Customer Reviews

Daybreak, 2250 A.D. / Beyond Earth's Gates (Ace Double D-69)

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The 1954 Ace sci-fi double numbered D-69 is a particularly notable paperback for vintage collectors. It includes one of the earliest appearances of Andre Norton's very first novel, "Daybreak--2250 A.D." (which first appeared in 1952 under the title "Star Man's Son"), as well as the first--and, I believe, to this date, the only--book edition of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's "Beyond Earth's Gates." This paperback should also be of interest to collectors as it is only the sixth sci-fi double that Ace ever released, out of a catalog that eventually numbered in the hundreds. I would like to confine my comments here to the Kuttner-Moore work, as the Norton story is by now extremely well known and oft discussed. "Daybreak" is a wonderful introduction to an author who would deservedly attain enormous popularity, and features the heroic action and human-animal rapport that would become her hallmarks. Seldom discussed, if at all, is "Beyond Earth's Gates," a novel that first saw the light of day in the September 1949 issue of "Startling Stories," under the title "The Portal in the Picture." This is a preferable title, I feel, as it gives the reader a more precise inkling of what the book is about. In it, we meet Eddie Burton, an up-and-coming Broadway actor who gets into big trouble with the cops when his annoying ladyfriend, Lorna, disappears into a framed Rousseau painting on his living room wall! And shortly thereafter, Eddie also disappears into the portal in the picture, and appears in the land of Malesco, which he had heard about in supposedly make-believe stories told by his Uncle Jim many years before. Malesco, as it turns out, is all too real; a sort of alternate Earth that had split off from our own space/time shortly after the rule of Caligula. Vaguely Roman in setup, Malesco is completely dominated by its priesthood, the keepers of the religion of Alchemy, and lorded over by the very intimidating figure known as the Hierarch. As had Uncle Jim, Eddie and Lorna become involved in an incipient people's revolution against the priesthood; a seemingly hopeless cause....
Anyway, I have often referred to Kuttner and Moore as sci-fi's preeminent husband-and-wife writing team, but it can be fairly stated that they also excelled in the fields of fantasy and, as in their masterful "Valley of the Flame" (1946), a meld of the two genres. "Beyond Earth's Gates" is certainly a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy tale, and a darn good one at that. To make their bizarre plot a bit more credible, the authors continuously have Eddie tell us that he is no hero. He makes constant references to Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, telling us that John Carter might do this or Allan Quatermain might do that, but that he was too chickenhearted to do anything. Eddie is certainly not your classic adventure hero; just a dude who's gotten in waaay over his head, and this somehow makes the story more believable. He is a very humorous narrator, too. For example, he compares his plight in Malesco to a space alien trying to navigate the N.Y.C. subways, and tells us that nobody in N.Y.C. "subway change booths has ever been known to speak in human tongues"! When he learns that the Malescans look on N.Y.C. as an otherworldly paradise, he says, "Believe me, I know better!" (As a native New Yorker, I thought these lines were quite amusing.) The authors, very cleverly, even manage to explain the mysteries of Joan of Arc's voices, Kaspar Hauser and Peter Rugg, by tying them in with the Malescans. This short novel (the whole thing runs to less than 140 pages) concludes with an extremely suspenseful denouement, with Eddie facing off against the Hierarch whilst thousands of Malescans watch the fate of their world hang in the balance. Wonderful stuff. Anyway, shortly after "The Portal in the Picture"'s 1949 release, Kuttner and Moore moved to the West Coast to earn their degrees at the University of Southern California. Only two more sci-fi novels would be forthcoming from the team, "The Well of the Worlds" in 1952 and the "fix-up" novel "Mutant" in 1953. A reading of "Beyond Earth's Gates" will likely convince most readers that even toward the end of this prolific team's legendary career, they were still capable of extraordinary, highly entertaining work.