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| Judgement
Night by C. L. Moore check out website: www.redjacketpress.com
'Judgement Night'.
Even
these were published, with the exception of the title story, under the pen name
of Laurence O'Donnell. Back in the 50s, it was very hard to be a woman writer
who wrote Science Fiction. This husband-and-wife team were so prolific and it's
a shame that they're almost forgotten by today's modern audience. One can only
hope a publisher gets it into its head to do a fresh Kuttner collection. But,
on the bright side, we do have this marvellous re-print here. The 'Judgement
Night' collection is solely Moore's work and it's really an anthology of five
of her novelettes. 'Judgement Night' (1943) concerns the involvement of the Emperor's
daughter in the prevention of an assassination attempt on her father and a change
of power. Oddly enough, I felt this story to drag a little with various twists
and turns. Moore was too skilled a writer to pad but this no doubt made up the
word count and 10 years later would probably be considered more a small novel
than a novelette. 'Paradise Street' (1950) is set on a frontier world
where the maverick who discovered it mixes with the wrong people and is finally
ousted from the world to go searching for new worlds again. Comparisons between
the old Wild West and SF is nothing knew but in a story written in 1950 for 'Astounding
Science Fiction', it's a fair bet that such stories were used to bring different
audiences to our genre. As an open comparison to the first story, Moore has certainly
come a long way since the previous tale with a desire to read to find out what
happens next. 'Promised Land' (1945) is a tale of rebellion on a criminally
run planet and how Fenton deposes his boss and the skulduggery of one of his other
minions who was ousting him as well. If you were reading this book and weren't
hooked by now, this one will catch you hook, line and sinker. It might have a
certain naive charm today but I bet nearly 60 years ago, it caught all its readers. 'The Code' (1945) tells of a man being restored to youth and the realisation
that they hadn't really known was kind of chap he was when young. As with all
good SF authors, there is always opportunity to examine the human condition and
this was one of Moore's stories doing the same. 'Heir Apparent' (1950)
is set in a future where select groups of people can be integrated via a machine
to, for the want of a word that probably wasn't used then, terra-form worlds.
This tale focuses on Harding who is tracking down a renegade Integrator, Mayall,
who was fired for not being up to the job and now being employed elsewhere. This
story has unexpected turns and you're never quite sure who are allies or not.
If anything, this one is really the topping of the book. It also holds with my
theory that anthology books released in the 50s had a tendency to leave their
best story for last so you'd go away wanting more by the same author or publisher. C.L. Moore's strength was in writing character stories more than science-orientated
ones. No doubt the collaborations with her husband, Henry Kuttner, gave the best
of both worlds and probably explains why she moved towards fantasy stories after
he died as SF became more science-orientated. Whatever, this collection is still
of great interest to SF fans and those of you with an historian bent will be wanting
to see some of her earlier work. Some of these stories might not be as memorable
as her other work but this book can be used as a gauge to see how good she was,
writing on her own. GF Willmetts
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OTHER REVIEWS - October 2004
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Another
of Red Jacket's reprinting in limited edition of a 1952 Gnome Press book. In this
case, C.L. Moore's 
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