I sighed as I closed my eyes, called up a picture of the man in his fighting leathers to look at, and spent some time wondering if I would ever see him again.

Years ago, at one of the flea markets or antique malls my wife and I stopped at on one of our days-long car trips, I purchased a copy of Sharon Green's Mists of the Ages, a 1988 paperback from DAW.  I remember vacillating over the thing--I was curious, but would I really read it?  The book was over 300 pages, a serious time investment, and it gave every indication of living on the borderline of pornography--the description indicated that it was about a woman spy who teamed up with a male gladiator to investigate a "pleasure planet," after all, and one of the ad pages in the back was devoted to John Norman's Gor books.  (In a 2012 blog post reviewing Green's 1982 novel The Crystals of Mida, tarbandu directly compares Green's writing style and subject matter to Norman's.)  Well, all those years ago my curiosity overcame my reluctance to invest a dollar in the book, and this week my curiosity finally overcame my reluctance to invest the time it takes to read 310 pages of what I expected to be silly fights and nonconsensual sex--let's see what Mists of the Ages is all about; I like sex and violence as much as the next guy and maybe I will be pleasantly surprised!

Dalisse Imbro is the best burglar on planet Gryphon!  She's the best because she was mentored by the best, Seero, her surrogate father!  But Seero is dead, killed by the Twilight Houses, and now Imbro (her friends call her Inky!) is on a campaign of revenge against the Houses.

Chapter 1 gives us standard crime fiction stuff, starting in medias res with Inky in the middle of a burglary job, overcoming security systems and picking locks and stealing a document out of a hidden safe, and then we get all the background exposition at a bar, where Inky talks to her friends about Seero's demise and warns them not to help her on her campaign against the Twilight Houses because it is too dangerous.  Inky narrates the novel, and in these early chapters on Gryphon Green emulates the style of a hard-boiled detective story:

Getting out of my transportation brought me the stale but familiar smell of the air in that district, air that seemed to be holding itself as still as possible to avoid being noticed.  It was an attitude that seemed to be shared by a lot of the denizens of the area, and one that never failed to annoy me.

....

"I'm trying to say they weren't there," I answered, reaching for my cup of javi.  Black was the way I drank it, as black as my hair, and preferably as strong as my resolve for revenge.

Of course, instead of New York or L.A., Mists of the Ages is set in a space empire future where you ride your personal hover car to a night club and sit at a table drinking "javi," your privacy ensured by a "distortion field" that surrounds your table. 

In Chapter 2 we learn that Inky's method of taking down the Twilight Houses is to work with the local branch of the space empire's intelligence service: because the Gryphon courts are corrupted by bribes from the Houses, said Houses can only be successfully tried in Imperial Courts, and Inky steals the evidence that Imperial prosecutors need to make their case--Imperial prosecutors are permitted to use evidence obtained without a warrant or via a criminal act.  (Obviously the ACLU hasn't opened any offices in this space empire.)  When she goes to the intelligence service's HQ to deliver her latest burgled document, the intelligence people blackmail Inky into leaving the planet to join a team investigating weird goings on over on planet Joelare.  One entire continent of Joelare is covered in mists, and this continent has been turned into an amusement park called "Mists of the Ages" where wealthy people can spend time in recreations of cities from the past.  Lately people have been getting killed in mysterious accidents in the amusement park, and the Imperial cops think Inky's skills at stealing documents will be of service to them in their investigation--why bother with subpoenas and lawyers when you can just steal a company's records?

Chapter 3 covers an additional briefing Inky receives from an intelligence agent who flirts with her, and is a good example of the form most of this book takes.  Mists of the Ages is a talky book, and a typical scene consists of a long conversation larded with verbose descriptions of the furniture where the conversation takes place, the attire of the participants, and what my guide to the world of the legitimate theatre, Bertie Wooster, calls "stage business": what the talkers are doing with their eyes and what they are doing with their drinks--"I handed him a cup of javi," "he raised his cup of javi," "I sipped my javi," etc.  Green really wants you to know what a conversation between people drinking coffee looks like. 

In Chapter 4 Inky gets on the space liner to Joelare, and Green shifts gears; the noirish tone is abandoned and in its place we find the letter and spirit of one of those romantic comedy movies that infest our cinemas and cable networks.  On the liner Inky has her "meet cute" with the gladiator mentioned on the book's back cover--walking in a crowded corridor he is looking at a hot chick and Inky is looking at the hot chick's jewelry, so Inky and the muscleman blunder into each other and each blames the other for the collision.  Inky is told that this dude is Serendel, the most popular gladiator in the galaxy, and Green tries to wring some comedy out of the fact that Inky's fellow secret agents, female electronics expert Lidra and medical man Chal, are star struck at the sight of him while Inky finds him oafish and exasperating.  Of course, by the end of Chapter 5 Inky and Serendel are already softening towards each other after, in the liner's gym, he shows signs of being not a meathead but a gentleman, and she shows signs of being not a ditz but a talented athlete.

In Chapter 6, a third of the way through the novel, our three government spooks, undercover as tourists, and their new buddy, stud and arena star Serendel, arrive at Joelare and don the costumes they will wear as roleplayers in the amusement park.  The middle third of Mists of the Ages almost entirely ignores the espionage/law enforcement plot, and is instead about the relationships among our four protagonists, the development of which we directly observe and indirectly learn of via tediously long conversations.  We endure page after page of flirting and lovers' spats as Inky and Lidra play hard to get and try to maintain their independence in response to Serendel and Chal's pursuit of their favors, and page after page in which Chal or Lidra talks to Inky about the absent characters behind their backs.  These conversations are the same cliched glop you can hear on the TV every single night: Chal wants to "make a life together" with Lidra, but fears Lidra is reluctant because "she's been hurt in the past;" Lidra and Chal make each other jealous by flirting with Serendel and Inky; Lidra eventually explains that what she is really worried about is getting involved with men she works with; Lidra and Chal urge Inky to be more open to the gladiator's advances, etc.  Mind-numbing!

Independence is a theme of Mists of the Ages and we see it not only in how vigorously the ladies resist the men's advances.  Inky reminisces about refusing to join a clique in high school; Inky tells us how she doesn't care that the average person thinks that stealing is wrong (halfway through the book we learn that Seero and Inky aren't really thieves anyway, but more like vigilantes because all their breaking and entering is of the properties of bad people); when a member of the amusement park staff warns our four heroes to obey his advice in the interests of safety, they object: "Paying for the privilege of being bossed around isn't my idea of a fun vacation" says Lidra, and Serendel adds, "I don't obey anyone without question."  Serendel repeatedly complains about the burdensome responsibilities and limits put on him by his fans and trainers.

Over the course of Chapters 7 through 15 our heroes visit two of the amusement park's historical recreations.  The first of the two milieus the characters explore is ancient Llexis, where lords compete over women through the medium of their magicians.  Inky objects to roleplaying a woman subordinated to a lord, and decides to go off by herself; when she gets scared by some of the park's simulated dangers (actors in monster suits), Serendel appears and comforts her.  When another tourist's magician defeats Serendel's magician and, by the rules of the game, Inky is supposed to have sex with this guy, she and Serendel simply refuse to follow the rules.  I have to wonder why Green bothered with this whole "amusement park recreating many strange cultures" gimmick if 1) there are only two cultures represented in the book and 2) the characters just ignore the customs of these places that are actually strange and might present the reader with some kind of entertainment. 

As the final third of the novel begins, Inky and Serendel declare their love for each other and consummate their relationship.  It's the best sex of Inky's life!

Because tarbandu tells us The Crystals of Mida includes nonconsensual sex, I was expecting some nasty sex scenes in The Mists of the Ages, but, in fact, Green in this book practically fetishizes consent.  When trying to comfort her, Serendel asks Inky if he can put his arm around her shoulders and she rhapsodizes over how wonderful this is in comparison to all the times men in the past put their arms around her without asking first.  (Does this milquetoast attitude about sex really sit comfortably next to the novel's Death Wish/Dirty Harry attitude towards vigilantism and the use of illegally obtained evidence?)  Maybe in The Crystals of Mida Green was answering John Norman's Gor books by having women sexually exploiting men instead of the reverse, and here in The Mists of the Ages she is doing the same by having nobody exploit anybody and instead portraying safe space sex.


The characters move to the next recreated historical society, Bulm, where the crime story rises from the dead.  Inky and Serendel are to roleplay out a game in which she is chained up as a sacrifice to a monster and the gladiator is to rescue her, but instead of an actor in a suit a real monster shows up.  Fortunately Serendal has been carrying his gladiator sword with him all this time--it's essentially a light saber, a hilt that generates a force field blade when he turns it on--and our heroes kill the creature in a long fight scene in which we get detailed descriptions of the box Inky climbs up on and the chandelier she hangs from so she can wrap a chain around the towering monster's neck.

In the last 40 or so pages of the book our heroes sneak into the amusement park's HQ to seize the evidence they need and learn that the Mists of the Ages management are drug dealers who are spreading a powerful new drug throughout the galaxy by addicting tourists.  Inky distracts guards so her friends can escape, and is captured and tortured.  Luckily Imperial soldiers rescue her before she is actually killed.

The real climax of Mists of the Ages isn't this police stuff, but the fact that when Serendel realizes Inky isn't a full-time secret agent, but in fact a thief, he breaks up with her because he hates thieves!  A thief killed his sister!  Wait, how can a romantic comedy end with the main characters broken up?  Because Mists of the Ages is the first of an aborted series about Inky and Serendel's relationship!  The novel ends in a cliffhanger when Inky refuses to go on a second mission against the drug dealers for the intelligence apparatus and they threaten to haul her off to prison.  Presumably in volume two of the series, which was never published, Inky would win Serendel's love again (and continue the whole Twilight Houses plot.)

At the level of the individual sentence and paragraph, Mists of the Ages is more or less competently written, and some may appreciate its message about women's independence and the ability of women to steal and spy just as well as men, but I cannot recommend it--it is long, boring, and lacks originality.  It is only nominally a science fiction story--SF elements like the gladiator sword or the properties of the mist are essentially superfluous--or an adventure story--the pace is slow and there is very little excitement or suspense.  This is a comedy about meeting your soulmate hung on the skeleton of a detective story, but the characters are bland, their relationships conventional, and the jokes anemic, so Mists of the Ages fails in its real purpose as well as its ostensible one.     

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On the weekend I read a story by Charles L. Grant from Frontiers 2: The New Mind; it was pretty good.  So, what else does The New Mind, a paperback from 1973 of original stories edited by Roger Elwood, have to offer? 

The New Mind includes an introduction by Frederick Pohl that perhaps provides an interesting snapshot of early 1970s attitudes.  Pohl argues that technology has ruined the world, and also suggests that the two parent family is "rigid" and may very well have driven us all insane.  Pohl thinks maybe things would be better if we all grew up in communes; if communes don't work, hopefully some other unspecified changes will save us: "...there are changes coming.  They are coming because we need them...."

On a less apocalyptic note, and perhaps more in keeping with the "new mind" theme, Pohl also pokes fun at people who believe in psychic powers or UFOs, but suggests that these beliefs are no more irrational than a belief in God.  He tells us that many intelligent and well-educated people, including "famous men in the hard sciences" whom he has met, believe in ESP.  Pohl himself does not believe such things, but admits that he wishes he could: ESP and similar phenomena might provide a means to solve all our problems, and the arrival of aliens would be fun and exciting!

Back cover of my copy

Besides Pohl's amusing intro, over the last few days I read three stories from The New Mind, R. A. Lafferty's "Four Sides of Infinity," Barry N. Malzberg's "Opening Fire," and Joseph Green's "Space to Move."

The back cover of Frontiers 2: The New Mind advertises Frontiers 1: Tomorrow's Alternatives and assures us that further volumes in this series are in preparation.  However, as far as I can tell no Frontiers 3 ever appeared.

"Four Sides of Infinity" by R. A. Lafferty

R. A. Lafferty, because he writes in an unusual style and has a range of interests and attitudes quite different from most SF writers, is always worth checking out.  When I first read Lafferty I didn't quite appreciate what he was trying to do, but he quickly grew on me.  As with Barry Malzberg or A. E. van Vogt, you have to embark on a story or novel by Lafferty with a different set of expectations than you do when you read a more conventional piece of work.

"Four Sides of Infinity" (about 40 pages) consists of four separate stories about the same odd collection of characters living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which Lafferty tells us is "the Athens of mid-America."  Some of these four tales would later appear on their own in collections of Lafferty's stories.  In these four stories we see Lafferty's Christian faith and wacky sense of humor.

The first ("The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos") is about a scientist whom we are invited to think of as the Devil (his name is "Drakos," after all) who creates artificial life in the form of mice.  The other characters, which include a literature professor, a political manipulator, a seismologist, an Australopithecine houseboy, a female ghost, a life-sized animate doll, and Lafferty himself (whom the other characters call "Laff"), object to Drakos playing God, and the mice are destroyed in a fierce lightning storm.

The second story ("The Two-Headed Lion of Cris Benedetti") is about how a literary professor claims to be a fan of an Irish writer who does not, in fact, exist, even forging books to put over this fraud.  His friends and students are fooled, and, fired by the prof's false enthusiasm, go so far as to organize a visit from the fictional writer.  The professor is flabbergasted when the students send money to Ireland and two imposters answer the summons; these two old Irishmen come to blows and the American professor who "created" them is grievously wounded in the fracas.

The third story ("The Hellaceous Rocket of Harry O'Donovan") follows the political manipulator's efforts to create and own a senator.  He gets together a used car salesman to be "the mask," a skilled writer to be "the pitchman," and an able manager to be "the brain."  The used car salesman does poorly in the primary race until the fourth man, without whom no politician can succeed, comes on the scene and joins the campaign--the fourth man is the Devil!  The used car salesman becomes candidate for his party, but then the lit professor and the Australopithecine houseboy perform an exorcism, driving out the Devil.  The used car salesman loses the election and the manipulator is frustrated in his designs.

The final story ("The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen") is about the seismologist.  He builds a scale model of a section of the Earth's crust upon which to perform experiments in tectonics.  The female ghost uses her unearthly powers to bring this tiny world to life, but disaster occurs when a volcano erupts on the little world, setting the seismologist's house on fire.

These four crazy stories are full of satire, wacky jokes, and bad puns.  One of their uniting themes is the folly of counterfeiting and fraud.  Four of the characters try to take on God's job of creation, and all four suffer for it.  Another theme is the vague, or "contested" as they might say in academe, definition of who is alive, and who is human.  The two female characters are undead, a ghost and a doll animated by the spirit of a dead girl, and then there is the houseboy, an Australopithicus. 

A fun read.

"Opening Fire" by Barry Malzberg

This story is six pages long, and is split into six chapters.

Humans have met a peaceful alien race, and an elite team goes out to negotiate with them.  One member of the team, our narrator, a mathematician, has failed all the psychological tests designed to weed out bigots and xenophobes--he finds the aliens disgusting and repellent, and his gut tells him they will try to outwit and dominate humanity.  The authorities decide to let him on the team anyway; humanity's instinctive suspicion and fear are probably a valuable evolutionary trait which has protected mankind from extinction in the past, and the authorities figure this aspect of human life deserves a seat at the table.

Malzberg leaves it somewhat ambiguous whether the bigoted mathematician is justified in his fear or not.  The aliens are pretty mysterious (all the meetings are on the Earth ship, no human gets to see the inside of the alien ship) and they aren't really all that peaceful (they say they are in a war with another alien race the humans have never met, and they want to buy Earth weapons from the humans.)  The captain of the Earth ship, after negotiations are concluded, hands our narrator over to the aliens, who kill him with a ray gun, saying that, for there to be peace between them and the Earth people, all such bigots must be eliminated.    

Not bad; if you care to, you can spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out if the narrator deserves to be killed for being a xenophobe, or if his death proves that the humans really should be suspicious of the aliens, or if the point of the story is that life is horrible and makes monsters of us all.

"Space to Move" by Joseph Green

In his preface to The New Mind, editor Roger Elwood says, "Barry Malzberg, Joseph Green, and Frederick Pohl need no introduction."  I must beg to differ; I'd never heard of Green before.

Compared to the Lafferty and Malzberg, "Space to Move" is an ordinary, traditional story, but it is not bad.

Ken is a graduate student, flying around in space in a university FTL scout ship, gathering data for his dissertation.  The ship's computer consists of a disembodied human brain, that of a young woman killed in an accident, Flo.  They discover a crashed alien space ship; it turns out these aliens had the technology to transfer minds from one brain to another.  Flo misses the physical sensations of having a body, and convinces Ken to use the alien machinery to shift her mind from her brain into the brain of an alien bird.  Flo then flies away to a life of freedom.

I have been reading so many downbeat and pessimistic stories that I thought Flo was going to figure out some way to steal Ken's body or something like that, but this is actually a story with a happy ending.

************

Three enjoyable, interesting stories; The New Mind is a good anthology, and I am glad I bought it.