Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn – Thieves World Vol. 2

Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn – Thieves World Vol. 2
Edited by Robert Asprin
Copyright 1980

Introduction by Robert Asprin
Hakiem the storyteller lounges in the Vulgar Unicorn, noting that its clientele has turned seedier since the disappearance of its proprietor, One Thumb. He tries to remain unnoticed in the crowd, gathering tales he will share for coin later.

Not a story as much as it is an mood setter, and as the title states, and introduction to the book.

Spiders of the Purple Mage by Philip José Farmer
A downtrodden woman is on her way home from work in The Maze when a dying man comes upon her and tells her he’s hidden an expensive and stolen jewel in a piece of cheese that was eaten by a rat. The man is covered with spider bites. The woman’s husband hears the story and trades its telling for drinks, which starts a great rat hunt in the city. She is then approached by a mysterious man who tells her the jewel was stolen from a mage who betrayed his religious order. If she’ll help him get into the mages fortress on a remote island, she can have whatever riches she can carry out while he’ll mete out justice. The two confront the mage’s wicked spiders and other minions in their quest.

This story reads like an old fashioned Dungeons and Dragons dungeon crawl. New monsters, traps, and obstacles at every turn. It was great fun. Asprin allowed Mr. Farmer’s story a full 29 percent of the book. This one is long.

Goddess by David Drake
Regli – a Sanctuary nobleman – waits impatiently outside his wife’s room as she endures a second day of labor. His brother in law arrives and is permitted to enter the room to see his sister – much to Regli’s consternation. After the brother in law, Samlor, Regli enters the room and triggers a backdraft. The room has been set on fire. Regli notices that his bride has been stabbed in the abdomen and bled out before the fire started. Meanwhile, Samlor is headed for the catacombs under the city to find a demon who impregnated his sister.

This story shifted gears abruptly and the transition from Regli’s anger at finding his wife dead and Samlor’s underground exploration was hard to understand. At one point, I thought maybe I was reading flashback. The story was too wordy in telling the reader, “he made a right, then a left, and circled around. . .”

The Fruit of Enlibar by Lynn Abbey
Illyra, the half-S’Danzo is visited by her long lost half brother who was with her when their parents were murdered when they were children. He returns to her with her mother’s jewelry and to ask a favor. He wants her to use her powers to move backward in time and decode the magical runes on a shard of pottery. Those runes hold a major clue in the development of a new kind of steel that will make swords more powerful.
Illyra is one of the more intriguing characters inhabiting Santuary and Lynn Abbey has spun her second excellent tale surrounding the S’Danzo. The story is well paced and the development of this new steel and who may wield it promises more great stories in the near future.

The Dream of the Sorceress by A.E. Van Vogt
Many year after the unsolved murder of his father, a Sanctuary healer’s home is invaded. He learns that whomever was in his home exited by simply passing through the door rather than opening it. After consulting a S’Danzo, Stulwig learns that he is caught between warring gods in a lover’s spat.

This story was more cerebral than most in Thieves’ World and was a refreshing change up from the swords and sorcery encountered so far.

Vashanka’s Minion by Janet Morris
Tempus Thales is an immortal mercenary working on behalf of the god of war, Vashanka. His latest mercenary job finds him employed as one of the Hell Hound guards in the employ of the prince. He is dismayed to find that his god, with whom he often quarrels, has spontaneously erected a temple in the Maze of Sanctuary. In that temple, men and women are able to purchase the magical weapons and devices they need to kill more effectively.

This story starts and never finishes entirely too many subplots. While Morris does a nice job of introducing the reader to Tempus who figures in many future Thieves’ World stories, she never really gives us a great deal of insight into the contentious relationship between Tempus and the god he serves.

Shadow’s Pawn by Andrew J. Offutt
Tempus, desperate to retrieve many of the items sold out of Vashanka’s Weather Shop is desperate to retrieve them – particularly the wands. He enlists the aid of Hanse – Perhaps the best thief in Sanctuary to help him. Hanse makes his first attempt and is struck by a wand of fear, causing him to flee. He encounters a S’Danzo who is able to calm him and restore his sanity. Later, he is able to steal a wand of enscolment and return it to Tempus. In exchange for helping Tempus, Hanse has recruited the immortal, mercenary hell hound to accompany him on a treasure hunt.

This second story improves my opinion of the first. It appears that the final three stories in the book are but chapters in long short story. We see now that the weapons initially made their way into the hands of both good and evil. But they are all sure to make their way into evil hands once word of their existence hits the streets.

To Guard the Guardians by Robert Asprin
The commander of the Hell Hounds strikes a deal with the slave trader, Jubal, to stop the murders of Jubal’s spies and henchmen in the city. The Hell Hound, Tempus, hates Jubal and kills his men at every opportunity. The Hell Hound commander asks in return that Jubal shut down the mad scientist conducting horrific experiments on his human slaves. Both men find creative ways to fulfill their bargain.

This was easily the best story in the book and Tempus has developed into a really complex character that will be featured over and over again through the series.

Essay: The Lighter Side of Sanctuary by Robert Asprin
At the end of the book, Asprin laments that most of the stories contained in the first two volumes of Thieves’ World are dark and without humor. So, to lighten the mood, he creates a chamber of commerce marketing piece for Sanctuary that is mildly funny.

War Against the Rull By A.E. Van Vogt

War Against the Rull
By A.E. Van Vogt
Copyright 1959

The War Against the Rull is a “fix up” of five short stories, rewritten to link them into a continuous story. Sometimes, the effort is a rather dubious one, as it was with Van Vogt’s Supermind. Other times, such as with the first volume of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, the effort is much more seamless.

The War Against the Rull is not seamless. There is a definite feel of “shifting gears” between the stories. However, reading the book was not a chore because, while the transition between the short stories was not smooth, the stories themselves were fun.

Trevor Jamieson is a high ranking official in the earth government on a mission to the inhospitable Eristan II en route to try to convince human settlers on nearby Carson’s Planet to assist earth forces in their war against the insectile, doppleganging Rulls of another galaxy. Unfortunately, he is trapped in the untamed wilderness of Eristan II with one of the native creatures of Carson’s Planet known as an Ezwal. Ezwals are nine feet tall, blue, armored and endowed with sharp claws and sharp teeth. They don’t like their human invaders.

To get to their life raft which has crashed a few miles beyond them, they will be forced to work together. The strong Ezwal, who appears to be a brutish, incommunicative animal, is actually an intelligent being that communicates via telepathy. This is a revelation to Jamieson and will be to humans when he gets a chance to tell them.

The first task is survival in this hostile jungle of carnivorous creatures. The strong and dexterous Ezwal carries Jamieson on his back while Jamieson covers them with his blaster with a dwindling power supply. They traverse the jungle and are able to board the ship and travel to Carson’s Planet where the Ezwal returns to his people and Carson goes to the earth settlement.

Jamieson makes the case for befriending the Ezwal and using them as an ally in the war against the Rull. To the people of Carson’s Planet, this is heresy because the Ezwal have killed many of them and the humans refuse to consider that they are intelligent. They are not eager for their planet to be a military base either. One woman on the council suggests the two of them scout out Carson’s moon which has an atmosphere and plant life to ascertain if it will provide a suitable alternative. Jamieson agrees to accompany her there, but parts by chiding the humans to reach out telepathically to the Ezwals.

Jamieson and Dr. Whitman (referred to in the text by Van Vogt mostly as “the woman”) to Carson’s Planet’s moon. Once there, Dr. Whitman launches their climate suits into orbit, effectively stranding them on the moon where they will freeze to death.

But Dr. Jamieson is a clever man and manages to find shelter and food and get them rescued.

Jamieson returns to Earth command and resumes his job as a diplomat. He tries to convince his superiors that the Ezwal are a race that they should treat intelligently. Instead of treating them as an intelligent race, humans go to Carson’s Planet and capture one. They are transporting it back to earth when the ship transporting it crashes into a wooded area on Earth.

The young Ezwal escapes. He is angry and bent on revenge. He must keep his thoughts contained because the Ezwal elders do not want it revealed to humans that they are intelligent beings capable of telepathic communication.

Jamieson learns of the ship’s crash and rushes to the area where troops are scouring the woods to find the escaped Ezwal. Jamieson contacts it telepathically to let it know it’s been spotted and the humans mean to kill it. The Ezwal is torn between staying true to his people and believing Jamieson has his best interest at heart. He finally decides to trust Jamieson and is rescued and returned to Jamieson’s office.

Later, Jamieson goes to talk to the operator of a remote mining colony about labor unrest and rates of payment. He meets the operator’s son who refuses to shake his hand, fearing that Jamieson is a Rull. While Jamieson is talking to him, he is knocked unconscious and transported to the mining colony where he learns the son is a Rull spy. He and the young man’s father kill the Rull spy. The contract is settled and Jamieson returns to Earth.

In the next chapter, Jamieson’s son is roaming about a local shipyard where the largest spacecraft in history is being built. He is approached by two Rull spies (disguised as humans) who want the boy to help them get past the bacterial security barrier. Diddy knows he’s being used by the Rull, but can’t act out, knowing they will kill him.

As he’s guiding the Rull to the research laboratory on the shipyard grounds, he receives a telepathic message from the Ezwal telling him there is a gun inside the building and at an opportune moment, he should seize it and kill the Rull. Diddy seizes his moment and is able to defeat the Rull and return safely to his parents.

A few months later, Jamieson is shipwrecked on a uninhabited planet. Shipwrecked near him is a Rull ship where the Rull commander is braced for one on one battle. It will be ten days before a rescue ship can arrive to save him. Jamieson and the Rull commander play a game of cat and mouse before Jamieson outsmarts and kills the Rull.

So ends the War Against the Rull.

I liked the individual parts of this fix up and wish I could have read them as individual stories, because they are not fixed up very well. The stories, Repitition (1940), Cooperate or Else (1942), The Second Solution (1942) The Rull (1948), and The Sound (1950) were published in the sci-fi pulp magazine, Astounding Science Fiction as stand alone stories.

It is quite easy to tell where the seams are. Van Vogt put little effort into the rewrite to concoct a novel from these unconnected stories. What emerges is a disjointed, difficult to follow tale with no character development or arc and no real plot line.

Van Vogt's penchant for doing fix up novels, some would argue, reduced his standing in the science fiction community. Those readers new to Van Vogt's work might pick up one of these fix up novels and wonder how this man ever got published.

As science fiction transitioned from the pulp magazine short stories and serials into full blown novels, some authors made the transition and some did not. Van Vogt wrote some good novels and many excellent short stories. He should have kept the two separate.

As a novel, The War Against the Rull is poor. Reading the individual chapters was great fun and takes one back to those days when pulp sci-fi was light years ahead of Hollywood in creativity.

Supermind by A.E. Van Vogt

Supermind
By A.E. Van Vogt
Copyright 1977

This book is what is called a fix-up of three short stories written by Van Vogt in his career. The stories are redrafted, incorporating new material to link them. In the case of this muddled, confusing book, the short stories should have been left alone because, as hard as Van Vogt works to meld them into a story, the stories are too dissimilar and incongruous to make for a good short novel. The three stories in the fix-up are Asylum, first published in 1943; The Proxy Intelligence first published in 1968; and Research Alpha, first published in 1965.

The “story” centers around beings of advanced I.Q. in the galaxy and how they migrate. Spanning the story is an organization based on earth called Research Alpha which is a repository of the knowledge of the Great Galactics whose role it was to protect lesser developed solar systems from being overwhelmed by greater ones.

In the first segment of the story, two fugitive Dreeghs – energy vampires that suck blood and use energy – land on Earth. They are in dire need of blood and attack two humans right away to restore themselves. They then bury their spaceship under a New York restaurant where they dwell.

The murders shock the people on earth because murder is almost unheard of since Dr. Ungarn – currently residing on an asteroid near the Jupiter moon of Europa – devised serum to rid most of mankind of its murderous impulses. The story is investigated and reported by one of the world’s most recognized reporters – Bill Leigh. Soon after the publication of his article, he is invited by a stranger to his favorite New York restaurant to dine in a private room.

Leigh arrives and soon is joined by a young woman who hastily takes him through a secret door to a subterranean chamber where the Dreeghs are living. The young woman confronts them and warns the Dreegh that Earth is to be left alone. As a lower, fugitive race, the Dreegh will be dealt with most harshly.

Leigh is stunned and isn’t sure how to report this story and make it believable. But before he can, he is kidnapped by the Dreegh who use their mental powers to convince him to travel to the asteroid where Dr. Ungarn lives to destroy him and his daughter. The Dreegh suspect that the Ungarns are agents of the Great Galactics who will prevent them from settling and taking over Earth.

Leigh manages to hitch a ride on the freighter that routinely transports supplies to Dr. Ungard’s laboratory near Jupiter with no idea what his real intentions are, other than to find the girl who he met on Earth that he is sure is Patricia Ungard. They arrive on the asteroid and just as they are meeting with the Ungards, the two Dreegh arrive and capture them. They inform the group that more Dreegh are on the way and that this vanguard against their invasion of this solar system will be destroyed.

As the Dreegh prepare to draw the life force out of their three victims, a powerful mental force awakens in Leigh and he is able to slay the Dreegh before they can harm Patricia or her father. He is then contacted by a higher intelligence that informs him that he has never really been Bill Leigh, reporter. He learns that it is he who is one of the supreme beings of the Great Galactics. Leigh, unable to comprehend all this, jumps into a small space shuttle and flees to earth, ending the first portion of the book.

In a chapter in between, two scientists at Research Alpha discuss the events that have just unfolded and the awakening of one of the Great Galactics, thought to be gone from material existence. They see Leigh’s victory over the two Dreegh as a positive development in their quest to raise the I.Q’s of certain beings to that of the supreme beings.

The second phase of the story opens with the freighter captain, who was captured and bound by the Dreegh on the asteroid, escaping his bonds. He joins Patricia and her father who are awaiting the arrival of Patricia’s betrothed – a man she has never met before. When he arrives, it turns out he is an advance scout for the Dreegh invasion party.

The Dreegh captures the Ungards and Captain Hanardy. The Dreegh drains some life force from Hanardy and puts him into a stupor. Nine more Dreegh arrive and they appropriate Hanardy’s freighter to stage an invasion of the spaceport on Europa where they plan to tap into the blood supply of the humans there.

But like Leigh, the somnolent Hanardy finds a great intelligence inside himself – intelligence planted there by Research Alpha – and he is able to seize control of the minds of the Dreegh. After they take blood from almost 200 residents of Europa, Hanardy acts to drive them away. Using his vast mental power, he propels the Dreeghs thousands of light years away from our solar system.

In the third segment, which bears upon the previous two not at all, a Research Alpha scientist decides to test a serum he has developed to expedite the evolution of man’s mental abilities. He first injects it into a typist who works for the laboratory’s chief administrator, then into her boyfriend. He hopes to watch them evolve together and perhaps create offspring.

The young woman immediately notices she is smarter and more mentally sharp. She suspects that the strange pinch she felt on her shoulder when the doctor was standing behind her has something to do with what is happening to her. Her boyfriend, whose shot didn’t quite take, becomes lethargic and ill.

The scientist keeps his subjects under close observation and decides to inject them with a second, higher level serum. The young woman’s mental powers increase dramatically and draw the attention of the head of Research Alpha and his assistant who try to monitor the woman’s evolution to determine if she will act as an agent of good or an agent of evil.

The boyfriend also receives a second injection, but his condition deteriorates. The scientist decides he must die and tries to kill him by drowning him. But the leaders are able to save him and bring him back to the laboratory.

Meanwhile, the young typist finds her new mental abilities astounding. She is able to send her consciousness out into the universe to observe cosmic events. She can delude people into believing whatever it is she would have them believe. While she is not evil, she is undisciplined and the heads of Research Alpha – they themselves mentally superior beings – decide they must reign her in. They set a trap for her, using the boyfriend as bait, to bring her back to the lab.

She returns to the lab, knowing that the snare is set, but not caring. She has enough humanity in her to be concerned about her boyfriend. The lab director shows her her boyfriend who has physically devolved into a 22 inch tall, dwarvish creature. The lab director explains that the serum effects the genetic code of every person differently because every person has a different genetic code.

She asks her old boss what he has planned for her. He says that there is a man here on Earth that she will marry and mate with to start a race of Great Galactics on Earth. His name is William Leigh.

There ends the story.

I would like to read Asylum as a stand alone story because its elements of intergalactic vampires coming to Earth to take over has great appeal to me. The story was well written except where obviously new material was injected into it to link it and transition it to the second phase of the story.

The Proxy Intelligence might have well been a decent stand alone story. Here, it is a mishmash of the original with a great deal of obviously injected and incongruous new material that makes it disjointed and hard to follow. Van Vogt may have developed the character of Patricia in his original story as a strong willed, self sufficient woman. In Supermind, she is that at times, but at other times hopelessly weak and indecisive for no explicable reason.

Research Alpha – even in this fix up book – is a great stand alone story and reveals what a great teller of short stories A.E. Van Vogt was. The characters are interesting and complex. In most stories of this sort, we see illustrated the old maxim of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the case of the young typist, it does corrupt her to some degree because she enjoys her omniscience. However, she retains her essential humanity and makes conscious decisions not to harm anyone. While it is long for a short story, it is well paced with no wasted words or actions.

Van Vogt is one of the more prolific writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. While many names from that era like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov are recognized by most people today, Van Vogt has faded from the notice of even most science fiction fans.

Van Vogt wrote action oriented stories with thin characters. This was acceptable in the pulps of the 1940s and 1950s. More refined readers of today expect more. Bradbury, Asimov, and even the technically oriented Heinlein developed greater characters and greater settings for their tales. They also incorporated human emotion, human heroism, and human frailties into their tales. Van Vogt comes up short in this area most of the time.

I have several of these thin pulp books on my bookshelf authored by Van Vogt. While horribly dated, some are quite enjoyable. Supermind does not rank among Van Vogt’s enjoyable books. It reads like an author who has quickly and haphazardly pieced together unrelated stories to get a book to market.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume I

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume 1
edited by Anthony Boucher
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Rebirth
by John Wyndham
This is a powerful novella about post-apocalyptic Newfoundland and a young boy’s coming of age in a profoundly religious society

David, the son of THE local minister in a society where any physical deviation from the normal makeup of the human body, encounters a little girl with six toes. They try in vain to hide the secret, but are unsuccessful and the girl and her family are forced to flee. David, meanwhile, shares a small mental abnormality -- telepathic ability -- with several other local youths who all work hard to conceal it. When David’s new sister is born, they soon find their own abilities pale in comparison to hers. They fear their secret will get out.

This book is dripping with social commentary on religion versus intellectual progress and the role of religion in our society. The characters lack the alienation of a Kafka hero, but it is not hard to sympathize with them as their culture tells them they are abominations before God. While the bit about collectivism at the end smacks a little of socialistic superiority, the story blends just the right amount of social analysis with action to make a truly engaging story.

The Shape of Things That Came
by Richard Deming
A scientist’s nephew finds his time traveling T-shirt and uses it to travel from the year 1900 to 1950. Upon his return, he writes a short story about the experience that his editor simply finds implausible. The man explains what he saw.

Pillar of Fire
by Ray Bradbury
This was the antithesis of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. In this story, the vampire struggles against the humans who dominate society. The last existing corpse comes to life in the 25th century to fight for its existence and to exterminate humans. In a perfectly ordered society, nobody suspects any abnormalities despite the chaos around them

Bradbury gives hints at what would come in Fahrenheit 451, which he wrote later. Our vampire compares himself favorably to the anti-heroes of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft in a society that has burned such disorderly books.

Waldo
by Robert Heinlein
The world’s greatest scientist is presented with an engineering problem that could threaten civilization. He is forced to appeal to a much older and arcane form of problem solving to develop the solution.

This was science fiction for engineers. WAY too much technology and not nearly enough story. I struggled to finish it.

The Father Thing
by Phillip K. Dick
Aliens have eaten Charles Watsons’ father. He must flee from the awful thing that has taken its place and take revenge on its evil master.

This story contains that theme of impostors and conspirators that was so common in the Golden Age Science Fiction of the 1950s. This is comparable to Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was also published in 1954.

The Children’s Hour
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
A man goes to a psychologist to be hypnotized so he can recall what happened to missing hours and days in his life. He recalls a young, beautiful girl to whom he was engaged. But fate -- or the intervention of some higher power -- always seems to get in the way.

This was a somewhat intriguing story that built the tension nicely, then veers off in a really odd direction that can't really be called a twist. Melds contemporary psycho-drama with mythology, and in the end, plain old fashioned sci-fi.

Gomez
by C.M. Kornbluth
A prominent scientist receives a letter from an immigrant dishwasher asking him to verify his theory regarding nuclear physics. When the government finds out about it, the young immigrant dishwasher finds his life dramatically altered.

An ok, if non-descript story

The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff
by Theodore Sturgeon
Aliens conduct sociological and scientific experiments on a group of boarding house residents to ascertain whether or not the human race has the necessary mental capacity and ability to survive. As they engage their science from a higher plane of existence, they behave like a typical human married couple.

I don’t normally like character studies like this, but Sturgeon’s characters were meaningful and engaging. The story’s sci-fi tie-in is really tertiary to how human beings of various backgrounds dwell in the same habitat and how they see each other and themselves within that habitat.

Sandra
by George P. Elliot
A first person narrative about a man who purchases a female slave who is obedient and dutiful (and willing to sleep with him). He falls in love with her and she becomes lazy, disobedient, and independent. So he puts her back into slavery and she reverts to her normal form.

I guess this story qualifies as some alternative reality story since the guy purchased his slave at an Oakland department store, but nothing else in the text indicates any hint of sci-fi or alternative reality. It was racy for its time, I’m sure, but today would be dismissed as highly misogynistic.

Beyond Space and Time
by Joel Townsley Rogers
A brilliant scientist teams with a brilliant engineer to design and build the first rocket-ship designed to leave the galaxy. When the engineer is launched, he learns more about what is going on on Earth and his personal life from billions of miles away than he ever did while on Earth.

Ok, if somewhat light, story.


The Martian Crown Jewels
by Poul Anderson

A locked room whodunit in space. The Martian Crown Jewels are being transferred from Earth --- where they were being studied --- to the Mars moon Phobe where they will be unloaded and returned to Mars. They are stowed in a locked cabinet aboard an unmanned freighter. When that freighter arrives, the jewels are gone. Terrified diplomats turned to a skilled Martian detective to help them solve the unsolvable case.

The Weapon Shops of Isher
by A.E. Van Vogt

A group of dissidents operate transient weapons shops that move from town to town and village to village to sell specialized self-defense weapons to help repress the tyranny of an imperial government. A young man defies his father who finds the weapon shops offensive and strikes out on his own with the help of a young woman associated with the weapon shops.

This story was superb and embodied everything that is good about Golden Age science fiction. The characters are strong and the story plot driven. The pro-2nd amendment advocacy is not even thinly veiled, but allows the reader to identify with characters confronting the same issues 5000 years in the future that we confront today.

A website I found describes Van Vogt as the third pillar of Golden Age sci-fi along with Bradbury and Asimov. It also claims that this novella was actually a series of short stories published separately.