Time War by Lin Carter

His mind was filled with a vast, dawning astonishment.  For now he knew beyond all question what the flying mountain of red metal must be.

The Weapon Machine.

And the smooth, mile-high dome of non-reflecting darkness?

The Living City of Arthex, shielded by the Null Sphere.

I continue to purchase books at a faster clip than I can possibly read them.  A recent purchase: Lin Carter's Time War, a 1974 Dell paperback with a terrific Frank Frazetta cover.  If you have fallen in love with this vision of heroic masculinity, lush femininity and crimson lunarity--and who could blame you?--run down to the Wonder Book in Frederick, Maryland where I got mine, because they had a second copy.

Lin Carter's fiction doesn't have a stellar reputation, even here at MPorcius Fiction Log, but we're giving this novel a try anyway.  Chalk it up to the power of good cover art!  Most of Carter's fiction seems to be imitative of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard, but the dedication to Time War promises that this is something a little different--an homage to or a pastiche of the mind-boggling body of work of our favorite Canadian, A. E. van Vogt!  Sure enough, Time War seems to owe a lot to "The Chronicler," AKA "Siege of the Unseen," AKA "Three Eyes of Evil."  In that 1946 serial from Astounding (which I reread in the 1971 Paperback Library collection M33 in Andromeda after finishing Time War and drafting this blog post), a guy discovers he has strange mental powers and then a woman from the future enlists his aid in a stalemated siege between her faction's flying warship and a decadent city that is a barrier to human progress and is protected by a force field.  The same kind of stuff happens here in Time War, and Carter actually lifts significant pieces of dialogue, odd phrases, and memorable images from "Siege of the Unseen" for use in this book.*

John Lux is a genius!  An "electronic scientist," he not only designs the guidance systems of ICBMs, but he owns and manages the company that manufactures them!  He's also a sterling physical specimen, big and strong!  But wait, there's more!  He doesn't know it yet, but Lux is a "neuro-radionic superman," a mutant of a unique kind!

As the story begins, Lux is in his office and is almost killed in an unbelievable way--his own pistol floats into the air and shoots at him!  Equally unbelievably, before the round can hit him, he has teleported out of its path into a corner of the room!  When he goes out to get a drink, an automobile with no driver tries to run him down, and again he is teleported out of the danger zone just in time.  These teleportations are a subconscious, autonomic response to imminent death--Lux tries, but cannot, teleport at will when or where he wishes to.

isfdb lists nine entries for Joe Schaumburger, letters to periodicals like Locus and 
Startling and reviews in the fanzine Luna Monthly--at the link Schaumburger
reviews some off-the-wall books we've actually written about here at MPoricus Fiction Log

Lux goes to visit an old professor of his, Havering, to talk out these bizarre events with a man whose wisdom he repsects.  He stays the night, and in the middle of the night an attractive woman who calls herself Lady Lis appears in his room.  She explains that she is from the future--a million years hence!  She can only stay a brief time, and has to give the novel's exposition quickly.

Time War is one of those SF stories in which there are crisis points in history and different time lines branch out from each crisis point, depending upon whether the Wellington or Bonaparte triumphs at Waterloo or whatever.  Lady Lis is from a wonderful Edenic future, the product of the collapse of Arthex, renowned as The Living City, 800,000 years before Lady Lis's birth.  You see, approximately 200,000 years after your birth and mine, the human race was reduced to only one city after a series of terrible wars.  Arthex was that city, and it was run by a computer whose robots did all the work.  With no challenges or responsibilities, the human race began a decline into decadence; all courage and ambition and genius, even the desire to reproduce was being bred out of the race--this easy life was going to lead to the extinction of the humanity!  (Like that time line-crisis points business, this is another idea we've seen many times her in our reading at MPorcius Fiction Log.)  A faction recognized this problem and destroyed the city before it was too late, forcing everybody out into the wilderness.  Out there, humanity had to quickly reacquire its old virtues, virtues that eventually led to the building of the brilliant civilization that Lady Lis lives in.

But Lady Lis's time line is under threat from the villain Malaire.  Malaire, living approx. 200,000 years from now, wants to preserve Arthex.  So, Lady Lis's people sent a huge unmanned robotic flying battleship, a thing shaped like a top or a Christmas ornament and bristling with weapons called The Weapon Machine, back in time to attack the city.  The computer running Arthex threw up an impenetrable force field, The Null Sphere, rendering the city invulnerable and setting the stage for a stalemate that has endured for many centuries.

Malaire, Lady Liz warns Lux, knows about Lux, the 20th-century neuro-radionic superman, and fears Lux is the one thing that can get through the Null Sphere, so he has sent agents back in time to murder him.  Lady Lis warns Lux to be careful and before she vanishes gives him a device to use if he finds himself in real serious trouble.

Lux goes into hiding, and the agents of Malaire, seven silver men who can fly, hunt for him; soon the police join the hunt, because the Silver Men frame Lux for the murder of Havering.  In trying to escape, the desperate Lux recklessly drives a stolen car into a river and seconds before he drowns uses the device Lady Lis gave him, which transports him 2000 centuries to the future, to the ravaged Earth where the Weapon Machine hovers over the city Arthex, which lies behind the matte black dome of the Null Sphere, its impenetrable force field.  When the Silver Men appear and fire their rays at him, Lux's automatic teleportation ability kicks in and he finds himself inside the decadent city of Arthex! 

The first third of the novel has moved at a pretty quick pace, and interesting stuff has been happening, but in the middle third of the book we get a little bogged down as Carter describes the extravagant architecture of Arthex and the outlandish costumes and depraved behavior of its inhabitants.  These descriptions are too long and had my eyes glazing over, though I will note that Carter does try to spice things up with some gross-out exploitation material, namely a description of two prepubescent children having sex.  Anyway, Carter very explicitly makes the point that a coddled existence has reduced the human race to a bunch of children with no initiative, no responsibility, no ability to overcome obstacles, etc.; robots solve all problems and do any work that might be necessary, so Arthex is like a giant playground--the streets and floors are even paved with a pliable material so people who trip and fall won't be injured.

Lux meets a member of the underground that wants to help the Weapon Machine destroy Arthex in order to preserve the human race from extinction--this guy actually seems like the only current member of this faction.  He is in touch with Lady Lis and so has been expecting Lux.  This guy--who it eventually becomes clear is in fact Lux's friend form the 20th century, Havering--trains Lux in how to use his nucleo-radionic powers by the expedient of forcing our hero into a chamber in which he is successively subjected to lethal doses of heat, electricity, gamma rays, etc.  Each time Lux is on the brink of death, his subconscious unlocks knowledge of how to control his mental powers so he can preserve his life.  (The theme of Time War is that adversity makes you strong, and comfort makes you weak, a theory that is easy for me to endorse as I sit in my air conditioned house, drinking tea and listening to Procul Harum on my headphones.)  When the training is over, Lux has control of his powers, and is immune from most attacks, can launch his own deadly energy attacks, and can even fly around with ease like our beloved Lum!  But he still has to breathe, and while exploring the city a woman captures him by shooting him with a sleep gas gun.  Doh!

In the final third of the novel Lux escapes captivity and gains a full understanding of his unique powers and of the true identities and agendas of Havering, Lady Lis and Malaire.  It turns out those attacks in the 20th century and the pursuit by the Silver Men were all illusions generated by Havering and Lis and designed to guide Lux into learning how to wield his powers and into helping Havering and Lis destroy Arthex.  Malaire was actually just a robot figurehead run by the Arthex computer, not a real person; to the amazement of Lis as well as Lux, Havering turns out to also be a robot, one built seconds before the erection of the Null Sphere by the Weapon Machine to infiltrate Arthex!  No longewr needed, the Weapon Machine and Havering self destruct, Lux destroys the computer that runs Arthex, and the human race is liberated, the citizens of city cast out into the wilderness to suffer and grow.  As the story ends we are given the idea that Lux and Lis will become lovers, perhaps marry, in the world of a million years from now.

Carter not only wrote fiction, but SF history and criticism, and in a two-page Author's Note talks a little about A. E. van Vogt and his decision to write a pastiche of van Vogt's work.  He notes two other such pastiches, Charles L. Harness's Flight Into Yesterday, and Damon Knight's Beyond the Barrier--we here at MPorcius Fiction Log wrote about Beyond the Barrier way back in 2014--and, interestingly, compares van Vogt's "intellectual puzzle-yarns," as Carter calls them, to "the sort of locked-room mystery John Dickson Carr specializes in." 

As Carter admits, his text imitates van Vogt in style as well as plot.  For example, in "The Chronicler"/"Siege of the Unseen," Van devotes quite a bit of time to the fringe theories on eyesight of William Horatio Bates, and to a related theory on how the path to health--and immortality--is to consciously relax.  In Time War, Carter discusses theories of the brain that claim there are large parts of the brain that have no apparent use and perhaps are responsible for powers we haven't learned to use yet, and Havering refers repeatedly to Charles Fort.  In the footnote I point out some direct textual similarities between Time War and The Chronicler"/"Siege of the Unseen," and Carter also emulates, or perhaps just shares, an idiosyncrasy of van Vogt's that is a pet peeve of mine; van Vogt was in the habit (see The Weapon Shops of Isher) of describing every hand gun, even a ray gun, as a "revolver," and Carter does the same thing, calling Lux's Colt .45 automatic, issued to him during his service in the Korean War, a revolver.

Comparing "Siege of the Unseen" to Time War, I have to say Time War is much less puzzling than van Vogt's text; for one thing, Carter's book is told in chronological order, while "Siege of the Unseen" is told somewhat out of chronological order, the main narrative having interpolated within it undated primary documents from a variety of time periods that provide hints about various events.  Van Vogt also does a more vigorous job making us unsure which characters are helping the hero and which are his enemies, and a better job of portraying the protagonist's ambiguous and evolving feelings about the aliens manipulating him.

Time War isn't spectacular, and could have used another revision, or maybe just another round of copy-editing, as different sections of the novel don't quite jive; examples: the Weapon Machine is described twice, the second time totally redundantly, and a couple of times earlier conversations are paraphrased, but the paraphrases don't really match the original dialogue.  I've already mentioned the superfluous descriptions of the city of Arthex that slow down the story.

Despite these flaws, I thought Time War was fun and enjoyed it.  Part of its appeal to me is that it is like a love letter to van Vogt and an excuse to think about van Vogt again; obviously this doesn't apply to everybody!  Maybe I should give some of the Carter Burroughs and Howard pastiches I own a try (I just bought a pile of them) even though I was disappointed in the Callisto and Green Star books by Carter I read before I started this blog, and see how I feel.

*Cf. "The important thing...is for you to stay alive for twenty-four hours" on page 23 and "bearding Geean in his great central tower" on page 57 of M33 in Andromeda with "keep hidden--at all costs, you must survive the next twenty-four hours!" on page 25 and "bearded Malaire in his den" on page 116 of Time War.  As for images, both feature flying men clad in silver who pursue the hero.