Phoenix Without Ashes by Edward Bryant & Harlan Ellison

"We all forgot we were on a ship.  We forgot the cataclysm, and the accident, whatever it was...and we even forgot the Earth.  We lived as if our entire universe was a hundred kilometers across with a metal sky...."

When I lived in Manhattan I would spend untold hours walking the streets and admiring the skyscrapers and the crowds of aspiring actresses and fashion models, loitering at the river watching the container ships, oil tankers, sailboats and cruise liners bobbing with the tide or cruising up or downstream, and squinting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Greek vases, Roman statues and European paintings and drawings.  Life in Central Ohio doesn't offer these same sorts of opportunities, but one Columbus area pastime I can recommend is scrutinizing the bookshelves at Ohio Thrift's various locations.  Among the rough of all the romance novels and cookbooks and computer language tutorials one can often find a diamond. For example, I recently discovered a paperback edition of South African athlete, writer and adventurer Robert Crisp's memoir of his service with the Royal Tank Regiment in North Africa, Brazen Chariots.  (I read Brazen Chariots in my teens, never forgot it, and having reread it now can confirm it as a great read.)

Another recent Ohio Thrift find was a 1975 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback, Phoenix Without Ashes, a novel by Edward Bryant based on a TV script by Harlan Ellison for the TV show he created, The Starlost.  I've never seen The Starlost, or even read about it (I'm a cultural illiterate!) but the first page of this paperback (that page where the publisher tells you how awesome the book is and shares ecstatic blurbs if they can get them--Fawcett couldn't get any for Phoenix Without Ashes, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King being too young, I guess) indicates that Ellison conceived of the series, wrote a teleplay (which won an award from the Writers Guild of America) and then, when the show was actually produced, felt that the TV people had screwed it up and ripped him off.  There's an acknowledgements page on which a host of writers who have used the "enclosed universe" idea are listed, apparently a prophylactic or retaliatory measure against those who might have the temerity to accuse Ellison of acting like he came up with the "enclosed universe" theme, and then there is a 20-page introduction from Ellison.  I decided to skip the intro and read the actual novel first, as if it was just some ordinary novel I might judge on its own merits and not an exhibit in the never-ending case of Harlan Ellison vs. The World.

The first 60 of Phoenix Without Ashes's 160 pages are set in Cypress Corners, a spot of land 100 kilometers wide with a hexagonal sun and moon and a metal dome for a sky.  Here lives a sort of 19th-century farming community managed by Elders who preach from a Book that says that premarital sex is bad.  Devon and Rachel are in their late teens and in love, but the Creator (a eugenics computer susceptible to manipulation by the unscrupulous Elders) has decreed that Rachel marry some other guy with a better "genetic rating."  This part of the book is there to tell you that sex is good, religion is a scam perpetrated by lying hypocrites, and people who believe in religion are sheep--you know, in case you forgot.  We get to witness Rachel's erotic dreams, as well as Devon's dreams which cryptically reveal to him the true nature of the universe--poor Devon can't just read the back of the book like we can to see that Cypress Corners is but one component of a generation ship ("space ark") and has to make do with his latent psychic powers.

Going full rebel, Devon pulls a tape out of the Creator computer and tries to convince Rachel's family that their religion is a trick, but he ends up being chased into the woods by a torch-wielding mob.  By luck (or through unconscious use of his powers?) he discovers a hatch that leads to the maintenance and control areas of the generation ship, which he finds bereft of crew and in considerable disrepair.

These generation ships are pretty unreliable means of transport, always suffering mutinies like in Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, or breaking down like in Aldiss's Non-Stop and Malzberg's "Over the Line."  And all the stories about them seem to somehow be about religion, mostly saying religion is crap, though in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun the crap religion obliquely leads the characters to what Wolfe considers true religion--at least that is how I remember The Book of the Long Sun, having only read it once, and that long ago.

Anyway, Devon figures out how to use a space suit and operate an air lock, and then spends 20 or so pages talking to a computer, learning the history of the destruction of Earth five centuries ago in 2265, the creation of the 1,600 km long ark, its populating with three million passengers from dozens of different cultures (each hermetically sealed in its own individual sphere) and its doomed voyage.  Yes, doomed--there was an accident 400 years ago that killed the crew and the ship has been off course since then, and, in fact, is projected to crash into a star in five years.

I like the back cover
illustration, spare and evocative

I had hopes that Devon would immediately start exploring the other biospheres, looking for a technological society that could help steer the ark onto a safer course, but instead he returns to Cypress Corners because he loves Rachel and wants to coax her into joining him in his adventures beyond the CC dome.  We readers get an abortive sex scene, and a full serving of the kind of material we have already seen hundreds of times in popular fiction: Devon throws pebbles at Rachel's window at night to awaken her; Devon climbs up a tree whose branch approaches her window; Devon gets captured by an ignorant mob; Devon is put on trial in a kangaroo court.  He gets sentenced to death by the fraudulent preachers, but a minor character liberates Devon from jail and he and Rachel escape Cypress Corners.  On the final full page of the book it is made clear to us that, as in The Fugitive and the Lou Ferrigno/Bill Bixby The Incredible Hulk, a not wholly unsympathetic person will be chasing our protagonist through future episodes.

This novel is not very good.  While essentially competent, it is very conventional, a bunch of ideas and themes we've seen before without any additional elements or a distinctive voice to make it fresh or engaging.  Phoenix Without Ashes doesn't inspire any emotion in the reader, the characters are stock and forgettable, the style is cold and bland, and the pace is slow and unvaried--each character's every little movement is described, so much of the novel reads like a mechanical record of stage directions transcribed by somebody watching a TV show.  Structurally it has problems--as the first episode of an episodic story it lacks climax and resolution and suffers from long expository sections--and I for one don't find Amish-Mennonite type environments very interesting; maybe the constraints of TV production or the desire to attack religion lead to the low-tech setting, but I would have preferred some kind of strange futuristic or otherwise speculative setting.

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UK edition

After I drafted the above I read Ellison's long intro, which is full of spoilers (if isfdb is to be believed, the 1978 British edition of the novel relegates Ellison's intro to the back and retitles it "Afterward"--heed the wisdom of a people steadfast enough to eat a bazillion jars of Marmite every year!)  It describes the genesis and development of The Starlost project, mostly focusing on how nobody involved with the show knew anything about SF, the exceptions being Ellison and Ben Bova, whom Ellison enlisted as a technical adviser and whom he describes as "editor of Analog, the leading sf magazine in the country," and the program was a disaster because these people wouldn't listen to Ellison.  Robert Silverberg and Gene Rodenberry have cameos as people who back up Ellison and attest to his greatness.

This intro, titled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto," has the distinctive Ellison voice and thus is more readable and emotionally involving than Bryant's novel; it should interest people who like stories about Hollywood shenanigans and those who enjoy hearing Ellison insult people.  Most interesting to me was the fact that the Fugitive angle, seemingly tossed in at the end of Bryant's novel, was apparently the germ that started the whole project--we are told that a "West Coast head of taped syndicated shows" requested a meeting with Ellison because, he said, he wanted "the top sf writer in the world" to write "a sort of The Fugitive in space."

Bryant gets a page and a half to introduce himself, and his last line is "And I'm a dilettante inland lay-authority on sharks," which made me smile because one of Bryant's more memorable stories is about sharks.

While not offensively bad, I can't really recommend Phoenix Without Ashes.  Perhaps people interested in Bryant's career (this is his only novel listed at isfdb) and those who have seen The Starlost (Ellison says he never saw any episodes after the first, which he calls "the abomination," but that friends call him up to tell him how much they like it after catching it in reruns) will find it intriguing, and Ellison completists may want to own "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto."

January 1974 stories from Fantastic: Myers, Bunch & Malzberg

Let's take a look at one of the magazines I got at the Des Moines Flea Market!

The January 1974 issue of Fantastic has a weak cover painting; the dripping knife in the brutish woman's hand actually reminded me of the knife StrongBad likes to include in his own art work.  And is that water coming out of her sleeve?

Editor Ted White's editorial is full of minutia that might interest the SF fan obsessed with 1970s inside baseball stuff, like how the number of stories in a SF magazine compares to that of a mystery mag, and whether SF and the mystery are genres better suited to the novel or the short story.  White tells us that a traditional (puzzle whodunit) mystery story drawn out to novel length is a drag, while the "most memorable and outstanding" SF stories are long stories or novels.  He and other SF editors find that there have been quite few really good SF short stories lately.

At the back of the magazine we have eleven pages of letters.  Alexei Panshin praises Ted White to the skies, and White returns the favor.  Other correspondents call Alexei and Cory Panshin's novel The Son of Black Morca "brilliantly creative" and "sheer greatness."  My man tarbandu read the paperback edition of this novel (retitled Earth Magic for book publication) and called it "one of the worst fantasy novels I've ever read."  There is also a lot of discussion of Gene Rodenberry's failed TV pilot Genesis II and a rumor of a Star Trek movie!

I read three pieces of fiction from the issue early this week: a short novel by Howard L. Meyers, a very short story by David R. Bunch, and a story by Barry N. Malzberg.

"The Earth of Nenkunal" by Howard L. Myers

I'm not familiar with Howard L. Myers, who wrote few novels but a substantial number of short stories.  Baen has published two collections of Myers' stories recently, and "The Earth of Nenkunal," as I write this, can be read for free as part of the free e-book, the Creatures of Man.  "The Earth of Nenkunal" is the first story in what the people at isfdb call the "Econo-War" series, which the people at Baen tell us is part of the "Chalice Cycle."  The version of the story in Fantastic is graced with an evocative illustration by Jeff Jones.

The world is changing!  The Age of Magic is giving way to a period of religion.  This revolution is the doing of spirit creatures called "necromancers" from outer space; they are coming down to the Earth and taking over people's bodies and stealing people's souls and that kind of thing.  The necromancers have the ability to lay a geas on people that causes them to worship the necromancers as gods.  Among the worshipers, sex is considered dirty, which is a big change from the Age of Magic.  Among those still devoted to magic, it is normal for people to have group sex in the middle of a tavern while the other patrons watch and cheer.

Basdon is a swordsman newly arrived in Nenkunal, where magic is still holding on. Basdon is a recovering worshiper, and so he is a little reluctant to climb onto the tavern table and bang a chick while all the farmers watch and wait their own turns with the young lady.  But he manages to get into the swing of things.

After pulling up his trousers Basdon is pulled aside by a magician, Jonker.  The magic-user tells Basdon that the coming era of religion will only last twenty thousand years, so no biggie, but when the next magical era begins it may be stunted.  The magicians of the future will have an easier time of it if Jonker can find a particular magical talisman and preserve it for them in a place safe from the religious.  Jonker asks Basdon to accompany him on this quest; the talisman is currently in territory ruled by religious people, and Jonker could really use the help of a fighting man with knowledge of the ways of the religious.

In Nenkunal the croplands are lush and the people friendly; in the lands of god-worshipers there is famine and everybody is a jerk who loves money.  Basdon and Jonker have to fight in hand to hand combat with "weredogs" and their master, an evil wizard, and in the ruin where the talisman lies buried kill the musclebound body occupied by one of the necromancer "gods."  Basdon also rapes a six-year-old girl.  Hey, don't worry!  You see, she has a curse on her, and for the last two weeks her body has been growing at the rate of a year a day, so she's legal!  And, after Jonker applies a little more magic, the girl isn't calling up Rolling Stone for an interview, she's asking Basdon for more! 

"The Earth of Nenkunal" is an ordinary quest adventure with a few crazy pro-sex and anti-religion elements stapled on.  Barely acceptable.

"Alien" by David R. Bunch

This story was translated into French and included in Univers 10.  Univers 10 has one of those covers that makes us Anglo-Saxons say "Sacre bleu!" or "ooh la la."  Bunch is another author I have never read before; I guess it's education time for your humble blogger!

"Alien" is one of those stories that makes us 21st century people say "WTF?"  Two pages long, it stars a "little man-not-around" with a "pumpkin-yellow-face" who wants to love everybody and serve as people's "umbrella." But everybody, particularly a millionaire and a woman in high heels with lots of cosmetics on her face, is in too much of a hurry and they push the guy out of the way.  So pumpkin-face decides to become a man in a hurry also, and becomes the fastest and hurryingest of all.  The moral of the story: we are all trying to get away from something, and we don't spare enough time for love.

Awwwwwwww......

In his intro to the story Ted White tells us "Alien" is "a parable" and "a unique offering," but I suspect White included it to serve as evidence of what he says in his editorial: "I have talked with several of these editors and I've noted a common complaint: all are very discouraged by the general state of the sf short story."  Editor dudes, I feel your pain!

"Network" by Barry N. Malzberg

This story appears in the 1976 collection The Best of Barry N. Malzberg, and it is pretty good. It includes images, characters, an adventure plot, and traditional SF ideas, things our man Barry doesn't always feel the need to include in his work.  Somehow, of the three stories we are talking about today, Malzberg's is the least crazy!

In the future a crumbling big city, I'm guessing New York, has been closed off by the authorities, so the inhabitants can't get out and only tourists and students of the Institute can get in.  (Yes, this sounds kinda like Ben Bova's 1976 novel City of Darkness and his 1973 short story, "The Sightseers.")  Our story follows two students from the Institute who drive into the city, which is called "Network," to collect information.  They act foolishly, get in trouble, and have to fight for their lives.

A decent story, I suppose about urban decay and the callousness of the authorities and intellectual elites in their dealings with the common people.  The tense action and danger stuff actually works, so, kudos to Malzberg.

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When the wife and I are on some road trip in the Toyota Corolla, and I inevitably get us lost with my incompetent driving or incompetent map-reading, I say things like "hey, this is an adventure!" and "we're explorers!" and "it's always worthwhile to see things you've never seen before!"  The January '74 issue of Fantastic is a little like that.  Am I going to be seeking out more stories by Myers and Bunch?  No, not really. Am I glad I got to experience their 1974 wackiness?  That's what I'm telling myself!

(Luckily the Jeff Jones illustration makes the issue worth far more to me than what I paid, and I liked the Malzberg.)

In our next episode I'll explore more fiction from this issue, including Ted White's own story about "a new kind of sword and sorcery hero," Janet Fox's story about a "witch-girl," and the mysterious Susan Doenim's story, which she dedicates to Harlan Ellison!