Humans Survive: After Doomsday by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson. After Doomsday (1962) Not a post-atomic-holocaust novel. This time, it’s the aliens who have destroyed Earth. Sterilised it, in fact. But a handful of Earth ships that were in interstellar space have survived, and these preserve Earth’s heritage even while they hunt and eventually find Earth’s killers. Typical SF pulp from the Golden Age (1940-60s), with its plausible but hokey science of FTL travel, its motley collection of alien civilisations, its courtly love romance between hero and heroine, but unusual in its assumption of women’s equality to men (within a strictly 1950s moral framework, however).
     Anderson’s not only a skilful craftsman (the story moves along at a nice clip), he’s also wildly inventive, albeit within a rather limited understanding of sociology and biology. A sterilised Earth would no longer have any oxygen, for example, for without green plants there would be no regeneration of the oxygen that would have been bound to carbon etc when the planet burned. The aliens just aren’t alien enough: they are really just humans with funny body-plans and peculiar bio-chemistry. Of course, inventing a truly alien psychology is by definition impossible: we can imagine only variations on our own. But within these limits, Anderson’s a cut or two above the rest.
     This is a relatively early book, clearly a potboiler, but an above average example of the genre. I enjoyed reading it. **½

St Thomas Cantelupe, Bishop of Hereford

     Meryl Jancey. St Thomas Cantelupe, Bishop of Hereford. (1982) I didn’t know there was a St Thomas of Hereford until I was given this book. My Great Uncle Peter (F.  C. Morgan) contributed two photographs to it, and his daughter Cousin Penelope contributed an essay and a photograph.
St Thomas was Bishop of Hereford in the latter 1200s, soon after St Thomas a Becket was martyred for his insistence on the Church’s rights and privileges. St Thomas of Hereford had a somewhat easier time of it, but the  relationship between Church and King had still not been settled, and he had some trouble asserting the power of the Church. Hence his canonisation. I think that the strained relationship between Church and King continued beneath the more or less formal accommodations between the religious and secular authorities, which made it easier for Henry VIII to break with Rome.
     Very little documentary evidence about St Thomas survives, apart from the dossier assembled as part of the canonisation process. But even that is incomplete. The essayists take care to stay well within the bounds of plausibility when they fill in the gaps. St Thomas was a typical senior churchman of his time, of an aristocratic family, used to command, and absolutely sure of his authority. What faint impressions of his personality reach us across the eight centuries since his death suggest an imperious, somewhat cold man, who took his duties seriously, and discharged them faithfully. He would not have been a chatty dinner companion. I learned a lot about medieval life in England. The canonisation process became formalised during St Thomas’s life; I suspect that he would have been made a saint much more easily a century earlier.
     Saints' cults were a major source of income for the Church, which had not yet assembled the wealth that would make it pretty well independent by Henry VIII’s time. Hereford encouraged the cult of St Thomas, which lasted for about 100 years from the time of his death (about thirty years before he was canonised). Cousin Pen’s essay describes the evidence for the effects of the cult of St Thomas. The money raised was used not only to build a splendid tomb for St Thomas, but also to repair and eventually rebuild the cathedral. The See was not rich, and needed the money.
     I’ve been to Hereford several times. It’s best known for its library, one of the oldest preserved medieval libraries in the world, with its original volumes still chained to the shelves; and for Mappa Mundi, one of the oldest maps of the world. Uncle Peter and Cousin Pen always gave us a wonderful time guiding us around the library and the Cathedral. That’s why I’m glad to have this book.
     It’s a good ancillary text for any student of medieval history. The documents presrve a surprising amount of the music, which has been reconstructed and rewritten in modern notation. ***

Maxim Jakubowski. Pulp Action (2001)

 

    Maxim Jakubowski. Pulp Action (2001) A second anthology, according to the prefatory note, of typical noir pulp fiction from the 1920s to the present. The earlier tales are severely moral, even when the hero is a crook, for then he is a Robin Hood type, punishing guilt that the law can’t touch. They also tend to have more or less painful twists and excessively poetic justice. They remind us of a time when many people who would later turn to TV, and in our day to video games, read cheap fiction to pass the time.
     Some of the later stories focus more on the psychology of evil. A couple of stories edge into Raymond Carver territory, telling stories of ordinary people crossing some self-imposed boundary, and painfully coming to terms with their transgressions. In short, the collection reminds us that the short story of whatever type shows us the moral dilemmas of the day in crystalline detail. A few exemplify gore-porn, a genre I don’t like, but most could be transferred to prime-time TV or film with little or no change in tone or ethical perspective. As indeed many such stories were, when movies and then TV were the staple entertainment for most of us.
     Cliches and stereotypes (dumb cops, smart amateurs, simple-minded crooks, lascivious molls, etc) abound, but that’s part of the charm. The 70-odd year span represents two to three generations, and the contrast between the early and most recent stories shows us how America has changed. There is a kind of naive innocence about the early tales, an assumption of firm ethical standards that corrupt politicians and bent cops can’t transgress with impunity. But noir is also a harbinger of the future: the corrupt pols and bent cops almost win, and the weary detectives that bring them down don’t find much joy in the exercise.
     Overall, the collection tends to horror rather than crime. The older stories triggered nostalgia, I used to read such stuff back in the 50s and 60s. The more recent stories are darker, and a couple are written merely to give the reader the frisson of encountering extreme evil without the attendant danger. 0 to **½ (2010)

Best of the West: The Railroaders (1986)

     B. Pronzini & M. Greenberg. Best of the West: The Railroaders (1986) 5th in a series of stories culled from the pulps. Well-done examples of the short story as mass entertainment, with clear plotting, plain but effective styles, and often sentimental themes. The railroading is authentic, insofar as I can judge it, and the Western atmosphere conforms to the rules of the genre. Most of these stories are Westerns with a railroad motif or setting, not railroading stories as such. In the days before TV, pulp fiction helped people while away their free time, and I’m sure did much good, considering their unequivocal support of the mores of melodrama: the right will win out, the evildoers will get their just desserts, and the girl will marry the one who is worthy of her. ** (2007)

Stardust (Robert Parker, 1990)

Robert P. Parker Stardust (1990) (Borrowed from BR library.) A TV star is being harassed. Spenser takes on the job of protecting her, and then finding the murderer of her stunt double. After a series of vignettes typical of the genre, the case is cracked more by luck than skill, as the star goes to LA to be with a mobster who fathered her child. It transpires that her own father molested her when she was a toddler, which explains a lot of course.
      Good fast hard-boiled smart-ass style. Spenser is the scarred knight of American detective fiction. Parker knows the genre, and does a skilled job. The chapters are short, with good dialogue; the whole thing is very cinematic –  almost a script. As is usual with this genre, the love-interest is mere decoration (Spenser's lover is a psychologist, and you would think she could give him some relevant information, but she is definitely on the sidelines.) There is a politically-correct Black, Hawk, who is Spenser's good buddy, as expected in books of the 80s and 90s. The pathetic fallacy runs strong, again as required by the genre. Parker has an eye for telling detail, and the landscapes are nicely described. I read this book because a friend told me his book was more in the style of Parker, so I wanted to find out what this meant. *** (1999)

2026-06-10: Cover image added, and minor editing.

Turn on the Heat (Book review)

A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) Turn on the Heat Another Bertha Cool - Donald Lam tale. In mood a noirish version of the Thin Man stories plus a mild satire on the Nero Wolfe-Archie Goodwin genre. Pure pulp fiction. Lam tells the story, and does most of the legwork. Unlike Wolfe, agency head Bertha Cool doesn’t solve the case. As in the Wolfe novels, the plot is incredibly convoluted; but Fair plays fair with the clues, if you want to keep score. Unlike the Wolfe novels, the solution hides a good deal of the truth from the police. A pleasant enough entertainment, if you don’t read too critically. One oddity: the cover shows an electric typewriter, but the story is set ca. 1940, when it was written. **