July Books Read

 

From 1975 comes the 124 page SF thriller The Ghosts of Epidoris by E. C. Tubb.  For the third time Cap's old arch enemy Kaifeng is back and as bad as ever.  Kaifeng is the Fu Manchu of Cap Kennedy's galaxy, or the Master from Dr. Who's universe, a man who is evil through and through.  He loves to punish people who fail him, though in this story he admits that he failed at something yet doesn't mention any self punishment.  Could he be a hypocrite?  Once again the ancient Zeltyana race is at the forefront of Kaifeng's evil plan to rule the galaxy, as the evil one is using old alien technology to hide his doings from the rest of a planet's population.  Did I mention yet that he is evil?  Are there really ghosts wandering at night on Epidoris?  Or, is there a scientific explanation to what is happening and what people are seeing?  As usual, Tubb has a good SF premise and reasonable enough sounding explanation.  There is plenty of action, and even a bit of high culture talk between Cap and Kaifeng's equally evil female assistant, who harbours a bit of a crush on Cap.  My main complaint has to do with Tubb's ridiculous brief ending.  Less than half a page from the major climax the book suddenly ends.  No doubt the author wanted to bring back Kaifeng in a future story and didn't want to deal with his possible escape.  My secondary complaint is that any time relics of the ancient race are found, the bad guys get to it first and then Cap has to blow it all up at the end.  Seriously?

** 1/2 stars.

 

 

Original publication with cover by the great Jack Gaughan.

I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Next month I will return to Kenneth Bulmer's engrossing Dumarest Saga, but now it's time for more Delphi Classics reading.  Clark Ashton Smith was up next.  Smith has written some of the best horror and fantasy short stories I have ever read, so I always look forward to him when his turn comes around again.  This time its a collection of 14 stories published in 1948 under the title Genius Loci and Other Tales.  The first story is the title one, very much influenced by H P Lovecraft (Poe is another influence on this terrific writer).  A young artist visits a friend in the country and discovers a very dismal swamp.  He becomes fascinated by the atmosphere and strives to capture its likeness on canvas and in sketches.  Alas, the swamp has its own plans, not only for him but also his young fiancee.  Smith writes so much better than Lovecraft, even though many of his ideas are borrowed from him.

"The Ninth Skeleton" and "The Phantom of the Fire" are minor efforts but told well, though the skeleton story has some nice touches (no pun intended) and the fire story sounds like something supernatural that could actually happen to someone.

"The Eternal World" is almost a novelette, combining influences as disparate as H G Wells and Olaf Stapledon.  It is the story of a man who builds a kind of time machine and encounters two different kinds of intelligent life, a good kind and a bad kind.  It's the kind of story that Jack Williamson might have written back in the day.  Quite good reading for classic SF fans. 

"Vulthoom" is top notch Smith SF writing, as two men stuck on Mars encounter a much older and stranger being than the current Martians who trade with Earth.  In this novelette Vulthoom is a legendary god among the Martians, one who awakens every 1000 years, but as the two men discover, the godlike alien being is all too real.  As good as the story is, the ending is also one of the best.

"A Star Change" sees a depressed human approached by two aliens from Mlok while he is sitting on a mountain top.  They sense his depression and offer him a lift to their distant planet.  He refuses, but they later visit him in his San Francisco apartment.  He finally agrees.  On Mlok he has trouble adjusting to the new sensations.  Despite the friendliness of the aliens he spends much of his time shrieking in terror.  They perform some medical procedures on him and he is finally able to adjust.  Pangs of homesickness hit him, however, and he wishes to return to Earth.  He gets his chance when Mlok is invaded by a space born parasite, dooming the world and its people.  Meanwhile back on earth, his adjustments he received back on Mlok make him unfit for life on Earth.  Only Smith could come up with these bizarre but fascinating stories and their tragic endings.  Great stuff!

"The Primal City" is a great little horror story about two adventurers who trace down the location of a vast lost city in the mountains of northern India.  They and their guide trek for many days, at last coming to the ruins.  The city seems to have been made for giants, and was destroyed by some unknown force.  Soon, however, that force will make itself known once again. Only one man and one camel survive.

"The Disinternment of Venus" takes place in a Franciscan monastery in 1550, and is one of those stories that could easily have been a local legend.  A masterpiece of Roman sculpture is dug out from a monastery garden by two monks.  Afterwards, discipline breaks down and rules are constantly being broken.  Anyone who sees the statue is affected.  One non-viewing monk sets out to destroy it with a hammer.  He is found next day locked in the arms of the statue,  His body cannot be freed and he is buried forever with the statue and the garden is abandoned.  A terrific short story!

"The Colossus of Ylourgne" is a novella detailing the doings of an evil dwarf wizard seeking revenge on all those who wronged him in a small area of France in the early 1200s.  This is by far the best story of conjuring a demon-like being that I have ever read.  The gripping tale is filled with violence, both as the beast is being formed from buried corpses, and after it goes on its countryside rampage.  First two monks fro ma nearby monastery attempt to deal with the conjurer, but are sent back dully punished.  What I love about Smith's writing in this genre is that religious beliefs hold no sway over evil magic; churches are destroyed, the monastery is destroyed and many monks die as they pray.  A one time student of the wizard decides to give it a go, and while he pays dearly for his attempt, his eventual success gives the novella's climax a ring of truth and lasting freedom.  An excellent story and, like many of Smith's tales, would make a great film.  Highly recommended for sword and sorcery fans.

"The Satyr" is a short horror story about two lovers accosted not only by the woman's husband, but by Pan.  The cuckolded husband is the least of the worries for the woman.  Ever since my dream about Pan several years ago (I actually met him and he is a very scary guy), I suspect that this story and others like it are true.  Once again a terrific ending, and not a happy one (unless you are Pan).

"The Garden of Adompha" is another dark tale of black sorcery, with quite a hideous theme.  With the King's permission his cruel wizard grafts human parts onto various trees and plants in the King's secret garden.  This is one garden door readers do not ever want to open.

"The Charnel God" is another one of those stories about strange gods and customs.  A young couple stop overnight in a strange town.  She is cataleptic and has an attack and is pronounced dead by a local doctor.  Anyone who dies in this city has their body given over to the god.  Her boyfriend tries his best to rescue her, and he is unwittingly aided by a trio of body thieves.  A very unusual tale.

"The Black Abbot of Puthom" is a tale that Fritz Leiber would have greatly enjoyed reading, as did I.  Two body guards and a eunuch are sent to fetch a girl for the harem.  Her beauty is renowned and is coveted by the king.  The trip home is fraught with danger and adventure, as the four people are kidnapped by an evil sorcerer and brought to his monastery.  He wants to have his way with the girl but the two loyal bodyguards stand in his way.  A great adventure with even a touch of humour at the end.

"The Weaver In the Vault" (such great titles on some of these tales) 

 

Cover of the first edition (1948) by Frank Wakefield.

 

From a 1974 edition, with cover by

Bruce Pennington.
 

Olaf Stapledon is a very strange SF writer, likely well into the spectrum for autism.  If he was an artist he probably would be drawing those incredible detailed maps and drawings produced by people with such gifts.  Darkness and Light (1942) presents his best and worst case scenario for humans on Earth.  In past novels he has taken on the entire universe, with Earth as a mere dust mote in the grand scheme of things.  Well, this time he devotes the entire book to this dust mote and the people who dwell upon it.  Like a good Tarot card reading, Stapledon is not making predictions.  He is providing a framework for some grand ideas to be played out.  In the first half of the book we get the bad stuff.  Try to imagine the world in the near future if more Trump-like leaders emerge in the world's most important countries.  He does, and it isn't pretty.  In the second half of the book he provides a vision for Utopia, a vision that very few people today would ever accept.  Joining together for a common cause?  Ya, right.  Growing until we rise above consumerism and then leading more spiritual (not religious!) lives?  I don't think so.  As grand and hopeful as the author is, his first scenario is much more likely to happen, and sooner than most of us would want.  Stapledon's books could spark endless discussion, and they lead off in so many directions that a person could spend his life tied to any one of his visionist novels.  Even his best case scenario is frought with problems that defy correcting.  Well worth reading, but don't wait around for any of the good stuff to happen soon.

*** stars. 

 

Rabindranath Tagore's Fruit Gathering is a collection of 86 short poems from 1916, mostly dedicated to nature or god.  While reading these peaceful lines it's difficult to believe that the Great War was in full swing.  Many of the poems are worth quoting in their entirety, while others produce lines that are truly heaven-sent.  Often meditative, never frivolous, this is poetry with some weight holding it up.  A few brief examples: "I throw away all that is not one with my life nor as light as my laughter.  I run through time and, O my heart, in your chariot dances the poet who sings while he wanders."  "Cling to this living raft, my body, in the narrow stream of my earthly years.  I leave it when the crossing is over.  And then?"  How about this one?  "Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength."  One more:  "Let the mantle of tender darkness cover me in its folds, and cover my pain awhile from the pressure of the world."  This is good stuff, with nearly every poem offering up something of worth.  Recommended.  **** stars.   

 

Josephine Tey (1896-1952) was a Scottish author known best for her Inspector Grant murder mystery novels.  She has two of her books in the top 100 best mystery books of all time, including the #1 position! (The Daughter of Time).  The Man in the Queue is from 1929 and was her first in the Grant series, and her second novel ever.  She has a highly detailed style, always told from one perspective by the narrator.  The story is actually a police procedural, as we tag along with the inspector to try to solve a seemingly unsolvable murder.  Clues and witnesses are few and far between, and along the way the highly intelligent inspector makes several large errors, not entirely his fault.  This is one of those mystery stories where the evidence is so stacked against one man that we wonder all along if he did do it, and if not, then who?  Does the inspector solve the case?  Actually, no he doesn't.  But he has enough of a bad feeling about the arrested man to keep digging for evidence that might help him.  No luck there.  He strongly feels that the wrong man was arrested and will likely be hung for the crime.  To find out how it all turns out, read the book.  Tey has a witty style of writing also, and brings in some uncanny but perfect small details along the way.  There are even a few Holmes and Watson jokes.  Well worth reading for mystery fans.

*** stars. 

Brain Fruit by Stephen Oram was a gift from a friend following a recent visit to London, UK (thank you again, Caroline).  From 2025 it is a SF/Fantasy novelette published in hardcover format, something one does not see very often.  A limited edition, mine is 104 of 500.  The story concerns a bee, a bug and a piece of fruit trying to make peace with a village of androids, to the mutual benefit of everyone.  The closest thing to it that I have read before is T. H. White's The Book of Merlin, where readers get inside the lives of wild geese and later an ant colony.  I think that very often individual short stories and novelettes can get lost in 'collections' of same.  Publications like this one are not cheap and likely have very limited numbers of buyers.  But it is refreshing to see original short works receive what one might term royal treatment.  Worth reading, but good luck finding a copy.

*** 1/2 stars. 

 

After recently watching 30 episodes of Apple TV's Foundation series, it was finally time to reread the books (it's been decades).  The first novel, Foundation, is from 1951.  I read this series as a teen and remembered very little of it, except that music plays a major role somewhere.  Not in book 1.  There are two main flaws with this first novel.  The first is that it's not really a science fiction novel.  It's mostly a political story, with traders and phony priests mixed in.  The second problem is an almost complete lack of female characters.  The only woman with speaking lines is a shrewish wife after more riches and more power, and she is a very minor character.  The TV series at least made the story more science fiction than the novel, and they did add several important female characters, badly needed.  However, they totally destroyed Asimov's story.  They muddled it badly.  After watching 30 episodes I can honestly say that I don't know what the hell is going on, or who is who or why this happens.  It's a great series to look at, but it has very little skill at telling a story.  Asimov's book is very clear cut and makes perfect sense, at least.  I somewhat enjoyed the book, more than the series.  *** stars.  

 

I am reading the Kindle editions. 

 

I finished off the month with two more evolution essays by Stephen Jay Gould, finishing a 3-chapter section called Human Prehistory.  "A Lesson From the Old Masters" refers again to prehistoric cave painting, specifically a few depictions of a giant deer, and how the discovery of this art helped bolster evolutionary theory and tie up a loose end or two.  In "Our Unusual Unity" Gould takes on biases that insist that evolutionary progress is linear, something the author consistently argues against.  In a linear theory only one type of humanoid can exist at any one time, like today.  Gould argues that today's unity is not the norm, but the exception, showing how bias can affect a scientist's theory even when evidence strongly suggests otherwise.  Bush theory says that several types of early man once existed at the same time, and may have interacted in some ways. 

 

See you in a month (or perhaps two) or so.  My reading time is slowly being reduced so I don't get through as many books as I once did.  We'll see how things go, but if you don't see an August summary, there will be one in September for sure.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

March Reading

You Can't Stop Me is from 1963 and is 158 pages.  It was written by "Don Elliot," one of Silverberg's many false names.  This one takes the prize for the most outrageous novel I have ever read.  It's about a serial killer (58 victims no less) who strangles the women either during sex with them or just before.  This is a story about a real sicko, and I find it hard to believe that Silverberg needs cash so badly that he would allow this one to be republished.  He even writes a short intro to the volume, excusing himself because "times were different then."  Umm.  Not so different, really.  Silverberg wrote more sleaze novels than all his other fiction and non-fiction combined.  And I used to wonder, when reading his SF, why women never played major roles in a majority of his stories.  I truly think the man had a problem with women, and anyone brave enough to read this book would likely agree.  One for the trash heap.  There is nothing I can think of about the story that redeems it.  If I needed an excuse to stop reading Silverberg, this is it.  Avoid this one.

From 1984 comes Kenneth Bulmer's 154 page novel Delia of Vallia, #28 in the Dray Prescott series.  It makes a terrific change to finally find out what Dray Prescott's counterpart gets up to while he is off on his adventures.  The Empress is a Sister of the Rose, a secret organization of females trained as warriors but out to do good.  They work with hospitals, orphans, women in perilous situations that need assistance, as well as helping out in putting down rebellions in Vallia.  When some of the sisters are being recruited by a rival women's group to help bring down Vallia, Delia is sent to the hot spot to find out what is going on.  The plot mostly concerns women, though there are some memorable male characters as well.  Delia goes through nearly as many hardships as her galavanting husband, and by the end of this tale readers have even more respect for this true Empress of a woman.  Bulmer pulls no punches in showing how Delia is humiliated before she strikes back.  Highly enjoyable and a much needed change of pace for the series.  My Kindle edition included a very short story by Bulmer taking place in the same world, but not directly related to this series.  Called "Lallia The Slave Girl" it recounts the revenge one such female gets on her brutal master.  The story has become a legend and oft told on Scorpio.  

 

E. C. Tubb's Hills of Blood, an aptly named western from 1965, is 145 pages long.  The basic story involves a group of Confederate prisoners of war being asked to help man an understaffed western fort, thus aiding the Union troops.  There is considerable resentment, but the captain of the imprisoned men tells them it's better than starving and freezing to death in prison.  There is a secret gold mine involved in the plot, and a few rebel soldiers not too anxious to fight Indians for the Union.  As per usual, Tubb sympathizes with the Indians and their great loss of land and lifestyle.  He has also had a very upstanding Confederate soldier or former soldier in a lead role more than once in his westerns.  Just reading this series of novels one can learn a lot about Plains Indians from that time.  All of his western novels are recommended reading.  I had expected something quite different when I began reading them.  This is the final one.  Recommended.

 

In the final volume of the violent Lone Wolf vigilante series, we finally witness the complete collapse of Wulf's sanity, and his final demise at the hands of his one-time partner and friend Williams.  Philadelphia Blowup is from 1975 and is a brief but intense 120 pages.  Malzberg has created a memorable character in Wulf, one that is beyond human in his actions and abilities.  His one goal is to eliminate the upper echelon of drug dealers, but once he has eliminated them his task has barely begun.  This is what finally drives him to madness; the fact that despite all he has done, he has barely started in making a dent on American drug use.  During the series Malzberg gets to deal alot with bigshot people who are about to die, despite the fact they believe themselves invulnerable.  There is a sameness to the boldest of the kingpin men, which quickly evaporates when they realize that Wulf will now kill them.  Malzberg also gets to use one of his strongest points as a writer, that of a madman justifying his actions any way he can.  Inner voices are a specialty with Malzberg, and he gets plenty of opportunity in these novels.  The story ends with two afterwords from Malzberg, dated 2022, where he continues to sound off about the real reasons for the Vietnam war, as well as what really happens during the "war on drugs."  He is an interesting writer with plenty of ideas and strong opinions, and even in this offbeat series he manages to delve deeper than many hard fiction writers into today's problems and their root causes.  It is a difficult series to recommend because of all the violence, and the fact that it is all aimed at a male audience.  There are too many killings and too much of the same kind of storyline, though the final five books do deviate considerably from the first nine.  At least the author brought things to a definite conclusion, unlike many other long running series.  

 

Moving on to my unrestricted reading choices, I began with the second crime novel by Ghanian author Kwei Quartey.  Children of the Street is a sometimes shocking and heartbreaking story of life in Accra, the capital and largest city in Ghana.  A serial killer is murdering teenage street kids, using ritualistic methods that are cruel and outrageous.  Detective Darko Dawson tackles the crime series, and we get more than a glimpse of life on the streets in a poverty stricken zone of the city.  The problem is almost unbelievable for a western observer, but the long list of acknowledgements at the end of the novel indicates how much research went into the story.  The author is also a practicing M.D.  Like in the novels of Tony Hillerman, set on lands populated by the Navajo Nation, we learn a lot about Ghana and its people in these stories.  The first book was set in the smaller places in the north of the country, but here we are hit full face by modern Accra and the problems it faces.  Quartey writes in a simple fashion, not using large words or complicated sentences or overly constructed plots.  The writing and story is simple and straightforward, suitable no doubt for high school age children, though the material is considerably dark.  Highly recommended.

 

I read the Kindle edition.
 

I keep hoping I will come across a novel by Vita Sackville-West that I actually enjoy reading.  Challenge, written in 1920, is not it.  Sackville's writing seems to me vague, wispy, and without grounding.  The novel was banned in the UK until 1974 or 1976, though I cannot see nor think of a single reason why.  It is a pretty fluffy concoction, set in the Greek Isles at the time they sought independence, but Greece was coming for them.  There is nothing in the story except petty politics and a perverse kind of selfish love.  Julian and Eve are cousins, both very young (22 and 19).  though they fight and argue constantly, they are in love.  She wants love unconditionally, and admits that even if he had a dog she would be too jealous of it to live peaceably with Julian.  His interest in helping some of the islands revolt against their Greek masters is, to her, too much to compete against.  So she aids the Greeks in reconquering the islands, and sees Julian exiled.  She then realizes that she has destroyed him by taking away his fight for freedom, so she goes out and drowns herself.  At the last minute she has second thoughts, but alas, it is too late.  She is likely one of the most unlikable female characters I have ever encountered in a novel, with almost no redeeming qualities.  I say almost, for she does love, but her kind of absolute love is a perversion of the word, in my opinion.  She is not even above luring on a priest who takes to her, driving him mad with desire for her.  When he is rejected, he kills himself (or trips over his garment, we never know for certain which).  Not recommended.  But stay tuned; her next novel is Orlando, so maybe there is some hope yet.  For a much better novel showing a female writer pushing boundaries (sand having them come back to bite her) read Kate Chopin's The Awakening, from 1899.

 

Mrs. Warren's Profession, from 1893, is another early play by G. B Shaw, one that was banned from performance for several years after publication.  The play is prefaced in my Kindle edition (Delphi Classics) by a long tirade against censorship by the author, and indeed is more interesting to read than the play itself.   Not put on the stage until 1902, it tells the story of a woman who runs a house of prostitution, using the earnings to ensure her daughter receives the best education available to her.  The play was savagely attacked as "unnatural."  Shaw's lengthy response is, as one can imagine if one knows of Shaw's critical skills, right on the mark.  The play itself is in 4 acts, each taking about 20' to read.  Apparently even mention of such a woman was enough to cause apoplexy in the theatre critics of the time.  the opening performance audience loved the play, especially the women.  However, the next performance was for the critics,and thus history is made.  If anything, Shaw's a bit overboard on his "modern" woman, casting her a person not seeking love, adventure, beauty, or truth.  Instead, she wants to work in an office and use her skills of higher calculation (she is a university graduate in high standing), and never wants a vacation.  While it is admirable that she wants to leave her background and dubious friendships behind, I'm not too impressed with her life goals.  She sounds remarkably like an AI version of a calculator.  The play has amusing moments, but is mostly a scathing social commentary and assessment of the options for employment open to women of the time.  It is easy reading, and overall brings up many valid points about the English labour market of the time as it pertains to females.  Recommended.

 

Lost Worlds is a vast collection of 24 stories from 1944 by Clark Ashton Smith.  Smith's stories, for me, put most of Lovecraft's work to shame.  Smith is a writer, whereas Lovecraft was not.  Smith can set an eerie atmosphere with very few words, capturing an entire setting easily and craftily.  Smith is best at hinting at horrors, rather than trying to always describe them outright, and telling us how horrifying they are.  He lets readers decide what is horrifying and what isn't.  The first story is classic Smith.  "Empire of the Necromancers" is set in Zothique, the last continent to survive near the end of the Sun's life.  Earth is mostly dust and gloom, but two evil wizards decide to use their evil skills to repopulate a province that was decimated by plague.  They conjure up the dead people that once lived there, and turn them into zombie slaves.  Smith set many of his best stories in Zothique (see the Ballantine Fantasy volume edited by Lin Carter), and this one is characteristic of them.  If you are looking for a unique atmosphere for tales of wizardry, look no further.  

Next comes "The Isle of the Torturer," a much less successful story no doubt written to bring to life some lurid cover for Weird Tales.  A King sees his kingdom vanquished by a plague called the Silver Death.  His chief wizard gives him a ring that saves the king alone.  So far so good.  He sets sail for a friendly island and is shipwrecked instead on the title isle.  From here on the story degenerates quickly into nothing but horrible tortures.  One neat twist is the cruel girl who pretends to be trying to help him, but is only keeping him and his hopes alive so that he might live to be tortured for one more day.  His original wizard told him to never take off his ring, for the Silver Death will emerge.  At last it is time to take off the ring, but how?  He is tied up and on a torture wheel.  Read and find out how the king gets his revenge.

"Necromancy in Nat" sees Prince Yadar's intended bride kidnapped while he is on a hunting trip.  He goes on a worldwide search for her.  He ends up shipwrecked on Nat, an island of wizards and their zombie slaves.  This story is a bit more coherent than the one above, and begins as as normal kind of adventure, but quickly jumps into Sinbad the Sailor territory.  The ending is very unexpected yet perfect.  One of the author's better tales.

"Xeethra" is one of the best.  A shepherd boy wanders into a strange and lush valley with his drought starved and thirsty sheep, one that he has never before seen.  He discovers a cave entrance and following the dark passage emerges in a strange land filled with springs, healthy trees, and promising lands.  He plucks a fruit from a tree and eats it and his life is transformed.  The fruit brings back ancestral memories of when he was King of a great city on the seashore, and he sets out to find his city.  People he meets think he is quite mad, but after a long and harrowing search he comes to the ruins of a once-great city.  This adventure story is very well written and full of surprises, and as atmospheric as any by the author.  It is like reading the very best Dunsany adventure.

"The Holiness of Azerdarac" is a tale from medieval Averoigne, oen of several such tales written by Smith.  A young priest is sent to investigate a bishop suspected of foul magical deeds.  Brother Ambrosa discovers more than he wishes to, and sets out on his return journey to his own city to report on his findings.  But he never makes it home.  Instead, he has adventures where he journeys back 700 years, encounters a seductive sorceress, than is sent back into a future time, and then back again to the sorceress who tried to send him back to his own time.  It's not as confusing as it sounds, and is actually well written.  Many of these tales would make an excellent series of short films!

"The Beast of Averoigne" takes place in the year 1369, describing events near an abbey as a bright comet slowly passes through the heavens.  This is another very effective tale, and again would make for a great short film, or even a feature if handled well.

"The Letter From Mohau Los", or "Flight Into Super-Time" is a very poor time travel tale, characteristic of many badly written SF stories from the late 30s and 40s.  Stick to H. G. Wells on this theme.  Most of the story is description, with very little in the way of plot.  So many loopholes....

"The Light From Beyond" is a novelette about an artist (he likes to illustrate stories by Poe), who, while in seclusion in an isolated mountain cabin, has an other-worldly experience that changes him forever.  Inter-dimensional travel to an alien world will do that to a person.  He eats a somewhat forbidden fruit there and undergoes what might be regarded as an LSD trip.  Interesting story, especially the lead up to solving the mystery before he travels.

"The Hunters From Beyond" is about a writer of macabre tales and his cousin, a sculptor of devilish creatures.  Very few, if any, of Smith's stories have a happy ending.  The burden this time falls on the innocent artist's model, who is kidnapped by demons.  She isn't at all the same when she returns.  As usual, the story has an interesting exposition.

"The Treader of the Dust" is a short tale about a man deeply into studying the dark arts.  He ends up conjuring an entity that rapidly ages everything around it, including his butler and himself.

"The Last Incantation" is another brief story, this one about a sorcerer in Poseidonis, the last standing isle of Atlantis.  Smith wrote a number of tales about the lost continent.

"A Voyage To Stanomoe" describes how two powerful wizards of Poseidonas, after failing to find a solution to the island's destruction, flee in their spacecraft to Venus.  A very weird tale with a remarkable ending.  Smith's imagination is beyond categorizing. 

"The Death of Malygris" is classic Smith, a tale of an evil and all-powerful wizard in Poseidonis who takes taxes from traders.  the king has finally had enough, and summons 12 wizards to aid his main wizard in doing away with Malygris.  It turns out that Malygris has been dead a long time already, and is just sitting in his chair atop his tower.  Or is he dead?  Two expeditions set out to find the truth.  A wonderful tale of black sorcery!

"The Tale of Zatampa Zeiros" is one of the best short stories of wizardry ever written, and it is likely that it greatly influenced a young Fritz Leiber.  Two fearless thieves set out to loot a cursed and forbidden ruined city.  Unfortunately, their luck has run out on this mission.  Great writing, showing a humourous side to Smith.!

"The Doors To Saturn" is a bizarre tale of a wizard who becomes interested in dark magic and a god that might be worth visiting.  He is being pursued by an inquisition priest.  After creating a method of visiting the god, who happens to dwell on Saturn, he disappears in a most unusual way.  But he is followed by the priest, who wants him arrested for worshipping a dark god.  The two eventually become entangled with a low grade civilization on Saturn, before escaping certain death and moving on to a somewhat higher life form.  More humour can be found here than chills, but again proving Smith's nearly limitless imagination.

"The Seven Geases" is yet another humourous look at human interactions with gods.  A royal hunter disturbs a wizard, ruining it with his intrusion.  As a punishment the hunter is sent into the netherworld to serve an evil god.  When that god has no need of him, he is sent on to a 2nd god, and so on until the 7th god is reached, releasing him from his fate.  along the way the hunter, weaponless, encounters all manner of nasty beasts that wish to devour him, but his protected by a primitive bird from the original wizard, to ensure he makes it safely to the intended god.  The sudden ending of the story satirizes the writer's problem of having to stop writing when a certain amount of words have been reached, as laid out by pulp editors.

"The Coming of The White Worm" tells of a giant iceberg and its evil being that flow south, freezing everything and everyone in its path.  One wizard will someday possess the key to destroying the awful beast.  Will he be able to do it?  With Smith, one never knows.  Again, this is one of the most bizarre stories I have ever read.  It would make a good folk tale explaining the ice age.

"The Maze of Maal Dweb" is one of Smith's best tales, as a barbarian matches wits with a wizard who has kidnapped his intended bride.  In Smith's writing, barbarians do not have much of a chance.  Atmospheric but also humourous.

"The Flower Woman" is a sequel to the above story, where the wizard Maal Dweb heads off seeking new adventures.  The story has a very abrupt ending, but is a pretty good one up to that point.  Dweb pits his resources against seven other wizards who are trying to elevate themselves to a dangerous lever of wizardry, and must be stopped before that happens.

"The Demon of the Flowers" tells of an evil power that inhabits a flower, and gives them dominance over humans.  When a female human is to be sacrificed to feed the evil power, the king tries to finally put a stop to things.  This is as Smith story, so his success is somewhat tempered by failure.

"The Plutonian Drug" is a silly story with an ending that is far too predictable, and makes the main protagonist look like a complete idiot.  A man takes a drug that allows him to see so far into his past and into his future.  But his future goes dark as he enters a lane way shortcut at night.  Hmm.  Wonder what might happen.  When the drug wears off he wonders that exact thing, as he takes the shortcut through the lane way.

"The Planet of the Dead" is a trans-dimensional love story, cloaked in sadness and lost memories.  A good tale as an antique collector and amateur astronomer leaves Earth for another existence in another place and another time.  He spends a brief month there before returning.

"The Gorgon" is the real thing.  The head of the Gorgon is well and living in London, and still turning direct onlookers into stone.  A man grieving his dead wife travels the world, stopping in London where he is accosted on the street and promised a mirrored look at the real thing.  He accepts, and his adventure begins.  Unusual, even for Smith.

 

Original hardcover publication.  I read the Kindle edition. 

Mapman Mike
 

February 2024 Reading Summary

 Not many books were read, but two of them were epic novels.  One of them required 9 days!  I usually have about 2 to 2 1/2 hours per day to read, with sometimes an extra hour on Sundays, when I often don't practice piano.  I will begin with my regular five remaining Avon/Equinox authors, though this month I read Silverberg's last big novel.  I have one large volume of his short stories remaining, and then I'm in to a few of his reissued pulp trash novels from early days.  So Silverberg will likely be wrapped up by summer.  Tubb and Bulmer will go on for years yet, as will Moorcock.  And I still have at least ten more Malzberg pulp crime novels remaining.

 

First published as a whole in 2003, the 449 page Roma Eterna is historical fantasy fiction, though it can't really be called a novel.  At least not in the traditional sense of that term.  Silverberg postulates that the Roman Empire managed to survive, rather than fall apart as it did.  Each chapter carefully explains how it managed to overcome some of its biggest obstacles, such as the rise of Christianity, the northern barbarian invasions, and the rise of Islam.  The chapters were mostly published separately, then combined to make this one long story.  It's always  interesting to think how certain trivial events might have altered history if they had not happened, and this book is full of such ideas.  I must admit that more than a few places were pretty boring to read, unless readers are fans of Roman history.  I'm sure I missed many small connections, though I easily got the big picture.  Again there is a great shortage of female characters.  the ones that do appear seem to be there mostly to satisfy males for companionship and pleasure.  Though hardly my favourite book by the author, it is a solid piece of writing by a man who was quite obsessed with much of history during his creative lifetime.

It felt good to jump into an easily readable novel by Bulmer, the 15th Dray Prescott one called Secret Scorpio.  Though it many ways it's just more of the same, he is a good enough author not to repeat himself too often, and each volume adds something new.  In fact, Bulmer is a terrific writer, with a great sense of pacing and an ever lurking sense of humour.  Many of these stories rise well above the usual pulp level encountered in so many books from this time.  The guy was a veritable work horse, with a very demanding publishing schedule.  Secret Scorpio introduces a fake religion, one promising riches and rewards in this life, as well as in the afterlife.  Many people can not resist such promises, it would seem.  Even people who should know better.  For once, the Emperor, whom Dray has insulted and thus has banished him from the main city, is ahead of Dray.  He does have his finger on the pulse of his people, it would seem.  Dray will have to face him again in the next book.  They do not like one another very much, and Delia, the Emperor's daughter and Dray's wife, is caught between the two men.  A good addition to the series.

 

Tubb's 2nd Cap Kennedy book, by contrast, seems to rehash many of the tales already told by this prolific pulp master.  Cap ends up becoming a mining slave, and must orchestrate a break out before he can set things to right.  A brutal race of reptilian people are being led by a particularly greedy member of their race, though he in turn is being tricked out of his mining fortune by two humanoids.  In addition to becoming a slave, Cap also has to fight in the arena.  How many times has this already happened in a story by Tubb?  The title is there to attract boys to the genre, but there are no female slaves.  Sorry, boys.  There is only one woman in the story, and she is there very briefly.  This is a man's world.  Girls keep out.  Oh, there is also a giant worm burrowing deep in the planetoid being mined.  We have to have a giant underground worm.  No marks for originality here.  We've read it before, both in single novels by Tubb and in his Dumarest series.  I hope the other books in this series can raise themselves a bit higher.

 

On to Michael Moorcock and the 2nd of his Colonel Pyat novels, called The Laughter of Carthage.  The first book dealt with Russia and Ukraine in the years of the Revolution, roughly 1917-20.  At the conclusion, Pyat was on a boat heading for Constantinople.  It is a roundabout journey, but he makes it.  His adventures in and around the city eventually involve him in the Greek and Turkish war, revealing how the Greeks were betrayed by the Americans and British during their failed attempt at conquering the Islamic nation.  After a lengthy stay, in which he more or less adopts a 13 year old girl as his lover, daughter, and bride to be, they both head to Rome, and then on to Paris.  Like its predecessor, it is a very long book and covers a lot of ground.  Including the introduction we are looking at around 534 pages.  In some ways this story is as engaging as the first one, but in other ways it isn't.  Pyat's madness becomes much more evident in this volume, and his asides and comments that interrupt the narrative flow grow longer and more manic.  The story itself, when it is told, is as fascinating as the first book.  Another thing that makes this volume a bit less fun to read is the amount of untranslated foreign language rants and sentences that occupy the paragraphs.  French, German, Russian, and possibly other languages are used, and most readers will have no idea what they say.

 

While Pyat may be a fictional character, he is situated in the true happenings of the 1910s and the 1920s.  He meets many real characters from the time, and sometimes becomes involved in events that actually occurred.  This is not historical fiction at all, but a unique way of telling the complicated story of just what was going on in Europe at the time.  While no one person could possibly understand all of it, Pyat has opinions on just about everything.  His anti-Semitism and general racism become even more outlandish.  He supports the cause of the white (male) protestant, and is against the pope and all that Catholicism stands for.  And don't get him started on Islam.  So we are not too surprised when this Pyat character, who loves D. W. Griffith and all that his films stand for, supports the work of the Klan once he arrives in the US.  At first I wasn't thrilled with the American portion of the book, but by waiting patiently for several pages the story became completely fascinating again.  Despite its great length, this is a series worth reading.  at the conclusion of book 2 Pyat is about 22 or 23 years of age and about to be reunited with the love of his life once again, after a lengthy interval.  After a suitable break, I will look forward to reading the 3rd book.

 

Burt Wulf lands in Vegas with a bang in Desert Stalker, a 1973 thriller that is the 4th in a series.  Malzberg hit his stride in this series at least one book back, and the roller coaster life of this lone vigilante keeps the pace moving forward.  Though all the books are loosely connected, they are not tied down to the same characters.  In fact, most of the main characters are dead by the end of each novel in which they appear.  This time Wulf takes on the Vegas racket, and takes a hotel and its crooked proprietor hostage.  Just when it seems like the story will focus around a kind of unusual hostage situation, it explodes into a major pulp fiction action adventure tale.  Again the car chase is unique, and the way it is resolved.  Hollywood seems to know only one type of car chases; Malzberg is way ahead of them.  At one point we see a bit of life come back into Wulf, who has been essentially a killing machine since the overdose death of his new York girlfriend.  He has another female friend from two books ago, whom he met in San Francisco and managed to pull away from drugs.  He calls her in a moment of desperation, badly needing to talk to someone.   And so we are confronted with at least a trace of humanity reawakening in the man.  There are 14 books in the series.

 

Moving on to my free reading for the month, I managed to get through [ ] books.  The first one is called Seven Brief Lessons In Physics, by Carlo Rovelli, a book suitable for non-science majors to help them understand the modern world.  Beginning with simple but very effective explanations of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the book (really it's barely a novella) moves outward to cosmology and inward to atoms and electrons.  It succinctly summarizes our knowledge to date in the most simple terms I have ever come across.  The book would be suitable for Gr. 11 Physics students, or anyone who has even a passing interest in what has been going on for the past hundred years or so regarding our material world.

 A simple and easy to understand primer on the state of modern physics.

 

Next came Clark Ashton Smith's 2nd collection of shorter tales, called Out of Space and Time.  It was published in 1942, though Smith had pretty much done with writing by 1936.  Heavily influenced by Poe, he wrote in the tradition of Lovecraft, Dunsany, and Robert E. Howard.  But he definitely outclassed those latter writers, except for Dunsany.  Smith's horror fantasy stories are unique in the literature, and well worth seeking out.  This collection has 20 tales.  One of them, "The City of the Singing Flame," is given in its early shorter version and in its revised novella version.  I read the novella version.  A man steps through a kind of dimensional warp in time and space and emerges in a fantastic landscape, with a city in the distance that sings like a siren to any who hear.  Filled with good descriptions of strange people, places, music, and architecture, it ends with the complete destruction of what should have been the gate to Utopia.  I can see the early stories of Jack Williamson being heavily influenced be Smith's writing to mention A. Merritt.  "The Second Internment" is straight out of Poe's stories, as a man who fears premature burial has it happen to him not once, but twice.  The description of him suffering inside the coffin is true horror writing at its finest.  "The Chain of Aforgorman" is an Orientalist horror/fantasy tale about a man who uses a rare drug to achieve his goal of reading from a forbidden text.  Guess where it gets him?  Not to heaven, at any rate.    "The Unchartered Isle" is a shipwreck fantasy, about a man who encounters some very strange humans where he ends up landing.  Though he leaves with proof of his strange adventure, still no one believes him. 

 

Once we get to the Zothique stories, we have come upon some of the finest fantasy horror fiction to have ever been penned. "The Dark Eidolon" is a prime example of Smith's ability to create a kind of fiction that has never been surpassed, even by Fritz Leiber.  A vengeful and powerful wizard takes revenge of the cruel and selfish king that once wronged him.  Though the wizard does take his revenge, despite dire warnings from his patron evil god, a few unexpected turns make his revenge far from satisfying.  Great stuff!

 

Original cover jacket for first edition by Hannes Bok.  Arkam House was the publisher. 

 

Another tale from the continent of Zothique is "The Lost Hieroglyph," where a hapless 2nd rate astrologer takes his final long and rather complicated journey into the hereafter.  One thing (of many) that I like about Smith's writing is that his endings are often unexpected and unusually harsh at times.  Assuming a certain ending, the reader is likely to be surprised.  "Sadastor" is very much in the tradition of Lord Dunsany, a short piece that is mostly descriptive.  "Oh," says one creature to another, "so you think you are woeful.  Well, wait till you hear my story...".

Smith is again at his very best in the relatively short "The Death of Ilalotha."  A handmaiden to the Queen, both these women are in love with the same man.  He flees for a week to recuperate.  It is the hand maiden whom he loves, and is at a loss at what to do.  When he returns he finds Ilalotha dead, as well as the King.  A 3-day orgy and drunken feast is just ending, apparently the way funerals are run in this kingdom.  Again there is a truly wonderful ending, as readers expect something quite different.  A real treat to read!  By comparison, "The Return of the Sorcerer" is pretty much pure Lovecraft, and nowhere near as good.  Twin brother sorcerers fall out and one kills the other.  The dead one comes back for some revenge.  But he has been cut up into pieces, which have been buried separately.  So it takes him some time to get his act together, so to speak.

"The Testament of Athammaus" shows a humourous side to Smith.  A city's axeman tells the tale of a criminal whose head would not stay attached to his body.  Each time the man reappears from his grave, the neck area becomes more deformed, until at last his head comes back attached at his chest.  Needless to say, the citizens are quick to abandon the city after the third reincarnation.  Athammaus is the last to leave.  He now has the same job in a different city.  Another somewhat light-hearted tale is "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan."  Avoosl is a money lender, and somewhat on the greedy side.  After refusing to give pitiful beggar a coin, something that always obdes ill in a Smith story,  the beggar predicts an unholy death for the man.  One day a thief comes to Avoosl, selling him two beautiful emeralds.  But the emeralds are called back to their owner, and Avoosl follows them, not wanting to lose their investment.  He discovers a veritable Aladdin's cave of jewels, and literally bathes in them.  However, he soon meets the even greedier owner of the jewels.  "Ubbo Sathla" concerns a jewel found by a man in a London antique shop.  Could it possibly be the jewel that old texts say was once owned by a powerful wizard eons ago?  Why of course it is!  And by staring into it, the new owner of the jewel gets to meet his ancestors from way back.

The next story is a SF novelette called "The Monster of the Prophecy."  A down on his luck London poet contemplates jumping into the Thames one night.  He is interrupted by a man who tells him that he is an alien from the Antares system, and that he wants to bring back a human with him to help fulfill a prophecy.  Off they go, and a large part of the story is a description of the city state where the alien, having timed his appearance with the strange man from Earth (the people from the Antares system have three legs and five arms and three eyes), is able to claim leadership over the people.  But things don't go smoothly for either the new leader or the man from Earth.  A decent enough story, but not the kind that Smith excels at.  For that we turn to the final longer tale, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."  Forget "Alien."  For a really good SF/horror story, look no further than this tale of a group of Martian archaeologists researching a 40,000 city on Mars.  Like many Martian cities, this one has a vast underground component. What a great film this would make!  Though the ancient city dwellers of Yoh-Vombis are long gone, there is still a very nasty lifeform dwelling down there beneath the old city.  Classic Smith story telling!

Next up was Solaris, the 1961 novel by Stanislav Lem.  Unlike the two movies I have seen loosely based on the book, the novel is about the planet Solaris.  As Lem himself stated, "If I wanted to write a romance, I would have called it "Love In Outer Space."  Two quotes by Dr. Snaut early on clarify things nicely.  "We don't need other worlds--we need mirrors."  In other words, humans are a long way from claiming to be ready to visit other planets and to understand them.  And then, "We are unlikely to learn anything about it [the planet Solaris], but maybe about ourselves.

This is hardly the first great alien contact story I have read.  There are excellent ones by many of the Avon/Equinox authors, such as The Man In the Maze by Robert Silverberg, and The Shores of Another Sea and Unearthly Neighbours by Chad Oliver, to name only three.  But Solaris is different in many ways.  For one thing, humans have already been studying the great ocean planet for decades before Dr. Kelvin comes aboard.  His psychology degree is useless in his search for answers as to why people are appearing on the planet (he does seem to be a bit thick), since his entire outlook, and that of other humans trying to communicate with Solaris, is totally human centred.  They have no reference point other than themselves in which to experiment.  Thinking outside the box, in this case, leads quickly to so many quack theories that are untestable that the subject can not really proceed in any direction but the usual one.  Lem is painstaking in describing the planet, and takes a full 38 page chapter to let us know what has already been learned.  Besides this chapter, there is much more about Solaris, too.  But none of it allows for any kind of communication.  Oliver's Unearthly Neighbours comes closest to this conundrum,and would make a good companion read with Solaris.  But Lem offers no plausible answers.  His only solution is for Kelvin to stay on the station and keep trying.  By now he has realized the futility of getting back his wife/girlfriend, but the great ocean (there is some land on Solaris, too, by the way) and the mystery of its existence will not let him return to Earth.  And so he stays on at the end, and will continue to experiment.  A true "science" fiction book, and one worth more than one reading.  And forget about the Soderbergh film, which has absolutely nothing to do with what Lem is attempting to write about.

That's it for this month.  I am coming towards the end of my Silverberg books, with only one more SF story collection remaining.  When that author is finished, I will replace him with a reread of all the works by Fritz Leiber, still a great favourite.  Besides the man who coined the term 'Sword and Sorcery', and who wrote many of the best stories in that genre, he is also a great SF author, as well as a horror writer.  His stories are often filled with humour, too.  So expect lots of Leiber in the months ahead.

Mapman Mike