Black Gate

By 1977 Joe Haldeman had already won three Hugo Awards, for his novella “Hero” (1972), his debut SF novel The Forever War, and his short story “Tricentennial” (1976), and one Nebula, also for The Forever War. He was a fast-rising star, and in November of that year he added the anthology Study War No More to his fast-growing SF catalog. It contained stories by some of the greatest SF writers of the time — including Poul Anderson, Harry Harrison, Isaac Asimov, George Alec Effinger, Damon Knight, and Mack Reynolds — that addressed the problem of war. Here a snippet from his introduction:

Fear of the atom was such an effective deterrent that it was over two weeks before war broke out again. A fellow with a wispy beard seized control of Hanoi. The editor of this anthology was in diapers when that happened; it lasted long enough to give him his first white hairs, and then five years more…

But why this anthology? The absurdity and outrage of war may be quite obvious, but trying to find a solution to it has occupied the energies of the race’s finest philosophers and poets for thousands of years, to no conspicious success.

Science fiction writers are generally renowned neither for the depth of their philosophy nor the fineness of their poetry, so isn’t it presumptuous of them to take on so formidable, yet subtle, an opponent? The answer is a duet: a soft “no,” and a loud “Hell, no!”

Haldeman was intimately familiar with war; he was a combat engineer in Vietnam who was wounded and received a Purple Heart. The inside cover of Study War No More addressed his experience, and how it had influenced his writing. Here it is.

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I haven’t used Goodreads much, but I’m beginning to see that’s a mistake. It truly is a marvelous resource for those looking for a wide range of opinions about books — especially those that have been out of print for decades. For example, here’s a small sample of reviews for R. A. Lafferty’s gonzo space-pirate novel Annals of Klepsis, published as an Ace paperback original in 1983. First up is Andrew:

A surrealistic apocalypse from a master of surreal apocalyptic fantasy. Lafferty’s novels function with the logic of a Bugs Bunny cartoon written by Kafka.

Astonishing how on-point that is a 2-sentence review. Here’s a snippet from a much more in-depth review by Printable Tire.

The book’s setting is sort of a blend of science fiction, in that it takes place on another planet, with “zap guns” (not called that) and everything, and fantasy, in the way Alice in Wonderland is fantasy. The very loose sprawling story takes place on Klepsis, a pirate planet, who for the last 200 hundred years has been in a state of pre-history, a state of legend. One of the thousands of things Lafferty postulates is that all pre-history and pre-legend does not take place in linear time, but because it is pre-history it all takes place at the same time; thus Hercules was a contemporary of Achilles, and thus the proportion of ghosts in this book.

And finally, here’s a sample from my favorite Goodreads review, from Raymond St.

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Cover by Luis Bermejo

Poul Anderson formed a pretty consistent part of my paperback SF diet in the late 70s and early 80s. Novels like Mirkheim (1977) and classic tales like the Hugo Award-winning “No Truce with Kings” (1963) made me an early fan. But I always thought of Anderson as an SF writer, and as a result I never paid much attention to his fantasy. It wasn’t until my fellow writers here at Black Gate educated me that I learned what I was missing:

Ryan Harvey on The Broken Sword
Fletcher Vredenburgh on The Whole Northern Thing: Hrolf Kraki’s Saga by Poul Anderson
Gabe Dybing on Poul Anderson and the Northern Mythic Tradition: An Introduction
Gabe Dybing on Chaotic and Lawful Alignments in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions
Gabe Dybing on Northern Matter in Poul Anderson’s “Middle Ages” of The Broken Sword and in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth
Gabe Dybing on Sex and Violence in Poul Anderson’s Rogue Sword

I’ve recently started exploring more of Anderson’s fantasy back catalog, and last month I purchased a copy of A Midsummer Tempest, an alternate world fantasy in which William Shakespeare was an historian, rather than playwright, and the events he recorded were all factual. While the plot draws from multiple Shakespearean plays, as the name implies it is chiefly based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. It was nominated for both the World Fantasy Award and a Nebula, and won the 1975 Mythopoeic Award for Best Novel.

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Here’s a Jack Vance novel I haven’t read: Maske: Thaery, a science fiction adventure first published in hardcover in 1976. The Wikipedia entry does a fine job of summarizing how the book fits into Vance’s catalog, I thought.

Maske: Thaery is a science fiction novel by American writer Jack Vance, set in his Gaean Reach milieu… Maske: Thaery marks the beginning of the period when Vance’s novels were published exclusively straight to paperback, whereas prior to this the majority had first appeared in science fiction magazines, the last such examples being Durdane trilogy, serialised in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1971 to 1973, The Gray Prince, serialised in Amazing Science Fiction in 1974, and Marune: Alastor 933, also serialised in Amazing Science Fiction in 1974. The twofold title of Maske: Thaery, with its separating colon, would suggest that it was originally intended to be part of a serial, similar to the Alastor novels (Trullion: Alastor 2262, Marune: Alastor 933, and Wyst: Alastor 1716), although no further volumes were written… Maske: Thaery continues Vance’s interest in richly textured, strongly xenological settings, in which an outsider protagonist comes into conflict with a bewilderingly complex social hierarchy, other examples being Emphyrio (1969) and the Durdane trilogy.

Maske: Thaery placed 12th on the annual Locus Award list for Best SF Novel in 1976. After Jack Vance’s death in 2013, I read the following tribute/review at Speculation…, which called the book “one of his best.”

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