The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde

by Norman Spinrad

Early stories by one of the "bad" boys of science fiction of the 1960s.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Collections, Science Fiction Fantasy

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Born in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad is an acclaimed SF writer.

Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.

Reviews

[Michael Jandrok · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll just state right up front that this review will be another one of my journeys down nostalgia road. It’s yet again a case of my being fascinated as a child with cool and dangerous looking cover art (skulls are a repeating theme with me) and the fond memory of a book left behind by my older brother when he left home for college. “The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde” was author Norman Spinrad’s first short story collection, published in 1970. These stories were beyond me as a youngster, and it took me until now to catch up with this volume again. Spinrad specializes in edgy and psychedelic science-fiction, literary artifacts of a particular time and place, and this anthology does not disappoint. If you like Harlan Ellison, you will most likely enjoy Norman Spinrad, as the two writers are friends and travel down the same dangerously visionary back roads of the genre. Spinrad, like Ellison, is a big double threat as a writer, capable of creating great characters and memorable themes and plots. He could veer from relatively hard science-fiction to social parody in a heartbeat, and his stories shine with a darkly visceral quality. Much like another of his similar contemporaries, Michael Moorcock, he works big themes with a gonzo sort of hallucinogenic exuberance that is undeniable.

Quick non-sequitur - I was lucky enough to find the 1970 Science-Fiction Book Club edition of this book. Let me tell you, the sheer quality of the book club editions of that period are fantastic. Solid binding, deckle edges, thick paper….these printings were made to last and produced with an eye towards luxury. This is a 47 year-old book and it’s in better shape than a lot of modern volumes.

As I have already hinted, drugs and the spirit of the '60s counterculture were a big deal to Spinrad and his buddies Moorcock and Ellison. This collection fairly drips with references to hallucinogens and trips of one sort or another. Drugs play a central role in a number of the stories as a plot device, and the general aura is one of a playful and mischievous generational vibe. It’s all sort of bohemian and fresh and full of this beautiful hippie mentality, back when an entire generation of young people really thought that they could change the world. Hindsight is 20-20, of course. The Age of Aquarius didn’t exactly pan out the way it might have, but in reading these stories you can still get a feel for the time in which they were written. More importantly, these stories remain as fresh today as when they were created. It’s a tremendously enjoyable collection, highly recommended if you enjoy what was at the time called the New Wave of speculative fiction.

“Carcinoma Angels” - A highly successful savant take a unique approach to battling his terminal cancer. Very effective story, perhaps more so for me as I fight my own war with cancer.

“The Age of Invention” - High comedy as the stone-age residents of a town invent all sorts of modern rackets. Funny and insightful.

“Outward Bound” - A travelling interstellar trader ship discovers a cargo that carries with it a paradigm-changing secret. But the cargo is also being pursued by a team from Earth, desperate to catch-up to and destroy the information. Fantastic story with well-developed characters and a wonderful plot device. I kind of wished this had been stretched to novel length. I just wanted to read more about these characters.

“A Child of Mind” - An interstellar survey team finds itself on what looks like a jackpot planet, lush, green, temperate, and seemingly ready for habitation. But this planet holds a dark secret, one that could wipe out humanity. It’s up to one crewman to save the day, or can he? Another great story, reminiscent of “Who Goes There?” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

“The Equalizer” - The madness of an ultimate arms race brought into clear focus. Clever and nuanced, this story wins on the strength of the characters alone. It was also interesting to see an Israeli point of view for this tale, written prior to the Six-Day War and The War of Attrition.

“The Last of the Romany” - a tender and heartfelt tale set in the far future of a man who is looking for his lost brethren, the gypsies of old. The antiseptic society he lives in has been scrubbed and cleansed of most traces of the Romany, but in the end he finds that there may be hope after all. I really loved this story, though I admit a bit of cultural bias seeming as I am descended from Hungarian Romany myself.

“Technicality” - An interesting take on alien invasion wrapped up in sly social commentary. Written before the state-sponsored violence at Kent State in 1970.

“The Rules of the Road” - A more or less standard take on the “aliens are testing us to see if we are worthy” gimmick. I liked the ending, though.

“Dead End”- A stagnating man living in a purposeless utopia longs for an experience with “suffering”, in the hopes that it will fulfill his empty spaces. He doesn’t exactly get what he was aiming for.

“A Night in Elf Hill” - Another great story with a vague sort of Lovecraftian vibe. Beautifully done.

“Deathwatch” - What would life be like for the immortals born amongst us? And for those left behind?

“The Ersatz Ego” - A story of subterfuge that reaches cultural levels. Looking at today’s political landscape, I’m reasonably certain that this plot line ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

“Neutral Ground” - A reality-altering drug allows the user to Voyage to distant Places, perhaps real, perhaps of the mind. What other Voyagers from other Places might also be making the journey?

“Once More, With Feeling - A time-travel tale with a twist. Apocalyptic sex never felt so good?

“It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!” - High comedy with a superhero theme.

“Subjectivity” - A team of interstellar astronauts must deal with the mind-numbing effects of long-term space travel. The solution to not going mad? Psychotropic drugs, given daily to every member of the crew. What could possibly go wrong?

“The Entropic Gang Bang Caper” - A psychedelic product of it’s time. The sort of writing that seemed very edgy and clever at the time. I think it’s about war…..and entropy….copyrighted in 1969, right at the tail end of the love generation’s last gasp at changing things for the better.

“The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde” - Spinrad does a riff on Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius, to good effect. Moorcock was an early advocate of what we would now call “open source” creativity, giving other writers the freedom to expand upon and enhance the Jerry Cornelius mythos. A fun story, in full spirit of the character.

I really can't recommend this anthology enough. Spinrad is one of the lesser known lights of the silver age, but his work is uniformly excellent and he is more than worth seeking out if you enjoy quality science-fiction written with a high level of intelligence and originality. Less "edgy" than Ellison and more grounded in hard science than Bradbury, he hits the high notes pretty frequently in his writing. Better yet, seek out one of these old Science-Fiction Book Club editions. They are well worth the search.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of Spinrad's early work. I never felt that Spinrad was appreciated in the field as much as he should have been; he was like an American version of Ballard or Moorcock in his time, but is now sadly mostly forgotten. There are some particular favorites in this volume, especially the title story.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stories here. I wonder if I kept my copy? Have to look.
ToC and story histories:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?4...
Title story is a good one, and some others sound familiar. Mt. TBR grows another inch....

Year read is just a guess.... Back when new pbs were $1.50!

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the summer of 1984 I was pretty sure I had an good administrative job at Loyola University Chicago locked up. The Dean liked me. I liked and respected him and the rest of the staff. Although still taking some coursework, my research assistantship in philosophy had reached its limit and prospects of ever securing a professorship in the field looked poor. In "celebration" I went on the customary science fiction binge upon the end of the semester and the beginning of the summer.

Unlike many of the sf books read during that period, most of them in the course of a few hours on a single day, I actually recall enjoying some of the particular stories in this, Spinrad's first collection.

[Sam Coppola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carcinoma angels - The ghost of Howard Hughes gets way too high but manages to defeat his inner demons…literally

The Age of Invention - Cavemen invent art, as well as renewable exclusive agency clauses

Outward Bound - Old men play hide-and-seek in space

A Child of Mind - Future colonizers dream their mommy fantasies into fruition. Decide later to destroy the world.

The Equalizer - Poignant tale of the horrors of war

The Last of the Romany - The best tale of them all by far. A gypsy tells robots and cops to get bent. Proceeds to bail out to space and play concerts for children.

Technicality - Green rabbits have invaded Earth and the new guy is feeling trigger happy.

The Rules of the Road - Second best story in the bunch. A risk taker confronts the ultimate challenge: survive a ufo obstacle course and a journey to the 5th dimension and beyond.

Dead End - Depressed cynical man (uncomfortably relatable) gets so bored that he does the unspeakable: takes a trip to a park.

A Night in Elf Hill - PKD style mind-trip where a spacefarer discovers the ultimate city. But not all that glitters is gold.

Deathwatch - Immortality is tearing families apart.

The Ersatz Ego - Electroshock therapy is perfected by none other than North Korea. It is only used for good of course.

Neutral Ground - Psychedelics get so potent that we can literally jaunt through the stars

Once More, With Feeling - Time travelers bang. Thats it.

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! - An outbreak of beta-males thinking they’re Superman is doing wonders for the private shrink rackets.

Subjectivity - Third best story of the bunch. Psychedelics get so potent that we can literally interact with each others hallucination. Trippy.

The Entropic Gang Bang Caper - Brunner-esque experimental beat story.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde - Maybe it was meant to be a love letter to the golden age of sci fi? Ends up more as a hyper-masculine violence fantasy…so nailed it?

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been reading and (mostly) enjoying Norman Spinrad’s novels, but the only short fiction of his I’ve read is “Carcinoma Angels”, his excellent contribution to Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology. That story also appears in this volume, which is also Spinrad’s first collection of short stories, and of course I had to pick it up.

One striking thing about this collection is that even within the SF wheelhouse, it’s strikingly diverse. Spinrad covers a lot of ground – space opera, space madness, corporate caveman satire, alien honeypots, alien wars, alien invasions, dystopian utopias, immortality, avant garde psychotherapy, time-travel tourism and (of course) experimental drugs.

Another striking thing about this collection is how accessible most of it is. The title track is one of the few stories here that points toward the experimental, Kerouacian lyrical writing style Spinrad would embrace for some of his more famous novels. But most of these are relatively more conventional, style-wise, which is not a bad thing. Anyway, a few stories don’t quite work for me, but overall this is a solid collection.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was purchasing Henry Gee's Sigil trilogy from Reanimus Press (review of Henry's masterpiece to follow - I haven't had a chance to read it yet), I noticed they had reprints of some classic science fiction. I'm a sucker for this - my SF enthusiasm peaked in the 60s and 70s, so anyone who has emerged since isn't really on my radar (seriously - I consider Ben Bova trendy). Something that caught my eye was a book of short stories by Norman Spinrad. To be honest he's not an author I had had much to do with, but it was reasonably priced, and short stories are idea for ebook reading, so I downloaded a copy of The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde - and I am so glad I did.

Although these stories are probably 50 years old, they are mostly timeless. Okay, one or two have a slightly dated feel to the female characters, and there are a couple where the technology caught him out, but story after story was brilliant - really exploring the implications of different types of life and world for very ordinary human beings. I particularly liked the way he thought through the commercial implications of interstellar flight.

With the exception of the last two pieces (including the title story), which seem to have been strongly influenced by the SF 'new wave' urge to write something that doesn't make a lot of sense, these are some of the best SF stories I have read in a long time. They work so well on the iPad too. Highly recommended if you like this kind of thing.

You can download the book direct from the publisher, or get it on Kindle from Amazon.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though most of the stories in this collection have the indelible stamp of the 70s on them - both in tone and relationship to technology - they are all readable and enjoyable. The most memorable to me was The Equalizer, about an Israeli scientist who discovers a superweapon and has to grapple with the consequences of potential proliferation. It reminded me of Jorge Luis Borges' short story Deutsches Requiem a little, and there were some other stories like Outward Bound that also touched on the ideas of culture and self-sacrifice vs self-preservation in a similar way. This wasn't a mind-blowing collection though, I guess mainly because it feels like all of these ideas have been picked over to death already. Spinrad wrote a response to literary critics after this came out, addressing the charge that he didn't present a single original voice in the collection. While it's true that there's somewhat of a diversity of style here, it's not like each voice is wildly different, and overall for whatever reason this isn't a particularly essential science fiction touchstone. Harsh, I know, but it's not a complete waste of time either.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"A solid collection of seventeen short stories and one novelette by one of my favorite New Wave authors, Norman Spinrad. Although the collection seldom reaches the heights of his inventive and original alt-history novel The Iron Dream (1972), The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (1970) is still a wonderful showcase of his earliest short fiction. However, Spinrad’s relentlessly bleak outlook on Earth’s future will not appeal to all SF readers. I only recommend the collection for fans of experimental late 60s SF, the New Wave movement, and bleak satires of societal ills (count me in!).

The best include: “Technicality” (1966), a war against pacifist aliens who wield horrific but non-lethal [...]"

[Mike Rossmassler · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest collections of science fiction short stories ever

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first exposure to Norman Spinrad's stories. Many years ago working graveyard shift at a resort another graveyard manager and I were talking about SF books and he mentioned his favorite SF writer was Norman Spinrad. I was a bit embarrassed to admit I'd never heard of him. I considered myself sort of well-read in science fiction, but nope. I still had a lot to learn. Anyway, finding any books by Norman Spinrad in the new and used bookstores back then was a fruitless effort. Eventually though, almost 20-some years later I found a couple short story collections, including this one. I'd put off reading it though, thinking it was going to be a lot of New Wave stuff that would leave me confused. Happily, that's not the case. Yes, some of these stories are definitely New Wave, but none of them are difficult as New Wave often seems, at least to my tastes. All of these stories are from the 60s so you'll find recurring themes of the time: war, drugs, psychology, sex. There is a good dose of cynical humor and a bit of space opera as well. I may be late to the game but I finally got here. Recommended for vintage SF fans.

[Burning Thoughts · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of stories explored to their ultimate resolution.

Spinrad wrote these stories in the 1950s and '60s, back when the world was clearer, though just as perverse. He takes an idea, like Korea War brainwashing in "The Ersatz Ego" and pushes it to the extreme. By proper use of electroshock, the disturbed personality could be broken down into primeval formlessness, and then rebuilt.

In the title story, Spinrad weaves song titles in the narrative with good effect. His interest is ideas, sci fi ideas. He develops that primarily. Characters are developed only to the point necessary to keep the story alive. In the opening Story, "Carcinoma Angels" an entire lifetime is covered. He summarizes vast stretches of activities into narrative summary, because people need be developed only to the extent necessary to develop the idea.

Individual stories deal with the speed barrier of light, propaganda, gypsies and outsiders.

If you like to see ideas explored, page through, and select your fancy.

[Norman Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been over forty years since I read this book but I still remember the title story and "Carcinoma Angels". They are probably quite dated now, but they really interested me at the time.

[Ondřej Šefčík · Rating 5 out of 5]

Norman spinrad has never written a stupid story, ok, maybe Solarians, and this collection of short stories is THE proof of it... each story is a jewel, worth of reading...

[Maxfield Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really engaging anthology. Because of the writers style, it all feels like it fits within the same universe.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great collection. Dated, but of course it is.

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being reminded of "A Child of Mind" while reading How Long 'til Black Future Month?, I come back to recommend the collection in which I first read it. An above-average number of memorable stories (IMO, as always):

"Carcinoma Angels"
"The Age of Invention"
"Outward Bound"
"A Child of Mind"
"Technicality"
"Subjectivity"

And an honorable mention for "The Entropic Gang Bang Caper," which is very much a product of the '7os.

[Mihai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of short SF stories by Normal Spinrad.
I have re-read this book as I found myself looking at it and not remembering anything at all from the first time I went over it. It's 4 stars because the last 2 stories were too psychedelic for my taste.

[Matt Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collection of science fiction short stories from the 1960s. Some really good ones and some really bad ones, including the title story which chokes on its own attempt to be clever and literary.

[John E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stories from the drug centered 1960s.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Variable quality - some interesting story ideas

[Stephanie Chu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still unforgettable