Sign of the Labrys

This book has a compressed elegance sadly absent from the current overstuffed fiction scene: it does the job, and then stops. It does not tell you what it us going to tell you, tell it to you, and then tell you more than once what you've been told, on and on, for three or ten or more volumes. I should point out one very obvious point that is never mentioned in the critical literature I have seen: the story tracks that of Dante's Inferno, something that becomes clear enough by the time the hero reaches Level I, and is emphasized with a final resolving chord in the last sentences of the book.

An early distopian novel in which a man attempts to escape a society resembling ancient Crete, with a very graphic minotaur in charge. The Minotaur is a quasi government entity the FBY, who are intent on killing Sam, our hero who, like everyone else, lives in a labyrinth of underground apartments, with rigorously controlled entrances and exits. Like Logan, Sam escapes with a cool chick to confront an unknown future.

Don't know why I've been obsessed with this book, but I've read it probably 20 or 30 times. I enjoy the beginning of the book where the protagonist continues to descend into the various levels of this dystopian world. without wanting to spoil the book for those who haven't read it, I can hint that after the hero returns from level "H" or level "I" the book does begin to lose steam, but that's only after I read it about 10 times. The concepts the author puts forward in 1963 are strangely familiar today, and her book in some ways resembles, in structure, today's fantasy video games with their many levels and history/sci fiction mingling with the paranormal. Highly recommend.

Women are writing science-fiction!
Original!Brilliant!!Dazzling!!!
Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They posses a buried memory of humankind's obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites...
Fresh!Imaginative!!Inventive!!!

I mean, really. It wasn't even as if women sf writers where that uncommon when Sign of the Labrys was published: Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, Katherine MacLean, Zenna Henderson, Judith Merril and Andre Norton, to name just a few all show more wrote before 1963. Margaret St. Clair herself had debuted in 1946 and written quite a few short stories, as well as several novels before Sign of the Labrys. Still, the blurb did what it was supposed to do: got me to buy this novel and read it.

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Interesting concept for phantasy, involving Minoan antiquities. Don't forget that this book appeared shortly after Mary Renault's two big hits in this subject-area. Unfortunately, Ms St. Clair neither developed the concept philosophically nor -- unlike the more spirited Ms Renault -- told a very compellking tale

La Tierra constituía un horrendo y fantástico lugar tras las espantosas epidemias sufridas. Los pocos seres humanos que sobrevivieron a ellas eran incapaces de soportar la presencia de unos a otros, viviendo en cavernas excavadas en las entrañas de la Tierra, donde las bombas atómicas eran incapaces para llevar su destrucción. Pero en un hombre en especial residía la esperanza del mundo, aunque él lo desconocía. San Sewell solo sabía que debía continuar su camino a pesar de los temibles peligros derivados de la oscuridad del pasado y ser rescatado por la sabiduría antiquísima de una misteriosa mujer, dotada de poderes mágicos, Despoina.