Light-Years from the Vatican

Pavane by Keith Roberts
285 pages
Originally published in 1968

How to describe Pavane? Two things are simple to say: first, it’s a fix-up novel, or a mosaic. A collection of stories set in the same universe that are brought together and presented as a novel.

Second, it’s an alternate history. In 1588, says the prologue, Queen Elizabeth I was assassinated, which set into motion a series of events that prevented the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church (the political, militant Catholic Church) ended up controlling half the world. These stories take place over a few generations in the late 20th century.

The things that are more difficult to convey about the book are how beautifully it’s written and how vivid and moving the stories are.

Also difficult are my mixed feelings about the presentation of the Catholic Church, which is not really the Catholic Church at all. The world is very different under its stifling power, the most obvious thing being that the Church has prevented the use of many technological advances. The Pope issues papal bulls with titles like “Petroleum Veto” that forbid the use of internal combustion engines. The remnant of the Inquisition (called the Court of Spiritual Welfare) is present, too.

Yet the 20th century feudal world presented is a fascinating setting, and the stories are very moving, like I said. And then there’s The Coda – the last short story in the book – which is thought provoking.

This is a book that I’m not likely to forget.

Neil Gaiman Presents did an audio version of this over on Audible. Stephen Crossley narrates. I listened to a couple of stories and it was excellent. Gaiman’s introduction is a nice bonus.

Added: I would compare Keith Roberts (this book, anyway) to Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, Tim Powers.

Julie and I discussed Pavane on the A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast, episode 89.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon by Jeffrey Kluger

A lot of things didn’t go well in 1968. Senior Time Magazine writer Jeffrey Kluger (author of Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13) gives us the story of one of the things that did: NASA’s Apollo 8 mission in December of that year.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 and the focus of Kluger’s Lost Moon, is one of the crew of Apollo 8, but the person Kluger spends the most time with in this book is this mission’s commander, Frank Borman. When the Apollo program was struggling, especially after the Apollo 1 accident that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee, Borman spent a lot of time on the Apollo capsule factory floor representing the astronauts. He was so good at the job that he nearly lost his place as an astronaut due to extreme competence.

As the Apollo program fell behind the schedule set with President Kennedy’s “before the decade is out” challenge, and with Russia making giant strides, a decision was made that changed everything – instead of executing the cautious plans currently in the schedule for Apollo 8, why not make a bold leap forward and make Apollo 8 a lunar orbital mission, thus accelerating the schedule? Kluger details the preparation over the following 16 weeks that led to the mission, which became the first manned mission to the Moon.

Without the successful Apollo 8 mission, containing and achieving the goals set for it by the launch date, Apollo 11 would not have been the Apollo that landed on the Moon. How that would have changed things is fodder for authors of alternate history.

Two remarkable things about the Apollo 8 mission:

First, it is where the famous “Earthrise” NASA photograph comes from. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were the first people ever to be far enough away from Earth to see it as a globe. All previous missions achieved orbit around Earth or less. In other words, all the astronauts to this point could look “down” and see the Earth beneath their feet at all times. Apollo 8 was the first mission for which that was not true.

    …Now, however, Borman, Lovell, and Anders could see the planet floating alone, unsupported, in space. The Earth was no longer the soil beneath their feet or the horizon below their spacecraft. It was an almost complete disk of light suspended in front of them, a delicate Christmas tree ornament made of swirls of blue and white glass. It looked impossibly beautiful – and impossibly breakable.
What Borman said aloud was: “What a view!”
What Borman thought was: This must be what God sees.
Then he collected himself. “We see the Earth now, almost as a disk,” he radioed down.

Second, at one point on the way to the Moon, the Apollo 8 capsule stopped climbing uphill against Earth’s gravity and started falling toward the Moon due to the pull of the Moon’s gravity. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were the first people to be far enough away from Earth to experience that. The first people to be far enough away from the Earth for the Moon (or any other object) be the primary gravitational influence.

Both of those things are amazing to consider!

Jeffrey Kluger’s Apollo 8 is a crystal clear, well written account of this important event in the history of mankind’s exploration of space. It’s filled with details and he lingers just long enough to consider the implications of what was happening. It’s got a quick pace, it’s enjoyable, it’s moving.

According to a telegram Borman received after the Apollo 8 mission from a stranger: “Thank you, Apollo 8. You saved 1968.” The Moon was one thing, but saving 1968? That wasn’t a small feat, either.

After watching King Kong for the 455th time, Harlan Ellison wondered about the maps. After wondering, he wrote “Incognita, Inc.”

In hundreds of adventure movies, there’s always a map of some strange, lost land. In Muslim mythology it’s Kaf, the mountain range that circles the earth. In The Odyssey it was Ogygia, the island where Calypso kept Odysseus a captive. If you went looking for King Kong it was “2 south, 90 east, latitudes way west of Sumatra, southwest to Skull Island.” The Garden of Eden, Barsoom, Asgard and Midgard, Atlantis and Avalon, the Catacombs of Rome, Mount Olympus, Oz, Nepenthe, Lilliput, Islandia, Hy-Brasil, Lemuria. Did you never wonder where do these maps come from? Who makes these maps? By what arcane mappery do these cartographs come to be?

It’s a magic shoppe story. Behind a storefront that doesn’t call attention to itself is a shop that is skinny but impossibly long – so long that you can’t see the back wall. The walls you can see are covered with cubbyholes that contain rolled-up maps from centuries of map making. Abner Wonacott is in there, sitting on a tall stool at a slant-top desk, drawing a map that leads somewhere.

Love it.

The magic of the shop and of the map-making are threatened by a main character that has been sent by a corporation that has been paying Wanacott to make maps for 65 years. Maps no longer need to be made, you see, since we have satellites now that can produce accurate maps without a maker. Wanacott is no longer needed, and not-needed people need to be cut from payroll.

My mind wanders. Maps to mythic places are a metaphor for mankind’s brushes with the transcendent. They are mystical directions that point characters to things that are amazing yet true. They are communication from somewhere else to here, and the conduit is the mapmaker. What does a person bring to one of these maps? Like the inspired writer of scripture, a person brings himself to the map, and with him comes the transcendent.

This story doesn’t make me question the whether or not the satellites should exist. It makes me question the people who make decisions based on maximizing profit, how those decisions affect people. The direct opposite of transcendent, maybe. Not a new problem. It’s the bean-driven decision maker that can’t see the value of the mapmaker both in this story and in life. There is always going to be room for maps with dragons in the margins, even though satellites exist that are tuned to the inch.

“Incognita, Inc.” by Harlan Ellison, 2001, first published in the United Airlines inflight magazine Hemispheres, January 2001. I read it in the collection Can and Can’tankerous by Harlan Ellison from Subterranean Press.

This review was originally posted here on April 4, 2018.