by Gideon Marcus
The Big Push
After a year of build-up, air raids, and smaller actions, the United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam have opened up the largest offensive of the war. Operation Junction Central involves some 50,000 troops pouring into the logistical heart of VC-controlled South Vietnam west of Saigon. Their goal: to find the communist equivalent of the "Pentagon". It's a classic hammer and anvil style operation, with nearly a thousand paratroopers forming the brunt of the anvil behind enemy lines. The push is accompanied by the biggest logistical bombing raid we've seen in weeks.
Whether this colossal effort will bear fruit remains to be seen. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army have only seemed to grow despite constant combat. More and more often, the fights occur on even, conventional terms rather than as furtive guerrila efforts.
But with half a million soldiers "in country", I suppose it was time to do something. Perhaps the momentum of operations will switch to the allied forces.
Business as Usual
Analog editor John Campbell seems unaware that institutional decay has set in. And with no great competitors from without, he is unwilling to change a formula for his magazine that has remained for the past two decades. I suppose that, as long as he sells more than everyone else, he doesn't need to.
On the other hand, I read that Analog's monthly distribution is down from the 200K+ it enjoyed early in the decade. Maybe the wolves at the door will instigate a sea change. Or a palace coup…
In any event, until that happen (note the subjunctive mood), we can expect more issues like the one for March 1967. Dull. Uninspiring.
by John Schoenherr
The Time-Machined Saga (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison
Harrison once again displays his near interchangibility with Keith Laumer, at least when he writes "funny" stuff (his dramatic prose is a notch above Laumer's, I think). This serial involves a film company on the verge of bankruptcy. Salvation appears in the form of a time machine. Said "vremeatron" will not be used to alter history, purloin lost treasures from the past, or other, potentially lucrative (but old hat) endeavors. No, instead, the movie house is going to travel back to A.D. 1000 to film the True Story of Leif Erickson…Hollywood style.
Said on-location filming will cut costs dramatically: no need to hire extras, no unions, and best of all, since the time machine can come back to the moment after it departed, no time involved! (the production company still gets paid for the time it spends in the past, though). What could go wrong?
I suspect we'll get the answer to that question next installment.
A tepid three stars thus far. I could take it or leave it.
Radical Center, by Mack Reynolds
by John Schoenherr
In a piece designed for Campbell's reactionary heart, Reynolds writes about a time in the not-too-distant future when the trends of apathy, crime, and downright down-on-Americanism have reached a zenith. A hack journalist, badly in need of a story, posits an imaginary illuminati bringing this malaise upon us intentionally.
Little does he know how right he is.
I can't help but deplore the sentiment behind and suffused into this piece. Next, we'll have stories about how long hair is Ruining Society. On the other hand, I feel Reynolds has something when suggests that unscrupulous forces will utilize apathy of the masses to allow their comparatively small blocs to sway policy. Also, I really liked the line, regarding a clown of a politician, "He was laughed into office."
So two stars and a wrinkled nose.
Countdown for Surveyor, by Joseph Green
My eyes lit up at the title of this one. I love pieces on the Space Race, and this inside dope promised to be exciting.
It wasn't. It's as dull as reciting a checklist, and three times as long.
Two stars.
In the Shadow, by Michael Karageorge
by Kelly Freas
After a short piece (probably by Campbell) about ball lightning and free-floating plasma (interesting so far as it goes), we have the latest story by Michael Karageorge, whoever he is.
The space ship Shikari is exploring a new gravitational source zooming through our solar system. It emits no light, but it has the mass of a star. Is it a cold "black dwarf"? A rogue neutron star? Or something else entirely?
The characterization in this one can be reduced to a set of 3×5" index cards each with two or three words on them. Things like "irritable, downtrodden genius". "Absent-minded professor." "Weeping woman." "Comforting woman."
On the other hand, the science is pretty neat, even if I don't buy it for a minute.
I didn't hate it. It's not as good as Karageorge's first story, though. Three stars.
The Uninvited Guest, by Christopher Anvil
by Kelly Freas
A shiny ellipsoid appears on a launch pad and starts to take nibbles out of everything: walls, roads, machinery, people. It appears invulnerable to attack, but it also seems to be of failing vitality. The problem, it is deduced, is that if the thing dies entirely, it will explode with the power of an atom bomb.
Can the alien visitor be thwarted or succored before time runs out?
For an Anvil story, it's not bad. Which means a high two or a low three. I'm feeling charitable today.
The Compleat All-American, by R. C. FitzPatrick
by Kelly Freas
A young man, good at anything he wants to be, is dragooned by his father into playing football. His remarkable abilities, largely consisting of not getting hurt and performing miracles with the pigskin when under pressure, catch the eye of two government investigators.
After fifteen pages of shaggy dog fluff, we learn that said All-American is invulnerable and unstoppable. He also, luckily, has no ambition. Three more shaggy pages of dog fluff follow this revelation.
I guess this is what's under the barrel. One star.
What's the score?
Half way around the world, forces clash in a titanic struggle between Democracy and Communism. Or maybe it's pitched fight between a downtrodden people and the venal imperialists and their running dog lackeys. However you characterize it, Something Big is Happening.
But here on the pages of Campbell's mag, not much of interest is happening at all. Analog finishes at just 2.3 stars, by far the worst mag of the month. Above it are Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Fantastic (3.2), New Worlds (3.25), and IF (3.3).
Things are actually worse than it seems. Only the last of these mags was really outstanding (Fantastic is mostly reprints, New Worlds was basically an Aldiss novel with a few vignettes for ballast).
Adding insult to injury, just one woman-penned story came out this month, and there were only 25 pieces of fiction in all the magazines, period.
Something's gotta change soon. This can't go on forever…
I picked this one up for the Harrison serial but not impressed so far. His first 4 novels were all Analog serials and pretty good, unfortunately this so far feels like something he put together to pay the bills. Whilst some parts were quite funny, it was so filled with nonsense that seemed directly to Campbell's sensibilities rather than having a purpose. Comedy time travel stories have been around for almost a century, and this is no Mark Twain novel.
The Mack Reynolds piece had some interesting ideas and good moments but overall felt very flat for me. Come on Mack, do better!
None of the others I didn't feel were noteworthy at all and I have to add on them.
I will probably read the review of the 2nd part of the serial here next month before deciding if I should pick up a copy.
I find it odd that you sound down on Harry Harrison's humor when you gave his last comic piece that I can think of (The Starsloggers, later expanded into Bill, the Galactic Hero) five stars. That said, I can see the Laumerian aspects of this piece, but I'm willing to let him warm up the satirical aspects of his tale. However, I'm not sure Hollywood really works this way any more. Louis B. Mayer's been dead for… what? A decade? Sam Goldwyn hasn't done anything since Porgy and Bess bombed. Hollywood is all about accounting these days.
I didn't particularly care for the Reynolds, but I'm pretty sure he didn't think the goals of his secret society were a good thing. Campbell probably didn't see it that way, but this was more of a warning than "this is the way it oughta be".
Typically for Analog, the fact piece was dull as ditch water.
The Karageorge was all right. Like you, I didn't hate it, but I can't go much further than that. When we covered his first story, there was speculation in the letter col, spearheaded by John Boston, that Karageorge is Poul Anderson. I could see that, but some confirmation would be good.
The Anvil was fair for Anvil, but only barely. And "All-American" was terrible, and about 3 times longer than it needed to be.
I thought Starsloggers much more piquant, timely, and honestly, FUNNY, then this one.
Wonder if Harrison got part of the idea for this from T. L. Sherred's E for Effort, Astounding, 1947?
That was quite an original idea in Astounding in 1947.
Hehehe.
Galactic Journey: "Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Fantastic (3.2), New Worlds (3.25), and .IF (3.3). Things are actually worse than it seems. Only the last of these mags was really outstanding (Fantastic is mostly reprints, New Worlds was basically an Aldiss novel with a few vignettes for ballast)."
You're finally seeing the real picture.
Pohl has 2-3 mags to fill, to be sure. Retief Delenda Est, certainly. MacApp's Gree, too. That said, right now overall the only consistent source of signs of life in the American SF magazine market — and arguably the only consistent venue for quality stories anywhere, amid all the filler, since the British mags are experimental and inconsistent, as well as underfunded — are Pohl's magazines.
I cite the regular appearance there of Niven, Silverberg Mark 2, heavyweight novellas like Budrys's 'Be Merry,' etcetera.
You'll miss Pohl when he moves on, as he inevitably will.
I'm sure you're right. I've often said if you squished Asimov and Pohl together, you'd get me.
Galaxy has been pretty poor lately, a shadow of its first five years. Worlds of Tomorrow is on the skids. IF is spotty.
I wonder if magazines, in general, are just dying? That'd be a shame as I like short stories. Anthologies like Orbit and New Writings aren't (yet?) frequent enough to pick up the slack.
Sounds like it's time for "Who Killed Science Fiction? Part Two."
The magazines are on the decline, it seems, both in the USA and the UK. I won't suggest any particular reason. It doesn't seem to be a case of wildly glutting the market, as it was in the 1950's, with an absurd number of SF/fantasy magazines being published. (More than twenty American Sf magazines in 1957; six by the end of 1960.)
Pohl may have bitten off more than he can chew, certainly, with three full magazines to edit. The publisher seems to have just thrown Amazing and Fantastic into the garbage can, offering them little support. Campbell, of course, goes his own way, as do the various editors of F&SF. Others can speak for the British situation better than I can.