by Victoria Silverwolf
I trust that the spirit of William Blake will forgive me for stealing the title of his 1794 collection of poems. It seems appropriate, now that the Beatles have conquered America with a combination of sophisticated melodies and simple lyrics. Maybe you were one of the millions who watched the Fab Four perform the Number One song in the USA on The Ed Sullivan Show a couple of weeks ago.
If not, don't worry about it. You'll find plenty of innocence and experience in the pages of the latest issue of Fantastic.
Cover by Paula McLane
Iron, by Robert H. Rohrer, Jr.
The cover story takes place long after metallic aliens failed to conquer Earth. One of the invaders escapes from an underground prison after one thousand years, finding a domed city inhabited by robots, but without people. During a battle of wits between the alien and the robots, we learn what happened to the vanished humans.
This story has some interesting concepts, but presents them in an unsophisticated way. The manner in which the alien and the leader of the robots deduce the truth about each other from a few vague clues strains credulity. There are no surprises in the plot.
Two stars.
The Graveyard Heart, by Roger Zelazny
In the near future, a small number of the elite go into suspended animation, emerging for a day or so now and then. They are all extremely wealthy, but money is not the only thing needed to join this exclusive set. Their long slumbers alternate with brief periods of parties and other amusements.
The protagonist falls in love with a woman who belongs to the group. He struggles to join the set, facing the arbitrary whim of an elderly woman who has the final say. Complicating matters is a cynical, alcoholic poet. A dramatic event brings the characters together, with unexpected results.
If the first story in this issue lacked style and elegance, this one has plenty — one would say it has too much! There are elaborate metaphors and multiple allusions, some of which went over my head. The tone is world-weary and decadent. The hibernating hedonists remind me of the inhabitants of J. G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands. Not all readers will care for the author's literary pretentions, but I appreciated them.
Four stars.
The Coming of the Little People, by Robert Spencer Carr
This month's Fantasy Classic comes from the November 1952 issue of Bluebook. As the story begins, a feeling of optimism fills the world. Simultaneously, strange lights appear on the most inaccessible peaks on Earth. Although the possibility of spaceships or biological experiments comes up, it's clear from the start (and the title) what's really going on. Mischievous but benign fairies arrive to aid humanity. Not only do they end the Cold War, they help an army officer and his female sergeant admit their love for each other.
Readers with a low tolerance for sweetness and sentimentality had best stay away. If Zelazny's tale was the epitome of Experience, this one is the exemplar of Innocence. It feels cruel to blame the author for naivety, when he wears his heart on his sleeve so openly.
Two stars.
Training Talk, by David R. Bunch
We turn from pure light to complete darkness in the latest mordant fable from a controversial author. A man makes his two young children bury dolls made from sausage and paper. Six months later, they dig them up. What happens next is very strange.
I'm not sure what the author is trying to say, but it has something to do with the man's broken marriage and a woman's death. The frenzied narrative style makes for compelling, if confusing, reading.
Three stars.
Identity Mistaken, by Rick Raphael
An astronaut crashes on an inhabited planet. Only his brain survives. The local aliens rebuild his body, based on their monitoring of Earth's television broadcasts. The whole thing is just a set-up for a joke about the popularity of Westerns. You may get some slight amusement from the punchline.
Two stars.
Summing Up
Zelazny and Bunch represent one extreme of imaginative fiction. They make use of avant-garde literary techniques, at the risk of alienating the audience. The other authors demonstrate simpler, more traditional methods of telling a story. They communicate with the reader clearly, but may seem stale and unoriginal. It's impossible to say which approach is better. Maybe writers of fantasy and science fiction can learn a lesson from the Beatles, and make use of both.
There was nothing particularly special about the Rohrer, but I liked it a little better than Victoria did. If the writing is a bit pedestrian, it might help to remember that the author is (I believe) still in high school.
Now the Zelazny story was something very special. It took me a while to find my way into it, but once I did I enjoyed it a lot. I found it far more readable than most of the Ballard we've seen (I couldn't even finish "Vermilion Sands"). I continue to be impressed.
I skipped over the reprint and rather wish I had skipped over the Bunch, as well. The narrative raises and never addresses a dozen questions, though the style was interesting. Unlike most of his readers, I am neither hot nor cold toward Bunch, but I don't think I'd miss him if he stopped writing.
Rick Raphael is a much better writer than this story would have you believe. A long and overdone joke with a punchline anybody could see coming from a mile away.
One very good story and one that's so-so. I can't say Fantastic was worth my 50 cents this month.
Whoa! Where did that TV in the picture come from? This *is* a television and not just a prop or a toy with a picture on the front, right?
Besides being freakishly tiny, the picture tube looks almost perfectly rectangular. Maybe it's easier to do with a small tube like that, but our new 23" console still has a four-cornered-curve bezel over a somewhat-flattened CRT.
Even with modern transistorized receiver components, packing the CRT, power supply, flyback transformer, and tuner in a box that small is quite a trick.
Something that small and portable, you could carry it from room to room and put it on the kitchen table, coffee table, or even an end table in the bedroom and watch TV anywhere in the house!
I need to make sure Mrs. TRX doesn't see that. We only owe a few months' more payments on the console, and after that I need a new trolling motor for the boat…