Today is January 24, as I write this, and it’s the birthday of C. L. Moore (1911-1987). She’s a favorite around here.
Being cooped up in the house most of the day due tot eh weather, I was able read one of her stories. I chose “Heit Apparent” from the collection Judg,ment Night. That’s the cover of the original Gnome Press edition there on the left with a great cover by Kelly Freas.
It’s one of two stories in this volume that the ISFDB calls the Threshholders. The other is “Promised Land”.
Judgment Night was published in 1952.It contains five novellas that Moore was the primary author on. Her husband Henry Kuttner didn’t collaborate much if at all on these stories. They were all published under the pen name of Lawrence O’Donnell.
I read this book in the DCell paperback edition when I was in high school. I remember very little about it, which is why I chose a story from it for this post I wanted to look at some of her work that doesn’t get a lot of attention. There’s a slight C. L. Moore reviavl going on at the moment. At least it looks like it to me. While Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry are her best known works and my favorites of her stories, there’s more to the work of C. L. Moore than jsut those two characters.
“Heir Apparent” first appeared in the July 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
The story is set in a future in which humanity has colonized the solar system, although most of the action takes place on an artificial island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
In this future, groups of seven men are mentally joined, or Integrated, in a joint mind. The purpose for this is to solve problems that one person isn’t capable fo solving alone They solve problems that are too great for a single mind to encompass the solution thereto.
The main characters is Harding, He’s been kicked out of an Integrator Team. He’s looking for George Mayall. Mayall was on the same team as Hariding.
Until Harding got him kicked off.
Mayall is on his own private island, involved in a revenge scheme that will involve treason. (The interplanetary political situation isn’t explained in deatil in this story)
Mayall also wants to kill Harding.
The feeling is mutual.
There’s just one problem. Members of an Integration Team are conditioned in such a way that they can’t harm one another.
That does pressnt a problem, does ‘t it?
The story has a lot of internal dialogue in it. By that I mean, Moore shows us Harding’s thoughts in deatail.
That is something I’ve noticed about Moore’s later solo work. It tends to be more introspective, at least in my mind, than her earlier work Think Jirel and Northwest Smith here. That’s probably why I prefer her work either solo before Kuttner or her collaborations with Kuttner. The earlier stuff is more to my taste.
That’s not to say I don’t like her later work. I very much do. It also helps if yo aren’t dead tired when you read, which I was today. That goes for reading in general.