CommWealth – The Origin Dream

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJanuary 7, 2024

The idea for CommWealth came from the first part of these notes from a dream (“Their Satanic Majesties Computer Software Guide”), although successive revisions changed much of the plot. The second part, “The Tremendous Romance,” wasn’t used in the novel. The third part, “The Library Fantasy,” also wasn’t used, but has a similar tone to that of the novel’s ending.

Design Considerations for New Writing. A Sort of Plot.

“Economics As if People Mattered”

Their Satanic Majesties Computer Software Guide
The Tremendous Romance
The Library Fantasy

Part 1. T.S.M.C.S.G.

Character: Allan. An actor. Also supercilious asshole. Masks true identity. But he is aware of this problem–also doesn’t know how to get to the truth. His compulsive sexual fantasies destroy his sex life with his girlfriend, Ann. His whole life revolves around his fantasies. But he is such a good actor that he manages to pull off an acceptable front to the world. His penalty: that he doesn’t even know himself. His fantasies and sexual acts grow more and more absurd.

As story opens, Allan is walking, sees a Porsche or whatever, and asks the owner for the car. Owner must relinquish it. In the next pages we see, casually treated, an astonishing variety of “free transactions” like this. Everything is free in this society. You just ask for it. There is a 30-day waiting period before one “possessor” can ask for that same item back from the new possessor of it. There is subtle retaliation–for instance, the Porsche owner, while not allowed to act angry about giving up the car, does go ahead and ask for Allan’s coat and tie. Allan recognizes the maneuver–he always manages to make his askers “pay” somehow himself. The other technique is to hide as much of what you’ve got as possible. But these people are constantly castigated as “hoarders” and surprise inspections of homes, and publications of people’s inventories, are common. Often you are called up at night and asked for several of your items over the phone, with instructions on where to leave them for pickup.

Allan has adapted to this society well.

At home (he got a new suit and tie, but only for reasons of personal vanity), Allan stays up to 2:00 AM writing. He knows it is poor. Mostly he is writing out sexual fantasies involving Lisa, a woman he once had an affair with. Meanwhile Ann sleeps in the next room, vaguely aware of Allan’s distance.

Allan writes various poems and “confessions,” in an attempt to express all his pain, or get one line of real truth out. But he always misses. He’s never correct. He buries the poems in coffee cans out in the back yard. There are fifty or sixty cans buried out there. One reason is his paranoia–no one, least of all Ann, must ever know. Secondly, even writing is not considered personal property. Folders of poetry, or novels, are registered on one’s “inventory” and can be requested by others. Allan has never yet lost any of his poetry. (He just started writing last year, “under the pressure of it all,” and plans to write a play “someday,” that “will finally express everything.”)

He buries the can in the morning, after Ann has gone to work as an insurance accountant. He then moodily walks to The Cup of Fog.

The Cup of Fog is a coffee and tea house run by a married couple, Jill and Steve. Another character there is a friend of Allan’s, a former doper, now a soccer player and bicycle racer, named Richard. Richard is totally into being fit and healthy now. Yet there is a subtle need for friendship going on between him and Allan. Allan thinks of Jill and Steve as “mystically stable,” and longs for that sort of relationship–even though he recognizes that he probably wouldn’t want to remain in a monogamous relationship. He changes too much. Allan is vaguely aware that both Jill and Steve “tolerate him” only, that they consider him too neurotic (although he is a great actor, they know). Yet Richard, considered everyone’s friend, links them all.

Allan spends all morning drinking coffee and engaging in various discussions with Richard, Jill and Steve. Allan doesn’t work, not needing to because of the “free” law. (Most people do choose to work, however–a brief age of total freeloading was followed by almost zero production, and gradually people realized they needed to work, both for their own sanity and to keep some semblance of a society going). Richard doesn’t work, either, but spends the entire day training. His “work” is with the city’s professional soccer team, anyway. Allan tries to argue that his “work” is the theater, but he knows himself he doesn’t spend enough time really developing himself. Again, he feels he is cheating.

Around eleven AM Lisa comes in to buy a cup of tea and leave. She is pleasant to Allan, but the old strain is there. She leaves. Allan suddenly has a plan. If everything is free, then why not Lisa? He spends the rest of the afternoon nervously plotting his plan. He knows she always shows up as a certain bar on Friday evenings after work, sees a bunch of her friends there, etc. In fact, it was even mentioned during the Cup of Fog conversation, and Allan took it as some significant hint.

At five, he goes to the bar and finds her. She is nervous. He then blurts out that he wants her, and then states that she must comply, for everything is free. She refuses. He asks for all her clothes, right then and there. She still refuses. “Shall I call a cop?” Allan says. Conversation gets quite absurd. “The law hasn’t ruled on whether people own their own bodies,” Lisa maintains. Allan says that the law states that everything is free, everything must be forked over. Lisa pulls the “price” maneuver and asks Allan for his house. “Fine, but you must give yourself to me.”

They go to the house and resume their old affair. But Lisa is angry anyway. She reveals that she’s been trying to start a new relationship–with Richard. Allan is shocked, and terribly hurt and jealous. And then he realizes that Lisa owns his house, that he and Ann must move out and ask for a new one. Yet the coffee cans are buried on the property. Lisa says (not knowing this) that she’ll dig up the entire back yard for a garden and also a swimming pool next week–long before the 30-day limit expires and Allan could reclaim his house.

Allan realizes that he doesn’t even want Lisa to know of his fantasies. In desperation he tries to ask for rights to material buried in the back yard. Sensing victory, Lisa denies this. Allan throws himself on her mercy and reveals the contents of the cans. Lisa says she will dig them up this very night and publish all of them.

Part 2. The Tremendous Romance

Allan finds himself “asked” to work in Australia and reluctantly, after consulting an attorney, leaves for Australia. More than property is indeed involved in “everything being free.” Evidently an old résumé was found kicking around inside a computer, and whatever company wanted him could have him.

Journey to “island” at south of Australia. Of course, Allan had visited Australia once as an exchange student and knew the place–perhaps that was one reason he was chosen. When he gets to the quaint seaport town, he is totally surprised–it has twenty or thirty students, or faculty, from that Sydney university here, all working out their interesting careers. He only knew them tangentially but is overjoyed to see them. These people all decided to work in this same “dying” town and revitalize it as an experiment–but found themselves changed by it, and decided to live and work here for real. A whole string of interesting, colorful characters. Allan finds he had been chosen to work in the town’s detective agency, working with two aboriginals and one white man. One aboriginal is Holly, the brains of the outfit, although the black man is supposed to be in charge. The white guy is fairly crazy, but a good detective. Allan gets to know everyone in the town, including the doctor (formerly university professor) and all his patients.

Allan narrowly avoids being knifed by a street punk and then watches this punk kill someone (or something). His inaction contributed. The detective team sets out to find this guy. Allan begins to see that he is much like the man they are seeking–he feels he doesn’t belong in the team anymore. A lot of remorse. After a long chase, all three others are killed by this man. Allan must pursue.

Part 3. The Library Fantasy

Richard receives the numb Allan back and tries to soothe him. An all-night exercise session, “better than those all night drug sessions we used to do.” Lisa told him what happened and Richard, after much reflection, decided to forgive and forget. But Allan is numb and feels destroyed, feeling that he has steadily ruined himself since he was 20. All this through Richard. Yet Allan’s inner state brought out through much conversation. Wandering through the old University grounds–a vast, somewhat scary park. Dawn, and buried dream of Brown-Jones conclusion of mythic day at Rice–Brown-Jones like a spaceship on the pad at dawn. Something intelligent is happening here. Allan feels spaced out, totally confused. Richard guides him inside to the gray “church.” The “easy mix” of religions and sexuality in “this society.” The woman who dances in her leotard in the aisle. Astonished, Allan notices that it is Jill–expressing herself. His whole picture of her, of her and Steve, of the Cup of Fog, and lastly, of his own potential, abruptly shifts.

“My God, I could never come right out and do that,” Allan says in awe. “I just couldn’t afford to.”

“Sure, you can afford to,” Richard says. “We all have that within us.”

“But–it’s so difficult–”

“Yes, it is difficult. But once you make up your mind to pay the price, it becomes easier and easier. See how easily Jill pays the price of her freedom.”

CommWealth – The Ensemble Cast

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Michael D. SmithMay 16, 2020

I’ve always thought of the characters in CommWealth as an ensemble cast in a movie, where accomplished actors divide the plot between them and no one actor has the lead role. I didn’t intend this approach from the beginning, but as the novel progressed I saw that distributing the focus between six major actors, each with reasons for hiding his or her deepest self, made the story flow easily. The ensemble concept is apt for this novel, in which these characters form the core of the Forensic Squad theatrical troupe. The Cup of Fog coffeehouse in the fictional coastal Texas town of Linstar is their home base and forms the stage upon which the forces of the novel collide.

The insanity of the six-month-old CommWealth system, in which all private property has been outlawed and citizens are required to share everything, finds its expression in our lead-off batter Allan Larson as he glibly procures electronics and a Porsche in the first scene. Allan is a narcissistic playwright and actor who forces Forensic Squad to stage his mediocre play Cabaret. Supercilious, clueless, and manipulative, he’s claimed a mansion in Linstar Heights, surrounding himself with expensive cars and gadgets. He both needs friends and is quick to betray them. As a writer he thinks he should express his buried truths, but he’s too fearful to find out what they really are, and when crime tempts him, he sees it as just another avenue to fulfilling his needs. He considers himself too creative to be bothered making backup copies of his writing, and it’s only by luck that he gets a digital copy of Cabaret back after his laptop is claimed by another citizen along with all his wide screen TVs, sports cars, and motorcycles.

Lisa Arlington is a professional actress who managed to escape a disastrous affair with Allan a few months ago and is just now exploring a return to Forensic Squad. A gorgeous, sexy woman, an heiress whose family was one of the original founders of Linstar, Lisa finds to her horror that Allan can request her body and have exclusive use of it for the standard CommWealth “thirty days of enjoyment.” She draws upon her outstanding actress skills to fake it with Allan for a whole month, but as her behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, all wonder whether she’s finally surrendered to madness.

Richard Stapke owns Richard’s Bicycle Repair, struggling to maintain his business amid the growing economic and social disaster of CommWealth. He’s immensely charismatic, creative, and unconsciously seductive, and Cup of Fog co-owner Jill Constantine, damaged and looking for salvation, easily succumbs to him, hating herself as she does so. Richard had never thought about acting and was surprised to find himself enjoying hanging around theater people. He got hooked the same way Jill and her husband Steve had‑‑outsiders who’d been cajoled into accepting tiny parts as favors to their actor friends, then railroaded into larger and more demanding roles. Yet Richard’s interest in acting comes from having hidden decades of writing and photography, passions which eventually detonate at Forensic Squad’s first rehearsal of Cabaret.

Erica Thora, Richard’s beautiful model girlfriend, initially seems to be a two-dimensional background figure, especially when Allan, tired of the apparently brainwashed Lisa, begins cataloging his lust for the physical attributes of the exceptional six-foot beauty, with her short dark hair, thick kissable lips, and deep brown eyes. Yet Allan is shocked to find out that the buxom, wasp-waisted model is really thirty-seven, six years his senior, and mature and decisive in ways that terrify Allan and in fact are unknown to her own boyfriend Richard. Erica’s father, a policeman, had taught her how to shoot everything from hunting rifles to semi-automatic weapons, and it’s her courage and practical insight that finally challenge the folly of CommWealth.

Jill Sheridan Constantine owns the Cup of Fog coffee shop with her husband Steve, and though not an actress, she’s the force behind Forensic Squad, providing its home and keeping the group together. Though she’s been zealous about hosting artists and actors at the Cup and sponsoring discussions that skirt the edge of treason, her role conceals darker dealings with the powerful bureaucrats of CommWealth. She and Steve have been married two years, yet they are strangers to each other. Jill has always been afraid and unsure, and in succumbing to Richard’s advances, her motivations aren’t physical but stem from thwarted nervous energy. She finally realizes how badly she’s diminished herself by accepting Richard’s brand of sexual transcendence.

Steve Constantine, co-owner of The Cup of Fog coffee shop, is competent and resourceful. Tall and vibrantly physical, with prematurely receding blond hair, he’s knowledgeable about carpentry and mechanical repair and does anything necessary to keep the Cup of Fog running as best it can under the dysfunctional CommWealth system; in fact he’s studied every nuance of the CommWealth legal code. He’s not an actor but functions as an efficient manager for Forensic Squad. He’s comfortable with his inner self, though he’s been hiding it in a similar way as does Erica and, in fact, every member of the theatrical troupe. Allan considers Steve to be a saint who never gets upset, but he’s horrified when Steve apparently goes crazy, arming himself with outrageously illegal weapons and dragging Allan into an impossible revolution against CommWealth.

CommWealth is published by Class Act Books and is available from the publisher, from Amazon, and from Barnes and Noble.

More background
CommWealth Character Images

Crisis! Restructure Major Metropolitan Library!

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

This summer’s Draft 7 of Sortmind completely changed the old library-centric plot of the original novel, and it was only after a small amount of grief that I finally knew I had to let go of the following mini-chapter from the first version, although every time I’ve reread it I’ve found myself laughing out loud. Maybe you just had to have been there. In the revised novel Don and Peter are software entrepreneurs, but below we find the original Donald L. Roseparker, power hungry simpleton Assistant Director of Administration of the Drulgoorijk Public Library, finally putting his library school degree to work in the original Part II, Chapter 18 of Sortmind. He’d previously had limited use of the library’s malfing Telepathic Database, but now discovers it in full, along with its marvelous Telepathic Word Processing program.

TD document TWPP/D3/45h:98223-534:990**/:44
Mode: Article
Submit to Publication: Library Limousine, for issue: June
Created: May 15, 10:13 AM
Title: CRISIS! RESTRUCTURE MAJOR METROPOLITAN LIBRARY!
Author: Donald L. Roseparker, M.L.S., Ph.D., Assistant Director for Administration, Drulgoorijk Public Library

INTRODUCTION

Peter Traumfoster told me, write up restructuring of Library as my goals as my first year as Assistant Dir. for Administration, immensely controversial for this reason to write a major article for Library Limousine will educate philosophical, budgetary reasons behind restructure when this article could as a revolutionary blueprint?

For reasons beyond control, in finally getting around to this article even though it May, but when it finally came time to compose article, I found Telepathic Word Processor and I said this is for me

INTRODUCTION

Well, okay! Many of senior staff at Drulgoorijk Pubic including perhaps Director Library, was not sufficiently aware of the crisis screwing Drulgoorijk September: the budget of $20,000,000 must slash by $6,000,000 by Oct. 1! and begin of September the great Lambert Holbin, intentionally famous librarian and Ass. Director for Admin. has come up with, cuts only $2,556,308.22.

and this performance is unacceptable and so they say Mr. Holbin’s September 5th untimely Mindwipe did not diminish his mythic status in the world; BUT did he know he failed and he chose Mindwipe rather than face the facts that this time! So the slick Lambert Holbin had run out of tricks?

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The Hunter’s Rede (The Chronicles of Ealiron Book One) – Review

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Fantasy author F. T. McKinstry offers a 2016 second edition of The Hunter’s Rede, now available from Amazon.

The Hunters’ Rede, Book One of The Chronicles of Ealiron, offers an absorbing look into the psyche of a hired assassin with limited but well-disciplined magical powers. Making his way through kingdoms at war and encountering treachery, grief, comradeship and love, he begins to understand that he must move beyond his allegiance to the rules of the Hunter’s Rede which have served him so well for so long.

Sometimes the creation of an entirely new fantasy or alien world, with all its history and complexities, presents problems for the reader struggling to make sense of all this new input. Not so this novel. There is no clumsy, heavy exposition, and the straight chronological narrative, all focusing on the point of view of the main character Lorth, leads you easily through setting up the world in your mind. It would really have strained this narrative to have to undergo flashbacks to other characters’ point of view, other times and places; the straight chronology centered in one character provides a strong backbone for this book. A detailed but not overlong glossary at the end of the book also helps nail this world down.

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The First Twenty Steps in Paperback

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

I’m not sure this is the protagonist, Harry Allen, but I drew him or someone today and there he possibly is. The novella chronicling his first day out of prison, The First Twenty Steps, is now available in paperback from Sortmind Press, and can be purchased at:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

eBook versions are also available at both sites.

The book begins with crime and slips into science fiction. Harry wanders the foggy downtown streets of One-West at one AM, unaware of the ordeals and transcendence he’s about to stumble into …

All I had was two hundred bucks and my freedom, but as I listened to my boots slapping on the damp sidewalk I had to admit I didn’t know what to do with either of them. All I knew how to do was wander in the mist at one in the morning. Which was probably why I’d wasted one‑fifth of my life in prison. Hell, maybe I’d wasted the whole thing.

Other people seemed to know the tricks that got you what you needed. They figured out how to get jobs, apartments, and cars. And they stayed out of trouble. And look at me, out of the pen for maybe eleven hours. Sons of bitches like Eric and Ronnie had to be attracted to me.

I needed to get back to Drulgoorijk, thirty miles to the east, and join up with my brothers again. They hadn’t visited me in a couple years, but I’d read enough about them in the papers to know that the Defenders were still alive. And I needed to get a bike in a hurry so I could ride with them again. I hoped they remembered me.

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Reviewing Reviews

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJune 26, 2019

Recently an episode of relentless plowing through a novel I didn’t really want to read sparked a happy realization. I’m always open to abandoning a book I’m not enjoying–after all, there are millions of great books out there, so why waste your time on work that’s not catching your interest or seems meaningless to you? But in this case it was an indie title I’d agreed to review for marketing purposes, so I kept forcing myself on, to the point where I was just skimming the text, thoroughly disinterested.

Somehow I’d gotten about two-thirds of the way through the book, which wasn’t self-published by the way, but came from a small press and was well-edited. I just could not get any further, though all through the novel I’d been ransacking my stressed brain about positive statements I might dare make about this book. It was an enormous relief to make the decision to stop. Maybe it was just that I don’t care for that particular sort of tale and others will enjoy it, but this book’s story, characters and genre held no appeal despite my initial attempts to make excuses for them all.

I realized I couldn’t give it a good review, in fact, the existential realization was that if I went ahead and tried, in the name of helping a fellow indie writer, I’d be invalidating the good reviews I’ve given to several other upcoming writers I’ve reviewed. I’d hate to have a reader take my advice on one of those titles, then delve into this particular book thinking it had to be similarly high on my list.

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Corporal Rappol McBoerland, Date of Death June 15, 2034

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Michael D. SmithMay 19, 2023

Yellow light flooded the cell. Before them stood an obese man in gray uniform, his nametag reading McBoerland–Service Level 3. He also had a round green pin: Serving His Majesty the Emperor With a Trouble-Free Smile!

But McBoerland’s expression was anything but trouble-free as he jerked a set of keys off his flab, blearily puzzled about which he might want to use, and stuck one into a metal box in front of Jack. As the lock clicked open Jack felt the immense electrical current shut off.

“Don’t even think about arguing with this here shattergun,” McBoerland said wearily as he raised his little alien weapon. “I been up all night with a damn cold, I don’t need this crap. I’m sick and I hate this. I got the okay to shatter ya both if ya try anything.”

“Not me,” Joe said, backing away as McBoerland pushed the cell door open. “But, sir, has anyone told you your breath is enough to knock a guy down? I mean, I could smell you coming thirty feet away! Man, that is foul!”

“Piss on ya,” McBoerland said, tossing two silver bags onto Joe’s bunk. “I don’t need your crap. Ranblon was supposed to have this shift but the turd has a damn hangover. So I get stuck with it. But I’m the guy who’s sick. I hate this place! Always so damn cold and damp down here at the damn bottom–”

“Huh. I wonder if that’s the cause,” Jack said. “Your breath really is bad. To be completely honest, it’s enough to make us puke.”

“Crap on that! I ain’t here to give a crap about what ya think! That’s your grub there, ya better eat it. Ya get fed once a day–the first two days that is. As the Torture goes on, ya don’t get fed none at all. I watched Hergs break a few guys in the Torture Room so I know what I’m talkin’ about.” McBoerland carefully backed out of the room, shifting his shattergun from side to side to cover them both. He shut the door and reached for the key in the box.

Jack pulled his sleeves back to expose bare arms to the biceps.

McBoerland turned the key and the amp field came on. Again Jack’s forearm hairs stood on end.

“We said, your breath makes us want to puke all over the place!” Joe screamed.

–from The Martian Marauders, Book One of the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Okay, so McBoerland is a minor character in The Martian Marauders, in fact this is about all of him we see. But I still had fun with him, as well as with his drawing. In Book One, a series of inexplicable solar system disasters in the near future, including exploding gas giants and asteroids hurled into the sun, forces a panicky acceleration of space technology and weaponry. But humanity hasn’t learned much from Mars exploration and the discovery of Star Drive, and by 2033 the United System Space Force has not only wrecked the earth with the planet-destabilizing Xon bomb, but in evacuating the remnants of Earth’s population to Mars, has also somehow overlooked an indigenous, intelligent race which is quite displeased by the arrival of two billion shellshocked humans. Amid family squabbles rising from the presence of four Commer brothers aboard his ship, Captain Jack Commer Jack finds himself battling Martian insurgents armed with shatterguns and telekinetic Amplified Thought.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

The Tower Treasure Project

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Michael D. SmithDecember 25, 2024

1. The Hospital

I’m not sure which copy of The Tower Treasure I read in the hospital in late February or early March 1960.

The lower one pictured is the 1927 edition, the middle the 1959 revised book, and the top, which I just had to have after rereading 1927 and 1959, is the most recent May 2016 version. I’m not going to supply the endless images of covers over the years found on the Internet; see the links at the end if you’re interested. You can get lost in investigating editions, authors ghostwriting as Franklin W. Dixon (Leslie McFarlane being the author of 1927, and Harriet Adams being the author of 1959), covers, British editions, “canon” volumes 1-58, “digest’ volumes 59 on, etc.

The lower edition, copyrighted 1927, is actually from around 1945, as it lists the series up through The Short Wave Mystery (1945). There is also a wondrous ad for “Air Combat Stories,” including one titled Spitfire Pilot, which takes us to World War II. The 1959 by definition has to be between the book’s publication date of 6/1/59 (if the list of titles in June 1959 could include, as my copy does, the projected 12/1/59 The Mystery of the Chinese Junk) and early 1960.

But I’ve not only just reread–for the first time since 1960–the first chapter book I ever read, but I also read the same physical copy of that book! It’s just that I don’t know which one it was.

In January 1960 seven-year-old Mickey Smith managed to dart from between parked cars onto surging River Road in Fair Haven, New Jersey, was struck by a late fifties monster chrome bumper, and spent the next two months in the hospital with a fractured skull. These days I probably would have been released after two or three days, but at the time it was mandated that I stay in bed so long I had to be retrained how to walk. The smell of ammonia used to scrub the rooms wars with the two horrifying shots in the ass every night as the worst part of the experience.

Nevertheless, it all just sort of happened to me and I can’t recall feeling afraid, just horribly constrained, during my initial hospitalization to March. Fear didn’t kick in until the second operation a few months later in July 1960 where, being wheeled to the operating room, I considered the possibility that I could die. See below for when I started to write, though.

The feeling of being a prisoner with no options was central to the hospital experience. I have a memory of being told to wave at my brother Doug and sister Tricia in the parking lot below my hospital room window one evening, as for some reason they weren’t allowed into my room–maybe just for that day, I don’t know. But my brother Doug did manage to smuggle me his copy of The Tower Treasure–could it have been that same night? I was intensely grateful that he entrusted it to me, but I was also unsure if I could handle it. I had never read a real book before. Okay, Make Way for Ducklings–I’m still unsure how long before 1960 I read that picture book, but it must have been a significant amount of time–and a host of similar picture books counted, but not really–the novel, the chapter book, a phrase I didn’t encounter until adulthood, was the real test.

So, in my bed by the window to the parking lot, in deep night, under a circle of light from the lamp over my right shoulder, I read Book One of the Hardy Boys. As opposed to the difficult concentrating to make sense of Make Way for Ducklings, to my surprise I found I could absorb this novel easily. It fueled my confidence in reading from then on.

Thanks, Doug!

The circle of light on the book, the deep night fascination, the confidence, was sanctuary amid the dull horrors of the hospital. It occurred to me recently that not only was this moment the first time I felt at ease during that hospital stay, it was probably the first time in my life I’d ever consciously experienced that sense of timeless ease. Sure, kids can have joyous moods from age zero on, but these aren’t usually self-reflective. Reading The Tower Treasure, I was granted some rest and relief at a way station on a difficult journey.

So, as I said, I either read a 1927 (1945-era reprint) or a 1959-60 book. I agree with most commentators that the 1959 edition is a poor revision of the 1927. But to my mind neither book really gets into satisfying descriptions of the Tower Mansion or its old and new towers, though 1927 does better in this regard. It’s for this reason I wonder if I really hadn’t read the 1927/1945 reprint, as my memory of the 1960 reading is mostly that of the awesome, mysterious Tower itself. But this may just be wishful thinking. Though it’s possible that it was some 1945-ish family copy Doug got to me, it seems more likely that he lent his newer version. I could easily be conflating the richness of the experience of the circle of light and sanctuary with the fact that 1927 is a richer book in itself.

Disclaimer: Decades of distance certainly alter one’s perceptions. It has to be said that both versions are pretty mediocre as novels. But that didn’t stop me as a child from reading Hardy Boys straight through to book forty or forty-one. I still have a box with all of the series up to that point, and recall as a child looking at 1920’s or 1930’s copyright dates and marveling to be holding such old books.

2. 1927 and 1959

I first read the 1959 version earlier this month, assuming that of course the novel would be slightly updated from the 1927 version. But I was startled at how different the two books were, and decided to read 1927 as well. 1927 is not only a more rewarding experience, but seems written at a higher reading level. The 1959 Harriet Adams revision is a sadly workmanlike attempt to modernize and clean up the original, but it leeches the life out of the book. I do give her credit for adhering to the time-honored trick of exciting first paragraph:

Frank and Joe Hardy clutched the grips of their motorcycles and stared in horror at the oncoming car. It was careening from side to side on the narrow road.

Contrast that with the first two paragraphs of 1927, which unfortunately continues to forcefeed us bad exposition for the first few pages until it mercifully settles down into being decent storytelling:

“After the help we gave dad on that forgery case I guess he’ll begin to think we could be detectives when we grow up.”

“Why shouldn’t we? Isn’t he one of the most famous detectives in the country? And aren’t we his sons? If the profession was good enough for him to follow it should be good enough for us.”

I was unable to check the 1987 edition at the library where I work. Before I could embark on that task, a boy approached me at the reference desk asking whether we had any “Frank Dixon” books, and thus I found myself obligated to place The Tower Treasure of 1987 into his hand. I’d assumed that the book must have been revised numerous times after 1959–c’mon, Frank and Joe would have iPhones by now!–but my impulse purchase of the May 2016 edition answered this question. As far as I can tell 2016 is identical, page for page, to 1959, with the exception of two juxtaposed lines on 1959’s page five that baffled me in my latest rereading, but which have been corrected by 2016. I’ll leave the exact date of correction to serious Hardy Boy scholars.

In 1927, The Hardys’ friend Chet Morton is a confident jokester and gets a lot more space than in 1959, where he comes off as a one-dimensional fat boy coward.

Frank’s girlfriend Callie is virtually characterless in 1959, but in the 1927 edition she has more lines and is sketched out better, though still not fully. She has a certain force about her completely lacking in 1959.

In 1927, some chapters are written from father Fenton Hardy’s point of view. The boys aren’t present for some major aspects of the case; in contrast 1959 includes Frank and Joe in all scenes and all description is from their point of view.

In 1927, Fenton hotly disputes with the Bayport police chief and his idiot sidekick Detective Smuff; the police are seen are incompetent fools, and the 1927 Chief Collig actually starts a rumor to discredit and humiliate the Hardys. To rectify 1927’s literary calumny against the law enforcement profession, the 1959 edition elevates Chief Collig to a state of impeccable authority but, to keep at least one buffoon in the picture, demotes Oscar Smuff to luckless independent private investigator not employed by the police department.

Intriguingly, 1927 also builds on moods of frustration, despair, and anxiety as the case refuses to cohere–not just on Frank and Joe’s part but also, significantly, on that of father/authority figure Fenton. Such introspection is absent in 1959.

Our Tower Mansion-dwelling obstacles Hurd Applegate and sister Adelia are more fleshed out and believable in 1927. The 1959 explanation that it was Adelia who lent money to her servant is preposterous, as she then would have known all along there was no servant motive for the tower theft. The 1927 version of a third party involved makes much more sense.

1927 treats the boys more as neophytes beginning to understand what detective work will involve. Fenton’s long, insightful explanation of how to minutely observe people is instructive to the boys and was inexplicably cut from 1959. 1959 tries to show the boys more grown up and aware of their work. In 1959 Frank is eighteen and Joe seventeen. In 1927, Frank is sixteen and Joe fifteen.

1959 added some jazzed-up action, including the Old Tower’s broken trap door and Joe’s plunge over the tower railing, along with an encounter with a devilish hobo in the railroad tower, but overall, this book wasn’t supposed to be an action novel but an investigation into how the boys begin to learn their craft by observation and analysis. Such modernization as presented, for example the use of airplanes instead of trains, doesn’t really accomplish much.

The strangest difference is the revision of the diversion Frank, Joe, and several of their high school friends use to delay the incompetent Oscar Smuff from catching his train (1927) or plane (1959). The 1959 version has the boys exaggerate a trash fire behind the Italian fruit seller’s shop into a crisis demanding Smuff’s attention. But in 1927, one of the boys actually puts a ticking clock in a box under the fruits seller’s stand and leaves everyone to guess that a time bomb is about to explode! The fruit seller is convinced that the bomb is from The Black Hand, which apparently was, according to Wikipedia, “an extortion racket practised by the Camorra and Mafia members in Italy and the United States.” The resulting cowardice displayed by Chief of Police Collig, Detective Smuff, and patrolman Con Riley as they argue about who is to defuse the bomb is way over the top. Its slapstick humor is almost out of place in the book, but does serve to indicate how feckless the Bayport Police Department is compared to the brilliant Hardy family.

From page 96 of 1927–not all the diction is this convoluted, but I’m not certain a boy in 1959 could have made sense of the second paragraph:

“We’ll just have to be patient, I guess,” said Frank. “No news is good news.”

And with this philosophic reflection the Hardy boys were obliged to comfort themselves against the impatience that possessed them to learn what progress their father was making in the city toward following up the clues they had given him.

The endpapers of 1927 show a single drawing of the boys spying with binoculars at something suspicious across a river. The 1959 shows numerous images from the series. Both have the same logo on the cover. (I don’t have dust jackets so don’t ask! But see the URL’s below for likely candidates). Both editions promise the second book, The House on the Cliff, in a suspension-of-disbelief-wrecking paragraph near the end. So branding began right from the beginning and has been maintained full throttle ever since.

3. When Did I Begin Writing?

Four months later, July 1960, probably after the second operation. Some Air Force pilot loses his oxygen mask and dire consequences result. See The Gore Book.

A couple years later, in the fifth grade (as mentioned elsewhere on this blog) we were to make stories out of the current week’s list of ten or so new vocabulary words. I hated writing my first story for that class, a dull rip off of the Hardy Boys, and could barely force myself to finish it. But maybe some lesson from the circle of light way station was still with me, maybe something in that experience was pointing me beyond this first chapter book into new visions of my own, because the next week I came up with Jack Commer and “Voyage to Venus” and never looked back, never tried to create anything so parasitic again.

And the Dickensian Oscar Smuff, the blustering amateur failure mode detective who always gets his comeuppance, may have inspired my evil Sam Hergs from the original eighth grade version of The Martian Marauders. From that unfinished 1966 effort, which also includes older brother Jack and younger brother Joe:

Half an hour later all were situated in their positions when Jack remarked: “Joe, the data that the officials sent in before we left; well, they also included a little summary of that Sam guy. I’ll read off what it says:

“Real name‑‑Samuel Jay Hergs.

“Born on April 19, 1999 in Maine‑‑specific town not known.

“Had a police record‑‑started at fourteen.

“At age of twenty‑one organized an anti‑space riot‑‑said exploring space was foolish.

“In the same year he denounced his country in Socialism at Work, a book he wrote in 2020.

“In 2033, on the policy of evacuation, he said it was ‘stupid.’ He organized a spy route and infiltrated many of the U.S.S.F. spaceships and sabotaged them, killing hundreds of people.

“Lately has been known to work with the Martians‑‑is extremely dangerous.”

Jack stopped. Joe whistled. “He sure is a tough customer.”

“I’ll say,” said Jack. “But I think his madness may foul him up. I hope he is at the Mercury base.”

“I agree. He should be killed off soon.”

copyright 2016 (also copyright 1966!) by Michael D. Smith, with shameless promotion of Jack Commer Book Four, Collapse and Delusion, thrown in–after all, The Tower Treasure had to have influenced the Jack Commer series somehow!

Some URL’s found along the way:

Rhys of Earth by Kara D. Wilson

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Michael D. SmithAugust 16, 2016

In Rhys of Earth, the first volume of The Falkrow Narratives, the teenaged engineer Rhys and his younger sister Alina flee the destruction of their deep space colony spaceship to find themselves marooned on an Earth abandoned by modern humans centuries ago. The planet has long since devolved to a state that might correspond to a mix of our Medieval and pre-Industrial eras, though there are pockets of more advanced technology here and there. Finding themselves quickly choosing sides in an ongoing war, the two youths must navigate lingual, cultural, technological, and religious clashes, all of which the author navigates with well-considered, imaginative ease. The coming of age story of the teenagers and the delineation of this alternate Earth bring out the author’s excellent storytelling skills. Though describing the religious and philosophical underpinnings of a complex society, the author keeps the book accessible to the reader, with well-drawn characters and a plot that moves effortlessly from one significant development to another. The author has a gift for unexpected plot turns, yet every scene further defines the depth of the characters. Events seem “fated,” anchored in psychic depth and moving towards a grasp of basic human truths; nothing is merely manipulated for effect.

The character of Vinz, Overseer of the ship Themis to which Rhys and Alina attach themselves, is a fascinating study in bright and dark impulses, in lofty vision obstructed by obstinate impracticality. Vinz is a mixture of confident wisdom and reckless impulses that frequently bring his courageous mission of peace to the brink of disaster. It’s Vinz that Rhys must eventually understand, accept, and surmount as he emerges from catastrophe primed for adulthood and the unfolding of his own purpose, inherited from Vinz but strengthened by new perspective, by tragedy and loss.

I’d previously reviewed the two books of the author’s first series, The Aurora Chronicles, marveling at the author’s felicity in fashioning her stories. While both these books are very well done, it’s exciting to experience the quantum leap in novel creation evident in Rhys of Earth as the author continues her explorations into civilization and the psyche.

Rhys of Quadrant Six, the second book in The Falkrow Narratives, is now available and I’m looking forward to finishing it, as I accidentally got through its first thirty pages before I realized I needed to start with Book One. But while I recommend starting in the correct order, I can attest that even in the first thirty pages of Book Two I found myself encountering a well-constructed world of rich characters and suspense. Thus Book Two could easily be a standalone novel. But as I say, start with Book One!

Rhys of Earth at Amazon | Rhys of Quadrant Six at Amazon

review by Michael D. Smith

Collapse and Delusion in Paperback

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Michael D. SmithJuly 11, 2020

Jack Commer gets a close look at the disintegration of the Alpha Centaurian Empire in the aftermath of its lost war with the United System Space Force, as well as a devastating surprise from his estranged son Jonathan James, a child survivor of an abduction by Alpha Centaurian security forces. The book picks up from the last 2033 scene of Book Three, Nonprofit Chronowar, and takes us to 2075, where all the main characters are still in action, thanks to new rejuvenation techniques.

Collapse and Delusion, Book Four of the Jack Commer, Supreme Commander science fiction series, is now available in paperback from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I’m still in awe of publisher Deron Douglas’ excellent cover. The repeated motif of circles and planets is mesmerizing. Here are the four books in the series: