Robert Silverberg (1935-  )

Lan Wright (1923-2010)

STEPSONS OF TERRA

In the year 3800AD Earth has colonized about a thousand worlds throughout the galaxy.  The planet Corwin is in the constellation Epsilon Ursae, about 16 parsecs away (a parsec =3.26 light years).  They are  about to be invaded by the merciless Klodni from the nearby Andromeda galaxy.  The Klodni have already decimated numerous peace-loving planets, destroying and conquering everything in their path.  In a last ditch effort to evade the fate of the other colonies, Baird Ewing has travelled in a one-man ship to Earth to seek help.  The journey lasted ll months, 14 days and 6 hours.  Baird was in stasis during the trip.  Upon landing at the spaceport, he meets a Sirian, Rollun Firnik, a short stocky colonist from nearby Sirius 4 who aggressively accosts him, asking impertinent questions about his reasons for being there.  Making an excuse, Baird walks away and registers at the "A Shred of Vitality" hotel.  A visitor arrives shortly thereafter, a scholar named Myreck from the College of Abstract Science, who invites him to give a lecture to his colleagues the next evening.  Baird agrees and goes down to dinner where he's solicited by Byra Clork, another Sirian agent, who also is interested in his presence on Earth.  It becomes evident that Earth is under threat from the powerful and belligerent Sirians, who are planning a take-over of Earth for its own good, as they believe that the planet's ancient and florid culture needs more discipline.  After dinner, Baird is kidnapped by the Sirians and subjected to the third degree, but rescued by a tall man wearing a gold mask.  Myreck re-appears and takes Baird to his College (which is invisible, being a micro-second behind "real" time).  Baird is astonished to discover that the scientists have invented a time machine, but one that only is capable of traveling into the past.  Convincing the staff members that he needs to use the machine, he projects himself three seconds into the past and wakes up in a meadow outside the city.  He robs a citizen and used the money to travel back to the city.  He buys a gold mask and rescues himself from the Sirians, then purposely commits suicide by overloading the circuitry in a phone booth until it explodes.  Then the rescued Baird returns to the College but doesn't enter it in order to avoid a temporal paradox.  Instead, he goes back to his ship and is about to take off, returning to Corwin, when yet another Baird calls him on the radio and insists on a meeting.  He goes to see the other Baird who tells him that there were four Bairds;  the one he's talking to is the one who rescued the kidnapped Baird but didn't blow himself up.  The two make a plan to steal the machine and the plans for it, then sneak into the spaceport.  One of them distracts the police while the other powers up the ship and takes off.  The distractor is killed during the take off, presumably leaving only one Baird left, the one who's going back to Corwin with the time machine.  Back on Corwin, Baird convinces the council to let him build the time machine and install it in his ship before the Klodni show up.  When the vast fleet of 750 vessels enters Corwin space, Baird takes off and projects the time beam at the fleet and sends them 5 billion years into the past.  Then, after the celebration and decorations are over with, he builds yet another mobile time machine in his basement and duplicates himself once more.  Leaving the simulacrum to stay with his family, the other one returns to Earth to fight the Sirians.

A MAN CALLED DESTINY

"Jones planet wasn't the best place in the galaxy to be stranded with a broken drive unit."  Argyle is sulking in a second-rate saloon in the well-used city of Jones on the planet Jones, waiting for repairs to the ship which will take four weeks at least.  He's a second grade Engineer and is morose because the planet has no telepath.  Telepaths are used for communication across the galaxy and are the only means of contact between planets and the huge, Amazon-like trading corporations that connect one world with another.  Spiros, an agent of the Dellora Corp., buys a glass of Jones brand whiskey for Argyle, and offers employment.  Apparently Argyle's wife had been a personal secretary to the owner/operator of the Dellora corporation, and since she had recently died, Pietro Dellora wanted to hire her husband to replace her.  So they travel to the planet Dellora, where Argyle takes a room in the Galactica hotel.  A lawman pays him a visit, informing him that Spiros has been assassinated with his own needle gun.  Argyle then pays a visit to Pietro's space station, the headquarters of Dellora corporation.  He finds Pietro enormously fat but mentally astute.  Back at the hotel, an attempt is made by another assassin on Argyle's life.  In the middle of the night a thin perp appears out of nowhere and shoots but misses and then vanishes again.  The police arrive in the morning and arrest Argyle for the murder of Pietro, who's been shot.  He escapes the police and hides away on a freighter outbound for Rigel 5.  He meets the arresting officer, Lawman Sworder, who, knowing of Argyle's innocence, advises him to consult with Preacher Judd on planet Earth.  Judd is the leader of the largest political party and wields enormous influence in planetary and galactic affairs.  Before Argyle can contact Judd, another attempt on his life is made:  a local jeweler is assassinated and the gun left in Argyle's hotel room.  But Sworder smells a rat and realizes that Argyle is being set up, and advises him to go back to Rigel 5.  So he does, but the ship stops half way there and the passengers are taken aboard a second ship which voyages to a dead world named Leemos.  Judd arrives and tells Argyle that Pietro's son, Alfredo, has been behind all the attempts to frame or kill Argyle, and that it's all been a devious plot to grab power.  Alfredo wants Argyle dead because Pietro has left everything to Argyle in his will.  Judd also informs him that he's immortal, and one of an increasing number of psy-heightened humans who are being born with all sorts of different psychic abilities, teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, and others.  The theory is that with the augmented distribution of humanity through the galaxy, the expansion of mental abilities has occurred as a result.  They all return to Dellora, where a summit meeting is about to take place among all the leading trading corporations.  At the meeting, Alfredo tries to hog everything in spite of his father's will, using Argyle's psychic talents as reason to oust him ( how can trade exist if every one knows every one else's motives?).  But Argyle demonstrates that Alfredo is a psychic also and that they are not to be feared.  Alfredo fires a shot at Argyle, but Judd's secretary, who's a psy talent also, shoots him before he can get away.  So Argyle takes over the business, content in the knowledge that the Galaxy is now in the hands of the psychically talented.

Both of these were good efforts i thought.  The Silverberg was one of his first efforts and it was better than Wrights.  The latter seemed a bit hit or miss insofar as plot organization was concerned:  it read rather jerkily and although Wright was a well known author in Britain, it might have been improved by a little editing.  But it held my interest.  The Silverberg   was much better, imo of course, showing a lot thought even in the descriptions of the complex temporal events taking place in the College of Abstract Science (wonderful place-name).  Silverberg's Majipoor chronicles should be mentioned as good examples of his remarkable ability to evoke detailed cultural emulations sci fi or not...  These stories are dated, true, but still very much worth reading, being chock-full of interesting events and ideas...

 

    THE PLANETEERS/THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

John W. Campbell  (1910-1971)

ACE SF DOUBLE  B-585

 THE PLANETEERS:

Rod Blake and Ted Penton have just left Earth in their home-made spaceship.  They're in a hurry as one of their atomic experiments blew up Europe, but they were glad to have been given a multi-cannon salute even if the operators had forgotten to remove the shells before they were fired.  They land on Mars in a patch of sand dunes near a boggy swale which is covered with three foot high dome-shaped plants with sword-shaped leaves.  Blake notices a fifteen foot Japanese maple and points it out to Ted, using Ted's voice.  Ted replies in Rod's and the two realize that the plants are telepathic and are projecting images into the minds of the recent arrivals. They reenter the ship and visit a ruined city they have spotted on the horizon.  Landing in a sort of decayed plaza, they see that the scarred pavement is covered with centaurs.  They exit the vessel and the elder centaur teaches them the centaur language and history in about 30 seconds via telepathy, which is apparently the principal means of Martian communication.  They learn that the centaurs had visited earth thousands of years before, but had returned due to the cranky and unpredictable behavior of an emerging hominid species.  In reality there aren't as many centaurs as appear to the two explorers, as some of them are the dome-shaped plants (called Thushol) they had previously encountered.  As well as possessing ESP, the Thushol are also shape-shifters.  The elder tells them that they had given up trying to distinguish the real centaurs from the imaginary ones and that it didn't make any difference as they all behaved the same anyway.  While they're talking to the centaur they notice that more Teds and Rods are popping into existence all around them.  Confusion reigns until one of the Rods sneezes, proving he's human.  That Rod feeds the other Teds drinks of tetanus and they all run off except one, proving he's the real one.  They both climb back into the ship and leave to explore other planets.

The Ganymedeans are 7'3" tall and are skinny with green hair and are divided into two groups, the Shaloor and the Lanoor.  The former are upper class rulers and the others are slaves.  Ted and Rod are in jail because the previous Earthlings had shot at the natives when they first landed and humans were now regarded as untrustworthy.  Since much of their equipment is in jail with them, Ted is able to concoct a Crotonaldehyde cocktail which has the property of turning glass to a brittle solid.  They use it to break a window and escape, stealing a car and getting caught in a traffic jam and run into a light pole.  A sticky globular sort of creature (the Shleath) chases them until Ted drives it off with an atomic flashlight.  They are caught and jailed again and anticipate being used as Shleath bait in a kind of Roman arena surrounded by bleachers which are occupied by the Shaloor.  Ted invents electric soles for their shoes as he has discovered that electricity dissolves the Shleath, which otherwise absorb any other type of organism and get bigger.  After they're shoved into the arena, they turn the boots on and trample the Shleath into submission, but one of the Shaloor, having appropriated one of their atomic pistols, overloads it and blows a hole in the arena wall through which Ted and Rod escape and dash off to their ship and leave the planet.

Callisto doesn't rotate:  one side is always pointed at Jupiter so they have 16 day days and nights.  It's a heavy metal planet with a nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere.  The Callistans make machinery and buildings  out of cellular material and are mainly made of beryllium themselves.  Ted and Rod's ship is also made of that element, so while the two are being entertained and are lecturing to the denizens, other Callistan mechanics are busy taking their ship apart.  When they realize this, Ted and Rod dash off, chased by guards with air guns and wavy-edged swords.  They find refuge in a sort of factory where they are befriended by a six-legged dachsundish dog that loves borax.  It's name is gkrthps so they call it "pipeline" instead.  Stealing a bio-car, operated by muscles that drive sets of feet, they hot-foot it to the landing field and retrieve their ship before it is totally vandalized and leave.  Then they pay a brief visit back to Ganymede to drop off some of the doggies that seem to have the habit of multiplying exponentially when they get their favorite food:  boron.  Soon the Shleath that are terrorizing that planet will be wiped out by the voracious gkrthps's. (Memories of "The Trouble with Tribbles")

Curious about the tenth planet beyond Pluto, they fly there and land.  It's a dark place as the sun is so small and they place the ship near a cliff made of what appears to be basalt.  Exploring they observe that the surface is made of blue sand (frozen oxygen) and there's a lake nearby that's made of liquid hydrogen.  The temperature is 5 degrees above absolute zero.  Poking about, they see black cylindrical creatures rolling toward the lake.  They are immense, about 100' long by 30' in diameter.  arriving at the lake, they produce a long tubular appendage with which they suck up the liquid hydrogen.  As seems universal, the "rollers" have telepathy.  In a mental exchange, Ted and Rod learn that the rollers live a million years or more and that they are truly schizophrenic:  Their minds and bodies don't communicate, so the personalities are just along for the ride, so to speak.  When of the bodies finally dies, the mind forms a sort of vortex and lives forever.  One of the beast spots the two voyagers and the whole herd gives chase.  Ted and Rod take cover in a crevasse cut into the cliff while the pursuers mindlessly try to squeeze themselves into it, slavering over the potential juicy tidbits.  The first roller kills itself trying to mash into the entrance, so they escape.  Rod throws his water bottle into the air and shoots it, creating an explosion.  The rest of the rollers run off and the two run back to the ship and take off.

 And land on the tenth planet's moon, occupied by beings 5' high and 6' in diameter.  The ship is parked in a sort of garden the surface of which is mostly pink moss.  The name of the moon is Pornan and its a dense planet with twice as much gravity as Earth.  Telepathy is the means of communication here as well, but the users are a type of monkey that delight in making life miserable for the staider residents.  The latter drive cars that have immense inflated bumpers around each, because accidents are common.  The Krulls, as the monkeys are named, take fiendish amusement in causing traffic tie-ups, stealing items not nailed down, and creating havoc whenever an opportunity presents itself.  Their highly developed telepathic abilities enable them to project images into the minds of the more normal citizens.  The most common projection being that they themselves are invisible.  This allows them to practice all kinds of destructive and irritating pranks, such as automobile accidents.  The Krull steal Rod and Ted's ship and make it disappear, but with the aid of their space goggles, they are able to find it on top of a big rock in the park.  They stun the surrounding Krull with one of their atomic flashlights and escape the planet.

THE ULTIMATE WEAPON:

Buck Kendall of the Interplanetary Patrol and his six man crew are cruising near the orbit of Pluto when they intercept a distress call from a miner on Pluto, saying that a giant ship has landed and is firing on his dome.  The signal cuts off abruptly and Kendall races to the rescue.  He finds the mining location wiped out and all the platinum gone, but his sensors indicate that the invader is nearby.  The two ships fire on each other but it's no contest:  the larger one just absorbs the patrol ship and Buck and his crew barely manage to escape in a life boat.  They are rescued two days later and inform their superiors that the ship not only had faster than light drive, but also used neutron guns as weapons.  Since Buck is rich and an inventor, he resigns his post as lieutenant and begins experimenting in his own lab with answers to the FTL problem.  He soon realizes that extra-dimensionality would be the only way to go faster than the speed of light;  his analogy involving comparing the time it would take to run around a football field as contrasted with just dashing across it.  

Meanwhile, one thousand light years away, in the Mira system,  Gresth Gkae, commander of the 93rd expeditionary force reports to his superiors about the rich rewards being offered by the defenseless Solar System.  Mira is a variable red giant star around which the two planets Sthor and Asthor revolve.  Because of the erratic radiation, the worlds suffer from unpredictable heating and freezing eras, ice ages of indeterminate length, alternating with torrid epochs, also unpredictably protracted.  So the Solar System seems like a good place to move to.

Buck in his lab on the Moon is soon involved in studying atomic energy and the quantum world.  The lines of force observed to be perpendicular to light waves seem to offer a way to exceed light speed, but the problem of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle has to be solved first.  (That relating to the impossibility of pinpointing the exact location of a given quantum: proton, neutron, electron, etc.).  He builds an enormous generator using mercury as a regulator because it undergoes a change of state at  very high temperatures.  So he manages to create a magnetic bubble with which to contain and manage atomic energies.  Then he designs a silver mirror to reflect the atomic reaction along a linear pathway.  This light cannon is made just in time as the Mirans have invaded and decimated everything in their path including the planet Mars and its moons, Deimos and Phobos.  Because of the Buck's invention, though, the war reaches a stalemate. 

Continuing his research, Buck realizes at last that the Heisenberg Principle can be split into four different modes: quantum, atomic, molecular and mass.  And he grasps the fact that the latter concept will give him control of FTL because it entails the total conversion of mass to energy:  not only faster than light, but instantaneous travel.  So he builds several versions of the HP:  the 4th to power a ship and the 3rd to make bombs.  In no time at all, the Mirans are driven out of the system and their own solar system is conquered.  But Earth forces are not revengeful;  they realize that the Mirans have a lot to offer and that cooperation is more productive than hostility.  So they help locate another solar system for the Mirans to move to and share the discoveries about the utilization of the quantum universe.

I liked both of these epic creations of the Golden Age quite a bit.  Campbell, as an magazine editor,  had a reputation of being one, or THE popularizer of scifi in the thirties through his encouragement of writers like Asimov, Heinlein, and others, but he was a rather cranky and conservative sort of person and didn't get along with everyone.  Opinionated and harsh upon occasion, he nevertheless raised  the quality of published stories and novels into the realm of actual literature instead of letting them wallow in the depths of the pulp world...

THE CHARIOTS OF RA  by Kenneth Bulmer  (1921-2005)

EARTHSTRINGS              by John Phillifent alias John Rackham  (1916-1976)

Jean at Howling Frog blog suggested a January devoted to old Ace SF Doubles and since i have a few (17, i think),  she said i could participate in the "challenge" or "celebration" or whatever its termed, so:

This is Double #10293:

Roy Tully and Graham Pike grew up together, went to the same college and were fired from their jobs at the same engineering outfit.  They had no prior attachments, so they sold their stuff and bought a Cadillac intending to drive to the West Coast.  The first night they ran out of gas and while parked by the side of the road arguing about whose fault it was, a van pulled up alongside of their car and a few octopus-like creatures jumped out and began pushing them into the back, using the clubs as persuasive instruments.  Then the van drove off.  There were other kidnappees as well, some humans and beings of a more alien description.  There was a jolt and a head-spinning sensation and the van stopped to collect more victims, two of which were a giant Nordic type along with a blond skinny person named Corny.  The mental mix-master sensation was repeated several more times until the truck had quite a few occupants.  Soon they all had to get out and walk, persuaded to keep moving by the octopi creatures.  They crossed a desert environment and were attacked by giant Pterodactyl-like avians with retractable claws that snatched up several of the slaves and then went through another portal into the Myxotic Durostorum which had enormous man-eating flowers.  Many of their companions were slain and the Octopoi captors lost control of the group so Roy, together with the Norse giant and Corny, who was a porteur(capable of transiting through dimensional portals with only his mind), escaped and arrived in a city called Brorkan consisting of mud and wattle buildings and a saloon called The Friendly Mouse.  Roy met a fellow called Fangar, who was a short, thick-set warrior type from another world and they both were transported involuntarily to yet another world that much resembled Egypt in the centuries before Christ.  The two wandered down a river having adventures and meeting oppressed villagers and hermits until they reached the double city of Hamoun-Apen, situated on both sides of the OO river.  They had had an encounter with some chariot riders along the way and learned that the city had just been ransacked by a rival country (Hyktros) and was in a state of depression and devastation.  Roy stayed there long enough to befriend the two lady rulers of the cities and to invent a new sort of chariot with small wheels that permitted greater maneuverability than those used by the Hyktrosians.  Also he set up a primitive battery system that would allow the chariot drivers to zap their enemies.  

In another skirmish with some Torozoi usurpers, Roy and Fangar are accidentally transported back to The Friendly Mouse and picked up by a Landrover and carried through another couple of dimensions to the world of the Xlotls who are fiercely resisting the invasion of an army from the Irunium led by the Countess, who rules a number of different dimensionary worlds.  Fangar was originally from the Irunium, as was the Nordic person and Corny, his skinny blond porteur friend.  The Countess is delighted to see Roy, as he has developed into a porteur himself, and she wants him to help her in her vast plan to conquer all the worlds.  But when a miscalculation occurs Roy is transported back to the world of Hamoun-Apen just at the time that the army with the new chariots and the electric prods are about to attack Hyktros and the book ends.

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In Earthstrings, we are in a future world that has colonized some of the nearer star systems, but is experiencing a certain amount of strife related to corporate greed and crooked politics.  Jeremy White is a reporter who tries to find out why one of the largest colonies, at Beta Hydri, has failed to make contact with Earth for several days.  Sabotage is suspected and White wants to discover the truth.  Many of the large Earthian corporations want space exploration to cease, as they want to keep their money at home.  But science and other industrial interests want to keep expanding the Universal horizons, as they see that that is where the future of humanity lies.  There are complications having to do with wills and inheritances.  Jeremy interviews a producer of popular travelogues.  Barnaby Green has received photographic reviews of the the worlds that have been colonized and has done very well out of popularizing them with the general public, but the person from whom the films have come (Kit Carew, scion of a major corporation) is also missing, having been on Beta Hydri when communication was interrupted.  Kit's sister, Abigail, has been running the Tri-C's corporation since her father recently died.  She is worried about Kit and consults with White about the possible reasons for his disappearance.  Together, they meet Francis Allen of the mega-giant corporation Allen Enterprises and her present boyfriend Miguel Santana.  Santana is an owner-operator of his own space ship and invites the others along on a trip to Beta Hydri to investigate the mystery.  They arrive at the planet and beam down to find the large and sole town on the planet covered in a sort of yellow slime.  Abigail has a lot of training in chemistry and she sees that the stuff is all crumbly and is disintegrating rapidly.  It becomes obvious that Santana, working for the Allen Corp. has used a temporary poison to kill all the inhabitants so as to discourage future space exploration.  There's a fight, Santana is slain and the survivors return to Earth, Abigail and Jeremy having gotten married aboard ship.

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These were both pretty good books, the second perhaps better written than the first one.  The plot was tighter and some philosophical speculation regarding humanity and its problems was introduced in a mild way.  But in terms of action and adventure, "Chariots" had it beat:  lots of action, swords and wizardry, detailed description of "Daniel" cells as a primitive source of electricity, vivid evocations of wild chariot rides over bumpy ground, and effective elucidation of alien life forms, were all interest provoking.  But the two books did what they were intended to do, imo of course, which was to distract the mind from oppressive reality and console it with imaginary diversion.  I liked them, even though they were quite different from each other.

 

THE BETROTHED

Alessandro Manzoni  (1771-1825)

Trans. Archibald Colquhoun

November 7, 1628.   Father Abbondio, sixty years of age, is traipsing down a mountain trail, headed home when he's accosted by two bravos.  (This takes place in Lombardy in northern Italy.)  A "bravo" is a sort of hanger-on, or private soldier that relies on and does the bidding of a territorial Count or Don.  In this case, the two baddies tell the good father to postpone or cancel the proposed marriage of Lorenzo and Lucia, as Don Rodrigo has an interest in the lady.  Abbondio is upset.  He's naturally reticent and fearful, and doesn't want to ignore his responsibility, but on the other hand he's deathly afraid of whatever revenge the Don might have in mind if he doesn't co-operate.  So when he talks to Lorenzo that same evening he hints that it would be a great idea if the couple were to postpone the rites.  They are flabbergasted.  Lorenzo is a parent-less silk weaver, a skilled occupation, and at first he doesn't know who to turn to.  His potential mother-in-law suggests he consult with the attorney, Doctor Quibble-Weaver, which he does, but attains no satisfaction.  In fact the lawyer kicks him out of his office.  Later Renzo discovers that he's a toady of the Don's.  So the mother of Lucia next suggests they all go to see Father Cristoforo, an influential religious figure with a reputation for correcting injustices.  Cristoforo pays the Don a visit at which he notes the presence of Quibble-Weaver and a table full of rowdy and insulting minions.  They laugh and point him toward the door.  Rodrigo senses that there is opposition to his intentions and decides to kidnap Lucia.  At the same time, Agnese, Lucia's mom, figures out a way to fool Abbondio into performing the ceremony by using a little known clause in the civil code.  They try their ploy on the same night that the bravos plan their nefarious deed.  Abbondio is aghast at what Agnese wants him to do and begins yelling which alarms the night watchman who starts ringing the church bell to wake the village.  People leave their houses and run around the streets scaring each other with imaginary disasters and phantoms.  Meanwhile the two baddies have ransacked the house, looking for Lucia, but find nobody home, so they make tracks out of town.

The three, Lucia, Renzo and Agnese visit Cristoforo for advice.  He counsels them to leave town for a while.  The two ladies travel to the Monza Convent near Milan for refuge and Renzo goes to Milan itself to ask Fra Bonaventura's opinion on what to do.  Renzo arrives during a bread riot and due to overindulging in vino and expressing himself too outwardly, is arrested by a couple of police persons but manages to escape.  He makes his way out of Lombardy and gets a job in a cousin's silk factory in Bergamo.  But he can't return to Milan because the authorities have blown his involvement in the riot way out of proportion and are actively searching for him as one of the ringleaders.  Lucia, due to the conniving of Rodrigo's uncle, is fooled into taking vows to be a nun.  Still hungering for her person, Rodrigo talks to another relation who is entitled by the author, "Unnamed", probably because he resembles a genuine figure in history and whose relatives he doesn't wish to get in bad with.  The Unnamed pulls strings to get the head abbess of the convent to send Lucia out with a message for a non-existent person and more bravos capture her and take her to the Unnamed's castle in the mountains.  Unnamed has led a life of cruelty, greed and immense criminal activity, but seeing the poor unhappy Lucia locked up in one of the cold stony castle dungeons causes him un-looked-for misery.  So over night he changes into a benevolent, helpful soul, willing to do anything to help anyone.  Federigo Borromeo arrives at the village below the Unnamed's castle.  He has a national reputation as a wise, kind soul who is possessed of bounteous generosity.  He arranges for Lucia to enter the service of a local member of the nobility where she'll be safe from the devious lust of Rodrigo.

Lorenzo has gotten tired of not knowing what happened to Lucia or where she is, so, receiving a letter informing him that she is in the convent, he journeys to Milan to find her.  Unfortunately the plague has arrived and people are dying by the thousands.  It was brought by the 27,000 remaining survivors of the Thirty Years War in Germany who, with nothing else to do and no prospects, decided to invade Italy.  Renzo explores Milan, looking for his Betrothed, and finally hears that she can be found in the lazaretto.  This last edifice is a huge fence structure just outside of the city filled with shacks and temporary housing and at this point houses somewhat more than 10,000 ailing sufferers.  Lucia is there helping out where-ever she can and Renzo eventually finds her.  They  both have contracted the disease but survived.  They return to their village and are married by Abbondio, but since Renzo has prospects in Bergamo, they sell their holdings in the village and move there, where they live happily ever after and have lots of kids.

This is a very brief synopsis of this quite long book.  It's pretty famous, having been translated into many languages, and in some respects lives up to its repute.  Manzoni was not a very focussed author;  he rambles a lot in the book, citing histories and statistics and going into detail about the plague in 1630 and the bread riots leading up to it.  The description of the plague and its progress rivals that of DeFoe in his "Plague Year".  His forte is in character analysis and presentation.  He successfully and in very convincing style gets into the motivations and feelings of Lucia and Lorenzo in particular, although he's not so successful in conveying the reason's for the Trumpic rationales of Rodrigo and the Unnamed.  The latter twopretty much just appear to be mindless goons out for whatever they can steal or whoever they can dominate.  And the overnight rehabilitation of the Unnamed is not very believable.  Still, it was an interesting book because Manzoni was a curious person:  the sort that gave the impression of having the potential of becoming a friend or charming dinner companion.  He was probably a fascinating conversationalist and undoubtedly knew a lot about Italian history.

 

ZOFLOYA, or THE MOOR

Charlotte Dacre (1771-1825)

The time is the late fifteenth century.  In Venice, Italy, the di Loredani's are throwing a fete to celebrate Victoria Loredani's birthday.  The Marchese di Loredani had married his wife, Laurina after her having been his mistress for several years.  They had two children, Victoria and Leonardo, who had been brought up haphazardly, and had their characters formed, perhaps adversely, by the proud and pugnacious society of the time.  Affairs of honor, and lax conditions of morality were the prominent features of the somewhat degraded upper classes, the members of which spent most of their time verbally sparring in their constant attempts to establish their superior dignity.  Sometimes they used knives, or swords.

A stranger arrived uninvited at the party.  Charismatic and handsome, Count Ardolph soon attracted the interest of Laurina and the two arranged for a meeting after the celebration.  Ardolph was a veritable Don Juan and Laurina fell madly in love with him.  The Marchese and the Count met on an afternoon stroll, fought with knives and the former was fatally stabbed.  Ardolph persuaded Laurina to run away with him, and Victoria went with them.  Leonardo was disgusted by the whole business and left town for parts unknown.  A villa in the remote hills, Monte Bello was rented by the absconding party and they lived there in isolation, spending much of their time dealing with and participating in affairs organized by the local criminal element.  The presence of Victoria was an inhibition on their illicit activities, so they took her to stay with Signora Modena in Treviso, an unpleasant, rather sadistic old lady who kept Victoria locked up in her room for the most part.  But with the help of a servant girl and the luster of a gold ring, she managed to escape the old crone's clutches and return to Venice.  She had fallen in love earlier with Count Berenza, a Venetian she had met in Monte Bello, and was mad to see him again.  When she arrived, Berenza locked her up in a room and tried to educate her as he was more interested in her brains than her body.  To wit:

"Such was the determination of the reasoning philosopher, whose delicate and fastidious mind made its own food, and took for ever a pleasure in repining upon itself."

In a confused exchange, another interested party, Megalena Strozzi, hires an assassin to kill Berenza because she resents his supposed taking of Victoria as a mistress.  One night Victoria hears a disturbance in Berenza's bedroom and she enters just in time to keep him from being stabbed although she herself is stabbed in the arm.  It turns out that the stabber is her brother Leonardo.  Leonardo, after he fled Venice, found refuge with the Zappi family near Naples, but Zappi's wife fell in love with him so Zappi kicked him out.  After several adventures, including working as a gardener for old Nina, Leonardo returned to Venice where he was befriended by Megalena.  After the assassination attempt, Megalena and Leonardo run away to the island of Capri.

Five years later, Victoria is still living with Berenza when the latter's brother arrives for a visit.  Victoria immediately falls madly in love with him, but he doesn't care.  Driven to desperation, she tries to get Henriquez to pay attention to her but he's already enamored of Lilla, the daughter of a Venetian patrician.  Victoria doesn't know who to kill first:  "dark and dreadful are the intricacies of the human heart".  One night she has a dream in which a tall dark stranger, Zofloya, guides Victoria to a chapel where she sees Lilla die and be replaced by herself,Victoria, and Berenza falls down covered with blood and Henriquez turns into a skeleton.

Spoilers, pretty quick:  Soon Zofloya in person is a constant visitor at Berenza's palace.  He is ostensibly a servant of Henriquez, acquired in Spain when Zofloya was taken captive in the Spanish/Moorish wars. He's a master of secret medicines, an artist in "the morbid refinements of a sickly fancy".  Wearing a white turban, a lot of gold rings and staring at her with lambent dark eyes, Zofloya persuades Victoria he can help achieve her wildest dreams.  He gives her some poison which she uses on Berenza.  He ails and suggests they move lock stock and barrel to a castle he owns in the Apennine mountains where his health might improve.  Once there, Berenza eventually dies, but Henriquez is still in love with Lilla to Victoria's teeth-gritting rage.  So with Zofloya's help, again, they kidnap Lilla and chain her up in a cave in the mountains.  Henriquez is fading away for love for her, so with the aid of Zofloya, Victoria plies him with eye-altering drugs so that he thinks she's Lilla.  They have a nice time together until the dope wears off, then, seeing that his inamorata is not Lilla but Victoria, he falls on his sword, killing himself.

Victoria dashes out and runs to the cave, where she frees Lilla, stabs her, and throws the body over the cliff.  Time passes and a scene opens with Zofloya and Victoria standing on a precipice in the Alps (near Mt. Cenis, actually).  There's a lot of thunder and lightning and the two are accosted by a band of banditti who take them to their lair:  a cave located in a deep canyon.  They are captives but are not treated harshly;  they are under a sort of parole and can walk outside occasionally.   The chief and his  wife wear masks, but Victoria recognizes them anyway.  One day a traveler enters the cave dragging an abused lady with him.  The chief knows him and immediately sticks a knife in him and rescues lady who is his mother, her captor being the Count Ardolph.  She dies soon after and they discover that the Duke of Savoy is on the way with a band of troops to wipe out the bandits.  The chief, Leonardo, and his wife, Megalena, stab themselves and there's a huge earthquake which kills a lot of the bandits.  Zofloya grabs Victoria during the ruckus and takes her to another peak and reveals himself to be Satan, and laughing gleefully while the lightning rages with red light, he throws her over the cliff.

I have to say, regardless of the dated textual material and plot, that Ms. Dacre was a master of prose, in my opinion, anyway.  She had a very large vocabulary and really knew how to use it.  I felt shivers traversing my spine several times while reading some of the more horrifying episodes, in spite of the somewhat, or altogether, "Perils of Pauline" ambience.  She wrote in a time when ladies were not supposed to do that sort of thing, but not only made a success of it (she wrote other books, also), but carved out a path for other literarily inclined women to follow.  I don 't know if any academic studies have been made of her ouvre, but it would be fresh territory for some grad student to investigate...  

I should also say that the main gist of the book had to do with chains of circumstance:  how a single action (in this case, Laurina's decampment with Count Ardolph) led to a whole series of dire events and deaths, with both her daughter and son falling into undisciplined and baneful situations, not to mention Laurina's own demise.  Surely Ms. C meant all of this as an object lesson, but her perhaps overly pedantic purpose was alleviated by the beauty and effectiveness of her prose...  I should also add that the reason i got this book in the first place was that it was supposedly a favorite of Shelley's.  How or if it effected him and his complicated affairs with the opposite sex is open to question...

 

SUNSET AT BLANDINGS

P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

Richard Usborne (1910-2006)

Sir James Piper, Chancellor of the Exchquer, is disgruntled.  His sister Brenda has made arrangements for them to visit Blanding Castle for a summer soiree, thus bringing to naught his hopes of fishing in Scotland during his vacation.  What's more, he has to take his stepdaughter, Victoria, along with him to get her exposed to some decent people.  And he knows that his nemesis, Sergeant Murchison, will be trailing along with his eyes open for villains of all stripes who may harbor resentment against the Chancellor for any one of a number of reasons.  Other persons belonging to the Threepwood tribe will be present:  Florence, the dowager-in-charge, Diana Phipps, her divorced sister, together with Rollo the son, and probably Galahad will show up in case there are situations to resolve or spare champagne to absorb.  James and Galahad are former members of the Pelican Club, no longer extant, which in former days was a riotous center for wildly uncivilized goings-on, like bread-throwing contests, and marathon wine-bibbing, not to mention undisciplined skirt-chasing.  Clarence, Lord Emsworth, (the freeholder in residence)is "up to his collar stud in the Slough of Despond", mainly because he wants to hire a painter to make a portrait of the Empress, his prize-winning pig, to hang in the art salon even though Florence is dead set against it as being crude and offensive.  Florence and her sisters (all eight, or sometimes ten) are all possessed of stares capable of inducing panic in the hearts of any normal person, particularly if there are intentions or activities anticipated as being against the comportment of members of the upper classes.  Victoria is the niece of Galahad, and as he is interested in her welfare, he begins plotting to assist her romantic designs on Jeff Bennison, a painter with whom she has struck up a friendship.  Jeff taught art at a girl's school run and operated by another Threepwood sister, Daphne, who has just, as the story opens, fired Jeff for, according to Threepwood standards,  moral decrepitude.  Florence dislikes Jeff as well, having discovered at an earlier date that his father Arthur was an inveterate swindler.

As the opening scene presents itself, we see Lord Emsworth "drooping over the Empress's sty like a wet sock", because he can't find a painter who will do a picture of his prize-winner.  Galahad steps to the fore, however, and arranges for Jeff to be invited to the party under a different cognomen.  An ancillary person, Claude Duff, had something to do with Jeff being fired, but he's invited also, as a friend of Daphne's.  Freddie Threepwood may appear at some point, although that's not clear at this point.  Freddie has gotten rich in America as a member of the staff of Donaldson's Dog Joy, a johnny-come-lately nouveau riche corporate entity, with fingers in the purses of English as well as American pet owners.  During a break in the festivities, Galahad meets Chancellor Piper in a local saloon and he confesses his long ago love for Diana and the impossibility of proposing to same because of the eternal indefatigable presence of Murchison.  The latter, by the way, is in love with one of the Blandings maids, Marilynn.  Galahad is not bashful about either his exploits or his problem-solving capabilities.  "I was one of those young men my mother always warned me against".  He is not dissuaded by discovering that Clarence hates Jeff's (now known as Smith the portrait artist) father because he once bilked him out of two thousand pounds.  Finding out that Freddie is in an immediate state of arrival, he side-tracks him and convinces him not to come because he's afraid that Freddie the loud mouth will wreck his plan to marry Victoria and Jeff and James and Diana and Murchison and his maid, and another couple I lost track of.  

Beach (the butler)accidentally locks Jeff out of the house on the first evening and the latter, determined to get in, in order to assuage the feeling of Victoria who's upset because Jeff won't elope with her because he is supposed to paint the Empress, climbs up to an open window (Victoria's as it were) and falls into Victoria's burglar trap:  a collection of golf clubs, cricket wickets, assorted lacrosse cudgels, and several soccer balls.  Claude has stated his love for Victoria, so Jeff is in a condition of distress.  Murchison arrests Jeff(Smith) in the hall because he thinks Sir James is in danger.  Daphne arrives and is about to identify Smith as Jeff;  meanwhile Lord Emsworth is singing a ditty in the piano room about how Americans eat jam with peanut butter.  Brenda and Daphne corner Beach and are trying to get him to oust Smith, and...  the story ends.

It was very unfortunate that P.G. passed on before he could finish this, his last book.  His more or less official biographer and Scholar, Mr. Usborne, adds all of Wodehouse's notes at the finish of the text, and sums up what was most likely the termination of all the plot complexities: four marriages and some sort of solution to the Empress's artistic debut, presumably.  There were eight books written about the Blandings group and their travails, of which this was the last.  They're perhaps they best anxiety relievers ever published;  every stock market entrepreneur or corporate lackey needs to have the complete set to hand with immediate access.  They're even great for the literary itinerant of advanced age, determined to unravel and hack out in some sort of presentable form a precis and/or  indicator of academic worth intended for a peripatetic book blog, haha...

 

THE PENNYLES PILGRIMAGE, or THE MONEY-LESS PERAMBULATION OF JOHN TAYLOR FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH AND BACK

John Taylor, 1580-1653

In 1618 Mr. Taylor left London on July 14, beginning what he claimed to be a walking trip to Scotland and back.  He took a horse along, but apparently used it just to carry his personal effects.  And he had some money, he just said he didn't use any of it.  He was popularly known as the "Water-Poet", because of his attempt, which he stated was successful, to row 40 miles down the Thames in a paper canoe.  He cheated a bit, though, as he took along nine bladders filled with air for additional support in case his vessel sprang a leak.  Which it did, the bottom falling out after several miles.  Anyway, the first day of walking saw him arriving at The Saracen's Head in Islington.  As was to be his normal means of monetary support, he got one of his friends to foot the bill.  He must have been a personable sort of man, because he had friends all along his route.  Frequently he'd stay at one of their manors for a short period, and accept the services of a guide to the next patron's residence.  The first few days of walking were difficult, due to sore legs.  He said, "My legs I made my oars and rowed by land".

Life wasn't always predictable, however.  Suffering from sore feet on his way to Daventry, he was looking forward to enjoying a jug of beer supposedly left for his refreshment by the local land-owner, but when he got there he found that interested parties had drank it.  Occasionally waxing poetic, he described a night in a field as a bed of soft rushes with a star-studded ceiling for a roof.  On the way north, he traveled on the west side of the Pennine mountains, thus passing through Coventry, Manchester, and Carlisle, then over the Highlands to Edinburgh.  By the time he reached Manchester, he had had to have his horse reshod twice, for some reason;  maybe the first blacksmith didn't do a very good job, as he wasn't getting paid for his work...  Beyond Carlisle it rained a lot and that made the river crossings somewhat dicey.  In Lancaster he was jailed for two days at his own request, just to stay out of the perpetual rain.  Finally reaching Sir John Dalston's estate near the Scottish border, he stayed long enough to dry out, and then, with a guide, waded a quarter mile across the river Esk.  Scotland he found to be somewhat lacking in the nature of its creature comforts.  At one primitive croft he stayed at, the owners insisted on him sleeping in the single bed in the establishment.  The experience introduced him to "Irish mosquitos" (bedbugs).  The guide that was along with him slept on the floor and a pigeon resident in the rafters relieved itself on his face.  In the morning they walked 21 miles to Blythe, wallowing across the Annan river in the process.

His legs were even more sore by the time he arrived at Edinburgh, and he was grateful to fall into the hands of some of his friends.  He toured Arthur's Seat while he was there.  There was a cannon mounted on the upper deck that was so large in diameter that he could crawl into the bore.  He said his companion did also, at the same time, but it was a tight fit.  It had been used to shoot fire balls at the enemy.  Taylor stayed with the Lord of Leith for a while and was happy that the noble gave him eleven shillings.  While staying with the Earl of Culross, the owner talked him into touring his coal mine.  They got into a boat and paddled out to a tower protruding from the sea.  Climbing up and into it, they descended down below the sea bottom into a tunnel that was a mile long and was lit with torches.  Water seeped in through the oozy ceiling and there was a sort of semi-automatic bucket chain to get rid of the excess.  Taylor said he was glad to leave.  

Later, he spent time with several of the Lairds in the Highlands, observing their hunting parties and social gatherings.  The former were arranged to suit crowds of a hundred or more members of the nobility and their retainers.  Shooting parties were shepherded up into a previously selected locale, usually a valley or glen, where villeins had rounded up herds of red deer for the pleasure of their masters who would bang away at them, killing a hundred or more as a rule.  Then the party would return to camp and eat too much and get drunk.  On the way back to Edinburgh, Taylor met the playwright Ben Jonson at Leith.  Jonson was on a trip to visit some of his relatives, and also to drum up some support, probably monetary, from some of his admirers.  Taylor spent quite a bit of time with James Acmooty, the owner of Bass Island, and when James offered to accompany him on his way back to London, he accepted the generous offer.  So the return trip was made considerably less arduous than the previous section had been.  Basically they traveled from one castle to another, with predictable aid and resources each step of the way, arriving in the Capitol on October 15.

This account was written in a rather messy iambic pentameter to begin with, but soon degraded into a kind of doggerel short hand.  Not that it wasn't pretty interesting, especially when Taylor was describing some of the events he was involved with, but the traveling itself was pretty much left to the readers imagination.  Taylor was a popular person in the urban culture of the time, and he knew most of the artistic personages that lived in London, including Shakspeare, Jonson, and many others.  His account of his walk is worth reading, if only because it pretty effectively imparts the social atmosphere of that time and location.  I definitely got the impression that artists of all types, poets and playwrights in particular, could be pretty rowdy.  But it was strange, i thought, that Taylor never said why, exactly, he was trying to do the walk without money.  Maybe it was just a publicity stunt, exactly the sort of thing one would expect that sort of personality to dream up...