by Gideon Marcus
Journeys to Come
We're now just a couple of weeks out from Tricon, the Cleveland-hosted Worldcon! We'll get to mingle with our fellow fen, meet our favorite authors, drink lots of bheer, and figure out who gets to go home with a rocketship in their luggage.
Modern Cleveland
The much-ballyhooed new science fiction anthology, Star Trek, debuts on September 15. However, all the fans are abuzz that they'll be privately showing the show's pilot at Tricon. I hope you all will join us at Tricon to watch it!
Journeys we Have
As exciting as the things to come might be, we still have plenty of exciting stuff to enjoy right now. To wit, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction is quite a solid mag.
by Jack Gaughan
Luana, Gilbert Thomas
A mycologist (a real fun-gi) with a yen for sculpture combines both vocation and avocation when the latest Gemini brings home a space spore. The resulting fruiting body proves warm, delicate, and eager to be carved. The scientist does so, in the form that has occupied the efforts of sculptors since the Neolithic…with less than savory results.
A decade ago, this minor bit of titillation would have been fodder for Venture. Cute but utterly forgettable. Three stars.
by Gahan Wilson
The Productions of Time (Part 2 of 2), John Brunner
Last month, the author had left us on a tremendous cliffhanger. Murray Douglas, a washed out but on the wagon film star (viz. Kirk Douglas in Two Weeks in Another Town) has been increasingly unsettled by the goings on at his latest production. The writer, Delgado, seems deadset on sabotaging the play before it can gel, setting each of the actors and production crew at each other's throats. The country retreat at which they are staying is equipped with the oddest of surveillance equipment, from two-way TVs to mysterious tape recorders placed just under a sleeper's pillows. When Douglas calls Delgado on his actions, he wakes up the next morning with a severe headache and surrounded by half empty bottles of gin…
He quickly realizes it's all a set-up, and he heads to a local doctor to certify his utter sobriety. Bolstering his sanity is the arrival of an unexpected ally: Heather, a member of the cast whose only purpose seems to be to sate the Lesbian tastes of another of the actresses, has also determined something odd is going on. Douglas makes up his mind. They will leave the retreat on the morrow. But Delgado, and the unusually assertive valet, Valentine, have other plans.
Thus ensues the climax and rather satisfactory (though somewhat given away by the title) ending of this exciting novel. It's rather short, so I'll be surprised if it gets turned into a full-length story. Maybe one half of an Ace Double. Nevertheless, it's a nice departure for the oft-brilliant author, notable for being told largely in dialogue (as befits a piece about play!)
Four stars.
Mr. Wilde's Second Chance, Joanna Russ
When the great playwright/poet arrives in the hereafter, he is offered the chance to rearrange the events of his luminous life into a more pleasing order. The reward is, perhaps, another life. Mr. Wilde is at once successful and unsuccessful.
I suspect I would have gotten more out of this story had I been more acquainted with the subject's work. It's a four-star story regardless.
Municipal Dump, Max Gunther
R.J. Schroon, a rapacious hotelier with designs to bend the would-be paradise world of Cooltropic to his whim. If it only weren't for the omnipresent, ever-irksome Bounders! Fed up with these meddling puffballs, Schroon calls for their extermination. He manages to eliminate one, frightening off the rest.
Out of the frying pan…
This one feels like a lesser (though competent) tale from the early days of Galaxy. Three stars.
Narrow Valley, R. A. Lafferty
The Wizard of Whimsy offers up this tale of a Pawnee, who protects his 160-acre reparation grant with a mighty spell. It's not that others can't find the plot to poach — they just can't seem to get in!
A fun if rather trivial piece. Three stars.
I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover, Isaac Asimov
In the conclusion to his articles on particles and cosmology, The Good Doctor offers up his own ideas on the origin of the universe. In a nutshell, just as every subatomic particle seems to have both an opposite charged counterpart and a opposite baryon/lepton number, so the universe must have three counterparts so that the net value of energy and mass equals zero. Add to this an 80 billion year boom and bust cycle, and one has a cosmos that requires no beginning or end, utterly symmetrical.
It's cute if nothing else. And I'm banking on the nothing else.
Three stars.
Troubling of the Water, Zenna Henderson
Ms. Henderson has seemingly exhausted the modern day as a setting for her stories of The People. The author is now recounting their first coming to Earth in the late 19th Century. Water is a not-quite sequel to her last story. A family in a Western territory (probably Henderson's native Arizona) finds their water supply dwindling below the sufficiency required for their crops. On the eve of dessication, a member of The People, a race of gentle humanoid espers, literally falls from the sky in a ball of flame.
Zenna has told this story several times before: strange, gifted person (usually a child) is encountered/adopted by a human or group of humans. Said alien eventually displays great powers to the benefit of the humans, and a bond of love is forged.
It's a testament to the author that the tale has not yet gotten old. I do wonder if a collection of such stories (as is advertised as forthcoming) might be a bit much to take in one sitting, though.
Four stars.
Looking Back
In the end, the newest issue of F&SF breaks no new ground. Indeed, had it been published in 1956 rather than 1966, I don't know that we'd have noticed (save for Asimov's piece, which relies on cutting edge science). Still, it would have been one of the better issues of August 1956, just as it is one of the better amalgamations of SF in this month.
No complaints here!
Cute? I think the word I'd choose for "Luana" is disturbing. My impression was that the protagonist's various paramours prior to the title fungus either wound up as substrate for his experiments or wound up sharing a plate with a side of mushrooms.
The Brunner was strong, even if the title did give things away to a degree. And perhaps this is a sign that he can sell this sort of thing on the left side of the Atlantic and will give up writing uninspired space opera for American audiences.
I don't know that greater familiarity with Wilde's work would give more understanding of the Russ story, but some familiarity with his biography and philosophy might. That is what really explains the climax. Definitely a four-star story.
"Municipal Dump" was rather forgettable filler. It flirted very strongly with being boring a couple of times, but never quite crossed the line.
Lafferty, as usual, is being Lafferty. His Pawnee characters come close to being stereotypes. I'm not entirely sure that's mitigated by the fact that most of his characters are stereotypes, unpleasant or otherwise. But it's better than any time Mack Reynolds starts to write about Indians.
Dr. A reminds us that as a physicist and cosmologist, he's a fine chemist. His concept seems based on speculation in his previous articles and obvious enough that somebody else would have already published it if there were anything to it. At least it wasn't another superlatives list.
Zenna Henderson's latest is another fine story of the People, though, as you say, one she's told before. The contrast that came to mind while reading your review is Fred Saberhagen. He somehow manages to make every story about his relentless Berserker killing machines very different, while Henderson tells the same story again and again, though keeping them relatively fresh.
I went to the Worldcon in Cleveland, Labor Day weekend 1966. Gene Roddenberry came and showed the first pilot (rejiggered later into a two parter ) at the con. Fans were impressed, since there had been no adult space opera like it on TV , or since Forbidden Planet released in 1956. Next day Roddenberry was in a hallway alcove with a model of the Enterprise. Not a single soul was talking to him. So walked over to him and said “lots of that looked very familiar to me!”. He smiled and said “it should”. He started talking about all the nomenclature he borrowed. He had read Astounding in the 1940s and 1950s, FTL ‘warp drive’, matter transmitter, bunch of other SF stuff familiar to fans who read prose SF. He also mention that from his reading of SF that he felt most the ‘interstellar-flight’ stories took place 200 to 300 years in the future. That was, still is my guess for a setting like Star Trek.
A solid issue. General agreement with the above comments. Russ is shaping up to be an important new talent, Lafferty is marching to the beat of a different drummer, Brunner is a true professional, for good or bad, Henderson is always dependable.
Luana is interesting piece. Not exceptional but atmospheric for sure.
I was as impressed with the Brunner as some others were but still more on the side of the better literary stuff he does for the British mags and Ballantine than the rote money spinners for Analog and Ace. As an aside did anyone else get reminded of "Six Characters in Search of an Author"?
I am big fan of Wilde and I found it interesting. I think this is one case where the short length helped the piece by allowing it to be nicely ambiguous. (If people are interested in understanding more about Wilde I would recommend the excellent film from a few years ago, The Trials of Oscar Wilde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trials_of_Oscar_Wilde)
Municipal Dump is fine but eminently forgettable.
I don't generally like Lafferty at the best of times and this isn't one of his best.
People stories continue to be excellent. I wonder if they wouldn't make for a good TV series over at NBC, given the current love there seems to be for rural family tales.
Overall, a better issues of F&SF.