Judgment Night

by C.L. Moore

WHICH OF THESE ALIENS AND HUMANS WOULD SURVIVE?

The Lens of Death was the most dreadful weapon of history. Control of this infernal machine meant man's only chance at survival if the cosmos was hurled into fiery oblivion on JUDGMENT NIGHT

JUILLE - A beautiful Amazon, heiress to the ruling galaxy, risks the destruction of the universe to outwit the arrogant masculinity of the man who could be her lover - or killer.

EGIDE - The godlike warrior from an alien, savage world torn between his love for Juille and his vow to obliterate her people from the galaxy.

JAIR - Brutal, incredibly cunning, with a sinister power no mere human could subdue.

THE ENVOY FROM DUNNAR - A mysterious being always shadowed by the weird intelligent creature called llar. Does he already know the decision of Judgment Night?

(Source: back cover)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Pulp, Space Opera, Anthologies

156 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1943

About the author

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, as C. L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in the genre, and paved the way for many other female writers in speculative fiction.

Moore met Henry Kuttner, also a science fiction writer, in 1936 when he wrote her a fan letter (mistakenly thinking that "C. L. Moore" was a man), and they married in 1940.
Afterwards, almost all of their stories were written in collaboration under various pseudonyms, most commonly Lewis Padgett (another pseudonym, one Moore often employed for works that involved little or no collaboration, was Lawrence O'Donnell).

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Science Fiction

Judgment Night is a 1952 work of classic science fiction by Catherine Moore, who most frequently published under the name C.L. Moore, but along with her science fiction writing husband Henry Kuttner wrote under numerous pseudonyms such as Lewis Padgett. Like many writers of her generation who wrote for the pulps, there may even be stories out there of hers for which she has yet to be credited such we’re the multiplicity of names used. Moore was a pioneering giant for female science fiction writers, a fact partially obscured by her writing under the C.L. Byline.

Judgment Night was originally published in 1952 and the edition I read was 199 pages and contained only this story. However, there are other editions out there with the same title which are nearly twice as long and also contain three or four novellas. Thus, reviews will often refer to Judgment Night as a collection.

It is science fiction with a war between two competing intergalactic empires being the focal point. It also contains the science fiction element of numerous technologically advanced ray guns.

It stands apart though because it focuses on a female lead character, fairly unusual for science fiction of that era which was often a man’s domain. And Juille is described as an Amazon, a warlike daughter of an emperor who will brook no insult from the would-be invaders. Also, despite the Romeo and Juliet aspect (note how Juille is like Juliet), Juille has an awkward uncomfortableness with her attraction for the prince of the opposing galaxy.

Also, there are whole dreamlike sequences in the story which are like drops into alternate realities and Moore’s prose doesn’t do much to ground those sequences. And, for those of you who think virtual reality is a new thing, think again. Moore practically invented the whole idea of virtual reality in a Disneyland like planetoid where even royalty can go and relax and lose themselves in fantasies.

Often, Judgment Night can feel more like a fantasy piece than hard science fiction with ancient temples and spirits and voices booming out of the jungle, secret passages, and palace intrigue.

Overall, a most interesting and unusual work.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, the foremost husband-and-wife writing team in sci-fi history, produced their novels and short stories under a plethora of pen names, as well as their own, and for the past half century it has been a sort of literary game to puzzle out which author was the primary contributor to any particular work. This has apparently been far from a simple task, as either writer was perfectly capable of picking up the other's thoughts in mid-paragraph and carrying on. Catherine Moore has said publicly that many stories for which she was the primary author were published under Kuttner's name for the simple reason that his word rate was higher than hers; this, despite the fact that Moore was a longer-established writer. (I suppose that unequal pay for equal work was a factor in the 1940s even more so than it is today.) Despite the abundance of pen names--17, by my count, the most well-known of which were Keith Hammond, Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell, that last pen name often being attached to stories written solely by Moore--one generally regarded truism was that when a work appeared under C.L. Moore's own name, that was a sure sign that the piece was hers alone. Such was the case with the novel "Judgment Night," which initially appeared as the cover story of "Astounding Science-Fiction" in August 1943, under Moore's name, and concluded in the September issue. (The team was so very prolific at this point, by the way, that its short story "Endowment Policy" also appeared in that same August issue, under the Padgett byline!)

"Judgment Night" displays all the colorful, emotional elements that are the hallmarks of Moore's style. It tells the story of Juille, the headstrong, amazonian daughter of the galaxy's emperor, and her last-ditch efforts to stave off a revolutionary attack by barbarians on her Lyonese empire and, specifically, her home world of Ericon. Juille is somewhat similar to one of Moore's most popular characters, Jirel of Joiry, a medieval, swashbuckling fantasy creation who appeared in a series of stories in "Weird Tales" magazine in the 1930s. The similarly named Juille can almost be seen as a space-age Jirel, trading a traditional sword for a fire sword; a horse for a star cruiser. As with Jirel, her battling ways come into direct conflict with the pull of romantic entanglements. One of the more interesting aspects of "Judgment Night" is the simultaneous attraction and repulsion that Juille feels for Egide, the blond-bearded leader of the barbarian hordes; this reluctant undermining of Juille's "amazon code" gives her character some real psychological depth. The book, first and foremost, however, is a thrilling adventure tale, with several stunning set pieces: the initial meeting of Juille and Egide on Cyrille, an artificial, orbiting pleasure planetoid on which any scenario imaginable can be created by the use of films and what I take to be holograms; the kidnapping of Juille, and an exploration of the mysterious catacombs beneath Ericon; a visit to the gods of Ericon, who dwell in a dimensionless temple in the forbidden forests; and, saving the best for last, an hallucinogenic battle royale between Juille, Egide and his brutish henchman Jair, back on Cyrille, as the clock ticks away towards Ericon's destruction. This last section is a real tour de force for Moore, as her protagonists battle from one artificial environment to the next (from forest to desert to underwater to blizzard to beach scene, etc.), armed with mysterious superweapons discovered in Ericon's catacombs. Moore even manages to pull off a wonderful surprise ending for her story, as well as a suitably downbeat message regarding the folly of man and the utter waste of war. Juille is a wonderful character--brave, humorless, willful, spoiled--who changes for the better as the book progresses, and it is a shame that Moore never chose to revisit her again. I have read this terrific, well-nigh forgotten piece of Golden Age sci-fi twice now (in the 1965 Paperback Library edition pictured above) in a 25-year period, and found that I liked it even more the second time around. Fans of fast-moving space adventure told with colorful prose and emotional depth should by all means pounce!

[David Herter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd always presumed Judgment Night by C.L. Moore to be a sequel to Doomsday Morning: another near-future SF thriller. My pursuit was therefore low-key. But it turns out that Judgment Night is in fact Moore's ultimate space opera, a work that towers above Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry (as unlikely as that sounds) and remains one of the most entertaining and apocalpytic works of SF in the entire genre.

John Clute knew.

In an email discussion of all things Meyrink, the subject of Judgment Night snuck in. "Just finished reading Judgment Night," he wrote. "Quite an astonishing indictment of Western Civilization Corp for John W Campbell to have swallowed neat."

("Quite a coincidence," I replied. "I recently stumbled on Judgment Night in the used bookstore. These last two nights I've been feasting on it. It is shaping up as perhaps my favorite Moore." And later, "I can only imagine John Campbell was otherwise distracted when he published it."

("Yeah," said John, "in every possible way JN contradicts the received wisdom about Campbell's career-long insistence that homo sapiens prevail. I figure maybe the RW on JWC may be more valid after WW2 when his attitudes began not only to harden but to prevail (see correspondence with Heinlein for early examples of when they precisely did not prevail)")

I had long been drawn to Moore's work, along with that of Kuttner and Brackett and Harness. But none of the other novels is so memorable and yet so unknown.


It begins:

The hundred emperors of Ericon looked down gravely out of their hundred pasts upon Juille, striding with a ring of spurs through the colored twilight of their sanctum.

Juille is cousin to Jirel of Joiry, Moore's far-better-known heroine, who also wore spurs. And Juille's apocalyptic bent is perfectly suited for an empire at the end of its days; at the cusp of fire.

"It was a fool's work to let [the H'vani] live." Juille gave [her father] a bright, violet glare. "I'd have wiped them out [...] if it meant the end of the empire. I'd have killed every creature wth a drop of H'vani blood. I'd have razed every building on every world they had, and sown the rocks with radium! I'd have left their whole dead system hanging in the sky as a warning for all time to come. I'll do it yet -- by the Hundred Emperors, I will!"

And Juille tries her best.

"We've got to fight, father. Everyone says so but you. Nothing anyone can do will prevent it now."

Looking down, her father saw on the girl's face a look he knew very well -- the terrible pride of a human who has tasted the attributes of divinity, who rules the turning worlds and the very stages in their courses. He knew she would not relent. He knew she could not. There were dark days ahead that he could not alter.

Juille's tale refuses to move in the direction she wishes, of course, though she is an arrow shot from Moore's bow. There's little dithering, little talk. The pace is quick, the page-count low. Through a series of memorable set pieces, including a a tour-de-force pre-vision of Michael Bay widescreen destruction, Juille single-handedly demolishes (or so very nearly) the artificial world on which she's trapped.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the numerous kerfuffles in the SFF field last year came when some dinosaur or other wrote a post about women "destroying" science fiction by mixing in, ugh, relationships and all that squashy stuff. As is so often the case, it triggered a creative reaction in the form of a Kickstarter for a special "women destroy science fiction" issue of one of the pro magazines.

Well, as this book shows, women have been "destroying" science fiction for a good long time now, and doing it very well. These stories date from the 1950s, and when I compare them to some of the stories from the same period written by men, there's an extra element, an extra depth of personal and emotional significance, that I usually think of as a product of the New Wave that came a decade later. To overgeneralise, genre fiction tends to have a lot of external action and less focus on the significance of that action, while literary fiction is the other way around. Moore brings both together, and each of these stories has both aspects: events that form a plot, and another layer of significance laid over the top.

The first story, from which the title comes, would almost work as fantasy. It's a galactic-empire story, but the planets could equally well be countries (especially since the only one described in detail has only one climate for the whole planet, like Hoth or Dagobah), and for the most part the technology could equally well be magic. Some of the weapons, though, work better as technology, and they're fairly important to the plot. It's an almost Shakespearian tragedy, a kind of reverse Romeo and Juliet, in which the main characters' relationship fails to bring their factions together - in part because they aren't ready to commit to it fully, or at least she isn't. The oracle character tells the female protagonist that she will make the wrong choice because her instincts are wrong, and those instincts have been trained away from emotional connection in the direction of war. The woman, in other words, has become like a man, and this leads to tragedy not only for her and her lover but for all their people.

Paradise Street, the second story, is very much a space Western, but again it has a depth and significance which lies in the relationships between the characters. The loner protagonist, because of his hatred of how his beloved frontier world is becoming settled and his livelihood is passing, rejects and even betrays his friends, but is ultimately rescued from his bad decisions because they refuse to give up on him.

The third story, Promised Land, is also driven by passion, but this time it's a man's passion for justice. He's the chosen heir of the genetically modified tyrant of Ganymede, his patron has deliberately sent him to the school of hard knocks, and yet he retains connection and compassion for the Ganymedans. He's the other half of his patron, the part that fights for others at cost to himself.

The fourth story, The Code, was, I felt, the weakest of the collection. It reminds me most of Poe, particularly "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," largely because of the use of (a completely unrealistic version of) hypnosis as a key plot point. It's thick with overlong passages of baseless sciencebabble, which for me obscure and distract from the not-particularly-strong premise: a man's elderly father receives treatment to reverse his ageing, and starts turning into someone else from another time track. Moore draws on her literary background and weaves in comparisons to the Faust legend. I still wouldn't call it a bad story, but it's not as good as the others, and could have benefited from being shorter.

The final story, Heir Apparent, is in the same setting as Promised Land (genetically modified humans are colonising the solar system). That's not what it's about, though. It's about a kind of almost mystical gestalt that groups of people use to solve problems, mediated by a machine, and what happens when some of those men are expelled from the gestalt and have to cope in the outside world. Hypnosis features again, this time preventing two men from killing each other. The outward events have to do with a political struggle, but the inner significance is to do with how human thought and human values must interact with even the greatest machine. It's not as good as the first three stories, I felt, but works better than the fourth.

I read the ebook edition from Singularity & Co. I really wish they would run a spell check after they scan and OCR, because virtually all of the errors I spotted in it could have been picked up by one. It's frustrating to be distracted from an otherwise fine book because of a scanning error that could have been easily corrected.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine collection by C. L. Moore. I have the original edition from Dell rather than the facsimile edition but I'm assuming the stories are the same. My copy has:

Judgment Night (a novella)
Paradise Street
Promised Land
The Code
Heir Apparent

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started having problems with this book from the very beginning. Despite an interstellar war with the H'vani, Princess Juille travels to the pleasure world of Cyrille, there to cavort with the mysterious Egide, and while this is necessary from a plot standpoint--the two characters need to have a history in order for their conflict to make sense--her motivations for actually wandering out there in the first place are undeveloped at best. Her moment of departure for Cyrille comes off as brattish pique at her father, and this is my main issue with the book. Despite attention and rather exaggerated detail paid to her Amazon ways and denial of her feminine self, and the supposed warrior training and discipline, she certainly falls into her man's arms quite readily and loses battles to him at every opportunity. It makes her character seem weak, and since the story is told largely from her perspective, the reader is a forced witness to her being batted around.

There is raw power in the almost delirious prose (to the point where the story's thread may become lost), and a number of wonderful set pieces, between the buried city ruins of the previous ruling civilizations of planet Ericon (and the servitor people dwelling secretly there and plotting revolution) and also in Juille's mad destructive spree through Cyrille with a chain lightning gun, madly blowing apart the decadent and deviant pleasure rooms and shattering the mechanics and structure of the place.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are good ideas in these stories but the exposition drones on. The description is vivid and makes imagining the scene easy but the action gets bogged down making it a chore to read. I want to like this more than I did. Perhaps a different work by Mrs. Moore would suite me better. Respect the talent but these stories were slow and cumbersome.

[Vesselin Metodiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He hated it more than anything he had ever seen."

This was a hidden gem. Unfortunately, C.L. Moore happens to be among the numerous female sci-fi authors of the late-40s/early-50s that have been forgotten.

This collection includes:

Judgement Night - the titular novella (or maybe a short novel). A space-opera tale, that deals with the decline of empires due to excessive militarism and the use of weapons for mass destruction.

Paradise Street - a sci-fi western about colonialism and xenophobia. This one was somewhat boring.

Promised Land and Heir Apparent both seem to share the same world. Both deal with the colonisation of the Solar system and trans-/posthumanism. The latter even had a strong proto-cyberpunk vibe.

The Code is a cosmic horror take on the legend of Faust mixed with some time travel and a great deal of body horror. Definitely my favourite of the collection.

[Janne Wass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contrary to popular belief, “strong” female characters have existed in SFF since the inception of the genre. One of the foremost SFF writers of the 40’s and 50’s was Catherine Lucille Moore, either writing under pseudonyms like “Lewis Padgett” with hubby Henry Kuttner, or under her genderless initials C.L. Moore. Under her own name, she produced a long line of pulp stories, most notably the “Jirel of Joiry” Medieval fantasy series. Her short novel “Judgement Night”, however, may be her finest solo work.

A magnificent, atmospheric, doom-laden and fast-paced space opera, the book follows protagonist Juille, an amazonian warrior princess, daughter of the galaxy’s emperor, as she gets embroiled in a battle for the survival of her long and proud civilisation, and in extension for the future of humans as the rulers of the universe. But it is also an upside-down Romeo and Juliet story, as Juille has a whirlwind romance with Egide, the leader of the barbarian forces threatening to end her father’s rule. Much of the novel takes place on a “pleasure planetoid”, a whole planet designed as a virtual reality world for the rich and powerful. There’s an astonishing final sequence where Juille, Egide and his henchman Jair chase each other with super-weapons and portal guns, zapping from one virtual reality to the other, finally laying waste, Michael Bay-style, to the entire planetoid.

Juille’s character is wonderfully drawn – strong, yes, but also obstinate, spoiled, insecure, vengeful, and militaristic, in the end failing to choose reconciliation before war, eventually causing the downfall of her entire empire and, in a great plot twist, the rule of Man. Contrary to much of the pulpy SF output of the era, “Judgement Night” is a refreshingly downbeat prophecy of the folly of the capitalist-militarist Western civilisation and Darwinist determination. Moore’s somewhat overwrought and clunky prose was always against her, but it does little to detract from this criminally underrated space epic. Berndt Ahliny’s Swedish translation in my 1954 copy is adequate.

[Warwick Stubbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've had a desire to read old SF paperbacks, pot-boilers, or just stuff that I've always seen but never paid much attention to because they weren't from the 'great authors' or weren't in themselves well-respected - Edgar Rice Burroughs type of stuff (but by lesser or similar genre authors). Whatever.

I walked into a local (local to where I was) 2nd-hand bookshop, took a punt, collected three titles from the shelf. This is Title 1.

At times Moore writes some good prose, but mostly she tells instead of showing, and as a consequence many paragraphs become a slog to get through. For a book first published in the early 1940's it is great to have a strong and relatively resourceful female protagonist charging through the story guns blazing, but plotting becomes ridiculous at times as well as convenient spoiling any kind of credibility. On the other hand, this is pulp science fiction and all things considered it still manages to cast quite a dire indictment against humanities desire to wage wars.

Interestingly enough, the story contains a weapon that would later appear in a very similar guise (but using a gun instead of Moore's necklace lens) in an episode of Blake's 7 from the late 1970's. I also wonder if the seemingly benevolent Llar creature didn't have some influence on the creation of Futurama's Nibbler!

Interesting for it's place in the history of Science Fiction that uses Sword & Sorcery Fantasy tropes, Interesting for its wacky plotting, Interesting for the history of both female protagonists and female authors in Science Fiction. But it lacked so much character building and interesting details that I just could not become invested in the story overall.

[Peter Tillman]

From Best Science Fiction blog, http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/bl...
1952: Judgement Night by C.L. Moore

"American science fiction in the 1940s and 50s was not exactly a welcoming place for women, but a handful of tough-minded women started to produce serious work that rivalled the best that the men could produce in this intensely masculine genre. Writers like Katherine MacLean, Margaret St Clair and Mildred Clingerman all emerged during this decade, but the best of them was probably C.L. Moore.

More produced a rich variety of work that ranged across Lovecraftian horror, fantasy and science fiction, sometimes in collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner (they tended to use the pseudonym Lewis Padgett). Although she did write the occasional novel, most of her very best work was as short stories, and five of the best of them were included in this collection, each displaying the rigorous thought and the colourful style that was typical of Moore."

TOC: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?1...
If I've read any of these stories, I sure don't recognize the titles. But they were published from 1945 to 1952 -- a long time ago!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

C. L. Moore was a rare woman writing in the early swords-and-sorcery / pulp SF era, and seems to be getting some additional attention these days. Her story The Black God's Kiss has appeared in several collections, and tells of a woman warrior travelling to hell to gain a weapon so she can recover her rightful place. It doesn't end well, but not for the obvious reasons.

This is nominally SF, but runs over the same territory: A powerful woman, aristocrat, determined to defend her rights, makes a series of phenomenally bad decisions.

At novella length this is maybe a bit longer than it needed to be, but some of the surreal imagery, and how it's worked into the plot, is just amazing. I imagine Dante's ghost hunting down Moore to find swap ideas.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiringly creative and original SF stories cover-to-cover, each written with color, verve and flair; surrealistic adventures with elements of morality and horror tales. It’s the best Catherine Moore book I’ve yet read, and it’s highly recommended.

[Josiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

My copy has just the one story, Judgment Night, from 1942.
The first thing I liked was the strong female lead character, written by a female author. Moore plays with 1940's expectations and designs two conflicting worlds for her main character, Juille: the world of the strong amazonian warrior princess and the world of emotion. Having had a lifetime of training for the former and absolutely no knowledge of the later, Juille heads to a pleasure world to experience love. But even here, she is caught in her destiny, and is ensnared in a conspiracy to topple her dynasty - which sounds rather standard, I suppose, but plays out in unexpected ways.
Secondly, I really loved Moore's descriptions of place. She rivals my all time favorite, Jack Vance, in some of her vividly imagined imagery. "Ericon is so much a world of rain that all its architecture is designed to take advantage of rain's beauty, much like solariums on other worlds." Juille later ends up back on the pleasure world, and runs through it on a destructive spree unlike any I've ever read.
Finally, Moore has something to say about war and humanity. The final solution doesn't reinforce mankind's violent tendencies - this battle for galactic domination is one not to be won with weapons.

[Pauline · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est une bonne fiction, bien qu'on sent qu'elle à vieilli (la guerrière invincible qui pert ses moyens dès qu'un boug arrive, je souffle fort)

[Ivan Lanìa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dopo aver letto un po' di opere individuali di Henry Kuttner e un po' di collaborazioni con sua moglie Catherine L. Moore, era giunta l'ora di leggere qualcosa della sola Catherine, e siccome sono ancora in vena di sci-fi mi sono buttato su questo Judgment Night: A Selection of Science Fiction – ovverosia un omnibus di cinque romanzi brevi/racconti lunghi scelti da Moore stessa come suoi pezzi forti.
Non male, ma mi aspettavo di meglio:

1. Judgment Night: è il romanzo eponimo e più "ciccio" dei cinque, e per paradosso trovo sia il testo invecchiato peggio. In scena abbiamo la classica situazione da space opera di un antico impero galattico insidiato da una feroce ribellione e qua e là ci sono delle canoniche scene di consiglio di guerra e progettazione di armamenti (con tecnofarfuglio a iosa), ma il grosso dell'azione segue la principessa dell'impero galattico e il comandante ribelle che giocano al gatto e al topo in ambienti esotici lontani dal cuore della battaglia, fra cui un satellite artificiale di delizie olografiche (sì, è realtà virtuale immaginata nel 1943!), templi nella foresta e antiche catacombe, il tutto raccontato con dovizia di monologhi interiori dal punto di vista della principessa guerriera. Indubbiamente la combinazione di eroina proattiva, tensione erotica neanche tanto latente fra eroina e antagonista, e abbondante introspezione doveva essere altamente avveniristica per l'epoca – però ho trovato le elucubrazioni della principessa un po' troppo contorte, la tensione erotica un po' troppo grezza per reggere il confronto con le mille esecuzioni moderne del tema, le descrizioni di ambienti ed azioni fin troppo minute, e in generale la trama di inseguimento reciproco fin troppo esile, quasi pretestuosa per giustificare il "giro turistico" fra i vari paesaggi surreali (obiettivamente interessanti); sicuramente queste storie di "panorami anziché azioni" avranno il loro seguito, ma con me sinceramente attaccano poco. Ciò detto, è una tragedia che Moore non sia mai tornata su quest'ambientazione per approfondire i lemuri senzienti dalla mente alveare che subentrano all'umanità dopo l'auto-genocidio della guerra galattica.
2. Paradise Street: è praticamente l'opposto di Judgment Night, e cioè una vicenda con personaggi semplici ma trama solidissima e, anche per questo, più nelle mie corde. Siamo in una situazione space western senza arte né parte, in cui gli insediamenti umani su altri pianeti funzionano esattamente come la colonizzazione del Selvaggio Ovest statunitense, fra emporio/drogheria, sceriffo impotente, case da gioco e posse di contadini infuriati – ma l'ambientazione ha una corposità notevole, i personaggi sono piacevoli dal protagonista trapper al contrabbandiere venusiano, gli slanci lirici di scenari agresti e meditazioni sulla vecchiaia sono dolcissimi – persino nel finale un po' melodrammatico.
3. Promised Land: potrebbe essere in assoluto il mio testo preferito, perché chiama in causa ed esegue a menadito tanti temi che adoro: colonizzazione spaziale in ottica di fantascienza dura (con procedure di terraformazione dei pianeti e selezione eugenetica di coloni mutanti), politicheggiamenti e astio familiare, psicologia spicciola, il tutto con un ritmo sempre sostenuto. E sì, lo ammetto, mi piace anche perché ci sono troppe somiglianze con Dune perché siano casuali.
4. The Code: un piacevole pezzo quasi-horror sul tema "esperimento che inizia bene e continua peggio", molto carina l'idea di rileggere il mito del dottor Faust in ottica science fantasy, apprezzabile l'alternanza di voce narrante puramente descrittiva e dialoghi tecnofarfuglianti fra i personaggi – un poco contorto il finale, ma era fisiologico se si chiama in causa il viaggio nel tempo. Comunque c'è catarsi, e questo è l'importante.
5. Heir Apparent: probabilmente il testo che mi ha convinto meno. Si svolge nella stessa ambientazione di Promised Land, tiene in conto la trama di quest'ultimo per costruire un'ambientazione più vasta – e spreca tutto ciò in una vicenda dozzinale di spionaggio e stalli messicani fra personaggi banalissimi il cui unico tratto caratteriale è il più elementare egocentrismo. Unico lato positivo la scena madre finale, che riprende temi di transumanismo elaborati assai meglio nel romanzo The Time Axis (forse è vero che nella coppia Moore metteva il sentimentalismo e Kuttner la pianificazione).

In conclusione, con 3 testi su 5 piacevoli (anche se non memorabili) e 1 datato ma obiettivamente avanti sui suoi tempi, mi ritengo abbastanza soddisfatto dall'antologia – nonché abbastanza propenso a recuperare gli altri racconti miscellanei della buona Catherine, The Best of C.L. Moore.

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did you know one of the most famous pulp science fiction writers was a woman? Me either. Surely I had to give her work a shot.

Judgment Night was an inventive concept that was mediocre in execution: A fierce warrior woman faces down a bitter rival that makes her tingly. Except she's not fierce, she's a spoiled, almost heartless archetype whose alleged fierceness is undermined by (for example) her inexplicable horror at being merely carried somewhere against her will. As a reader, I felt significant cognitive dissonance between who the author was telling me Juille was, and how she was behaving. I just didn't think she was a cohesive or believable character.

As for the writing... the prose is mediocre, and the fantastical elements lose their shine when they consist of page after repetitive page. There is one ostensibly tense chase/fight scene that went on for so long my eyes glazed over. Juille's weird portal gun is only cool for like three of the twenty times she uses it.

But the heart of the story is there, buried beneath the want of a good editor, and it pushed me to finish. I thought the ending surprisingly sophisticated for such a simple set up, yet that, too, disappointed. This was a book that pitched itself as romantic and ended in deep cynicism about human nature. Thus it seemed thematically inconsistent. I wish as much care was given to other parts of the story as were given to the final moments.

My hat's off to Moore for writing pulp science fiction in an era when that gig was a man's game, but that's where my respect begins and ends.

[Morgan Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection that shows an author with great imagination and creativity not really living up to it.

Judgment Night - 3/5 - First 140 pages where pretty boring, for me at least. I can see someone else liking it, but the level of description felt laboured, and the action scenes lacked tension. Felt like the story was trying to fill pages. Still, the last 10 or so pages where absolutely stellar, with a philosophically-provocative twist ending.

Paradise Street - 4/5 - A fun little space western story with some cool social commentary.

Promised Land - 3/5 - Builds up a really interesting setting with the concept of "Thresholders" - human beings eugenically altered to suit life on alien worlds - and the tensions these people face with "ordinary" homo sapiens. The biggest drawback is that the story is so brief.

The Code - 3/5 - Some cool elements, but feels like wasted potential. There could be body horror, meditations on the meaning of age mentally, physically, and spiritually, but there's an unfortunate lack of that, for some sci-fi that doesn't make sense within its own fiction.

Heir Apparent - 2/5 - Some of the worst writing elements from sci-fi of the era, with a lot of technobabble jargon, uninteresting, flat characters with vague motivations, so many twists and turns and expositions you're left with no idea what's happening. Found it hard to get invested, even though it presents some neat sci-fi ideas.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Judgment Night" is a memorable space opera: Juille, princess of a galactic empire, decides to play hardball against a revolutionary alien movement despite her father's desire for peace. And the fact she and Egide, the leader of the other side, find each other extremely hot. All this plays out under the eyes of an ancient, powerful race deciding whether these humans deserve to rule (I did not expect the outcome). There's one particularly striking sequence where the characters are fighting on a pleasure planet and the holodeck (or this universe's equivalent) plunges them into a constant stream of shifting settings.
This edition fills the collection out with several other stories. They're more serious SF that Idon't enjoy as much as her more pulpish works. That said,"The Code" is the only really weak one, as the rationale for what's going on doesn't make a lick of sense.

[Mark Zodda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. Interesting, but dated book in the way that it was written as well as how it looked at the roles of men and women. This was really a short story that was stretched out into a short (180 page) book and would have benefited by being edited back down into a shorter format. Too much whining and introspection for me with no characters that were appealing (but I think that was largely the point). C.L. Moore might have been a revelation in the 1930s and 40s (this book is copyrighted in 1952), but not today. Pass.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always so hard to rate collections. This is five short stories / novellas. In my opinion, one is fantastic, one is very good, two are OK, and one kinda sucks. The stories, in the above order, are:

The Code, originally published in 1945

Judgment Night, originally published in 1952

Promised Land, originally published in 1950
Heir Apparent, originally published in 1950

Paradise Street, originally published in 1950

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd say 3 1/2 stars. "Judgment Night" itself gets 4, at least. It is well worth reading on its own. The other stories here are skippable, though they each have interesting elements. Moore's main problems as a writer are being too wordy (understandable when you are paid by the word!) and creating protagonists that are not all that likable. "Judgment Night" escapes from these problems.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, I was very disappointed with this book and did not finish all the stories. The writing (perhaps not surprisingly) is very dated. I remember really liking this author’s work when I was younger but, like me, the stories have not aged well!

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Nothing too memorable as this book wasn't enticing enough to really get into and thoroughly enjoy.

[Sasha Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Norman Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that starts out slowly, focusing on the lovemaking of two rivals on a pleasure planet, then segues into a fast paced adventure, and concludes with some remarkable psychological analysis of warfare. There are lots of little details that give this a sense of wonder that is crucial to successful science fiction. For example, there's a sequence late in the book on a planet that is essentially one large virtual reality, made up of rooms with various ecologies, including varying gravities. Juille, the protagonist, is a well developed character who undergoes a significant emotional arc.

I read this book anticipating that it would be nominated for the Retro Hugo Award, but it was not. I am sure it is a better book than some of the ones that were nominated.

[Elijah Kinch Spector · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problem with most "golden age" sci-fi writers is that they aren't C.L. Moore. The titular novella in here is amazing, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the stories in here.

[Christian Petrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So almost 6 months it took me to read this. Is this indicative of the book, in a way yes, but not completely.

To begin this book is a series of one novella and 4 short stories. My overall rating of this book is based upon the average of the short stories.

Judgement Night (2 Stars)
This novella, which I think it is more of than a short story, takes up the bulk of the book. This is one of the two that took me a while to get through. The overall plot is the last days of an empire. How the story is told is through the daughter of the Emperor of an empire. The problem is you are not sure this is it as the plot appears to change until the end. It goes from possible learning exercise, to possible love story, to kidnapping story, to a big fight story. You could almost break this into separate stories. The one consistent is C.L. Moore's writing. She brings depth to the story and does a great job of world building with this. It is just with the change of plots, that caused me to loose focus with it.

Paradise Street (2.5 Stars)
As I mentioned with C.L. Moore, as a writing she is able to bring depth to the characters and the stories. Where she is can become lacking is story focus. This continues with this story, however it is an improvement. It might due to the length of the story, or could be the type of story that ranks this above the last story. She takes what could be an old west story and places into the space. With creating the conflict between settlers and the first people to the planet Loki (hard to take the name serious due to The Avengers) you could place this anywhere in the old west. This creates a wonderful concept for the plot. Again, you think it is going in one direction then veers into another. Not bad, just could have used some tightening up.

Promised Land (4 Stars)
This was the first story that captured my interest. Here we have an individual trying to leave the service of someone who controls him. We do have an underlying concept of who owns a new developed world. At the same time you have a question of who is playing who. This is almost a pure action story. With C.L. Moore's writing the plot felt stronger than the last two and kept me interested in it. I think it was also the one that I read the fastest out of the two.

The Code (3 Stars)
Here C.L. Moore takes an experiment involving finding a "Fountain of Youth". She turns this from a story about the discovery, to an ethics discussion on experimentation. Following the last two stories, this one lays down the discussion a lot more clearly. Very different story, yet still holds your attention.

Heir Apparent (3 Stars)
The last story is almost average. It has an undertone of what lengths do you go to change yourself. The overall concept here is what determines your human self. At the beginning this is not what it is about. it seems to be either a revenge or espionage. Based on the background of the two main people, it turns into a story of who you are.

Overall this book can appeal to some people. Others might find it dull. What should be kept in mind is the writing style of C.L. Moore. It is a very different style that I can't compare to anyone else I have read recently. She brings an underlying story to the characters and creates a unique world building to each story. If you decide to read this book, keep in mind it could be mixed for one.

One last note on her world building, even though it feels like each story takes place in a different place, Paradise Street, Promised Land, and Heir Apparent could be in the same area. The reason Ganymede is a location either the actions takes place on, or is referred to. Along with other colonies on Venus and Mars.

[Joe Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really happy that Singularity&Co chose this book to convert to an eBook and send to their subscribers. I was expecting classic SF stories that read like classic SF stories: dated science, dated tone, a story that felt stale because I've seen so many of its descendants and imitators. None of that was true about this book.

All of these stories felt timeless, in the best sense. They dealt less with technology and more with people. In fact, I had to check the original publication date a couple of times. These stories feel so fresh and relevant that it's hard to believe they were originally written 60 years ago.

This is my first exposure to Ms. Moore's writing. It won't be my last. I'm already looking forward to purchasing Northwest Smith and Doomsday Morning from Singularity&Co.

Highly recommended.

[DMS]

http://dms.booklikes.com/post/382212/...