What do you think?
Rate this book
Transient
The Governor, a widower in his earliest fifties, turned off the ignition, noting with satisfaction the absence of street signs limiting parking time. Governor Lampley, serving out the unexpired term of his predecessor and not entirely hopeless of nomination and election in his own right, pictured the stupid or fanatical cop who under any circumstances would write a ticket for the car with the license GOV-001. He and Marvin had made a big joke out of those zeros, Marvin showing his hostility under the kidding, the Governor hiding his dislike for his secretary under his self-deprecation. Before getting out he dusted the knees of his trousers and looked up and down the shabby street. The Odd Fellows Hall was built of concrete blocks; Almon Lampley was reasonably sure it hadn't been there thirty years before. The other buildings seemed to be as he remembered them, if anything so fragile as the reconstruction in his mind could be called a memory. He'd forgotten the name of the place, its very location. Only the highway marker, the one so close it rooted the town briefly from obscurity to pinpoint it so many miles from the capital behind him, so many miles to the destination before him, hit the chord. Why, it was here. This was the place. How very long, long ago. Goodness (he curbed the natural profanity of even his thoughts lest he offend some straitlaced voter), goodness—years and years. A generation. Before he met Mattie, before he switched from selling agricultural implements to vote-getting.
135 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 9, 2010
8 people want to read
About the author
Ward Moore
75 books37 followersJoseph Ward Moore was born in Madison, New Jersey and raised in Montreal and New York City.
His first novel was published in 1942 and included some autobiographical elements. He wrote not only books but reviews and articles for magazines and newspapers.
In early 50s, he became book review editor of Frontier and started to write regularly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His most famous novel was Bring the Jubilee (1953), and his other works include Greener Than You Think (1947) and the post-apocalyptic short stories "Lot" (1953) and "Lot's Daughter" (1954).
His first novel was published in 1942 and included some autobiographical elements. He wrote not only books but reviews and articles for magazines and newspapers.
In early 50s, he became book review editor of Frontier and started to write regularly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His most famous novel was Bring the Jubilee (1953), and his other works include Greener Than You Think (1947) and the post-apocalyptic short stories "Lot" (1953) and "Lot's Daughter" (1954).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 4, 2022
I didn't actually read this as an ebook but as it originally appeared in the February, 1960 issue of Amazing Stories. I will add that my copy of the story is not in a copy of the magazine. I purchased the story from what I was told (and believe) was the collection of the late science fiction fan and editor, Sam Moskowitz. This is one of two stories by Ward Moore that I bought from that source. The stories had been removed from the magazines in which they had been published, then bound with stiff paper covers. This story appears to be sewn together. The other story, "Rx Jupiter Save Us" (originally published in the January, 1954 issue of Future Science Fiction) is stapled.
The story is labeled in the magazine as a "complete book-length novel." My copy has written on it "34,000 words." My estimate would be slightly higher, but not more than 36,000 words. The science fiction and fantasy website ISFDb calls this story a novella.
Governor Almon Lampley, a widower in his early fifties, is driving and stops in a small town that he (sort of) remembers. He goes into the one hotel. There is no clerk at the desk, so the Governor goes upstairs and chooses a room. And then things get increasingly more peculiar.
This is a very odd story, particularly for a 1960 science fiction magazine. This appears to be pure - or maybe that should be impure - surrealism. Finding a dead donkey in the piano would be close to a normal occurrence. This entire tale seems to be set on a kind of "Anything-can-happen-day," where no logic connecting events can be discerned.
Much of this is deliberately disgusting. Moore dwells on decay, awful scents and sights, a tour of the more down-market neighborhoods of Hell. There is occasional humor, such as Lampley's examination by medically-minded apes.
And there are lists, lists of places, lists of people, lists of items, lists of animals, some alive, others dead and decaying, lists of horrors. Lists to port and starboard. Lots of lists.
A brief example, chosen because it is not nauseating:
The balcony was cluttered with anchor-chains, spools of telephone conduit, cotton bales, spare parts for mechanical chess-players. Lampley trod carefully between them and opened a door marked NO ADMITTANCE, SERVICE ONLY, DO NOT ENTER, THIS MEANS YOU. The room had no proper floor, only closely woven flat steel strips which sagged at every step. Enlarged X-ray photographs lined the walls; light shone through them to show up the deformed bones like parachutes, like plows, like cutlasses. The clerk, wearing an admiral's gold-laced cocked hat and the black robes of a judge over his blue jeans, sat in a porch swing that swayed gently to and fro behind a pulpit.
One problem that I have with the story is that the section of it that I think is the best comes quite early on. The Governor travels to an island on which he captures a tiny woman. She begins to grow at a remarkable rate. Lampley and the woman repeatedly have sex and she becomes pregnant. The woman takes extremely drastic action.
Many of the developments in the course of the story do keep the reader's interest, even when they are repugnant, but for most of the story it feels that details are being piled on but no progress is being made, either for the Governor or the reader.
I don't know what reaction this tale received when it was originally published, but it must have been shocking to readers at the time.
There is a fine, horrific illustration by Virgil Finlay in my copy; I don't know if it also appears in the ebook. The picture by artist Ed Valigursky that is shown above at the top of this entry illustrating the ebook is from the cover of the November, 1960 Amazing Stories, in which the story was first published. It shows a man in a kind of spacesuit with a unicorn. There is a unicorn that appears in the story briefly; there is no man in a spacesuit, though. I suppose that it was thought that that was the kind of thing that readers of a science fiction magazine would expect and like.
A final note: Cele Goldsmith (later Cele Goldsmith Lalli), then editor of Amazing Stories, was always willing to take risks. I don't think that "Transient" is a great story, but it is an unusual and at times fascinating one.
**********************************
7/4/22 addendum:
In 2019, I wrote:
I don't know what reaction this tale received when it was originally published, but it must have been shocking to readers at the time.
I still don't know what most readers thought of this story, but I just discovered what some of Moore's fellow writers thought. The following comments are from the book Preceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, a tongue-in-cheek title for a sort of house organ for folks in the science fiction field, edited by Theodore R. Cogswell. The first comments are from Cogswell himself writing in February, 1960:
MUST READING: Ward Moore's Transient in the February Amazing. It's a blend of Kafka, Blake, and Lewis C. - and you owe it to yourself to read it just to see what can be done in our field. Damndest thing I've read in years. Flipped me completely.
A March, 1960 reply by James Blish:
Aside to TRC [Cogswell]: I read Ward Moore's Transient as recommended. It has nothing to do with our field, as far as I can see. The first two chapters (pp. 58-77 in the magazine) imitate The Castle (mostly by inversion, but sometimes quite directly) and as such are about as interesting as Derleth's Solar Pons stories; the Carroll is visible in the plays upon incomplete sentences, but I suspect that these came much more directly from Kornbluth's "Thirteen O'Clock" and "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell," as does the whole wearisome rest of the story's structure. I can't imagine why you also saw fit to invoke Blake, and my gorge rises at this kind of comparison; it makes it sound as though you had never read any Blake (or any of the surrealist novels of the 1920's, or indeed much Kafka) which I know to be untrue. All honor to Moore for attempting it, but it's only a clumsy assembly of pastiches, and we ought to try to keep our voices down before we compare such a thing to three of the greatest writers in the mainstream (as you very recently reminded me). You do Moore no favor at all by being so grandiose in his behalf; instead, you make him sound sillier than he deserves.
And Cogswell replied:
The type of academic one-up-manship employed by Blish in his comments on Ward Moore's Transient rather surprised me. This sort of thing is to be expected when one full professor takes a swing at another in the pages of PMLA, or when Dr. Bloggens of Mortimer College reviews the latest civil war novel in the Saturday Review; but these be writers about rather than writers. When a writer tries to break out of the pulp format that most of us seem quite happy with, he deserves more than impolite condescension.
Later correspondence contains criticism of "Transient" by Edward E. Smith and someone with whom I am not familiar, Sidney Coleman. And then a final commentary, much too long for me to quote in its entirety, by Ward Moore himself. Some of what Moore replied is in the following brief excerpt:
As for what I think of it in comparison to my other work I can only say that the best things I have written have not been published but consistently rejected. A satirist's life is not a happy one.
I should note that the Solar Pons stories to which Blish refers are pastiches of Sherlock Holmes tales. The two Kornbluth stories he mentions are both very light in tone and intended, I believe, to be simply comic, certainly not the case with "Transient." (And the use of "1920's" rather than "1920s" is from Blish, not from me; I also used the form with the apostrophe for years before being told this was wrong. I wonder if the form Blish uses here used to be regarded as correct. )
I can not urge readers to run out and find a copy of "Transient," but I will repeat what I wrote in my review. This is unquestionably flawed but also "unusual and at times fascinating."
The story is labeled in the magazine as a "complete book-length novel." My copy has written on it "34,000 words." My estimate would be slightly higher, but not more than 36,000 words. The science fiction and fantasy website ISFDb calls this story a novella.
Governor Almon Lampley, a widower in his early fifties, is driving and stops in a small town that he (sort of) remembers. He goes into the one hotel. There is no clerk at the desk, so the Governor goes upstairs and chooses a room. And then things get increasingly more peculiar.
This is a very odd story, particularly for a 1960 science fiction magazine. This appears to be pure - or maybe that should be impure - surrealism. Finding a dead donkey in the piano would be close to a normal occurrence. This entire tale seems to be set on a kind of "Anything-can-happen-day," where no logic connecting events can be discerned.
Much of this is deliberately disgusting. Moore dwells on decay, awful scents and sights, a tour of the more down-market neighborhoods of Hell. There is occasional humor, such as Lampley's examination by medically-minded apes.
And there are lists, lists of places, lists of people, lists of items, lists of animals, some alive, others dead and decaying, lists of horrors. Lists to port and starboard. Lots of lists.
A brief example, chosen because it is not nauseating:
The balcony was cluttered with anchor-chains, spools of telephone conduit, cotton bales, spare parts for mechanical chess-players. Lampley trod carefully between them and opened a door marked NO ADMITTANCE, SERVICE ONLY, DO NOT ENTER, THIS MEANS YOU. The room had no proper floor, only closely woven flat steel strips which sagged at every step. Enlarged X-ray photographs lined the walls; light shone through them to show up the deformed bones like parachutes, like plows, like cutlasses. The clerk, wearing an admiral's gold-laced cocked hat and the black robes of a judge over his blue jeans, sat in a porch swing that swayed gently to and fro behind a pulpit.
One problem that I have with the story is that the section of it that I think is the best comes quite early on. The Governor travels to an island on which he captures a tiny woman. She begins to grow at a remarkable rate. Lampley and the woman repeatedly have sex and she becomes pregnant. The woman takes extremely drastic action.
Many of the developments in the course of the story do keep the reader's interest, even when they are repugnant, but for most of the story it feels that details are being piled on but no progress is being made, either for the Governor or the reader.
I don't know what reaction this tale received when it was originally published, but it must have been shocking to readers at the time.
There is a fine, horrific illustration by Virgil Finlay in my copy; I don't know if it also appears in the ebook. The picture by artist Ed Valigursky that is shown above at the top of this entry illustrating the ebook is from the cover of the November, 1960 Amazing Stories, in which the story was first published. It shows a man in a kind of spacesuit with a unicorn. There is a unicorn that appears in the story briefly; there is no man in a spacesuit, though. I suppose that it was thought that that was the kind of thing that readers of a science fiction magazine would expect and like.
A final note: Cele Goldsmith (later Cele Goldsmith Lalli), then editor of Amazing Stories, was always willing to take risks. I don't think that "Transient" is a great story, but it is an unusual and at times fascinating one.
**********************************
7/4/22 addendum:
In 2019, I wrote:
I don't know what reaction this tale received when it was originally published, but it must have been shocking to readers at the time.
I still don't know what most readers thought of this story, but I just discovered what some of Moore's fellow writers thought. The following comments are from the book Preceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies, a tongue-in-cheek title for a sort of house organ for folks in the science fiction field, edited by Theodore R. Cogswell. The first comments are from Cogswell himself writing in February, 1960:
MUST READING: Ward Moore's Transient in the February Amazing. It's a blend of Kafka, Blake, and Lewis C. - and you owe it to yourself to read it just to see what can be done in our field. Damndest thing I've read in years. Flipped me completely.
A March, 1960 reply by James Blish:
Aside to TRC [Cogswell]: I read Ward Moore's Transient as recommended. It has nothing to do with our field, as far as I can see. The first two chapters (pp. 58-77 in the magazine) imitate The Castle (mostly by inversion, but sometimes quite directly) and as such are about as interesting as Derleth's Solar Pons stories; the Carroll is visible in the plays upon incomplete sentences, but I suspect that these came much more directly from Kornbluth's "Thirteen O'Clock" and "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell," as does the whole wearisome rest of the story's structure. I can't imagine why you also saw fit to invoke Blake, and my gorge rises at this kind of comparison; it makes it sound as though you had never read any Blake (or any of the surrealist novels of the 1920's, or indeed much Kafka) which I know to be untrue. All honor to Moore for attempting it, but it's only a clumsy assembly of pastiches, and we ought to try to keep our voices down before we compare such a thing to three of the greatest writers in the mainstream (as you very recently reminded me). You do Moore no favor at all by being so grandiose in his behalf; instead, you make him sound sillier than he deserves.
And Cogswell replied:
The type of academic one-up-manship employed by Blish in his comments on Ward Moore's Transient rather surprised me. This sort of thing is to be expected when one full professor takes a swing at another in the pages of PMLA, or when Dr. Bloggens of Mortimer College reviews the latest civil war novel in the Saturday Review; but these be writers about rather than writers. When a writer tries to break out of the pulp format that most of us seem quite happy with, he deserves more than impolite condescension.
Later correspondence contains criticism of "Transient" by Edward E. Smith and someone with whom I am not familiar, Sidney Coleman. And then a final commentary, much too long for me to quote in its entirety, by Ward Moore himself. Some of what Moore replied is in the following brief excerpt:
As for what I think of it in comparison to my other work I can only say that the best things I have written have not been published but consistently rejected. A satirist's life is not a happy one.
I should note that the Solar Pons stories to which Blish refers are pastiches of Sherlock Holmes tales. The two Kornbluth stories he mentions are both very light in tone and intended, I believe, to be simply comic, certainly not the case with "Transient." (And the use of "1920's" rather than "1920s" is from Blish, not from me; I also used the form with the apostrophe for years before being told this was wrong. I wonder if the form Blish uses here used to be regarded as correct. )
I can not urge readers to run out and find a copy of "Transient," but I will repeat what I wrote in my review. This is unquestionably flawed but also "unusual and at times fascinating."
July 8, 2022
It’s full of weird craziness. It makes about as much sense as the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song ( such as Hard Rain.). The governor of an unnamed state checks into a hotel which seems like The Hotel California. The governor goes down the rabbit hole. He’s a rapist. The hotel clerk escorts him to a doctor who performs an abortion on him.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews