1965; 215 pages. Book 1 (out of 8) in the “Lord Kalvan” series. New Author? : No. Genres : Classic Sci-Fi; Multiverses. Overall Rating : 7*/10.
It had to be some sort of time-machine. One minute Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania
State Police was leading a raid on a farmhouse where an escaped murderer was holed
up, the next minute some dude in a flying saucer popped up and zapped Calvin
into some other time and place.
Check that. Some other time, obviously, but not some
other place. Calvin grew up in this
area. Things like trees and houses are
different in the world he's been transported to, but the basic terrain – the mountains, cliffs, rivers, etc. – are
still where they always were.
So that flying saucer thingy
must’ve been a time-machine. The farmhouse
he was sneaking up on has now disappeared, and Calvin finds himself alone, out in
the sticks. The first thing he needs to
do is find some civilization – assuming it exists – and see what year it is. Right now, he can’t tell whether he got zapped into the future or into the past.
Until he figures that out, he’ll call this place—
Otherwhen.
What’s To Like...
Lord Kalvan of
Otherwhen was published in 1965, and was intended to be the start of a
series featuring the then-newly hypothesized concept of multiverses. The countless array of parallel worlds are monitored
by the dimension-hopping Paratime Police, and they occasionally screw up. Alas, the book was published posthumously, H. Beam Piper having taken his life a year earlier. The remaining seven more books in the series were written
by John F. Carr, sometimes by himself, sometimes with a co-author.
We follow Calvin, later dubbed
Kalvan, as he acclimates to the world he’s just been dropped in. He surmises correctly that he has little
prospect of returning to his home world.
I liked that Calvin’s first order of business is to learn the local
language. No magic translating gizmos
here.
Otherwhen has attained a
sword-and-musketry level of technology, where the key compound needed to fire
projectiles, gunpowder, is in extreme demand. The process to
make the gunpowder is a carefully-guarded secret,
developed by a sinister quasi-religious group called Styphon’s House. Luckily, Calvin apparently has a chemistry
background and knows all about the three main ingredients needed to make gunpowder – sulfur,
charcoal, and saltpeter. More
luckily, Calvin knows a more powerful ratio of mixing those three components, much to the
distress of Styphon’s House.
The book felt well-researched
to me for a 1960’s sci-fi novel. Calvin
may be in an alternate time-line, but the technology to make a metal ball
explode out of the end of a musket is the same.
I also enjoyed the Eastern Pennsylvania setting: it’s H. Beam Piper’s
home turf, and just north of where I grew up.
The world-building shows its
age in places. Most notably, there’s a
lot of smoking going on, without any social stigma. Heroes do it, so do baddies. Men do it, so do women. Drinking is equally acceptable, and I was amused that the
Paratime Police had developed a handy medication for dealing with hangovers for when
they’re fraternizing with the natives on a parallel world. It’s called the “First Level Alcodote-Vitamin
Pills”. The brief mention
of the Pennsylvania Dutch and one of their signature dishes called “scrapple” resonated with me as well.
Kewlest New Word ...
Antiphonally
(adv.) : sung or played by two groups
in turn.
Others: Nitriary (n.); Fluviatile (adj.); Auto-da-fé
(n.).
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.7/5
based on 276 ratings and 94 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.20/5 based on 1,380
ratings and 58 reviews
Excerpts...
The masters complained that the journeymen
and apprentices were becoming intractable, meaning that they’d started thinking
for themselves. The peasants objected to
having their byres invaded and their dunghills forked down, and to being put to
unfamiliar work. The landlords objected
to having their peasants taken out of the fields, predicting that the year’s
crop would be lost.
“Don’t worry about that,” he told
them. “If we win, we’ll eat Gormoth’s
crops. If we lose, we’ll all be too dead
to eat.” (pg. 47)
“Kalvan, this is General Klestreus, late of
Prince Gormoth’s service, now of ours.”
“And most happy at the change, Lord
Kalvan,” the mercenary said. “An honor to
have been conquered by such a soldier.”
“Our honor, General. You fought most brilliantly and
valiantly.” He’d fought like a damned
imbecile, and gotten his army chopped to hamburger, but let’s be polite. (pg. 137)
“The gods would do
what they wanted to without impertinent human suggestions.” (pg. 173)
The quibbles are minor and
mostly inherent with any science-fiction work written in the 1940s-60s.
There’s not a lot of cussing
in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, just nine
instances in the first 50%. When H. Beam
Piper wants to simulate cussing, he often makes phrases up, usually based on
the names of the local deities. Some examples here
are: “Dralm-dammit”, “Great Galzar!”, and “Galzar only knows!” I love it when authors do this.
The ending is okay, but way
too convenient to be believable.
Everything goes just too perfectly for Kalvan and company. But keep in mind that the target audience for
sci-fi books in 1964 was teenage boys, who didn’t mind an ending lacking twists, as long as the white-hats triumphed.
Lastly, it should be noted
that there is lots of verbiage devoted to lots of battles. Even YA readers will most likely get tired of all the minutiae H. Beam Piper imparts to the
fighting scenes. Several other reviewers at
Goodreads felt the same way.
None of that kept me from
enjoying Lard Kalvan of Otherwhen.
Writing a sci-fi tale set in multiverses surely was a groundbreaking task back then, and in that regard H. Beam Piper does an admirable
job. It may not be on par with Star
Wars or even the author’s Little Fuzzy novels, but it’s a better-than-average effort from the heyday of science-fiction.
7 Stars. Some plot threads remain unresolved at the end. Calvin may be “Lord Kalvan”, but uneasy rests the head that wears the crown. Styphon’s House has had its proverbial nose bloodied, but they are still very much a threat. And the Paratime Police are certainly capable of tinkering with the time-line some more. None of that is a criticism, though. That’s why the rest of the series exists.
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