by Gideon Marcus
Inside baseball
In the latest issue of Science Fiction Times, author Norman Spinrad complains that with just four science fiction magazines left, under the helm of three editors, it is impossible for the 250 members of the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America to make a living at short story writing. Spinrad also says that the editors have their chosen pet authors (Spinrad calls them "whores"), and because they are gauranteed slots, other writers are left in the cold. This, Spinrad maintains, is why so many folks are turning to novels or TV to make ends meet. He feels this is a shame since you can do things with short stories and novelettes you can't do with novel-length pieces. Spinrad notes that we'll never get another Sturgeon, Bradbury, or Cordwainer Smith under the current situation (I note with some amusement that Cordwainer Smith was one of Pohl's so-called "pets", which I guess makes him a brilliant "whore", according to Spinrad's definition).
Spinrad ends his piece urging that writers demand that Amazing and Fantastic end their mainly-reprint policy (they don't pay for them, which has provoked an SFWA boycott) and that Pohl be fired from at least one of his magazines. This, Spinrad asserts, will create more slots, which will encourage more writers, which will generate audience demand, which will promote the creation of more short length outlets, whether magazines or paperbacks.
A name Spinrad does not specifically mention as having a pet policy is Ed Ferman, editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ferman is fairly new to the job, and F&SF has typically cast a wider net to gather its stories. There are also more slots per issue, as F&SF tends toward shorter pieces.
I would thus conclude that, if any place in science fiction would still offer a quality selection of stories, it would be F&SF. They can, after all, print the best of the best that the 250 SFWAers can offer.
Let's open up this month's F&SF and see if that be the case.
Off the slush pile
by Richard Corben
Out of Time, Out of Place, by George Collyn
The lead piece is by a fellow we normally see in mags on the other side of the pond (Spinrad did not mention the UK mags as potential markets, but to be fair, there's only one left). Collyn's tale features a spaceman returned from a fifty year voyage to find the world completely changed. He is but ten years aged thanks to relativity, and so he is a young, lonely man utterly divorced from society.
But one day, he finds the most extraordinary woman, and they marry and live in bliss. Until he discovers what she does for a living, and how it relates to an advance in mass media technology called "altrigo"…
The problem with this story, aside from the disturbing ending, is that it's just been done by Kate Wilhem in her piece, Baby, you were great!, which just appeared in Orbit 2. Thus, I knew what was coming miles early. Very distracting.
Three stars.
The Cyclops Juju, by I. Shamus Frazer
The next two stories involve African magic clashing with Westerners. I'm always leery of such tales. They smack of parochialism and usually hinge on a pretty narrow idea of what goes on in the vast continent that straddles the equator. Neither of these pieces disabused me of this view.
Juju takes place in an English boarding school. One of the students has brought a wooden statue of a cyclops, apparently modeled on the prow of an old slaver ship and worshiped as a totem by an African tribe. All of the students who sleep in the same room with it begin experiencing a sequential dream, that they are captive slaves on the ship who break free and land on an island with the slaver crew as captives. Over time, the totem exerts greater and greater control over the students until it is uncertain what is dream and what is reality.
Of course, stories like this depend on willful ignorance on the part of the authority figures so things can get sufficiently out of hand. In the end, this is a reasonably well told horror/fantasy that feels like it would have done well in a prior decade. It feels out of touch here.
Three stars.
Night of the Leopard, by William Sambrot
Faring worse is this piece, involving missionaries sent to Sierra Leone on a peace-corps-esque endeavor. Opposing them is a witch doctor with a draconian control over a starving village and the putative ability to turn into a leopard. The linchpin to defeating him is Eunice Gantly, an American of African extraction (specifically Masai). The witch doctor's attempts to seduce and subvert Eunice end up backlashing. The result is pure Twilight Zone corn.
The problems with this story are several-fold. For one, it was done before, and better, by Richard Matheson in 1960. For this same magazine. Moreover, I take umbrage at the idea that people have these racial memories that can be unlocked. And even then, Eunice and the witch doctor are as related as me (Eastern European Jew) and my wife (Western European mutt). That is to say, we might be the same color, but I doubt our genetics have been within a thousand miles of each other. The idea that all Africans, or even all Sub-Saharan Africans, belong to a single society is laughable and a bit offensive.
Two stars.
by Gahan Wilson — I think his feature does not better this magazine
The Saw and the Carpenter, by J. T. McIntosh
SF veteran McIntosh offers up this serviceable murder mystery: the son of a space station commander is murdered by a robot. Since robots must be programmed, the culprit must be human. A robot expert is sent to investigate.
The story is reasonably executed, even if the characters all have exotic names like "Bob" and "John" and "Lucy" (one wonders if they were placeholders the author forgot to modify). The ending is…interesting. Apparently, Asimov's Three "Laws" don't always apply.
Anyway, three stars.
A Thousand Deaths, by Jack London
Because there are so many writers submitting pieces to F&SF, it follows that the editor would run…a 70 year old reprint. This early London tale is about a seaman who is subject to a hideous series of experiments in resurrection. Captive of a mad scientist, said sailor is murdered again and again, only to be brought back by a wonder process. But is a life of dying really what you'd call living?
It's all very breathless and pre-pulp, and while fun to an extent, and valuable historically, I'm not sure I'd rather have it than a new story.
Three stars.
Donny Baby, by Susan Trott
A married couple, part of the avocado tree crowd, have a baby the same day their seed finally sprouts. The sapling and the infant seem to have intertwined lives.
Had I read this as I was putting together Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1953-1957), I might have given it three stars. Ten years after the fact, I'm afraid it merits just two.
The Great Borning, by Isaac Asimov
The science article by Dr. A is something of a highlight. I had grown up with all of the names of the geological eras, periods, epochs, etc., but I'd never grasped their meaning. This is an informative etymological piece.
Four stars.
A Secret from Hellas, by I. Yefremov
Finally, another reprint, though it is probably more accurate to call it an import. A sculptor feels compelled to make a particular kind of statue, though he is hampered by an injury to his hand sustained in the war. This piece bears some kinship with the African duo earlier in the piece, although the dreamscape and racial memories in this tale are of Greek origin rather than African.
It is the definition of forgettable but inoffensive. Three stars.
Throw it back
One of Spinrad's points was not only that writers can't find enough short story slots to make a living, but that writers are so discouraged that they aren't even trying to write SF short stories anymore. I suppose that could be the explanation why the once proud Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is reduced to publishing tired clichés and reprints.
But it's a chicken and egg thing, right? If there's no supply of good stories, demand wanes. Once demand wanes, how do you build it back up? Maybe Damon Knight has found the answer with his Orbit series. It may well be time to think about new media for shorter pieces. I think I'd rather have several paperbacks of excellent stuff than a dozen issues of mediocrity. Sure, I'll miss the attendant quirks of each publication — the science articles, the lettercols, the editorial comments, etc., but I think I'd rather just have the good stories and save the auxilary stuff for fanzines and Scientific American.
What do you think?
Better stories from the heyday of science fiction magazines can be found in the two Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women volumes. Highly recommended!
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I actually like how F&SF does reprints every now and again; it's the only one of the "big three" to reprint stories, and usually they're from outside F&SF anyway. Some of these stories would be hard to get one's hands on otherwise, being a good 50+ years old.
I agree. I often find the reprints to be the best stories in F&SF.
Anyway, a very unremarkable issue, neither outstanding or bad.
The Collyn was decent, though I didn't really care for the tone. I did have the advantage of not having Kate Wilhelm's story, which may have helped. You'd think there would be more stories about relativistic culture clashes, but most of the stories that use it seem to either have mechanisms for dealing with it or play it for laughs. There should be more of an emotional punch.
The author of "Cyclops Juju" seems to have been aware of just how out of step with modern stories it is, since he set it between the Wars. He could just as easily have set it before the Great War and not had to change anything.
"Night of the Leopard" was all right for what it was. It certainly could have been a lot worse. Good point about the way most media look at sub-Saharan Africa as a cultural monolith.
The McIntosh was fine, if forgettable. I figured it out long before the end, just got the motives wrong.
F&SF seems to have started its own spate of reprints lately. They're always by "name" mainstream authors, often of the sort English teachers like to inflict on unwilling students. Perhaps Ferman is trying to subtly make a point about the genre being more than those same English teachers think.
"Donny Baby" was just tedious. None of the character motivations made much sense to me. It was all just in service of the ending delivered with a dark wink.
Good article from Dr. A. I knew most of it, but having it all in one place is handy.
The Russian piece was all right. It seems fairly typical of what comes out of there. I think I was more struck by the realization that the editor's blurb must have been the very last thing written before the magazine was sent to the printer. LBJ and Kosygin met in Glassboro in late June and it's only mid-August. That's quite the turnaround time.
As to your final question, I think I prefer the magazines. Editors may have their pets, but those pets write for the other editors, too. And if everything goes to anthologies instead, it becomes even harder for new writers to get noticed. The magazines look at everything that comes in over the transom (Fred Pohl even actively seeks out new writers), and writers know where to send their stories. Paperback anthologies are going to tend more towards established names to generate sales, and even anthologies dedicated to new writers will wind up drawing from a much smaller pool.