Lancer's Science Fiction line in 1972

In our last episode we read the edition of David Mason's Kavin's World published by Lancer in 1972, which they billed as a "science fantasy" in the "immortal tradition of Conan."  I guess Conan was a big money maker for Lancer; at the end of the book are three pages of advertising, and the first of them is for Lancer's line of Conan paperbacks.  We are told our local retailer may very well have a special Conan display!

I think people nowadays look down on these editions of Conan because they include pastiches and posthumous collaborations with Howard by people like Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp.  I think my brother and I had some of these as teenagers, but as an adult I bought and read those oversized paperbacks put out by Ballantine-Del Rey that have more authentic texts.

Perhaps more interesting than the Conan page are the last two pages of my copy of Kavin's World, which advertise Lancer's general SF line.  "Have you missed any of these recent LANCER SCIENCE FICTION best sellers?" we are asked.  Looking over the list I see I have actually read, and even written about, some of these!

Michael Moorcock: The Jewel in the Skull.  This is the first of the Runestaff/Hawkmoon books.  I was a Michael Moorcock fanatic in my teens and early twenties, and read all of the Hawkmoon books, though not in Lancer editions.  (I think I read the 1990 Ace edition of The Jewel in the Skull.)  Of the various Eternal Champion series, I thought these were below average, with less interesting characters and more tedious wars than in the Elric and Corum books, though I loved the idea that all the bad guys wore elaborate masks.  A theme that recurs in Moorcock's work is a portrayal of Great Britain as the villain, and with the exception of the Oswald Bastable books I think that theme is most blatant in the Hawkmoon series.  According to wikipedia the Runestaff books are full of weird in-jokes about the Beatles, British politicians and SF writers, jokes which I did not pick up on when I read them.

Michael Moorcock: The City of the Beast, The Lord of the Spiders and The Masters of the Pit.  These are the three Warriors of Mars books, which I liked least of Moorcock's adventure stories.  They felt totally uninspired, and I have heard they were written in a feverish rush due to a need for money to finance other projects.  I think my brother back in New Jersey still has my copies of these, the early '90s Ace editions, which have Dorian Vallejo covers.

Hal Clement: Needle: I own the 1967 Avon edition of this and read it in 2013 and thought it wasn't bad.  The way the alien communicates with the human protagonist was pretty ingenious.

Ted White: The Sorceress of Qar.  I own the Lancer 1966 edition of this, but have not read it yet.  I liked White's Spawn of the Death Machine, so will probably check it out after I get a hold of and read Phoenix Prime, which precedes it in the Qanar series.

Edmond Hamilton: Return to the Stars.  I own the Magnum edition of this, which looks almost exactly the same as the Lancer printing.  Was Magnum a division of Lancer, or a company which bought Lancer properties or what?  Mysterious!  The cover is by Steranko.  I read my copy quite a long time ago, I guess during my New York days.  I don't remember much specific about Return to the Stars--a guy's consciousness is flung into the far future into the body of an important personage involved in a space war--but I am pretty sure I enjoyed it.  Return to the Stars is a sequel to The Star Kings, a copy of which I own (1967, Paperback Library) but have not read.  Hamilton and his famous wife Leigh Brackett wrote another story involving the Star Kings, Stark and the Star Kings, which was supposed to appear in Harlan Ellison's abortive third Dangerous Visions anthology.  Fortunately in the 21st century Haffner Press and Baen made the story (which I have yet to read) available to Hamilton and Brackett's fans.

Poul Anderson: Satan's World.  I own the Berkley 1977 edition of this, and read it in April of last year.  I wrote a positive review of it at this here blog; it is a good space adventure story, full of hard science and libertarian politics, just the thing to cheer up you laissez faire types in this decidedly unlibertarian political season.

John Lymington: Ten Million Years to Friday.  I read this baby in September of 2011 and reviewed it on Amazon.  This is one of those stories in which Christians, businesspeople, and humanity in general are shown up by a superior alien.  As in way too many movies, the evil humans try to exploit the alien and the main character protects it.  I sold my copy of the Lancer edition in 2013.

Frank Belknap Long: Survival World.  The mysterious Magnum Books strikes again! I own the Magnum edition of this title, which looks almost exactly like the Lancer edition.  This is one of the worst books I have ever read; I suffered through it in late 2011.  As of today there are three Amazon customer reviews of Survival World, and all three award the book a single star; one of these reviews is mine, and you can read it here.

Robert Hoskins (ed): Infinity Two.  I own this anthology, and in 2015 read a few stories from it, including tales by William F. Nolan, Edward Bryant, and Barry Malzberg.  I should probably read more from this thing; there is a collaboration between Poul Anderson and his wife Karen, and stories by writers like J. F. Bone, Anthon Warden, and Russell L. Bates, about whom I currently know very little.

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Readers who have read any of the books from Lancer's late '60s/early '70s line, who think I'm all wrong about Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon and Mars books, or who actually saw the special Lancer Conan display way back when, are invited to comment!

Proscription List #1: Dickson, Lymington, Smith, Chase

As all you classical scholars know, during the crisis of the late Republic, the winners of a Roman civil war would publish a list, a proscription, of all the people they wanted killed, either because those people were seen as opponents of the new regime or because the winners of the civil war wanted their money.

As someone of limited means and with limited bookshelf space, I have decided to sell eight of my SF paperbacks to Half Price Books. These are books which I will never read again; none of them have covers I am in love with, either. Today I will archive here my Amazon reviews for three of them, Dickson’s Mission to Universe, Lymington’s Ten Million Years to Friday, and Smith’s The Galaxy Primes, and a review of Chase’s The Game of Fox and Lion I found on my hard drive but which I never posted anywhere.

In the near future I will post notes as to why the other four victims are getting the axe.

Mission to Universe by Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon R. Dickson's "Mission to Universe" has a good plot, and effectively conveys to the reader a tone of tension and tragedy. The crew of Earth's first interstellar ship consists not of disciplined military men or experienced astronauts, but a bunch of civilian scientists and technicians, and their commander, a scientist himself, not only has to whip them into shape but has to learn, on the job, how to lead. Dickson's focus is on the terrible danger of their mission, to find planets suitable for colonization by the people of an Earth on the brink of nuclear war, and the tragic costs, physical and psychological, paid by the members of the crew.

Unfortunately, the novel doesn't really come alive until the last third or so. Relationships which are so important to the end of the book are barely touched on in the first half, or so it seemed to me. I also didn't care for Dickson's writing style; it reminded me of Poul Anderson's, cold and totally lacking in any kind of distinctive flavor or character. A book with the tragic tone and exciting plot of "Mission to Universe," but written by someone with a good writing style, like a Jack Vance or a Gene Wolfe, could have been a masterpiece.

"Mission to Universe" has problems, but the emotionally grueling final third makes up for them, and I feel able to recommend it to classic SF fans.   

Ten Million Years to Friday by John Lymington

Ten Million Years to Friday has a plot with much in common with an H. P. Lovecraft type story: an eccentric scientist figures out a way to look into the distant past, and discovers an incredibly ancient, incredibly large and incredibly powerful alien being lies dormant deep underground, near an abandoned mine in Cornwall. The alien is waking up, and its psychic emanations can be felt by some human beings.

To this is added the anti-military-industrial complex sensibility we have seen so often, perhaps most famously in movies like "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "E.T." The reader is expected to sympathize with the peaceful alien and deplore how warlike humanity is, and the last 75 pages or so of the book are centered on the efforts of an enlightened human to protect the alien from the police and military. There is also an evil businesswoman who tries to use her sexual wiles to keep the eccentric scientist from diminishing the value of her stock in computer companies with his inventions, a strong animal rights subtext, and dismissive criticisms of Christianity.

I like Lymington's writing style, and there are some quite effective scenes, for example, when the main character is all alone in an evacuated town, with only a dog. The Cornish setting is also sort of interesting, as are some of the characters. So, I am willing to give Ten Million Years To Friday an unenthusiastic recommendation, but I cannot deny that I was much more enthusiastic during its first 100 pages, when it still seemed possible that the alien (and not humanity) was the villain, and the story generated suspense.

It is unlikely that I will seek out any more of John Lymington's work.  

The Galaxy Primes by E. E. Smith  

Edward E. Smith's Galaxy Primes is farcically bad, like a parody of later Heinlein. I recall enjoying elements of E.E. Smith's Lensman series, as well as his Skylark series, but this is a disaster that readers should avoid.

The two smartest and best-looking men, and the two smartest and best-looking women, all four of them super powerful psychics, go on a journey in the first star ship. Sounds like the set up for a great adventure tale, but it is not. For one thing, Smith spends a lot of time describing the boring relationships between crew members via stretches of dialogue that consist of boring arguments and bizarre compliments ("I think you are the greatest psychic in all the universe!") Even worse, every planet the ship goes to is an Earth-like planet inhabited by humans with a society almost identical to that of 20th century Earth, so Smith can engage in some very weak satire and boring utopianism. (For example, the protagonists disarm some totalitarian countries they encounter, using telekinesis to steal their missiles and warships so the democratic countries on the planet will be safe.) There are some hostile aliens and some fights, but the fights are absolutely lacking in tension because the protagonists' psychic powers make them invincible; with a glance they can generate explosions equivalent to nuclear bombs, but without the messy radiation.

Not recommended for anyone save Smith completists. I read the 1965 Ace paperback, number 27292, with the mediocre red painting on the cover. The cover is better than the book, however hard that may be to believe. 
 
The Game of Fox and Lion by Robert R. Chase

Published in paperback by Del Rey in 1986, The Game of Fox and Lion is one of those novels in which the clever open-minded people outsmart the stupid bigots, presumably in hopes of eliciting cheers from the clever open-minded readers that, the author expects, make up the majority of SF readers.

Chase depicts a universe in which the numerous human colonized star systems are riven by conflict, fierce competition between business firms, between political factions, and between religious factions. Underlying all of this conflict are issues raised by genetic engineering – do people with an altered genetic makeup have the same legal and social rights as unmodified humans, and do such people have souls? War has erupted between unmodified humans and the Bestial Clans, the descendents of humans bioengineered for super strength and endurance and who look like werewolves. Only a few years before a small group of humans bioengineered to be super smart, the Multi-Neural Capacitants, tried to launch a revolution that would have put them in charge of all humanity.

The plot of The Game of Fox and Lion concerns two men, Chiang, the head of a new business firm that is challenging the hegemony of the old firms, and Renard, the last of the Multi-Neural Capacitants, who since the abortive revolution has been living a peaceful life as the monk Brother Benedict, but now is enlisted by Chiang to help him defeat his business and political rivals and end the war between unmodified humans and the Bestials. There are some space battles, but mostly the book consists of chatty scenes in which Chiang, Renard, or their supporters outwit the heads of religious factions, legislatures, trade unions, robber baron families, etc., or discuss philosophical points. Lots of slippery business deals, legal maneuvers, peace negotiations, that sort of thing.

Chase’s writing style is bland, and there is little human interest in the book, the characters and their relationships striking no chords with the reader. And because we know the geniuses will win and because we already agree with the novel’s “message,” there is no suspense or tension in the plot. The Game of Fox and Lion is not painful, but it is not memorable either, and I cannot recommend it.