Rings [Hardcover]

Ring and Firebird, and Drunkard's Endgame are good novels too-but frankly, Harness lost something after returning to SF in the late 1960s after a long hiatus. Even so, the entire volume is well worth reading and owning. The relative obscurity of PM shows that sometimes quality isn't enough...

The unifying concept represented by the title is "Rings": one of Harness' favorite concepts is cyclic universes, and "rings" in time. (Though the new novel restricts its ideas to a sort of "ring" in space.) Harness' writing was always audacious: occasionally going over the edge to silliness, but at his best, even when thoroughly implausible, the breathtaking nature of his speculations, and their rather poetic intensity, redeemed the sometimes contrived and overwrought plots.

_Rings_ includes _The Paradox Men_, perhaps Harness' best known novel, from 1953, which deals with Alar the thief and his battle against the entrenched government of his time, a battle which ends up in a wild journey to the sun (and more!). _The Ring of Ritornel_ (1968) is an even broader-scoped novel from Harness' return to the field in the late '60s, dealing with the end of the universe and the possible start of a new one, and the battle between chaos and order. _Firebird_ (1981), the most ambitious of several novels he produced in a new burst of productivity around the early '80s, again deals with the cycles of the universe. Common to all these novels is the theme of the outlaw who, chases by the corrupt forces of the established order, and in love with a highly placed woman, succeeds, usually with personally tragic side effects, and whose success is far more wideranging in cosmic effect than originally planned.

They are baroque and colorful, and great fun.

The new novel, _Drunkard's Endgame_, is a welcome addition, though it's a fairly minor book. It's set on a starship populated by robots, who rebelled against their human masters 1000 years before, and who have been fleeing ever since. The (corrupt, natch) leader of the starship is searching for the ultimate weapon which a human had devised, and which he thinks was stored in the memory banks of one of his fellow robots. He is opposed by the aristocratic robot known as L'Ancienne, and by her nephew Rodo, who falls in love with one of the robots exiled to the surface of the starship. Once again, the book ends with a radical change to existing conditions, and the beginning of a "new world", but in this case the plot contrivances to bring this about are hard to believe, and the villain combines stupidity with malice rather excessively. It's still a breezy, fun, read however.

This omnibus edition is another marvelous product of NESFA books.