Here is August, and one other.
As usual the links (except for gutenberg) are Amazon Affiliate
ones which could in theory earn me a pittance should you buy through
one.
I should probably let this rest overnight and read it for sanity
tomorrow, but what the hey.
==
Scorpio Assassin (Dray Prescot Book 39)
by Alan Burt Akers
https://amzn.to/3XzXKDQScorpio Invasion (Dray Prescot Book 40)
by Alan Burt Akers
https://amzn.to/3TkSz87Scorpio Ablaze (Dray Prescot Book 41)
by Alan Burt Akers
https://amzn.to/3TjdDfeWhen I was in high school, and into college, "Dray Prescot" was my
favorite swords & planet series, and I was quite disappointed when
DAW stopped publishing them. I know now that this was part of the
regime change which went with Donald A. Wollheim's passing and the
takeover of the publisher by his daughter Betsy Wollheim. She has
said in fairly recent interviews that Wollheim senior continued to
publish a number of authors who were friends of his despite the
books not making money. I don't recall that she gave specifics,
but I'm pretty sure that applied to Kenneth Bulmer (writing here
as Alan Burt Akers), E. C. Tubb, and John Norman. I have my
suspicions that this was only partly the case and that she just did
not care for men's adventure books. In the case of "Dray Prescot",
I wonder too if the series weren't tarred with the same brush in
her mind as Norman's "Gor" since they were both ERB derived planetary
adventure. That's all total speculation on my part however.
At any rate the Dray Prescot series vanished from the racks, and
though I heard from time to time that it was still being published
in German, that really didn't help me at all. I was quite excited
then when the first wave of e-books arrived, and "Savanti Press"
started to offer the English versions of the "new" books.
At the time, e-readers were not a thing, and there were really no
format standards, so Savanti offered the books in PDF, and I printed
out several, punching them and putting them in three ring binders.
I had some indirect correspondence with Bulmer, writing to Savanti
that he had inspired a story of mine which had won an award in the
campus literary magazine, and with them passing back his
congratulations and that he was happy to hear it.
Unfortunately, Savanti was really a bit too early into the field
and didn't last long enough to run through many books. Years
later, once the Kindle and other e-readers were established, and
the file formats standardized, another outfit, Mushroom Press
took up the torch and started putting out the rest of the books.
Again I read several, but then Bulmer passed and I understood
that the series would never be finished, so I kind of put off
reading the rest.
I recently got back into them and read three in quick succession,
and it was a bit of an "old home" week.
Dray Prescot is an Englishman, a pressed sailor in Nelson's navy
who rose improbably onto the officers' deck as a Lieutenant,
about as far as a man of his origins could go, not that *that*
story ever played out. Instead, he was taken up by the mysterious
and mostly godlike Starlords, and the immortal but human Savapim
and transported to the beautiful but brutal world of Kregan under
the twin suns of Antares.
Kregan is a mostly pre-industrial world (and lacks gunpowder), but
has pockets of tech in advance of Earth (generally around flight)
and is populated with numerous chimera races as well as standard
homo-sapiens, each race and culture with its own quirks. Prescott
quickly found his Dejah Thoris, Delia of Delphond whom he eventually
married and had a number of children with though circumstances (and
the Starlords) often conspired to keep them apart.
Over the years the standard practice of the Starlords was to take
Prescot up from whatever he was doing with the aid of their spectral
blue scorpion, and then drop him naked and weaponless into some
dire situation without any clue as to what he was supposed to do.
He has only recently discovered that this is not their standard
practice with their other agents, and is a bit sore about it.
The general gist of these missions (which sometimes include time-loops
so that Prescott is in several areas of Kregan at once) is to
bring Prescott into rulership of numerous different lands with
the apparent goal of making him emperor of the continent of Paz
so that he can forge a defense against the shark-men chimera
race of Shanks who are "raiding around the curve of the world"
and have already subdued several areas of Paz.
Previous to book 39, Prescott has already spent a good deal of time
in Southern Loh, where the people take reincarnation very seriously,
trying to arrange the local throne so that a Queen who will actually
fight is in charge. Although he is unhappy, as usual, about being
torn away from Delia, I get the feeling he takes the time almost
as a vacation. Due to the odd circumstances of his arrival, the
other Starlord agent on the scene is convinced that he is a screwup
and that she is in charge, and Prescott is content to play along
at that using an assumed name (something he does quite often),
and mixing it up with the local gangs and nobles watching the
situation develop. Things come to a head quite suddenly, and
due to the ill-timed intervention of the Starlords, Prescott is
unable to save one Queen, and due to his vituperation of his
masters is snatched up punitively (and apparently into some
sort of internecine struggle) before being dropped hundreds
of miles away.
That's where book 40 starts, and after a numerous series of
books where the Shanks are merely the background menace whom
Prescot is maneuvering to counter, here they finally come on
stage and Prescot has to organize the scattered resistance in
a fallen kingdom (not altogether successfully) and has to infiltrate
the Shank stronghold. All the time, he is in intermittent contact
with home through one of his wizard friends, but the promised
flying armada never seems to actually get to Loh...
Book 41 finally sees the mass confrontation with the Shanks which
has been building for the whole "Lovian Cycle". The armadas of
Vallia & Hamal are mighty indeed, but Prescot's settlement of an
ally on the throne of Hamal is not universally acclaimed in the
Hamalese fleet, and the Shanks seem to have a supernatural ally
of their own who is greatly blunting the utility of Prescot's
Wizards of Loh in the battle, and the overall morale of his forces.
It will be a near run thing...
These were, as I said, like old-home week, and I slipped into
Prescot's first person narrative like a comfortable old shoe.
He says he has mellowed over the years, and you can see some of
that playing out in his increasing use of guile and working
anonymously behind the scenes (and in odd incidents like saving
the life of a venomous beast which has just attacked one of his
Queen candidates), but when the time is right, he is still ready
to grab of his great bar of steel and run naked into the fight.
If you are thinking of starting the series, I wouldn't start
here, of course, but you *could*, and if you didn't know every
incident Prescot is musing about, you would get the gist.
There are several more books in the Lovian Cycle, which I presume
comes to a resolution of sorts, though I believe the next
Cycle is unfinished.
Hai, Jikai!
Gods' Battleground (Legion of Angels Book 12)
by Ella Summers
https://amzn.to/47gdSgOLeda Pandora has come a long way since she joined the Legion of
Angels as a way to level-up enough to rescue her kidnapped brother.
She long ago accomplished that, but by that time her life was
complicated enough that that was hardly the end of her adventures.
Now as the child of both a god & a demon, she has the task of
coordinating both of those fractious pantheons against the ultimate
menace of the "Guardians" who have cursed her sister as well as
being just generally mean & nasty. It plays out well enough,
including a standard fantasy "arena fighter" sequence, but on the
whole, it feels like what it is, a wrap-up book and doesn't quite
have the energy of the early books.
Leda's arc is basically finished, but I believe we can expect more
books in this universe. In particular, Leda's daughter is a child
of Prophecy...
"Subspace Survivors" by Edward E. Smith
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21647(Astounding Science Fact and Fiction, July 1960)
This is a late Smith novella that harks back to a number of his
earlier works, most notably to _Triplanetary_ and _The Skylark Of
Space_ for reasons which I think would be quickly apparent, as well
as to Van Vogt's "The Storm" in a way as well.
Space travel is established and as safe in the future as flying is
to us now, but just as we lose a plane every now and then, so a
space-liner will go missing from time to time. The ships are never
found, and nobody has a satisfactory explanation so as to keep it
from happening again since nobody has ever come back from such an
event.
Carlyle Deston is the First Officer of the liner "Procyon" and a
somewhat unusual man. Much given to hunches, and unbeatable at
gambling, he turned away from the temptations of easy money to do
something responsible and productive. Now however, with the liner
just away, he has one of those hunches that he ought to go below,
at which point he meets and psionically imprints on heiress Barbara
Warner, (an oil dowser as it happens). The two are naturally married
immediately by a shipboard (it's a big ship) minister and start
making plans for the future when one of those random events strikes
the ship killing almost everybody on board. Almost everybody.
There are a few left, both for good and ill, and maybe, just maybe,
there will finally be survivors from a Subspace catastrophe to bring
the news home...
You can see this being explicitly pitched for Campbell with the
psionics angle despite Deston raising some objections to the whole
concept, but other than that it's a fairly standard space adventure
with some harum-scarum encounters with gangsters and the like along
the way. The curious thing is we never do find out exactly what
happened to the ship. We know how to survive it now, but not what
precipitated it. I believe Smith was probably going to draw that
mystery out some, and I know there was a follow-up novel incorporating
parts of this story (_Subspace Explorers_) and a third book only
partially by Smith (_Subspace Encounter_) both of which I know I
read, but cannot now recall.
Anyway, it's minor Smith, but moves along pretty well.
Succubus: A LitRPG Series
by A.J. Markam
https://amzn.to/3To7P43Here's another "stuck in the game" book.
Ian Hertzfelder needs a job. Down on his luck
he has even done medical experiments, so actually getting
paid for playing his favorite game, OtherWorld as a
Quality Control monitor for the new AI expansions is a dream
come true.
The major catch is that they picked a guy willing to do medical
experiments on purpose: He will be sedated and interfaced with the
game to a whole new level. It might take a while to get used to,
but, hey, if it goes overtime, that's time-and-a-half or even
double-time pay. The minor catch is that he can't play his usual
warrior character but must play a Warlock.
In the game he finds that playing a Warlock is hard: You are pretty
much powerless until you can summon demons, and the demons a starting
Warlock can summon are pretty useless, like can't even take out a
skunk useless...
He also finds that the whole Quality Control thing isn't happening
because none of his contact screens work. In fact he can't contact
*anyone* outside the game, and the "quit" option is greyed-out too.
Looks like double-time for sure. He does finally make tenuous
contact with his employer though another gamer, also a Warlock
who informs him that the big perk of Warlockism is leveling up
enough to summon a Succubus, because: Succubus. Naturally this
becomes Ian's goal as long as he is stuck in the game anyway,
and finally he succeeds, but things aren't quite as simple or
sexy as he imagined...
For about two-thirds of this book, I didn't like Ian much as he
seemed oblivious to certain large facts, and the comic banter and
sex-farce were a bit forced. In his defense, he had a Thomas Covenant
problem with the morality of the place, and finally did make some
breakthroughs. The ending however was a bit pat, and seems to
have happened only to set up the next book, as the story had
seemingly reached a satisfying conclusion. I may pick up the
next book, but it will probably be a while.
Captain Future #22 Children of the Sun
by Edmond Hamilton
https://amzn.to/4cYJ1XsHere's one from my review hiatus of last year that I wanted to get out.
Curt Newton, aka Captain Future started out as a pulp hero, sort
of a future Doc Savage. Like Savage he had a crew of bickering
side-kicks, went on done-in-one adventures, and was pretty much the
same book to book. Most of those short books (one appearing in
each issue of "Captain Future" magazine) were (mostly) written by Space Opera
pioneer Edmond Hamilton, and there were 20 of them before the
magazine folded.
I don't know if it were Hamilton's idea or an editor's request, but
that wasn't the end of Captain Future with Hamilton bringing
Curt Newton back for a number of novella length "mature" adventures
in other magazines with this being the second such. And good heavens,
it's a winner, a marvelous story.
One of Newton's scientist friends is missing, and the crew tracks him
to Mercury (this is still the habitable Solar System), a place they
have been before. On-planet, the clues all lead one way, and when they
find the scientist's fate, Curt must decide whether to follow and try
to bring him back or not. In the event he does try, and it's
an emotional roller-coaster of a journey with an ending that wrings
out everybody.
You can sense the differences from the pot-boiler pulps immediately.
Newton's famous ship, The Comet, is battered and pitted, the crew
are all serious, and are all given real things to do, there is no
"villain" and no fights though there are certainly heroics, and there
is no pat happy-ending though it is a satisfying one.
Bravo, Mr. Hamilton.
-- columbiaclosings.comWhat's not in Columbia anymore..
RI August 2024
Re: RI August 2024