SEABURY QUINN – Alien Flesh. Oswald Train; hardcover, 1977. Introduction by E. Hoffman Price; illustrations by Stephen Fabian. Expanded from the short story “Lynne Foster Is Dead!”, Weird Tales, November 1938.

   There is a type of book that can only be called a peculiar classic; not a work of great literature, and yet both memorable and remarkable. Inevitably such books are faintly redolent of the decadent, faintly touched with the strange; Huysman’s La Bas and Against the Grain are such books, so were the works of E. H. Visiak and William Beckford, so Mari Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan, and James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen. Everything William Morris wrote falls under this umbrella and most of Lord Dunsany.

   And so does Seabury Quinn’s Alien Flesh.

   Seabury Quinn reigned supreme in the old pulp Weird Tales. The popularity of his tales of psychic sleuth Jules de Grandin and his Watson, Dr. Trowbridge, far surpassed the popularity of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch or any of the other legendary names associated with the magazine. He even produced one genuine classic, the haunting Christmas story Roads (the legendary Arkham House edition illustrated by science fiction master Virgil Finlay is one of the most attractive books ever printed by a small press)..

   Alien Flesh is a novel, written after Weird Tales glory days, in 1950 not long before the series of strokes that ended Quinn’s fiction writing career. He lived until 1969, but no longer churned out tales of vampires, werewolves, cults, and covens, and only one book like Alien Flesh. Not that there could be more than one book like Alien Flesh.

   Hugh Arundel, Egyptologist, attending a new Egyptian exhibit at a New York museum is introduced to the fabulous Madame Foulik Bey, Ismet.

   And something draws Arundel to her, something in her strange manner, and stranger eyes, something he can’t quite put a finger on.

   In short order his life revolves around her. She becomes the axis all aspect of his thoughts turn on. And at every turn a new mystery, her nature possessing, “as many facets as a diamond.”

   And yet despite her obvious feeling for him she holds him at bay.

   Finally he pushes her and she relents and tells him her story,

   Lynne Foster was a boyhood friend. They had gone to school together, dated together, both been fascinated with Egypt. Lynne Foster had disappeared in Cairo, possibly murdered.

   And then she relates her — Lynne Foster’s — tale.

   I did warn you this was a peculiar classic.

   Lynne Foster in Egypt fell afoul of ancient sorcery, and in his western arrogance was punished. He was transformed, from the strong and tough minded young man to …

   As you might imagine this could go wrong very quickly, and it is a testament to the old pulp master’s skills that it does not. He finds a fine balance between horror, humor, whimsy, unabashed Arabian nights, the erotic — suggested but never spelled out — and sensuality — the book drips with that — as he spins out the tale of the fortunes of Lynne Foster, now Ismet a simple harem girl.

   Again, I said this was a peculiar book and it is difficult to convey to any reader how well Quinn handles this difficult theme without slipping into either soft porn or outright comedy. The book recounts Ismet’s adventures, her first touches of romance in her new body, her battle with the mind of Lynne Foster and the emotions of the woman Ismet, and her rise to riches and power using Lynne Foster’s masculine mind and Ismet Foulik’s feminine charms.

   I’m not sure I buy the sweepingly romantic ending, but Quinn more than prepares you for it, and after all, Hollywood used to churn out this kind of fantasy with regularity — though usually in the form of Thorne Smith comedy such as Turnabout or I Married A Witch.

   Here it is deadly serious, but handled so deftly that the giggles that could easily turn to guffaws and destroy the entire mood are held at bay (at least while you are caught in Quinn’s spell, I can’t answer for later) and the reader manages to stay with Quinn thanks to his sheer story telling skills.

   Once he gets you on his side he keeps you there, and plays deftly with both the reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief and also the key to any storyteller’s success, the readers desire to see what happens next. Quinn knew how to spin a tale and keep the pages turning, and here those skills serve him well. This isn’t the sort of book that can survive much in the way of the reader stopping to meditate on the story.

   When this was reissued in 1977 by Oswald Train it came with an appreciative forward by Quinn’s friend and former pulp master E. Hoffman Price, a beautiful color cover by illustrator Stephen Fabian, and a full accompaniment of full page black and white illustrations also by Fabian. It’s a lovely little book and a perfect tribute to this most peculiar of peculiar classics.

   I know many of you reading this description of the book, are going to say there is no way it could work in the form Quinn gives it, and no doubt it would not for many readers, but Alien Flesh, given half of a chance earns it’s place on that shelf of peculiar classics, and earns Quinn this much from me — I can’t think of another writer who could have pulled it off with half the charm, skill, and old fashioned pulp romanticizing.

   If nothing else you turn each page just to see if he avoids the obvious traps — which he always does — and you reach the end glad to give him his choice of endings thankful for the memorable trip.

   And one more peculiar classic finds its way onto the shelves.

CONNIE WILLIS – All Clear. Spectra, hardcover, October 2010; trade paperback, October 2011.

   This is the second book in Willis’ story of the British home front during WWII; the first was Blackout. Originally written as one big novel, because of the length it was split into two novels by the publisher.

   Between the two of them they are over 1200 pages long — and that is the major problem. There is just too much happening — too many characters, too many events, too many disappointments. The combined novel should have been titled The Perils of Polly, who is the main character in a cast of thousands. She keeps flitting from one disaster to another, just like Pauline in the movie.

   In this novel, set in the same time traveling universe as Willis’ award winning Doomsday Book, three historians from 100 years in the future are trapped in England during WWII. For some reason the time gates that let them go back home at the end of their studies will not open.

   Ellen had been trapped in a mansion caring for children shipped out of London when an epidemic of measles broke out and she was quarantined and missed her pickup date. Polly worked as a shop girl in London during the Blitz. Matt had been badly wounded at Dunkirk. The three had finally found each other, compared notes, and resolved to find a way home at the end of the first novel.

   And in this novel that’s what they try to do — for over 600 pages, futilely trying to find other historians, put messages in newspapers, and desperately try to get a message back to the future so they can be rescued over and over and over again, with completely futile results.

   Isn’t the definition of insanity trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?

   This whole thing, both novels together should not have been more than 400 pages long. At some point in writers’ careers, they lose the ability to edit themselves. It happened to Robert A. Heinlein in the 70s. It happened to David Weber seven or eight years ago. And now it has happened to Willis.

   There is a lot of good stuff here — just too much of it. I found myself skip reading by the end of the first 200 pages. If you can manage to slog through it, this novel is worth reading, but be prepared to budget a lot of time doing it.

   And let me also say here that I like Willis. To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of my favorite novels of the last ten years. I wish I had liked this one as much.

Rating:   B minus.

FRITZ LEIBER – Conjure Wife. Twayne, US, hardcover, 1953. Penguin, UK, paperback, 1969. First published in Unknown Worlds, April 1943. Reprinted several times, in both hardcover and soft, including: Lion 179, pb, 1953, cover art by Robert Maguire; Award A341X, 1968, and AN1143, 1974 (cover art by Jeff Jones on the latter).

      ● Filmed as Weird Woman Universal Pictures, 1944. Lon Chaney Jr., Anne Gwynne, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Morgan. Director: Reginald Le Borg

      ● Filmed as Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn!. Independent Artists, American International, 1962. Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, Margaret Johnston, Anthony Nicholls. Screenplay by Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson & George Baxt. Director: Sidney Hayers.

      ● Filmed as Witches’ Brew. Embassy/United Artists, 1980. Teri Garr, Richard Benjamin, Lana Turner, James Winkler. Conjure Wife uncredited as the source. Directors: Richard Shorr & Herbert L. Strock.

   Last October I was also in the right mood for Conjure Wife (1943) Fritz Leiber’s classic tale of Black Magic and Campus Politics. It starts off rather predictably, as Professor Norman Saylor, successful sociologist and author of a popular book on primitive superstitions and modern behavior, discovers a trove of charms, voodoo tokens and sundry magic-spell components in his wife’s drawers (a rather fetishistic scene in itself) and learns that while he’s been relegating such things to unimportance, his wife has taken them seriously.

   Naturally, he convinces her to destroy them, and naturally, all hell (literally!) proceeds to break loose.

   I saw it all coming, but Leiber manages to invest the early scenes with atmosphere and a certain prosaic realism that kept me reading. Then he proceeds to give things a neat twist that generates considerable suspense and leads to one line that absolutely chilled me. I won’t reveal anything further, but I will say that Conjure Wife is a classic worth visiting.

   The book was filmed three times: once very respectably in England as Night of the Eagle in 1962, and previously as a dotty “Inner Sanctum” movie from Universal, Weird Woman (1944.) Written and directed by studio hacks (including Brenda Weisberg, one of the few women in the creative end of horror films, whose career, alas, is notable only for being unremarkable) Weird Woman is mostly beneath contempt, but it does offer a kind of silly charm if you can get past the notion of Lon Chaney Jr. as a scholarly academic irresistible to women.

   His solemn voice-over soliloquies add another layer of risibility, which fits in perfectly with the over-playing of over-heated dialogue from the rest of the cast. Looking back, Weird Woman is largely devoid of any artistic merit, but I have to say it’s done with an aesthetic consistency that held my unbelieving attention.

MURRAY LEINSTER – The Brain-Stealers. Ace Double #D-79, paperback original, 1954. Published dos-à-dos with Atta, by Francis Rufus Bellamy. Reprinted by Ace in single volume form, circa 1974. Trade paperback: Wildside Press, 2007.

   So came last October, and I started my month of ghoulish reading with Murray Leinster’s The Brain-Stealers (Ace, 1954), a crackerjack bit of sci-fi from a master of the form.

   This one starts fast and never lets up, as a spaceship full of blood-sucking aliens lands on the first page in a remote part of the country and discharges a band of “little guys”: hairless, short-limbed, sharp-toothed and incredibly selfish beings with the power of mind control, who proceed to enslave the locals and propagate, with plans of world domination.

   Said world is a clever wrinkle Leinster throws in the plot-pot. Brain-Stealers is set in a near-future society (near-future in 1954 that is) ruled by something called “Security” where science, culture, even knowledge itself are carefully regulated in the name of peace and safety.

   (Which makes the whole thing unbelievable; I mean, now really! Can you honestly imagine people giving up their individual rights for the promise of security? But I digress…)

   Such a world seems ripe for enslavement, but in the tradition of the best sci-fi, Leinster rings in an escaped scientist (experimenting in thought-projection no less!) who lands in the middle of things and finds himself in a run-and-jump war with the aliens.

   This is pulp as it oughta be: stylish and fast, with a plot that keeps twisting right to the end as Leinster throws his rogue scientist in and out of peril with breath-taking speed. You honestly can’t spend a better couple hours than sitting down with this and … letting your mind go!

JIM BUTCHER – Changes. Roc, hardcover, April 2010; tall paperback: March 2011.

Genre:   Paranormal mystery. Leading character:   Harry Dresden, 12th in series. Setting:   Chicago.

First Sentence:   I answered the phone, and Susan Rodriguez said, “They’ve taken our daughter.”

   Seven years ago, wizard Harry Dresden’s love, Susan Rodriguez left after being turned into a half-vampire. Now she calls to tell him that his daughter Maggie, about whom he’d never known, has been kidnapped by the Duchess of the Red Court.

   Harry learns that Maggie is to be a blood sacrifice in an act that will destroy him and many others. Harry is determined to rescue his daughter.

   I am, primarily, a mystery reader. I picked up Storm Front, the first Harry Dresden book by Jim Butcher thinking it would be interesting to see how he brings mysteries and the paranormal together.

   While the books are far more paranormal/fantasy than mystery, about half-way into that first book, the genre definition no longer mattered. Harry Dresden is not the stuff of fairy tales — at least, not the Disney versions — Grimm was, after all, rather grim — but the stuff of nightmares with a wickedly good sense of humor.

   It is definitely a series to be read in order. And, boy, does Butcher know how to tell a story. He touches every emotion while making us face the monsters in the closet. I thoroughly enjoy the references to movie, television, literature which have become part of our popular culture.

   The world and characters created by Butcher are vividly drawn and often very unpleasant. Much of that is offset by the strong human characters, excellent dialogue and wonderful humor. There is a delightful bit where Harry says firmly, “I don’t do hats.” This is a jab to the fact that the cover of every book shows Harry wearing a hat.

   Dresden is a classic hero. He is tall, attractive, strong, clever, protects the innocent and weak, destroys the bad buys and isn’t overly macho ever. As with each previous book, we continue to learn more of Dresden’s background. We also see the extent to which he is willing to go to protect and save others.

   In Changes, Butcher brings together nearly all the characters of previous books for this pivotal story, and some wonderful characters they are. It’s thanks to his skill and imagination that we have Bob, the intelligent spirit who love trashy romance novels; Molly, Harry’s apprentice; Mouse, the amazing Foo dog; and all the others, human and inhuman.

   The story is non-stop with some breath-catching moments, both in terms of pacing and suspense. It is touching, suspenseful, gruesome, emotional, violent and occasionally funny.

   The book’s ending is as much a shock to us as it is to Harry. I’m one who usually abhors cliff-hanger ending, but then realized Butcher did play fair with us by the lead up to the ending. I am concerned about where the series is going from here, as I know the series is continuing. I’ll just have to trust to Butcher’s wonderful writing and go along for the adventure.

Rating:   Very Good Plus.

SIMON GREEN – Hawk and Fisher. Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1990. Reprinted in Swords of Haven: The Adventures of Hawk & Fisher, an omnibus edition containing the first three books in the series; see below. Penguin/Roc, July 1999; trade ppbk, June 2006.

   It is quite remarkable how you can come across the most interesting sorts of things when you least expect them. No one looking for the best locked room mystery written in 1990 (I wager to say) would ever in their right mind pick this book up to read — looking as it does as the latest variation of the Conan-based fantasy-action series that clog the science fiction shelves in every Waldenbooks store in the country.

   Hawk and Fisher (male and female, and married to each other) are two captains of the guard in the dark city of Haven, on some unknown world at some unknown time, where magic works, and vampires, werewolves and succubi abound. (He has a patch over one eye, and she wears a shirt that exposes an ample amount of bosom, as well illustrated on the front cover.)

   They are both tough, and even more remarkably, they are both honest, a rarity in Haven.

   After disposing of a particularly bothersome vampire, they are asked to investigate the stabbing of an important reformist councilor in his locked bedroom. The crime could not have been committed by a magical spell, as first suspected, as the dead man wore an amulet about his neck designed especially to ward off such attacks.

   Being a reformist in local politics means that the victim had many enemies, but the only ones who could have killed him are trapped in the house with him. Thus what this resembles, in perverse but strangely believable fashion, is an exceptionally good isolated county manor caper, complete with false trails, red herrings, and fine old-fashioned detective work.

   The solution to the crime, reasonably intricate, is meticulously worked out as well. I can’t see any flaws in the story, which certainly triggered all the right responses in me. I don’t know how easy it will be for you to get your hands on a copy, but since several more in the series have appeared in the meantime, it’s possible Ace may have kept them all in print. Highly recommended.

   And from later on, from the same issue of Mystery*File:

SIMON GREEN – Winner Takes All. Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1991.

   The second in Green’s “Hawk & Fisher” series. The first, Hawk & Fisher, was an extremely pleasant surprise — a well-written locked room mystery taking place in a world of pure fantasy.

   This new adventure of the two married members of the Guards is pure politics, however, as election time is nearing. Lots of swords, lots of evil sorcery, lots of action. Entertaining, but still a disappointment in not living up to expectations.

       The Hawk & Fisher series:

Hawk & Fisher. Ace, September 1990.
Hawk & Fisher: Winner Takes All. Ace, January 1991.
Hawk & Fisher: The God Killer. Ace, June 1991.

Hawk & Fisher: Wolf in the Fold. Ace, September 1991
Hawk & Fisher: Guard Against Dishonor. Ace, December 1991.
Hawk & Fisher: The Bones of Haven. Ace, March 1992.

   The six books were reprinted in two omnibus editions. The first is so mentioned above. The second grouping of three titles was entitled Guards of Haven, Penguin/Roc, ppbk, November 1999; trade ppbk, June 2007.

Editorial Comments:   The artwork is so finely detailed it does not show up well in normal-sized images; hence the blow-up, as you see!

   Also, George Kelley has just reviewed the two omnibus editions of Hawk & Fisher books on his blog. You can read his comments by following this link.

ALISTAIR REYNOLDS – Century Rain. Ace, hardcover, June 2005; reprint paperback, May 2006. First published in the UK: Victor Gollancz, hardcover/softcover, 2004.

   The world Floyd and Custine live in seems to be Paris in the mid-nineteen fifties, but something is wrong, though they — and no one in their world knows it. They don’t know either that all that is about to change and Floyd, an expatriate American private detective/jazz musician is about to become a key figure in what happens.

   So is Verity Auger, an archeologist who specializes in excavating the ruins of Earth in the wake of the apocalyptic Nanocaust. A wormhole has been discovered, and at the end of it like Alice’s wonderland a surviving Earth preserved as if in amber — Floyd’s world, and somewhere on that alternate Earth is a device capable of destroying both realities — and a madman who plans to do just that.

   Over the last twenty years there has been a revolution is the hoary old science fiction genre of space opera in both the United States and in England.

   While popular, the American version tends to be militaristic and modeled on C. S. Forester’s Hornblower saga or Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey and Maturin books, whereas the British revival is something else, with writers such as mainstream novelist Iain M. Banks, thriller writer Paul McAuley, and astrophysicist Alistair Reynolds taking the form places E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith and his Skylark and Lensman saga never imagined.

   Century Rain is a good example of the new space opera, a sweeping adventure novel dealing with vast ideas and concepts and at the same time a meditation in noir recreating a version of 20th Century Paris out of Simenon out of Raymond Chandler, with a human and moral private eye at the center of the action of both worlds and solving mysteries both personal and profound.

   Eventually Floyd and Auger will meet and team to save both their worlds, and part in a bittersweet moment.

   The ending as Floyd makes a painful decision about his own life and his own world is a Chandleresque moment of perfect pitch on Reynolds’ part.

   A world killer, some nasty monsters, galaxy spanning concepts of space and time, a heroine who is a cross between Indiana Jones and Flash Gordon, a noirish private eye with the soul of a jazz musician, a quest, an alternate Noirish Paris circa the 1950’s that would fit with one of Leo Malet’s Nestor Burma novels, hard science, alien artifacts, augmented humans, real humor, a touching love story, a sacrifice, an adventure, spy thriller, mystery … And yet the book is an homogeneous whole, as simple and perfect as any book you are likely to read, written with the casual elegance of a natural.

   And it all ends on a perfect note embracing both noirish despair and at the same time the hopeful optimism of the most boisterous space opera. This one is what they mean by a tour de force, a perfect blend of several genres that shouldn’t blend at all, but do here with real skill and to great effect.

JACK WILLIAMSON – The Legion of Time. Pyramid X-1586, reprint paperback, March 1967. Hardcover edition: Fantasy Press, 1952 (limited to 4604 copies).

   Actually two short novels published together as one book: “The Legion of Time” and “After World’s End”, each originally appearing in the pulp magazines in 1938.

   Both are slam-bang space opera at its finest, with groups of gallant men banding together to fight for the survival of (1) a far-future civilization, and (2) the human race itself. Names like Rogo Nug, Kel Aran, Verel Erin and Zerek Oom prevail.

   The first is the better story, but I soon found myself caught up in the second one as well — obviously a distant forerunner of Star Wars.

COMMENT: Of the four names above, one is that of a starship’s captain, two are members of his crew, and the fourth is that of the girl he seeking, perhaps the last other survivor of the human race. Can you tell which is which?

JOHN BRUNNER – Into the Slave Nebula. Lancer 73-797, paperback; 1st printing, this edition, 1968. Revised from the novel Slavers of Space, Ace Double D-421, pb original, 1960 (bound with Dr. Futurity, by Philip K. Dick).

   The young scion of a wealthy family on Earth stumbles across the murder of a “Citizen of the Galaxy,” and faced with a boring future otherwise, decides to investigate, not realizing how deep into space the conspiracy lies.

   Unfortunately, anybody who reads the title before opening the book knows exactly what’s going on. And even so, it’s only an adventure novel, poorly told. I’d suggest another revision, if I thought it would do any good.

COMMENT: This is the first time I have ever used the word “scion” in a sentence. Do you know what? It feels just fine.

E. HOFFMAN PRICE – Operation Longlife. Ballantine/Del Rey, paperback original, January 1983.

   The story of an 186-year-old scientist named Avery Jarvis “Doc” Brandon. This was written by an 84-year-old pulp writer, and — with all due respect — it reads like it.

AVRAM DAVIDSON – Masters of the Maze. Pyramid R-1208, paperback original; July 1965.

   It sounds like space opera — the monstrous Chultex swarming across the galaxy to ravage Earth! — but as usual, Davidson’s flair for dense literary science fiction is beyond me. I’ve been able to read Davidson’s short stories, on occasion, but never one of his novels. In his case, and given his reputation, I’m perfectly willing to say it’s me.

[UPDATE] 05-04-10. Back in the late 1950s through the 1960s, I used to gobble up space opera SF novels as if they were snacks just out of the pack. By the early 90s, as you can see, it was getting more and more difficult for the same old fare to satisfy me. For the most part now, I don’t read much SF, although I try every once in a while, and when I do, guess what? It’s almost always space opera. No new tricks for me, or at least not very often.

THE NIGHTMARE MAN. BBC-TV, UK, four-part mini-series, 01 May to 22 May 1981. James Warwick, Celia Imrie, Maurice Roëves, Tom Watson, Jonathan Newth, James Cosmo. Screenplay: Robert Holmes, based on the novel Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire. Director: Douglas Camfield.

   That both the screenwriter and the director were involved with the BBC’s Dr. Who, both before and after, suggests why this moderately well-plotted SF-thriller comes off so well.

   All four parts take place on a unnamed Hebrides island, up around Scotland way. About 35 square miles in size, the island has a police force of four men, headed by Inspector Inskip (Maurice Roëves), and a coast guard station with three more.

   Is that enough to protect the island’s inhabitants from a crazed killer whose victims have been mauled to death by a creature that seems to be half animal and half human? Under ordinary circumstances, yes, but the island is socked in by fog with no access to the mainland. Until the weather clears, the people on the island are strictly on their own.

   Pictured on the DVD cover are the two principal characters in this four-act play. James Warwick as Michael Gaffikin, the island’s dentist, an outsider who honorable intentions are questioned by the closely-knit townspeople in regard to the incipient love affair between him and the island’s druggist, Fiona Patterson, played the lovely Celia Imrie.

   Only once do we see the latter in anything resembling glamorous, however, during a dinner date with Gaffikin, in which she wears a daring low-cut dress. Otherwise she is as bundled up against the fog as the rest of the guys. Of course it is she who has previously mapped out the island, so it is also she who is their guide up and down and across some fairly rugged terrain (actually filmed in Cornwall), trying to reach campers in danger and to track the increasingly murderous intruder — who just may be an alien newly arrived from space.

   As usual in stories like these, the truth, while equally fantastic is also rather prosaic, making the fourth of the four episodes the weakest. It takes a lot of sedentary (standing around) exposition to make the details of the island’s attacker understood.

   But before then, by which I mean the previous three episodes, this is a fine example of horror fiction, slightly old-fashioned now and only moderately gory, one supposes, due to its being made for TV — shown only once, by the way, until recently released by the BBC on Regions 2 and 4 DVD.

   I watched all four episodes (two hours) in one evening. I couldn’t stop myself.

ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS – The Darkness Before Tomorrow. Ace Double F-141, paperback original; 1st printing, 1962. [Paired with this novel, tête-bêche, is The Ladder in the Sky, by Keith Woodcott (aka John Brunner).]

   Dan Stumpf and David Vineyard were briefly exchanging comments about “hack” writers earlier this month. It all depends on one’s definition, of course, and while you can say that a hack writer is one without talent and/or one who merely cranks out the wordage for the money, everyone has a different concept of what’s talent and what’s not and/or how many cranks are needed to make a hack.

   When it comes to Science Fiction hacks, though, for some reason Robert Moore Williams comes to mind. Not that I’ve read anything by him in nearly 50 years, but I’m sure I have, and it must have stuck with me, since (rightly or wrongly, but with no malice intended) I’ve tended to use his fiction as more or less my yardstick of hackwork.

   Titles such as Conquest of the Space Sea (1955) and Zanthar of the Many Worlds (1967) might suffice as examples, but in all honestly, since I haven’t read them, I can hardly dwell on them.

   I will point out that Robert Moore Williams’ SF career started considerably earlier than did, say, John Brunner’s, whose novel on the other side of this Ace Double I reviewed here not so long ago. Brunner first novel was published in 1951, I believe, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that anyone began to take notice of him.

   In comparison, Williams’ first story appeared in Astounding SF in 1937, and he had a long list of other pulp stories to his credit before he turned to paperback fiction in the 1950s. But no matter; even in 1962 his pulp roots show. The Darkness Before Tomorrow has, I am sorry to say, very little in it for which I might recommend it to you.

   The opening couple of chapters are adequate, however, and indeed maybe even more than adequate. The story begins in the year 1980 or so, with the action going on immediately, allowing the characters to be introduced on the fly.

   Someone, as it happens, has discovered a new kind of weapon that kills without making a wound of any kind. Scientist George Gillian stumbles across a body killed in such a way and hence into a crossfire between the villains and the pair who are resisting them, a brother and sister (Eck and Sis) whose side Gillian quickly joins.

   If I were to tell you that the head villain is a ruthless gangster named Ape Abrussi, and his headquarters are in what’s called Mad Mountain, you will know at once what kind of story this is. It is also the story of aliens walking among us (with small horns on the foreheads and goat-like eyes), with only good intentions (it is assumed), and no, Ape is not one of them. It turns out that he came across his new weapon only by accident, and now that he has, his intentions are to rule the world.

   In a novel like this, of course, good luck with that.

   And so, the big question is: Is this the work of a hack? “Hackery” is such a pejorative term I’d hate to say yes, but I have a feeling that by many people’s standards, the answer is is probably in the affirmative. Williams is good in describing places and things, conjuring up loads of atmosphere for the former and having an excellent eye for detail on the latter.

   But what he’s not so good at are essential things, such as working with people and complex relationships between them — nor is the dialogue they speak anything but stiff. Williams is not so good at science, either, but he’s good at waving his hands and making believe that he does.

   But you could say pretty much the same sort of things about 90% of the writers who wrote for the pulps. What most of them could do, though, those who were successful at it — and I’d place Robert Moore Williams among them — was to write stories that made readers keep on reading them. It worked for me!