Gather at the Hall of Planets by K.M. O'Donnell (AKA: Barry Malzberg)
I generally will give more time and attention to a Barry Malzberg novel, and while I enjoyed this one, this felt like a SF satire spin of the Day of The Burning, that I read last year. I think this one came out first and by indications this was a Donald Wollheim concept, much like Campbell suggesting Foundation to Asimov. OK, is a little less of a big deal of a concept but you get the idea.
My favorite thing about this novel is picturing a smoke-filled office in NYC with Wollheim and Malzberg being two cranky old school SF dudes developing the idea. What I am sure they started with is a novel set at a WorldCon was a good way for Malzberg to vent all his anger and frustrations with being a SF writer, woah boy, does he do that.
It was also a way for him to get in some jabs at their old pals and colleagues, and sell a few Ace Doubles. This novel owes much to Anthony Boucher’s murder mystery, Rocket to the Morgue published 30 years earlier. That locked door mystery featured caricatures of LA-based SF writers with whom Boucher was in a writers' collective. This group included Robert Heinlein, Hubbard, and more. I can’t help but compare the two novels, and Boucher’s satire or caricatures of major SF figures were more obvious in Rocket. That novel was pre-scientology, and while you might guess that Gather was aiming at Hubbard, it is more AE Van Vogt, who was an early follower, that gets the treatment in Malzberg’s novel. I am assuming he had a Van Vogt experience like the one in the novel. Seekers of Tomorrow editor Sam Moskowitz and his tensions with Author/editor Fredrik Pohl are treated with humor for those in on the joke. I am sure that will be lost on 99% of anyone attempting to read it today.
The concept is that Sanford is warned a malevolent alien has infiltrated the Worldcon SF convention, and you need to find him. The alien storyline is the same as the Day of the Burning, a later Malzberg novel, and that storyline is better told in that novel. In Gather it is more of an excuse for Malzberg to vent. On the surface, it is about the struggles of an SF writer, but Kvass like BM ended up writing Erotica.
Sanford Kvass is a cranky old SF writer; maybe worse than Barry and that is saying something. The book is meant to be funny, and maybe if I were in a different mood, I might have laughed more. I mean, Malzberg uses Kvass to take a literary dump on the problems of being a writer in SF. “You don't have to refund the money, you idiot, they're canceling. They're dropping the whole science fiction line effective immediately and converting to sex books period if you would deliver the book when you were supposed to deliver it you would have $2000 and all the rights back to because they would have released it, but now you've only got 1000 and you can't even write the book. I want my money, Sanford, I mean that. I can't go advancing people and being screwed this way give me the money.”
Did Kvass/Malzberg want to be SF writer? Not really. And he makes that clear. Even their intentions when starting in the genre seemed lost…
“At around the time you become a professional writer a startling realization hits you it may come during the course of writing a book or more likely in the periods(longer and longer and more agonizing) in between books, and that realization is that what you are doing has absolutely no connection with what you thought you were going to do when you fell into it in the first place.”
Knowing what I know about PKD’s book deals with this part when Kvass refers to paperback only authors as “paperback prostitutes,” is an eye-opening look at the business of it all.
“But then of course, you take the fast deal with the paperback prostitute, you're Just filling in time, just going from month to month period, there are no royalties or increments with paperback. On the other hand, who has the time to angle for a hardcover? Then too, hardcover can be a worse deal than paperback unless you get some kind of edge or a break in reviews. Most affairs end dismally and are more expensive than simple relationships with prostitutes. “Paperback prostitutes” Kavass mumbles, and then, embarrassed, plunges his head into the coffee cup.”
The best and probably most grumpy part of the book was this exchange when Kvass explains his feelings on the entire process….
“Besides, there is an audience out there. At some point along the way, people have gotten around to “reading” your “books”; there are certain “responses” towards your “books”, and every now and then they give you indication, through postcards or strange notes to one another in the subculture called “fanzines” that what you have been doing has some connection to them after all. This is the most insane thing of all, because it is impossible to imagine that anyone could take this seriously, there are people who find it consequential. They form “opinions.” they purchased copies in enough quantities of sometime items to guarantee “royalty rates.” Many of them turn out to want to be “writers” themselves and ask for advice. They want to know what's the best way to go from specialized sale at the beginning or whether they should go right out and try to sell big a commercial novel so that they can make “big money” and spend the rest of their lives “doing the kind of work that we really want to be doing.”
This novel is pretty tongue-in-cheek on topics I find funny and ripe for satire, so I am surprised I didn’t enjoy it more. It maybe a function that I read at a busy time, none the less I don’t think it is one of the more important Malzberg works but I may have to give it another spin.
