John Rackham (1916–1976)

The fifth entry in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. novel series is a lightweight romp even by the standards of the series. There’s no real sense of threat or menace from either the titular crazy scientist, or the Thrush agents on the scene.

Having said that it’s still a fun quick read with the banter between the two leads well represented. It also nice to see the the obligatory damsel who gets dragged into the adventure show character growth as she develops from innocent bystander to an equal partner in the action stakes by the story’s conclusion.… (mere)

review of
John Rackham's / John Brunner's The Beasts of Kohl / A Planet of Your Own
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 10, 2019

The Beasts of Kohl is the sort of thing that I'd usually be put off by. The deliberate editorial strategy of the Ace Doubles seems to be to occasionallly combine 2 story types of differing natures in the hope of getting the reader to choose the bk out of preference for one of them but to then read both. That's what happened w/ me: I picked this for the Brunner but read the Rackham 1st. That's somewhat like the way I eat: I eat the food I like the least 1st & save what's tastiest to me for last.

The "beasts" of Kohl include, at 1st, one human &, eventually, 2. Kohl is a non-human described thusly:

"Kohl had no shape, produced no visual image of his own, and never a sense of any emotion except keen pleasure, quick curiosity, or cool reason. Rang knew, with the top of his mind, that Kohl could change his shape to a certain extent, could produce extrusions to touch and operate the machinery controls to his own region of the undersea home, but he never thought of Kohl as a shape anyway, or a thing. He was just Kohl, who knew all things, who neither saw, smelled, heard or felt anything except through the mental rapport between himself and his beasts, who was at home in the sea, but shared life in all spheres with his servants." - p 10

Now, there's a type of Science Fiction & Fantasy that I usually avoid: a type that includes dragons, swords, names like "Rang" (single-syllable names meant to be Barbarian-evocative), etc.. But, occasionally, I read somethong along those lines that pleases me: Samuel R. Delaney's Return to Nevèrÿon series & Mack Reynolds's The Space Barbarians. Rackham's The Beasts of Kohl isn't really Sword & Sorcery, it makes it into its own category, perhaps, but it doesn't quite achieve what Delaney & Reynolds do — partially b/c it isn't as politically informed. Still, its basic premise of a creature w/ superior abilities to humans kidnapping human children & raising them as pets/bodily-extensions & then returning them to their planet of origin thousands of yrs later allows some interesting development. The 3 creatures on the cover are the "beasts": a human, a large dog & a large bird. What's surprising is that the naked woman, who comes along later, isn't featured in a rear-view position on the cover. The planet from wch the children were taken is, of course, Earth, as the reader soon realizes.

""This is a yellow-orange star," he said, remembering what he had learned out of the memory tanks. "A small one. See, it has nine planets. I wonder which one is to be ours?"" - p 39

Rang, having returned to an Earth dramatically in the future from the time he was born there still has the appearance of a cave man in contrast to the sophisticates of modern technology that he meets. Nonetheless, he has abilities, taught to him by Kohl, that surpass those of his new modern friend, Hector.

"And Rang showed him, by careful stages, how to disentangle physical and emotional reactions from rational thinking, how to be aware of fear, and pain, and hunger and weariness, to isolate and analyze one by one the animal responses and understand them. And then, in a hesitant inexpert way, to control and project them. Once he had grasped the first essential, and tremendously difficult, knack of non-effort, Hector made progress swiftly." - p 104

Rang had never met a female human until Rana came along. He was of a sexual age but when she appeared in her natural nakedness he, apparently, didn't have a natural reaction. Given that I don't think that such a reaction is an acculturated one, the following passage, where Rana is dressed & otherwise altered, strikes me as delusionally humorous.

"With just a brief flicker of hesitation she glowed and responded to him with total sympathy. It was a pleasant feeling. A fervor.

""Lord!" Hector breathed. "What have you done, Merry? She was magnificent before, but now—!"

""It's very good!" Rang endorsed, catching the ardent glow in Rana's mind and matching it generously. "But how?" He brought his attention, and the feelings, back to Meryl. Her face was rosy now, but her voice shrank to a confused murmur.

""It wasn't anything, really. Just a shampoo, and a good brushing. And a little foundation—powder—nothing much. But it makes a difference. You look different too, now that you're dressed up."" - p 106

Call me old-fashioned but I prefer a naked woman w/o make-up to a woman w/ "foundation" on anyday.

This having been written in 1966, it seems a little late to be perpetuating the Cold War but the Soviets are tossed in anyway.

""I am Maly Shevlov, the captain of this ship. In the name of my glorious country and on behalf of the rational people everywhere, I welcome you to a better life, Mr. Raine. Please be assured that if you behave with reason and good sense you will find us the same. We wish no harm to yourself and your so beautiful companion. Put the pistol away now, Rakov; it will not be needed."" - p 143

Well, some exciting, adventurous, positively THRILLING things happen & then it's over. But, HEY!, there's still John Brunner's bk on the flip side:

*********************************************************************

John Brunner's A Planet of Your Own: Brunner's one of my favorite SF writers & even in these sometimes deficient Ace Doubles his ideas always shine thru. I've reviewed so many bks of his now that I won't even link to them here. Here, amongst other things, Brunner addresses post-Earth beauty standards.

"And even her asset of last resort, her appearance, had failed her. What she hadn't reckoned with—or had omitted to find out—was that once they had been clear of Earth, and the traditional association of appearance with regional origins, the emigrants whether forced or voluntary had become satisfied to be human beings rather than Europeans or Africans or Asians. By the time a couple of generations had slipped away, the mixing of the gene-pool had already been producing types which made the concept "exotic" seem irrelevant" - p 8

SOOOOOOO she gets desperate for a job stuck out in some podunk galaxy somewhere & she gets tricked into being what she thinks & is told is the only human on a planet that manufactures the veeerrrrryyyyy expensive "Zygra Pelts".

""Hmmm? Oh!" Shuster leaned confidentially close. "The term 'pelt' is a misnomer, and it's no breach of company secrecy to say so nowadays, although when they were first being imported to civilized worlds the admission would have been an automatic breach of an employee's contract, since it was thought advisable to mislead purchasers and possible rivals by making them think it was the skin of an animal. Actually, the pelts are entire lifeforms in themselves, and insofar as they're related to anything we know they're a kind of moss.["]" - p 13

Brunner has his character have a skill set that turns into the unlikely makings of a hero.

"She whistled. Hadn't it been ruled, in McGillicuddy and Kropotkin versus Callisto Methane Derivatives, 2106, that interplanetary space included any solid body not possessed of its own independent jurisdiction? As of this moment, therefore, the whole planet Zygra counted as an asteroid." - p 73

This was great, if I'd liked The Beasts of Kohl as much as this I might've been tempted to give the whole Ace Double a 4.5 rating. Instead it's a 4. Not wanting to give away too much, my 'reviews' of both are really just teasers.… (mere)

In my quest to find and review forgotten SF writers from the classic period of the 1950s - 1970s I'm always happy when I find a good one. I had never heard of Phillifent or his SF pen name John Rackham.

He was a UK writer who wrote some of the "Man From U.N.C.L.E novels in the 1960s. In the 1970s he frequently used the Rackham pen name and wrote SF novels. This is one of those novels.

I was pleasantly surprised. Frequently lesser known UK writers, of the period, filled their stories with idioms and words used only in the UK. This can be fun at first but eventually wears thin. Stories with over use of "fortnight", "busman's holiday" and "not cricket" can limit readership and does not age well. A popular English trope was a subplot of the main the character's wife sleeping with other characters. When this style spilled over to Science Fiction it frequently led to very few readers in the USA and Canada. Like Clarke and other successful UK writers Phillifent's stories are region-less and age well.

This is a fun and interesting people story in a future setting. I will look for more books by this author.… (mere)