MidJourney: Old-school scifi heroes wear ties

Review: Necromancer – Gordon R. Dickson

necromancer So I reviewed this book before, in November of 2019. It’s not a very good review, and it’s also not a very well-written review. One excuse for this is that slaving in the tiger pits is hard work and not conducive to metaphysical contemplativity or resultant expression. The other reason why I liked but didn’t understand it at the time is that I hadn’t consciously or subconsciously figured out the twist–or was just skimming too hard to catch it–and that’s kind of critical to understanding the actual book and its place in the series, which, after all is called the Childe Cycle….not the “Dorsai series.”

Needless to say, on reading it again I was impressed by how well it’s done. Yes, it is low on scifi blasting action. But it’s not a scifi pulp-action. It’s more of a futuristic thriller, with [para]psychological overtones that become more prevalent as the plot unfolds. (Also, needless but unfortunate to say, almost anything improves in contrast to The Final Encyclopedia.)

Necromancer was published 1962, the second book of the Cycle. It’s unquestionably the work of a younger author: it’s intense, bold, quick in thought and action, and immensely self-assured without being self-indulgent.–rather like it’s protagonist, Paul Formain. And to discuss said protagonist. I’ve opined before how most authors have character types which they resort to time after time, how better authors are aware of this tendency, and how the best authors make use of it. Dickson’s Hero Type is a loner, a man separate from humanity, who observes it with varying degrees of interest, affection, and masterful dominance. Dickson being an old grandmaster, he twists and plays with this character type, giving its tendencies varying emphasis: on the mastery, on the loneliness, on the affection or disaffection for other humans–and sometimes subverting it wholesale, by allowing the protagonist to be completely and utterly wrong about things. (They also tend to be extremely tall, muscular, and strangely attractive to women, but never mind that.) But it’s a character type which, in competent–and confident–hands, is immensely satisfying to follow. Readers of the Childe Cycle will note essential similarities between Dorsai!‘s Donal Graeme, Necromancer‘s Paul Formain, and others along the way. But, of course, that’s the point…

md30651125858 I was also quite impressed with the plot structure, which unfolds the personalities involved in the conflict, then the conflict itself, and then the solution to that conflict, in a manner which allows each side time to develop and explain its side and stance, and then resolves it all without diminishing any of them. (The ending is kind of brilliant, because each of the parties involved in the confrontation walk away thinking they’ve won, or at least been allowed to walk away and continue their path to inevitable victory.) Often–almost always, in fact–authors can only resolve a confrontation between two ideologically-motivated opposing forces by writing one as obviously evil, and then making that side inexplicably stupid when the critical moment comes, even if it’s been monolithically powerful before. Here, both sides of the conflict are allowed to draw out and present their case. Both (/all) sides have their good points and bad ones, which are shown and not told by the simple yet brilliant method of embodying them in the personalities which showcase each side. The powers of both sides are presented, showing that they are in their own ways, evenly matched in their total opposition. –and then the audience is reminded that anything that perfectly balanced in one direction can be upset by a force from a different direction.

And, critically, it does all this in less than 200 pages. There’s no padding, no self-indulgent, meandering theses. Every scene is well-crafted, to the point, and solid.

Okay, so what is the book about? So young mining engineer Paul Formain loses his arm in an accident, which by itself doesn’t seem to be all that strange. Neither, in isolation, does the fact that, five years before, Paul survived a boating accident which should surely have killed him–an accident from which he hazily remembers being rescued by a strange figure in a black cloak and pointy hat. Somewhat strange is the fact that Paul’s body completely rejects transplant attempts to graft on a new, replacement arm. Maybe strange is the way his remaining arm grows freakishly stronger over time. Definitely strange is his utter rejection of his psychiatrists’ diagnosis of a subconscious urge to self-destruction; but, following this, entirely natural for him to conclude that modern science is of no use in this matter, and that hope lies with the agents of Alternate Science, the self-proclaimed wizards, warlocks, and necromancers of the Chantry Guild…

The Chantry Guild boldly declares that it’s purpose is to destroy: to smash down the institution and the attitudes which have brought the human race to a well-fed, well-groomed, near-mindless, complaisant sickness…except that, as events unfold, what they really want to do is protect themselves. And, since rational human beings (even rational beings who believe in Alternate Laws and follow a leader who wears a pointy hat and a long cape) don’t have to protect themselves in the absence of an enemy, it follows that there is an enemy. And that this enemy is not simply an institutional attitude, but has actual, physical form–an enemy which even modern-day sorcerers, with the ability to warp time, perception, and matter itself, are hard-pressed to match, let alone overcome.

Oh, and the fate of the human race itself is at stake.

But that’s the ultimate point of the Childe Cycle….

Other stuff: Formain returning to the final confrontation in a cryogenically-frozen body which hasn’t quite finished thawing out is still a striking scene. So is the reveal of the final pages, which make it clear what’s going on without, and I cannot stress this enough, belaboring the point.

mayo_mccall_a_dreaming_man_levitates_through_the_streets_night__bdcb3c2c-482b-4535-bb15-8502089b19ad

Rated: I still don’t get what the deal is with the “apple comfort” song, though.

QuikReview – The Book of Dreams – Jack Vance

The Book of Dreams is the fifth and last in Vance’s magnum opus, the Demon Princes cycle. Naturally enough, it’s the first one I read, when The Father of Skaith snatched it up at a library sale years ago. For me, the Big Three of science fiction are Roger Zelazny, Gordon Dickson, and Vance. Each of them embodies something different about good scifi: Zelazny a conscious, irreverent sense of wonder; Dickson, the coolly tempered love and respect for humanity as only felt by one who is part of, but also apart from, the thing itself; and the many worlds of Vance, in their colors, scents, shapes, placid beauties and hard-edged underbellies.

Vance is principally praised for his peerless prose, distinctively detailed yet fascinatingly flourishing. He balances the golden-age scifi sense of wonder with a grounded sense of callous verisimilitude–but strikes a fine line while doing so–rarely falling off to either the grim, or the fanciful sides. Needless to say, The Demon Princes saga is not a work in which he steps awry. His worlds are fleshed out–by a side description of the vegetation, by the peppery smell of alien vegetation and the two-toned light of other stars–and then made real as he shows the attending, distasteful side: the grime and casual horror. So a chance paragraph informs us that on a certain world, native tribesmen labor for years to intricately inscribe slabs of precious wood and ceremonially set them afloat in the sacred ocean; over the horizon, trading ships wait to collect these slabs and sell them for curios.

Vance’s heroes tend to the distinctly SFfian mode: superbly competent, innovative and clever, cool under pressure, and emotionally inept. Guys, he’s a classic-era scifi writer. What else do you expect? Anyhow, we all know that it’s the first of these things that are the interesting ones as we watch his heroes, enmeshed in conflict, calculate, strategize, or just plain smash their way back out again. They’re active, not reactive; they’re strong (and sometimes headstrong); steely, and rarely out of their depth except when the love interests are involved.

So, The Book of Dreams is the fifth and last book in the Demon Princes saga. What does that mean? Nearly thirty years before, five master criminals united to destroy and enslave an entire human settlement/planet, the Mount Pleasant Raid. There were only two survivors: nine-year-old Kirth Gersen, and his grandfather–a gentleman with an unknown but somewhat recognizable background. Kirth was raised and educated as a weapon with a single purpose: to destroy evil men, beginning with the five who orchestrated the destruction of an entire world. Through the proceeding years and four other volumes, Kirth Gersen has managed to locate Attel Malagate, The Star King; Viole Falushe in The Palace of Love; Kokur Hekkus of The Killing Machine; and has found (and put a projac beam through) Lens Larque’s monstrous Face.

One more remains: Howard Alan Treesong.

In the manner of the most successful and righteous avengers, Gersen has also become enormously rich and controls the popular and widespread magazine, Cosmopolis.–which becomes enormously useful when, in the wastebasket of the Cosmopolis archives, he finds a photograph of ten men and women at a banquet. Scrawled in a corner of the page, a now-dead woman has written Howard Alan Treesong’s name.

And honestly, the back cover blurb summarizes the plot and characters better than I can, so:

WIN_20230508_11_36_35_Pro - Copy

[Photo courtesy of my mother’s kitchen table.]

Anyhow. ‘s a good book.

Rated: H. A. Treesong is here…

Book Review: Tower of Silence – Larry Correia

tower-of-silence-9781982192532_xlg So Tower of Silence, the fourth of five in Larry Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, is out, and Larry promises that there’s only going to be five books, so yay. It’s a really good book, in a really good series, and I recommend it AND THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR ALL FOUR BOOKS SO FAR, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. SotFW is some of Correia’s very best work so far—a work that plays to his strengths (action scenes, over the top violence, strong and violent men, strong and sometimes violent women, unexpectedly detailed worldbuilding, and snarky humor), while also building on them. Correia started out with the schlocky Monster Hunter International, a gory and brainless homage to a) B-grade monster movies, b) guns.

He’s gotten so much better since then, and Saga of the Forgotten Warrior showcases that growth. So the action scenes in this book/series are never pointless or excessive; the violence either exhilarating, shocking, or deeply satisfying; his characters, male and female, have depth, intelligence, and personalities that develop and expand as they move through the world and face the challenges that plot and life throw at them. And apparently his world has fractional reserve banking, so….I’ma say he indeed put some thought into the worldbuilding. Crucially, he doesn’t waste audience goodwill by including detailed scenes of financial analysis—but the world of Lok does have an authenticity about it when the characters discuss the economies of rebellion, war, and wholesale genocide.

And despite that last sentence, there’s also a healthy current of dark but snarky humor throughout.

There’s also several heartbreaking deaths and plenty of nauseating ones.

SPOILERS COMMENCE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Good stuff:

One of the things that always bugs the hell out of me in a certain genre of fantasy is EVERYONE BLOODY HAVING TO TRAVEL FROM POINT A TO POINT B, ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Just because JRR Tolkien did it doesn’t mean you have to, too, and it drives me bonkers when other authors use “travelogue” to substitute for “plot.” Other books in this series have had that tendency, to a degree. This one mostly doesn’t (Ashok not initially being on the correct continent is the only exception). Correia has managed to place his characters, mostly, where they physically need to be, and lets the plot proceeds with, around, and occasionally over their dead bodies.

One of the other things that Correia does is write a very satisfying book. Because his characters are multi-dimensional and intelligent, their actions lead very logically to consequences–some of them planned, some of them unforeseen but predictable to the readers because this is how the world and stories set in this world logically work. Even better, some of the consequences might not have been explicitly predicted by the readers, but fit within the rules provided. So, after we have been shown that magical communications can occur best when communicants embed their messages on adjacent demon bones, and that the Inquisition is harvesting their bones from a captive demon held in a massive tank beneath their headquarters, [SPOILERS] Omand eventually finds that all messages that have ever been sent using that creature’s bones are known to it. Omand is intelligent, lusts for power, and has absolutely no limits when it comes to increasing his power, but he has several significant blind spots when it comes to the actions of other people–or beings–who also have no limits. (Hence always underestimating Ashok.)

The other part of why this book is so satisfying to read is that the characters are intelligent, competent, and largely proactive. The plot is a series of moves and countermoves by people who have clearly defined goals and ambitions. Thera wants to save the casteless. Bharatas wants revenge on Ashok Vadal. Jagdish wants to keep his family safe and the honor of House Vadal intact. Rada wants to undo the harm she has done by forging reports leading to genocide. Ashok wants to get back home and protect the Prophet. Devedas wants power. Omand wants unlimited power. The demons want unlimited revenge. Each of these characters works to get what they want.

As far as wordsmithing goes, it’s competent and brisk. Correia knows what he’s good at, and improves on what he’s not.

And we already have discussed the action scenes. They’re great.

SPOILERS COMMENCE: PLOT SUMMARY

So I’ve reviewed Son of the Black Sword and House of Assassins, books 1 and 2, but failed to review book 3, Destroyer of Worlds. This is because while SotBS and HoA were fairly self-contained stories with satisfying conclusions, Destroyer of Worlds ends on a downer note-slash-cliffhanger. The Great Extermination has begun and Ashok is out of commission as far as leading the rebellion goes. As a matter of fact, he’s just washed up on the shores of Fortress after having had his throat cut in a duel and falling into an icy river.

Book 4 opens with Ashok still out of commission, after having been imprisoned in the deepest dungeons of Fortress / Xhonura for almost a year. Unlike the rest of Lok, the people of Xhonura do remember the prophesies about the return of Ramrowan—but there are many pretenders, and the easiest way of dealing with them is to see if they can survive the sort of conditions that Ramrowan could have. Unfortunately, even when proof of the prophecy’s fulfilment is presented to them (and their current tyrant meets, uh, the end that comes to those who piss off Ashok Vadal), Xhonura itself is still politically divided and unready to take action to support their Avatara. And support is very necessary, because Thera has decided that Sons of the Black Sword need to strike a decisive blow against Capitol and the Great Extermination.—and in her council, the right-hand man of her priest and chief advisor, is Javed, a spy for the Inquisition.

Meanwhile, the chief Inquisitor, Omand, starts to leverage his position with the demon he has kept captive and tortured beneath the Inquisitors’ Dome: in return for the deaths of the blood of Ramrowan—all the blood of Ramrowan—power. Thing is, despite Omand’s cunning and intelligence having brought him so far, he’s still quite blind in certain vital ways.

Also meanwhile, our other heroine, the ex-Librarian Rada has been warned by the black steel artifact of which she has been made keeper. She, her Protector bodyguard Karno, and their host and friend Jagdish, must heed this warning if they are to survive…for there really are powers greater than man at work in the world of Lok, and they have decided to move.

Oh, also, there is one hell of an “uh oh, uh oh, oh shit!” cliffhanger ending here.

Rated: “You bear my name. For I am the witch.“

The Shadow # 105 – The Yellow Door

shadow_magazine_vol_1_105 TLDR: it’s Harry Vincent’s finest hour.

Since the 1942-batch of novels was heavy going, I zigged back to this one. It was published in 1936 and showcases The Shadow and his agents at the top of their game. Cliff Marsland, Rutledge Mann, Hawkeye, and Jericho Druke get some pagetime. Even Burbank gets a chance to get some fresh air, taking up a field operations post in New Jersey and running mission control for Vic Marquette and the G-men.

So I’ve reported at length about the taut pacing and easy to follow, fast-moving plots Walter B. Gibson had pretty much perfected. I’ve also mentioned that his characterization skills benefited, rather than suffered, from brevity. With less leeway for self-indulgence, only the most relevant, vivid, and memorable traits of each character are showcased, and these are shown only in service of moving the plot forward. So Hawkeye is the best trailer and spotter in the business: he finds his man and trails him without anybody any the wiser, uncovering vital clues. Cliff Marsland is a gunman who walks his own trail in the badlands, and is cool as a cat while the bullets are flying. Burbank is a technological wizard with nerves of absolute tungsten and an unflappably methodical manner. Unlike some other pulp novels (by which I mean: Doc Savage), The Shadow isn’t a huge gadgeteer even though he does stay on the cutting edge of aeronautic developments. The most complicated device he or his agents carry normally is a flashlight. This is one of the exceptions, as Harry Vincent is sent off undercover equipped with a miniature radio transmitter which The Shadow and Burbank use their own send/receiving stations to triangulate in on and discover the secret Citadel of the hidden Yellow Door. It’s smart, but feels entirely grounded.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Harry Vincent (sigh). Actually, though, as remarked above, Harry Vincent actually lives up to his moniker as The Shadow’s “most competent agent” in this book, hardly at all making a misstep until the 94% marker, and that barely through any fault of his own, and then also taking on his direct antagonist, and contributing to the big shot villain’s demise by lead injection. Not bad for our boy who usually is the resident punching bag. (There is also another Shadow story wherein Harry Vincent makes a triumphal exit from an underground lair shirtless, waving a gun, with a disheveled damsel clinging to him…but he’s done like 2% of the work in that particular instance, and also I just can’t take that mental image seriously. I mean, it’s Harry Vincent. Come on.) Still! He does good in this book. Let us not forget this.

Okay, so. The other part of why earlier plots feel more grounded and competent is because…they are. Instead of having a so-called detective who be led by the nose from obvious clue to obvious clue (looking at you, Bruce), The Shadow actually investigates. He tails suspects, confirms theories, and, well, he would have interrogated the suspects, too, if they hadn’t ended up eating a bullet in the ensuing gunfight. Ah well. What’s more, since this case is fairly simple and because The Shadow has almost an inside man on the job, the complicating twists are almost entirely supplied by forces which The Shadow cannot reasonably predict: Police Commissioner Weston and his attempts at detectiving.

Our game begins to foot with the entrance of James Dynoth, who has just murdered the wealthy businessman Peter Gildare and returned to his home preparatory to fleeing to the safety of the Citadel. He is given twenty minutes to pack and depart. About fifteen minutes in, he turns around to find an ominous black-clad figure standing behind him. The Shadow was too late to save the dying man, but not too late to hear his dying words. Among these words were “The Yellow Door.” We are about to find out exactly what this means when twenty past eight hits and a) Dynoth’s nerve gives out and he crunches his suicide capsule, b) a machine gun opens up on the house, c) the house explodes. The Shadow escapes with some injury, but does have a lead to follow up on: a man named Ferris Krode, who works in Cleveland and knows about The Yellow Door.

Meanwhile, millionaire businessman Dudley Birklam is confiding in Vic Marquette. Birklam has been approached by a man named Ferris Krode and warned that certain courses of action will lead to trouble for him and his business. He fears that Krode is involved with the prior deaths, of which Gildare’s was typical. Marquette promises government protection to big business, because of course he does.

The Shadow has carried this deduction still further, and has a man on the spot. And it’s Harry Vincent. Now, normally this would result in Harry getting slugged over the head, kidnapped, or shot at, but in this case Harry actually manages not only to bluff Krode into thinking that he’s there for the 11:00 meeting with “Mandon,” he also turns around and manages to convince the real Mandon that he’s Krode, uncovering valuable information the entire time.

The Yellow Door is a secret society of blackmailers, saboteurs, and industrial spies, running a multi-industry racket. It’s also an actual door, in a place called the Citadel, where the big shot is. Krode is the highest ranking man that The Shadow or Harry Vincent are able to discover, but he isn’t the big shot. And if he isn’t, who is…? The Shadow intends to find out, although he is substantially hindered at critical points by the not-so-cunning plans of Commissioner Weston. Like, seriously, Commissioner, stick to the budget and presiding over official breakfasts.

Another great thing is that having a proactive hero makes it easier to showcase that hero’s competence, as well. The Shadow already has a plan in place for the final battle–position the G-Men and have them rush in guns blazing once he, Burbank, and Harry Vincent have collaborated to locate the Citadel–but when he gets the information that the perimeter fence is electrified and the surrounding hillside is mind, The Shadow instantly adjusts his plans and orders his forces accordingly.

Overall, this story seems as though the author enjoyed writing it. There’s an eagerness to the descriptions and plot, and a relish to the action–and even a few witty flourishes, such as his description of Guzzler’s Joint:

The proprietor was leaning on the bar, his fat arms folded, surveying the customers with a pleasant grin. To Guzzler, the middle line of the room was like the bars of a cage; on one side, the monkeys – on the other, visitors to the zoo. In comparing the boastful thugs and the society habitues, Guzzler had never yet decided which were the apes and which the humans. Guzzler was philosophical as well as imaginative.

Rated: I liked this book and reading it made me happy.

The Shadow # 241 – Vengeance Bay

shadow_magazine_vol_1_241 So it’s been a little while since I reviewed one of The Shadow stories. One reason is that I haven’t been reading much of anything at all lately, and the other is that they’ve not been that great. I’ve been reading through the three hundred and twenty-six Shadow novels proper for over a year now, and this is, as the title states, number 241. Walter B. Gibson had been writing The Shadow stories for ten years at this point. The world is distinctly different: gone are the gangsters firing tommy-guns out of touring cars (and associated massive casualties), or smuggling, or racketeering. I haven’t even seen an evil mastermind for weeks and minions must be demanding. And, needless to say, it’s 1942 and there are “unsettled world conditions” making things complicated.

The sea change starts mostly in the 1941 story cycle, with noted globe-trotter Lamont Cranston grounded in New York, and thus having little better to do than hang out with his friend the Police Commissioner, or hang out on dates with his other friend, Margo Lane. (She showed up about a dozen books ago and is…an OK character. Actually she and Harry Vincent make an excellent team, but frustratingly they don’t work together that much.) And here’s the problem I have with that: the real Lamont Cranston, what we see of him, is actually a solid dude and doesn’t really deserve this treatment. I headcannon that he’s hanging out with Jim Corbett teaching jungle survival skills to army recruits in India during this time period. Gibson mostly has moved away from his earlier staples of writing from the point of view of a proxy hero (such as, sigh, Harry Vincent); and also has largely abandoned his focus on the villains.

Most of his earlier novels were written kind of in reverse, mapping out the villains’ path for victory rather than the hero’s as step one; and only then strategizing on the method of countering what would otherwise be an inevitable win for the bad guys. This also allowed Gibson to use a more, shall we say, colorful cast of characters (and then thin them out as the novel progresses.)

Another thing lost is the lack of genre shifts. Gibson used to regularly shift between gangster noir (now out of style along with the gangsters who inspired it), gaslamp fantasy, psychological thrillers, and plain murder mysteries. Now, it’s…I can’t define the genre other than to say it’s “Lord Peter Whimsy plus Batman.”–and there it stays without departure. I have nothing against Lord Peter Wimsy, but have come to regard B. W. as an ingrate imposter, so…

However, the real problem with the ’41-’42ish batch of stories is that The Shadow, is: a) the primary point-of-view character, b) diluted. He’s much less formidable, much less powerful, much less insightful, and much, much less of an active instigator. He investigates less, shoots less, and misses more. The Shadow is no longer a personality, as in previous, early stories where the man involved seemed to be almost somehow crippled without cloak and hat, and unleashed with them; it’s a persona now, something that Lamont Cranston dresses up and does. (And the less said about Kent Allard is…very little actually said.)

Nevertheless, this book involves The Shadow commanding a cannon duel with a submarine, so it’s worth it entirely for that scene alone.

Okay, so: there’s this famous partisan refugee from Significantly Unnamed European Countries Which Have Been Overrun By Another Country, Vedo Bron. The Shadow is keeping an eye on him on the theory that he may need protecting, a theory which at first seems to not be borne out at all–and then is shown to be entirely true. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, the person whom the gutteral-voiced, stocky attackers end up with is Lamont Cranston (who was distracted lighting a cigarette with his back to a dark doorway, it could happen to anyone). Getting out of this scrape results in a rather thrilling sequence wherein crooks are astounded and dismayed to see The Shadow in one place, and hear his laugh coming from somewhere else entirely (meanwhile also, bullets. It’s understandable.)

Exactly why Vedo Bron has hired a crew of totally reformed and 100% trustworthy ex-smugglers to ship him down to Massaquoit Bay is yet unknown, but The Shadow promptly places himself and his agents Margo Lane and Harry Vincent on location to find out and help, thwart, or protect as needed. Harry Vincent doesn’t even get clobbered over the head once in this story. Unfortunately, The Shadow takes up the slack, getting heavily concussed not once but twice and almost needing outside help.

Almost.

Already on the ground (water?) in Massaquoit Bay are our new characters, Judy (who owns a speedboat and is generally wealthy), and her swain Jack (who is poor and also kind of a jerk.) Jack is searching for the famed buried treasure of Blackbeard, and thinks that he has a genuine lead on it. Into this ongoing drama enters Vedo Bron, Margo Lane, shifty professional treasure-hunters, fake lighthouse keepers, and a couple of stocky little men with gutteral foreign accents.–all watched over by the sharp and unerring eyes of…The Shadow!

And so it goes…

Having listed my complaints about the last batch of The Shadow novels, I’ll say that this one went down quick and smooth as any of the best of them. It has a minimal cast of agents, but it uses them effectively; the action scenes are mostly decent except for the climactic battle, which is epic, and, yeah, this one’s good.

Rated: Do you guys know how hard it is to actually clamber in and around stuff with a broad-brimmed hat on? It’s hard.

Review – Dorsai! – Gordon Dickson

(By the way, this cover is book-accurate.)

So, in this book Dickson stays on the correct side of the mysticism/science line that philosophically-inclined SF, his in particular, sometimes falls off of. What’s more, he also stays on the right side of the action/introspection divide as well, neither spending too much time tossing grenades around and shouting “clear,” or becoming too absorbed in the mind of its ubermensch. The result is a story that is fast-paced and gripping, but which never forgets that it has a deeper purpose and meaning–a terrible purpose, as Paul Atreides would say.

That terrible purpose? To portray the life and times of the Super-man.

That’s a spoiler, but I feel that knowing the reveal to one aspect of the plot doesn’t detract from the rest of this book; there’s a solid enough mil-SF plot with all the trimmings of a political thriller there on top of the aforementioned psychological aspect. It’s an engrossing enough plot, albeit briskly told with an absolute dearth of padding (my paperback copy is a mere 280 pages); and while I have some doubts on the actual efficacy of certain plot elements, such as Donal’s total-takeover strategy for invading a “civilized” world, or the whole issue of how very efficient it could be to contract skilled labor from other planets in lieu of, IDK, sending your own students to other planets to get educated, maybe….well, it’s speculative fiction.

What I find valuable about this book is Dickson’s adept portrayal, and explanations of in simple terms for the socially maladapt nerds reading it–of the tactics of mistake. Dickson breaks down thought processes involved in strategy, and the viewpoint that would support a short-term unfavorable position in order to achieve conditions favorable for a long-term goal. He shows how the personality types that would deal in such methods work–and how an honest and honorable, but equally cunning opponent can deal with such duplicity. Again–all this, but it’s explained in terms teenage nerds can comprehend. (Frank Herbert did much the same, with somewhat more stylization, in Dune.)

After all, what is the Super-man? To a nerd, it’s someone who understands other human beings….

So, Gordon Dickson is an author with pretty uneven output. He published a lot of stuff, some of which has been forgotten because it was overly grim and lacked balance; some of which was forgotten because it was overly fluffy and lacked staying value (as sorry as I am to say it about the valiant Hokas). At his best, though, his works speak deeply but not very clearly. He tends to write of individuals, men (Golden Age SF = male protagonist, sorry) who are alone in a crowd, in a city, in a universe: men who struggle not with other people or with that collection of other people known as society, but with themselves.

In Dickson’s world, “Man versus Self” is typified in the titanic but entirely internal struggles of a character making choices and acting upon those choices, in search of the understanding of what feelings or motivations determine those choices. Internal conflict is a character who does not understand his or her subconscious motivations, but either acts boldly on them regardless–or who struggles against them and refrains from action–and, examining the consequences of their actions or inactions, gains insight into their own mind, until the time comes when they see themselves and are at one with what they see.

[I had more on this theme written down but the paper got lost somewhere. Alas.]

In Dorsai! Donal Graeme’s internal conflict is with himself–to understand himself and where he stands in relation to humanity. Donal is apart from humanity, although he values it as a collection of individual lives. His external conflict is with the shadow version of himself: someone part of humanity–possibly even the apex of humanity–who regards human populations as a disposable whole, and who acts towards them accordingly.–a conflict as natural and instinctual as it is unavoidable, inevitable, and increasingly personal. And there you have your answer to the question “okay, but so what is the plot, anyway?”

So, anyway. It’s a well-crafted novel where even the love-interest subplot, on reflection, fits snugly, if a little gratingly at first. It’s interconnected to the rest of the Dorsai cycle deeply enough to make me go and re-read Lost Dorsai. And The Spirit of Dorsai. And Warrior. And Brothers…

Rated: I really need to know who would win in a knife fight between Donal Graeme and Paul Atreides, but I want to be standing on a different planet when it happens.

Also rated: Donal Graeme can walk on air, because walking on water would have been way too on the nose.

The Shadow #229 – Gems of Jeopardy

shadow_magazine_vol_1_229 So, as the well-informed know, there are around three hundred and eighty-odd Shadow stories, written over a period of eighteen years. The vast majority were written by The Shadow’s original creator, Walter B. Gibson, under the penname Maxwell Grant, but there were several other authors who were pinch-hitters as well. Lester Dent (the Doc Savage guy) wrote a handful, and some hack named Bruce Elliott wrote the last twentyish novels after Gibson was fired. I haven’t reached those yet, but I’m assured they’re dreadful. Anyhow, after Gibson, the best of The Shadow’s authors was Theodore Tinsley, a pulp novelist.

I use the term deliberately. Gibson wrote his stories with ceaseless crossings between genres–sometimes straight-up mystery, sometimes proto-superheroic, sometimes gothic melodrama, sometimes hardboiled gangster noir–to the point where The Shadow is almost its own genre in itself. Tinsley, on the other hand, wrote pulp fiction and was proud of it. Although he approximates Gibson’s handling of the characters remarkably well, Tinsley is cruder than Gibson–in plot, in execution…and in taste. Stay tuned, we’ll get there when we get there.

A little more discussion before we get into the plot. The Shadow had been around over ten years (and two hundred twenty-eight previous volumes) at this point, and had run a huge gamut of foes, from corrupt board members to evil aviators, corrupt politicians in distant cities, backwoods intrigues, underwater mad scientists, desert mad scientists, swamp mad scientists, isolated ancestral castle mad scientists, evil psychologists, more evil-overlord-wannabes complete with secret societies than you can shake a stick at, several would-be world emperors, and…thugs trying to hijack armored cars. The audience has seen quite a lot, to the point where it would be difficult to top–and futile to try. It’s hard to take the narrator’s breathless assertion that this car chase through Manhattan, or this jewel robbery, or this attempt to hostilely take over a company is the most daring, dangerous, and brilliant of The Shadow’s career when…it’s really not, come on. We’ve seen him take on Doctor Moquino, Zemba, and Zanigew…some dude wearing a mask of his own face really kind of doesn’t compare.

But, if that sounds like “The Shadow is now boring,” please continue reading, because that is definitely not the case. Gibson and his editorial cohort seemed to recognize this, and, I think deliberately, made them simple again. Throughout the later part of 1941 (or at least, the last handful of books I’ve read, which I’m plugging through in numerical order), the high-concept dramatics have been backed down a notch in favor of simpler, lower-key–but no less interesting, and no less intense–stakes.

Okay, so that being said, what’s the plot?

Well, first there are a couple of murders, a burned-down house, and a map which has had the Atlantic coastline ripped away. That’s for starters. Then there’s Jerome Linton, a business acquaintance of Lamont Cranston’s, whom he and Margo Lane witness dumping an already-dead body to fake a hit-and-run accident…

Twelve boxes of jewels have been smuggled into America by the brutal, treacherous ex-Balkan Colonel and his beautiful, but absolutely no less brutal and treacherous wife, Princess Zena. They have no sooner disposed of anyone else who could identify them, when they are confronted by the sinister Mr. X, who, somehow forewarned of their (money’s) arrival, has laid an ambush. Zena sacrifices her husband and escapes, but with a burning hatred of Mr. X and a no less burning desire to get her jewels back. So she murders a woman and steals her clothes and car and drives off…

Meanwhile, The Shadow is looking into Jerome Linton and the links between him and the previous murders. He’s aided (surprisingly competently) by a roster of his agents: Harry Vincent, Hawkeye, Moe Shrevnitz, Clyde Burke, and Margo Lane. And when I say “surprisingly competently,” I mean Harry Vincent doesn’t even get captured and tortured through any fault of his own! I mean, yes, that is him on the cover, sure, but it wasn’t actually his fault! Margo Lane and Moe Shrevnitz make an actual competent team in following their suspects! They do need rescuing, uh, twice…but they’re under cover and shooting back gamely when The Shadow arrives! Clyde Burke…actually doesn’t do anything himself, but he supposedly lends his face for The Shadow to press an interrogation. (I have a dubious here, because Clyde has been described as small and wiry; The Shadow, master of disguise that he is, is very tall. And it isn’t a phone interview. Anyhow.) Soon enough, a $50,000.00 satchel of jewels and a notorious fence make their appearance.

And so it goes.

So, yes, Margo Lane has finally turned up in-novels, and her presence is not a negative. Mostly because having an actual damsel on the team makes Harry Vincent automatically 83% less likely to end up in the “distressed damsel” role of the novel. But, barring a few false starts, she’s shaping up to be a competent agent in her own right, cool under pressure, good with a gun, and surprisingly resourceful.

The other standout character from this novel is its principal antagonist, Princess Zena. She’s a brunette with shapely (we are often reminded) legs….on one of which, tucked into her garter in a flat leather sheath, is a razor-sharp knife that she has great expertise and zero hesitation in using. She’s managed to survive the war-torn disruption of her native (carefully unnamed) country; she’s survived the exile from it (by shoving her husband into an assassin’s bullet and then faking her own death in quicksand); and she’s utterly determined to find revenge and her twelve boxes of stolen crown jewels. She’s utterly ruthless, but she’s also intelligent, charismatic, and enormously proactive throughout the story….by which I mean she has a body count almost as high as Mr. X’s by the time they finally meet, and there’s an actual villain-versus-villain duel which is kind of just awesome.

And that’s about all I have to say, because that really should be enough. This book is kind of just awesome: it’s correctly paced, and the stakes are just high enough; it’s well-characterized, with almost all The Shadow’s agents getting a chance to shine (or bleed) (….sigh); the action scenes, while definitely gorier than the norm, could still pass muster by the Hayes’ Code and are fast and satisfying. There’s a number of good villains, an underground lair (this one includes bonus waterfall), and The Shadow scaring the crap out of some henchmen when, in that hidden and secure base, eerie laughter begins to echo…

Rated: I forgot to to mention, while in that lair he uses their phone to call Burbank, too. Awesome.

The Shadow Magazine #22 – The Creeping Death

creeping-death-600x1008-1 So, The Creeping Death is the twenty-second The Shadow story, and was published in 1933. And it’s a bit strange to come back to after the more settled formula of the later Shadow books.

The Lamont Cranston persona is a colder, more impressive figure–less of the languid man-about-town and more of a) a financier chiefly interested in money and new inventions (Cranston would probably have quite a lot of SpaceX stock, one surmises), b) very obviously a disguise used by a dangerous and indomitable figure. But, then to remind us that we are in fact dealing with a master of disguise, there’s also the not-nearly-as-transparent Phineas Twambly, a doddering and nearly-deaf old man who couldn’t possibly be less of a threat to the men staking out the lobby of the Westbrook Falls Inn and eyeing each other like the predators they are.

Then there’s the plot, which–in good form for the earlier books–is carried primarily through the actions of the villains, and seen primarily through either their eyes or the eyes of the proxy hero, in this case Vic Marquette of the Secret Service. The Shadow himself lurks, listens in, silhouettes, menaces, and only just intervenes to tip the scales here and there, mostly just letting the bad guys play out their mummery amongst themselves with hilarious and deadly results. Until–well, you’d have to read the book to see. Heroes react; great heroes act; smart heroes decide when to act and when to stand back and utter a soft, grim, mocking laugh at the follies of others.

The titular creeping death is introduced in the first chapter, when a Mr. Jerry Fitzroy collapses and dies in his hotel room, only barely able to gasp out a few words–words seemingly overheard only by the hotel physician and detective. Some part of the mystery is cleared promptly, when Fitzroy is revealed to be a Secret Service agent, recently returned from a trip to the small town of Westbrook Falls. The gold coin in Fitzroy’s pocket is one of a strange kind that has been recently flooding the market: a strange alloy with the appearance and physical qualities of gold that still is not gold. The partridge feather in his pocket is a little more mysterious….but not to The Shadow.

And not, for very long, to the audience either, with the introduction of elderly inventor/chemist Lucien Partridge and his hidden laboratory in Westbrook Falls. Partridge has a business arrangement with several other American businessmen, who believe they are exploiting him for the synthetic gold which they receive and distribute. The reverse turns out to be the case…and, what’s more, Partridge’s network is worldwide: he has multiple contacts in multiple countries through which he is exchanging fake gold for real, which he has stored on the grounds and with which–and the creeping death–he intends to launch a reign of terror which will ultimately end with him becoming world emperor.

But in the meanwhile and somewhat more pressingly, he going to have to deal with some internal personnel and management problems first. You see, it has occurred to multiple branches of his organization that “fake gold out -> real gold in = somewhere, massive stockpile of real gold.” And the Americans, the French, and the Spaniards, all want a much bigger cut than what they’re getting.–and therein lies the meat of the story, watching them variously blunder, plot, counterplot, form alliances, sneak, backstab, and bluster as they jockey for position and information–all under the glittering eye and grotesque shadow of…The Shadow!

The villain himself, Lucien Partridge, is an interesting mix of megalomania and practicality. Yes, he wants to be the emperor of the world and believes he will be welcomed with open arms at the end of, well, a rain of terror–but he has a fairly chilling plan for enacting said terrorism, and a very practical one for bankrolling it. He’s resourceful and cunning enough to have agents in many countries and be collecting revenue from each of them. And he controls the Creeping Death, an insidious and almost undetectable method of murder which leaves its victims unmarked, able to travel far away from the cause of their death while leaving their murderer unsuspected. (Although he did have to knife Li Tan Chang to get its secrets. What happens in Shanghai stays in Shanghai.)

The Shadow’s usual agents are scarce this time. Harry Vincent gets about half a page of screentime, which might have contributed to why this mission had such smooth sailing. So the primary proxy hero is Vic Marquette, and he’s…okay. For a Fed.

And…the cover art is fantastic.

And that’s about all I have to say. This is a top-notch early Shadow story, and if you know the genre, know the author and his style, you know that means a rippin’ good yarn. You really can’t ask for better than that.

Rated: This your final warning, Jose! Those that disobey my word–die!

The Shadow Magazine #42 – Mox

shadow_magazine_vol_1_42 So. One of the ways that The Shadow’s mysterious ways remained mysterious is by not including his point of view. He is shown, in certain stories, either as a gliding, cloaked-and-hatted shape through the, uh, somewhat dispassionate lens of the omniscient narrator–observing and describing his actions but offering little concrete commentary on his motivations.

Some books don’t even have an alter-ego for The Shadow–only spectral laughter and sinister whispers; some books have him assume an entirely new personality for the length of the story, discarding it and revealing himself only to thwart evil at the climax.

Alternatively, sight of The Shadow is filtered through the eyes of a POV character…who is generally far, far from omniscient. This contributes to the overall mystery (since they are generally baffled and/or completely wrong about their deductions,) or to the plot (because Harry Vincent is going to a) get clobbered and kidnapped, b) screw up his mission. Sigh.)

In this case, the narrative viewpoint largely follows Joe Cardona, currently an Acting Inspector and generally regarded as the ace sleuth of New York City’s police force–largely because of assistance from a certain black-clad force of justice and vengeance that he cannot formally admit exists, especially to his skeptic boss. “Mox” is Jarvis Moxton, a wealthy speculator whose name soon becomes of interest to investigators looking into the death of contracting agent, Schuyler Harlew. (How that happens is admittedly via a long, long shot, but for such deductions is The Shadow famed.) It transpires that Mox–Moxton–has been locating inventors of promising but underfunded projects, luring them to his countryside lair with promises of money and support, and there–at the stroke of midnight–destroying them! The Shadow puts the pieces together just a tad too late to save another unlucky victim, but he vows that no others will so die!

He succeeds, too, in a brief-but-awesome battle that a) saves an innocent life, b) decimates Mox’s henchmen, c) reveals Mox’s true nature to local authorities, and d) forces Mox into flight. Local authorities, in the person of the cool and cantankerous Sheriff Junius Tharbel, soon seem to have cracked open the case–much to the displeasure of the visiting Joe Cardona, who begins a bitter and one-sided rivalry as a result–but the question still remains to be solved as to where–or who–of the suspects Mox truly is. Junius Tharbel has jurisdiction; he also has the scoop. And a material witness. And also a dog….and yet who seemingly has more interest in going off huntin’ with his country hick friends (you know: the short fat one and the tall thin one) than in tracking down Mox.

The dog is a Dalmatian by the way, which are not actually great pets. They have a high prey drive and can be very aggressive. Also, they have a congenital tendency to deafness and need special food because they also have a tendency to kidney disease. Anyway, the dog is also a material witness in the case. But how does Junius Tharbel actually plan to crack this case–and, more importantly, does The Shadow?

I’ve also talked at length before about how Walter B. Gibson never cheapens his work by letting The Shadow’s power level vary strategically with circumstances. It’s never conveniently just one notch above his current adversaries: it’s always at eleven. Sometimes The Shadow mows through opponents easily: if, for instance, he’s up against a handful of disunified, poorly-coordinated mooks in a dimly-lit area, or if he gets into a hand-to-hand fight with someone whose only combat experience is brawling with other thugs. Sometimes, he struggles rather more–giant Mongol henchmen are always a toughie; and gangsters prepared with anti-Shadow ordnances such as machine guns and spotlights, definitely make things very hot indeed. And sometimes he does get flat-out beaten to the punch, such as when he attempted to jump a squad of Japanese jiu-jitsu masters, or accidentally triggered a voice-activated murder robot.

But when The Shadow is on the struggling side, Gibson never cheats on his behalf to even things back up. Mongol warriors don’t suddenly lose their fighting skills or their brains; they get outmaneuvered, or they end up fighting Jericho Druke, or they get shot. Murder robots…actually, I forget how that one got solved, that was kind of weird. Spotlights get shot out. Carloads of crooks get sniped from mobile or covered positions; they don’t all die, but they are scattered and forced to retreat. Ninja masters get the snot scared out of them in a darkened room and The Shadow gets his last laugh. There’s a real-world logic to the winning of these conflicts that lends them–no matter how outlandish the situation–a verisimilitude, a weight and tension, that’s absent from other stories of the kind.

Clyde Burke liaises with Cardona and Tharbel, and The Shadow glides about in the background, communicating via phone calls and whispers so sinister his own agent gets the chills. There’s a spidery henchman who kills on the stroke of midnight, a death-pit, hidden rooms, secret identities, and red herrings galore.

And so it goes.

This is really a superb Shadow story, so much so that it received a follow-up, Crime County, several years later, starring Junius Tharbel and a dog named–Mox.

Rated: W-A-D-E-H-O-S-T-H-I-S-T-H-E-S-H-A-D-O-W