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Birthday Reviews: Frank Belknap Long’s “Willie”

Birthday Reviews: Frank Belknap Long’s “Willie”

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Cover by William Timmins
Cover by William Timmins

Frank Belknap Long was born on April 27, 1901 and died on January 3, 1994.

In 1976, Long was nominated for three World Fantasy Award for his study Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, his collection The Early Long, and received his second Lifetime Achievement nomination. He would eventually receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Award in 1978 and form the Bram Stoker Awards in 1988. In 1977, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame.

“Willie” first appeared in the October 1943 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. It was reprinted in 1979 in Night Fear, a collection of stories by Long. In 1999, August Derleth included it as an example of a time travel story in New Horizons: Yesterday’s Portraits of Tomorrow. It was also reprinted in 2010 in the Centipede Press volume Frank Belknap Long, part of its Masters of the Weird Tale series.

Although the story is called “Willie,” the central character begins by thinking of himself as simply “Twenty-ninth Century Man.” He eventually learns that he is known as Agar, although he also has the identity of Monitor 236, a position of responsibility and dignity. Despite all of these identities, he is never quite clear who he is or how he fits into the primitive society in which he finds himself in. He does know that it is his responsibility to protect the people of the city.

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Birthday Reviews: A.E. Van Vogt’s “War of Nerves”

Birthday Reviews: A.E. Van Vogt’s “War of Nerves”

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Cover by Malcolm Smith
Cover by Malcolm Smith

A.E. (Alfred Elton) van Vogt was born on April 26, 1912 and died on January 26, 2000.

Van Vogt began publishing science fiction with “The Black Destroyer,” the first of four stories which became his novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle. His other major works include Slan, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and The World of ­Ā.

In 1966 his story “Research Alpha,” co-written with James Schmitz, was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella. In 1996 his “The Mixed Men” and The World of ­Ā were both nominated for Retro Hugo Awards. That same year he received a Worldcon Special Convention Award for his six decades in science fiction. He finally won a Retro Hugo in 2017 for the novel Slan. His The Weapon Shops of Isher received a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 2005. He received a Forry Award in 1972 and an Aurora Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1980. In 1996, he was named an SFWA Grand Master and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

“War of Nerves was incorporated into van Vogt’s fix-up novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, the last of the four stories published (although set after the first story in the novel). It originally appeared in Other Worlds magazine in the May 1950 issue, edited by Raymond Palmer, the only one of the four not to appear in Astounding. The original story has been reprinted in van Vogt’s collections Monsters, The Best of A.E. van Vogt, and Transfinite: The Essential A.E. van Vogt. Monsters has also been published under the title The Blal. The story has been translated into French and twice into Italian.

“War of the Nerves” describes a telepathic attack on the Space Beagle by a previously unknown race, the Riim. The attack, which comes out of nowhere, results in the crew becoming either incapacitated or allowing their pent up emotions free. The scientists on board take sides in a civil war between factions and the military men begin looking for an excuse to let their hostility towards the scientists loose.

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Birthday Reviews: Fletcher Pratt’s “Hormones”

Birthday Reviews: Fletcher Pratt’s “Hormones”

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Cover by Richard Powers
Cover by Richard Powers

Fletcher Pratt was born on April 25, 1897 and died on June 11, 1956.

Pratt was nominated for an International Fantasy Award in 1952 for his nonfiction book Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles and Space Ships co-written with Jack Coggins. In 2016, Pratt was nominated for two Retro Hugo Awards for the novellas “The Roaring Trumpet” and “The Mathematics of Magic,” both co-written with L. Sprague de Camp and part of their Harold Shea series.

“Hormones” was published in the second volume of Frederik Pohl’s Star Science Fiction series in 1953. Although that book has been issued in multiple editions, the story has never appeared elsewhere.

Reading science fiction published over the span of the twentieth century, much of it can be seen to be representative of its time, culturally, technologically, and literarily. In “Hormones,” Pratt attempts to update the disappearing shop story and the love potion story, with limited success. His shop doesn’t actually disappear, but the individual Herbert Schofield needs to deal with does vanish before Schofield can return.

Schofield’s character is stuck in a lower position at work than he would like, which not only impacts his career, but also his chances of marrying the girl he is dating. When a clerk at an all-night pharmacy offers him hormonal potions that can resolve both of his issues, he jumps at the chance. Pratt’s decision to update the magic potion with a veneer of chemistry is a nice change of pace.

Naturally, things don’t turn out the way Schofield expected and while the use of a love potion can be seen as akin to a date rape drug, Schofield has the tables turned on him. “Hormones” is an example of a story which was very much of its time, but doesn’t stand up well to the changing societal mores, which make it more creepy than was intended by the author or tone.

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How Much Adventure Can Fit on One Planet? Find Out in Tarsus: World Beyond the Frontier

How Much Adventure Can Fit on One Planet? Find Out in Tarsus: World Beyond the Frontier

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Tarsus Game Designers Workshop-small Tarsus Game Designers Workshop-back-small

I started playing Traveller in 1980, using Marc Miller and Frank Chadwick’s original 1977 boxed set from Game Designers’ Workshop. I really enjoyed it although — as I noted in my 2014 article on GDW’s Dark Nebula and Imperium board games — it was a little light on setting.

The original boxed edition of Traveller didn’t really have a setting — it was sort of a generic system for role playing in space, and it drew on the popular vision of a galaxy-spanning human civilization found in the science fiction of the time by Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Keith Laumer, H. Beam Piper, and others. (James Maliszewski did a splendid job of re-constructing the formative SF behind Traveller in “Appendix T.”) It was a game desperately in need of a rich setting, and it found one in Imperium.

Looking back, that critique was perhaps a little harsh. Yeah, the 1977 boxed set forgot to include a setting, and the publisher had to steal one from Imperium. But it wasn’t long before GDW began to improve the situation by producing high quality supplemental materials for Traveller. One of their better efforts was the boxed set Tarsus: World Beyond the Frontier, designed by Marc W. Miller and Loren K. Wiseman and released by GDW in 1983. I recently tracked down a copy, and I really wish I’d had it for those early gaming sessions in the trailer in my back yard in 1980.

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Demons and Monsters: The Black Mountains by Fred Saberhagen

Demons and Monsters: The Black Mountains by Fred Saberhagen

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THBLCKMNTN1971I ended last week’s review of The Broken Lands (the first part of Fred Saberhagen’s The Empire of the East) by saying it felt like something big was coming. I was right! The second book, The Black Mountains (1971), is one great big splashy explosion of pulp majesty. Even though I liked The Broken Lands, I didn’t get why Gary Gygax included it in Appendix N, the list of books that inspired his initial vision of D&D. Now I get it, 100% and absolutely.

Following the defeat and death of the villain, Satrap Ekuman, the Free Folk of the West are preparing to bring the war directly to the Empire of the East. Som the Dead is one of the greatest lords of the Empire, and its viceroy in the Black Moutains. Each of the lords has given himself to the demonic powers that rule the Empire and in exchange received special abilities. Som’s is that any attacks on him are reflected back at his opponents, making him nigh invulnerable.

In addition, among his army is an elite guard who wear metal collars. When they are severely or mortally wounded near the mountains, they are carried off to a secret lake of healing elixir by flying metal devices called valkyries. Finally, living under the mountains Som rules over, is the mighty and powerful demon, Zapranoth. To face him unprotected by magic leads to madness. With him live several other, lesser demons. It would seem Som the Dead is impossible to overcome.

Against these enemies Thomas, commander of the Free Folk, plans to lead his army. Fortunately, he is aided by wizards of his own, Gray foremost among them. He has secured the services of a djinn that posessess an understanding of technology, something magic has difficulty overcoming. Thomas has also found and captured the essence of two of Som the Dead’s demons. Control of a demon’s essence allows the owner to command or even destroy the demon. Deprived of two major elements of his army, Som the Dead may just be vulnerable to defeat.

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Birthday Reviews: Don D’Ammassa’s “The Library of Lost Art”

Birthday Reviews: Don D’Ammassa’s “The Library of Lost Art”

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Cover by David Lee Anderson
Cover by David Lee Anderson

Don D’Ammassa was born on April 24, 1946

D’Ammassa won the FAAN Award in 1979 for Best Single Issue of a Fanzine for Mythologies #15. He has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer four times and for Best Fanzine twice, without receiving the Hugo. Although D’Ammassa has written dozens of short stories, collected in more than a dozen volumes, and numerous novels, he is best known as a reviewer and a critic.

“The Library of Lost Are” was published by Algis Budrys in issue #5 of Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, which appeared in October 1993. The story has never been reprinted. Tomorrow ran for 24 print issues through 1997. From 1997 until 2000, the magazine was published online only, one of the first online magazines. Unfortunately, much of the magazine’s electronic record has been lost.

There are many stories of libraries which contain unwritten or lost books, and “The Library of Lost Art” is one. It focuses on John Cosgrove, who as an eleven year old boy was sent to spend the summer with his Uncle Dan, one of the only times he met him. Dan and Cosgrove immediately found themselves sympatico and Dan showed his nephew his library. It was filled with books that had never been published, just as the rest of the house was filled with art which had never been realized.

Although it is clear that an adult Cosgrove is reflecting back on his visit to his uncle’s house, there is little of an eleven year old in his portrayal.  The child version of Cosgrove not only thinks like an older person, but shows interests in literature which seem wrong for even the most precocious eleven year old.

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A Dark and Eerie Journey: Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Tree

A Dark and Eerie Journey: Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Tree

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The Hazel Wood Melissa Albert-small“My mother was raised on fairy tales, but I was raised on highways.”

Melissa Albert, via her narrator and protagonist Alice, opens The Hazel Wood with these words. The careful reader will latch on to that “but” right away, a particle suggesting that there is a great difference between the two — fairy tales and highways. Alice, raised by a single mother in a series of flights from bad luck, bad bosses and broken leases, believes there is. She is, at the book’s opening, a very typical protagonist in Young Adult fiction of the last sixty years. Outsider? Check. Troubled past? Check. Few or no friends? Check. Alice has recently undergone a drastic change in circumstances, as her mother has married a wealthy New York businessman. This has brought her a stable home, a stepfather who is at least trying to do right by her, and admission to an elite private school. There is a young man with a similar degree of wealth and a troubled past of his own.

And then things take a sharp turn off the well paved streets into new territory.

If you’re a fan of de Lint, Gaiman, McGuire or del Toro, the first line warned you. Alice has grown up on the run, not so much from mundane bill collectors but from her grandmother’s legacy. Althea Proserpine (again, a name that should set off alarm klaxons faster than a Klingon battle cruiser) was a reclusive author who wrote only one book, a set of “Tales from the Hinterlands.” Alice’s mother is dismissive of the book, loathes its cultish fans, and is insistent on forever staying far, far away from Althea’s home, The Hazel Wood.

And again, if you know fairy tales at all, you know what happens next.

No matter how hard a parent tries to keep a thing hidden from her child, it will come calling. So back onto the highway Alice goes, to find the truth of her own origins, of the mysterious book, of its legacy.

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Birthday Reviews: Avram Davidson’s “Author, Author”

Birthday Reviews: Avram Davidson’s “Author, Author”

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Cover by Ron Cobb
Cover by Ron Cobb

Avram Davidson was born on April 23, 1923 and died on May 8, 1993. He served as the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the April 1962 issue until November 1964. During that time, the magazine was nominated for three Hugos, winning one.

Davidson also won a Hugo for his short story “Or All the Seas with Oysters.” He was nominated for ten Nebula Awards, one of which was posthumous. He received nine World Fantasy Nominations, and won for Best Collection for The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, for Best Short Fiction for “Naples,” and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986. He also received posthumous nominations for the Seiun Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award.

“Author, Author” was published in the July 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy of Science Fiction under the editorship of Robert P. Mills. Davidson reprinted it in his 1962 collection Or All the Seas with Oysters and it was published in the British edition of Venture Science Fiction in October 1964. Robert Silverberg and Grania Davis included it in The Avram Davidson Treasury.

Rodney Stirrup was the mystery author who invented the cliché “The butler did it” according to Davidson’s “Author, Author.” Unfortunately, his writing has become trite and predictable, leading his publisher to decide to cancel Stirrup’s contracts. Dejected, Stirrup heads into the country where his car breaks down and he goes to a nearby large mansion for help. Stirrup’s discovery that the large group of men congregating in the house know him takes a rather different turn when he learns it is essentially a butler convention.

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Birthday Reviews: Damien Broderick’s “Under the Moons of Venus”

Birthday Reviews: Damien Broderick’s “Under the Moons of Venus”

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Subterranean Online
Subterranean Online

Damien Broderick was born on April 22, 1944.

Broderick has won the Aurealis Award four times, for his short story “Infinite Monkey” and his novels The White Abacus, Transcension, and K-Machines. He has also won four Ditmar Awards, for his novels The Dreaming Dragon, White Abacus, Striped Holes, and the collection Earth Is But a Star. The Dreaming Dragon was also a John W. Campbell Memorial nominee and his story “This Wind Blowing, and This Tide” was one of two Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award nominations. In 2005, he received a Distinguished Scholarship from the IAFA and in 2010, he was awarded the A. Bertram Chandler Memorial Award.

“Under the Moons of Venus” was originally published in Subterranean Online in the Spring 2010 issue, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Strahan included the story in his The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 and it also appeared in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 16, Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction 7 Fantasy 2011, Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection, and Allan Kaster’s audio anthology The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 3. Broderick included it in his 2012 collection Adrift in the Noösphere: Science Fiction Stories. The story was nominated for a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

The title of Broderick’s “Under the Moons of Venus” evokes Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Under the Moons of Mars,” the first Barsoom story, later reprinted as A Princess of Mars. The story itself, while it has elements that are reminiscent of John Carter’s exploits, is actually quite different, focusing its attention on Robert Blackett, who is wealthy in a seemingly depopulated world, working with a therapist, Clare Laing, who he is convinced is trying to seduce him, and consulting with his friend, Kafele Massri.

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Birthday Reviews: Fiona Kelleghan’s “Secret in the Chest”

Birthday Reviews: Fiona Kelleghan’s “Secret in the Chest”

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Cover by Luis Royo
Cover by Luis Royo

Fiona Kelleghan was born on April 21, 1965. Most of her writing is non-fiction. She produced Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work in 2000 and two volumes in the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature series. She has also published a variety of essays and  reviews over the years.

Kelleghan’s only fiction is the fantasy story “Secret in the Chest,” purchased by Shawna McCarthy for Realms of Fantasy, which published it in the October 1998 issue. The story has never been reprinted.

Although “The Secret Chest” seems to start out as a standard damsel in distress/knight on a quest story, it quickly demonstrates that Kelleghan is doing something very different. Sir Palavere comes across a castle while he is seeking to save his village and finds himself having to respond to three challenges from Darcia, a woman who is tied to the castle. The reasons for her link to the castle and the rules surrounding the three challenges are unimportant and Kelleghan doesn’t delve into them. They are part of the fantasy narrative and by ignoring them, Kelleghan is challenging them.

Throughout the story, Kelleghan also frequently breaks the structure of fiction, addressing the reader directly in phrasing which is designed to make the reader consider the clichés which the story includes and deconstructs. These asides are unnecessary to the story Kelleghan is telling, which works perfectly well without them, but they adds depth and additional humor. And “Secret in the Chest” makes the reader want to see additional fiction from the author.

Reviewed in its only publication in the magazine Realms of Fantasy, edited by Shawna McCarthy, October 1998.

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