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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the dust of the world's end,
By
This review is from: Earths Last Citadel (Paperback)
This old SF chestnut is from way back in 1943, and deserves to be rediscovered by historically-minded fans of the genre. Golden Age SF tales were often (though not always) stereotypical space operas and high-tech adventures. But occasionally you'll come across an unconventional and head-tipping gem, like this one. C.L. Moore's extra creepy and incredibly inventive works in both SF and horror really demand greater respect from modern fans, and her husband Henry Kuttner was a deservedly respected Golden Age bard himself. This book offers an incredibly creepy and disturbing tale of four WWII spies from both sides, who have somehow been transported billions and billions of years into the future. They arrive at a time when Earth is environmentally devastated and humans are nearly extinct, after an eons-old invasion by aliens who are themselves nearly extinct. In addition to the melancholy state of this really distant future world (way beyond the near-future or sort-of-far-future of most SF), Moore and Kuttner's aliens are inventively evil and horrifically "alien" in every sense of the world. There is also an effective subplot in which the humans from our age try to cope with the fact that their ideological disputes have become meaningless, but they still can't get over their personal animosity. This novel is recommended for fans of literary and speculative SF that rises above trends and stereotypes. It was so far ahead of its time in 1943 that it has become timeless today. [~doomsdayer520~]
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strange creatures, magnificent cities and horrific danger!,
By
This review is from: Earth's Last Citadel (Vintage Ace SF, F-306) (Mass Market Paperback)
This story begins in the deserts of Tunisia. World War 2 rages over the country and Alan Drake, an American Army Intelligence man, is struggling to complete his latest mission. His job is to get the Scots scientist Sir Colin Douglas out of the hands of the Nazis and to Allied safety. The two fugitives are making their journey cross-country be foot. They are pursued by two Nazi agents: Karen Martin, a sly, ruthless but charming woman of mixed races, and Mike Smith, an Americanized German with a history in racketeering and a strong instinct for killing. All four simultaneously pass over the crest of a ridge and come upon each other, but more importantly come upon a strange ovoid-shaped craft, which is half buried in the earth in a crater. The craft is glowing with heat like a meteorite, but its surface is perfectly smooth and unpitted as if its furious plunge from the sky has left it unharmed. The two parties draw weapons and a standoff occurs, but suddenly, as if commanded by telepathic control, all four walk into the strange craft. The craft buries itself in the ground and Alan Drake is dimly aware of strange 'dreams', of an alien creature hovering in a doorway, and of time passing. When all four awake they find themselves transported far into the distant future. What strange adventures and what dangers await the four twentieth century travelers? Will they ever return to their own time?
C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner are two famous authors of the 'Classic Era' (1930s to 1950s) of science fiction writing. Neither is remembered much today, though they are both well worth reading. The two authors independently established their careers as fiction writers, then married in 1940, after which they often wrote as a team. This novel is one of their early team efforts and it manages to successfully combine Moore's high-adventure style with Kuttner's "more cerebral storytelling." The story moves along at a quick pace: we hardly get used to one circumstance before we are thrust into some new occurrence. But there is depth also, especially when we read the brief, but interesting, descriptions of the various strange 'mind-states' that the hero, Alan Drake, experiences. Also of depth is Mike Smith's descent from cool, confident agent to fearful, crazy-man. At around 150 pages this book is a quick read, and indeed it could possibly be describes as a novella. Moore and Kuttner wrote for the pulp magazine trade which, because of the limit of physical size, encouraged shorter works. <Earth's Last Citadel> (1943) is just the right size to curl up with for a weekend's entertainment. Of course each book takes a place in the history of literature and this novel shows a number of similarities to the famous earlier book The Moon Pool by A. Merritt (1919). The chief of these similarities is a non-corporeal, 'energy' monster with mind-control capabilities. Moore and Kuttner have definitely put their own spin on these details and thus made the monster 'their own'. Anyone who has read the earlier book would not be disappointed by this one. If you are interested in books which provide a lot of adventure with some depth of description and characterization this is the novel for you, but if you are looking for something like Nobel Prize winning fiction you should skip this one. This is basically good quality pulp and I found it very entertaining and am happy to award it four stars.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A VERY IMAGINATIVE SCI-FI/FANTASY FROM A GREAT WRITING TEAM,
By s.ferber (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Earths Last Citadel (Paperback)
Catherine Moore and Henry Kuttner, generally acknowledged to be the preeminent husband-and-wife writing team in sci-fi history, initially had their novella "Earth's Last Citadel" released in the pages of "Argosy" magazine in 1943 (indeed, it was the very last piece of science fiction to be serialized in that publication). It was finally published in book form 21 years later. This is a pretty way-out piece of sci-fi/fantasy that reveals its debt to a handful of writers who had been major influences on the pair, particularly the florid early works of Abraham Merritt. In it, four participants in the conflict known as World War II are shanghaied from the beaches of Tunisia and brought billions of years into Earth's future. The quartet includes Alan Drake, a U.S. Army Intelligence officer; Sir Colin Douglas, a Scotch physicist whom Drake had been rescuing; Karen Martin, an adventuress working for the Nazis; and Mike Smith, an Americanized German also working for der Fuhrer. The four are forced to put their differences aside when they reawaken and discover a moribund Earth, populated by giant worms and wailing flying creatures and shrouded in perpetual mists. This early section of the book is very well done indeed; a bravura piece of outre and descriptive writing that really makes the reader feel the desolation of the landscape. Later, our band of confused heroes becomes involved with the jewellike, underground city of Carcasilla, the barbarous Terasi, AND a sentient, alien vortex of energy that is trying to suck the life out of Earth's last survivors. It is in the authors' descriptions of the fantastic, gravity-defying city of Carcasilla that their fondness for the hyperadjectival purple prose of A. Merritt is most noticeable, but nobody tops ol' Abe in this department. There are also tips of the chapeau to the works of H. Rider Haggard, the so-called "Father of the Lost Race Novel," not least of all with the inclusion of a fountain of light energy that bestows virtual immortality; only a very slight variant of Haggard's Fountain of Life in his classic 1887 novel "She." Kuttner's love of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, with whom Kuttner corresponded in the 1930s, is certainly hinted at in his descriptions of the life-draining Alien, a nameless entity so very different from terrestrial life that it might as well have leaped gibbering from the pages of the Cthulhu mythos. "Earth's Last Citadel" is a brief, fast-moving tale, and at 128 pages can easily be consumed in a few sittings. Typical for Kuttner and Moore, it is a perfect blending of their respective talents, and should satisfy most lovers of Golden Age sci-fi and colorful fantasy. As for me, I was a tad dissatisfied with the book's refusal to answer all my questions (such as why and how our heroes and the central Alien got into this mess to begin with!), and with how difficult it is at times to visualize certain aspects of the Carcasillan landscape. (The city's architecture is almost surreal, with its waterfall steps, liquid towers, etc.) Still, forcing a reader to exercise his/her imagination to the full certainly isn't the worst fault a writer can be guilty of! And to be completely honest, "Earth's Last Citadel" had me fairly riveted throughout...
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