Sign of the Labrys

by Margaret St. Clair

Like others who withstood the pandemic, Sam Sewell lives in a subterranean shelter. The vast catacombs were built before the military's biological weapon leaked out, killing nine out of ten people and leaving the survivors so traumatized that they can barely tolerate each other's company. So it's quite peculiar that some government agents seem to think that Sam lives with a woman, Despoina, who's suspected of conducting germ warfare. Pressured by the agents to locate Despoina, Sam must literally go underground to discover the truth about a hidden world of witchcraft and secret rituals.
This Wiccan-themed science fiction novel was cited by Gary Gygax as an inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons. Enthusiasts of the role-playing game will recognize the forerunner of Castle Greyhawk and its labyrinthine setting of multiple levels connected by secret passages. Other readers will savor the fantasy on its own terms, as the poetic recounting of an otherworldly mystery.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Post Apocalyptic, Horror, Dystopia, Science Fiction Fantasy

139 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Margaret St. Clair (February 17, 1911 Huchinson, Kansas - November 22, 1995 Santa Rosa, CA) was an American science fiction writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard.

Born as Margaret Neeley, she married Eric St. Clair in 1932, whom she met while attending the University of California, Berkeley. In 1934 she graduated with a Master of Arts in Greek classics.
She started writing science fiction with the short story "Rocket to Limbo" in 1946. Her most creative period was during the 1950s, when she wrote such acclaimed stories as "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951), "Brightness Falls from the Air" (1951), "An Egg a Month from All Over" (1952), and "Horrer Howce" (1956). She largely stopped writing short stories after 1960. The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985) is a representative sampler of her short fiction.

Apart from more than 100 short stories, St. Clair also wrote nine novels. Of interest beyond science fiction is her 1963 novel Sign of the Labrys, for its early use of Wicca elements in fiction.

Her interests included witchcraft, nudism, and feminism. She and her husband decided to remain childless.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

So why on earth did I read this particular book? Short version: In the back of the original 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, Gary Gygax provided a list (Appendix N) of recommended and/or inspirational reading -- most of it being the Usual Suspects (Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc.), but some of it being a bit further out there ... And over the years, I'd managed to read almost all of the authors (even if in some cases I hadn't read the specific work Gygax was recommending). The one that I'd never quite gotten around to was Margaret St. Clair, who had two books listed by name: The Shadow People and Sign of the Labrys. And, due to a confluence of circumstances (and the fact that it got its first reprint in probably 50 years), I decided it was time to fill that particular gap in my education by reading Sign of the Labrys.

And it was ... OK?

The time is the not-excessively-distant future (which, given that this book was written more than 50 years ago, in the early 1960s, means it could actually be the recent past). Yeast-borne plagues have ravaged the world and the survivors, for the most part, live in vast underground complexes (dare we call them dungeons?), venturing to the surface primarily to help dispose of bodies. The narrator, Sam Sewell, is, at first, entirely typical of his time -- spending most of his non-corpse-disposal-related time alone (because the plague taught people to mostly steer clear of each other). But he returns to his dwelling place one day to find a ring and a note from one Despoina; and agents of the FBY (the vague yet menacing governmental agency currently running things) refuse to believe him when he says he has no idea what's going on, sending him on a lengthy journey into the depths of the underground world, and a journey of Wiccan discovery (Despoina and the Resistance mostly being of the witchy sort, and Sam discovering he has tendencies in that direction as well).

I'm not entirely sure I got all of what was going on -- it definitely had that vaguely psychedelic and/or mystical 60s vibe -- but I'm glad I read it if for no other reason than to check it off my list; and it certainly wasn't that much of a commitment -- probably closer to novella than novel, judged solely by word count.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasingly unique--indeed, possibly sui generis--combination of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and (of all things) Wiccan magic and craft, "Sign of the Labrys" initially appeared in 1963, as a Corgi paperback. Its author, Kansas-born Margaret St. Clair, was 52 at the time and had been writing short stories (well over 100 of them) since the late '40s. S"ign of the Labrys" was her fourth novel out of an eventual eight. And lest you think that the novel's Wiccan elements were merely a passing fancy of its author, let me add here that St. Clair and her husband were indeed inducted into the Wiccan craft three years after this novel's publication, when Margaret would adopt the Wiccan name Froniga. Out of print in English since the year of its release, St. Clair's truly bizarre novel is easily obtainable today via Dover Publications' "Doomsday Classics" series of post-apocalyptic books; I had recently enjoyed Fritz Leiber's "The Night of the Long Knives" from this same group of novels. In the Dover edition, author Brian Stableford, in his introduction, reveals that St. Clair used, as a research tool, Gerald Gardner's influential 1954 volume "Witchcraft Today," and I suppose that a patina of authenticity thus covers many of the magical feats to be found as her novel progresses. For this reader, the result was certainly engrossing, if not wholly satisfying.

"Sign of the Labrys" (and this may be as good a place as any to state that a "labrys" is an ancient Cretan double-edged ax; a symbol of the Wiccan faith here) transpires a decade from today, in a world where 9/10 of the human population, as well as most of the trees and many other plants, have been wiped out as a result of the release of toxic yeasts from a government research station. We meet our hero, 25-year-old Sam Sewell, who has been living in a massive, multileveled cave system along with thousands of others--in a locale that may or may not be Peabody, Mass., near Salem, appropriately enough--for the past 10 years. Sam lives a semi-contented existence apart from all the others (no one, it seems, can tolerate the company of his fellows any longer, as in the Leiber novel), scrounging for canned foods, eating the purple fungus off the cave walls, and occasionally working outdoors with a bulldozer crew, shoving around the limitless number of corpses for burial. But Sam's serene existence comes to an end one day when an agent of the FBY (which the reader can only assume stands for the Federal Bureau of Yeast) asks for his help in the search for a mysterious woman named Despoina. And soon after, Sam is left with a curiously carved ring and a message requesting him to meet Despoina in the lowest level of the cavern's layers. Thus, Sam travels from his home floor of E and down through F, G and H, encountering undreamt-of marvels on each deeper level, in search of the elusive woman, who is rumored to be a witch. And once Sam does indeed find the elusive object of his quest, he learns some surprising truths about himself, attains newfound abilities, and becomes embroiled in violent conflict with the FBY, which, as it turns out, has grandiose aspirations that will impact the lives of all citizens, both aboveground and below....

OK, I'm not going to lie to you: "Sign of the Labrys" really is a strange little book. It is, commendably, the sort of book in which there is just no way to predict what will happen from one page to the next, and each level that Sewell descends into is like a new and more surreal dreamland. Whereas Sam's Level E is fairly mundane, with cubicle quarters and storage rooms and so on, Level F, the former science section, is now infested with cyclic tides of rats, and as Kyra--a woman of "the craft" who assists Sam there--mentions, it also harbors a gnawing, mutated blob monster that makes irregular appearances (no, we never get to see it ourselves). Level G contains a beach (!), casino, private houses, and a host of former VIPs who stay happy with the assistance of "euph pills." And Level H, where the president once bunkered, contains surprises of its own. Not for nothing, I suppose, has sci-fi author Gary Gygax suggested that this novel was the inspiration for the game "Dungeons & Dragons." (Personally, I couldn't say, having no familiarity with the game; perhaps you will be in a better position to judge.)

Adding to the strangeness quotient are some of the outré characters whom Sam encounters, including a double-brained dog who helps him on his way, and a cookie-munching simpleton in charge of a teleporter device. Not to mention the inclusion of an anti-grav shaft, an entranceway from one level to another via autoclave, a fountain with a floating corpse hiding a matter transmitter, and on and on. And then there's the fact that Sam, as he begins his transformation/reawakening, is subject to hallucination-inducing fevers, and the fact that he is given numerous consciousness-altering drugs by Kyra, and the fact that he is subject to very strange and suggestive dreams. (Sadly, I'm afraid that I will be unable here to adequately describe in words how very strange "Sign of the Labrys" FEELS to read.) Thus, between the fever hallucinations, drugs, dreams and straightforward bizarreness of his actual surroundings, poor Sam just cannot tell what is going on, and the reader can only breathlessly hold on tight and hope that all will eventually become clear.

Fortunately for the reader, it kinda sorta does. But St. Clair deliberately chooses to withhold much, ultimately resulting in a story line that just barely hangs together, while at the same time engendering a sense of phantasmagoric weirdness throughout. Stableford compares her to A. E. van Vogt in this regard, and correctly tells us that "...the particular ambience created by continual conscientious omission and understatement contrives a teasing perplexity that makes the novel highly distinctive and a fascinating delight to read...." Personally, this reader could have done with a bit more concrete detail, but then, I suppose, we might have lost some of the unguessable strangeness that is the hallmark of St. Clair's work here. Happily, the author turns out to be both highly readable and compelling, and I must also admit that, bizarre as the novel is, I found "Sign of the Labrys" to be quite unputdownable. St. Clair's language is simple, clean and direct, even if what she is writing about is somewhat vague, and she pleasingly throws in scattered literary references (ranging from Shakespeare to Dante to Victorian poet George Meredith) to make things feel, if possible, even more off-kilter.

And then there is the matter of those Wiccan elements themselves. As her book progresses, St. Clair shows us what Despoina--and, increasingly, Sam himself, after Kyra's tutelage--is capable of: namely, the ability to see with one's eyes closed; the ability to count any number of objects automatically; "fith-fath," or the power to seemingly alter one's appearance; "dwym-dight," or soul-paining, a sort of compulsory hypnosis; and the "bull-leap," by which one is able to take command over another person's body. It is an interesting bag of tricks, to be sure, and if any Wiccans in modern-day America are truly capable of even half these abilities, it is amazing that they haven't used them to conquer the world. (Fortunately, I have a feeling that such power grabbing is not consistent with their philosophy.) Interestingly, St. Clair shows us that each of these abilities has specific rules and limitations, and reveals how enervating their practice can be for those who would wield them.

As I mentioned up top, "Sign of the Labrys" is a truly one-of-a-kind experience, and most decidedly recommended as a "stoner book"; something akin to Robert Silverberg's "Son of Man," in that regard. It could easily have served as the opening salvo of an entire series, in which the Wiccans go on to counter the further dastardly deeds of the power-hungry FBY, but sadly, this was all that Margaret St. Clair left us. The book is a strange one, but not off-putting enough to prevent me from wanting to check out more of St. Clair's work, as I hope to do one day. Give it a try...you might find it bewitching enough to cast its spell over you....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Margaret St. Clair....)

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's easy why this made it to Gygax's Appendix N: an evocative and enthralling physical setting of a half-abandoned subterranean complex with purpose-built levels, with stranger and more dangerous contents--traps, adversaries, weird stuff--as one descends.

St. Clair structures the story as a sort of transformative underworld quest, similar to what she did with The Shadow People, but far more successfully. This is not to say 'particularly well': the reader is expected to accept that magic works and is real without concepts being introduced to Sewell so that they can pass to us. He goes from being a person being led about and shown things and not really understanding what is going on, to being a person who understands and does not explain his understanding. Part of it appears to be that he is not so much learning something new as remembering something forgotten in a past-life sort of way.

Weirdly, the Wiccan mysticism consumes the second half of the book the same way that the details of the yeast apocalypse and the cave installation fills the first half.

[Timothy Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sign of the Labrys seems to be the one Margret St Clair novel people remember. Although the cover art has little to do with the book itself (big surprise there), the blurb on the back proudly proclaims: "Women are writing science fiction!" And we are told that it is "Fresh! Imaginative! Inventive!" Just like a loaf of wonder bread. I do hope she got some mileage out of this book, first published in 1963. At least some fame would compensate for the covers.
Written from the point of its protagonist, Sam Sewell, Labrys can best be described as a science fantasy idea novel. Although the hero uses science to further his ends, he also delves into the realm of fantasy, and he does it for idealistic reasons. It's also one of the first novels which treats Wicca as a bonafide religion. In some ways, this book is a statement of faith.
It's a post-apocalyptic book which takes place 10 years after 90% of humanity have been wiped out from scientifically created yeasts. Most of the survivors of the plague are living in underground bunkers built for the nuclear war which never came. The survivors are scaveging off the land- most of the trees having been destroyed-and burying the dead.
The novel begins with Sam recieving a visit from FBY agent Clifford Ames. It's never mentioned what FBY stands for, although Federal Bureau of Yeasts might be a good guess. The FBY is the only thing which passes for a government, since most of the plague survivors can't stand being in close proximity to one another. The FBY man is searching for a woman named Despoina (Greek: "Mistress") and he thinks Sewell may have been in contact with her. The FBY suspects her to be a "sower", which is to say a lunatic who deliberately spreads deadly microorganisms.
Although Sewell just wants to be left alone to live his life on E level in the underground bunker, he soon finds out that other people are interested in him. Someone leaves a mystical ring in his posession, he sees the sign of the labrys ( a double-headed fighting ax) on the cave walls, and mysterious figures whisper "Blessed be" in the darkness. Ames returns, dies in a struggle with Sewell, forcing Sewell to venture into the lower levels in search of truth.
On his way down he encounters a mycologist named Kyra who is doing research in what remains of the government labs in her sector. Through the use of mirror gazing and narcotics, she is able to help him look into his soul. Sewell has visions of another life where he danced around the fire and was chased by animals She's also able to get Sewell into the next level, G.
G level turns out to be where all the self-appointed important people reside. They had fled underground in anticipation of nuclear war. After a casual encounter with a woman on this level results in her death, he begins to suspect he may be carrying a deadly yeast infection. By now he's developed the ability to see inside people. A very intelligent dog is able to show him the way to the final level, H.
At level H, Sewell meets Despoina, in all her pagan majesty. He's initiated into the Kraft, just as the FBY attacks. Sewell manages to make it back up to Kyra at the F level, where they plan on making contact with Despoina, but the FBY attacks once again, this time with super cool carbon dioxide gas, intent on freezing everything out of existence. Sewell and Kyra manage to escape the feds through the use of extra-sensory powers. Their goal is to regroup with Despoina's Krafters and strike back at the FBY.
One of the interesting things about the novel is the use of a labrys as a symbol for Wicca. Today, most Wiccian initiates use the pentagram. Once upon a time, the ankh was in vogue, but the five-pointed star seems to have won out. In Greece today, the labrys is used as a symbol of paganism. In North America, it's usually seen as a lesbian symbol (the amazons were supposed to have fought with a labrys). I suspect that St. Clair, having a background in Greek and Roman studies, wanted to associate the Wiccan religion with ancient Greece as much as possible.
Labrys suffers from some of the loose ends which I've started noticing in St. Clair's other writings. At a crucial point in the plot of the book, we find out the pre-plague civilization had developed matter transmitters. OK...if they could send a physical object anywhere, what protection would an underground bomb shelter furnish? Did the matter transmitters become standard just before the plague? And what's with the secret clan of the Wiccans? Where did they come from?
Once again, St. Clair wrote a good novel, just not the great one I'd hoped to find with this book.

[J. Sebastian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sign of the Labrys ~ Margaret St. Clair (1963)
I decided to try to read fifty books in this year's Goodreads challenge, and I wasn't planning to write any reviews, because they take time that I better spend reading, but this book has pissed me off enough to register some thoughts. I rarely encounter one-star books, but this is changing recently now that I am working on reading a set of books from a specific list, the Appendix-N list from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide by Gary Gygax, a list of fantasy and science fiction inspirational sources.

Sign of the Labrys takes place in a post-apocalyptic plague-ridden North America. An effect of the plagues has been that people are repelled by the company of others, and they try to live in as much isolation from one another as possible. It is a fine experiment on the part of the authoress that the entire novel is written in the 1st-person POV of the protagonist. This helps to reinforce the oppressive isolation of Sam Sewell, and it also creates a claustrophobic effect for the reader, who cannot escape from the mind of the narrator-protagonist.

The prose, however, is insipid, stale, boring, and you're stuck with Sam for 168 pages. Sam could not hold my interest. The vocabulary was too simple, the language unadorned and commonplace. I do not know of Margaret St. Clair’s other writing. Perhaps when your protagonist is an average Joe, it’s necessary to make him speak in an average way. There can be no polished literary language when your 1st-person narrator is an unexceptional mundane protagonist. Sam is not, however, what he seems, and does not even know himself at the beginning of the story, but suffers from an unexpressed amnesia. He stumbles upon things that he should know, but has forgotten. “Don’t you remember?” others ask him, as if he should know things.

What Sam should be remembering is never explained for the reader, who will only figure it out when Sam does, and the reader must remain patiently in the dark with him until that should happen. The first-person narration then, is an account of his self-discovery, but it is rambling and boring, and in the end becomes a sort of glorification of witchcraft.

One annoying tic of the writing is the use of adverbs. Here are some examples:

She spun around him planetarily.
She leaned over the fish absorbedly.
He asked petulantly.
The two women began to talk hurriedly.
He closed his eyes and sucked voluptuously on his peppermint. 😂

The writer bats a thousand finding adverbs that should never be used but for the sake of humour.

Sam tells us that he “found time to wonder fleetingly what Ratty [the guy with the peppermint] had been in surface life, before he took up tending matter transmitters.”

Why must Sam wonder fleetingly? What does that even mean? A man would never "wonder fleetingly." Reading that line, and many others I forget that our protagonist is a man and not the authoress herself.

Later, Sam describes a fight: “Nipho sat down on my chest and started to strangle me. I tried to throw him off, but all I could do was to thrash futilely with my legs in the air behind him.” That doesn’t sound like a man fighting to me.

With the help of his friend, Sam is able to subdue the antagonist. They tear strips from a bedsheet to tie him up with. Sam makes the following remark: “by the time Nipho came back to consciousness I had him tied up like a holiday turkey.” A man would never say something like this. He would just say “I had tied him up.” So, disagree if you want, but for me, Ms. St. Clair has not written a convincing male protagonist here.

Here, however, is a sentence that I liked, not for any artistry, but for the curiosity of an apostrophe-s. I had seen such examples in a historical grammar book once, but never encountered it in the wild: “She risked her own life just as much as anyone’s else.” That is just a beautiful thing.

SPOILER ALERT
(If you intend to read this novel––perhaps merely on your quest to complete the list of books in the Appendix N list––do not read beyond this point!)

The most distasteful thing for me is that the protagonist, in whose 1st-person POV the entire book is narrated, makes love with Despoina, the top witch-chick in the story (there has been little build-up to this), but in the course of the story Sam has been discovering his powers and learning who he is, and after they make love the conversation goes like this:

“When I first began to dream about you,” she went on, “I never could see your face. . . . Do you know now who you are, Sam?”

“I think so. I’m the devil.”

“You’re the person our persecutors called the devil,” she amended."

Sam and Despoina climb up from the wreckage of the collapsed underground bunker; it is night and the stars are shining. Sam is now speaking more poetically, and Despoina borrows the last verse of Dante’s Inferno to cast her triumphant return from the ruined subterranean world to the surface (together with "the devil") in the glow of Dante’s emergence with Vergil from hell.

There are some big differences: (1) in Dante's Divine Comedy the devil is no hero, and he is not escaping his eternal damnation. He is held fast by ice in the pit of his underground prison at the centre of the earth; (2) Dante has been terrified by his journey, and is humbler than when he started, knowing himself as a sinner that has no hope of salvation except by the grace of God. Despoina and Sam, however, could care less about God; they have the craft, which is itself their “glowing faith;” (3) Vergil and Dante do not stop on their climb out of hell to satisfy their lusts. There is an inversion here between good and evil.

The message of the book is that witches are good; they have a gift and are merely misunderstood.

[Bobby · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There is a fungus that grows on the walls that they eat."

Love that opening line! What a strange book. It plays out in a non-linear dreamlike fashion. A lot of deus ex machina that didn't seem to bother me because I enjoyed the oddness of it all. Wiccans as heroes, post apocalyptic cave civilizations, unexpected magical/mutant powers, a very interesting dog, etc. The revelation at the end had me a bit flummoxed. Ultimately not really the novel it could have been, but makes me interested to look further at author Margaret St. Clair.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unusual early-60s sci-fi story about witches in a post-apocalyptic (killer yeast outbreak) subterranean world. What might be typical pulp (it's basically formatted as such) is made more memorable by the strangeness of the underworlds, and the fact that Margaret St. Clair converted to Wicca three years after this was published. She's clearly already an initiate here, as she dumps in Wicca details as if they're already self-evident to all involved, which makes for an uneven but intriguing reading experience.

The back blurb, proclaiming in all caps the marvelous fact that women can write sci-fi too and are closer to nature and primitive wisdom than men, has been accurately identified by plenty of others as especially awful and hilarious.

[Kateblue · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, yes, Sign of the Labrys is old, but it doesn't read like it's old. And yes, I read it as a kid, and re-read it, and re-read it, as we all do with books we love as kids. But I still don't understand the low rating. Now that I have re-read it all these years later, it still holds up.

The setting is a very creative dystopian Earth. Dystopias being popular, you'd think people would like this book more. Also, although it's futuristic with some technology, there are also fantasy elements, so everyone should like it.

It's not the usual dystopian YA. Instead, the main characters are actually adults. A plus for me as I have read so many YA "after the end" books in recent years.

The circumstances that created the dystopia are revealed slowly as the plot demands instead of being dropped on the reader in the dreaded expository info dump. Wanting to find out about what happened to mess up the world draws the reader further into the book, painlessly, entertainingly. Well done.

Also, the characters are interesting. Sam, the hero, who doesn't really want to be a hero, grows throughout the book. The secondary characters actions' sometimes seem mysterious, but all the mystery hangs together to lead to a satisfying ending.

In fact, the worst thing about it is the purple cover picture with the monster-like guy and the rats. Though possibly a kewl picture, it is totally misleading as to what this book is actually like.

Try this, I think you will like it.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sign of The Labrys by Margaret St.Clair is well written, and starts out in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future, but turns out it's fantasy, not science fiction, with Wicca and magic. Normally I wouldn't read something like that, but it was written so well it was as easy to keep reading as to put down. The Wiccan protagonists explore underground survivalist-city levels and caverns, trying to keep ahead of a new would-be police-state faction. If you like that sort of thing you'll probably enjoy it. Good suspense, original ideas.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed in this book - it was nowhere near as good as The Shadow People, by the same author. And it is truly weird fiction - part post-apocalyptic sci-fi, part fantasy, part Wicca . . . very strange. Enjoyable, but strange.

[Sol]

WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!
ORIGINAL!BRILLIANT!!DAZZLING!!!
Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind's obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by the recourse to ageless immemorial rites...
FRESH!IMAGINATIVE!!INVENTIVE!!!

I don't think I'm gonna read a better blurb than this for a long time.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this 1963 novel from a used bookstore almost entirely because of the back cover blurb, which reads:

"WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!
ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!!

Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind's obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites...

FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!!"

The book itself is a bit of a head-trip through a plague-ravaged post-apocalyptic world with a heavy dose of Wicca mixed in. There are some interesting questions about what is real and what is hallucinated and whether science can bring people powers thought to be supernatural. But really, if that breathlessly excited cover description didn't grab you, I don't know what would.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This bit of 1963 sci-fi craziness starts with a cool, overly relatable premise -- a plague of viruses has wiped out 90% of the population of the U.S. (maybe the world, we don't know) and many survivors live in huge, empty underground bunkers built for survivors of a nuclear war.

Now they're empty, but they have stockpiles of food and water to last centuries. Power, water, and other necessities are basically free, if you can find them. And you don't have to work, but some folks do out of boredom.

Cool. Then comes the plot, which is weird and convoluted, and involves many things that might be magic, or illusions, or technology, or something; It's hard to tell. Our hero, creatively named Sam, wanders around without much interest in anything until, whaddaya know, he meets a girl who changes everything.

There's stuff that reminded me a lot of Logan's Run (everyone's a bit promiscuous and clothes seem largely optional) and, as you go along, more and more Wicca. Wiccans are a big feature of the book, and their powers/skills.

We never know exactly what's up with that, other than that they've lived other lives or something, it's never really explained in depth.

Far too many of the obstacles are overcome by powers Sam has that he didn't know he had until right when he needs them (others do similar things, though, presumably, they knew they could). It's hard to hang a plot on that sort of thing, and several times it stretches credulity.

Still, a lot of the book stretches credulity, and that's half the fun. I mean, the FBY (Federal Bureau of Yeast, I kid you not) battles it out with Wiccans, people eat purple fungus, there's a two-brained swimming dog, a lot of rat tides, a blobby monster, an escape though an autoclave, escalator chases, grenade battles, mystic powers, a poor chubby guy who loves building miniature landscapes (St. Clair is pretty rough on the only overweight character in the book, sadly), and a dude who falls in love with a relative (then, fortunately, someone else).

It doesn't make a lot of sense, ultimately, but the post-apocalyptic world St. Clair invented is fascinating and would make a great movie. It does remind one of Omega Man, Logan's Run, Silent Running, and Soylent Green all rolled into one.

And, curiously, this book is listed in the famous "Appendix N" from early editions of the Dungeons and Dragons game, where that game's creator, Gary Gygax, lists books that inspired the game. Though Sign of the Labrys seems much better suited to Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha, two post-apocalyptic role-playing games from the 1970s and 80s. James Ward, who created both, surely read Sign of the Labrys first.

[Kenneth · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book came out in 1963, the same year I was born. I came to read this through appendix N. Appendix N was a reading list in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide that outlined the books and authors that had most influenced Gary Gygax in his creation of D&D. Someone brought it up on Facebook the other day, and I looked back over it for the first time in decades. I had read every author listed at least a little, most I'd read deeply. Save one. Margaret St. Claire. So I picked up Sign of the Labrys.

Fiction has changed a lot in nearly sixty decades. I've been doing a lot of reading of older pulp works during my Covid year. Some of it stands up really well. Some of it does not. Aside from any racism or misogyny you might run into to spoil the fun, the expectations I have for fiction have changed a bit. I say this to let you know, I read older works, I still enjoy a lot of them. This book, on the other hand, is mystifying.

None of the characters are more than nametags. There is not plot, things just happen. It's a chosen one narrative that makes little effort to set that up. It's all about Wiccans, the author was an early adopter, but set in a post apocalyptic future. It's like someone telling you a dream. Things happen, they seem to have some importance to the dreamer, but there's no logical narrative and the symbolism is too personal to be meaningful to anyone else. It was...a SEEDLESS grape! I mean, your HALF SISTER caused the plague! If it had been any longer I would have chucked it in, because things happen and the reader has absolutely no reason to care.

A lot of older Sci Fi is about ideas. The characters and plot are secondary to the Laws of Robotics and the changes to society, or how humanity would deal with aliens, or whatever. It feels like this author had something really deeply buried to say about Wicca, modern society, or something, but just couldn't quite bring it up far enough to translate it to other humans.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 2 out of 5]

4/10. Soporífero y mal llevado, no leí más de la autora.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a world devastated by yeast plague, Sam Sewell is caught between the forces of the old world of magic and the remnants of the technological government, the FBY. This is one of the many inspirations from the infamous Appendix N that influenced Dungeons & Dragons, especially its early focus on dungeons and friendliness to a combination of technology and magic. It is definitely a strange world, where there is such an abundance that nobody counts the cost, even in lives.

It is also very much a relic of the sixties. Even relatively good people think it was a good idea to kill over 90% of the population. It stopped a nuclear war, and it made a vague form of socialism possible, in the narrator’s mind, anyway. Even at the beginning it is clear that he’s pretty happy that the pre-plague world created a huge surplus of food, shelter, and supplies, and then enough of them were killed to make food, shelter, and supplies so abundant that there’s enough for everyone, at least for his lifetime.

Of course, it helps that the narrator is one of the survivors. Those who died of the plague are not consulted. Neither are the future generations who will outlive the abundance left by the dead.

[Jesús · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pufff. Entre unas cosas y otras he leído muy muy poco estas semanas/mes y encima este libro no me ha enganchado nada. Mezcla un poco la ciencia ficción con los Wicca, que al parecer es todo esto de las brujas, el demonio y la magia ritual... A mi no me ha gustado, quizás si no se me hubiese atragantado antes le hubiese dado un 2 o un 3 pero vaya...

[Printable Tire]

Witches in a post-apocalyptic underground world? Something like that. I read this one Halloween when I was visiting Salem.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantasy, Wicca and fungus. What’s not to like??

[SmarkDent · Rating 1 out of 5]

Completely baffling tale of witches, plagues and fungus.

[Jason Schoenleber · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started off good, but quickly turned into some crappy Wicca proselytizing. The ending was all over the place and poorly written. Don't water your time on it.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange novel, part H.P. Lovecraft and part A.E. van Vogt, Sign of the Labrys starts well enough. About halfway through it loses direction, becomes something entirely different, and has a most unconvincing ending. The first part of the novel reads like a post-apocalyptic story inspired by Lovecraft. The population is decimated by a fungal plague. Now, people wander around, keep themselves busy doing pointless tasks, and live in isolation. They cannot stand the presence of other humans. Also, there is some kind of edible fungus growing around. This isolationism and fungus focus are what give me the Lovecraft sense. The narrator is surprised by a man from the FBY, the remains of the federal government who seem intent on keeping some kind of bureaucratic order. He insists that Sam, the narrator, knows a woman named Despoina, but Sam has never heard of her and has no idea what the FBY man is talking about. Events lead to Sam discovering that he is some kind of plague carrier, not affected by it, but in close enough proximity people who contact him will die, with goo flowing from their mouths. This all seems very interesting and Lovecraftian enough to make me wonder what a post-apocalyptic Lovecraft story might look like. But then, the story takes a sudden weird turn into a much less interesting account of how Sam discovers that he is a kind of superman, hence the A.E.van Vogt vibe, and is now on the run from the dangerous FBY, who turn out to be cartoon villains. Sam is no ordinary superman, though. He is a Wicca superman. Yes, Sam discovers that he is connected, without ever knowing it, to a Wicca cult that is actively fighting against the FBY, and has been working on a secret cure to the fungal plague. This second part of the novel races through events, and Sam suddenly seems to know all kinds of things about witchcraft, though how he knows it remains unclear. Thus, all of the setting details of the first, and far more interesting, half, become meaningless. Sam could have found his Wicca powers in just about any setting, and certainly St. Clair could have contrived a setting that would fit more comfortably with that story. I much preferred the semi-surreal world of purple fungus, behavior distorting diseases, preternaturally communicative dogs, an entire community living in a drug-induced happy obliviousness. The Wicca vs. the government story just did not keep my interest.

[Nicolas Lontel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Résumé en une phrase, ce livre serait un roman de science-fiction post-apocalyptique labyrinthique d'inspiration wiccan sur le LSD. Le protagoniste est un homme assez ordinaire pour la société où un démolisseur d'un niveau souterrain avec des aptitudes extra-sensorielles rendu plutôt misanthrope par les effets de l'apocalypse est ordinaire. Je vais m'arrêter là pour les listes interminables de description, mais ça vous donne une idée du type de roman que c'est.

Suite à la visite d'un agent du FBY (et son décès), notre protagoniste est lancé dans une quête à la recherche d'une femme, Despoina, dans les niveaux encore plus sous-terrains que le sien (en contexte, l'homme est situé au niveau sous-terrain E; il tentera d'atteindre le niveau H).

Dans sa quête, il se fera aider par Kyra, une femme mystérieuse qui le guidera à travers un étage (F) rempli d'expériences scientifiques étranges (incluant une machine projetant de la radiation à travers un mur pour une raison jamais expliquée), il se retrouvera après sur un étage réservé à l'élite (VIP) (étage G) ayant survécu à l'apocalypse, etc.

Sa quête va comprendre aussi des hallucinations, des rêves, des perceptions extra-sensorielles, des interactions avec de la technologie et de la magie, des humains/créatures parfois assez étrange.

Bref, un roman complètement éclaté et foisonnant dans un univers riche et labyrinthique à en s'y perdre. Un récit unique en son genre (après, je n'ai pas lu le reste de la fiction de l'autrice), je suis définitivement intrigué· à en lire davantage d'elle et bien que certaines questions restent non répondues, il était intéressant de voir le casse-tête narratif être assemblé.

[Вікторія Слінявчук · Rating 3 out of 5]

Очень странная книга. Необычная смесь постапокалиптической фантастики и фэнтези. Мир, в котором 9/10 населения выкосила "чума" (точнее, эпидемии вызванные взбесившимися дрожжами), а главный герой живет в огромном подземном бункере, построенном когда-то на случай ядерной войны - и тут же ведьмовской союз, практикующий викканскую магию.
Знак лабриса - двустороннего топора - намекает на древний Крит. Встречаются и другие элементы, с ним связанные - кольцо в минойском стиле, одежда главной ведьмы подобна наряду критской жрицы, да и сам многоуровневый бункер с запутанной планировкой в чем-то напоминает Лабиринт. Вероятно, это намёк на то, что магическая традиция, о которой идет речь, восходит аж к минойской эпохе. Более глубокого смысла этих аллюзий я как-то не уловила...
Путешествия героев по бункеру-лабиринту напоминают и психоделический трип (и психоактивные вещества реально используются персонажами), и прохождение уровней компьютерной игры. А ведь книга была написана в 1961-м, задолго до эпохи персональных компьютеров и уж тем более игр типа "Dungeons&Dragons". Интересно, может, первые гейм-дизайнеры вдохновлялись книгой Сент-Клер?..

Если бы пришлось, как в школе, сочинение на тему "что хотел сказать автор?", не знала бы, что и написать :)

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is very interesting for a few reasons: it's the first fictional work with Wicca as a major theme; the plot and tone document how profoundly the pessimism of the early nuclear era permeated people's minds; and the resonance in 2020 of the plague setting where people can't bear to be near each other.

Unfortunately there are at least as many marks against it. I find the pulp-style writing hard to wade through; the narrator character is both bland and inscrutable in a way that doesn't really pay off; and I don't know if the author had to double down on the misogyny of mid-century sci-fi because she was a woman, but just to cite the most egregious example: at one point the narrator accidentally kills a young woman, then decides that it's fine because she was vapid. The story moves on from there and it's never brought up again or made relevant in any way.

3 stars instead of 1 or 2 just because of the historical/literary significance and the labrys references.

[Anthony Emmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read. A post-apocalyptic science fiction novel in which 90% of the human race was wiped out by a fungal infection. The survivors live in various underground shelters and the last surviving government agency is the FDY (yes, Y, not I). The religion of Wicca plays an interesting role in the plot, and the male protagonist is, unuusally for the time, not a square-jawed, two-fisted hero but a rather plain, likeable fellow.

The author writes in what I call a stream-of-consciousness style. Very little is explained by way of narrative but rather by interaction and inference. There is neither a huge climatic finale, nor is there any kind of traditional closure. The novel just ends. Some migjt find this perplexing or not to their individual taste, but it actually works for the plot in an almost Tiger or the Lady fashion.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately confused on what I just read...a post-apocalyptic story where humans live underground due to a fungal plague, and the heroes of the story are witches who are trying to hide their identities from the current government and their police-state organization called the "FBY." What was St. Claire on? Wicca, apparently. Anyway, there are portions of this wholly original plot where her writing is suspenseful and terrifying even today, and those parts made the book worth reading. Then there was everything else. Like the narrative being a bit too simple sometimes, and explanations of terms, pseudoscience, and ideas being a little too thick or thin. Very meh in some areas, but there are some gems here.

[Luciano · Rating 1 out of 5]

Esta es de esas novelas en las que la trama es un misterio y el protagonista tiene que desentrañarlo esporádicamente, y cada revelación genera otro misterio; así que nunca sabes qué parte de lo que llevas leyendo es importante o no, y mucho menos como conectarlas entre sí. Lo que resulta como consecuencia que el protagonista deba actuar todo el tiempo confiando ciegamente en la palabra de otros, y no por una resolución lógica, como si fuera una marioneta de la autora. Si bien esto no me generaría tanto disgusto si lo que hubiese sido descubierto fuera interesante, este no es el caso. No hay nada que me resulte innovador o llamativo. Razón por la que al llegar a la mitad decidí dejarla.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyable for the first 55 pages, this book then becomes a boring slog. Pointless and lacking any impact, a generic messiah story tells place with some people doing something and then bravely facing the unknown bla bla blah.

And tell me this: why does a book featuring a society of female Wiccan practitioners need a male protagonist? Why is the Chosen One for this all-female society a dude? Why is he the most powerful magician they have, when he is only fueled by raw talent and confidence? This is either be an amazing parable of the way women willingly give away their magic to boring dudes who later mistreat them, or a sh*tty book about witches.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

"Margaret St. Clair was one of a handful of prolific women SF authors who started publishing short fiction in the late 40s—her first SF story was “Rocket to Limbo” for the November 1946 issue of Fantastic Adventures. From the late 50s to the early 70s she published eight slim novels, mostly Ace Doubles (paired with authors such as Philip K. Dick and Kenneth Blulmer). Regardless of her earlier publishing prowess—by the publication date of Sign of the Labrys (1963) she had four novels [...]"