I became a fan of William’s Barton’s fiction in the 1990s, initially from the science fiction he co-wrote with Michael Capobianco, but soon after from the science fiction he published alone. And, as you do with writers whose works you enjoy or admire, I tracked down and read as many of his books as I could find. He’d originally been published in the 1970s, and then vanished from sight before re-appearing in the early 1990s with Iris (1990, USA, with Michael Capobianco) and Dark Sky Legion (1992, USA).
Barton’s last novel from a major sf imprint was When We Were Real (1999, USA), although he did have short fiction published in Asimov’s SF magazine until 2009. At some point this century, he decided to self-publish his entire back-catalogue on Kindle. After purchasing a Kindle just prior to my move to Sweden, I decided to use it as an opportunity to catch up with his oeuvre…
And found myself a fan of not only of Barton’s fiction, but also his project to annotate his career in writing science fiction.
The books he’s self-published on Kindle — and they include a variety of works, from previously-published novels to unpublished novels to collections of short fiction. Each of them includes extensive forewords and afterwards, detailing when the book was written, what happened to it, and how Barton’s career at the time progressed. It’s fascinating stuff.
Barton and Capobianco were typical school sci-fi geeks, spending hours inventing science fiction worlds and stories. I was exactly the same in my early teens. Somewhere I have an exercise book or two filled with deck-plans of starships. And this was before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller.
Barton was born more than fifteen years before me, so when he was at school there were no role-playing games around to provide a ready-made purpose for his and Capobianco’s science fiction inventions— although he did later become a prolific reviewer of science fiction RPG supplements in gaming magazines in the 1970s and early 1980s (often as William A Barton). Eventually Barton turned some of these inventions into published fiction… and they became his first novels — Hunting on Kunderer (1973, USA), one half of an Ace double with John T Phillifent, and A Plague of All Cowards (1976, USA), an Ace paperback. Both are set in the same universe, invented by Barton and Capobianco during their school years, using the same extended cast of characters they had come up with during that time.
Neither, sadly, are very good.
There are clear signs in both novels that Barton was a little more adventurous in literary terms than most sf writers. A Plague of Cowards even features a Greek chorus. But such sophistication was lost on sf readers of the time and, to be totally honest, at the time Barton didn’t really have the skill to pull it off. To make matters worse, there were far too many details from those schoolboy stories left in the mix, which led to weird elements of juvenilia in what was ostensibly an adult sf novel. (And, yes, at heart, sf is essentially a juvenile genre, but never mind.)
This Dog/Rat World (2012, USA) is the final book of Barton’s Starover series. It was originally written in the 1970s, and planned to follow A Plague of All Cowards, although its story actually follows on from Hunting on Kunderer. But Ace bounced it, and Barton found himself without a contract… until the 1990s.
This Dog/Rat World is not an especially good sf novel. Barton has published it pretty much as it was originally written. A bold move. And one which makes the publication itself part of an epic fictional endeavour. Which I think is amazing. He outlines its flaws, its obstacles to publication… but he does not interrupt the flow of the universe he created — as a schoolboy! — for the novel and its prequels.
In the Starover universe, humanity spread out into the stars, first using a slow form of FTL, which led to a corporate monopoly-led state, then superseded by a much faster one, privately-invented and -developed, which opened up the galaxy even further. There were, of course, alien races out there, including several which had survived an all-out war millennia earlier.
And it’s that ancient war which underlies the plot of the Starover series and, more specifically, This Dog/Rat World. The novel follows the hunt for a super-weapon left behind by one of the combatants in the war, although the story is confused by another Greek chorus, a subplot involving human semi-immortals, and all of it based on a universe invented by a pair of pubescent boys in the early 1960s, which, sadly, shows in the details.
Had the Starover books appeared as planned in the late 1960s or early 1970s, as indeed some of them did, and had the series subsequently developed in light of its possible success… then perhaps it would be something much more notable than it is. But Barton’s pubished fiction of the time was too ambitious — a Greek chorus! — for the sf market and the universe was not developed well enough in the books that were published.
Science fiction role-playing games, a decade or so later, provided a perfect outlet for these schoolboy science fiction fantasies, as is evident in the huge number of Traveller fanzines and licensed (and un-licensed) Traveller adventures and supplements published in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I have an extensive collection of them.
When you’re a schoolboy (or -girl) and have invested hours in exercise books filled with starships deck plans, there are only so many ways to go forward. Put aside childish things, so to speak, and, still interested in science fiction, either read sf or watch sf films or TV. Or perhaps rewrite the contents of those exercise books to fit into the universe of your favourite sf RPG (during the Golden Age of RPGs in the late 1970s through to the late 1980s). Or… use them in a science fiction novel.
Except… getting published is difficult. Barton seems to have had a reasonably easy time of it — he sent off his manuscript to Ace, it was accepted, and he was published. I don’t believe he used any of the universes he’d created with Capobianco as RPG supplements, or even did more than review material written by other people. Perhaps The Starover Role-Playing Game could have been a thing. But it wasn’t. And so Barton’s career consists of a handful novels in the 1970s, and then a handful more in the 1990s.
I’m a science fiction fan, I enjoy reading science fiction. But I also enjoy reading about science fiction — although most such are critical works published long after the science fiction work they discuss. The act of creation is less well-documented. Yes, there are interviews, and a well-known US sf author provides a platform on his blog for authors to explain the inspiration behind their current novel… but that’s just marketing by another name.
Barton’s forewords and afterwords are something else. They’re the real nuts and bolts of science fiction. And if the subject material seems unworthy of such scrutiny, the commentary at least has the benefit of being by the material’s creator. And the subject material did indeed improve.
I till think Barton is one of the best science fiction writers the US has produced, although I recognise his early works are poor and their promise hard to spot… But the additional layer he has since added to those early works as he has self-published— self-re-published—them has made them much more interesting.
