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  But this is not obvious at all, and is, in fact, an unjustified assumption. Actually, all of the attributions cited by Bleiler are correct, for there are two different books with the title He, and two different versions of King Solomon’s Wives. This becomes obvious when one compares the bibliographical data for the books.

  The British edition of He, by the Author of It, King Solomon’s Wives, Bess, Much Darker Days, Mr. Morton’s Subtler, and Other Romances, was published by Longmans, Green early in 1887; it consists of 119 pages of very large type. The American version, He: A Companion to She, Being a History of the Adventures of J. Theodosius Aristophano on the Island of Rapa Nui in Search of His Immortal Ancestor (no attribution of authorship), was issued in April of 1887 by Norman L. Munro, three months later than the Longmans edition, in 213 pages of very small type; both of these books are included in They: Three Parodies of H. Rider Haggard’s She, edited by R. Reginald and Douglas Menville (New York: Arno Press, 1978).

  King Solomon’s Wives; or, The Phantom Mines, by Hyder Ragged [i.e., Biron], was published by Vizetelly & Co. of London in 1887 in 125 pages of large type. King Solomon’s Wives, by the Author of He, It, Ma, Pa, etc. [issued anonymously], was released by Norman L. Munro in 1887 in 239 pages of small type. The Munro edition was written by John De Morgan. The issue is confused further by the fact that the Munros later reprinted the Vizetelly book in one of their other series, the Seaside Library, in 100 pages of small type, complete with original pseudonym and subtitle. The Biron version has been reprinted in the anthology King Solomon’s Children: Some Parodies of H. Rider Haggard, edited by R. Reginald and Douglas Menville (New York: Arno Press, 1978).

  In addition to the two Munro books cited above, De Morgan also penned three other parodies for this paperback line: It: A Wild, Weird History of Marvelous, Miraculous, Phantasmagorical Adventures in Search of He, She, and Jess, and Leading to the Finding of “IT”: A Haggard Conclusion, a direct sequel to He: A Companion to She, and also featuring Aristophano as protagonist; King Solomon’s Treasures; and Bess: A Companion to Jess. The latter two books were also reprinted in King Solomon’s Children, and It was included in the anthology, They. The two remaining parodies, Ma and Pa, are not fantastic; both were written anonymously for Norman L. Munro in the spring of 1887 by Jacob Ralph Abarbanell, another hack writer for the line.

  It is not recorded what Rider Haggard himself thought of these efforts. But if parody is the sincerest form of flattery, surely he must have been amused.

  4. DANCE OF THE SPHERES

  KEITH ROBERTS AND THE PAVANE OF HISTORY (1979)

  One of the more interesting and peculiar subgenres of science fiction is the alternate history, in which the known facts of past human existence are changed just enough to bring about a different result in the modern world. Hence, we have worlds in which the South won the Civil War (Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee and MacKinlay Kantor’s If the South Had Won the Civil War); in which the Nazis won World War II (Eric Norden’s The Ultimate Solution and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle); in which the atom bomb never worked and the United States actually invaded the Japanese mainland (David Westheimer’s Lighter Than a Feather); and even a novel in which the Arabs defeated the Israelis (If Israel Lost the War, by Richard Z. Chesnoff, Edward Klein, and Robert Littell). But perhaps the best-conceived and most human of these enterprises in destiny is Keith Roberts’s masterpiece, Pavane.

  In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I is shot and killed by a Catholic fanatic. As a result the Spanish Armada successfully invades England, Spain’s Philip II becomes King, and the Catholic Church is restored to a position of pre-eminence. With the power of the English people now behind them, the Popes are able to subdue the forces of Protestant resistance throughout Europe, and once again make themselves political masters of the civilized world. The inquisition is introduced into England and the other ex-Protestant states. The American colonists remain permanently under Spanish rule.

  Roberts choreographs his stately dance into six “Measures,” each originally published separately, loosely connecting them to form a picture of a society in transition. The first story, “The Lady Margaret,” is set in 1968, but this is a time that bears little resemblance to the year in which Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. The Church has retarded technological progress: electricity is outlawed, and the internal combustion engine is banned. Society is restricted and controlled through a series of closed guilds and family enterprises.

  Strange and Sons is one such business, a shipping firm which hauls its goods over the English countryside in six- or ten-car rail-less steam-powered trains. The Lady Margaret is the magnificent engine being driven by Jesse Strange, owner of the company, on the last run to the coast for the winter season. Jesse’s father, Eli Strange, has recently died, and with the death of one driver, the firm is shorthanded; Jesse himself must make the final trip. The hauler’s twin enemies are the cold and the Routiers, Norman bandits who roam the countryside looking for easy prey. But Jesse is intensely loyal to the ideals of hard work, tradition, and responsibility to his company, and he pushes on in spite of the danger and harsh conditions. Near the end of his journey he is attacked by the brigands, led by one of his old school chums; Jesse lets them have the last carriage in line, thereby saving the rest of his train. As he drives off through the night, the darkness is lit by a flash of light and a loud explosion: the bandits have been destroyed through their own greed.

  The second measure, “The Signaller,” is the tale of Rafe Big-land, a poor boy who has always been fascinated by the semaphore station located near his town. With electronic communication devices banned by the Church, the Popes and the state maintain chains of semaphore stations running throughout all of Europe. The Guild governing the signallers is one of the strongest in England; only twelve commoners are allowed admittance annually into the Guild’s training school. Rafe is determined to become one of the twelve, and with the help of the friendly sergeant at his local station, he obtains the proper forms, studies diligently, and wins a place in the school through a nationwide exam. The College is located in Londinium (the Latin name for London), and there Rafe learns all of the basic languages spoken in the realm—Norman French for the upper classes, Latin for the Church, modern English for commerce and trade, middle English, Celtic, Welsh, Gaelic, and Cornish for the peasant classes—in addition to signal codes and techniques, mechanics, and composition.

  After several years of work, Rafe passes his exams, and is posted to a training station, a major switching center called St. Adhelm’s. The final test is a daylong ordeal in which two trainees must transmit from one to the other an entire book of the Bible, signing on and off at the end of each verse. Rafe has finally become a Signaller, and is posted to his first assignment, a small personal station located in one of the great family estates. After a year’s service there, he receives his first independent command, a small station located in the hills of Dorset, a lonely outpost isolated from the next nearest station by two rugged miles. The winters are harsh in the uplands, but the Signallers must still maintain vigilance. On one of his daily walks during an off-duty period, Rafe is suddenly attacked by a wildcat, and badly clawed. He crawls back to his station, falling into his bed. There he is comforted by the Fairies, a race older than mankind, before succumbing to his wounds and the bitter cold. His body is found in the spring by his replacement.

  The third tale, “Brother John,” examines more closely the workings of the Church. John is an engraver in the monastery of St. Adhelm in Dorset. One day he is summoned by his Abbot, and told to report to the head of the Court of Spiritual Welfare, as the Inquisition is now called in England. The Church wants a record made of the torture sessions used to extract “truth” from heretics, criminals, and political dissidents. But the sessions with the Court destroy John’s artistic sense, and nearly drive him mad. When he leaves the city, John heads for the hills, plagued by visions, noises, and memories of the screams and pleadings of the v
ictims whose sufferings he so faithfully recorded for the Pope. There he starts a revolution aimed at Church and state alike, and quickly gathers a following among the peasant class. Soldiers are assaulted and insurrections spring up around the countryside. The Cardinal Archbishop of England excommunicates the monk and puts a price upon his head in a letter dated June 21, 1985. But John escapes his pursuers when the commoners hide him from the searching soldiers, and the bounty on his body quickly escalates to two thousand pounds. John gathers a huge peasant army and marches to the coast, where he addresses the people, telling them of the great new age approaching when the Catholic Church will ease its grip upon the land, and when progress will ease the lot of the people. He turns to the sea, steps into a boat, and sails into the storm-tossed waves, on his way, he says, to see the Pope. The boat’s keel is found washed upon the shore the next morning.

  “Lords and Ladies” features Margaret Strange, niece to Jesse Strange, and the heir to the firm after her own father. Jesse is dying, and Margaret remembers her own adventurous life as she waits for the old man to expire. As a young woman, she had helped a poor fisher boy whose hand had been mangled in a winch. Her erstwhile companion, Robert Purbeck, son of Lord Purbeck, had then driven her home to his castle, which dominated the pass called Corfe Gate. After a brief courtship, Margaret found herself in Robert’s bed, but when she awoke, Robert had been called away on the King’s business. As she rode away from the massive walls, she spied an old man sitting amid the ruing pillars. This representative of the Old Ones, the Fairies, told her that the Church has a purpose and a place in this world that must be fulfilled, and it should not therefore be despised: “The great Dance finishes, another will begin.” And then he vanished. She returned home to find her uncle dying. Now she sits reminiscing. After Jesse’s death, Lord Robert comes for her, flogging his horse to a frenzy. One life ends, another begins.

  “The White Boat,” the fifth measure, was published a year after the main sequence of stories, and was not included in the British edition of Pavane, perhaps because its tone and texture differs markedly from its five companion pieces. Becky, a young peasant girl, lives on the coast not far from the point where Brother John had met his untimely end. One day she sees a white boat sneak into the harbor, unload some cargo, and then move off. This pattern continues for several weeks, off and on. Finally the girl, driven away by her father’s brutality at home, sneaks aboard the craft, and is taken by it to France, where a cargo is loaded and the men paid. They are obviously smuggling some secret goods into England. When she pries open a case, she finds a heretic device, a manufactured object not sanctioned by the Church; she hides one under her clothing, and takes it with her when she leaves. She shows it to her priest; he calls in the government troops to intercept the boat on its next pass. But Becky has second thoughts, and grabs the lanyard of a waiting cannon, setting it off prematurely. The white boat, now warned, turns away from the coast, laughing at the hapless guns of the enemy.

  The sixth and final tale, “Corfe Gate,” was actually the first written. Eleanor Purbeck, daughter and heir of Lord Robert Purbeck and Lady Margaret Strange, both now deceased, and granddaughter and sole heir of Timothy Strange, Jesse’s sole remaining brother and head of Strange and Sons, has succeeded temporarily to Lordship of Corfe Gate on her father’s accidental death; pending her marriage, when she will lose her independence, she rules the great castle standing astride the pass into Dorset. Shortly after her accession, Pope John XL levies new taxes on an already strained economy, and Eleanor declines to pay: her people, she says, will starve if she hands over the grain. A rakish knight is sent against her, but she meets him at the portcullis, and when he threatens Eleanor and her people, she herself ignites the cannon that kills a score of Papal soldiers. Soon the castle is invested, and the countryside is in arms. Sir John Falconer, Seneschal to Eleanor and her late father, is one of the Old Ones, the Fairies, a nonhuman race which has been helping man from before recorded history.

  In the end King Charles returns to his lands and appears before the Castle, and Eleanor surrenders it to her Lord; Corfe Gate is dismantled, and Eleanor retires to obscurity, later being assassinated in her old age by the King’s agents. In a brief “Coda,” Sir John Falconer ties together the loose ends of the story: the Church deliberately slowed technological progress until man’s racial maturity had advanced to the point where atomic power would not result in mass destruction. There had been an earlier rise of mankind, an earlier Renaissance, an earlier Armada, and a civilization which had ended in flames. Only the Popes and the Old Ones knew the whole story. The siege of Purbeck had been the Church’s last gasp: within ten years, Charles had gained sufficient independence to throw off his chains, and much of Europe had followed. A new Utopian Age had dawned.

  Roberts’s lyrical story cycle is intensely British in theme and outlook. Much of the story derives directly from the real-life history of the Isle of Purbeck, which is still dominated by the enormous ruin of Corfe Castle. During the English Civil War, Lord Bankes had placed the defense of Corfe in the hands of his wife, Lady Mary; her courage and resourcefulness were such that she was allowed to retain her lands at the end of the struggle. The castle itself was destroyed. Roberts imbues his tale with the best qualities of the English people, a curious blend of honesty, loyalty, love of tradition, and ironic dourness. Throughout the cycle we continually experience the loyalty of major characters to strongly-felt beliefs: Jesse Strange follows his ideals, even when they result in the death of his friend; Rafe Bigland is loyal unto death to the Guild of Signallers; Brother John follows his vision into the sea; Margaret Strange returns to her uncle’s deathbed; and Robert Purbeck follows his love as far as he must; Eleanor surrenders her castle only to her liege lord, the King.

  Indeed, the very title of the book suggests its theme: the stately dance between Church and state holds together an artificially retarded society that would otherwise disintegrate. In six clearly delineated snapshots, Roberts combines his love for the Dorset people with the grand theme of societal and cultural regeneration. “The great Dance finishes, another will begin.” And so it has always been.

  5. A STITCH IN TIME

  FREE WILL IN WARD MOORE’S BRING THE JUBILEE (1979)

  The philosophical debate between determinism and free will has been argued in science fiction stories and novels from the very beginning of the genre, and never more fiercely than in stories dealing with time. Can man affect the course of history? Or will the tide of events smother the most potent attempts of individuals to alter the nature of recorded reality?

  Ward Moore answers these questions in Bring the Jubilee (1953) by having his hero, Hodge Backmaker, accidentally alter his world’s history into one we recognize as our own. In Hodge’s time track, the course of the Civil War was changed when Southern troops occupied Cemetery Hill and Round Top prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, thereby gaining a strategic advantage that won the battle for the Confederacy and altered the course of the war. The North was forced to surrender on July 4, 1863, leaving the nation permanently divided into two rival states. But the South, as victor, exacted a heavy price from the Federal government, forcing it to pay war indemnities that crippled its economy for decades and left it permanently impoverished, demoralized, and embittered. The South generously allowed the North to keep all the states above the old Mason-Dixon Line, but occupied Kansas, Missouri, and California, and also annexed Mexico at a later date. The political rearrangement of North America affected other parts of the globe as well: France remained an Empire under the Bonaparte dynasty, and Germany became the German Union (not Empire). World War I was called the Emperors’ War of 1914-1916. Still, the key event for Hodge and his fellow Northerners was always the “War of Southern Independence,” as it came to be called.

  Moore delineates the plight of the Northern states through the tale of Hodge’s upbringing. Backmaker’s family is poor, rural, ignorant, and penny-pinching. Hodge’s only prospects are more of the same, or sel
ling himself into indentured bondage to one of the small manufacturers or great landowners. Neither of these prospects is particularly appealing, so Hodge leaves home in 1938 at the age of seventeen, seeking his fortune in the great metropolis of New York. The United States has no public transportation except an expensive and inefficient railway system, and the roads are virtually impassible to anything but horse and carriage (minibiles—steam cars—do exist, but are confined to the wealthiest classes), so Hodge must walk the eighty miles to town. New York is the largest city in the United States, nearly a million strong, filled with second-rate technological marvels: cable cars, horse-cars, express steam trains, bicycles, gas lights on every corner, an intricate network of telegraph wires to every office and large household (providing instant Morse code communication from and to all central points), pneumatic lifts, and balloon airships running overhead. It also has its share of impoverished slums, tenement houses, and crime. Hodge has no sooner arrived in the Big City than he is robbed of his three dollars—a fortune in an era when 50¢ is the normal day’s wage for a grown man—and left for dead. He is rescued and left with a bookseller named Roger Tyss, and Hodge’s real education begins.

  Tyss is a strange man, widely read, self-educated, but misanthropic, with a fatalistic philosophy of life. He takes the boy in and gives him a home, but also engages his mind in a running series of debates, queries, dialogues, and discussions. In one of the most interesting of these encounters, Tyss propounds his philosophy, a Calvinistic creed which denies the possibility of free will. “The whole thing is an illusion,” he says. “We do what we do because someone else has done what he did; he did it because still another someone did what he did. Every action is the rigid result of another action.” This is a key passage in Moore’s novel, the setting of the problem which Hodge will ultimately resolve. For Backmaker (and Moore) clearly believe the antithesis, that if “choice exists once, it can exist again.”