Black Gate

The Signet science fiction novels of Zach Hughes

Zach Hughes’ For Texas and Zed (1976) was one of the very first science fiction novels I ever read, at the tender age of twelve. I probably plucked it from the paperback spinner in the PX on Rockcliffe airbase in Ottawa in the fall of ’76, shortly after we arrived from Nova Scotia — the same place I bought A.E. van Vogt’s Slan a few weeks later. The description on the back of For Texas and Zed was precisely the kind of thing that would have appealed to me at the age of 12, even if I was a little vague on where Texas was, exactly.

Spacemen from Texas on Earth had settled this remote planet centuries ago. While the rest of the galaxy was being divided between two vast warring empires, Planet Texas preserved its independence, created its own unique civilization, developed its own advanced technology. But now all that Planet Texas was and all that it believed in were threatened, as the super-powers of space moved in for the kill.

I was still figuring out what science fiction was all about at the time. But even at 12, I knew For Texas and Zed wasn’t a very good novel (even if if did contain the very first sex scene I ever encountered, with a casual description of female nipples that’s still scorched into my brain four decades later). Slan proved to be a much better book, and I gladly searched out more by A.E. van Vogt. But I never read another Zach Hughes novel (though it’s possible I did furtively flip through them in book stores, on the lookout for the word “nipple.”)

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For the last few years the major streaming players — Netflix, HBO, Amazon, Hulu, and others — have spent untold millions searching for the next Game of Thrones. A tale of dark magics, black-hearted evil, kings and princes, palace intrigue, war, treachery, and sex. I could have saved them a lot of time if they’d just asked me. I would have recommended they film John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting.

The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History was published in 1983. It’s a sprawling alternate history that combines Richard III, Edward IV, the Princes in the Tower, the Medicis, and vampires. Edward IV sits on the throne of England, but his kingdom is threatened by an expansionist Byzantine Empire. The Vampire Duke Sforza is massing a dark army against Florence, and Byzantium is on the march. High in the Alps four people come together: the exiled heir to the Byzantine throne, a beautiful physician forced to flee Florence, a Welsh wizard, and a German vampire. Together they wage a secret campaign against the entire Byzantine Empire, to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III.

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Usually I use a Vintage Treasure post to celebrate a book I enjoyed decades ago, or a tough-to-find artifact that I’ve finally tracked down. But not always. Sometimes they’re just surprises.

The 1985 Tor paperback The Exile Waiting is a fine example. It showed up in a small collection of vintage paperbacks I bought on eBay last week for $5.95. Until then, I had no idea it even existed.

This is a surprise because Vonda N. McIntyre was one of my favorite SF writers of the 70s, and I thought I was paying more attention. Her marvelous novelette “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” won the 1973 Nebula Award, and the novel it formed a part of, Dreamsnake (1978), won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. And in 1997 her novel The Moon and the Sun won the Nebula, beating George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. That’s not something you see every day.

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