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by David Levinson
They’re on our side (I believe)
There’s no question that French President Charles de Gaulle has a larger-than-life, albeit rather prickly, personality. It stood him in good stead through the War and in midwifing the Fifth Republic a few years ago. It’s also a big part of what underlies his “politics of grandeur”. Alas, it also makes him a sometimes troublesome partner on the world stage. As early as 1958, he was urging a greater role for France in NATO, kicking against the traces of the Anglo-American “special relationship”. In 1959, he pulled the French Mediterranean fleet and air defenses from NATO command and banned the United States from positioning nuclear weapons in France. A year later, he even tried to renegotiate the NATO treaty, but no other member nation supported him. He was fairly quiet during the Kennedy administration and showed great solidarity during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he’s up to his old tricks again.
French President Charles de Gaulle announcing that France will go her own way.
In February, de Gaulle declared that the changed world order has “stripped NATO of its justification” and demanded French control of all foreign troops and bases in France when the current NATO agreement ends in 1969. Apparently, he decided that was too far in the future. On March 7th, he ordered all foreign troops and equipment removed from France by next year. Two days later, France formally withdrew its officers from the NATO unified command, assumed full control of the 70,000 French troops in Germany and announced that they will close all allied bases that don’t surrender to French control. President Johnson appears to have taken all this with the poise of a matador performing a verónica, with the faith that de Gaulle can be brought around in a time of need, though there is a rumor he instructed Secretary of State Dean Rusk to ask if that withdrawal includes the thousands of American war dead in French cemeteries. “De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.”
Unearthing the past
Oftentimes, what we think we know about the past and how we got where we are is simply wrong. Learning the truth may make us change our course, shatter our identity or turn the whole world upside down. Quite a lot of this month’s IF features characters facing the consequences of just such a revelation.
Supposedly from Silkies in Space. Silkies don’t need spacesuits. Art by Schelling
Silkies in Space, by A. E. van Vogt
Nat Cemp is a Silkie, a genetically engineered human who can adapt his body so that he can live underwater or in space as easily as he can on land. While walking down the street, he encounters a man who appears to be his twin and delivers an ultimatum to Nat. All Silkies are to end their association with humans and return to the nation of Silkies or be deemed traitors. Around one fifth of all Silkies have had a similar experience at roughly the same time. The Silkie nation is traced to a planetoid that travels from outside the orbit of Neptune to inside that of Mercury, and Nat is sent to investigate. What he discovers will have enormous consequences, not only for the 2,000 Silkies of Earth, but for the entire planet.
Gregor Samsa… er, Nat in spacegoing form enters the mysterious planetoid. Art by Gaughan
This is a direct sequel to “The Silkie” from a couple of years ago. While this story largely stands alone, it might make more sense if the first story is fresh in your mind. Parts of it are quite good, other parts (mostly when Nat starts using his mental powers) rather confused and nonsensical. As we’ve discussed many times here at the Journey, van Vogt is a polarizing writer. Oddly, I find myself in both camps. There are stories I like a lot, but I’m also put off by his long fascination with supermen and his strong association with dianetics. There are bits here, like the “logic of levels” where I wonder if I’m being spoonfed Hubbard’s nonsense, and it detracts from the whole. The story goes completely off the rails at the end, as well. I’m waffling on the score, but I think I liked it just enough. Barely three stars.
The Historian, by Carroll J. Clem
We open with a chapter from a history book telling us that as humanity spread to the stars, no intelligence was found to equal man’s own. A few vignettes of humans engaging in the worst forms of colonization and oppression follow. The story concludes with the historian discussing his work with the people who commissioned it.
Clem is this month’s new writer. Stylistically, it’s decent and it’s short, but it’s also fairly obvious. Again, I find myself wavering on the score, but the fact that the author felt compelled to spell out the ironic twist is a mark against it. A high two stars.
The Hide Hunters, by Robert Moore Williams
Ed Grayson is exploring the Amazon, looking for the next big psychedelic drug. When the old chief of the tribe he is staying with begs the use of Ed’s rifle to kill the hide of his dead grandson, Ed is appalled. Later, he finds the chief skinning his grandson and horrified by the strange white filaments connecting the skin to what is inside it. His partner McPherson returns by helicopter and is worried by Ed’s behavior. Ed is going to return to civilization with the helicopter, but a poison dart attacks and kills the pilot. McPherson tries to fly them out and instead crashes near some ancient ruins, where they find Egyptian hieroglyphs and something much more disturbing.
An injured Grayson waits for his partner’s return. Art by Adkins
If Weird Tales were still publishing, this would have fit right in. The story clearly shows Williams’ roots in the pulp days, but is reasonably well updated for today, apart from the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Why not something Incan? One the whole, this is a decent representative of stories of this kind. Too bad the attack on the pilot makes absolutely no sense. Still, it’s three stars.
An APA For Everyone, by Lin Carter
Building on his look at fanzines last month, Carter takes a look at amateur press associations, an idea that goes back nearly a century. Unlike fanzines, which will send a copy to anybody willing to pay the postage, APAs limit circulation to a limited group of contributors who must submit a certain number of pages every month. There are even waiting lists for people to join. Carter examines some of the bigger APAs in fantasy and science fiction, as well as what drives someone to contribute to them. His breezy style is slightly tempered from last time, but it still grates. Three stars.
Mountains Like Mice, by Gene Wolfe
Dirk is being prepared for his Retreat by Otho the Captive. If he can avoid being found for the two months it will take for the dye to wear off, he will become a Master. That night, Otho leads him to the spot where his Retreat will begin at sunrise. Later, he sees what he thinks is Otho being captured by the gyrda, a race of people half the height of a normal person. He tracks them into the mountains with the plan of rescuing Otho. In the end, things known to Dirk are revealed to the reader, and he gains deeper insight.
A captive of the gyrda. Art by Lutjens
Wolfe is unknown to me, but after some digging I see that he had one previous sale to the “gentlemen’s” magazine Sir!. If he can write like this so early in his career, I foresee big things. He’s clearly in love with language and words, and every sentence is beautifully crafted. I don’t claim to really understand the metaphor of the title or the implications of the final paragraph, but the journey there is incredibly beautiful. Four stars.
Golden Trabant, by R. A. Lafferty
A man enters Patrick T. K.’s store to sell a huge lump of greenish gold, clearly of extraterrestrial origin. We then learn of the unscrupulous men seeking the legendary golden asteroid and the consequences of their success.
This is an unusually traditional story for Lafferty, but it still has his unique touch. Of course, it’s largely a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Diamond as Big as the Ritz without the romance and with a few Lafferty-esque bits. This might be a good starting point for someone who has never read Lafferty and is concerned about some of the things they’ve heard. Three stars.
Earthblood (Part Two of Four), by Keith Laumer and Rosel G. Brown
Last time, Roan, a purebred Terran who grew up among aliens, was forced to join an interstellar circus. There he met the beautiful Stellaraire and rescued her from the villainous Ithc. Now he has hatched a plan for the two of them to escape so that he can make his way back to his mother and then find lost Terra. Those plans are thwarted when Iron Robert, the rock creature who was Stellaraire’s only friend, is grievously injured in a fight. At Roan’s insistence, Robert is brought aboard the ship and nursed back to health, rather than being left behind to die.
En route to another stop, the ship is attacked by the pirate Henry Dread. Many are killed when the ship enters emergency acceleration, and the rest are gunned down by Dread’s crew. Roan is spared, because he is fully human, as is Iron Robert again at Roan’s insistence. But Stellaraire was killed, crushed by a falling beam. Dread views the world divided into three groups: Terrans, Gooks, who are humanoid and may have some Terran in them, and Geeks, the rest of the aliens. And for him only Terrans matter, so he takes Roan under his wing.
Dread takes Roan along on a raid of the old imperial capital of Aldo Cerise. Roan saves Dread’s life and afterward Dread reveals that he is actually a member of a group calling themselves the Terran Navy, supposedly formed from the remnants of the old navy thousands of years ago. He inducts Roan and explains that he’s on a long mission recruiting and financing. Eventually, they find a Niss ship and Dread’s hate leads him to make a foolish attack. Roan winds up killing Dread in an attempt to save Iron Robert, but in the end, Robert must be left behind on the dying ship while Roan leads a desperate raid on the Niss ship, their only hope for survival. To be continued.
Iron Robert meets his match. Art by Wood
Well, that didn’t go how I expected. After last month, I was sure I could see the course of this story. The circus ship would prove to be an extremely powerful warship that Roan would use to break the Niss and Stellaraire would prove not to be a sterile mule. Instead, she’s dead and the ship was about as effective in combat as a Greek trireme against an Iowa-class battleship. In fact, almost everyone who ever supported Roan is dead. His father, Stellaraire, Iron Robert (presumably) and Henry Dread.
Last time, I also expressed concern about the human superiority that was expressed. Some of that is there again, but it’s more clearly an ugly thing. Roan lashes out once at Iron Robert with the vile language Dread uses, but immediately regrets it, and his constant support of Iron Robert shows his real attitudes. I’m more hopeful.
I still don’t see much Laumer here, other than in names (Groaci and Aldo Cerise this time) and the presence of Bolos. And it looks like Wally Wood is indeed the artist for the illos. Three stars.
Summing up
Not as good an issue as last month, certainly. But Earthblood looks like it will be much more than I expected, and we have an interesting new voice in Gene Wolfe. If he can hone his craft a bit more and keep his beautiful language, he may be a force to be reckoned with.
No hype at all for next month? That’s not a good sign.
I was able to follow the plot of "Silkies in Space," more or less, which is better than average for Van Vogt. Of course, the mental powers of (yet another) super-human protagonist are incomprehensible nonsense. The whole thing was a wild roller coaster ride, a comic book in prose. At least the author thinks big!
"The Historian" was a heavy-handed attempt at satire. At least it was short.
"The Hide Hunters" was old-fashioned pulp adventure/horror, as you've indicated. The Egyptian stuff was goofy. Otherwise, it was like a B monster movie.
"Mountains Like Mice" was very interesting. Strange and moody. Maybe a little too much exposition, but the ending was quite subtle and made me think about what I'd read.
"Golden Trabant" was one of Lafferty's science fiction tall tales, told with his unique mixture of deadpan grimness and outrageous whimsy. I liked it.
Gene Wolfe would provide progressively less exposition as his career progressed until, in his 70s and 80s, his novels would become positively obscure — yet the prose never suffered, and his short stories were always first rate. He unfortunately died at 88 almost exactly 2 years go and his final novel (submitted weeks before his death), although it feels attenuated by his failing eyesight and health, is probably his most beautiful prose in a novel in a couple decades.
Literary critic, John Clute (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction), would say of his writings "There is no first reading of these works." and "They cannot be read. Only reread."
"Mountains Like Mice" would connect Wolfe with Damon Knight and he would become a staple of Knight's Orbit anthologies for the next dozen years, generating award winning fiction ("The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," "The Death of Doctor Island," "The Fifth Head of Cerberus") and some amazing novels ("The Fifth Head of Cerberus" novel and "Peace."
Starting in the late 60s he became a writer whose most ardent fans were other writers: Ursula LeGuin, Joanna Russ, Harlan Ellison, Joe Haldeman, Gardner Dozios and Jack Dann, and others. The devotees of the next generation include Michael Swanwick and Neil Gaiman. His breakout occurred with the novel that dominated his career "The Book of the New Sun" published from 1980-83.
I read these a while ago but completely forgot to give my thoughts. Here we go:
Silkies In Space is more evidence I feel than van Vogt is no longer the great writer he once was, A pity,
I usually like stories like The Historian more than most but it seemed poorly executed to me.
Robert Moore Williams is another writer who still feels like he is trying to write in the 1930s.
Mountains Like Mice was better than most in the issue but still did not appeal to my own tastes I am afraid.
Lafferty continues to be totally opaque to me.
Earthblood however is ticking along nicely.
Once again, we seem to be in the situation with If that the serial is the main reason to read it.