Eternal frontier gems12/17/2022 ![]() Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams want to talk about racism-but they need to do it without in any way implicating systems. That parable strains credulity even more than a magic wishing ring-and perhaps for that reason, it needs to be retold, on a broader scale. The way you acted, you don’t deserve a nickel’s worth!” End of parable. “You want trouble,” the cop sneers, and Stewart replies, “I kind of doubt you’re man enough to give it-even with your night stick!” The cop is about to do something more…when another cop comes up and tells him to back off. ![]() Some blond cop is harassing two guys playing dominoes on the street, and Stewart tells the pig to back off. This book probably isn't a good choice for your first Schmitz book, but if you try the more famous ones and find you like his stuff, it's a worthwhile purchase.John Stewart’s first appearance in comics, in 1972, involves him challenging a police officer. Stories like "Ham Sandwich", about a slick operator running a psi scam, and "Where the Time Went", about a very different SFnal crime, are clever and enjoyable.Even the lesser stories here are generally breezily enjoyable. Schmitz wrote some crime fiction as well, often for the SF magazines, but also in mystery magazines. Another fine alien invasion story is "These are the Arts". Especially good is "We Don't Want Any Trouble", a very neat SF horror story about an alien invasion. Many of these are in the section the editors have called "Dark Visions" - Schmitz usually went for fairly conventional happy endings, but in these stories the horrific implications of some of Schmitz' ideas are fully explored. And among the shorter stories are some first-rate pieces. The above-mentioned longer stories, "The Ties of Earth" and "Captives of the Thieve-Star", are both very uneven, but even if they don't work completely, they have some nice bits. But for those of us who have learned to love his work, this is an invaluable way to get those tantalizing few stories we haven't yet found.That said, there are some very fine pieces here. ![]() It's fair to say that the earlier Baen reprints gathered the bulk of his best work - it's easy to see why some of these stories haven't seen the light of day in a while. My rating for the book is based more on its appeal to its intended audience - Schmitz fans - than on its intrinsic merits. It also includes Schmitz last (and by far weakest) novel, _The Endless Frontiers_. But _Endless Frontier_ collects all of Schmitz' short fiction that had not previously been reprinted - including some stories from mystery magazines. But it was much harder to find stuff like "The Ties of Earth", a long novella only published as a two-part magazine serial, or "Captives of the Thieve-Star", a novelette which prefigures in some way Schmitz' later female characters, but which was only ever published in a 1951 issue of the classic pulp Planet Stories. Fans of Schmitz, like me, spent much time in used book stories finding his work before the recent reprint series - and in that way it was relatively easy to collect most of the Telzey stories, the Trigger stories, and books like _Agent of Vega_ and _The Demon Breed_. This book is particularly welcome, not because it is the best (it is not, not by a long shot), but because it contains some of the most obscure of Schmitz' stories. From my perspective this has been a successful and welcome undertaking. _Endless Frontier_ is the sixth book in Eric Flint and Guy Gordon's project to return James H.
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