Mindwebs: The Man Who Returned and A Night In Elf Hill and The Valley Of Echoes

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Man Who Returned

This is by Edmond Hamilton, who is perhaps best known for pioneering space opera. This tale of a prematurely buried man who claws his way free of the grave to return to his family, a family curiously in the habit of delivering expository dialog in front of windows, is nothing like space opera.



A Night In Elf Hill

Dig that crazy space-slang, daddy-o! Also, is there a Spinrad story of this vintage whose protagonist is not a monumental sexist prat?

I imagine in settings like this one, honey-traps like this one are something the manual eventually covers. Unfortunately for this guy, he is in the process of being sort material for that chapter in the manual.


The Valley Of Echoes

I don't know much about Gérard Klein but this 1966 story of men desperately looking for any sign of life on an otherwise disappointing Mars is respectably modern.

Comments

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Also, is there a Spinrad story of this vintage whose protagonist is not a monumental sexist prat?

Are there any Spinrad stories etc?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am going to be very sad if I go back and reread the novel about the Patriarchs versus the RadFems, aren't I?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

You know, I think that's the only Spinrad of that era I haven't read. He might be completely un-fucked up in that one! ahahahahaha.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Hey! It's hard out here on the mean streets paved with gold that's NYC when you're a short fellow, whose ego rises higher than the World Trade Center towers in progress! (I think he was living in NYC back then -- maybe I'm wrong. But not wrong about the WTC towers. More than once he in many places like the NYC zines of the time he fulminates about the great Vagina -- yes, that's the word he used, though he'd have preferred another one, which in those days he couldn't use in print -- that's the towers and how badly she treats him, whether as himself or as a protag-narrator, wasn't always clear though.)

And -- why is protag-narrator telling his brother about their early relationship when surely his brother knows it even better than the protag- narrator does?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

For much the same reason the loving couple in The Man Who Returned explain to each other their common history.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I am inexplicably amused by the idea of a World Trade Vagina, probably an urban canyon of some sort built to replace the too-phallic WTC towers.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The Klein includes a pretty standard Time of Troubles back on Earth, one that fits the hypothesis that ToTs seem to show up a generation or two into the author's future.

(Known Space seems to be an exception)

[tandw.livejournal.com]

I remember being kind of creeped out by the Hamilton, though sharing a name with the viewpoint character definitely contributed to that.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That'll do it, sure.

I had forgot how in the story Our Hero can't help overhearing people saying what they really think of him, something he'd managed to skip all his life. Also there's something endearingly 30s Radio Drama in how the son is hoping to get himself set up in Business. No particular trade, just, Business. I can imagine Mike and Tom Servo and Crow giggling over that one.