MARILYN

Due to reverse-engineering experiments with alien technology, a Welsh American military officer is flung back into British Isles in the Dark Ages and adopts the persona of Merlin the magician while striving to return home.

A diplomat’s daughter, Lt. Col. Marilyn Morgan is a resourceful U.S. military officer whose Welsh background and language skills come in very handy when she participates in a secret government project in Waxahachie, Texas. Remains of a long-buried extraterrestrial spacecraft have been uncovered. The most functional device is the “Glass Table,” a crystalline thingy that apparently served as the craft’s engine. But as Marilyn’s team (including her lover, Philip) experiments with activating the astounding relic, Marilyn is whiplashed into a dimensional portal: “Her surroundings swam into focus as her vision cleared: a dimly lit cave, stalagmites and stalactites encrusted around an all-too-familiar artifact.” Now a transparent one-way barrier separates her from her comrades. Marilyn’s fellow scientists can perceive and interact with her, but no solid matter seems able to return through the portal. Also, a localized time-distortion zone is in effect. Exploring her surroundings, Marilyn deduces she has landed in ancient Wales, circa 500 C.E., and the first inhabitant she meets is a friendly youth called Uthyr. With her odd uniform, stun-gun wand, bag of survival medicine, and knowledge of chemistry, the officer has stumbled, physically and phonetically, into the historical role of Merlin, the healer, wizard, and adviser to the once and future King Uthyr/Arthur. Passing herself off as a male and playing her supernatural “fae” image up as required, Marilyn/Merlin ingratiates herself as a sage and wonder-worker to the natives and tries to amass enough influence in this distant land to enable her return trip. For her, weeks are passing, while for the frantic team back in the Texas lab it’s only hours. Time is crucial for the marooned Marilyn for many significant reasons.    

The notion of a SF takeoff on the Camelot legend is not an entirely fresh idea. Mark Twain, of course, riffed on it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and SF grandmaster Poul Anderson blended space opera with Dark Ages chivalry. Here, Wilson pulls off the considerable feat of taking a mythic plotline everybody knows (or at least we think we all do) and making it fresh and offbeat. The hoary aliens-are-responsible conceit notwithstanding, readers are there with Lt. Col. Morgan as she fulfills—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately—major touchpoints of Arthurian lore. As the narrative point of view shifts to the vantage of the ancient Britons, there are unexpected depths granted to peripheral or invented characters from previous bardic chronicles by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Tennyson, Mallory, Boorman, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Monty Python, and more. Female characterizations are especially robust, though a harsh chieftain, Gorloys of Cornwall, also gets his dramatic due. A postmodern touch is that Marilyn and her associates are Harry Potter fans, and J.K. Rowling material colors her magic, adding some levity without seeming merely silly. This volume only covers the opening portion of the Arthur/Merlin saga; follow-up books are prophesied.

SF wizardry imbues fresh life into the Arthurian classic!