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Mack Reynolds (1917–1983)

Author of Mission to Horatius

194+ Works 4,548 Members 67 Reviews 9 Favorited

About the Author

Disambiguation Notice:

Bio comes from Towers of Utopia

Series

Works by Mack Reynolds

Mission to Horatius (1968) — Author — 283 copies, 13 reviews
Earth Unaware (1966) 144 copies
Galactic Medal of Honor (1976) — Author — 133 copies, 6 reviews
Tomorrow Might Be Different (1975) 126 copies
Commune 2000 A.D. (1974) 110 copies, 2 reviews
The Towers of Utopia (1975) 110 copies, 1 review
The Cosmic Eye (1969) 108 copies, 2 reviews
Lagrange Five (1979) 99 copies, 2 reviews
Satellite City (1975) 96 copies, 2 reviews
Deathwish World (1986) 91 copies, 2 reviews
Rolltown (1969) 91 copies, 1 review
Trojan Orbit (1985) 89 copies, 1 review
Space Visitor (1977) 85 copies, 1 review
Ability Quotient (1975) 80 copies
Amazon Planet (1975) 75 copies
Other Time (1984) 73 copies, 2 reviews
Looking Backward, From the Year 2000 (1973) 73 copies, 1 review
Equality: In the Year 2000 (1977) 71 copies, 1 review
Day After Tomorrow (1976) 70 copies, 2 reviews
Nebula Alert / The Rival Rigelians (1967) — Author — 70 copies, 1 review
Section G: United Planets (1976) 70 copies
The Lagrangists (1983) 69 copies, 1 review
Police Patrol: 2000 A.D. (1977) 63 copies, 1 review
The Fracas Factor (1978) 63 copies
Behold the Stars / Planetary Agent X (1965) — Author — 63 copies, 1 review
Time Gladiator (1964) 62 copies
The Earth War (2017) 62 copies
Eternity (1984) 59 copies, 1 review
Chaos in Lagrangia (1984) 55 copies, 1 review
The Space Barbarians / The Eyes of Bolsk (1969) 54 copies, 1 review
After Utopia (1977) 54 copies, 1 review
The Best Ye Breed (1978) 53 copies
The Best of Mack Reynolds (1976) 52 copies
The Rival Rigelians / Planetary Agent X (1974) 51 copies, 1 review
Code Duello / Computer War (1968) 51 copies
Science Fiction Carnival (1953) — Editor — 50 copies, 1 review
Trample an Empire Down (1978) 49 copies, 2 reviews
Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (1986) 48 copies
Perchance to Dream (1977) 45 copies
Brain World (1978) 44 copies
Planetary Agent X (2011) 42 copies
After Some Tomorrow (2011) 38 copies
Home Sweet Home 2010 A.D. (1984) 37 copies
Space Search (1984) 31 copies
Space Pioneer (2011) 30 copies
Computer World (2011) 29 copies, 1 review
Adaptation (1960) 28 copies, 1 review
Ultima Thule (2010) 25 copies, 4 reviews
The Rival Rigelians (2018) 25 copies, 1 review
Happy Ending (1957) 21 copies
Compounded Interests (1983) 20 copies, 1 review
Computer War (2017) 17 copies
Expediter (2011) 17 copies
Frigid Fracas (2011) 17 copies
Blackman's Burden (1961) 17 copies, 1 review
Once Departed (1970) 16 copies
Revolution (1960) 16 copies
Mercenary (2013) 15 copies
Border, Breed nor Birth (2009) 15 copies
Status Quo [short story] (2014) 13 copies
The Case of the Little Green Men (2009) 13 copies, 2 reviews
Gun for Hire (2011) 12 copies
The Space Barbarians (2013) 12 copies
Medal of Honor (2009) 11 copies
The Common Man (2010) 11 copies
Unborn Tomorrow (2014) 10 copies
Freedom [short story] (2011) 10 copies
Mercenary from Tomorrow (2020) 10 copies
Off Course (2011) 9 copies
Subversive (2009) 9 copies
Dogfight—1973 (2014) 8 copies, 1 review
Combat (2010) 8 copies
Summit (2014) 8 copies, 1 review
Effetto valanga (2012) 7 copies
The Jet Set (2012) 5 copies
Code Duello (2017) 5 copies
Potential Enemy (2012) 4 copies
The Expatriates (1963) 4 copies
Short Fiction 4 copies
PUerto Rican Patriot (1969) 4 copies
Galaxy 6 (1966) — Composer — 4 copies
This Time We Love (2012) 4 copies
Les gaspilleurs (2015) 3 copies
The Five-Way Secret Agent (2019) 3 copies
Mercy Flight 3 copies
Dawnman Planet (2017) 3 copies
A Kiss Before Loving (2012) 3 copies
The Martians and the Coys (2021) 2 copies
Not in the Rules (2023) 2 copies
The Good Seed (2019) 2 copies
Spaceman on a Spree (2024) 2 copies
The Galactic Ghost (2020) 2 copies
Earthlings Go Home! (1962) 2 copies
Fantalmanacco 2 copies
Halftripper 2 copies
The Cosmic Bluff (2021) 1 copy
Dog Star 1 copy
Isolationist 1 copy
Pacifist 1 copy
Slow Djinn 1 copy
Dead End 1 copy
Speakeasy 1 copy
Beehive (SS) 1 copy
Fad (SS) 1 copy
Devil To Pay 1 copy

Associated Works

Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales (1963) — Contributor — 496 copies, 7 reviews
Galactic Empires, Volume 2 (1976) — Contributor — 430 copies, 4 reviews
Study War No More: A Selection of Alternatives (1977) — Contributor — 293 copies, 1 review
100 Great Fantasy Short, Short Stories (1984) — Contributor — 269 copies, 5 reviews
Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology (1973) — Contributor — 258 copies, 1 review
A Century of Science Fiction (1962) — Contributor — 208 copies, 2 reviews
10th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1965) — Contributor — 195 copies
100 Crooked Little Crime Stories (1994) — Contributor — 180 copies, 2 reviews
101 Science Fiction Stories (1986) — Author — 174 copies, 2 reviews
Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space (1984) — Contributor — 169 copies, 6 reviews
Microcosmic Tales (1944) — Contributor — 160 copies, 3 reviews
Galactic Empires {complete} (1976) — Contributor — 137 copies, 1 review
Science Fiction of the 50's (1979) — Contributor — 129 copies, 1 review
Nova 3 (1973) — Contributor — 127 copies, 2 reviews
8th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1963) — Contributor — 126 copies, 4 reviews
The Year 2000 (1970) — Contributor — 124 copies, 1 review
Warrior (1986) — Contributor — 122 copies
SF: The Best of the Best (1967) — Author, some editions — 119 copies, 1 review
Analog 2 (1962) — Contributor — 113 copies, 1 review
Best SF: 1968 (1969) — Author — 108 copies, 3 reviews
Backdrop of Stars (1968) — Contributor — 102 copies, 3 reviews
7th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1962) — Contributor — 100 copies, 3 reviews
Invaders of Earth (1953) — Contributor — 99 copies, 5 reviews
Thirteen Above the Night (1965) — Contributor — 97 copies, 4 reviews
Flying Saucers (1982) — Contributor — 96 copies
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (1989) — Contributor — 94 copies, 2 reviews
The First Science Fiction MEGAPACK (2013) — Contributor — 89 copies, 4 reviews
The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural (1968) — Contributor — 85 copies
Time Machines: The Greatest Time Travel Stories Ever Written (1998) — Contributor — 82 copies, 5 reviews
Young Mutants (1984) — Contributor — 80 copies, 5 reviews
100 Astounding Little Alien Stories (1996) — Contributor — 73 copies, 1 review
The City, 2000 A.D: Urban Life through Science Fiction (1950) — Contributor — 71 copies
The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK (2011) — Contributor — 61 copies, 4 reviews
Space, Time & Crime (1964) — Contributor — 58 copies, 1 review
TV:2000 (1982) — Contributor — 56 copies, 2 reviews
SF: Authors' Choice (1968) — Contributor — 47 copies
Young Monsters (1985) — Contributor — 47 copies, 2 reviews
The Weird Ones (1965) — Contributor — 43 copies
Future Quest (1973) — Contributor — 40 copies
Portals of Tomorrow (1954) — Author — 40 copies, 1 review
Analog 7 (1966) — Contributor — 39 copies, 3 reviews
14 Great Tales of ESP (1969) — Contributor — 39 copies, 1 review
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: Vol. XCVII, No. 11 (November 1977) (1977) — Contributor — 34 copies, 1 review
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow ... (1974) — Contributor — 33 copies, 1 review
Science Fiction Adventure from Way Out (1973) — Contributor — 32 copies
Gentle Invaders (1969) — Contributor — 31 copies
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: Vol. XCVII, No. 12 (December 1977) (1977) — Contributor — 28 copies, 1 review
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: Vol. XCVII, No. 10 (October 1977) (1977) — Contributor — 27 copies, 1 review
The Old Masters (1970) — Contributor — 27 copies
The Bank Street Book of Science Fiction (1989) — Contributor — 26 copies
Analog 4 (1966) — Contributor — 25 copies, 1 review
Worlds of When (1962) — Author — 24 copies, 1 review
Shared tomorrows: Science fiction in collaboration (1979) — Contributor — 20 copies
Analog Anthology #5: Writers' Choice, Volume one (1983) — Contributor — 19 copies
Space Dogfights (1992) — Contributor — 18 copies, 1 review
Political science fiction;: An introductory reader (1974) — Contributor — 16 copies
Univers 1982 (2001) — Contributor — 16 copies
International Relations Through Science Fiction (1978) — Contributor — 15 copies
Science fiction verhalen [1969] — Contributor, some editions — 14 copies, 1 review
Galaxy Science Fiction 1974 December, Vol. 35, No. 12 (2004) — Contributor — 13 copies
Tomorrow Today (1975) — Contributor — 12 copies
Cosmolinea B-1 (2013) 12 copies, 1 review
An Anthology of Angels (1996) — Contributor — 12 copies
New Worlds For Old (1963) — Contributor — 11 copies
Zielzeit. Die schönsten Zeitreise- Geschichten II. (1985) — Contributor, some editions — 11 copies
Worlds of Tomorrow No. 02, June 1963 (1963) — Contributor — 9 copies, 1 review
Analog 2 (1982) — Contributor — 9 copies
Galaxy Science Fiction 1968 August, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1968) — Contributor — 8 copies
Out of This World Adventures, July 1950 (1950) — Contributor — 7 copies
Space Science Fiction, Spring 1957 (Vol. 1 ∙ No.1) — Contributor; Contributor — 6 copies
American Government Through Science Fiction (1974) — Contributor — 6 copies
Future Kin (Anthology 8-in-1) (1974) — Contributor — 6 copies
Det sidste spørgsmål og andre historier (1973) — Author, some editions — 6 copies, 1 review
The Science Fiction Omnibus #1 (2017) — Contributor — 4 copies
Universe Science Fiction June 1953 (1953) — Contributor — 4 copies
Worlds of Tomorrow (Berkley Books G-163) (1958) — Contributor — 4 copies
Startling Stories, September 1950 (1950) — Contributor — 4 copies
Impulse 4 (1966) — Contributor — 4 copies
Imagination, April 1955 (Vol. 6 ∙ No. 4) — Contributor — 3 copies
The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes — Contributor — 3 copies, 1 review
Times 4: Four Science Fiction Tales — Contributor — 3 copies
Un passo avanti e due indietro — Contributor — 3 copies
Adventure Tales #7: Classic Tales from the Pulps (2014) — Contributor — 2 copies
Amazing Stories Vol. 51, No. 3 [May 1978] (1978) — Contributor — 2 copies
Rogue For Men, March 1959 (Vol. 4, No. 2) — Contributor — 1 copy
Great Science Fiction from Fantastic No. 4 (1966) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

@Garage (21) Ace (23) Ace Double (160) American (18) anthology (16) calibre (26) digital (19) ebook (33) fiction (307) G-SF (19) Guest Bedroom (42) Kindle (26) library (36) Mack Reynolds (30) novel (58) oldsf (21) paperback (118) PB (29) read (34) ReynoldsM (18) science fiction (1,104) science fiction series (17) sf (411) sff (93) short stories (71) Star Trek (65) time travel (19) to-read (67) unread (42) wishlist (17)

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Reynolds, Dallas McCord
Other names
Collins, Clark (pseudonym)
Mallory, Mark (pseudonym)
McCord, Guy (pseudonym)
Reynolds, Maxine (pseudonym)
Rose, Dallas (pseudonym)
Ross, Dallas (pseudonym)
Birthdate
1917-11-11
Date of death
1983-01-30
Gender
male
Education
Army Marine Officers' Cadet School
Transportation Corps Marine Officers School
Occupations
novelist
journalist
Organizations
US Marine Corps
Socialist Labor Party (US)
Relationships
Reynolds, Verne L. (father)
Short biography
Due to a life-long interest in socioeconomics, he has specialized in his extrapolations into the future on themes based upon political economy.
In the 1950s, Mr Reynolds began a campaign of seeking out material for his stories all over the world, and since, has lived in or traveled through more than 75 countries in every continent but Antarctica. He once crossed the Sahara to Timbuktu and on the way was captured by the Tuareg (The Forgotten of Allah, and the so-called Apaches of the Sahara).
Another time in the tropical jungles of Mexico he was bitten by a vampire bat and had to be treated for rabies.. He has been in more than half a dozen wars, revolutions, and military revolts
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Corcoran, California, USA
Places of residence
Corcoran, California, USA (birth)
San Luis Potosi, Mexico (death)
Place of death
San Luis Potosi, Mexico
Disambiguation notice
Bio comes from Towers of Utopia
Associated Place (for map)
Corcoran, California, USA

Members

Discussions

Just eyeball it in Good Show Sir! — bad science fiction and fantasy covers (February 2025)

Reviews

92 reviews
Mack Reynolds was a prolific science fiction writer of the mid-twentieth century who is being rediscovered by modern futurists and with some reason - his ability to predict the world we live in now half a century ago is quite remarkable.

He is not, however, a great writer. 'The Towers of Utopia' feels like two novellas and a short story jammed together to serve his real purpose which is somewhat didactic - to explore the logic of American capitalism as it moves towards a self-realising show more 'welfare state'.

The story line and characterisations are amusing and the book acts as adequate light entertainment but what we really have here is non-fiction purporting to be fiction. This is intellectual socio-political scifi clothed in popular pulp memes.

This is not to denigrate it because it depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for great and insightful literature adding to our understanding of the human soul, go read Dostoevsky. You won't get that here.

What you do get (from the vantage point of 1975) is the opportunity to question the America of your day according to its own logic. Reynolds scores some top marks for seeing not only how the system works but where it must logically lead.

This does not mean he gets it entirely right. As usual some of the technology is still a bit ahead of what we are capable of today (although becoming less so by the day) and we do not all live in hundred floor high rises while 'mobile towns' are rather an absurd concept.

The high rise 'demes' that provide the basis of the story represent a 'utopian' solution to mass poverty based on 'negative income tax' (what we would call now universal basic income) administered by managers answerable to good old and corrupting finance capital.

Class differences remain but crime has almost disappeared although at the cost of surveillance of all money transfers and movement outside the home (where the fig leaf of privacy remains sacrosanct unless of course the security forces think otherwise).

The similarities to our contemporary conditions are quite remarkable. Reynolds, who could have had no idea of an actual world centred on digitalisation and soon blockchain, imagines the consequences of such a world with more discipline even than William Gibson was to do later.

Perhaps this managerial capitalism with its coating of constitutional liberty but also with real power vested in organisations not unlike the modern Department of Homeland Security and in elected managers who belong to an avowed Meritocracy is more like China today in some respects.

If so, then the West is becoming more like China just as China is becoming more like the West with the only difference being that the Chinese have a Government that is still ultimately in control of Capital where the West does not - even if outcomes for us are potentially similar.

There is a sly critique of American capitalism's fear of Communism with the presence of a pseudo-socialist Futurist Party capable of overturning the system if not nipped in the bud. Reynolds is, in fact, highly skilled at not letting us into the secret of his own sympathies too easily.

This is cold, clinical, analytical stuff with a somewhat cynical view of human motivation as the 'good guys' (the managers) hold together a system that is far from as utopian as it initially appears and whose trajectory seems to be towards constant waste and eventual collapse.

There is a touch of Asimov and of his determinism with futures predictable by massively clever computers but also a hint that human nature can subvert the most utopian systems through bloody-minded refusal to get with the project or work-arounds to meet unmet desires.

Reynolds explores the workings of the mafia and of prostitution as well as the way the system controls drugs by providing something (shades of Huxley) that pacifies the poorest. Unemployment is, in fact, increasing as NIT grows in scale.

It is the insight into the risks of UBI that makes this book worth reading today. UBI is presented by idealists as the best means of dealing with inequity and poverty but our recent and decent experiment with furlough should cause us pause for thought.

Furlough was vital to get many vulnerable people through an existential crisis and there are arguments for continuing such benefits for those who can never work - perhaps a certain percentage of the population cannot but be near the bread line for many reasons.

Furlough also had one major positive short term effect that suggests that something like UBI might work for short one or two year periods in peoples' lives - it caused many people to re-evaluate their lives and look for new opportunities (the root of some of the labour disruption now happening).

Unfortunately, mass long term UBI looks as if it will have effects like those suggested in Reynolds' book - the creation of a bored and demoralised lumpenproletariat without any incentive to do anything with their lives except to vote in more benefits for themselves.

This is, as Reynolds points out, merely reproducing the conditions of Rome as it declined, with a senatorial class using its agents (the 'managers') to control the population through any means to hand - trank (the drug), surveillance, taking out dissidents, manipulative managerialism.

Ambition becomes defined in terms of becoming one of the managers, moving up the ranks in what amounts to an administrative army of economic legionaries, while the real wealth accumulates in massive amounts elsewhere based on networks that can support super-corporate needs.

Super-corporate profitability and survival (or rather the survival of its shareholders) becomes linked to welfarism but a welfarism that does not encourage responsible autonomy in the individual but just the atomisation of individuals who merely aggregate their desires to create markets.

The high rises, as much as in Ballard's 'High-Rise', brilliantly filmed by Ben Wheatley recently, contain the seeds of their own disintegration as market forces, corporate greed and corporate propensity for 'creative destruction' work their magic. Managers just move on.

Whether this is good or bad (Reynolds is good at not preaching at us, although equally good at creating opportunities for different points of view to do so) is not clear, perhaps it is the only way our savanna-origin species can operate - alphas, betas and gammas together.

His most subversive commentary lies in describing the situation in the first place and then suggesting that any such system (bearing in mind that the Soviet Union was an apparently successful entity at the time) can be overthrown if one subversive can get inbetween the cracks.

There are no answers in this book, possibly because there are no answers anywhere. It is poor literature (if that matters) but I can see why frustrated futurist engineers quite like it. It speaks to their doubts about the system they serve and heroises their class, the managers.

I suspect that, being engineers, they are not really tuned to Reynolds' sub-text which is that managers are part of the problem rather than part of the solution but my reasons for writing that must not be stated for fear of letting loose a spoiler.
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The other time would be August 1519 because that’s when our hero Don Fielding suddenly finds himself. On vacation in Mexico, he left his Land Rover with just the contents of his pockets: some money, a compass, a Swiss Army knife, some cigarettes and matches. He also carries a .22 pistol and ammo for it.

He’s surprised to come across a village where the natives seem untouched by modernity. Their clothes are very traditional. They don’t even speak Spanish. That’s ok, though, because he show more speaks the Nahautl language because he’s a professor of ethnology at the University of Texas in Austin and specializes in studying the past and present of the Tenochan culture – what we commonly call the Aztecs.

The locals judge Fielding a magician and give him some provisions before sending him on his way to get help or find his car. In the second chapter, he comes across what at first seems an elaborate movie set. Then he realizes the startling truth: he really has encountered the Cortes expedition in process of conquering Mexico.

Fortunately, Fielding’s first name is taken, when he introduces himself, as a title. He tries to pass himself off as merely a scholar from the rich and, to the Spanish, unknown lands to the north. But he says too much, reveals a knowledge of the Aztecs political structure. And the always greedy Cortes is keenly interested in learning about more lands to loot.

Fortunately, Fielding keeps his knowledge of Nahautl to himself among the Spanish. But then he meets another figure from history: Malinche aka Dona Marina. She’s a controversial figure to this day in Mexico, a heroine or race traitor depending on your perspective. With her knowledge of the Aztecs and serving as an interpreter, Fielding recognizes her as the most useful of all Cortes’ tools in conquering the Aztecs. But she’s also a beautiful woman whom Cortes has taken as his mistress. The attraction between her and Fielding is immediate, but it will be relationship throughout the book that will vary between sexual attraction and hostility.

The other historical figure (there are probably more I didn’t recognize) is Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the historian who, years later in our timeline, produced the only “honest” account of Cortes’ conquest.

Fielding finds himself a “guest” among the Spanish, but they eventually try to kill him. He flees to Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs. He finds sanctuary there, but Cortes, as Fielding knows he will, shows up and demands Montezuma turn him over to the Spanish. Fortunately, by this time, Fielding has gotten himself adopted into a warrior clan and declared Montezuma’s nephew.

There are some specific allusions to other time travel stories: H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the movie Berkeley Square. (There are frequent film references in Reynolds’ works. Fielding is described as looking like Gary Cooper.) A work that isn’t specifically mentioned is Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”, but Fielding does wonder about the historical consequences of killing a mosquito or rabbit or fathering a child in this past.

The one time travel story that isn’t mentioned, the one this mix of alternate history and time travel most reminded me of, is L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Falls. Both have weak rationalizations. Time travel via lightening bolt for de Camp and a reference to a famous Fortean timeslip, English schoolteachers finding themselves in the Palace of Versailles’ past for Reynolds. But the heroes of both novels try to save a threatened civilization through a combination of political and technological innovation.

The mix of those two things differs in those novels, though. Fielding is no engineer. Sure, he knows what gunpowder is made of. But what’s the exact recipe? Where’s he going to get the ingredients? He does suggest some low-tech innovations. He gives the Aztecs wheelbarrows, suggests improvements to their pitiful bows and arrows, that they put big versions of the wheels from their toys on carts to be pulled by men, and introduces the Macedonian phalanx to the Aztecs.

Throughout most of the book, Fielding is just intent on his own survival. Cortes’ conquest proceeds as he expects from history no matter his presence. He’ll go down with the Aztecs, so he throws his lot in with the locals.

But this is a Reynolds book, so Fielding turns to political tools: espionage, propaganda, well-timed sabotage, political reforms, and provocation. And then things unknown to history start happening.

This book does a good job with Fielding’s character and others. His horror at seeing a sight he only knew from history — the Spanish melting down gold Aztec artifacts and burning Aztec manuscripts is well-depicted. So is this world as a whole including the physical environ of Tenochtitlan. And, yes, the horrors of Aztec human sacrifice are covered. Their abolishment may be the only good thing, Fielding ruefully thinks, to come from Cortes’ conquest. From what I know of Cortes’ expedition, the book gets the military details right. I trust the depiction of Aztec governance is correct. It’s not the hierarchical structure the Spanish think but a council of which Montezuma is the head. Montezuma himself is depicted as weak and vacillating, stuck, despite Fielding’s admonitions and “prophecies”, into trying to appease the Spanish “gods”.

The novel’s ending is a bit rushed and frantic – not unusual for Reynolds. But it’s quite clear that the history has been bent into a new shape. I was very surprised how much I enjoyed this one.
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There’s not much going on in the mountain town of San Raphael de Aldama in Mexico. That’s what journalist Alex Germain hears, a lot, when he arrives by bus. That’s what Lilith Eden, who looks strikingly like the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, tells him at the bust stop. It’s just a colony for elderly foreigners. That’s what Ursula Zavala tells him. And doesn’t Ursula look good? She doesn’t seem to have aged at all since Alex met her in Vienna twenty years ago when he covered a show more conference on gerontology.

And, speaking of gerontology, who does Alex meet in the dining room of Ursula’s Calle Hospicio Number 15? Why it’s Dr. Werner Gottlieb who spoke at that conference. Didn’t think he’d still be around. Interesting dog, Buda, he has. Seems pretty smart.

Yeah, it is kind of a dull place. What kind of hotel has a copy of the Journal of the American Gerontology Society lying around? Jack Fast, the piano player, seems fond of really old tunes. But, then, so are the patrons. Still, the elderly Beaumont couple from Texas tell Alex, you wouldn’t think it would be impossible to rent or buy a place in such a town.

Of course, the reader suspects Alex of hidden motives, and he’d be right. And, right in Chapter One, Reynolds starts giving us “Interludes” where unidentified people in town (though it’s not really hard to guess who they are) indicate they have secret agendas. Things get more complicated for Alex when a mysterious woman enters his darkened room and has sex with him. And, the next morning, Ursula, whom Alex also had a fling with all those years ago, suggests they take a car trip out of town for old times’ sake.

Then Dr. Gottlieb ends up murdered.

This was a surprising and enjoyable work from Reynolds. Yes, politics show up at the end, but a lot of it is a detailed look at lines of actual research in extending human life – some of which still go on. Reynolds throws in various epigraphs at the heads of chapters on how to extend life and arguing how likely or desirable that is. Along the same line, we get lots of explicit allusions to works from Aldous Huxley, H. Rider Haggard, and Robert A. Heinlein that deal with the theme of immorality.

This book reminded me of a longer, more morose, and grander take on the theme: Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years. Both feature immortals and the practical and emotional problems they face living through the centuries though Reynolds actually uses some historical characters which allows him to work in various mythological and historical references to immortality and how to achieve it. The immortals here, like Anderson’s, really have no idea why they are what they are though several theories are proposed

It's a well-paced thriller though, of course, Reynolds’ characters do a lot of talking and arguing. He mends the science, history, and myth together well. And, even with its short length of 254 pages, some of the characters, especially Lilith, are drawn well.

Reynolds’ novels sometimes end abruptly with future developments implied. That’s not really the case here because the central political struggle is unresolved at the end, but certain characters find emotional satisfaction from events.

I did, I think, detect a slight amount of Dean Ing in how the violent conclusion is written
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review of
Robert Lory's / Mack Reynolds's The Eyes of Bolsk / The Space Barbarians
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 19, 2018


This is the type of bk I probably wd've judged negatively by its cover for much of my life & dismissed w/o reading it. These days, esp in the case of Mack Reynolds, I see the titles & the cover art as somewhat misleading marketing lures for content that's deeper than the garishness might imply.

As usual w/ these Ace Doubles, I read the work by the author that I show more don't know 1st, saving the Reynolds, wch I'd expected to enjoy (& did), for last. I eat in the same way, saving the food I like the most for last so that the meal doesn't have an unclimactic ending. Lory's The Eyes of Bolsk begins:

"Boredom—We include a special subheading on this psychological state, which you may well experience during your term of service. Because environmental conditions here at headquarters render you relatively static in terms of your normal aging process, and time as you have known it passes in hardly traceable movements, the "time" you may spend in any given staff assignment may appear to you to be exceedingly lengthy." - p 5

An interesting aspect of this bk is its framing of things w/ bureaucrat-speak such as the above & then contrasting the 'reality' of how things play out. The "employee handbook" that the preceding is a 'quote' from is often reasonable & cautionary while the 'actuality' is quite different. The handbook is somewhat considerate & tactful, the 'reality' is otherwise:

"Kane thought of his gun and his knives, of which one was buried in the guard's chest behind him. All right, he had the means, but . . . "After I kill this man and put out his eyes, you say I can return here. Here to this exact place?"

""To this exact place and time, which will then begin to flow for you again."

""But then that bullet there . . ."

"Aylan smiled. "I'll leave that problem to your ingenuity. As for the man, you won't be required to kill him."

"Kane said grimly. "Committee ruling, I suppose."

""Not at all. There's no Committee ruling which says you can't kill the man. But that doesn't change the fact of the matter. You cannot kill Bolsk. He's already dead."" - p 15

I think that's a catchy beginning. This is, after all, a work of the imagination & such a premise is imaginative. The over-the-top legend that explains it is even more so:

"Doyak had already limped across the room and his right arm wielding the heavy sword in one horizontal swish, lopped off Bolsk's white haired head. "False old man!" he howled. "You wished your sight restored. Now you see not. Now your eyes are dead. Now you have need of the magic I've brought. Now see, old man, now see!" And as a guard's sword rent his own heart, Doyak thrust the contents of the earthen jar into the eyes of the severed head on the floor." - p 21

"["]Between Trovo and a certain elsewhere a window has existed since long before the death of Bolsk. Since his death, however, the window has widened. That window is the eyes, which are not yet a door but which may become so. It is only a matter of time. That is why the eyes must be put out."" - p 23

As I pointed out in connection w/ Kenneth Bulmer's The Key to Venudine, "it occurred to me that Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) is the earliest example of the genre I can think of" - by wch I meant the genre in wch a technology of a particular time & place gets transplanted into a time & place where it hadn't previously existed. In this case that means a gun into a more medieval setting:

""All of you—over to the door with the others," Kane snarled as the object lesson of their fallen comrade took hold. "The door I want opened, and fast. I also want every single one of you out of it as fast as your feet can travel. Understand that there is a new ruler in Castle Bolsk and that if ever I see or hear your coming back to this place, the magic of my booming tube will blast out instant death to you as it has to your leader and to one of your number already. Am I quite clear in my meaning?"" - p 50

Finally we meet part of what-once-was-Bolsk. One might say that after being a ruthless dictator life (or death) hasn't been good to him:

"What might once have been a man stepped heavily to a place between two couches. The body looked sick, withered, but the horror was where there should have been a head. A head was there—but not a human head. It was a brass colored metal of some kind, Kane decided, egg shaped and positioned vertically as if the bottom part of the egg was resting deep within the shoulders. There were no facial features, just a large circular lens, the outer edge of which converged on two three inch protrusions whose functions were not clear by their position." - p 62

This is a novella, 90pp long. Near the end is a non-human appraisal of humans, a type of appraisal that's common to SF:

"They are negative even in affirmation, destructive even in advancement. The underlying trait extends to their mode of limited space travel, for example. It depends entirely on the fist thrust (term is their own and revealing, symbolizing as it does a folded and tightened hand, which in this configuration is utilized solely for the striking of another member of the species of material against material." - pp 75-76

So, who is Robert Lory? Is that a pen name? He seems to've mainly written hack Dracsploitation stuff so it's no wonder I've never read anything by him before:

"(1936- ) US public relations adviser and author who began publishing sf with "Rundown" for Worlds of If (see If) in May 1963; his stories have been assembled as A Harvest of Hoodwinks (coll 1970 dos). His sf novels, mostly light, fantasy-laced adventures, are unambitious but competent; they include Identity Seven (1974), which involves Identity Exchange in various realities, and The Thirteen Bracelets (1974). The Trovo series – The Eyes of Bolsk (1969 dos) and Master of the Etrax (1970) – and the Shamryke Odell sequence – Masters of the Lamp (1970 dos) and The Veiled World (1972 dos) – are Science Fantasy of an undemanding sort. The Dracula Vampire sequence, beginning with Dracula Returns! (1973) and ending with Challenge to Dracula (1975), features an immortal Dracula who has survived Atlantis only to be subjected to a villain's electronic control, gradually becoming a Superhero under duress; the Horrorscope sequence, beginning with The Green Flames of Aries (1974) and ending with Gemini Smile, Gemini Kill (1975) is horror, a genre with which he became identified. His contributions under the House Name Paul Edwards to the John Eagle Expeditor series of adventure thrillers were nonfantastic. [JC]" - http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lory_robert

I can't honestly say that any of that interests me. In fact, I find the idea of writing yet-another-Dracula/Vampire-rip-off to be so nauseatingly unoriginal that I just deduce that, for Lory, a job is a job.

****************************************************

On to something much more to my liking: Mack Reynolds's The Space Barbarians. The protagonist, John of the Hawks, is presented as a precociously triumphant warrior/raider probably inspired half by Scottish clan history & half by pre-European invasion AmerIndian culture.

"John was grinning again, even as he herded the loot before him. "There will shouting of my name by the criers tonight," he boasted.

"The other had his petty revenge. "I doubt it," he said.

"John halted his horses and scowled puzzlement. "How do you mean?" he demanded. "How long has it been since either a Hawk or a Fielding counted coup on three raiders in a single day and seized their possessions as well?"

""A long time indeed, John of the Hawks, and your feat is praiseworthy. But unfortunately for your moment of honor, the muster is to go into session shortly."

"It was John's turn to stare. "The muster! But this is only Apriltime."

""Yes, and ordinarily the sachems and caciques would not join in the muster for three months; but they are gathering to discuss the travelers from Beyond."" - p 10

Don't you just hate it when that happens? You accomplish something spectacular & you expect some love for it & you get trumped by some astronauts plopping on yr turf. It just ain't fair. Making matters worse, these astronauts are up to no good:

""I'm no ethnologist, and your guess is probably as good as mine. I'd say they're the result of a crash of some pioneer group, Skipper. A very bad crash, since they lost communication."" - p 12

""You must forgive us if we are unacquainted with some of your customs," he said. "As you know, we come from a great distance."

"Which was a strange thing to say, John thought. Surely customs were the same everywhere. The Banns laid down by the Holy were as necessary on one world as on another, and surely the Holy presided over all creation." - p 18

"["]Very well, where you have potent nip, you've got people who are hooked on it. All we have to do is find a sachem or so hooked on uisgebeatha, get him binged and have him sign over mineral rights to us."

"His voice expressing interest, Harmon said, "How do you know that under local laws the sachems have such power?"

""What do we care? They're kind of a chief, aren't they? With the papers signed by one or two sachems, we can go to one of the less punctilious planets and get some military beef to back up our local rights."" - p 39

The origins of the people whose planet has been 'discovered' by these astronauts is gradually revealed:

""The Ark," John said. "All of the people of Caledonia came in the Holy Inverness Ark."

""Krishna!" the skipper said. "I remember now, Possibly the first pioneer craft ever to be lost in space. Crewed largely by colonists from northern Great Britain."" - p 43

After failing to con the Caledonians out of their natural resources in one way the astronauts return to try missionaries as their 2nd way. The locals are suspicious:

"The other nodded. "That is correct. I am now skipper of the Revelation. All members of the crew also follow the footsteps of Krishna. None are armed."

"Don of the Clarks said, "And so are protected by the bann." He grunted. "I suspect you cozen us, Skipper of the Harmons."" - p 59

The 2nd way involves drugging people into passivity:

"John grunted and looked back at the older man. "Then, what happens after you take soma?"

""You become one with Krishna, our redeemer, and follow his teaching the rest of your years until the end of mortal life comes and you are gathered into the bosom of Kalkin."

""What teaching?"

""Thou shalt not harm."" - p 60

The typical ruses of missionaries are effectively put in place:

"The bedel said in disgust. "What can be done? Obviously, the guru, at least, is a holy man. He performs miracles."

""He performs medicine," John growled. "While we of Caledonia have remained stationary with our banns and our traditions, they have advanced in every direction.["]" - p 91

"["]And then the two of you take your soma and return to Aberdeen to set a good example. Six months from now, oh, perhaps a year, and you'll both be working in the new mines, all civilized, along with everybody else in Caledonia."" - p 98

As I've come to expect from Reynolds, anything he writes questions status quo assumptions — in this case: who're the barbarians & who're the civilized? & what makes one preferable to the other? While many SF writers seem to have military experience that informs their stories, Reynolds seems to have a deep knowledge of history that's closest in spirit to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States while clearly predating it.
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