Stranger than SF

Science Fiction Book Review

 Hellflower

Bizarro Lensman
This is my first George O. Smith book, and it's absolutely wild. It feels like a bizarro Lensman story. We have a shadowy drug-smuggling operation that turns out to be an enemy invasion, which mirrors the space pirates and drug smugglers that were the tip of the Boskonian spear in the Lensman series. But instead of incorruptible Lensmen serving the honorable Galactic Patrol, we've got a SAND agent giving a forged license to a disgraced pilot and telling him to go smuggle hellflowers.

It doesn't work for me.

Charles Farradyne
Charles Farradyne is toiling away in the fungus fields of Venus when Howard Clevis, agent of the Solar Anti-Narcotics Department (SAND), approaches him about a job. The job is to infiltrate a hellflower smuggling ring so that SAND can take out the whole operation. Farradyne is just the guy to do it: he's a disgraced pilot who crashed the Semiramide four years ago. Clevis will set Farradyne up with his own spaceship and a forged pilot's license. In return, Farradyne will take any transport jobs he can get around the solar system, and keep a particular eye out for any hellflower smuggling opportunities. When those arise, he will work his way into the gang, then tip off SAND who will swoop in and clean up the operation

Semiramide?
This is revealed in bits and pieces, but Farradyne was the piloting the Semiramide when he was interrupted during the crucial landing phase. As a result, he crashed the spaceship into the bog, killing almost everybody on board. Farradyne testified that there were other people on the control deck, who distracted him and caused the accident, but this was never proven. He lost his license.

Hellflowers
The hellflower, also known as the love lotus. It's indistinguishable from a gardenia, but its fragrance is a powerful drug that affects women. Only women, it seems. It's called the love lotus because its primary effect is to cause a woman to fall madly in love with whoever is nearby. It's also called the hellflower because its addictive effects can leave a woman strung out. They are highly illegal but apparently relatively easy to procure. SAND has been unable to determine where they come from.

Norma Hannon and Michael Cahill
Clevis sets Farradyne up in his own Lancaster model spaceship. Farradyne is flying high: all he ever wanted in life was to be a pilot, and he's back in the game. At the first space bar he stops into he manages to pick up Norma Hannon. She's strung out on love lotuses, and what's worse, she has a grudge against Farradyne: her brother died on the Semiramide. Norma has been burned out by long-term hellflower usage, and all that's left in her is hatred, which she directs at Farradyne. She doesn't try to kill him; rather, she boards his Lancaster and refuses to leave. She intends to make him suffer by her presence. Also she thinks he's a love lotus smuggler and demands that he give her some, as her supply has run out. These hellflowers are bad stuff.

Farradyne also picks up another passenger who may actually be connected with the hellflower operation: Michael Cahill. Farradyne thinks Cahill will be his ticket into the operation. Unfortunately, during the voyage, Cahill makes a move on Norma, and she kills him. Farradyne sends the body out the airlock. As Cahill was never an official passenger, he gets away with it—for now.

Planet X
Farradyne does eventually make it into the hellflower smuggling operation, through meeting Carolyn Niles, a young woman whose family is in the business. But little inconsistencies keep Farradyne thinking, and eventually he catches onto the bigger story: the hellflower operation is not just drug smuggling, it's an alien invasion. Carolyn and her family are not human, they are the vanguard of an alien military operation to invade and conquer Earth. The hellflowers are a great way to weaken Earth from within. Yikes.

Farradyne hides himself on his Lancaster and lets it be captured by one of the alien spaceships, who take it back to their Planet X. Farradyne snoops around, figures out the whole scheme, and takes off back to Earth.

It's a close-run thing, with the enemy spaceships hot on his tail, and enemy operatives in Earth's military and governments trying to silence Farradyne, but he gets the word out. Crisis averted.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Sandworld

Store brand Dune, with vampires
I swore I would never read another vampire book after the last one, but here I am again. How can I resist Twilight Dune? “Stranded on a strange alien planet with a race of alien vampires!” Yikes.

It was not a great book. It had its fun moments, but once again I vow to never read another vampire book.

Jungle planet
Five people in one station wagon find themselves suddenly transported from California to a jungle planet. Inmates Red O'Reilly, Bennie Nebayan, and Willie B. Hutkin, corrections officer Marc Mauriello, and ACLU lawyer Ms. Alice Michaelson are driving the 101 freeway in San Francisco on their way to the courthouse. One moment they are driving down the freeway through the torrential rain. The next moment the station wagon is in the middle of a dense and verdant jungle, with no freeway and no city in sight.

Desert planet
The lush jungle evaporates before their eyes, and the whole world is revealed to be sand. The top layer of the sand is dehydrated trees, animals, etc. It's sand, but everywhere that a drop of water falls, the vegetation springs up in moments, then withers away and dehydrates into tiny spores. It's a fascinating idea. Preposterous, but fun. I like it.

No help coming
The party realizes they are alone on an alien planet. There is no help coming, and the only order of the day is survival. Unfortunately, officer Mauriello is rigid-minded and unable to recognize the reality of their situation. He refuses to unshackle the inmates, and uses his shotgun and pistol to maintain control. Eventually the others overpower him. O'Reilly is elected leader. They pick a direction and head off across the sand, hoping to eventually find something.

Vampires in the night
During the night wraith-like vampires snatch Bennie Nebayan and drag him off. Later, the rest of the party finds a walled city. Just outside the city walls they find Nebayan's body: dessicated and sucked dry by vampires: "All that was left of Bennie Nebayan was a few pounds of cracked, dried bones and skin."

Vampires in the walled city
The party continues into the city, which appears long deserted. Deserted except for some vampires, who pursue the party. Eventually our heroes discover there is an underground network of transportation tunnels beneath the city. The vampires drag down and kill Mauriello, which allows the others to escape into the tunnels. The transportation network is still functional, and automatic, so they ride a moving belt to another city.

Tyahnans
They emerge from their trip to find a bustling cosmopolitan city populated with vampires. The vampires explain everything. This is the planet Tyahn, and the vampires are Tyahnans. The chief Tyahnan, Dzozong-gnyadzong, explains that about 20,000 years ago they invented a means of interstellar transport. It operates sort of like Star Trek beam transporters, but across interstellar distances, and only at the speed of light.. Unfortunately there were some accidents, and various unsuspecting people were snatched off their planets and transported to Tyahn. This is what happened to our heroes. They were accidentally snatched up 20,000 years ago, beamed across 20,000 light-years of distance, and rematerialized in Tyahn. The vampires/Tyahnans are very sorry. They are also very sorry about the actions of the criminal outlaws (wild ones, they call them) who murdered Nebayan and Mauriello.

A whole new world
The Tyahnans can't send O'Reilly, Alice, and Willie back. For one thing, they don't know where Earth is located. For another, it's been 20,000 years. All they can offer is the services of their civilization: full access to the transit beam network, to go anywhere, explore anything. Dzozong-gnyadzong assigns Zagdan-gyatzan to teach them how to operate the transit network. Their first test trip is to a nearby planet of Ptayeem, which has long since been abandoned.

Ptayeem
But of course it's not. And this is odd, because after the main plot (where our heroes find themselves on a strange alien world, survive the desert, lose two of their number to vampires, and encounter the Tyahnan civilization) now they have a little side excursion. It turns out Ptayeem is populated with the degenerated descendents of Tyahnans. The Ptayeemin are small, minimally intelligent, and worship their ancestors (the Tyahnans) as gods. When Zagdan-gyatzan, O'Reilly, Alice, and Willie come through the transit beam, the Ptayeemin immediately grab them. They put Zagdan-gyatzan on a throne, and tie the others up with the intent of killing them as sacrifices to their god.

Of course our heroes get out of the predicament and make it safely back to Tyahn. O'Reilly, Alice, and Willie, now fully trained in the operation of the transit beam network, set out from Tyahn to go explore the universe.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Singer Enigma

"A science-fiction novel"
Once again my rule of thumb is proved right. Any book that has to clarify on its cover that it is a novel is usually not good. This book's cover clarifies that it's "a science-fiction novel" because…well, I'm not sure why. Today the author is more known for her work in other genres, but not in 1976 when The Singer Enigma was published.

The Concord and the Singers
The story starts in a galactic civilization that operates under the Concord Charter. Into this mix comes a race known as the Singers. We're not told what precisely makes the Singers a problem, but they do present such a conundrum that the Concord hires the Carifil to investigate.

Tarhn and the slakes, and Lyra Mara
The Carifil hired is named Tarhn. (The Carifil are not a race, but rather an organization. Kinda like an interplanetary Pinkerton, except more shadowy.) Tarhn has two slakes as companions. The slakes are small dragon-like creatures, telepathically linked to their master. Tarhn's slakes are n'Lete and Bithe. Tarhn has been hired to follow someone named Lyra Mara, which he does. His slakes alert him during the night, and Tarhn manages to foil an attempt to kidnap Lyra. Unfortunately, in saving her, he gets them both crash-landed on a remote planet named Wilderness.

Wilderness and Singing
Their escape pod is damaged, and the only way off Wilderness is through an Access, which is a portal that can transport them instantly across space to any other Access in the galaxy. Unfortunately Wilderness is an undeveloped planet used mainly for recreational hunting. The only Access is several days' hike across a forest planet teeming with savage wildlife.

Worse, they're being chased by bad guys. They are nearly captured several times, and during it all, Tarhn and Lyra begin to fall in love. Later, Lyra sings and uses her power to whip up a storm and drive off their pursuers. Tarhn realized Lyra is a Singer, and his love turns to hate.

Kretan a Harnan n'Ahler, Acting Helix of Tau
Tarhn and Lyra are captured and brought before Kretan a Harnan n'Ahler, the Acting Helix of Tau. It turns out Tarhn is also from Tau, and knows Kretan. The details are sketchy, but it seems Kretan—and all Tau—are engaged in a eugenics project to create the Supreme Helix: the genetically perfect person. Kretan believes Lyra has the proper genes to be genemother to the Supreme Helix. The other genes will come from Kretan—or from Tarhn.

Access Unlimited
And now we learn a little more about the Accesses. The technology is owned by Access Unlimited, which leases its Access portals to planets in exchange for conscripts, that is, slaves. And Access Unlimited is controlled by one person: Kretan a Harnan n'Ahler, Acting Helix of Tau.

Singing, Lyra Mara, Access Unlimited (again), and Unfolding
There's a lot more. We get a big infodump in the middle of the book, under the guise of Tarhn going through a mental "integration" process wherein he recovers a lot of repressed memories. When Tarhn was a boy, he attended an assembly where the Singers first addressed the rest of the Galactics. They did so by singing, and when they sang, many people died. The trauma of the experience caused Tarhn to block it out.

But there's more. It turns out Access Unlimited is only partially owned by Kretan. The majority share is owned by Lyra Mara. She is the daughter of Daveen, grandson of the investor Lyle Li'mara who funded Kretan and Access Unlimited. As the rightful heir, she owns three-fifths of Access Unlimited. This, among other reasons, explains Kretan's interest in her.

Oh, and it turns out that Singers only experience the positive range of human emotions. They are unaware of negative emotions. The Singers are innately telepathic. When they Sing, it affects others in various ways, but mainly by unfolding the mind and revealing to each person his own self, exactly how it is. This unfolding can be traumatic, even deadly in some cases, as people choose to die rather than face their true selves. Thus, when the Singers sang for the other races, they caused widespread death.

And then what happens?
Let's see. Tarhn and his slakes kill Kretan. There are interminable pages upon pages of Tarhn undergoing mental unfolding, which is dull as dirt. I'm not even 100% sure what happened at the end.

Pages of indescribable description
I prefer books where things can actually be described. About half of The Singer Enigma is descriptions of indescribable mental enlightenments as Tarhn goes through this unfolding, and it's just the worst.

---

Here is a list of keywords that I wrote down in my notes while I was reading:
Slizzard vs Helix
Tarhn, from Tau, a Carifil (Tarhn a Harnan n'Ahler, Conditional Helix)
n'Lete and Bithe, slakes
amnesian
Lyra Mara, from (presumably) Singer
The Concord, Concord Charter
Access
Access Unlimited
Wilderness (planet)
Stukor drug
Kretan a Harnan n'Ahler, Acting Helix of Tau. Tarhn's uncle. A slaver, eugenicist, working to develop the perfect race, invented Access, sells Access in exchange for slave (conscript) labor Kidnapped Lyra to use her as a gene-mother to create the Supreme Helix: the final, genetically perfect baby (with Tarhn, it seems.)

Clereth, Tarhn's mother?
Plague
First Helix
Supreme Helix

Flerhan
Li'mara
Daveen (Li'mara's half-son), killed by Kretan's assassins
Jerlis, Tarhn’s mother
Jasilyn

*telepathic communication is written In asterisks instead of quote marks*
Daveen Li’Mari

Singers
sickness
crosser
Chanson
kerden
Centrex
Singer hybrid
sverl hunter

Science Fiction Book Review

 Tama of the Light Country

A book of contradictions
Tama of the Light Country is a book of contradictions. It's got a basic aliens steal Earth's women plot, but it's also a book about women's rights and collective action. It's a book where Hill City is located at the bottom of a valley. It's a book where much of the action is set on a tidally-locked Mercury where there are no days or nights—but the Mercutians nonetheless organize their lives around day-cycles and night-cycles, and routinely speak of doing thing "tonight." It's a book that straddles the genre line between science fiction and planetary romance.

I enjoyed it. It doesn't have quite the imaginative setting of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom books (notably, Tama of the Light Country introduces only a single native Mercutian animal, and that only briefly. Compare to the panoply of creatures in A Princess of Mars, or any ERB book.) But it makes a valiant attempt at social commentary, and succeeds more than ERB ever did. (In my opinion. Your opinion may vary.)

Plot synopsis
Raiders from Mercury kidnap Earth girls from sleepaway camps in Maine. Millionaire investor J.G. Bolton takes a crew in his Cube spaceship to follow them. In his crew are Jack Dean, a reporter (and our narrator) and Rowena Palisse, whose brother Guy Palisse disappeared ten years ago when his rocket to the moon went off course. The Cube's crew recovers a cylinder in space, which contains a message from Guy.

Guy's rocket landed him on Mercury, in the Light Country, where he fell in love with Tama, a winged Mercutian girl from the capital, Hill City. Mercutian women (but not men) are born with wings, but the men clip their wings as a way to control them. Guy helps Tama lead a revolt against this practice. In response, some of the powerful men decide to steal girls from Earth instead—they have no wings to begin with.

There's a battle in space. The good guys win. The bad guys lose. Jack falls in love with Rowena.

---

Characters
Jack Dean, reporter and narrator
Jimmy Turk, police officer and helicopter pilot
J. G. Bolton, millionaire investor who built the Cube spaceship
Rowena Palisse
Guy Palisse, Earth explorer who ended up on Mercury
Tama, a winged Mercutian girl from Hill City
Toh, her brother
Roc, antagonist and powerful Hill City leader
Croat, Roc's father. A giant of a man, banished from Hill City and now a leader in the Cold Country.

Places
Mercury, tidally locked (as was thought at the time the story was written)
Light Country, in the zone of half-light along the terminator line
Hill City, the capital of the Light Country
Cold Country, on the dark side of Mercury
Fire Country, on the light side of Mercury

Things
Guy's moonrocket
Cylinder, invented by Guy to send a message back to Earth
Cube, or Flying Cube, a spaceship built by Bolton Metal Industries
Dragon, Jimmy's light airplane
brue, a large insect-like beast of burden
Bolton Astronomical Research Society
Bolton Metal Industries
antigravity
Heat ray, short-range handheld Mercutian beam gun
Death ray, a large, long-range beam weapon thought to have been lost to history but rediscovered by Croat

---

Chapter-by-chapter summary:

Chapter I: Screams in the Night
The narrator, newsgatherer Jack Dean, responds to a call from his friend Jimmy Turk, an officer of the Interstate Flying Patrol, to come report the biggest story of the year: during the night unknown assailants have snatched ten girls from the White Summer Camp for Girls near Moose Head Lake in Maine. Worse, two girls and three adult employees were killed, and Professor White himself was mortally injured. Dr. Grenfell, Head of the Bolton Astronomical Research Society, expects the kidnappers to strike again, so he sets a trap. The bait is Rowena Palisse, an orphan and ward of Professor and Mrs. White. Rowena's only relative, a brother named Guy Palisse, disappeared ten years ago when he blasted off in a homemade rocket to the moon.

The bait works. Assailants armed with beam weapons attempt to kidnap Rowena, but Jack, Jimmy, and Dr. Grenfell are armed with automatics and thwart the attack. In the process they shoot a short, stocky man-like creature and "fluttering white thing" in the air; a much larger, giant creature escapes into the dark woods. The fluttering thing falls to the ground. It is a winged flying girl, and as she dies she says in English: ". . . warn you . . ."

Chapter II: From Another Planet
Professor White dies. The group examines the dead man—short, thick, "ape-like" but pale and hairless—and winged girl—thin, fair, and, well, winged. Dr. Grenfell explains that observatories and Navy pilots have tracked objects moving from space to the earth's surface. Because Mercury is currently at "inferior conjunction" (its closest point to Earth) he deduces the invaders are from Mercury. He also predicts another attack the next time Mercury reaches inferior conjunction: in one hundred sixteen days.

Chapter III: The Ascent of the Flying Cube
Weeks later, observatories track a small cylinder through space as it heads for Earth. Jimmy takes Jack to see the new spaceship built by Bolton Metal Industries: it's an enormous metal cube, fifty feet in each dimension. It operates not with rockets, but by means of gravity plates. Rowena Palisse is there; her friendship with Dr. Grenfell and the late Professor White, along with her desire to go to the moon and ascertain the fate of her brother, gave her an intense interest in astronomy and space. She has been part of this secret project for years.

Jack is taken with Rowena. He notes how at-ease she is among the scientists and lab workers. Jack, Jimmy, Rowena, Dr. Grenfell, and five assistants board the Flying Cube and lift off into space to intercept the mysterious cylinder..

Chapter IV: The Mysterious Cylinder
They maneuver the Cube next to the cylinder and bring it into an airlock. It's about two feet long. Written on the outside are the words: "FROM GUY PALISSE". The cylinder contains a written message and a warning from Guy Palisse to Earth.

Chapter V: The Warning From Mercury
The letter from Guy Palisse starts with a warning that "Earth's women--particularly our young girls--are in deadly danger." He explains: for the last ten years he has been castaway on Mercury--not the moon. He has lived in Hill City, the capital of the Light Country. Mercury being tidally locked with the sun, there is no day or night here. The Light Country exists in a zone of half-light. The landscape is bleak, rugged, and abundant with copper and other metals. In the Light Country there are deep valleys overflowing with lush, tropical vegetation.

Hill City: Interestingly, Hill City is in a deep valley. Also it is on a high plateau in the rugged mountains. Oh, and there's a river that flows out of Hill City through a flume tunneled through the mountain. So Hill City is simultaneously high in the mountains, in a bowl-shaped valley, and has a large river flowing out through a tunnel. This is nuts.

Never mind that though. The men of the Light Country are heavyset and short. The women are small and winged. They can soar through the sky in the light Mercurian gravity. Unfortunately the men find this threatening, so every woman has her wings clipped at marriage as a means of control.

There is a revolutionary "no clipping" movement, and Guy Palisse falls in love with their leader, Tama, who he compares to Joan of Arc. His rival for Tama's affection is a young Mercutian named Roc, whose father Croat once tried to overthrow the Light Country government. Croat was banished to the Cold Country. Roc has become an influential leader in Hill City.

Guy taught Tama and her brother Toh to speak English.

Chapter VI: The First Murder
One evening "after the last meal of that day-cycle" Guy is alone in his bedroom in Hill City. Yes, this "evening" and "day-cycle" directly contradict the previous chapter where Guy explained that there is no day or night on Mercury, and that the Light Country exists in a "zone of half-light" with no change in brightness except due to large storms.

Speaking of storms, there is a large one brewing.

Toh arrives and tells Guy that Tama wishes to meet him outside the city. Toh has killed the guard outside Guy's house--the guard he says was sent by Roc to keep Guy prisoner "until this is over." Guy chooses to trust Toh and Tama. Guy helps Toh get rid of the body, then they flee.

Chapter VII: Revolt of the Winged Virgins
Toh and Guy meet Tama on a crag high above the city. Tama asks Guy if he can get into the government armory and procure weapons. He says no. This is unfortunate because the people have only knives, feathered arrows, and catapults, but the government has "electronic weapons and defensive electro-armament." These are small short-range hand-rays. The knowledge of the long-range death ray has been lost to history.

Tama explains that for the past two months, the virgins of Hill City have been protesting the wing-clipping laws by refusing marriage. In response, Roc has persuaded the government to pass a law to clip the wings of every girl over sixteen years of age--married or not. At this very moment Roc's minions are going door-to-door clipping girls' wings.

So the protest has become a full-fledged rebellion. All the marriageable young women of Hill City, and five other cities, are fleeing into the mountains to found their own city. Tama asks Guy to join them.

Chapter VIII: The Flying Platforms
Guy agrees to join the rebel virgins. The girls will meet at a rendezvous point in the mountains, then find a valley to live in. A few men—perhaps twenty or thirty—have agreed to join them. Guy sees himself as a natural leader of these rebel girls, and realizes their plans are doomed to fail. They need allies. So instead of joining them immediately, Guy decides to return to Hill City to retrieve his cylinder: a device he's been working on which will carry a message back to Earth.

Chapter IX: Madman's Gamble
Guy returns to his rooms and finds Roc. Guy's greater Earth strength wins the day and he leaves Roc unconscious. He gathers his cylinder and runs. Armed guards pursue him and shoot arrows at him. As he nears the lake in the middle of the city a brue—a large insect-like beast of burden—blocks his way forward. Guy throws a boulder and smashes the grue, then leaps into the flume that drains water out of the valley, through a tunnel, and out into a rocky wasteland.

Chapter X: Besieged in the Metal Desert
Tama and Toh retrieve Guy, and they make their way to the meeting point in Fire Country. They take refuge at the bottom of a cauldron. There is no soil or vegetation, but they find caves for shelter. There are about 1000 young women, a handful of men, and woefully few supplies.

Roc's army attacks on the second day-cycle, raining arrows from the cauldron's rim-top. (Once again, day-cycles on a planet with no day or night. How odd.) Guy and Tama make a foray up to the rim-top to kidnap Roc. Once there, they see a spaceship. Peering inside, they see Roc and a seven-foot-tall giant. The giant is Croat, Roc's father. Guy and Tama listen to the conversation between Roc and Croat. They are nearly caught, but they escape back to the cauldron floor.

Chapter XI: The Plot Against Earth's Women
The overheard conversation reveals a great deal. Croat now leads a Cold Country government. They have a death-ray projector and small hand-held heat rays. They have built a spaceship. Originally Croat's plan was to steal women from Hill City, but when Roc informs him about Earth, they decide to steal women from Earth instead. Roc abandons the Hill Country government and throws in with Croat. Without Roc's influence, Hill City will reconcile with the rebel virgins, so the rebels decide to return home. Guy launches his cylinder to warn Earth.

Chapter XII: Night-Prowling Giant
Dr. Grenfell decides that at the next conjunction—in about three months—they will take the Cube and head for Mercury, hopefully heading off the Mercutian attack before it starts.

Meanwhile, the giant that Jack, Jimmy, and Dr. Grenfell observed in the Maine woods was indeed Croat. He's been stranded on Earth since that time. Croat steals a flyer from the Reverend Dr. Arthur T. Hoskins and forces Hoskins to teach him how to fly it. Croat also learns English, and he learns from radio broadcasts that Dr. Grenfell and his Cube are preparing to go to Mercury. He determines to kidnap Rowena Palisse.

Chapter XIII: In the Airlock
The Cube heads for Mercury. Jack and Rowena kiss and declare their love. During the night Rowena vanishes from her cabin. She's been abducted by Croat, who stowed away on board. Croat holds her at ray-gun point in the airlock.

Chapter XIV: Human Projectiles
Croat has signaled his spaceship, which had not returned to Mercury but had waited for him near the moon. Croat and Rowena don spacesuits. So does Jack. Jack rushes into the airlock just before Croat opens the airlock outer door. All three are blown out into space.

Chapter XV: The Combat in Space
Floating in space, Jack watches the approaching Mercutian ship. There is fighting on board, between Mercutian men and winged girls—stowaways, presumably. A great flash, and then the ship explosively decompresses, instantly killing all aboard. A silver ball ejects from the wreckage.

Jack drifts close enough to Croat to grab him and kill him with a knife. The Cube moves in and recaptures Jack and Rowena into the airlock.

Chapter XVI: Falling Stars
Jack and Rowena reboard the Cube. The silver sphere approaches the Cube. The sphere contains Guy, Tama, and eight of the kidnapped Earth girls. It turns out Guy and Tama stowed away in Croat's ship, and seized an opportune moment to seize control of the ship. They escaped in the silver sphere tender just in time.

Croat and the remains of his ship burn up as they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

Jack, Rowena, Guy, and Tama all live happily on Earth. But they miss their friends in the Light Country.

Science Fiction Book Review

 System Collapse

Book seven. The Murderbot concept was new, intriguing, and held my interest for the first few books. It started to wear thin by book five. Book six was a fun murder mystery, but reading book seven felt like a chore sometimes. Maybe it would have been fun to hear the story from a different character's perspective, because Murderbot is starting to annoy me. Still, it's a competent story.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Fugitive Telemetry

Book six.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Island of Fear and Other Science Fiction Stories

I'd never heard of William Sambrot before I got this book in a big box of books from eBay. These are good stories. They are near-future stories, mostly written in the 1950s and 1960s and dealing with Cold War themes. Sambrot has an excellent grasp of what a short story should be: an interesting hook, a bit of story, and a clever twist at the end. Even if we can see the twist coming—and I usually could—it's nonetheless satisfying. I read this book in a single day, in two sittings.

Space Secret
The first automated mission to photograph the far side of the moon brings back tapes of an advanced civilization—but then somebody switched the tapes to remove the evidence. In a twist, that somebody is the narrator, who is a member of that civilization.

Control Somnambule
The first “Operation Moonshot” goes perfectly up until the spacecraft vanishes for six hours and then reappears. Captain Paul Davenport recalls nothing. Under hypnosis he recounts being captured and examined by unknown aliens. A close examination of Davenport’s body reveals the aliens removed his appendix, which had been infected. Also, he’s been “tagged.”

A Distant Shrine
A Soviet mission to Mars finds a small human population, complete with agriculture, churches, and a shrine commemorating the most common earth animal. The rat. And an inscription in Middle Low German: “Hameln, 1284 A.D.” They are the descendants of the children spirited off by the Pied Piper, who was an extra-terrestrial.

Island of Fear
Kyle Elliot peers over a great wall on a remote Greek island and sees an exquisite stone statue of a woman and child. He questions the locals, who are reluctant to discuss it. All he can get out of them is that 1) the wall has always been there, and 2) it's owned by the Gordons. An English family, Kyle surmises. Desperate to get a closer look and perhaps buy the statue, he persuades a young boy to row him around to the far side of the island where he can get inside the wall and approach the statue. Too late he discovers what the wall was built to imprison: the Gorgons—Medusa’s sisters.

Creature of the Snows
After two full months in the high Himalayas, photojournalist Ed McKale comes face to face with a yeti. Face to face with an eight-foot-tall, perfectly humanoid creature covered in white fur. And looks into its blue eyes. Sees the savage intelligence. And backs away, with no photographs, no proof but his memories.

Nine Days to Die
Joe Vitali, truck driver and vegetable delivery man, receives a lethal dose of radiation when a disposal truck from a nearby government research lab sprays him with radioactive dust. It takes him nine days to die. The narrator tries to convince his wife to allow a special autopsy that may help devise treatments for future radiation victims, but Mrs. Vitali is reluctant. In the end she agrees, so that Joe's death will not have been in vain.

The Secret of the Terrible Titans
A special investigative report commissioned by Ocean College determines that the team of seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound albino athletes who are winning every game for Pacific Underwater College are in truth—yeti. And better still: the investigator is headed to the Himalayas to procure a team of yeti for Ocean College.

Invasion
A view from the strategic bomber sent to deliver a nuclear knockout punch to the Soviet Union in retaliation for an invasion of West Germany. The bomber, named Snapdragon, gets deep into Soviet airspace before being recalled; the Soviet premier has capitulated at the last possible moment and begun withdrawing his troops from West Germany.

Report to the People
Don Masterson approaches his old friend Jerry Shipley, a publicist, with photograph proof of an advanced alien civilization on Mars, and further evidence that the Martians have infiltrated the highest levels of earth’s institutions to keep their existence secret. Jerry agrees to publish the photos—but he burns them. Jerry is a Martian. This is the same plot and the same plot twist as Space Secret.

Deadly Decision
Jim Henderson, in a bunker in a lonely missile silo complex in the remote arctic, debates whether to flip the switch and push the button that will launch the Big Punch. The retaliatory fifty-megaton lithium-cobalt doomsday bomb that will rain radioactive dust and destroy all life on earth. The all clear signal, which comes every three hours without fail, is two hours overdue, but Jim can’t bring himself to push the button. In the end he is proven right: it was a solar flare that knocked out communication. There is no war.

Jim was chosen specifically because his psychological profile indicated he would evaluate all the facts, determine that he should launch the missile—and still not have the heart to do it. The Big Punch was never meant to be used, and Jim Henderson is part of the safeguard to ensure it never will be.

The Man Who Knew
After an accident during the war, Neil Sheldon knows. He knows when a woman is willing, and in his dreams he seeks them out, approaching them in the night, seducing them. And every morning he realizes it was no dream. He desperately wants to sleep without dreaming, to get a real night’s sleep, but still he always knows, and in his dreams he always goes to them.

Cathartic
A siliceous life form crashes into a planet, absorbs silicon, grows into a massive mountain that destabilizes the planet. The planet wobbles, oceans slosh over and flood continents, and the siliceous life form breaks apart and seeds the planet with new, abundant life.

The Second Experiment
Dr. Andrew MacPhee returns from his trip to Venus and reveals a startling truth. Venus is a new Eden, a paradise populated by a peaceful people who know no sin—God's second experiment after the failure on Earth. The universe belongs to Venus. Earth, meanwhile, is doomed to die in atomic fury when China develops an H-bomb and demands her fair share of the world’s resources. The nations will respond in the only way they know: violent force.

A Son of Eve
A young islander boy stays behind on the atoll because, like Eve in the garden, his curiosity gets the better of him. He wants to see the great power that the Americans say they must test. He sees it. From nearly ground zero. And he is punished for his sin: blind, hairless, shriveled, bleeding. He is punished for daring to look at God.

Science Fiction Book Review

 The Horn of Time

Poul Anderson is a pleasure to read, as usual. I didn't find any of these stories to be great, but all were good and well-written. I particularly enjoy that Poul Anderson knows his history, and that he recognizes the impact of religion in general and Christianity in particular on Western history and culture. Many writers of science fiction just ignore religion altogether, or treat it as an evil to be overcome, but Anderson is more even-handed.

The Horn of Time the Hunter
An expedition to an abandoned colony world has an unfortunate run-in with the locals: an aquatic humanoid species which turns out to be the descendants of the colonists.

A Man to My Wounding
After three world wars, the nations of Earth realize war is too dangerous. Disagreement must still be resolved, so “war” now consists of ritualized assassination of political leaders. But how long until somebody breaks these unspoken rules and goes after other targets?

The High Ones
A ship from Earth (escaping from the united world soviets) runs into a hostile alien race and tracks it back to its planet of origin. There they find the perfect collectivist race. A civilization millions of years old, with the people nothing more than mindless drones servicing computers like termites in a great colony.

The Man Who Came Early
A US soldier stationed in Iceland during the Cold War is struck by lightning and transported back a thousand years to before Leif Eiriksson’s voyage to Vinland. He tries to use his modern knowledge but quickly discovers that his knowledge is so far removed from the technological development of the time as to be useless. Then he gets himself into a fight, a feud, and eventually gets himself killed.

Marius
Étienne Fourre confronts Jacques Reinach, the general who won the third world war, and tries to convince him to give up his emergency powers and let democracy have a chance to flourish once more.

Progress
A crew of Maurai merchant sailors infiltrates a secret Beneghali project-a nuclear fusion power plant. And destroys it. To preserve the status quo and allow the various cultures of the world to mature, and to prevent another ruinous War of Judgement.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Tomorrow Knight

My verdict
Tomorrow Knight is not a satisfactory story. It's a setting and a series of events. It feels like the prelude to a story. It's got four characters who could presumably be interesting in the sequels, if this were an origin story for a series and not a stand-alone novel.

Still, it's got some great scenes and I enjoyed reading it.

Holy Crusade
Lance Corporal Carl Frederic Allan is a member of His Most Imperial Majesty's Holy Crusade, fighting the Horde of Allah. He really is. But this crusade is one small part of an entire planet of people devoted to ritualistically reenacting scenes from history. That brings to mind the Frames from The Probability Man and Planet Probability by Brian N. Ball, although in Tomorrow Knight the performance is for the benefit of alien watchers called Guests, not for the enjoyment of the performers themselves.

Alyssaunde
Carl fights the Saracens, takes a black Knight prisoner, rescues King Hiram VI from six black Knights, and passes out. After the battle he meets a Guest: a human girl in a flitterboat, who introduces herself as Alyssaunde. Later, back at Bivouac Area Charlie, Hiram VI promotes Carl to knight-brevet for his heroism in battle.

Nighttime raid
Unusual flitterboat activity alerts Carl to a Saracen nighttime surprise attack. He awakens the troops but there is no time to organize a defense, just time to run into the forest and hope to live. Carl is wounded. Alyssaunde rescues him and bandages his wounds. She explains a little about his world: Earth is divided into twelve areas, and each area is divided into sectors. Carl’s area, which contains the Holy Crusade and the Horde of Allah, is Area One Sector Seven. Bivouac Charlie is at grid coordinates A-stroke-nine. Altogether, 01:07:A/9.

Different O'Malley and Chester A. Arthur
Carl and Alyssaunde are kidnapped by a couple of renegades, Different O’Malley and Chester A. Arthur. The two renegades force Alyssaunde to fly the flitterboat beyond the sectors to the Outland. Along the way, they explain to Carl about the Earth’s setup. It’s one big amusement destination for alien Guests. People like Carl are the entertainment. A small ruling class called the fives, of which Alyssaunde is a member, run the planet. Alyssaunde objects that she too is a prisoner of her position: as a woman she’s expected to look pretty. The man have all the power.

When they arrive in the Outland they are immediately captured by Inspectors who have been trailing the flitterboat. Alyssaunde is whisked away to her father, and Carl is arrested for the crime of leaving his sector.

Devil’s Island
Carl, O'Malley, and Arthur are sent to Devil’s island as prisoners. Arthur reveals to Carl that they are not on Earth. For one thing, Earth has a single moon; this planet has two. The three determine to escape not just their island prison, not just the historical reenactment sectors, but the whole planet. And furthermore, to find the real Earth, which is their heritage as human beings.

Confederacy
The three awake one morning to see prisoners from Devil’s Island being shackled and painted black. They are destined for Atlanta to be sold as slaves in the old Confederacy sector. The three clobber the Confederate soldiers assigned to accompany the prisoners, don their uniforms, and take their place. Once in “Atlanta” they get caught up in a slave revolt—apparently great amusement for the watching Guests. They are saved in the nick of time by the Confederate army. Then they slink away, taking a train to escape to the neighboring sector.

In one of my favorite exchanges of the whole book, Carl and Chester have this conversation in the aftermath of the slave rebellion:

"If the Guests knew about it in advance," Carl said, "then it must have been instigated from outside."

"That's right," Chester agreed. "It's authentic history, there were slave revolts; and it's a good show. The Guests eat things like that up."

"Hundreds of people will get killed," Carl said, "on both sides."

"Probably," Chester agreed.

"We could have been on either side," Carl said. "We could just as easily have ended up as slaves as disguised soldiers."

"Easily," Chester said.

"The slaves don't have a chance," Carl said, "and it's not even their own revolt. There's something wrong with that."

"I'm convinced," Chester said.

"But what can we do?" Carl asked.

"Get off this planet," Chester said. "Find Earth—the real Earth. See if they know what's happening here."

"Perhaps they don't care," Carl said.

"Perhaps they merely don't know," Chester said. "Perhaps we can find somebody who does care. Besides, we can't stay here."

"What a strange thing that is," Carl commented.

"What's that?"

"To look at a whole planet and say, 'We can't stay here.' And, I suppose, to have somewhere else to go."

Spies, spies, criminals, fugitives-at-large
Later they are mistaken for Union spies and nearly hanged, but escape across the barrier to the next sector (WWII France) where they are captured by the Maquis and nearly executed as Nazi spies.

They’re arrested by Inspectors and taken to see the Governor-General. Alyssaunde (who is his daughter, naturally) rescues them, and the foursome steals a spaceship (the Governor-General’s, naturally, and Alyssaunde is a trained pilot, naturally) and head for the real Earth.

The end
Abruptly the book ends.

I wonder if there was supposed to be a sequel. This story is unfinished.

Science Fiction Book Review

 Double, Double

Exceedingly competent
Double, Double is a competent book—exceedingly competent. Competently plotted, competently paced, competently written, competently tied up with no loose plot threads. Competent all around.

Monster from the deep
It’s barely science fiction. A shapeshifting people-eating monster crawls out of the ocean depths and eats a few people and a dog, but is stopped just in time by a plucky constable, a hardworking scientist, and a hippie band riding high on their brush with fame after their top-20 hit song Seadeath.

Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
Bruno Twentyman and his fellow bandmates and girlfriends—Gideon "Gid" Hard (the West Indian), Glenn Salmon (the American), Nancy Lane, Cressida "Cress" Beggarstaff, and Liz Howell—are driving their converted Ford Transit van along the English coastline looking for a particular beach Glenn thinks would be great for an "open-air freakout." They run into Tom Reedwall and his dog Inkosi. Tom works at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brindown Research Station. Tom points them to the beach they're looking for

Dead man walking
The band has a picnic at the beach. The girls do a little skinny-dipping but it's all very tame. Very tame, until a man's body washes up. He's alive and moving, but not breathing, which is odd. The band tries to pull him up onto the beach, but he seems reluctant to leave the water. When they see his face is half eaten away, the band freaks out and runs off.

Constable Sellers
Bruno heads to the local police station and makes a report to Sergeant Branksome, Constable Roger Sellers, and reporter Joseph Leigh-Warden. They figure it's a hoax, but Branksome decides to have it checked out just in case.

Double, Double
Thus begins a mystery. The locals try to piece it together, but the clues don't fit. The man that Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition saw is the pilot of a recently crashed airplane, but that was days ago and he couldn't possibly still be alive. Miss Beeding, a batty old woman who lives near that beach, disappears—seemingly the victim of a struggle in her home. Later she turns up a whole town away in Geddesley, where she's talking incoherently and has a violent aversion to being touched. She's placed in a mental institution. But Constable Sellers sees Miss Beeding in Brindown while she's still in the mental institution in Geddesley. Can there be two of her? Later, Miss Beeding disappears from her locked room in the mental institution, but the duty nurse now exhibits the same symptoms: incomprehensible mutterings and an aversion to being touched.

Shapeshifters
Brunner weaves the threads of the story together competently. It was a shapeshifting monster from the ocean depths, somehow thrust up to the ocean's surface. Desperate for food, it consumed the pilot's body. Then, following its nature, mimicked the form of the creature it has just consumed. The shapeshifting creature feeds every few days, consuming whatever prey it can find, doubling its own mass, dividing into two creatures, and taking the form of whatever it consumed. Constable Sellers, Sergeant Branksome, Tom Reedwall, Bruno and the band, and many others work together to track down and kill the creatures before they can escape into the English countryside and ravage an unsuspecting population.