paperback

review of
C. M. Kornbluth & Judith Merril (writing as Cyril Judd) 's
Gunner Cade
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 16, 2011

This was probably written in the same yr as Kornbluth & Pohl's The Space Merchants & published as a bk before The Space Merchants was. & while the approach to the story-telling is substantially different, there're significant correlations between the 2.

In both bks, the main character is a dupe of the ruling elites - benefiting in some respects from their unquestioning servitude. In both cases, the main character somewhat haphazardly plunges into realities that they were previously unaware of & eventually have to come to terms w/ in order to recreate their relation to the world. In both cases, these characters resist facing reality as long as they can - only incrementally being disabused of their delusions. In both, they eventually become heros of forces that they previously didn't understand at all. AND, in both there's another planet that's ultimately the hope of resistance to tyranny. In the case of The Space Merchants that planet is Venus; in the case of Gunner Cade that planet is Mars.

As I've gradually become more aware of C. M. Kornbluth, I've been particularly interested to learn of his collaborations w/ Merril. It's somewhat to my discredit as a hypothetical scholar that I'm not more aware of the many pen names that authors that I'm interested in have written under. The name "Cyril Judd" has some transparency insofar as "Cyril" is Kornbluth's 1st name & "Judd" is an abbreviation of Merril's 1st name. But if I'd previously seen a "Cyril Judd" novel somewhere I might've passed it over as by someone I'm not familiar w/. & I have to wonder: How many good bks have I missed this way? I, of all people, shd be hyperaware of multiple name use given that I might have as many as 60 names myself - & how many people know them all? Noone that I know of.

I've been interested in Merril for a long time b/c when I 1st started reading SF in the early 1960s I knew of few or no women involved. Then I discovered & read Merril's 1961 editing of the 6th Annual Edition The Year's Best S-F & was happy to find something both edited by a woman & including women writers. This was certainly one of the earliest SF anthologies I ever read & I remember being very impressed by it. As such, Merril stuck in my mind as someone to watch for. Nonetheless, I've read very little by her since! Having just now read her Wikipedia bio, I'm once again astounded that I hadn't previously learned more about her. Her activities as a political activist alone are enuf to strongly endear her to me.

Again, as in The Space Merchants, Gunner Cade presents history & language distorted for propaganda control purposes. People are taught that the world(s) had been created 10,000 yrs before & that an Emperor & a particular political system had been served throughout. Creationism anyone? Page 10: a teacher 'explains' that: "'They must be always occupied with fiddling details' - I should perhaps explain that a fiddle was a musical instrument; fiddling hence means harmonious, or proper." The joke here being that at the time Gunner Cade was written "fiddling details" wd've meant 'trivial, little, petty, worthless, insignificant' details - in other words, something to keep the dupes busy to keep them from thinking about anything important.

Another instance of this is on page 18: "'Always assume mankind is essentially merciful; nothing else explains why crooks are regularly returned to office.' If you know as little of Philosophy as you do of decency, Brother, I should explain that a crook is an implement formerly used by good shepherds and in this case stands, by a figure of speech, for the good shepherd himself." Ha ha!!

Making this whole tale even more poignant for me is that much of it takes place in Baltimore (my home town), Aberdeen (the military weapons testing area north of Baltimore), & Washington DC (similarly nearby in the South). These are, indeed, highly significant locations for American militarism. The society of this story is a future one so these locations are described circuitously: eg: the Pentagon is a ruin called the Caves of Washington.

As Gunner Cade, the title's character, becomes less naive re what's actually going on around him, a respected military figure is found to be completely cynical. Cade learns that wars that he'd fought in were at heart divide-&-conquer strategies to keep the masses disunited. WWI anyone? As a "Gunner" Cade is to keep absolute distance from women. Look to the more militaristic culture of Papua, New Guinea (& most other places) for contemporary parallels. But it takes contact w/ one of these dreaded creatures for Cade to finally learn about history - a very dangerous subject indeed.

All in all, the bk's slant is pro-technology wch is to say pro-science wch is to say pro-progress - a slant that I suspect that Merril probably came to qualify as its more destructive ramifications became increasingly apparent after WWII. According to Wikipedia, "From the mid-1970s until her death, Merril spent much time in the Canadian peace movement, including traveling to Ottawa dressed as a witch in order to hex Parliament for allowing American cruise missile testing over Canada." Wch isn't to say that technology is only cruise missiles - wch is to say that an unquestioned support of technology will most certainly include such things as cruise missiles & even worse.

Both Gunner Cade & The Space Merchants end on an optimistic romantic note: the women are the ones who know what's going on from the get-go & the men are the ones who are gradually converted by love to apply their power to less slavish ends. If the implication is that this is generally the case between the 'sexes' then I probably disagree. Nonetheless, this was yet another good subversive novel written at a time when such things were very important - just as they are now. ( )

There are a least three SF books written by Cyril Judd. The authors are really Judith Merril and Cyril Kornbluth. Both were successful pulp magazine short story writers in the "Golden Age" of SF.

Judith Merril is known as one of the best science fiction anthology editors of the period. She wrote a couple of novels solo and three with Kornbluth.

Cyril Kornbluth was a prolific SF writer selling dozens of short stories to the pulps. Along with his collaborations with Merril he co wrote at least 5 novels with Frederik Pohl and some solo novels. The Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl were married at that time so working with both of them was easy.

Unfortunately the Cyril Judd novels were average fair for the period. This book is the most popular and has some very good writing. The overall story is week. I will not read another of the Cyril Judd books. There are too many great SF novels waiting to be read. ( )