ERNEST HILL – Pity About Earth. Ace Double H-566; 1st printing, 1968. Published back to back with Space Chantey, by R. A. Lafferty, reviewed here. Cover art by Kelly Freas.

   In a future more than 30,000 years from now, man has lost his place in the universe, to the machines that have taken away even his humanity. The Publisher controls all forms of communication: TV, tapes, and papers that sell only advertising space.

   Archexecutive Shale represents mankind’s loss of feeling and does not know what it means to care. The hybrid half-ape Marylin he befriends is more human than he. The scientific laboratory’s experiments on living humans are something worse than black comedy. Is this any way to run a universe?

   Marylin takes the role of Publisher and initiates the slow process of restoring to man the illusion he controls [his existence]. Not very subtle, but tending to be both fascinating and dull.

Rating: ***½

Bibliographic Update: Ernest Hill was a British SF writer whose other two novels were published only in the UK: The G. C. Radiation (1971) and The Quark Invasion (1978). Of several dozen short stories, most if not all also appear to have been published only in the UK, many for New Worlds SF.