A light-hearted spin on the Odyssey wheel. A try at a rollicking set of sailors tales, that falls flat. Lafferty is a good stylist, but the book seems to be relatively ordinary for a Lafferty. ( )

(Original Review, 1980-11-26)

Another old Ace double that's a favourite is "Space Chantey" by R. A. Lafferty. It's sort of a retelling of "The Odyssey" in sf terms, but in typically crazed Lafferty fashion. Odysseus becomes Space Captain Roadstrum, the land of the lotus eaters becomes a planet where (shades of Tennyson) it is always afternoon, the clashing rocks become an asteroid belt and so on. I think this was the first Lafferty I ever read, and I was taken by the style even if I didn't know what was going on. I remember walking into the corner store, oh, about 1980 or so to buy groceries & checking out the book rack: that's how I found my first RA Lafferty book, “Fourth Mansions”. After that, I would buy any book that had his name on it without even reading the synopsis on the back. He was just that good. I'm looking forward to some great re-reads. It blew my mind like a party balloon. After that book I was lucky to find a second hand copy of “Not to Mention Camels”.

After that: well, I was on a Lafferty hunt that lasted at least a decade. I read all I could find. Not everything was great but it was all Lafferty. Which was and will always be good enough for me. He is much more difficult to read than the likes of Sheckley or Dick, and frankly, apart from the current hardcore readership it is difficult to see his audience expanding much into the mainstream beyond enhanced snob value namedropping.

Off topic, there's a lot of good Jack Vance books that you don't see very often. One of his first was "The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph", a collection of short stories about a genteel, goateed adventurer who consistently outwits his brawny, space-tanned adversaries. I think it was reprinted recently; I recommend it. Mark S. Geston [2018 EDIT: What the hell happened to Geston? I don’t think I read anything more from him ever] doesn't write much and isn't strong on plot, but if you like apocalypses he's your man. "The Lords of the Starship", "In the Mouth of the Dragon" (very hard to find) and "The Siege of Wonder" all contain final battles of one kind or another. "The Siege of Wonder" is probably the best; it concerns a confrontation between the forces of magic and those of science: griffins vs. tanks and the like. His style might be too poetic for some, but I'd pick him as my favourite unknown author.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )

An Odyssey in space, where the perils are strange and the men die left and right. The author makes no attempt to make sense or even, at times, explain how the crew extracts themselves from sticky situations. The poetry/chanteys throughout are not particularly good either, unless you mostly judge poems by the uniqueness of rhymes, in which case it's pretty good. This book tries to make up in (sometimes dark) humor and creativity what it lacks in cohesiveness. ( )

Hardcover edition with black and white sketches by Vaughn Bode. The most jolly and exhilirating space Odyssey in the Universe. Language, inventions and ideas , so smart and amusing. Great class!