The Seafarer by Ritchie Smith and Thomas Penman (New Writings in SF #26, 1976)1 opens with Karangetti and Ana sailing to an island. The beginning is typical of the story’s descriptive prose:
Putting out from Grey Havens in the early morning rain, after Karangetti and a smiling canvas-crawler acquaintance of his had raised up the swelling orange sail, he had steered his sea-craft to the south and east, then she had begun to flee before the wind. Time passed. And while they were eating the bread and cheese and the ripe, tangy citrus fruits that Ana had prepared, and mockingly raising toasts in the vitriolic spirit Richard poured from a wickerworked bottle, they found the softer hues of afternoon all around them: somewhere, their Goldberry had ran out from the later brightness of morning.
About this time a ship appeared out of the distance; he recognized her, a bluff ungainly paddle-cruiser on picket duties off the coastal waters of Mancontinent, all military camouflage greyness and raw, unnatural straight lines, with a single stack trailing a white scarf of smoke; fore and aft were rocket-launcher bundles and light steam cannon. She had hooted twice, three times, as she crossed their course; tiny figures of men waved back at them. Then, she was past, and receding, and soon there were again only the sun and some ghosts of cloud hanging in the vast blueness of the sky, and the darker, mirroring blueness of the sea, with somewhere a horizon sandwiched between. p. 165
They arrive at an island where there is a dilapidated house that is familiar to Karangetti, and we get a hint that Ana has been sent on a mission to seduce him, and then . . . well, nothing much happens for the next twenty pages or so. They look at the flowers in the garden; we get hints about Earth and Exile; they make love; they look at the ruined cottage; there is more canoodling, and music, etc. etc.
In between all of the above, Karangetti generally moons about like a Romantic poet, and the writers of the story take the opportunity to give us the benefit of (I assume) their English Lit. degrees—we get quotes from William Wordsworth, Blake, the Corpus Christi Carol, and mentions of Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Tolstoy, etc. (and in the background there is a musical soundtrack of Maple Leaf Rag, Clair de Lune, Moonlight Sonata, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, etc.). At times it feels like the occupants of Pseuds Corner2 having a day out on an alien planet.
Finally, at the end of the story, Karangetti shows Ana several graves, one of whom was his lover Margueritte:
‘As to what happened here, I will tell you.’ There, on the hill-top, with the wind freshening and the sun sinking, dying and bathing the sky with its blood, Karangetti swept horizons with his grandiose hands.
‘There, to the north, lies Mancontinent. There, far over in the south and east, is where the Loct came down…
‘It was a day in October, iron-skied, lightly raining. I was called away from our few weather eyes and installations and such on this place, to Beachead, which was then still a base rather than a city. Marguerite was alone in our house. It had happened before but she told me she didn’t mind . . . Anyway—the Loct had been quiet for a year or two, but they chose that day to make an exploratory raid.’ p. 189
Can you have “grandiose hands”? No matter: although I like the initial descriptive passages, the rest of this has far, far too many words, and virtually nothing in the way of a story.
* (Mediocre). 7,550 words. Story link.
1. I was a bit disappointed with this story as I originally rated it (and the other two works* they published in New Writings in SF) as good.
* The other two stories were The Banks of the Nile (NWISF #28) and Amsterdam (NWISF #30, by Smith alone).
2. The wiki for Pseud’s Corner.