Iron Thorn

by Algis Budrys

[Back Cover]

Why did the Honors hunt the strange, bird-like Amsirs among the dunes of that distant world? In the shadow of the tall, metallic structure called the Iron Thorn, the two species had played cat-and-mouse for generations. But were Amsir and Honor always to be locked in conflict? And could the Iron Thorn itself be a clue to unravel the mystery of the gulf between tem? Algis Budrys adds the touch of a master craftsman to this riddle of evolution on an alien planet.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, War, Aliens, Novels

157 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Algis Budrys was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, Paul Janvier, and Sam & Janet Argo.

Called "AJ" by friends, Budrys was born Algirdas Jonas Budrys in Königsberg in East Prussia. He was the son of the consul general of the Lithuanian government, (the pre-World War II government still recognized after the war by the United States, even though the Soviet-sponsored government was in power throughout most of Budrys's life). His family was sent to the United States by the Lithuanian government in 1936 when Budrys was 5 years old. During most of his adult life, he held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army.

Budrys was educated at the University of Miami, and later at Columbia University in New York. His first published science fiction story was The High Purpose, which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. Beginning in 1952 Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Some of his science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". He also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier." He also used the pen name "Alger Rome" in his collaborations with Jerome Bixby.

Budrys's 1960 novella Rogue Moon was nominated for a Hugo Award, and was later anthologized in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two (1973). His Cold War science fiction novel Who? was adapted for the screen in 1973. In addition to numerous Hugo Award and Nebula Award nominations, Budrys won the Science Fiction Research Association's 2007 Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to speculative fiction scholarship. In 2009, he was the recipient of one of the first three Solstice Awards presented by the SFWA in recognition of his contributions to the field of science fiction.

Budrys was married to Edna Duna; they had four sons. He last resided in Evanston, Illinois. He died at home, from metastatic malignant melanoma on June 9, 2008.

Reviews

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a top notch, classic sci-fi or possibly speculative fiction, depending, if we have to redefine the world.

Algis Budrys is probably not one of the top names people think of in connection to classic sci-fi, but he was a prolific writer and publisher of stories in the 1950's - 1970's. He also has a handful of novels and this is one of them. I have always enjoyed his writing style, though it has dated a bit (I don't think in a bad way) and it can be pretty hard to get a hold of his books.

Wikipedia describes his writing as depicting isolated and damaged people and themes of identity, survival, and legacy. I feel that is a fair description but a bit narrow. There is always a critic of individuality, desires and society - at least in all of his work that I have read - but I would argue against the bleak aspect of the Wiki description.

This book starts with Honor White Jackson who is going 'Honning' and the reveal of what honning is, who the character is and what his world is like are all done with slow reveal. The visual descriptions in the book are vivid and absorbing, though not as extensive and exhaustive as modern descriptions can be (not a bad thing, for me).

Now, I don't really feel that one can spoiler a book that was first published in 1966, but maybe take that into account before you keep reading.

Honor White Jacksons world is unbelievably harsh and socially stratified, he is aiming to become a hunter (honning) and does so after having trained for it his whole life BUT his world view is thrown awry when the animal he is hunting and eventually kills, talks to him.

With an enviable resilience, he walks away from the new status he has attained in order to find more about the world that he has not been told, a journey which leads him in pretty short order into the world of the Amsir, who he had been hunting, then, much further.

This really is a classic book; it combines all the elements of world building that classic sci-fi did so well, way out survival conditions are so common in fiction, literature and fil today that we forget that until the sci-fi revolution they barely existed. Additionally it speculates about such things as genetic experiments, colonising the planets of the solar system, social experimentation and the future of mankind's evolution.

For a small book it packs a lot in and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It is a one person point of view really, Honor White Jackson (who becomes, through the story Honor Black Jackson, Honor Red Jackson and finally Jackson Greystoke) and he is a detached, somewhat analytical wild card of a character. Often less of a rounded character as a modern writer might create them and more of an avatar for the story.

The sci-fi enthusiast will see so many derivations both in and from this book! I wa enchanted by what I very much suspect is a nod to the Eloi in H.G. Wells book The Time Machine. When I first read this, I spotted what seemed to me a theme, only later did I find out how much Budrys was affected by the book. This theme does not go where I half expected it to go, by the way.

There is also the theme of an all knowing, all powerful controller 'Comp' not quite a computer, but sharing most characteristics with a supercomputer, this theme also did not go anywhere near where a modern reader would expect it to.

Great book! Glad to be getting back to the classics.

[Alien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eine vergessene Kolonie auf einem lebensfeindlichen Planeten, die in eine Jäger-und-Sammler- Stufe zurückgefallen ist. Der Protagonist Jackson hat seine Initiations-Jagd auf die intelligenten Vögel, die den Menschen Konkurrenz machen. Er merkt, dass er bisher belogen wurde und will um jeden Preis die Wahrheit herausfinden.

Die einzige Hauptfigur ist ein unsympathischer Arsch, dem andere Menschen (bzw. Wesen) egal sind. Das macht es nicht leicht, mit ihm mitzufiebern.
Das dünne Büchlein hat eine Menge Handlung und durchläuft mehrere überraschenden Wendungen (die ich nicht spoilern will).
Das Ende bleibt für mich aber auch unbefriedigend offen. Ich habe mich dann schon gefragt, was mir das ganze sagen soll.
Budrys galt laut Encyclopedia of SF als einer der wenigen Intellektuellen, die Genre-Romane schreiben. Ein bisschen was merkt man in diesem Buch davon, aber nicht allzu viel.

2.5/5

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the SF writers of the 50s and 60s, Algis Budrys is most famous for being unpronounceable and for the edition of _Rogue Moon_ which was spelled "Rouge Moon" on the spine. I never read any of his early stuff, but I remember a 1970s computer thriller called _Michaelmas_. Should probably go find that again. (I look over the tide of new books coming towards me, and retire that thought without comment.)

Here, however, is an ancient (1967, fifty-cent) paperback, fallen into my grasp. Being a pulp-ish novel of the old days, it's short (150 pages). The cover (Frazetta, very faded) shows a guy with a pointy hat facing down some kind of green man-bat monster which is awkwardly holding a spear. (Bats *sort of* have hands...) Worth a shot?

Absolutely! I open the book and bam, it's an Amsir hunt. Must've in the old days, a writer knew how to bag you in the first page -- because they were giants who walked the earth, or because he only had 149 more to work in? Who knows. But the Amsir, the monster, is sparely described ("graceful as a goblin bride") and then we meet Honor White Jackson, who chases it under his pointy hat. The hat is crucial. So is the hunt, the Hon -- "Honor" is a job title -- and the Hon will last one short chapter, after which you will have to unlearn some of what you picked up in those seven pages. After the second short chapter, you'll have to unlearn the rest of it. The plot continues turning over completely every couple of chapters thereafter.

I'm not sure this is a novel. (It was originally a magazine serial.) It certainly has no regard for novelistic convention; Honor White Jackson (not called that for long) is not after the respect of his brother, the love of the girl next door, or any sort of narrative closure. He's too smart for that. (The barbarian with a pointy stick, by the way, is a Genius Protagonist; always a step ahead; rendered with no flourish and dead convincing. Try and keep up.)

By the end, Jackson (and we) have travelled between planets, dealt with technology and a post-scarcity society that would fit *absolutely undated* in a Banks Culture novel, been on reality TV, and gained -- again, I'm not sure. The chance to tell his story, I guess is the point. Or be the butt of the joke. Whatever works.

Randall Garrett once made a pun about an "algae buttress", so we know that much.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s wonderful about this book is the truly alien landscape, and the intriguingly strange society, that we are initially presented with. This is science fiction at its most inventive. It was therefore a huge let down for everything to then suddenly reset into a mundane explanation and much more familiar setting.

However all is not lost and that mundane setting itself starts to peel away to reveal a society that is almost as odd as the first one we meet. Clearly the reader is meant to make the very same contrast but this third section of the book still doesn’t match the imagery of the first section which is probably why the last couple of pages is drawn back to those first images.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story in two parts and I'm not sure the second was necessary. It works but also distracts, or suggests a longer book based on the second part. For the modern reader less of a twist, though I suppose stories like this is where twists like these come from. Worth reading for the classic sf fan.
Plot: good
Characters: interesting
Style: good
Setting: variable

[Len · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't understand what the author's point was in this story. I realised that the characters at the beginning are the descendants of a long discarded genetic experiment to settle humans on Mars. But everything seems so random.

The honors and farmers live under the protection of their Iron Thorn – which is actually some sort of terraforming device built to provide them with a local environment friendly to life. The amsirs have their own Thorn, clearly much the same as that used by the honors but with the addition of a smaller Thorn that turns out to be a working spaceship. The honors and farmers are human, while the amsirs are – well – it depends how you view it. Some reviewers see them as aliens, some as giant reptilian flightless birds, some as genetically altered humans. I think I go with the last, though why anyone thought that life on Mars could be enhanced by having large wings and raptor-like talons and beak, when the planet is devoid of small animals to hunt, defeats me. The humans, despite being farmers, hunt and eat amsirs; while the amsirs, despite being built for hunting, survive by nibbling – it must be quite awkward with a large beak - on a form of blue lichen. The amsirs try to capture humans alive. You see, that spaceship will only allow humans to enter – amsirs are killed by its defences – however no human has been able to work out how to open its door. That is until our hero, Jackson, is taken by the amsirs and has the brilliant notion of asking the spaceship to open up instead of trying to force it. That leads to the second part of the story.

Some of the answers may lie in the names. Honor – pronounced with a huh – is a corruption of hunter. Ariwol, a sort of honor Valhalla, turns out to be a corrupted form of Airworld – possibly referring to Earth and meaning Our World, or the world with a breathable atmosphere. That leaves amsir and the amsirs' tame creature Ahmuls. The author does not provide any answers; perhaps he thought their meaning was so obvious that they didn't require any. I have given this some of the time-consuming thought that hiding from Covid-19 induces. At one point Jackson soothes his troubled soul by singing to himself a childhood verse that has a chorus which is clearly a distortion of the beginning of Psalm 23. And before that is a verse which sounds as if it adapted from a poem. Possibly indicating a religious source for the words? Against that, when he is on the spaceship, he is told that the whole thing was the brainchild of the Associated Midwestern University Generic Research Project. Associated Midwestern officers – AMsirs? The amsirs did have the spaceship which could indicate their original superior status. As for Ahmuls – apart from suggesting that ahmuls are animals – I give up.

The whole thing seems to be an example of the old fashioned SF idea that, in an invented universe, anything can happen because nothing can be proved impossible. Such as nakedness. Why, towards the end of the story do we find out that everyone is naked? Even when Jackson and his companion Ahmuls, as free of clothing as the good Lord intended, use the spaceship to go back to Earth they find that the Earth people are also au naturel, living the life of the Eloi without the threat of becoming a Morlock lunch. Sadly the story descends into a mixed up charade with no one seeming to know what to do next or why they are doing it. Except for the exteroceptors - tiny insect-like machines connected and inter-connected with each other and some anonymous world-controlling super brain – they seem to know everything, but they're not divulging the plan.

[Jason Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

(My edition is just called The Iron Thorn.)

This story literally hits the ground running, with our hero White Jackson hunting a Amsir (the indefinite article is a foible of his dialect) across a desert. He must stay within sight of the Iron Thorn, a clearly ancient man-made tower, or he won't be able to breathe. This limited environment is the first microcosm that Jackson explores and then abandons. His small tribe huddling around the Thorn with their frozen culture do not satisfy him, and in due course he breaks away to the next worldlet on his journey, the city of the flying Amsirs themselves.

It is less these imagined societies than Jackson himself that forms the subject matter of the book. Jackson's other names change several times, reflecting his restless inability to conform to social roles. He has no time for fakery, tradition or authority, ultimately finding even the world of the Thorn's creators a pointless mummers parade. Incidentally an accomplished artist, he has perhaps too sharp an eye for reality for his own good: "To me I am the only sane man conceivable."

Budrys is a neglected but very fine writer of SF, and even his lesser works, like this one, have a distinctive metaphysical edge. Here he shows us a rational man who will brook no nonsense, a modern post-Enlightenment man despite his upbringing in a backward society, and shows us too how that admirable hunger for truth makes peace of mind impossible. A far-future "Catcher In The Rye", it's a tight, thoughtful, slightly worrying book.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another one of the Science Fiction Book Club novels I have accumulated over the years.

The Iron Thorn is something of a strange tale of conflicting species on a conditioned planet, living as neighbours but technologically unable to enter each other's habitat, meeting instead in the sandy dunes between where they hunt each other for sport and kudos.

Underwhelming.

[Alan Sharp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Algis Budrys is one of those classic era writers that every sci-fi buff is aware of an hardly any of the general public are. His reputation rests mostly on two novels, Rogue Moon and Who?, but he had a career stretching from the late 1950s into the early 21st century.

His novels are mostly quite short, but he often fits a lot into that length. This novel was written in the late 1960s, and unfortunately it shows. Starting with an intriguing, if not entirely original scenario, the novel takes several twists and turns and rather than reaching a satisfying conclusion, it ends in some hippie naval gazing and philosophising and just kind of fizzles out.

Because it rambles in so many directions, providing a plot summary would be difficult without it containing all kinds of spoilers. However the set up is that we are on some other planet, where humanity seems to have attempted to set up a colony that has presumably then been forgotten about.

The human settlement surrounds a large metal building, the Iron Thorn of the title. This provides them with power, clean water and a breathable atmosphere. However this atmosphere only extends a certain distance from the Thorn. Anyone going outside of this circumference quickly dies from lack of oxygen.

There is another species also inhabiting the planet, the Amsirs. These are vaguely humanoid but with wings, although in the human’s realm at least, they are flightless. The humans hunt the Amsir’s for food, and being a hunter, or an Honor as they are termed, means being highly ranked in society.

Honor White Jackson has completed his training and is on his first hunt. However, he is surprised to discover that the Amsir, contrary to what he had been told, can both speak and wield weapons. Although he wins his battle and takes the corpse home with him, he is unsatisfied with the explanation of why he had not been given this information, and decides to investigate on his own, which leads him on a strange journey.

The problem is that while this beginning is quite intriguing, the further through this journey we go, the stupider and stupider it becomes. And the more Jackson uncovers the secret of where this planet is and why his situation was created, the less interesting it becomes. The solution to the conundrum is simply not equal to the conundrum itself.

Which is a shame, because I think there is something interesting and thought provoking hidden in here, but it just doesn’t find its way out. So not one of Budrys’ best, but it deserves some marks for trying.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honor White Jackson has returned from his hon (hunt) of the avian-human Amsirs to the Iron Thorn - a huge metal obelisk whose origin is now myth. Trained to be an honor he has some questions for the Elds - in particular why the Amsir he killed spoke to him and carried a spear - when he had been told that they were just animals. Jackson’s questions trouble his people and when he leaves for Amsir country unannounced an Eld tries to kill him but is instead killed. White Jackson has become Red Jackson. Yielding to the first Amsir he finds he is taken to their Iron Thorn where he is forced to try to open it. Succeeding, he is counselled by the onboard voice (which he discovers is a computer) and leaves the planet in the Thorn, which he now understands is a spaceship. Jackson and the Amsirs are part of a forgotten experiment on Mars and upon his return to Earth he finds things are not as great as he was led to believe. Algis Budrys has given us a layered tale of the effects of jaded entitlement and a kind of cargo cult mentality of their lessers. This book will make you think, so be warned. Most enjoyable.

[Peter Tillman]

I've at least seen this edition. Story doesn't sound familiar -- though its a 1967 book!

[Robert Whelan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, interesting and different. A bit too short. It's baffling why this book has such a low score, 2.91 as I write this.

[Darren Goossens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is from here.


Budrys is an author whose fiction oeuvre in sheer wordage is not huge, but whose every effort is worth a little attention. He wrote with a sharpness and an eye-catching simplicity that showed him to be a more finely tuned wordsmith than many in SF. Probably his best novels are Michaelmas and Rogue Moon, and I remember enjoying Hard Landing when it came out in F&SF many years ago.
Cover of The Iron Thorn by Algis Budrys.

This one, first published in Galaxy in the sixties, is in the next rank but still worth a look. It is an odd mix of edginess and cliché. The main character, Honor White Jackson is his name at the start, is the classic SF hero who comes into a static world and is not happy to accept what he sees. Think of Alvin in The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, or any one of a hundred other characters who break up the status quo. Hence it can be categorised as a conceptual breakthrough story, in the parlance of the SFE.

Much of the enjoyment is in the details, as always with Budrys. Eye-catching turns of phrase, economically but effectively drawn characters, the extraordinary sangfroid of the hero (a bit too pronounced to ring true, in truth). He pre-empts Drexler's grey goo, too.

In the end the result is somewhat underwhelming. The first half is a sharply drawn evocation of a strange way of life on an alien planet, but always in the back of my wind I was thinking, "Please, don't let the explanation be what I think it will be," and it wasn't -- quite. But it nearly was, and frankly I felt that the book tailed away after the mid point, despite the creation of Ahmuls, one of the more interesting figures in the book, and despite an acutely drawn post-scarcity culture that reads like something from Iain M. Banks.

In summary, the strengths of the book grow out of Budry's skills as a writer, the weaknesses out of the needs of American magazine SF of the time and ultimately a failure to take the story far enough away from the conventions of the field.

A decent read, but not his best. Not as badly dated as much work from the time, though.

[Gingaeru · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looking at the cover now, I don't even know what made me buy this. But I'm so glad I did. This guy could write. It was consistently awesome... until chapter thirteen (the writing still had its moments, but the story from that point on spiraled down to an unsatisfying conclusion). It somehow managed to be simultaneously predictable and surprising. The culture is very unique and detailed. I really liked the protagonist (which is rare); he deserved a much better ending (as did Susiem).

One thing you'll notice in this novel is that the words "Honor" and "Amsir" are preceded by "a" rather than "an." This was done intentionally to show how the people of the "Thorn" are uneducated and how grammar has corroded over time. The words "Honor," "hon," and "honning" would seem to be corruptions of "Hunter," "hunt," and "hunting." Which means that the "H" is probably not silent after all, but our brains are programmed to see it that way. I'm still not sure what "Amsir" is from, but it invariably makes me think of hamsters, which are obviously completely unrelated.

"They have a complex system of naming..." I'll say! The protagonist is mainly called Jackson in the narrative, but he goes through four titles by the end.
...

Some parts are slightly frustrating to read because you have knowledge that the characters do not. The door to "the object" loudly drones out its repeated message, but it's slowed way down, so nobody understands it. But the reader knows exactly what it's saying. That part doesn't go on for too long, thankfully.
...

Authors should never have their characters (no matter how illiterate) say, "could of." Especially when those very same characters ALSO use the correct "could have."
"No, look, kid, it could of been somebody else waiting here to meet you... But it could have been Red Filson or Black Harrison or one of those other guys..."
-
"It occupied considerable of his attention..." (Who needs grammar, anyway?)
...

The first 113 pages are fantastic. It would have been perfect had it continued that way. Based on the dedication at the front of the book, it looks like someone named "Barbara" is responsible for the ending. Thanks a lot, Barbara... (sarcasm).

8/10