Yearly Archives: 2019

Book

[April 16, 1964] Of Houses and World Building (Jack Vance's The Houses of Iszm/ Son of the Tree and Andre Norton's Web of the Witch World)

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by Rosemary Benton

March and April have been very satisfying months in terms of science fiction literature that really revels in the art of creating alien worlds and cultures. Between Andre Norton's next installment in the Witch World series, Web of the Witch World, and the Ace Double release of Jack Vance's novellas The Houses of Iszm and Son of the Tree, science fiction readers had their pick of genre crossing science fiction. Andre Norton's book was, like much of her works, a solid science fiction and fantasy blend with technology and supernatural elements working side by side to create a world of complicated politics and alliances. Jack Vance, on the other hand, displays an ability to write classic science fiction with a hint of sinister terror lurking at the heart of his stories.

Ace Double F-265: The Houses of Iszm / Son of the Tree, by Jack Vance


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

The Houses of Iszm (originally published in a shorter form in “Startling Stories” magazine, 1954) and Son of the Tree (“Thrilling Wonder Stories” magazine, 1951) are both older stories of Jack Vance's, but ones which have yet to show their age. In keeping with each other, the plot twist of both stories centers around strange societies with strange practices designed to keep an intellectual stranglehold on valuable information and technology. Vance likewise reuses similar settings and pacing in both stories, making them feel as if they could be long lost relatives of each other both existing in the same universe but not aware that they were related.

The Houses of Iszm follows the unassuming adventure of Earthling botanist Aile Farr's visit to the planet Iszm. While there he hopes to observe the unique and highly coveted native flora that the native peoples have shaped in wondrous ways. Through thousands of years of selective breeding the people of Iszm have evolved a form of plant that serves both as their domicile, their plumbing system, and their source of food and hydration. Only recently has Earth set up one sided trade relations through the house growing classes of the Iszic. The man who holds a monopoly on this off world house trade is the human industrialist K. Penche.

Unwilling to part with their trade secrets, the Iszic are the only ones in the universe who have access to the coveted techniques for the rearing of plant domiciles. Despite innumerable attempts to smuggle female seeds, cuttings or saplings off planet there has never been a successful attempt, although that doesn't stop the greedy and the blindly altruistic from trying – for the sake of personal riches or for the sake of the universe's homeless who would benefit from a self growing and repairing shelter. Aile Farr is one of the latter, and through a mix of professional curiosity in plants, bad timing, and naiveté he finds himself caught in the middle of one such ambitious attempt to get a Iszic house seed off world.


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

On the flip side of this Ace Double is Son of the Tree. This Jack Vance story unfolds around the revenge driven, and unassumingly named, Joe Smith of Earth. Traveling across the universe on whatever money he can gather, Joe is in pursuit of a man named Harry Creag who had an affair with Joe's wife, Margaret. Along his pursuit of the elusive adulterer, Joe comes to a feudal world whose ruling class is unified around a religion that worships a massive tree called The Tree of Life. Just trying to make enough money in order to continue his pursuit of the man who stole the heart of his wife, Joe becomes entangled in the dangerous back stabbing of opposing regimes vying for control of the minds of the planet's laity, as well as the natural resources of the newly industrializing neighboring planet Ballenkarch. He soon finds himself as an unwilling pawn in the mechanizations of many dangerous missionaries, spies and military personnel who see him as a means to their end. Joe struggles just to survive, but he is inexorably drawn into the intrigue as an active player. 

While The Houses of Iszm is less plot heavy than Son of the Tree, it shows a more sinister world. In Son of the Tree there is no misunderstanding that literally billions of lives are at stake in the political power play between the Druids, the Mangs, and the Ballenkarts. But by the end of Son of the Tree the evil of the people-consuming Tree of Life and its offshoot is revealed and measures are being taken to stop its slaughter of the Druid laity. Granted, Harry Creath admits that it will be a blood soaked venture, but he suggests that it will give back purpose and self determination to the peasants on the Druid's world. There is a sense of justice by the end of the book, even if it is a bitter justice. The Druid laity will be free in time, Ballenkart has avoided disaster by killing the sprout of the Tree of Life that was planted in its soil, and the Mangs have not conquered the planet.

There is no such justice to be found in The Houses of Iszm. There isn't even any societal change, positive or negative, brought about through the suffering and sacrifice of the people caught in the heist of the Iszic house seed. After the initial field raid that Farr witnesses on Iszm, Farr is tested and questioned to see if he had any hand in the plot to steal the house cultivation secrets of the planet. Part of this interrogation involves him being shown the newest experiments the Iszic are testing – the merger of animal and plant to create new potential structures. The animal part of this experimentation is a living, sentient being that was captured during the raid and lobotomized. He was then “planted” before scientists coaxed vegetation to grow from his body.

It's a nightmarish concept, and one for which the Iszic face no consequences. Granted, the experiment is a failure, but the reader is not shown that the experiments will halt, or even that there is any remorse felt by the Iszic for what they are doing to the poor being. Indeed, it's safe to say that there will be other people who will be tortured in the same manner. After Farr leaves the planet and begins his journey to Earth, there is no sign that things will be anything but business as usual in the labs of Iszm. The plot continues on without a backwards glance.

This sense of “take what you can and run” is pervasive throughout The Houses of Iszm. Justice seems to be only that which you bargain for as in Farr's sale of the smuggled seed to K. Penche, or the quick cover up of the death of the Iszic after the final confrontation at K. Penche's house. More than anything, it seems as if the creed of Jack Vance's worlds is "he who can afford to buy the power (female house seeds, knowledge of the true nature of the Tree of Life, etc.) makes the rules." 

It would be interesting to see these two stories merged to tie up some of the loose story elements in both books. For instance, what if the tree Aile Farr sold to K. Penche became the horrendous Tree of Life on Kyril? It being a male sprout Penche purchased from Farr, combined with the fact that Iszic house growing secrets would never be given up willingly, then Penche would be required to spend his resources learning to reverse engineer the Iszic growing techniques for the sake of mass producing tree homes. Zhde Patasz of Iszm made it very clear to Farr during his visit that trees are semi-sentient and directly interact with their occupants in a symbiotic way. But there is such a thing as a mad tree. An organic man-made monstrosity created in a lab for the purpose of mass marketing at an affordable price would be an very interesting origin story for the Druid's sacred tree.

Although at times wavering unsteadily between fun action adventures and pessimistic commentary on the balance of power, Jack Vance's works have definitely fired my imagination. I look forward to reading more of his work in the very near future. 

Web of the Witch World by Andre Norton

Picking up shortly after the conclusion of Witch World, Web continues with the trials of the citizens of Estcarp and their allies as they fight to save Loyse of Verlaine from kidnappers and contain another attempt by the Kolder to return to the home dimension of the former witch Jaelithe, the Earth man Simon Tregarth, Loyse, Koris of Gorm. As in its predecessor Witch World, Norton's focus on the balance of power (both technological and supernatural) alongside the geo-political intrigue remains crucial to the advancement of the plot. But also just like Witch World there is little development in the characters' personalities.


The book can be viewed here and purchased here

It's not hard to empathize with Norton's characters, but it's difficult to rationalize why we should be invested in them. Other than the hardships endured by their physical characteristics (plain faced Loyse or oddly shaped Koris), or the duties of their positions (Falconer, Witch, Border Warder, etc.), what can be said about any of these people who inhabit the the lands of Witch World? To say that any one of them is persistent, brave or intelligent is too generic a statement since these descriptors apply to all of them. Koris could be said to be the more brash of the primary protagonists, but even that is tempered by a seemingly universal understanding amongst the characters that the greater good of Estcarp and the protection of Loyse could be jeopardized with too much bravado.

In both Witch World and Web of the Witch World there are precious few characters who will act outside of the universally held objectives of their respective groups – all Kolder (native Kolder as well as their agents) work for the goal of cross-dimensional conquest, and all Estcarp allies work for the wills of the Guardians. Putting the two stories side by side the only characters who felt as if they evolved somewhat into distinguishable people were Aldis and Simon Tregarth.

As mistress to Yvian, Aldis is in a precarious position of power that could easily be lost should Yvian tire of her company or if he should recapture his runaway bride Loyse and cement a union between his territory and Verlaine. We see her exhibit cunning, duplicity, manipulation and forethought in Witch World, as well as a hardened self-serving determination to survive in a society where women are secondary accessories to the lives of the men who rule them. Sadly, only a little of this characterization survives into the plot of Web of Witch World before it is overridden by the mind control of the Kolder. Once an unpredictable and capricious character who added an edge to the chapters she appeared in, the Kolder force her to take wooden actions with nearly none of her classic cunning. 

Simon Tregarth, the man from another Earth, is one who I desperately wanted to see evolve from his flat personality in Witch World. Thankfully, in Web of Witch World he does mature somewhat as a character. Between the time when the first book ended and the second one begins Simon and Jaelithe have married. It feels like a massive waste not to have been privy to the turmoil that must have been present within Jaelithe during that time as she officially sacrifices her Witch power, her position amongst the leadership of Estcarp, and sole possession of her physical body for her love of Simon. Apparently she must have come to terms with the trade, because things seem to be peaceful between them until one morning when both she and Simon feel a call of the power. Elatedly she declares that she feels whole again and goes off on her path in the plot, leaving the reader with some of the first real insight we have had into Simon – and that insight is that he is wildly insecure about this return of Jaelithe's power.

In only a handful of instances does the writing dive back into Simon's head to analyze this development in their relationship and how it affects Simon, but through it we are treated to a small character arc in which a character is motivated to action by more than a call to a greater good or service. Simon goes through an initial bout of self doubt that he wasn't enough to make Jaelithe feel whole since the loss of her power. Now that she has it back he's worried that she will begin to prioritize her role as a magic user over her relationship to him. He worries that her career as a Witch will pull them apart from each other physically as well as emotionally. He even begins to resent her as “defecting” from him until he starts to realize that that kind of thinking is playing into the hands of the Kolder who intend to drive a wedge between all those who oppose them. Ultimately Simon realizes that Jaelithe's reestablished connection with magic is not a threat to their marriage. He comes to see her as an equal and a powerful ally in the fight against the Kolder.

Andre Norton's Witch World is shaping up to be a series that will be most appreciated by fans of fast action political epics. It's not a series for those who are looking for a character study, or for a story that develops due to interplay between unique and interesting people. Again, as I said about Witch World, Norton has laid the foundations of a world with many interesting facets. The inter-dimensional travel, technology so advanced people have reverted to calling it magic, and deeply divided cultures are fun, but this world building takes far more precedence in the plot than the people within it. 

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Book, Magazine

[April 14, 1964] COOKING WITH ASH (the May 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Melting Down

The cover of the May 1964 Amazing depicts an astronaut whose space helmet and surrounding objects are melting as the giant sun blazes in through his rather large porthole.  This illustrates Lester del Rey’s story Boiling Point, or more likely the story rationalizes the cover; I suspect more strongly each month that a lot of Amazing’s cover stories are in fact written around an already purchased cover painting. 


by Schelling

Boiling Point

The story starts out as routinely clever.  Protagonist Stasek is a technician residing on Venus and studying “energy-eaters,” amorphous creatures who hang out near the sun and live on its energy.  He is pressed into service to do maintenance on“the ring of satellites strung like beads between the orbit of Venus and the orbit of Mercury.” They are there to relay communications, observe sunspots, absorb energy and beam it to wherever it’s needed. 

Stasek sets out and, of course, quickly comes across an energy-eater wrapped around a satellite he’s supposed to service.  What an opportunity!  He disregards regulations, gets close to it, and finds out why nobody who has done so has come back: it wraps itself around his little spaceship.  Turns out it’s telepathic, and it’s hungry: it wants to go towards the sun, and when Stasek demurs, it takes control of the ship.  Curtains!  Except Stasek, before he cooks completely, figures out a better deal to offer it.

This would be a perfectly acceptable piece of hardware-opera yard goods except that it turns on the assumption that telepathic communication, if it exists at all, could work right off the bat between creatures of such utterly different background and experience.  I read that some guy named Wittgenstein said, “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” Sounds right to me, and that goes at least double for a shape-shifting vacuum-dweller that feeds on pure energy.  Sorry, too much to swallow, downgraded from yard goods to factory reject.  Two stars.

As for the rest of the issue, I can’t say there’s anything especially good here—but at least some of it is bad in more interesting ways than usual.  Also, as someone suggested to me, this seems to be the Special Bad-Mouthing Issue.  Once past the del Rey story, every piece of fiction contains some derogatory stereotype or a character who is nasty to the point of caricature.

Sunburst (Part 3 of 3)


by Schelling

This issue concludes Phyllis Gotlieb’s serial Sunburst, which seems sincere and well-meaning, but ultimately inconclusive. 

Premise (in case you haven't been reading along): years ago, in a small Midwestern city called Sorrel Park, a nuclear reactor accident resulted in the town’s being quarantined under martial law, and in the birth of a number of mutant children with very strong psionic powers.  A few years later these feral superchildren ran rampant through the town destroying everything within reach, and were themselves quarantined behind a force field in a barren place called the Dump (hence, Dumplings).

The main character is Shandy Johnson, a 13-year-old orphaned girl who is an “imperv,” i.e., someone with no psi talent who is undetectable via psi, and who is trying to get by in depressed and police-dominated Sorrel Park.  She is apprehended and taken to the authorities, who want to use her as a go-between with the Dumplings, though that doesn’t actually happen.

Instead the author launches a very busy plot full of escapes, pursuits, disappearances, captivities, disturbances, threats of massive sabotage of essential government functions, etc.  Midway through, Shandy unspools her big idea: psi talents tend to develop in people who are psychopaths anyway—born juvenile delinquents!  I.e., mesomorphs who have had trouble with the police starting early, who mostly “come from families without very strong morals—often immigrants who have trouble coping with a new country. . . . I’ve heard poverty is a cause of delinquency, but I think these kinds of shiftless, helpless people could be a cause of poverty too. . . .”

After this detour into discredited pseudo-science, the busy plot machine cranks up again, with the Dumplings mostly acting like the natural-born delinquents we’ve been told they are, and at the end most of those who are still alive are back in the Dump behind a more secure force field.  That is, after all the hugger-mugger, the story’s basic problem, young people essentially sentenced to life imprisonment in a barren environment because nobody can control their dangerous talents, is unchanged.  It is suggested that Shandy is the real mutant superperson here, though what that means is unclear. 

Meanwhile, we have never seen the Dumplings and their outcast society—the most interesting part of the set-up—except second-hand, and in melodramatic bursts during their breakout.  It’s all perfectly readable, if you can overlook Gotlieb’s frequently clumsy writing.  (Sample: “She had come to a hard decision, and she silently awarded herself the razz for her sense of its altruism, without stopping the ache.”) It just never adds up to much despite the potentially interesting premise.  Two stars.

The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal


by Schelling

Next up is The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal, by Cordwainer Smith, he of the suddenly soaring reputation.  This one is told in high whimsical tall-tale style, about the eponymous Commander who is dispatched to probe the “outer reaches of our galaxy.” He encounters a colony planet where “femininity became carcinogenic,” so the women all died off and the only means of survival was to turn everyone medically into men, which of course had effects beyond the medical.  Smith describes the results at some length.  Here’s a sample:

“They, themselves, were bearded homosexuals, with rouged lips, ornate earrings, fine heads of hair, and very few old men among them.  They killed off their men before they became old; the things they could not get from love or relaxation or comfort, they purchased with battle and death.  They made up songs proclaiming themselves to be the last of the old men and the first of the new, and they sang their hate to mankind when they should meet, and they sang ‘Woe is earth that we should find it,’ and yet something inside them made them add to almost every song a refrain which troubled even them.

“And I mourn Man!”

One must ask whether this is a glimpse of the far future, or of the author’s insecurities.  We don’t hear much about homosexuals here in this small Kentucky town, and what we do hear amounts to locker room talk.  I wonder if Smith is just passing on the locker room talk of intellectuals.  His extravagant fantasy about people I doubt he knows much about reminds me of some of the strange things people in this mostly segregated town say about Negroes.  Anyway, two stars: a story that started out like a bravura performance, brought down by what reads like gross stereotyping.

Incidentally, the blurb to the story reads like the editor tried to get into the swing of Smith’s sometimes outlandish prose.  I wonder if she just appropriated a piece of the story to serve as a blurb.

The Artist


by Schelling

Rosel George Brown contributes The Artist, a purposefully difficult and unpleasant story about an artist, a stupid and nasty jerk who has become successful by painting what his long-suffering wife sees (it’s not too clear how that works).  Now she sees something strange and frightening in a corner of the room, and rather than have him paint what she sees, she provokes him into getting a stepladder and looking for himself, with unpleasant results (for him anyway).  It’s sort of like that playwright of bad marriages, Edward Albee, meeting H.P. Lovecraft, to mutual dislike.  For lagniappe, the action takes place at a party featuring caricatured secondary characters.  Two stars for making the story seem interesting enough to persevere with it (including a second read) long enough to figure out what is going on. 

According to His Abilities


by Schelling

Another nasty jerk is featured in Harry Harrison’s According to His Abilities, though this one isn’t so stupid, and is also rationalized at the end of the story.  The refined milquetoast DeWitt and the boorish thug Briggs have been dispatched to rescue an Earthman from primitive aliens who are pretty boorish and thuggy themselves.  Briggs’s belligerence wins the day, and there’s a facile revelation about him at the end, of an all too familiar sort.  It’s dreary hackwork executed professionally.  Two stars.

For Every Action


by Adkins

C.C. MacApp’s For Every Action starts with a mildly clever idea, spaceborne life forms around the orbit of Pluto that glom on to spaceships’ rocket exhausts so they can no longer steer accurately, then adds another such idea (a guy could move around in space using a bow and arrow!), and sets them in a silly frame of Cold War suspicion, concluding with a reference to Soviet spacemen (implicitly, drunk) floating in space singing Volga Boat Song (sic).  It’s generically similar to Boiling Point but much weaker.  Two stars, barely.

Planetary Engineering

And of course Ben Bova is back with the latest in his interminable series of fact articles though this one gets no farther than the Moon.  It’s about what people will have to do to establish colonies there, and is frankly a rehash of what we’ve seen not only in dozens of SF stories but in plenty of articles in general-interest magazines, complete with platitudes (“Finally, carving out a human settlement in a literally new world will give man an opportunity to create a new society.” Etc.) and observations so mundane as to be suffocating (“Corridors will no doubt be painted in special color codes, to help travellers find their way.”).  Two stars, largely for good intentions.  Also, no one is insulted here.

The Verdict

So: not much here of much merit, but, as already suggested . . . if you can’t be good, at least find an interesting way to be bad.


by Schelling

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TV

[April 12, 1964] Mold of a Man (The Outer Limits, Season One, Episodes 25-28)

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by Natalie Devitt

Recently The Outer Limits has primarily featured storylines about intellectually superior aliens and mutants treating people like something easily controlled or shaped to suit their needs. Episodes have included stories about a man-turned-mutant using his telepathic abilities to keep members of his crew prisoners on another planet, an alien holding a group captive in an old mansion until they can provide him with important information, a man and a woman being thrown into a deadly game for the entertainment of creatures from another planet, and an alien posing as a tutor so he can recruit children as tools for his nefarious plans.

The Mutant, by Allan Balter and Robert Mintz

In The Mutant, Larry Pennell, an actor you may have seen in anything from Thriller to Have Gun – Will Travel, plays Evan Marshall, a man who travels to a planet that seems to be “suitable for colonization by Earth‘s overflowing population.” The planet, Annex One, resembles Earth. He arrives there intending to investigate the death of a scientist stationed at planet.

Marshall is instructed to wear special goggles while outside as protection from the planet’s harsh weather conditions, which can include anything from “constant daylight” to severe storms. A member of the team, played by Warren Oates (he recently appeared on The Twilight Zone’s Number 7 is Made Up of Phantoms), plays Reese Fowler. Fowler assures Marshall, “You begin to feel like they [the goggles] are a part of your person, which is the way that we feel.” Fowler fails to mention to Marshall that he rarely removes his goggles in order to hide his swollen eyes, which started protruding after he was accidentally caught in a storm without his protective eyewear. This incident resulted not only in bulging eyes, but it also gave Fowler telepathy and the ability to kill people with just a touch of the hand.

Fowler is abusing his new powers, keeping everyone on Annex One as “his prisoners” as he frantically searches for a cure to his mutations. Members of the group try to warn Marshall about Fowler. All the while they try to prevent the mutant from reading their minds as they devise a plan to return to Earth. But as Fowler warns them, it is nearly impossible for anyone to quiet their thoughts for long.

Between Fowler’s telepathic powers being almost inescapable and the effects of endless daylight on a person‘s sanity, The Mutant does a pretty good job of establishing a sense of dread. Further, I think the sight of Fowler’s eyes will be forever seared into my mind. One aspect of the episode that certainly did not work very well was the romantic secondary plot, which was not very convincing and did not do much to support the main plot. But overall, I would say The Mutant is strong enough to deserve three stars.

The Guests, by Donald S. Sanford

The Guests, opens on an elderly man being pursued on foot by an alien through the woods. The man collapses as a young man, Wade (Geoffrey Horne, from The Twilight Zone’s The Gift), stops to offer a hand. As the extraterrestrial vanishes, a mansion appears in its place. Wade picks up the old man’s pocket watch, inside of which is a very old picture of a young woman that appears to have been taken in the 19th century. As Wade approaches the house, the front door seems to open itself.

Upon entering the house, he spots the same young woman in the picture, Teresa, looking exactly as she did in the old man’s photo. Wade also meets another fellow, and two other women, one of which is played by none other than the famous Gloria Grahame. They are all wearing clothing from different time periods. Not thinking much about their outdated clothing, Wade goes on to tell them about the old man. Teresa does not miss a beat, responding rather coldly with he must be “gone by now.” She then adds, “He’s been dead for a long time.”

Wade tries to leave the house at once, but he is pulled back in, then up the stairs, where he finally comes face to face with their host: a glowing version of the creature from this season's The Mice. Their captor says he is looking for “the factor that will balance the equation.” After being interrogated by the alien, Wade is told by the others, “You won’t leave here, young man. None of us will ever leave here.” The other guests may be content to remain frozen in time, but Wade is determined to escape.

The whole alien holding people captive in a big strange mansion sounds an awful lot like this season's Don’t Open Till Doomsday, and while The Guests is not quite as strong, it almost succeeds in capturing the same creepy atmosphere. If there is one thing that The Outer Limits does extremely well, it is create mood. While you can predict this story‘s outcome, there is a scene involving a character rapidly aging that has stayed with me since I watched it.

I am kind of disappointed that I did not enjoy Gloria Grahame in this entry as much as I would have liked. I have seen the Oscar winner shine in a wide range of roles.  This performance is not bad, just a little uninspired. Given her impressive body of work, I am not sure that matters very much. In any case, this entry receives three stars.

Fun and Games, by Robert Specht and Joseph Stefano

Fun and Games tells the tale of a man and a woman, played by Nick Adams (whom you might know from the TV show, The Rebel) and television actress Nancy Malone. They are teleported to another planet, Andera, where they are informed by a shadowy figure that they have been selected to represent the men and the women of Earth in a “rather terrible kind of game” for the amusement of their kind. The humans, Mike and Laura, will fight against one male and one female representative from another planet, the Calco, in a fight “until the death.“ The creature insists that they will not be forced to participate, but if they choose to not join, their “opponents will win by default.“ Most importantly, if they lose the game, Earth will be destroyed.

The Calco resemble apes, and are so primitive that they use boomerangs as weapons instead of guns. Participants are prohibited from using guns at any time during the game, but when Mike and Laura discover that one of their adversaries murdered its own partner in order to stretch out its own food supply, they realize just what they are up against. Do they really stand a chance against such a ruthless opponent?

The two lead actors really deliver some fine performances in this hour of the series, which almost succeeds in distracting from how goofy and unthreatening the Calco appear. Fun and Games revisits important moments in the story, exploring different decisions characters can make. I imagine watching the same thing over and over is enough to drive some viewers insane. Personally, I really enjoyed it, but I could see how it could feel like padding to fill the entire hour. Luckily, the conclusion has some interesting twists. Fun and Games is in my opinion the best entry of the series this past month, which is why it earns three and a half stars from me.

The Special One, by Oliver Crawford

One stormy night, a family is visited by stranger who goes by the name of Mr. Zeno. He claims to be “from the Educational Enrichment Program,“ and expresses his interest in tutoring their son, Ken. But not long after studying with Mr. Zeno, who is really an extraterrestrial in disguise, Ken begins behaving strangely. When Ken’s dad (played by Hitchcock-thriller Shadow of a Doubt’s MacDonald Carey) wants him to do anything besides homework, Ken tells him, “Sorry, Dad. I’ve got to study. Mr. Zeno will be here in a minute.” Also, Ken’s father, Roy, thinks it is strange that Zeno does not seem to give advance notice when he is coming over to their house, and how he seems to be spending an increasing amount of time with his son.

Roy stumbles on a periodic table that Ken has been working on. The strange thing is that it includes 23 extra elements. This leads to Ken‘s father to tell his buddy about the situation, who states, “I wouldn’t let my boy join the group.” When Dad confronts his son about the extra elements on the his periodic table, Ken simply states that they are not there “yet,” but that the “balance is in the future.” Ken’s mother accuses Roy of being jealous of Mr. Zeno. On top of all of that, the Education Enrichment Program’s office has never heard of Mr. Zeno and claim their tutors do not do house visits. So, what does a creature from outer space need with Ken?

The Special One is not really my favorite episode about aliens plotting to take over the world, but it's not really a bad one, either. The acting is strong, except for a somewhat awkward scene where Mr. Zeno tries to get Ken’s dad to commit suicide, which also reminds me of a similar scene in a previous episode, Corpus Earthling. One thing the episode really has going for it is its special effects, which are surprisingly good, especially for television. Three stars.

It has been another enjoyable month of the series, which seems to have been filled with even more than usual number of narratives about people being easily influenced by extraterrestrial beings. Given that this month included one very good episode and three good episodes, I am confident the remaining month of the season will also entertain.

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Science / Space Race

[April 10, 1964] Piercing the night (Gemini, Zond, Kosmos 28, and Explorer 9)

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by Gideon Marcus

After what felt like a pause in the Space Race, things have now het up, and I'm getting excited abouting being on the NASA beat again.  To wit, both superpowers seem on the cusp of making a giant leap forward in the exploration of the great black unknown.

Two for the Price of One

It has been nearly a year since the Mercury program wrapped up.  Since then, NASA has been feverishly working on its Apollo lunar program, comprising the Saturn rocket, the three seat Command/Service Module, and the two seat Lunar Excursion Module.  We finally got a peek at a full scale mock-up of the last, and it's unlike any spacecraft I've ever seen before.

Even while NASA is progressing with Apollo, the space agency has also been proceeding with its Gemini two-seat spacecraft.  Gemini is a sort of bridge to Apollo, a direct successor to Mercury that will allow astronauts to perfect the techniques of orbital rendezvous and docking.  It is also likely that the Air Force will use Gemini to build a staffed space station and perhaps for other military purposes.

On April 8, 1964, the first Gemini soared into orbit atop a modified Titan II ICBM.  There was no one on board, but the flight was still an important one.  Using missiles borrowed from the Air Force is always a dicey proposition — they aren't designed to carry people, after all.  I am happy to report, however, that the new rocket did its job just about perfectly, delivering Gemini 1 to an orbit just slightly higher than planned.

The uncrewed spacecraft fell silent after its first orbit when the battery became exhausted, a planned occurrence.  In fact, no plans were ever made for recovery; the Titan second stage was left attached to the spacecraft, and holes were drilled into Gemini's heat shield to ensure it completely burns up when its orbit decays about two days from now.

This launch marks an important first step for Gemini.  The Titan II, a much simpler and stronger rocket than Mercury's Atlas, is now "man-rated."  It only remains for the capsule itself, to get the same certification.  That should happen with the Gemini 2 mission, planned for late this year. 

In any event, it's another "first" for America — we got the first two-seat ship into orbit!

Destination Unknown

The Soviet Union beat us to the moon in 1958 with Mechta, and they almost beat us to Mars last year, too (their craft went silent along the way).  Now, it looks like they're setting the stage for another deep space endeavor.

On April 2, 1964, the Russkies launched Zond 1 "for the purpose of developing a space system for distant interplanetary flights."  It left orbit, and TASS continues to report that Zond is functioning properly.  However, they are being extremely cagey about where the spacecraft is going.  Experts suggest that it might be a Venus probe based on its launch date and trajectory.  I suppose it could also be a long range mission with no planetary target like Pioneer 5 was.

Two days later, on April 4, the Soviets launched Kosmos 28, an orbital satellite "intended for the further exploration of outer space in accordance with the program announced by TASS March 16, 1962." 

Which is to say, probably a spy satellite like our own Discoverer program.

The Balloon Goes Down

Yesterday, we bade a fiery farewell to Explorer 9, the first of six planned 12-foot balloon satellites whose task is to measure the density of the top of Earth's atmosphere.  The satellite confirmed the daily bulge in the upper atmosphere caused by the sun's heating the air during the day, and it also verified the model of the region's temperature, established by prior satellites. 

Moreover, the satellite lasted long enough that its data could be compared to that of its identical successor, Explorer 19, which is still up there.

Explorer 9 was the first satellite to be launched by the Scout solid-fuel rocket and the first to be launched into orbit from Wallops Island in Virginia.  Ya did good, pal!

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TV

[April 8th, 1964] Pooooolo! (Doctor Who: Marco Polo, Parts 5 to 7)

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By Jessica Holmes

The caravan winds ever onwards across Cathay. Let’s catch up, shall we?

We’re a bit over halfway through our first historical serial, tagging along with Marco Polo as he travels across China to meet with Kublai Khan. With him are Tegana, a Mongol warlord and obvious baddie, Ping-Cho, a young lady from Samarkand on her way to be married, and of course, our Doctor and his companions. Tegana has been trying (and failing) to bump off our tag-alongs so he can nick the TARDIS for his master, Logai, a rival to the great Kublai Khan. And now a guard has just turned up dead. Could this journey be about to come to a sudden and bloody end?

RIDER FROM SHANG-TU

Our companions find the murdered guard, and are quick to raise the alarm. The men arm themselves, and prepare to fight. There’s a bandit attack coming (a gold sticker for whoever guesses who orchestrated that), and they’ll need all the fighters they can muster.

So they send the women into the tent.

On your own heads be it, lads.

The Doctor advocates taking shelter in the TARDIS, but to no avail, because Marco is just bit too stubborn for his own good. Tegana tries to convince Marco that the Doctor and his companions murdered the guard. To be fair, they did have the motive and opportunity, but what about the means?

I suppose Ian could have made use of the forgotten art of war crockery.

Marco doesn’t really listen to Tegana, so his stubbornness can be good for something, it seems.

Still, they’re going to need more than a few swords if they’re going to win against a pack of bandits. Ian comes up with the ingenious idea to throw bamboo on the fire. Bamboo is a hollow grass, so there’s air inside each stick. What happens to air when it heats up? It expands. And what happens if the grass can’t expand with it?

Pop!

The bandits turn up, and we’re treated to a bit of swashbuckling action as the battle commences. In all the hubbub, Tegana kills the leader of the bandits, sending his secret complicity to the grave with him, and the Doctor dusts off his fencing skills.

Ian’s exploding bamboo trick pays off, and the bandits scatter, leaving the caravan free to lick its wounds and get going again. The Doctor is smart enough to figure out that Tegana was in league with the bandits (well, duh), and Marco starts to warm to the companions again.

A courier from the great Khan arrives, to the surprise of everyone, for they are many, many leagues yet from Shang-Tu. He explains that he had a fresh horse waiting for him at waystations every league, and he wears bells on his clothing to let the ostlers know when he’s about to arrive, so as to waste as little time as possible.

You see, he had an extremely important message for them. A matter of grave urgency.

Kublai Khan says: Hello, how are you?

Oh. Nice of him, I suppose.

Then off we go to Cheng-Ting, the ‘white city’.

The set and costumes here are lovely. I’ll be waxing lyrical about this in a little bit.

What I will not be waxing lyrical about, however, is this fellow here, whose name I never did catch, because I was so distracted by how bizarre his intonation and mannerisms are. He’s the most pompous prat in all of China.

The Doctor’s uncharitable but accurate impression of him is very funny. So, perhaps it was deliberate.

A one eyed man, Kuiju, meets Tegana in the stables, and they strike a deal. Kuiju will steal the TARDIS for Tegana. In great trade caravans, it is so easy for things to be misplaced, after all.

I just had a thought. How heavy is the TARDIS? We saw a few additional rooms during The Edge Of Destruction, so we know that the TARDIS is at least the size of a house on the inside. So, does the weight of the TARDIS match the outer dimensions, or the inner dimensions, or both?

I’m just wondering how they’re managing to transport it. They seem not to have had any problems loading it onto the wagon, so perhaps it does only weigh as much as the outer dimensions. That’ll make it easier to steal, I suppose.

I feel like that probably breaks some law of physics. Don’t ask which. I’m not a Science Lawyer.

Well, it looks like it’s soon to be a moot point, because Ping-Cho’s stealing the keys to the TARDIS! She promised Marco that she wouldn’t reveal to the others where the keys were hidden, but she didn’t say anything about not taking them herself.

I would honestly love it if Ping-Cho came along with the companions as a permanent addition to the crew. Susan gets a friend her own age, Ping-Cho doesn’t have to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather, everybody wins!

But it’d also bring the serial to an end two episodes early, and I’m quite enjoying myself, thank you very much.

Let’s throw a Tegana in the works.

4 out of 5.

MIGHTY KUBLAI KHAN

Tegana foils the companions’ attempt to escape, and Ian ‘confesses’ to taking the key, to protect Ping-Cho. With that, the caravan moves on, and our next stop is at an inn between Cheng-Ting and Peking.

Ian tries once again to convince Marco to give the TARDIS back, and this time, he throws all caution to the wind and flat out tells him that he’s from the future, the TARDIS flies through time and space, and no, they can’t just hang about and get a ship back home from Venice.

Marco, though having seen some wild things in his travels across the far east (like a burning black stone!), has to draw the line somewhere, and the notion of travelling freely between tomorrow, today and yesterday is about a hundred leagues over that line.

What’s more, Marco figures out that Ian lied about stealing the key, and deduces that the only reason he would lie is to protect the real thief: Ping-Cho, who is nowhere to be found.

She has slipped out and is now making her less-than-merry way back to Samarkand, so Ian offers to ride back to look for her.

Ian, can you actually ride a horse? I mean really, properly ride a horse? No, plodding along the beach on a donkey when you’re holidaying in Blackpool doesn’t count.

Ping-Cho makes it back to the way station, and runs into Kuiju as he puts his scheme into action, posing as an envoy from the Khan and tricking that pompous official into letting him take possession of the TARDIS. Oh, and while he’s at it, he scams Ping-Cho out of all her money when she tries to book passage to Samarkand with his caravan.

Nice chap.

Just when it seems Ping-Cho is royally stuffed, along comes Ian! And with the arrival of the real envoy from Shang-Tu, it doesn’t take anyone long to realise that the TARDIS has been stolen.

I think I’d have really liked Ian if he’d been one of my teachers. In another life he’d have been a hero in one of those old adventure serials. Ergo, a cool teacher.

Ian figures the TARDIS is most likely being taken on the road to Karakorum, which was the capital of Genghis Khan’s empire, though by now it’s little more than a field. The Mongols were, and still are, a nomadic people, after all. Their cities don’t tend to stay in one place.

Meanwhile, in Shang-Tu, the companions have finally arrived!

The set for the summer palace is gorgeous. Throughout this serial the sets have been impressive, and the palaces are sublimely ornate. I’ve managed to procure a few colour images taken from production, so as we can see they’re even more beautiful when not viewed on a monochrome television set. The level of detail and care that’s gone into every inch of the production certainly shows, and sells the palace as the splendid heart of this mighty empire.

Still, for all the majesty of the Yuan dynasty, the Doctor isn’t about to kowtow to some puny Earth ruler. He has a bad back, anyway. Perhaps he should try a curtsey?

And now, dear readers.

The moment you’ve been waiting for.

Enter the mighty Kublai Khan!

Were you expecting him to come galloping in on horseback or something? That’s more his grandfather’s style. Kublai Khan is, as Marco Polo notes, ‘the greatest administrator the world has ever seen’, which is a weird boast, but I’ll take his word for it. His vizier is a bit uptight, but the Khan turns out to get along with the Doctor quite well, and it’s not long before the pair potter off to have a soothing bath in the local healing waters.

Back at the way station, Ping-Cho and Ian track down Kuiju (and also the TARDIS), and at knife-point the thief admits that Tegana paid him to steal the ‘caravan’.

And speak of the devil, here he comes!

3.5 out of 5. Nothing extraordinary, but not bad.

ASSASSIN AT PEKING

The confrontation turns deadly when Kuiju ends up on the wrong end of a knife, and moments later the courier from Shang-Tu arrives. Tegana claims Ian was trying to steal the ‘caravan’, Ian claims Tegana was plotting against the Khan, and the courier, having just come to deliver a message and being far too busy to play judge, more or less throws up his hands and says it’s up to the Khan, who has left Shang-Tu for Peking.

Speaking of Peking, we have a lovely set once again. I don’t know much about Chinese art, so I couldn’t say for sure if it’s appropriate to the right period of Chinese history, or whether it’d be like seeing a Norman Rockwell painting in George Washington’s study.

Period accurate or not, it sure does look pretty.

The Doctor and the Khan are getting along happily, drinking tea and playing backgammon. Oh, and betting colossal amounts of lands, goods and chattel on the outcome. I think the Doctor owns about half of the empire now. What’s more, the Doctor seems to have got over his aversion to bowing, as he manages just fine when the Empress shows up.

Lovely costumes once more. Very pretty fabric and some lovely cuts, as can be expected of Chinese textiles.

However.

They’re the wrong period.

Yes, they’re Chinese. They look very authentic. Some nice, authentic, Qing dynasty clothing. The Qing dynasty was last in power in 1912. The last Qing Emperor is actually still alive.

This serial is set during the Yuan dynasty, which ended in 1368. Oh, and we have the entire Ming dynasty separating these two periods.


Courtesy ofWikimedia Commons

This fresco, dated to the Yuan dynasty, shows some differences in the style of clothing. What jumps out to me most are the abundance of flowing fabrics and wrapped robes fastened with a belt. I could be wrong, but the costumes just don’t look like Yuan dynasty clothes to me.

I can’t claim any expertise but I think this might be comparable to seeing Charlemagne in a ruff.

The betting heats up when the Doctor asks to put up the TARDIS as stakes in their game. It’s a big risk, but it might be his best chance of reclaiming his ship. The Khan, however, would much rather he took something a bit less valuable, like the island of Sumatra.

I’m fairly certain that’s not yours to give, Kublai. Do you even have a navy? From what I know of the Mongols they were more into land-based empire building. Horses don’t do all that well on water.

Along comes Marco, and shortly after Ian turns up with Tegana and Ping-Cho, and I will give you three guesses as to whose accounting of events the court sides with. Because of course, Tegana is a Mongol, and Ian is not.

Oh, and Ping-Cho is getting married tomorrow. Now, I think weddings are great. Everyone has fun and you get free cake. But I’m also a big fan of this neat concept called ‘consent’ which seems to be glaringly absent in this marriage. Poor Ping-Cho.

Marco finally admits that laying claim to the TARDIS was wrong of him, but what’s done is done, and Kublai won the game of backgammon anyway.

A sentence ago I said ‘poor Ping-Cho’, but it looks like she’s in luck! Her husband-to-be? A little less so.

Her fiancé, so excited to get to spend the rest of his life with his pretty young bride, decided to try and extend his time on Earth with an ‘Elixir of Life’.

…Made of sulfur and quicksilver.

Something similar happened to the first Qin emperor, and the first man to unify China, Qin Shi Huang, who took mercury pills in the hopes he would live forever.

He did not live forever.

Ping-Cho is much relieved at the old man’s death, though she is smart enough not to be too open about that fact. She does, however, decide to stay in the court of Kublai Khan. Who knows, perhaps she’ll meet someone nice. It’s a bit too convenient for my liking, but still a nice little nod to Chinese history.

Marco, however, is feeling defeated. His gift didn’t work and the Khan no longer trusts him. It looks like Tegana’s won.

Good for him, but what does he want? What is Tegana’s game? Logai, his master, could attack Peking, but Kublai’s superior numbers would surely crush him.

But what is an army without a leader? Kublai is an old man, after all. It wouldn’t be hard to kill him. Especially if you’re a strong young warlord who has been welcomed into the city with open arms.

Oh, dear.

Realising the danger, the companions rush to the Khan’s chambers, warning Marco along the way, just as a messenger arrives and informs them that as they feared, Logai’s army is marching on Peking!

In the throne room, the Khan narrowly escapes death when Tegana kills his vizier by mistake, and it buys him just enough time for Marco and company to arrive, and we at last get the duel we’ve been waiting for, a thrilling clash of steel, a dance of blades, between the warlord and the explorer.

Marco succeeds in disarming Tegana, but before he can be brought to justice, Tegana grabs a guard’s sword and falls upon it, and all his schemes, along with the man himself, come to naught and slump onto the throne room floor.

With Tegana defeated, Marco hands the Doctor the keys to his TARDIS. Everyone says a hasty farewell, and the companions pile in, with the ship vanishing into the ether a moment later as the court looks on in astonishment.

Marco apologises to the Khan for giving away the gift from under his nose, but the Khan shrugs and quips that the Doctor would only have won it back in a game of backgammon anyway. Still, it’ll be quite a tale to tell everyone back in Venice. That is, assuming anyone believes it.

Well, poor old Marco Polo had great trouble convincing any of his contemporaries that most of what he wrote was true. Even the bit about seeing unicorns. Look it up.

4.5 out of 5, largely for the swordfight.

CONCLUSION

So, that was Marco Polo. I quite enjoyed our journey across China, though the serial is not without its flaws. It drags in places, I began to find everyone’s obliviousness to Tegana’s obvious scheming quite irritating after a while (the perils of invoking dramatic irony), and as I noted last time there’s the disappointing casting choices, along with I think some issues of historical accuracy when it comes to design. Also, the ending is a bit abrupt.

However, this is the most impressive production the Doctor Who team have put on for us yet, bringing the grandeur of a Hollywood epic to the small screen. It’s not quite Cleopatra in terms of scale (or budget), but I definitely feel a similar sense of ambition in this story of great journeys, great rulers and great treachery.

All in all? Well worth the watch, and more of this sort of thing, please and thank you.

THE SCORE

Now, the maths says (factoring in the score I forgot to include for The Wall Of Lies) that this serial gets a 3.57, but I’m feeling generous, and because of the quality of the latter half I’ll be nice and bump it up to a 4.

4 out of 5 stars

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Magazine

[Apr. 6, 1964] The art of word-smithing (May 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

The gimmick

Everybody's got to have an angle these days to stand out.  Volkswagen cars are tiny and cute.  Avis, being number two, tries harder.  In your heart, you know Goldwater's… right?

Science fiction magazines are no strangers to gimmicks.  Fantasy and Science Fiction has "All-star issues" with nothing but big-name authors (though they often turn in second-rate stuff).  Analog is trying out a run in "slick" 8.5" by 11" size. 

And this month, IF has gotten extra cute.  Every story in the issue is written by a guy named "Smith."  It's certainly a novel concept, but does it work?

The Issue at Hand


Cover by John Pederson, Jr.

The Imperial Stars, by E. E. Smith, Ph.D.

Leading this month's issue is the latest from Doc Smith, who almost single handedly developed the genre of space opera.  In many ways, this affable chap is still stuck in the '30s, with simplistic storylines and swashbuckling adventure.  On the other hand, he also has basically ignored the stultifying '50s with their ossified gender roles, which is refreshing.

Stars is about an interstellar circus troupe, the Flying D'Alemberts, who are really a batch of superspies.  They hail from the three-gee heavy planet of Des Plaines, and in addition to being stunningly gorgeous, they are all super strong and agile.  Jules and Yvette D'Alembert, the creme de la creme, are tapped to ferret out an Empire-wide network of traitors led by a bastard pretender to the Throne of Stanley.  Join them as they rollick and banter across the galaxy, slaughtering dozens of goons along the way, in the service of the throne!


by Gray Morrow

Stars reads sort of like a kid's version of Laumer's Retief stories, or maybe a light-hearted version of what might have happened if Kerk and Meta from Deathworld had decided to become covert agents.  It's fun, frothy stuff, utterly inconsequential, and inordinately admiring of absolute monarchy.

I most enjoyed the complete parity of status women shared with men in the D'Alembert universe; if anything, Jules is the sex object!  Again, Doc Smith seems not to have bought into the notion of more recent years that women don't make good heroes.  Good for him.

Three stars.

Fire, 2016!, by George O. Smith


by Nodel

I was looking forward to this one as fire is, by far, the greatest natural threat that faces the San Diego region.  Sadly, this piece about the quest for novel firefighting techniques 52 years hence is a dud, dull, and (ironically) highly conventional.  In brief: a young firefighter candidate wants to, in order to woo the daughter of the local Fire Marshall, find a replacement for water as a fire combatant.  It turns out there isn't one, but using computers, he is able to optimize the amount of water used in putting out a blaze.

It sounds a lot better written out like that, but it's really not very good — better suited to Analog…and Mack Reynolds' typewriter.

Two stars.

The Final Equation, by Jack Smith

This first piece by Jack Smith is a vignette, in which a professor has the hubris to declare his Godhood after deriving the equation for everything.  The real God takes umbrage.

It didn't work for me.  One star.

The Store of Heart's Desire, by Cordwainer Smith


by John Giunta

Ah, but then we come to the Cordwainer Smith, which is worth double the price of the entire magazine.

I lamented that the Smith "short novel", that had appeared in last month's Galaxy, stopped just as it was getting interesting.  In The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, we met Rod McBan, scion of the McBan house of the planet, Norstrilia.  His family was rich with the growing and selling of stroon, an anti-aging compound.  But he was psychically crippled and, on the eve of adulthood, at risk of being destroyed for his handicap.  With the aid of a canny computer, Rod leveraged his fortune into the biggest sum of capital ever amassed, and he used it to buy all of the original home of Man: Old Earth.

At the end of the novel, McBan had made it to Earth disguised as a cat person, one of the many under-races formed in human image but treated like animals.  At the starport, Rod meets C'Mell, the cat woman who so poignantly took up the cause of her people in Smith's 1962 classic, The Ballad of Lost C'mell.  She is there to protect Rod from those who would seize him for his wealth.

That's where it ends, with Rod on the verge of exploring Old Earth, of doing something with his prize.  It was a very unsatisfactory stopping point. 

The Store of Heart's Desire is Part 2.

Without giving a thing away (for you really must read this), Cordwainer Smith weaves together every thread of the Instrumentality universe, finally giving flesh to the tiny bits of bone we've seen over the years.  The rising discontent of the underpeople, the Reawakening of Man, the Starport, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, Lord Jestocost, and of course, C'Mell, Old North Australia and Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons. 

It is the task of science fiction authors to paint a future.  Not the future, for writers are not seers, but a plausible tomorrow.  I have yet to see anyone create a setting so vivid, so alien, and yet so accessible as Cordwainer Smith.  His world lives, described with a minimum of words and yet with profound depth.  And C'Mell is simply the best hero one could want.  Getting to see the rest of her story is truly a gift.

Five stars for this segment, and since the Journey is mine and I can do as I please, a retroactive increase of the first part's score to four stars.  Four and a half for the whole, and if the resulting full novel doesn't win the Hugo next year, it'll only be because too few people had subscriptions to both magazines in which the serial appeared.

Summing Up

In the end, the Smith experiment was something of a wash.  Given Editor Pohl's crowing over the upcoming Heinlein serial, more Smith, and a piece by A.E. Van Vogt, I can't but wonder if the magazine is going backwards.  Still, I cannot praise the Cordwainer Smith story enough.  Even if this be the last good issue IF ever prints, I'm glad we got this one.

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Book, Movies

[Apr. 4, 1964] A taste of brine (the book and movie, The Amphibian)

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by Margarita Mospanova

In every reader’s life there comes a time which we all dread. A time we try to forget as soon as it happens. A time when we finish reading a book that by all accounts should be a delight but that instead bores us to tears and makes us wish time travel was real just so we could go back in time and skip the experience altogether.

And sadly, dear readers, that is exactly what happened to me when I turned the last page of The Amphibian.

But first things first.

The novel was written by Alexander Beliaev in 1927 and published just a year later, first in a magazine, and then as a stand-alone book. It was published in English in 1962 by Moscow’s Foreign Languages Publishing House.

The story is set in Argentina and follows Ichthyander, an adopted son of a world-renowned surgeon, Salvator. When he was but an infant, Ichthyander was very ill and to save his life Salvator transplanted a set of shark gills onto him, giving his son the ability to breathe underwater. Hence the name, as the parts of it come from Ancient Greek, translating to “fish” and “man”. The pair live a fairly idyllic life in large mansion, the father treating locals and the son spending much of his time playing in the ocean.

However, as Ichthyander grows older, he become more reckless, attacking Argentinian fishermen and returning their hauls back to the water. Until one day, one of the local pearl gatherers, Pedro Zurita, sees him, and realizing the boy’s potential as a pearl diver, tries to catch him.

That doesn’t sound too bad, you might say. And you would be right, the plot looks quite interesting. In theory. In practice, the story has been flung head first against a truly horrendous writing style, flat characters, and unnatural dialogues.

The Russian text reads like a badly done translation. It is all the more unfortunate, when the rest of Beliaev’s books (at least the ones I’m familiar with) are written perfectly well. I suppose the author wanted to mimic the often more abrupt style favored by Western writers, but if so, he failed. And failed spectacularly.

Therefore, it will not come as a surprise when I say: read the book in English. Ignore the original Russian text and skip right to the translated version. I dare say, you will find yourselves much more satisfied with the book than I did.

Still, there were a couple of passages, all of them describing nature, the ocean specifically, that hinted at what the book might have been had the prose been more… engaging. But they were few and far between.

Out of all the characters the only ones that had at least a small spark of life in them were Baltasar, Zurita’s right hand and the father of Ichthyander’s love interest (don’t start me on that particular train wreck), and Zurita’s mother, a cranky old woman. The rest were blander than cardboard.

(You might have noticed – I really didn’t like the book.)

And now we come to the crux of the problem. The book was bad. Why would I, or anyone else for that matter, bother to read it?

And the answer, dear readers, is that in 1962 it was made into one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.

The Amphibian Man turned flat and uninteresting characters into real people, dry prose into stunning visuals. It has you gripping the edges of your seat, from the beginning to the very end. You fret over Ichthyander’s naive and innocent nature, tie yourself into conflicted knots over don Pedro’s actions, empathize with Salvator, and curse the cruel Argentinian policemen.

This is a movie that, I’m sure, we will be watching even after the turn of the second millennium, no matter how optimistic that sounds.

And The Amphibian is the book that made it possible. That alone turns it into a worthy read, even if nothing else does. That is why, at the end of it, I give The Amphibian one bookish and five cinematic stars out of five.

(Now go watch the movie!)

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Book, Magazine

[Apr. 2, 1964] The Joke's on me (the uninspiring April 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

April Fool's

Some days, I just have to wonder.

This month saw sad times across our country.  Last week, a massive earthquake rocked Alaska and devastated the city of Anchorage.

In Jacksonville, Florida, riots broke out in response to segregation and injustice, quickly turning violent and destructive.

Famed character actor, Peter Lorre, died at 59.

Of course, it's not all bad news.  The Civil Rights Bill is steaming through the Senate despite threats of filibuster.

And in genre news, it looks like IF is going monthly.

But in general, it's been kind of a lousy month.  This applies to the science fiction I've read this month, too — take a look at the latest Analog and you'll see what I mean.

The Issue at Hand


Illustration of Sunjammer by Harvey Woolhiser

The Extinction of Species, by Bert Kempers

Our nonfiction article for this month is a bit atypical.  In it, Kempers talks about prominent animal species that have ceased to be due to the existence of humanity.  Whether we hunted them for food or eradicated their habitats, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the smilodon, the mammoth, etc. are no longer with us.  And other creatures like the American bison and the California condor are on their way out.

Food for thought.  Three stars.

Sunjammer, by Winston P. Sanders

"Winston Sanders," a.k.a. Poul Anderson, is back with another tale of the mid-future.  This time, he's left the recently freed asteroid belt and the gas-miners of Jupiter to give us a yarn about uncrewed solar sailship #128, making a leisurely trip with a cargo of radioactive volatiles.  Thanks to an unexpected solar flare, the vessel is about to explode; if this happens, all of near-Earth space will be contaminated for years.  It is up to the crew of the Merlin to intercept the #128 and somehow keep its cargo hold from popping. 

Like the other stories in this series, Sunjammer is long on technical details and short on character development.  Still, it's mildly entertaining, and the universe "Sanders" plays in is interesting.

Three stars.

Problem Child, by Arthur Porges

I liked this vignette, about a mathematician's "idiot" son who turns out to be far more.  We've had a lot of tales about autistic children of late.  I wondered what triggered the boom.

Three stars.

Shortsite, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The Richmonds have yet another tiny tale, this one about an inventor with talent for creation but none for marketing, who develops the first room-temperature superconductor.  Editor Campbell loves these tales about lone wolf geniuses who are unappreciated by society.  This one was too clearly written to his tastes.

Two stars.

Counter Foil, by George O. Smith

Goodness, this one goes on.  Its setup is not unlike Lloyd Biggle's All the Colors of Darkness, where teleportation has become the preferred mode of travel.  This time, instead of aliens disrupting our daily commute, it's a pregnant woman who delivers her baby in transit.

This intriguing plot is lost in the endless, needless padding — it's a three page story expanded several fold.  You'll slog through the thing just to get to the problem's resolution, and then you'll feel cheated.

Two stars.

The Spy, by Mario Brand

Ever wonder where cats go when they disappear for the night, only to return bedraggled but satisfied the next morning?  Turns out that they are interstellar spies, zipped from Earth to a million light years away so that their memories can be probed by inquisitive aliens.

It's a great premise, but Brand does nothing with it.

Two stars. 

(great art by John Schoenherr, though, who may well get my vote for Best Artist this year)

Spaceman (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

Last up is the resolution of Leinster's novel, begun last month.  The Rim Star, an enormous cargo ship designed to transport an entire starship landing facility to a colony, has been taken over by its enlisted crew of six criminals.  Only the skipper and first officer Braden can prevent the destruction of the vessel and its five passengers, a film crew that bought passage hoping to get footage for a space-based movie.

While the mutineers have the advantage in weapons, Braden has the power of position, having seized the central drive station and secreted the passengers inside.  There, through slick cinematography and control of the ship's viewscreens, the team convinces the bad guys that the Rim Star has entered The Other Side of Space, a realm in which the laws of the universe no longer apply, and no escape is possible.  The ruse reduces the spacejackers to terrified catatonia, and the ship safely completes its mission.

Once again, we have a serviceable plot made mediocre thanks to extension.  What could have been a tidy novella, the kind the author is quite good at, is twice as long as it should be.  Leinster repeats what we already know again and again, using short, declarative sentences that dissipate any momentum the story might have built up.  I could also have done without Braden's disdain toward the capable producer, Diane, though that was only a minor irritation.

Upon completion, I was left with the same sense of dismayed regret I feel when I see a dented and spilled can of food at the supermarket: something perfectly good has been ruined and has to be thrown away…

Two stars for this installment, two and a half for the whole serial.

View from a Height

Punching the numbers into Journeyvac, I find that the April 1964 Analog scored just 2.4 stars and had no stand-out stories.  Amazing was a similar disappointment, clocking in at 2.6 (though you may find Phyllis Gottlieb's ongoing serial worth the cover price).  Fantasy and Science Fiction, while it did have Traven's interesting Central American creation myth, got the worst score: 2.3.  Fantastic only got 2.7 stars, but it did contain Ursula K. LeGuin's story, The Rule of Names, which I liked pretty well.  The last (?) issue of New Worlds went out with a muffled pop with a crop of three star stories.  Only Galaxy (3.3 stars) impressed, with what looks to be the first half of a novel by Cordwainer Smith and the excellent Final Encounter by Harry Harrison. 

We had a whopping 4.5 woman-penned stories (out of 38) this month.  But as for outstanding fiction, pickings were slim aside from the pieces described above.

Ha ha.  The joke's on us.  Here's hoping for a happier month ahead.

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Movies

[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao)

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by Victoria Lucas

Place Number 1: Denver

The neat thing about film festivals is not just being able to see more than one film in a short period of time.  It's the gossip, the revelations, the people who show up, some of them onstage.  In this case the festival site was Denver, Colorado.  Seem an unlikely place for a film festival?  But there it was that "7 Faces of Dr. Lao," made last year, enjoyed its first U.S. release on March 18.  I went there basically to see that one film, but my ride-sharing friend went to see many.  So I saw a little of Denver outside the movie theater.  But I'm not here to review Denver. 


My mom's postcard—I don't have a camera

Place Number 2: the MGM lot

If you saw my review of Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie.  It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot.  The "Circus" was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that's so.  My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa.  All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.

Place Number 3: Chujen, Chu, China

This was the last place Laozi was seen alive (531 BC), if indeed he did live.  In the movie, but not the book, the Abalone newspaper editor, Ed, asks where he is from, and after Dr. Lao tells him this place, Ed looks it up (providing an opportunity to see his love Agnes, who in the movie is a librarian as well as a teacher) and confronts Dr. Lao with the news that Chujen no longer exists, so what is going on?  So we and Ed see the circus tent and Merlin (not in the book) for the first time.  And that provides me with an excuse to tell you the following.  The plot of both Finney's story and the film was, very briefly, that the circus comes to town, the town of Abalone, to be exact.  But it's not a Barnum & Bailey-type circus.  It arrives somehow with, or in the person of, the Chinese legend Laozi (Lao-Tse, Dr. Lao, or as you wish), since in the movie he arrives on a donkey with only a fishbowl and fish, as well as a pipe, which he ignites with his thumb as lighter.  It consists of other legends, myths, and gods in—as it were—the flesh.  The rest is what happens to, of, with, by, and from the circus and its hawker, guide, medicine man, and (in the movie) magical self, Dr. Lao.


Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

Place Number 4: Abalone, Arizona

MGM's Abalone, understandably, looks just like all those old western towns you see in television shows and movies, more than one horse, but not more than half a dozen, and not more than that many streets.  I always thought of Finney's Circus as taking place in the late 1920s, when he began the story while he was still billeted in China by the U.S. Army.  But this version of the story takes place in that same smeared-out time zone that westerns always use—somewhere between 1890 and 1910, when record players were known as gramophones, and when men were men and women were uh … unable to take care of ourselves. 

Place Number 5: Tucson, Arizona

Many people, including me, think that Abalone, Arizona—the setting of more than one Finney story—was actually Tucson.  And there is an "Old Tucson," a movie set just outside Tucson that became a tourist attraction in which the stagecoach gets robbed twice daily.  The set really epitomizes that "Old West" stereotype that dominates in "7 Faces."  But in desert scenes, saguaro cacti figure heavily in the movie's landscape.  Most people don't know that saguaros are not found anywhere but in the Sonoran Desert.  There is a certain creep, perhaps a foot or so per year, as the cacti spread around mainly southern Arizona (U.S.) and northern Sonora (Mexico), but at this point they only live in the Southwest, and not on the MGM lot in California.  The ones on the MGM lot look pretty strange.  I would have said that the cacti were the worst things about the movie, were it not that I realized that their strange appearance (looking like cardboard cutouts) adds to the surreal nature of the film.


A real—not surreal—saguaro cactus near Tucson, Arizona

Place Number 6: Dr. Lao's circus tent

The circus tent of the good doctor is said to be "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" by one observer in the movie, and indeed it has many twistings and turnings.  In fact it is rather like a layered labyrinth and is a remarkable movie set, one of the best inventions of the movie, I think.  There is a lair for every beast, a spiel for every part of the tent.  Steps up, steps down– Hurry! Hurry!–a very strange circus tent that provides the setting for the fish from Dr. Lao's fishbowl, not in the book, but in the movie an excuse for some animation when it grows to the size of the sea serpent advertised.  The book ends with the story of Woldercan (below), but the movie has a showdown with villain Clint Stark's henchmen that burns the tent.

Place Number 7: Woldercan

Woldercan was a city dominated by a vengeful god in Finney's Circus, and now, in the movie, destroyed by improbable cataclysms.  In both the movie and the book, Woldercan is shown as if unfolding outside as the rear of the tent rolls up, but in the movie the people of the city look like the people of Abalone, and they are led astray by a man who looks like Stark.  In the book they are threatened by starvation and flock to the temple, where a dispute over which virgin to sacrifice leads to the deaths of three people—not the whole city.  In the movie the story of Woldercan becomes the turning point in the Stark v. Abalone battle.


The author, courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

As I think of it, the movie was funny although not Finney, worth seeing for the performances of Randall and Barbara Eden (Angela), the jokes and pokes at westerns—oh, and don't forget the surrealism.  Go see this circus when it comes to town.

And now for a little catalog.  Finney put one at the end of his story, so I thought I'd put just a short one in:

Plots & bits interposed in Finney's tale:

  • romance of Angela & Ed
  • politics of Clint Stark v. Abalone, including meetings, printshop destruction
  • Lao's interruption of beating of George who is supposed to be a Navajo (Indians from Northern Arizona) played by a Lakota (Plains) Indian
  • inflation of sea monster
  • Lao's trick of lighting his thumb
  • Lao's trick of speaking any dialect, not just perfect English v. Chinee American stereotypical dialect.

Men-like creatures not in book:

  • abominable snowman (screenwriters' solution to the book's Russian v. bear problem)
  • Mike (Angela's son)
  • Clint Stark
  • cowboy muscle and snark
  • Merlin the magician (Apollonius was the magician in the book)
  • Ed Cunningham (Angela's honey and editor of the newspaper)

Woman-like creatures not in book:

  • Angela's mother-in-law

Ending as it began

As for Laozi (not pronounced LOWzee), he was last seen riding into the west, but in the 6th century BC that was on a water buffalo.  On the MGM lot in 1963 it was on a donkey, and in the direction of some cardboard saguaros.  Or, as the movie's Dr. Lao (pronounced LOW) would say, "Hello.  Goodbye.  Thank you."

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Book

[March 29, 1964] Five by Five (March Galactoscope)

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For your reading pleasure, Galactic Journey presents a quintet of the newest books in this month's Galactoscope…


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Prodigal Sun, by Philip E. High

I'm sitting here sipping some Earl Grey tea, nibbling a Bendicks Bittermint, listening to the Beatles on the radio; am I still in Tennessee?  I must be, because I'm holding Ace paperback F-255 in my hand, and that's an American publisher.  Then I take a closer look, and notice that the author is British.  I guess there's no way of getting around it; I'm a walking anglophile.

Philip E. High may not be very well known to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, but his stories have appeared in UK publications for about a decade.  I've had a chance to read a handful of them in New Worlds, thanks to fellow Traveler Mark Yon, who is very generous with lending copies of the magazine to Yanks. 

High also had the story Fallen Angel published in the June 1961 issue of Analog.  Our host was not impressed by it.  Overall, High seems to be a competent, if undistinguished, writer of science fiction.  Will his first novel confirm that opinion?  Is it worth forty cents?  Let's find out, starting with the front cover.

Was he there to teach Earth – or to rule it?

Well, that's a fairly interesting teaser.  The cover art is all right, I suppose, although it doesn't really grab me.  Let's take a look inside.

They wanted his secrets, but feared his presents

That should say presence, I think. 

Next we have a cast of characters.  That's a nice touch, as it allows me to flip back to the front when I forget who somebody is.  My only complaint is that it leaves out some important names.  Anyway, let's move on to the text.  Like most science fiction novels, it's well under two hundred pages long, so it's not a major investment in time.

The background is complex, requiring a lot of expository narration and dialogue.  Long before the novel begins, Earthlings settled a few extra-solar planets.  They ran into aliens, at about the same level of technology, who wanted one of these worlds for themselves, and a long and bloody interstellar war followed.  Eventually the humans won, but only at the cost of turning Earth into a brutal dictatorship.  Anyone suspected of disloyalty undergoes involuntary psychological conditioning, so that rebellious thoughts cause intense physical pain.

Into this dystopian world comes our hero, a young man named Peter Duncan.  As an infant, he was the only survivor of an accident in space, and was rescued by highly advanced aliens.  The rulers of Earth see him as a potential threat, but also as a possible source of technological secrets.  He has plans of his own, which I won't describe here, as they are not fully revealed until the end of the book.

The complicated, fast-moving plot also involves a bodyguard, a reporter, and a businessman who undergo important changes in their relationship with Duncan.  Thrown into the mix are enemy aliens, held as prisoners of war after hostilities end.  There is also a secret underground civilization, a love interest for the hero, and yet another set of aliens.  The novel shifts point of view often, sometimes several times within a single scene.

Near the end, developments come at a furious pace.  The revelation of Duncan's scheme, and the explanation of the novel's punning title, go beyond the limits of credulity. 

The book is full of interesting ideas; maybe too many.  Its basic theme can be expressed as Love Conquers All, which is not what you expect from a science fiction adventure story.  Many of the secondary characters are intriguing, although the protagonist is rather bland.  Often a villain turns out to be more complex than first thought, and earns the reader's sympathy.  The author's style is serviceable at best, with some clumsy phrasings.  Overall, it's a mixed bag, worth reading once, if you can spare a quarter, dime, and nickel, but not destined to become a timeless classic.

Three stars.

The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber


by Jason Sacks


Cover by Bob Abbett

The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber is an odd book, a combination of two disparate elements which never quite come together for me.

The core plot of the story is that a new planet, nicknamed the Wanderer, has appeared in our solar system — and in fact appears in almost exactly the same spot as our moon. At first nobody knows what to make of this new celestial body, but most people feel a combination of awe and confusion about what this new interstellar visitor might mean and what its impact might be on our world.

Quickly, though, a tragedy which once was unimaginable becomes inevitable. The moon begins to disintegrate under the gravity of The Wanderer, which unleashes a devastating level of natural destruction. Because The Wanderer has a higher gravity than the moon, ocean tides increase geometrically in power, terrible tidal waves hit all oceans, earthquakes strike in California, rising ocean currents open Lake Nicaragua to the ocean, and floods strike much of the United Kingdom.

In the midst of this utter destruction, Leiber shows us the hearty survivors who battle the effects of the devastation. We follow a band of travelers in Florida who encounter unexpected racism, a group of UFO enthusiasts in California who battle tsunamis, violence and some actual flying saucers, a lunar explorer who sees the crisis up front, and a panoply of other ordinary and extraordinary people, from South Africa to Vietnam to New York to a lone sailor piloting a ship across the Atlantic.

The scenes with these characters provide The Wanderer with much of its power and momentum, as readers are swept up in the terrifying and all-too-human adventures of these hearty and terrified people. In fact, if Leiber had focused exclusively on the people and left the reason for the destruction a mystery, this might have been an even more satisfying book.

Instead, Leiber shows us the reason for the Wanderer’s presence. In those sections, the book falters. The reason the Wanderer journeys to our solar system is that the Earth is one of the remaining backwaters in the universe that’s not yet settled by a group of extraterrestrial beings looking to civilize nearly all of known space. Those beings need to use our solar system as a kind of refueling station.

The Wanderer is actually an artificial planet, filled with hundreds of levels of civilizations inhabited by creatures and cultures nearly unimaginable to most humans. Piloting the ship is a super-brilliant catlike creature named Tigerishka who captures one of the lunar explorers and explains to him the background of the plot. A rebel against the civilizers, Tigerishka is soon captured and put on trial before she runs away from her fate — but not before she and the human have some extraterrestrial intercourse.

Leiber spins up an epic tale with some memorable characters and startling situations, but the work feels a bit undercooked to me. The two key elements of the plot never quite connect with each other and the space trial comes from out of nowhere. There is precious little foreshadowing of Tigerishka’s presence, and I found the idea and execution of her to be a bit pulpy. I kept imagining the cover being similar to a Gernsback pulp with an attractive human body attached to a mysterious feline face.

Still, this is the kind of epic novel which would make for a fine film and likely a nomination for the award named for Mr. Gernsback. While I won’t be voting for it in next year’s Hugos, it’s easy see Mr. Leiber’s entertaining though flawed creation taking home honors.

Rating: three stars

[you can purchase this book or check it out at the library]

Marooned, by Martin Caidin


by Gideon Marcus

Some science fiction propels us to the farthest futures and remotest settings.  The latest book by Martin Caidin, better known by his aeronautical and space nonfiction, takes place on the very edge of tomorrow.  When the Soviets stun the world early in 1964 with the launch and docking of a pair of multi-crew spacecraft, NASA is directed to fill the space between Gordo Cooper's last Mercury flight and the increasingly delayed Gemini program.  Major Richard Pruett, a (fictional) member of the second cadre of astronauts, is tapped for a 49 orbit Mercury endurance mission, launched in July.

For three days, all goes perfectly, but at the moment of deceleration, Pruett's retrorockets refuse to fire, stranding the fellow in space.  Now, with just enough oxygen to last two more days, the hapless astronaut must somehow find a way to last three days — until the drag of the upper atmosphere seizes Mercury 7 and sends it plunging toward the Earth.

There is no question but that Caidin did his homework for the book.  Undoubtedly, the author has enough material for a lengthy reference on the Mercury program and the astronaut training process in general.  But within the gears and hard science, Caidin manages to draw a compelling profile of Pruett, sort of an amalgam of the seven Mercury astronauts.  From his first flight in a propeller plane, through a bloody stint in Korea, and past the rigorous astronaut indoctrination, Pruett gives the reader a first-person view of the experiences that make up the humans beneath the silver sheen of the spacesuit.

Marooned shines most brightly in the first and last thirds of the book.  The solitude and hopelessness Pruett's plight is vividly portrayed, and the pages fly up through about page 100.  The journey through astronaut training is more clinical, with few dramatizations to liven it up.  It will be interesting to neophytes, but any of us who read the Time Life series on the Mercury 7 (or the compilation We Seven) will find it dry.  Things pick up again when we learn of the daring rescue attempts being assembled to save Pruett from being America's first casualty in space.

With Marooned, Caidin accomplishes two goals in one book, delivering an exciting read and providing perhaps the most detailed summary of the Mercury program for the layman yet put to paper.

Four stars.

ace double F-261

The Lunar Eye, by Robert Moore Williams


Cover by Ed Valigursky

It is the year 1973, and Art Harper owns a service station on the freeway to the launch pad where soon a giant rocket will take the first twelve men to the moon.  His life had hitherto been one of complete and deliberate normality.  But then, a woman appears claiming to be one of the Tuantha, a society of humans that had gone to the moon millennia before and established a secret, highly advanced civilization.  She insists that Art is Tuanthan, too, placed with a human family like a changeling, and that he must come home.  Further complicating the mix is Art's brother, Gecko, who, while human, managed to sneak into the Tuanthan moon city during one of the frequent inter-planet teleport trips.  Now he wants to live in their lovely settlement, too.

The fly in the ointment is the upcoming lunar shot.  The Tuanthans are convinced that, should the two societies ever meet, the Earthers will dominate and ultimately exterminate them, just as the Europeans slaughtered the American Indians.  And so, the Tuanthans plan to sabotage the American lunar effort before the moon city is discovered. 

This latest book by Robert Moore Williams stands in stark contrast to Caidin's hyer-realistic Marooned.  Moore has been producing adventure stories since the '30s, and it shows.  Eye reads like something written in 1948, lacking any comprehension of technological improvements since then.  But the real flaws of the book are in its execution.  It starts out excitingly enough, and the first half reads quite quickly.  But then Art, Gecko, and the Tuanthan, Lecia, end up on the moon, and the whole thing becomes a slog of speeches and redundant scenes as the three are put on trial for treason for wanting to stop the destruction of the American moon rocket.

In fact, Williams' fiction production consists almost exclusively of novellas.  It's pretty clear he has no heart or endurance for longer works, and the padding required to cross the novel-length finish line is tiresome and obvious.  Finally, Eye is riddled with plot holes and story threads that go nowhere. 

A promising but ultimately sloppy piece: Two and a half stars.

The Towers of Toron, by Samuel R. Delany


Cover by Ed Emshwiller

On the other hand, Chip Delany's new work, a sequel to last year's Captives of the Flame, reflects an upward trend.  In the first book of the series, he introduced us to Toromon, capital of an island empire situated on Earth long after an atomic cataclysm.  The cast of characters was bewilderingly large: the decadent and young King Uske, his cousin; Prince Let, who was smuggled into the custody of the smarter, psionically gifted forest people; the capable and canny Duchess Petra; the noble and former prisoner, Jon, who along with Petra had been rendered invisible in dim light by the radiations that girdle Toron's imperial boundaries; the paternal forest person, Arkor; Tel, a poor fisherman's son; Alter, a thief and acrobat; Clea, a brilliant mathematician…

It was all a bit much, but now that I see the author is planning on doing more with the world, I can understand why he introduced so many players.  Towers does a fine job of continuing their stories, and I feel like I have a good handle on them all now.

Towers is set three years after Flame.  The empire has rediscovered the technology of matter transfer and is busy exploring the devastated planet.  A war has already been fought and won against the mutant insectoid tranu, and another is in progress against the mysterious ketzis.  It is a strange war, fought in nearly impenetrable mists thousands of miles from home.  The enemy is never seen, and its combatants (who include Tel, the fisherman's son), seem almost in a daze, unable to dwell much upon their pasts or their futures.  Meanwhile, Toromon is in increasing turmoil.  Prime Minister Chargill is assassinated.  The evil seed of the fiery enemy from the first book is discovered hidden in the mind of King Uske.  And Clea, seeking refuge in arcane mathematics after the death of her fiancee (that occurred in Flame), discovers a secret that could tear the entire empire asunder.

Tower is a significant improvement on Flame: better paced, more skillfully written, exciting.  It is no mean feat to juggle all of these viewpoints and still maintain a coherent whole.  Moreover, I appreciate the sheer variety of characters, including the prominence of several women.

I did find both fascinating and a little disturbing Delany's depiction of the three races of people that inhabit future Earth, with greater divergence than the paltry skin tone differences humanity has today.  They are practically different species, with the baseline humans being seeming to be more imaginative (though not necessarily smarter) than the "neo-neanderthals," and the forest people occupying a mental rung above the humans.  The neo-neanderthals are referred to as 'apes', and though they don't ever object, I can only imagine that the author (who is Black) is making a point.

If there's a down-side to the book, it's that it is a clear bridge to the next novel in the series, which has not yet come out.  All the threads do come to a satisfying resolution at the book's end, but the aftermath, and the coming (final?) battle with the cosmic Lord of the Flames is left for later.

Three and a half stars, and kinder disposition toward the first book.

[(this book and the others in the series can be purchased here)]

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