James Nicoll Reviews

1984’s Circumpolar! is the first volume in Richard A. Lupoff’s Twin Planet’s duology.

It has long been known that the Earth is a flattened toroid. Vast ice walls bar the southern (outer) edge of the planet. Fierce winds make passage through the hole at the northern (inner) region nearly impassable. Therefore, while this side of the Earth — the side with Eurasia, the Americas, and all the other familiar continents — has been mapped, nothing is known of the other side.

Mrs. Victoria Woodhull Martin offers fifty thousand dollars to the first team to somehow reach and return from the other side of Earth.

Two aviator teams undertake this historic challenge.

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Richard A. Lupoff’s 1978 Space War Blues is a military science fiction novel (more on that later). A fix-up, it incorporates material previously published in Again, Dangerous Visions (more on that later), and various volumes of New Dimensions, Amazing Magazine, and Heavy Metal. The Dell edition includes introductions from Harlan-Ellison-superfan Harlan Ellison and Richard A. Lupoff (and oh yes, more on that later).

Fast interstellar ships allowed the people of Earth to spread out to a plethora of habitable worlds. Every community could have a planet of its own!

Now, one might think this would mean an end to war. That sunny view fails to take into account that the core value that defines N’Alabama is white supremacy. Confident in their inherent superiority over black people, N’Alabama resolves to defeat and conquer N’Haiti.

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