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359. Westercon Who?

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I always think of Westercon as a big deal, but really, most people have never heard of it. Star Trek conventions, sure. Comicon, oh yes: especially since The Big Band Theory showed our four nerds in attendance.

Worldcon is the mother of all science fiction conventions, genealogically, although not in size. It began in 1939. Hugo Awards are handed out at Worldcon.

In 1948, local science fiction fans in the Los Angeles area decided to hold their own convention, because Worldcons were being held on the east coast, and coast to coast travel in 1948 was no small chore. The first Westercon drew 77 people — the first Worldcon had drawn 300.

You might say they have both grown since then. Conventions have also fragmented into specialty venues for fans of fantasy, comics, Star Trek, Star Wars, zombies, manga/anime and who knows how many others.

I love science fiction, but I’m not a fan. That means I read it a lot, read everything my favorite authors write, re-read frequently, and eventually became a writer myself. But since I’m not gregarious, and no one in my world shared my interest, I never talked to anyone about science fiction. Until this blog, that is.

Fans talk about their favorites, and also the %*#*@ jerks who are ruining the genre. They used to write fanzines, and now they produce webzines, websites, and pod casts. And they produce conventions, go to conventions, and volunteer at conventions.

I guess this website takes me half-way into fandom, since I have written quite a few appreciations of Heinlein, Clarke, Norton and others of my favorites. And now I’m volunteering as a presenter at Westercon 70 in Tempe, Arizona over the fourth of July weekend this year.

I’ve actually done this before (see How to Build a Culture), but it has been a while. I’m tentatively scheduled to be on five panels:

What made the golden age golden?
Fantasy world building
Alien autopsy: the biology of ET
Science & Technology versus Magic: what makes this such a compelling trope?
Fake it ’til you make it: a survivor’s guide for the introverted author

I’m not the kind of guy who can flop down behind a table with three or four people I’ve never met and pontificate. Not gregarious; as I said above. I will be preparing my thoughts on these topics over the next month, and as I do, I’ll be sharing them in the form of posts. That way you will be in on things, even it you don’t make it to Tempe. This will work well with Spirit Deer in Serial. That short, short novel is going to turn into a bit of a how-to through posts over on this side, and that will work well alternating with how-to posts made in preparation for Westercon.

This should be fun.

Golden Age of Science Fiction (3)

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Raven’s Run concluded Monday, May 22. A new novel will begin soon.  Meanwhile, this is the third of three posts of material for the panel “What Makes the Golden Age Golden?”, to be presented at Westercon.

.  .  .  Some say the golden age was circa 1928; some say 1939; some favor 1953, or 1970 or 1984. The arguments rage til the small of the morning, and nothing is ever resolved.
         Because the real golden age of science fiction is twelve.
                                   David Hartwell

That the golden age of science fiction is twelve — or thirteen — has some validity, but also has limitations. If you are a thinking reader, the golden age of science fiction begins when your maturity begins.

For fun, let’s put that into pseudo-mathematical terms:

MATURITY = ENTHUSIASM – CALLOWNESS

Old age comes when you also subtract enthusiasm — some of us will never reach it. A mature reader loves the good stuff (by his/her lights) but doesn’t love everything.

I had a life crisis just short of my sixteenth birthday that drop kicked me into maturity. From sixteen to college was Hell. Then I escaped. Once I was on my own, I grew like a weed after a rain storm — fast, sprawling, and a little bit prickly. I reveled in being part of a community of scholars, but I didn’t ignore that rack of science fiction paperbacks at the back of the college book store.

I had read The Way of All Flesh in high school. Samuel Butler was good. I read Davy after I was on my own. Pangborn was better.

I had read the stories in the Old Testament in church, sitting in the back pew, with my Bible in my lap so I could look like I was listening to the preacher. They weren’t bad. I read A Wizard of Earthsea after I escaped. Le Guin was better.

I don’t disparage the classics, but consider this. Setting aside the universals of the human experience (which are reason enough to go to the classics), Dickens and Butler were fighting the battles of their day. Those battles were won or lost before we were born. The best science fiction writers are fighting the battles of today and tomorrow.

Is Dickson as good as Dickens? I doubt it. But the Friendlies, the Exotics and the Dorsai are probably more relevant to today than Oliver Twist. Aside from the universals, that is.

My college roommate introduced me to Marvel comics, something that wasn’t allowed in my childhood home. That led to a decade long addiction. I finally kicked Marvel cold turkey, so I would have money enough to eat. I swear the idea of crossovers would make Wall Street proud.

My roommate also introduced me to the Lensman books. Thanks, Bob. It’s hard to read them fifty years later without lip-syncing, but I still do.

If you read enough, and treasure the good stuff, you will create your own golden age.

You can find my golden age in tattered paperbacks on the shelves of my writing room. They are the ones I didn’t get rid of, out of the thousands I read. You will find Ursula Le Guin there, but shoved to the back. Her fantasies would be at the top of my fantasy list, and a long way above Lord of the Rings, but not her science fiction. They are all thoughtful, intelligent, meaningful, and powerful. The problem is the people with whom she populated them. They were all Mrs. Brown’s of both genders (including both genders in alteration in Left Hand of Darkness). How someone who created Sparrowhawk/Ged could fail to write any science fiction protagonist I could like, even while I was enjoying her stories and respecting her skill, is a continuing mystery to me.

You will find Pavane on those shelves. It is my second favorite fantasy and near the top in science fiction. Technically an alternate timeline story, Pavane tastes like fantasy. If they ever put on a panel, “Is there any difference between science fiction and fantasy?”, I’ll propose Pavane as exhibit number one, for the prosecution and the defense.

The Road to Corlay is there, along with everything Zelazny wrote; also everything from Dickson’s Childe Cycle, but very little of his other writing. Everything from Heinlein is there, even For Us the Living. I don’t understand why, but I re-read Heinlein more than any other author. If I could solve the conundrum of Heinlein, and apply it to my own writing, I could make a million dollars and be equally loved and hated by the whole science fiction community.

I could go on for hours, but you would quit reading. It doesn’t really matter what makes up my personal golden age. It only matters what makes up yours.

#              #              #

And then there was New Age.

No concept as fuzzy as New Age has boundaries. It’s even hard to point to a center. Is Michael Moorcock part of it? Certainly. Harlan Ellison? Maybe. Defining New Age is like trying to nail fog to the wall.

During the sixties and seventies, everybody was talking about the New Age. It was going to save moribund science fiction from itself. It was going to destroy science fiction by drowning it in a sea of whining. It depended on who you were listening to.

I never was clear on who was or wasn’t New Age. I just knew there was a lot of weird new stuff coming down and I really liked a lot of it.

J. G. Ballard blew my mind. I never knew where-the-hell his stories were going while I was reading them. I often wasn’t sure after I had finished. If you ever despair of the decency of humanity, don’t read “Deep End”, and least not if you have the means of suicide ready to hand.

Harlan Ellison was the best writer of short stories ever. No qualifiers. If you want a clinic on how to craft the perfect last line, without gimmicks, read “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes”.

If you want a clinic on how to write a soap opera, in the sense of a story that goes on and on with each sub-climax leading to new start, with suspense and resolution, but no final resolution — in short, a story that can go on forever and keep its readers happily following book after book — read Zelazny’s Amber series. It will take a while. Or if you want to sample Zelazny in a short novel that doesn’t commit you to a lifetime of reading, try Isle of the Dead.

I think there is one golden age that I missed. About mid-eighties I hit a dry spell in my writing — or more accurately, in my selling. It had consequences. When I saw a newly published science fiction novel that wasn’t as good as mine, I got angry. When I saw a newly published science fiction novel that was better than mine, I got depressed.

I was still re-reading old science fiction, and new novels by old favorite authors. I found some new favorites — John Varley, David Brin, and others come to mind — but I largely bypassed a generation of new writers. Recently I have been reading Neil and Neal, Gaiman and Stephenson, but I know I must have missed a feast of others.

I have probably missed more than one feast. Is there a Golden Age of Steampunk? Probably, but I don’t know the sub-genre well enough to talk about it.

So now I’m off to Westercon to participate in a few panels, including the Golden Age panel that prompted this series of posts. While I’m on that stage, I’ll not only be sharing my thoughts, but also taking notes. I have some catching up to do.

These posts called out a short story, which will show up Monday, over in the A Writing Life side of this website.

==================================

This is an insert, placed in the last days before Westercon. The change in the Golden Age panel caused me to write additional material on the subject of political correctness getting in the way of reading old books, but the earliest space available for that post is on July 13. Click here to go there. If you saw me at Westercon, and have arrived here via the Westercon page, I think you can get to the post early. If you click and nothing happens, try again after the 13th. Sometimes posting seems to have all the paradoxes of time travel.

Golden Age of Science Fiction (2)

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Raven’s Run concluded Monday, May 22. A new novel will begin soon.  Meanwhile, this is the second of three posts of material for the panel “What Makes the Golden Age Golden?”, to be presented at Westercon.

Yesterday, we looked at Jules Verne. Meanwhile, over in England, there was a fellow named H. G. Wells, but I place him with all the other unreadable Victorians. In my opinion, if he had been a German or a Spaniard or — God forbid — a Hindu, we would never have heard of him. Actually, that is probably true of most of the denizens of British Literature 101. Others differ on this opinion.

Science fiction, as we know it, got its start in France and England. The next major event in science fiction history, possibly not a golden age, but at least an efflorescence, was the era of the magazines, starting with Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1926 and extending, much attenuated, until today.

The era of John Campbell’s Astounding from 1939 is probably the most cited period in the search for a golden age, and a list of stories from that venue is compelling. The list of authors from the Campbell era is of almost unbelievable quality.

At that time, science fiction was mostly a literature of short stories. Novels existed, but were typically presented serially — a technique that has been in play at least since Charles Dickens. All that changed around the time of the end of World War II, with the rise of mass market paperbacks. It is a complicated story with dozens of players, but no one was more influential than Donald A. Wollheim.

Wollheim began as a fan, went on to write novels and short fiction, and eventually found his métier as an editor. He began with fanzines, moved to the editing of anthologies, then became an editor at Avon books. In 1952 he moved to Ace, where he introduced Ace Doubles. These were twin novels, published together back to back, head to foot. Two for the price of one was a real selling point in the era when paperbacks were introducing cheap literature to the masses. That’s me; I was part of the masses.

Was this a Golden Age? In terms of the availability of new writers like Delany, Le Guin. Zelazny and Brunner, certainly. And Andre Norton’s works finally got to shed their tattered cloth library look and to sport bright, new multicolored covers, sometime two on one double. But technically, this might not be a true golden age, since large numbers of the titles were recycled from the John Campbell era magazines.

It sure felt like a golden age to those of us who were reading the hundreds of titles that were suddenly available to us.

Here lies one of the answers to what makes a golden age. Any time you publish material, some of it will be golden. If your output is large enough, there will be enough gold to make an age, notwithstanding all the rest of the sludge-flow that carries it along. The influx brought about by Ace doubles and the rest of the paperback revolution made huge numbers of new works, and equally large numbers of lost classics from the past, available on every street corner for prices that everyone could afford. If that isn’t a golden age, I don’t know what it takes.

With no intention to disparage the genius of Le Guin, Zelazny, or any other, I am reminded of an old Irish story:

A group of men in an Irish bar were solving the world’s problems one by one. Deep into the night, one of them asked the group, “If every poet in Ireland were all killed tonight, how many years would it take before a new generation of poets rose up?” Another of the group raised his hand with one finger showing, and the rest nodded in agreement.

It is my opinion that for every literary genius who arises, there are a hundred like her or him that we will never know. For every award winning novel, there are many more as good moldering away in typescript, awaiting their author’s death and their final trip to the trash bin.

Literary genius is a part of the whole human race. A golden age comes when opportunity arises for the distribution of genius. Change the venue, change the world.

Today there is a mass of unread eBooks, self published through Amazon. You wanna get rich? Invent the algorithm that winnows through this crop of eBooks, and separates genius from the rest. Of course, if you do, would-be authors everywhere will hate you.

Why? Let’s consider traditional editors as Valkyries. (I didn’t say vultures, I said Valkyries.) They cruise above the field of battle and choose those worthy of Valhalla, or at least publication. Self-publication bypasses this process. An algorithm to decide on quality would be an AI-editor. Now there’s a scary science fiction concept.

The onslaught of paperbacks was not the last golden age. Beginning with the original Star Trek, there was a golden age of television science fiction, although its quality was never very pronounced. CGI, starting with Star Wars, brought a golden age of movies, at least visually. I watch them occasionally, but I have yet to see one which rises to the quality of a good novel. That may be just a personal prejudice.

I watched the Wild Wild West in its original run, and had no idea I was there for the birth of steampunk. I’m still trying to figure out what steampunk is, as something more than a sales tag. Jules Verne, plus sex? That’s puzzlement, not disparagement. I have liked the steampunk I’ve read and watched, but it won’t come into focus for me as a movement. more tomorrow

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Golden Age of Science Fiction (1)

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I am scheduled to participate in several panels at Westercon this year, July forth weekend in Tempe, Arizona. I intend to research the topics of each panel, and place posts outlining the ideas I will be carrying with me to the convention. Unlike normal posts, I will continue revising these right up to the moment I leave, including after they are published.

This material is for the panel “What Makes the Golden Age Golden?” Material for the other four panels will be published between now and the July 4th weekend, probably some in A Writing Life and some in Serial.

Now for the change-up. After I had written and posted all this, I finally got a proper description of the panel. 

Heinlein and Asimov are two pillars of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi. But reading those works with modern eyes can reveal attitudes that would be unacceptable in modern times. What can we learn from the classics when we look past the sexist and racist attitudes that pervaded the works of that time? Can we still appreciate works that present unacceptable ideologies?

What I had thought would be a panel on SF history is clearly going to be something different. I don’t mind. I am always ready to take up arms in the fight against political correctness, and this looks like it’s going to be a grand brawl!

#                    #                   #

The golden age of science fiction is thirteen. Some say twelve. Yes, that’s an old chestnut, but it’s still around, and people are still repeating it, because it’s true. (The golden age of fantasy would be a whole other panel, which I won’t talk about here.)

You can see it at work in Goodreads, where it can be encapsulated in this theory: The number of stars a novel will get is inversely proportional to the age at which the reviewer first read it.

That doesn’t always work of course, but it goes a long way toward understanding all those low star ratings of Harry Potter by grumpy old people who cut their teeth on Lord of the Rings, and all the five star reviews by people who were young when they first read him.

What makes thirteen a golden age? Duh! Youth, newness, our first realization of our personal uniqueness, and our first real sense of making our own choices. It also makes thirteen the golden age of baseball, science, making money, sexuality, and every other thing that makes life fun.

As for a list of books from my personal version of that golden age — sorry, can’t do it. Most of the science fiction books that gave me joy in the fifties are too dated to be enjoyed by moderns, with the exception of the early Nortons. Since Andre set her stories outdoors and stated her technological wonders without explaining them, they are largely immune to changes in the “real world”. They work when you are thirteen, and still work as long as you can see the words on the page.

We science fiction types always like to invoke Sturgeon’s Law — 90% of everything is #%*%#.” Turn that on its head, and we can say that every era has produced at least some good science fiction. In other words, there is not one golden age, but several, if you ignore the dreck. Let’s look at some of them

The first golden age of imagination was the ancient world. Thor lived then, and he still does. Gilgamesh lived then, and he lives again today, after a long hiatus. Zelazny’s works keep ancient Egypt alive. An odyssey is an odyssey, whether it is carried out by Odysseus or Dave Bowman.

Half-men half-animals, from Ra to the Centaur, abounded in the ancient world and they never really went away. Witness the were-critters inhabiting today’s bookstores. Demigods were everywhere, and they still are. Hercules is still among us and Tarzan is his modern cousin.

The trouble with starting in the ancient world is that it is ancestral to everything in heroic myth, from James Bond to Wyatt Earp to Luke Skywalker to Spiderman. Science fiction proper is not so old.

The first golden age of science fiction is found in the works of Jules Verne. Verne had the advantage of being so far back in science fiction history that he was respected. His works, in France at least, were viewed as literature, not as novelties. Now some modern science fiction writers are now being taken seriously again, but personally, I think this has more to do with sales figures than genuine acceptance.

Between Verne and today stretches the Valley of Critical Disdain, which takes up 99% of the history of science fiction.

Jules Verne invented science fiction, but he didn’t invent all his inventions. His technique was very much the same as the one science fiction writers use today. He took contemporary events and technology, and extrapolated them. That, not his “inventions”, makes him the father of science fiction.

Verne’s Nautilus was not the first submarine. As early as the 1500s there were diving bells and plans for sealed, submerged rowboats. There were numerous unbuilt plans before Drebbel’s first successful submarine in 1620. Every good American knows about Bushnell’s Turtle of 1776.

Kroehl’s relatively modern submarine made its maiden voyage in 1866. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was serialized in 1869-70. Verne’s Nautilus was not the first submarine but it was infinitely advanced over the real submarines of the day. That is the manner in which science fiction still operates. 

Americans know Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, mostly from movies, comic books and juvenile editions, and some Americans know a half dozen other Verne titles. But Verne published from 60 to 80 novels, depending on which list you read. (The difference lies in whether you count French editions or English editions, and how you count the ones that were published in parts and later placed under one cover.) He was a force in French literature, and for at time was studied in French schools as an exemplar of excellence in the French language.

In the English speaking world, we have fewer titles. They are are often indifferently translated, and frequently abridged for the juvenile trade. One of my fantasies-that-will-never-happen is to learn French in order to read Verne in the original. more tomorrow

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356. Raven and Ian

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Raven and Ian are saying goodbye today over in Serial. I’ll miss them. I read A Writing Life and Serial every day, just like some of you. In my case, it is a final check for typos, but I still feel for my characters.

If you write, and you don’t enjoy reading your own work, what is the point?

Will we see them again? Will Raven find what she is looking for? Will they come together again at the end?

Beats me.

I do know that if they find final happiness, it will be an epilog, not a novel. Settled, happy people make for good lives, but not good stories.

As for Ian, he has that Cameron Davis thing hanging over his head. I have some ideas about that.

In his immediate future, there is a meeting with an old friend of his mentor Joe Dias’, who has need of a troubleshooter. It seems that in 1990, most of the world opposes German reunification, including Bush One. A healed Germany might pose a threat, and a broken Germany provides a lot of opportunities for a lot of different groups of people.

Then there is that legendary (or is it) cache of Luger pistols, built in the last days of the Third Reich and hidden away to arm a future Nazi resurgence. Or to arm any one of several other groups who are after them. And there is that girl, whose brother was imprisoned in East Berlin when Ian was stationed there, years earlier. She shows up again. And there is Sergeant Davenport, Ian’s mentor when he was in Berlin, now in federal prison.

Ian has a lot of backstory to present. Will he get the chance?

Beats me.

I’m willing, but Ian in Berlin (it doesn’t have a title yet) is only one of a dozen stories waiting to be written. Which one I will start next depends on a lot of factors. I’ll let you know.

*          *          *

When I began placing Raven’s Run in Serial, I had intended to publish it independently as an eBook. I had hoped and planned to make an announcement of its publication date in this post. Such publication will probably still happen, but marketing Cyan has taken up so much of my time that it has been moved to the indeterminate future.

Most of the things I have presented in Serial have been moved afterward to Backfile and remain there to be read by anyone who checks in. Even To Go Not Gently is there, and Jandrax will be there later, although both were published years ago.  To Go Not Gently is from an issue of Galaxy that is not almost impossible to find, and Jandrax has so much commentary in the posted version that it has become a virtual how-to, and needs to live a separate life from copies still available in used book stores.

Those presentations which I intend to publish independently, such as Raven’s Run, will to be removed from Serial and not placed in Backfile, but this may not happen immediately.

Jandrax is still there because it takes a lot of time to make the transition. Marking out the virtual chapters is a real pain, as is transferring bits that originally appeared in A Writing Life, but eventually it will be placed en bloc so that it is easier to read. For now it remains as 92 individual posts in Serial and a few more in A Writing Life.

Also for now, Raven’s Run will remain as individual posts in Serial for a while. That way you won’t be stranded if you came in late and are still catching up.

Confusing? Welcome to my life.

Raven’s Run 150

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“Ian, you see things in people that aren’t there. You look at me and see someone you could live the rest of your life with, but I am not that person.”

She paused, watching me. Then she said, “Would you follow me again, if I left now?”

It had finally come, and all I felt was anger. Grendel was waking, reaching out from his mossy bed, with sleepy eyes, ready to slash, ready to rend. I tried to send him back to his cave, but he wouldn’t go.

Raven sat up straighter and pulled the covers tighter around her.

“No,” I said, “I would not follow you again. Chasing you was humiliating.”

“Ian, I love you.”

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“Plenty hard already.” I pulled up a chair and straddled it. Set my chin on my forearms. Waited. A stone would have felt more than I felt, at that moment. Than I dared to feel. To feel was . . . No!

Not now. Not now. Not now. Not now.

Raven waited. She had seen this face before. Finally the red haze receded, breathing slowed, and I said, “Go ahead.”

“What did they do to you?”

“You know part of it. You won’t be here long enough to hear the rest.”

“Ian, I love you.”

“I know. I knew it before you did.”

She smiled. “Yes, I think you did. Ian, I don’t want to leave you. But I have to.”

I nodded. Nothing I could say would change what was going to happen.

“You are a complete person, in ways even I don’t fully understand. You had to become complete, or die. When I see you like you just were, it scares me. You have so much rage. But it is part of what makes you complete; part of what makes you strong.”

Raven tucked her feet under her, pulled the blanket tighter around her neck. She seemed to become smaller.

“I am not complete, Ian,” she said. “And I want to be. More than anything else, I want to be complete.

“Ian, your father was the central fact of your life. The way he raised you, then abandoned you, made you what you are.”

I shook my head. “He started me toward what I became. But this isn’t about me.”

“It is about you. It’s about both of us,” Raven said, “because my father is also the central fact of my life.”

“That’s ridiculous; Daniel Cabral is one of the most complete men I have ever met . . .”

It got very silent in the room while I choked on the obvious. Raven nodded slowly while I absorbed what she had known since Paris. Finally, she said, “I don’t want to marry Daniel Cabral. I want to become Daniel Cabral. And I can only do that by myself.”

*          *          *

An hour later, the rain started. The electric heater groaned and rattled, but it was no match for the cold that seeped in. I sat in a chair, dressed in sweats with a jacket around my shoulders, staring out past the streaked window to the heaving sea beyond. Raven stayed in the bedroom. The apartment was filled with a sad and gentle silence. The anger had washed away with the rain.

Finally Raven came out to stand beside me, and I pulled her into my lap. She nuzzled her head against my neck and said, “The rains have started. It’s time to leave.”

“Tomorrow.”

She ran her finger down my cheek. I said, “I still love you.”

“And I still love you.”

“But I won’t wait for you.”

“I know.”

“I have to live. I want to live. But when you are ready . . .”

“You can’t promise that. Neither one of us can.”

“No.”

A shift in the wind rattled the windows.

“What’s left for us?”

“Now,” Raven said. “Tonight. And who knows, maybe someday – maybe forever?”

***************

So it ends, for now at least. 

Raven’s Run 149

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“The central fact of our lives,” I said, “is that I love you and you love me.”

“Yes, Ian, I love you. I ran away from you because I loved you. I came back to you because I loved you, not out of guilt or duty. Eric was just someone to run away with.”

“I knew that in Paris.”

“How? How did you know?”

“Because compared to you he was an empty vessel. He could never be enough for you.”

After a moment, she said, “That’s why I chose him.”

Tears streaked her face. I touched her arm. She shook her head and could not speak. I pulled her out of the chair into my arms. She was trembling. She raised her wet face to mine; thrust her straining body against mine. Her pain and need were strong; it was no time for words. I carried her to the bedroom.

*          *          *

“Why did you follow me all over Europe?”

The afternoon had gone cloudy. A rectangle of cold, lifeless light hugged the far wall of the bedroom, inching its way minute by minute out of the room. In the long, sleepy silence after love making, Raven had wrapped the sheet around her as the room cooled.

“Because I loved you. But that wasn’t all. I wouldn’t have followed you if you hadn’t been in danger. If you had just left because of Eric or because you didn’t want to be with me, I would have let you go. I almost stopped looking, anyway.”

“When?”

“Venice.”

“Where you made love to Susyn?”

“Yes.”

Mad violet eyes. Raven felt the tremor that shook me and stroked my arm. 

Susyn had lived four days with spine and skull shattered.

Raven shook my arm and said, “Let go!” 

I tried.

“You don’t wake up screaming her name any more,” Raven said.  “Do you still dream about her?”

“Probably. I still wake up in the night, sweating and exhausted. But now the dreams fade before I can remember them.”

“Because of her, you were ready to give up the search?”

“No. I made love to her when I had already decided to give up the search. There is a difference.”

Raven’s fingers touched the scars on my side. She sighed. She said, “Susyn meant a great deal to you, didn’t she?”

“I cared about the person I thought she was. I cared about an illusion.”

“And you made love to her.”

“Yes. That matters. It isn’t something I do lightly.”

“You loved her – or loved what you thought she was?”

“Somewhat.”

“And you still do – somewhat.”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Whatever I felt, I felt for a person that never really existed. Whatever I felt, ended when she shot at you. When she shot me.”

Mad violet eyes. The sound of her scream. The spine-shattering, skull-shattering sound of her landing.

“No,” Raven said, drawing closer, “that isn’t so. You don’t fool me. I hope you aren’t trying to fool yourself.”

The light had fled the room. I got up and dressed. Raven reached for the blanket and wrapped it around her. I was aware of waves crashing on the beach below. A storm was brewing somewhere out in the Mediterranean. Soon our retreat would become a cold, gray place.

“She mattered,” I said. “The person I thought she was mattered to me. That’s really all we have anyway – our perceptions. We don’t fall in love with people; we fall in love with what we think they are.”

“Ian, you see things in people that aren’t there. You saw goodness in Susyn. You look at me and see someone you could live the rest of your life with. I am not that person.” final post Monday

Raven’s Run 148

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November 10, 1989, Antibes, France

Raven had gone to walk the beach. I let her go alone, sensing that she wanted it that way. I had things to think about anyway.

In mid-August, the Austrian-Hungarian border had opened and all those East Germans had made their way to West Germany by the long way around. I missed it; I was in ICU when it happened.

In late September, more escaping East Germans made their circuitous way to the West German embassy in Prague, and from there to West Germany. I followed their flight in the newspapers, in an outpatient center in Bergen while waiting to find out if I was going to be tried for murder, or released on self-defense.

Then last night, the Berlin wall fell. Just like that. 

It would be years before all of the confusions, clumsiness, and accidents of that event were fully understood, but in today’s newspaper it was clear that it had all happened in one night. There were pictures of young men and women with sledge hammers, breaking down the concrete barriers and walking away with souvenirs.

They built the wall the year I was born, and now it was history. All across eastern Europe, vast changes were taking place, and I was chafing to get in on the action. 

*          *          *

November can be a cruel month, even on the Riviera. By two o’clock a chill wind drove Raven up from the beach. Her bikini was more conservative than the one she had inherited on the Wahini, but not by much, and her smile was radiant as she came up the stairs to the balcony.

I followed her into the apartment and went to our bedroom for clothing. As I passed the mirror, I checked my reflection. Sun and exercise were beginning to put me back together again. My torso and legs were honey colored with new tan. My left side was a mass of jagged, interconnecting scars where the Norwegian doctors had probed for broken rib fragments. There were perfect coins of untanned scar tissue on the front and back of my left thigh where the other bullet had passed cleanly through.

In the kitchen, Raven set out food on the tiny iron table by the picture window. The Mediterranean beyond was that same wine dark sea that Homer had sung of millennia ago. Raven had slipped a shawl around her shoulders. I kissed her, and held her for a long time before we sat down. Later, when the meal was done, she said, “We need to talk.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

She patted my hand, and said, “It’ll be okay.”

“Are you going to marry me?”

“Wait. Let’s talk first. Do you remember the note I left you in Paris?”

I would forget my own name before I forgot that note.

Ian,
I am not like most people. You surely know that by now. Every day with you has been an adventure, and I thank you for all of them. But love can be bondage, for a person like me. Lately, I have been afraid that I was falling in love with you, and last night I proved to myself that I was. For someone else, that would be cause for happiness. Not for me. It would spell the end of all I have tried to become. Maybe we will meet again some day, and we will no longer be enthralled with one another. Then I can explain. I can’t explain now. The explanation would also tie me to you. I’m sorry. More sorry than you can ever know.
                                  Raven

“The central fact of our lives,” I said, “is that I love you and you love me.” more tomorrow

353. Two Times Gordon Dickson

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I have on the desk in front of me a book, Ace Double D-449, which was previously owned by Mrs. Elffa E. Philbrick (address redacted) of Urbana, Illinois. I don’t know her. I have never met her, and I don’t know if she is still living. At some point, she placed a return address sticker on the first page – an ordinary person’s version of the ex libris stickers used by fancy people. You don’t see ex libris stickers in Ace Doubles.

I presume Mrs. Philbrick was the first owner of the book. It was published in 1960 and the sticker has no zip code (zip codes came out in 1963). The sticker and the book are equally age-yellowed. That’s all the detective work I could accomplish. There is no way to know how many people owned the book after her, but before I bought it at a local used book store.

One of the minor pleasures of buying used books is occasionally seeing the metaphorical fingerprints of previous owners. They always leave me speculating on how they lived their lives. Was Elffa, perhaps, a suburban housewife with six kids, laundry, PTA, and all the rest, who led a secret life of the mind by traveling, via novel, to distant worlds?

She might also have been a pioneer female engineer working in a local defense plant after a childhood of reading Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But in 1960, which was more likely?

Ace doubles are paired short novels, printed back to back. They are important in the history of science fiction, and will get a post of their own later. This one has The Genetic General on the front, with Time to Teleport on the flip side, both by Gordon R. Dickson.

The Genetic General is part of Dickson’s multi-book Child cycle, AKA the Dorsai books. They include some of my favorites novels and a few that were, in a family phrase, half a bubble off of plumb. Someday I will do a full treatment of them, for the sake of any SF fans – if there are any – who have not already become addicted. Today I’m going to concentrate on Time to Teleport, which is quite a lot better than its title and cover suggest.

(Aside: One of the nicest things about Ace Doubles is that they have two covers, which leaves no space for lying back blurbs.)

Brief summary, sans spoilers:   The world has progressed beyond war, by rearranging its allegiances. Territorial states no longer exist. The Groups which replaced nations are global in scope, and defined by function, such as Communications, Transportation, or Underseas. As the story opens, Groups have been in place for eighty years and have served mankind well, but times have changed and a crisis impends.

The story centers on Eli Johnstone, former head of the Underseas Group. Eli has a secret, deeply buried, that holds the key to the future of mankind.

I bought this book because I realized that, although Ace Doubles had been a staple of my reading during the sixties, I didn’t have one in my library. I chose one which had a proven winner on the front. Since I don’t always like Dickson’s non-Dorsai work, I had small expectations for Time to Teleport, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was a refreshing dip into the-way-things-used-to-be.

It was also a preview of things to come in Dickson’s work. Eli has a bad knee (as did Cletus Grahame), used a cane in the beginning (as did Walter Blunt), and teleportation is a key element. By the second chapter I was expecting an early version of a key scene from Necromancer, but that didn’t happen.

What did happen was a story that tasted like vintage Dickson, and a little like Heinlein’s Lost Legacy (see 148. Lost Legacy). Eli, as the genetically superior man who saves mankind, reminded me of every other science fiction story from the sixties and seventies. So did the heavy reliance on psi forces.

Time to Teleport had an almost naive hopefulness about mankind’s future which I haven’t seen in science fiction lately, and which I miss.

Raven’s Run 147

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The eye is a sphere about the size of a target’s bullseye. Don’t look at the visible lids and lashes. See the eyeball behind it. See it as the bull of a target.

Sgt. Davenport had told me that, in Germany. His voice echoed in my ears as the sight picture came into focus. There was a tearing jolt that staggered me and the picture wavered. Then the sights settled again and I squeezed the trigger.

I shot the stranger through the right eye with my last bullet. Small, fast, and jacketed, the round went in and out of his skull with little fuss. He staggered and fell, rolled over twice and ended face down, staining the water of the lovely green seep.

I had to get to his revolver, but there was some confusion about how to get there. Something fierce had a Rottweiler grip on my leg. I looked down and saw blood spreading across my thigh. Then the pain hit, and I had to fight it down. I started forward, stumbled, then lunged up and staggered toward where I had seen the revolver fall. I heard another shot and the whip of the bullet as it passed. 

Susyn was there; she had circled beyond us and was standing near the verge of the drop. The revolver was on the grass, closer to her than to me, and she was looking over the sights of Alan’s automatic. Her violet eyes were mad. She would not miss. And she would not fire once. She would empty that cavernous magazine, and every shot would go home.

Then her eyes wavered. Someone else was behind me, moving away, drawing Susyn’s gaze with her as she moved. Someone Susyn hated nearly as much as she hated me. Raven. 

As Susyn’s eyes followed Raven, and the gun muzzle moved, I lunged forward. Susyn twisted the gun back and fired. Something hit me hard and I staggered. Left handed, I slapped the gun aside. 

Right handed, I hit her in the mouth. 

I tried to break her neck with the blow, but most of my strength was running out of bullet holes in my side and leg. She flipped backward and went gracelessly heels over head down the short slope to the brink of the cliff. I went after her, dragged by my own momentum. I dug my heels in and slid to a stop at her feet as she staggered for balance. She had kept hold of the gun. I knocked it upward, and that was all it took to overbalance her again. She fell backward. 

Some things are automatic. Like man overboard drill.

I reached out for her. I grabbed for her flailing hand and I swear I could have caught it. Could have dragged her back, even then. Could have calmed her. Could have convinced her, eventually, that there was nothing she could do for her brothers and no need to die trying to avenge them.

But I saw her eyes. I saw the violet madness in them, and knew that nothing would ever calm them. That as long as she lived, neither Raven nor I would have peace. I saw that madness just as she reached – instinctively – to grab my hand and save herself.

I saw her eyes and closed my fist. 

She reached for a hand no longer open. Her straining fingers brushed my knuckles and she fell away screaming. I saw her eyes when I closed my hand, saw them as she fell away, saw them in my mind all the way down until the clatter and whump told me the fall was over.

Saw them still, when Raven stood over me, wrapping my wounds and stuffing them with torn clothing to keep the life in. Saw them through the endless time of waiting, lying in the mud and grass, through the dimness and cold of a long Norwegian evening while Raven went for help.

See them still, in these fever dreams. more tomorrow