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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 12, 1969] Slick stuff (March 1969 Galaxy science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Bad Kind

For 12 days, 21,000 gallons a day of crude oil spilled into the Pacific ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara.  Only on February 8 was the leaking undersea well finally capped. This debacle, courtesy of the Union Oil Co., has blackened the harbors and beaches of the San Gabriel Valley coastline, killing hundreds of sea birds.  Even Governor Reagan is declaring this mess a disaster, making federal funds available for cleanup.

Newspaper picture of Coast Guard Admiral Chester Bender and Senators Muskie and Cranston inspect the oil slick at Santa Barbara Harbor

Nevertheless, the Governor did not relieve the oil company of its obligation to the government agencies and private citizens harmed by this catastrophe.  It will likely take more than 1000 men three weeks to clean up the mess.

The silver lining is that only about 1% of the local seabird population has been affected, and virtually none of the seals.  Indeed, the damage is only about a quarter of that caused two years ago when the super tanker Torrey Canyon broke up off the coast of Southwest England.

Still, if the best we can say is that this crisis is not as bad as the worst, I think we can do better.

The Good Kind

In refreshing contrast to the environmental incident described above, the latest issue of Galaxy is anything but a tragedy:

cover featuring a bird-like aircraft floating on an ocean, with a man on top. Similar aircraft are flying in the distance.
by Douglas Chaffee illustrating The Weather on Welladay

And Now They Wake (Part 1 of 3), by Keith Laumer

In 1981, just as broadcast power switches on for the first time, an inmate by the name of Grayle makes a daring escape from a New York prison.  He is an enigmatic man, an inmate who looks 35, but who has been incarcerated since before World War 2.  He also possesses an uncanny ability to heal from wounds.

At the same time, another fellow with similar powers stumbles drunk out of a bar, making his way to a steam room where he miraculously heals a profound set of scars and ejects an antique Minie ball from a wound in his back.

These events are coincident with the appearance of a tremendous water spout in the middle of the Atlantic, and interwoven with tales from a thousand years ago of a renegade from the Galactic Fleet named Thor, and his comrade-turned-betrayer, Loki.

Viking era scene where a slave is beset by a haughty noble while others watch. Backdrop is a long ship which has just made shore.
by Jack Gaughan

Who are these two immortals, and why has their story suddenly come to a head?  I don't know…but I'm hooked!

Four stars, so far.

The City That Loves You, by Raymond E. Banks

The Alpha Centauri city of Relax offers everything to its twenty million inhabitants—comfort, company, computerized guidance.  But what happens when a citizen wants to leave?  What if every inducement, soft and hard, is made to keep him there?  Does the fellow really have a choice in the matter?

I read the whole story waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I was not displeased with the result.  In the end, for a place to truly be paradise, there must be a way out.  The socialiast utopias of the world, from Bulgaria to Beit Ha Shita, might take note.

Four stars.

Leviathan, by Lise Braun

An advanced submarine, akin to the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea rescues a primitive fisherman lost at sea in the Atlantic Ocean.  This inadvertently gives rise to a number of familiar legends.

This is an old-fashioned story; it would have been right at home in Imagination in 1954.  I do like the clever, organic way Braun conveys that the action takes place thousands of years in the past, and the reading is pleasant, if not extraordinary.

Three stars.

The Weather on Welladay, by Anne McCaffrey

illustration of a woman in a skin-tight, belted suit, gripping her shoulder. She stands in what looks like a big rock formation. A man in a black, skin-tight suit is behind her, arm oustretched.
by Reese

The sodden, storm-lashed world of Welladay seems too bleak a world for settlement.  However, schools of whales that inhabit it produce a valuable radioactive substance prized for medical applications.  A team of hardy fishermen taps these whales for their lymphic treasure, braving the waves and weather.

But some pirate has been draining the whales dry, decimating the population and threatening the economy and health of the Federation.  Is it one of the four fishers?  The mysterious woman space pilot shot down at the beginning of the tale, who crashes on a lonely archipelago?  Or someone else?

This is definitely one of McCaffrey's better stories, with far more atmosphere (no pun intended) and far less barely suppressed violence and hokey romance.  It goes on a little long, and I find it improbable that this vast planet seems to have exactly six people on it, but I enjoyed it.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Collision Course, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley's piece this month is on asteroids that cross Earth orbit, particularly Icarus, which precipitated the 49th end-of-the-world scare since the birth of Christ.

Interesting and useful, though rather brief.

Three stars.

four-panel image depicting the stages of crater formation, from meteorite impact, to explosion, to resulting crater.

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain, by James Tiptree, Jr.

A sick scientist and his dying love make a multi-stop air flight around the world.  At each landing, he makes sure to expose as many people as possible to what appears to be an aerosol for cold symptoms, and he feeds bread crumbs to migratory birds.  As the story unfolds, told mostly in third-party reports, we learn the scientist was working on a deadly disease, and that he thinks of humanity as a blight on the Earth.

There's no subtext to the story—it's all on the surface—but it's beautifully told and very eerie.  I liked it; my favorite from Mr. Tiptree so far.  Four stars.

The Theory and Practice of Teleportation , by Larry Niven

drawing of various teleport booth configurations: E and F face each other, a man shooting a gun into E and getting hit in the back of the head from F; C is on top of a cliff, A and B are on the ground, and D is on a railroad track

Adapted from a lecture Niven gave at Boskone in front of the MIT Science Fiction Society, this is an interesting look at the effects of teleportation, in all its potential developmental paths, on society.

Four stars.

Greeks Bringing Knee-High Gifts, by Brian W. Aldiss

A darkly humorous story set in the near future, satirizing the world of executives. They all hate each other but are not allowed to express it or complain, so they do things that they can claim are generous as an act of passive aggression.

For instance, one gifts another with a genetically tailored midget Tyrannosaurus…which promptly eats the recipient's leg.  Said giftee then names the dinosaur after the giftor's coquettish wife and turns up at the giftor's funeral with the creature to terrorise people, but in doing so claims it is a lovely tribute.

Rather obtuse and pointless.  I didn't like it.

One star.

(with thanks to Kris for co-writing this review-let).

Godel Numbers, by J. W. Swanson

three men in suits look at an enigmatic black flat cuboid that looks like a bar of dark soap
by Jack Gaughan

200 miles west of Cairo, archaeologists have dug up what they're calling the "Cairo Stone".  It is a black tablet, obviously artificial, clearly advanced, and meticulously carved with a series of scratch marks.  Dated to 3000 B.C., it could not have been made by a contemporary terrestrial civilization.  It's up to three scientists, a melange of linguists and computer engineers, both to crack the code of the tablets and to fend off Soviet agents.

In the end, the tablet serves much the same purpose as the monolith(s) in 2001, jump-starting humanity's progress.  It's an amiable, old-fashioned sort of tale, and so esoteric that it probably would have done well, if not better, in Analog.

Three stars.

Cleaning up

All in all, the latest Galaxy makes for pleasant, if not outstanding, reading.  I would certainly much rather read about Godel numbers, teleportation, immortals, and isotopic pirates than oil slicks any day!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 8, 1969] So Much for That (March 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Last issue, new editor Barry Malzberg declared that “the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition,” and proposed to use Amazing and Fantastic to promote the “rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category.”


by Johnny Bruck

Now, in this March Amazing, Barry is gone.  Sol Cohen, listed as Publisher last issue, is now Editor and Publisher.  Laurence M. Janifer is listed as Associate Editor, and contributes a guest editorial and a movie review.  Ted White, new to the masthead, is listed as Managing Editor.  Most likely he will actually be editing the magazine, having been Assistant and then Associate Editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction until mid-1968.

But as a great philosopher said, you can predict anything but the future.  What we have right now is the last issue of the Malzberg editorship, credited or not, which we know since the new stories are the ones he announced in the last issue. 

So why his sudden departure?  I had a conversation with Barry, and he reported that it had nothing to do with the direction he proposed for the magazine’s fiction or his jaundiced account of the state of the field.  Rather, he bought a cover, which he understood he was authorized to do, and said he would quit if Cohen did not allow him to run it.  Cohen responded, "I don't know anything about stories but I do know about art and I can't run this cover.  [Pause] You're fired."  Barry adds, on reflection, that Cohen was right, and there’s no resentment on his part.

But back to the issue before us.  Overall, it’s business as usual: another tiresome cover by Johnny Bruck, four new short stories (mostly very short) and the conclusion of a new serialized novella, and three reprinted novelets.  There is the usual "Science of Man" article by Leon E. Stover, and the usual book review column, credited as before to William Atheling, Jr., the not-at-all secret pseudonym of James Blish–though the review of The Making of Star Trek is bylined Blish (who is also the author of several Star Trek paperbacks).  Janifer’s above-mentioned movie review is about Hot Millions, a scientific heist film in which Peter Ustinov, as an embezzler, goes up against a giant computer.  (Before long, I am sure, there will need to be a name for such a villain.  Computer . . . hijacker?  Nah, too cumbersome.)

We All Died at Breakaway Station (Part 2 of 2), by Richard C. Meredith

Richard Meredith’s two-part serial novella, We All Died at Breakaway Station, concludes here.  It may well be the most downbeat space opera ever published.  Earth is at war with the Jillies.  Protagonist Captain Absolom [sic] Bracer has been killed in battle and resurrected, and is now hideously disabled and disfigured and patched up with mechanical parts, since there are no replacements to allow him to return to Earth for more seemly regeneration.  Also he is tormented by phantom pain from the missing parts, as well as the psychological impact of his mutilated condition.  His fellow officers are all in similar shape. 


by Dan Adkins

Bracer is charged with escorting a hospital ship full of other casualties back to Earth for better treatment.  But he learns that the relief ships from Earth to Breakaway, a barren planet where the essential faster-than-light communications link to Earth is located, are days away from arriving.  He decides to delay departure so he and his subordinates will be around to protect Breakaway from the expected Jillie attack.  This set-up of course leads to a lot of slam-bang action, with continuing death, destruction, and angst (though a note of glee does creep in here and there), and then the probably obligatory tragic but uplifting ending. 

The writing is amateurish in places but quite readable even as one is noting that Meredith is going on much too long about things that don’t advance the narrative, playing silly games with chapter divisions (there are 36 of these in 79 pages, one of which is four lines long), and writing dialogue some of which seems lifted from World War II B-movies.  But there’s actually a story here, the author is clearly having a good time, and it’s infectious as long as you manage your expectations.  Three stars.

The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs, by Thomas M. Disch


by Bruce Jones

Thomas M. Disch, whose career started in Amazing and Fantastic, makes his first appearance here of the Sol Cohen era.  The Invasion of the Giant Stupid Dinosaurs is a short jokey First Contact story involving a spaceship landing on the property of a small town church.  It is archly told in a fussily stilted style possibly meant to remind the reader of The War of the Worlds (though Wells was generally not arch, stilted, or fussy).  It’s well turned, as always with Disch, but trivial.  Three stars, mostly for style.

The Aggressor, by John T. Sladek

John T. Sladek’s The Aggressor is also short, highly surreal, and seemingly an exercise in dream logic or a satire on the very idea of a story.  Or maybe—since the main character (loosely speaking) is the head of a large computer corporation—it’s supposed to be the output of a defective computer, or perhaps a very advanced one that is unexpectedly beginning to achieve consciousness. Sometimes Sladek’s humor escapes me entirely, and this is one of them.  This dog is too damn shaggy!  Two stars; at least the guy can write.

Prelude to Reconstruction, by Durant Imboden

Durant Imboden is an assistant fiction editor at Playboy, says the blurb to his story Prelude to Reconstruction, with one prior SF magazine appearance.  The story is a slightly rambling farce about a future authoritarian USA in which the work is all done by robots, who are supervised by the Ministry of Slaves.  The robots have to be kept in line lest they get funny ideas about slaving for humans; so Cerebra-1, a giant computer, is devised to monitor their loyalty quotients and reorient those needing it. 


by Bruce Jones

But now Cerebra-1 is getting balky, spitting out ancient political slogans, and things only get worse fast for humans (and the story ceases to be so farcical).  Problem is Imboden hasn’t quite caught on to “show, don’t tell,” so most of the story is the author recounting events after the fact without dialogue or even on-stage characters for stretches of it.  There’s also very little background on exactly what the robots’ and Cerebra-1’s capabilities and limits are, so the analogy to American human slavery (which becomes explicit at the end) falls flat, and there’s not much to be interested in conceptually.  Two stars.

In the Time of Disposal of Infants, by David R. Bunch

David R. Bunch, an avowed editorial favorite, is here again with In the Time of Disposal of Infants, listed among the new stories, but in fact new only to professional publication.  It first appeared in the fanzine Inside #13 (January 1956) along with five other Bunch stories.  It is much more sedate stylistically than his later work, but outrageous enough in content.  The title says it; the story is narrated by a garbage collector whose team finds a four-year-old among the refuse—surprisingly, since if they last that long, the parents usually keep them.  Three stars.

The Man in the Moon, by Mack Reynolds

The first of the acknowledged reprints is Mack Reynolds’s The Man in the Moon (from Amazing, July 1950) , a very early story (his eighth, appearing three months after the first).  It amounts to a tutorial about early space flight, now thoroughly outmoded and a bit boring.  Protagonist Jeff Stevens and two of his fellow trainee astronauts are bundled off to the Moon in separate ships; their voyage was preceded by some unsuccessful (i.e., fatal) tries, and by a number of unmanned ships carrying supplies and materials. 


by Leo Summers

Only Stevens makes it, and he proceeds (despite a broken arm) to assemble several of the unmanned ships into a base.  Human, as opposed to mechanical, interest is provided by the repeated reminders that Stevens is sensitive about being short, and by the fact that his sometime girlfriend left him for one of the other astronauts, who died on an earlier expedition.  But it’s all right, because he finds that astronaut’s body where he expired in his spacesuit in the line of duty.  “’Last Brenschluss, spaceman,’ he whispered.” Hackneyed, maudlin, two stars, generously.

Ask a Foolish Question, by Milton Lesser

Milton Lesser’s Ask a Foolish Question (Fantastic Adventures, June 1952) is a slickly rendered dystopian story.  In this world, most people work long hours for low pay, living in barracks, in order to support the space colony Utopia, where, it is said, everybody lives a lot better.  That’s OK, since the Earth dwellers regularly get the chance to take examinations to see if they can qualify to space out, and some win and depart.


by Tom Beechem

But Citizen Gregory Jones has been notified by the Department of Prognostication that he is to die in five days.  After some plot maneuvers not worth recounting, he winds up killing a government employee, faking his own death a day early, and then impersonating the government man.  But in that fake role, he is given the choice of dying when Jones would have died, or going to Utopia with the lucky exam-winners, since the government can’t allow anyone to stick around who knows that a prognostication didn’t occur on schedule.  Of course, he chooses Utopia, and the next events show that Lesser has clearly taken note of The Marching Morons.  And there's another twist before the end.  Derivative but well turned; three stars.

Death of a Spaceman, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

In Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s Death of a Spaceman (Amazing, March 1954), Old Donegal is a retired spacer bedridden and dying of cancer, though nobody but him acknowledges it, and he goes along with the pretense that he’ll be well before long.  Going to space is a pretty rotten blue-collar job (it killed his son-in-law), his pension and his daughter’s widow’s benefits are lousy, but Donegal can’t let go of it—he wants to stay alive long enough to hear the evening rocket blasting off from the nearby spaceport, demanding that his space boots be put on for the occasion after the priest has come by to administer the last rites. 


by Ernest Schroeder

It’s well written and clearly heartfelt (though thankfully less febrile than the other early Miller stories Amazing has reprinted (like Secret of the Death Dome and The Space Witch), but thoroughly maudlin and hard to take too seriously, especially by comparison with the much better stories Miller was already known for (e.g., Conditionally Human and Dark Benediction).  Three stars.

Science of Man: Apeman, Superman —Or, 2001's Answer to the World's Riddle, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article this issue is Apeman, Superman—or, 2001’s Answer to the World’s Riddle, which eschews the usual anthropology for a long synopsis of the film, superfluously I suspect to most readers.  Stover’s interpretation: humans spreading into space will be good (contra C.S. Lewis), we’ll leave all the bad stuff behind along with our bodies, sort of like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin explains: “the gathering force of mind that has come to envelope the surface of the planet Earth must eventuate in a projection into space as a purely spiritual component that will converge ultimately at the Omega point in one single entity, the very stuff of God.  But once all the consciousness of the universe has accumulated and merged in the Omega point, God will get lonely in his completeness, and the process of creation must begin again by way of arousing conscious creatures to reach out once more for closure in one collective identity.” Ohhh-kay, whatever you say, chief.  Next, Stover quotes Nietzsche, and adds: “Now that the theologians tell us that God is dead, it appears that the burden of theology is upon SF.” Three stars, it’s amusing and probably harmless, but Stover should probably get back to writing what he knows.

Summing Up

At Amazing, the beat goes ever ever on, ever more wearily, with some worthwhile material, but burdened by the weight of mostly lackluster reprints.  The ambitious new editor is gone.  The apparent new editor is well qualified, but will he be allowed to give the magazine the makeover it needs?  Yet again, wait and see.

[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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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 28, 1969] Slidin' (February 1969 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mudslides

Winter is the wet season for Southern California, and we've been just drenched these past weeks.  I understand seven inches of rain fell in the Los Angeles area, causing terrible mudslides, property damage, and injury.  Apparently, things were made worse by a spate of arson last year that got rid of the stabilizing undergrowth.

Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)
Ontario's Foothill Boulevard looking west toward Red Hill Country Club Drive, flooded. (Daily Report photo)

I've had many friends ask if we're alright, afraid we might have been swept downstream in the torrent.  Rest assured that Vista is disaster-proof (knock on wood), and our house is at the top of a hill.  We had some deep pools of water in the backyard, but they've since drained.  Our neighbors have gotten invaded by bugs seeking refuge from the storm, though.

A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)
A man runs past a station wagon that was washed two blocks down Carnelian Avenue, along with part of the road surface. (Daily Report photo)

Ups and Downs

If the physical world is getting washed away, one edifice that manages to stand firmly, if not always proudly, is Analog, science fiction's most popular magazine.  Has this month's issue slid at all, or is it holding fast?  let's see:

Analog cover featuring drawing of woman holding a baby swathed in christmas light glows data-recalc-dims=
by Kelly Freas

A Womanly Talent, by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

We're back in the world of psionic talents, perhaps related to the stories that involve ladies in towers.  A pair of politicians want to pass a law protecting and enabling the psionically adept, legitimizing things like professional prognosticators and psychic manipulators.  A Luddite strawman, name of Zeusman, is against it.

Meanwhile. Ruth is the wife of Lajos, a precog.  She is frustrated because she has an unidentified talent, and also because she really wants to be a mom.  Eventually, the latter frustration is relieved, and her daughter ends up demonstrating what Ruth's power really is.

Aside from the tale beginning with ten pages of conversation that reads more like a Socratic dialogue than a story, I just find McCaffrey's writing so flat and amateur.  I'm sure all the psi stuff was music to editor Campbell's ears, including lines like "Those who truly understand psionic power need no explanation. Those who need explanation will never understand," but it doesn't work for me.  Beyond that, McCaffrey's attitudes on the relations of the sexes is so atavistic, although I suppose she gets points for talking about sex at all.  Maybe Campbell likes that, too.

Two stars.

You'll Love the Past, by J. R. Pierce

Illustration for You'll Love the Past with a bunch of heads of the characters in the story
by Leo Summers

A time traveler from the 21st Century takes a trip in a time machine to the 24th Century.  A war has transformed society: America is now largely mixed race, with the whitest of the population an inbred and stupid group.  Socially, the continent is organized into placid socialist cooperatives run by religious Brothers, advanced technology provided by the Japanese.  It's the sort of world one can be happy in…provided one is favored by the status quo.  Every so often, one of the non-favored tries to escape.

Not a bad story, even if it seems to be obliquely casting aspersions on Communists of darker hue.

Three stars.

The Man Who Makes Planets, by G. Harry Stine

picture of Ken Fag holding a globe of Mars he has painted in front of a large globe of Saturn he painted. data-recalc-dims=
Photos by G. Harry Stine

A nifty piece by Analog's resident rocket enthusiast about a fellow who makes model planets for a living.  I'd get one for my house, but they're a bit pricey—a quarter of a hundred large!

Four stars.

Extortion, Inc., by Mack Reynolds

Illustration of a man in a suit holding a bottle of whiskey looking like he's being exploded toward the viewer
by Leo Summers

Yet another piece set in the (anti-) Utopian future of People's Capitalism, where North America has become a stratified welfare state, and money is a thing of the past.

Rex, last of the private dicks, is engaged by a government minister to find out who stole the plans for a miniaturized nuclear bomb, and why said criminal is blackmailing him, threatening to distribute the plans should a ransom not be paid promptly.

The solution to this mystery is actually trivial, and the story isn't quite long enough for what it's trying to do.  Nevertheless, I always find this setting interesting.  And perhaps prescient.  There was piece in last week's newspaper about the National Urban League's proposal for a universal income…

Three stars.

Wolfling (Part 2 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

illustration of the main character teleporting into a space, wearing a beret and tartan, surprising two alien soldiers and their leader
by Kelly Freas

Back in part one, Jim Kiel was sent from Earth to study the intergalactic empire whose fringes were discovered when a Terran probe made it to Alpha Centauri.  An anthropologist and ubermensch, Jim is essentially a spy, though the High Born of the empire don't know that—they think that he's an interesting curiosity, favored for his bullfighting skills and independent thinking.

This installment begins just after Jim's first encounter with the Emperor, a genial, capable man who, nevertheless, seemed to suffer a stroke.  A stroke that no one but Jim noticed.  Much of this middle installment is devoted to Jim's navigation of High Born society, attempting to master the reading machines to determine if Earth really is a long-lost colony of the empire or something else, and also how he discovers and foils an insurrection attempt with designs on incapacitating the empire's leader.  In the last portion, Jim is promoted to the equivalent of a Brigadier General and sent to quell a rebellion.  This is actually a trap designed to kill him, but he neatly sidesteps it.  Now he wants to know why he's marked for death.

The pot continues to boil.  There's a lot of the flavor of Dickson's Dorsai series, but with a different, perhaps even more interesting, setting.

Four stars.

A Chair of Comparative Leisure, by Robin Scott

illustration of a suit-vested professor and little bubbles surrounding him illustrating seens from history
by Leo Summers

A stammering professor somehow manages to be the most magnetic, as well as effective at conveying information.  Does his technique go beyond the verbal?

(Yes.  He has the power of psychic projection.  Whoopee.  Two stars.)

Calculating the damage

Japanese ad for a Hitachi computer with a Japanese woman leaning over a machine

You win some, you lose some, and this month's issue clocks in at exactly three stars.  While nothing could compare with the superlative four-star Fantasy and Science Fiction, three stars is still lower than New Worlds (3.3) and Galaxy (3.2).  It does beat out IF (2.8) and Fantastic (2.2), however.

You could fill as many as three issues with good stuff out of the six that were put out—in large part thanks to how great F&SF was this month.  Nevertheless, women contributed very little of that, with only 6.67% of new fiction written by female writers, most of that Anne McCaffrey's drudge of a story.

Still, in an uncertain world, I can't complain too much.  Especially since, mudslides or no, the Post Office still manages to get me my magazines on time!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 4, 1969] Not following through (February 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

The misrule of law

You may recall that Brazil underwent a military coup back in the spring of 1964. The reasons were the usual ones, and the U.S. response can be characterized, at best, as “turning a blind eye,” because then-president João Goulart (popularly known as Jango) was leaning a little too far to the left. The military junta which has ruled Brazil since prefers to call it a revolution, not a coup, but whatever you call it, the result is the same.

Seeking to give themselves more legitimacy, the military instituted a two-party system in 1966. The National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) officially represents the military dictatorship, while the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) gets to make speeches against and vote no on things that are going to happen anyway. That way, the legislature doesn’t look like the rubber stamp it is.

Or was. Unrest has been growing, particularly among the young. Arbitrary arrests and the torture of politcal prisoners has been ongoing. In March, a teenager who was leading a protest against rising food prices was shot point-blank by military police. This murder sparked further unrest, to the point that officials felt they had no choice but to allow a large protest march, hoping it would let the students blow off steam. The March of the One Hundred Thousand in June saw little violence, as the protestors demanded an end to the military government.

The March of the One Hundred Thousand. The banner reads “Down with dictatorship. People in power.”

Enter Márcio Moreira Alves. He started out as a journalist and opposed the Goulart government. After initially supporting the coup, he soon began to oppose it as well, with his primary cause being an end to the torture of political prisoners. He was elected as a Federal Deputy in 1966 and has continued his fight. In September, he called for a boycott of Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations on September 7th, and urged young women not to dance with military officers (or perhaps not date them, I have seen both mentioned in reports).

That was too much. The Justice Department asked the legislature to lift Alves’s immunity so that he could be tried for treason.  On December 12th, a joint session of the Federal Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate resoundingly refused to do so with a vote of 216-141.

Márcio Moreira Alves delivering the speech that got him into trouble.

The very next day, President Arturo da Costa e Silva issued Institutional Act Number 5. This act, which is not subject to judicial review or legislative oversight, allows the president to rule by decree, eliminates habeas corpus for political crimes, establishes censorship, and lets the government suspend any public servant who is found to be subversive or uncooperative, along with a number of other heavy-handed measures. Costa e Silva ordered hundreds of arrests of government critics the very next day.

There is strong opposition even within ARENA, the party founded to support the junta. Whether this is merely a crackdown or the beginning of cracks in the foundation of the dictatorship remains to be seen.

Passing judgment

If last month’s issue was about forgetting, this month’s IF is about the law and judgment. There’s something else that ties almost all the fiction here together, but we’ll get to that at the end.

Time travelers on their way to meet their ancestor. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The “Hoax” Story, by H.L. Gold

Former editor H.L. Gold offers a guest editorial on the two threads in science fiction that have dominated since the days of Verne and Wells. Today we might call them hard science fiction and speculative fiction, though Gold doesn’t use those terms. It’s interesting, but rather muddled. Gold’s definition of what constitutes a hoax seems ridiculously broad and not connected to his theme.

Three stars.

Beside the Walking Mountain, by Burt Filer

After being cashiered out of the GS (never explained, but probably something like Galactic Service), Hatch bought the planet where he ruined the careers of his superior and himself, hoping to right some of the wrongs they committed. Now that superior has returned to finish what he started and get revenge on Hatch. And he has the law on his side.

In desperation, Hatch tries to get his barge over the moving mountain. Art by Brock

Filer has been an inconsistent author, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here, he demonstrates the full range of his quality in one story. He’s created an interesting, if implausible, planet, with a mountain that follows the terminator during the 14-month day. The conflict is solid, though the antagonist may be a little overdone. But the resolution falls flat on its face. Largely because eminent domain doesn’t work the way the author thinks it does. In fact, the precedent cited in the story invalidates the ending.

Good and bad average out to three stars.

Praiseworthy Saur, by Harry Harrison

A boy is taking home an interesting lizard he’s caught. His walk is interrupted by a group of time-traveling lizardoids descended from his new pet. They want him to let their ancestor go, so she can lay her eggs safely.

A tight little story with a sting in its tail. Harrison packs a lot into a very small space and does so with skill. The boy is also a believable and skeptical modern boy, which is a nice touch. Is that enough to get it to four stars? For me, it falls just short.

A very high three stars.

At Bay with Baycon, by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch reports on last year’s Worldcon in Oakland. After a rocky start and the requisite namedropping, he settles in to a fair report, though a lot of the humor is forced. Of course, the Journey covered Baycon several months ago, and we had pictures.

Three stars.

How many of these folks can you identify? Art by Gaughan

The Defendant Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt

It turns out that Mars, Venus, and a few other places in the solar system actually are habitable and are joined in an interplanetary union of sorts. Now, they’d like to give Earth the chance to join, but there’s one problem. The Martians are unhappy with the way they have been depicted in science fiction, going all the way back to Wells. It falls to Ohio lawyer Joe Blair to negotiate a solution.

Offutt is another author who’s been very uneven, but he does a good job here. The story is enough fun that I can overlook the lack of explanation for why the job fell to the protagonist and the reliance on a somewhat tired cliché for the resolution. It’s not a deep tale, but it is enjoyable.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey has been reading The Biological Time Bomb by Gordon Rattray Taylor, which looks at all the recent advances in the biological sciences, what scientists are working on and advances they expect to see in the not too distant future. Organ transplants, cloning, sex selection of children, tinkering with DNA (both intentionally and unintentionally), artificial life. There’s a lot coming down the road that society, politics, and the law are going to have to deal with. Hopefully, science fiction will have plotted a safe path forward by the time these changes hit us.

Three stars.

Trial by Fire, by James E. Gunn

John Wilson is in something resembling a fugue state, unsure of anything, even his own name. His consciousness drifts between two worlds. In one, he’s on trial for arson and murder, though he has apparently been framed by an anti-science political party which is using him to further their agenda. In the other, he works as a witch doctor in a fractured United States, secretly using science to help the superstitious peasants. There he has been arrested by the secret police for witchcraft.

This isn’t happening in the world you might expect. Art by Gaughan

This rumination on anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes is a sequel to a much older story (“Witches Must Burn,” Astounding, August 1956), but having read that isn’t necessary. Most of it is summarized by the prosecution in Wilson’s trial. Either way, it’s not very good. The drift between the worlds is interesting at first, but having the viewpoint character addled and unsure of what’s going on around him wears out its welcome quickly. Gunn still managed to keep my interest most of the way, but then we get several pages of philosophical rambling about science and the duty of scientists, followed by a climax that’s difficult to believe. Even less believable is the suggested connection between the two worlds Wilson inhabits. And all that in about twice the length the story needed.

A high two stars.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Harry Harrison

In what appears to be a new feature, we have another interview transcribed directly from tape and again without the questions. This month, as you can tell from the title: Harry Harrison. This was a little more interesting than last month’s interview with Roger Zelazny, but then Harrison is a dozen years older and has spent time living in Europe. The highlight for me was him talking about his transition from comic book writer and inker to SF author.

Three stars.

A caricature, but recognizably Harry. Art by Rudy Cristiano

The Fire Egg, by Roger F. Burlingame

This month’s new author is a 38-year-old minister and former Fulbright scholar who wrote his story—which begins with a peasant finding the titular fire egg—as an assignment in the Famous Writer’s School. It’s well-written, as you might expect from the author’s background. Unfortunately, it’s also obvious and superficial. The sting at the end feels more sarcastic and nasty than ironic and deep.

A high two stars.

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 2 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

In part 1 of this story, a man and two women found themselves in a pleasant but sealed off region with six portals leading away.  The man knows nothing, one woman a little, and the other more than she’s saying. As the first installment ended, Rex and Regina had run into trouble while exploring one of the worlds beyond the gateways. In this part, the explorations continue, and many questions are answered, with some surprising revelations. Finally, the trio must make a momentous decision.

Rex and Venus discover an empty world. Art by Gaughan

Last month, I feared that McIntosh didn’t have enough room to explore all six worlds. The final three are given very short shrift, with each character exploring one alone and merely reporting on what they found. Everything is rushed, the reason behind the sense of ennui and doom afflicting all of humanity made little sense to me, and the solution was far too extreme. A weak finish to a promising start.

A low three stars for this installment, but still three stars for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

In baseball, they tell batters to swing through the ball, not at it. The same goes for golf and probably every other sport that involves hitting one thing with another. It’s the follow-through that makes the difference, and that’s what is missing from all the stories in this issue except for Harrison and Offutt. The rest feel like the author simply rushed to get the story over and offers no sense of what, if anything, might come after. Gunn hints at it, but I don’t see how he gets from the end to what he tells us is coming. (Admittedly, I was bored and rushing to get it over with myself by that point.) The result is another C- issue with no standout stories. IF deserves better.

Another Hugo winners issue. Dare we hope?




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[December 31, 1968] Auld Lang Syne (January 1969 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

We made it

And so, 1968 ends with a bang, not a whimper.  After a miserable year that saw the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the capture of the Pueblo, the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam, the riots at the Democratic Convention, the election of Richard Nixon, and many other tragedies, we finally have some good news to end the year.

First, there was the stirring flight of Apollo 8, a bit of unmitigated good that gave the holiday season additional poignancy.  And then, just last week, the crew of the Pueblo were finally released.  Vietnam peace talks appear to be stumbling forward.

On a more personal level, I got to prepare the Galactic Stars for the year, which involves reading all of the four and five star stories recommended by my colleagues.  For one month, everything I read is terrific.

It is in this euphoric mode that I get ready for tonight's New Year's celebration…and present to you the last of this month's magazines, the January 1969 Analog.

We read it


by Kelly Freas

Wolfling (Part 1 of 3), by Gordon R. Dickson

A galaxy-spanning empire makes contact with Earth.  Amazingly, the denizens of the sprawling star-society appear to be humans, though the ruling caste is distinctive due to selective breeding—onyx white, seven feet tall, and brilliant.  Because of the clear relation between the species, the prevailing belief is that Earth is some kind of lost colony.


by Kelly Freas

James Keil, bullfighter extraordinaire, is adopted by the High-born for display at the Throne World.  Keil is also a trojan horse, dispatched by the United Nations to gather information about the non-alien aliens. 

The hidebound High-born possess tremendous powers, from teleportation to matter conversion, but they are also just as petty and Machiavelian as any Earthers.  Keil's only ally is Ro, a (comparatively) dark-skinned High-born tasked with caring for the High-born queen's menagerie.

Dickson spins an interesting tale, detailing how the "Wolfling", Keil, walks the diplomatic tightrope, navigating a literal lion's den all through his FTL journey to the heart of the galaxy.  Though the story featueres eugenics, it is clear that the tale is an indictment rather than an endorsement.  Of course, the message might have been more strongly made were Keil's surname "Chang" or "Ojukwu".

Four stars so far.

The Hidden Ears, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by Leo Summers

A renegade UFO on the lam breaks through the cordon placed around Earth by the interstellar fuzz, taking refuge in the barn of a rural homestead.  The cops scratch their carapaced heads for a while, until they figure out a way to locate the hidden fugitive.  The genuinely amusing conclusion is the one bright spot in an otherwise frivolous story.

Two stars.

The Other Culture, by Ted Thomas


by Kelly Freas

If ever the word "pedestrian" described a story, it's now.  Thomas strings the most colorless sentences together, most of which are superfluous, and none of which are more than adequate.

The plot?  The Weather Council has to decide who will be prioritized for the increasingly demanded amount of world rainfall.  Because, as we all know, that's the kind of minor issue that is solved at a single conference.

That would be silly enough, except for the bombshell dropped about a quarter-way into the story: continental drift is suddenly speeding up, and all land masses will reunite as Pangaea in half a century.

Turns out this (ludicrous) plan is the work of BROW, the Brotherhood of the World, a rival underground (no pun intended) society.  But this potentially disastrous plan also, fortuitously, contains the solution to the water problem.

"Culture" is a talky, ridiculous story with no merits whatsoever.  It makes no scientific sense—moving continents around like bumper cars will produce a million 1906 San Franciscos—and the prose is dull as dishwater, as are all of the "characters".

One star.

"On a Gold Vesta … ", by Robert S. Richardson

This is a pretty neat piece about how we measure the density, size, and albedo (reflectiveness) of the myriad minor planets in the solar system.  All of these values are related, and without a firm grasp of at least one of them, it's virtually impossible to estimate the others.  A little short, but valuable.

Four stars.

Classicism, by Murray Yaco


by Kelly Freas

It's been eight years since we last heard from Mr. Yaco, and quite frankly, he might as well have stayed in hiding.  This is the "funny" tale of a young engineer from the last planet that believes in "classical economics".  He is sent to the big universe to become a cog in the command economy—specifically, to manage planet-wide garbage operations.  In his spare time, he works on perfecting a teleportation system, which he hopes to sell at great profit.

Too silly to be truly offensive; too lightweight to be worth your time.  Two stars.

Krishna, by Guy McCord


by Kelly Freas

Last year, Mack Reynolds…er… "Guy McCord" wrote a tale about Caledonia, a strange planet that was an odd combination of Scots and American Indian societies.  Krishna is a direct sequel, and a much better (though incomplete) story.

John of the Hawks is now a man, Raid Cacique for his clan, in fact, when Outworlders return.  The villain of the last piece, Mr. Harmon, is now wearing the black cloak of an acolyte of Krisha.  His ship, the Revelation, houses a bunch of missionaries who offer cures to all diseases if only they will partake of soma, a powerful hallucinogen.  Those who ingest soma become peaceful, one with Krishna…but also sterile and apathetic.  Obviously, such is anathema to the hardscrabble, lusty Caledonians.

"McCord" balances the clan politics with the Outplanet menace much better this time around, and John's endeavor to "steal" Alice Thompson for a bride is pretty gripping.  I don't mind that this novella is obviously the first (second?) installment in a novel, and I look forward to the next one.

Four stars.

We rate it

The word for this month is "vicissitudes".  On the face of it, none of the magazines did very well—Analog finished at 2.9 stars, well above Amazing (2.4 stars), but below New Worlds (3 stars), Galaxy (3.1 stars), IF (3.2 stars), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3 stars).

Yet, every mag save Amazing had at least one four-star story in it.  Several had more than one.  If you took all the good stuff this month, you could fill two magazines with it and have some quite good reading ahead of you.  Women contributed 12% of the new fiction published, which is on the high end.

So, a foreboding or auspicious sign for the New Year, depending on whether you fill your scotch half full or half empty with soda.  Either way, here's looking forward to a lovely 1969 with you all.  May your holiday season be bright!




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[December 26, 1968] Comfort OK? Looking Forward, Not Backwards New Worlds, January 1969

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by Mark Yon

Scenes from England

Hello again.

A recent comment from our leader here at Galactic Journey caused me to pause for thought. As he summed up the year in science fiction, it struck me that we are about to end one year (not that un-obvious, admittedly) and about to begin the last year of the decade, in what must be one of the most significant decades in recent human history.

Personally, the near-end of the decade seems to have crept up on me, but I can’t deny that it has certainly been eventful. Who knows, judging by all the recent activity (e.g. the Apollo missions!) we could be seeing people on the Moon in the next couple of years. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Anyway, I digress. My point is that I was suddenly made aware of how much things have changed in the last decade.

Which in a roundabout way brings me to the many changes involving New Worlds in the last few years. The New Worlds of 1968-69 is a very different beast from that of ten years ago. Some will say ‘better’ – more intelligent, more literary, more complex, more adult in nature – whilst others will say ‘worse’ – perhaps summarised as “Where’s my Science Fiction?”

After reading Gideon’s final article of November, I wrote him a letter, noting:

“More seriously, despite my personal grumblings, New Worlds is miles ahead of what the magazine used to be, even if its science-fictional content varies enormously. Much more inner space than outer space these days.

And there’s a whole debate over whether we can count it as an SF magazine any more – many of its older readers think not! – but it is noticeably different to pretty much anything else out there at the moment. I do hope that New Worlds can keep going next year, although it's not entirely certain.

That applies not just to the US but to Britain as well, of course – there is no other magazine to compare it to, as all the others have been cancelled!"

This year exemplified that range of content. In the last issue alone we had, on one hand, the stunning Samuel R. Delany story, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones, which I am still thinking about, and on the other a story about a man repeatedly raping a paralysed patient and making her pregnant. Talk about eclectic….

Cover by Gabi Nasemann

Anyway, this month’s issue feels like the return of the old guard. Although the cover is in the new format started last month – a strangely coloured but generic photo of two heads, text from one of the main stories within – the roster of authors is mainly the usual. Even these stories are mostly connected to previously published stories… more later.

Lead In by The Publishers

More about the contributors this month: Ballard, Disch, Langdon Jones. They also sneak in an apology for the contents of this issue being different to what was expected due to the Post Office delivering the manuscripts too late for publication. Hmm.

The Tank Trapeze by Michael Moorcock

Last month the magazine declared that Mike Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius would continue in future issues by stories written by others, starting with James Sallis’s Jeremiad.

For whatever reason this hasn’t happened, and so we get a story from Jerry’s originator instead, the sixth by my reckoning. And we’re straight into contemporary issues, with assassin-for-hire Jerry being in Czechoslovakia whilst the Russians take over the country. Jerry plays cricket whilst Dubrovnik burns, seduces (or is seduced) by a woman and executes a young boy-monk, who may or may not be important. Memorable, shocking, surreal – a typical Jerry Cornelius story. 4 out of 5.

Anxietal Register B by John T. Sladek

Back in the April 1968 issue Sladek wrote New Forms, an increasingly surreal fictious form. It was amusing and quite popular (I liked it.) As befits the current mood of this issue, if it works once, why not do it again?

This time it is about testing how anxious you are. Mundane responses are encouraged amongst shockingly provocative ones – “Have you ever suffered from: arthritis… rheumatism…homosexual tendencies” etc. It is still amusing, but its impact is diminished as the shock novelty value of the first time is less of a surprise second time. 3 out of 5.

Epilogue for an Office Picnic by Harvey Jacobs

A story in the form of a unrequited love letter between "Bald Mr. X from Data Processing" to "Sherill" – or  Sheril, or Sherrill – the writer isn't sure. An odd tale that's meant to be amusing. I just found it sad. 2 out of 5.

The Summer Cannibals by J. G. Ballard

Ah, J. G. “Chuckles” Ballard. Lots of imitators of late, none really of his ability. After the last few stories by him have underwhelmed me (see The Generations of America in the November 1968 issue), we’re back into a better story of Ballard’s usual observational descriptions of societal bleakness – sex, cars, money, belongings, the American lifestyle. (Anybody else notice how often Ballard’s characters are just walking?)

With its sections of different prose styles, photos and sheer oddness, this is a better piece of work than his last one, although I’m not quite sure about the strange juxtaposition of sex and car parts. (Really. Try reading the section entitled “Elements of an Orgasm”.)

As perplexing yet as iconic as ever, The Summer Cannibals is typical Ballard and therefore welcome, if only to be brought down by the point that this is like Ballard-things we’ve read before and – of course! – another extract of something that will soon be a novel. Does it matter? Echoing the tone of Ballard – not really. Appreciate the style, consider the content. 4 out of 5.

Spiderweb by John Clute

An author we’ve read before, back in the November 1966 issue, but has been very quiet since. This seems to fit the current New Worlds template – a surreal story of love, sex, race and graphic hallucinations, although mainly sex. Vivid imagery. Bug Jack Barron has a lot to answer for by setting a standard for this sort of thing. 3 out of 5.

Article: Sim One by Christopher Evans


The welcome return of Dr. Christopher Evans brings us an interesting article about how close we are to creating a life-like human robot. I think Asimov would be pleased at the progress, but I keep thinking about Philip K. Dick’s stories about simulacra and personally am a little horrified. 4 out of 5.

Hospital of Transplanted Hearts by D. M. Thomas

Erm.. poetry warning. If you’re a regular reader of my reviews, you know my general view on poetry. But perhaps you know more about it than I do, New Worlds reader.

Just to be clear – New Worlds editors really like D. M. Thomas. As in, REALLY like. Declaring the poet to be “without question, one of England’s very best poets” in the Lead In, they like this particular poem so much it is available as a poster, courtesy of Charles Platt.


Here, I’m less enthused. This was the ‘poet’ who wrote that awful Mind Rape poem back in the March issue, after all, but I try not to let that affect me.

Here the poem is like a pick and mix jumble of statements and phrases so you can make up your own as you skip through the Battleships-type grid. It is amusing, but less important than it would like to be. It is certainly not an event on the scale of the Second Coming of the Messiah that New Worlds seem to want to create. (How’s that for a Christmas reference?)

The thing about creative work such as poetry is that people often passionately agree or disagree about such things. This may be a case in point. Others may love it – me, less so. 3 out of 5.

Juan Fortune by Opal Nations

A story in deep homage to Ballard here – broken into sections, with lists of characters WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS like a play…and (of course!) all about sex. Seems pointless to me. (the prose, not sex!) 2 out of 5.

Ouspenski’s Astrabahn by Brian W, Aldiss

It hurts to write about this one. “The longest part of the Charteris series”, it says in the Lead In, about to be published as a book. As a series I have grown to actively dislike, I have little to say on this one. Yes, it’s clever, and as ever with Aldiss, well written. But at the same time, it’s an incomplete extract of a story that may make little sense if you haven’t read the previous parts and secondly, it degenerates (like some of the previous parts) into a variety of prose styles that I can only politely describe as stylistic gobbledygook.

Does the story, such as it is, make sense? Is it worth my time? In the end I didn’t care about the characters, the setting or the story.

Others will disagree, I’m sure – I’m just pleased that this, whatever it is, is finished, and I can move on (see also Bug Jack Barron earlier this year too.) 2 out of 5.

Book Reviews

J.G. Ballard reviews The Voices of Time by J. T. Frazer in a very Ballardian way, Langdon Jones reviews Silence by John Cage as if it was a questionnaire, John Brunner reviews four psychology books published by Allen Lane, whilst at the same time trying to persuade me that as a reader of science fiction I should read such books (I’m personally not too convinced), and William Barclay reviews Jack Trevor Story’s books, an author I only know because of Hitchcock’s film of his novel, The Trouble With Harry.

It is left to James Cawthorn to review some British science fiction books, although Thomas M. Disch reviews Quicksand by John Brunner. Joyce Churchill (who I believe is a pseudonym for M. John Harrison) briefly reviews a bunch of anthologies and John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Langdon Jones also gives us the sad news of Mervyn Peake’s recent death, illustrating it with some of Peake’s drawings.

Summing Up

I think Moorcock and his team have been pushed to get an issue out this month. (Perhaps they’ve been Christmas shopping instead?) Whilst Langdon Jones has been away, his absence, not to mention the effect of Post Office delays, as mentioned in the Lead In appears to have led to what feels like an issue cobbled together from remainders from old established authors with nothing really new to say, just finishing off what has already been started.

I realise that some readers may see the issue as a comfort, as in the return of old friends, but to me, it is like a shop clearing the shelves of tired, old stock ready for the new year. The Ballard is entertaining, but even then just a variation on a previous theme. I’ve said on many previous occasions (even last month!) how much I’ve come to dislike Aldiss’s Charteris stories, and it doesn’t help that this conclusion fills up much of the issue. At least the Jerry Cornelius was good.

I know that there are readers that will love both the Ballard and the Aldiss and even D. M. Thomas’s ‘poem’, but not me, sadly. The standard has been raised so much in recent years that it is almost a given now that each issue of New Worlds will surprise, amuse, antagonise and annoy. For the first time in a long time, this issue for me has really let me down.

Really the only good thing I can say about the issue is that at least these series are finished, and as the new year begins, we can look at new material in the future – looking forward, not backward. Rather appropriate for the end of one year and the beginning of the next, I think.
On a more positive note, have a great Christmas, and I look forward to returning next year when (hopefully) I will be less grumpy. “Bah, Humbug!” and so forth.

I'm off to look at the Christmas Radio Times to cheer myself up and see what's worth watching and listening to (Morecambe and Wise?)

Until next time!



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[December 4, 1968] Sign Me Up (January 1969 Amazing)

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by John Boston

In this January's Amazing, on page 138, there is an editorial—A Word from the Editor, it says, bylined Barry N. Malzberg—which suggests a different direction (or maybe I should just say “a direction”) for this magazine.  First is some news.  There will be no letter column; Malzberg would rather use the space for a story.  Second, “the reprint policy of these magazines will continue for the foreseeable future,” per the publisher, but “A large and increasing percentage of space however will be used for new stories.”


by Johnny Bruck

Pointedly, the editor adds, “it is my contention that the majority of modern magazine science-fiction is ill-written, ill-characterized, ill-conceived and so excruciatingly dull as to make me question the ability of the writers to stay awake during its composition, much less the readers during its absorption.  Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past, science-fiction has only within the past five or six years begun to emerge from its category trap only because certain intelligent and dedicated people have had the courage to wreck it so that it could crawl free. . . .  I propose that within its editorial limits and budget, Amazing and Fantastic will do what they can to assist this rebirth—one would rather call it transmutation—of the category and we will try to be hospitable to a kind of story which is still having difficulty finding publication in this country.”

Sounds good to me!  This brave manifesto is only slightly undermined by the familiar production chaos of the magazine.  It is not acknowledged on the table of contents, and does not appear in the usual place for an editorial, at the beginning of the magazine.  Instead, there appears a piece labelled Editorial by Robert Silverberg, S-F and Escape Literature, which (though touted as “NEW” on the cover) actually dates from six years ago, when it appeared as a guest editorial in the August 1962 issue of the British New Worlds.  Silverberg is also listed as Associate Editor.

Silverberg’s piece briskly disposes of the “escapist” critique of SF, pointing out that all literature is escape literature; it’s just a matter of where you’re escaping, and how well the escape is executed.  “The human organism, if it is to grow and prosper, needs change, refreshment, periodic escape.”

The other non-fiction in the issue includes another Leon Stover “Science of Man” article (see below).  There is the by-now-usual book review column, attributed to James Blish on the contents page, with reviews by his pseudonym William Atheling, Jr. (mixed feelings about Clarke’s 2001 novelization, praise for D.G. Compton and Alexei Panshin); by Panshin (praise for R.A. Lafferty); and by editor Malzberg (praise for the new edition of Damon Knight’s In Search of Wonder, mixed feelings about Alva Rogers’s fan tribute A Requiem for Astounding).  There is also a movie review, by Lawrence Janifer, of Rosemary’s Baby; he finds it well done but dull, and—in an unexpected juxtaposition—quotes Virginia Woolf: “But how if life should refuse to reside there?”

We All Died at Breakaway Station, by Richard C. Meredith


by Dan Adkins

The major piece of new fiction is Richard C. Meredith’s We All Died at Breakaway Station, first part of a two-part serial.  As usual I will read and review it when it’s complete; a quick rummage reveals it’s a space war story whose plot would probably have been right at home in Planet Stories, but which looks much grimmer than the pulps allowed.

Temple of Sorrow, by Dean R. Koontz

Dean R. Koontz’s novelet Temple of Sorrow is a breezily parodic procession of stock genre elements—the protagonist with a mission (“My name is Mandarin.  Felix Mandarin.”—from “International,” we later learn), accompanied by Theseus, his Mutie bodyguard (actually a bear, “developed” in the Artificial Wombs), to pierce the veil of a powerful religious cult (with overtones of the one in Heinlein’s “—If This Goes On,” such as the omnipresence of Naked Angels, female of course).  In this post-nuclear war world, the Temple of the Form predicts the Second Coming of the Form (the mushroom cloud), and it seems is bent on bringing it about by stealing the world’s last atom bomb.


by Jeff Jones

Felix is caught and reduced to near-mindless servitude, but his conditioning is broken by his realization of the Bishop’s sadistic plans for the Angel who has caught Felix’s fancy.  Rejoined by Theseus, who had fled to the wilderness but returned just in time, Felix and the Angel Jacinda fight their way to the Temple’s Innermost Ring (cameo appearance by a giant spider along the way).  And there’s super-science!  Felix figures out that the Innermost Rings of all the many Temples worldwide are interdimensionally connected, so if the Temple bigs can set off a bomb in one Ring, the explosion will be replicated in all the others!  Conservation of energy be damned.

So they hasten from Ring to Ring, find the bomb, and disarm it.  “Any child could disarm an A-bomb if he has read his history and had an instructor in P.O.D. who allowed him to practice live on dummies.” Felix proposes to the Angel Jacinda.  Theseus has somehow gained human intelligence during the interdimensional trek.  Exit, wisecracking.  Or, as the editor put it: “Tied to an older tradition and nailed down stylistically to the worst hack cliches of three decades past . . . .” Good sarcastic fun.  Three stars.

How It Ended, by David R. Bunch

And here is the writer half the readership has long seemed to hate, in his second consecutive issue—David R. Bunch.  Editor Malzberg says, “I think that Bunch is one of the twenty or thirty best writers of the short-story in English.” I might pick a slightly higher number, but I’m happy he is again welcome here.  But this one is called How It Ended—“it” being Moderan, scene of a procession of stories about the Strongholders, their new-metal enhancements held together by the flesh-strips that are all that remain of their human bodies, fighting their endless wars in splendid isolation from each other.  Can it really be the end?  Time will tell whether Bunch can resist returning to the scene. 

But to the matter at hand: during the Summer Truces following the Spring Wars, someone looses a wump-bomb, which is strong stuff indeed.  This sets off a new war which is only ended when the narrator releases the GRANDY WUMP (sic), which puts an end to Moderan entirely.  This is his confession, rendered onto a tape which may or may not ever be listened to, complete with his litany of self-justification.  The inexorable logic leading to complete destruction may be familiar to those who frequent newspapers and government briefing papers.  It’s Bunch as usual and you either like it or you don’t.  I mostly do, with qualifications, but this one goes on a little too long for my taste.  Three stars.

Confidence Trick, by John Wyndham


by Henry Sharp

Moving to the reprints, John Wyndham is here with Confidence Trick (from Fantastic, July-August 1953), about some people going home on a commuter train who discover that it is the train to Hell.  They escape their fate only through the loudly expressed disbelief of one abrasive young man, after which the whole illusion falls apart.  It is suggested that social institutions such as the banking system are not too different from religions in their reliance on unquestioning faith.  It’s smoothly written but becomes a bit heavy-handedly didactic after its comic beginning.  Two stars.

Dream of Victory, by Algis Budrys

In Algis Budrys’s Dream of Victory (Amazing, August/September 1953)—a “complete short novel” at 26 large-print pages—a war has left the world devastated and depopulated.  Androids were developed to provide a work force.  They are apparently human in all respects except for standardization of features (which they can pay to have fixed), and they can’t reproduce.  Fuoss, an android, is not happy about this, or about the fact that there seems to be growing discrimination against androids; he can get jobs but somehow always loses them, and his successful android lawyer friend tells him the creation of androids has now stopped.


by Ed Emshwiller

Fuoss has a recurring dream about a woman bearing his child.  He finds his situation so frustrating that he acts in progressively more self-destructive ways, driving away his android wife, in part because he flaunts his affair with a human woman. Then he loses his latest job, drinks a lot, and his girlfriend throws him out.  When he comes back and finds out she has taken up with somebody else, he smashes a whiskey bottle and cuts her throat after she dismisses his delusional babble that she will have his child.  His lawyer friend (ex-friend by now) visits him in jail and chastises him for the harm he has done to the android cause.  “ ‘Is she dead?’ he asked hopefully.”

I’m not sure what to make of this story.  Budrys has commented on it in the introduction to his second collection, Budrys’ [sic] Inferno (UK edition retitled The Furious Future): “Dream of Victory is the first novelette I ever wrote. . . . Dream of Victory, as I was writing it, seemed a free-wheeling piece of technical bedazzlement.  Happily, most of the experimentation in it was elevated to more comprehensible levels by Howard Browne, the quietly competent editor who bought it and with his pencil made me look a little more mature than I really was.  There is a certain temporary value to a young writer in coming on as a prose innovator and pyrotechnician; I think there is more for the reader and, in the course of time, more for the writer in letting the story speak for itself.”

So, all procedure and no substance about this story in which the protagonist responds to his emotional travail by murdering his girlfriend.  I wonder if it is supposed to be a displaced commentary on race relations, especially since the plot seems to bear some similarity to that of Richard Wright’s Native Son (a book I haven’t read and know only second-hand).  Did Budrys have it in mind?  Probably not.  Probably this is just another example of a writer who can’t think of a more imaginative way to resolve the situation of unbearable frustration he has created than with hideous violence against women—not altogether unrealistically, I have to acknowledge, since I do read the newspapers. 

It’s tempting to say “nice try,” but it really isn’t; the best thing to say is that Budrys got better later, at least a lot of the time, in finding better resolutions (or accepting no resolution) for the intolerable situations he was so good at coming up with.  One star for substance, three for execution (though as Budrys says, much credit goes to editor Browne for that).  Split the difference.

Don't Come to Mars, by Henry Hasse


by Leo Morey

Henry Hasse’s Don’t Come to Mars (Fantastic Adventures, April 1950) is a large comedown from his goofily grandiose classic He Who Shrank, reprinted in the last issue.  Dr. Rahm awakes to see himself walking out the door, and looks down to see he has a whole new tentacled body.  Aiiko the Martian has borrowed his by long-distance projection.  Turns out Aiiko is trying to sabotage Dr. Rahm’s life work developing space travel to Mars so humans will avoid the terrible fate that has befallen the Martians.  It’s routinely executed and reads more like a story from the ‘30s than one from 1950.  Two stars.

Science of Man: Lies and the Evolution of Language, by Leon E. Stover

Leon E. Stover’s “Science of Man” article is Lies and the Evolution of Language, which displays Stover’s faults even more prominently than his earlier articles.  The subject is certainly interesting, but the article is mostly a turgid mass of assertions with very little attempt to convince the reader to believe them or to provide any basis to assess them.  This is less of a problem when he is addressing current or recent times, of which most readers will have some direct knowledge or experience.  But consider: “Without a doubt the first humans replayed the action of the day around the campfire at night in an unabashed display of ceremonial boasting.  And doubtlessly manly valor was an entrance requirement into the hunting team, all the more incentive for a male to boast about what he had seen and done so as to be allowed to become ‘one of the boys.’ ” Certainly plausible, makes sense, but “without a doubt”?  Without more support than Stover provides, I’ve got a doubt.

Some of Stover’s assertions are more than doubtful, such as his claim that animals cannot lie.  In fact there is considerable deception in the animal world.  For example, some birds feign broken wings and walk away from their nests, apparently seeking to distract predators from their eggs or young.  Stover might have an argument that that behavior is not linguistic enough to be relevant to the discussion.  But he doesn’t make it, or acknowledge the question. Two stars.

Summing Up

So, another mixed-bag issue of Amazing (excluding the serial, to be assessed next time), but one that is promising—a word I must have used a dozen times about this magazine, but this time there's an actual promise about what the new editor plans to do with it.  As always, we'll see.

[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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Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 2, 1968] Forget It (January 1969 IF)

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by David Levinson

Forget the future

It’s official. As if it weren’t already clear from the events in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia over the summer, the Soviet Union has now openly declared that no communist nation in the Soviet sphere of influence will be allowed to go its own way or engage in any sort of reforms not approved by Moscow. Addressing the Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party on November 13th, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated, “When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.” That’s the justification for military intervention wherever the U.S.S.R. feels like, especially within the Warsaw Pact. We all know who will get to decide if something is a move towards capitalism.

Leonid Brezhnev after addressing the Soviet Central Committee earlier this year.

The backlash has already begun. After years of strained relations, Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in protest over the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Of course, they have Yugoslavia as a buffer state, and the close proximity of Greece and Italy probably also offer a deterrent. As we go to press, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu has publicly condemned this new doctrine as a violation of the Warsaw Treaty. Only time will tell how this shakes out.

Forget the past

Forgetfulness seems to be the theme of this month’s IF. The issue is book-ended with stories featuring protagonists with amnesia, while two of the remaining three stories offer a man who doesn’t know his name and an entire year blotted from everybody’s memory.

Just some random art not associated with any of the stories. Art by Chaffee

Six Gates to Limbo (Part 1 of 2), by J.T. McIntosh

A man awakens naked in a field with no idea who he is or how he got there. It proves to be a pleasant place about 50 miles in circumference, surrounded by a dome of gray mist. He dubs the place Limbo. Set in the dome, about 20 feet above ground are six ovals that he believes to be portals. Eventually, he also finds a house with a well-stocked kitchen, a library full of books (printed on Earth, all before 3646), and three bedrooms, two of which have women’s clothes in them.

In the basement, he finds three coffins with windows set in the lids. One is empty and is labeled Rex, giving him a name. The second, labeled Regina, contains a very pretty woman, while the third holds a beautiful woman apparently named Venus. Regina comes to, already knowing her name and also with the ability to know where anything (and anyone) is.

After a time, Rex passes through one of the gateways. He discovers a huge city called Mercury, which is laden with a sense of doom that depresses all its inhabitants. On his return, Rex discovers a freezing sub-basement with clues that the gateways are portals to other planets. Regina deliberately triggers Venus’s awakening, and the three get along fairly well, without Venus interfering in the relationship between the other two.

As this installment ends, Rex and Regina pass through another portal and find themselves on a hot, desert planet. While investigating an immigration office, Rex blunders and the police – or worse – are summoned. To be concluded.

Rex investigates the first portal. Art by Jack Gaughan

McIntosh has given us an interesting set-up and an intriguing mystery, but I don’t see how he’s going to extract Rex and Regina from their current predicament and explore four more worlds in just one installment. I’m eager to see the rest of this. But one thing really stood out to me. Take note Robert Silverberg and many other authors, in and out of science fiction: McIntosh makes very clear to the reader that Regina is quite petite without once referring to her breasts or hips, nor is there anything describing her as childlike. He does describe her once as a girl in comparison to Venus, but Rex clearly views her as an adult. Similarly, we know that Venus is voluptuous without any reference to her secondary sexual characteristics.

A high three stars.

The Year Dot, by William F. Temple

Bart Cabot grew up an orphan in a small town. His fascination with the X-men in the next valley repeatedly gets him into trouble with the Sheriff. He’s also curious why the year 1978 is missing from all the records in the library, but nobody else seems to see a discrepancy. Finally, he pushes the Sheriff too far, and only intervention by one of the X-men saves his life. Bart learns a lot about what’s going on and has a choice to make.

Doesn’t look like any of the X-Men I know. Beast maybe? Art by Brock

The story’s well told, if nothing special. There’s a strong implication that what’s going on is global, but the focus of the story makes it feel entirely local. The missing year thing doesn’t make a lot of sense, either. And calling the aliens in the next valley X-men is just confusing to anyone with a passing knowledge of comic books.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, Lester del Rey looks at changes in agriculture. Sure, we have things like corn that produces large, uniform ears, strains of plants that grow in soil that was once unsuitable, and fertilizers to replenish exhausted fields. But do those fertilizers replenish minerals that occur in vanishingly small amounts; do the new strains take up those sorts of minerals, if the soils they now grow in even have them? Maybe that will affect taste (ask a vintner about how the tiniest variation can affect their product) or maybe the lack of those “unimportant” minerals will have unsuspected health effects. Lots to think about.

Three stars.

The Steel General, by Roger Zelazny

Zelazny picks up where Creatures of Light left off. Wakim, the servant of Anubis, desperate to find out who he once was, and the Prince Who Was A Thousand do battle in time. Eventually they are transported to another planet, where Horus, son of Osiris, comes also seeking to kill the Prince, as does the Steel General, who supports the Prince merely because he is the underdog.

Anubis doesn’t want Wakim to learn who he really is. Art by P. Reiber

Now Zelazny has me hooked. The intermediate material following Wakim leaving the House of the Dead that weakened the previous story might have fit better at the beginning here, but this works without that, too. Although the ending is something of a cliff-hanger, there’s enough here to make a complete tale, and it’s a doozy. Poetic, mythic, Zelazny at his best.

A high four stars.

Operation High Time, by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Simes are an offshoot of humanity who must take life energy from normal humans, or Gens (short for Generators; Sime from symbiote maybe?). The process was once fatal, but the two groups have found ways to live together, with many restrictions on the Simes. Protagonist Farris is a Sime who has found a way to ease some of those restrictions. His lobbying in Washington leads to his strongest opponent in the Senate being kidnapped. Following a hunch, Farris is kidnapped as well.

Farris is imprisoned with his political nemesis. Art by Brand

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been complaining about badly-done exposition by authors who should know better. This month’s new author shows how to do it right. The exposition in this story comes in small, natural chunks, giving just enough for the story to make sense while hinting at much more. The rest of the story is also done quite well. This is probably the best IF First debut since Larry Niven.

A very high three stars.

In the Shield, by Dean R. Koontz

The latest from Dean Koontz starts off with an amnesiac man in a spaceship filled with weapons that have no maker’s marks on them. In short order he winds up with two unexpected companions and then follows post-hypnotic orders to go to one of the main worlds in the galaxy.

That was the look on my face at about this point in the story. Art by Reese

The story starts off fine, but quickly brings in two astronomically unlikely coincidences, and then goes completely off the rails, descending into a sophomoric attack on religion. Koontz keeps missing the mark, but he does aim high. Maybe he should aim a little lower until he has the chops to match his ambition.

Right on the line between two and three stars. I’ll be generous and give it the lowest three stars possible.

Authorgraphs: An Interview with Roger Zelazny

Zelazny on himself, science fiction, writing and so on. According to the editor’s blurb this was transcribed directly from a recording of him answering questions (which we don’t get). Interesting and informative, if a bit shallow.

Three stars.

I wonder if he’s always this dapper. Art by Gaughan

Summing up

Yet another middle-of-the-road issue. I’m starting to come around on McIntosh, but he’s on probation until next month. Zelazny managed to pull me in, where I had been less interested, and we got a very impressive debut from an author I hope to see more of. But there are times when I feel like Galaxy gets all the choice stories, and IF is left with the dregs.

Can’t say anything here really excites me.




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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 2, 1968] Role Models (December 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

The passing of a great

As I sat down to write this article, I heard the news of the death of Lise Meitner. If that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Einstein once called her “the German Marie Curie,” which might be understating things. She is arguably the most important woman physicist of the 20th century and possibly one of the most important theoretical physicists, period.

Born in Vienna in 1878, she became only the second woman to earn a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna in 1905. She later moved to Germany and worked at the University of Berlin. There, she and Otto Hahn discovered the most stable isotope of the element protactinium, which she dubbed protoactinium before dropping the second “o.” In 1939, she and Hahn, along with Otto Robert Frisch and Fritz Strassmann, discovered and explained nuclear fission. There are also at least two nuclear phenomena which bear her name.

Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner circa 1912.

Meitner was able to escape Nazi Germany in 1938 with the help of Niels Bohr. She settled in Sweden, where she spent the rest of her professional life. Her role in the discovery of nuclear fission garnered her a lot of celebrity after the end of the War; she was even interviewed by Eleanor Roosevelt on her radio show. She was a popular speaker and instructor and traveled extensively to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

She received numerous accolades throughout her career, and the institute that oversees Germany’s first research nuclear reactor bears her and Hahn’s names. But the Nobel eluded her. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (ignoring not only Meitner, but also Frisch and Strassmann). The Nobel committee plays things pretty close to the vest, but word is that Lise Meitner was nominated many times in the fields of physicist and chemistry. In 1966, President Johnson honored her with the Enrico Fermi Award.

After retiring in 1960, she moved to the United Kingdom to be closer to family and continued giving lectures. She was in poor health in recent years, unable to attend the Fermi Award ceremony. She died in her sleep at the age of 89.

Lise Meitner in 1963.

Stereotypes

As Lise Meitner’s life shows, women play an active and important role in science, and ought to do so in science fiction as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer women writing SF than there were a decade ago, and there don’t seem to be all that many as key characters in stories either. Two of the stories in this month’s IF don’t have any, two offer mothers, two more femmes fatale, and as far as the first story goes, the less said the better.

A previously unknown piece by the late Hannes Bok, probably the last new Bok cover ever.

The Holmes-Ginsbook Device, by Isaac Asimov

This absurd story is ostensibly about coming up with a better way than microfiche to present printed information (no one has ever heard of putting words on a page and stacking those pages into a book). The "message" is that staring into a microfiche reader keeps you from staring at women. It's patently offensive. And not in a way that challenges our acceptance of societal norms like something in Dangerous Visions. Women are here only the be ogled and groped.

He looks familiar. Art by Gaughan

One star and a guaranteed winner of the Queen Bee Award.

The Starman of Pritchard’s Creek, by Julian F. Grow

Young Widder Poplowski has set her cap for Dr. Hiram Pertwee. He might be inclined to encourage her, but her nine-year-old son is a hellion, and her motherly love is excessively fierce. While picnicking along Pritchard’s Creek, the three of them encounter a talking, self-propelled steam engine and a living trash heap. Getting kicked in the head by his horse may be the least of Pertwee’s problems.

Whatever it is, it ain’t natural. Art by Wood

This is our third encounter with Dr. Pertwee, and it’s a good bit better than the last. This one is well-suited to the western theme, and the doctor’s voice is very well done. I’d say the tone aims to imitate Twain, but doesn’t come close. Of course, not coming close in an attempted imitation of Twain leaves a lot of room to still be good.

Three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey looks at couple of areas where science and science fiction keep overtaking each other: there’s too much free oxygen on Venus, the steady-state theory might not be dead yet, and quantum particles that move faster than light.

Three stars.

The Canals of Santa Claus, by Bram Hall

Three wildcat miners are forced to put down on an uncharted planet. They dub the planet Santa Claus for its black growths that resemble Christmas trees (Yule was taken), but can’t explain the regularity of their spacing or the canals of salty water that flow without any change in elevation.

Hall is this month’s new author, and it’s not bad for a freshman effort. There’s nothing really new or groundbreaking, but it’s well handled, and there’s a bit of a sting in the tail.

Three stars.

The Comsat Angels, by J.G. Ballard

Since 1948, the world has become aware of a boy genius roughly every other year. Invariably, they fade from public view after a year or two, never seeming to live up to the potential they showed. A television production team begins digging into the story, but are soon broken up and reassigned. What shadowy organization is pulling the strings?

I’ve never been a fan of Ballard’s work, which I generally find too avant-garde and over laden with allusion and symbolism. This story, however, has a beginning, a middle, and an end (in that order) and lacks the ennui and decadence of the Vermilion Sands stories. I enjoyed it, with two complaints. First, the boy genius discovered in 1965 is Robert Silverberg of Tampa, Florida. He would be a good deal younger than science fiction’s own Silverbob (who isn’t from Florida), and the name pulled me out of the story every time he’s mentioned. None of the others seem to have been given the name of someone else from the genre or elsewhere, so it struck me as odd. Secondly, the connection to comsats seems very strained. But otherwise an enjoyable story.

A high three stars from me; others might like it better.

The Tin Fishes, by A. Bertram Chandler

Continuing his tour of the planets he once opened and charted, Commodore John Grimes has arrived on the water world of Melisse. Giant, unkillable starfish are attacking the huge oysters the natives use to grow pearls, the planet’s only export. Since both of the major Rim officials are incompetents he had posted to a place he thought they could do no harm, he figures it’s his duty to investigate.

Chief Wunnaara may be the only reliable person on the planet. Art by Virgil Finlay

This is a fairly standard Grimes story, with a bit of mystery and spy thriller thrown in. Entertaining enough if you like this sort of thing. I was a bit put off by the ease with which Grimes went to bed with the prime suspect, considering he’s spent the last several stories missing his wife very much. I guess mores and morals are different out on the Rim.

Three stars.

The Pawob Division, by Harlan Ellison

I’m not even going to try to describe this story by Harlan Ellison. It’s full of silly, made-up words like phlenged and thrillip’d to describe the use of alien senses and whatnot. I suspect that if it had been sent in by an unknown, it would have been sent back, maybe with an encouraging letter to keep trying.

A low two stars.

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Professor Paul Kosloff heads into Common Europe and Common Eur-Asia to try and find out who’s behind the plot to tamper with the computer records of the United States of the Americas. Somehow, the bad guys seem to know his every move.

More action exactly like the action in Part 1. Art by Gaughan

Part 1 of this serial was so heavy on (poorly delivered) exposition, I predicted this installment would have lots of story. I was wrong; there’s just as much exposition in this half. The action is also just as over detailed; I don’t know what an “Okinawa fist” is, nor does knowing what the protagonist shouts as he delivers a karate blow tell me anything. All in all, it winds up being a typical, if slightly subpar, Mack Reynolds adventure. But it might be worth revisiting in 50 years or so to see how well Mack did at prognosticating the effects of an increasingly interconnected world.

Three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole.

Summing up

Maybe the awful first story influenced my impression of the rest of the issue, and some of these stories deserve better ratings. On the other hand, this is the second issue in a row with a one-star story, and that’s a rating I very rarely give. With the two worst stories coming from the two biggest names in the issue, I’m starting to wonder at some of the editorial decisions being made. But Galaxy doesn’t seem to be doing quite this poorly. At least Fred has promised another Hugo winners issue next year, so we have something to look forward to.

There’s the Zelazny we were promised. This issue really needed it.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 2, 1968] Future History Lessons (November 1968 IF)

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by David Levinson

Saving the past

Around the turn of the century, the British in Egypt set out to regulate the flooding of the Nile by building a dam at Aswan, near the First Cataract, a little under 150 miles north of what is today the border between Egypt and Sudan. They limited the height of the dam in order to prevent the submergence of the island of Philae and the many monuments there, but still raised the height twice by the mid-1930s. The reservoir nearly overflowed the top in 1946, and it became increasingly clear that the dam’s storage capabilities were insufficient for modern Egypt.

King Farouk favored the construction of dams in Sudan and Ethiopia, where cooler temperatures would mean less loss of water due to evaporation, but when he was overthrown, the new government under Nasser preferred a larger dam at Aswan under Egyptian control. One of the reasons for the nationalization of the Suez Canal was that shipping fees would pay for the new dam. The change in plans alarmed archaeologists, who pointed out that the entirety of the ancient province of Nubia would be flooded, inundating numerous ancient monuments and sites. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan appealed to UNESCO for help, and thus was born the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia.

The most impressive of the monuments to be rescued are the temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II in the mid-13th century B.C. to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Best known is the Great Temple, dedicated to Amun, Ra-Horakty, Ptah and the deified Ramses himself. The entrance is flanked by four statues of the pharaoh, each over 65 feet tall. Nearby is a temple dedicated to Hathor and Ramses’ favorite wife Nefertari.

Ramses gets a face lift.

But how do you rescue something like that? A freestanding temple can be taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt elsewhere. This was done with the temple of Kalabsha, in work funded and supervised by West Germany. The Ramesseum was carved into sandstone cliffs. One suggestion was to build a clear freshwater dam around the temples and create underwater viewing chambers. Instead, an international team of archaeologists, engineers, and heavy construction experts have spent the last four years carefully carving the entire site into enormous blocks with an average weight of 20 tons and moving the whole thing to a new site some 650 feet back from the Nile and over 200 feet higher. The work is finished, and on September 22nd the reconstructed Ramesseum was opened to the public. Let’s hope that the many other rescue projects are just as successful.

Optimists and pessimists

This has been a rough year all around the world, and so it’s natural to turn to our entertainment to make us feel better. Unfortunately, the trend in science fiction seems to be toward unhappy endings, and this month’s IF seems to lean more to the pessimistic side. It also takes us to Ancient Egypt in the far future.

The Waw is bored. Art by Vaughn Bodé

The Computer Conspiracy (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Regular readers of the big American SF magazines will be familiar with Mack Reynolds’ People’s Capitalism, in which every citizen is granted Inalienable Basic shares that pay dividends that are enough to live off, while the more ambitious can earn Variable Basic shares and move up in the world. Meanwhile, the Universal Credit Card serves all economic and identification functions. All of that is made possible by a massive computerized data bank. What if a hostile power could tap into that data bank, or worse yet change or erase the data?

Action in the subway of abandoned Manhattan. Art by Gaughan

This first half of Reynolds’ new novel is delivered mostly in the form of lectures telling the protagonist things he already knows. Reynolds can usually make this sort of thing interesting, but normally he doesn’t rely on pages of dialogue for his exposition. Much of it seems to be based on Vance Packard’s The Naked Society from a few years ago, which he explicitly mentions. This is interspersed with a couple of action scenes, one of which is overly detailed to the point of being interesting only to practitioners of karate, and the other is largely taken from the recent Among the Bad Baboons. All in all, not Reynolds’ best work, but I don’t see how the second half can be anything but story, so the whole thing should be better.

A low three stars.

If… and When, by Lester del Rey

This month, del Rey delves into the science of ecology, which studies the interrelationships of living things and their environment. It’s the sort of thing that will be crucial in establishing a colony on another planet, but it’s rarely dealt with in science fiction, except as an occasional aside. It’s also sadly neglected in the real world, though that’s beginning to change. There’s a lot here for SF writers to explore.

Four stars.

Creatures of Light, by Roger Zelazny

Sometime in the distant future, all of humanity lies between the poles of the House of Life, ruled over by Osiris, and the House of Death, ruled over by Anubis. Now, an old threat is returning from outside, and various factions must take steps to stop it.

Anubis and Osiris determine the fates of humanity. Art by P. Reiber

The obvious comparison here is to Zelazny’s Lord of Light, though the “gods” here make the spacemen pretending to be the Hindu gods look like apemen banging rocks together. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote in a letter to Science earlier this year, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s all very Zelazny in terms of style and construction. However, there’s no actual story here; it’s just the author introducing various characters and establishing the conflict.

It says on the cover that this is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. That’s enough to save its rating, but the Lord of Light excerpts that ran in F&SF were much more successful as stand-alone pieces. I’m probably interested in seeing the whole thing, but something with a bit more of a traditional structure (if possible) would have been better.

A tentative three stars.

Where the Time Went, by James H. Schmitz

Everyone is familiar with those times when you set out to get a lot done, and suddenly it’s the end of the day and you’ve accomplished next to nothing. That happens to writer George Belk every day until his agent puts him in touch with someone who can help.

I suspect Schmitz was inspired by a couple of days like those George describes. It’s a cute story, but it doesn’t play to any of the author’s strengths, especially his ability to create characters.

Three stars.

Now That Man Is Gone, by James Blish

The Waw has been nine years old for over 2,000 years. Humanity has been extinct for 1,994 years. The aliens who care for him call him the Waw, because he is the Next-to-Last, but there is no sign of the Ya. Until now.

Art uncredited

This is the most optimistic story in the issue, which seems odd coming from Blish, though it is tinged with melancholy as well. It’s also the inverse of a concept that forms the core of many Ray Bradbury stories. Nice enough, but nothing special.

Three stars.

Wizard Ship, by F. Haines Price

Primitive tribesman Hin bravely boards a ship of the gods which has descended from the sky. He soon figures out that the gods are mere mortals who plan to sell him into slavery. The three unscrupulous spacers aboard also don’t realize that primitive isn’t the same as stupid.

Price is this month’s new author, and it shows in his writing. The story is too long, and the darkly ironic ending isn’t worth the trip.

A low two stars.

Bookmobile, by Charles L. Harness

A report from an alien librarian describes how humanity lost the ability to read thanks to everything moving to audio.

What an incredibly stupid story; nothing about it makes any sense. It ignores the fate of the deaf when everything is spoken and nothing is written, which is odd considering a key point is that the librarian can’t hear. I’m also not sure how you look things up when it’s all audio. Harness is an attorney, you’d think he would find that important.

One star, because it makes me angry every time I think about it.

The Perfect Secretary, by Mike Kirsch

On the day Albert Willis opens his new business, a strange man offers him a free trial of an automatic secretary. It can write articles and letters, retrieve reference materials from a host of locations, and pretty much do his job for him. It’s rather more than he or its makers suspect.

Willis is presented with his new secretary. Art by Wallace Wood

An awful story about awful people being awful. And it comes with another dark ending. Kirsch seems to be another new author, though maybe he’s sold things in other genres. The writing is decent enough, but all the characters are horrible.

Two stars.

Summing up

That’s another month of IF in the bag. There sure are a lot of familiar authors here not putting their best foot forward. And Zelazny’s piece really deserves a grade of Incomplete. There’s not even enough there to tell us what the rest is going to be like. Add in all the attempts at being dark and gritty, and the whole thing’s rather unsatisfying. At least the serials are back.

Science fiction from A(simov) to Z(elazny). That Zelazny piece might be another part of the new novel.




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