Review: "By Proxy" by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on March 1st, 2008

Randall Garrett stories are comfort food, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes of free fiction. Sure, if you have a bad day you can always come home, knock back a fifth of Jim Beam and kick the dog, but what does that get you? A hangover and a pissed-off dog. Next time you need a cocktail, try a Randall Garrett Old-Fashioned.

This novelette is thankfully missing psionics and while there are one or two light-hearted lines, Garrett’s atrocious punning also skips its appearance. At its heart, it is really just a slow-boiled adventure/mystery/suspense tale that happens to have a scientific invention at the center. The story could likely have been told with a different type of discovery and still worked.

Terrence Elshawe is a newspaper reporter assigned to the upcoming launch of Malcolm Porter’s homemade spaceship. Porter has just recently been released from prison after serving three years of a five year sentence for launching an unauthorized rocket.

Porter’s defense at his trial had been that he hadn’t launched a rocket, but that his craft had used a new anti-gravity technology. Unfortunately, the military had obliterated the ship when it shot it down, so he could not prove his claim, and after the government’s physics experts discounted his anti-gravity theory to the jury, he was easily convicted.

Following his release, Porter pulled the old gang together and developed another ship and is now set to launch. Elshawe is sent to cover the story, but finds multiple government players out to put a stop to it, including threatening Porter’s parole.

Egotistical Porter is unswayed, and continues preparations. Meanwhile, Elshawe begins investigating a quiet character on Porter’s team and finds out some interesting information about him. Eventually, there is a launch, and Elshawe, an on-the-scene-witness, finds himself in front of a congressional committee hoping he can keep certain secrets.

Overall, it was interesting enough and focused more on the psychology of a couple individuals involved than it did on pot-boiling suspense or mystery. Like I said, comfort food.

Recommended. You can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: Tinker’s Dam by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on February 22nd, 2008

“Joseph Tinker” is listed as the author at Project Gutenberg, but even though wikipedia does not list “Joseph Tinker” as a pseudonym, I would lay money that this novelette was actually written by Randall Garrett. Sorry for any confusion.

Joseph “Gyp” Tinker is the head of the F.B.I.’s Chief of the Division of Psychic Investigation. He’s a snake hunter issued special powers by Congress, including summary execution. Mainly he just hunts down telepaths and deports them to Oklahoma so they can’t learn sensitive Washington D.C. secrets and spill them by having their own minds read by the Russian embassy telepaths.

Gyp finds himself with a pretty secretary protecting his back from an underling looking to climb over it. Fred Plaice, the backstabber, has captured a telepath that claims to be Gyp’s mother, Maude Tinker, and is looking to ruin Gyp. If you’re wondering, that’s Maude over there, the one giving me the hairy eyeball.

Anyway, the news that Gyp’s mother is a telepath would be troublesome because telepathy is known to be hereditary, and disclosure would cost Gyp his position at the very least.

This novelette is pretty short, so I won’t give away any more. You can read it yourself to see how Gyp resolves the situation. Randall Garrett fans will not be surprised at the ending, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Therefore I’m calling it

Good/Recommended. You can read it online here or hunt it down at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: Supermind [Malone 3] by Garrett & Janifer (1963)

Posted on February 14th, 2008

My comments on the “Malone” trilogy* can be found here in the review of the first story of the series. *Well, the novels are a trilogy, but there are three earlier novellas. Call it what you will, I won’t complain.

This novel is the payoff of the Malone trilogy. Garrett and Janifer pull out all the stops in crafting a humorous story that had me chuckle aloud for the first time in the series. The funny hits hard and fast, so you should figure out quickly whether it’s your type of story. I will give fair warning that the puns are larger-and-in-charger than ever.

This is the third and final tale of psionic FBI Agent Kenneth J. Malone. There are unfortunately no illustrations available for the Project Gutenberg release of this one, but I’m sure they follow the contradictory pattern seen in the first two stories. In this one, Malone can again teleport even though he did not learn the ability in the previous novel; he did learn it in the precious novella on which the previous novel was based. I know, it confuses me too: if you’re not following, and want the full explanation, I discuss it here in the review of the first story of the series.

This story opens with another assignment from his boss, the distracted Director Burris. Here Malone is ordered to sort out certain inefficiencies in the operations of Congress: adding machines are no longer adding correctly, secret embarrassing documents are being leaked, and the paranoids of Congress are being generally persecuted.

Malone quickly finds that the problems are widespread and affecting not just politicians, but labor unions, organized crime, and other major institutions. He also quickly realizes that there are no mundane explanations to be had, so he again enlists the help of the kindly delusional telepath that believes she is Queen Elizabeth I as well as fellow FBI Agent Thomas Boyd.

In his investigations, Malone picks up an incompetent Russian spy ring and accompanies them back to Russia when they are deported. Coincidentally, Lubya, the daughter of one of the spies is an employee at a psionic research organization Malone had encountered while digging up old stories of psionic abilities. The organization bears a striking resemblance to the Fortean Times folks, while Lubya bears a striking resemblance to a romantic interest.

The trip to Russia is madcap, and Malone is escorting not only the three spies, but Lubya and the QEI who agrees to travel incognito. The humor at the expense of the Russians was a little broad, but we are talking 1963. While there, Malone observes that the Russian spy organizations are plagued by just as many suspicious inefficiencies as he has seen in America.

Malone returns to the U.S. and plods around awhile as he normally does, lamenting his lack of deductive superpowers as compared to storybook detectives. Earlier on he had figured out that the problems were caused by some mysterious psionic cabal, and he eventually figures out who is behind it all.

The ending was vaguely unsatisfactory for me, but I do not want to ruin the potential surprise, so I’ll say no more. Even so, this one is

Highly Recommended. Beam your thoughts to your mouse to click here to read it online or teleport over to Project Gutenberg to find it in a couple downloadable formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: "Out Like A Light" [Malone 2] by Garrett & Janifer (1960)

Posted on February 12th, 2008

My comments on the "Malone" series in general can be found here in the review of the first story of the series.

This is the novella version of the second entry rather than the novel version. Ever-lucky Agent Kenneth J. Malone begins this story with a pleasant daydream after getting coshed on the noggin while checking out a red Cadillac.

Malone was assigned the red Cadillac investigation by Director Burris because it is an odd case, and odd cases are Malone’s specialty after all. Illustration Malone is in full fashion effect with his Mohawk and furry fringed jacket, while Text Malone is again sedately dressed in more normal FBI garb.

Malone plods along as is his wont, gaining occasional help from the Queen and fellow agent Tom Boyd again, although he and Tom are not forced to wear clothes of the Court this time around. Malone finds that he is facing a gang of teleporting juvenile delinquents when one of them snaps his fingers and disappears from an interrogation room while being questioned.

Malone is rightly at a loss at that point, so he plods around a bit more until a tip falls in his lap. He eventually captures the gang after manifesting some extraordinarily strong psionic abilities of his own. Note, however, that the novel version of this story describes instead a mundane method of capture, eschewing the fantastic even though the third novel picks up assuming Malone possesses the described ability.

Garrett & Janifer kick the humor up a notch in this one, and portray Malone as more of a comedic James Bond/dime novel detective than in the first. Compared to the first and third, this middle tale is light on plot, but it does show Malone developing into a stronger, more confident character even with all the weird stuff happening around him. Just to complete that image, he of course again manages to get the girl in the end.

Recommended. You can read it online here or psionically download it from Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: "That Sweet Little Old Lady" [Malone 1] by Garrett & Janifer (1959)

Posted on February 9th, 2008

The Series

This is the first novella in what I’m calling the “Malone” series. Others refer to it as the “Psi-Power” series, and Project Gutenberg even calls it “The Queen’s Own FBI” series but this is my review and that’s what I’m calling it. There were three novellas in the series: (1) “That Sweet Little Old Lady,” (2) “Out Like a Light,” and (3) “Occasion for Disaster,” which were all later expanded and published as novels under the titles (1) Brain Twister, (2) The Impossibles, and (3) Supermind.

Just to add to the confusion, the novels and novellas were all published under the “Mark Philips” pseudonym, which is the name Randall Garrett and Laurence Janifer used when they collaborated (with each other, that is, not in the war criminal sense).

The illustrations that accompany the novellas are bizarrely wonderful. The text makes clear that the main character, Kenneth J. Malone, is a suit-and-tie FBI Agent, and the most daring personal flair displayed by an agent is when one dares to sport a beard.

However, the illustrations inextricably but consistently show Malone rocking a fabulous Mohawk while dressed in an outfit that can only be described as pool hall chic. The Mohawk is carried through the illustrations in all three stories in a gloriously obstinate ignorance of the text of the stories.

The plots and the differences between the novellas and the novels are just as strange, with the second novella ending with a manifestation of psionic power that resolves the plot. The novel version of the same tale ends with a mundane explanation instead, and yet the third novel picks up where the second novella ended, assuming, contrary to the second novel, that the psionic power had manifested.

I would suggest a reading order of (1) “That Sweet Little Old Lady” novella, (2) “Out Like a Light” novella, and (3) the Supermind novel.

The Plot

The series itself begins at strange and goes to wacky. In this first story the main character, FBI Agent Kenneth Malone, comes across as a bit of a schlub, not only dimwitted, but possessed of a literalism that approaches retardation. The reader suspects it is an attempt at humor, because Garrett’s atrocious punning is present, although not as prevalent as in the third story.

Apparently the FBI was smaller in this future 1970s, because Malone is always given his assignments by FBI Director Burris. Malone has a reputation for solving difficult cases, but he personally considers it nothing more than luck. Here he is assigned the task of stopping a telepathic spy from reading the minds of the scientists on a super secret research installation in Yucca Flats.

Using the philosophy of setting a thief to catch a thief, Malone begins by rounding up all the telepaths the FBI can find. Unfortunately, they are all insane due to the early childhood stresses involved in reading the thoughts of others.

The least-insane is delusional Rose Thompson, who believes herself to be the immortal Queen Elizabeth I. With the dubious help of the Queen, Malone and fellow agent Thomas Boyd work on solving the case while dressed in courtly garb. When the resolution comes, it is through an out-of-character flash of insight from Malone.

The third story in the series is the best, but this one is solid enough to stand on its own, and you should read them in order, because many loose strands come together in the final novel. The illustrations here are done very well, so well I almost wish I could also read the story they illustrate. But regardless, this one is

Recommended. You can read it online here or find it an Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: "In Case of Fire" by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on February 7th, 2008

Very short but delightful psychological story about a Terran Ambassador making lemonade with the lemons he is assigned by Personnel. I recall a military law professor remark once that the Marine Corps needed all kinds of people; if they received an applicant with an IQ of 50, well, they could always use a good machine gunner with a strong back to lug it around.

Good/Recommended. Read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “The Unnecessary Man” by Randall Garrett (1959)

Posted on February 6th, 2008

Quickie short story that uses the framework of an easy mission of an undercover government operative (Lord Sorban) to flesh out the governmental problems facing a future intergalactic Empire. Not so much a plot-based story as much as a commentary on how the masses need to be fooled for their own good and that a government must do things in the background that provide the illusion of democracy while barring the reality.

Maybe it is supposed to be a cautionary tale or maybe it felt more reasonable amidst the Cold War, but whatever the case, it feels pretty wrong-headed today. I normally find Garrett’s stories at least tolerable, if not enjoyable, but I’m labeling this one as

Not recommended. If you want to check it out, though, you can read it online here or get it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “Vigorish” by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on January 22nd, 2008

Novelette with same setting and some of the same characters as in Card Trick.

Walter “Lefty” Bupp, our friendly neighborhood telekinetic surgeon and local Psi Lodge troubleshooter, is dragged into another casino investigation and winds up with a little more on his plate than he expected. The lodge boss sends Lefty out to Reno to investigate potential psionic misuse at a casino that’s losing big bucks. Vigorish is the percentage, or take, a casino expects to receive from games.

Lefty runs into a skinny woman with buck teeth that quickly attaches herself to him. Turns out she has her own psi abilities and Lefty is a little uncomfortable with the things she tells him, but it all comes together in the end. She’s even able to fix his bad arm, although for some reason the illustrator based Lefty on Dr. Smith from “Lost in Space” (see illustration).

I enjoyed this story more than the previously mentioned Card Trick, but if you like one, you’ll probably like the other. As far as negatives, while Garrett is a great storyteller, his portrayal of women doesn’t tend to be the most enlightened.

Recommended. Psionically click on the links to find it a Project Gutenberg in a couple formats and Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “Card Trick” by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on January 17th, 2008

I’m on a Randall Garrett tear, no doubt about it. The last couple Garrett stories I read I enjoyed immensely, but this novelette didn’t do much for me. I know that in reading these free stories cribbed from old issues of Astounding I am going to come across psionics a fair amount, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

Garrett is great at his craft, but this story of a gambler strong-armed into recognizing his psi talents by the local psi fraternal order lost my attention the more it dug into the psi elements. On the other hand, Garrett’s pace is as good as ever: he feeds the reader enough to keep him a half-step ahead of the main character so as to read faster to hurry up the main character.

The setting for this novelette is an unspecified distance in the future where psionic powers such as telekinesis and precognition are common, but not considered desirable by the Normals. Tex, a Ph.D. student who keeps afloat on his constant gambling winnings, believes himself to be a Normal. His girlfriend, a laboratory researcher that runs psi experiments all day to disprove such abilities exist, believes he is a Normal as well.

Walter Bupp (which is also the pseudonym under which Garrett wrote the story) claims that Tex uses psi powers to win at gambling and that the local psi lodge will come down hard on him if he doesn’t cut it out because they don’t want to antagonize the Normals. The story then devolves into whether the psi lodge is legitimate or just rolling him for his winnings, whether Tex possesses psi powers, and whether Tex can win back his best girl as it comes to an underwhelming conclusion.

I’ll rate it Fair. You can wrap your own mental powers around it by downloading it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

Review: “The Highest Treason” by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on January 16th, 2008

Great novella and sharp cover image.

This space opera is set roughly a century and a half in the future when the Earth forces are losing a war against an alien warrior civilization. Earth and its colonies have developed a society where equality is prized above all, and as a result institutional advancement is based solely on seniority rather than merit. Initiative and creativity are discouraged while paperwork pushing is rewarded.

Colonel Sebastian MacMaine is a Harrison Bergeron-type character: a capable military strategist that finds himself weighted down by a leaden bureaucracy. As one of the few men able to see that the Earth forces are losing the war due to their self-selected mediocrity, MacMaine finds that he must act when the opportunity arises.

So McMaine learns the alien language from captive prisoners, springs an enemy prisoner-of-war from confinement, hijacks a spaceship, and defects by delivering himself, the spaceship, the crew, and the POW general into enemy hands as a show of good faith.

After a period of confinement and a character reference from the freed general, the ruling alien military council allows MacMaine to take strategic command of a fleet opposing the Earth forces in return for a lucrative salary and retirement.

Macmaine shows that he is a masterful strategist and delivers crushing defeats to the Earth forces opposing him. Not stopping there, he shows that he is even more ruthless than his alien overlords by ordering the entire civilian population of a captured colony (120 million men, women, and children) hanged.

Following that atrocity, MacMaine is quickly branded the worst traitor mankind has ever seen and a large reward is issued for his capture. MacMaine still has a trick or two up his sleeve, however, and escapes his pursuers after leaving a taunting note.

While it may not sound like it from the description, this is really a story about sacrifice and redemption, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you give it a try because it holds up extremely well, comparing favorably with much military space opera of the 1990s.

I have some small complaints, such as the tendency to paint both the alien and Earthmen with respective overly broad brushes, but it doesn’t distract much from the story.

Very highly recommended. Break free of your shackles and get it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “…Or Your Money Back” by Randall Garrett (1959)

Posted on January 16th, 2008

Solid genre-crossing short story written by Randall Garrett under one of his many pseudonyms (David Gordon). Includes some nice illustrations by Summers.

This is the story of Jason Howley, a young man who walked into a Nevada casino with a small mysterious box and walked out with $300,000 thanks to the roulette wheel. Or at least he would have walked out were he not detained by the police for suspicion of fraud following his big wins. It is also the story of the attorney who defends Howley at his criminal trial against charges of fraud.

The legal side of this story is rather well done, supplying the flavor of courtroom examinations while avoiding the tedium that an actual trial entails. Call it a realistic, albeit abbreviated, look into a criminal trial. I was impressed by the accurate and sympathetic portrayal of the attorney character; Garrett did his homework before writing this story and it shows.

This story began as a nice little cheat-the-casino tale and progressed to a courtroom drama before winding up with a nice little surprise at the end as we found out Howley’s motivations.

Definitely recommended. You don’t even need to be a member of the bar to get it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

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Review: “Measure of a Man” by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on January 14th, 2008

This short story hooked me right away and ended all too quickly. Think of it as The Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Crusoe on speed.Lieutenant Alfred Pendray, sole survivor of a “Rat” attack on the now dead-in-space battleship Shane, finds that he is the last hope for mankind. The Shane’s mission to retrieve a Terran spy from a Rat planet was accomplished, but the ship was discovered and blasted on its return, accompanying it to its demise were the rest of the crew, picked off fleeing in the lifeboats.

Pendray, surviving because he was in the shielded sickbay with a busted ankle, discovers that the remaining lifeboat was being repaired at the time of the attack and that leaking radiation would kill him if he used it. He further discovers the Terran agent’s message, which warns of a plot to destroy Sol by a certain date but also includes the means to foil the plot if the warning reaches Earth in time.

If you ever wondered why you needed to learn that math back in school, well, this short story shows how you might just save the world with it one day.

Lastly, the single illustration by Martinez is very good and fits the mood of the piece.

Definitely recommended and you can find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or Manybooks.net in more.

Review: “The Destroyers” by Randall Garrett (1959)

Posted on January 14th, 2008

A short story that is an inversion of the usual war for freedom. The main character, Anketam, is a peasant farm supervisor on a feudal world that is being invaded by outsiders. The outsiders are attempting to bring freedom, equality, and the basic necessities to the backwater world, but the natives see it as a loss of the security they have worked for all their lives.

The themeÂ is timeless in the sense that it forces the reader to consider that, no matter who you are, if you invade another’s country you may not be welcomed as a liberator.

I’d rate is as Fair. The inverted social view/alternate perspective made for an interesting take, but the life of a farmer, even during wartime, isn’t exactly exciting. The van Dongen illustrations are decent here.

You can find it at Project Gutenberg in some formats and at Manybooks.net in more.

Review: “A Spaceship Named McGuire” by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on January 13th, 2008

This is a short story, but any longer and it would pass over into novella territory. This story had me hooked after the opening paragraphs:

A Spaceship Named McGuireÂ

No. Nobody ever deliberately named a spaceship that. The staid and stolid minds that run the companies which design and build spaceships rarely let their minds run to fancy. The only example I can think of is the unsung hero of the last century who had puckish imagination enough to name the first atomic-powered submarine Nautilus. Such minds are rare. Most minds equate dignity with dullness.

This ship happened to have a magnetogravitic drive, which automatically put it into the MG class. It also happened to be the first successful model to be equipped with a Yale robotic brain, so it was given the designation MG-YR-7â€”the first six had had more bugs in them than a Leopoldville tenement.

So somebody at Yaleâ€”another unsung heroâ€”named the ship McGuire; it wasn’t official, but it stuck.

The next step was to get someone to test-hop McGuire. They needed just the right manâ€”quick-minded, tough, imaginative, and a whole slew of complementary adjectives. They wanted a perfect superman to test pilot their baby, even if they knew they’d eventually have to take second best.

It took the Yale Space Foundation a long time to pick the right man.

No, I’m not the guy who tested the McGuire.

I’m the guy who stole it.

* * * * *

Hard to not keep reading after an opening like that. I like Garrett’s writing and I generally like the characters he creates. The main character is gruff space adventurer Daniel Oak, who is nominally playing bodyguard to spoiled rich girl Jack Ravenhurst. There is a second layer wherein Oak is also exploring suspected sabotage of the first six suicidal Spaceships McGuire before the launch of lucky number 7. Then both Jack and Daniel both have further layers to their motivations which are revealed later in the story.

Coincidentally, there is a small reflection of the ability to deliver suggestive voice commands like that in Alarm Clock by Everett B. Cole. And again we find a shadow law enforcement group at play. Herbert Hoover must have been making all sorts of people nervous in the early 1960s.

I must give fair warning that the ending is pretty much a sexist train wreck. That’s a shame because the female lead, Jack Ravenhurst, was a pretty strong character who was doing her own thing throughout the story. The ending just makes you cringe, though, so consider yourself forewarned.

So for the most part, it’s a cracking good yarn. I heartily recommend it up until the very end, which is a little a lot over-the-top sexist. If, on the whole, that’s not going to bother you much, you can find it at Project Gutenberg.

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