Forgotten Book: Jack of Eagles by James Blish (1952)

How much you enjoy James Blish's "Jack of Eagles" depends on how much scientific jargon you're willing to wade through.

How much you enjoy James Blish’s “Jack of Eagles” depends on how much scientific jargon you’re willing to wade through.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 191st in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week we look at a writer I have read a fair bit of, some I enjoyed, some I did not. James Blish is considered a fairly major writer of science fiction between WWII and the beginning of the New Wave in 1967. He was nominated for a Hugo Award twice during his lifetime, winning Best Novel for A Case of Conscience. He was nominated for the Nebula Award three times, not winning in all tries. He has since been nominated for three Retro-Hugo Awards which he won twice for early shorter versions of A Case of Conscience and Earthman, Come Home. Still an impressive list.

I really enjoyed the four Cities in Flight novels, of which Earthman, Come Home was a portion. His After Such Knowledge series featuring A Case of Conscience, Doctor Mirabilis, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment was not a sequence I particularly liked, though. Case of Conscience was okay but overlong. The rest, I finished but had no desire ever to re-read.

Other novels I liked included VOR, A Torrent of Faces (with Norman L. Knight) and the novella “There Shall Be No Darkness,” which was an early werewolf novel.

When I selected Jack of Eagles, I did so thinking I had read it before. Very quickly, though, I became aware that this was the first time. I think I initially had it confused with VOR. But I read it and it was OK. Again, not anything great, but I did not begrudge myself the time.

The novel tells the story of Danny Caidan, a journalist at a food service magazine in New York City. He has the amazing ability to tell people where they have lost items. Other than that, he’s pretty normal. Until the one day he is called on the carpet for writing an article that says a wheat company is about to get in trouble with the Feds for insider trading. When asked for a source, he cannot provide one and is summarily fired.

Gathering his things, he begins to wonder about his situation. He visits a stock broker and wants to buy some futures in the wheat company. If what he wrote was true, he could make a killing, ironically on “insider trading.” He visits his bank and finds he has a tidy sum, so he goes to a bookie and makes some bets on horse races. His bets all come in. Since he bet modestly, he won modestly.

He also visits a fortune teller and meets her niece, Marla, who wants to know what tricks he is using to scam the rubes. He also visits a group of psychic believers.

Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of Danny Caiden. The FBI and SEC want to know about insider trading and how he was able to break the news on a very secret investigation. The gangsters running the bookie outfit want to know how he gets the winners correct. The psychics want to know the true extent of his power. He seems to be a precog who has some telekinesis and the ability to teleport and they are not sure what else. He could be a danger to them, since he does not want to follow their party line.

There is a lot of scientific jargon in this novel. In his introduction, Robert A. W. Lowndes talks about Blish’s fascination with science and trying to be scrupulous in how he described things. Blish was not one for a hand-wavy explanation and that may be what I dislike in his work. I am not an engineer; I don’t need to know how something works to appreciate it. When Blish comments on a scientific text, it is after reading it thoroughly, rather than getting the Cliff Notes version,

Anyway, Danny has to work out his problems with some help from a friend and save the girl while avoiding jail or death.

It was an OK read, as I said. Your mileage may vary. I will probably not revisit another Blish title in the immediate future though.

Series organizer Patti Abbott usually hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs. This week the lovely talented and vivacious Todd Mason is doing those honors.

 

 

 

Cocktail Hour: The Spacer (Inspired by Samuel Delaney’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…”)

The Spacer blends ingredients that riff on the exoticism of the other in "Aye, and Gomorrah..."

When I first read Samuel Delaney’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…” as a teenager, I had no idea what to make of it.

Most of the sf I’d read up to that point was about big ideas, big action and big conflict. People saving or destroying planets, besting alien adversaries and exploring new dimensions. And here was a short story deemed important enough to win the 1967 Nebula award that was simply about a woman propositioning the protagonist for sex — or something like sex.

What was I missing? Turned out, a lot.

In Delaney’s story, interstellar travelers — dubbed “Spacers” — are neutered before puberty to null the effects of the radiation they encounter during their travels. They grow into sterile, androgynous adults whose original sex is the subject of guessing games. Enter the “frelks,” a group of fetishists aroused by the Spacers, primarily it’s suggested, because the sexless space travelers are unattainable.

The story begins with a group of Spacers on a Kerouac-esque road trip that whisks them from France to Mexico to Texas to Turkey, drawing gawks from the populace along the way. We learn the Spacers are hustling for frelks, seeking compensation for their desirable androgyny and sterility. We also get the sense that while they’re superficially respected by Earth people, they’re still lonely outsiders.

About midway through the story, the unnamed Spacer protagonist ends up making eye contact with a pretty Turkish student, who invites him to her apartment. The rest of the story plays out largely in dialogue as they spar over the Turkish woman’s interest in Spacers and she tries to convince her pickup to stay, even though she can’t come up with any lire to make it worthwhile.

Delaney, who is gay, points out the story was “written three years before Stonewall and half a dozen years before anyone was aware there might even be a disease like AIDS.” It’s clearly a commentary on what it means to be a sexual other, and it makes the powerful argument that sexuality is not a choice — an idea not widely accepted 50 years ago.

‘“You don’t choose your perversions,”‘ the Turkish student tells the Spacer. ‘”You have no perversions at all. You’refree of the whole business. I love you for that, Spacer. My love starts with the fear of love. Isn’t that beautiful? A pervert substitutes something unattainable for ‘normal’ love: the homosexual, a mirror, the fetishist, a shoe or a watch or a girdle.”’

The story works in part on the strength of the prose, which whips along with a  playful rhythm. Delaney doesn’t beat us over the head with long-winded explanations about who the Spacers or frelks are and how this future society works. We pick up those details gradually, through dialogue and action, as the story unfolds.

Even though its powerful message about sexuality not being a choice may not be as revelatory today (for many of us, anyway), “Aye, and Gomorrah…” has additional resonance because it recognizes that human sexuality evolves with technological change. Who’d have thunk back in 1966, for example, that people would be so willing to commit mutual masturbation in front of computer screens halfway around the globe? And consider the number of fetishes — from latex clothing to extreme body modifications — that are the outgrowth of technological advances.

I don’t know about you, but all that analysis has left me with a powerful thirst. May I present this week’s cocktail, the Spacer?

The Spacer riffs on the fetishized outsiders of “Aye, and Gomorrah” by giving exotic flavors a boozy boost. The ingredients also give a nod to the story’s Turkish, Mexican and Texan settings. The tequila and tamarindo are a perfect border combination, sweetened by the pineapple juice, and the mint spins us halfway around the world to Istanbul’s Flower Passage.

THE SPACER

2 oz. reposado tequila
2 oz. fresh pineapple juice
2 oz. or more of chilled tamarindo (tamarind soda available at most Latin American markets)
Fresh mint leaves
1/2 tsp sugar

Muddle six to eight mint leaves with the sugar in the bottom of a cocktail glass. Fill the glass with ice and pour in the tequila and pineapple juice. Still until condensation appears on the outside of the glass and top with the tamarindo. Garnish with another sprig of fresh mint.