The Avon/Equinox Rediscovery Series #19: First On Mars, by Rex Gordon

17 books by Gordon (also known as S. B. Hough, and Bennett Stanley) reviewed in this segment.  This completes the Rex Gordon/S. B. Hough page.

FIRST ON MARS 

Cover art by Kelly Freas

 Equinox publication March 1976.  

Rex Gordon is the name chosen by Stanley Bennett Hough, a British writer who lived from 1917 to 1998, for his SF novels.  He wrote six SF novels under Gordon's name, and other types of fiction as S.B. Hough (six books also), and some under the of Bennett Stanley.  In WW II he was a wireless operator.  I will attempt to read all of his SF, at least, then move on to his other works.  All reviews will appear on this page.

First published in 1957, this very solid SF story is 192 pages long.  A full crew blasts off from the Australian desert for Mars.  Their intent is to orbit the planet to take photos and motion pictures.  An airlock mishap kills all of the crew except for one man.  Gordon Holder was the ship's fuel consumption engineer, and the only survivor.  He cannot pilot the ship back to Earth on his own; he is not a mathematician.  Rather than orbit Mars and die up there, he decides to attempt a landing instead, and at least die on the surface of Mars.  They say any landing that you walk away from is a successful one.  Holder crash lands, but manages to survive.

Things move quickly to this point, but now the book settles down to one man trying to survive on Mars, all alone and using his wits and available pieces of equipment to survive.  Sound familiar?  Any Weir's The Martian is a complete updating of Rex Gordon's novel.  The main difference between them?  Gordon was using all the science and knowledge available to him in 1957, a year before the first Earth orbiting satellite was launched.  The best images of Mars were from large Earth-bound telescopes, and were at best quite blurry, still leaving much to the imagination.  At least the Martian canal theory had been put to rest by then.  Weir was using up to date science from  2011, and all that we have learned about Mars up to that time, which was considerably more than Gordon had at his disposal.

As a result, Weir turns his novel into pure survival, Man against an alien and hostile environment.  Gordon allows Martian life to creep into the story, and puts them to excellent use.  Besides dealing with the survival aspect, which is completely fascinating on its own, we have biological plants that flower and bear fruit; a type of crystal life form; a biped, human-like creature; and an intelligent species of giant something or other, not easily categorized by any Earth standards.  So Weir wins hands down with his realistic portrayal of Mars as a dead world.  But Gordon gives us a unique and amazing first contact experience.  If we forget what we know today about Mars, the story is easier to read.  I ended up pretending it was a desert planet on another star system, one in which we know practically nothing.  Now Gordon becomes a near-genius writer, and gives us one of the best SF novels ever written.

In 1964, a SF movie came out called Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  To my knowledge Gordon received no credit, but the movie is an obvious rip-off of the book.  It would be funny to think of what might have happened to a film company if they had tried that today with Andy Weir's book.  The earlier movie, which I saw when it came out, drifts far from Gordon's book.  Too bad.  This is still a book that needs to be filmed, again using a distant solar system, not ours.  Gordon refers to Crusoe often in his novel, and the frontispiece has a quote from that novel.

A sensationalist poster for the 1964 movie.

A largest part of the book details how Gordon Holder manages to survive.  He learns to distill oxygen, and uses various pumps to get water.  He treats a plant to make it edible, and this whole area is done really well.  Some of the food is hallucinogenic, and some is impossible to eat.  Some can be tolerated after much experimentation.  If I were an astronaut heading out to a different planet, I would take Rex Gordon's and Andy Weir's book along with me, just in case!  Holder manages to build himself a tricycle, and eventually sets out on his first overnight camping trip.  He runs into the human-like creatures, then sees a bright light on a massive, fast-moving machine or creature, and decides to return to his broken down ship in a hurry.  He now has competition for his meagre seasonal food supply.

Cover of the 1957 novel, accurately showing the tricycle.

Cover artist unknown.    

Once contact with the aliens occurs, the book just gets better and better.  I know I will enjoy rereading this story in the near future, and will have no problem recommending it to SF fans.  Gordon creates a very unique situation, where he must contact the dominant life form to survive.  They use light and colour to communicate, and he barely manages to save himself by creating a flashing light at different strengths, as well as using some coloured material.  But there is a lot more to the aliens than simple communication.  Gordon creates one of the most enigmatic and interesting alien life forms I have every come across in fiction.  He also comes to terms with what it means to be human, discovering what our major problem is.  Here is a quote from one of the aliens, talking with Holder:

"...You crave for power, because power means safety.  You crave for strength because you are weak and uncertain of yourselves.  You crave for knowledge because you know nothing.  You crave to conquer the universe because it is so vast and you are so small.  You think always that if you can know a little more, if you can travel a little farther, you will stumble on some secret which will transform your nature.  But your nature is what it is.  It is that you should try to change."

Apparently Buddha is now an alien life form on Mars!  If you are craving an action-packed pulp novel, look elsewhere.  However, if you want something a bit slower paced, and are not afraid of admitting that we may not really be at the top of the heap when it comes to intelligent life, this may be your thing.  Obviously if you enjoyed Weir's book, you owe it to yourself to see where his inspiration came from.  It's amazing how well this book holds up, even today.

**** stars.  Reviewed February 4th/18

FRONTIER INCIDENT  

 Cover art by Leslie Wood. 

This is the earliest novel by Gordon/Hough I have come across.  It is from 1951, and is 192 pages long.  All of the hallmarks of his writing are present, including a small cast of varied characters, a somewhat closed-in setting, and a tense situation that must be thought through and overcome.  The plot soon focuses on Smythe, a British diplomat working at the embassy in Baghdad.  His wife Mary is pregnant, and they wish to return to England for the birth.  Their flight does not arrive as scheduled, and they opt for a coach, alone with seven other people.  The coach is hijacked in the desert, and the small group, which includes three Americans, an Arab, an Indian, and a British female archaeologist, are soon all thrown into a very confined prison cell in a small, unknown village.

The main tension in the novel comes from Smythe's interviews with a very calm and clever psychologist, wanting him to work for the new regime.  He also wants the British man to coax the main American prisoner, an oilman by the name of Fordyke, to also switch sides and come work for them.  The alternative is to be shot, and have their wives, pregnant or not, work on a road gang.

Despite the book having a very interesting premise, setting, and cast of characters, the novel largely fails due to Hough's tendency to have his main characters think way too much.  Over thinking might be a fault in some people, but not everyone.  Even Philip Jose Farmer can sometimes fall prey to this tiresome device, but soon returns to his action scenarios.  There isn't much physical action in Hough's story (there is an escape by three of the prisoners, including a Russian who was put in with them afterwards), but 95% of the story is hearing what is going on inside Smythe's mind.  There are so many pages of his second guessing (and third guessing) that after awhile one grows numb from it all.

Even in some of his SF novels, it seems that Hough had an obsession about having to decide between Capitalism, Anarchism, Socialism, and Communism, at least as practiced by contemporary society.  The big deal of this novel is whether or not Smythe will capitulate and work for the other side.  The group of captives have assumed that one side or the other has come crashing through the Middle East in one giant swoop, and that the entire world is at war.  So their decision whether or not to collaborate is an important one; I do not disagree with this.  And the book was written only 5 or so years after the end of WW II.  Many people immediately began working with the Nazis after being occupied to save their skin, while others worked for them but were continually trying to disrupt and aggravate things.  A third group refused to cooperate, and were either killed outright or worked in the underground movement to assist the Allies.

So this question of what a man might choose, especially if his wife and baby were written into the equation, is a valid one and not without interest and importance.  Overall, I liked the story, but for reasons already stated, I'm not certain how many people today would understand where Hough was coming from and why he was writing about this subject.  I just wish that the author

had not so overdone the internal decision process.  Make your decision; change your mind if you wish; but spare us every last detail of that decision.
**1/2 stars.  Reviewed June 2nd/19 

MISSION IN GUEMO 

 Cover design by Ernie Socolov. 

Hough's 2nd book comes from 1953, and is 195 pages long.  I read the American  hardcover edition, published in 1964.  Guemo is a fictional South American country, being pretty much in the vicinity of Paraguay and Uruguay.  After WW11 the remains of the Nazis fled here, to begin anew the task of building a new society, based on the old ideals.  James Branden, on leave from his ship, becomes involved with a girl who he saw being violently arrested on the streets of the capital city.  He reports to the British consul, and from there his life will never be the same.

He is recruited, against his wishes, to infiltrate the Nazi outpost in the jungle, from which the girl, Mary Payne, had recently escaped.  He realizes that he may never come back.  He was once a scientist working on guided missiles, but he resigned amidst a black cloud, which has been hanging over him now for three years or so.  He enters the Nazi camp through the auspices of an old acquaintance, and is shocked to see what he sees.

In Hough's books, especially the early ones, there is inner dialogue aplenty.  Pages and pages of it, usually focused on one idea or conflict at a time.  Hough's main heroic characters are all deep thinkers, highly intelligent, usually with bad experiences behind them.  This can become annoying as the reader awaits the next plot development.  Plot developments can be a long time coming, usually preceded by pages and pages of inner dialogue and thinking.  Take the trial, for example, in which Branden will pass sentence on a prisoner (who, it turns out, happens to be Mary Payne).  If he passes the correct sentence (death), then he will be accepted into the rogue society.  If he fails, he will be killed.  Well, before the trial actually happens, about 30 pages are given over to his inner struggle.  Will he accept the doctrine, or will he pretend to accept it, and continue to be a spy?

Even though a man called Gerhart now is in charge, and claims to have rejigged the Nazi belief system (he claims that the Nazis went wrong by expelling people like Einstein--now, in this new version of the party, outside help is welcomed).  He wants Branden's expertise to help him achieve his goals, which are, essentially, to wait until the Russians and Americans have destroyed the world with nuclear weapons, and then take over the political system.  There is a lot of fascinating ideology thrown about in this novel, and some very interesting conversations.  Branden eventually spots the flaw in Gerhart's belief, and manages to exact his revenge.

This is a thinking person's book, though all things considered there is also a goodly amount of action.  Whether you enjoy reading it or not depends on your ability to wade through a lot of doctrine, and having that doctrine turned over and over inside the mind of Branden.  In my opinion this is a fascinating book.  Being written so soon after the end of the war, it also offers some interesting thoughts about the Nazi party, and especially Hitler himself.  Definitely worth the effort to read.

***1/2 stars.  Reviewed January 28th/20

SEA STRUCK  

 My hardcover edition is missing this dust jacket.  

From 1953 comes this tale of a sailing ship and its irascible skipper.  It is 260 pages long, but I wish it had gone on for at least 400 more.  I have always had an affinity for books about the sea, including works by Joseph Conrad and William Hope Hodgson.  This is Hough's (Stanley's) 1st book about the sea, and I loved every minute of it.  The first chapter, where the skipper of The Wanderer single-handedly brings the schooner into harbour during a serious blow, is one of the best story openings to a book I have ever read.  Even though things slow down considerably for nine chapters afterwards, I was already seriously hooked.

By Chapter Ten we are back at sea, heading from Falmouth to Tangiers with a crew of amateurs, though Jane, a typist in London a mere week ago, is showing promise.  She is made temporary mate, then a week after that gets the position full time.  Jane wants to sail nearly as bad as the skipper, who is a scarred war veteran in love with the sea, and his current schooner.

They hit it off pretty good at first, and are soon sharing a stateroom.  However, Jane soon gets it on with Julian, a rich pretty boy who has also signed on as crew.  This causes the main friction in the novel, as the skipper becomes jealous and furious, especially when he overhears them planning to jump ship at the next port of call.

Through storms, financial disaster, coast guard troubles, and seas high enough to engulf skyscrapers, the skipper and crew undergo some severe challenges, emotionally and physically.  This is a great story in the old tradition, and not something you would ever find written in modern times.  Highly recommended, though take warning, as there is male physical violence against a female, more than once.
**** stars.  Reviewed July 18th/19

THE ALSCOTT EXPERIMENT  

 Cover art uncredited.  

Rex Gordon and Bennett Stanley were two names used by S. B. Hough.  It is quite difficult to track down all of his books, and some older ones are too expensive for me.  This strange little gem is from 1954, and is 189 pages long.

Roger is a man living outside of time, away from people, and is in a sort of self induced state of suspended animation.  He is living alone in shabby accommodations, and seems constantly wrapped in thought, his mind going around and around like an unstoppable merry-go-round.  An ex navy captain of a British submarine, he survived WW II, and half of the Korean War.  His mind has been damaged by past events, and his life is one of doing nothing as often as he can.

A phone call changes things, he hopes for the better, as he is asked to captain a yacht for a private cruise.  The good ship Miracle is to take on passengers, namely a very rich American and his 18 year old daughter.  Roger is faced with a task that he can't help himself becoming involved with, and it leads to some of his greatest despair, as well as to more hope for the future than he ever thought he might achieve.

Roger is a very smart and capable man, and is also a fine captain.  However, when he begins to become involved with young Leslie Alscott, things will never be the same for him again.  He first meets the young heiress as she attempts to jump overboard at night.  He stops her, and the mystery of her strange upbringing begins to slowly emerge.  The rest of the story follows the captain's struggles as he tries to discover exactly what is going on, and who is responsible for Leslie's precarious mental state.  Is she mad or isn't she?  Roger takes a chance on "no," which leads to some mighty fine maritime adventures.

The book consists of about 85% inner dialogue of Roger, and about 15% action and conversation with others.  Some people won't like the book because of this, and even I found it quite maddening at times.  But there are some wonderful moments of truth here, too, such as this brief excerpt from page 160:

     "It is not enough to know what you do, to work out, by science, the result, to calculate.  You must know also the emotional result of what you do on those to whom you do it.  If you cannot know that: if that remains incalculable, then you may not act."

     In the context of the story, these words are brilliant and timely.  However, they also make a totally amazing way to live ones life.  No wonder Roger has so much inner dialogue; imagine trying to figure out every move you make and how it might affect others.  Would there still be war?  Oppression? 

I found this to be a fascinating novel, and I highly recommend it.

*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed April 17th/19

THE PRIMITIVES 

 Jacket for my hardcover edition, which doesn't have one. 

From 1954 comes this tense and uncompromising 189 page novel about young twins, and their upbringing in a contemporary small industrial town in England.  The parents are poor, and are also terrible parents, especially the overbearing and insufferable mother.  We get the story mostly from the viewpoint of Percy, from the age of about four and on up to around 17.  Like most of us, Percy just wants some free time out of life, to find himself and to pursue some of his unusual interests. At school he is hot or cold, doing well in subjects he has a knack for, and failing those where he must memorize facts.  His sister has better success, and is a good student.  That is, until her brother starts receiving extra attention.

Hough can write an engrossing story, and get right inside the mind of his characters, in a way that compels readers to want to finish the book in one go.  I didn't, but it was hard to put down when I had to.  Percy is a complex, downtrodden, fear-laden boy, towing the line for his mother, though hating himself for it.  Elizabeth, his twin sister, breaks away first, and causes the mother to have a major breakdown.  Knowing that her son might do the same thing as her daughter (leave and go to London, with an older man no less), she panics and finally accepts him and anything he wants to do.

Percy doesn't know what he wants to do, but he worries about his sister.  The first and last chapter are told from the narrator's point of view, one of the upstanding citizens of the town.  We are made aware that the twins have done something thoroughly terrible, and have been sentenced for their crime, but we are not told what they have done until the very end.  We learn to like the kids, and sympathize, especially with Percy.  His lone camping expedition is one of the great chapters in fiction, and what he accomplished turns out to be a truly great and inspired feat.  But that remains his only major triumph in life.  Other bits of freedom have been stolen from extra moments he saves, such as racing downhill on his bike after dark, at top speed.  The rest of his life he is indentured to the Man, so to speak.  Until he sets off for London, after losing contact with his sister.

Hough, as usual, has written a minor masterpiece of fiction, a story far from the madding crowd.  His characters are astonishingly well portrayed, with his setting firmly established, and a plot that moves along and holds our interest.  The book is a real find, and will be reread.  Highly recommended, as is anything by this author.  It wouldn't hurt to be familiar with Jean Cocteau's 1930 (English translation date) Les Enfants Terribles, a different kind of brother/sister story.

**** stars.  Reviewed October 23rd/19

UTOPIA 239 

Cover artist uncredited. 

From 1955 comes this intense 222 page SF adventure novel, about a group of three people who leap into the future to escape an inevitable atomic war in 1958.  This paperback edition is from 1961.  It is an odd story, though engaging.  It is obviously the source of the many post-holocaust novels of John Christopher, though this one is much more interested in morality and proving a point.

The story opens in London, amid fear and suspicion as nuclear secrets continue to be developed.  Selwyn Penderton is such a nuclear scientist.  He is in love with Mary Linz, daughter of a disgraced scientist.  Even meeting up with her secretly puts him in danger of consorting with the enemy.  Going to her house, which is under surveillance, could mean losing his job.  Imagine his surprise when he discovers that old man Linz has discovered a way into the future.  The three make plans to leave 1958, and try their luck in a different time.  So far the story is fairly normal, though it is a bit hard to believe that a black listed scientist could gather the equipment and have the know-how to build a machine to travel into the future.

With the machine ready to go, they climb into their capsule and prepare for the journey.  It is a rough one, but they all come out alive.  Into a vast, unending field of corn.  I absolutely loved this part of the novel!  Of all the things I was expecting, it was not a flat and endless field of corn.  The air contains radiation, but is otherwise clear and pure.  There are no birds, no roads, no buildings, no people, no sign of any civilization.  At night the surroundings are black and impenetrable.  There are no aircraft.  It shakes them to the core.  They had expected and hoped for a vast city of people who had learned their lesson, now living in peace and harmony.  Instead, they got corn.

Their long walk through the corn field eventually does take them to a building, and here the story switches to one of morals; 1950s ideas of love, marriage, law and order, government, etc., versus what is actually going on today in this part of the world.  Contact is made with humans, first through watching some TV programs, and then with actual people.  Things do not go well for Selwyn and Mary.  They are transported to a hospital in a city, where their education begins.  And a fast moving education it is!  Old Linz adjusts much easier.  Decision time arrives soon, and the travellers must either accept a new and much bolder ethics, or depart for more traditional shores, where governments and fighting continue unabated.

It's odd, but the author asks every question I asked as I read.  And he answered, them, too.  Not all of his answers satisfied me, but what at first glance appeared to be a lawless and decadent society actually managed to function.  I don't quite get the part about clothing, especially women's, or why children have to run around naked.  But, like Selwyn, I don't understand a lot of things about this society.  However, since there is no going back, one either adjusts or departs for other shores.  No doubt I would take my chances here, but I wonder how many really would.

It is a thought-provoking book that manages to startle us more than once.  Don't expect all questions to have satisfactory answers, and don't expect me to defend the new society.  But I might accept it under the same conditions that faced our travellers from 1958.  Gordon would further explore time travel to the future in First Through Time.
*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed July 4th/18

EXTINCTION BOMBER  

 Cover jacket by Edward Pagam.  

From 1956 comes this 192 page cold war thriller adventure.  It's the kind of book I would not have given a second glance to on a bookshelf, before I knew about S. B. Hough, alias Rex Gordon, alias Stanley Bennett.  His books are not easy to collect in North American, and usually have to be ordered from England.  But they are worth seeking out, not just for their creative situations and deep thinking characters, but because Hough always tries to get to the very roots of what it means to be a human being living in very complicated times.

The story is a simple one, and we are let in on what will happen within the first few pages.  The story is told from the wife of an ace pilot, one of those few men entrusted with the task of dropping an atomic bomb on the enemy if required and ordered to do so.  Pilot gets call.  Mission is undertaken.  Will he follow orders?  What are the repercussions?

Such a simple plot, but Hough is able to dig deep, and gives us much more than a cold war adventure.  Written six years before Fail Safe, and two years before Red Alert, Hough's take on the situation that worried everyone on the planet in the late 1950s and especially the early 1960s is vastly different than that of other writers.  I can only imagine the screaming and the panning of this novel at the time by the establishment, and had Hough been American he undoubtedly would have been investigated as a Communist.  Such is the simplified thinking of most men when the pressure is on "to do something, anything" to maintain standards, appearances, and keep people from actually thinking about consequences.

The novel may even anger people today, perhaps more so than back then.  We still expect people to follow strict orders, and it upsets us when they don't.  To me, this book is still essential reading today.  Nothing has really changed in over 60 years, except even more petty despots now have access to nuclear weapons.  Not a comforting thought.  Would a North Korean pilot have any qualms about dropping a bomb on Seoul?  One reads, one shudders, and one moves on.

**** stars.  Reviewed September 11th/19.

THE TENDER KILLER (The Bronze Perseus) 

Cover design by Jon Weirman 

From 1957 comes this 205 page crime novel.  Originally entitled "The Bronze Perseus," the original makes for a much better title.  Harold Clemens is falsely accused of attempting to rape a woman on the street on a foggy night, and he pays the price by serving almost 5 years in prison.  As we are to learn later, prison does not agree with him, and he leaves it at the end of his sentence angry and seeking vengeance.  He robs a cashier carrying money and coming out of a bank, and later tracks down Emma Smith, the woman who put him in jail for nothing.

The third main character is this weirdly warped drama is the police sergeant in the town where Clemens takes up residence, setting himself up as a small grocer in the town where Miss Smith runs a private school.  Trying to keep a step ahead of the sergeant is a full time job for Clemens, who soon strikes up a romantic relationship with Miss Smith.  We can pretty much guess what he hopes to gain from this relationship.  We have known all along how messed up this woman is, but Clemens is just beginning to find out.

I kept comparing this novel to some that I have read by Patricia Highsmith.  We usually cheer for Ripley in her books, that dastardly criminal and murderer that everyone loves.  And here, we find ourselves aligned with Mr. Clemens, who is definitely owed something by society after what he has been through.  In fact, we hope he gets away with his theft, and we hope he gets away with his murder.  And he does, in a way.  But in another way, the sergeant knows exactly how to get at him, even though he has no formal evidence to charge him with either major crime.  We are led to believe that Clemens will destroy himself eventually, thinking the police are always watching him, and ready to pounce at any time.  Their conversation in an outdoor cafe in Florence is a classic denoument of crime fiction.  What are the odds of an intelligent criminal having to deal with an equally smart cop?

We are never directly told what makes Miss Smith a monster in Clemens' eyes.  He almost comes out with it, but decides that no one would believe him.  We have a suspicion, however, that it has something to do with the students at her boarding school, and their innocence.  Clemens finds out what it is on his Honeymoon, but never gets around to telling us.  Instead of attempting to work with the authorities to have Miss Smith committed, he decides to be her judge, jury, and executioner on his own.  That, in the sergeant's eyes, is where Clemens went wrong, and he needs to be punished in the only way open to him.  Whereas Clemens justifies his means via the statue of Perseus and the head of the Medusa, the law looks on things a bit differently.

This is a thought-provoking book, and has not dated itself at all.  Highly recommended.

*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed January 19th/19

FIRST TO THE STARS 

Cover art by Emsh     

From 1959 comes Rex Gordon's 2nd "first" books.  It was written two years after First On Mars, and is 190 pages.  Chapters are very short, and the book is easy to read.  In fact, I found it hard to put down once I got going.  Though the anthropology is not as accurate or refined as the SF novels of Chad Oliver (who is an actual anthropologist), Gordon makes a good case for most of his hero's encounters with an alien race.

The story breaks down into several sections, with the first one encompassing a voyage that leads to a binary star system 20 light years away, instead of the expected jaunt to Mars.  A man and a woman are the only crew.  Elvinia Kohl, a biologist, and David Spencer, pilot and engineer, do not get along.  Their discussions are frank and honest, a strange thing in 1959 SF literature.  Their relationship eventually becomes warmer, as the time spent cramped together in a small capsule goes on and on.  They manage to get beyond light speed, and end up crash landing on a small planet, part of the Kara system, though they do not know it at the time.

The second part of the book deals with their meagre and primitive existence on the planet's surface, first embedded in a giant marsh, and then moving on to higher ground and establishing their home there.  With Elvinia about to give birth to their first child, the two humans have accepted their fate and are making the most of it.  I'm not certain how the plan to carry on their bloodline was ever going to work out, but they seemed to think it would.  Wouldn't a biologist know better?  Brother marrying sister, or male child mating with mother, or father with daughter, will not exactly lead to a healthy gene pool.  I guess that since the speed of light has already been overcome, this is a minor problem that faces them.

David and Eve, the daughter, are rescued by the grasshopper-like people of Kara, and spend 13 long years as prisoners and specimens of the alien race.  This marks the third section of the story, and is a pretty interesting one (like all of the others).  Eve manages to gain a very adult education, and despite her young years is basically an adult in all of her thinking.  The aliens decide to take her and her father back to Earth, and attempt a first contact.  This marks the final section of the book, except for a short coda when they are finally back.  They have returned nearly 200 years later, and despite what David has told his daughter about Earth, his knowledge is very outdated.

This is an exceptionally good book, especially for its time.  Gordon was an amazing thinker and a very good writer.  His SF output is very small, but if the quality continues I will doubtless enjoy his regular fiction.  Highly recommended, despite some outdated science concepts, and a nominal grasp of biology.  The human relations, and the human-alien relations, on the other hand, seem spot on.

**** stars.  Reviewed March 26th/18

BEYOND THE ELEVENTH HOUR 

 Cover design by Martin Kaye 

Hough's novel of World War 3 is 190 pages, and is from 1961.  Many Sf novels discuss life in post holocaust society, some of the more memorable ones being written by Edgar Pangborn, Ward Moore, and John Christopher.  Christopher really got people thinking back in 1956 with his Death of Grass (No Blade of Grass).  But many authors, including Pangborn, do not deal with the actual event itself.  In 1961, what would a world war look like?  How would it start?  Why would it escalate?  What would be the collateral damage?  Who would win?

This "what if" novel is one of the most chilling war novels I have ever come across.  The story follows two main characters and several other ones.  Angna Dunn is a Nepalese farmer, a former Gurka in the British army.  John is an army reservist living in rural England with his wife Mary and two young children, a boy of 9 and a girl of 12.  We follow these two male characters throughout the book, getting a ground-eye view of what is happening, and what was known on the ground.  We also get to follow a few colonels and generals, and the presidents of India and the United States, and the Prime Minister of Britain.

There are many people today who believe that there will be some kind of worthwhile life after a nuclear war.  They store guns, ammunition, and food rations, thinking that somehow they will be the lucky ones to survive.  And maybe they will, though the world would be a much worse place if this were true.  Some people even think that a nuclear war could be won.  At the time of this novel, China was not a member of the UN security counsel, and did not have nuclear weapons.  Only the US and Russia had weapons that could be delivered by remote missiles.  France and England would have had to drop theirs by plane on the target.

A reviewer cannot really and truly say that he "liked" this sort of book.  It can't be treated the same way as other catastrophic fiction.  For one thing, we realize that such a war could start at any moment, any day.  There are currently several very unstable leaders who have access to the buttons that would start--and finish--such a war.  Hough is a truly great writer, and manages to keep the story focused on humanity.  He doesn't let it get carried away into a militaristic fantasy.  The devastation is not only done to the landscape, for the people who remain alive afterwards are pretty much morally bankrupt, too.  Even the "winners" have nothing much to celebrate at the end.

I think for me the most devastating part of the book (partial spoiler alert here) is when John returns to England after two years of fighting his way back home through a destroyed and chaotic Europe, to see if his family has survived.  In the grand scheme of things, what happens is pretty small and insignificant, but on a purely human level, what has happened is as devastating to the characters as was the war itself.

This is a must-read book, and is difficult to put down once begun.  Like several works by Christopher, Pangborn, Moore, and others who can write so well about what hell is really like, this one will stay in memory for a very long time.

**** stars.  Reviewed December 12th/19

FIRST THROUGH TIME 

Cover artist uncredited

  

Rex Gordon is a writer I am coming to like very much.  He wrote very few books, and only a few of those are SF.  I am now interested enough in his writing to seek out his regular fiction (like I did with Iain Banks).  The present novel is in ABA form, with the B Section itself being in ABA form.  It is 160 pages long, and is from 1962.  There is a very short author preface, facing the title page with a large b & w sketch.


The first section deals with the lab.  A group of people, scientists and military, are faced with their new massive synchrotron not working properly, but doing something even more spectacular than its original purpose.  It can send objects, including a camera, back in time, and then retrieve it.  The plan is to send a man trained as an astronaut back it time.  Though a robot is proposed, the choice is to send a human.  This is one flaw in the story.  They could have easily sent the robot first, and then the human.

In the B part of the story Judgen (the astronaut) finds himself very disoriented when he arrives at the cave indicated by the previous photos that were taken.  There is a mystery to solve, and it has to do with a skeleton scene at the cave entrance in the photos.  It appears to be the skeleton of Sara, the technician who actually manipulates the great machine.  Judgen forgets his training and staggers out of the cave, down into a verdant valley that appears to be inhabited.  His first contact with people of the future does not go well.  By the time his mental fog from the journey into the future clears, he is captive and has already seen some very alarming things, as in genetic mutations.

The middle part of the B section takes place in a city of the future, where Judgen tries to find out what has happened to his planet, and why there are so many mutations.  This part of the story is the weirdest part of the book, as he becomes unwillingly involved in producing a dominant race of humans.  In the final part of the B section, he returns to his cave, but then proceeds to the outlands, in an attempt to make contact with the people there, who are in direct conflict with the city dwellers.  He is enlisted to help them overthrow the city.

And finally we are back in the lab for the final few chapters, where the mystery deepens, but eventually gets sorted out.  For me the favourite parts of this book take place in the lab, where the discussions are very good and highly intelligent.  Probably too talky for some people, I nevertheless think this would have made an excellent SF movie.  Gordon's story owes much to H. G. Wells, but he delves even deeper into the weirdness of time travel and all that it implies.  I thought the ending was very good, and that Gordon gives a pretty good introduction to the possibilities.  Highly recommended.
*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed May 23rd/18

DEAR DAUGHTER DEAD 

 Cover art by Jon Weiman. 

From 1965 comes this 175 page murder mystery by one of the most original writers of the genre.  My edition is from 1983, the Perennial Library one.  Not much happens in this story.  The police are called out to the scene a crime when a girl's body is found, naked and with strangle marks on her neck.  Chief Inspector Brentford arrives and takes charge of the scene, with his Detective Sergeant Ball.  In a different but somewhat similar way than Holmes and Watson work, Ball becomes the recording secretary, while his superior officer interviews several neighbours, along with the parents of the murdered girl.

Several interesting points come up in the investigation that it is good to remember.  Firstly, most children are murdered (or abducted, or abused) by their parents.  I knew this going into the story, but in crime fiction one never knows until the final page of the story.  And that is the case in this story.  Let's just say that my first guess was wrong, as was the Inspector's.  We don't find out who did it until the final page.  No more spoilers here.

Hough restricts things to the few homes and residences of a private housing estate.  There are four houses with occupants, a total of ten people, including the murdered girl, as well as the caretaker.  We spend the entire morning, afternoon, and evening accompanying the Inspector and his Sergeant as he interviews everyone, some more than once.  If you began reading the book early in the morning, you could make a virtual day of it with the Inspector.  I liked this "real time" feel to the story.

The characters we meet are quite interesting people with strong ties to the murdered family.  As Sergeant Ball follows his boss around for the day, he figures the man is mad and has completely lost his way.  In some ways he has; there is no pretence about Brantford being a genius at solving mysteries.  Ball is always there with his internal dialogue to point out to us what the Inspector is not doing right, and how he is not following procedure.  Even Brantford wonders what he is doing at times.  But he has taken a keen interest in the case, perhaps because of the age of the girl (almost 16), and the state in which she was found.

As to the murdered girl, we learn a lot about her as the story goes on.  But almost immediately we discover that she is a bad one, but it takes a long talk with Feltman, a retired doctor who has taken an unholy interest in trying to steer the girl straight, before we learn how far off the rails Caroline was.

I have read and enjoyed a lot of crime fiction in my day, including all of the original Sherlock Holmes stories.  There are a few great ones by John Sladek, reviewed in this series on his own page.  When I was a teen, John Dickson Carr was a favourite author.  But Hough manages to tell his stories from just off-center, in a way that is hard to describe but a delight to read.  With 20 pages left in the book I found myself sitting in the office of my eye doctor.  Drops had been applied to my eyes, so reading was impossible until later in the day.  I sat for nearly an hour, reviewing the evidence in my mind and trying to determine who had killed the girl.  As I said earlier, I was wrong.  The ending, though thoroughly shocking, is told in the same quiet, almost laconic manner of the rest of the novel.  One certainly wonders afterwards what would have happened to Brantford's career.

This is top notch crime fiction, with lots of interviewing and talking to people.  If this is your thing, you will certainly love the book, as I did.

*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed February 27th/19

UTOPIA MINUS X

 

Cover artist uncredited.  

From 1966 comes Gordon's strangest book yet.  It is 190 pages long, and is the story of one Morgan Harvey, an astronaut and lone survivor of his crew of six.  His mission was to visit Barnard's Star and look for a suitable Earth-like planet.  Other teams had left for Alpha Centauri before his launch.  He crashes in an agricultural field back on Earth at the end of his mission, 200 years after his departure.  He finds everything automated in the fields, with tractors and threshers doing their thing without human drivers.  He disables a tractor and waits for a mechanic to come.

Melita Lucit is a very bright young woman (I.Q. 150) and is responsible for the farming equipment in her district.  She lives and works in the city.  She goes personally to see what has happened to the tractor, and meets up with Morgan.  She attempts to teach him his missing 200 years of history.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend Carlin (I.Q. 197X) is facing a showdown with the university administrator over his own future in the great scheme of things.  We learn that the world is run by computers, and that happiness for all has been achieved.  A little help from red-cloaked doctors is sometimes needed to help the happiness along, but the society functions well and everyone does seem happy.  No one works if they don't wish to.  Everything is free, including rent.

The book becomes one huge discussion of Communism versus free choice and private ownership.  Morgan is dead against Communism of any sort, even if it might work perfectly for most people.  Melita thinks everything is wonderful, but is willing to listen to opposing ideas.  Carlin soon realizes that his mind is in peril--the "X" beside his score means that he is an odd one, and won't easily fit into society or be happy.  He is being persuaded to be "changed" by the doctors, so that he will be happy.

The three main characters end up together, having endless discussions.  The worst discussion, however, was between Carlin and his university administrator.  I nearly gave up on the book at that time, but managed to yawn my way through it.  There is very little action in the story, but we do eventually learn all about the current society, as well as any alternatives that might exist for outsiders like Morgan and Carlin.  If you like chewy and talky books filled with interesting ideas and discussions, then you will probably like this one.  If you seek any type of real action or adventure, seek elsewhere.

** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed August 14th/18 

SWEET SISTER SEDUCED  

 Cover by John Weiman  

The novel is from 1968, and is 191 pages of small print.  This is another case for Chief Inspector Brentford to solve, and he does it in one long 24 hour session.  He gets the call early on a Sunday morning, when he is out digging in his garden on his one day off.  Soon the spade has been put away, and he is talking to people involved in the possible murder, which started out as a suicide.  14 years earlier the author had written The Primitives, and that book suddenly comes back into clear focus while reading this one.  Both stories deal with brother/sister incest, only this one takes things from the inspector's perspective, as he tries to discover if Elizabeth was pushed into the water, where she drowned, or whether she jumped in of her own accord.

The book is mostly talking, and hearing the inner thoughts of Brentford.  If you like action mystery murder stories, look elsewhere.  If you want to know how a real detective might go about solving a murder case, as he talks and listens to many people connected with the pair in question, then this is the book for you.  It is not technical by any means--for one thing, the drowning happened weeks earlier, and the inquest named it suicide.  But new evidence has cropped up, and in comes our Chief Inspector.

We not only get to know, in some intimate detail, about several people who live in the small city of Lockley, near Penlee village, where the incident occurred, but we also get to pretty much understand how the entire town is laid out, and how it functions.  The richness of detail provided as the Inspector goes about his busy day and night goes a long way to making the book almost seem like a guidebook for new residents.  But we never learn more than we need to, as the author keeps tight rein on relevance to the case at hand.  Anything and everything we learn could become significant at some point.

The ending is one of the more brilliant ones for this type of fiction, as Brentford realizes that he must arrest the brother.  But he also realizes, from everything that he has been told, that the suspect deserves some type of break for what he has been through.  And he gives it to him, though it is not what the reader would expect.  A very fine piece of writing.

*** 1/2 stars.  Reviewed March 8th/20

THE YELLOW FACTION 

 Cover art by Kelly Freas 

I haven't been so sad to read the final SF work of a writer since the death of Iain M. Banks.   Gordon only wrote six of them, whereas Banks wrote enough so that constant rereading of them should keep me happy till I die.  This final Gordon SF novel comes from 1969, and is the standard  160 pages long.  It is a brilliant account of a human colony 20 light years from Earth rediscovering space flight.  It is quite dense in places, political in the extreme, and with more plot turns than a stick of twisted red licorice.

Much of the story is related through journals and communiques from various leaders, and at first I thought this was going to drag the plot down.  And in fact it does, until you realize the significance.  Reading this novel a second time is almost required, and I already look forward to the day!

The three political parties on the planet Arcon are identified by colour.  The Blues want people to change to fit the new world they have settled.  The Greens want to change the world to fit the people who are living there.  The Yellows want to leave and go elsewhere.  There, in a nutshell, lies the basic conflict.  A tug of on-going war between the Information Office and the Military on Arcon leads to the development of a rocket that will take 12 selected people to a new star system another 20 light years hence.  Only the whole project is phony, carried out just to thwart plans of the ruling party.  There are double and triple crosses, and the reader must pay careful attention to the plot, and often reread sections to make sense of what is happening.

The reluctant hero of it all is a student by the name of Len Thomas, who is studying to become a communications engineer.  The other 11 young people selected to join him on the lifelong expedition are equally talented and useful in other highly significant areas.  Together they form the 24-legged creature, unstoppable and unpredictable, able to think their way out of virtually any tricky situation.

The main problem with life on Arcon can be summed up by the term "payoff balance."  Arcon falls short on this important factor.  With a lifespan of only 40 years, due to salts in the atmosphere, there isn't enough time in a human life to train for extreme expertise.  By the age of 30-35, when such expertise (post doctoral?) can be utilized, there isn't enough time left for experimentation that would lead to technological and scientific breakthroughs.  How can Arcon overcome this extreme handicap?  As things stand, they cannot progress, and they cannot escape the planet, as rocket technology is too demanding for their shortened lifespan.  The author has presented a humdinger of a problem, and I am not going to spoil the plot for readers by outlining how they go about attacking this formidable challenge.

This is a rare, very intelligent look at how a lone space colony from Earth got themselves into a Catch 22 situation, and how they go about trying to get out of it.  Highly recommended reading for serious and intellectual SF buffs.

**** stars.  Reviewed October 12th/18  

FEAR FORTUNE, FATHER 

Cover art by Jon Weiman.  

From 1974 comes the final book by this terrific author, who used three names at least to write.  S.B. Hough is his real name.  This is the first non SF book by him that I read, and it has convinced me to read as many of the others as I can.  His books are rare and expensive, and not on Kindle.  This crime novel (not a murder/mystery) is 223 pages long, and is from the Perennial Library Mystery Series, #679.  But it isn't a mystery.

It tells the story of an Englishman, aged 50, unemployed for a year, whose life is going downhill very quickly.  He has a high maintenance wife who took a chance marrying him years ago in spite of her rich family's grave misgivings.  Their current lifestyle cannot be maintained on mere government assistance.  So Dalby does what he has to do, and turns to burglary.  He lies to Margaret, more and more as his lifestyle at night carries on.  Soon he moves on to more serious crimes, namely targeted muggings.  When he sees a chance of escaping his life of crime if can only pull off one final, very big crime, the story begins to get very tense.

We accompany Dalby on only a few of his crimes.  Mostly what we get from the author are his inner monologues, as he rationalizes his new way of life, justifying himself as he carries on.  He tried hard for a year to get work, but none was offered.  He feels that society has failed him, so now he must work outside of society.  and we go along with him, because he is correct in his assumptions that there is no other way for him to get ahead, or even to stand still and maintain his current lifestyle.  The book is more philosophy than crime, and it works like a charm.  On Pg. 77, the author's full page essay on the depths of despair is one of the best things I have ever read!  Strong and very good stuff, and if doesn't change the way you think about certain ideals and lifestyles and ideas, then you have no soul and no empathy.

Besides Dalby and Margaret, three other important characters enter into the picture.  The first is Delicia, a girl of 16 whom Dalby accidentally encounters on one of his house-breaking forays.  The girl is crippled from polio, and is virtually trapped in her upstairs room.  Her father is out of work, and is a drunk and a lout.  Dalby builds a relationship with the girl, despite her father not wanting to lose her because of the allowance he receives on her behalf.  Then there is the nosey neighbour, retired and interested in everything and everyone on Dalby's street.  McFarlane grows suspicious of his neighbour's new found wealth, and seems about to ruin everything at the last moment.

All the way through the book, Dalby's relationship to his wife of many years is quite hilarious.  He believes he knows everything about her, and as a result can control and influence her.  Of course he lies about his criminal activities, making it seem as if he has a job, but a shady one.  To his surprise, he finds out the hard way that he really doesn't know his wife at all, and it shakes him badly.

This is quite a brilliant book, and I highly recommend it to readers looking for much more than just a great story.  It is also a book worthy of more than one reading.  It is difficult to put down once begun.
**** stars.  Reviewed Nov. 14th/18

Page proof read March 20th, 2020 

Mapman Mike