Early Drake with a sequel, sort of, to Kuttner's book. Life on Venus is not as advertised as terraforming goes bonkers. ( )

My reactions to reading this book in 1993. Spoilers follow.

The Jungle, David Drake -- This book reminded me of an unlikely combination of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse and a John Christian Falkenberg novel by Jerry Pournelle, and I liked it the best of any novel of Drake’s that I’ve read. As stated, the descriptions of aggressive, mobile Venetian flora and fauna battling each other on the shore reminded me of Aldiss’ novel. It’s good to see a modern tale of watery Venus – here rationalized by terraforming and genetic engineering combined with a high mutation rate given the large amountof ultraviolet light that reaches the surface. I thought the best part of the book was the characters of Ensign Brainerd and officer-trainee Wilding, an aristocrat of Wyoming Keep. The battle scenes in this book are all convincing in terms of tech, strategy and emotion. When their hovercraft crashes , Brainerd must lead his crew to safety, but he doesn’t feel like he’s at all cut out for the job. He views himself as a coward, too inexperienced for command and ignorant of the jungle’s dangers. In a previous battle, a fellow hovercraft crew seemingly gave their lives so his crew could flee while the other ship got an enemy vessel. (I suspect the versimilitude of the jungle, especially details of clothes rotting fungi, owes much to Drake’s combat experience in Vietnam.). He thinks Wilding should be the one really leading. Not only does Wilding, through his ecological studies, have a knowledge of jungle dangers but, through a series of accidents and luck, appears to be a born leader to Brainerd. However, to Wilding, Brainerd seems cool and very determined and calculating. That impression is reinforced by accident and luck and Brainerd’s conscious heroism. At novel’s end, both men realize their leaders. I liked this inner picture of soldiers terrified but still competent, clinging to the minutae of discipline not only for survival but an emotional anchor. The characters of Caffey and Leaf were good too. They had a nice relationship of respect and banter – especially given their past of belonging to gangs that warred on each other. The details of the hyper aggressive Venetian life were well done; I suspect Drake’s past as a horror writer helped. At first, the flashbacks to various characters were an unwelcome break of action, but eventually I came to like them as showing the flaws of confined life in the undersea Wyoming Keep replete with its class consciousness and bread and circuses (indeed the mercenary wars primarily as a cynical tool to amuse the masses and justify their grim lives.), why Wilding forsook his class to be a mercenary, and the colorful pasts of lower class Leaf and Caffey. There is also an important subplot involving Brainerd discovering that it was the other hovercraft that retreated in the face of the enemy, that’s he’s not a coward and, indeed, sank the enemy vessel the dead crew is credited. However, I thought the subplot with Wilding’s ex girl-friend, Francine, served little point. I suppose it’s purpose was to show the former callousness of Wilding – and, indeed, all the upper crust Twelve Families of Wyoming Keep – towards lower class Francine and her abandonment. This is another sf story that ends with a social revolution. The mercenaries, inspired by their experience (particularly Wilding) battling and most of them surviving, Venetian lifeforms, foment a revolution five years later in Wyoming Keep in which they supplant the ruling Twelve Families.

“Clash By Night”, Henry Kuttner -- This was put in a joint edition with David Drake’s The Jungle set in the same milieau. While not a sequel (actually, in terms of internal chronology, a prequel), reading the Drake story first was a bit of a distraction. The stories are written almost fifty years apart, and there are a lot of inconsistencies noticed when comparing Drake’s story to the well-regarded classic that started it. There are the obvious problems of nomenclature: telaudio links (A valid idea as described) instead of Drake’s laser beam communications. 50 years of technology have had their obvious effect. Of course, no mention of hovercraft but flitterboats (shallow draft attack vessels) instead. Heat rays are mentioned. Of course, naval warfare is described as being very WWII-ish or before (with a massive ironclad Armageddon (specifically called a monitor) playing a significant plot part) with no mention of modern missle warfare. And, of course given this story's publication in a 1943 issue of Astounding, there are numerous references to atomic energy: Earth is a literally a glowing radioactive cinder after several nuclear power plant accidents (Drake has the Earth destroyed in a nuclear war), and Venus is off-limits to nuclear power; a mercenary company allegedly (and in fact) using hand held atomic pistols is important to the plot. Political and social differences are also evident in these stories suupposedly set in the same mileau (Though, in Drake’s defense, it should be noted that Kuttner’s story is set in Montana keep – partially – and never in Wyoming keep as Drake’s is.). A semi-intelligent reptilian race inhabits Venus in this story. There is no mention of the revolution (and settlement of the surface) of Drake’s story. Perhaps most importantly, Kuttner has warfare on Venus serving a much different function than Drake’s cynical scheme of political diversion for the suffering masses. Not only is warfare fought against the keeps to get ransoms of the power source korium (This is a combination of mediaeval and rennaissance mercenaries ransoming cities, and sf of the 40s (and since and before then) use of new, mysterious power sources.), but to help the societies, cultures, and technologies of the keeps to evolve without the setbacks war would cause. (The keeps, by a “gentleman’s agreement” are never attacked directly. The mercenary Free Companies battle on the surface, and the winner symbolically drops a depth charge near a keep which then coughs up its korium.) The Free Companies themselves help advance technology through their weapons research. All these differences noted (And they didn’t bother me after awhile as I got into Kuttner’s story), it must be said that this story, on its own terms, deserves the respect Drake and others accord it. It does a lot of things it terms of idea and style. Drake himself notes that this is one of the few sf mercenary stories even now to show mercenaries as being in business. A significant part of this story involves contract negotiations by mercenaries. Kuttner uses a lot of different techniques here. The story’s opening is by some unknown history 900 years in the story’s future presenting its events as a recreation of history blending legend and fact about a “typical warrior of the period” – Captain Brian Scott. The story’s intro also tells us that its easy now to see the keeps as savage and backward, that Venus’ surface has been tamed, and the Free Companies, which helped maintain Venetian civilization in their own way, have vanished with Venus’ political unification. The story’s title comes from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” with its line about “ignorant armies clashing by night”. Scott is not exactly a typical merc in that he realizes that the days of the Free Companies are ended unlike many of his fellows in these ignorant armies. Nor can he fully believe in the values, traditions, and worth of the Free Companies like, say, his orderly, a long time veteran whose life in Doone’s Free Companion is all his life. To Scott, the Free Companies seem to be, like war, are “beautifully complicated and beautifully useless”, defenders of a civilization that regards them with unease, whose evolution will render them unnecessary. The Free Companies are habitations for worshippers of Mars who can’t live in the keep where Minerva of wisdom is served. After meeting a hedonistic girl, Ilene Kane of Montana keep, Scott decides, after one last battle, to become a civilian and leave his free wife Jeana. (This difference between civilian attitude and life and the military outlook is accented with Kipling poetry.) Not only does Kuttner gives us good battle descriptions, physical conflict of battle and the emotional conflict in Scott (merc life and Jeana or civilian life with Ilene), but Kuttner effortlessly and smoothly works in a number of subplots which are resolved with nary a break in action: there’s Commander Bienne who despises Scott for the latter’s rapid advances through the ranks to jobs Bienne thinks he should have (Bienne doesn’t get them because he’s too individualistic – the theme of integration and discipline in military life are important here), the untrustworthy Mendez – leader of a subcontracting mercenary group – that tries to kill Scott when their Commander in Chief is killed, the allegations of illegal atomic weapons by another merc group, the main battle itself of course involving a ruse with a supposedly damaged, slow moving monitor, and Scott’s main conflict involving his future life. Scott, ultimately, decides he can’t believe wholeheartedly in the values of military life, that mercs are “doomed guardians” of civilization, but that he is by nature a soldier and can do nothing else. By implication, he chooses Jeana over Ilene. I found her character (she only briefly appears at the beginning and in one scene) one of the most appealing in this story (Indeed more of an appealing character than in many other stories I’ve read.) She’s an ideal military wife and, one suspects, true to life for the women who love and stay with military men and who don't ask questions of Scott or try to change him. Another mark of this story’s apperance in time is the constant reference to psychological conditioning and counseling (they had high hopes in sf for psychology in the 40s).), vitamins, and chiropractic and massage therapy. The skill of this story makes clear why I’ve read some people claiming that Kuttner’s death at an early age was a great loss to sf. ( )