Book Review: Doomsday Morning by C.L. Moore

Doomsday Morning by C.L. Moore

Paperback, Golden Age Masterworks, 256 pages

Published January 2019 by Orion Publishing Co (first published 1957)

This year I decided I was going to read a lot more golden age Science Fiction, one of the books I have already read and reviewed was the Future is Female edited by Lisa Yasek. There were many authors I discovered from this book who I wanted to explore. First on my list was C.L. Moore. The reason I wanted to read her is like me she is a Hoosier. Born in Indiana early in the twentieth century Catherine Moore published her first works in the student journal the Vagabond at Indiana University journalism school just blocks from the house I live in grew up 60 years later. She left IU to support her family during the great depression but published many stories in the early pulp magazines. Later she would publish many works co-written with her first husband Henry Kutter. They met because they were in a circle of friends who met because they all wrote letters back and forth with THE one and only HP Lovecraft.

So I was interested in reading more of her work and when I saw that our library had a battered and worn first edition I jumped on it. The first thing I feel the need to comment on in the almost 70 years this book has been in and out of print it been consistently packaged in covers that have nothing to do with the book. There are no spaceships, or lazer guns, no giant robotic spiders. This is a serious dystopia that apparently is a follow up to her 1943 novel Judgement Night. That novel was not the basis for the silly 90's gangster movie. That short novel was actually more of a space opera.

Doomsday Morning is about a post-America 50 years in the future although no exact date is given. The country is run by what appears to be some form of AI called Comus (short for Communications of the United States). This book is really the essence of out of date Sci-fi written just before TV took over as a popular entertainment. Our window into this future comes from the POV of Howard Rohan a washed up actor. Comus sends him out to California to spread propaganda and accidentally out the forces of resistance against him. It is hard to imagine this type of media as propaganda in the future being down by traveling theater.

Much of this novel is about the theater, I don't know much about that subject but I believe the author did. The play they are touring with is called Crossroads. Those parts gave me a somewhat tongue-in-cheek feel. I thought of those scenes having a Terry Gilum or Coen Brothers feel. It was a interesting change of pace from the majority of the book that has many dark moments. The rebellion eventually falls into riots and chaos.

There is plenty of weird out of date attempts to predict technology like "Hedgehoppers" and really Comus itself is AI before the term really existed. This is not a read for everyone. It didn't age well but anyone serious about reading golden age sci-fi can't go wrong. This was the last work of an important author. While she returned to conventions to be remembered and honored for her contribution Catherine Moore never wrote in the genre again. I am glad I read it but outside of Golden Age completionists I not sure about the appeal 70 years later. I certainly respect the work.