Xenograffiti (13 page)
With the loss of the 1790 and 1800 Virginia censuses, all that officially remains of many of these persons is their mention on the personal property tax rolls levied statewide beginning in 1782. Every free white male of the age of twenty-one years or over was required to pay a minimum poll tax, plus additional sums for specific categories of personal belongings (including, at various times, horses, cattle, wagons, watches, hogs, and, of course, Negroes). The real estate registers were maintained completely separately. Beginning in 1787, the rolls also included white males of the ages of 16-21, often enumerated by name with their parents or guardians. Even those exempt—paupers, widows, certain professionals—had to be listed, making the tax registers virtually year-by-year censuses of each Virginia county. Through a systematic perusal of these rolls, one can guess at family relationships, estimate the ages of sons who appear with their fathers between their twenty-first and twenty-second birthdays, and determine when families have left the area (and possibly match their reappearances elsewhere in the surviving tax lists of other Virginia and Kentucky counties). When joined with surviving deed, will, and other records, the tax lists can often verify or support genealogical hypotheses established elsewhere.
Vogt and Kethley have been extraordinarily careful and meticulous in their transcriptions. All of the lists, including the few previously published elsewhere, have been copied or recopied from the original documents, or from microform reproductions of same. Column notations, which often vary from page to page in the originals, have been maintained exactly as written. Spellings have been rendered precisely as penned, included the raised abbreviations for given names so common during this period. Page breaks on the original lists are carefully noted. Names which could not be read are so noted; textual breaks and cut-outs are precisely marked. Sources or locations of the originals are always stated. Relatively few lists survive prior to the inauguration of the personal property tax registers, but Vogt and Kethley have managed to assemble an astonishing number of hitherto unknown and unpublished records, including an extraordinary 1779 petition that includes several hundred residents, surely a large percentage of the free white males then resident in the county. The index is comprehensive and easy to follow.
One can lament the many gaps in Stafford County tax, deed, and will records prior to 1800, and wish that fate had been kinder to documents which might have revealed many permanently-buried secrets of the families in this region. In the end, however, one can only be thankful for what does survive. Let us applaud the wide sweep and careful accuracy of Vogt and Kethley’s scholarship, encourage them to produce additional volumes in this series, and thank them both for a job exceptionally well done.
GEORGE ZEBROWSKI’S FICTIONAL UNIVERSE (1991)
Like Olaf Stapledon before him, George Zebrowski paints his fictive vistas with the brush of æons, adding and subtracting galaxies and centuries with great slashing strokes. Not for him are the crabbed miniatures of most science-fiction novelists, whose collective vision barely extends over the next hill. Zebrowski is concerned with the “big picture,” the long-term fate of mankind, the end (and the beginning) of things, the how and where and particularly the
why
of life, the universe, and everything. Where so many of his compatriots are now producing western, mystery, and mainstream novels with SF trappings, sequel upon sequel upon inanity,
this
author has written and continues to pen brilliant
science
fictions which could be presented in no other conceivable form.
Beginning life as the child of Polish parents displaced by World War II, Zebrowski grew up in England, Manhattan, Miami, and the Bronx, even then a wasteland of broken dreams and deadened hopes. He began reading science fiction at an early age, and was writing his first stories in the 1960s. In 1970 he published “The Water Sculptor,” the first of a hundred stories which quickly earned him numerous award nominations. The author’s first novel,
The Omega Point
(1972), later expanded into
The Omega Point Trilogy
(1983), provided an initial showcase for Zebrowski’s cosmic visions of man and the universe. These early fictions pale, however, before the sweep and impact of the writer’s first major novel,
Macrolife
(1979), which would ensure him a place in the SF Hall of Fame even if he never wrote another word.
Zebrowski had penned the first drafts of
Macrolife
as early as 1964, although the book was not completed until fifteen years later. In a near-future Earth, the discovery of bulerite (named for the Bulero family) has revolutionized architecture and economics. Lightweight, versatile, stronger than steel, bulerite has enabled the construction of huge cityplexes, and facilitated the exploration of near-Earth space, with the subsequent colonization of Mars, the asteroids, and several of the larger moons in the Solar System. Unknown to the Buleros, however, bulerite is inherently unstable, and as structures made of the element begin to disintegrate or explode, they pull civilization down with it. Three of the Buleros—Richard, Sam, and Janet—escape to Asterome, a hollowed-out, ten-mile-long asteroid in Earth orbit, along with other scattered refugees from the devastated planet below. Earth is enveloped in an impenetrable cloud, with no hope of any life surviving the incessant lightning storms raging over its surface.
Asterome represents the first stage of macrolife, a self-sufficient, self-contained structure that will eventually spread intelligent life to every part of the universe. Eventually, Asterome leaves the Solar System, traveling to nearby stars, and utilizing the raw materials from their planets to construct new macrolife globes as its own compartments become crowded, or as social divisions develop among the populace. The flexibility of this arrangement, and the gradual lengthening of life-spans, enable humanity to grow literally without limits, to avoid frictions that might lead to war, to develop intellectually and emotionally in ways never before contemplated. Eventually, an alien macrolife unit is located, one of many such structures traversing the galaxy, and contact is made, to the mutual benefit of both races. The mental links between these groups seem to promise another stage in the development of mankind.
Eventually, a hundred billion years later, all intelligence has merged into one group mind. But the universe is winding down toward ultimate nullity, when all matter will collapse into the final explosion. John Bulero, a clone of Samuel Bolero, suddenly finds his consciousness reconstituted for some ultimate decision. Is there something more? the intelligences ask. Can anything survive the final debacle? The answers to these questions lead Bulero to the third level of macrolife, a consciousness so powerful that it can create its own universes, can transcend time and space itself.
Zebrowski’s next major novel,
Stranger Suns
(1991), represents a further fifteen years of effort, an early draft having been published in much abridged form in 1975. Juan Obrion and his three companions discover an abandoned alien spaceship buried deep in the Antarctic ice. The ship admits them, then abruptly takes off for an unknown destination. The explorers discover matter replicators within the ship that solve their immediate problems of food and water supply, but no sign of the race which had constructed the vessel. They determine that the aliens have built a network of way stations within the suns of both our galaxy and its neighbors; these sophisticated facilities have similarly been abandoned, as have the surface structures found on a barren planet at the end of the chain. Eventually Juan and his friends determine that a set of black panels in the ship’s bowels connect directly through hyperspace to similar panels on two other vessels left within the Solar System, one buried in the Amazon jungle, the other on the Moon, and to other alien vessels and facilities, enabling instantaneous movement through tremendous distances.
However, nothing in Zebrowski’s works is ever quite what it seems, because the very act of moving back and forth through the portals alters either the viewer or the viewed in ways which are sometimes subtly, sometimes grossly skewed from the original. Eye color may be changed, or the outcome of a football game—or the fundamental history of the world as Obrion has known it. Why did the alien race develop this alternate mode of transportation? Why have all their facilities been abandoned? Where have they gone? Can mankind use these structures to ensure its survival? The answers to these questions lead Obrion and company on a strange odyssey beyond the universe to an existence outside time and space as we know it.
The author’s third major work,
The Killing Star
(with Charles Pellegrino, 1995), poses another curious question: if the universe is filled with intelligent life, as Carl Sagan and many other scientists have proposed, must they necessarily be as friendly as has been postulated? And if they’re not friendly, or even if they’re just a little bit afraid of what we might do to them in the future, won’t they do it to us first? Within the first few pages of this gripping adventure set a hundred years hence, most of humanity is wiped out by an unseen alien race which has decided to dispose of a potential problem with humanity before it arises. By accelerating rocks and other debris to near-light speeds, the unseen enemies create devastating bombs that home in on all radio emissions in the solar system, eliminating 99% of the human species within a few minutes. All that survive are isolated outposts and ships, and these are quickly targeted for “mop-up” operations by the alien intruders. The bulk of this gripping saga deals with the efforts of the remnants of humanity to survive and fight back, countering the overwhelming alien presence with new and innovative scientific discoveries.
Zebrowski has penned more than just these three novels, of course. His young adult series,
The Sunspacers
Trilogy
(comprising
Sunspacer
[1984],
The Stars Will Speak
[1985], and
Behind the Stars
[1996]), has been well-received in the juvenile market. His numerous short stories include significant works of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mainstream fiction. His editorial credits include numerous original and reprint anthologies, and long service as co-editor of the
Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America
. He also has gathered together several collections of his essays, including the groundbreaking pieces on Eastern European SF featured in
Beneath the Red Star:
Studies on International Science Fiction
(edited by Pamela Sargent, published in 1996), and the forthcoming selection of autobiographical essays,
Perfecting Visions
.
Most of Zebrowski’s fiction focuses on man’s attempts to rise from the mud of his mundane existence and lift his face to the stars. If our race is to survive the wars and chances of planet-bound existence, he seems to be saying, we must leave this place for the limitless reaches of outer space, we must find new challenges for the species as a whole. Life on Earth is inherently flawed, for by creating a world on the edge of collapse we have imperiled our own future existence. In Zebrowski’s cosmos, limited or unlimited, Earth (the soil) is Hell, the stars (the universe) are Heaven, and humanity can become either god or devil, savior or destroyer, as he or she so chooses.
THE FANTASY WORLDS OF KATHERINE KURTZ (1991)
The beginning of the tale, as related by the author in
The Deryni Archives
, derived from an especially vivid dream which came to her on the night of October 11, 1964. Kurtz summarized what she remembered of this vision on a 3 x 5” card, and shortly thereafter expanded the scenario into the novelette, “Lords of Sorandor.” “Sorandor” was in turn reworked into the climactic section of Kurtz’s first novel,
Deryni Rising
.
These journeyman efforts contain all of the seeds of the author’s later work. Katherine Kurtz has spent much of her creative life developing an alternate fantasy world centered around the medieval state of Gwynedd, the central kingdom of an area patterned roughly after tenth-to-twelfth-century England, Scotland, and Wales (in our own world, Gwynedd was an ancient name for Northern Wales). Although we can see rough similarities to medieval Britain—in language, culture, religion, and politics—there are equally striking differences.
Gwynedd and its neighbors are peopled by both humans and Deryni; the latter are outwardly similar to man, but have the innate ability to perform acts which their fellow humans regard as magical. These psychic talents vary considerably from individual to individual, and may be developed further with appropriate training. The history of Gwynedd has been marred by a series of conflicts between the two races, the Deryni having controlled Gwynedd for less than a century of its history. (They still control Torenth, a large neighboring kingdom, which they have ruled from its inception.) Such clashes have been exacerbated by lack of empathy between the two groups, by arrogance on the part of the Deryni, and by outright racial hatred and envy on the human side, with concomitant persecutions and pogroms of the Deryni minority.
Kurtz’s geography also varies significantly from the Europe we know, and these differences have themselves altered the political dynamic of the region. Unlike Britain, for example, Gwynedd is joined directly to the mainland; without the benefit of a channel buffer, it is immediately subject to invasion from hostile neighbors. The Mediterranean Sea does not seem to exist in this world, although references are made at several points to a “Holy Land” where Christ was born, preached, and martyred, much as in our own world. We can also see rough equivalents to the Moors, Gauls, and other ethnic groups from Earth, but no other obvious political, historical, or geographical correspondences with real-life medieval Europe.
The religious hierarchy of Kurtz’s world is also subtly different from that of medieval Europe, generally following the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, but being organized administratively along the lines of our own world’s Eastern Orthodoxy or the Anglican Church. Thus, each major state contains its own autocephalous religious body, governed by an archbishop or patriarch chosen and supported by an independent ruling Synod. There is no “Pope” or central Church authority (indeed, no “Rome”) in Kurtz’s “Europe,” although Latin remains the official Church language, and the celebration of the mass its key ritual.
Kurtz has developed her world in four sets of trilogies and nine short stories, eight of the latter being collected in
The Deryni Archives
. “The Chronicles of the Deryni,” comprising
Deryni Rising
(1970),
Deryni Checkmate
(1972), and
High Deryni
(1973), relate the rise to power of King Kelson Haldane, who succeeds to the throne of Gwynedd at the age of thirteen when his father is assassinated. The Haldanes, although not traditionally Deryni, have the ability to exercise similar powers when these have been activated through a magical ritual. Kelson represents the new man, merging the best of both blood lines into one person, unfettered by the past and able to forge the nation into a unified whole. In these three novels Kelson defeats the two representatives of the Festil dynasty, consolidates his position as King, and begins exploring his arcane heritage.
“The Legends of Camber of Culdi,” comprising
Camber of Culdi
(1976),
Saint Camber
(1978), and
Camber the Heretic
(1981), take place two hundred years earlier, at a time when Deryni monarchs ruled Gwynedd. Camber, the Deryni Earl of Culdi, proves instrumental in locating the last Haldane heir, Prince Cinhil, whom he restores to the throne after the latter kills the Deryni King Imre. By the end of Cinhil’s reign the restoration has created a backlash against the Deryni minority, resulting in increasingly harsh measures and massacres, as the newly-appointed human bishops and peers assume the reins of power.
“The Histories of King Kelson,” including
The Bishop’s Heir
(1984),
The King’s Justice
(1985), and
The Quest for Saint Camber
(1986), return to the time of Kelson, picking up where
High Deryni
left off. Now eighteen, Kelson must face a revolt in the provinces, endure a marriage of convenience and the murder of his wife, and counter further unrest at home, as the surviving conservative bishops attempt to oust him and his government. He also faces treachery from within his own family, and ultimately learns that the art of statesmanship must be tempered with the king’s justice.
“The Heirs of Saint Camber,” comprising
The Harrowing of Gwynedd
(1989),
King Javan’s Year
(1992), and
The Bastard Prince
(1994), are set in the years following the death of King Cinhil Haldane. The king’s passing brings the forces of repression to the fore, and the few remaining Deryni must go underground to protect the remnants of their persecuted race. One by one the King’s three young sons succeed to the throne and are killed by the human monsters actually governing the realm. But King Rhys Michael’s death is not without meaning, for he leaves a will that provides his supporters with a way of overthrowing the conservative rulers. The succession of his infant son, King Owain, promises new hope for the future.
Two additional novels return to the later era in Kurtz’s fictional universe.
King Kelson’s Bride
(2000) is by far the worst contribution to the entire series, reflecting an unfortunate amalgamation of incompatible stories of political intrigue in Torenth and an attempted romance in Gwynedd between the young king and his younger cousin. Alas, this book illuminates quite clearly the author’s total inability to present either believable women characters or believable romantic situations, and the attempt to shoehorn this “love story” into the usual political machinations fails miserably.
In the Service of the King
(2003) returns to the era of two generations earlier, at the end of the reign of Kelson’s grandfather and the succession of his father, King Brion, but the tale seems in the end almost as tired and shopworn as
Bride
, reflecting a turning-in of the author’s fictional world upon itself, and a cannibalization of old scenarios and
milieux
. We have seen this all before—and better done at that!
Politics and religion are inextricably intertwined in Kurtz’s creation, as they were in our own history, with state and church constantly vying with each other and the Deryni minority for power and authority. The key players of these historical fantasies recognize that the price of failure is either disgrace or death. What sustains them is faith, an abiding and sincere belief in God, his Church, his anointed King, and their close friends and family as
the
key structures of society.
Even those depicted on Kurtz’s
tableaux
as cruel or manipulative largely perceive themselves as acting in the best interests of Church or state or family, often justifying their despicable acts through religious dictates that condemn the Deryni as evil personified. We may not applaud such individuals, but we can readily understand their motivations. The author’s villains are carefully drawn in shades of gray, not splotches of black and white; some even seem marginally sympathetic, being true in their own fashion to the world as they see it. In her fiction Kurtz consistently champions intelligence, duty, sensitivity, love, faith, truth, and all of the other finer virtues. Such attributes do not always save her characters from the acts of evil-minded men, but they save their souls for eternity, and that is a far, far better thing to do.
In recent years Kurtz has begun a new series of fantasies co-authored with Deborah Turner Harris. The Adept sequence, beginning with
The Adept
(1991), and continuing with
The Lodge of the Lynx
(1992),
The Templar Treasure
(1993),
Dagger Magic
(1995), and
Death of an Adept
(1996), feature a group of Scottish and British occult detectives seeking to right wrongs and counter the influence of evil in the modern world. Kurtz’s solo novel,
Lammas Night
(1983), which is set during World War II, can be considered a prequel to these books. These novels, while entertaining in their own right, seem less effective than the Deryni books, perhaps because the contemporary setting decreases the verisimilitude of vast conspiracies and evil magicians working their wills over time on generations of insipid followers.
The characters in the Adept books are less ambiguous, more rigid in their beliefs, and ultimately less real. Ironically, the authors’ message shines through in these books even clearer than before. Man makes of this world what he will, Kurtz seems to be saying, either a heaven or a hell, and this condition clearly presages what he (or she) will ultimately become in the afterlife.
