Ace Doubles by Eric Brown

Brown writes human-oriented science fiction

Ace Doubles is a short novel (or novella) about a middle-aged science fiction writer named Ed Bently whose career has stalled out. After delivering the bad news to Ed that his current editor at the publishing house of Worley and Greenwood has not only rejected his latest manuscript but gone so far as to sever their relationship, Ed's agent tells him not to worry because he's already lined up a lucrative job that he can knock out in no time. Ed's first thought is that it's probably a Doctor Who novel but then quickly realizes he doesn't have the connections to get picked for a job like that. Instead, it turns out that a YouTube superstar named Tuppy Cotton wants to write a science fiction novel and has asked her publisher if Ed can be persuaded to "help" her with it. Her previous novel, ghost written by a horror novelist, earned huge profits for the publisher. The payday for Ed, if he accepts the assignment, is a flat fee of "thirty grand." Dollars or pounds isn't clear, but either way it's more than Ed earned on his last several duds. Going against his better instincts, he accepts because he badly needs the money to pay off debts.

Before going any further with the plot synopsis, I'd like to talk about the title because it's that (and not the bland cover art) that persuaded me to pick up the book. In 1952, Ace Books published its first "double" title, a pair of mysteries, Too Hot for Hell backed with The Grinning Gizmo. Ace published the books in a format called tête-bêche (head-to-toe), where two novels are bound together, one rotated 180 degrees from the other so that there are two front covers. The publisher logo read, rather clumsily, "Ace Double Novel Books," but they were known to fans simply as "Ace Doubles." Ace published mysteries and westerns, along with other genres, in the double format; but the science fiction doubles were the most popular and soon came to dominate the line.

In the novel, Ed Bentley is approaching sixty. He thinks back nostalgically about the Ace Doubles he discovered in used bookstores as a teenager, which caused him to fall in love with science fiction in the first place. A list of Bentley's novels have titles that are so similar to the titles of Brown's books that the autobiographical elements are unmistakable. When Bentley reminisces about Ace Double authors such as E.C. Tubb, Philip E. High, and Robert Silverberg, there can be little doubt that these are favorites of Brown's. Bentley's favorite author, George Lattimer, is fictional, but one wonders if Brown had a specific author from that period in mind as the model.

Ed's worst fears about what a YouTube star might be like prove to be unfounded. Tuppence Cotton (Tuppy to her fans, Penny to her friends) is smart, personable, and talented. While she's no writer, her draft for the novel contains good, workable ideas, and she's modest enough to happily accept Ed's changes and additions. As he settles into the mansion she owns, the two of them develop a productive and happy working relationship. To Ed's astonishment, he learns that the home Penny owns once belonged to George Lattimer. It's a coincidence that would strain credulity, except for the fact that it's not a coincidence, as we come to learn.

As short as the novel is (114 pages), it's built on character and develops at a leisurely pace. Much of Ed's journey is a reckoning with and acceptance of loss as he teaches others to deal with it, too. And, as much as Ed is a hard-headed realist, he will also have to confront something inexplicable and science fictional before the novel ends. The story that he hears from the aged and dying George Lattimer feels very much like a call back to Brown's 2011 novel, The Kings of Eternity, which I highly recommend. (In fact, you should go read that one first.) Ace Doubles is a light, quick read that reveals the appropriately double meaning of its title at the end.