Worlds of the Imperium - Keith Laumer

I received a recommendation for Keith Laumer's Imperium novels, and so I decided to follow up on it. There's a new omnibus edition collecting all three Imperium novels, but it's currently only available in hardcover. Since this is my first encounter with Laumer's writing, I opted for the cheap way and bought a slightly beat-up used copy of the first book in the series for about two bucks and gave it a try.

Laumer's hero, Brion Bayard, is an American diplomat from our world who is kidnapped and dragged into a parallel dimension by the Imperium. The basic idea is that there are many parallel universes that all differ from their neighbors by some tiny amounts. The Imperium is made up of many of these parallel Earths who are so close in continuity that traveling between them is easy and government and commerce flourish. Separated by an expansive barrens (parallel universes that failed in an evolutionary sense) is our universe, and one other. This other, "evil" universe is like ours, except the cold war escalated and modern civilization collapsed. Brion's counterpart in this universe is the supreme dictator of Earth, so the Imperium, fearing invasion by this "evil" universe, wants Brion to infiltrate the capital, kill his counterpart, and assume control of the government.

It's a pretty clever idea, except Laumer's writing is too sparse. The elaborate concept works solely to get Brion to his adventure on the "evil" Earth. The Imperium itself hardly appears at all in the story. Brion, though he is professionally a diplomat, is more of an action hero and never exhibits any of the tact or strategy one would expect. Laumer also made his most famous hero, Retief, a diplomat, so clearly he likes the idea, but for all purposes, Brion could have been a fireman or an accountant for all it mattered in this story. The depiction of the underground resistance on the "evil" Earth is particularly effective, as well as the intriguing twist Laumer injects into his story when Brion finally meets his counterpart. However, most of the book is written in a hurried style that never lingers too long on any one idea or character. It's not a bad book, just an unsophisticated one.

My copy includes two bonus short stories, unrelated to Imperium. "The War against the Yukks" is dreadful. It's the kind of chauvinistic junk that was common during the male-oriented bad-old-days of science fiction. Two idiots find an archaeological relic which turns out to be a spaceship and travel to a planet with 700 nubile women where they are given the arduous duty repopulating the whole planet. Ugh.

Much better is "Worldmaster" in which the admiral of the U.S.'s space fleet, as controller of the most powerful military force in the solar system, has decided to turn his military power back on the Earth and declare himself supreme dictator. The story's protagonist must take information of the coup to the president who may be able to stop the plot. The story is nothing more than an extended chase scene through a futuristic Washington D.C., but it was tight and quite enjoyable. I mention it because I enjoyed this one quote, which I find as applicable in today's political climate as it was in the 60s when Laumer wrote it. "Theories are beautiful things–simple and precise as cut glass–as long as they're only theories. When you find in your hand the power to make them come true...suddenly, it's not so simple."

Topper - Thorne Smith

There is a scene in Topper of such beauty that it has stayed with me in the weeks since I finished reading it. Cosmo Topper is an upper-middle class banker with a mundane life of routine. In an attempt to break free from his life of regularity (some might call this a mid-life crisis) he buys a sports car. The car was previously owned by a young couple with a reputation for hard partying and fast living. That lifestyle caught up with them, and they both died after wrecking the car. The car is lovingly restored and Topper begins driving it despite its reputation. The car, of course, is haunted by the ghosts of the young couple, George and Marion Kerby, and after getting over his initial shock at being haunted, Topper strikes up a friendship with the pair. In my favorite scene, Topper and George have found a case of whiskey and gotten good and thoroughly drunk, and Topper has finally started to loosen up.

  "This Scotch is delicious. Do you feel like dancing?"
  Kerby quickly looked up from his drink. Mr. Topper appeared to be perfectly normal. He was sitting solidly on his box and gazing into the fireplace.
  "Do I feel like what?" Kerby demanded.
  "Dancing, George," replied Mr. Topper in a reasonable voice. "Dancing or singing."
  "Certainly not," said Kerby, shortly.
  "That's odd," replied Mr. Topper. "I seem to."
  "Well, don't do it," Kerby commanded. "You'll spoil everything."
...
  "Listen, George," [Topper] asked humbly, "if I just sit quietly here by the fire and feel like dancing it will be all right, won't it?"

I found something beautiful, funny, and sad about a man so meted out, so worn down by his routine, that he had to ask permission to feel like dancing.

Eventually Topper and Marion (who no longer considers herself married to Kerby since death did them part) run off together for an affair which is anything but physical. The book is mostly a sequence of delightfully written set pieces of slapstick humor. Particularly outrageous are the Kerbys haunting Topper's trial for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, as well as a restaurant scene involving a partially materialized ghost dog. (I'll let you figure out which half of the dog was visible.)

Topper was written in the 1920s, and is full of references to prohibition. The Kerby's continual inebriation must have been shocking to contemporary readers, but even to a modern reader they drink to excess. There is something different in the way a modern reader interprets how the Kerbys died while driving under the influence, compared to a contemporary reader, for whom sports cars must have seemed a novelty or impractical luxury. The story also includes a few scenes of ribaldry which are tame by today's standard. Instead of seeming quaint, they lend a kind of timeless charm to the whole affair. The idea of an invisible naked woman sharing a room with a married man is enough to delight without being overly explicit.

There is a movie version of Topper, which is generally inferior to the book. It is perhaps most famous for being one of Cary Grant's early movies, and one of his very few supporting roles. The movie version adapts most of the book's best scenes and captures a lot of the slapstick comedy in the book. Roland Young is magnificent as Topper, but other than his nuanced performance, very little of the movie evokes the rich poignancy that runs throughout the story in Thorne Smith's book. If I just sit here and remember this book and laugh quietly to myself, it will be all right, won't it?

Agent of Chaos - Norman Spinrad

My copy of Agent of Chaos includes an introductory note by Rex Weiner who praises the book for its revolutionary premise and underground status, and explains that it is a cult favorite among prisoners in the U.S. corrections system. I have a hard time believing that this book – firmly rooted in space opera genre conventions and also a dreadfully dull lecture on political philosophy – would be enjoyed by anyone. The 1960s produced so many good revolutionary novels and works of political ideas. Agent of Chaos is not one of them.

In Agent a central government, the Hegemony of Sol, rules over all human colonies throughout our solar system. The standard of living of the average human in the Hegemony is generally good, sacrificing some individual liberties for stability and harmony. There are two rival organizations: the Democratic League, which seeks to replace the authoritarian Hegemony with a more representative democratic government; and the Brotherhood of Assassins, a shadowy secret group committed to following the teachings in a manuscript describing the role of Chaos in the natural order of the universe. There is a plot about assassinations and interplanetary coups that allows thinly-written characters to engage in pro-forma debates about the benefits of various forms of government. The ratio of lecturing to action in this book is about 10 to 1.

As explicitly stated and restated, these three organizations fall into the three archetypical forms of governance: establishment, loyal opposition, and counter-establishment. The opposition challenges the policies of the establishment government, but supports the general framework of governance. Consider the role of the Democratic Party in the present-day U.S. Republicans control all three branches of government. Democrats form an opposition to the Republican policies, but they are essentially seeking to replace Republicans in positions of power with members of their own party. Politicians of the opposition may use the language of revolution, but they are, in practice, counter-revolutionaries. In the book, the followers of Chaos are not anarchists opposed to any system of governance, but they oppose regularity and predictability. They perform the role of injecting randomness into a system to dislodge it from its evolutionary dead-end. It is ironic that they follow this theory in a disciplined and even religious fashion, but I don’t see evidence that Spinrad intended this irony.

The book is not long, but it continues on long past the point the reader has grasped its facile premise and ceased to care about its cardboard characters and rote plot. Spinrad followed this debut novel with some ground-breaking novels, but none of his later genius is on display here. I was especially reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s hallucinogenic Illuminatus trilogy, especially in the way the followers of Chaos in Wilson’s series follow a mysterious bible of discord and chaos. Agent lacks any of Illuminatus’s humor, wit, and even the plausibility of that absurd book. Rex Weiner says that this book inspired him to form Pie-Kill Unlimited, that group of jokers who throw meringue pies at powerful people. This book sure could have used some pies.