Read Online The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II by David G. Hartwell - Free Book Online
Authors: David G. Hartwell
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again, Larkin realized he was moved.
“We have the greatest luck, this country,” he said tightly. “At all the worst times we always seem to find all the best people.”
“Well,” Larkin said hurriedly, “we’d better get to work. There’s a speech due in the morning. And the problem of SAM. And . . . oh, I’ve got to be sworn
in.”
He turned and went off down the hall. Reddington paused a moment before following him. He was thinking that he could be watching the last human President the United States would ever have. But
– once more he straightened his shoulders.
“Yes, sir,” he said softly, “Mr. President.”
The Rose
CHARLES HARNESS
Charles Harness (1915– ) wrote one highly regarded SF novel in the 1950s, Flight into Yesterday (The Paradox Men , 1953). Damon Knight, in a
famous review essay, said, “Harness told me in 1950 that he had spent two years writing the story, and had put into it every fictional idea that occurred to him during the time. He must have
studied his model [van Vogt] with painstaking care.” But Knight’s point is that Harness surpasses van Vogt in SF: “All this, packed even more tightly than the original,
symmetrically arranged, the loose ends tucked in, and every outrageous twist of the plot fully justified both in science and in logic.” Brian W. Aldiss is also partisan to it: “This
novel may be considered as the climax to the billion year spree . . . I call it Wide Screen Baroque . . . Harness’s novel has a zing of its own, like whiskey and champagne, the drink of the
Nepalese sultans.”
After such praise, it is difficult to understand why Harness has suffered such comparative neglect, except that his career as a patent attorney allowed him only occasional
time to write. His second novel, The Ring of Ritornel , was not published until 1968, and this third, Wolfhead , in 1978. Seven more novels followed between 1980 and 1991, altogether a
significant body of genre work. Most of his short fiction has never been collected.
His only collection, The Rose (1966), was an obscure paperback original, containing the title novella and two other fine stories. Michael Moorcock, though, in an essay
about “The Rose,” calls it Harness’s “greatest novel,” and says, “although most of Harness’s work is written in the magazine style of the time and at first
glance appears to have only the appeal of colorful escapism, reminiscent of A. E. van Vogt or James Blish of the same period, it contains nuances and throw away ideas that show a serious (never
earnest) mind operating at a much deeper and broader level than its contemporaries.”
Moorcock goes on to say, “‘The Rose’ [is] crammed with delightful notions – what some SF readers call ‘ideas’ – but these are
essentially icing on the cake of Harness’s fiction. [His] stories are what too little science fiction is – true stories of ideas, coming to grips with the big abstract problems of human
existence and attempting to throw fresh, philosophical light on them.”
“The Rose” was first published in a British SF magazine in 1953, at a time when not a hundred copies of such a publication were seen in the U.S., and not reprinted
in America until 1966, long after the dust had settled from Flight into Yesterday . Except for the few new readers caught by the sixties paperbacks, the story, which deserves a place on the
shelf next to the works of Cordwainer Smith, fell into obscurity. Here it is again, at last, one of the finest examples of “Grand Opera” science fiction.
———————————
Chapter One
Her ballet slippers made a soft slapping sound, moody, mournful, as Anna van Tuyl stepped into the annex of her psychiatrical consulting room and walked toward the tall
mirror.
Within seconds she would know whether she was ugly.
As she had done half a thousand times in the past two years, the young woman faced the great glass squarely, brought her arms up gracefully
“We have the greatest luck, this country,” he said tightly. “At all the worst times we always seem to find all the best people.”
“Well,” Larkin said hurriedly, “we’d better get to work. There’s a speech due in the morning. And the problem of SAM. And . . . oh, I’ve got to be sworn
in.”
He turned and went off down the hall. Reddington paused a moment before following him. He was thinking that he could be watching the last human President the United States would ever have. But
– once more he straightened his shoulders.
“Yes, sir,” he said softly, “Mr. President.”
The Rose
CHARLES HARNESS
Charles Harness (1915– ) wrote one highly regarded SF novel in the 1950s, Flight into Yesterday (The Paradox Men , 1953). Damon Knight, in a
famous review essay, said, “Harness told me in 1950 that he had spent two years writing the story, and had put into it every fictional idea that occurred to him during the time. He must have
studied his model [van Vogt] with painstaking care.” But Knight’s point is that Harness surpasses van Vogt in SF: “All this, packed even more tightly than the original,
symmetrically arranged, the loose ends tucked in, and every outrageous twist of the plot fully justified both in science and in logic.” Brian W. Aldiss is also partisan to it: “This
novel may be considered as the climax to the billion year spree . . . I call it Wide Screen Baroque . . . Harness’s novel has a zing of its own, like whiskey and champagne, the drink of the
Nepalese sultans.”
After such praise, it is difficult to understand why Harness has suffered such comparative neglect, except that his career as a patent attorney allowed him only occasional
time to write. His second novel, The Ring of Ritornel , was not published until 1968, and this third, Wolfhead , in 1978. Seven more novels followed between 1980 and 1991, altogether a
significant body of genre work. Most of his short fiction has never been collected.
His only collection, The Rose (1966), was an obscure paperback original, containing the title novella and two other fine stories. Michael Moorcock, though, in an essay
about “The Rose,” calls it Harness’s “greatest novel,” and says, “although most of Harness’s work is written in the magazine style of the time and at first
glance appears to have only the appeal of colorful escapism, reminiscent of A. E. van Vogt or James Blish of the same period, it contains nuances and throw away ideas that show a serious (never
earnest) mind operating at a much deeper and broader level than its contemporaries.”
Moorcock goes on to say, “‘The Rose’ [is] crammed with delightful notions – what some SF readers call ‘ideas’ – but these are
essentially icing on the cake of Harness’s fiction. [His] stories are what too little science fiction is – true stories of ideas, coming to grips with the big abstract problems of human
existence and attempting to throw fresh, philosophical light on them.”
“The Rose” was first published in a British SF magazine in 1953, at a time when not a hundred copies of such a publication were seen in the U.S., and not reprinted
in America until 1966, long after the dust had settled from Flight into Yesterday . Except for the few new readers caught by the sixties paperbacks, the story, which deserves a place on the
shelf next to the works of Cordwainer Smith, fell into obscurity. Here it is again, at last, one of the finest examples of “Grand Opera” science fiction.
———————————
Chapter One
Her ballet slippers made a soft slapping sound, moody, mournful, as Anna van Tuyl stepped into the annex of her psychiatrical consulting room and walked toward the tall
mirror.
Within seconds she would know whether she was ugly.
As she had done half a thousand times in the past two years, the young woman faced the great glass squarely, brought her arms up gracefully
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