Science Fiction Book Review: Ace Double D-437: And Then The Town Took Off by Richard Wilson, and The Sioux Spaceman by Andre Norton

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Reading's what I do to relax when there's nothing else going on, so it's just as well that I have a houseful of books. And since I have several dozen Ace Doubles that I haven't read yet, I've always got something to read that isn't too lengthy. These vintage paperbacks comprising two books in one are usually entertaining. Like a lot of Ace Doubles, this one has one story by a big name author, and another by a relative unknown. The stories are dissimilar in that one's a comedy and the other's deadly serious, but they both have themes inspired by the Cold War. Not surprising, as it was published in 1960. I started this volume with the short novel by Richard Wilson, who I don't think I've read before. The cover art's competent, but not outstanding. The cover for The Sioux Spaceman has nothing to do with the story, although it is at least eye-catching, which was always the main requirement. The cover for And Then The Town Took Off is accurate to the book. And Then The Town Took Off by Richard Wilson One midnight, a small town in America called Superior, along with the land around it, is mysteriously scooped up from the Earth and takes off into the air, settling at an altitude of around twelve thousand feet. A passing plane picks up a radio message saying that Superior has seceded from the Earth. A train is passing through Superior at the time it leaves Earth, and among the marooned passengers are Don Cort, secretly a courier for military intelligence, and Geneva Jervis, secretary to Senator Bobby Thebold. Cort is secretly in radio communication with his bosses in Washington, so he gets stuck with the job of trying to find out what's going on. The chief suspect appears to be Professor Garet, an eccentric scientist who teaches the fringe pseudo-scientific theory of “Magnology” at a local unaccredited university. Certainly the Professor is acting as if what's happened has validated his theory, and some of the locals assume that it's an experiment of his. There doesn't seem to be any immediate prospect of returning Superior to Earth. Teaming up with Professor Garet's daughter Alis, Cort discreetly investigates and finds a tunnel leading to an underground chamber, but no clue as to who has constructed it. Meanwhile, Superior starts drifting away from America and towards Russia, provoking fear on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the mayor declares himself King and Senator Thebold and a group of vintage warplane enthusiasts mount an operation to take back control of Superior and rescue his secretary. And then people start seeing mysterious kangaroo-like creatures... This is a light comedy with a fairly cliched cast of characters. While I was reading it, it reminded me of those low-budget live-action comedies that Walt Disney were making for a while. It's on that kind of level, and I do think it could have been adapted fairly easily. So it was a fun story to read at the time, but not one I'm likely to go back to. The Sioux Spaceman by Andre Norton This story is much more serious than the other one, featuring one of Andre Norton's lone wolf heroes up against the odds and in constant danger on an alien planet. Kade Whitehawk is a member of the Sioux nation (this isn't the only story Norton wrote featuring a Native American hero). In the future time in which this is set, the Earth is the centre of an interstellar political union called the League. The League seems to be prosperous, but it isn't the main power in the galaxy. Bordering the League is a very large, very old and very powerful interstellar empire run by an alien race called the Styor. The socio-economic system of this empire is based on slavery, and the Styor ruling class has become soft and decadent, but also very cruel. The League can't compete directly with the Styor empire, because despite their decadence the Styor still have military forces that can crush anyone who openly opposes them. But the League can supply the Styor with luxury goods that they covet, so it builds its soft power through trade. Whitehawk is – or was – a member of the Patrol, which seems to be the League's security arm but at the start of the story he's lost that job due to getting into a fight with a Styor over the latter's cruelty to a slave. In the normal course of events, Whitehawk would be shipped back to Earth in disgrace, but he's surprised to find that his sentence has been put aside. Instead, he's going to be reassigned to a Mixed Team on the Styor-occupied planet Klor. Mixed Teams are groups of specialised traders who operate within Styor territory, trading luxury goods to the Styor aristocracy. Mixed Teams are made up of a mixture of human ethnicities, and one member of this Team – a fellow Sioux – has recently died from violence. Whitehawk is the only Sioux available to replace him so he is given the job, which strikes him as a very strange coincidence. Arriving on Klor, Whitehawk is put in charge of a bear cub, which has been imported from Earth to sell to the planet's Styor governor. While looking after the bear, Whitehawk also makes friends with Dokital, one of the planet's enslaved Ikkinni people. The Ikkinni are a stone-age hunter-gatherer people, mostly enslaved by the Styor, but there are still some free tribes hiding out in the mountains. Crucially, their culture never developed the idea of domesticating animals. Part of Whitehawk's job is to come up with ideas for new things to import and sell to the Styor, and going through the notes of his dead predecessor, he finds that he had had some tests carried out on the local version of grass, to determine that it could be eaten by Earth herbivores. What follows is an SF thriller including a plan by Whitehawk to import horses, sudden violence and at least two conspiracies, maybe more. Norton like to play the game of giving the reader just enough information to work out what's going on in broad outline, but with enough detail missing to invite speculation. It's an entertaining, fast moving read, well up to her usual standard. I don't know whether Norton ever wrote any more stories about Kade Whitehawk, but a sequel would certainly have been possible. Whitehawk himself is an interesting character, a soldier/policeman with veterinary training, steeped in his own country's violent history, with a strong sense of injustice and a bad temper which he needs to keep under control. The only weakness of the story is a complete lack of female characters, which was typical for Norton at this time, although I've no idea why. But it's still the better of the two stories in this volume, and well worth a read.