THE SPACED-OUT LIBRARY
Reviews by Elmwood Kraemer
Did you ever noticed the use in science fiction and fantasy of the cryptic title?
Numerous classic works in these genres (yes, there's that word again!) have titles that do not seem to relate to the texts and are inexplicable. Here are some novels of which that may be said, and I might add they are indeed classics of sf and may also be considered a basic bookshelf for those wanting a science fiction library of their own.
THE CAVES OF STEEL by Isaac Asimov. When you saw this book's title, were you anxious to read it and find out if it was about platinum miners? Actually one might need a pickaxe or even a hydraulic drill to get through the prose of it, one of the original hard science fiction masterpieces. One reasons that perhaps the story is a parable and one will find John Henry and his foreman and shaker in it. Instead there's Lije Bailey and his robotic partner R. Daneel. And if they live or work in a steel cave, you point it out to me.
THE LONG, LOUD SILENCE by Wilson Tucker. Nobody knows what the title of Tucker's book means. Was it something he had noted on the part of the publishers by way of a reaction when he sent his book to them for possible publication? Or was the reception he got to announcing that he was the author of it at a convention a long, loud silence? At any rate, the title seems to have some significance to him, because he managed to come up with the same effect again in a volume called THE YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN. Silence is a motif he apparently likes, perhaps in contradistinction to what his books portray.
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Leibowitz is neither given a canticle nor is one mentioned, so of course there is no definition of what one is. It's a rimed prayer set to music, according to the dictionary. (The reader is invited to visualize me slipping over to my dictionary in my stocking feet and looking the word up for the purpose of this review.) Nobody in the story comes near to delivering one of these, nor did anyone in the original novelette in F&SF. Apparently Miller would have told people to look it up in the dictionary.
TO MARRY MEDUSA by Theodore Sturgeon. It doesn't say who would marry Medusa, or why someone would, or what it would accomplish or not accomplish to do this, or how it would be done, unless it could somehow be accomplished by a group entityship. It was published in novel form as THE COSMIC MEDUSA, but there is no good explanation of why it is called the Medusa. Nor is it being Cosmic when it has come to Earth.
BEYOND THIS HORIZON by Robert A. Heinlein. Beyond WHICH horizon? The text does not say which one is meant.
CALL HIM DEAD by Eric Frank Russell. The story does not say who is to be called dead, or much about why, save for a single remark by a character to the effect that a man whose mind has been taken over by an alien may be considered dead. This remark is buried and seems to have been made simply so that the title is explicated somewhere in the book. But all it does is echo the title, not explain it. We still don't know why the title would be very relevant. It was issued by Ace Books as THREE TO CONQUER, which is more apropos the book, except that it should have been “Three to NOT Conquer” in order to fit with the spirit the book had. The title change is not very good English, either. I see an adjective, an infinitive, and an adverb, in that order. “Infinitive” doesn't mean infinite in meaning, either, nor does it act as a catalyst toward infinitude upon the other elements in a phrase.
THE GODS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were doing this early on. Gods and their machinations do not figure in the plot of this book at all, and the only one who accounts for that title is a goddess named Issus, who does not seem to be one, her behavior being chiefly that of a mortal, perhaps a pretender of some kind. Of course, if there aren't gods in it, how did John Carter get to Mars? But they don't appear or do anything else, and are scarcely mentioned as such.
MOONRAKER, by Ian Fleming. If there is a spaceship in this book, it's kept top secret and its existence is codified into being the name of a quasi-military action. The spaceship in the movie doesn't make the moon at all, nor is there any description of what it would have looked like if it had been there and done it. How does one “rake” a moon, anyway? Nobody in it says how it's done.
DR. STRANGELOVE, OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB is the Dada-like title of a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. No one in it learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, and one does not know who “I” is unless it refers to the director. The name of the character was never explained, and it should have been.
Here's a couple of works of fantasy in which the same thing is to be noted.
THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON by Robert E. Howard. Perhaps the astrological system to which this title relates is known only to Howard, but the action in this one lasts more than an hour, there is no dragon in it, and the denotative system is never explained.
DARK OF THE MOON, an anthology of fantasy poetry edited by August Derleth. The title is not explained in the introduction. The moon, if present in the sky, is bright; if it's absent, the darkness is not attributed to it. The only clue as to the title is in a poem by Donald Wandrei, “…but something from the Dark Side of the Moon…” The book's like that, if the title isn't satisfactorily explained.
To be recommending something the reader may not already have heard of this month, I have a couple of fantasy volumes, which, incidentally, do not have the titling faults of the works above. M.R. James' CASTING THE RUNES is indubitably about just that; most of the stories in the collection have archaeologists in them, and every runic reveals a ghost of some kind. There is such a thing as inauthentic ghost stories, but if you want to see authentic ones, get hold of this volume. The characters live a ghostly existence themselves, and the author pretends he himself might be a ghost. And there's a new volume of Lovecraft out, BLACK SEAS OF INFINITY, the modern world's best substitute for forbidden lore. Both volumes give one the impression that life on Earth is not very orderly, and might become even more disarranged. Perhaps that's what the readers of fantasies are after.