All posts by Victoria Silverwolf

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 26, 1965] Digging Up the Past (April 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Out of the Depths

One of the more intriguing events this month was the discovery of the wreck of the Confederate cruiser Georgiana by a young man named Edward Lee Spence. The teenage diving enthusiast — he's been finding shipwrecks since he was twelve years old — located her remains in the shallow waters of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

The steam-powered vessel, said to be the most powerful cruiser in the Confederate fleet, was on her maiden voyage from the Scottish shipyards where she was built. She ran into the Union gunboat Wissahickon while attempting to reach Charleston.


The crew of the Union ship that defeated the Confederate ship.

Seems Like Old Times

Given the fickleness of those who listen to AM radio and purchase 45's, a year is a very long time in the world of popular music. Proving that they are hardy veterans, ready to brave the storms of fame and oblivion, those old pros the Beatles repeated what they did way back in early 1964, by reaching Number One on the American music charts with Eight Days a Week, another expertly crafted, upbeat rock 'n' roll number.


The front cover; or is it the back?


The back cover; or is it the front?

Yesterday and Tomorrow

Fittingly, although many of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic take place in the future, they often involve days gone by in various ways. Others are set in ancient times that never really existed, or in a version of the present with a very different history.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Bright Eyes, by Harlan Ellison

Opening up the issue is a new story from a writer who is mostly working for Hollywood these days. I hope you caught Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, the episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits, because they're really good.

So what's he doing back in the pages of a magazine that can only afford to pay him a tiny fraction of what television can offer? Well, according to fannish scuttlebutt, Ellison was at the World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. (Discon, 1963) when he saw the drawing shown below. Impressed by the work of this fan artist, he remarked that he would write a story for it if somebody bought it. Cele G. Lalli, editor of Fantastic, happened to be present, and took him up on the offer.


Illustration by Dennis Smith; the only one in the issue! Maybe Lalli spent all of the magazine's art budget on it in order to snag a story by Ellison.

Bright Eyes is the only surviving member of a race of beings who inhabited Earth long before humanity showed up. He feels compelled to leave his underground home for an unexplained purpose. On the back of a giant rat, carrying a bag of skulls, he encounters wild dogs, bleeding birds, and a river of corpses, before we learn the reason for his excursion above ground.

This is a brooding mood piece, full of dark imagery and an overwhelming sense of vast eons of time. Ellison writes with great passion, creating vivid scenes of apocalyptic destruction. Once in a while his language goes out of control — acoustically-sussurating is a phrase you're likely to stumble over — but, overall, his work here is compelling.

Four stars.

The Purpose of Merlin, by Colin R. Fry

We're way back in time, during the reign of King Arthur. Our protagonist is a man of Roman ancestry, in the service of Arthur. He investigates an island inhabited by a lone madman and a lion-like beast that killed a boatful of men who landed there. With the help of a local villager and a band of warriors, he sets out to learn the truth of the matter and slay the creature. Merlin doesn't show up until near the end of the story, when we find out that this isn't quite the fantasy adventure we thought it was.

The way in which the author makes the legendary Arthurian era seem like real history was interesting. The unusual plot held my attention throughout. You may figure out the twist ending long before the story is over, but it's worth reading.

Three stars.

The Other Side of Time (Part One of Three), by Keith Laumer

I haven't read Worlds of the Imperium, to which this new serial is a sequel, so I was a little confused when it started. As best as I can figure out, the hero is a guy from our world who wound up in a parallel world ruled by the Imperium. I'm guessing that the World Wars never happened in this alternate reality, because the Imperium seems to be a British/German empire.

The protagonist appears to be comfortably settled in this strange place. He's happily married, has a loyal sidekick with whom he's shared previous adventures, and works for Imperial Intelligence. His boss is none other than Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron in our reality, now in his eighties. There's also mention of Hermann Goering working for the Imperium, so I suppose the horrors of the Nazi regime never occurred.

The Imperium has technology allowing them to visit other parallel worlds. It seems that improper use of this gizmo causes entire realities to vanish, leaving only a few worlds surviving in an emptiness known as the Blight.

All of this is just background information, and the author plunges us into the plot right away. Baron von Richthofen, for unexplained reasons, asks the hero a bunch of questions with answers that should be obvious to both of them. After this ordeal, he follows a figure who skulks around the headquarters of Imperial Intelligence, leaving blood and signs of burning behind. The mysterious person appears to be glowing with extreme heat.

Before we get any explanation for this bizarre turn of events, our hero gets knocked out. He wakes up to find himself in what seems to be the world of the Imperium, but all living things have vanished, even plants. As if two unexplained mysteries weren't enough, he soon discovers ape-men with their own vehicles that can travel between realities. He manages to sneak aboard one of these devices, and winds up a prisoner in the world of the ape-men, who make slaves of folks from parallel worlds. He meets a fellow prisoner who is a much more sophisticated kind of hairy fellow. The unlikely allies manage to escape, but the protagonist winds up in hot water in his new friend's reality.

As you can tell, a heck of a lot goes on in the first third of this novel. In typical Laumer style, the action never stops. It's a wild roller coaster ride all the way, never slowing down to let you catch your breath. We'll have to wait to see if the author manages to tie all these plot threads together into a coherent whole.

Three stars.

The Dreamer, by Walter F. Moudy

This is the only other work I've seen from the author of No Man on Earth, which was an interesting and unusual novel. This lighthearted story doesn't resemble the book at all.

Told in the fashion of a fairy tale, the plot involves an unsuccessful shopkeeper and his talking parrot. When his business fails, the fellow heads for another planet. The local ruler gives him his daughter's hand in marriage in exchange for the bird. The man has never seen the woman, so he suspects he's made a bad bargain. It all works out for the best in the end.

The whole thing is very silly but inoffensive. You may get a chuckle or two out of it.

Two stars.

Trouble with Hyperspace, by Jack Sharkey

In this brief yarn, faster-than-light travel allows a vehicle to arrive at its destination before it leaves its home base. (The author apparently thinks light is instantaneous, and that therefore anything faster than light is more than instantaneous, if you see what I mean.) After some discussion of the obvious paradoxes caused by this phenomenon, we get a weak punchline.

The premise reminds me of Isaac Asimov's joke articles about the imaginary substance thiotimoline, which dissolves before it is placed in water. The Good Doctor's pieces are just bagatelles, but they are far more cleverly done than this trivial attempt at humor.

One star.

The Silk of Shaitan, by John Jakes

Once again the mighty barbarian Brak faces magic and monsters in his quest to find his fortune. This adventure begins in medias res, so it takes a while to figure out what's going on.

It seems that Brak was beaten and left to die by a bunch of bandits. A man and his daughter happened to come by. In exchange for a healing potion, Brak agreed to accompany them on a dangerous mission. (By the way, there's also a servant along. You can tell right from the start that he's going to be the first victim.)

The leader of the bandits, a powerful sorcerer, demands that the man turn over the fabulous treasure that is to serve as his daughter's dowry. The man seems to accept this, but really plans to have Brak kill the magician. This isn't going to be easy, given the monster that lives in a pool, and magic silk that has a particularly nasty effect on those it touches.

As he has many times before, the author uses a vivid writing style to create a pastiche of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Barbarian. This particular yarn has a more tragic ending than most, but otherwise it's up to the usual decent standard.

Three stars.

Predator, by Robert Rohrer

Finishing up the issue is a science fiction horror story. The main character works as a waiter aboard a luxury space vessel. Someone — or something? — altered his body so that it contains various electronic components, with a sinister purpose. Whoever it was left his hand in a gruesome condition, hidden behind a bandage, as a sadistic reminder of what happened to him. Without giving too much away, let's just say that very bad things happen.

The main appeal of this grim and bloody shocker is the author's intense, subjective, stream-of-consciousness style. We really get into the poor guy's head, and it's not a pleasant place to be. Although the motives of the unseen villains are never explained, and the ending isn't surprising, the story sets out to chill your bones, and pretty much succeeds.

Three stars.

Trash or Treasure?


Always nice to see honesty in advertising.

Like an antique store full of old stuff of uncertain value, this issue is very much a mixture of the worthy and the worthless, with most of the items falling somewhere in the middle. The Ellison is definitely a nice find, and the Laumer may turn out to be the same, if the author maintains the same level of interest. As far as the other stories go, you may prefer to spend your time entertaining yourself some other way.


Maybe catch a great old movie on the tube.

We'll be talking about these space flights and more at a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT.  Come register to join us!  It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 16, 1965] Browsing the Stacks (May 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Did You Check the Card Catalog First?

If you're like me, when you enter a public or school library, or a bookstore, or any other place where volumes of written material are available for perusal, you wander around from place to place without any particular goal in mind. Of course, sooner or later you're going to wind up at the science fiction section. But along the way, you might find other kinds of fiction and nonfiction to pique your curiosity.


Students hard at work at Brigham Young University.They're probably not reading science fiction.

I thought about this pleasant little habit of mine when I looked at the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. The stories and articles reminded me of other categories of writing. Take my hand, and we'll stroll through the paper corridors of this miniature book depository and find out what wonders await us.


Cover art by George Schelling.

What Size Are Giants?, by Alexei Panshin

Category: Westerns

We start off near novels by Zane Grey and other chroniclers of the Old West. This rootin', tootin' yarn begins with a gal settin' by herself readin' a book (appropriately enough) and not realizin' that she's about to be run over by a stampedin' herd of wild critters. Luckily for her, a fella in a covered wagon comes by and saves her. He's sort of a medicine show kind of city slicker, of the type that the local settlers don't cotton to.


Drawin' by Norman Nodel. That's a mighty funny lookin' horse you got there, friend.

OK, let me knock it off with the dialect before I drive both of us crazy. We're really on a colony planet, one of many settled about a century ago, when a large number of gigantic starships fled Earth just before a global war destroyed all of humanity. The colonists survive at a low level of technology, while the people who remain aboard the ships enjoy much more advanced devices. The colonists envy and resent the starship folk, and the people on the vessels look down on the settlers as peasants.

Our hero sneaks off one of the ships and lands on the planet, intending to help the colonists with better goods, and to encourage trade between isolated communities. Along for the ride is his buddy, an intelligent, talking bird. (The only explanation for this animal is that it's a one-of-a-kind mutant, which is a little hard to swallow.)

Things don't work out too well. Not only do the settlers figure out the man is one of the hated people from the starships, but he is also tracked down by an enforcer from the vessel, because interfering with a colony is a serious crime.


A very accurate rendition of the author's description of this unpleasant character.

Complicating matters is the fact that the stampeding beasts are about to go on the rampage again, threatening to destroy the local village and everyone in it. It all builds up to an exciting climax, as our tomboy heroine comes to the rescue.


Ride 'em, cowgirl!

This is a decent enough adventure story, if not particularly outstanding in any way. The author's style is plain but serviceable. It'll give ya somethin' to look at while you're sittin' around the campfire, waitin' for Cooky to rustle up some coffee and beans.

Three stars.

The Effectives, by Zenna Henderson

Category: Religion

Not far away from the Bibles, Korans, Torahs, and other sacred texts, we find this work of inspirational fiction from a skilled author known for the use of spiritual themes in her tales of the People.


Illustration by John Giunta.

KVIN (as shown above) is a devastating illness of unknown origin. Those who suffer from it die very quickly after feeling the first symptoms, which vary from person to person. The only treatment is to completely replace the victim's blood with donations from healthy volunteers. This doesn't always work, however.

There's a peculiar geographic pattern to the cure rate. It never works in the San Francisco area; works half the time near Denver; and is always effective at a particular area near a medical research center. A troubleshooter arrives at the place and tries to figure out what's going on.

The center is near a religious community that has turned its back on the modern world, something like the Amish. They supply the blood donations. There is no such community in the San Francisco region, and half of the blood donations at the Denver area come from such a community. Could there be a connection with the cure rates? The troubleshooter, a hardcore skeptic, performs a risky experiment in order to find out.

How you react to this fable may depend on your religious beliefs. You may think that the author has stacked the cards too much in favor of faith over materialism. The troubleshooter is something of a stereotype of the stubborn atheist, although I'll have to give the writer credit for depicting him as a man with the courage of his convictions, but willing to change his mind when presented with strong evidence.

Considered just as a work of science fiction, this story is very well-written, with interesting speculative content. It may not change anyone's opinions, but it's definitely worth reading.

Four stars.

The Alien Psyche, by Tom Purdom

Category: Psychology

Strolling over to the nonfiction, we find this article next to a large volume of Freud. The author wonders about the ways in which biological differences between human beings and the sentient inhabitants of other worlds may lead to differences in their minds. What kind of neuroses would be found among aliens that reproduce by fission, or are hermaphroditic?

The piece mostly deals with traditional Freudian analysis, although the author has to admit that there are many other schools of psychology, and that none of them are anywhere near an exact science. Maybe someday we'll know more about the workings of the mind, but for now this is all idle speculation.

Two stars.

Bond of Brothers, by Michael Kurland

Category: Spy Fiction


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

Stuck between books by Ian Fleming and John le Carré is this tale of Cold War espionage. A fellow arrives at the secret headquarters of a US government agency, where his identical twin brother works. The brother is currently in a Soviet prison, after the Reds caught him spying. The only reason the protagonist knows about the headquarters, and his brother's location, is the fact that the twins have a telepathic link.

The hero manages to convince the head of the agency of this psychic connection, and volunteers to rescue his brother from the Commies. He goes undercover and faces many challenges in his quest to free his twin from their clutches.


Parachuting into the USSR.

The ESP gimmick isn't really relevant to the plot, which is a straightforward secret agent story. Some of Fleming's books, such as Thunderball and Moonraker, have more of a speculative feeling to them than this tale. I suppose it's an acceptable example of this sort of thing, but I felt a bit cheated by its appearance in a science fiction magazine.

Two stars.

Explosions in Space, by Ben Bova

Category: Astronomy

Passing by star charts and maps of the Moon, we arrive at the section of this tiny library dealing with the cosmos. We find an article dealing with things that go BOOM! in the heavens.

We begin with solar flares, and build up to entire exploding galaxies, with discussions of novae and supernovae along the way. The piece concludes with theories about the recently discovered, mysterious things known as quasars (quasi-stellar objects.) The author may not have the charm of Asimov, or the obscure knowledge of Ley, but he explains an interesting subject very clearly.

Four stars.

Dem of Redrock Seven, by John Sutherland

Category: Detective Stories

Leaning on some volumes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett — we'll ignore the bestselling works of Mickey Spillane and stick with the classics — is this hardboiled yarn about a tough investigator and his sexy secretary, working on a case that could spell disaster for civilization.

Oh, did I mention the fact that these characters aren't human beings? In fact, they're the mutated descendants of insects, long after people contaminated Earth with radiation and nearly died off. The giant, intelligent insects now have their own sophisticated society, and the few remaining humans are living like savages in uncontaminated areas. They're only a minor nuisance, until the mysterious death of a government worker leads the hero to a hidden threat that could mean the end of the insects.

Clearly meant as a parody of private eye stories, this tongue-in-cheek tale is kind of silly — giving the secretary a lisp is particularly goofy and pointless — but amusing at times. I'll admit that the author does a good job writing from the insect point of view, and you may find yourself cheering for the hero over those dastardly humans. Like the first story in this issue, this one features the female lead coming to the rescue of the hero, which is a nice touch.

Three stars.

Bogeymen, by Dick Moore

Category: War Stories


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

We'll head to the shelf that holds accounts of naval battles for this tale of combat with an enemy that remains unseen most of the time, like a submarine. Instead of sailing the seven seas, we're out in space, on a routine patrol of the inner solar system. The current situation between two vaguely defined rivals is hotter than a Cold War, although both sides refer to their violent encounters as accidents.


The patrol vessel, and that might be Mars at the top.

Word reaches the ship that a large force of enemy vessels is on its way to Mars from a base in the asteroid belt. Its target seems to be the friendly base on Phobos. Because it's extremely difficult to detect ships in the vastness of space, it's a matter of guesswork as to where the good guys should intercept the bad guys. It boils down to heading to the most likely place for them to appear and then waiting.


I have no idea what this is supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the crew alters its armed missiles, turning them into devices they can launch into space in order to increase the chances of detecting the enemy. The main character rather foolishly comes up with his own scheme for the armaments removed from the missiles, which lands him in very hot water indeed. He winds up having to go out in a one-person vessel in order to retrieve the arms, while risking own skin against the approaching enemy.


The hero in the small ship, I think, although this doesn't match the way I pictured it at all.

To be honest, I'm not sure if my brief synopsis is accurate at all. I found the technical aspects of the plot very hard to follow. The hero's actions are extremely unprofessional, putting the ship and crew in great danger just so he can play a hunch. The story also seemed quite long, as I slogged my way to the ending.

Two stars.

Have Your Library Card Ready

Is it worth a trip to the stacks? Maybe, maybe not. You've got one good story (although that judgement may be controversial) and one good article, along with other works ranging from poor to fair. I wouldn't go digging through musty old volumes to seek it out, but if it happens to be close, you might as well take a look. You might see something interesting.


She's only the librarian's daughter, but you really should check her out.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 6, 1965] Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (Crack in the World and Other Planet-Destroying Movies)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Start With an Earthquake and Build to a Climax

The above phrase, or some variation on it, has been attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, although this is almost certainly apocryphal. In any case, it represents the interest Hollywood has long had in depicting disasters on the silver screen. Sometimes these have been recreations of historic events, from San Francisco (1936, the 1906 earthquake) to In Old Chicago (1938, the 1871 fire) to A Night to Remember (1958, the sinking of the Titanic.) Watch for these on the Late, Late Show.

Here in the Atomic Age, it seems that fear of the Bomb has replaced some of the fear of Nature. Going back at least as far as Five (1951), films dealing with nuclear disasters have filled the theaters and drives-ins for quite a while now. There are far too many of these to discuss in any detail, from low-budget quickies full of folks in rubber suits pretending to be monsters, to sober and serious dramas. The best of these have been the topics of full articles by Galactic Journeyers, so I direct you to the archives for more information.

Humanity gets wiped out, or at least reduced to very few, in most of these apocalyptic flicks.  But what about those in which the entire planet Earth is threatened with destruction?  I can only think of a few.


Read the book!

Based on the 1933 novel by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, George Pal's 1951 production of When Worlds Collide dealt with a wandering star on its way to crash into Earth, and the effort to build spaceships to carry a few survivors to the star's only planet. (They sure were lucky that it turned out to be habitable.)


See the movie!

It was a handsome production, winning an Oscar for special effects and nominated for cinematography.


Nifty spaceship. Looks like an Astounding cover, doesn't it?


See the movie; there isn't any book.

1961's The Day the Earth Caught Fire was a British production. Filmed in black-and-white on a modest budget, it depicted the effect that simultaneous nuclear bomb tests by the United States and the Soviet Union had on Earth's orbit, tilting it on its axis and sending it spiraling into the Sun.


Some scenes were tinted to suggest the devastating heat.

An unusually realistic portrait of the possible end of the world, with an ambiguous ending, I found it made for compelling viewing.

Will the latest entry in this small group of Earth-In-Peril films prove as exciting as its trailer suggests? Let's find out.

Dig We Must


All this destruction going on, and Dana Andrews is making a phone call.

The plot of the new movie Crack in the World seems to have been inspired by Project Mohole, so a brief review of that troubled effort to reach deep into the Earth is in order.

First proposed in 1957, Phase 1 of this mighty engineering project got started in 1961. Five holes were drilled at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Baja California, the deepest about six hundred feet below the ocean floor. (You have to consider the fact that these holes start about twelve thousand feet below the surface of the water.)


You can see from this diagram why it makes sense to drill from the bottom of the ocean rather than from the land.

The rumor mill has it that there's a lot of controversy over the multiple scientific, political, and economic factors involved in moving on to Phase 2. Eventually, Phase 3 of the project is supposed to achieve the ultimate goal of reaching the Mohorovičić discontinuity, which is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle. (It's named for the Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovičić. No wonder most folks call it the Moho layer.) It's too early to tell how low things will go.

The Core of the Problem


The opening title, in cracked letters.

Project Inner Space, our cinematic version of Project Mohole, begins on land rather than at sea. A brief scene of warriors carrying spears and shields establishes the fact that we're in Africa. We'll find out later that the location is Tanganyika. (That former nation only joined with Zanzibar to form Tanzania last year, so I'll cut the filmmakers some slack on the misnomer.)


It's hard to see here, but that scaffolding contains a rocket pointed down into the Earth.

A jeep carrying people of many different ethnicities and accents arrives at the site. They're here to talk to the head of the project, who needs their approval for his ambitious plan.


Dana Andrews as Doctor Stephen Sorenson.

You see, Project Inner Space is a lot more ambitious than Project Moho. Its goal is to reach all the way down to the Earth's core, so that the magma can be used as a virtually limitless supply of energy and raw materials. Since the Moho discontinuity is twenty-odd miles below the surface of the land (something less than five miles if you go under the sea) and the core is about eighteen hundred miles down, you can see that Moho is really small potatoes compared to Inner Space.

Doctor Stephen Sorenson (American actor Dana Andrews, leading man of the 1940's and 1950's, perhaps best known to most moviegoers for The Best Years of Our Lives, but familiar to horror film buffs for Curse of the Demon) wants the committee in charge of the political side of the project to give the OK to shoot an atomic bomb down into the Earth. (He's already got a rocket set up to deliver the thing, so it's obvious he expects to win them over to his side.)


On the right is Kieron Moore as Doctor Ted Rampion.

Stephen has a very strong sense that his notion of using an A-bomb is safe, but he's honest enough to admit that a fellow scientist, Doctor Ted Rampion (Irish actor Kieron Moore, best known to SF fans for appearing in The Day of the Triffids, and familiar to me for having the lead role in Doctor Blood's Coffin) opposes him. Ted thinks the massive explosion might create a crack in the world, leading to massive destruction. Well, given the title of the movie, you can guess who's right.


Janette Scott as Doctor Maggie Sorenson.

Complicating matters is the fact that Doctor Maggie Sorenson (British actress Janette Scott, also in The Day of the Triffids, and known to me from the psychological shocker Paranoiac), Stephen's wife and fellow scientist, was formerly in a relationship with Ted. Adding to this soap opera subplot is the fact that Stephen has a terminal illness that he is hiding from everyone, even his wife.

Stephen gets the go-ahead from his bosses, and the atomic bomb is rocketed deep into the Earth. The resulting explosion destroys the scaffolding and releases a fountain of magma. Everything seems just fine, but since we've still got about an hour of running time left, you know it's not going to be that easy.

Reports of massive earthquakes and tidal waves indicate that, yes, we've got a crack in the world. It's racing across the globe, too, threatening to rip the planet apart. Desperate to save Earth from total destruction, Ted and the other scientists attempt to stop the progress of the crack by dropping another nuclear bomb into the heart of an active volcano on an island.


Inside the volcano

Because the bomb has to be guided into the volcano by hand, requiring two people in spacesuits to descend with it, this is a particularly tense scene. (It's not a big surprise that Ted, our hero, is one of the two.) The device is dropped into the molten lava successfully, and triggered from a safe distance.


A nice little detail is the fact that the scientists carefully record all this.

Unfortunately, this doesn't halt the crack, but only reverses its direction. It looks like it will head back in the general direction of Project Inner Space, threatening to link up with itself and send a chunk of the planet off into space.

Scenes of massive destruction follow, portrayed through stock footage and some really good miniature effects. A railroad disaster, done with models, is particularly convincing.


The crack is approaching the doomed train from behind the bridge.

Will Earth survive? Will any of our three lead actors survive?


This scene may give you a hint.

Worth Digging Up?

The science in this movie may be questionable — there's an amusing moment when Doctor Maggie Sorenson, who should know better, pronounces the word seismograph as SEIZE-mograph — but overall I found it entertaining. The visual effects are quite good, and the story (written by Jon Manchip White and Julian Halevy, directed by Andrew Marton) is never stupid, even if it's implausible and clichéd at times.

I like the fact that Project Inner Space is truly an international effort, and that the scientists generally act like scientists. The sets look like places people could really work.

I also appreciated the fact that Doctor Stephen Sorenson isn't a megalomaniac, but simply a man who makes a terrible mistake, and does everything he can to correct it.

Four stars. I dug it.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 22, 1965] Theory of Relativity (March 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

(More Than) One Big Happy Family

A lot of dramatic events happened this month, many of them violent and tragic, from a huge earthquake in the Aleutian Islands (fortunately, far away from inhabited areas) to, just today, the murder of civil rights activist Malcolm X.

Although not as world-shattering as other news stories, one incident that caught my eye was the bizarre story of Lawrence Joseph Bader/John Francis "Fritz" Johnson. Why two different names? Thereby hangs a tale.

It seems that Mister Bader, a salesman from Akron, Ohio, vanished during a storm while on a fishing trip on Lake Erie, back in 1957. His wife had him declared legally dead in 1960. Meanwhile, Mister Johnson showed up as a local TV personality in Omaha, Nebraska.


Broadcasting from an ABC affiliate

A guy who knew Bader ran into Johnson, and knew something was fishy (pun intended.) He brought Bader's niece to take a look at him. Sure enough, Johnson was really Bader, now married to another woman. Fingerprints proved the case.

Amnesia or a hoax? The authorities aren't sure. Johnson claims that he has no memory his life as Bader, but other folks point out that he had some problems with the IRS and may have wanted to start his life over. Sounds like a soap opera plot to me. Anybody remember the old radio drama John's Other Wife? Stay tuned!

Two Brothers and One Son

The man with two families came to mind again when I took a look at the American music charts recently. Earlier this month, the Righteous Brothers reached Number One with You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.


They're not really brothers, so I may be stretching a point until it breaks.

Later, Gary Lewis and the Playboys hit the top with This Diamond Ring. Gary is the son of comedian Jerry Lewis.


I wonder if any of Dean Martin's seven children will have hit records.

Family Affairs

Fittingly, some of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic involve close relatives, and others feature characters without families of their own.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Monsters & Monster-Lovers, by Fritz Leiber

Before we get to the fiction, let's take a look at an article from one of our greatest writers of imaginative tales. The title tells you what he's talking about; the current popularity of all things monstrous. It's a wide-ranging piece, listing many of the notable frightening creations of literature, pondering their appeal, noting that they flourish during relatively peaceful times, and dismissing the possibility that the discoveries of science will eliminate them from our minds. Perhaps the author tries to cover too much ground, but his essay is enlightening, elegantly written, and gave me the names of some classics I need to track down.

Four stars.

The Pillars of Chambalor, by John Jakes


The magazine's only interior illustration is also by Morrow.

Our old pal Conan Junior — excuse me, I mean Brak the Barbarian — shows up again in this issue's lead story. This time he's lost in a desert wasteland, near the ruins of an ancient city. In the time-honored tradition of sword-and-sorcery yarns, a huge monster attacks him, leaving him dying from its venom.

A wicked old man and his sweet young daughter show up. It seems the greedy fellow is after a fabulous treasure within the abandoned city, and needs Brak's mighty strength to open the doors behind which it lies. He'll provide an antidote for the poison if the barbarian swears to perform this service. (It amused me that the plot depends on Brak never breaking his word once he makes a promise, but then feeling free to turn against the old guy once he's opened the doors.)

Complicating matters is the fact that the ruins consist of about one hundred gigantic pillars, each one containing the bodies of the inhabitants of the vanished city, frozen in stone by a wizard. It won't surprise you to learn that they don't stay that way, or that we haven't seen the last of the critter that attacked Brak.

Predictable, but written with vivid imagination, this swashbuckling adventure is a decent way to pass the time. I find Brak a lot more tolerable in short stories than in longer pieces, although I wouldn't want to read a bunch of them at once.

Three stars.

Mary, Mary, by John Baldwinson

Here's a science fiction story that reads like fantasy, from an author completely unknown to me. In the future, folks usually work for fifteen years, saving little or none of their pay, then retire to lives of leisure, supported by a rich and benevolent government. The protagonist has a different plan.

She scrimps and saves, finally leaving her job with enough money to create a garden full of exotic plants from far-flung worlds. Many of these are as intelligent as animals, and some can even move around, acting as servants and watchdogs.

Although she's a loner, spending nearly all her time in the garden, the woman yearns for human company as well. She falls in love with a retired spaceman, and everything seems just fine. Too bad she doesn't realize her floral friends can feel jealousy.

Although the resulting tragedy comes as no surprise, there are some striking images and poetic writing to be found here. Despite the futuristic trappings, this is really a dark fairy tale, full of beings both beautiful and frightening. It reminds me of some of the romantic fables of Robert F. Young, which is OK in my book.

Four stars.

102 H-Bombs, by Thomas M. Disch

There's a lot going on here, so hold on to your hat and I'll try to walk you through it. In a future of constant armed conflict — don't call it war! — all male orphans in the USA begin military training at the age of ten. Our hero is named Charlie C-Company. (He got that last name due to a bureaucratic mix-up when he was inducted into the Army.) At this point, the story's satiric look at the armed forces made me think of Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller that came out a few years ago.

Anyway, Charlie is one of the winners of a contest to write an essay entitled "What I Would Do If I Owned the Empire State Building." You see, that famous structure is just about the only thing that survived an attack during this conflict that isn't officially a war. He and one hundred and one other winners — notice the title of the story — are flown to New York New (sic) and, well, things get complicated.

Not only does he make telepathic contact with a girl his own age who is one of the winners, he also finds out the real purpose behind the contest, learns something about himself, and becomes part of a larger, closely related group. The outcome has serious consequences for the whole world.

You get the feeling that Disch knows exactly how clever he is, so this is a story to admire rather than love. It's a real roller coaster of a tale, throwing all kinds of concepts at you left and right, always keeping your attention but making you feel a bit dizzy when it's over. It's worth the ride, anyway.

Three stars.

Look Out Below, by Jack Sharkey

This surreal tale features a main character without family or close companions.  He lives alone, on the top floor of a tall building, in a suite where everything is pure white.   Happy, but a bit lonely, he rides an elevator to the floor just below his own.

The things here are white, but with pale gray pinstripes.  He moves into a suite on this level that isn't quite as luxurious as the one he left.  The coffee, for example — like his food, clothing, and other belongings, it apparently appears from nowhere — is just slightly bitter.

Shortly after returning to the top level, uneasy dreams and yearnings draw him down two floors, where an alluring woman leads him to a crimson-lit place of music, drinking, smoking, and violence.  He soon descends even lower, leading to an enigmatic ending.

This is a very strange story, and not one I expected from the pen of a writer I associate with comedy and adventure.  I expect that I'll be pondering its meaning for a long time.  The author's intent seems to be allegorical, although I can't decipher all the symbols he uses.  The overall effect of reading it is intriguing, but frustrating.

Three stars.

The Headsman, by Irvin Ashkenazy

Like the lead story, this backwoods fantasy features a protagonist who meets an unusual father and daughter. The author isn't exactly new — digging into a pile of old pulp magazines reveals that he had a story published in Weird Tales nearly three decades ago — but he isn't exactly a household name, either.

The main character is an art dealer who goes deep into the wilds of Appalachia in search of priceless antiques. You see, a uranium prospector's journal indicates that the remains of a very old community exist way back in the hills. Did I mention that the prospector's headless body was found with his journal? That little fact, plus the title, should give you a clue that this is a horror story.

Anyway, the dealer locates the only two people who live in a ghost town in the mountains, a self-proclaimed preacher (and moonshiner) and his attractive but simple-minded daughter. After a lot of arguing and negotiation, the hillbilly tells the dealer how to get to the lost community. It was settled by supporters of Cromwell who fled to America at the time of the Restoration. (If nothing else, I learned something about English history from this story.)

The dealer finds the place and has a lot of spooky experiences. At the end, we discover the true nature of the hillbilly's daughter, and you can probably guess what happens to the dealer.

The plot involves many kinds of supernatural events, not all of which make sense. I also have to question the fact that there's apparently active volcanic activity in the Appalachians. The hillbilly and his daughter are old-fashioned stereotypes, and there's an unpleasant touch of racism in the suggestion that there's something weird about them because they're of mixed ancestry.

(As an inhabitant of Tennessee, where this story takes place, I have to mention another implausibility. The hillbilly and his daughter consistently address the dealer as y'all. Anyone who has lived in the American South for a length of time knows that this very useful word is the second person plural, and would never be used to refer to a single individual.)

As a parting note, let me contrast the weaknesses of this tale with the excellent backwoods fantasies of Manly Wade Wellman, found in his collection Who Fears the Devil?, which happens to win a glowing review from Robert Silverberg in this issue's book column.

Two stars.

The Man Who Painted Tomorrow, by Kate Wilhelm

This writer has appeared in genre magazines for nearly a decade — her first story was also in Fantastic — but is probably better known for being married to Damon Knight.   That may change some day, because she brings us an interesting and unusual tale that displays a great deal of imagination.

The main character's mind is pulled into the far future now and then, where he inhabits one of the four-armed bodies of the people of that time.  They bring him there to paint pictures of his present, with the help of a robot.

His main qualification for this task is the fact that he can draw very accurately, but without artistic creativity, which would distort the reality of his renditions.  His paintings become part of a museum, where other works depict humanity's history from the prehistoric past to what would be the protagonist's future, but the distant past of his hosts.

Eventually the man learns something about the world of the future, and a mysterious door that holds a secret his hosts try to keep hidden from him.  The ending brings present and future together, with both tragedy and hope.

The author has a gift for creating believable characters, which adds realism to the speculative aspects of the plot.  The conclusion may not be a total surprise, but it brings the sense of a fitting resolution.

Four stars.

It's All Relative

For the most part, this was an enjoyable issue. One of the stories wasn't very good, but I suppose every family has a black sheep.


The woman on the far right is Marilyn Munster. As you can see, she doesn't quite fit with the rest of her family, poor thing.

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Magazine, Serial

[January 22, 1965] With Apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein (February 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf


The guy on the right doesn't seem too happy about all this.

The long-anticipated movie version of the smash hit stage musical The Sound of Music had sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa this month, and is scheduled to show up in theaters across the nation in March. This sugary-sweet confection, very loosely based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, isn't really my cup of tea, but I thought I would pay tribute to the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II by stealing the titles of some of the ditties that appear in it.

Caution: May cause diabetes.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Just a couple of days ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States for his first full term.


Chief Justice Earl Warren administers the oath of office.

The inaugural address was a short one. In the space of twenty minutes or so, he raised the issues of poverty, health care, literacy, and much more. A phrase about American lives lost in countries we barely know is surely a reference to the conflict in Vietnam. He even threw in a nod to the space program, mentioning the rocket that is heading toward Mars.

Those are a lot of steep, difficult mountains to conquer for any politician, so let's wish the President well.

Do Re Mi

I've complained before about some of the syrupy ballads that reach the top, so I was pleased to see two tunes more to my liking jump to Number One this month. Both are courtesy of the UK, so pip pip and cheerio to our friends across the pond!

Earlier this month, the Beatles made a big comeback on the American charts with their upbeat rock 'n' roll number I Feel Fine.


The big advantage of buying a record instead of going to a Beatles concert is that you can actually hear the song instead of screaming.

Even as I type this, the news reaches me that British songbird Petula Clark is now Number One in the USA, belting out a nifty tribute to the pleasures of big city living called Downtown.


Baby, it's her, as far as music fans go.

My Favorite Things

Like the rest of you, I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, at least when they're done reasonably well. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Fantastic and hope for the best.


Cover art by Heidi Coquette.

A Fortnight of Miracles, by Randall Garrett

A magician, who is also handy with a quarterstaff, travels around with his familiar, a goblin. (In this world, that means an earth elemental.) They run into — literally! — a most unusual knight. Although he can talk and fight and do all kinds of knightly things, he's just an empty suit of armor. After a brief period of misunderstanding, the sorcerer and the goblin agree to help him find the wizard who put a curse on him.

Fortunately, all users of magic have to travel to a convention once per century or lose their powers, and it's going on right now. The knight also has to triumph at a jousting tournament, which is hard to do when you're just a suit of armor that doesn't weigh very much. Add in a lovesick wood nymph, the King of Faerie, and some Bad Guys, and you got a lighthearted fantasy adventure. It provides some amusement, although it's hardly profound.

Three stars.

Passage to Dilfar, by Roger Zelazny

If you studied Homer in school, you're familiar with the term in medias res. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, this brief tale begins in the middle of things.

Our hero, Dilvish the Damned, is riding his talking metal horse, for which he sold part of his soul, from the site of a lost battle, in order to carry the news to a city threatened by the advancing enemy. Along the way lots of foes try to stop him, but he escapes them all. A final encounter with a a knight wearing invulnerable armor tests the skills of Dilvish and his steed.

This lightning-paced tale is very well written, but it reads like a few pages torn out of a much longer story. I hope the author eventually tells us more about the Damned fellow.

Three stars.

The Repairmen of Cyclops (Part Two of Two), by John Brunner


Illustration by George Schelling.

As you may recall from the previous installment, the Corps Galactica finds evidence that the ruling class of the planet Cyclops is somehow restoring body parts for those lost by the wealthy; a thing which should be beyond their level of medical technology. As strongly hinted at last time, that's because they're buying them from some sinister folks who exploit the population of a planet unknown to the Corps.

The Bad Guys convince their victims that they're suffering from a terminal illness, take them away, and pay their families, pretending to be a sort of hospice. Of course, they really murder them in cold blood, and sell them to the physician on Cyclops who takes care of the elite.

In the concluding half of this short novel, the Corps figures out what's going on and tries to stop it. Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who is the de facto ruler of Cyclops orders the Corps to abandon their base on the planet, even though this will cause great economic hardship for her world. She has her own motive, which involves the physician and one of the innocent inhabitants of the secret planet. It all leads up to a daring raid on the evil doctor's lair by the heroine, a highly skilled and experienced agent of the Corps.

That makes the plot sound melodramatic, and, indeed, the climax resembles something from a James Bond novel. However, the characters are believable, the background is complex, and the combination of violent action and political intrigue always held my interest.

Four stars.

Winterness, by Ron Goulart


Also by George Schelling. I like the white-on-black effect.

Set in the early part of the Twentieth Century, this tongue-in-cheek yarn involves a spiritualist and a married couple, both of whom are novelists. The woman believes in the medium's powers, the man does not. At a seance for a newspaper editor and his mistress, the skeptic falls into danger, and dark secrets are revealed.

I've made the story sound a lot more serious than it is. Although the plot isn't a funny one, the characters, the dialogue, and the narrative style are all good for some laughs. I particularly liked a bit of satire on the writing game of years gone by, with the woman producing sentimental novels with titles like Venetia; or Led Where Love Compels and the man turning out muckraking works like Soil and Steam.

Three stars.

The Vamp, by Thomas M. Disch

The narrator is an old-time movie actor, going back to the silent days, who is now the host of a TV kiddie show. He sees his ex-wife on the street, acting like a flirtatious 1920's flapper to the men who pass by, who don't seem interested. That's not a big surprise, since she's more than sixty years old, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, dead white skin, ruby lips, sharp teeth . . .

OK, you know where this is going, from the title if nothing else. The narrator never figures it out, so he invites her home for a very rare — in fact, bloody — steak. That leads to the story's joke ending.

The whole thing is just a trifle, but I liked it well enough. Maybe that's because the idea of turning a silent-screen star into a you-know-what tickled me. Or maybe because the story reminded me of the great old movie Sunset Boulevard. (I can definitely see a similarity between the Vamp and Norma Desmond.)

Three stars.

So Long, Farewell

Before I say goodbye, let me sum up my thoughts on this issue. Overall, it was pretty decent. No bad stories, although many of them were definitely minor works. That's a lot better than a magazine full of lousy fiction, so I won't complain when I read something good.

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Magazine

[January 14, 1965] The Big Picture (March 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Science fiction writers often have to deal with things on a very large scale. Whether they take readers across vast reaches of space, or into unimaginably far futures, they frequently look at time and the universe through giant telescopes of imagination, enhancing their vision beyond ordinary concerns of here and now.

(This is not to say anything against more intimate kinds of imaginative fiction, in which the everyday world reveals something extraordinary. A microscope can be a useful tool for examining dreams as well.)

A fine example of the kind of tale that paints a portrait of an enormous universe, with a chronology reaching back for eons, appears in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, from the pen of a new, young writer.


Cover art by George Schelling

World of Ptavvs, by Larry Niven


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan

Our story begins about two billion years ago. The character shown above is a member of a telepathic species with the power to enslave other sentient beings with their minds.


An example of a slave species that doesn't play much part in the story.


This slave species, on the other hand, has a big impact on what happens to its masters.

Kzanol the Thrint has a problem. On his way to the homeworld in his starship, the engine that allows it to make long-distance voyages explodes. The rest of the ship is unharmed, but Kzanol is stranded. Fortunately, he has a suit that slows time down to a crawl for the wearer. He can't reach his native planet with the power his ship has left, but he can crash into an uninhabited planet, where yeast is grown to feed slaves, after a couple of centuries. He stashes some valuables into a spare suit, puts on the other one, programs the ship for the slow journey, and goes into stasis, expecting to be rescued once enough time has gone by.


Kzanol in the stasis suit.

Cut to Earth, in a future of flying cars and interstellar travel. Larry Greenberg (now where have I seen that first name before?) is a telepath. Compared to an average Thrint, he has hardly any ability at all; but it's enough to get him a job communicating mentally with dolphins. This is really just a stepping stone to a real career of reaching the minds of aliens discovered on the planet humans call Jinx.

Scientists who have just invented a time-slowing device — sound familiar? — realize that the so-called Sea Statue, an ancient object found at the bottom of the ocean, is really an alien inside a similar stasis field. By placing it inside their own gizmo, they can deactivate it. Larry is along to pick up the thoughts of the alien. This works much too well.

Kzanol's mind takes over Larry's body. Although he still has human memories, he thinks he is really a Thrint, lost on a world of ptavvs (beings without telepathic powers.) He also believes that he is trapped in the body of a ptavv himself, because he is unable to control the inhabitants of the planet with his mind.


One of several genetically engineered species Larry/Kzanol remembers, adding greatly to the feeling of a richly imagined background. These are giant plants that use solar power as a defense mechanism.


These are dinosaur-sized, single-celled animals the Thrint use for food, feeding them on yeast. There turns out to be much more to them than meets the eye.


Racing animals, like horses or greyhounds on Earth.


The interiors of these trees act as rocket fuel.

At the same time, the real Kzanol escapes from his stasis suit. This leads to a wild chase across the solar system, as both Kzanol and Larry/Kzanol race to find the other stasis suit, which contains a telepathy-enhancing device that would allow the wearer to control all the minds on Earth. Both Earth-dwellers and the colonists who inhabit the asteroid belt head out after the pair. There's an economic cold war going on between Earthers and Belters, adding to the tension.


Kzanol thinks the other suit is on Neptune, but it turns out to be on Pluto, which used to be a moon of Neptune a couple of billion years ago.

This is a fast-moving, complex story with a richly imagined background. The author clearly did a lot of work creating his fictional universe and populating it with a wide variety of organisms. There are so many concepts thrown out that some readers may feel overwhelmed. Certain elements are not fully explored. (The slave that Kzanol throws into his spare suit seems to have no relevance to the plot. And what's going to happen to the colonists on Jinx? Maybe a sequel?) Overall, however, it's a fine novella, indicative of an important new talent.

Four stars.

Undersea Weapons Tomorrow, by Joseph Wesley

The first of a pair of nonfiction articles in this issue imagines naval warfare two decades from now. The scenario is similar to the Cuban situation, heated up quite a bit. The Good Guys set up a blockade of an unfriendly island. The Bad Guys use submarines to attack Good Guy shipping. The author considers the balance of wins and losses in this aquatic battle. (For example, how many ships do you need to sink to make up for the number of submarines lost in the process?)

He also discusses locating the enemy via spy satellites, very slow seagoing bases for aircraft, and porpoises as allies. It's a rather dry piece, with some interesting aspects.

Two stars.

Scarfe's World, by Brian W. Aldiss


Illustration by Gray Morrow

This starts like one of those corny old movies where cave people and dinosaurs live at the same time. There are a couple of odd things about this primitive world, however. Sometimes people just dissolve, and the male protagonist doesn't really understand why he wants to be near the female protagonist.

We soon find out that the humans and dinosaurs are miniature forms of artificial life, created for study. The process sometimes breaks down, explaining the dissolving, and the organisms don't reproduce, explaining the caveman's confused feelings.

There really isn't much to this story other than its basic concept. The last third returns to the point of view of the caveman, which pretty much rehashes what went on in the first third.

Two stars.

Phobos: Moon or Artifact?, by R. S. Richardson

Our second science article answers the question posed in its title right away. The author considers a Russian article from 1959 that suggested that Phobos is hollow, rejects it, and tells us why. The reasoning is highly technical. If I understand things correctly, when a moon is slowed in its orbit by something or other, it approaches the planet. Thus, although its velocity was decreased at first, it actually increases later.

Apparently Phobos increased its velocity due to this effect, but Deimos did not. One explanation for the observed effect would be if Phobos had an extremely low mass for its size; as if it were a hollow artificial satellite, for example. The author points out that there are several other explanations for the phenomenon, and that it really isn't that well established anyway. The whole thing will probably be of more interest to experts in orbital mechanics than the general reader.

Two stars.

By Way of Mars, by Ron Goulart

A guy falls for a girl, but she keeps standing him up at their dates. The Government Lovelorn Bureau tells him to forget her, but he doesn't give up that easily. Things rapidly get way out of hand, as the fellow gets in trouble with the cops, is shanghaied to Venus, escapes to Mars, and becomes the leader of a rebellion on the red planet.

I found the author's satiric portrait of a near future Earth, with suicide clubs and sex book plotters, more effective than the protagonist's interplanetary misadventures. The intent seems to be comic, although nothing particularly funny happens.

Two stars.

Pariah Planet, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.


Illustrations by John Giunta

A spaceman kills a man in a bar fight on a planet with an odd system of justice. Although it was self-defense, he is convicted of murder, and transported to a prison planet. The underground society of this world is ordinary enough, with a couple of exceptions.

There are two groups of citizens. Type A people wear all different kinds of clothing, but Type B people must wear black at all times. Type B citizens are also required to repeat the crimes for which they were convicted, with the Type A citizens as victims. The protagonist, for example, is told to murder one Type A person each week.


The Type A people aren't really bald, as shown here, but the illustration sort of clues the reader in on what's going on.

This leads to a crisis of conscience, as the unspecified consequences of failing to commit one's assigned crime are said to be very serious indeed. As time goes by, the main character grows more and more fearful of what fate awaits him, and finds himself tempted to kill one of the Type A people, who seem like perfect victims.


The protagonist in a brooding mood.

The contrived situation reminds me of the sort of thing that used to show up a lot in Galaxy in the old days, with some aspect of society reflected in a funhouse mirror. Here, of course, it's crime and punishment. You'll probably figure out the nature of the Type A people, and how this eccentric system of justice is supposed to work, long before the end.

Two stars.

That's About the Size of It

After a big start, the second half of the magazine shrinks into a collection of disappointing little stories and articles. Maybe it's just the contrast between Niven's wide-ranging imagination and much shorter, less ambitious pieces. In any case, the publication is large enough to accommodate losers as well as winners. What do you expect for half a buck, anyway?


A big coin for a big magazine.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 4, 1965] Madness: 2, Sanity: 1 (January Galactoscope)

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[January's edition of the Galactoscope offers three novels in two books.  Be warned — there's madness afoot!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now that you've got the Doublemint Gum jingle running through your head, allow me to explain my reason for annoying you. The Ace Double Series has been going for more than a decade, offering two novels in one. Two short novels, to be sure; some are really novellas. Others are short story collections, as we'll see in today's review. The pair of mini-books are bound in what the printing industry calls dos-a-dos. (Sounds like a square dancing term to me.) That is, each half of the volume is upside down, compared to the other half. Sometimes both parts are by the same writer, sometimes not.

Let's take a look at Ace Double M-109, featuring G. C. Edmondson's first novel, as well as several briefer pieces from the same pen.

Mister Edmondson or Señor Edmondson y Cotton?

I can come up with no better way to introduce the author than by allowing him to speak for himself, in the blurb that comes with the book in question.

I don't know how seriously to take all of that, but it certainly makes for interesting reading. I hope the novel (yes, I'll get around to it eventually) proves to be at least as fascinating.

Appetizers Before the Main Course


Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Stranger Than You Think is a collection of all the Mad Friend stories that have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to date. Because our Noble Host has already reviewed these tales, I won't go into detail.

Suffice to say that they all feature the narrator and his Mad Friend in rural Mexico, and deal with time travel, alien probes, reincarnation, and such things. The tone is very light, and the stories are about ten percent plot and ninety percent local color. They remind me, a bit, of R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson. In general, the series is inoffensive but forgettable.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream


Also by Gaughan

I told you I'd get around to it.

Our hero is Ensign Joseph Rate, commander of the good ship Alice, a unique vessel in the United States Navy of the modern era. You see, Alice is a wooden sailing ship, although she also has a diesel engine for emergency use. The idea is that she can engage in countermeasures against enemy submarines without making sounds that would reveal her position.

At the moment, Alice is engaged in testing new equipment, requiring the presence of an elderly meteorologist and his young assistant. Unknown to his motley crew, Rate is also supposed to investigate criminal activities aboard her.

All of this fades into insignificance, when lighting strikes Alice at the same time the ship's cook is messing around with a new way to distill illicit booze. (Believe it or not, this plays an important part in the plot.)

Full Speed Backwards

If you've read the title of the novel, it won't come as a big surprise to discover that Alice gets zapped back in time a millennium or so, as well as leaving the warm ocean area near San Diego for colder waters, somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. A battle with a Viking raider ensues, followed by a slightly less violent meeting with a merchant ship. Among the cargo she's carrying is a Spanish Gypsy, enslaved by the Norsemen. She winds up aboard Alice, and serves as the novel's main source of sex appeal. Besides that, she's also clever and a tough cookie, so I'll give the author some credit for that.

Here We Go Again

Skipping over most of the first half of the novel, we reach a point where Rate tries to duplicate the circumstances that led to this situation. This doesn't work out very well, because Alice doesn't return to her home, but instead jumps back another thousand years, and winds up somewhere in the Mediterranean.

After encountering Arab slave traders who temporarily take control of Alice, the time travelers eventually wind up on a rocky island, populated by goats and several naked young women, who are more than willing to supply the crew with plenty of wine and other carnal pleasures. There's an explanation for what seems like a sailor's fantasy, which involves another inadvertent visitor from the future, this time the madame of a brothel/speakeasy in 1920's Chicago.

A lot more happens before we reach the end of the novel, including battles with Roman warships and the misadventures of the only religious fanatic aboard Alice, a male virgin who finds himself in intimate situations with more than one alluring lady.

Worth the Voyage?

Although it's impossible to take the novel's version of time travel seriously, the plot doesn't stop for a second, always keeping the reader's interest. As you may have guessed, there's quite a bit of sexual content, which tends to be more teasing than explicit. There's also a lot of violence, given the constant attacks on Alice by just about every vessel that meets her.

The tone of the book ranges from darkly comic to intensely dramatic, with a bit of satire in the form of the religious fanatic. This character may raise some eyebrows among readers of faith, although his version of Christianity is clearly of the extremist variety. The ending raises the possibility of a sequel, but whether such a book will ever appear is up to the tides of time.

Three stars.

A Little Mental Illness for the New Year (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick)


by Jason Sacks

This is the fourth Philip K. Dick novel released in the last several months, and I’ve read them all. Clearly science fiction’s most surrealistic writer is in the midst of an unusually fecund period, one in which his astounding fiction seems channeled directly from the writer’s brain onto the printed page. And while that unfiltered creativity makes for fascinating reading, Dick’s latest fiction shows him to be wrestling with some intense personal issues, including dislocation and mental health concerns.

Those recent works (The Penultimate Truth, The Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time-Slip and his most recently published novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich) share a lot in common with each other. All three books demonstrate a mind in constant motion, continually distracted and probing, with ideas seeming to spark from every page in a cascade which starts out as thrilling, becomes tiring, and ultimately proves to be overwhelming. Ideas, interesting and odd, bonkers and basic, philosophical and dully grounded, seem to flow from Mr. Dick as freely as the sweat which constantly seems to be on the foreheads of each and every one of his neurotic protagonists.

Eldrich starts from a template similar to his Dick’s other novels. Most Dick novels feature a neurotic protagonist, and this book is no exception. This time he is named Barney Mayerson and he is a wealthy man in a low-numbered conapt building (a major sign of status) with a great job as the New York Pre-Fash consultant at influential company P.P. Layouts. But Mayerson has problems – oh nellie does he have problems. As the book begins, the businessman wakes up with a hangover, a strange woman in his bed and, most frightening of all, a draft notice which will cause the UN to send him to Mars. That sounds like the beginning of a film noir, but as we follow Mayerson, he slips into a different sort of darkness than the doomed protagonists of our darkest films.

To help him escape the draft, Barney has purchased a robot named Dr. Smile, intended to help Mayerson avoid the draft by making him even more neurotic than he seems. But even the robot isn’t perfect; it calls him by the wrong name and doesn’t seem to pay close attention to Barney, adding to the seemingly endless list of degrading events Barney experiences in the first few pages — and far from the final humiliation he experiences in the book.

Like so many lead characters in recent Dick novels – poor doomed Norbert Steiner in Time-Slip and lovelorn, oblivious Chuck Rittersdorf in Alphane pop immediately to mind – Barney Mayerson is a confused man. He is neurotic, uncertain, perhaps mentally ill. He has tremendous problems relating to the women most important to him, especially his wife. He even gives up all hope of avoiding the draft and instead volunteers to go to Mars, simply to get away from a source of tangled neurotic pain. It is tough to spend time with Steiner, Rittersdorf or Mayerson, because they are so uncertain of themselves despite their apparent success. These are so conscious of their own flaws, their own massive insecurities, that we can understand why these feel rejected by the worlds which surround them. As readers, we want to reject them as well, want to follow characters with some measure of self-assurance, like Trade Minister Tagomi in Dick’s 1963 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle.

Taken one at a time, each of the recent Dick books provide an intriguing portrait of men whose own demons sabotage their own best aspirations. Seen together as a collection of books, it’s hard not to see some authorial autobiography flowing through these characters. After all, if Mr. Dick is writing his books so quickly, how can he avoid writing himself into his stories?

If we take that assertion as fact as part of my essay (and I would be delighted to hear counterarguments in the letters page), then Palmer Eldrich is the most frightening of all Dick’s novels so far. Because at its heart, and in the great thrust of its cataclysmic conclusion, is a break with peaceful reality that actually makes me worry about the author.

Without going too deep into the reasons why – part of the joy of this fascinating book lies in the ways Dick explores his shambolic but complex plot – Barney ends up on Mars and discovers that nearly all the Martian colonists are miserable and drug-addled. Their experience on Mars is so wretched and soul-crushing that only psychedelic drugs, shared among groups of colonists, provide a brief break from their mind-numbing lives.

Barney is responsible for helping a new drug to come to Mars, cleverly called Chew-Z, which promises better highs and more transcendent experiences. But as readers soon discover, the new drug also creates a schizophrenic experience, one in which the terrifying Palmer Eldrich comes to dominate Martian society – and much more – in a way that terrifies everyone who considers it. Eldrich is a terrifying creature, with steel teeth, a damaged arm, and an approach to the world which builds misery.

In truth, Barney Mayerson has unleashed a demon, and it’s not spoiling much in this book to say that by the end you will feel the same fear Barney and the rest of society begin to feel.

Eldrich, thus, is a deeply unsettling book, and fits Dick’s recent output in a way which makes me feel concerned for the author. It is the third out of the four recent novels to deal explicitly with mental illness (in fact, mental illness provides the central storyline of Alphane and a key secondary storyline in Martian Time-Slip). It’s intriguing that Dick sees in science fiction the opportunity to put the readers in the mindset of a man experiencing a schizophrenic break, a psychotic episode, or battling debilitating depression, but the continual presence of such ideas suggests a man whose life is also battling similar breaks.

If Mr. Dick is obsessed with mental illness, does he see that illness in himself when he looks in the mirror? And if we readers purchase Mr. Dick’s books in which mental illness takes a central role, are we aiding his therapy or abetting his continual wallowing?

Palmer Eldrich is not an easy book to read, not once it gets going and we start to realize the depths of Meyerson’s, and Dick’s problems. The plot ambles and wanders and is dense with philosophy and allusion. For a 200-page book, this is no quick Tarzan or Conan yarn. Instead, it is a deeply upsetting, deeply complex look into the disturbed psychology of both its lead character and its author. After consuming so many Dick novels all in succession, I’m craving something much lighter. Neuroses are exhausting.

4 stars




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Book, Magazine, Serial

[December 23, 1964] Odds and Ends (January 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

A Hodgepodge of Happenings

It's the season for clearing out all that stuff you've got piling up in the closet, ready to greet the new year with a fresh start. With that in mind, and given the fact that no one news item dominated the headlines this month, allow me to throw out a few observations about what's been going on lately.

Italy joined the Space Age this month, with the launching of that nation's first satellite, as recently discussed in great detail by our own Kaye Dee.  Named the San Marco, the spacecraft rode on top of an American Scout rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Although this is primarily just a test flight, the satellite does carry a couple of instruments designed to study the ionosphere.


The San Marco is the striped, spherical object, shown here being loaded into the Scout rocket. It seems fitting that an object intended to soar into the heavens is named after a saint.

After months of surprisingly passionate debate over its design, a new flag will now symbolize the nation of Canada. Some English-speaking Canadians wanted to retain the Union Jack found in the old, unofficial flag, while many French-speaking Canadians objected. The current flag looks like a good compromise.


The old design, known as the Red Ensign. Besides everything else, it just looks messy.


The new design, which seems much more aesthetically pleasing to me.

The late Ian Fleming's master spy continues to draw moviegoers to the box office like flies to honey, as his latest cinematic adventure arrived in the USA this month.


I think that woman in the middle has been sunbathing too long.

A Miscellany of Music

Unlike some months earlier this year, December offered no overwhelmingly popular song at the top of the American charts. There were no less than four hits that reached Number One this month, and maybe we'll even hear from a fifth contender before 1965 arrives.

Spilling over from late November was Leader of the Pack by the girl group the Shangri-Las. I can't decide if this tragic tale of a romance ended by a fatal motorcycle accident is an example of a Teenage Death Song, or a tongue-in-cheek spoof of that macabre little genre.


These smiling ladies aren't saying one way or the other.

It would be hard to find a starker contrast with that bit of feminine adolescent angst than Lorne Greene's rendition of the cowboy saga Ringo. Obviously, the record is cashing in on the popularity of his hit television series Bonanza. Greene doesn't really sing so much as narrate this tale of the final confrontation between an outlaw and a lawman.


I wonder how many young people think this song is about the drummer for the Beatles.

It wasn't much later that Greene was outgunned by crooner Bobby Vinton, returning to the top of the charts with the tearjerking ballad Mr. Lonely.


The singer kindly provides the address of his official fan club right on the record sleeve.

Not to be outdone, the Supremes gave us their third smash Motown hit with the catchy little number Come See About Me.


And they're classy dressers, too.

A Smorgasbord of Stories

In a similarly generous fashion, the latest issue of Fantastic supplies a wide variety of short stories, as well as the first half of a novel.


Cover art by Emsh

The Girl in the Gem, by John Jakes


Interior illustrations also by Emsh

Here's another swashbuckling adventure of the mighty barbarian Brak, whom we've met many times before.

In unheroic fashion, our protagonist is passed out drunk in a seaside inn. A bunch of dwarfs rush in, armed with knives, but deliberately avoid hurting him. It's all part of a plot to frame him for robbery. You see, an earthquake tumbled the old palace into the ocean. Another one raised it up again. Meanwhile, the local king is dying. His daughter blackmails Brak with the threat of death for thievery if he doesn't undertake the dangerous task of rescuing her sister, who was imprisoned in a gigantic jewel, from the recently revealed palace. Of course, this means he has to defeat a hideous creature.


The mandatory monster

The author writes vividly and definitely keeps the action moving. This is the shortest tale of Brak yet, and it's got plenty of plot for its length. The characters are standard for the sword-and-sorcery genre, and a few incidents seem arbitrary. (Why are the royal servants who invade the inn all dwarfs?) Despite a lack of originality in some aspects, it's worth reading.

Three stars.

Journal of a Leisured Man, by Bryce Walton


Illustration by George Schelling

In a technologically advanced future, an accountant loses his job to a computer. Like many other people, he is forced to remain unemployed for the rest of his life. To add to his troubles, his faithless wife leaves him for another man.

The company that formerly employed the fellow makes automatons, in the form of animals, children, and adults. We witness some gruesome ways customers use these simulacra. In what seems to be at first an act of kindness, an employee of the company offers the man a synthetic duplicate of his wife, to do with as he pleases. You may predict the twist ending.

Although there are few surprises, the story has a certain grim power. It's not always pleasant to read, but is likely to remain in the memory.

Three stars.

On the River, by Robert F. Young

A man finds himself on a raft, floating down a river by day, staying at deserted inns on shore by night. He meets a woman in the same situation, and romance blooms. It soon becomes obvious that both of them attempted suicide, and that the river leads to death.

(The idea of an afterlife on a world dominated by a river also appears in the most recent issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Given the delays in the publishing industry between writing a story and seeing it in print, this must be nothing more than a coincidence.)

I'm a sucker for this author's bittersweet love stories, so I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The conclusion may be obvious, but any other ending would have been inappropriate for a writer who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Four stars.

The Repairmen of Cyclops (Part One of Two), by John Brunner


Illustrations by George Schelling

A little research reveals that this novel is set in the same universe as two previous works, each published as one-half of an Ace Double. The series as a whole deals with what are known as Zarathustra Refugee Planets. Many centuries ago, the star which the colony planet Zarathustra orbited went nova. The inhabitants, fleeing the disaster, wound up populating a large number of planets. The Galactic Corps watches over these worlds, making sure that outsiders don't interfere with their development, while refraining from becoming overly involved themselves.


Cover art by Emsh


Also by Emsh

In the style of Philip K. Dick, the author uses many different viewpoint characters, so it takes a while before the main thrust of the plot becomes clear. The story mostly takes place on Cyclops, a relatively poor planet, although there is a wealthy upper class. An agent of the Galactic Corps, who was, I believe, the protagonist of Secret Agent of Terra, reviewed by our own Rosemary Benton some time ago, arrives after twenty years of service. Her reward for two decades of unpleasant, thankless work is considerable. She will have her youth restored, and her life extended for two centuries.

The extremely advanced medical technology of the Galactic Corps is one reason why the ruler of the planet resents them. (Although the government of Cyclops is, in theory, representative, she wields the real power.) There is also the fact that many natives of Cyclops were killed by the inhabitants of another world when they tried to make slaves of them. (I think these events also appeared in Secret Agent of Terra. Castaways' World does not seem to be as closely related to this new novel.)

The ruler's lover is an ex-spaceman who lost a leg in an accident. Although it was replaced, he is no longer allowed to serve on spaceships. While hunting the gigantic shark-like creatures who live in the oceans of Cyclops, he loses the same leg. After a brief stay in the local Galactic Corps hospital, he is whisked back to the care of his lover and her doctor. This creates a mystery for the Galactic Corps; how was the man's leg replaced, given the limited medical technology of Cyclops, and how do they expect to do it again? The author soon reveals the answer in scenes that take place on another world, where a sinister conspiracy takes advantage of unsuspecting victims.

Although a bit melodramatic in parts, this is an intriguing novel, full of richly defined characters, many of whom I have not even mentioned.


I haven't talked about these people.


I also haven't brought up these folks.

The author balances scenes of violent action with necessary exposition. It's interesting to note that the characters who are, I assume, the main protagonist and the primary antagonist are both powerful women. The complex background is fully developed, without becoming overwhelming.

Four stars.

Make Mine Trees, by David R. Bunch

The magazine's most controversial writer returns with another dark and strange story. This one is more comprehensible than most, and the title definitely helps you understand what's going on. The narrator, who is clearly as mad as a hatter, used some kind of formula to change his wife and her lover into trees. Now his young son is undergoing the same transformation. Typical for the author, the plot is much less important than the eerie mood and the eccentric style.

Three stars.

Multiple Choice, by John Douglas

A trio of young men, who have undergone a series of tests to become part of the elite, wait in a room for their final examination. They hear gunshots and screams from outside. Each one has a different theory about what's happening. Is it a hoax, designed to test their nerves? Are those who fail the last exam shot to death? Is it even possible that everyone is killed? The story's ending is inconclusive, which may be the point. Many readers will find the lack of a full resolution frustrating.

Two stars.

Something For Everyone?

Although the overall mood of the issue is on the dark side, there are all kinds of imaginative fiction to be found between its covers. From a heroic fantasy set in a distant past that never existed, to an adventure in deep space in the far future, and from a romantic parable of love and death, to a cynical portrait of tomorrow's dystopian society, there is enough variety to please just about every reader of speculative literature. You won't enjoy every story, but I don't think you'll dislike all of them. (If you do, turn to Robert Silverberg's book review column for more recommendations.)


He mostly reviews anthologies and collections in this particular column, so you've got lots to choose from.

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 19, 1964] December Galactoscope #2

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[The second Galactoscope for this month features a pair of new novels we felt we could not in good conscience leave unreviewed, particularly the latter. Enjoy this last review of books before the New Year!


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Day the Machines Stopped, by Christopher Anvil


Cover art by Ralph Brillhart

The Anvil Chorus

Christopher Anvil is the pseudonym of Harry C. Crosby, who published a couple of stories under his real name in the early 1950's. After remaining silent for a few years, he came back with a bang in the late 1950's, and has since given readers about fifty tales under his new name. His work most often appears in Astounding/Analog.

A typical Anvil yarn is a lightly comic tale about clever humans defeating technologically advanced but naive aliens. Perhaps his best-known story is Pandora's Planet (Astounding, September 1956), the first of a series of humorous accounts of the misadventures of lion-like aliens trying to deal with the chaos caused by those unpredictable humans.


Cover art by Frank Kelley Freas

The Day the Machines Stopped is his first novel. (At only 120 pages of text, I'm guessing it's well under 40,000 words, so it might be considered a long novella.) With its near-future setting, lack of space travel or aliens, and almost entirely serious tone, it's quite different from his usual creations.

The Eternal Triangle in the Science Lab

The first page of the book sets up a romantic conflict. Brian Philips, our protagonist, is a chemist for a research corporation. Carl Jackson is an electronics expert for the same company. They are both interested in Anne Cermak, who works with Brian. Carl is bigger, richer, and more used to getting his own way than his rival. Brian is a nicer guy, of course, and has the decency to admit that it's up to Anne to choose which of the two men, if either, she prefers.

Before we get too deep into this soap opera plot, we get our reminder that this is a science fiction novel. A news report on the radio reveals that a Russian scientist has defected to the West. He claims that an experiment in cryogenics at a Soviet facility in Afghanistan threatens civilization. It isn't very long before he proves to be right.

Who Turned Out the Lights?

Somehow or other, the experiment causes electricity to fail. Fully charged batteries provide no power. Automobiles stop dead in their tracks. (Diesel trucks still operate, but only when their electric starters are replaced by another kind of technology.) Working together despite their rivalry, Brian and Carl explore the surrounding area on bicycles. Things are the same all over, it seems.

The president of the research corporation, James Cardan, sees bad times coming. He manages to assemble firearms, provisions, and other supplies. His plan is to take his employees and their families, in a caravan of diesel trucks, to the northwest part of the United States, which he assumes will be safer than more populated areas.

Two Against Chaos

Without giving too much away, let's just say that circumstances cause Brian and Anne's father to miss the caravan. They set out on their own on bicycles, hoping to catch up to the others. (Due to frequent roadblocks caused by stalled cars, this isn't too unlikely. The diesel trucks are also slowed down by frequent stops for repairs.)

As expected, the breakdown in technology leads to bands of armed bandits, desperate for survival, battling over food. After many dangerous encounters, the pair of two-wheeled adventurers join Cardan's group.

Duking it Out

The caravan runs into a large, heavily armed, well-organized army, under the command of a man wearing a silver crown. He proclaims that the surrounding countryside, now known as the Districts United, is under his protection. He will punish those guilty of killing, arson, robbery, and bushwacking. (These specific crimes are listed under the acronym karb.) He calls himself the Districts United Karb Eliminator, or Duke. (This bit of satiric wordplay is one of the few traces of wit in the novel.)

Obviously, he's a megalomaniac, but he's a smart and effective one. Many survivors of the disaster are willing to place themselves under his dictatorship, given the alternative of fighting violent criminals. Brian, having few other choices, winds up working for the Duke, rebuilding steam engines, biding his time until he can escape with the rest of Cardan's group.

Worth Reading by Candlelight?

Anvil's style is plain and straightforward, so the book is very readable. His depiction of what would happen if electric power vanished is convincing, although the scientific explanation for why this happens is vague. The romantic subplot is less believable. The hero sometimes comes across as a ninny, given his willingness to trust someone who has already betrayed him. The ending comes as something of a deus ex machina. Overall, the novel is worth spending four dimes and two hours reading, but it's unlikely to become a classic.

Three stars.

By Rosemary Benton

The Other Human Race by H. Beam Piper

I could not be more happy with science fiction nowadays. On television we have shows like The Twilight Zone that are stretching the boundaries of story telling, and exploring new topics in a science fiction setting. In literature we have authors like H. Beam Piper who integrate a veritable cornucopia of academic fields into their stories about human exploration.

This is not the cut and dry kind of science fiction where it's us or them in a race for survival. Piper's books approach space exploration with a touching level of humanity and compassion. Alien and human language, diet, population demographics, social structures, and more are all examined and dissected by Piper's characters. His burgeoning "Little Fuzzy" series, following the success of his 1962 novel "Little Fuzzy", is a brilliant example of the ability Piper has to consider the humongous ramifications and complications of humanity contacting alien civilizations.

Fuzzies, Fuzzies Everywhere

"The Other Human Race" picks up mere weeks after the explosive conclusion "Little Fuzzy". Having been granted the universal recognition of "sapient", the fuzzies' home world of Zarathustra has been granted independence from the Chartered Zarathustrian Company. Word of the sensational trial has begun spreading like wildfire throughout human colonized space. But the fuzzies' new found notoriety has brought both altruistic and enterprising humans to Zarathustra.

On one side are the people who want to integrate the fuzzies into the wider galactic civilization while keeping their dignity and safety  in mind. This includes linguists, psychologists, nutritionists and other "Friends of the Fuzzies" who see value in the fuzzies as people, not animals. In contrast are those who would exploit the naive little people, as well as those who want to fill the power vacuum left by the CZC. Worst of all is the pressing concern about the kidnapping and enslaving of fuzzies to sell as pets in an illegal off-planet black market.

Things Just Got More Complicated

Piper balances that marvelous rush of scientific discovery in "Little Fuzzy" with a a weighty maturity in "The Other Human Race". While our protagonists take immense satisfaction with their continued study of the fuzzies, they bear a weighty responsibility. It inevitably comes down to them to make sure that the fuzzies’ quality of life is not sacrificed in humanity's drive to conserve the species.

Now that fuzzies have been made known to the universe, they face predators more devious and cunning than the native species of the planet. How can the Commission of Native Affairs go forward with plans to have humans adopt fuzzies and still protect them once a fuzzy is situated with a new human family?

The issue of the fuzzies' high infant mortality rate is also complicating things. To study why this is happening the group stationed on Zarathustra have to keep a miscarried fuzzy for study, despite the distress this causes the local fuzzy population. Their limited diet and off-balanced internal biology are also a tricky problem to study since the team can't just cut into a fuzzy and study its internal organs. Nor can they subject a fuzzy to a battery of tests to see how it reacts under certain stressors.

That same maturation is present in the character arcs of the cast. Those who were opposed to the recognition of the fuzzies as sapient in the first book are not permanently cast as evil. Instead, they change their attitudes towards the fuzzies with exposure to the little aliens. For instance, Victor Grego very early on in "The Other Human Race" comes across a fuzzy who has been scrounging around in his company's headquarters. After spending time with a member of the species that cost him access to the valuable resources on Zarathustra, Victor comes to realize that fuzzies are actually wonderful companions.

Our protagonists, including Jack Holloway and Ruth van Riebeek, must go through their own paradigm shift regarding those who were once their enemies. The grace with which some of these characters accept their former enemies as allies is laudable. Those employees of the now-charterless Zarathustra Company were acting in the interest of protecting their investments and livelihoods. But if they are willing to adapt and redeem themselves then, CZC or not, they should be congratulated and welcomed for their change of heart.

A Fragile New Sentience

H. Beam Piper's writing is altogether very touching. It's optimistic, but realistic in its acceptance that once something has been put in motion it will become infinitely more complicated. At the same time he seems to adhere to an inevitable sense of justice in his written worlds. Like a progressive modern scientist, Piper strongly advocates for the naturally given right people have to happiness and safety. All of his characters are entitled to it, and those who abuse or try to take away that right from others always get their just deserts.

Piper's writing continues to impress, and seems to be gaining more and more depth with each new novel. His "Little Fuzzy" series in particular has a lot of promise, and I hope to see more installations in the near future.

Five stars for Piper's well written sequel and masterfully built world.

[We are sad to have learned of H. Beam Piper's tragic passing just a few weeks ago. The genre has lost one of its brightest lights.]

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963) contains some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age. And it makes a great present! A gift to friends, yourself…and to the Journey!]

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 21, 1964] Bridging the Gap (December 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I'll Cross That Bridge When I Come To It

Citizens of the Big Apple now have a new way to travel between Staten Island and Brooklyn, with the official opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The structure is named for the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, said to be the first European to sail into the Hudson River, way back in 1524. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world, spanning a little over four-fifths of a mile.


Note to proofreader: The name of the bridge has one z, the name of the man has two. Go figure.

More than five thousand people attended the opening ceremony on November 21st, including New York City Mayor Robert Ferdinand Wagner II and New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Even President Johnson supplied a congratulatory speech.


The official motorcade crossing the bridge after the gold ribbon was cut. I don't think they had to pay the fifty cents that you or I would have to pay to get across.

If you'll allow me to stretch a metaphor to the breaking point, popular music can serve as a bridge between people of differing backgrounds, something we Americans could use during these times of racial strife. Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the fact that the Motown hit Baby Love, by the trio known as the Supremes, has been at the top of the US charts all month, and shows no sign of going away any time soon.


That makes the Supremes the first Motown act to reach Number One twice. Don't believe me? Ask any girl, or boy for that matter, who listens to Top 40 radio.

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic features a lead novella about crossing the immense gap between the stars.

Why? To Get To The Other Side


Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham.

The Unteleported Man, by Philip K. Dick


All interior illustrations in this issue by George Schelling.

Rachmael ben Applebaum is a man with some serious problems. His father recently died, apparently by suicide. (There are hints that this may not be the case, but the question is never resolved.) Rachmael inherited the family business, which happens to involve faster-than-light starships. Not much faster, however; it still takes many years to reach their destinations.

Applebaum Enterprises is in ruins, because the rival company Trails of Hoffman has control over teleportation technology that reduces the travel time to minutes. In this future overpopulated world, millions of people have already paid a small fee to be zapped to Whale's Mouth, a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. The teleportation machine only works one way, so nobody has ever returned. The sole evidence for what things are like on Whale's Mouth comes via broadcasts from the planet. They make the place sound like a paradise compared to Earth.


Two minor characters in the story, considering a long-distance move.

Trails of Hoffman deliberately became a major stockholder in Applebaum Enterprises, so Rachmael now owes them a huge debt. They also have the legal right to ownership of the only starship he still possesses. Desperate to find out what's really happening on Whale's Mouth, he engages the services of Listening Instructional Educational Services, derisively known as Lies, Incorporated. Despite the name, the organization is actually interested in the truth. They serve as a private espionage agency for their clients.

What follows is a complex tale of plots and counter-plots, involving not only the groups I've noted above, but the United Nations, which is now a powerful world government, dominated by a reunited Germany. After many adventures that could have come out of a very strange, futuristic James Bond novel, Rachmael manages to set out alone on his starship, willing to spend eighteen years getting to Whale's Mouth and another eighteen years on a return flight to Earth. Meanwhile, Trails of Hoffman, Lies Incorporated, and the UN have their own plans, not to mention the folks on Whale's Mouth.

As usual for this author, there's a complicated background, plenty of twists in the plot, and multiple viewpoint characters. Also typical is the fact that things are not always as they seem. It's obvious from the start that Whale's Mouth isn't the Utopia it claims to be, but it's also not quite what Rachmael fears it might be. One of the organizations mentioned above seems to be an enemy, but turns out to be an ally. Even the title of the story is misleading.

As I've hinted, the story has the flavor of spy fiction, mixed with a lot of science fiction concepts. Although the mood is serious, even grim, there's a touch of satire and absurdity. (One character fears losing his job to a trained pigeon.) The plot always held my interest, and the characters are intriguing. (Some meet with sudden, unpleasant ends, so don't get too attached to them.)


See what I mean?

My one quibble is that the novella stops in an open-ended fashion. Perhaps the author intends to expand it into a novel.

Four stars.

I Am Bonaro, by John Starr Niendorff

Here's an odd little story by an author completely unknown to me. A disheveled old man stumbles out of a boxcar, unable to speak, wearing a sign around his neck, bearing the words in the title. He wanders around, holding out a sponge to everyone he meets. Flashback sequences reveal his miserable childhood, when he developed the power to change himself into anything in order to escape his tormentors. The end explains his current condition, and the reason for the sponge. The whole thing is weird enough to be worth a look.

Three stars.

IT, Out of Darkest Jungle, by Gordon R. Dickson

Written in the form of a screenplay, this is a spoof of bad science fiction monster movies. You've got the young, handsome scientist, the beautiful assistant who loves him, the older scientist who makes an amazing discovery, and the monster. It's all very silly, and almost too close to what it's making fun of. (It makes me feel like I saw this thing on Shock Theater.) Readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland may get a kick out of it.

Two stars.

They're Playing Our Song, by Harry Harrison

In this very short story, a quartet of long-haired rock 'n' roll musicians, pursued by screaming teenage girls, turn out to be something other than ordinary superstars. This broad parody of the Beatles has an ending you'll see coming a mile away.

One star.

The Fanatic, by Arthur Porges


As the blurb suggests, sensitive readers may wish to skip this story.

The title character believes that alien invaders take the form of animals. He thinks he can detect them, because their behavior is slightly different from that of ordinary animals. He uses very disturbing methods in his quest to discover the truth. The conclusion is predictable.

I have to confess that there's a certain horrifying effectiveness to the narrative, but it's not one that most readers will enjoy.

Two stars.

Merry Christmas From Outer Space, by Christopher Anvil

Told through letters and interstellar messages, this is a comedy about Earthlings and aliens. Two rival extraterrestrial forces are hidden on Earth. One places a mind-disrupting device near the other's location. It turns out that the thing was pointed the wrong way, leading to a series of confused messages between a writer and a science fiction magazine.


I guess this is the machine that causes all the trouble.

You could easily take out the stuff about the aliens, and wind up with a mundane farce about miscommunication. Unless you find back-and-forth exchanges about payment and cancelled checks to be funny, I doubt you'll be amused.


Could this be the author having his story accepted by the editor?

One star.

Worth Paying The Toll?


OK, so this isn't the right bridge. Sue me.

By coincidence, a copy of the magazine costs just as much as crossing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (I doubt toll collectors will accept it instead of cash.) Making an analogy between the two, I'd say that the structure starts off strong enough, but the quality of the architecture drops off rapidly after that, ending with a big splash into a metaphorical ocean of poor-to-mediocre stories.

Of course, things could be worse, if you happened to be crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on November 7th of 1940.


The hopeful beginning.


The tragic end.

Let's just be thankful that reading a bad story isn't as dangerous as crossing a poorly designed bridge.

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