Philip E. High (1914–2006)

review of
A. Bertram Chandler's Contraband from Otherspace & Philip E. High's Reality Forbidden
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 19, 2017

This continues my spree of reading A. Bertram Chandler bks. This will be something like the 22nd of his bks I've read & reviewed in the last 9 mnths. As far as I can tell, I haven't given birth to anything yet.

This is yet-another bk in the John Grimes saga, something that I deeply enjoy w/o being passionate about. Grimes & Sonya resign their respective positions to go into business for themselves but, these being adventure stories, of course they're not just going to plod along making money.

"["]It seems that there's a little one ship company for sale, just a feeder line running between Montalban and Carribea. The gratuity barely covers the down payment—but with your gratuity, and our savings, and the profits we're bound to make we shall be out of the red in no time at all. Just think of it, John! You as Wonder-Master, and myself as your everloving Mate!"" - p 7

But before they get that there biz launched a mystery comes their way: "["]It seems that this ship just appeared out of nothing—those were Hall's own words. There was no warning at all on the Mass Proximity Indicator. And then, suddenly, there she was—on both M.P.I. and radar. . . ."" (p 9)

"The Psionic Radio Officer was slumped in his chair, staring vacantly at the glass tank in which, immersed in its cloudy nutrient fluid, floated the obscenely naked brain. The Commodore tried to ignore the thing. It made him uneasy. Every time that he saw one of the amplifiers he could not help wondering what it would like to be, as it were, disembodied, to be deprived of all external stimuli but the stray thoughts of other, more fortunate (or less unfortunate) beings—and those thoughts, as like or not, on an incomprehensible level. What would a man do, were he so used, his brain removed from his skull and employed by some race of superior beings for their own fantastic purposes?" - p 15

Funny that you shd mention that. I founded a small orchestra called "HiTEC", Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative, & one of our text instructions was entitled "Brain-In-A-Vat":

"Decide that you're a brain-in-a-vat instead of a brain-in-a-skull & that your perceptions of what's happening in the current Systems Management session are programmed perceptions rather than 'real' ones. Adapt yr Management to what you think is the most likely 'reality'."

I like the perceptual challenge(s) of thought experiments like this.

Grimes & co eventually board the mysterious spacecraft & theorize about its dead occupants:

""My dear John," Sonya told him in an annoyingly superior voice, "these hapless folk are neither the builders nor the original crew of this ship. Refugees? Could be. Or must be. This is a big ship, and a fighting ship. You can't run a vessel of this class without uniforms, without marks of rank so you can see at a glance who is supposed to be doing what. Furthermore, you don't clutter up a man-o'-war with children."" - p 28

The plot thickens, of course. It's a veritable blood clot.

"It was the tissue culture vats that held the shocking secret.

"The flesh that they contained, the meat that was the protein supply for the tailed beings who should have manned the ship, was human flesh." - p 34

These mysterious beings who eat human flesh try to contact Grimes & co in the ghost ship: ""Heenteer tee Ceerseer. Whee ees neet yeer veeseen screen een?"" (p 72) It's a Pidgin English! The creatures must be Pigeons! (or Businesspeople)

"Yes, it was familiar, and the Commodore could make out the site of his first landing—one of the smaller clearings that, by some freak of chance or nature, had the outline of a great horse." - p 74

NO! It's Businesshorses.

""Greetings," replied the Commodore.

""You come again, man Grimes." It was a statement of fact rather than a question.

""I have never been here before," said Grimes, adding, "Not in this Space-Time."

""You have been here before. The last time your body was covered with cloth and metal, trappings of no functional value. But it does not matter."

""How can you remember?"

""I cannot, but our Wise Ones remember all things. What was, what is to come, what might have been and what might be. They told me to greet you and to bring you to them."" - p 76

Nay!

"They came to the clearing, to the charred patch of ground already speckled with the pale green sprouts of new growth. And already the air ferns had begun to take root upon protuberances from the ship's shell plating, from turrets and sponsons and antennae; already the vines were crawling up the vaned pod of the landing gear. Williams had a working party out, men and women who were hacking ill-humoredly at the superfluous and encroaching greenery." - p 80

I like to say that Pittsburgh, where I live, is a temperate rainforest & that if humans were to stop battling the plant-life that the city wdn't be visible from the air in 50 yrs. Even the spaceship in my backyard wd be overwhelmed despite its force-field. The problem is that these horses can graze on any field.

"Grimes took her upstairs himself. With a deliberately dramatic flourish he brought his hand down to the keys, as though he were smacking a ready and willing steed on the rump. It was more like being fired from a gun than a conventional blast-off. Acceleration thrust all hands deep into the padding of their chairs. The Commodore was momentarily worried by a thin, high whistling that seemed to originate inside the ship rather than outside the hull. Then, had it not been for the brutal down-drag on his facial muscles, he would have smiled. He remembered that the Streen, normally coldly unemotional, had always expressed appreciation of a trip in a space-vessel and had enjoyed, especially, violent maneuvers such as the one he was now carrying out. If Serressor was whistling, then he was happy." - pp 82-82

The moral: "smacking a ready and willing steed on the rump" causes whistling.

THE END.

Well, not really, b/c now it's time to flip ye old Ace Double to the Reality Forbidden side. Whenever I read an SF bk by an author I haven't heard of it's probably a good idea to check on ye old internet whether that name's a pen name of some other author that I have heard of. But, NO! Not only was that his non-pen name name there's even a website dedicated to his writing: http://philipehigh.com/ . You can even get Reality Forbidden on Kindle! How SF can you get?!

""We can find our own way out, thank you."

""Oh, but you can't. You can find your way in but you cannot find your way out until I have shown you."

""Does it matter?"

""Of course it matters." the old man was suddenly shrill and petulant. "There is a way in and a way out, a way to enter and a way to leave. That is the order of things and we must obey orders."

"Behind his back, Glliad looked sideways at Kendal and tapped his temple meaningly. His lips formed the word "nits."" - p 6

Of course, what the old man was referring to was this review. Reality being forbidden by the horses n'at YOU think that you can leave this review whenever you want to but you can't. The review is in yr mind now. Horses & tigers. They're out to get you.

"The corridor turned again and the old man paused. "Keep to the left here, there is a tiger in the third room."

"Gilliad looked at Kendal and raised his eyebrows despairingly. When he reached the door with the word "Tiger" on it he kicked it contemptuously with his toe.

"There was a snarling sound and Gilliad screamed. He flung himself back from the door and put his hands over his face.

""Oh, my God," he said. There was a jagged gash beneath his left eye and blood trickled down his cheek." - pp 6-7

Horseshit. Who do these guys think they're kidding?!

"["]Before you try and answer that, we see it something like this. We see you floating in on a repeller unit just like a feather. When you touched the tops of the trees, however, all the various appendages crumpled and snapped off as they were designed to do. As a crash it looked real good even if the repeller did get you down safely and burn itself out automatically as soon as you touched down.["]" - p 9

Are you pickin' up what he's puttin' down?!

""We wanted to know"—Kendal was suddenly sweating visibly—"if coherent culture existed, what methods it had employed to suppress the machine."

""Machine? You mean the wish-machine"? He stared at them and suddenly burst out laughing. "My God, man, they're legal here." - p 10

You wish.

"Their voices were cool, neutral and without triumph. "In the event of an addict being apprehended, what is the procedure?"

""The addict is confined in a temporary prison until the effects wear off."

""And then?"

""Then"—Gilliad tried to hold back the words or alter them but found the task hopeless—"then he is paraded through the streets and publicly executed in a slow-heat cubicle."" - p 21

This bk was written in 1967 by a British author. I wonder what the drug laws were like in Britain at the time?

"Drugs considered addictive or dangerous in the United Kingdom are called "controlled substances" and regulated by law. Until 1964 the medical treatment of dependent drug users was separated from the punishment of unregulated use and supply. Under this policy drug use remained low; there was relatively little recreational use and few dependent users, who were prescribed drugs by their doctors as part of their treatment. From 1964 drug use was increasingly criminalised, with the framework still in place as of 2014 largely determined by the Misuse of Drugs Act."

[..]

"Following pressure from the US, the UK implemented the Drugs (Regulation of Misuse) Act in 1964. Although the Convention dealt with the problems of drug production and trafficking, rather than the punishment of drug users, the 1964 Act introduced criminal penalties for possession by individuals of small amounts of drugs, as well as possession with intent to traffic or deal in drugs. The police were soon given the power to stop and search people for illegal drugs."

[..]

"1964 – Dangerous Drugs Act, following UN 1961 Single Convention. Criminalised cultivation of cannabis.

"1964 - Drugs (Prevention of Misuse Act) criminalised possession of amphetamines.

"1967 – Dangerous Drugs Act. Doctors required to notify Home Office of addicted patients. Restriction on prescription of heroin and cocaine for treatment of addiction." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_United_Kingdom

W/ that info in mind, at least part of Reality Forbidden seems to be a warning for the way that drug laws in the UK were going at the time.

"["]The potential addict is the man with problems, the type of man who lives beyond his income, the man with an erring wife, or worries too much about this and that, the unrequited lover; in short anyone who has good reasons for wanting to escape either from himself or his problems.

""In the subjective world which the machine, responding to his imagination, creates for him, his problems are resolved. Naturally, once the effects of the machine's stimulation wears off, the real problems of the world loom even larger and he resorts to the machine again—once this becomes habitual he is a second degree addict.["]" - p 31

"Keisler cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. "It was only when several good men had met rather messy ends that the authorities began to wonder and, by the time they had finished wondering, the truth was all too clear. Ina large number of cases, the addict's imaginary protectors were coming to his aid."

[..]

"["]Some speak glibly but a little obscurely of a 'retained hypnotic mental impression' while a more cautious school is engaged in physical research. They are working on the theory touched upon by most great physicists, that thought has substance.

""Which school of thought is right I'm not prepared to say, but this fact is inescapable—if an advanced addict concentrates too long on a means of defense, this means of defense becomes objective to a Susceptible." - pp 35-36

This notion of thought becoming palpable, of mind-over-matter essentially, is a key fantasy to many people, myself included. Movies like Dr. Strange appeal to it. It's just like ceremonial magick: there are people who practice it who seem to think that they can get the power that they're otherwise lacking in their life by going thru the right mumbo-jumbo.. & maybe they can.. although I've never known anyone to succeed. I think they'd be better off becoming an accountant for a university & ripping off a million or so. They'd stand almost no chance of being prosecuted - unlike if they stole a piece of meat from a supermarket.

"He turned from the window, frowning. "From right now Ontario is a beleagured province; we stand alone." He pulled himself abruptly erect and grinned twistedly at the other. "The Mother Country stood alone more than once, guess we can, huh?—let's go and have a beer."

""A beer!" Gilliad, borught up in regimented society looked vaguely shocked. "Shouldn't we tape a report or something?"

""What the hell for?" Osterly tapped a small device strapped to his left wrist. "Everything was recorded, they'll have it all; if they want me they'll send for me—come on."" - pp 46-47

That's right, we've just uncovered a plot to attack a large population, let's go relax now, that was hard work.

Question: Why did you wish to conceal your identity?
Answer: It was a prepared policy.
Question: Did all the Immunes adopt it?
Answer: Yes.
Question: How old are you?
Answer: Two hundred and eighteen.
Question: How old do you hope to be?
Answer: Around three thousand." - p 83

Ok, give the guy a break. I mean, let's get real: If he revealed his true age he'd never get laid.

""Attention all citizens. Observers report three active volcanoes twenty miles beyond the city limits. Remember, please, that this volcanic activity is not real, it is subjective." - p 112

'Attention all citizens. Observers report three major tv news networks in this country. Remember, please, that this news is not real, it is propaganda.'

"Osterly, his pipe halfway to his mouth, froze. This was the end, there were limits to what the human mind could conceive. God, earthquake, fire, flood and tempest. The Immunes had not only thrown the book at them but the wrapping and price tag as well." - p113

Horsepuckey.. Wait a minute! What's THAT doing here?! That's from the other review!… (altro)

Come, Hunt an Earthman by Philip E. High


This is a 1970s pulp science fiction romp with an engaging premise but less-than-believable characters. It is told in plain language and presents unambiguous views on morality through stereotypical heroes and villains, focusing on a seemingly endless series of conflicts between alien and human military technology in which the underdog predictably comes out on top in the end.

Somewhere along the way it makes a strained foray into the philosophy of our place in the universe, but to the end remains incautiously optimistic about the capabilities, ingenuity, and integrity of humankind.

Although the book is reasonably well written and may be of interest to readers who revel in imaginatively destructive fictitious technologies, those who prefer character-driven novels and more contemplative content could find it becoming tedious before they are halfway through.
… (altro)

This was an unexpected pleasure to read, one of the best scifi books I've read this year along with Station Breaker, Orbital & A For Andromeda.

Invader On My Back starts off a little strangely mentioning humans called Norms, Scuttlers, Stinkers & Delinks however it all soon becomes apparent that Norms are basically normal people, Scuttlers are people who can't look at the sky, Stinkers are people who other people can't stand to be around and become violent in the presence of (towards the Stinker) and Delinks are delinquents. How does this fit into the story? It's set far into the future, the figure of 400 years is mentioned so perhaps circa 2368 depending on when that 400 years begins. In this future humanity has evolved into these four distinct groups, and this story follows Craig, a stinker, who is given hired by the Police Research Institute to meet another Stinker for research purposes.

Shortly thereafter we learn there's a 5th type of evolutionary divergence happening within the population and following this Craig's research brings to light other goings on on the planet relating to the Invaders of the books title.

Whilst it's quite a short novel at 176 pages, it really is excellent and very much worth the read.… (altro)