The twenty-first Tor Double is the first time both of the authors in a collection are repeats. It includes the second (and final) Samuel R. Delany story, We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, and the second of three Roger Zelazny story, Home is the Hangman. Delany first appeared in Tor Double #4 and Zelazny in #12. It is also unique in that it is the first time one of the stories (Delany’s) includes a dedication to the other author (Zelazny).

We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line was originally published as “Lines of Power” in Fantasy & Science Fiction in May, 1968. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.

In We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line, Samuel R. Delany has created a futuristic world which has fragmented, but in which technology has continued to advance. Blacky belongs to a team whose job it is to bring electrical power to isolated regions which don’t have power. As the story opens, Blacky has received a promotion and a new woman, Sue, has been hired to fill his old position. Their team is made up of four individuals, Blacky and Sue, Mabel, who is the team leader, and Scotty.

They know they are doing good work, helping keep people from falling into a literal dark age. When they are called to an isolated Canadian commune known as High Haven, however, Blacky is in for a surprise. It turns out that not everybody wants to be on the grid, and some are willing to fight to retain their isolation and non-electrified ways.

High Haven appears to be a small township that is difficult to reach, except by “broomsticks,” a futuristic version of a motorcycle, and the township seems almost designed to emulate a biker gang in its manner of governance. Currently, it is led by Roger, who only recently overthrew his predecessor, Sam. Roger’s partner, is Fidessa, who had been Sam’s partner until she saw the writing on the wall and threw in her lot with Roger.

Although Roger makes it clear to Blacky that Blacky and electricity are not welcome in High Haven, he also greets Blacky and Sue with a host’s graciousness, showing them around the commune and explaining to them how their system works, why they want to remain isolated, even understanding some of the drawbacks of that isolationism, and why they don’t want or need to be wired for electricity. It is a viewpoint that is as alien to Blacky as if the High Havenites and landed from the sky.

While Blacky doesn’t come around to their point of view, he does question why electricity and modernity should be forced upon a people who have weighed the plusses and minuses of the situation and made an informed decision. The fact that people an leave High Haven, as happened following Roger’s defeat of Sam, indicates that the people who remain are in agreement, at least up to a point.

Delany is using the introduction of electricity to the High Havenites and an analog for colonization. The outsiders believe they know what is best for a community and strive to give them the blessings of their knowledge. Even when one of those outsiders can understand that they are not necessarily changing things for the better, they find themselves up against the inertia of the system, especially when the colonizer vastly outnumber the group whose way of life is being impinged on.

Even if Roger shows hospitality to Blacky in an attempt to get Blacky to agree to bypass High Haven, Fidessa sees the writing on the wall. She acknowledges, and shares with Blacky, that High Haven is hemorrhaging citizens. Five left when Roger took over and she expects only one of them might return. They once had scores of citizens, but there numbers have declined dramatically, so the community is barely able to sustain itself. If she once deserted Sam because she saw Roger as his successor, she now sees that Blacky will take over from Roger, even if neither of them men have that in mind.

While Blacky gains sympathy for the High Havenites, he cannot persuade Mabel that they should turn their backs on the community. Her response is that just because they provide electricity doesn’t mean the High Havenites have to use it. Fidessa, however, sees through that claim. Even if they commune doesn’t want electricity, if it is there, it will be used and will change their way of life despite their desire and intentions. Electricity, of course, is a stand-in for any other technological advancement that a colonist attempts to force upon an indigenous people.

Blacky may have sympathy for Roger and the other High Havenites, but it is difficult for the reader to drum up much sympathy for the society which they are trying to build. Danny, who makes tools for them, has been practically blinded in an attack by Sam, but they have limited resources to help him. Invited to a party, Sue must fend off sexual aggressors. Nevertheless Blacky’s team still tries to provide them with the help his team feels they need. The unsympathetic portrayal of the culture, if not of individuals, makes it difficult for the reader to get on board with Roger’s desire to save his world even as the reader is aware of the destructive nature of Blacky’s aid.

Home is the Hangman was originally published in Analog in November, 1975. It won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

Roger Zelazny offers up a mystery in this story. His protagonist, who is unnamed, but uses the pseudonym “John Donne,” is hired by Don Walsh to help alleviate the concerns of Senator Jesse Brockden. Opening with a lengthy data dump provided by Walsh, the reader and “Donne” learn that twenty years earlier Brockden was one of four people who helped train the “Hangman,” an anthropomorphic robot artificial intelligence, which Zelanzy takes great effort to explain is not the same as a telefactor, a remote controlled robot.

Brackden is concerned because the Hangman may have returned to Earth and begun murdering the people who helped program it. The first victim was Manny Burns, a New Orleans businessman, and Brackden is concerned that the Hangman will come after him, Leila Thackery, and David Fantris, although he refused to explain why he thinks the Hangman had come back to wreak its retribution. Against his better judgment, “Donne” accepts the case and begins traveling to St. Louis and Memphis to interview Thackery and Fantris and figure out the motives for the strange case and potentially stopping the murderous robot.

Zelazny brings a noir sensibility to “Donne”’s investigation as he connives his way into Thackery’s building and gets an interview with her. A psychiatrist, Thackery explains to “Donne” that she doesn’t think the Hangman is a threat and refuses to take any steps to protect herself from it. She also worries that Brackden, who is dying, is under too much stress in trying to accomplish too many things before his illness kills him. Despite this, “Donne” heads down to see Fantris in Memphis.

His interview with Fantris goes differently than the one with Donne. Donne has managed to figure out who “Donne” really is, at least with broad strokes. While Thackery has built up a successful psychiatric practice, Fantris has found religion. “Donne” doesn’t get much more out of Fantris than he did from Thackery, but shortly after his visit, Thackery also turns up dead, leading “Donne” to rush back to St. Louis to try to beat the Hangman to Thackery.

There is a strong sense of place throughout Home Is the Hangman. The Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and rural Wisconsin Zelazny depicts all have different feels. Moreover, rather than having “Donne” simply show up at those places, Zelazny describes the hotels and motels he stays in, the airports he moves through, providing a depth of realism to the world. The Hangman, however, remains elusive, but the realistic geography allows “Donne” to predicts its path, and the reader to imagine the robot moving stealthily up the Mississippi River and through nighttime streets and alleys to avoid detection as it strives to achieve its goals.

“Donne” is eventually able to learn about a secret the four have kept ever since their days programming the brain of the Hangman twenty years before. He also finds himself in a showdown with the Hangman in Wisconsin, where Brockden is trying to hide from the robot. Zelazny has managed to introduce  a twist to the story which allows it to retain both the detective noir elements as well as the horror aspects as the relentless Hangman tracks down and kills his progenitors for a long-ago indiscretion.

The Hangman is built up using all the tropes of the vengeful monsters coming back to strike at its creators, with Zelazny going so far as to have one of the characters reference Frankenstein’s monster. Zelazny is very clearly aware of the tropes the reader expects to find and he enjoys playing with those tropes to subvert the readers expectations. “Donne” comes to conclusions that are similar to the readers and is surprised to discover that not only is he wrong, but that his actions have precipitated some of the very things he had hoped to head off.

In the end, after Zelazny reveals what the Hangman is trying to do and why the Hangman is acting the way it is, the reader is still left with the mystery of who “John Donne” really is. Since the story is told from “Donne”’s perspective, it isn’t surprising that he doesn’t give his identity away, however, he does provide the reader with some clues that are left by Fantris, who has indicated that he knows “Donne”’s secrets.

Wayne Barlowe provided the cover for We, in Some Strange Power’s Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line.  Martin Andrews provided the cover for Home is the Hangman.

 

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.