I really enjoy the broadness of Galaxy's 196-page format. It allows for novellas and novelets, which is a story size I've come to prefer. F&SF has lots of stories per issue, too, but they tend to be very short. Astounding likes serials, which can be fine if they're good, but dreary if they're not. I mentioned last time that this month's issue was looking to be a star all through. Let's see if that prediction held true.
All pictures by Dick Francis
Wilson Tucker's King of the Planet certainly did not disappoint. You may remember that Tucker wrote the excellent Galaxy novel, The City in the Sea. His writing skills are on full display in the instant story, about a old old man who has outlasted all of his comrades. and now lives a solitary existence in a mausoleum, the one remaining survivor of a colony of humans. Every so often, he is visited by other humans from faraway stars. They question him, conduct surveys, and then they leave, puzzled at the self-styled king's longevity and solitude. King is the story of one such visit. There is an interesting, religious twist at the end; what is your take? Let me know, would you?
Silence, by Englishman John Brunner, is also fine reading. Abdul Hesketh has been the captive of the inhuman Charnogs, with whom humanity has been at war with for decades, for 28 years. When he is at last rescued, his mind has been thoroughly damaged by the ordeal, and his treatment at the hands of his saviors, which amounts to near-torture as they attempt to pry useful intelligence from him, is anything but therapeutic. A little let down by the ending, but a fascinating psychological exploration.
Sadly, the last two stories are not up to the standard set by the rest of the magazine. Elizabeth Mann Borgese, polymath daughter of the famed German philosopher, Thoman Mann, has never written anything I really liked, and True Self is no exception. It is a story of plastic surgery and feminine beautification taken to an absurd level. A worthy topic of satire, but not a very engaging piece.
Lastly, "Charles Satterfield" (co-editor Fred Pohl, presumably working for peanuts) has a rather mediocre novelette (Way Up Younder) set on a future colony world with a decidedly Ante-bellum Southern culture with robots standing in for Black slaves. It’s not bad; it just sort of lies there.
Where does that leave us with the star tally?
Sadly, the last two stories dropped the issue from 4 to 3.5 stars. A pity, really. What’s better? A tight, good issue, or a less-good longer issue?
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Of course you have, though he also writes under "William F. Jenkins," which happens to be his real name. Leinster/Jenkins is one of the few authors with a shot at the title of "Dean of Science Fiction." He's one of the old guard–a veteran of World War One, the pulp era, Campbell's Golden Age of Astounding, and he's still going strong. He won the Hugo in 1956 for his Exploration Team (which I haven't yet read). Leinster has an interesting style, unadorned and occasionally repetitive, that I think lends itself well to being read by adults and kids.
Interestingly, I am not as acquainted with Leinster as I feel I should be. Aside from the juvenile, Space Tug (which I mentioned in an earlier article), I've only read some of his short stories. Sam, this is you, for instance, came out in Galaxy a few years ago, and it was good.
My favorites have been the short two stories, thus far, in the "Med Series," (there is also at least one novel, which I should read soon.) Their protagonist, Calhoun, is a "med man." That is, he's a doctor who flies in his one-person ship between planets like a country doctor visiting farms, bringing the latest cures and techniques. Normally, his trips are routine, but we don't get to read those stories.
Calhoun does have a companion–the cat/monkey hybrid named "Murgatroyd." Not only is the creature incredibly cute, but it has the innate ability to develop antibodies to virtually any disease. It is thus invaluable for creating vaccine sera.
I like any story where the hero is distinguished by his or her healing rather than combat prowess. Moreover, Calhoun has to use his brain, which is more fun and interesting than wielding a gun. Both of the stories came out in Astounding in the last couple of years (Ribbon in the Sky, June 1957; The Grandfathers' War, October 1957), and I imagine back issues would not be hard to obtain.
What I also like about this series is the universe. Leinster's future posits a superluminary drive that goes some 30 times the speed of light. This is unquestionably an impressive speed, but though it facilitates colonization of other planets, it is too slow to efficiently maintain a galactic empire. Instead, each planet is left to its own devices, and there are a few loose galactic organizations whose purpose is to facilitate the spread of medicine (the Med Corps) and to mediate interplanetary disputes.
This Ambassadorial Corps is featured in Leinster's new serialized novel, The Pirates of Ersatz ("A ha! He's finally getting to his point!" I hear you say.) The February 1959 issue of Astounding has been sitting on my to-read pile for some time, and I've finally gotten to it. Of course, only the first of three parts has come out, and I don't want to spoil it issue-by-issue. Suffice it to say, it looks promising. It does not feature Calhoun, but rather an enterprising inventor, who suffers for his ingenuity. In tone and structure, it feels a bit like Heinlein's recent Astounding serial, Citizen of the Galaxy. This is not a bad thing.
So stay tuned! I won't have a review of Leinster's novel for another two months, but the other stories in the magazine (blessedly, I don't think there's an Anderson or Garrett among them) will be discussed quite soon.
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Regular readers of this column know that I am unreserved in my praise of Robert Sheckley. Since bursting on the scene early this decade, he and his alter-ego, Finn O'Donnovan, have graced the pages of Astounding and Galaxy and probably more magazines. If you haven't read his three short-story anthologies, you need to plunk down the $1.05 and expand your library.
I'm not quite so enthusiastic about Sheckley's first novel, serialized in Galaxy as Timekiller. It's not bad; it just doesn't rise to the standard set by his shorter work.
Timekiller is the story of the bland Thomas Blaine, a junior yacht designer from 1958. He lives a pleasant but uninteresting life as the dogsbody of an East Coast boatwright. Blaine is charming-enough, but he's never really scored with ladies, work or life. On the way home one night, his car swerves out of control causing a fatal collision with an oncoming driver.
Yet Blaine awakens—in 2110! It turns out that some time in-between Blaine's death and rebirth, it is discovered that each person has a soul distinct from his/her body, and about one in ten thousand make it through the death trauma with the soul intact. The soul hovers about in a transition between Here and the Hereafter, occasionally causing unrest on Earth. Hence the stories of ghosts and poltergeists.
Not long after the discovery that one's persona survives death, a company is founded to insure that everyone with enough cash on hand can safely navigate death and journey to the Hereafter. The company is fittingly called “Immortality, Inc.” Unfortunately, the work of this company has played havoc with the world's religions, who are staunchly against Immortality, Inc. This is why they tried to save the soul of a 1958 religious leader, who could serve as a spokesman for the company after his resurrection.
Unfortunately for Immortality, Inc., they got Blaine instead.
I commented in an earlier piece that science fiction authors tend to incorporate only one or two truly revolutionary changes into their stories, either for fear of alienating their audiences or for inability to envision more (or both). Sheckley's future is not that different, technologically, except for the flying cars that we all expect to be driving. Instead, Sheckley focuses on the social and medical implications of resurrection. People sell their bodies in exchange for Hereafter insurance to rich people who want to stay on Earth for another lifetime. Others transplant their souls to other bodies for kicks or more-nefarious purposes. Imperfectly transplanted souls never synchronize properly with their host bodies, which become zombies and eventually decay to uselessness.
In a story about independent souls, the consuming questions to my mind are (1) does a transplant body retain any vestiges of the old soul inhabitant? and (2) what is the Hereafter like? The first is answered pretty well. The second isn't touched upon. I suppose that makes sense, but it is hardly satisfying.
My issue isn't with set-up but rather the execution, which is a bit lacking. Much of this can be attributed to the format. The novel began serialization way back in the October 1958 issue of Galaxy, and it was spread over an unprecedented four installments. As a result, the story reads a lot like four connected novellas. The first primarily deals with Blaine's arrival, in which Blaine narrowly escapes death at the hands of a body peddler. In part two, Blaine is a “hunter,” an assassin hired for an elaborate suicide game in which the quarry expects to die in a blaze of combat. Part three, perhaps the most interesting, reveals a sinister plot against Blaine's life and introduces us to the subterranean zombie community. Part four wraps things up in an exciting escape from the country and finishes off with a good (though not unguessable) twist.
Because of the format, Timekiller feels a bit padded and uncoordinated. I had a similar problem with Heinlein's latest serial, Have Spacesuit Will Travel; Part 2 of that novel was largely filled with an exciting but rather pointless escape attempt that ended in frustration.
The characters in Timekiller aren't terribly exciting either. Most prominent besides Blaine is Marie Thorne, the scientist in charge of Blaine's recovery; she ends up largely a love interest. The rest of the cast is largely forgettable, though I did like Ray Melhill, a fellow target of the aforementioned body peddler, who provides Blaine a lot of assistance despite being dead most of the story. Smith, a zombie, probably has the most interesting story to tell, and his thread runs from beginning to end.
So what's the final verdict? I'm afraid this review makes me sound a bit harsh. Timekiller is thoroughly readable, and the world it portrays does capture the imagination. I could see the novel being improved in editing for book publication, which I understand is forthcoming. As is, however, it is merely competent.
For Bob Sheckley, that's damned faint praise indeed.
3 stars out of 5.
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I'm willing to concede that we (currently) live in a “man's world.” Men make up most of the protagonists and characters in science fiction, and the vast majority of science fiction authors are men. This month's Astounding does not buck this trend–virtually every story has no, or at best a token, female presence. I suppose I should be grateful for this, however, as I would rather have no women in my stories than see them horribly mistreated and poorly portrayed, as I saw happen rather gratuitously in the second half of the magazine.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Poul Anderson's “Bicycle Built for Brew” ended as it started with a fine premise, an interesting if whimsical storyline, and horrible execution. The resourceful engineer of the Mercury Girl managed to escape from the occupied planet by fashioning a ship from a sealed crate and several barrels of beer (providing the reaction mass for propulsion). The national and gender stereotypes were tired by page 2 of the last installment, and they don't get better here. All's well that ends, and I was happy to see this story finish.
Miller's pre-book-review column focused on UFOs, which are still popular. I remember reading in an Asimov or Ley article that the number of UFO sightings climbed sharply in the late '40s coincident with the testing of new jets and sounding rockets. At the same time, the number of reported demonic encounters dropped dramatically. You may draw your own conclusions from this.
“Seller's Market,” by Chris Anvil, is another inconsequential but readable story of the type that has characterized his writing since he started. It depicts a small military force on a harsh planet as it struggles against a nominally superior but fatally flawed foe.
And now, I can put it off no longer. The story that ruined my morning and my impression of Randall Garrett, and by extension, Astounding magazine: “Queen Bee.”
I don't think misogyny can adequately convey the sentiment in this story. “Hatred of women,” may get closer to the mark. The setting of the story was interesting-enough: Four men and three women marooned on a wild planet for life. However, the story begins with the viewpoint character hitting a woman (she was hysterical, of course), and it goes downhill from there.
It is decided, pursuant to codified law (!) that the males and females must breed constantly and switch partners each time such that a colony with a maximum of genetic diversity can be produced. One of the women, the only married one, seems fine with this, much to the consternation of her old-fashioned husband. The other two women resist the idea for some reason. One of them is diagnosed by the resident doctor as a “man-hater,” and the other is a Taming of the Shrew Kate-type character. That's all right–the male characters beat sense into them, quite literally. The man-hater, after being walloped a good one realizes the error of her ways and becomes pregnant shortly thereafter.
But the other hold-out won't budge despite several clouts and a full course of spanking (!!) Eventually, she kills the other two women so that she, as the only woman, can enjoy an indispensable (and perhaps beating-free) status. Given the circumstances, I'm not sure that I find her actions unreasonable. Of course, the men are horrified, and they exact a horrible revenge… er… mete out appropriate justice. They hold a trial and find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
And then they lobotomize her, turning her into a mindless child-bearing factory.
What is so maddening about this story is its contrast with Judith Merril's story in this month's F&SF. The set-up is quite similar, except the women don't have to resort to constant brutality to keep the men-folk in line. One could argue that the arrangement in Merril's story was consensual and thus a whole different matter. This only emphasizes the horror of Garrett's scenario: the women in his story didn't sign up to be mothers of a colony. They certainly never agreed to be dominated and brutalized by their fellow castaways.
Perhaps, if the story had been meant as satire, I could have taken it. But I think Randy Garrett's premises, that men should automatically be in charge, that a woman's duty is to bear children, and violence against women is the best method to keep them in line, must ring natural and true to Mr. Garrett, to Mr. Campbell, and if the readers of Astounding do not subscribe to them, I imagine they do not generally find them egregious.
Well, I did. This is worse than the story that turned me off of Venture ("Eve and the Twenty-Three Adams" by Robert Silverberg; the set-up was similar–in that one, all starships came equipped with a ship's whore, and when the story's ship's whore wouldn't perform, the Captain drugged her up so that she could fulfill her role while unconscious). Garrett's lost me as a fan, and I am sending a copy of this article straight to Mr. Campbell.
Sorry to end this piece on a down note. I will hopefully have cheerier things to discuss next time around. The final score: 4 stars for the first half, 1.5 stars for the second, 2.25 for the whole magazine.
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I usually save Astounding for last among my subscriptions. I have mixed feelings about this magazine. On the one hand, it is physically of the lowest quality compared to its competitors (F&SF being easily the highest). Editor John Campbell, with his ravings about psionics, perpetual motion and Hieronymous machines, as well as his blatant human-chauvinism, is tough to take. But he has a fine stable of authors, and some of the best stories come out of his magazine.
This issue's headliner, Poul Anderson's short novel, “Bicycle Built for Brew,” does not look like it will be among them. It is the first half of a two-parter set some time in the next century in the Asteroid Belt. The setting is interesting, and so is the set-up: a renegade faction of an Irish-colonized nation of asteroids has taken over Grendel, a small asteroid under the sovereignty of the "Anglians," and the crew of the trader, Mercury Girl is stranded until it can find a way out.
Unfortunately, this is one of those “funny” stories, the kind of which Bob Sheckley is a master and Poul Anderson is not. Moreover, Anderson phonetically transcribes the exaggerated accents of his multinational cast of characters, which quickly becomes a slog to read. I had high hopes for Anderson after “Brainwave” (1953), but everything since then has been generally (though not entirely) mediocre to turgid. It's all very male-chauvinistic stuff, too. More so than most contemporary authors.
"Goliath and the Beanstalk," by Chris Anvil is forgettable, like all of Anvil's stuff I've read to date. He and Robert Silverberg are much alike: prolifically generating serviceable, uninspired space-filler.
The next story is by a fellow named Andrew Salmond, a name so unfamiliar to me, that I suspect it is a pseudonym for one of the regular contributors [But it's not! Andrew Salmond is a fan from Glasgow, who served a stint in the RAF during the War (Ed. (12-6-63)]. "Stimulus" is a mildly interesting yarn about Earth being the one planet in the universe made of contra-terrene matter (also known as anti-matter), and the effect this has on spaceflight and humanity's future in general. The gotcha is that the situation was recently imposed upon the Earth–right before our first moon launch, in fact. Can you guess how the Earth figured out what had happened? I (he said smugly) did quite early on.
By the end of the story, humanity is the most powerful race in the galaxy and rather insufferable about it, too. I'm sure this appealed to Editor Campbell, given his taste (editorial requirement?) for stories where humans are better than everyone else.
Gordy Dickson's "Gifts…" is not science fiction at all, and it reads like a screenplay for a short television episode. It is about a man given the opportunity to wish for whatever he wants, and his decision whether or not to use the power. Slight stuff.
Katherine MacLean's “Unhuman Sacrifice” is reason enough to buy this issue. I had not read much of MacLean's stuff before, but I will be on the look-out for her stories from now on. Her tale of a spaceship crew's encounter with an alien species with a singular life cycle, told from the viewpoint of both the humans and the aliens, is fascinating and haunting. I won't spoil it by telling you anything more.
Asimov's new science column continues. This time, it attempts to answer why, in a galaxy filled with billions of suns, Earth has yet to be contacted by alien civilizations. He ultimately concludes that galactic civilizations are likely to form in the center, where stars are densest, and may well avoid the backward edges, where we live. He further opines that we may well have been discovered by vastly superior races (for any race that could find us must be far beyond us, at least technologically) and are being left alone so as not to disturb our development. It's a cute idea, but it is also indistinguishable from our being undiscovered. Until the flying saucers announce themselves outside of the deep Ozarks, we have to assume We Really Are Alone.
P. Schuyler Miller's book review column remains the most comprehensive available. His comparing and contrasting of Bradbury with Sheckley, Matheson and Beaumont is interesting and arch. The rest is good, too.
The issue wraps up, as always, with Campbell's letter column, Brass Tacks. I skipped it, as always. Campbell may fill his magazine with fine stories, but I find the quality of his own opinions (like the quality of Astounding's paper) to be lacking.
New magazines come out on the 26th. Stay tuned!
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