The Original Trilogy and Other Stories, edited by Mike Ashley. British Library, 2020, 287 p. Reviewed for Interzone 290-291, Summer 2021.

This British Library reprint, subtitled “The Original Trilogy and Other Stories” contains five novellas first published in 1961 and 1962. The “time” trilogy was collected as Times without Number shortly after then. Its three stories are set around the four-hundredth anniversary of the victory of the Duke of Parma’s Armada over the English fleet when a (Catholic) Spanish Empire – centred on the British Isles – of which our protagonist Don Miguel Navarro, a licentiate of the powerful Society of Time, is a citizen, is at its peak. These are, then, tales of Altered History, with place names such as Jorque and Londres
Curiously we are told Spain itself has been reconquered by “virile” Islam but nothing more is made of this. The Empire’s main rival is instead a Confederacy of Northern European states. The Society of Time controls the time travel machines of the Empire (“Borromeo showed us how we might rotate the dimensions of substances so that the worlds became flat and we could voyage back into time,”) and has rigorous rules to prevent interference with History. A similar organisation in the Confederacy acts likewise. The Islamic powers we must assume to have no time travel capability. All three stories centre round the inevitable (otherwise no story) floutings of these interference protocols. Miguel, a rather correctly behaved individual, is also shocked by other infractions the Society’s members condone, such as pandering.

In the first novella, Spoil of Yesterday, Miguel immediately recognises a work of Art as an illegal import from the past and arrests its owner. The breach is resolved by a trip to the past to replace it immediately after its removal, but the reader does not take this time trip with Miguel, is only told of it. In the second, The Word not Written, Miguel finds that prominent members of the Society actively explore ruptures in time when an argument between them is attempted to be settled by allowing female warriors from a time which would not have occurred bar interference to come to their present, with disastrous results. Again, only a trip back to the past, again unseen, restores the status quo ante. Only Miguel and his confessor retain memories of the infringement. In The Fullness of Time, in retrospect a cunning title, we do finally accompany Miguel to the past. The Empire’s exploitation of the mineral resources of its lands in the New World is protected by the (carefully worded, so as to avoid any possible contravention) Treaty of Prague between it and the Confederacy. Evidence has been found of the Confederacy using its time travel capability to mine in the past where it had no right to. While (in a nod to what actually happened in the reader’s world) recognising that without the Empire the natives of the New World might have been ground between the interests of competing European nations, Miguel’s companion, a Mohawk, resents the Empire’s intrusions on the natives’ ancient lands, despite his tribe becoming a leading light in Empire circles. It is his interference in the past which drives the story and ultimately ensures there will be no more Don Miguel tales.

This is all still very readable, though Brunner’s writing occasionally lapses into cliché, the characterisation is sometimes rudimentary, and there is a rather awkward portrayal of sexual roles and attitudes.

The other two novellas are stand-alones which arguably do not belong with the trilogy though editor Mike Ashley’s introduction says Brunner was at his best at novella length.

In Father of Lies a small area of England is on no maps and technology breaks down when it is entered. Miles Croton is part of a group investigating the phenomenon and penetrates the anomaly on foot after his car will no longer work. He almost straight away sees a dragon from whom he soon has to rescue a naked woman tied to a stake and finds he has entered a world based on mythology (mainly but not exclusively Arthurian.) While this might seem like a fantasy scenario Brunner supplies a rational explanation for them.

The Analysts by contrast is a tale of unusual architecture. Joel Sackstone can visualise from a drawing how a building will be experienced by its inhabitants and as such has been crucial to his firm’s success. A new project baffles him by its design – on which the clients are irrevocably set – seeming to lead people in a direction that isn’t there. In amongst all this oddness Brunner managed to include some asides on sexual and racial politics.

The following did not appear in the published review:- contains the phraseology of the time eg coloured for black.

Pedant’s corner:- “two capital L’s” (strictly speaking the plural is ‘two capitals L’, but that is not how people say it,) focussed (focused,) “if there was anything more undignified than a Licentiate could do” (if there was anything more undignified that a Licentiate could do,) “once for all” (once and for all,) “landing astraddle of the branch” (landing astraddle the branch,) staunch (stanch,) “that all was not well” (that not all was well,) a full stop where there ought to have been a comma, “ten year ago” (years.)

Stories of Life in the Void. British Library, 2021, 315 p, including 12 p Introduction.

Mike Ashley’s Introduction to this collection is in effect a short history of the earliest SF stories set in space habitats such as a space station, spaceship or generation starship, in any one of which the nine stories herein are set. Their first publications date from 1940 to 1967. Few are without (but in one case plays upon) the mostly unconscious sexism of their times. A theme common to that era of SF, the suffering of a technical problem which must be solved, crops up regularly, though some of the stories do concern themselves with psychological matters.
The eponymous umbrella of Umbrella in the Sky by E C Tubb is a space shield being built to protect Earth from a solar eruption due to the imminent arrival of an anti-matter stream. Our narrator is hired to find out why the work is progressing too slowly. This story invites the reflection that nothing ages as fast as the future. (Consider all those flashing panel lights and toggle switches in the original Star Trek TV series.) This story contains many references to people lighting cigarettes and smoking. In a space-faring environment!
Sail 25 by Jack Vance was originally published as Gateway to Strangeness. A grizzled, curmudgeonly veteran trains a group of recruits to operate a solar sailing ship (the type sometimes known as sunjammers.) He doesn’t make it easy for them.
In The Longest Voyage by Richard C Meredith the first human expedition to Jupiter is beset by problems. Scott Sayers is the only survivor, engine gone, in perpetual orbit round Jupiter. He has to find a way to cobble together some sort of propulsion system to get him back to Earth.
The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey was the first SF story to feature a spaceship operated by a human mind. This one, Helva, inspired by music, is able to sing. This is a love story, of sorts.
O’Mara’s Orphan by James White I first read many years ago in the anthology Worlds Apart way back in the 1960s. It is one of White’s “Sector General” tales, set on a habitat designed for dealing with the medical needs of a vast array of alien species. O’Mara’s orphan is the offspring of two Hudlarians killed in an accident during Sector General’s construction. He is given its care as a punishment for his supposed responsibility for their deaths.
Ultima Thule by Eric Frank Russell finds a spaceship with a crew of three men emerging from hyperspace into nowhere – beyond the known universe, with no apparent way back. Each man reacts differently.
What was apparently the first ever generation starship story, The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years by Don Wilcox has thirty-five people setting out on the voyage – two of them stowaways of a sort. The narrator is the odd – therefore unmarried – one out. His job is to be revived every hundred years to solve any problems that have arisen in the interim. Over the generations there are plenty of these as he morphs from potential saviour and god to despised ogre. Just about all the subsequent tropes of this sub-genre are in evidence.
Survival Ship by Judith Merril is another generation starship story. This one is set on the Survival, sent off with much fanfare to “Sirius in fifteen years,” carrying its load of Twenty and Four humans. That capitalisation – and mix – is the single most important aspect of both the voyage and the story.
Lungfish by John Brunner focuses on the difference that developed between tripborn and earthborn as a generation starship nears Trip’s End. Unusually in the stories here, where marriage (and presumably, monogamy) are unquestioned social arrangements, a character in this one reflects that “promiscuity had to be encouraged to ensure the mixing of all genetic factors.”
Most of these stories – if not all – are still immensely readable. And they can still evoke a sense of the strangeness and immensity of the universe and humanity’s insignificance by comparison, though some of them lean towards the “humans can do anything” standpoint.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Introduction; “in the same plane of Venus” (in the same plane as Venus.) Otherwise: “inside of me” (no ‘of’, just ‘inside me’,) “the death role mounted” (death roll,) “having just skirted a loose mass of asteriodal debris” (that is not how spaceship trajectories work,) Sayers’ (Sayers’s,) Isaacs’ (Isaacs’s,) “vocal chords” (vocal cords,) “the Horsehead Nebulae” (x 4. There is only one Horsehead Nebula,) Regulus’ (Regulus’,) insured (ensured; ditto insure/ensure,) “their mass and inertia was tremendous” (mass and inertia were,) a character allows water to boil off 2into the vacuum outside” (surely very wasteful,) “began to sag, and slip then was” (no comma needed,) “two volumes … showcases his …” (showcase,) “in behalf of” (on behalf of,) buncombe (x 2, usually spelled bunkum,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2,) “got to … go to…” (the sense implies ‘got to … got to…’ but this may have been an attempt to simulate textually the losing of consciousness,) “Sirius’ planet” (x 2, Sirius’s,) chlorophyl (chlorophyll,) “the men must practically be able to read my mind” (it was an individual; ‘the man must be able to’.)