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David Pringle in Interzone: a very
welcome expanded edition of a classic collection [...] David
Irvine Masson (born 1915), who lives in Leeds, has written no more
fiction since the 1970s, and this remains his sole sf book;
recommended.
Stuart
Carter: I think it’s a measure of the quality
of the ten stories in The Caltraps Of Time that not
until you finish reading them and notice the "first
publication" dates do you realise that even the baby of the
bunch, "Dr Fausta", comes from the darkest depths of
1974. Perhaps even more surprising is that The Caltraps of
Time contains all the short fiction Mr Masson has ever
published (usually in New Worlds), so it can pretty much
be said that he has never published a really duff piece of work.
Michael Moorcock: Caltraps, along
with Knights of the Limits [by Barrington J. Bayley], is
one of the great collections of our time (not to mention others'
time).
John Clute in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
He began publishing sf with "Traveller's Rest" for
NEW WORLDS in 1965; his fiction, including
this extraordinarily intense study in the distortion of
PERCEPTION, was assembled in The
Caltraps of Time (coll 1968), which single
volume established his strong reputation as a writer of vigorously
experimental, vivid, often scientifically sound stories. Notable
among them, and reflecting his close and informed interest in
LINGUISTICS, were "Not so Certain"
(1967) and the brilliant TIME-TRAVEL story
"A Two-Timer" (1966), told entirely in language
appropriate to 1683, the year from which the inadvertent time
traveller is whisked into the future. Each of DIM's stories seems
to be a solution to some cognitive or creative problem or
challenge ..."
Algis Budrys in Galaxy: [On "Traveller's
Rest":] Particularly engrossing ... represents major talent.
David I. Masson is at least as ingenious in "A
Two Timer" as he was in "Traveller's Rest", but his
ingenuity this time has to do with the language and viewpoint in
this story of a Seventeenth-Century man who finds a time machine
and comes to 1964 to marvel and commit adultery.
Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove in Trillion Year
Spree: ... David I. Masson, whose clutch of stories
in the mid-sixties greatly enriched the New Worlds brew.
He began spectacularly ... with the story "Traveller's Rest"
... Life as a long dream lived between moments of impacted
madness. It suited the New Worlds idiom perfectly.
Masson's second venture was the powerfully
evocative "Mouth of Hell" in January 1966, where
atmosphere and idea are large enough to swallow any reader whole.
It was science fiction of the most imaginative kind --
metaphysical statements that touched one personally.
Harry Harrison introducing the 1976 paperback:
... Not to be forgotten for a moment is that Masson is a wonderful
storyteller. There is a density of content in his stories as rich
as the density of character in a Hemingway story. Hemingway never
tells you too much about a character, his work always reveals so
much -- and implies more. Masson does the same with the society
and its discoveries in "The Transfinite Choice". We know
that he is so well acquainted with this future world that he could
write a book about it; the fullness of his imaginative knowledge
is obvious. Just as Hemingway knew everything about his character,
being so sure of this that what he left out was more important
than what he put in, so does Masson know all about this particular
world-to-come.
There is a temptation to write too much about
these stories instead of letting them speak for themselves.
Suffice to say that not only are they prime examples of short
stories, but perfect examples of that unusual beast, the science
fiction short story. They have all the strengths and none of the
weaknesses of the form. |
