Both stories published in this volume originally appeared in 1974, with Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier appearing in April and Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch appearing four months later.

Tin Soldier was originally published in Orbit 14, edited by Damon Knight and published by Harper and Row. The story was also Vinge’s debut story.

Among Vinge’s best known works is her Hugo and Locus Award winning novel The Snow Queen, which was also nominated for the Nebula, the Ditmar, and the coveted Balrog. That novel took its inspiration from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Vinge’s first story, The Tin Soldier, looks to the same source, taking its title from Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” a fact referenced in the story.

The Tin Soldier is the name of a bar on New Piraeus. It is run by a cyborg who goes by the name “Soldier,” although his real name is Maris. As a cyborg, who has had most of his organic parts replaced, Soldier has seemingly achieved immortality as he stands behind his bar serving drinks.

Because of its location, the Tin Soldier is the hangout for spacers who are staying on New Piraeus between flights. One of the things that set the spacers of Vinge’s world apart from so many other stories is a set of rules, some of which are physical in nature, others are traditional. For the purposes of Vinge’s story, this means that men and cyborgs are not able to travel between the stars.

Brandy is a spacer whose schedule brings her to New Piraeus every twenty-five years, although from her point of view, only three years pass between her visits. On her first visit, she meets Soldier and the two hit it off when Soldier is able to give her a taste of the liquor for which she is named. Because Soldier is a cyborg, he doesn’t age. The novella chronicles their relationship over several of Brandy’s visits to New Piraeus.

By its nature, Tin Soldier is a slow moving story. Once Vinge established there was a connection between her two characters, she is able to take her time to explore what it means, with one character who doesn’t age and another who ages slowly against the evolution of the world she visits. As Brandy sees Soldier and New Piraeus as she moves through her twenties in three year increments, the city she visits grows by leaps and bounds as a century passes. Soldier, who has seen the growth occurring, on the other hand, is able to make gradual adjustments to the changes that Brandy can’t fully understand as she isn’t really part of New Piraeus’ society.

On the other hand, Soldier isn’t, and can’t be, part of Brandy’s world. Their relationship is entirely on his turf. Eventually, she decides to introduce him to her world as much as she can, which means subverting the rules to smuggle him on to her spaceship. The visit doesn’t go entirely as planned. Obviously needing to stay in port, Brandy explains the reasons for the no men or cyborg rules and when one of her crewmates and the ships AI realize that a man and cyborg are on the ship, even if it isn’t flying, it causes issues.

One of the things that sets Tin Soldier apart from many science fiction stories is that although it focuses on the romance between Brandy and Soldier, it is a platonic romance. The two are friends and both are accepting of the fact that they are friends and not lovers. Not being lovers, whoever, doesn’t mean they lack intimacy, and both of them look forward to their periodic visits, whether they are separated by three years for Brandy or twenty-five years for Soldier.

It isn’t all easy, however. Brandy faces the dangers inherent in space travel, whether physical or based on her desire to succeed and get promoted. When she visits, Soldier isn’t the only person she spends time with and, while he understands her needs to spend time with others in New Piraeus, at times he does so grudgingly.

While Vinge handles the relationship between Soldier and Brandy well, giving each of them their own lives and needs, neither of the characters is particularly interesting or memorable. Their relationship is originally built on Soldier’s ability to provide Brandy with a taste of brandy, and subsequent visits build a relationship, but in many ways they seem to be thrown together for the sake of nostalgia. She connected with him on her first visit and he’s comfortable. On the other hand, Vinge only shows his relationship with Brandy, not exploring how he reacts with other customers in a similar position or what sets Brandy apart from the rest of the spacers who visit the Tin Soldier.

Riding the Torch was originally published in Threads of Time, edited by Robert Silverberg and published by Thomas Nelson. Nominated for the Hugo Award, this story has the distinction of being the only novella in the Tor Doubles series which also appeared as one half of Dell’s short-lived Binary Star series that also paired two novellas for publication in the late 1970s.

There are many generation ship stories in science fiction. In some cases, the inhabitants don’t realize they are on a spaceship, in other cases, they know, but there is nothing they can do until they reach their distant destination. In Riding the Torch, Spinrad offers the Trek, a collective name for several generation ships traveling together. People can travel between the ships and each ship has its own cultural dynamics, with some ships being trendsetters and others being more conservative. The Trek is also accompanying by “voidsuckers,” who travel ahead of the main body of the generation fleet scanning space to try to find potential planets on which to settle.

Jofe D’mahl is an artist aboard the Excelsior who creates sensos, immersive dramas. In Riding the Torch, he debuts the senso Wandering Dutchmen. When the debut occurs, Spinrad suddenly shifts into a second person narrative, to emulate the idea that people enjoying D’mahl’s senso are full integrated into it. The sudden shift is a bit disconcerting, which may have been part of Spinrad’s intention.

Perhaps because D’mahl is Spinrad’s viewpoint character, Riding the Torch feels as if it is part of a decadent society. The focus is on the creation of plays that offer the passengers of the Trek an alternative to the life they are living. The creation of sensos is the sole purpose of his life and when the debut of Wandering Dutchmen is interrupted by the news that the voidsuckers have discovered an earthlike world where the multi-generational Trek can disgorge its passengers, D’mahl reacts poorly to the interruption, which results in his agreement to journey with a group of voidsuckers.

The journey with the voidsuckers really feels like a different culture. Separated from the artistic world in which he sits atop of the pyramid, D’mahl is sulky, looking at the journey as a sort of punishment for his rash decision. His traveling companions, however, are intent on making sure he understands why they bear the name voidsucker, which comes not from their journeys into the unknown, but rather due to the fact that while on those journeys, each member leaves the safety of the ship to perform an EVA. Although none of them talk about their experiences, they make it clear that each of them comes back to the ship profoundly changed after each visit to the void.

Initially, D’mahl balks at the idea of doing an EVA, but eventually succumbs to the experience, returning to the ship convinced he hasn’t been changed. Once initiated into their world, however, the voidsuckers reveal that they had worked hard to bring D’mahl on this journey so he could understand their lives and mission better, as well as their disappointments and the truth of their announcements of potential worlds for colonization.

Following his return to the Trek, D’mahl works slowly on a new senso to share what he has learned while traveling with the voidsuckers. It is only at this point that the reader realizes the changes that visiting the void inflicted on D’mahl, who is still in denial about the profundity of the experience. When Spinrad offers the senso, which shares its title with the novella, with the reader, the shift from third to second person isn’t as jarring as it was for Flying Dutchmen, allowing the reader to more vicariously experience the senso through the description of D’mahl’s work.

To return to the Binary Star series, it is an interesting coincidence that only three authors appeared in both that series and the Tor Doubles series.  The three authors were Norman Spinrad, Joan D. Vinge, who shared this Tor double with him, and Fritz Leiber, who shared the same volume of Binary Star that included Spinrad’s Riding the Torch.

The cover for Riding the Torch was painted by Wayne Barlowe. The cover for Tin Soldier Island was painted by Ron Walotsky.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.