Sos The Rope (Battle Circle #1)

Sos The Rope, by Piers Anthony

October, 1968  Pyramid Books

Sos The Rope started life as a three-part serialized novel in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction (July-September, 1968), before being published as this slim paperback. Then in 1978 it was collected with its sequels, Var The Stick (1972) and Neq The Sword (1975), as a fat mass market paperback titled Battle Circle. It was the collected edition that I read, but I’ll review the titles separately because I’m just that kind of guy. 

I recall picking up Battle Circle sometime in 2017, and recently discovered it in a box in my garage, of all places. Indeed, I discovered it on the very same day I (re)discovered my copies of The Virtue Of Vera Valiant (those were in a different box in a different room, though; I guess I’m just a hoarder at heart). 

While he is incredibly prolific, the only Piers Anthony novels I have read are the Jason Striker series and the Total Recall novelization. Thus I cannot say I am an expert in the style of Piers Anthony, but Sos The Rope reads very much like those other books: a somewhat formal tone to the narrative, with a somewhat lurid feeling (this is a good thing, of course), but nothing too exploitative or explicit (this is a bad thing, of course). 

The biggest comparison to Jason Striker is the dumb-ass protagonist. As we’ll recall, Jason Striker was this tough judo master who happened to be a ‘Nam vet, but he blundered like a fool from one situation to the next. The same holds true of this novel’s protagonist, the titular Sos The Rope, who basically gets his ass handed to him again and again in the battle circles of this post-nuke America. And like Striker he makes one poor choice after another, usually a victim of his own nature. 

Anyway, we know from the outset that Sos The Rope is set in a post-nuke world; or, post “Blast,” as the characters refer to it. In the first pages we have references to plastic, a refrigerator, and even television, yet at the same time it is clear this is a primitive society, with men wandering around on foot and challenging one another in the formalized, ritualized practice of battle-circle dueling. 

It’s worth noting however that this is not a bloodthirsty post-nuke society by any means; the battle circle fights are rarely to the death and are more so ritualized ways of settling differences or matters of honor. Brawny men choose their names, specialize in one of the weapons allowed in the battle circle (swords, staffs, knives, etc), and roam the post-nuke country like nomads. What sets off the course of Sos The Rope, and the ensuing trilogy, is a meeting between two men who have the same name: Sol. 

I’ll admit, the first several pages were a bumpy read. There’s nothing like trying to make sense of a post-nuke pulp from decades ago in which two muscular men, both named Sol, challenge one another in a battle circle on the windswept plains while a nameless young woman (with a “voluptuous body”) watches on. I had a helluva time keeping track of which Sol was which, but basically one of them has long black hair and a beard, and the other one has long blonde hair and no beard. 

The bearded one is Sol The Sword, because that’s his weapon; the beardless one is Sol of All Weapons, and he carries around a wheelbarrow or something with all his fighting gear. The two men meet at a hostel – a place, we’re informed, that was set up by “the crazies” and is used as lodging for the nomadic warriors – and they have a friendly disagreement over who “owns” the name Sol. They decide to settle their differences in the battle circle by the hostel, all while some busty chick who works at the hostel watches on, ready to give herself to the winner. 

Anthony, given his martial arts background, is pretty good with hand-to-hand fight description, as proven with Jason Striker. But still, it’s hard to know which Sol is which, let alone which one to root for. Not that it matters, as neither is killed and indeed they become lifelong friends: but, for what it’s worth, “our” Sol, ie the supposed hero of this novel who will become “Sos,” gets his ass kicked and loses – which, of course, sets the tone for the rest of the book. 

The fight was for the name of Sol, and now that this Sol has lost, he needs a new name. Eventually he will become “Sos.” As for the busty girl, she gives herself to Sol, the winner, and so she becomes Sola – in other words, women don’t even have a name until a man has taken them, a sign of how male-dominated this post-Blast society is. If you listen closely, you can hear the piteous wailings of the ever-indignant wokesters over on Goodreads: “How dare Piers Anthony stoop to such misogyny! His female characters have no agency!” And etc. 

An interesting thing is that Anthony works his world-building into the narrative, never shoehorning us with info; eventually we learn that there is no rape in this post-Blast world, where the men actually respect the women. Indeed, there is a later part where Sos sleeps in a hostel that is occupied by a girl who has expressly come there to find a man, and since Sos is not interested in her (not suprising, given his overall lameness), she sleeps by him without concern of being raped. 

The nomadic warrirors wear metal bracelets, and the women they choose – whether for life or just for the night – wear the bracelet when chosen. Gradually I realized this was Anthony’s post-nuke spin on a wedding ring. But this is how Sola becomes Sola, wearing the bracelet of Sol – and she, Sol, and Sos will prove to be the three main characters of Sos The Rope. 

The trio venture into the Badlands, ie the still-radiated wastelands around the countryside, and encounter all kinds of brutal flora and fauna. The latter is evidenced by a rat swarm that might raise the hackles of more sensitive readers (as if sensitive readers would be reading a book titled Sos The Rope!). The bigger threat however is the love triangle that develops: Sola belongs to Sol, but Sos and Sola have a thing for each other. 

Sadly, it develops that Sol does not have a, uh, thing; left comatose from the bite of a mutant moth, Sol is dragged to safety from the rats and loses his clothes in the process, and Sos discovers that Sol is castrated; something Sola was already aware of. So basically she’s “married” to a guy who cannot give her the goods, yet still – for reasons of honor and such – Sos won’t give Sola what she clearly wants. 

I forgot to mention: Sos as a child was reared by “the crazies,” ie the tech-savvy overlords who run things behind the scenes. They are the ones who stock the high-tech hostels and whatnot, and have all the learnings of the pre-Blast world, and Sos has not only learned to read but knows a fair bit of history…though he is uncertain how true those ancient books really are. 

Piers Anthony does a good job of keeping the story moving while doling out small bits of background about the post-Blast world. Meanwhile the main narrative has Sos becoming Sol’s best buddy and sidekick; Sol dreams of starting an empire, but he knows he isn’t smart enough. Sos, meanwhile, is smart in all those ways, so Sos agrees to serve Sol for one year and help him gather men into an army. 

Meanwhile Sos and Sola become an item while Sol is off gathering men, but Anthony leaves it off-page. About the most us sleazehounds get are random mentions of Sola’s “voluptuous” build and pretty face…not much. But Sos manages to knock her up, though this tidbit is left off-page; curiously, Anthony leaves many important events off-page…most notably, a part where Sos challenges Sol in the battle circle for Sola and her newly-born daughter. 

Yes, Anthony cuts immediately to some time later, and we learn that Sos has once again had his ass handed to him. So much for the “rope” he’s learned to fight with; all this is after the empire has been started, and Sos has gone back to the crazies to learn what to fight with now that he’s lost the right to use a sword. A rope wouldn’t be my first choice, and anyway Sos still can’t beat Sol, so whatever. 

Here’s where Sos The Rope gets real interesting. It’s some time later and Sos has decided to end his life by climbing this big mountain that people go to when they’re ready to commit suicide. He climbs up and up, then “dies,” then wakes up in this high-tech “underworld” that is run by the crazies. He will eventually hook up with a lithe young (and small-statured) lady with major karate skills (again, the hanky-panky occurs off-page), but most importantly Sos here is augmented into a sort of cyborg warrior so as to be sent back out into the world to kill Sol and topple his empire. 

My assumption is Piers Anthony was influenced here by Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, and this sequence – where Sos dies and then goes to an underworld where he has plastic armor embedded beneath his skin, and his muscles augmented, and etc – reminded me very much of the Neoplatonist readings of The Iliad. 

Simply put, the Neoplatonic reading of the Iliad goes like this: when Achilles’ best friend/lover Patroclus is killed in battle by Hector while wearing the armor of Achilles, the idea is that Achilles himself has died. After Patroclus dies, Achilles stops eating the food of mortals and instead eats ambrosia, the food of the gods. He goes to his mother, who happens to be a minor-grade goddess, and she in turn goes to Hephastus, aka Vulcan, and asks this major god to forge divine armor for Achilles. Dressed in this divine armor, Achilles is unstoppable when he goes back to the war at Troy, eventually killing Hector. The Neoplatnic reading here is that Achilles the mortal has died, reborn in his divine armor – ie his divine soul. 

That’s all very basic, and I’m sure I missed quite a bit, but that’s the essential idea, and more importantly for the goal of this review – that is what Piers Anthony has happen to Sos the Rope. It was at this point, around a hundred pages in, with Sos transformed into a sort of walking tank, with armor plating beneath his skin, that I realized Sos The Rope was a post-nuke Iliad. 

At this point I was very much into the novel; it was just that sort of late ‘60s/early ‘70s sci-fi I love, with a metaphysical and slightly psychedelic edge, but again it was slightly undone by the blunderings of Sos – or, “The Nameless One” as he is now known, a giant who towers over the average men. Piers Anthony again gives us a doofus protagonist who can’t make up his own mind; Sos has carried a torch for Sola all this time, and indeed he decided to climb suicide mountain over his loss of her. But, despite only thinking of the little karate lady as a casual lay in the underworld, Sos realizes, after leaving her forever, that he was truly in love with her, not Sola! Actually, now that I think of it, Piers Anthony might understand male characters better than any other sci-fi writer. 

Seriously though, this kind of gets to be a little much, and takes away from Sos’s post-death meta-human makeover (we’re told his hair has even gone white, like he’s some sort of super-deformed anime hero). But even in his superhuman state Sos blunders, outing himself on his first night back in the real world and inadvertently letting one of Sol’s men know who he is – the idea is, see, that Sos takes the job from the crazies to kill Sol, but really he plans to sneak into the empire and tell Sol to end his empire, so that Sol doesn’t have to die. 

This entails a lot of fights with Sol’s underlings so Sos can prove himself – again, the fighting is for the most part bloodless (save for one fight where Sos accidentally kills someone), but it’s cool how Sos has essentially become the post-Blast Hulk. Even here Piers Anthony does a curious skipping of important parts and suddenly has Sol and Sos confronting each other, though Sol apparently doesn’t realize this huge cyborg creature is actually his old buddy, Sos (or maybe he does; Anthony leaves this vague). 

The finale of Sos The Rope is quite curious, with the two characters arguing with Sol’s chieftans over whether or not Sol’s empire should be disbanded. SPOILER ALERT: The finale is rather downbeat, with Sol himself deciding to head on up suicide mountiain, his little girl demanding to go along with him – and Sos sadly watches his old buddy stalk off, kicking himself that Sol will no doubt make it up the mountain alive and end up banging the cute little karate girl that Sos has only now realized he’s in love with. In other words: wash, rinse, repeat – Sos now has the woman he wanted, Sola, but again he is jealous of Sol, who will no doubt soon be giving the little karate girl some good lovin. 

Well, all this no doubt is covered in the next volume, Var The Stick, which I’ll be reading soon. I have to say, I quite enjoyed Sos The Rope, especially the unexpected eleventh-hour jump into a sort of meta-human Iliad riff. I hope Piers Anthony continues with this vibe in the next books; one can only imagine the surreal, over-budgeted, psychedelic mess of a film Alejandro Jodorowsky might’ve made out of it.