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

[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)