Book review - Incident on Ath (Dumarest 18)

E.C. Tubb’s eighteenth book in the Earl Dumarest galaxy-spanning saga is Incident on Ath.

But first, some background:

The Dumarest novels are set in a far future galactic culture that spread to many worlds. Earl Dumarest was born on Earth, but had stowed away on a spaceship when he was a young boy and was caught. Although a stowaway discovered on a spaceship was typically ejected to space, the captain took pity on the boy and allowed him to work his passage and travel on the ship. By the time of the first volume, The Winds of Gath, Dumarest has travelled so long and so far that he does not know how to return to his home planet. Perplexingly, no-one has ever heard of it, other than as a myth or a legend. It’s clear to him that someone or something has deliberately concealed Earth’s location. The Cyclan, an organization of humans (cybers who are surgically altered to be emotionless, and on occasion they can link with the brains of previously living Cyclans, in the manner of a hive mind process, seem determined to stop him from locating Earth. The cybers can call on the ability to calculate the outcome of an event and accurately predict results.

An additional incentive for the Cyclan to capture Dumarest is that he possesses a potent scientific discovery, stolen from them and passed to him by a dying thief, which would inordinately amplify their already considerable power and enable them to dominate the human species. Also appearing in the books is the humanitarian Church of Universal Brotherhood, whose monks roam many worlds, notably every world where there is war.

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Incident on Ath (1978) is a self-contained adventure; it begins on the planet Ath, with a gifted artist, Cornelius, and his sensual sponsor Ursula; he craves perfection in his art and she is prone to taking a drug that offers her temporary oblivion.

On the planet Juba Dumarest rescues a woman, Sardia, from attack. She is a retired ballet dancer, now dealing in artwork and artefacts. She is grateful and takes him back to her apartment. ‘Asleep she was more beautiful than awake, small tensions eased, muscles relaxed, the hand of time lifted from brow and cheek and the corners of the eyes. The mane of her loosened hair lay like a serpent over the pillow… In her throat, beneath the rich olive of her skin, a small pulse beat like a tiny drum.’ (p35) Here, in the apartment, among her collection he spots an intriguing painting – a scene depicting a familiar sight. ‘The moon he had seen when a child on earth’ (p26). Dumarest learns that the painting comes from Ath.

Also on Juba is a Cyber Hine; at puberty he was operated on: an adjustment to the cortex which took from him the ability to feel emotion… Yet Dumarest cleverly evades the cyber with Sardia’s help.

He and Sardia arrive on Ath to find there are no taverns, no hotels. To obtain accommodation you have to be a guest. Guests are bid for by the populace. They have little choice but to go along with the local custom. Dumarest becomes the guest of the woman Ursula – who reveals that she knows of earth! Sardia is the guest of Cornelius… 

Cornelius tells Sardia about the creative impulse, applicable to writers as much as artists: ‘You get an idea, a concept, and you work on it until, within your mind, it is there in its final accomplishment. A work complete in every detail. Then comes the need to communicate and so the necessity of taking that image from the mind and setting it down on canvas…’ (p86) ‘A determination to pursue the demon which plagued him; the creative madness which cursed all true artists. A thing they carried as a burden and a dread, hating it, fearing it, owned by it and totally possessed by it.’ (p88).

As a dancer, Sardia empathises. ‘No dance could be given a personal interpretation without confronting the same devils which tormented every creative artist. The compromise. The limitation of the medium involved. The hopes and aspirations and, always, the sickening knowledge of failure.’ (p86)

Dumarest saw the parallels between Cornelius and himself. ‘Yet the quest was a search and both men sought, in their own way, to find the same thing. The truth… A painting finished – a world found.’ (p89)

As always, Tubb was inventive – ‘The cube itself provided the music…’ (p103) – this written long before the devices we now have in the twenty-first century.  

There are two cultures on Ath – ‘the Choud make the decisions and the Ohrm obey. Anything else is unthinkable.’ (p141) Only there are factions who are intent on overthrowing the Choud, though those in power seem incapable of conceiving any kind of rebellion… Arrogant, uncaring, incapable of listening, the Choud are in for a surprise – as will be the reader when the devastating truth is revealed.

A fast-paced moral tale about the over-reliance on computer systems with plenty of insights into the human condition.

Note:

A pity the blurb writer didn’t read the text more closely. The back cover states ‘His rail led to Ath – and to the ominous forces of the Cylan’ when it should be Cyclan! Oh, well…

Editorial comment

In the text we have: ‘… the forearm pressed against her windpipe as the snort of the laser he held pressed against her temple.’ (p174) Of course this should be ‘snout’ not ‘snort’ and there are ways to avoid repeating ‘pressed against’…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A clean page, a new year with lots of promise...!

A Dance to the Music of Time (8 of 12)

Anthony Powell’s eighth book in his sequence is The Soldier’s Art and was published in 1968. 

   

It begins in 1941 with our narrator Nick Jenkins buying an army greatcoat in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue, ‘where, as well as officers’ kit and outfits for sport, they hire or sell theatrical costume’. (p5) As ever, Powell provides an excellent scene setting for a humorous interlude where the tailor’s assistant, ‘bent, elderly, bearded, with the congruous demeanour of a Levantine trader’ is convinced he has seen Nick acting on stage, and can’t be swayed from this, ending with ‘I’ll wish you a good run.’ (p7)

England is in the midst of the blitz. ‘Announced by the melancholy dirge of sirens, like ritual wailings at barbarous obsequies, the German planes used to arrive shortly before midnight…’ (p9) and these air-raids are significant, notably towards the end of the book. The targeted populace could only hope and pray the raids were not too long – ‘… the hope that the Luftwaffe, bearing in mind the duration of their return journey, would not protract with too much Teutonic conscientiousness the night’s activities.’ (p10).

Besides pricking the pomposity of individuals, Powell puts in his sights the Treasury: ‘… the cluster of highly educated apes ultimately in charge of such matters at the Treasury.’ (p20)

Again, we’re introduced to several new characters. Cocksidge: ‘… the imaginative lengths to which he would carry obsequiousness to superiors displayed something of genius. He took a keen delight in running errands for anyone a couple of ranks above himself, his subservience even to majors showing the essence of humility.’ (p39) Soper, the Division Catering Officer, who stared at a piece of rejected meat on Biggs’s plate: ‘… to implyu censure of too free and easy table manners, or, in official capacity as DCO, professionally assessing the nutritive value of that particular cube of fat – and its waste – in wartime.’ (p71)

And we meet people from the earlier books, too. Nick is working for Widmerpool now, who has not improved in his manner: ‘We are not in the army to have fun, Nicholas.’ (p72)

Then there’s Chips Lovell who meets up with Nick: ‘I hope there’ll be something to drink tonight. The wine outlook becomes increasingly desperate since France went.’ (p115) How will we ever cope after Brexit…?

Another person from earlier is Mrs Maclintick, who is now sharing a house with Moreland; ‘What lax morals people have these days,’ Moreland says (p216). ‘Small, wiry, aggressive, she looked as ready as ever for a row, her bright black eyes and unsmiling countenance confronting a world from which perpetual hostility was not merely potential, but presumptive.’ (p118)

Charles Stringham turns up in the army, too, having become tea-total, and is quite happy to be an ‘other rank’, the officers’ mess waiter. He makes a telling statement, too: ‘How severe you always are to human weakness, Nick.’

Some characters we’ve known die – victims of the war. The scenes where Nick appears at the aftermath of a bombing are touching though Powell inevitably steers clear of sentimentality and any emotion.

Throughout, and as evinced by the above examples, Powell has a good turn of phrase. ‘I began to tell my story. He cut me short at once, seeming already aware what was coming, another tribute to the General’s powers of transmuting thought into action.’ (p89) And ‘The comparative enthusiasm Farebrother managed to infuse into this comment was something of a masterpiece in the exercise of dissimulation.’ (p194)

We’re barely aware of what is happening in the war, apart from an occasional line such as ‘military action in Syria’ and ‘the Germans attacked in Crete’ (p168) And Germany invades Russia (p219) bringing some kind of hope…

The book’s title comes from Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came: ‘Think first, fight afterwards – the soldier’s art;’ (p214)

Eight books down, four to go. We, the reader, shall soldier on!

Next: 9 – The Military Philosophers.

Mystery Weekly Magazine - June 2018

Six crime stories, all varied in setting, characterisation and period, from a Canadian publisher, available on Amazon for under a fiver.   

The cover story ‘Lady Dick’ by Tony Parker is set in the 1950s, when two post-war OSS female operatives are working as private eyes. Present tense relating to the past – ‘We ranged through occupied Europe like angels of death. We owned the night.’ Some great lines, quite slick. 

Next up is a switch, ‘A Ship called Pandora’ by Melodie Campbell, a science fiction outing, a Witness Protection system run by two hard cases, transporting their human cargo to the outer reaches of space for their protection. A nice twist ending. 

‘Mop Jockey’ by Michael Ayoob is a raw tale told in first and third person about a cleaner with a deadly difference.   

John H. Dromey’s ‘A Detour down Memory Lane’ is a lighthearted investigation into a John Doe’s death. I liked the line ‘a snot rag of prevarications’ meaning ‘a tissue of lies’. [The editor in me will forgive the use of ‘pouring’ instead of ‘poring’ – ‘pouring over a dusty ledger’ (p50)]. A likeable team, lawyer Stephanie and investigator Molly. 

The story ‘Stars’ by Peter W.J. Hayes is a hard-nosed gangster tale where the anti-hero Tank learns that good or bad, lives are transient. 

I found the last story highly enjoyable: ‘The Motor Court’ by Jennifer Collins Moore, where a body is found in a dumpster and two women, usually at loggerheads, reluctantly combine forces to discover the perpetrator. Good dynamic between octogenarian Betty and the owner of the motor court, Eleanor.

If you like crime shorts, try this magazine. Contrary to its title, it's monthly...

A Dance to the Music of Time (7 of 12)

Seventh in the sequence of twelve books that comprise A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell is titled The Valley of Bones (1964).

Narrated by Nick Jenkins, we find him in the army now. It’s 1940 and he’s a second lieutenant stationed in a Welsh regiment officered in the main by bank employees and manned by miners.

The title of the book comes from Ezekiel, the passage being quoted at a religious service held in one of the parish churches of the town near the army base: ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley: and, lo, they were very dry…’ (p42) As is the narration here…

The battalion under the command of Captain Gwatkin is moved to Northern Ireland. Gwatkin is a sympathetic but muddled character who strives to endear himself to the men, striving to get the best out of them, even the most recalcitrant: ‘The NCOs and privates do their best. Are you going to be the only one, Sayce, who is not doing his best?’ Farce rears its head when Gwatkin muddles instructions during an exercise. As a result, there’s a snap inspection, an unexpected visit to the Battalion by General Liddament, who voices concern when he learns the men haven’t had porridge. He cannot believe that anyone can dislike porridge; they must be foolish fellows. (p102)

There are an amusing couple of pages poking fun at Lord Haw-Haw’s propaganda and his ridiculous pronunciation. (pp58/59)

As in earlier volumes, Powell can visualise a scene well: ‘Within the (train) carriage cold fug stiflingly prevailed, dimmed bulbs, just luminous, like phosphorescent molluscs in the eddying backwaters of an aquarium, hovering above photographic views of Blackpool and Morecambe Bay: one of those interiors endemic to wartime.’ (p110)

Nick reflects on his past, evoked for example by meeting Brent, a paramour of Jean, an earlier love. ‘… even when you have ceased to love someone, that does not necessarily bring an indifference to a past shared together. Besides, though love may die, vanity lives on timelessly.’ (p135)

Though written in the 1960s, the story is in the 1940s, and we’re reminded how the cost of living has altered: ‘I’ve got a broken-down old car I bought with the proceeds of my writing activities. It cost a tenner…’ (p142) Oh, to afford a car on one’s writing proceeds these days!

The characters are interesting, whether it’s Gwatkin, the unrequited lover, the alcoholic Lieutenant Bithel, CSM Cadwallader, Odo Stevens or Priscilla. Indeed, the least interesting is the narrator himself, Nick.

Yet again, Powell – in the guise of Nick – cannot deal with emotion. ‘It is hard to describe your wife.’ (p143) And ‘… when I had been able to see Isobel and the child. She and the baby, a boy, were “doing well”, but there had been difficulty in visiting them…’ (p178) He’s talking about his own boy who remains nameless! No affection whatever… And it is not mitigated by the words ‘Like a million others, I missed my wife…’ (p180)

Reality impinges but briefly: The summer was very hot. ‘The Germans had invaded the Netherlands, Churchill become Prime Minister…’ (p188) And by the book’s close: the ‘German army were reported as occupying the outskirts of Paris.’

Towards the end of the book, Nick is transferred to be the assistant of the HQ Division’s DAAG (Deputy Assistant Adjutant General) and is surprised by the incumbent’s identity…

Next: #7 – The Soldier’s Art

Editorial comment

Editors can miss things, I know from experience. Here’s one case in point. ‘Rowlands thinks it will be Egypt or India. Rowland always has these big ideas.’ (p19) Somehow, Rowland has gained an ‘s’…!

‘Dooley patricularly entering into the idea of a rag.’ (p29) A typo that slipped through; this shouldn’t happen nowadays with spell-checker.

‘… and the bones cames together, bone to bone.’ (p42)

‘Rain had begun to fall again.’ (p86) Rain always falls. Maybe, ‘It began to rain again’ would have worked?

Happy Christmas

Wishing all readers of this blog a Happy Christmas.

Sadly, there are many who have lost loved ones and this time of year brings with it mixed emotions - memories of happier times but also moments when that loss seems particularly crushing. Quell the pain and dwell on the good times, which remain in the memory always.

Peace.

Nik

Book review: For Kingdom and Country

I.D. Roberts’s second adventure, For Kingdom and Country, featuring Kingdom Lock was published 2015; it is a direct sequel of Kingdom Lock (2014), already reviewed (see here).
 

We’re in Basra, Mesopotamia, in 1915, with the British against the German and Turkish forces in WWI.

Wilhelm Wassmuss, Lock’s German nemesis from the first book, is plotting to incriminate our hero in the crime of assassination. He is also financing a far-reaching network of spies…

Lock’s involvement with rich nurse Amy is thrust against the rocks, it seems, despite their earlier throes of passion. Lock is supported by his faithful comrade Siddhartha Singh (‘Sid’). Lock and his men are sent on a Commando mission to spike the enemy mines on the Tigris.

Throughout, the period details and the terrain come across as genuine. The map is useful and an improvement on the map in the first book. We continue to empathise with Lock and Sid.

Certainly, some of the storyline seems contrived, notably where coincidences are concerned, but it’s still good Boys’ Own adventure stuff.

Annoyingly, other characters are not developed much; for instance Sergeant Major Underhill and Petty Officer Betty Boxer, both of whom are interesting.

In conclusion, I suspect the book was probably rushed. The final confrontation is confusing, inadequately described. And many threads are left dangling, possibly intentionally with an eye on another follow-up.

Entertaining, but could have benefited from tighter editing.

Editorial comment

These comments may prove useful to writers…

As before, the name Lock is used too often when ‘he’ would suffice.

When only two characters are in a scene, it is not necessary for them to constantly refer to each other by name/rank, and the worst offenders are Lock and Sid conversing. Too many instances to itemise, but, for example: ‘Don’t be daft, Sid… I’m fine, Sid… Nothing, Sid…True, Sid… Yes, Sid…’ (all on p278)

It’s grating to repeatedly encounter ‘was sat’ instead of the perfectly correct and simpler ‘sat’ in the narrative. Again, too many instances to itemise, here’s one, for example: ‘He was sat shoulder to shoulder…’ (p211)

‘Though still a sergeant major, Lock had gained a rare mumble of gratitude from Underhill when he presented him with his promotion to RSM...’ (p179) Of course this is wrong, implying Lock is the sergeant major! The editor should have deleted ‘Though still a sergeant major’.

Both Indian’s were shirtless… (p191) There shouldn’t be an apostrophe!

Over-use of the word ‘up’, often when it is not necessary. An example: ‘… peering hard up at the sky.’ (p280) We know the sky is up… A single page has too many ups and downs, for example. (p377)

Similar, here: ‘… the pinking sky above them…’ (p284)

And: ‘… shadow cast from the moonlight up above,’ (p314)

At least three instances of the misuse of the word ‘populous’ when it should have been ‘populace’ (I noted two: pp331, 348)

‘a sound lost in the aeroplane’s noisy engine’ (p376) This should be ‘a sound drowned by the aeroplane’s noisy engine’, perhaps.

‘Without his shako on, Lock could see that the generaloberst had a head of thick snow-white hair’ (p397) Of course, the shako belongs to the white-haired chap, not Lock!

This next instance is a common conundrum for writers. If you’re riding a horse, you are not galloping but the horse is, yet we tend to say ‘He galloped…’ So it is here: ‘Lock puttered along trying to estimate how far he needed to travel before he should go ashore.’ (p407) It’s the motor launch that putters, not Lock. We know Lock is in the launch, so why not attribute the puttering to the boat? ‘The motor launch puttered along while he tried to estimate…’