[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

President Johnson commissioned noted (and favorite of our editor, Janice) artist Peter Hurd to draw his official Presidential portrait.  This was the result:

Reportedly, upon seeing the painting, Johnson described it as the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  Aghast, the artist asked what the President had wanted in a portrait.  Lyndon whipped out this piece painted by Normal Rockwell:

I understand that Hurd returned his commission and that a new picture will be made.  Maybe by someone with the initials L.B.J.

Law of Analogy


by Jack Gaughan

It was certainly a blow to the shocked Hurd, but I kind of know how Lyndon felt.  I had a similar reaction upon finising the latest issue of Galaxy.  This was, for the most part, not the magazine I was hoping for.

Our Man in Peking, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Yes, as Winter follows Fall, so we have yet another tale in the saga of Dr. West and the half-alien Esks.  Briefly: an alien came to Earth and bred with a local woman.  Her progeny, and their kids, too, all breed humanoids who look like Eskimos, but who mature in three years and give birth in a month.  Twenty years after the first was born, there are now more than a billion of them.  And instead of being stopped or even investigated to any real degree, the governments of the world refuse to see them as anything other than mutant Eskimos, deserving of love, affection, and free food.  The Chinese have welcomed them with open arms to till hitherto unprofitable fields, but Canada, Scandinavia, and other places have also taken them in.

Only one man, the notorious Dr. West, who tried but failed to sterilize the Esks with a tailored plague, will admit the true menace of the Esks.

Last installment, West was in a comfy Canadian prison for his attempted genocide.  In this one, he has been sent on a mission to Red China, brainwashed to learn the details on an as-needed basis, mind-controlled to have no say in his actions.  He is shot down over the mainland along with an Air Force Major so caricatured in his manner that I wondered if Gaughan's art would depict him with straw coming out of his joints.

After much rigamarole, West finds himself in the presence of the current Communist leader, Mao III (do the Chinese give descendants appellations like that?) And then the true nature of West's mission is revealed…

Hayden Howard really isn't a very good writer, and there aren't actually any characters in this story–only marionettes who dance to the author's strings without any will of their own.  I also could have done without the word "Chink" used a couple dozen times.

What keeps the tale from getting just one star is this morbid fascination with how this wholly unrealistic scenario will turn out.  We're supposed to get the conclusion next month.  God willing, that'll be the end of the Esks, one way or another.

Two stars.

Return Match, by Philip K. Dick

The outspacers have gambling casinos across the galaxy.  The only problem?  They tend to be lethal for their patrons.  Joseph Tinbane, a cop for Superior Los Angeles, takes on the aliens' latest contraption: a pinball machine that evolves not only to be unbeatable, but ultimately to attack the player!

Dick's vivid writing is on display here, so there's nothing wrong with the reading.  But the concept is pure fantasy, up to and including the conclusion where Tinbane is menaced by giant pinballs.  I can only imagine that PKD turned on, dropped out, and dashed off this tale before the hallucinations disappeared from his memory.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Who Invented the Crossbow? by Willy Ley

Ley's latest piece is an interesting, but somehow perfunctory piece on the evolution of the crossbow.  A few more pages of Asimov treatment would have helped.

Three stars.

The Last Filibuster, by Wallace West

War between North and South America is averted when the governments of both nations are captured and impressed to do the fighting.

I like the sentiment: politicians would be a lot less willing to send their sons (and daughters) to war if their lives were on the line.  But the story is just sort of silly and obvious.

Besides, who could believe that an armed mob could invade the Capitol to kidnap Congress?  It beggars the imagination.

Two stars.

They Hilariated When I Hyperspaced For Earth, by Richard Wilson


by Vaughn Bodé

The leader of a boring world that has stalled in its progressive mediocrity comes to Earth to steal our Secretary General, an efficient Ugandan who knows how to get things done.  A lot of "comedy" ensues.

Not only is the story a bore, but I can't forgive it for getting "They all Laughed" stuck in my head.

Two stars.

The Trojan Bombardment, by Christopher Anvil

How we defeat an enemy without firing a shot?  Why by shooting shells filled with booze, cigarettes, and sexy ladies at them!  After all, that's what they're really fighting for, isn't it?

Fellow traveler Cora Buhlert recently noted that she can smell a Campbell reject a mile away, and Bombardment is almost assuredly an Anvil story too stupid even for Analog.

One star.

The Discovery of the Nullitron, by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

Speaking of stupid, here's another "funny" piece, in the style of a Scientific American article, on the new decidedly supra-atomic particle called the Nullitron, putatively discovered by the authors after a jag in Ibiza.

One star.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, by R. A. Lafferty

A dozen of the Earth's greatest scientists team up with a computer to improve history.  Their first time traveling target: to salvage relations between Charlemagne and the Caliph, allowing Arabic knowledge to flow freely.  They will know that they have succeeded because all of their records will change before their eyes!

Of course, if they had read William Tenn's The Brooklyn Project, they'd know that, as part of the time stream themselves, they'd never know what had changed.

Still, it's kind of a fun piece.  The journey's the thing, not the destination.

Three stars.

The Palace of Love (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Vance


by Gray Morrow

The saving grace of this magazine is this final installment of Vance's latest serial.  Keith Gersen has tracked down Viole Falushe, one of the five "Demon Kings" crime lords who killed his parents, to the mobster's private domain.  The Palace of Love is a mystical retreat, designed to provide pleasure to discerning patrons.  But its staff and denizens are all slaves of Falushe, though they aren't completely aware of the fact.

Half of this last act involves the long, meandering road to Falushe's Palace of Love.  It is only in the final sixth that we learn the truth about the place, who Drusilla is and her relation to Falushe's object of childhood infatuation, Jheral Tinzy, and whether or not Gersen can succeed in his revenge.

I found it all gripping stuff.  Vance has a knack for sensual writing; you always know what things smell like, what color they are, how they sound.  Yet the prose is never overlabored.  If the first book in the series starts auspiciously and ends with a dull thud, this second one only has one slow patch, in its second sixth.

For that reason, I give this installment and the book as a whole four stars, and it'll be in the running for the Galactic Star at the end of the year.

Summing up

Even with Palace shoring things up, this month's Galaxy clocks in at a dismal 2.4 stars.  And given that the Vance is likely to end up published in paperback, it's probably not even worth buying this mag for the one story (unless, of course, you want the serial complete in original form).

I'll be surprised if Galaxy doesn't come in last this month.  I'll also be really disappointed in that event; I don't think I could easily face another, worse slog!

That would truly be the ugliest month I've ever seen…





5 thoughts on “[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)”

  1. I am generally in agreement with you. This is a really dreadful issue. I might have liked the Wallace West story slightly more than you but otherwise nothing much of interest. Although having given up on the Vance serial already and refusing to read any more Esks stories it was at least quick for me.

  2. Ugh. It was pretty bad. I do wonder why Jack Gaughan thinks Chinese peasants dress like American teenagers at the lake.

    The whole Esk thing has gone on far too long, with a couple of outings being nearly identical. Nothing in this story makes any sense, but I guess Howard needed some reason for Dr. West to have influence over the dictator of China for his finale.

    The Dick story was odd in the way that only he can really make interesting. This sort of thing works much better in short form than it does in the novels he's tried to cram it into in recent years.

    Ley's article was mildly interesting without being terribly informative. It just meanders around without ever getting anywhere or really saying much.

    "The Last Filibuster" was painfully obvious and not terribly well written.

    "Hilariated" was also terrible. A skilled comic writer could have done something with this, but Wilson was not up to the task. Imagine if Bob Sheckley had written it.

    Cora's right about spotting Analog rejects. With Anvil, though, that's no great feat. You can spot them by them not being in Analog. Remember when he was a decent, if not brilliant, writer?

    Parodies of scientific papers aren't all that easy to do. It helps if the author has some familiarity with actual science and scientific papers. I'm not sure either Disch or Sladek do. I blame Asimov for making it look easy with Thiotimoline.

    It's a tautology, but Lafferty is Lafferty. Not one of his best efforts, but not the worst either.

    The Vance finished strongly, but I'm not sure I liked the whole as much as you did. It felt to me like there were a lot of slow spots in this one. That fit with the languid and sensual theme, but it wasn't enough for me. (And this is actually the third story of the Demon Princes. Gersen even tells Falushe that he's already dispatched two them. The Journey somehow missed The Killing Machine a couple of years ago. Maybe because it was from Berkley; Judith Merrill has noted that they're terrible about promoting their SF.)

    1. DemetriosX: "It’s a tautology, but Lafferty is Lafferty. Not one of his best efforts, but not the worst either."

      To be sure (begorrah!),Lafferty is Lafferty. For those who bounce off his singular, antic tall tales — or at least are somewhat resistant to them — doubtless they all seem of a singular, antic sameness.

      But for those of us who've developed a taste for what the man does — despite ourselves, sometimes — there are specific Lafferty stories where he's particularly clever (and he _is_ a clever fellow behind all his idiosyncratic, tall-tale-telling manner) and hits a home run. His 'Slow Tuesday Night,' 'Narrow Valley,' 'Land of the Great Horses,' 'The Transcendental Tigers,' and 'What's the Name of That Town' (featuring the same crazy cast of characters as 'Thus We Refute Charlemagne') are all instances of top-level Lafferty, in my view.

      And so is 'Thus We refute Charlamagne,' I'd say, for all that Tenn's 'Brooklyn Project' is prior art on this theme of changing the past.

      Regarding the Vance, I've had an an advance glimpse of the book MS. I can say that editor Pohl cut some chunks out of it to shorten it, including the whole beginning chapter.

      As for the Hayden Howard, Pohl's reasons for publishing this series so persistently remain a mystery. I can only guess that Howard sold it to him on the basis of an outline of the ideas, because the delivery sure is bad.

      Conversely, I'm always (well, almost always) happy to see a new Dick story. Granted, this is another trifle. It's clear the man's energy is focused on novels currently, like last year's THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH.

      As for the Disch/Sladek, Wilson, and Anvil, yes — these are bad filler and in a better world would not have been published

      Still, with the Lafferty, the Vance, the Dick, and Budrys's book column — almost always a pleasure, though in this issue he tackles an uninteresting trio of books — I enjoyed this issue of GALAXY a little more than Mr. Marcus and the rest of those commenting here seem to have.

  3. Some of Campbell's rejects may be instantly recognizable, but others cover a wide range of territory.  For example, per reliable scuttlebutt that will no doubt be reduced to print at some future point, he rejected Heinlein's "Goldfish Bowl" (only to relent when Heinlein threatened to stop writing), Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain" (as "too extreme"), Clarke's "Against the Fall of Night," the early version of Asimov's PEBBLE IN THE SKY, Philip Jose Farmer's "The Lovers," Philip K. Dick's "The Golden Man," and Heinlein's THE DOOR INTO SUMMER and STARSHIP TROOPERS.

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