Re: Emshwiller and Fontenay

On Tue, 6 Mar 2007 18:07:46 +0200, netcat
<netcat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Browsing around sfsite.com, one thing led to another and I found myself
reading a review of Carol Emshwiller's _Mount_.

The plot mightily reminded me of "The Silk and the Song", which I
remember liking, and I thought, cool, she's made a novel of her original
short story. But after a bit of googling, I see Charles Fontenay was the
author of "Silk", not C.E.

I also see there hasn't been much conversation about this novel at all.
Can anyone who has read it comment on the similarities and whether or
not it's worth checking out?

I've read THE MOUNT -- as you know, since I wrote that SF Site review!
-- but not "The Silk and the Song".

But that plot, and similar ones, are not terribly uncommon. For
example, here's a snippet from something I wrote about an obscure old
magazine, the November 1956 Imaginative Tales:

"The only story that intrigued me did so for non-story reason. This is
"The Valiant Die Hard!", by Adam Chase. The story concerns humans who
have been enslaved by smaller aliens, who breed them as racing beasts,
and ride them as jockeys. (The big race is called the Peoplechase.)
The hero, a proud fast "steed", is pushed by his supposedly dead
father to rebel. Nothing terribly special here, except that this also
describes, almost to the letter, Carol Emshwiller's recent and quite
good YA novel _The Mount_. (_The Mount_, naturally, is much more fully
and interestingly developed: it shares only the basic situational set
up.)"

I also sent Kate Nepveu an entry for her "Paired Reading" page (alas
after she had stopped maintaining it) pairing THE MOUNT with Thomas
Disch's MANKIND UNDER THE LEASH.
.

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