Cradle of the Sun / The Wizards of Senchuria

Keys to the Dimensions

by Brian M. Stableford, Kenneth Bulmer

Cradle of the Sun:
‘Was the world’s last coward mankind’s final champion?

Call it soul, call it humanity, species-sentience, anything – it was missing. And not only was it gone from mankind, but from man’s ancient enemies, the rats, as well. There was no will to power, no will to live…
Both intelligent species were dying.

The task of saving the world fell to Kavan Lochlain, the last living coward. The only man who cared enough to feel fear, Kavan was afraid of everything. But this fear was going to take him to the Cradle of The Sun, because he was too scared to let anything stop him.

“I haven’t been so struck by the vivid imagery in a book since The Jewels of Aptor or The Dying Earth” – Jack Gaughan’
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The Wizards of Senchuria:
Scobie Redfern was just a nice good-looking American young man who had never heard of such things as Portals, parallel worlds, and Trugs. So when someone materialized in his apartment with the Trugs in hot pursuit, it all seemed sort of a funny game. But there was nothing amusing about it once the monsters themselves arrived.

For it wasn't long before Scobie was himself running for his life from world to world and from Portal to Portal just to keep one jump ahead of the Trugs, and hoping that The Wizards of Senchuria might, just might, be able to get him back home alive and whole!
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Blurbs from the Ace Double 12140 paperback edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the Ace Double volumes, a publishing curiosity extant from the early 1950s to the early 1970s, where two separate books are bound together but published back-to-back and in opposite orientation to one another in what was known as tête-bêche format. Each side had its own cover, so there were two fronts and no backs. The Stableford novel in this volume has an interesting Jack Gaughan cover on a white background and my favorite of the pair was the Bulmer cover, which was painted by Frank Kelly Freas, a very colorful action piece with a whole lot going on... bugs and the mysterious willowy Contessa and a Paul Lehr-like city and monsters and stars and a lot of green... cool stuff! This one was published in 1969, and (as I usually say) was still a bargain for the recently raised price of seventy-five cents. Cradle of the Sun is a far-future mad scientist tale in which the world's last coward, Kavan Lochlain, who isn't a very likeable character, has to save the day. The imagery is quite reminiscent of Jack Vance's Dying Earth. It's not a bad story but is just a little hard to follow. Stableford went on to a long and prolific career with many books of fantasy and science fiction, ranging from vampires and space operas to Warhammer novelizations and biotech. The story on the flip side is Bulmer's The Wizards of Senchuria, one of his novels that's part of his Keys to the Dimensions series. This is the fifth of eight or nine books in the series published from 1961 - '83, all adventurous stories with imaginative settings and situations but not terribly memorable characters. Bulmer always seemed to have cool and catchy titles! It's a very fast-paced adventure in which Scobie Redfern has the ability to transport things and people into alternate dimensions. He meets some characters from the previous books, the evil Contessa is introduced, the Trugs are in pursuit, and why is he willing to help the beings who had trapped him in the first place? It's a fun story with plenty of action and might have been at home in issue of Planet Stories a couple of decades previous. The standard disclaimer is that both novels have a mid-20th century feel and all of the prevailing attitudes of the time. But it's an enjoyable read, three stars for each.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Cradle of the Sun" was neither joyful nor eloquent, being a hero quest turned on its head, in a Dying Earth type setting that feels wrung out.

I'm on board for others in the Keys to the Dimension series, "The Wizards of Senchuria" being pulpy high-velocity nonsense of the best sort. It hangs quite a bit on references and cameo appearances to what must be major players in the rest of the series. If you start in the midst of this, like I did, then these are jarring and random and deflate the agency of what is supposed to be the heroes of this one. The Burroughs-like channel changing of settings to keep things movie feels appropriate, but this pace eventually stumbles over itself on the way to its inconclusive conclusion.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

CRADLE OF THE SUN

‘Was the world’s last coward mankind’s final champion?

Call it soul, call it humanity, species-sentience, anything – it was missing. And not only was it gone from mankind, but from man’s ancient enemies, the rats, as well. There was no will to power, no will to live…
Both intelligent species were dying.

The task of saving the world fell to Kavan Lochlain, the last living coward. The only man who cared enough to feel fear, Kavan was afraid of everything. But this fear was going to take him to the Cradle of The Sun, because he was too scared to let anything stop him.

“I haven’t been so struck by the vivid imagery in a book since The Jewels of Aptor or The Dying Earth” – Jack Gaughan’

Blurb from the Ace Double 12140 paperback edition


Stableford is a prolific but sadly under-recognised writer who has been a major figure on the British SF scene since the 1970s.
This is an early and somewhat nihilistic piece in which Stableford takes the basic premise that in Earth’s far future, a psychoparasite has been draining the will to live from humanity and the one other sapient race on the planet, the rats.
Humanity has travelled to the stars in seedships and humans have been altered genetically to match the worlds discovered rather than terraform the planets.
It is the rats who identify the threat, which they believe to be based in Tierra Diablo, in The Cradle of The Sun, and bring it to the attention of The Librarian, the aging custodian of a vast library of knowledge.
In turn the librarian assembles an expedition consisting of a warrior, an amphibious woman, three rats, and Kalvan Lochlain, whose motivation is his own fear. The companions die one by one with a kind of Shakespearean inevitability leaving Kalvan to face the menace in The Cradle of The Sun alone.
The style is interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. A form of bleak Romanticism laced around the Campbell quest structure. The hero sets out with his companions to seek out and destroy a powerful enemy in his lair, and meet allies and foes along the way.
It fits best, loosely, within the Science Fantasy novels of this period and has strong stylistic links with Michael Moorcock and Jack Vance.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ace Double Novel 441-12140-075
Cradle of the Sun, Brian Stableford, grade B-
Wizards of Senchuria, Keneth Bulmer, grade C+