Note: appeared as by K. M. O'Donnell. This
work is contained, in its entirety, in The
Passage of the Light.
From the cover blurb:
Review:
Review buy Guy Salvidge:
Gather in the Hall of the Planets picks up, in a sense, where Dwellers of the Deep left off. It seems to operate in the same fictional universe as the one of Dwellers, insofar as the names of various SF writers are consistent, as are the names of the magazines. Whereas in Dwellers the focus was on SF collectors (notably the twenty three year-old Izzinius Fox) and fandom in general, Gather is set at the 1974 Worldcon in New York, and focuses on the travails of SF writer Sanford Kvass, winner of the ‘boilerplate’ award in 1964 for being most promising young writer, but now something of a burned-out case. Thus, where the interest of Dwellers lay in the satirizing of SF collectors, in Gather the focus is extended to the entire SF microcosm, all gathered together for three days. This is an excellent (and true-to-life) exercise in world reduction. The plot of this novel does not differ greatly from that of Dwellers: here, Kvass must discover which person at the convention is an alien masquerading as someone he knows. The stake, of course, is the fate of the earth.
The main difference between Dwellers of the Deep and Gather in the Hall of the Planets is that Gather is funny and entertaining while Dwellers (in my humble opinion) is not. Why this is, I am not completely sure, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that SF writers are of more interest than SF collectors. The character of Sanford Kvass is well drawn and, despite his failings, likeable to the end. One thing I did note was that while the two books are of approximately the same length (Dwellers is 113pp, Gather is 121pp) this book actually seemed much shorter. At closer inspection, I realized that there are 42 lines per page in Dwellers there are a mere 33 in Gather. A much better length, I think.
Having said this, I feel the two books form a kind of dialogue, making the combination of both interesting in a new light. Dwellers of the Deep is actually mentioned in Gather in the Hall of the Planets, as well as a non-existent novel, "The Wizard of Izzinius" (Izzinius being the protagonist of Dwellers).
Chapter VII is of particular interest insofar as it details how the
business of writing and selling SF is actually carried out, and shows how
this is bound to lead to eventual breakdown or disaster (or both). It is
a lucid and powerful critique of SF as a whole. Furthermore, the convention
can be seen as a metaphor for the whole of SF, which is shown to be insular,
ill organized and in rapid deterioration. The failings of the convention
are the failings of SF itself, and in still way Gather in the Hall of
the Planets is as savage an indictment of the field of science fiction
as Herovit’s World (which can
be said to be the third in this recursive trilogy).