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Masters of the Maze
Book by Davidson, Avram
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
5 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
Avram Davidson
431 books94 followersAvram Davidson was an American Jewish writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche. He won a Hugo Award and three World Fantasy Awards in the science fiction and fantasy genre, a World Fantasy Life Achievement award, and a Queen's Award and an Edgar Award in the mystery genre. Davidson edited The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1962 to 1964. His last novel The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil was completed by Grania Davis and was a Nebula Award finalist in 1998. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says "he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author".
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 19, 2021
DUUUUUUUUUDE. This book is a mess and a half, but I don't care. I loved it. It's a wild and wooly esoteric head-trip that would be right at home on a shelf of PKD, RAW, or William Burroughs. Chittering masses of interdimensional insectoid beings are skittering through a mystical maze knitting together all of space-time, opposed by a splinter Masonic group and ultimately by a group of ascended masters including an I Ching-tossing King Wen, Apollonius of Tyana, and a Martian sage? Uh yeah, sign me the f@%k up. It's clear that Davidson was writing a psychedelic novel, but it's also got a touch of the post-modern: the protagonist is a thinly-veiled caricature of the author, a prolific generator of hilarious hack-work with higher literary aspirations. It's played with wry humor and it's one short wormhole trip from "Horselover Fat" in VALIS.
Now, is Davidson the greatest stylist the world has ever known? No. Does he deftly juggle all the characters introduced and deliver a tightly plotted mystery? Also no. This thing feels like it's barely held together with the tape and library paste mentioned in a goofy editor's letter in the text. There are a bunch of characters introduced who don't have a lot to do and are hard to distinguish. The characters often feel like they're under the spell of a zombie-fungus as they perform nonsensical actions to advance the plot. Pages are wasted in "comedic" riffs on hick law enforcement and irate girlfriends. And massive shifts happen with so little explanation that there might as well be a "SCENE MISSING" card. Like, the protagonist goes from hapless and ignorant outsider to MASTER OF SPACE AND TIIIIIIIIIIME in a paragraph. (Spoiler, I guess, if you are new to Earth and don't know how these kinds of stories work.)
But...that's not the point! Davidson has delivered an old-school initiation account. Nobody's hassling Apuleius because The Golden Ass doesn't make linear sense! The confusion and abrupt transformations are part of the genre. We want to see the puling fool pull back the veil on reality, and to be changed by that epopteia. And hoo boy, do we. Our new Sage weaves through endless worlds and times, touching down in Minoan Crete, meeting an enlightened Ambrose Bierce, and witnessing cosmic vistas of cataclysmic beauty. Then he basically convinces the Buddhas/Uatus to intervene just. this. once. in the lower realms in an amusingly half-assed resolution to the plot. Along the way, one could squint and see metaphors for American imperial projects in Southeast Asia, racism, and meditations on interventionism vs. quietism. Also, Davidson clowns ruthlessly on right-wing isolationist BS and their main mouthpiece gets eaten. So yeah, awesome.
This book definitely isn't for everyone, but I was delighted to find a forgotten gem. If you like Phil Dick and the perennialist high weirdness of the '60s-'70s counterculture, my friend, have I got a book for you.
Now, is Davidson the greatest stylist the world has ever known? No. Does he deftly juggle all the characters introduced and deliver a tightly plotted mystery? Also no. This thing feels like it's barely held together with the tape and library paste mentioned in a goofy editor's letter in the text. There are a bunch of characters introduced who don't have a lot to do and are hard to distinguish. The characters often feel like they're under the spell of a zombie-fungus as they perform nonsensical actions to advance the plot. Pages are wasted in "comedic" riffs on hick law enforcement and irate girlfriends. And massive shifts happen with so little explanation that there might as well be a "SCENE MISSING" card. Like, the protagonist goes from hapless and ignorant outsider to MASTER OF SPACE AND TIIIIIIIIIIME in a paragraph. (Spoiler, I guess, if you are new to Earth and don't know how these kinds of stories work.)
But...that's not the point! Davidson has delivered an old-school initiation account. Nobody's hassling Apuleius because The Golden Ass doesn't make linear sense! The confusion and abrupt transformations are part of the genre. We want to see the puling fool pull back the veil on reality, and to be changed by that epopteia. And hoo boy, do we. Our new Sage weaves through endless worlds and times, touching down in Minoan Crete, meeting an enlightened Ambrose Bierce, and witnessing cosmic vistas of cataclysmic beauty. Then he basically convinces the Buddhas/Uatus to intervene just. this. once. in the lower realms in an amusingly half-assed resolution to the plot. Along the way, one could squint and see metaphors for American imperial projects in Southeast Asia, racism, and meditations on interventionism vs. quietism. Also, Davidson clowns ruthlessly on right-wing isolationist BS and their main mouthpiece gets eaten. So yeah, awesome.
This book definitely isn't for everyone, but I was delighted to find a forgotten gem. If you like Phil Dick and the perennialist high weirdness of the '60s-'70s counterculture, my friend, have I got a book for you.
January 7, 2013
I'm being unusually subjective in rating this book two stars. In my ratings system (which is primarily based on reading non-fiction), three stars means a book has accomplished what its author set out to do, while two stars is a book that fails in its basic goal in some way. In this case, I suspect that Davidson more or less did what he wanted to, I just didn't enjoy it very much, and it seems to me that "to entertain" would be one of the goals of a novel like this one. It didn't entertain *me* very much, so I am giving it a subjective two stars, with the proviso that some people would enjoy it more than I did.
Before I start talking about the problems I had with it, let’s talk about what this book is for a bit. Basically, it’s a sci fi adventure story set on “present-day” Earth (meaning Cold War America and Britain), in which an alien invasion is fended off by an unlikely everyman-type-hero. The interesting twist is that, rather than coming to Earth via flying saucers, the insect hordes are going to attack via “the Maze” – a preexisting hyperspace/wormhole/dimensional anomaly that connects all points in space and time and has openings in various places on Earth and other planets. The Maze is defended by people called “The Watchers,” who are a long-existing society of men based loosely on Freemasonry, but all of whom are today aging and dying off (just like the Freemasons).
This is the point to introduce my critique, because it was in reflecting on why I have never joined, or even looked into joining, the Freemasons, that I realized what my basic problem with the book is. I have no desire to join a society that would require me to spend a certain amount of my free time out of the company of women. This isn’t (just) a political statement, it is an actual preference: I like the company of women and I prefer environments where free exchange of ideas between the genders takes place. Furthermore, there’s a better chance of heterosexual relations taking place if you deliberately include women in your social activities (you’d think that was a no-brainer, but apparently for many men it isn’t).
And that is essentially what is wrong with this book: There are no real women in it. The female characters that do appear are less-than-two-dimensional. There is a shrewish, nagging fiancé, who only really appears in one scene. There are various nubile, apparently brainless creatures, that remind one of the stars of stag films (frequently shown in fraternal orders), but bear no relation to actual women, and who never interact with the male characters when they are doing Something Important. And there are a few Goddess figures for initiatory purposes, who might as well be men dressed up in drag for ritual. When we meet the actual “Masters” of the title, they are predictably all men. Davidson goes so far in excluding women that his insect race has inverted the biological imperative: rather than a single giant Queen dominating a nest and being impregnated by drone males, there is a single giant Sire which impregnates drone females (as unwieldy and improbable as that system would be). It’s ironic that at one point in the text he chides Lovecraft for his hangups, because Davidson’s appear to me far more extreme.
Of course, not every book is going to include strong female characters, and that’s fine. I will tend to gravitate towards those that do, because I find them more interesting to read, just as I tend to gravitate toward activities that include women, preferably as equals. I’ll add that I didn’t find the male characters all that well defined either, and I found it especially difficult to keep the various bad guy humans straight – they all seemed to be variations on a single theme. Also, Davidson managed to annoy me by including Ambrose Bierce as a throwaway character for no particular reason. I love Bierce, and if he’s going to show up in your story he’d better be doing something important, or else I’m just going to be hyper-critical of the historical details.
Before I start talking about the problems I had with it, let’s talk about what this book is for a bit. Basically, it’s a sci fi adventure story set on “present-day” Earth (meaning Cold War America and Britain), in which an alien invasion is fended off by an unlikely everyman-type-hero. The interesting twist is that, rather than coming to Earth via flying saucers, the insect hordes are going to attack via “the Maze” – a preexisting hyperspace/wormhole/dimensional anomaly that connects all points in space and time and has openings in various places on Earth and other planets. The Maze is defended by people called “The Watchers,” who are a long-existing society of men based loosely on Freemasonry, but all of whom are today aging and dying off (just like the Freemasons).
This is the point to introduce my critique, because it was in reflecting on why I have never joined, or even looked into joining, the Freemasons, that I realized what my basic problem with the book is. I have no desire to join a society that would require me to spend a certain amount of my free time out of the company of women. This isn’t (just) a political statement, it is an actual preference: I like the company of women and I prefer environments where free exchange of ideas between the genders takes place. Furthermore, there’s a better chance of heterosexual relations taking place if you deliberately include women in your social activities (you’d think that was a no-brainer, but apparently for many men it isn’t).
And that is essentially what is wrong with this book: There are no real women in it. The female characters that do appear are less-than-two-dimensional. There is a shrewish, nagging fiancé, who only really appears in one scene. There are various nubile, apparently brainless creatures, that remind one of the stars of stag films (frequently shown in fraternal orders), but bear no relation to actual women, and who never interact with the male characters when they are doing Something Important. And there are a few Goddess figures for initiatory purposes, who might as well be men dressed up in drag for ritual. When we meet the actual “Masters” of the title, they are predictably all men. Davidson goes so far in excluding women that his insect race has inverted the biological imperative: rather than a single giant Queen dominating a nest and being impregnated by drone males, there is a single giant Sire which impregnates drone females (as unwieldy and improbable as that system would be). It’s ironic that at one point in the text he chides Lovecraft for his hangups, because Davidson’s appear to me far more extreme.
Of course, not every book is going to include strong female characters, and that’s fine. I will tend to gravitate towards those that do, because I find them more interesting to read, just as I tend to gravitate toward activities that include women, preferably as equals. I’ll add that I didn’t find the male characters all that well defined either, and I found it especially difficult to keep the various bad guy humans straight – they all seemed to be variations on a single theme. Also, Davidson managed to annoy me by including Ambrose Bierce as a throwaway character for no particular reason. I love Bierce, and if he’s going to show up in your story he’d better be doing something important, or else I’m just going to be hyper-critical of the historical details.
June 4, 2024
Masters of the Maze is a shifting, sliding torrential avalanche of wonderful words constantly threatening to wash the reader’s feet out from under them and bury them in the mountain of marvelous, baffling, bonkers prose Davidson is pounding out. Straight up bananas stuff and I loved it.
The John Schoenherr cover of this Pyramid edition scares me.
The John Schoenherr cover of this Pyramid edition scares me.
October 3, 2010
Why do I love this piece of absurdity? Maybe because Davidson did. But most of all because the Chulpex may be the most wonderfully realized alien culture in all of SF. An insect-based aberration in the "maze" of space and time, they act like intelligent insects, not like humans with an exoskeleton. Davidson always knew what he was doing, and when he ran off the track, it was because he chose to.
Want to read
March 8, 2010Contains this paragraph:
'Somewhere in the mass and morass was a chapter and a half of a novel he was looking for. He paused to read an item done on IBM Executive typeface, From the desk of Sydney Sherman. "Once again, as he is obliged too often to, Mr. Sherman finds it needful to draw contributor's attention to his very minimal standards for manuscript presentation. Mr. Sherman does not require manuscripts intended for his establishment to be engraved in copperplate on cream-laid paper with deckled edges; although such items are admittedly pleasant to receive, Mr. Sherman has not received any since he left the staff of Delineator late in the Coolidge Era. However, he draws the line and will continue to do so at items typed single-spaced with a red ribbon, on yellow or orange or blue construction paper, particularly when it is a worn red ribbon. Mr. Sherman also objects to MSS. mailed rolled up, as they require four hands to hold them flat and Mr. Sherman only has two--much as it may surprise such contributors. He did indeed at one time employ a chimpanzee to scrutinize such MSS., but it was found that the animal lacked editorial discernment, and it was persuaded to take a civil service appointment at the information window of the Main Post Office instead. Stories and articles, cobbled together with paper clips, Scotch or Irish or bicycle tape, surgical sutures, or even wholesome old-fashioned library paste, meet with a gentle but a rather unenthusiastic reception from Mr. Sherman. He wishes this were more widely known. Mr. Sherman is a devout supporter of the United Nations, and it is a source of much anguish to him that he is unable to retype and translate MSS. inflicted by threshing machines on extra-thin onionskin paper, well as he understands how high the postal rates are from Catalonia and Bhutan. He hopes that this inability will not cause political unrest in such renascent nations, for whom he will continue to entertain the highest regard, you should know. During the years 1919 and 1920 Mr. Sherman frequently took off his hat as parades dedicated to the cause of female franchise passed by, and he sincerely trusts that his positive refusal to peruse MSS. on which the baby has wee-weed or the children's luncheon jam been dropped will not incite supporters of the suffrage movement to place bombs in his mailbox or--" Nate dropped this and continued to shuffle the papers on his desk.'
'Somewhere in the mass and morass was a chapter and a half of a novel he was looking for. He paused to read an item done on IBM Executive typeface, From the desk of Sydney Sherman. "Once again, as he is obliged too often to, Mr. Sherman finds it needful to draw contributor's attention to his very minimal standards for manuscript presentation. Mr. Sherman does not require manuscripts intended for his establishment to be engraved in copperplate on cream-laid paper with deckled edges; although such items are admittedly pleasant to receive, Mr. Sherman has not received any since he left the staff of Delineator late in the Coolidge Era. However, he draws the line and will continue to do so at items typed single-spaced with a red ribbon, on yellow or orange or blue construction paper, particularly when it is a worn red ribbon. Mr. Sherman also objects to MSS. mailed rolled up, as they require four hands to hold them flat and Mr. Sherman only has two--much as it may surprise such contributors. He did indeed at one time employ a chimpanzee to scrutinize such MSS., but it was found that the animal lacked editorial discernment, and it was persuaded to take a civil service appointment at the information window of the Main Post Office instead. Stories and articles, cobbled together with paper clips, Scotch or Irish or bicycle tape, surgical sutures, or even wholesome old-fashioned library paste, meet with a gentle but a rather unenthusiastic reception from Mr. Sherman. He wishes this were more widely known. Mr. Sherman is a devout supporter of the United Nations, and it is a source of much anguish to him that he is unable to retype and translate MSS. inflicted by threshing machines on extra-thin onionskin paper, well as he understands how high the postal rates are from Catalonia and Bhutan. He hopes that this inability will not cause political unrest in such renascent nations, for whom he will continue to entertain the highest regard, you should know. During the years 1919 and 1920 Mr. Sherman frequently took off his hat as parades dedicated to the cause of female franchise passed by, and he sincerely trusts that his positive refusal to peruse MSS. on which the baby has wee-weed or the children's luncheon jam been dropped will not incite supporters of the suffrage movement to place bombs in his mailbox or--" Nate dropped this and continued to shuffle the papers on his desk.'
January 19, 2019
I give up. I have been trying to get through this book since I was 12 (or more than 50 years). It lures the reader with its wit and wonderfully rendered aliens. But once in, the reader is lost in a funhouse where plot and character get caught up in a maze that I don't think even the author understood.
September 23, 2015
This book is completely mad, and makes no sense at all. What was the purpose of the dancing Minotaurs? Why did the temple of the Heavenly Wang disappear into nothing? Why was the giant insect pretending to be a goblin? You'll never read anything else like this, but not necessarily in a good way.
March 17, 2025
Excruciating. The amazing part of this book is that every part of it reads like pointless guff in relation to every other part. The rambling "naturalistic" dialogue of the modern day sections have no bearing on the gormless time travel, which themselves are superfluous to the alien invasion. Most every scene gradually filled me with simultaneous boredom and irritation, yearning to read something else, only for the next to begin the process over again. There is one goodish scene from the perspective of the alien Chulpex as they instruct infiltrators on human customs.
The creepiest entry in Barlowe's Guide, there are a lot of good details here, like the stiffly held hands, the obviously inhuman feet, which come up in the story, and the very ugly face, yet still human enough to pass as such in a disguise.
Summary:
The creepiest entry in Barlowe's Guide, there are a lot of good details here, like the stiffly held hands, the obviously inhuman feet, which come up in the story, and the very ugly face, yet still human enough to pass as such in a disguise.
Summary:
October 9, 2019
The alien race and premise were interesting but overall, not recommended.
This book is a mixed bag, it had a lot of potential that was never fulfilled. The Chulpex are an interestingly alien species with some intriguing individuals. The idea of the maze itself is fun along with the idea of a secret society on Earth that protects the portals to different worlds and times. And then there are the Masters of the maze themselves, another potentially cool idea.
Yet somehow, all these ideas are turned into a confusing muddle. It feels a bit like this was a short story or novella originally published in the pulps and, to turn it into a full-length novel, the author wrote lots of additional, and seemingly unrelated, chapters that were then mixed into the story. On top of that, the chapters jump around in time to fill in parts of the backstory. The end result lacks a continuous narrative. I'm guessing the actual story and plot take up about four chapters scattered through the book with the remaining seven chapters being either filler or background information. I think a better author (or perhaps this author with another revision or two) could pull that sort of thing off. For example Neal Stephenson often has entire chapters on a barely related character that don't come off as either confusing or filler.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of racism and racist slang in the book. Much more so than in other books of that era. Some of it is coming from the "bad guys" so you could maybe write it off as them being intentionally depicted as racist but a lot of it is also in the dialog of the protagonist. And the book is strangely devoid of female characters except as servants for the human characters or breeders for the alien characters.
The book is hard to recommend but the potential in the ideas it contains makes me wish it was better.
This book is a mixed bag, it had a lot of potential that was never fulfilled. The Chulpex are an interestingly alien species with some intriguing individuals. The idea of the maze itself is fun along with the idea of a secret society on Earth that protects the portals to different worlds and times. And then there are the Masters of the maze themselves, another potentially cool idea.
Yet somehow, all these ideas are turned into a confusing muddle. It feels a bit like this was a short story or novella originally published in the pulps and, to turn it into a full-length novel, the author wrote lots of additional, and seemingly unrelated, chapters that were then mixed into the story. On top of that, the chapters jump around in time to fill in parts of the backstory. The end result lacks a continuous narrative. I'm guessing the actual story and plot take up about four chapters scattered through the book with the remaining seven chapters being either filler or background information. I think a better author (or perhaps this author with another revision or two) could pull that sort of thing off. For example Neal Stephenson often has entire chapters on a barely related character that don't come off as either confusing or filler.
There's also a surprisingly large amount of racism and racist slang in the book. Much more so than in other books of that era. Some of it is coming from the "bad guys" so you could maybe write it off as them being intentionally depicted as racist but a lot of it is also in the dialog of the protagonist. And the book is strangely devoid of female characters except as servants for the human characters or breeders for the alien characters.
The book is hard to recommend but the potential in the ideas it contains makes me wish it was better.
Read
February 5, 2024I tried it, but couldn't finish it despite being a short one.
This book is... an interesting case, it's not bad nor badly written, just quite messy and doesn't know where or what to focus on, too many characters in the very first pages and odd aliens which were honestly fascinating to discover, but not amazing.
I'm still keeping this book in my collection, afterall I have a big soft spot for its cover and for the long hunt I went through to get it.
I might try it again in the far future, who knows.
This book is... an interesting case, it's not bad nor badly written, just quite messy and doesn't know where or what to focus on, too many characters in the very first pages and odd aliens which were honestly fascinating to discover, but not amazing.
I'm still keeping this book in my collection, afterall I have a big soft spot for its cover and for the long hunt I went through to get it.
I might try it again in the far future, who knows.
April 18, 2024
I loved this book. It is what it is. Fiction. I found the characters likable (like the protagonist) and some not so likable, like the Chulpex. Meeting some historical characters, who are tied into the story. the concept of the Maze, which, in more recent science, sort of relates to a wormhole, 'works' in my mind. I found a 2nd hand copy when I was a student. I still have it about 50 years later and reread from time to time.
August 1, 2024
I found this book rather confusing, and it seems like others have as well. The overall premise is interesting. A man trying to save the world from an alien species from another dimension trying to get to Earth through a weird time/space maze. Much of this is all over the place. I found myself confused on how everyone got to where they are at each point. Maybe I missed a lot, but it was still all over the place.
March 29, 2025
Read the first chapter and I don't know where I am, who they were, when we were.
The true maze is this book and whoever travels it and survives is truly a master of the maze, whether that's worth it or not, I know not.
The true maze is this book and whoever travels it and survives is truly a master of the maze, whether that's worth it or not, I know not.
March 10, 2022
Inventive, but ultimately just ok. Fast-paced, and the insect race is envisioned well.
May 18, 2024
3½. Davidson often doesn't know when to shut up and a few times I had really no idea what was going on, but it's a unique and enjoyable little novel.
October 24, 2025
Two elderly gentlemen meet at country tavern to discuss secret societies & old coins. One sips his whiskey while the other opens a briefcase he’s brought from his dairy farm and pours himself a tall glass of organic milk. A few clues are dropped early on, but don’t expect a lot to happen in this book until half way through: a dead body is found laying fireside & someone or something was seen vanishing through the wall as if by magic. The adventure begins when a houseguest from Manhattan, a visiting writer named Nate Gordon, summons his chuptzpah and decides to pass through the wall himself. Its here when the novel also establishes its main protagonist from a dizzying caste of characters. Turns out there’s more than one portal in & out of the maze. Inside the maze Nate proves his merit, utilizing his military training to advance past various goblins, mermen and human-lookalikes who claim to be guarding the portal gates from the Chulpex, a species of lemming-sized insectoid aliens who we’re told are planning an Earth invasion.
On multiple occasions the book makes off-color reference to the Chulpex as being some kind of allegory for the threat of communism, Chinese or otherwise. I say off-color because it happens to be the only times in the book when the author resorts to racist and misogynistic language. The big idea we get at the end is that these gateways in & out of the maze connect it to all sorts of places and timeframes in the universe, even far away solar systems. So when Nate meets up with legendary Lao-Tzu & King Ken to consult the I-Ching for a strategy to use against the Chulpex invasion, the universe spits back an unexpected answer: passive in-action. The consequence is total Chulpex genocide.
On multiple occasions the book makes off-color reference to the Chulpex as being some kind of allegory for the threat of communism, Chinese or otherwise. I say off-color because it happens to be the only times in the book when the author resorts to racist and misogynistic language. The big idea we get at the end is that these gateways in & out of the maze connect it to all sorts of places and timeframes in the universe, even far away solar systems. So when Nate meets up with legendary Lao-Tzu & King Ken to consult the I-Ching for a strategy to use against the Chulpex invasion, the universe spits back an unexpected answer: passive in-action. The consequence is total Chulpex genocide.
November 29, 2017
Some rushed thoughts more for myself than anyone else:
I'm not very familiar with the author's work but it seems to me he could have done with a better editor. There are quite a few random characters who are introduced who don't seem to do much. It was quite oddly paced.
On the plus side it was a great concept and I liked the sequences towards the end. I also thought the aliens were well thought out.
I'm not very familiar with the author's work but it seems to me he could have done with a better editor. There are quite a few random characters who are introduced who don't seem to do much. It was quite oddly paced.
On the plus side it was a great concept and I liked the sequences towards the end. I also thought the aliens were well thought out.
May 30, 2016
I really had trouble trying to keep straight who was who and what happen where
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews