A few days ago, folks in the Soviet Union must have been surprised to see nudity on their television sets. Nude scenes from the controversial new play Oh, Calcutta! and photographs of sex magazines appeared on one of the Soviet Central Television networks.
The intent was not to titillate the audience (although that may have been an accidental side effect) but to point out the decadence of American culture.
The Soviet station's logo. You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
What does this have to do with the latest issue of Fantastic? Keep your hat (and other clothing) on and you'll find out.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.
The original always looks better.
Editorial, by Ted White
The new editor introduces himself. He relates how he failed to produce a fancy, expensive magazine called STELLAR Stories of Imagination. Some of the stories intended for that stillborn publication will appear in Fantastic and Amazing. He also promises to provide what he calls different stories in the magazines. We'll see.
No rating.
What's Your Excuse, by Alexis Panshin
Here's a tale that was supposed to appear in STELLAR. A professor plays a trick on a graduate student who is in his late twenties, but who appears to be in his teens. The student has his own secret up his sleeve.
It's hard to say too much about this brief yarn, which depends entirely on its premise. Is it different? Yeah, I guess so. Is it good? Well, maybe not. A trivial oddity.
Two stars.
The Briefing, by Randall Garrett
Another very short story. The narrator is aboard a spaceship. He's about to be sent down to a planet in disguise, in order to shorten an impending Dark Ages.
Without giving away anything, let's just say that you may be able to predict the twist ending. Extra points for being a bit of a dangerous vision, at least.
Three stars.
Emphyrio (Part Two of Two), by Jack Vance
Taking up half the magazine is the conclusion to this new novel.
Illustrations by Bruce Jones (obviously.)
We first met our hero, Ghyl Tarvoke, with his head literally cut open. His brain controlled by those holding him prisoner, he was forced to tell the truth.
This led us into a long flashback, from Ghyl's childhood until he decided to run for mayor under the pseudonym of Emphyrio, the name of a semi-legendary hero.
Part Two begins with Ghyl losing the election, but coming in third. That's enough to draw the attention of the authorities. Ghyl's father was already in trouble with them, and the situation only gets worse.
After the death of his father, Ghyl agrees to join his friends in a plot to steal a starship from the Lords and Ladies who rule his world. He makes them promise not to do any killing or kidnapping or pillaging after this single crime. Don't expect any honor among thieves.
Ghyl winds up leading a group of Lords and Ladies through the wilderness of another planet. The place is full of dangerous animals and people.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He is eventually captured (leading back to our opening scene of interrogation) and sentenced to exile. However, there are a lot more adventures ahead, as he discovers the truth about the Lords and Ladies, and about the real Emphyrio.
Last time I said that the novel was very good, but maybe a bit leisurely and episodic. It turns out that incidents I thought were of little importance have great significance. I underestimated the intricacy of the author's tightly woven plot. At least I acknowledged his ability to create complex, imaginative worlds and cultures.
Five stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic. Apparently the new editor prefers to avoid taking things from Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, which may be a good thing.
Let's Do It For Love, by Robert Bloch
The November/December 1953 issue is the source of this farce.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
A guy invents some stuff that makes folks love everybody. The narrator is a public relations agent who tries to promote the wonderful chemical. Too bad nobody wants universal siblinghood.
Anonymous illustration.
There's a touch of satire, of course, but this is mostly just a silly romp, full of wacky jokes and tomfoolery. If that's your thing, fine. The way the story deals with the inventor's shrewish wife may not please too many readers.
Two stars.
To Fit the Crime, by Richard Matheson
This ironic tale comes from the November/December 1952 issue.
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
A curmudgeonly poet insults his relations in creative ways as he lies dying. In the afterlife, he faces an appropriate fate.
Illustration by David Stone.
There's not much to this except for the poet's way with words. The unpleasant fellow's version of perdition may cause some amusement.
Two stars.
The Star Dummy, by Anthony Boucher
The Fall 1952 issue provides this lighthearted story.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A ventriloquist imagines that his dummy talks to him. Oddly, that's not really what the story is about. It actually deals with a goofy-looking alien, newly arrived on Earth, looking for his vanished mate. The extraterrestrial and the ventriloquist wind up helping each other.
Illustration by Tom Beecham.
This is mostly a comedy, of a very gentle sort. One unusual aspect of the story is that it also deals with the ventriloquist's religious faith. There's some discussion of science fiction itself as well.
Slightly eccentric, moderately entertaining.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Ted White
Leiber discusses three new novels that add explicit sex to science fiction plots. (I told you I'd get to that!) For the record, the trio consists of The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer, The Endless Orgy by Richard E. Geis, and Season of the Witch by Hank Stine. Leiber gives them mixed reviews, but welcomes the new frankness with which they describe sexual behavior.
The editor offers a long, glowing review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny. I liked it, too.
No rating.
The Hungry, by Robert Sheckley
Back to reprints. This one comes from June 1954 issue.
Cover art by Ernest Schroeder.
A malevolent thing preys upon the negative emotions and physical suffering of a young married couple. Only the baby of the family and the pet cat can see it. The infant does what it can to help.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
Told from the viewpoint of the baby, this is an offbeat little story. Minor, but nicely done.
Three stars.
The Worth of a Man,by Henry Slesar
The June 1959 issue supplies this grim tale.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A veteran of a future war has much of his body replaced with metal parts. He talks to a psychiatrist about his sense that somebody is out to hurt him.
Of course, his supposed paranoia is more than a delusion. What happens to him is disturbing, which is apparently the author's intent. I found it to be a powerful and all-too-plausible chiller.
Four stars.
Fantasy Fandom, by Ted White and Bill Meyers
I wasn't even going to discuss, let alone rate, this new column from the editor, in which he intends to reprint writings from fanzines. However, the first one knocked me out.
First published in Void, White's own fanzine, the essay by Meyers relates the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien to the author's childhood. It's a thoughtful, elegantly written piece, not so much about Tolkien as it is about the way that our early years influence how we react to literature.
I may be prejudiced in its favor, because Meyers grew up in the Chattanooga area, where I currently reside.
Five stars.
The Naked Truth
That was a very mixed bag of an issue. One excellent novel, one excellent essay, stories old and new ranging from below average to above average. You might want to skip some of the lesser pieces and go see a play instead.
The cast of Oh, Calcutta! You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
I've spoken before about my inexplicable interest in cheap, trashy movies about motorcycle gangs. Two more films in this genre arrived this month. Hop on the back of my chopper and let's take a ride into the wild world of weirdos on wheels.
The Sidehackers
The opening credits are odd. The image is reduced to a tiny part of the screen, surrounded by black.
So is it The Sidehackers or The Side Hackers?
My sources in the movie biz tell me that this thing was originally called Five the Hard Way, which is also the name of the song we hear during the credits. My guess is that they had to chop up the opening to squeeze in the new title.
Anyway, we soon meet a pair of young lovers as they frolic in the woods and fields. Boy pushing girl in a swing, both of them running through flowers in slow motion, etc. Corny stuff.
Diane McBain as Rita. She was in The Mini-skirt Mob, too.
Ross Hagen as Rommell. He was in The Hellcats AND The Mini-Skirt Mob!
We meet Rommell's married buddy, who tells him all about the wonders of matrimonial bliss. This romantic domestic drama is interrupted by the arrival of a guy who makes a living by performing stunts on a motorcycle. (We never actually see this.) He's accompanied by his girlfriend and his gang.
Claire Polan as Paisley and Michael Pataki as J. C.
Fans of Star Trek may recognize Pataki. (Hint: It should be hauled away AS garbage!)
Then we get some sidehacking. Oh, you don't what that is? Well, it's a sort of motorcycle racing in which a guy is hanging off the side of the bike on something like an open metal cage. Don't worry, this has nothing at all to do with the plot, and we'll never see it again.
Sidehacking!
The plot gets going when the sadistic J. C. beats up Paisley, who then tries to seduce Rommell. He's a one-woman kind of guy, so he rebuffs her. In retaliation, she tears her clothes and tells J. C. that Rommell attacked her.
This sudden change in mood from romance and racing to violence is jarring. Believe me, it gets worse.
J. C. and his goons beat Rommell savagely. Much more shocking, they rape and kill Rita. After some time goes by, Rommell assembles a crew and sets out for revenge. Don't expect a happy ending.
Fans of action movies will be disappointed by how the film slows down to a crawl until we get to the final battle. Pataki chews the scenery as the psychotic J. C., and everybody else is pretty bland. (One of Rommell's army — that's probably why he's named for an infamous Nazi general, even though he's supposed to be, more or less, the good guy — is named Crapout. He's our wildly inappropriate comedy relief, has a thick Southern accent, and is really annoying.)
One star for an odd combination of boredom and nastiness. Cut out the most disturbing scenes and you might have something worth mocking with some buddies.
Satan's Sadists
This one jumps right into the vile stuff. Before the opening credits, a motorcycle gang comes across a man and woman. They rape the woman, then kill both of them. This is just a hint of what's to follow.
The opening credits feature some interesting abstract animation, and may be the best thing in the film.
A married couple picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere. He just got out of the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam. They wind up at a little restaurant/gas station in the desert.
From left to right, the waitress who is our heroine; the ex-Marine who is our hero; and the married couple. Not shown is the owner of the place.
The motorcycle gang shows up and immediately starts making trouble. The leader is a guy named Anchor. His girlfriend (whom he abuses as much as J. C. did Paisley) is Gina.
The other hoodlums each have some kind of gimmick. One wears a hearing aid, one takes LSD all the time, one has only one eye, one is big and strong, and one is an Indian. (The last is nicknamed Firewater, and is probably the least evil of the gang. Naturally, he's played by a non-Indian, John "Bud" Cardos, a pretty well-known stuntman of Greek ancestry.)
Russ Tamblyn as Anchor. You may remember him from lots of movies, such as West Side Story and The Haunting.
[Are you sure that's not Arte Johnson? He looks 'very interesting'. (Ed.)]
Regina Carrol as Gina. She's married to Al Adamson, the director. He also recently gave us Blood of Dracula's Castle.
The gang takes everybody prisoner. All but two of them haul the married couple and the guy who owns the diner outside. They rape the woman then kill all three of them.
Inside the place, the ex-Marine manages to overpower the two gang members left to guard them, killing both. He and the waitress escape via dune buggy, but the vehicle soon breaks down. It all leads up to a battle in the desert.
(As if this weren't horrible enough, the big chase scene is interrupted when the gang finds three young women on a geology field trip. Of course, they torment, rape, and kill them. This is when Firewater objects to the murders, proving that he's still got a tiny bit of decency hidden deep inside. His disagreement with Anchor leads to a big fight scene, made more effective by the experience of stuntman Cardos.)
Boy, this is nasty stuff. It definitely delivers all the shocks it promises, unlike the occasionally tepid The Sidehackers. It's a lot more coherent than Blood of Dracula's Castle, or Blood of Ghastly Horror, another offering from Al Adamson. For those reasons, I have to give it two stars.
After this double feature, it's time to take a long, hot shower. Let's hope future motorcycle movies won't be quite so slimy.
Coming soon! As the poster indicates, it's already been shown at the famous Cannes film festival. Let's hope it's better than these two films.
As far as I know, there aren't a lot of science fiction mystery novels out there. The most famous, of course, are Isaac Asimov's tales of police detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. The Caves of Steel (1953) and The Naked Sun (1956) are classics in this specific combination of genres.
A new book continues the tradition of a detective investigating a murder case in the far future. Will it be up to the level of the Good Doctor's predecessors? Let's find out.
The novel takes place aboard a luxury starship on its way from Earth to Altair. On board is police lieutenant/doctor of psychology Claudine St. Cyr. Her job is to make sure that the king of a planet orbiting Altair gets home safely. This seems like an easy assignment, as the king claims that everybody on his world loves him. It turns out this isn't quite true.
After foiling an assassination attempt on the king, things start to go very badly indeed. Somebody has sabotaged the gizmo that allows the starship to travel faster than light. This threatens to make the whole darn thing blow up, killing hundreds of passengers and crew.
As if that weren't enough, both the captain and the second in command die in mysterious ways. Can St. Cyr solve the crime and save the ship?
Suspects? We've got plenty of 'em. Just about everybody we meet has some kind of secret, from the king to a shopkeeper who sells St. Cyr a wristwatch with a second hand that runs backwards.
Notable among the possible killers are a wild-eyed religious fanatic and a guy with telekinetic powers. It takes a while for the plot to get going, but towards the end the author throws in a ton of twists and turns.
As a murder mystery, it generally plays fair with the reader. There are lots of clues scattered here and there, from a mysterious message left near the sabotaged gizmo to the aroma of a certain brand of cigar. My one quibble with the whodunit plot is that some of the twists depend on people concealing information from St. Cyr (and the reader) for pretty weak reasons.
As science fiction, well, that's a different matter. There's a long discussion of the way the starship gizmo works that is pure doubletalk. We also learn a lot about the way telekinetic powers work; more than I wanted to know, really. Despite the far future setting, it feels more like we're aboard the Queen Mary during the golden age of cruise ships.
A word about St. Cyr as a character. She's highly skilled as a detective and as a psychologist. She is also very beautiful, and just about every male character in the novel falls madly in love with her. She isn't afraid to use her feminine wiles to get information out of these besotted fellows, and this gets to be a bit much at times.
Overall, a light piece of entertainment that passes the time pleasantly, but will fade from memory as soon as you reach the last page.
Three stars.
by Gideon Marcus
The Nets of Space, by Emil Petaja
I've only recently discovered Petaja, a Finnish-extraction author with a fantastical sense imbued in his writing and a penchant for incorporating themes from various mythologies. He's sort of a rip-roaring version of Thomas Burnett Swann, and I always enjoy (though not necessarily love) his work. His latest is no exception.
Cover art by Paul Lehr
The opening is a grabber: Don Quick is a technician bounced from the Alpha Centauri expedition at the last minute. The first scene of the book is a dream sequence in which he is in an enormous cocktail glass with dozens of other naked humans, glazed in brine, and they are one-by-one pulled out and dipped in sauce before being eaten by giant alien crabs.
When he awakens, Don finds himself back on Earth and recalls that he has been a mental patient for months. Is his dream a kind of clairvoyance? Or merely a kind of shell shock from the time he inhaled hyperspatial gas during a pre-launch accident involving the Centaur III? And why, when he falls asleep, does the dream continue sequentially and seem to portend an extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth?
Cervantes' classic Don Quixote figures strongly in this book; it is the external influence Petaja has chosen for his latest adventure. The whole thing is lighthearted enough that you're never too worried about Earth's possible impending disaster. Indeed, The Nets of Space is essentially a comic book in literary form—never mind the science or consistency. But it reads quickly: I finished it on a single flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka.
The Day of the Dolphin is a work of fiction of great contradictions: it’s lighthearted and downbeat, escapist and embedded in the world; engaged in technological innovation and driven by characters; and written in manners both straightforward and elliptical.
If there ever was a book to drive a reader crazy, it’s this one.
At the heart of Robert Merle’s new novel is a fascinating concept. We all know that dolphins are smart animals. As this book reminds us, the brain size and complexity of the average dolphin is roughly analogous to those of a human brain. So what if a wise researcher was able to talk to dolphins in their language and teach dolphins to talk to us in ours? How would those dolphins navigate their learning, how would their approaches to the world be different from those of humans, and what would make those majestic creatures truly happy?
When Merle explores those ideas, The Day of the Dolphin leaps ecstatically like a dolphin leaping out of the water to shoot a basketball through a hoop. There’s a thrilling element of discovery as a secret government laboratory of scientists patiently work with a young dolphin to teach him a few words of English. When he starts to learn English, the scientists provide that dolphin a mate. And the courtship and love affair between the dolphin couple is fascinating and sweet and surprisingly moving. My favorite parts of the novel were the sections in which Merle shows the creatures change each other, drive their relationships and truly build a bond between themselves and the scientists who care for them.
But if a scientific agency is driving this research, you know there has to be some geopolitics involved, and of course there is. In fact, one character notes in a clever bit of metafictional dialogue the moment when the plot takes on Bond or Flint elements. There are human romances inside the research group. But there is also espionage, and secret taping, and a “dolphin gap” argument with the Soviets, and it is to sigh.
Mr. Merle
Because to me, all those moments of connection to the real world take away the most intriguing aspects of the book. The book pivots at its midpoint. At that point. The book swiftly changes from an intellectually absorbing exploration of science into an often dull, often by-the-numbers tale of espionage and intrigue. I predicted around page 20 that the dolphins would be sent on the mission they go on towards the end of this novel, and the impact of those actions were equally as obvious.
Merle writes much of this book in a kaleidoscopical style, full of long paragraphs with stream-of-consciousness approaches which kind of wander and meander from first person to third person, from grounded reality to revelations of emotion and often to outright gibberish. At first this style is thrilling or at least intriguing, but when Merle breaks up that approach with excerpts from letters or interviews conducted by government agencies, that break often feels like a necessary breath of fresh air. I kept finding my mind drifting as the characters’ minds drifted, ungrounded in reality or in this story but instead of my own thoughts about dolphins or work or the Miami Dolphins of the NFL.
It sounds like I hated this book but in truth I enjoyed The Day of the Dolphin for its brazen oddness and for Merle’s obvious passion for both the way he presents his story and the story itself. The more I read about them in this book, the more I wanted to read about our aquatic friends. I now have a nice stack of library books on my desk about Cetaceans because I find that species so interesting. I just wish The Day of the Dolphin had a bit more dolphin and a bit less human in its pages.
Yesterday the Vatican announced that more than forty saints have been removed from the official liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. How come? Because there's some serious doubt that these holy folks ever existed.
The most famous of these former saints is Christopher, patron of travelers. There are plenty of people with Saint Christopher medals hanging from the rear view mirrors of their cars, hoping for safe journeys.
A typical Saint Christopher medal. Note the infant Jesus carried on his back.
The story goes that Christopher (whose name, appropriately, means Bearer of Christ) carried the baby Messiah across a river. I guess we'll never know now how He made it. Perhaps He crawled on water.
Long Hair Music
I'm sure that ex-Saint Christopher will continue to be associated with a divine youth. In this modern age, what could be more associated with secular youth than the hippie movement? The popularity of the musical Hair is proof of the cultural importance of these groovy young people.
Further evidence, if any be needed, is the fact that Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, a medley of two songs from Hair performed by The 5th Dimension, has been Number One in the USA since the middle of April, and shows no signs of leaving that position anytime soon.
Maybe I'm prejudiced in the song's favor because I'm an Aquarius.
Bildungsroman
Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic is dominated by the first half of a new novel in which we see the main character develop from a child to a young adult.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
The cover is, as usual, borrowed from an issue of the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
What happened to the green halo around the sphere in the upper right corner?
Editorial: Don't, by Laurence M. Janifer
The associate editor tells us why writing is a bad career choice. Although the piece is intended to be humorous, I can't help feeling that there's a trace of true bitterness to it.
No rating.
Emphyrio (Part One of Two), by Jack Vance
Illustrations by Bruce Jones.
Taking up half the magazine, this initial segment begins with a bang. We witness our protagonist, Ghyl Tarvoke, held prisoner in a tower. His skull is cut open and his brain attached to a sinister device. His captors manipulate his mind, bringing him from a vegetative state to one where he is able to answer questions, but lacks the imagination to lie. The torturers want to know why he committed serious crimes before they kill him.
After this dramatic opening we go into a flashback. Ghyl is the son of a woodworker. They live on a planet that was colonized so long ago that Earth is just a legend. Centuries ago, a war devastated the place where they live. Wealthy and powerful people restored basic services and now rule as lords, collecting taxes from their underlings.
Ghyl and a friend sneak into the spaceport where the aristocrats keep their private starships.
Ghyl's father engages in the forbidden activity of duplication; that is, he builds his own device that allows him to make copies of old manuscripts. (Other forms of duplication are also illegal; everything has to be made by hand.) He eventually pays a very heavy price for his crime.
In what starts as a joke, Ghyl runs for mayor (a purely symbolic office, but one that might offer the possibility of changing the oppressive laws of the lords) under the nom de guerre of Emphyrio. This half of the novel ends just as the election is about to take place.
Vance is a master at describing exotic settings and strange cultures, and his latest work is a particularly shining example. I have failed to give you any idea of the novel's complex and detailed background. (Vance is the only SF author I know who can get away with the copious use of footnotes to explain the worlds he creates.) Ghyl and the other characters are very real, and their world seems like a place with millennia of history.
If I have to have a few minor quibbles, I might say that the novel (with the exception of the shocking opening scene) is very leisurely and episodic. Readers expecting an action-packed plot may be a bit disappointed. Personally, I found Ghyl's world fascinating.
Four stars (and maybe even leaning toward five.)
The Big Boy, by Bruce McAllister
The only other original work of fiction in this issue is a blend of science fiction and religious fantasy. Space travelers, including clergy, discover a galaxy-size, vaguely humanoid being deep in the cosmos. It manipulates stars and planets. An attempt to communicate with it yields a garbled message that seems to indicate that it is God. A clearer version of the message reveals something else.
I didn't really see the point of this story. The second version of the message isn't some big, shocking twist, but rather a slight modification of the original. (That's how I saw it, anyway, although the characters react wildly to it.)
Two stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic, instead of the usual yellowing copies of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures.
Time Bum, by C. M. Kornbluth
The January/February 1953 issue of the magazine supplies this comedy.
Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.
A con artist rents a bungalow from a married couple. He drops hints that he's from centuries in the future. Revealing his identity as a time traveler would be a capital offense in his future world, or so he convinces them. The plan is to have them bring him a fortune in diamonds that he can supposedly duplicate for them.
Illustration by David Stone.
This is an amusing little jape. The author has a good time making fun of time travel stories and science fiction in general. (The wife is a reader of SF magazines, tearing off the covers with their scantily clad space women.) It's a minor work, and you'll see the ending coming a mile away, but it's worth a chuckle or two.
Three stars.
The Opal Necklace, by Kris Neville
The very first issue of the magazine (Summer 1952) is the source of this horror story.
Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.
The daughter of a witch living way back in the swamp marries a man from New York City. The witch warns her that she will always be a part of the swamp. She gives her daughter a string of opals, each one of which contains one of the husband's joys.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
When the marriage inevitably falls apart, the woman turning to booze and cheap affairs, she destroys the opals, one by one. The first time, this causes the death of the man's pet dog. It all leads up to a tragic ending.
Besides being an effective chiller, this is a very well-written story with a great deal of emotional power. The woman is both victim and villain. The reader is able to empathize with her, no matter how reprehensible her actions may be.
Four stars.
The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch, by Eric Frank Russell
This grimly comic tale comes from the Fall 1952 issue.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A series of gruesome deaths occurs in a small town in France. They all happen near a place where a meteorite fell. Only the village idiot knows what is responsible.
Illustration by Leo Summers also.
Does that sound like a comedy to you? Me neither. The basic plot is a typical science fiction horror story, but the author treats it with dry humor. Frankly, I found it in questionable taste, and not very funny.
Two stars.
Root of Evil, by Shirley Jackson
A tale from a truly great writer comes from the March/April issue.
Cover art by Richard Powers.
A man places an ad in the newspaper offering to send money to anybody who writes to him. Sure enough, folks who send in a request get the cash. We see several people react to this strange ad in different ways. At last, we learn about the fellow giving away all this loot.
Illustration by Virgil Finlay.
I was expecting a lot from the author of the superb short stories The Lottery and One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts as well as the excellent novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I didn't get it. The initial premise is interesting, but the story fizzles out at the end.
Two stars.
What If, by Isaac Asimov
The same premiere issue that gave us Kris Neville's dark story of an unhappy marriage offers this sentimental tale from the Good Doctor about a happy one.
Illustration by David Stone.
A lovey-dovey couple are on a train. A strange little man sits across from them with a box that says WHAT IF in big letters. He doesn't say a word, but he shows them a glass panel that allows them to see what would have happened if they had not met the way they did.
This isn't the most profound story ever written, but it makes for very pleasant reading. The message seems to be that some people are truly meant for each other, and that things tend to work out for the best. An optimistic point of view, to be sure, but it will probably appeal to the old softy inside all of us.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Hank Stine
Leiber has high praise for the dark fantasy novel Black Easter by James Blish (I agree; it's very good) and the story collection A Glass of Stars by Robert F. Young, particularly noting the latter's skill with love stories. (I agree with that also.)
Although it's not a book, the column includes an appreciation of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows by Hank Stine.
No rating.
Worth Spending Your Youth On?
This was a pretty good issue, despite a couple of disappointments. The Jack Vance novel is clearly the highlight. If you'd rather skip the rest of the magazine, you can always read an old literary classic.
It's a highly superior clutch of books this month around—plus a double review of the new Vonnegut…
by Victoria Silverwolf
Sophomore Efforts
By coincidence, the last two books I read were both the second novels to be published by their authors. Otherwise, they are as different as they could be.
Coleman's first book was something called Seeker From the Stars. I haven't read it, so I can't comment. In fact, I was completely unfamiliar with this author, so I asked my contacts in fandom and the publishing industry about him. I turned up a couple of interesting facts.
Firstly, he's one of the few Black science fiction writers. (The most notable is, of course, the great Samuel R. Delany.) That's a good thing for the field. The more variety of writers, the better the fiction.
Secondly, he's currently in jail for burglary. It seems that he's taken up writing while incarcerated. That seems like a decent path to rehabilitation, so let's wish him good luck while paying his debt to society.
But is the book any good? Let's find out.
At some time in the future, humanity has reached the far reaches of the solar system. However, a conglomeration of business interests known as the Five Companies has put a stop to further development of space science, unless they control it. They're so powerful that they have their own secret police. Not even the World Government or the Space Patrol can keep them from crippling research.
Our protagonist is Catherine Rogers. She is part of a private space research group that dares to defy the Five Companies. Trouble starts when a scientist shows up at their headquarters, shot by the secret police. Just before dying, he gives Catherine and her colleagues a book and a key to a hidden cache of highly advanced technology brought from another world.
We quickly find out that two aliens in the form of glowing spheres are on Earth. One of them is insanely evil. He kidnapped the other, who is essentially the queen bee of her species. He intends to mate with her against her will, forcing her to produce one hundred million offspring (!) who will be raised to be as wicked as himself.
He wants to feed off the life force of human beings, and teach his children to do the same, wiping out humanity. Complicating matters is the fact that the evil alien shares his mind with one of the leaders of the secret police, who wants to get his hands on the advanced technology.
This all happens very early in the book, and we've got a long way to go. Suffice to say that Catherine and her friends work with the good alien, who has enormous psychic powers, to defeat the bad one.
The author's writing style isn't very sophisticated, sad to say, nor is the plot. Much of the time I imagined this story as a comic book. On the good side, the pace keeps getting faster and faster. By the end, it makes Keith Laumer look like Henry James.
I also appreciate the fact that the heroes are of mixed races, and a large number of them are women. All in all, however, I have to confess that this is a disappointing work.
Randall's first novel was called Hedgerow. I haven't read that one either, but apparently it's a Gothic Romance without supernatural elements.
Unlike Coleman, I'm familiar with this author. She had two excellent stories published in Fantastic a few years ago.
Will she be as adept at a longer length? Let's take a look.
An automobile accident claims the lives of the parents of two sisters. Elizabeth (twenty-four years old) escapes without a scratch, but Gabrielle (nineteen) is severely injured. The two young women move into a house owned by the great-aunt of a doctor who cared for Gabrielle during her long and painful recovery.
The house is located on an island off the coast of New England, the perfect setting for a Gothic Romance. Elizabeth and the doctor fall in love, giving us the other mandatory element for this genre.
The first half of the book is narrated by Gabrielle. On the very first page she feels the presence of Alarice, a woman who lived in the house long ago. (She's the dead sister of the great-aunt. Throughout the book, there's a strong parallel between the two pairs of sisters, including a love triangle.)
It's obvious from the start that Gabrielle is mentally and emotionally unstable, after her traumatic experience, so it's not always clear what's real and what's not. The second half of the book is narrated by Elizabeth, who gives us a very different perspective on events, including the tragic accident.
I haven't mentioned a third narrator, who shows up only a few pages from the end, adding a genuinely chilling touch.
This is a beautifully written book, with great psychological insight into its characters. Besides gorgeous language that makes me want to read it out loud, it has a plot as intricately woven as a spider web. We witness the same things happen from different viewpoints, completely changing what we thought we knew.
Five stars.
by Brian Collins
This month's Ace Double is a very good one for both Fritz Leiber fans and readers in general. The quality packed into this Double is unsurprising, though, since it is all reprints. There's the short collection Night Monsters, which contains four stories that all run in the horror vein. Three of these stories were previously printed in Fantastic, and so Victoria covered them some years ago. The other half is The Green Millennium, one of Leiber's more overlooked novels, first published in 1953 and not having seen print in the U.S. in about fifteen years.
The longest story here is also the best, at least in terms of the sheer beauty of Leiber's prose. It's Southern California in the early '60s, and the narrator is recounting the strange ramblings of a friend of his who would disappear under mysterious circumstances. Said friend believes that not only is oil a corrupting force, but that oil might somehow be alive. The supernatural is never seen but is strongly alluded to, in passages so evocative, so oppressive, that they compare with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The plot itself is rather structureless, but this doesn't matter because Leiber is so good at chronicling modern horrors such as industry and the urban landscape. I lived in California (in Pasadena) for a short time, and I'll be sure never to return.
Another contender for best in the collection is a more personal, more melancholy story. A middle-aged man, a chess-player, astronomer, and divorcee who reads somewhat like a stand-in for Leiber, sees a silhouetted figure behind him in the doubled mirrors he sees going up and down the stairs every night. Without giving away the ending, the apparition may be the ghost of a theatre actress he had met by chance who had committed suicide not long after their encounter. The man, in an attack of conscience, is confronted with a memory he had suppressed, of a person he had deeply wronged, though he didn't know it at the time. It's a ghost story, a striking portrait of guilt, and in a strange way, a love story.
As an unintended companion to the previous story, this one is interesting. It also features a ghostly woman who has been wronged, albeit the crime committed upon her is much worse. We're led to believe at first that this woman is simply a temptress, but while she may creep up on the unsuspecting male lead, she is not a totally malicious specter. "I'm Looking for 'Jeff'" is about a decade older than the other stories, and it certainly shows a restraint (given the horrific crime at the center) that Leiber would probably not show if he had written it today. My one real problem is the ending, which is an expositional monologue from a third party that explains the twist, rather than Leiber showing us what happened.
The last and shortest is also the most lighthearted; it's what you might call a horror-comedy. An actress is quite literally fading (her body is becoming more transparent) as her popularity is on the decline, so she resorts to a very old family ritual that might make her famous again—at a price. The satire is cute, although I think Leiber tackled something similar but better and more seriously in "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." I'm also not sure about those rhyming couplets. It's fine, but ultimately minor.
Phil Gish is aimless and unemployed, but his life quickly gets turned upside down when he meets a green cat he takes an immediate liking to. He calls the cat Lucky, and like Lovecraft, who liked taking care of strays, he thinks of the animal as his own—only for Lucky to run off. Man gets cat, man loses cat, man goes looking for cat. This is the skeleton on which the book's plot is built, but it balloons into something much weirder and more convoluted.
The future America of The Green Millennium is dystopic, but not in ways we now take as obvious. Robots have become normalized, taking away much of human labor, and the people themselves are largely hedonists desperate for stimulation—not even for pleasure itself but more to fight off boredom. Despite being first published in 1953, it reads like something written in the past few years—in the wake of the New Wave and even something like Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Certainly it could not have been serialized in the magazines of the time, what with the explicit references to sex and drug use.
The plot, at its core, is simple, but Leiber introduces a colorful array of characters, all of whom want Lucky as much as Phil does. These characters include, but are not limited to, a husband-wife wrestling duo, an analyst who sounds like he himself could use an analyst, a woman with prosthetic legs that hide what seem to be hooves for feet, a pack of corporate higher-ups who may as well be mobsters, actual mobsters, and a few others I have not mentioned. The green cat might be an alien, or a mutant, or a weapon devised by the Soviets, I won't say which.
I might sound inebriated as I'm trying to explain all this, but let me assure you that I haven't smoked or ingested marijuana in five months!
Leiber is a mixed bag when it comes to comedy: he can be pretty funny, but he can also write The Wanderer. The Green Millennium is a madcap SF comedy that was written at a time (the early '50s) when Leiber could seemingly do no wrong, and it demonstrates his keen understanding of things that haunt the modern American. Most importantly, it's just a lot of fun.
On a routine flight from Stockholm to London, sixteen travellers (eight women and eight men) with no connection to each other, find themselves whisked to another world. Their new environs are suggestive of nothing so much as a zoo habitat designed to be reminiscent of home. To wit: a strip of highway flanked by a supermarket and a hotel, complete with electricity and running water. Two automobiles sans engines. A few workshops. A nightly replenished supply of booze, groceries, and tools.
Russell Graheme, M.P., quickly takes charge of the unwilling emigrants, organizing exploration parties. Soon, contact is made with a medievalist enclave, a Stone Age encampment…and what appear to be flocks of fairies.
What is this world? Who brought them there? And to what end? Those are the key riddles answered in this terrific little new book.
It's sort of a cross between Cooper's book Transit (in which five humans are transported to an extraterrestrial island) and Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" series (in which everyone who ever lived is transported, along with his/her culture, to the banks of an extraterrestrial world-river) with a touch of the whimsy of L. Sprague de Camp (viz. The Incomplete Enchanter). It reads extremely quickly, and what with the short chapters and quick running time, you'll be done with the novel (novella?) before you know it.
What really engaged me, beyond the tight writing and fine characterization, was the central message of hope throughout the book. In "Riverworld", the various cultures who find themselves alongside each other in the hereafter almost immediately form belligerent statelets; war is the constant in Farmer's series. But in Seahorse, it's all about making peaceful contact, working together, having a productive goal. There's no Lord of the Flies to this story (though it is not unmitigatedly happy, either). Cooper clearly has a positive view of humanity, or at least wants to inspire us toward his idealistic vision. Count me in.
Five stars.
Contrast this upbeat book with the other one I read recently…
By page 100, Gideon determined that Slaughterhouse Five is not a book one enjoys, but rather experiences.
Two thirds of the way through the book, Gideon realized he'd been hoodwinked. Slaughterhouse Five is not science fiction at all, but rather the author's attempt to convey his experiences as a POW in Nazi Germany during the War, culminating in his presence at the firebombing of Dresden (now sited in East Germany). The SFnal wrapping, in which Billy Pilgrim is abducted by 4D aliens who unstick him in time and incarcerate him in an extraterrestrial zoo, seems there mostly to get eyes on the book. Or maybe to maintain a certain detachment from the material by changing the genre from "memoir."
For the same reason Billy Pilgrim, the eternal schlemiel, gets to be the closest thing the book has to a hero rather than the author, himself. The only way Vonnegut could work through his battle fatigue and War-derived ennui was to make the protagonist as hopeless and hapless as possible, to reflect the flannel-wrapped blinders through which the author now sees the world. To Vonnegut, Earth is a pathetic stage on which man inflicts indignity on himself and then on others. Then they die. So it goes.
On or about page 81, Gideon got a little tired of the fairy-tale language Vonnegut employs. It worked in Harrison Bergeron, but it's a bit of a one-trick pony.
Somewhere along the line, Gideon figured that the inclusion of the starlet, Miss Montana (who exists to provide someone besides the enormous Mrs. Pilgrim for Billy to stick his hefty wang into) was so that, in addition to appealing to SF fans, the book would appeal to horny SF fans. And horny readers in general. And because S.E.X. s.e.l.l.s.
Kilgore Trout, if he existed, would probably be reprinted these days in Amazing.
About a third of the way in, Gideon determined that he would write the review of Slaughterhouse Five in the style of Slaughterhouse Five.
Whatever the book is not, it is, at the very least, a memorable account of the author's feelings toward and memories of those dark last months of the war. It is a poignant counterpoint to all the jingoistic WW2 films that have come out this decade, and perhaps a more suitable epitaph for the millions who died in that conflict. So it goes.
Four stars.
by Cora Buhlert
War is hell: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Last month, thousands of people gathered in Dresden to remember the victims of the Allied bombings in the night from February 13 to 14, 1945, the night from Shrove Tuesday to Ash Wednesday and never was a day more aptly named. These memorial gatherings happen every year and while the number of East German officials and politicians attending and the degree of belligerence in their speeches waxes and wanes with the greater political situation (East German officials like using the Dresden bombings for propaganda purposes as an example of the infamy of the West), one thing that remains constant is the number of Dresdeners who come to remember the dead and the nigh total destruction of their city.
The burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in Dresden, once a jewel of Baroque architecture.The Semper opera house in Dresden after the bombings. The exterior is still standing, but the once gorgeous interior is burned completely out.
I have never seen Dresden before 1945, though my grandmother who grew up in the area told me it was a beautiful city and how much she missed attending performances at the striking Semper opera house, which was largely destroyed by the bombings and is in the process of being rebuilt (The proposed completion date is 1985). However, I have visited the modern Dresden with its constant construction activity and incongruous mix of burned out ruins, historical buildings in various stages of reconstruction and newly constructed modernist office and apartment blocks and could keenly feel what was lost.
Views of the modern rebuilt Dresden in postcard form
I also know survivors of the Dresden bombings such as my university classmate Norbert who witnessed Dresden burning as teenager evacuated to the countryside and who – much like Kurt Vonnegut – was forced to help with the clean-up work and body recovery and wrote a harrowing account of his experiences for the university literary magazine.
Of course, Dresden was not the only German city bombed. Every bigger German city has its own Dresden, that night when entire neighbourhoods were wiped out and thousands of people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed. For my hometown of Bremen, the night was the night of August 18, 1944, when Allied bombers destroyed the Walle neighbourhood next to Bremen harbour (while miraculously missing most of the harbour itself, similar to how the bombing of Dresden miraculously missed the industrial plants on the outskirts of the city). My grandfather, a retired sea captain, lived in the Walle neighbourhood. He was one of the lucky ones and survived, though his home in a housing estate for retired seafarers was destroyed. I remember sifting through the still smoking rubble of Grandpa's little house with my Mom the next day, looking for anything that might have survived the bombs and the firestorm and finding only two bronze buddha statues that Grandpa had brought back from Thailand. These two buddhas now stand guard in my living room, the war damage still visible. Meanwhile, the street where Grandpa once lived no longer exists on modern city maps at all.
An aerial view of Dresden's old slaughterhouse, where Kurt Vonnegut was imprisoned and survived the bombing of the city.
This is the perspective from which I read Kurt Vonnegut's latest novel Slaughterhouse Five, which uses science fiction as a vehicle for Vonnegut to describe his experiences as a prisoner of war who survived the bombing of Dresden and – like my classmate Norbert – never forgot what he saw that night and in the days that followed.
The result, much like the contemporary Dresden with the burned out ruin of the Church of Our Lady overlooking a parking lot and a hyper-modern restaurant and entertainment complex sitting directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace, is jarring and incongruous. Vonnegut's protagonist is Billy Pilgrim, an American everyman whose suburban postwar life is disrupted when he is abducted by aliens and becomes unstuck in time, forced to revisit the bombing of Dresden over and over and over again.
No, this photo of the burnt out ruin of the Church of Our Lady in winter was not taken in 1945, but in 1960. It still looks the same today.A banner advertises an exhibtion of contemporary Soviet art, while the ruins of Baroque Dresden loom in the background.The ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, the largest in all of East Germany, opened only last year – directly opposite the newly restored Baroque Zwinger palace.Aerial view of the ultra-modern restaurant complex Am Zwinger, which includes a self-service restaurant, the Radeberger beer cellar and the Café Espresso, pictured here. Just don't expect the coffee on offer to actually taste like espresso.Tourists lounge in the terrace café of the restaurant complex Am Zwinger, overlooking the recently rebuilt Baroque Zwinger palace.
Slaughterhouse Five is not so much a novel, it is a metaphor for the trauma of war, a trauma that still hasn't subsided even twenty-four years later but that keep rearing its ugly head again and again. Many veterans report having flashbacks to particularly traumatic experiences during the war – any war. But while those flashbacks are purely psychological, poor Billy Pilgrim physically travels back in time to the worst night of his life over and over again.
Barely a blip on the radar
The bombings of World War II loom large in the collective memory of people in Germany and the rest of Europe, yet they are comparatively rarely addressed in contemporary German literature. Der Untergang (The End: Hamburg) by Hans Erich Nossack from 1948, Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (A Time to Love and a Time to Die) by Erich Maria Remarque (who was not even in Germany, but sitting high and dry in Switzerland during WWII) from 1954 and Vergeltung (Retaliation) by Gert Ledig from 1956 are some of the very few examples. It's not as if World War II plays no role in German literature at all, because we have dozens of war novels. However, these are all tales about the experiences of soldiers on the frontline, not about the civilians getting bombed to smithereens back home. Most likely, this is because war novels focus on the experiences of men (and note that both Slaughterhouse Five and Remarque's A Time to Love and a Time to Die focus on soldiers experiencing bombings and air raids) and the experiences of men are deemed important. Meanwhile, the people who suffered and died during the bombing nights of World War II were mainly women, children, old people, sick people, prisoners of war, concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers and their experiences are not deemed nearly as relevant.
Considering how utterly destructive the bombing of Dresden was, it's notable that it is barely a blip on the radar of German literature in both East and West. Erich Kästner's memoir Als ich ein kleiner Junge war (When I was a little boy) touches on the bombing of Dresden, where Kästner grew up, though the book is not about the bombing itself, which Kästner did not experience first-hand, because he was living in Berlin at the time. And for the twentieth anniversary of the Dresden bombings, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the brightest lights of West German journalism, penned a scathing article for the leftwing magazine Konkret, condemning Winston Churchill and Royal Air Force commander Arthur Harris for ordering the attack on Dresden under false pretences. "Was Winston Churchill a war criminal?" the cover of the respective issue of Konkret asked, while quite a lot of readers wondered why this was even a question.
So should Slaughterhouse Five, a work by an American author, albeit one who witnessed the bombing of Dresden first-hand, become the definitive account of the destruction of Dresden and of the bombing nights of World War II in general? I hope not, because I want to read more accounts by German civilians about the bombings of World War II. Nonetheless, I'm glad that Slaughterhouse Five exists, as an account about the horrors of war by one who has seen them. I'm also glad that this novel was published in the US, because too many Americans still consider the bombings of cities and civilians during World War II justified. Maybe Slaughterhouse Five will make some of them reconsider, especially since – as I said above – it wasn't just Dresden that was destroyed by bombing. It was also Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Rotterdam, Coventry, Guernica, Hamburg and right now, it's Hanoi. And the next generation's Billy Pilgrim is currently locked up in a bamboo cage in the Vietnamese jungle somewhere, watching the flames over Hanoi turn the sky blood red.
Not a pleasant book at all, but an important one. Four and a half stars.
And now for something much more pleasant. For after a difficult book like Slaughterhouse Five, you need a palate cleanser. Luckily, I found the perfect palate cleanser in The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, a young American writer currently living in Britain. The Face in the Frost is thirty-year-old Bellairs' third book and his first foray in the fantasy genre.
John Bellairs
The novel starts off with a prologue that informs us that this is a book about wizards – just in case readers of Bellairs' previous two books, collections of Catholic humour pieces, are confused – and then introduces us to the setting, two adjacent kingdoms known only as the North and the South Kingdom. Such prologues can be dry and boring, but Bellairs' whimsical humour, which is on display throughout the book, makes them fun to read.
Once the introductions are out of the way, we meet our protagonist, the wizard Prospero ("not the one you're probably thinking of", Bellairs helpfully informs us) or rather his home, "a huge, ridiculous, doodad-covered, trash-filled two-story horror of a house that stumbled, staggered, and dribbled right up to the edge of a great shadowy forest of elms and oaks and maples", which Prospero shares with a sarcastic talking mirror which can offer glimpses of faraway times and places, though mostly, it's just annoying and also has a terrible singing voice.
Prospero's house, as illustrated by Marilyn Fitschen
This first chapter very much sets the tone for the entire novel, humorous and whimsical – with moments of dread occasionally creeping in. For Prospero has been plagued by bad dreams of late, he has the feeling that a malicious presence is watching him and finds himself menaced by a fluttering cloak, while getting a mug of ale from his own cellar. To top off Prospero's very bad day, he finds himself attacked by a monstrous moth that "smells like a basement full of dusty newspapers".
Luckily, Prospero's friend and fellow wizard Roger Bacon – and note that this time around, Bellairs does not inform us, that this is not the one we're thinking of, so this likely is the famed medieval scholar and creator of a talking brazen head – chooses just this evening to drop by for a visit, after having been kicked out of England, when a spell went awry and instead of constructing a wall of brass around the island in order to keep out Viking raiders, Bacon instead raised a wall of glass with predictable results.
As the two old friends discuss the day's events, it quickly becomes clear that something or rather someone is after Prospero and all that this is linked to a mysterious book that Bacon tried to locate on Prospero's behalf. However, it's late at night, so the two wizards go to bed, only to awaken in the morning to find the house surrounded by sinister grey-cloaked figures, sent by a rival wizard. There's no way out – except via an underground river that the two wizards navigate aboard a model ship, after shrinking themselves down to toy size.
A Magical Mystery Tour
What follows is a marvellous, magical quest, as Prospero and Bacon attempt to figure out just who is after Prospero and once they do, how to stop that villainous sorcerer from casting a spell that will plunge the whole world into everlasting winter. On the way, the two wizards encounter such fascinating locations as the village of Five Dials, which turns out to be an illusion, a magical Potemkin village of hollow houses inhabited by hollow people. They also escape all sorts of horrors their opponent sends against them such as a magical puddle that will capture a person's reflection, should they happen to look into it, and of course the titular face that appears in a frost-encrusted window to mock and menace Prospero.
Fantasy is experiencing something of a boom right now, triggered by the paperback release of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Lancer's reprints of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Cimmerian. But while Conan has inspired a veritable legion of other fantastic swordsmen and barbarian warriors from Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné to Lin Carter's Thongor, Lord of the Rings has inspired very few imitators. Until now.
This does not mean that The Face in the Frost is a carbon copy of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. Quite the contrary, it's very much its own story, even though the Tolkien inspiration is clear and was acknowledged by Bellairs. Furthermore, Bellairs' light and frothy tone makes The Face in the Frost a very different, if no less magical experience than Professor Tolkien's magnum opus.
The Face in the Frost is a delightful book, skilfully mixing humour and whimsy with horror and dread, and the illustrations by Marilyn Fitschen help bring the wonderful world of Prospero and Roger Bacon to life. The ending certainly leaves room for a sequel and I hope that we will get to read it sooner rather than later. At any rate, I can't wait to see what John Bellairs writes next.
A wondrous confection of whimsy, horror and pure joy. Five stars.
by Robin Rose Graves
Society Without Gender…
Another year, another Le Guin. For those tuning in for the first time, my introduction to Le Guin began two years ago, with her novel City of Illusions, which left me disappointed. Last year, I read A Wizard of Earthsea, where finally I saw Le Guin’s potential realized. When I saw she has another book coming out this year, I was interested, but reined in my expectations when I realized The Left Hand of Darkness would take place in the same universe as City of Illusions.
This is book four of the Hainish Cycle, but fortunately, you do not need to read these books in order to understand the story. In fact, I found little connection between this book and the previous one.
Genly Ai is an envoy sent to the snowy planet of Winter to convince the people to join the Ekumen (a sort of alliance between planets). Winter, or Gethen in their native language, is not as technologically advanced as the rest of the universe. They have yet to build airplanes, let alone a vehicle capable of space travel. Following an outsider’s perspective allows readers to learn about a new culture alongside the narrative main character.
As per my experience with her previous works, Le Guin excels at creating compelling and unique settings. Smaller, intermediate chapters offer folkloric stories from the planet of Winter to further enhance the reader’s understanding of Gethenian culture.
All the characters are human, though the Gethenians differ in one key way. They are completely androgynous except for once a month when they enter their reproductive cycle (known as “kemmer”) where they then shift into either male or female (as in they can either impregnate or become pregnant.) Which role a Gethenian will take on during kemmer is not predetermined and can change between cycles.
This confuses and occasionally disgusts Genly Ai, who regards all characters with he and him pronouns, perhaps because he is male and unable to empathize with or respect anyone who isn’t.
Without gender, Le Guin posits that there is no sexuality, no rape, no war. People who get pregnant are not treated as lesser. Children are raised by everyone, not just the person who gave birth to them. Jobs account for kemmer, giving time off for those experiencing their cycle, and special buildings are set aside for reproduction.
Contrasted with the world we live in today, this book subtly calls out the sexism of our own society, while also exemplifying how we may improve. I was pleasantly surprised by the feminist slant of this book.
Five stars.
Reflections in a Mirage, by Leonard Daventry
By Jason Sacks
Leonard Daventry is a British science fiction author whose work tends to follow standard pathways – until it doesn’t. As my fellow Galactic companion Gideon Marcus wrote about one of Mr. Daventry’s previous novels, Daventry likes to explore ideas of free love and complex relationships, using familiar set-ups with slightly surprising resolutions.
His latest book, Reflections in a Mirage, is an excellent demonstration of how Mr. Daventry takes on those challenges while delivering his own unique view of the world. Unfortunately, this novel is perhaps overly ambitious for its length. Mirage consequently falls short of the author’s clear goals.
We return to the lead character Daventry established back in 1965 in A Man of Double Deed: Claus Coman is a telepath, a so-called “keyman” who can create connections to minds of both humans and non-humans. Coman is enlisted to join a motley band of outcasts and criminals who journey to one of the many worlds which humanity has discovered among the vast stars: a forbidding but intriguing planet called Sacron. Coman at least has the comfort of traveling with longtime companion Jonl, a woman with whom he’s had a complex relationship.
But just as many British exiles to Australia rebelled against their crew, the group of 50 outcasts rebel against the crew of their space cruiser. A violent, vicious battle kills most of the men who can fly the cruiser, and terrible damage is visited upon the ship. They only have one choice: to land on the planet which is ironically called Paradise 1. Paradise 1 seems to be a desert world, nearly bereft of any life whatsoever, but there are hints the planet may be more complex than it initially seems.
In fact, we get an intriguing revelation towards the end of the book (with a few concepts which will be well understood by Star Trek fans), but I found myself hungering for more context of the deeper story. At a mere 191 paperback pages, I was constantly under the impression that Daventry had to cut out important elements to the story; its brevity leaves the conclusion feeling a bit unsatisfying.
Reflections in a Mirage is at its best when it explores the human relationships it depicts. Coman’s relationship with Jonl is at the center of the story and provides a happy connection where so many of the other connections are tenuous. Daventry spends some time showing Jonl’s relationship with other women on the colony ship – the men and women are partitioned away from each other – and alludes to furtive, loving relationships among the women. There are similar hints about some of the men's connections to each other, and a strong implication that this society accepts a full gamut of sexuality, from polygamy to homosexuality and even to asexuality.
All of that is very interesting, and places this novel firmly in a “new wave” mindset, but there’s just not enough of it to satisfy. Ultimately, Reflections in a Mirage has the potential to be great, but I felt Daventry needed at least 100 more pages to fully illuminate his story.
You’ll probably be more satisfied reading some of the other works in this column. (I do recommend the LeGuin and Vonnegut books.)
Vehicles travelling very rapidly were in the news this month, both in a good way and in a bad way.
On March 2, the French/British supersonic airplane Concorde made its first test flight in Toulouse, France. At the controls was test pilot
André Édouard Turcat.
Up, up, and away!
The plane reached a speed of 225 miles per hour (far below the speed of sound) and stayed in the air for twenty-seven minutes. Just a test, but expect a lot of sonic booms in the near future.
The same day, tragedy struck the Yellow River drag racing strip in Covington, Georgia. Racer Huston Platt was at the wheel of a car nicknamed Dixie Twister when it smashed through a chain link fence and hurdled into the crowd at 180 miles per hour.
Image of the disaster from a home movie taken by a spectator.
Eleven people were killed instantly. One later died in the hospital. More than forty were injured.
All this rushing around is likely to induce vertigo. Appropriately, the Number One song in the USA this month is Dizzy by Tommy Roe, a catchy little number that captures the feeling perfectly.
Even the cover art makes my head spin.
Speed Reading
With no less than thirteen stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, it's obvious that several of them are going to be quite short, resulting in quick reading.
The new stories slightly outnumber the reprints, at seven to six, but the old stuff takes up more than twice as many pages. Apparently today's writers like to finish their works at a quicker pace than their predecessors. Or maybe it's just a lot cheaper to buy tiny new works and fill up the rest of the magazine with longer reprints.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is also a reprint. It appeared on the German magazine Perry Rhodan a few years ago.
Also as usual, the original looks better.
Characterization in Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg
This brief essay by the Associate Editor promotes more depth of character in the genre, and praises new authors Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, and Thomas Disch for their skill in that area of writing. Can't argue with that.
No rating.
In a Saucer Down for B-Day, by David R. Bunch
Illustration by Dan Adkins.
The magazine's most controversial writer returns with a tale that is closer to traditional science fiction than most of his works. The narrator is an Earthman who is returning to his home planet with an alien. He wants to show the extraterrestrial Earth's big annual celebration.
The author makes a point about a current social problem, maybe a little too obviously. Even if this had been published anonymously, it would be easy to tell it's by Bunch from the style. (Just the fact that the narrator says YES! more than once is a strong clue.) More readable than other stuff from his pen.
Three stars.
The Dodgers, by Arthur Sellings
A sad introduction tells us the author died last September. This posthumous work features an engineer and a physician who land on a planet where many of the alien inhabitants are suffering from weakness and green blotches on their skin. As soon as the humans arrive, a bag full of gifts for the extraterrestrials vanishes. The mystery involves an unusual ability of the aliens.
I hate to speak ill of the dead, but this isn't a very good story. The premise strains credibility, to say the least, and the ending is rushed.
Two stars.
The Monster, by John Sladek
Illustration by Bruce Eliot Jones
A fellow eager to be a space explorer replaces a guy who's been the only person on a distant planet for a long time. The world turns out to be a dreary, boring place. The environment is so bad that our protagonist can't go outside for more than a moment. His only company is a robot in the form of a woman.
The author makes his point clearly enough. You're likely to see it coming a mile away. Still, it's not a bad little yarn.
Three stars.
Visit, by Leon E. Stover
The Science Editor for Fantastic and Amazing (which must be an easy job; do they ever have any science articles?) gives us this account of aliens landing in Japan. The American military officers present consult with a science fiction writer and a cultural anthropologist. After a lot of discussion, the aliens finally come out of their spaceship.
For a story in which not much happens this sure goes on for a while. Much of the text consists of references to other SF stories. The ending is anticlimactic. It left me thinking So what?
Two stars.
Ascension, by K. M. O'Donnell
The introduction reveals that O'Donnell is a pseudonym for the editor.
But which editor?
Glancing at the table of contents, you see that the Editor and Publisher is Sol Cohen, and the Managing Editor is Ted White. Cohen or White?
Trick question! It's actually Barry N. Malzberg, who was very briefly editor for Fantastic and Amazing. (My esteemed colleague John Boston goes into detail about the situation in his article about the March issue of Amazing.)
Obviously this issue was assembled under the auspices of Malzberg. Nobody ever said the publishing industry was fast.
Anyway, this is a New Wave yarn about a future President of the United States. (The 46th, which I guess puts the story somewhere around the year 2024 or so.) Civil liberties are thrown out, the President has an advisor killed, he gets kicked out by the opposition and shot, the cycle goes on. Something like that.
You can tell it's New Wave (with an acknowledged nod to J. G. Ballard) because sections of the text are in ALL CAPITALS and it ends in the middle of a sentence. I suppose it's some kind of commentary on American politics.
Two stars.
The Brain Surgeon, by Robin Schaefer
Guess what? This is yet another pseudonym for Malzberg. Must have had trouble filling up the issue. (No surprise, given the miserly budget.)
A man sends away for a home brain surgery kit that he saw advertised on a matchbook cover. He gets the instruments and an explanatory pamphlet in the mail. But what can he do with it?
Something about this brief bit of weirdness appealed to me more than it should. There's not much to it, really, but what there is tickled my fancy.
Three stars.
How Now Purple Cow, by Bill Pronzini
A farmer sees a (you guessed it) purple cow in his field. There's some talk of UFOs in the area. Then there's a twist at the end.
Very short, without much point to it. A shaggy dog (cow?) story. A joke without a punchline.
One star.
On to the reprints!
The Book of Worlds, by Dr. Miles J. Breuer
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear with this pre-Campbellian work of scientifiction from the pages of the July 1929 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Hugh Mackay.
A scientist discovers a way to view the fourth dimension. This allows him to see a enormous number of worlds similar to our own Earth, at stages of development from the first stirrings of life to the future of humanity. What he perceives has a profound effect on him.
Illustration by Frank R. Paul.
I have to confess that I wasn't expecting very much out of a story from the very early days of modern science fiction. This was a pleasant surprise. The author clearly has a point to make, and makes it powerfully. What happens to the scientist at the end may strike you as either poignant or silly. Take your pick.
Three stars.
The Will, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The January/February 1954 issue of the magazine supplies this moving tale.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
The narrator's teenage foster son is dying of leukemia. The boy is obsessed with a television program about a time travelling hero called Captain Chronos.
(No doubt this was inspired by the author's work on the TV show Captain Video not long before the story was first published.)
Illustration by Jay Landau.
The boy has a plan, involving his collection of stamps and autographs. But does he have enough time left?
Just from this brief description, you probably already have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. Despite the fact that the plot is a little predictable, however. this is a fine story. The emotion is genuine rather than sentimental. The ending is both joyful and sad.
Four stars.
Elementals of Jedar, by Geoff St. Reynard
Hiding behind that very British pseudonym is American writer Robert W. Krepps. This pulpy yarn comes from the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by H. J. Blumenfeld.
A spaceship captain with the manly name of Ken Ripper and his motley crew of aliens from various worlds are in big trouble. Forced to land on a planet said to be inhabited by living force fields of pure malevolence, they have to figure out a way to escape with their lives.
Illustration by Rod Ruth.
Boy, this is really corny stuff. I have to wonder if it's a parody of old-time space opera. When the hero curses by saying Jove and bounding jackrabbits!, it makes me think the author is pulling my leg. The fact that one of the aliens on the spaceship is a humanoid twelve inches tall makes me giggle, too. Even if it's tongue-in-cheek, a little of this goes a long way.
Two stars.
The Naked People, by Winston Marks
This story comes from the September 1954 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Ralph Castenir.
The combination of a sore ear and a fight in a tavern sends the narrator to the hospital with a brain infection. When he comes out of his coma, he is able to see the ethereal figure of a unclothed man. The lecherous fellow is able to solidify himself sufficiently to have his way with a pretty nurse while she's unconscious and under his control.
Illustration uncredited.
Then a female ghostly being shows up, with an obvious interest in our hero. It seems that these folks have been hanging around, unperceived by normal people, since the dawn of humanity. They materialize enough to steal food and, to put it delicately, act as incubi and succubi.
I get the feeling that the author didn't quite know how to end the story. The hero fends off the advances of the lustful female being and saves the pretty nurse from the male one. He even marries her. But the naked people are still around, with all that implies.
An unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly distasteful premise make for a less than enjoyable reading experience.
Two stars.
And the Monsters Walk, by John Jakes
This two-fisted tale comes from the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Cover art by Walter Popp.
The narrator starts off aboard a ship bound for England from the Orient. Burning with curiosity, he investigates the secret cargo hold, although the captain warned the crew this was punishable by death. He finds boxes containing humanoid creatures.
Barely escaping with his life, he makes his way to shore. Mysterious figures are out to kill him. On the other hand, a Tibetan mystic and a beautiful young woman try to help him. In return, they want his aid in combating a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by using demons to slaughter world leaders.
Illustration by David Stone.
John Jakes is best known around here for his tales of Brak the Barbarian. Those stories proved that he had studied the adventures of Conan carefully. This yarn convinces me that he is also very familiar with the pulp magazines of the 1930's.
I'll give him credit for not being boring, anyway. The action never stops, although you won't believe a minute of it. The author's intense, almost frenzied style keeps you reading.
Three stars.
I, Gardener by Allen Kim Lang
Our last story comes from the December 1959 issue of the magazine.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
The narrator pays a visit to a prolific writer. He speaks to a very strange gardener, who proves to be something other than what he seems.
I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give away too much about the simple plot. You may be able to figure out who the model for the writer is, given the title of the story and the fact that the character's name is Doctor Axel Ozoneff. (The introduction to the story makes it obvious, so I'd advise not looking at it.)
Not a great story.
Two stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Alexei Panshin
Leiber looks at novels by E. R. Eddison, and Panshin has kind words to say about The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
No rating.
Quickly Summing Up
Another average-to-poor issue, with only Miller's story rising above that level. At least most of the pieces make for fast reading, although a couple of the worst ones may make you furious at their lack of quality. You may be tempted to watch an old movie on TV instead.
From 1954, so it should show up on the Late, Late Show sometime soon.
I trust that singer Martin Gaye will forgive me for stealing the title of his current smash hit, which has been at the top of the American pop music charts since last month, and shows no signs of disappearing soon. (Gladys Knight and the Pips had a big hit with it not much more than a year ago, too.)
He's what's happening.
The reason for my musical theft is that certain information about the authors of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic reached me through informal channels.
Open your ears, for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
— Henry IV, Part 2
I'll explain when the time comes. Meanwhile, let's take a look at a very mixed bag indeed.
Wow! A new piece of art on the cover. The grapevine tells me editor Barry N. Malzberg is shaking things up at Fantastic.
The editorial by Robert Silverberg, the magazine's new associate editor (so long, former-editor-turned-associate-editor Harry Harrison), makes the case that there's plenty of room in the world of imaginative fiction for both Old Wave and New Wave. Hear, hear.
This issue, which contains ten new stories as well as four reprints, should prove an excellent test case for his thesis. We've got old-fashioned yarns as well as experimental works.
First of all is a new tale from an author who bridges the gap between the opposing Waves. (Don't try to tell me his 1950 story Coming Attraction isn't a Dangerous Vision!)
Near the end of his life, Edgar Allan Poe encounters a mysterious, beautiful woman with whom he becomes obsessed. Their conversation suggests that Poe has a premonition of the coming American Civil War. The conclusion hints at the woman's true identity.
As you'd expect, this is elegantly written. Leiber obviously knows and loves the works of fellow fantasist Poe. The story is full of references to Poe's tales and poems. (Some might say too many.) The denouement is nicely subtle.
It's not a major piece (calling it Fritz Leiber's Greatest Short Story in the table of contents is hardly accurate) but well worth reading. High three stars or low four stars? I'm prejudiced in favor of both Poe and Leiber, so let's go on the high end.
Four stars.
Any Heads at Home?, by David R. Bunch
Hollywood used to call actor/director Erich von Stroheim The Man You Love To Hate, because of his many villainous screen roles. The controversial works of David R. Bunch, back when the magazine was edited by Cele Goldsmith (later Cele Lalli), made him The Writer You Love To Hate in the eyes of many conservative readers. He's back in form here.
The insane narrator (shades of Poe!) relates how he took the head of his dead, filthy rich boss out of his grave so he could kick it around. A visit from the police isn't the only thing he should worry about.
The bare bones (pun intended) of the plot make it sound like an ordinary horror story. What makes it unusual is the author's unique style. His familiar quirks are here. Certain words are printed in ALL CAPITALS, often with EXCLAMATION POINTS! Bunch uses hyphens to create new words like leather-cloppy and stone-feather. The whole thing seems to be written in a frenzy.
Whether you like this stuff or not is a matter of taste. I think it's fairly effective.
After that bit of New Wave, we go back to the Old. This story from one of the greats comes from the December 1950 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by James B. Settles.
A newspaper man finds out his alarm clock and watch are both an hour fast. Just an odd coincidence? Maybe, but then there's the guy who calls the newspaper to report a sewing machine moving down the street by itself. Not to mention the rat-like machines hiding in the newspaper office, and the fact that the protagonist's typewriter prints out messages to him.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
The grapevine tells me this story has already been reprinted quite a few times, under the less melodramatic title Skirmish. The premise may remind you of the Twilight Zone episode A Thing About Machines. It's not bad, but it stops right at a dramatic moment, leaving things unresolved.
Three stars.
Back we go to new stuff; no less than half a dozen brief yarns before it's reprint time again. (Note that these six stories lack any illustrations. Maybe most of the art budget was blown on the cover.)
All in the Game, by Edward Y. Breese
An unscrupulous fellow finds himself in an extremely luxurious afterlife. His every desire is satisfied. There's a twist.
Sound familiar? Then you've seen another episode of Twilight Zone, namely A Nice Place to Visit. At least Simak has the excuse that he came first!
Two stars.
The Castle on the Crag, by P. G. Wyal
The previous story was new, but very traditionally narrated. This one is not. It starts like a satiric fairy tale (we're told that a princess is a White Liberal, and thus values poverty above all else) but then it jumps forward multiple centuries at a time, in several brief sections of text. A tree grows out of the dead body of the princess, an abbey is built on the ruins of her castle, etc. It builds up to a modern horror.
The point seems to be that nothing is permanent. This is a strange, dark story with a couple of remarks about religion that may raise some eyebrows. Not exactly pleasant reading, but interesting.
Three stars.
The Major Incitement to Riot, by K. M. O'Donnell
The grapevine tells me K. M. O'Donnell is actually editor Barry N. Malzberg. This surreal yarn consists of multiple conflicting versions of what caused violence to break out during the display of the gigantic death mask of a deceased official.
Weird stuff. Don't ask me what it means. The image of the huge mask is haunting, if nothing else.
Two stars.
The Life of the Stripe, by Piers Anthony
The army is running out of the stripes they use to designate rank. A sergeant is busted down to buck private so his can be reused. After his death, everybody who wears the stripe comes to a bad end. Is there a way to end the curse?
Not much to this beyond the premise. As military satire, it's not exactly Catch-22.
Two stars.
Slice of Universe, by James R. Sallis
As far as I can tell, this story involves a couple of aliens who speak in a complicated, song-like manner because they have multiple tongues. Their starship is operated, in some manner or other, by self-pitying, homesick birds. They explore the universe to its very end.
That's a very poor synopsis, because this piece is more of a dream-like prose poem than anything else. As such, I found it intriguing, if a little confusing. The aliens are really alien, that's for sure.
Three stars.
Reason for Honor, by Robert Hoskins
After World War Three, a couple of soldiers are the only ones left out of their unit. They see enemy troops approach. The encounter leads to an ironic conclusion.
Pretty grim stuff. Effective enough for what it is.
Three stars.
The Closed Door, by Kendall Foster Crossen
Back to reprints. This one comes from the August/September issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Gaylord Walker.
The grapevine tells me that the author's first name, despite the way it is spelled in the original magazine and in this reprint, is actually supposed to be Kendell. Gotta watch those vowels.
Illustrations uncredited.
Anyway, what we have here is a futuristic locked room mystery. The detective even mentions Gideon Fell, a fictional solver of such mysteries created by author John Dickson Carr.
Whodunit?
A humanoid alien is murdered in his hotel room, despite the fact that the door can only be locked or unlocked by his hand. Does a torn piece of paper bearing the letters COO hold the key to the crime?
Boy, this is a lousy story. It fails as science fiction and as a mystery. The solution depends on things the reader can't possibly know. Give me Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw any day in the week.
One star.
The Origin of Species, by Jody Scott Wood
We interrupt our reprints for a couple of new pieces. (Again, no illustrations.)
Less than a page long, this one takes the form of a tirade by a tree-dwelling ape against those radicals who are walking on the ground and doing other outrageous stuff.
A satire about the previous generation (Old Wave?) complaining about those darn kids nowadays (New Wave?), I suppose. Whatever.
Two stars.
Grounds for Divorce, by Robert S. Phillips
A man goes to a lawyer asking to divorce his wife. It seems the fellow isn't satisfied with his sex life, compared to the images he sees of the old days.
You'll probably see the twist coming a mile away. A mildly Dangerous Vision.
Two stars.
This Planet for Sale, by Ralph Sholto
The pages of the July 1952 issue of Fantastic Adventures supply this space opera.
Cover art by Walter Popp.
A couple of guys are in their spaceship, smuggling valuable cargo. Meanwhile, a father and daughter are in another spaceship. The two vessels run into an invisible planet that made its way into the solar system.
Illustration by Ernie Barth.
The daughter (in true science fiction fashion, this young adult woman is always called a girl) gets captured by the bad guy. The smuggler-turned-hero rescues her.
It all has something to do with the bad guy's plan to wipe out the indigenous population of the invisible planet and transport it somewhere else, in order to sell it to aliens. The bad guy also wants to do the same thing to Earth.
Pretty bad stuff. Nonsensical science, thud-and-blunder action. The nature of the smuggled cargo (kept concealed from the reader) solves everybody's problems (expect the bad guy, of course.)
One star.
The Day After Eternity, by Lawrence Chandler.
Another action/adventure yarn, this time from the February 1955 issue of the magazine.
Cover art by Henry Sharp.
The grapevine tells me that Lawrence Chandler was a house name (pseudonym shared by more than one writer.) Might be Howard Browne, might be Henry Slesar, might be somebody else. The grapevine doesn't know everything.
Illustration by Paul Lundy.
Another wandering planet comes into the solar system. This one seems to be stealing Earth's water. (Forget that. It has nothing to do with the plot.) Our manly hero and his manly buddies, plus a whole bunch of cannon fodder from other planets, set out to defeat the thing.
A telepathic psychiatrist comes along, because she's figured out that the planet is actually stealing minds. The cover illustration, for which the story was probably written, depicts a scene in which one of the buddies, who loves old cars, gets tricked by an illusion and blown up.
(At this point, I was reminded of Ray Bradbury's 1948 story Mars is Heaven!, which is much better.)
Everybody gets killed except the hero and the (ahem) girl. They bicker at first, but of course they wind up in love.
Two rotten old stories in a row. This one adds insult to injury by emphasizing the fact that the psychiatrist is old-fashioned because she doesn't expose her breasts.
One star.
Sour Grapes
There were some real stinkers in this issue, particularly the reprints from lesser known writers. Not all the new stuff was worthy either.
The grapevine tells me that Malzberg isn't happy with the magazine's reprint policy. Did he deliberately choose losers to make his point? The rumor mill also suggests that he won't be around long.
There were some decent stories here — it's hard to throw fourteen darts and not hit the target sometimes — but you might want to spend some time watching an old movie on TV instead.
On the first day of this month, a new movie rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went into effect. Although the system is voluntary, filmgoers in the USA can expect to see a letter of the alphabet accompanying almost every movie.
This is very old news to those living in the United Kingdom, where a similar system has been in place since 1912. There have been some changes over the years, but currently the British ratings are:
U for Unrestricted (everybody admitted)
A for Adult content (children under 12 must be accompanied by adults)
X for Explicit content (no one under 16 admitted)
The new American system uses different letters, although they kept the scary X.
G for General audiences (everybody admitted, no advisory warnings)
M for Mature audiences (everybody admitted, but parental guidance is advised)
R for Restricted (persons under 16 not admitted without adult parent or guardian)
X for Explicit (no one under 16 admitted)
Gee, Magazines R Xciting!
In the spirit of the MPAA, let me experiment with offering my own similar ratings for the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, in addition to the usual one-to-five star system of judging their quality.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As with previous issues, the cover art for this one comes from the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
Hell Dance of the Giants, or something like that.
The fine print under the table of contents reveals that former editor Harry Harrison is now the associate editor, and former associate editor Barry N. Malzberg (maybe better known under the authorial pen name K. M. O'Donnell) is now the editor. I have no idea if this swapping of job titles really means anything.
As the cover states, this is a sequel to Hamilton's famous space opera novel The Star Kings, from 1949. (I believe there have been a couple of other yarns in the series, published in Amazing.) However, it's certainly not a short novel. By my reckoning, it's a novelette, not even a novella.
I haven't read The Star Kings (mea culpa!) so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (The fact that several paragraphs near the start are printed in the wrong order doesn't help.)
Three guys escape from a planet in a starship stolen from aliens. One fellow is the main hero, a man of our own time who somehow wound up in a far future of galactic empires and such. Another is a man of that time. So is the third one, but apparently he used to be the Bad Guy in previous adventures. Now he's working with the two Good Guys for his own self interest.
It turns out there's an alien on the ship as well. It can control human minds, but only one at a time. The trio solves this problem by crashing into a planet.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The place is inhabited by nasty winged reptile aliens, who are part of an army of various extraterrestrials being collected by a Bad Guy to invade a planet ruled by the woman our time-traveling hero loves. Can he find a way to save her? Can he trust his former enemy? And what about those pesky mind-controlling aliens? Tune in next time!
This slam-bang action yarn reads like a chapter torn out at random from a novel. Besides starting in medias res, it stops before reaching a final resolution.
Hamilton is an old hand at writing this kind of space opera (they don't call him The World Wrecker for nothing!) so it's very readable. The former Bad Guy is the most interesting character (and he seems a lot smarter than the two Good Guys.) Too bad the story doesn't stand very well on its own.
Three stars.
Rated G for Good old scientifiction.
Ball of the Centuries, by Henry Slesar
Here's a brief tale about a guy who uses a crystal ball to see into the future. He warns a couple about to get married not to go through with it. Of course, they don't listen to him. Years later, they have the argument he predicted. The husband tracks down the guy and finds out the real reason he warned them.
That sounds like a serious story, but it's really an extended joke, with a double punchline. It's OK, I suppose, but nothing special, and a very minor work from a prolific and award-winning writer of fantasy, mystery, television, and movies.
Two stars.
Rated M for Matrimonial woes.
The Mental Assassins, by Gregg Conrad
Cover art by H J. Blumenfeld.
From the pages of the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, this story is the work of Rog Phillips under a pseudonym.
Illustration by Harold W. McCauley.
People who have been horribly maimed in accidents are kept alive and made to experience a shared dream world. The trouble begins when three of the twenty people develop evil alternate personalities. (As usual, the story thinks that schizophrenia literally means split personality.)
The physician in charge of the project asks the hero to enter the dream world and kill these doppelgängers. (This won't actually harm the real people, just eliminate their imaginary wicked doubles.) He gives it a try, but finds the experience so unpleasant he backs out of the deal.
The story then turns into a sort of hardboiled crime yarn, as the hero gets mixed up with a couple of mysterious women, a hulking bouncer, and two cab drivers who know more than they should. A wild back-and-forth chase ensues, partly on a spaceship, followed by a double twist ending.
You may be able to tell what's really happening as soon as the hero exits the dream world, but I don't think you'll guess the other plot twist, which is rather disturbing. This yarn reminds me of Philip K. Dick's games with reality, although it's not quite as adept.
Three stars.
Rated R for Really shocking ending.
The Disenchanted, by Wallace West and John Hillyard
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
This fantasy farce comes from the January/February 1954 issue of the magazine.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
The ghost of Madame de Pompadour shows up at the apartment of a publisher. Present also is the author of a novel about the famed mistress of King Louis XV. The ghost objects to what the writer said about her in the book, and demands that it not be printed. When the publisher refuses, she has her ghostly buddies uninvent things, leading to chaos.
Strictly aiming for laughs, this featherweight tale ends suddenly. As a matter of fact, because the usual words THE END don't appear on the last page, I have a sneaking suspicion part of the story is missing. [Nope. It's that way in the original, too! (ed.)] Be that as it may, it provides a small amount of mildly bawdy amusement.
Two stars.
Rated R for Risqué content.
The Usurpers, by Geoff St. Reynard
Cover art by Raymon Naylor.
The January 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this chiller by Robert W. Krepps, an American author hiding behind a very British pen name.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
The narrator is a one-armed veteran of the Second World War. An old comrade-in-arms shows up and tells him a bizarre story.
It seems the fellow recovered from a serious eye injury. When his vision was restored, he saw that about half the people around him were actually weird, horrifying monsters in human disguise. He reaches the conclusion that beings from another dimension are infiltrating our own, intent on displacing humanity.
Things go from bad to worse when some of the creatures realize the guy can perceive them. They try to kill him, while he destroys as many of them as he can, leading to the violent conclusion.
This shocker is most notable for the truly strange and creepy descriptions of the monsters, each one of which has a different form. As an ignorant American, I found it convincingly British, although somebody from the UK might disagree. Overall, a pretty effective horror story.
Three stars.
Rated R for Revolting creatures.
The Prophecy, by Bill Pronzini
Like Henry Slesar's piece, this is a miniscule bagatelle about a prediction. A prophet who is always right announces that the world will end at a certain time on a certain day. When the hour of doom arrives, the unexpected happens.
Even shorter than the other joke story, this tiny work depends entirely on its punch line. I can't say I was terribly impressed. I also wonder why the magazine printed two similar tales in the same issue.
Two stars.
Rated G for Goofy ending.
The Collectors, by Gordon Dewey
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
My research indicates that somebody named Peter Grainger is an uncredited co-author of this story from the June/July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.
Illustration by Harry Rosenbaum.
A very methodical fellow, who keeps track of every penny, tries to figure out why a small amount of money disappears every day. He runs into a woman who experiences the same phenomenon. It seems to have something to do with a vending machine.
The editorial introduction dismissingly says this story is . . . no classic, to be sure, it isn't even a minor classic . . . which seems like an odd way to talk about something worth printing. I thought it was reasonably intriguing. In this case, the open ending seems appropriate.
Three stars.
Rated M for Mysterious conclusion.
Unrated
As I mentioned above, the MPAA rating system is voluntary. No doubt a few movies will be released without one of the four letters. In a similar way, the stuff in the magazine other than fiction isn't really appropriate for rating.
Editorial: The Magazines, The Way It Is, by A. L. Caramine
Brief discussion of the rise and fall of science fiction magazines, with an optimistic prediction that they're on the way up again. A note at the end states that A. L. Caramine is the pseudonym of a well-known science fiction author.
Digging through old magazines, the only reference I can find to A. L. Caramine is as the author of the story Weapon Master in the May 1959 issue of Science Fiction Stories.
Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.
A glance at the magazine tells me that, in addition to a story by Robert Silverberg under his own name, there are book reviews by the same fellow under his pseudonym Calvin M. Knox. Given the way that single authors often filled up magazines with multiple pen names, I suspect that the mysterious A. L. Caramine is Silverberg as well, although I don't have definite proof of this.
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Laurence Janifer
One page article that praises the film named in the title, and says that Planet of the Apes is lousy. Just one person's opinion, take it or leave it.
The Rhyme of the SF Ancient Author or Conventions and Recollections, by J. R. Pierce
Parody of the famous Coleridge poem mocked in the title. It says that science fiction writers shouldn't go chasing money by writing other kinds of stuff. Pretty much an in-joke, I guess.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber
Mostly notable for a glowing review of Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ. May be the best-written thing in the magazine!
Good? Mediocre? Rotten? Xcruciating?
All in all, this was a so-so issue. The two star stories weren't that bad, the three star stories weren't that good. Not a waste of time, but you might want to listen to the current smash hit Hey Jude by the Beatles instead.
David Frost introduces the Fab Four as they perform the song on his television program.
Emil Petaja is an American writer of Finnish ancestry. His best known works are a series of novels based on the Finnish national epic the Kalevala. (Saga of Lost Earths, The Star Mill, The Stolen Sun, and Tramontane. These were all published from 1966 to 1967.)
Petaja's latest novel, although not part of this series, also deals with themes from Finnish mythology.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
Doctor Stephen McCord is an anthropologist. Although he's the only major character who isn't of Finnish descent, he's studied the culture and knows something of the language.
Before the novel begins, his college buddy Art Mackey took off for a remote area of Montana, in search of his girlfriend Ilma, who mysteriously returned to her old homestead. Stephen gets a tape recording from his friend, giving him a few hints as to what's going on. (It also serves as exposition for the reader.)
It seems that the former logging town of Hellmouth, inhabited by Finnish immigrants, was completely destroyed in a huge forest fire in 1906. When Art arrived in search of Ilma's nearby farmhouse, he found the place looking exactly the way it did six decades ago, with some of the former citizens still alive and kicking.
Intrigued by this mystery (and wondering if his pal has gone nuts), Stephen makes his way to the supposedly vanished town. He discovers that Hellmouth is indeed still around. Furthermore, the inhabitants worship Ukko, the chief god of Finnish legend. (Roughly comparable to Zeus or Thor, I believe.)
Stephen finds Art, and they both search for Ilma. Things get weird when they actually run into what seems to be Ukko, a being whose presence is so overwhelming that it's almost impossible not to fall to one's knees in adoration. The apparent god promises to make Earth a utopia, in exchange for worship. Ukko also has plans for Stephen.
What happens involves Ilma's elderly father Izza, her hunchbacked brother Yalmar, the local schoolteacher/librarian, and the steel plate inside Stephen's head, a souvenir of his time as an ambulance driver during a conflict in Southeast Asia. (Maybe Vietnam, as the story takes place just a little bit in the future, some time in the 1970's.)
The author writes clearly and elegantly. I always knew what was going on and was able to keep track of the characters. There are many vivid descriptions of Petaja's home state of Montana. (He now lives in San Francisco, which is also depicted excellently in the early part of the book.)
Besides having a compelling plot that kept me reading in one sitting, the novel has some intriguing and controversial things to say about the nature of deity and its relationship with humanity. Even at the very end of the text, Stephen still isn't sure if opposing Ukko was the right thing to do.
Four stars.
Comedy and Tragedy
The latest Ace Double to fall into my hands (designated as H-85, for those of you keeping score) offers a pair of short novels with contrasting moods. One is lighthearted, the other is serious. Let's start with the humorous one.
David Grinnell is actually the well-known fan, writer, and editor Donald A. Wollheim. He also created the Ace Double series, so he must feel right at home.
This novel was published last year in hardcover.
Cover art by Michael M. Peters.
The protagonist is a filthy rich and rather egotistical fellow named Ajax Calkins. A little research reveals that Wollheim (without co-author Carter) has been writing about him since 1941, sometimes under the pen name Martin Pearson. Most recently, this old material was recycled into the novel Destiny's Orbit. The Noble Editor gave it a lukewarm review a while back, calling it a juvenile space opera.
In the current volume, Ajax is the king of an asteroid that is actually a gigantic spaceship built by the civilization that was destroyed when their home planet blew up long ago, creating the asteroid belt. He and his fiancée Emily Hackenschmidt are on Earth, leaving the asteroid in the hands (so to speak) of their loyal Martian friend, a spider-like being called Wuj.
Dastardly amoeba-like aliens, the inhabitants of Saturn, are the sworn enemies of Earth. (In a touch of satire, we find out that they were perfectly nice folks until they learned aggression from humans.) Two of the Saturnians disguise themselves as Ajax and Emily and convince Wuj they're the real thing. They set off for Saturn, eager to uncover the ancient spaceship's secrets and use its advanced technology to conquer the solar system.
What I've failed to convey is the fact that this is a comedy. Ajax manages to save the day, of course, but he's also something of a fool. The more levelheaded Emily is often exasperated at him, with good reason.
The novel is written in a dryly tongue-in-cheek style that is more amusing than the usual science fiction farce. There are quite a few witty lines. I'm not a big fan of comic SF, but this one is better than some.
Let's flip the book over and take a look at something without laughs.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
The cover proudly announces that this is the novel's first book publication. I assume that's true, but there's also a British hardcover edition that came out this year.
Cover art by Colin Andrews.
The story takes place a few hundred years after society fell apart, for reasons not apparent until later in the novel. Humanity has managed to build itself back up, but there's been a strange change in people. They're divided up into castes. Again, the explanation for this is unknown.
Roughly half of the population consists of Norms; ordinary folks. The other half are Delinks; murderers and other violent criminals. Some Norms and Delinks are also Scuttlers. These are people who have an intense phobia about the sky, and can't bear to look at it.
A small number of folks are Stinkers. Everybody else hates these people; so much so, that few of them survive. Those who do isolate themselves and protect their lives with various resources.
Michael Craig is a Stinker. (That looks like an example of nasty graffiti, doesn't it?) He gets a message from the police (by mail; if he came anywhere near them they would try to kill him) asking him to try an experiment. The cops want to know what would happen if two Stinkers met. Would they loathe each other on sight?
Michael agrees to meet Geo Hastings, a Stinker who lives in Africa. The oddly named Geo turns out to be an attractive woman. If you think the two are going to fall in love, give yourself an A in predicting familiar plot developments.
Besides not trying to kill each other, the two discover that they can communicate telepathically. Things would seem to be turning out nicely, if it were not for the Geeks.
A Geek is a type of human being that has just appeared recently. They are physically superior, tend to be cold-bloodedly calculating, and are intent on wiping out the rest of humanity. In particular, they are bent on destroying the Stinkers; not for the usual reason (pure, unexplained hatred) but as part of their plan to conquer the world.
Without giving anything away (although you may be able to predict the novel's plot twists), let's just say the reason for all these weird happenings is revealed. Can Norms, Delinks, and Stinkers work together against the Geeks and the secret menace behind them? Not to mention the Scuttlers, who have a vital role to play.
This isn't a bad novel. Not great, but not bad. The story held my interest. (I haven't mentioned Michael's three heavily armed robot birds, who are the most charming characters.) It's worth reading once.
Science fiction may be my first love, but I read other genres as well. And so my latest pick-up at the local import bookstore was a crime novel entitled God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake. The reason I bought the book is that it just won the prestigious Edgar Award, i.e. the mystery genre's equivalent to the Hugo and Nebula Awards, for the best crime novel of the year, beating out Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. Any novel that can beat a juggernaut like Rosemary's Baby is certainly worth checking out, so I picked it up. And reader, I was not disappointed.
The Most Gullible Man in New York City
The protagonist of God Save the Mark is one Fred Fitch, who must be the most gullible man in New York City. Fred is a magnet for con artists and there's not a scam in existence that Fred will not fall for.
The novel opens with Fred getting a phone call from a lawyer that his Uncle Matt has died and left Fred more than three hundred thousand US-dollars. This makes even the extremely gullible Fred suspicious, especially since he does not have an Uncle Matt.
So Fred alerts his friend his best and probably only friend, Detective Jack Reilly of the NYPD's "bunco squad", i.e. the police department dealing with fraud. Reilly tells Fred to go to the appointment with the fake lawyer, so Reilly can arrest him red-handed. Alas, Fred is late for the meeting because he got scammed… again and it turns out that the lawyer is not a fraud after all, but the real deal. As is the will of the late Uncle Matt. Fred really did inherit more than three hundred thousand US-dollars.
However, there's a catch or rather several. For starters, Uncle Matt was a con artist himself and the black sheep of the family, which is why Fred has never heard of him. What is more, Uncle Matt, though terminally ill, was murdered. Which makes Fred the prime suspect.
A City of Con Artists
The situation quickly escalates. To begin with, Fred's new found riches make him a target for even more would-be con artists, including a childhood sweetheart who intends to hold him to a marriage proposal made as a kid or sue him for breach of promise and a neighbour who wants to publish his alternate history novel Veni, Vidi, Vici with Air Power via a predatory vanity press. Worse, whoever murdered Uncle Matt is now taking potshots at Fred. Finally, Fred also finds himself entangled with two very different women, Gertie Divine, a former stripper who was the late Uncle Matt's nurse, and Karen Smith, Reilly's bit on the side who still hopes he'll marry her someday, once he gets over his Catholic guilt induced reluctance to divorce his wife.
The intense pressure under which Fred finds himself finally makes him wise up. He tells off several would-be con artists and also puts his skills as an independent researcher to use to investigate Uncle Matt's murder himself, since he no longer trusts the police.
However, there are still many twists and turns ahead, including a hilarious chase scene where Fred steals a child's bicycle to escape his pursuers and ends up tumbling headfirst into a pond in Central Park.
This was the first novel by Donald E. Westlake (who also writes as Richard Stark and under a number of other pen names and has even dabbled in science fiction on occasion) that I read, but it certainly won't be the last, because this book is laugh out loud funny and a complete and utter delight.
In many ways, God Save the Mark is a reminiscent of the screwball comedies of thirty years ago, yet it is also a solid mystery that plays fair with the reader and delivers plenty of red herrings as well as all the clues needed to solve it. The novel also offers an excellent overview of the various cons and scams going around, some I was aware of and others that were completely new to me. The ending is a perfect fit.
A Deserving Winner?
So is this novel better than Rosemary's Baby? Well, the two books are difficult to compare, because they are so very different. But all in all, I'd agree with the verdict of the Mystery Writers of America that God Save the Mark is a most deserving winner of the 1968 Edgar Award.
A fluffy, frothy caper that will leave you rolling on the floor laughing and guessing till the end.
Sometimes as a reviewer you just don’t quite trust yourself when you encounter something totally unexpected. When you read a work which feels sui generis for science fiction, a book which draws comparison to literary fiction like Dos Passos, Burges and Nabokov, it’s hard to assess that book in its own context.
John Brunner’s fascinating new novel Stand on Zanzibar is the spiritual successor to those modernist writers.
Brunner’s novel reads as part pulp fiction and part assault-the-senses bursts of information. Zanzibar is a prophecy and a critique, a satire and a work of deep seriousness. It has plot lines and complex emotions and an energy that won’t quit, and at 576 pages of very short chapters, it somehow felt exhausting and left me craving more. It’s also extremely hard to describe, so be aware I’m barely skimming the surface here, and I welcome anybody who’s willing to add their own comments in an LoC to this magazine.
Let’s start with the easy parts to describe. On its most basic level, Stand on Zanzibar is about the problem of overpopulation. When we all were in diapers, if stood side by side, all of humanity could take up a space roughly the size of the Isle of Wight. By the distant year of 2010, however, as Brunner writes, "If you allow for every codder and shiggy and appleofmyeye a space of one foot by two, you could stand us all on the 640 square mile surface of the island of Zanzibar."
There’s so much information contained in one sentence. You get one of the key themes of the novel and also a feeling of Brunner’s approach to his writing. Like Burgess’s punks in Clockwork Orange, the characters in this book chatter and mumble in an invented slang which feels clever and becomes part of the larger reading experience of the book. (Brunner admits a strong influence on him from Burgess.) The language forces readers out of our comfort zones and therefore pay closer attention to the often fractured way Brunner chooses to tell his tale. (A codder is a certain type of man and a shiggy a certain type of woman and an appleofmyeye is a child, by the way.)
Mr. Brunner
The other key piece of information in that sentence above how fears of world overpopulation has led to strong laws against procreation. Those restrictive rules in turn have created a vast black market in child-rearing, as citizens are shown considering traveling to the state of Puerto Rico to have kids, much as one might escape their home state for an abortion or divorce to defy difficult local laws. World society also angles towards eugenics, forced sterilizations and genetic modifications. Can suicide booths be far behind?
All of the above is mere background – though thoughtful, fascinating background – for the main thrust of this sprawling exercise. Much of the book tells the story of the small calm African country of Beninia, population 900,000, which has become the main staging point for refugees from wars in three neighboring countries. Those refugees despise each other, but the country has a kind of tenuous peace under the benevolent rule of President Zadkiel F. Obomi. However, President Obomi wants to retire. And when he retires, what will happen to the peace he worked so hard to broker?
Enter another key aspect of this book’s fascinating plot. Obomi is good friends with American Ambassador Elihu Masters, and as they discuss the problem, Masters comes up with an unexpected suggestion: what if American corporation General Technics (motto: "The difficult we did yesterday. The impossible we're doing right now") took over the country? What if the country exchanged its vast offshore mineral and oil reserves for education and infrastructure creation?
Parts of the book alternate between reveries by Obomi and the life in New York City shared by roommates Donald Hogan and Norman House. House is “Afram”, African-American, and has astutely used his race and his native intelligence to gain himself a powerful role inside GT. That means he will be on the ground while GT moves operations to Beninia – that is, of course, if Norman can shake his deep feelings of melancholia and dissatisfaction with his life and his career. Hogan, meanwhile, seems innocent since he spends most of his days at the New York Public Library. But in fact Hogan is a “Dilettanti”, a spy recruited by the government because of his preternatural skills at discovering patterns in seemingly normal experiences. Hogan is passive until “activated” by the government, and he worries about that aspect of his life.
Until he actually is activated and sent to Socialist Asian country of Yatakang, where the government has announced how eminent geneticist Dr. Sugaiguntung has invented a way for everybody around the world to give birth to perfect children. But is their assertion true, or it just a lie on top of all the other lies circulating in this complex world? Can Donald prove the Yatakang government’s announcement is a lie? Can he persuade the people of Yatakang to support the leader of a guerilla rebellion which is happening in the country’s mountains?
Shades of ol' Fidel
*Whew.* There’s so much there just in the plot. I’m sure you can see the pulpy outlines of a Le Carre style spy novel, as well as chances for Swiftian social satire in both storylines I’ve described, and yet all that description barely scratches the surface of this most profoundly wild novel. Because underpinning this entire book is a deeper critique of world society, a society full of selfishness and cheap thrills and tawdry media which creates false reality in its shows.
Most damningly, Brunner presents a world in which people seem constantly interconnected and yet somehow deeply distant from each other. Hogan and House, for instance, despite being roommates, scarcely know anything about each other. The media consumed by the people in this world prevents them from being social, and that gap has vast societal consequences. When people can literally project fictionalized versions of themselves on fantasy television shows, what attraction does the real world have? Drugs are all pervasive. Suburbs are collapsing. The planet is groaning from the weight of all the people living upon it. Yet the vast majority of men and women in this world care much more about the shows they consume than they do about the world they have created.
And there’s so much more here. There’s Shalmaneser, the super computer which makes critical decisions on Earth (wonder if Brunner heard about Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001 ideas?). There’s the muckers, a group of random people who go on killing sprees for no reason. There’s a drug which forces people to tell the truth which is given to a bishop who spends a Sunday mass telling everyone his real feelings about God. I could go on and on, and dear reader, I know I’m skipping one of your favorite elements of this book.
But I grow filled with a bit of despair that I could do an adequate job of explaining any element of this book; even more, I despair at the idea a mere plot summary would be useful to anybody who might be considering reading this astounding book.
So let me sum my feelings up this way. Like many of us here at the Journey, I’ve long been a fan of Mr. Brunner’s writing. But Stand on Zanzibar takes all of John Brunner’s writing abilities and takes them to a quantum level. He displayed massive potential in many of his earlier works, but here Brunner shows that potential paid off in spades.
No matter the context, on first read, Stand on Zanzibar Brunner has delivered the wildest, weirdest, most successful book of the year so far. Previously I called Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage the best book I had read in 1968 up to that point. Brunner’s achievement far exceeds Panshin's. I hope to be rereading this book in that far-flung future of 2010 and seeing how many of Brunner’s prophecies came true.
Five stars.
[And new to the Galactoscope, we are pleased to introduce poet and author Tonya R. Moore, who has dived into New Wave's deep end with her first brush with Chip Delany….]
Nova was my first encounter with the work of Samuel R. Delaney who has, thus far, proven himself exemplary of the originality and innovativeness one would expect from the current New Wave of Science Fiction writers. Set in a distant future where humans have migrated to other worlds, this book paints a chaotic but beautiful picture of human turmoil and adventurousness in an ever expanding universe.
Lorq Von Ray is a born upstart from a family of nouveau-riche propelled into high society by their ill-gotten gains. He makes friends and, eventually, enemies with Prince and Ruby, quintessential Earth-nobility driven by power, greed, and a keen sense of self-entitlement.
Von Ray grew up haunted by constant reminders of the social stratum wedging a vast chasm between himself and the siblings. Ever ambitious, Von Ray pits wills and wits against Prince and Ruby, aiming to upset the economic balance of power between the Draco and Pleiades systems.
Further embittered by their twisted and broken friendship, he sets out, with dogged determination, to hit the motherlode of interstellar treasures in the form of illyrion, the ephemeral byproduct of a nova and the most valuable and potent energy source known to mankind.
Should Von Ray succeed in this second attempt to capture this precious material in abundance from the nova, his payload promises to transform the economy of the Pleiades system and upend Prince’s monopoly on interstellar travel technology which allows them to hoard most of the wealth and stratify the balance of power between the Draco and Pleiades systems.
This book introduces a motley cast of characters who are destined to be enmeshed in the many dangers and high drama that comes along with being employed by Von Ray.
Mouse, for example, is a nomadic troubadour eking out a meager living while playing interplanetary hopscotch in the Draco system. He winds up on Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, while seeking employment on one of the spaceships bound for other star systems and greater opportunities.
Here, Mouse encounters Lorq Von Ray, scion of the richest family in the Pleiades system and jumps at the opportunity to join the ragtag crew of cyborg studs on Von Ray’s spaceship bound for the heart of an exploding star.
Ruby Red and Prince don’t appreciate Von Ray’s intent to rise above a station they consider beneath them, not to mention shift humanity’s prosperity from Draco to the Pleiades system. A cargo hold filled with seven tons of illyrion would certainly help him achieve that.
Mouse and his syrynx, a musical instrument that conjures holographic imagery, bear witness to the changing times while the melodrama of a twisted love triangle unfolds among Von Ray, the selectively diffident Ruby Red, and the pridefully neurotic Prince.
The gypsy troubadour playing his syrynx is a recurring motif representing the backdrop humanity's culture and history against which the story unfolds. The syrynx, a stolen object, ironically foreshadows the climax of the story where it is once again stolen then turned into a weapon.
Delany’s command of astrophysics and the science behind supernovas is reasonably solid. He proves himself a master of using literary language to describe scientific concepts and the murky dynamics of human interpersonal entanglements but there are elements of Nova that make little sense.
Ruby Red’s complicity with Prince’s cruelty and neurotic behavior seems arbitrary, for instance. As a character, she seems to lack a will of her own. Despite her prominence in the story, we’re never given a real glimpse inside the mind of the woman. What does Ruby Red want? Why does she do the things that she does?
Ultimately, Nova is a beautifully chaotic and original tale rife with vivid, sometimes visceral prose, exuberant dialogue, and an intriguingly colorful cast of characters.
You don't have to be a sociologist to realize that the past few years have been one of cultural upheaval. The hippies, the struggle for civil rights, protests against the war in Vietnam; I could go on and on.
An example happened one week ago, when hundreds of women protested at the Miss America pageant. They asked to be treated as human beings, not as stereotyped images of artificial standards of beauty.
Members of the emerging Women's Liberation movement toss things like stiletto heels, makeup, and copies of Playboy magazine into a symbolic garbage can.
A recurring theme of these social changes is the desire for freedom. It can even be seen in popular culture. For nearly a month, for example, the number one song in the USA has been People Got to be Free by the Rascals.
They seem very serious about it.
This is a laudable goal, of course, and there's a long way to go before we can truly say that oppressed groups are liberated. An optimist might say we're halfway there.
Speaking of halfway . . .
Four of One, Half an Octad of the Other
I've been griping for quite a while about Fantastic filling its pages with reprints, along with one or two new stories per issue. Maybe somebody at the magazine heard me. Of the eight stories in the latest issue, only half are reprinted. That's progress!
Cover art by Frank R. Paul.
You can see the cover screaming New at you. Ironically, the cover art is old. It served as the back cover of the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.
As you can see, they reversed it, covered up a pretty big part of it, and just generally made it look worse.
Did I say halfway? The four new stories take up somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the magazine. They're all clustered together at the front.
The Sound of Space, by Ross Rocklynne
A spaceman returns from a two-year voyage to Alpha Centauri. He shows up at Triton, a moon of Neptune, where his fiancée is waiting for him.
Illustration by Jeff Jones.
She's upset because he hasn't aged at all. (This is supposedly an effect of weightlessness, which seems unlikely to me.) She also doesn't like the fact that space travelers are notorious for being irreligious. She takes him to church, and tells him that she's going to marry the pastor unless he goes back to Earth and ages in its gravity. The spaceman comes up with a wild scheme to show the woman and the pastor what deep space is really like.
The premise of gravity being the cause of aging isn't exactly plausible, to say the least. The story is written in an odd style, with verbal quirks. The woman inserts a fair amount of French into her speech. People often talk in flowery language that doesn't sound like anything anybody would really say. Folks are often referred to as Sir So-and-So (such as Sir Preacher); the spaceman even calls mortality Sir Death.
As an example of the care with which the magazine is put together, the cover and the table of contents call this yarn The Dragons of Tesla (note the change in spelling.)
Anyway, this is the latest in a series of science lessons disguised as fiction featuring the clever Ensign De Ruyter. In this tale, he and his captain explore the planet Telsa (not Tesla). It's hot and has an atmosphere without oxygen. There are a huge number of dangerous reptilian predators around.
(Herds of hundreds and hundreds of predators? That seems unlikely, given the typical predator-to-prey ratio you'd expect.)
After wiping out a whole bunch of the beasts with their ray guns, the unlucky pair run out of the energy that powers their weapons. They go hide in a cave, which just happens to have exactly the stuff that De Ruyter needs to save the day.
As I may have suggested above, the plot depends on a pretty outrageous coincidence. (Gosh, the cave has a pool of liquid rubidium and an object that's shaped like a shallow bowl! Just what we need to play Mister Wizard!)
It's not a big secret that K. M. O'Donnell is actually Barry Malzberg, the magazine's new assistant editor. He's had a few New Wave stories published here and there.
This epistolary tale relates the misadventures of a sort of social psychologist, for lack of a better term, among aliens. He goes through a ritual, not understanding what's going on, leading to a bizarre climax.
I've supplied a pretty bad synopsis, because it's not easy to figure out what's going on. The nature of the so-called Oaten, for example, is particularly puzzling. Then there's that ending . . .
I really don't know what to make of this thing.
Two stars.
Where Is Mrs. Malcolmn?, by Susan A. Lewin
The magazine proudly announces that this is a first publication. That's not always a good sign. In another example of careful editing, the table of contents spells the character's name Malcolm, which looks more normal to me. The text makes it clear that it's really the less likely Malcolmn.
Uncredited photograph, one of three accompanying the story that pretty much all show the same thing.
A woman recovering from a heart attack investigates what she thinks is a water tower that appears out of nowhere. If you've ever read any science fiction before, you'll know exactly what happens.
There's not really much to say about this extremely predictable first story. Was it written just to go with the photographs? Lots of room for improvement, I suppose.
One star.
So much for new stuff. On to the reprints.
Lords of the Underworld, by L. Taylor Hansen
The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this yarn.
Cover art by J. Allen St. John.
Three guys are fooling around in the California desert, doing archeological stuff. One of them very casually mentions that he's built a time machine. The main character (the other two disappear from the story quickly) sends himself back thousands of years.
Illustration by St. John also.
This leads to a rip-roaring adventure, as the hero defeats an evil empire nearly by himself. There's a beautiful princess to help him, a sinister cultist to destroy, vampire bats, a saber-toothed tiger, and, yes, a dinosaur. Lots of stuff goes on.
It's all nonsense, of course. There are some nice descriptions, but the whole thing is pretty darn goofy. The open-ended conclusion suggests a sequel, but I don't think there was one.
Two stars.
Between Two Worlds, by Milton Lesser
The December 1955 issue of the magazine is the source of this fantasy story.
Cover art by Edward Valigursky.
A meek fellow has dreams about being Jason from mythology. Of course, he really is living as the legendary hero. He falls in love with the warrior maiden Atalanta, fights with Hercules, wins the golden fleece, and so forth. If you've seen the nifty movie Jason and the Argonauts, you know what to expect. There's a surprise ending that's not surprising.
Illustration by Louis Priscilla.
This piece comes from a brief, odd period in the history of Fantastic when it was dedicated to wish fulfillment stories. Or, as you can tell from the cover, male fantasies. It's not as openly voyeuristic as the other stories seem to be, judging by their descriptions, although Atalanta is stark naked at one point.
As a retelling of an old story, it's OK. Otherwise, there's not much to it.
Two stars.
Bandits of Time, by Ray Cummings
This wild and wooly adventure comes from the December 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Rod Ruth.
A mysterious fellow approaches a reporter and his blind girlfriend. He promises them a wonderful life if they'll meet him at a certain place in the middle of the night. He also says he'll restore the woman's sight.
Illustration by Ruth as well.
Understandably, the reporter is suspicious. He takes his girlfriend home and shows up at the designated place with a fellow newsman, hoping for a big story. Instead, he discovers that the woman has been kidnapped. She and the two reporters are sent two million years into the future.
The weird man who approached them has a mad scheme to set up his own private empire in a distant future when humanity has devolved to a primitive state. He takes along male criminals from all periods of history, as well as kidnapped women to mate with them.
Can the two heroes escape being executed by the insane dictator? Will the woman regain her sight? Will the seductive would-be empress prove to be an enemy or a friend?
Two time travel yarns from 1941, both of them full of nonstop action. This one isn't quite as wacky as the first one, although there's a revelation about the madman's identity that comes out of nowhere.
Two stars.
The Monument, by Henry Slesar
We finish up with a mood piece from the July 1956 issue of Amazing Stories.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A small group of tourists are on a spaceship headed for the Moon. A couple of them complain a lot. The captain opens the observation window to show them something.
Illustration by William Llewellyn.
The plot is very simple. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do. Maybe that's enough.
Three stars.
Half Empty or Half Full?
Either I'm in a bad mood or this was a very weak issue. Maybe I should have given out some three star ratings to some of the stories, maybe not. My time might have been better spent making a sandwich.
A full loaf of diet bread counts as half a loaf of regular bread, doesn't it?
![[July 10, 1969] Sex! Now That I Have Your Attention . . . (August 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[June 18, 1969] Sleazy Riders (<i>The Sidehackers</i> and <i>Satan's Sadists</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Untitled.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[June 16, 1969] The Voyage to Net a Dolphin (June 1969 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/690616covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[May 10, 1969] Youth (June 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 14, 1969 ] (March 1969 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/690314covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[March 10, 1969] Speed (April 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/COVERHALF.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[January 8, 1969] Young Punks and Old Fogies (February 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/690108cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[November 10, 1968] Ratings (December 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/COVERREDUCED.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[September 18, 1968] Dangerous Visions (Not Those Dangerous Visions!) (September 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680920books.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[September 14, 1968] Half a Loaf is Better Than None (October 1968 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/coverREDUCED.jpg?resize=427%2C295)
