is based on a very western and Christianised idea of religion. For manifesting their anger as thunder and striking down enemies with lightning is something western deities do.

But in spite of these criticisms, “A God Named Kroo” is highly enjoyable story. I could easily imagine this as a movie, a sort of cross between Indiana Jones, African Queen and Bringing Up Baby.

Talking of Indiana Jones, his inspirations are not as well documented as those for Star Wars, though in general Indiana Jones is believed to have been inspired by the movie serials of the 1930s and 1940s with maybe a dash of Doc Savage thrown in. However, I have also come across several science fiction and fantasy stories from the golden age which were more than a little reminiscent of Indiana Jones. “A God Named Kroo” could actually be an Indiana Jones movie – down to the protagonist and his female partner being saved and the antagonists being destroyed by divine intervention. For though Indy is more of an action hero than Horace Danton, he nonetheless is saved by divine intervention in his first three movie and by alien intervention in the fourth that we shall not talk about. I don’t know if George Lucas ever read “A God Named Kroo”. However, we know that he was an avid reader of pulp science fiction, so I wonder if there isn’t a little bit of Horace Danton or Leigh Brackett’s various archaeologist protagonists in Indiana Jones.

The fact that “A God Named Kroo” is such a delightful and entertaining story makes it even more of a surprise that the story is relatively obscure. It is probably my favourite of the Kuttner solo stories I’ve read so far. At any rate, I enjoyed “A God Named Kroo” more than the better known Gallegher stories from the same period. Nonetheless, “A God Named Kroo” has only been reprinted once in seventy-five years – in 1954.

This very obscurity may well count against “A God Named Kroo” in the Retro Hugos, which tend to reward stories and authors with name recognition – which is why substandard early stories by future stars get nominated and occasionally win Retro Hugos over better, but lesser known stories. And though the novella category for the 1945 Retro Hugos is a tad weak, “A God Named Kroo” is up against the well-known and very good “Killdozer” by Theodore Sturgeon as well as also very good “The Jewel of Bas” by Leigh Brackett and “The Changeling” by A.E. Van Vogt, who still has a lot of fans. Furthermore, Henry Kuttner has somewhat fallen into obscurity, probably because he died much too young. “A God Named Kroo” would certainly be a worthy winner, but I suspect it’s too obscure to win.

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Retro Review: “The Children’s Hour” by Lawrence O’Donnell a.k.a. Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

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Astounding had some good covers in 1944. This is not one of them.

“The Children’s Hour” is a novelette by Lawrence O’Donnell, one of the many pen names of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. It was first published in the March 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

The protagonist of “The Children’s Hour” is a soldier named Sergeant James Lessing. Lessing has a problem, for during a psychological experiment to use hypnosis to desensitize soldiers against pain, hunger and other hardship (Am I the only one who finds this slightly sinister?), Lieutenant Dyke, the psychologist running the program, noticed that three months of Lessing’s life were simply missing, hidden behind an impenetrable hypnotic block. Lessing, on the other hand, does have memories of those months, memories of a perfectly mundane civilian life as an advertising executive in New York City.

Nowadays, a soldier with three months of his life missing and a hypnotic block in his mind conjures up sinister scenarios along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate. However, the novel version of The Manchurian Candidate was not published until 1959, fifteen years after “The Children’s Hour”. And even though “The Children’s Hour” was written at the height of World War II, it is the product of a more innocent time not yet affected by Cold War paranoia. And so the novelette goes into a completely different direction.

The story catches up with Lessing as he is about to see Lieutenant Dyke for the decisive session, the one where Dyke will finally break through the barrier in Lessing’s mind. Dyke hypnotises Lessing and asks him to go back to the summer of 1941.

At first Dyke sees a shadow and gets the first lines of a poem, “The Children’s Hour” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem is not identified in the story itself. Kuttner and Moore obviously assumed that their readers would recognise it. And since the poem was frequently taught in American schools in the first half of the 20th century, the average Astounding reader of 1944 probably did recognise it. I have to admit that I had to look it up, even though I do own The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and wrote a paper on “Evangeline” at university.

As a matter of fact, the story is full of literary allusions – not just to Wordsworth, but also to Greek mythology, Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland, James Branch Cabell and H.G. Wells – that make me wonder whether a contemporary reader in 1944 was expected to recognise them all without Google at his disposal. Coincidentally, it also belies complaints from certain quarters that science fiction and fantasy used to be simple, plain good fun, but now everything is so political and literary. Because here we have an SFF story full of literary references in 1944. But though the literary references enrich the story, “The Children’s Hour” also works without them. In fact, I am now reminded of , another work full of literary references (reading it as an adult after watching the 1985 movie when I was way too young for it, I was stunned how many references there were) that was a genuine mega-bestseller in the 1980s and was read and enjoyed by lots of people who didn’t get the references at all, but just read the novel as an exciting historical mystery.

Gradually, Lessing remembers that he met someone at a drinking fountain in the park that summer. At first, he has problems recalling that person, then he gets another line of verse – this time a quote from Romeo and Juliet – and finally remembers.

The person Lessing met in the park was a woman named Clarissa. Clarissa made Lessing see the world anew, as if he were a child again, and Lessing was very much in love with her. However, there was someone standing between them. Shadowy guardians, who had snatched Clarissa away and taken Lessing’s memory. Lessing also remembers that Clarissa had an aunt, an aunt who disapproved of him. However, he cannot remember what that aunt looked like or what she said to him on the last day he saw Clarissa. All he remembers is Clarissa and her tears.

Gradually, Dyke and Lessing unearth more buried memories, such as the first time when Lessing noticed something off about Clarissa, when she suddenly vanished in a vortex of pulsating concentric rings, while they were witnessing a car accident near Central Park, only to reappear a moment later.

Strange things keep happening. The next time, it’s not Clarissa who vanishes, but a pavilion in Central Park, where they want to take shelter from a sudden rain shower. Due to being caught out in the rain, Clarissa develops a fever and Lessing does not see her for a few weeks. During these few weeks without Clarissa, life become dull and drained of colour to him. But then Clarissa is sufficiently recovered that Lessing can visit her again in her strange windowless apartment that is filled with mirrors.

Lessing is completely in love with Clarissa by now and they begin making marriage plans. But then, Clarissa begins to slip away. Lessing blames her aunt for keeping them apart. Then, one day he tries to visit Clarissa at her apartment, but no one answers the door, even though he can see a shadowy figure – the aunt – moving around inside. Lessing gets angry and breaks down the door, only to find the apartment empty.

And suddenly, Lessing sees Clarissa enveloped by a golden shimmer and begins to fall through a portal of mirrors, until he is suddenly somewhere else. Two men armed with strange weapons threaten him, protecting a group of women, one of whom is Clarissa. The armed men are as surprised to see Lessing as he is surprised to see them. Only Clarissa isn’t surprised. She smiles at Lessing and tells him that he doesn’t have to bother explaining where he came from, because they would only forget anyway. One of the guards attacks Lessing with a whip and suddenly he is back in the real world, lying flat on his face outside Clarissa’s apartment. He chalks the whole episode up to bumping his head, while he tried to break down the door.

However, Lessing’s adventure in the mirror world was so vivid that he plans to talk to Clarissa about it, forcing his way past her aunt by any means necessary. He comes to the apartment again, but this time the door is open and the only person at home is Clarissa, who is standing there in a shower of golden stars. Lessing, who is rather erudite, is immediately reminded of the antique myth of Danae, locked away in a tower from all men, only for Zeus to transform himself into a golden rain and impregnate her.

Lessing comes to the conclusion that the strange occurrences surrounding Clarissa must mean that she is being courted by a godlike being just like Zeus once courted Danae. Lessing also muses whether the Greek legends have a basis in experiences like his own with Clarissa. However, he cannot tell Clarissa what is going on, because she does not seem to be aware of what is happening and he has no idea how Clarissa will react, once she learns the truth. However, Lessing plans to open her eyes, before his supernatural rival comes to claim his bride, so that Clarissa can choose freely. Whatever else you think about Lessing, you have to admire his guts, considering he believes that he is about to go up against a god.

The next evening, Lessing takes Clarissa dancing at a seedy nightclub. He is determined not to get drunk, but a mix of alcohol, drugs (marihuana is namechecked) and the intoxication of love make him decide to take Clarissa away from New York City, away the aunt who keeps her imprisoned and his godlike rival. So they get into Lessing’s car and drive along the Hudson River.

It’s interesting that neither Lessing nor Dyke nor the authors sees anything wrong with Lessing driving, while drunk (and the story makes it very clear that he is at the very least drunk, if not high as well). Considering how strong the taboo against drunk driving and the respective laws are today, I have to admit that I found that scene jarring. Investigations reveal that New Jersey, just across the river from where “The Children’s Hour” is set, had a law against drunk driving as early as 1906. The state of New York followed in 1910. So Lessing’s drunken ride along the Hudson River was no more legal in 1944 than it would be today.

In the end, Lessing and Clarissa’s drunken flight is for naught anyway, because the powers guiding Clarissa’s life force them back via traffic jams, road closures and Lessing suddenly realising he is going the wrong way (Uhm, are you certain that’s not just because you’re drunk?). The golden rain appears again to envelop Clarissa and Lessing suddenly finds himself in a forest, watching a procession of sombre figures in black hooded cloaks. One of them is Clarissa, who is oddly, deliriously happy. Lessing tries to approach her, but before he can, a person in a red hooded cloak embraces her. Lessing cannot see that person’s face, just a golden glow, and assumes it’s his divine rival. Then the world starts spinning again and he is suddenly back in his car, double-parked (Lessing really is intent on violating traffic laws, is he?) outside Clarissa’s apartment. Clarissa bids him good night and tells him to phone her in the morning.

However, it’s Clarissa who calls Lessing and asks him to come at once. She seems upset and point blank asks him, if they did something wrong last night, because she had a feeling that they did, only that she cannot remember. Now Lessing tells her everything, all the strange occurrences surrounding her and that he has the feeling that someone is guiding Clarissa towards something.

Clarissa tells Lessing that she never really noticed before how she was being guarded and guided, but that she cannot unsee it now. She also tells him a fairy tale she heard from her aunt, about a princess who grew up among the blind in the woods, never opening her eyes, even though she can see, because the sun would still be too bright for her. Clarissa has no idea how the fairy tale ends, but she knows that she is the princess. She also tells Lessing that the powers have always protected her. Lessing is doubtful about their true intentions, but Clarissa insists that they are benevolent and that of course, the powers will let them get married.

But then, one of the guardians – the unseen aunt – appears and tells Clarissa quite clearly that there will be no marriage and no future with Lessing. Clarissa cries, while Lessing is paralysed as the aunt tears them apart. A voice tells Lessing that he has served his purpose and shall now forget, which he promptly does, until Dyke recovered his missing memories.

However, “The Children’s Hour” is still a story published in Astounding and so Dyke now takes over to deliver the solution to the mystery, complete with the requisite technobabble, including equations. Dyke theorises that Clarissa is a young human superior. As adults, human superior are so highly developed that ordinary humans cannot even perceive them, just as Lessing could never truly see Clarissa’s aunt. Meanwhile, human superior children are about as developed as ordinary human adults. And that is what Clarissa was, a human superior child come out to play in the world, a four-dimensional being in a three-dimensional world. Once she has become mature enough, she was returned to her own people, while Lessing had his memories wiped.

However, Dyke also has another, more likely theory. After all, both Lessing and Clarissa were caught in the rainstorm in Central Park. Clarissa fell ill, developed a fever and experienced delirium. But maybe Lessing fell ill as well and simply imagined all the strange things that happened afterwards.

Lessing decides to settle the question once and for all. He will go back to the apartment and pay Clarissa a visit. After all, she might be waiting for him. Dyke does not think that this is a good idea, but goes along with it. So Lessing heads for Clarissa’s apartment and rings the doorbell.

The door opens and Lessing sees the mirrors, but he can no longer see Clarissa. She is an adult now, to evolved for him to even perceive. Lessing briefly grasps the truth. Clarissa is not just homo superior, but a multi-dimensional being existing in many worlds and places at once. Those were the visions of other Clarissa’s in other worlds that Lessing saw. Once all of these different Clarissas have developed, they will combine to form the full, adult Clarissa. This is exactly what happened and not only can Lessing no longer even perceive Clarissa, to her he is merely a child’s toy, a plaything to be put away for more adult pursuits.

The story ends with Lessing getting into a taxi (at least, he’s not driving drunk or high this time) and asking the driver where to find a good nightclub. He has forgotten everything once more and this time, the memory block is complete, which is probably for the best.

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This 1959 anthology only credits the story to Kuttner.

“The Children’s Hour” is a very beautiful and very strange story. Not a lot happens, the bulk of this very long (likely close to the novella borderline of 17500 words) novelette consists of two men sitting in a psychologist’s office, while we are treated to a long flashback of one of the two’s doomed romance with a superior being. And while there is a mystery to solve, there is no huge world-threatening menace involved. Lessing was hypnotised and had part of his memories taken not for some sinister purpose to sabotage the war (and it’s very clear that the story is set during WWII, even if the war never impinges on the narrative except via brief mentions of military ranks, barracks and marching soldiers), but to protect him from a truth to great for him to understand.

Even though “The Children’s Hour” is a love story between an adult man and what is essentially a child, it manages not to be skeevy. For starters, Lessing has no idea that Clarissa is a child, even if she does seem childlike at times, as Dyke points out. Furthermore, Clarissa appears to Lessing as a woman of his own age. Physically, they are similarly developed, even if Clarissa will evolve and Lessing will not. Finally, there is also no indication that Lessing and Clarissa ever had sex – mostly they just walk hand in hand through the parks of New York City. Of course, there is very little in the way of sex in golden age science fiction in general and in Astounding in particular. However, in C.L. Moore’s earlier Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories, it’s very clear that both Northwest Smith and Jirel have sex at times, even if the scenes are vague and the sex only alluded to. There is nothing along those lines in “The Children’s Hour” and I also suspect that if Lessing and Clarissa’s romance had ever threatened to go beyond handholding in public parks, Clarissa’s unseen guardians would have intervened – just as they did when Lessing attempted to elope with Clarissa.

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I have no idea what is going on on the cover of this French Kuttner/Moore collection, though it does seem to show Kuttner and Moore in bed with a buddhe statue and a naked black woman.

A lot of people have claimed that with Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore’s collaborations, it’s difficult to tell who was responsible for which parts. And reprint anthologies and collections have frequently attributed their collaborative stories to Kuttner alone. However, I have never had any problems telling Kuttner’s and Moore’s contributions apart, because their solo writing styles are quite different. And the dreamlike quality that suffuses the entire story, particularly the flashback scenes of Lessing and Clarissa, is highly reminiscent of C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories of the 1930s. After all, both Jirel and Northwest Smith spent more time exploring strange worlds and having nigh psychedelic experiences than swinging swords and firing blasters, something which regularly exasperates those who prefer their SFF with a large dose of fighting action. But fighting action is not something that C.L. Moore delivers. However, she could create otherworldly landscapes and moods like few other writers of the era. At times, the story feels almost psychedelic, like a drug-fuelled dream. Steve J. Wright calls it a 1940s fairy tale in his review.

Because the rest of the story is so dreamlike, the infodump towards the end, complete with equations, sticks out like a sore thumb. I strongly suspect that Kuttner wrote that part, if only because Moore’s infodumps sound very different as can be seen in “No Woman Born”. I also don’t think the story really needs the infodump and that it would have worked just as well, if the mystery of Clarissa’s true nature had remained vague. But Astounding editor John W. Campbell liked his infodumps and since he paid well and upon acceptance, his writers obliged him.

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Another anthology, which includes “The Children’s Hour”, even though the story neither contains aliens nor was it published in Analog

Talking of which, “The Children’s Hour” is yet another highly atypical Astounding story. In his review, Paul Fraser says that while he was reading “The Children’s Hour”, he kept wondering what this story was doing in a 1940s issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Frankly, I had the same reaction. Because while the other atypical Astounding stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project such as e.g. the City stories by Clifford D. Simak are still very much golden age science fiction stories, “The Children’s Hour” doesn’t feel like a story of the 1940s at all and certainly not like a science fiction story, technobabble infodump complete with equations notwithstanding.

I know that I say this a lot, but I’m very surprised that Campbell bought and published this novelette, because it is so very much not the sort of thing you’d expect to find in Astounding, even if the character who cracks the mystery is a psychologist who uncovers hidden memories, a subject Campbell had a keen interest in. However, “The Children’s Hour” is very much the anti-Astounding story, if there is such a thing. Once again, the mood is bittersweet and melancholic, which is remarkably common for Astounding in the 1940s (see also the City stories or Moore’s own “No Woman Born”). There is a mystery to solve here, but science and technology do not help to solve it, even if Dyke throws around some equations towards the end. Never mind that Dyke’s efforts have been for naught, because Lessing has his memories wiped again at the end and most likely that pesky meddler Dyke will receive a visit from a shadowy presence as well. Nor are the humans triumphant or superior in this story. To superior multi-dimensional beings like Clarissa’s “aunt”, humans are little more than children, to be used to socialise and educate their own young. And yes, Dyke and Lessing refer to the adults of Clarissa’s species as homo superior, a popular concept in Astounding during the golden age, which eventually found its way into the Marvel comics of the 1960s and beyond. But we have no way of knowing if they really are human, since Lessing cannot even perceive the adults of the species. And while the adult beings are not malevolent, unlike Alexander, the homo superior baby and psychopath in training from Kuttner and Moore’s “When the Bough Breaks”, they are simply so far above humanity that they barely show any interest in us at all, except as playthings for their kids.

Maybe “The Children’s Hour” was left over from Unknown Worlds, Astounding‘s fantasy-focussed sister magazine, which fell victim to WWII paper rationing the year before. This might also explain why the technobabble infodump feels so tacked on, because it was retrofitted to turn into a science fiction story for Astounding.

[image error]However, if I had read “The Children’s Hour” blind, I would have assumed it was either a fantasy story from an early 1930s issue of Weird Tales (and of course, Kuttner and Moore both got their start writing for the unique magazine) or a New Wave story from the 1960s. The fact that “The Children’s Hour” is either fifteen years behind its time or twenty to twenty-five years ahead of it may also be the reason why the story is not particularly well known. Adventures Fantastic points out in their review that it has only been reprinted a handful of times over the past seventy-five years. It does not show up in either Moore’s or Kuttner’s Best of collection. Nor was it included in Isaac Asimov’s and Martin H. Greenberg’s anthology The Great SF Stories Vol. 6 – 1944, probably because they already included “When the Bough Breaks” and “No Woman Born” and felt that “The Children’s Hour” would be one Kuttner/Moore story too many. Even though I vastly prefer “The Children’s Hour” to “When the Bough Breaks” and will have a hard time deciding whether to rank “No Woman Born” or “The Children’s Hour” in first place on my Retro Hugo ballot, because they’re both very good, if very different stories. That said, 1944 readers seem to have liked the story, even it is highly atypical, and voted it in first place of Astounding‘s reader poll for the March issue.

“The Children’s Hour” is a beautiful, almost dreamlike fantasy romance. I’m not sure if Retro Hugo voters will go for this story over the better known “No Woman Born”, “City” or “The Big and the Little”, but do I hope that it will do well, because it is story that deserves more recognition.

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First Monday Free Fiction: The Kiss of the Executioner’s Blade

[image error]Welcome to the June 2020 edition of First Monday Free Fiction. To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month. It will remain free to read on this blog for one month, then I’ll take it down and post another story.

So far, most of the free stories I’ve posted on this blog have been science fiction, fantasy or crime fiction, since those are my main genres. However, I also write historical fiction and historical romance on occasion and today, I will share one of those stories.

Trigger warning: There are some scenes of physical and sexual violence in this story, not overly graphic.

The Kiss of the Executioner’s Blade takes us back to France in the year of the Lord 1516, where the disgraced nobleman turned travelling executioner Geoffrey de Bressac finds himself faced with a dilemma. For the traitor and assassin he is supposed to behead turns out to be a young woman. Worse, she insists she is innocent.

So witness as Angeline de Golon faces…

The Kiss of the Executioner’s Blade

The key turned in the lock and the iron gate opened with a pitiful moan. A red-faced guardsman squinted at the black-clad figure towering in the doorway. “Are you the headsman?”

Geoffrey du Bressac nodded, even though the guardsman’s words had stirred an old wound. It was not right that he, whose forebearers had been knights of the realm, should now be reduced to the ignoble profession of executioner, forced to hide his face behind a mask. But even though none knew his face, Geoffrey was renown as the most skilled headsman in all of France. And on this day in the year of the Lord 1516 he had come to the town of Charentes to see that a most despicable traitor received his just punishment.

The dungeon of the Chateau de Charentes was a place of darkness, misery and despair. The men and women interred here knew that they would never again see the light of day. And even if they should be blessed to set their eyes on the sun once more, they knew it would be the last thing they would see in their lives.

The moans and the cries of the damned could be heard everywhere, as the guardsman led Geoffrey though the gloomy corridors. Upon seeing the shadow of the executioner, many prisoners scurried away in horror, tearing at the chains that held them. All feared that he was coming for them. Yet Geoffrey had not a glance, neither of condemnation nor of pity, for the doomed. He just stared straight ahead into the darkness.

They left the common gaol and its squalor and dirt behind and entered the part of the dungeon that was reserved for ‘special’ prisoners. It was even darker here than before and more quiet, too. The silence served its purpose, for here the prisoners were held whose incarceration should remain a secret until the day of their execution. To Geoffrey, the sudden absence of the usual mixture of screaming, crying, whimpering and mumbled prayers came almost as a shock. It was as if the shadows themselves had swallowed up all sound.

He followed the guard along the silent corridor, his heart beating in perfect tune with the echo of their booted feet on the bare stone floor. Finally, the man stopped in front of one of the heavy oakwood doors. “Here we are.”

A grated window was set into the door. It was covered with a piece of black cloth to indicate that the prisoner therein was condemned to die. Geoffrey swept the cloth aside and pressed his face to the peephole. The cell beyond was lit by a single tallow candle. Two figures could be seen in the dim light. One was clad in the black robe of a priest, come to give the condemned the last rites no doubt. The second figure, kneeling before the priest, her hands clasped in prayer, was a young woman, scarcely more than a girl. She was clad in a dress of crimson silk, now dirty and torn. Her long dark hair was falling loose over her bared shoulders. Suddenly, her head shifted and for the merest of instants, her large pleading eyes seemed to look straight at Geoffrey.

He turned to the guard. “I was not told the condemned was female.”

The guard shrugged. “Traitor is traitor.” He licked his lips. “Though I admit that it’s always a special treat when a woman is put to death. Particularly a highborn lady like Angeline de Golon.” He leant forward. “They say she’s still a virgin,” he whispered.

“What is her crime?”

“A crime of the foulest kind. She is an assassin. Stabbed the Comte with a knife.”

“She is hardly an assassin then…” Geoffrey remarked, “…considering that the Comte is still alive.” In fact, Henri, Comte de Charentes, had personally requested Geoffrey’s services.

“The Comte was only wounded, Mother Mary be praised. Nevertheless, any attempt on the life of a member of the royal family constitutes high treason. And for that she must die. Were she a man, she would suffer on the spokes of a wheel. But due to her birth and sex, the Comte has decided to be merciful and grant her a less shameful death.”

Geoffrey cast another look through the grated window at the kneeling girl. She certainly did not look like an assassin and high traitor.

“I wish to examine the condemned.”

***

Angeline de Golon knelt on the bare stone floor of her cell. The abbé had urged her to confess her sins and go to the scaffold repentant so that her soul would be welcomed in heaven instead of cast down into eternal damnation. But what sins could she confess, when she was wholly innocent of the crime she had been condemned of?

The bar slid back, the cell door opened and Angeline froze in terror. For in the doorway, a sinister figure loomed, tall and clad entirely in black. The figure stepped into the cell and Angeline saw that his face was covered by a mask. She screamed and shrank back into the farthest corner of the cell. The headsman had come. He had come for her.

The abbé reached out and placed a calming hand on her bare shoulder. “Have no fear, my child. Be brave, sincerely repent thine sins and thou shalt sit by the Lord’s side in heaven.”

The executioner hovered in the middle of the cell like a malign shadow. “Bring the prisoner into the light,” he commanded, “I wish to see her.”

In response, one of the guards, the fat one with the foul teeth, barged into the cell and grabbed hold of Angeline. Within seconds, her arms were pinned behind her back and she was thrust into the circle of light. Coarse hands tore at her dress and ripped the fine Lyonesse silk, exposing her tender breasts for all to see.

The priest at least had the decency to avert his eyes. The guardsman knew no such scruples and grabbed her right breast, squeezing it like one would an orange. The executioner just stood there, unmoved. “Leave us alone,” he ordered, “I will interrogate her in private.”

Obediently, the guard trotted out of the cell, murmuring something about never getting any fun. The abbé paused in the doorway. “Confess, my daughter,” he urged, “Confess, repent and thou shalt be saved.” Then the heavy door fell shut and Angeline was left alone with the man who was to put her to death.

Shivering she knelt before the executioner, very conscious of her nakedness. The cold air of the dungeon hardened her nipples until they resembled rosebuds about to erupt in bloom. She felt the executioner’s eyes, invisible behind his mask, on her body, examining every inch of her bared skin with a cold, clinical gaze.

“You are very beautiful,” the man said.

Angeline had heard tales about what happened to virgins condemned to death on the eve of their execution and she was gripped by a shudder that was deeper than the cold.

The hangman, however, abruptly turned away. He took a blanket from the floor and tossed it at Angeline. “Cover yourself.”

Gratefully, Angeline pulled the blanket around her shivering body, covering her nakedness. The executioner was circling the kneeling girl. “Do you wish to confess your crime?”

“I… I have nothing to confess.”

“Do you deny then that you attempted to murder the Comte de Charentes?”

“I was only defending myself,” Angeline whispered, not daring to look at the black figure towering above her, “Defending my honour.”

A gloved hand touched Angeline’s face, cupping her chin and gently forcing her to lift her head. “Speak,” the executioner ordered.

“The Comte, he wished to marry me. He wanted to add my lands, my wealth to his own. But I could not love him. So I refused.”

The executioner stroked her cheek, curiously gentle. “Go on.”

“The Comte, he is a powerful man and used to getting his will. So he had me kidnapped and brought here. He was polite at first, even though I was his prisoner. One night, he dined with me in his private chambers. And for dessert, he attempted to… ravish me.”

The executioner let his fingers trail across Angeline’s skin, his touch prompting her to continue.

“The Comte said I could no longer refuse a marriage when it had already been consummated. He threw me onto the table and then he was on top of me and his breath was in my face and his hands were everywhere…”

Unbidden the horror of that moment came back. The Comte’s weight pressing her to the table, the stench of cognac on his breath, his mouth, his tongue, his hands defiling her body. The gleam of silver, promising salvation.

“And then I saw the knife,” Angeline said, “And I took it and stabbed the Comte.”

“Yet you were convicted of high treason and sentenced to die? Did you not appeal to the king?”

“How could I possibly appeal when the Comte de Charentes is a cousin of King Francois himself? Who would believe me? No, there is no escape for me. Except one. After the trial the Comte said that he would pardon me if I consented to marry him.”

All of a sudden, Angeline realized that the hand that was calmly caressing her skin would only a few hours from now slaughter her just as calmly. In horror, she pulled away.

“But I shall never marry such a fiend. No, better to die.” She wanted to be brave, go defiant to her death, but tears overcame her and she buried her face in her hands.

The executioner said nothing, even though Angeline could still feel his eyes on her body. Gathering all her courage together, she wiped the tears away and looked up straight into that expressionless mask. “Please, will you grant me one last request?”

“If it’s within my power…”

“Could… could you take off your mask, please? I want to see the face of the man who… who will…” She broke off, unable to say the unthinkable out loud. Come sunrise, this man would kill her, snuff out her life as casually as one might extinguish a candle.

In silence, the executioner removed his mask. The man beneath was younger than she would have expected. And unlike the way men of his profession were commonly depicted, his features were not coarse and brutal. He was clean-shaven, his hair was dark, his eyes were the colour of steel. Under different circumstances, one might almost have called him handsome.

“You have the face of a nobleman.”

For an instant, regret clouded those eyes of steel. “I was of noble birth… once.”

Angeline took a deep breath. She had to know all. “Tell me, how will it happen?”

“You will die by the sword.”

Beheading? At least that was an honourable death, not as shameful as the gallows or the wheel or the stake. “Will… will it hurt much?”

“You need have no fear,” the executioner said, “I will be swift. And gentle.” Again, he reached out for her face. Tenderly, his gloved hand ran down her cheek and neck. And this time, Angeline did not shrink back. “You will scarcely feel it. Just the touch of the blade, as light as a lover’s kiss. And a brief flash of pain, as brief as the one that turns the maiden into a woman.”

***

In spite of the early hour, a great crowd of townspeople was already gathered at the place of execution. The times were dark and the joys but few, so the people saw an execution, particularly that of a young and beautiful maiden, as excellent entertainment.

On a dais, Henri, Comte de Charentes, was seated in a comfortable chair, surrounded by courtiers and advisors. A tall man of middle age with a pointed beard still unmarred by silver, the Comte cut a splendid figure in his doublet of black velvet lined with scarlet silk. He did not look like a man who had only narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Yet few in the crowd seemed to notice, as their eyes were directed elsewhere.

For the centre of attraction was the scaffold that had been erected on the market square of the town, just outside the walls of the chateau. A company of soldiers surrounded the scaffold, but the platform itself was empty except for the executioner, an intimidating figure all clad in black. His face was covered by the traditional mask and at his side, still sheathed, was the blade that would soon sever the head of Angeline de Golon. Apart from the sword, the only other objects on the scaffold were a pillow of scarlet velvet upon which the condemned would kneel and the coffin into which her headless body would be laid. There was no block, the condemned would have to kneel and bend her head to receive the deadly blow.

From his raised seat, the Comte surveyed the arrangements. Then he looked towards the East where the first rays of the morning sun were painting the sky in fiery splendour. Satisfied, he rose from his chair. A wave of his hand silenced the crowd.

“Citizens of Charentes, we have gathered here today to witness the execution of a most despicable traitor and assassin. For her crimes against our glorious realm and against my own person, Angeline de Golon shall now be put to death. Have the malefactress brought before the headsman.”

Upon another wave of the Comte’s hand, the palace gates were opened and a small procession marched out into the square. The abbé led the way, murmuring Latin verses. He was followed by four guardsmen escorting the condemned.

Up to now the spectators had been cheering and jeering, as they customarily did during public executions. But once the condemned appeared, the crowd suddenly fell silent. There was no one present whose heart was not touched by the sight of the beautiful girl who was being led to her execution, so brave and composed in the face of death. She seemed so young, scarcely more than a child. A life barely begun that was now about to be nipped in the bud.

She was clad in a gown of thin white linen that was little more than a shift. The gown was low cut, exposing the girl’s shoulders and neck to the sword. Around her throat, a ribbon of scarlet silk had been tied to mark the executioner’s aim. Contrary to custom, her head was not covered by a veil. An early morning breeze pressed the thin execution gown to her naked body, outlining the gentle curve of her thighs and the firm mounds of her breasts.

The small procession had reached the wooden platform. Three of the guards remained below, the last man led the girl up the seven steps to the scaffold. The priest followed, still murmuring prayers to himself. Once they had gained the top, the executioner dismissed the guardsman with a nod.

Of the two men left on the scaffold, the priest was the first to administer his attentions to the condemned. One last time, he urged Angeline to confess her crimes. Silently, she shook her head. Undaunted, the abbé touched the girl’s forehead to bless her. He placed a crucifix at her lips and in response Angeline bowed her head to kiss it. Finally, the abbé handed her a simple rosary. “Repent, my child,” he urged, “Repent and pray for thy soul.”

When the priest had finished his ministrations, the Comte de Charentes himself rose from his seat to read out the sentence. “Angeline de Golon you were found guilty of high treason. For a crime of such magnitude there can only be one punishment: Death. Death in the most shameful and public manner. Therefore, we decree that on this day you shall be taken to a place of execution where your head shall be severed from your body with a single stroke of the blade.”

The Comte paused and looked straight at Angeline, hunger in his eyes

“However, in our most infinite mercy, we have also decided to grant you one final chance of saving your worthless life. Should any man of noble birth declare his willingness to take you for his wife, you shall be pardoned the moment the vow is spoken. And in spite of the cowardly attempt on my life, I have in my boundless magnanimity already made you an offer of marriage. So what is your answer, Angeline de Golon? Which do you choose, the ring or the blade?”

“I choose death,” the girl replied bravely.

An angry flush raced across the Comte’s face. “So be it. Headsman, do your duty. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

“Amen,” Geoffrey du Bressac thought, even though he knew that the last sentence was addressed to the girl and not to himself. Yet he realized that he needed the Lord’s forgiveness as much as the condemned, maybe even more so. For while Angeline had solely fought to protect her virtue against those that would strip it from her, Geoffrey was about to murder an innocent woman. He who had once sworn to protect the innocent.

Gently, he took Angeline by the arm and led her towards the pillow of scarlet velvet. Without prompting, she knelt down, clumsily but unafraid, and raised her hands. She was still clutching the rosary. By right, Geoffrey should have taken it away from her, but he did not. Instead, he produced a length of rope and proceeded to bind her hands, careful that the rope would not cut too deeply into her wrists. He wanted her to be as comfortable as possible.

Angeline seemed well aware of the uncommon tenderness with which she was handled and gave him a brief smile of gratitude. Then she calmly lowered her head, awaiting the fatal blow. Geoffrey brushed the raven tresses of her hair aside to expose the nape of her neck. She was beautiful. Those eyes, so large and pleading, that skin so milky white. The perfect curve of her neck and shoulders, those firm breasts, nipples already hardened in expectation of the blade’s caress.

The sight of her, kneeling before him quietly awaiting the kiss of his sword, sent fire streaming into his loins and blood rushing into his privates. It was not the first time that Geoffrey had experienced arousal during an execution. Sex and death, Eros and Thanatos, were closely related. No one knew that better than Geoffrey. But this time it was different. This time, it was more than mere arousal. He felt as excited as a man on his wedding night, about to lead his bride to the conjugal bed.

Geoffrey always made sure that the condemned, particularly those that were female, suffered as little as possible. When he had hanged a girl at Dieppe, he had ordered weights tied to her feet to ease her passing. At Amiens he had seen to it that three condemned witches were quietly strangled before being burned at the stake. And at Lille, he had beheaded an adulteress and her lover with a single stroke, uniting in death what had been separated in life. But no condemned prisoner had ever touched his heart like Angeline de Golon.

Why was she not veiled as was the custom? To make it easier for the girl as well as for her executioner. So Geoffrey pulled a square of fine black silk from beneath his tunic and proceeded to cover Angeline’s face. “Have no fear,” he whispered.

“What are you doing?” the Comte de Charentes demanded.

“Veiling the prisoner.”

“It has been decreed that due to the gravity of her crime, this malefactress does not deserve the privacy of the veil. She is to die with her head bared, so that her shame is for all to see.”

“I refuse to behead the prisoner unless her face is covered. They tend to shift at the last moment, making things very messy.”

Messy executions tended to cause uproar and uproar was the last thing the Comte wanted. “Have it your way then”, he grunted, “And be about your business.”

The time had come. The first rays of the morning sun were spilling across the horizon. Geoffrey unsheathed his sword and raised the blade high above his head, ready to deliver the fatal blow.

Angeline’s bound hands were clasped in prayer around the wooden beads of the rosary. Every muscle in her body tightened, in the knowledge that the next breath, the next heartbeat might be her last.

The sun crossed the horizon, its rays striking the executioner’s blade. The Comte’s intestines were quivering with anticipation. With his left hand he was surreptitiously massaging his crotch. With his right he gave the final sign. The crowd held its collective breath. The priest crossed himself and averted his eyes. The executioner finally… did nothing.

“What are you waiting for?” the Comte demanded in irritation, “Do it!”

Geoffrey did not move. “I refuse to carry out the sentence.”

“What?”

“I refuse to carry out the sentence…” Geoffrey repeated, lowering his sword, “…and I demand this woman, Angeline de Golon, for my wife.”

Angeline raised her head and a stray gust of wind tugged at the black veil covering her face. Geoffrey laid a calming hand on her bared shoulder. “Hush. Stay where you are and not a word. Trust me.”

“You have no right to demand anything of that sort,” the Comte thundered, “Now carry out the sentence or suffer the consequences!”

One of the Comte’s advisors leant forward. “Actually, my lord, he does have that right. You yourself said that any man of noble birth may…”

“A man of noble birth, yes. But this is just an executioner. A lowly executioner.”

Geoffrey ripped off his mask, “I am the Chevalier du Bressac…” he declared, “…and my blood is as noble as your own, Comte.”

“You have no choice,” the advisor urged, “You must grant his request.”

The townspeople had been watching the proceedings with the mixture of horror, morbid curiosity and perverse gaiety that such displays usually attracted. But with the sudden interruption of the execution, the tension of the crowd had been growing like the string of a bow drawn by the archer’s hand, until it had to be released. One by one, clamours for mercy arose until the townspeople were shouting in unison. It seemed as if a turmoil was about to break out.

The Comte de Charentes had no choice but to relent. He turned to Angeline. “Are you willing to accept this man as your husband?”

Angeline hesitated for the merest of seconds, seeking the eyes of the man who would save her.

“Yes, I am,” she said firmly.

The Comte glared at her, but there was nothing he could do. “Citizens of Charentes…” he announced, “…this woman, Angeline de Golon, has committed most heinous crimes. Crimes which deserve the strictest of punishments. Nevertheless, I have decided to be merciful and grant the executioner her life and her hand. But be warned, headsman, that my mercy is limited. Should you or your woman ever enter the city walls again, you shall be both put to death at once. Abbé, perform the ceremony.”

And so Geoffrey, Chevalier du Bressac, and Angeline de Golon were wed on the very spot where the bride was to have been beheaded. Angeline was still clad in her execution gown and instead of a bride’’s wreath she wore the black veil of death. Yet her eyes were full of hope and gratitude as Geoffrey’s hand tightened around hers.

The Comte de Charentes remained true to his word and formally pardoned Angeline as soon as the vows had been exchanged. Once the ceremony was over, Geoffrey swept his bride up in his arms and carried her from the scaffold. Within the hour, they had left the town of Charentes behind, never looking back.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new story will be posted.

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Some Comments on the 2019 Nebula Award Winners

The winners of the 2019 Nebula Awards have been announced tonight. Like most events these days, the ceremony and the associated conference were virtual. There was a livestream of the ceremony, too, but I forgot that it was on and only remembered when I saw someone congratulating a winner on Twitter.

The winner of the 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novel is A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker. I have to admit I am a little surprised about this win. Not because A Song for a New Day is not a highly deserving winner, for it absolutely is. However, 2019 was an extremely strong year for SFF novels and judging by the amount of buzz they got, I expected either A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine or Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir to win. Furthermore, A Song for a New Day is set in a world where live concerts have been banned because of infections risks, which hits a little too close to home given the current situation. I thought this might hurt its chances, because I for one don’t want to read/watch any kind of plague, pandemic or general post-apocalyptic fiction right now, not even my own (I read A Song for a New Day last year, shortly after it came out). However, other people feel differently and both The Plague by Albert Camus and the 2011 movie Contagion (which I disliked intensely back when it came out) are hugely popular right now.

Best Novella goes to This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I for one am not at all surprised that This Is How You Lose the Time War won, because I loved the novella a lot and judging by the reviews, I’m not the only one. It’s also currently in first place on my Hugo ballot, though there’s one novella I haven’t read yet. However, several commenters at Camestros Felapton’s recent review of the novella did not care for it at all, so maybe it’s more of a Marmite book than I thought. Which makes me even happier that it won.

The 2019 Nebula Award for Best Novelette goes to Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo. Once again, I’m really happy about this win, because Cat Rambo is a fine writer and incredibly nice person who deserves more recognition. I’m also happy for the publisher Meerkat Press, a small press that does great work. By the way, we featured Carpe Glitter at the Speculative Fiction Showcase last year, which makes Carpe Glitter the first Nebula winner we’ve featured at the Speculative Fiction Showcase so far, though we did feature finalists and winners of the Bram Stoker, Sir Julius Vogel, Aurora and Nommo Awards. And yes, I’m always thrilled when a book we featured is nominated for or wins an award.

Best Short Story goes to “Give the Family My Love” by A.T. Greenblatt. I read the story during the Hugo nomination period and while I liked it, I did not nominate it, considering how many great stories are out there. That said, it is a fine and deserving winner.

The winner of the 2019 Andre Norton Award for Outstanding YA Book is Riverland by Fran Wilde. The book is also nominated for the Lodestar/YA Not-a-Hugo this year, but I can’t say anything about it, because I didn’t get to it yet.

The winner of the 2019 Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation is Neil Gaiman for the Good Omens episode “Hard Times”. This episode was one of my Hugo nominations and I’m happy it won. Of course, I would have loved for Baby Yoda to win a nice shiny trophy to play with, but I suspect a Hugo makes a better toy than a Nebula.

The new Best Game Writing Nebula Award goes to The Outer Worlds by Leonard Boyarsky, Megan Starks, Kate Dollarhyde, Chris L’Etoile. I’m not a gamer, so I really can’t say anything about this category.

The recipient of the 2019 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award is Lois McMaster Bujold, which is highly deserved, because Lois McMaster Bujold is not only one of my favourite authors, but also one of the best living SFF authors today.

Julia Rios wins the Kevin O’Donell Jr. Service Award. The Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award goes to John Picacio and David Gaughran. Once more, all three are highly deserving winners. I’m particularly happy for David Gaughran, whose books not only helped countless authors take their first steps into indie publishing, but who also has done invaluable work exposing scammers looking to make a quick buck (and sadly often succeeding) in the Amazon Kindle store.

Those who worry that Tor is dominating the various SFF awards too much can stop worrying for now, because Tor did not publish a single Nebula winning work this year.

Those who worry that women are dominating the various SFF Awards too much can go on worrying, because the winners in the novel, novelette, short story and YA categories as well as the Grand Master and Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service Award winners are all women. The winners in the novella and game writing categories are male/female writing team. Meanwhile, Neil Gaiman, John Picacio and David Gaughran are holding up the flag for the male gender.

This year’s Nebula Award post is much shorter than last year’s, but then there is little to say about the winners other than that they are all excellent choices and congratulations. There is no drama or controversy this year and some of those disgruntled following last year’s drama have gone on to form their own guild. And considering that 2020 is turning out to be a supremely shitty year otherwise, it’s a relief that at least the SFF Awards have no drama and lots of fine winners this year.

One thing that’s interesting is that there will be comparatively little overlap between the Hugo and Nebula winners this year, because neither A Song for a New Day nor Carpe Glitter nor “Give the Family My Love” are Hugo finalists in their respective categories this year and the Hugos do not have a game award. I for one like this, because it means that more deserving stories will get awards love and those who use the Hugo and Nebula winners and finalists as reading lists will have more stories to choose from.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for May 2020

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some April books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have epic fantasy, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, horror, paranormal mysteries, time travel romance, science fiction romance, space opera, military science fiction, weird westerns, dragons, ghosts, monsters, demons, knights, necromancers, immortals, superheroes, space marines, intergalactic relic hunters, tentacled terrors, crime-busting witches, swashbuckling cats and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Oblivion by Andy Blinston:

Once a god, now a target.

Darius wakes surrounded by blood. Most of his mind has been stolen, and the dark figure that took it wants the rest.

Caught in a centuries-old war between the human empire and fiery rakkan invaders, he soon learns his fearsome powers have made him an enemy to many.

Unable to tell friend from foe, he must fight to escape the one hunting him, the one who seeks to turn him into a mindless puppet.

His only allies are his panther and the captivating but callous Alexandra, who promises to restore him to former glory. But can she be trusted?

Is he ready to discover the truth of who he was, and why he’s wanted?

The Thing from the Dread Swamp by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

While travelling through the Dread Swamp, Thurvok, the sellsword, and his friends, Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, Meldom’s sweetheart Lysha and the sorceress Sharenna come across an overturned wagon and the terrified merchant Polyxo who babbles that a monster has taken his daughter Cerissa. Because they are heroes – and because Polyxo has offered them a sizeable reward – the quartet of adventurers offers to rescue Cerissa from the thing that lives in the Dread Swamp.

This is a short story of 5300 words or 19 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

The Tentacled Terror by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

Thurvok, the sellsword, and his friends Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, the sorceress Sharenna and Meldom’s sweetheart Lysha set sail for the sunken city of Nhom’zonac, looking for the lost treasure of the Sea Kings. But they have to get past the Lovecraftian horror guarding the city first.

This is a short story of 5300 words or 19 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Elven Doom by Lindsay Buroker:

Dragons make life complicated. Extremely complicated.

After returning from Idaho, I was hoping to have time to figure things out with Zav—also known as Lord Zavryd, the dragon who claimed me as his mate without asking—but the dark elves are up to their old tricks again.

Actually, they’re up to far more deadly tricks, using more powerful magic than I knew existed. I have no idea how I’m going to stop them, but if I can’t, my entire city and everybody I care about could be obliterated.

To make matters worse, Zav’s sister has shown up and is rooting around in my life. His family doesn’t approve of me, and she plans to put an end to our relationship… one way or another.

[image error] Dragon Physician by Joyce Chng:

Can Jixin succeed in a world of dragon racing run by powerful women? Can he fight the system and fulfil his dream of becoming a dragon rider? Or does he choose instead to be a dragon physician like his mother? Jixin finds his world suddenly changed when Lu Si, the scion of a Rookery owner, takes a shine on him. He is plunged straight into the lucrative world of dragon racing… Will his life change?

 

 

Toga by Karen Diem:

Go home, myths , you’re drunk.

After a magical accident, part-time superhero Zita Garcia and her two closest friends wake up stranded in an ancient Greece that could only have existed if all the myths were real and somewhat inebriated.

Unfortunately, they can only leave with help from the locals, not all of whom are friendly. The dryads are downright deadly, and even the normally chatty centaurs aren’t talking. To convince them to assist, Zita and her friends will have to go questing, just like in all the classic fantasy novels. The ones Zita never bothered to read.

If they win, they’ll get the help they need.

If they don’t, they better get used to togas.

Toga is the fifth in the Arca superhero urban fantasy series and includes deliberate historical inaccuracies, immoderate language, lame sexual innuendo, and comic book violence.

How to Science Fictionally: A User Guide to Made Up Stuff by Camestros Felapton:

How can you make your space ship travel faster than light? How can you make your teleporter work? How are you going to send a message home and how are you going to style your beard? These and many other questions are often badly answered in this compendium of essays from Camestros Felapton. Ranging from flippant to occasionally researched, this book answers all of the least important questions in modern sci-fi.

Essential reading for aspiring science fiction authors.

The Necromancer by Rachel Ford:

A rash of grave robberies. A cursed barrow. A case that will test the balance between magic and law.

When bodies turn up missing, the mage’s academy assigns the case to Apprentice Idun Wintermoon. With the jarl’s liaison for all things magical, Lissette Forlatt, and her best friend, the giant Njal, they try to track the thief.

But the closer they get to answers, the further away from truth they find themselves. When a series of strange visions brings Lissette to the ruins of the long abandoned goblin kingdom, they descend into a dark and terrible world of magic and secrets.

They’re in a race against time as they try to stop the Necromancer. But to get to her, they have to tread where the dead sleep – or worse, don’t.

And if they’re not careful, they’ll end up forgotten denizens of the undead themselves.

Viper’s Nest by Rachel Ford:

Banished, shipwrecked and sent to the arenas.

Trygve Bjarneson lost everything. And he deserved it. He knows that. So when he’s given the opportunity to regain some of his honor, and reclaim his life in the process, he takes it.

Little does the once future-king realize that the seemingly straightforward job of bodyguard to Empress Cassia is anything but. Machiavellian politics are just the beginning. He’s about to be plunged into a dark world of bloody murder, grim assassinations, and deadly rivalries. It will take every bit of cunning and ingenuity to protect the empress from her enemies.

But if his foes have their way, he will wish he never made it out of the arenas alive.

Ghostly Business by Lily Harper Hart:

Every “quiet” town has secrets. The one nobody expected is about to rock Whisper Cove.

During what should’ve been a romantic double date, a fire breaks out at a historic home. Harper Harlow and Jared Monroe race to the scene to make sure nobody is trapped or in danger … and discover one heck of a secret.

It seems the house, which was owned by a solitary older woman who kept to herself, was being run as a brothel. Now she’s dead and there’s a bevy of married men on the hot seat for her murder.

Harper has a cantankerous ghost to deal with … and a bevy of odd emotions running roughshod over her mental health. She feels like an invader in her own skin, and she can’t figure out why.

Jared’s problems are even more pronounced. Whenever he questions an individual present at the house that night, they threaten him with a legal suit before clamming up. On top of that, he’s worried about Harper, who seems fixated on the case.

Since the moment they met, they were joined at the hip … and lips. Now, that unshakeable bond they’ve always reveled in is going to be put to the test.

Nothing can break them apart … but that doesn’t mean outside forces won’t try, and they might be willing to kill to do it.

To Love a Witch by Amanda M. Lee:

Bay Winchester is at a crossroads in her life. Her powers are growing, her personal life is settled, and there’s a young witch in crisis under her care.

Things are … difficult.

A good witch at heart, Bay knows that the teenager she’s trying to tame is dangerous. To keep Hemlock Cove safe, she’s isolated her at the campground property she owns with her boyfriend Landon. While visiting one day, a ghost catches her attention across the lake … and when Bay crosses to investigate, she finds a fresh body and a whole lot of trouble.

It seems the new property owner is currently dating the victim’s ex-boyfriend and there’s a convoluted mess to untangle. That’s on top of the other people in town – including Aunt Tillie’s nemesis Mrs. Little – who keep showing up at the lake with an agenda.

Bay has no idea what to do. She needs to keep her teenage protégé hidden while uncovering a deadly story of an affair gone wrong and greed run amok. All the while she wonders what will happen if she can’t turn things around for her new teenage responsibility. What will she have to do to protect the people that she loves?

If that wasn’t enough, Landon is acting out of sorts. His demeanor is strange and he’s having secret conversations with her mother while trying to keep Bay out of his sock drawer. She can’t figure out why and her imagination is running wild.

It’s going to be a race to the finish. There’s an out-of-control ghost, a teenager who doesn’t want to be helped, and a man who has a plan to give his favorite witch everything she’s ever wanted.

This is the one you’ve been waiting for. The big moment is finally here.

The Whisper Killer by Rod Little:

Wolf Hollow is not like other towns. It gets what it needs.

Ben is a baby-faced serial killer who can charm his victims with a smile. But when he stumbles into Wolf Hollow to hide from the FBI, it’s the town that charms him and convinces him to stay. Because Wolf Hollow gets what it needs, and it needs Ben. It knows his secret.

Ben isn’t alone. He shares his body with a century-old demon. He may be the town’s worst nightmare, but he’s exactly what they need.

Under cover of a blinding snowstorm, a bitter enemy returns to Wolf Hollow, a group of men hell-bent on revenge, resolved to wipe out the entire town and leave no survivors. Only Ben has what it takes to stand in their way . . . if he chooses. He is their only hope.

Because some evils can only be met by a greater evil.

Insurgent by Ken Lozito:

As Connor secretly searches for the enemy homeworld, he launches clandestine military operations to liberate other worlds in hopes of gaining allies before the enemy can find the last human colony.

The humans cannot hope to compete with the enemy’s vast empire, but with the discovery of a new ally, Connor believes their luck has finally changed.

Instead, when new allies clash with the old, Connor finds himself caught in the middle. Connor will have to choose whether doing what’s necessary to ensure the colony survives is worth compromising his loyalty to allies close to home, but the price could ultimately tear the colony apart.

Surviving a war with the enemy isn’t always a numbers game, but in choosing one ally, will Connor lose it all?

Orion Rises by G.J. Ogden:

Kicked out of the Relic Guardian Force, Hudson Powell has started down the path to becoming a relic hunter. Fortune awaits inside the mysterious, alien hulks found on every planet throughout the vast network of portal worlds. The only problem is, he’s broke and he doesn’t have a starship.

A chance encounter with Liberty Devan – a streetwise, genius ship mechanic – provides him with an unlikely relic-hunting partner. Unfortunately, Hudson’s former RGF boss, Logan Griff, still wants him dead, and Griff has hired two of the galaxy’s deadliest mercenaries to get him.

Fortunately for Hudson, one of them has taken a shine to him.

Fighting to stay one step ahead of Logan Griff, Hudson and Liberty discover the first new portal in a century. But embarking on a relic hunt to a new and unexplored star system, they find an alien intelligence that warns them of a grave threat to humanity.

The secrets of the alien wrecks are about to be uncovered. And it isn’t good news.

Swashbuckling Cats, edited by Rhonda Parrish:

If you think cats and water don’t mix, think again.

Plunge into worlds of piratical cats: some selfish, some mischievous, all fond of hitting the catnip stash. From ships on the deep blue sea, to ships flying through the depths of space, and even visiting from beyond the veil, these cats are determined and on a mission.

Featuring thirteen “tails” of adventure-loving cats, puns, and fun by: Megan Fennell; S.G. Wong; Rebecca Brae; Grace Bridges; Lizz Donnelly; Blake Liddell; Frances Pauli; JB Riley; Joseph Halden; Leslie Van Zwol; Krista D. Ball; Chadwick Ginther; Rose Strickman; and Beth Cato.

Zelup by Lisa Probz:

Dawn

Who would have thought it? A one-night stand should have only been one night.

Then the hot guy shows up on my doorstep with a business proposal that stinks more than a Vanfian female in heat.

He’s hiding something. I just didn’t expect it to be an upcoming apocalypse.

I have no choice but to go all in, but the plan is to keep my heart protected from him.

Yeah right. My hormones are leading the way, and this guy isn’t going to let me slip from his grasp that easily.

Zelup

Life is just never easy, is it?

My older brother shacks up with the daughter of a goddess, and all of a sudden, our planet is pushed into an apocalypse.

And I’m forced to hunt down a mythical Guardian to aid us in the fight against the demon host that’s squared off to us.

What I don’t expect in my travels is to fall for a feisty scientist.

She sees through my crap and is hotter than Hades.

But I can’t afford to be distracted.

And yet, that’s exactly what I am. This Guardian can suck it. I’m more interested in convincing Dawn I’m her man, her protector.

Until the Crowned Prince of Hell gets her. His threat?

To erase me from her memory forever.

1910: Love Reaches Through Time by Georgina Rowe:

Rowena Cutler loves her job as a researcher, delving into the history of her beloved city of Sydney. After one marriage and several failed relationships, she has given up on men and romance, and believes she is happily in control of her life…until a paranormal experience turns her life upside down.

While reading an old newspaper article from 1910, Rowena is flung from the present into the distant past where she experiences the very event she was reading about. She latches onto an object from the past just as she is pulled back to her own time period, and is startled to discover the object has made the trip across time with her!

Shaken but determined, Rowena begins using her newfound gift to solve some century-old mysteries of Sydney. Her extraordinary paranormal adventures have barely begun, however, when she falls desperately in love with a man named Lionel who lived in 1910. Even though he is not fully aware of her presence because he cannot see her, Rowena knows she has finally found the man of her dreams. But if Rowena and Lionel are ever to be together, she realizes she must explore the full extent of her psychic powers, no matter how dangerous the consequences.

Wardtown by Glynn Stewart:

A young man’s anger and gun

An old man’s secrets and magic

A moment that binds them forever

Teer was forced into exile in the Spehari’s Eastern Territories after they betrayed his father’s memory, leaving him and his mother destitute. He has grown up on the ranch of his mother’s new husband, nursing the skills of a cowboy and the anger of a betrayed child.

When one of the demigod-like Spehari walks into his bar, Teer gives in to a pointless moment of anger—opening fire on one of the rulers of the Unity!

Sentenced to hang for his crime, Teer’s life hangs by the slimmest of threads: the mercy and secrets of the very immortal he tried to kill…

Sky of Water by Stacey L. Tucker:

This final installment of the Equal Night trilogy will put Skylar to her biggest test to date. After Magus takes her through the alchemical door in the Quine library, she quickly remembers her strange surroundings and the reason she’s been brought back to the First Age. Here, she will have to rely on her own magic to navigate the overlapping timelines that will allow her to rewrite history. But if she’s not careful, she could destroy it completely.

Back home, it will take every one of Skylar’s loved ones to execute Ocean’s plan, and Argan has the biggest role among them: the impossible task of retrieving Skylar home from the past. Luckily, it’s something he’s been training for his entire life.

Meanwhile, a woman now sits in the Oval Office, the corrupt scaffolding of the US government collapsing around her. Mica Noxx has a vision for the US, one that returns it to the original intention of the Founding Fathers.

With Skylar held in the First Age and Mica planted in current day, they have one shot to banish the darkness that’s held control for centuries, and return the United States to a trajectory toward its true destiny: becoming the New Atlantis.

Federation at War by James David Victor:

An old war is about to undergo an alien transformation.

Alone in the galaxy, humanity has waged war against itself in the name of order and personal freedom. When a new alien threat arrives on their doorstep, they will have to face a reality most don’t believe. They are not alone amongst the stars. And worse, they are far from superior.

Federation At War is the first book in the Blue Star Marines series which follows a young man who will have to push his hatreds aside and come to the aid of all humanity.

Download Federation At War and see if humanity can overcome itself and survive in the vast darkness of space!

Felons in the Eyes of God by Stephen James Wright:

The planet Thyrhucis is prosperous and peaceful, governed by a collective of uploaded post-human intelligences called the Necrarchy. Thyrhucis is a nexus for interstellar travel, and governments from all over the galaxy are seeking access to its trade routes.

Christabel Cameron Carrington wants access for the Cultural Revival, a multi-system movement that’s bringing back old Earth cultures. She’s not above using underhand methods, including hacking the planetary data networks, which brings her into direct contact with the Necrarchy itself.

Rethis Veid wants access for the spartan world of Thur, a grim and expansionist state that’s considered suspect by everyone. He’s involving himself with dissident groups, whose concerns about the Necrarchy become disturbingly relevant.

Laura Sabon, light years away, knows nothing about this – her only concern is keeping her decrepit space freighter operational. But she’s drawn into the situation when her ship is chartered to take a cargo to Thyrhucis – a cargo which just might contain the end of interstellar civilization.

The Ninth Knight by Stephen James Wright:

Prosperous and middle-aged, Sir Gaveran yearns for knightly adventure and chivalrous deeds. He persuades seven other knights to meet with him – rich and powerful Garrien, upcoming knight-errant Perinell, poor but honest Calan, aesthetic Lyas, foreigner Rykon, masked and enigmatic Yvon, and ill-omened Alair. Gaveran persuades them all to join him in an oath, to seek adventure in the coming year….

But, as the eight knights swear on their swords, a ninth blade is laid across theirs – and the shadowy figure of the Ninth Knight follows each knight as they quest, observing them and, perhaps, judging them.

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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for May 2020

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some April books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, 1930s mysteries, 1950s mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, legal thrillers, medical thrillers, action thrillers, horror thrillers, police procedurals, romantic suspense, noir, private investigators, amateur sleuths, police officers, lawyers, spies, terrorists, drug dealers, yakuza, serial killers, dark secrets, sinister mansions, deadly cruises, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting librarians, crime and murder in Miami, Los Angeles, Louisiana, California, Norfolk, Paris, Columbia, the Panama Canal and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

The Case of the Floating Funeral by Cheri Baker:

Wealthy entrepreneur and famed gambler Morgan Picklewick is dead, and his family and friends are coming aboard the S.V. Adventurous Spirit for the memorial service at sea. As the ship heads to sunny South America, Morgan’s heirs will scatter his ashes in the deep blue waters of the Panama Canal. But not everything is as it seems. Morgan’s business partner and friend, Roberta Crowley, strongly suspects that he was murdered by one of his children.

Did one of Morgan’s children kill their father to avoid being disinherited? As Ellie mingles with the mourners, it seems everyone is hiding a motive or two. Perhaps one of his wealthy business partners saw an opportunity to take a bigger piece of the pie? And what about his ex-wife? Is her diva-like behavior covering a guilty conscience? As Morgan’s heirs prepare to seize their father’s stake in the cruise line, with devastating consequences for the crew, Roberta gives Ellie her most difficult assignment yet: Identify Morgan’s killer before the crew is torn apart and scattered to the four winds, forever.

Death in the Beginning by Beth Byers:

June 1938

A new baby, an elopement, an unexpected visitor. Georgette Dorothy Aaron and her family of orphans knew it would be an exciting summer, but none of them expected to be drawn into yet another murder investigation.

When they band together, however, surely they can accomplish anything.

 

The Darkest Garden by Stacy Claflin:

How many secrets can one house hide?

Kenzi Brannon has always dreaded going down to the dark basement of the old Brannon house she grew up in. Now an adult, she’s returned home to find her apprehension has intensified. She avoids that locked door and the secrets beyond in hope that ignoring the problem will keep long-forgotten horrors buried.

A neighbor’s obsession with her house and history has rekindled Kenzi’s old fears. And reconnecting with someone from her past may force her to face what she’s been running from her entire life.

And that might not be the worst of it.

The garden her family is restoring could conceal something far more terrifying than anything inside the house. Something that could rip her newly found family apart.

Some people say the truth will set you free. Kenzi can’t help but feel that it will destroy everything.

When You Start to Miss Me by Stacy Claflin:

She’s there for everyone. But who’s there for her?

Malia is the glue that holds her dysfunctional family together. Her two brothers need constant attention, the family business drains her, and her narcissistic parents are on the verge of divorce. All that leaves her little time for herself. But when her brother nearly dies in her arms, she’s terrified she isn’t enough to save him.

Then Lincoln walks into her life at that crucial moment.

Linc’s got real pain in his past, pain that’s made him harden his heart. Even so, he can’t walk away from Malia—not the night he meets her, and not afterward. She might just be the thing that helps him risk love again.

But Malia has secrets that make her try to push him away, secrets some people would do anything to protect. When Linc forces them to light, he puts her in jeopardy, making him once again face the fear of losing someone he loves. And this time, he doesn’t think he can survive it.

Kill Our Sins by J.M. Dalgliesh:

What would you do to keep your past a secret?

When the mutilated remains of a woman are retrieved by local fishermen, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his team to identify how she came to be in the water and what put her there. Joined on the case by his new permanent boss, DCI Tamara Greave, it remains to be proven if the woman’s death was as a result of foul play or a tragic accident.

The victim carried no means of identification, was poorly dressed for the winter and horribly disfigured when pulled from the water. As the case progresses old ghosts return to haunt those living in the present. Matters thought settled a long time ago face intense scrutiny… attention that some hoped would never come to pass. When childhood friends begin to question one another, suddenly the long forgotten past comes to the fore.

The misadventure of youth can have grave consequences. No matter how much time passes nor how deep you bury them, your sins will always return to haunt you. But who has the most to lose and what else are they willing to sacrifice in order to keep what they have? Is someone prepared to kill for their sins?

Janssen must reveal and catch a killer without a conscience before they strike again…

The Man Who Never Was by Mark Dawson:

Can the man who never was catch the criminals who never get caught?

John Milton is used to operating in the shadows, weaving his way through dangerous places behind a fake identity. Now, to avenge the death of a close friend, he must wear his mask of deception once more.

Beau Baxter was brutally murdered by a drugs cartel but that doesn’t stop Milton from blaming himself for his friend’s death. With the help of a trusted team of undercover experts and Beau’s son, Milton is determined to track down the killers. And he isn’t just after the man who gave the order. He’s heading right for the top.

Milton plans to follow the trail of cocaine from the nightclubs of Amsterdam all the way to its source in Colombia. Disguised as an ambitious buyer, he’s prepared to work his way up the cartel hierarchy one rung at a time. But the ladder can be slippery and, as Milton travels deeper into a world of violence, ruthlessness and greed, he finds himself in a jungle that could prove impossible to escape.

Bullets and Beads by Jana DeLeon:

Let the good times roll?

It’s Mardi Gras time and Fortune is looking forward to seeing the spectacle firsthand, but when a visitor to Sinful is murdered during the celebration there, Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie can’t help but wonder what happened. As they start looking into the woman and the family in Sinful she came to visit, their investigation sends them to New Orleans, right at the height of the Mardi Gras celebration. But instead of relaxing a little and enjoying the festivities, Fortune can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched.

When she catches sight of her father in the Mardi Gras crowd, she knows why.

Unfortunately, her father’s presence in Louisiana has brought with it a host of terrorists, all with only one thing in mind—locate and terminate Dwight Redding. Can Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie manage to evade the killers long enough to figure out why Dwight has returned from the dead? And will knowing the answer make things worse or better?

Ghostly Business by Lily Harper Hart:

Every “quiet” town has secrets. The one nobody expected is about to rock Whisper Cove.

During what should’ve been a romantic double date, a fire breaks out at a historic home. Harper Harlow and Jared Monroe race to the scene to make sure nobody is trapped or in danger … and discover one heck of a secret.

It seems the house, which was owned by a solitary older woman who kept to herself, was being run as a brothel. Now she’s dead and there’s a bevy of married men on the hot seat for her murder.

Harper has a cantankerous ghost to deal with … and a bevy of odd emotions running roughshod over her mental health. She feels like an invader in her own skin, and she can’t figure out why.

Jared’s problems are even more pronounced. Whenever he questions an individual present at the house that night, they threaten him with a legal suit before clamming up. On top of that, he’s worried about Harper, who seems fixated on the case.

Since the moment they met, they were joined at the hip … and lips. Now, that unshakeable bond they’ve always reveled in is going to be put to the test.

Nothing can break them apart … but that doesn’t mean outside forces won’t try, and they might be willing to kill to do it.

Imminent Harm by Robin James:

Her reputation is on the line. A woman’s life is in danger. Can she stop them both from flatlining?

Lawyer Cass Leary is desperate for a break from her family drama. And when a local judge asks for help protecting his sister from domestic abuse, she sees an opportunity to resurrect her career. But the case quickly turns ugly when her client vanishes without a trace.

Convinced the volatile husband is behind the disappearance, Cass doubles down on her frantic search. But she’s unprepared for the tragic twist that could upend the entire Delphi court system…

With powerful figures circling, can Cass expose the shocking truth before her voice is silenced?

Imminent Harm is the sixth book in the high-octane Cass Leary Legal Thriller Series. If you like strong female leads, gripping courtroom conflict, and page-turning suspense, then you’ll love Robin James’s riveting novel.

To Love a Witch by Amanda M. Lee:

Bay Winchester is at a crossroads in her life. Her powers are growing, her personal life is settled, and there’s a young witch in crisis under her care.

Things are … difficult.

A good witch at heart, Bay knows that the teenager she’s trying to tame is dangerous. To keep Hemlock Cove safe, she’s isolated her at the campground property she owns with her boyfriend Landon. While visiting one day, a ghost catches her attention across the lake … and when Bay crosses to investigate, she finds a fresh body and a whole lot of trouble.

It seems the new property owner is currently dating the victim’s ex-boyfriend and there’s a convoluted mess to untangle. That’s on top of the other people in town – including Aunt Tillie’s nemesis Mrs. Little – who keep showing up at the lake with an agenda.

Bay has no idea what to do. She needs to keep her teenage protégé hidden while uncovering a deadly story of an affair gone wrong and greed run amok. All the while she wonders what will happen if she can’t turn things around for her new teenage responsibility. What will she have to do to protect the people that she loves?

If that wasn’t enough, Landon is acting out of sorts. His demeanor is strange and he’s having secret conversations with her mother while trying to keep Bay out of his sock drawer. She can’t figure out why and her imagination is running wild.

It’s going to be a race to the finish. There’s an out-of-control ghost, a teenager who doesn’t want to be helped, and a man who has a plan to give his favorite witch everything she’s ever wanted.

This is the one you’ve been waiting for. The big moment is finally here.

The Whisper Killer by Rod Little:

Wolf Hollow is not like other towns. It gets what it needs.

Ben is a baby-faced serial killer who can charm his victims with a smile. But when he stumbles into Wolf Hollow to hide from the FBI, it’s the town that charms him and convinces him to stay. Because Wolf Hollow gets what it needs, and it needs Ben. It knows his secret.

Ben isn’t alone. He shares his body with a century-old demon. He may be the town’s worst nightmare, but he’s exactly what they need.

Under cover of a blinding snowstorm, a bitter enemy returns to Wolf Hollow, a group of men hell-bent on revenge, resolved to wipe out the entire town and leave no survivors. Only Ben has what it takes to stand in their way . . . if he chooses. He is their only hope.

Because some evils can only be met by a greater evil.

The White Death by Willow Morgan:

It’s Tessa Newbridge’s first ever live fire exercise as a Cadet in the LAPD Police Academy. She’s certain to graduate. She just has to get through the sealed course she’s been through five times before—without live fire.

Running out of ammunition with the exit in sight, she’s ready to finish the course when, out of nowhere, two strange men jump the fence into her line of fire.

That startling incident spins Tessa off into a nightmare whirlwind of danger, intrigue, and mystery that could blow her whole world apart, to say nothing of the country itself.

Nothing and no one is what she thought they were and hidden enemies and unknown allies emerge from every side.

Can she dig deep enough to find the resources within herself to overcome all the forces closing in around her, or will they destroy her and everything she holds dear?

Death Trap by Willow Morgan:

By some miracle, Tessa Newbridge somehow survives the terrible car accident escaping the White Death Yakuza. Now she’s a sitting duck in a hospital bed with nothing and no one to stop the assassins finding her.

LAPD doesn’t seem to notice or care that the most dangerous crime syndicate on the planet wants her dead, and where is Leon Griggs, the hero Detective who saved her life?

Are the very Police officials assigned to protect her erasing the evidence that a tattooed member of the Yakuza is about to be elected President of the United States?

Tessa can forget about saving the world from impending disaster. She’s got her hands full just making it through the next few hours before her enemies finally catch up with her and she might not be the only one who pays the price.

Can she escape from this death trap before time runs out for her and those she loves?

Murder at the Fashion House by Sonia Parin:

Evie, Countess of Woodridge, is on a mission to rescue her favorite modiste from the consequences of an unfavorable review. Her quest is a timely diversion as her granny, Toodles, appears to be suffering from a case of restlessness.

All goes well until Evie’s public clash with the journalist responsible for the article is followed by the journalist’s death. The circumstances are suspicious and the police is warning Evie to stay away from the case.

While she is happy to comply with the detective’s request, the killer has other ideas and goes one step too far…

Never Walk Alone by Willow Rose:

The world is on lockdown due to a virus that originated in Miami.

A woman is kidnapped from her apartment, and Detective Harry Hunter is on the case.

At the same time, his sister shows up after they haven’t seen each other in a year.

As it turns out, Harry’s sister knows more about the virus than she lets on. Soon, he wonders if the virus is connected to the missing woman.

As he digs deeper into the strange mystery, he realizes his sister’s life is in great danger, and so is his.

Bedlam by L.J. Ross:

In a world gone mad, who can you trust?

Fresh from a high-profile case in the Paris fashion world, elite forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Alexander Gregory receives a call from the New York State Homicide Squad. The wife of a notorious criminal has been admitted to a private psychiatric hospital and can no longer testify in his upcoming trial. Without her, their case will collapse but, amidst reports that the staff are as unpredictable as their patients, who can the police trust?

In desperation, they turn to an outsider and now Gregory must find the courage to step inside the fortified walls of Buchanan Hospital to uncover the truth. The question is, will he ever be the same again?

Murder and mystery are peppered with dark humour in this fast-paced thriller set amidst the spectacular Catskill Forest.

Blood Family by Jacqueline Seewald:

In Jacqueline Seewald’s fifth Kim Reynolds Mystery, Kim, an academic librarian, is intent on locating her biological father, James Shaw. Unfortunately after finding him, he dies unexpectedly. It is up to Kim to connect with the family she has never known. In doing so, she discovers a half-sister who is in need of her help. Kim is concerned that Claire Shaw is being exploited, and Kim wants to help her however she can. Kim then learns that Claire’s stepmother also died under mysterious circumstances, and her stepbrother disappeared. Once Kim becomes involved, she quickly realizes her own life is now in danger. With Kim’s fiancé, Lieutenant Mike Gardner, Wilson Township homicide detective, investigating along with Sergeant Bert St. Croix, the race is on to catch a killer that is now intent on adding Kim to the list of deceased.

Murder at the Bomb Shelter by Lee and Norm Strauss:

Murder’s a blast!

Rosa Reed’s holiday with the Forester Family in Santa Bonita has turned into an extended stay, and Rosa decides to make use of her Metropolitan Police training and sets up a private investigative business ~ just like her mother! But she finds she’s not the only one who keeps business in the family, and when one of the members of the prestigious Gainer family is found dead in his bomb shelter, Rosa is invited to take on the case ~ much to Detective Miguel Belmonte’s chagrin. If Rosa doesn’t find the killer soon, the summer of ’56 just might be her last.

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Retro Review: “Arena” by Fredric Brown

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Astounding’s covers in the 1940s were hit and miss, but this one definitely falls on the “hit” side of the equation.

I’ll continue my reviews of the 1945 Retro Hugo finalist with “Arena”, a science fiction novelette by Fredric Brown that was published in the June 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is a finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

“Arena” opens in medias res with a man called Bob Carson awakening on his back in the sand of the titular arena. Of course, Carson has no idea that he is in an arena yet – though he notes that he has awoken in some kind of circumscribed area. Carson takes stock of himself and his surrounding and realises that he is completely naked, that it’s hot and that the sand is blue, which tells him that he is not in Kansas – pardon, the pulp science fiction shared solar system – anymore.

Carson has no idea how he came to be in the place with the blue sand, but while he tries to figure it out, he also gives us one of those infodumps that 1940s Astounding was so fond of. We learn that Carson was the pilot of a one person scout ship, deployed near Pluto, where the mighty Earth armada of ten thousand ships and half a millions soldiers is about the face off against the invading Outsiders. As alien naming practices go, Brown’s creativity leaves something to be desired.

Since this is a 1940s issue of Astounding, Carson also gives us an infodump about the Outsiders, what they look like (no one knows), the history of humanity’s interactions with them so far (unprovoked raids with no survivors, occasional skirmishes and finally a fully fledged invasion fleet) as well as their strengths and weaknesses (the Earth ships have better weapons, while the Outsider ships are faster and more manoeuvrable)

The clash of the two fleets would have been the decisive battle of the undeclared war (a fact that has nothing to do with current world events in 1944, I’m sure) between the humans and the Outsiders. And Carson and his scout ship would have been at the forefront of that battle. Carson still is at the forefront of that battle, though he doesn’t know it yet.

The last thing Carson remembers before awakening in the blue sand is that the alarm in his scout ship went off, as his sensors detected a scout ship of the Outsiders. Brown now treats us to a pitched space battle between Carson and the Outsider scout ship.

Contrary to popular belief, space battles are comparatively rare in golden age science fiction. At any rate, I have found only a handful of space battles in the more than thirty stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. And if space battles do occur, they are mostly kept off stage. Either the scene fades to black just before the battle begins, as in “The Big and the Little”, which contains one of Isaac Asimov’s comparatively few space battle scenes (or battle scenes of any kind) or the story picks up after the battle is already over, with a spaceship going down in flames, as in Leigh Brackett’s “The Citadel of Lost Ships” (though that story does contain a brief space battle) or her later story “Lorelei of the Red Mist”. Meanwhile, Ray Bradbury’s superb “Morgue Ship” begins with the two-man crew of the titular ship literally picking up the corpses left floating in space after the battle is over. And while the protagonist of Bradbury’s 1945 Retro Hugo finalist “I, Rocket” is a warship, we never see the rocket actually engaged in battle.

I’m not sure why space battles are so uncommon during the golden age, especially since spaceship crashes (not all of them due to battle) or physical fights are both extremely common. Part of the reason might be that no one in the 1940s had any idea what a space battle would look like, but then we no more know what a space battle would truly be like than the writers of the golden age did, but that doesn’t stop modern science fiction writers from penning endless battle scenes. Furthermore, the most common models for space battles, i.e. eighteenth and nineteenth century naval warfare and WWI and WWII aerial dogfights, were already plentiful in the pulps as well as in the more respectable fiction of the era. The Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester as well as Rafael Sabatini’s various maritime swashbucklers were already in full swing by 1944, while the aviator hero G-8 and His Battle Aces had been fighting aerial battles against extremely colourful antagonists in a version of WWI that never was for eleven years by this point. So it’s not as if the models didn’t exist. It’s just that science fiction writers of the era did not use them.

I now wonder when space battles became common in science fiction. Was it Star Wars, whose space battles were famously based on the aerial battles in the 1955 British war movie The Dam Busters, that made space battles an integral part of science fiction? Or did science fiction’s fascination with space battles start before 1977?

Because “Arena” features a battle between two scout ships, Fredric Brown chooses the aerial dogfight model for his space battle. By 1940s standards, the battle is quite detailed, even though Brown tells us that a space battle lasts three seconds, because a lightly armoured scout ship like Carson’s only has time to fire a single shot, cause once the opponent fires their single shot, it’s all over. Carson fires his single shot and misses. Since his antagonist misses as well, Carson tries to get in another shot, when both the Outsider ship and his own suddenly dive towards the ground – ground where there should be no planet, asteroid or other celestial body, since the plethora of Transneptunian objects would not be discovered until much later.

Carson explores the blue landscape in which he finds himself, when he suddenly receives a telepathic message from a highly evolved alien being. This being informs Carson that both humanity and the Outsiders have the potential to evolve into something like the alien’s own species, but only if the battle between the Earth fleet and the Outsider fleet is stopped now. For the two fleets are too evenly matched, so that any victory will be a Pyrrhic one. Not only the losing species will be destroyed, but the winner will have suffered such great losses that they will regress and never reach their full potential either. The aliens want to prevent this and so they picked a representative of each species and dumped them naked and unarmed into the titular arena, an environment that is equally alien and equally unpleasant to both, to fight it out as the champions of their respective people. The winner’s species will survive, while the loser’s fleet and species will be destroyed. And because “Arena” was published in Astounding, the alien also informs Carson that “brain-power and courage will be more important than strength”.

However, Carson doesn’t have much of a chance to think about all this, because he has his first encounter with his Outsider opponent. And this opponent is – no, not a two-meter tall green Reptilian alien – but a featureless, bright red rolling sphere, which also has retractable tentacles. The sphere rolls towards Carson who grabs a sharp-edged blue rock to defend himself. But before the sphere can reach him, it suddenly hit an invisible barrier and bounces off. It turns out that the two opponents are separated by a force field.

Both Carson and the alien – Carson calls it a “Roller” for its way of moving – check whether there is a way under, over or around the forcefield, but neither can find anything. Then Carson tries something else. He tries to project a telepathic message of peace to the roller. The Roller responds by sending waves of hatred at Carson, a hatred so intense that Carson almost collapses under its vehemence.

Since the Roller has no interest in peace, but is clearly telepathic, Carson tries telepathically killing it next, with zero success except giving himself a headache. Carson then watches as the Roller examines a bush and laboriously breaks of twigs and then as it captures a lizard and begins to rip off the legs the critter.

The Roller’s cruelty disgusts Carson, as he tries to figure out how to kill it. Meanwhile, the Roller throws the dead lizard towards Carson. The lizard lands at Carson’s feet, which leads Carson to believe that the force field is down. However, when he tries to launch himself at the Roller, improvised stone knife in hand, Carson only succeeds in running into the barrier.

The Roller and Carson now graduate to throwing rocks at each other. The Roller’s throwing tentacle is weak, though it does manage to hit Carson in the leg. Carson tries hurling his stone knife. He does not draw blood, but his missile clearly hurts the creature enough for it to flee to safety.

With the Roller out of range, Carson examines his injured leg and finds it bleeding. He also tests the barrier and finds that it is impermeable to living beings, but that inorganic objects and dead organic objects can pass through without problems. Carson also realises that he is thirsty, so he goes in search of water, but finds none. This means that Carson has to finish the fight, before he passes out and dies of thirst, taking the entire human race down with him.

The Roller is still keeping its distance, so Carson binds the wound in his leg with the leaves of one of the bushes. He also makes himself another stone knife with a wooden handle, fashions a belt from plant tendrils to hold the knife and starts to collect rocks suitable for throwing. Carson also holds a brief chat with a lizard and tries to dig his way under the barrier, without success.

Meanwhile, the Roller has done the logical thing and built a catapult, which it uses to hurl rocks at Carson. None of the rocks come even close to hitting, but Carson can’t take out the catapult either. Worse, he is steadily weakening from thirst, exhaustion and blood loss.

When one of the Roller’s missile strikes a stone and generates sparks, Carson has an idea. He builds a fire, using the bushes as tinder and striking sparks for ignition. Then he builds a slingshot and hurls firebombs at the Roller and its catapult. The Roller is not hurt, but the catapult goes up in flames.

Next, Carson builds a harpoon from stones, wood and plant fibres. But his condition is worsening, so he lies down to sleep as far away from the barrier as possible. When he awakes, he finds that his leg is badly swollen, the wound infected. Carson has to finish the fight quickly, before he succumbs to sepsis and takes down the whole human race with him.

One of the lizards suddenly starts talking to Carson. Carson naturally thinks that he’s hallucinating, but the lizard won’t go away, until he follows. So Carson follows the lizard, crawling on all fours, because he is too weak to walk, and finds one of its pals. The lizard is obviously in pain, its legs missing. The other lizard wants Carson to euthanise its fellow, which he does. Carson realises that it’s the same lizard that the Roller tore to pieces and threw through the barrier at Carson. Only that the lizard wasn’t dead, it was only unconscious. Now Carson realises that the force field is a mental barrier, which is why an unconscious lizard could pass through, but a conscious one couldn’t. This gives him an idea.

Carson grabs his harpoon and his knife and crawls right up to the barrier, to a place where the ground slopes downward. Then he hits himself in the head with a stone and lets his briefly unconscious body roll down the slope on the other side. Of course, if Carson hits too hard and blanks out for longer than a few seconds, he’s dead and so is humanity. However, this harebrained scheme is his – and humanity’s – only chance.

It works, too. Carson briefly passes out – long enough to pass through the barrier, but short enough that he comes to again before the Roller has the chance to kill him. The Roller comes closer to investigate. Once it is in range, Carson hurls his harpoon at the Roller. The wounded creature tries to get away, but Carson uses the harpoon’s rope, which he tied to his wrist to pull himself closer to the creature. Once he’s close enough, he stabs the Roller, again and again, until it is finally still.

Carson passes out once more and wakes out in the cockpit of his scout ship – thirsty, but otherwise perfectly healthy. However, there is a new long scar on his leg as well as lots of smaller scars all over his torso.

Carson is still not sure whether his experiences in the arena were real, when his commanding officer calls him and tells him to return to the ship, because the war is over and humanity won.

The first salvo the human fleet fired, so his commander tells him, ignited the Outsider fleet and caused it to go up in flames. A material flaw, most likely. Carson knows better, of course, but decides to keep his mouth shut, for who would believe him?

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The cover for the German edition of “Arena” in the Pabel Utopia line is striking, if not accurate. Also, what is that mummy doing there?

I imagine that “Arena” must have been a lot more impactful in 1944, when the mystery of Carson waking up naked in the blue sand still was a genuine mystery rather than a story everybody already sort of knows. For these days, “Arena” is better known for its 1967 TV adaptation as an episode of the original Star Trek.

That said, there are several differences between the Star Trek episode and the story that may or may not have inspired it (screenwriter Gene L. Coon claimed that he hadn’t knowingly read the story, when a Desilu executive noticed the similarities). For starters, the arena itself is a blue sand landscape in the story and Vasquez Rocks in Star Trek, though Vasquez Rocks supposedly can be hot as hell as well. In Star Trek, the opponent is a Gorn, a two metre tall reptilian alien. In the story, the opponent is a red blob with tentacles. Nor is there a barrier in the Star Trek episode, since Kirk and Gorn initially engage in a physical fight. Finally, William Shatner does not materialise naked at Vasquez Rocks – to the disappointment of many fans, I’m sure.

A lot of these changes are due to the technical limitations of 1960s television. A landscape with blue sand and blue vegetation would have been a lot more expensive to recreate in a studio than shooting on location at Vasquez Rock. Nudity was out completely (and would still be out today, unless Star Trek somehow ended up on HBO or Starz), so both Gorn and Kirk wear clothes. And while 1960s special effects could theoretically have recreated the Roller – The Blob, which features a very similar creature, was made in 1958, after all – a two metre tall reptilian creature like Gorn was a lot more photogenic and probably cheaper to do as well.

However, there is one change between the novelette “Arena” and the eponymous Star Trek episode that is not due to the technical limitations of 1960s television and that is the ending. Because the ending of the Star Trek episode is completely different from the ending of the novelette. In the novelette, Carson kills his opponent and the mysterious, unseen aliens who kidnapped them both to make them fight hold true to their word and destroy the Outsider fleet. In the Star Trek episode, Kirk gains the upper hand, but refuses to kill the Gorn and decides to spare him instead. This unexpected display of mercy persuades the not-so-unseen aliens (in Star Trek, they’re called Metrons and appear as a semi-translucent special effect in glittering togas) not to destroy the Federation (as they’d planned to do, because the winner is clearly more dangerous than the loser), because Kirk has proven that humanity is more civilised than it looks at first glance and that there may be hope for its evolution. Personally, I vastly prefer the Star Trek ending and was actively pissed off at the ending of the original story. Others feel differently, e.g. Adventures Fantastic prefers the novelette to the Star Trek episode in their review, as does Paul Fraser of SF Magazines in his review.

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A very striking seventiestastic cover.

The different endings of the original novelette and the Star Trek episode based upon it are largely due to the very different geopolitical situations in which the respective versions of the story appeared. Both versions of the story appeared at a time when the US was at war, but the novelette was published at the height of WWII, a war that was considered just and had broad popular support, while the Star Trek episode appeared at the height of the Vietnam war, a war that was hugely unpopular and that not even its supporters ever considered just. These two very different situations gave birth to these two very different endings for the same story: One ending where exterminating the enemy is completely justified, because they are cruel and hateful and utterly alien and peace cannot be possible, and another ending, where showing mercy and abandoning the war is the right solution, because the enemy turns out to have been misunderstood and acting in what they felt was self-defence. As someone who would have been a candidate for total extermination due to the mere fact of my nationality, it’s obvious why I prefer the Star Trek ending. Never mind that genocide is never an acceptable solution, even if the enemies are rolling red balls of hatred.

That said, I’m pretty sure that Brown would never have gotten a Star Trek ending past John W. Campbell in 1944, even if he had been inclined to write one. Just as Gene L. Coon wouldn’t have gotten a genocide (let’s call it what it is) ending past Gene Roddenberry in 1967. And indeed, Steve J. Wright points out in his review that the different endings are very representative of the venues where they appeared.

The very different nature of the alien opponent in either version of the story also predicts the respective ending. Brown’s Outsiders/Rollers are unknowable, utterly other aliens in the Cthulhu mode. There can be no peace or understanding with them – and to be fair, Carson at least tries – because they are just too different. Between this and the malevolent parasitic earrings of “And the Gods Laughed…” or the microscopic aliens of “The Star Mouse”, Fredric Brown certainly created some of the more inventive aliens of the golden age. And because the Outsiders are literally rolling red balls of hatred, who tear lizards apart for fun, few readers complain about the genocide. After all, who worries about the fate of murderous rubber balls?

Gorn, on the other hand, is a far more conventional type of alien, a huge, somewhat goofy looking green lizard. Of course, Reptilian aliens were (and still are) usually evil during the era of the original Star Trek. However, Gorn can also talk and express his grievances (“The Federation built an outpost in our territory. We consider that the precursor for an invasion”), while the Roller remains silent. Nonetheless, audiences would likely have been a lot more resistant to the Gorn being exterminated than to a race of rolling red balls of hatred getting exterminated, if only because Gorn feels more humanoid. And indeed, the fact that Gabriel Lorca has a Gorn skeleton in his ready room/cabinet of horrors is one of the many little hints that Star Trek Discovery drops regarding Lorca’s true identity.

[image error]However, the different depictions of the antagonist and the different endings of both versions of “Arena” also show how the depiction of the Other in speculative fiction has evolved in the past seventy-five years. The Outsiders (even the name the humans give them show that they are other) are just an evil to be exterminated. Understanding them, let alone peace with them, is not possible, because they are just too different, too other. And while few aliens of the era – with the possible exception of Cthulhu – were quite as alien or nasty as the Outsiders, genocide as a solution to intergalactic conflicts was depressingly common during the golden age. Fredric Brown isn’t even the worst offender, compared e.g. to the genocidal war criminal Richard Seaton from the Skylark novels by E.E. Smith. But while there were sympathetic aliens during the golden age – and bug-eyed monsters were very common on the covers, but rare in the stories themselves – aliens were mainly something to shoot with your ray gun.

These “Shoot all the aliens” stories still exist and there is an audience for them, as the flood of cookie cutter military science fiction novels in the Kindle store proves. However, speculative fiction has gradually moved towards humanising the Other, as the different versions of “Arena” show. The alien antagonist has gone from unknowable, absolutely evil thing to be killed in 1944 to other, but with understandable motives to be spared in 1967. A contemporary version of the story would probably have the antagonists teaming up to outwit those who have pitted them against each other (who are the true evil in this story IMO). Or we would have gotten the story from the POV of the alien antagonist. During the same time period, vampires and werewolves went from soulless undead evil in the 1930s/40s via tortured soul that doesn’t want to do bad things, but cannot help it in the 1960s/70s to viable romantic prospect in the 2000s. Robots and artificial intelligences have POVs now. Cthulhu is now a cuddly plush toy and new Lovecraftian writers are telling us that the elder gods are not the greatest evil a protagonist can face.

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Not the roller, but Mitzkey from “The Star Mouse”

I’ve spent a lot of time comparing Brown’s “Arena” to the eponymous Star Trek episode and analysing the historical context of both stories. However, one thing I haven’t done is discuss whether “Arena” is a good story.

Well, it’s certainly a competent story. Brown was a skilled writer and “Arena” is testament to his skill. Both the adrenaline fuelled space battle as well as Carson’s ordeal in the blue sand and his anguish at the fate of the entire human race hinging on him are viscerally described. And while there are infodumps – this is a 1940s Astounding story, after al – they are much less intrusive than with many other stories of the period. Bob Carson is a bland protagonist – the only things we learn about him is that he’s a scout ship pilot and that he’s white – but that’s hardly unusual for the period.

Of all the stories I’ve reviewed for the Retro Reviews project, “Arena” is the story that most matches the stereotype of what Astounding was like during the golden age. The protagonist is a competent white, presumably straight and presumably American man, who uses his brains and technical skills to triumph over the aliens and thus asserts humanity’s superiority. And though the sequence of try and fail circles goes on a little too long – “Arena” could easily have been cut down to short story size without losing anything – the story is never boring. The eventual solution is a little contrived – it relies both on telepathic lizards and Carson knocking himself out, after all – but Brown does his best to make it work. I also liked the fact that it’s intelligence rather than brute strength that decides the contest, though Carson does eventually bring his brute strength to bear on the Roller, when he stabs it to death with a sharpened rock.

Would “Arena” be as well remembered as it is, if not for the Star Trek episode? I’m not sure. The story has been reprinted several times over the decades, including long before Star Trek was a gleam in Gene Roddenberry’s eye. And Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg selected it for their anthology The Great SF Stories Vol. 6 – 1944. Furthermore, Fredric Brown shows up quite frequently on the Retro Hugo ballot, twice this year alone, so he certainly is still popular among the Retro Hugo electorate. Nonetheless, the “Arena” most people know is the Star Trek version and not the original novelette.

“Arena” is a well written science fiction story that is probably the closest thing to a stereotypical Astounding story on the 1945 Retro Hugo ballot. I’m not at all surprised that it was nominated, though given how strong the competition in the novelette category is, I would be very surprised if it were to win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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