August 2025 Reading Summary

E C Tubb works within a formula, one that produces gems nearly every time.  In Classical era music, Sonata Form was used thousands of times by composers, and while essentially the form is the same in each piece, it still amazes us today what some of those composers could do with it.  Understand the form and you will understand the music.  Take F J Haydn, for example.  104 symphonies, dozens of string quartets, trios, etc.  He wrote hundreds of sonata form movements in his life, each one different from the rest, and each one successfully tackling a new problem.  He never seemed to tire of it, and good listeners will always be impressed by what he did accomplish.  Is E C Tubb the Haydn of the pulp SF novel?  You bet he is!

 

Planet of Dread is from 1974 and is a skimpy 126 pages long (many Haydn Symphonies are quite short).  Cap Kennedy and his crew are the Doc Savage gang of outer space.  In each novel they are given one major problem to solve, which usually breaks down into several smaller ones.  The writing is so fast paced and the novel so short that there is usually no time for a coda; this book ends about one second after the climax.  When paid by the word, Tubb made certain he did not write beyond the limit.  I doubt Haydn would have been so strict, but then he is an artist, albeit one with a very strong work ethic.  Had Tubb been paid for another page of writing he likely would have ended the novel in a less breathless fashion. 

Cap is on hand for the signing of a contract between a newly adopted planet and the Earth syndicate.  An assassination attempt goes wrong and one of Cap's men is injured to near death.  Known medicine cannot help him, and Cap decides to transport him to the planet of the title.  There, almost anything can be cured, but there is a catch.  Cap must undergo something similar to the trials of Hercules in order to help his friend receive the care he needs.  This takes up a large part of the novel, after which we finally get back to the problem at hand; namely, why was an assassination attempt made and who made it.  The final part of the book deals with the original problem, and it is a slam bang finish to an action-packed story.  I'm not certain if this is Tubb at his best, but it's head and shoulders above so many other pulp writers.  I would love to have discovered what he could have done with a longer novel.  Perhaps, like Haydn, he preferred to be terse, leaving the epics for the Beethovens and Mahlers of the world.

 

I have seldom been disappointed by the Dray Prescott series written by Kenneth Bulmer.  However, this novel managed to do it.  From 1985, Werewolves of Kregen is well named.  It lasts for 127 pages, much shorter than most in this series.  I was so relieved when several volumes ago an all-powerful evil wizard, who could do anything to anybody anytime he wanted, was finally killed off.  It was no use.  Now his even more evil son and mother are at work.  I certainly don't mind seeing wizards (and witches) in heroic fantasy, but to make them able to do just about anything to the good guys, while their own wizards watch helplessly, gets very tiresome very quickly.  And so, in the first of what will likely be several novels, it begins.  The evil ones turn Dray Prescott's private guards into werewolves.  I won't bother to explain the elaborate process which causes such a thing, as it is much too far-fetched.  It's easier to simply believe in werewolves than in the method chosen by the evil ones.  Werewolves run around killing girls (mostly) and eating them.  This happens again and again until the dimwitted good guys figure out a way to stop them.  For the first time in a while I am not looking forward to the next book in this series. 

 

On to the Delphi Classics collection.  Next up was Enid Blyton's Five Run Away Together, from 1944.  Being a child in southern England during the blitz could not have been much fun.  Enid did her part by writing several stories to help take young minds off the realities of bombs falling where they lived.  Many children were shipped north, either to relatives or families willing to take them in during the war.  C. S. Lewis built his entire Narnia series around a group of children escaping London during the war, escaping into Narnia through an old wardrobe.  Blyton's young heroes and heroines have no war to contend with.  But their summer holiday is nearly ruined when George's mother gets very ill suddenly and is taken to hospital.  They are left in the care of an evil housekeeper, her husband, their halfwit son and a smelly dog.  Things don't go well.  Blyton allows the oldest boy, Julian, to stand up to the cruelties heaped upon the children and their dog.  George, whose house it is, decides to run away until her mother returns home.  The others agree to go with her.  They return to the little island where their first adventure took place (this is their third).  George/Georgina is an interesting character, one familiar to anyone who grew up with a lot of friends.  She is a girl who wants to be a boy.  She dresses like one, acts like one, and hates anyone who calls her Georgina.  I wonder if Blyton knew what she was doing here, and how she would have felt about allowing her character to trans to a male?  It is exactly what the many Georgina/Georges of the world need to do.  Knowing a bit about the author, she would have been horrified with the very thought.  Instead, she more likely believed it was cute in a young girl and that she would outgrow such feelings and eventually welcome motherhood and all the rest.  But her mistake was in making George such a strong character; there is no mother to be in George.  Her teen and adult life will always be one of conflict, self-doubt, and likely great emotional upheaval.  Poor George.

 

Original cover art. 

 

Ernest Bramah's The Secret of the League is from 1907 and is a very lengthy read.  It is a political thriller likely of no interest to anyone anymore and might be better off forgotten.  Or perhaps not.  In a make believe England sometime after the millenium (1900), the socialist party in power have given away nearly everything to the lower working classes, who only continue to support them as long as they keep receiving.  This is quickly impoverishing the nation, and the capitalist party wishes to end things and get the country back on its won two feet.  Much of the novel is about how they went about preparing, planning and executing their large scale derring do take over.  While this is fun to read and fascinating itself, what the book really accomplishes for a more modern reader (say about the year 2025) is to instruct him in socialism's beginnings in England, how it spread like a disease, and why it needs to be tempered with some form of reality.  While most of us know that today's capitalism not only exploits many workers, it is also destroying the very planet itself.  Any form of lifestyle that depends for its very existence on continuous growth is bound to eventually hit a wall; a big impenetrable one.  By the end of Brahma's book a thoughtful reader will be doing a lot of thinking.  Communism is a dead end, as is capitalism (though at least with the latter we can all die with champagne in our glasses).  Trying to find the workable balance somewhere between the extremes is the only way to survive our own greed, stupidity and arrogance.  One little SF note: in Bramah's England flight is just getting off the ground.  Not with airplanes, mind you, but with wings!  A nice little twist indeed.

 

The hero arrives to save the girl after a brutal wintry flight. From Bramah.

 

Thuvia, Maid of Mars is Edgar Rice Burroughs' fourth Martian novel.  It is from 1920.  Thuvia, a maid of Mars (and, of course, a princess), gets kidnapped by a bad guy who lusts after her.  John Carter's son (a prince, by chance) goes after him, as he is in love with Thuvia.  It's the oldest story ever told, and Burroughs gives it the works.  If you ever have a bad day, try comparing yours to that of Carthoris, John Carter's son (always put the horis ahead of the Cart).  First his princess is kidnapped.  Then suspicion falls on him.  He rushes off to save her, but someone has sabotaged his airboat,  He has to walk really far, fight some monsters, outwit two magicians, fight some more monsters, find the princess, lose her again, fight some six-armed huge green warriors.  All this before breakfast.  Edgar Rice Burroughs opened the door to so many different authors of SF and fantasy that his influence on future writers can be no less than that of Tolkien.  The Dray Prescott series by Kenneth Bulmer (see above) is one example.  Michael Moorcock's Martian trilogy is another.  I will always love reading Burroughs, even if all his heroines act exactly the same way (they are haughty and somewhat cruel to the good guy who loves her), and even if all his heroes are pretty similar, too.  Bring on #5, The Chessmen of Mars!

 

Cover of 1969 edition by Bob Abbett. There are about a thousand covers of this title, one of Burrough's most popular stories.  I own the edition above, but read it on Delphi Classics. As can be seen, there is not a lot of need for clothing on Mars.  Boxer shorts for him, and a bikini with fetching cape for her.  Add weapons for him and jewellery for her.

 

 We now take a hard right turn.  Sir Richard Burton's Personal Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah was first published in three volumes in 1855.  I am reading the fourth edition, with updated forewords, in the Delphi Classics collection.  Burton undertook the Haj in 1853.  The first book mostly deals with the time he spent in Cairo, Suez and Al Medinah.  At nearly 500 pages, I will wait for another time to continue the journey.  Try to imagine a non-believer British white man trying to pass himself off as an Arabic-speaking believer making the great pilgrimage to Mecca.  For one thing he would have to be awfully good with the language.  For another, his skin could have to be rather tanned.  If the truth had ever come out on the journey, he likely would have been stoned and beaten to death.  But he pulled it off.  Arriving first in Alexandria, he takes the persona of a Persian doctor.  By the time he has arrived in Cairo (on the little steamer "The Little Asthmatic") his friends have convinced him to try something else, as Persians were treated badly by Arabs and Egyptians.  So he changes into an Afghani doctor (more language skills necessary).  We get wonderful descriptions all along the journey of people and places, and the many small situations that arise.  Finally departing for Suez we cross the Sinai and spend time at the dismal settlement (pre-canal days).  From there we move on to Al Medinah, where a considerable part of the first book (about half) takes place.  It is fun comparing his stops with modern day Google Earth and Maps, to see how much things have changed (highways for one thing, instead of camel routes).  Places he visited on excursions from Al-Medinah, for example, are now well within the city.  I found the book quite fascinating, and look forward to reading its continuation in the future.

 

Finally, one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time came along, rather unexpectedly.  Heart's Desire is from 1905 and is one of Emmerson Hough's least known and appreciated works.  The title refers to the name of a tiny settlement in New Mexico, years after the Civil War.  The real town was White Oaks, now a mining ghost town.   The settlement is portrayed as Eden, a paradise with no need of doctors, lawmen, the railroad (which is coming soon), or even women.  It's a community of men who escaped from the East, usually because of female troubles.  The book is filled with cowboy wisdom and cowboy folly, and many of the speech mannerisms are quite priceless.  For instance, from one of the characters: "Somethin' better git did, and it better git did blame soon."  Each chapter is often its own story within the main story arc.  Much of the time not much happens.  It's like everyone is asleep, and it will take the intrusion of the railroad to awaken them.  Hough lived in White Oaks for a time, and is a fascinating character himself, easily worth a major biography.  He was a conservationist, among other things, and instrumental in getting the National Park system started, as well as making poaching in the park illegal.  This is American West storytelling at its finest.  Moments of this novel will stay with me a very long time.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

June Reading Summary

I am down to five SF authors now, until I eventually begin a new project.  I finished my "required" reading by June 9th, freeing up most of the month for other books.

 

June began with a collection of Robert Silverberg stories, a volume which also receives this month's coveted "Cover of the Month" Award.  The artist and author simply need to present themselves at my house and receive free martinis!  Take advantage of this exciting offer while it lasts!

Cover art by Thomas Maronsky. 

 

There are 13 stories in the collection, a foreword by Silverberg, and he also introduces each story. There are two first class tales included, and several others that approach masterpiece status.  I highly recommend "A Long Night's Vigil In The Temple," an excellent tale of a religion left behind by three visitors from another planet; "The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James," in which said author recalls the invasion usually credited to H G Wells.  Lots of fun here!!  Other great stories are "The Second Shield," "Hot Times In Magma City," "The Way To Spook A City," "Looking For The Fountain," and "It Comes and Goes."  A very good collection.

 

Blood Beach is part 12 of the adventures of Commander Fox of the British navy, during the battles with Napoleon around the year 1800.  The amazing thing about this book series is that the major events that take place remain true to history.  On top of that is the fact that Fox is one of the great characters of literature.  Add also that Bulmer can tell a great action tale like no one else.  The blood beach of the title is in Egypt, and Fox is destined to fight in the Battle of Abukir, which occurred in March 1801.  In this battle the British attacked the remaining French forces, and after a gruelling fight on the beach after landing their troops, they go on to win the battle and get established on land for a later assault on Alexandria.  Lucky for the British that Mr. Fox was there to fight with them that day!

 

Mayenne is #9 in E C Tubb's Dumarest series, a series that has managed to keep up its high quality of adventure SF writing.  Very much like a Star Trek episode, a crippled space ship encounters an all powerful alien in the form of a planet.  It wishes to learn about humans, and especially about love.  Cue Captain Kirk!  Despite the flaky sounding plot, it is actually a very good read.

 

Elric At The End of Time is one of Moorcock's better novellas about the end of time (a six volume series that has enormous highs and several unwelcome lows).  Elric encounters the beings who inhabit the end of time, mistaking them for the Lords of Chaos.  Lots of fun is poked at Elric's character here, and the story zooms along nicely.  Also included in the volume are some forgettable early tales by Moorcock of his teenage barbarian hero Sojan The Swordsman, a few essays, and another short story, previously read in another collection.

 

Lastly came an early novel by Barry Malzberg, non SF.  Like many pulp writers of his day trying to survive, he wrote a lot of soft core porn.  But as has already been seen in a few volumes, above, he often does not write any kind of erotic literature that would turn anybody on.  Instead, he has written several really impressive novels that helped get sold because they had sex in them.  Fire, from 1968, is about a Vietnam War vet returning to the US after being discharged for immoral behaviour.  He was caught with a prostitute, and interrupted at a very crucial moment.  Once back home, this failure to complete the sexual act haunts him.  His fiancee wants nothing to do with him any more, and a two couple party set up by a friend and coworker turns into a relationship disaster.  He is ultimately rescued from himself by a young prostitute, but scars from his time in Vietnam remain with him.  A really good read.

 

Turning now to off-the-shelf books, I finally managed to finish Jan Swafford's Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph.  At 1077 pages, fully footnoted, it's a hefty read.  Of course this means that we are nearly at the end of listening to all of the composer's works.  We have the last few string quartets remaining.  Like the author's previous book about Brahms, this one often reads like a novel.  It is truly the essential book on Beethoven's life and music.

 

Next came Malzberg's pick for the best novel of the 1960s, and I might have to agree with him.  Richard Yates' epic Revolutionary Road is the tale of a couple and their two children living in the suburbs.  Dad commutes every day to Manhattan by train, returning home at night.  The writing is crisp, and despite the 463 pages, not a word is wasted.  This was the author's first novel, and it is a devastating look into what it means to be trapped into a life.  The opening chapter sees a local amateur production of "The Petrified Forest" being put on in the local high school gym.  The play turns into a performance disaster.  The lead actress is our heroine, and the play largely fails because of her.  She has deep psychological problems, and wants out of the area, even the country.  She plans for the family to escape to Paris, where she would work for the American Embassy and support her husband, while he tried to "find" himself.  But the plan goes awry when she becomes pregnant with her third child, setting up the ultimate disaster that the family must go through.  Among the best writing I have ever come across, I will certainly be looking into his shorter fiction and other novels.  Very highly recommended.

 

Another non-fiction book was up next, Richard Burton's 1851 travelogue Goa and The Blue Mountains.  Burton is quite a good writer, though it can be expected that a good deal of racism will enter into the book.  However, he isn't any more racist than many people alive and blogging in 2023!  He visits Goa, still a colony of Portugal at the time, and reminisces about Vasco da Gama's voyage here in the late 15th C.  There are several good stories related here, many of which were told to him by his guide and by people he meets.  After several adventures in Goa he heads south again down the Malabar Coast, and eventually inland to explore some mountains and old forts.  Remarkably, I am mostly able to follow his journey on Google Maps, though many of the geographic names are now spelled quite differently.  We get detailed looks at the people, from the Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and the way they feel about one another.  He also talks about how the Portuguese went about converting the locals at the time of their invasions, and also what the Jesuits were up to in the same vein.  In the 2nd part of the book he spends time in the mountains.  First let me say that I had no idea India had mountains in the south, just north of Kerala.  Exceeding 8,000' in places, the Nilgiri Mountains (also called Blue Mountains) occupy Burton for a long time.  First discovered and populated in the late 1700s, by Burton's day there were established hotels, a man-made lake, and a growing population of diverse peoples (all described by Burton).  Some of the most amusing parts of the book occur during his interminable stay in Ooty (Ootacamund).  Though hardly an 'adventure' book, there is some good writing here, about places and peoples of which I knew next to nothing.

 

Robert Chambers is mostly remembered today for his story collection "The King In Yellow," from 1895.  A few stories are non-eerie, including a few about foreign students studying art in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.  Thus he also wrote three novels set in that time period (spring 1871 for this book), the first being The Red Republic.  An American student gets caught up in the aftermath of the war, when the Commune brutally took over Paris, attempting to wreak control from the legitimate government (bad as it was), abolish the Roman Catholic Church, and refuse the Prussians entry into Paris.  So the book can be classified as historical fiction, written some24 years after the events depicted.  At its heart it is an adventure story, mixing real life characters with fictional ones.  Chambers is obviously on the side of the government, which fled at the time to Versailles, before retaking the city (just in time to save our hero and his beloved).  The Commune is made to look very bad in this story, being run by bullies, criminals, and blood thirsty maniacs.  Which may have been true for some of the real people involved, but likely not to the extent that the author depicts.  A good tale, again teaching me about things of which I know little about.  It made me investigate the facts, many of which Chambers gets right.

 

Next came some early shorter fiction by Raymond Chandler.  All but one of Chandler's hard boiled detective novels have been made into films, and include several of the best noir films ever made.  His shorter fiction consists of novelettes of about 50 pages in length.  I read his first 7 stories, each one a gem.  They are complicated and long enough to easily be made into a feature film, but to my knowledge they never have.  Some amazing lines come out of the story.  I paraphrase a couple here.  "A hardboiled redhead came on next, singing a hardboiled song in a voice that could split firewood."  Or how about "I'm an occasional drinker.  I'm the kind of guy that goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard."  The stories are filled with tobacco and booze, and often take place in LA bars and nightclubs, not to mention run down fleabag apartments and hotels.  Two of the best stories (they are all fun to read) were "Spanish Blood" from 1935, and "The King In Yellow" from 1937.  The latter references a story, or rather a collection of stories, by Robert Chambers, and that book is loosely mentioned at one point in the story.  Great stuff!!  If you want a serious taste of what Chandler is all about, listen to Tom Waits sing "Invitation to The Blues."  

 

Salman Rushdie's 2023 novel Victory City was next.  It is a fantasy novel with strong historical roots, about a woman who was touched by a goddess at an early age, and lives to see the creation and destruction of a vast empire in South India during medieval times.  His story is based on the Vijayanagar dynasty, which once ruled much of South India.  He uses the historical founders, supposedly cow herders, and real Portuguese explorers who visited and wrote about the city.  But the main character is the female Pampa Kampana, who lived for 247 years and chronicled the entire dynasty, here called Bisnaga.  Though I often found the actual storytelling quite dry, and told with little feeling or emotion, it does read like a chronicle of events that actually happened, and the tale becomes more interesting as it develops.  There are heavy doses of a Utopian lifestyle in both the original city and the fantasy one.  All religions were tolerated, for one thing.  Also, the arts flourished, especially sculpture and poetry.  And women had virtually equal rights with men in day to day life.  Could the author be bringing certain things to our attention here?  Quite a good read, and loosely ties in with the Burton narrative, above, which takes place in the same general area.  If you have read the Mahabharata and/or the Ramayana, or even some of Burton's Thousand and One Nights, you will be on familiar ground here.

 

Lastly came a book by G K Chesterton, a dialogue between an unbeliever and a Christian, debating whether belief in a Christian god is possible.  The two have sworn to duel with swords, but every time they commence, an interruption occurs.  They end becoming more freinds than enemies.  The Ball and The Cross won't be to everyone's taste, but the book seems to fit nicely with the Ballantine Adult Fantasy idea.  The book is more on the adventure side of things than it is dialogue, though there are some very witty and worthy words spoken.  They end up, like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings, affecting the entire country (England) and all the people in it with their intentions to duel.  The last act, a long one, takes place in an asylum.  Who is mad and who is sane?  How do various governments deal with people who are truly different.  Are these people assets or liabilities?  A fascinating read, and a good place to start with Chesterton.

 

Mapman Mike