duntemann.wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (01/08/84)
I remember Phillip E. High for one half of an Ace double which I bought back
in 1968 or so. I bought it for the flipside of the book, Destination
Saturn, by David Grinnell & Lin Carter (a wild and funny screwball adventure
r\i\uure) but the High novel turned out to be a ratlin' good adventure:
Invader on My Back. Invaders of Earth have positioned sea-urchin shaped
psi transmitters in orbit to prevent the folks on Earth
from catching onto the plot. Only borderline telepaths can see the invaders
or their hardware, and the invaders have rigged it so that some kind of
heterodyne backwash from their telepathy causes normal Earthlings to instantly
fear and hate them. Yeah, hokey, but damn, did it move. I don't believe I
ever saw anything else by High on the stands. I think I might
t have bought it if I had.
Gene Wolfe has indeed finished a sequel to the Severian novels. I spoke with
him about it last year, when it was in fact titled "Urth of the New Sun."
I heard that it may in fact be called "Castle of the Otter" now, for reasons
obscure. I do know that it's finished and in production, but it has not yet
been published. All I know about it is that it contains a character who is
an intelligent spacesuit. I only discovered that (Gene is somewhat closed-
mouthed about works in progress--as he should be) because he heard me
discussing a story I had just completed starring an intelligent spacesuit.
I guess I beat him into print with it ("Borovsky`s Hollow Woman", OMNI,
October 1983) but this may, in fact, be the year that Everybody Wrote About
Intelligent Spacesuits. We'll see.
73,
Jeff Duntemann
DUNTEMANN.WBST@PARC-MAXCwombat@uicsl.UUCP (01/17/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-1520600:uicsl:10700074:000:596 uicsl!wombat Jan 16 14:27:00 1984 *Castle of the Otter* was published last year by Ziesing Bros. I had heard Wolfe was doing a fifth New Sun book with a title something like *The Urth of the New Sun*, but CotO isn't it -- rather, it's a book about the writing of the Book of the New Sun, and was picked up by the SF Book Club not long ago. I don't know if/when *The Urth of the New Sun* will show up, though. As for Philip E. High, I think he wrote quite a few halves of Ace Doubles. I've got three with stories by him, out of perhaps ten ADs. Don't know anything about High himself. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat