G.M. BarrowsReseñas

This is a rather dated but still enjoyable read of one of the first multiverse stories. The three main characters all think they are time-traveling but then come to realize they had simply entered another (very dystopian) version of their own world, where time moves at a different pace, (or something... the 'science' in this story is very hand-wavy). Regardless of the scientific accuracy, the story is entertaining, mostly on the strength of the characters and the strange adventures they find themselves having. And really, at its heart, this is more of an adventure tale than anything else. On that level it holds up pretty well more than 100 years after first being published.½

I'm glad this short novel has been reprinted in the Modern Library "Torchbearers" series, since it is certainly deserving of a new audience. It's not perfect, sure, but there's some excellent dystopian world-building here.½

Citadel of Fear is a novel from the World War I era, which may have been good for the time that it was written, but doesn’t particularly hold up today. It fails in more area than it succeeds. The novel starts off with an Irishman in America finding a lost Aztec city. There are shady goings on involving Aztec gods and an escape from the place where he is being held in captivity. The novel then has a jarring and abrupt shift into the future and eventually ties back into the lost city from the beginning of the novel.

Despite the title, there is nothing especially horrific happening in this story. I found the horror elements to be rather ho-hum, and the characterization to be fairly weak. The shift from past to present was so abrupt that it almost seemed as if I were reading an entirely different story. The climax of the novel is told in summary form rather than shown to the reader and it really falls flat. It’s often difficult to judge stories written in a different era. What may have worked then may no longer work today. I don’t know if this would have been scary or captivating to a reader from nearly a century ago, but it doesn’t stand the test of time.

Carl Alves – author of Battle of the Soul

Really enjoyed this. Will write at length at some point.

This story involves a vial topped by a silver image of the heads of Cerberus supposedly made by Cellini to hold dust scraped from the rocks of Purgatory. It turns out to have the ability to transfer people to Ulithis, a kind of "world between the worlds" and thence into a a world in an alternative time track (an idea this book is said to have pioneered). In this case the world, or at least the equivalent of Philadelphia in that world, is rued by a theocracy which worships William Penn, or at least his statue, as a god. Although the story is very different in other respects, the idea of a dust that transports people to a place between worlds reminds me of Lewis's The Magician's Nephew. Since he did read some American pulp fantasy magazines, I wonder if he had run across this story.

SS about elfs, gypsies, and old wives tales, good stuff.

In a future where women have naturally become the dominant sex, an old salt - a weathered sailor woman - tells the tale of the time she was a castaway on a very, very unusual island.

Let's just say - the dynamic here is pretty far from Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. Good fun, and a nice illustration of reaping what you sow.

This was a distinctly odd story, though not unenjoyable. The opening suggests we're in for a thriller along the lines of The Citadel of Fear, but things take a very different turn and we end up stranded in a parallel reality, via an extremely strange mystical interlude that has a bit of Greek myth and a bit of fairyland to it. Though the situation for the protagonists is grim, there's something ridiculous about the dystopia that made it hard for me to know how to take the story. The ending throws in a chunk of technobabble exposition that felt rather awkward.

I had a reasonable time reading this, but it felt unbalanced somehow. The transition of apparent genre from adventure to mystical fantasy to satirical dystopian alt-hist to some kind of science fiction maybe? just gave it an unpolished feel. It also felt a bit rough and ready, as though Stevens had some cool ideas but hadn't spent quite enough time making them fit together before publishing this. The red bell, in particular, felt clumsy to me - Stevens obviously wanted a get-out at this point, but this whole section felt rushed and underexplained, and despite the exposition I didn't get the sense that Stevens really much idea about the bell herself.

Our characters are okay, but the most interesting are definitely the bit-part Bertram and his sadly neglected lady friend. Despite the token romance, neither the protagonist nor the love interest felt very well fleshed-out to me, and they do very little. When the hero does finally take action, it's entirely offscreen and we learn about it all retrospectively, in dialogue, in a scene where it's not at all clear whether whether anyone's telling the truth. I'd also have liked to explore the antagonists more, and work out how they tick.

The ending of the story had a touch of the cop-out to it, and although it's not actually a dream sequence, it's annoying in similar ways.

I had a reasonable time with this story, and it pleasantly whiled away a journey, but I can't call it one of Stevens' strongest works.

This is a rarely reprinted science fiction novel of the early 20th Century about three people suddenly sent on a wild adventure.

Set in Philadelphia of the early 20th Century, Robert Drayton is a young lawyer in ethical trouble. Terry Trenmore is a big, strapping Irishman, full of muscles, but perhaps a bit lacking in brains. Viola is Terry's teenage sister. Through a busted burglary and a bit of intrigue, they are sitting at a table with a mysterious glass bottle in front of them. The sterling silver stopper is shaped into Cerberus, the mythological three-headed dog. It contains "the dust of Purgatory," said to have been collected by Dante himself during his time there. Terry touches the dust, and immediately disappears. Viola and Robert soon follow.

They find themselves in a strangely changed Philadelphia. After just a few minutes on the street, they are arrested for not wearing their number in public. It turns out that they have traveled 200 years into the future, to a dystopian Philadelphia, where everyone has numbers instead of names. They are taken to the Hall of Justice, where the punishment for breaking the law is to be thrown into the Pit of the Past. It is a large pit that is home to a carnivorous creature with steel spikes for teeth. Instead, the three are entered into "democratic" civil service exams, to become part of the ruling class.Actually, the contests are fixed, and the losers die. The ruling class does have names, like Cleverest, Swiftest and Loveliest; they also have total control over the population. History has been suppressed, and literacy is forbidden. Drayton gets in big trouble simply for asking for a newspaper. In 22nd Century Philadelphia, William Penn is worshiped as an angry god, and the Liberty Bell has been turned into a disintegrator machine. Can the three return home? Do they survive this dystopian nightmare?

This novel should be much more available than it has been. It does stereotype its characters, but the author stays away from insulting stereotypes. It certainly works as a dystopian novel, and is very much worth the reader's time.

Actually a short story, not a book. It's hard to genre-pigeonhole this one - it's got a setting that's some kind of sci-fi, but barely comes into it, with fantastical elements too. I liked how it flips gender roles just in passing while setting up the story. The actual story is just a bit of fun really. It's a far cry from The Citadel of Fear, though.½

A surprisingly engrossing weird adventure story. I went back and forth on this a couple of times. The early stages have two explorers encountering a classic lost city in the desert, where Aztec gods are still worshipped. When a fifteen-year time-skip intervened, my interest waned as it usually does in those circumstances. However, Stevens soon gets things going again, now in weird thriller mode. This is good stuff, keeping things weird enough to signal the reader that it's all Aztec all the time, but equally just plain weird for the characters trying to understand it.

I have no idea how accurate any of the Aztec mythology is, but once I'd got into it, I found this an enjoyable and novel story. Stevens maintains a good foreboding atmosphere, and I half-expected it to turn into a horror story. Nevertheless, the writing remains very readable. The characters are simple and see minimal development, but play their parts perfectly well. I'd have liked to see the mysterious girl better fleshed-out, as she's potentially a very interesting character with a unique background, but perhaps this wasn't the story for that - by the time she's on the scene things are bubbling towards a climax, and pausing to give her extensive backstory would have affected the pacing.

Similar in style to Edgar Rice Burroughs but just not quite as good. Nevertheless an enjoyable read. If you like pulp adventure stories you'll enjoy this one.

Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) was the first american, female fantasy writer. She wrote a few novels and short stories between 1917 - 1923. A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft were both fans of her writing. Her main themes are lost worlds, psychic possession, a Poe homage, etc. A wild imagination. Highly recommended.