Rogue in Space by Fredric Brown

Maybe gambling would be the answer, if he could find an honest game so he could enjoy it.  But finding an honest gambling game in Mars City--or in most other places in the system--was almost as hard as finding an honest woman.  Maybe there wasn't any such thing.  There was no honesty anywhere, not only not in gambling or women, but not in politics, business or anything else. 

Stalking the aisles of a Des Moines antique mall I spotted this 1971 printing of Fredric Brown's Rogue in Space, a fix-up novel first published in book form in 1957. Even though the last thing I read by Brown, a short story about a man-eating armadillo, was just OK, Brown was championed by big league scribblers Ayn Rand, Mickey Spillane and Robert Heinlein, so I felt like he deserved my attention, and that three and a half dollars wasn't too much to pay (though it was close!)

Rogue in Space is set in a dystopian future in which mankind has colonized the solar system.  How dystopian is it?  For starters, Albuquerque is the capital of the solar system!  Besides that, while democratic forms are preserved as a charade, the solar system is corruptly administered by the leading political party, a bunch of commies called "the Guilds," and the second place party, a bunch of fascists known as "the Gilded."  Not only is this society's politics tyrannical, arbitrary and corrupt, its culture is perverse and decadent.  The music is loud, simple and stupid; TV screens are several feet across and broadcast a wide variety of pornography; and homosexuality, voyeurism, prostitution, and necrophilia are rampant and accepted, even embraced, by the elite.  (Obviously Brown in the 1950s and a reader in the 21st century may have different ideas of what constitutes a perversity.)

What characters do we follow in this twisted world Brown has created for us?  Well, our main characters are a rock and a career criminal.  Yes, I said "a rock!"

Brown starts the novel off well with descriptions of his two main characters, who are compelling because they are so unusual.  On the first page of text we are told that life has appeared in the universe in only two places, on Earth and in a far corner of the galaxy, where a planetoid a mile wide achieved consciousness.  This rock is driven by its curiosity to explore the galaxy, and after billions of years of travel it approaches our solar system.

Brown based Rogue in Space on two of his short stories. The rock, which I was so excited to meet in the two-page introductory chapter, did not appear in the first story, "Gateway to Darkness" (printed in Super Science Stories in 1949), and so doesn't appear in this 163-page novel again until page 83.  Luckily we have our second main character to keep us company, a man called Crag.  Crag is a master thief and murderer who kills people with his robotic left hand.  Crag hates women, Crag hates homosexuals, Crag hates everybody, and over the course of the book we see him insult women, vandalize a gay couple's pornography collection, physically assault a male prostitute, and kill police in cold blood.  Crag is what the kids call "a hater."  Does he love anything?  Well, he loves to get drunk on the most exotic and expensive kinds of booze, and we see him do that as well.

Brown wrote crime stories as well as SF, and the first half of Rogue in Space is a crime caper in which Crag does stuff like pick locks, sneak into buildings, escape a prison, and get double-crossed.  The pace is fast, there are lots of cool SF trappings like space suits, space ships, and ray guns, and Crag, being an absolute jerk, is an interesting character, so I enjoyed this first portion of the novel, even if I was eager to get back to the sentient rock.

In that first half Crag falls into the orbit of the foremost politician of the Gilded, a man known as Olliver.  Olliver serves as a judge in Albuquerque, and has contrived to be the judge in a criminal case in which Crag is the defendant.  Olliver and his gorgeous wife Judeth help Crag escape prison and the "psycher," one of those devices we find in SF crime stories which erases your criminal personality and turns you into a law-abiding citizen.  Olliver and Judeth hire Crag to disguise himself and sneak into a genius's fortified laboratory on Mars to steal a disintegrator.  This device is so powerful it can disintegrate entire planets!  Olliver and Judeth have been telling Crag they want the disintegrator to finance the founding of a new political party, one which is sincerely devoted to democracy.  But when the three of them are on an asteroid, there to test the disintegrator, Olliver reveals that he doesn't really want to restore good government--he plans to use the disintegrator to become dictator of the solar system! Judeth and Crag won't stand for this, and kill Olliver.  Crag and Judeth admit they have a thing for each other, but have no opportunity to consummate their relationship because they are stranded on the asteroid, their ship having drifted away during the excitement.  First Judeth, and then Crag, run out of oxygen and die!

Us law-abiding types are always relieved when murderers and thieves like Crag die at the end of stories.  Justice has been served by the cosmos!  But wait!  My hero the sentient rock appears and brings Crag back to life as the second half of the novel (that corresponding to the second Crag story, "Gateway to Glory" from Amazing in 1950) begins!  Rock, what are you doing?  Maybe, as a rock who has never before encountered life, my hero doesn't know the difference between good and evil yet, and doesn't realize he should be using his godlike powers (he can manipulate any amount of matter at the atomic level) to provide restitution to Crag's victims, not bring Crag back to life?  Or maybe the rock knows that one should, as the kids say, "not hate the player, but hate the game."        

Apparently believing Crag is good on the inside, and has devoted his life to stealing, killing and drinking because of his environment (society made him do it!), the rock wants to be Crag's friend!  But instead of being thrilled by this First Contact, Crag tells the rock to leave him alone and flies back to Mars (the rock has summoned the ship back) to spend the money Olliver paid him on booze!  But Crag doesn't enjoy being rich; Brown does a good job of portraying a man who finds a life without risks or goals to be lacking.  While Crag is moping around bars and hotels, the rock alters the orbits of every asteroid in the asteroid belt so that they coalesce into a new planet! The government tries to investigate the new world, but is prevented by force fields and other phenomena.  The rock has made the planet for Crag, even manipulating the brain of the scientist who names the new heavenly body so that he will christen it "Cragon!"

Crag has made friends with a fellow criminal.  When this joker gets cornered by the fuzz during a jewel heist, Crag rescues him and, along with the jewel thief's cronies, they fly to Cragon, which they find to be a paradise!  No cops, no TV, no booze, no people, just the chance to start a new world, a place to build adobe huts, hunt and fish, sit and watch the fire and the stars.  To misanthrope Crag, disillusioned with the life of luxury that money can buy and disgusted by the pervasive sexual perversity of Earth and Mars, this may sound like a paradise (he realizes he doesn't need booze out here, that he used to get drunk to escape the pressures of human society) but the jewel thief and his hangers on don't want to live a primitive existence.  They take the ship and leave Crag alone, but Crag is not alone for long--the rock is able to recreate Judeth! Crag and Judeth live happily ever after on Cragon, watched over by the rock.  

1957 hardcover

Rogue In Space is pretty good.  Isn't part of the attraction of science fiction crazy characters, crazy settings and crazy capers?  Well, Brown delivers with main characters who are an intelligent rock and a murderous bigot who, we are supposed to believe, is a good person warped by an evil society, their bizarre relationship, and a depiction of (what Brown thinks is) a sick civilization.

Should we think of Rogue in Space as a satire of post-war life and society, or a warning that American society was headed in the wrong direction ?  Did Brown think 1950s pop culture was insipid and potentially a powerful negative influence?  That criminals, as rebels against society, are no worse, and perhaps better, than the rich and powerful, who are selfish and corrupt?  That the post-war boom was making life, which had been so challenging during the Depression and war years, dull, and making people soft, susceptible to decadence?  These kinds of questions add an additional level of interest to the novel, which already is a satisfying crime/adventure story about a man redeemed by friendship.  (Speaking of redemption, should we think of Rogue in Space as a Christian story, with the rock as God or his Son?)

I'd definitely recommend Rogue in Space--Ayn Rand, Mickey Spillane and Robert Heinlein did not steer me wrong!

Genius Unlimited by John T. Phillifent

"I'm Rex Sixx, escort to the expert from Interstelpol.  Put that to music and you should have a hit number.  Excuse my levity, won't you?"

For 45 cents, on the eastern reaches of the land where the tall corn grows, I purchased DAW No. 16, Genius Unlimited, written by John T. Phillifent and published in 1972. The back cover copy includes the phrase "a yen to do the science-thing in your own way," and warns us that our hero is named "Rex Sixx."  Is this a novel about a hair band?

Another question: Who is John T. Phillifent?  We'll let the people at DAW answer that one:

Obviously!

To make this blog post relevant to today's youth, I will point out that Phil also wrote some novelizations of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV show, the basis for the latest movie craze!  (Why are there so many TV shows and movies and comic books that expect us to just forget all about the Katyn massacre, the Gulag, the '56 Hungarian Revolution, Prague Spring, et al., and cheer on some KGB agent because this week he's taking a break from murdering kulaks and tossing samizdat typists in prison to help the U.S. fight some fictional terrorist group?)

I like the cover by Jack Gaughan.  The guy climbing outside of his space ship to fire his pistol at some menace reminds me of the famous cover of The Gods Hate Kansas. I remember seeing postcards reproducing the cover of The Gods Hate Kansas for sale on a spinner rack in Union Square, across the street from that famous coffee shop.

My copy of Genius Unlimited was once owned by a young man by the name of Patrick Blackowiak.  Mr. Blackowiak planned to order four more DAW volumes, and even filled out the forms in the back of this book, but for some reason didn't tear out the pages and mail them off.  Let's hope this was a case of Mr. Blackowiak finding these Dean Koontz, Donald Wollheim, Mark Geston and Jeff Sutton books on his local bookstore's shelves, or photocopying these pages and mailing them off, and not Mom refusing to enable his addiction to DAW's fine product line.

Fellow SF fan Patrick Blackowiak, we salute you!

Enough preliminaries, what is up with Genius Unlimited?  The first thing I noticed was how poor the writing was, full of clumsy transitions, strange colloquialisms, labored sentences, and odd word choices.  Here's a section from page 11 to give you an idea what I'm talking about:

"I made it grow a name."

The whole book, 140 pages, is like this.  One odd tic that stood out for me was Phil's love of the word "angular."  On page 44 we are told of Alma Tillet that "There was just the faintest hint of Scottish angularity in her speech."  On page 74 we learn that Olga Glink, "despite her angular name was as chubby and curvaceous as any Greek marble..."  On the very same page Graham Packard is described as "a long, angular, austere hawk of a man...."  This is a book which could really use some copy editing.  

The story: On planet Martas is an island, Iskola, where geniuses who can pass a stringent psychological test are invited to live in seclusion and do their work unhindered by the rules and regulations enforced elsewhere.  These are real antisocial types, each living alone in a private compound surrounded by a force screen fence and thousands of acres of dense jungle. When Iskola suffers a mysterious crime wave, its leader calls for outside help.  Interstelpol (I.S.P.) sends a sexy woman (I mean lady) detective, Louise Latham, and Interstellar Security (I.S.) provides her two bodyguards, our hero Rex Sixx and his partner, Roger Lowry.  Latham is a genius herself; her senses are so acute and her brain operates so quickly she is practically able to read minds, foretell near-future events,and see in the dark.  In fact, her nervous system is so quick that it stresses her out, and she medicates herself with vast quantities of alcohol! For their part, Sixx and Lowry wear stark white "immunity suits" (with helmets) that readily identify them as I.S. agents and provide protection from vacuum, radiation, gunfire, and other dangers.

These three characters, who are essentially comic book superheroes, take 55 pages to get to Iskola.  Twice on the way Latham's super senses save her from deadly booby traps, while in a tepid action scene Sixx and Lowry's armor saves them from an attack by thugs with rocket launchers.  Once on the island they do detective stuff, investigating the murder of a senator, Arthur Vancec, who had been visiting Martas from Earth.  Our heroes gather together suspects and witnesses and question them, look at crime scene photos, and search the area for clues.  

Science fiction novels often try to teach you some science, and/or address economic or political issues.  Phil tries to do a little of this.  For example the Iskola geniuses have "high brow" conversations with Sixx and company.  One genius explains the concepts of signal, noise and distortion, another talks about how so many men throughout history have been willing to risk their lives in war in defense of the "abstraction" of the nation or homeland, and argues that only a society that was dying would endeavor to enforce material equality, a policy that punishes those with ability. Then there's the description of the island's environmentally friendly power source (chimneys that draw in moist warm air to drive wind turbines.)

Iskola, an island where superior people can go to live in isolation and do their own thing, is (or could be) a means of exploring themes like the relationship of the individual to the state and society.  At one point Latham says that "Iskola is private property, and it's no one else's business how they live," but Sixx "contradicts" her: "It is now...Vancec's untimely demise has made sure of it.  In a murder investigation there is no such thing as privacy...."  I wondered if Phil meant Iskola to be a satire of or response to Galt's Gulch from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged--the geniuses on Iskola are kind of dysfunctional, and have to call for help from the I.S.P., which I guess is a government agency, and in the end they repudiate (at least the most extreme aspects of) their individualism and plan to invite a bunch of normal people to the island.

(I should note that I have not actually read Atlas Shrugged, only read about it.)

Perhaps Phil means Genius Unlimited to contribute to a dialogue with other writers interested in libertarian issues, like the aforementioned Rand, Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson.  I detected other, more concrete, connections to other SF authors.  For one thing it is hard to believe that the murdered senator's name was not inspired by Jack Vance, who, like Phil, wrote mysteries as well as SF novels.  And in the very beginning of the novel there is also a jocular reference to Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth: "Martas," we are told, means "gravy" in Hungarian, and Lowry suggests the discoverer of the planet must have gotten the idea for the name from a book.

Anyway, in the final third of the book there are chases through the jungle and gunfights and explosions as it is revealed that hundreds of people (paranoids and megalomaniacs who failed that psychology test) have sneaked onto the island over the years and have been hiding in the jungle, awaiting their chance to steal the geniuses' new technology for use in a plot to take over the galaxy.  Lowry and Lapham are captured, but Sixx rescues them.  The geniuses learn the value of cooperation ("...we must discard our policy of independent isolation and work together on this") and Sixx and one of the geniuses, the curvaceous Olga Glink, fall in love.  It seems like Lowry and Lapham will also soon be getting it on.  So a happy ending for everybody (we even learn that Vancec was terminally ill anyway, and came to Martas to expose his evil half-brother, which he succeeded in doing by being murdered by him.)

This book is pretty bad.  The writing is bad, one of the characters is silly and all the rest are without any personality, the jokes are bad, the action scenes are boring, much of the detective stuff and the science stuff feels perfunctory.  There was actually a sequel, printed as a serial in Analog and then as half of an Ace Double, called Hierarchies.  Do not expect to see a discussion of Hierarchies in this space in the near, far, or very far future.  

The Wicked and the Witless by Hugh Cook

"Towards noon, Sarazin passed a gross grey skull, so huge that half a dozen trees sprouted from holes in its dome.  It gave him such a shock that he thereafter suspected the forest of evil intent, and scanned each thicket for ambush by werewolf or worse."

My copy, front and back covers

As a kid I borrowed Wizard War (1986) by Hugh Cook from the library.  It's a pretty long book (447 pages) and I didn't finish it, but a few aspects of the book stuck with me. Particularly, I never forgot the disgusting worms in the novel; in one scene a worm actually crawls into a guy's urethra!  Another worm, the size of an anaconda, bursts from the carcass of a dead dragon.

As an adult I purchased a used copy of Wizard War, and then it sat on shelves and in storage for years.  I finally read it last year.  I loved it, and quickly ordered several more books from Cook's ten volume series, Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, of which Wizard War (British title, The Wizards and the Warriors) is the first.  I read volumes two, three and four, and then took a long break.  This week I read volume five, The Wicked and the Witless (1989).

In general, these novels are long adventure stories, in which people travel around, encountering monsters and wizards and exploring ruins in the wilderness, and in towns getting involved in wars, court intrigues, feuds, love affairs, etc.  The setting is a fantasy world, with magic spells, dragons, demons, and plenty of sword fighting, but thousands of years in the past this was a world of high technology, and ancient science-fiction style artifacts will turn up and play a role in the plot.  This post-apocalyptic setting also allows Cook, and the characters, to use words and concepts like "democracy," "anarchism" and "terrorism" without it feeling jarringly anachronistic.  Wicked and the Witless even includes a minor character who is a gentle parody of Ayn Rand; she engages in a spirited debate on laissez-faire economics with a loyal adherent of King Tor, an ogre.

For my taste, Cook includes in the books just the right amount of sex, violence, suspense, and humor, and strikes a perfect balance between plot and description; the places and characters are always well-defined in my mind, but the story is always moving, something is always happening.  The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness are some of the most entertaining books I have ever read, all of them quite long, but never feeling long; I am always eager to find out what will happen on the next page.

One of the clever things about Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is that most of the books take place during the same time period, and include many of the same characters.  In different books we see the same events from different points of view, or follow a character we recognize from earlier books during a different period of his life.  The Wicked and the Witless stars Watashi, who was a minor character in earlier volumes, a bloodthirsty 25 year old cavalry commander.  Watashi has just turned 22 when we meet him in The Wicked and the Witless, and he is more interested in a poetry career than a military career.  He is still going by the his birth name, Sarazin.

Inside cover and first page

Sarazin's mother, Farfalla, is the chief executive of a powerful country, The Harvest Plains, and Sarazin has spent his youth as a hostage at the court of a neighboring nation, the Rice Empire.  At 22 Serazin returns home, and we follow several years of his madcap military and political career, which takes place during a time of upheaval in the world; as we have seen in the earlier volumes of the series, the nations surrounding The Harvest Plains and Rice Empire are wracked by invasions and revolutions, and then the sorcerous defenses to the south which have kept the monstrous Swarm at bay for centuries collapse, leading to a cataclysm.  Amidst this chaos Serazin strives to achieve greatness, wins the name Watashi, and receives an education from various relatives, tutors, and mentors, and from innumerable horrible experiences.

A theme of Wicked and the Witless is free will and fate.  Serazin has been taught that people are responsible for their own lives, that successful people deserve their success and that failures and the poor equally deserve whatever happens to them.  At the same time, Serazin is obsessed with prophecies and the fates, visiting soothsayers and poring over a prophetic book, and the events of his own life, which is rife with political manipulations and secret conspiracies, strongly suggest that people are at the mercy of powers beyond their control, perhaps beyond comprehension.

I thought The Wicked and the Witless was a lot of fun, but I'm sure it is not for everybody.  It goes on and on, 457 pages of incident after incident, and doesn't really follow a traditional adventure story structure; there isn't a big action climax or a sharp resolution, the novel ending in the middle of a war at the point at which all of Sarazin's teachers have been incapacitated or killed or have abandoned him, and for the first time he has to stand on his own two feet. The novel is also, as the kids say, "politically incorrect;" topics like rape, incest, torture, and child abuse are prevalent and often played for laughs.  Numerous jokes revolve around the fact that Serazin is tricked into having sex with obese and/or old women.  Cook expresses considerable cynicism about lawyers, politicians, and religion.

So, not for everybody, but I found it a solid piece of entertainment.