Charles L. Harness (1915–2005)

I have a giant, ultra-soft spot for this book. It's cheesy as hell, it's clichéd to no end, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's also an utter delight to read, precisely because of its cheerful disregard for sense-making. 3D Characters, you say? Psh! Who needs those when we have extravagance?

The assumption in the background is that our current universe is the latest in a series of cycles of big bangs followed by big crunches. This story deals with the previous iteration, in show more which a race of spacefaring cat people have been made subservient to the rule of two planet-sized supercomputers (that crazy idea in itself should make you want to read the book). Foreseeing their coming demise in a matter of 13 billion years, these computers attempt to disrupt the cycle of the universe by blowing up an entire galaxy. The idea is that when the universe reaches its tipping point between expanding and contracting, the lack of a galaxy's worth of matter is enough to keep the universe at that tipping point indefinitely, leaving the computers free to think their cold thoughts for all eternity. (In this fictional universe there's a brief time gap between matter disintegrating and reappearing as light/heat/other energy that makes this plan possible. The flaw has been fixed in our current iteration.) An inherent part of the computers' scheme involves the extinction of all life forms, ever, since keeping the universe in this stable condition means that all energy (light, temperature, motion, matter, ...) will gradually be used up and everything will freeze eternally at absolute zero, dooming all future lifeforms in all future universes in the process.

But there are some who resist! A ragtag band of plucky resistance fighters send off two star-crossed lovers on board of one spaceship to remedy the situation. Their plan is to have the ship go on an uninterrupted voyage for billions of years at near-lightspeed, during which it will accumulate enough theoretical mass to make up for the loss of an entire galaxy. This will enable the universe to start contracting again and to continue its eternal cycle. Oh, and the universe turns out to be a sentient entity.

If this seems like a giant fuck you to physics, well that's because there's luurrve involved, dammit! With love potions and ray guns! And cat-people-chess! And time travel! And near-lightspeed spaceship chases! And it's a cat-people version of Tristan and Isolde, too. In space!

It's rolicking good fun. Ignore reality and enjoy the ride. show less

It does feature a sentient cat people, and something like that usually sets off my alarm bell, but this is a Space Opera with an emphasis on Opera. It's about love -Tristan and Isolde type love. It's amazing how staggeringly romantic Harness is and gets away with it. A universe controlling pair of artificial intelligences built around male and female cortical tissue respectively, are planning to disrupt the cyclical death and rebirth of the universe so that they can function at absolute zero show more in a dead universe forever. Two star crossed lovers and a space ship -the Firebird of the title, are what could ruin their plan. A mindblowingly huge story by a true Vogtmaster. I'll grant the the novel hinges on a fairly predictiable twist to anyone who has read a few thousand of these things -but it doesn't matter. Short, sweet, richly detailed and highly recommended to everyone including fantasy readers. Worth hunting down and reading. It is one of the novels in the NESFA hardbound anthology Rings. show less

Harness’ last novel is atypical and familiar, charming and enticing in its episodes, and memorable in its overarching story of a deep love that survives death.

Harness’ final novel is a masterpiece in that it skillfully weds his most characteristic theme, what George Zebrowski’s introduction calls “the denial of death and the power of hope”, to a plot that transforms the “dreams and what-might-have-beens” from Harness’ life to “artful alternate realities”.

The milestones of show more Harness’ early life are here. Birth in Colorado City, Texas in 1915, a move to Fort West (which seems to be Fort Worth in its proximity to Dallas), Texas; an early interest in chemistry; a brief foray into seminary at the behest of his mother; employment as a fingerprint technician in the red light district of Fort Worth; employment at the U. S. Bureau of Mines during World War II, and eventually becoming a patent attorney. Oddly enough, Harness makes no reference to the early death of his older brother which shows up in other novels.

There are asides on Texas history and chemistry – lots of chemistry since Harness was a trained chemist.

There are nods to Edgar Allan Poe and classical music.

There is a deep, passionate, erotic love ended too early and perhaps transmuted. This is, after all, a sort of Grail story.

"My first real contact with Cybele Wilson where I could daily undress her with adoring lascivious adolescent eyes, was in high school. She was my chemistry teacher.

"She was well named. In ancient Phrygian mythology Cybele was the Goddess of Nature. Miss Cybele Wilson was a very special teacher and a very beautiful woman. I was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and she was not yet twenty-four. Sure, I had a crush on her."

So Joe Barnes opens his account. The next 145 pages recount Barnes’ life from 10 to 30 and his relationship with Cybele. We will hear of Barnes’ mother; the Brothers of St. Joseph, an unorthodox order who guards what they claim is the Holy Grail in a Texas town; Diana Mulligan, madam of a brothel; Sandt, a derelict who hangs out in the brothel; a local minister; classmates and co-workers of Barnes. It’s one of those plots where characters wind through Barnes’ life, each guaranteed at least two appearances.

Harness fans will appreciate this as his most personal story.

Grail completists (in about 1984 I saw a bibliography of Grail stories – it was already thick then) will, of course, want to look at it.

Those looking for a short, moving love story or coming-of-age novel will also appreciate it. At such a short length, it will perhaps wet the appetite of Harness neophytes for the grandeur of his classic science fiction novel The Paradox Men. show less

My reactions to reading this novel in 1991. Spoilers follow.

This is the quintessential Harness novel though I liked The Paradox Men better for a stronger element of revenge. All his characteristic themes are here: the lovers (Jamie Andrek and Amatar) fighting against a despot (here Amatar’s father, Oberon, determined to kill Andrek to destroy a potential threat to his life -- Oberon killed Andrek’s father and imprisoned Andrek’s brother Omere’s consciousness in a computer), the show more mysterious workings of fate (a theme not only echoed here in the preachings of the Ritornel and Alea religions but the crystomorphs of the Aleans which attempt to project the future of a man’s life and how it will be influenced by other events and other people), cycles of time (here the Ritornel belief in an eternal, predestined cycle), the law (Andrek is a lawyer and we are treated to a scene where he saves Earth from destruction), and even spiders (Harness gives us a clever sf idea here -- along with the usual van Vogtian fairy-tale vistas of time and spaces -- a metal poor planet formed from the debri of a first generation star populated by sentient aliens, expert surgeons descended from spiders). There is also art here in the form of Omere (based on Harness' brother who died at an early age). There is also an Adam and Eve plot here. Like Harness’ “The New Reality”, it involves a couple repopulating a cleansed Earth in another universe.

The novel is clever on many counts: the corrupted names of Earth (Terror) (However, it was rather obvious that Terror was Earth as it was that Kendrys and Amatar were clones of Oberon) and Rimor (for Rhymer, the computer/brain synthesis of poet Omere); the novel is filled with manifestations of the struggle between the two philosophies of Alea (total randomness) and Ritornel (total predestination bolstered by some interesting philosophical arguments. There is the bet between monk Vang of the Aleans and Andrek as to whether twelve die rolls would produce the Ring of Ritornel, the spiders web which produces adodecahedron -- symbol of Alea’s die. Imagery of randomness is repeated with the many die casts throughout the plot, the very chapter structure which goes from 1-12 and then goes from 12-1 where each of the last 11 chapters is a slightly modified restatement of the title of the first 11 chapters -- thereby invoking the twelve faces of Aleas die and the cyclical ring of Ritornel. There is a clever, but nonscientifi,c description of antimatter. Love is another theme in the union of Andrek’s and Omere’s mind (and the symmetry of both experiencing disembodied states).

Everything is very well woven together in this novel, but the central theme is the questions as to what guides fate: the randomness of Alea or pre-destination of Ritornel. Both play their part. A marvellously integrated, exciting book, a true masterpiece. show less