[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Tossing and turning

When I was a kid, I had (like everyone else) a cotton-filled mattress. In a lot of ways, I was lucky. I was a skinny kid so I didn't weigh much, and I was just as lief to sleep on the rug as in a bed, so I wasn't picky about where I lay down. Plus, bedbugs weren't a problem in sunny El Centro. They hated the lack of air conditioning as much as we did. So that ol' mattress did me fine.

But I got spoiled by my first innerspring in the 50s. That's sleeping comfort.

The only problem with coil mattresses, of course, is that after a while (unless you managed to stay teen skinny into your middle years) the middle sags. Eventually, you're in this little self-made pit. Oh your aching back!

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a bit like a saggy mattress.  It's great at the ends, but the middle is the absolute pits.

It started so well


by Chesley Bonestell

The Hall of the Dead, by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is having the best decade in a long time.  It's a pity he's not around to enjoy it, having passed away more than 30 years ago.  But his mighty thewed creation "Conan", warrior of Hyboria, has found new life in the hands of famed Fantasist L. Sprague de Camp.  In addition to compiling (and lightly editing) Howard's old stories for a pair of collections, which Cora will be reviewing in two days, Sprague has also taken unfinished pieces and raw outlines and given the bones flesh.

The Hall of the Dead was only a 650 word outline when Sprague found it.  It is now an intriguing new novelette in the Conan canon, one that I found every bit as exciting as the various pieces I've found in old pulps. 

It's a tale set very early in Conan's life.  He is on the run from the wicked city of Shadazar, a company of police soldiers on his tail led by the Aquilonian mercenary, Nestor.  Conan seeks refuge in the cursed dead city of Larsha.  There, he and Nestor must team up to face a variety of horrors, living and dead.  The reward if they succeed?  Treasure beyond imagining!

It's great, riproaring stuff.  More please.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

A Walk in the Wet, by Dennis Etchison

The lone survivor of a spacewreck is haunted by more than the deaths of dozens.  For, as a telepath, he experienced the fatalites as well as witnessed them.  Now faced with the truth of how he became the mutant he is, the spacer has taken on a grisly mission…if only he can remain sober long enough to carry it out.

That summary makes this sound like a pretty good story.  It's not.  It's impenetrable and rather disgusting.  I suppose its lone virtue is that it's memorable.

One star.

The Next Step, by E. A. Moore

On an overcrowded world, the only hope for humanity is colonizing the stars.  It turns out that the inevitable leukemia that the settlers acquire on their relativistic jaunts is the key to their transcending their physical form and becoming one with the universe.

In addition to being rather amateurishly written, this story requires a lot of leaps of faith.  I have trouble buying the premise that cancer is actually a beneficial development.

Two stars.

The Song of the Morrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ferman is really scraping the barrel if he has to go back 70 years for a piece.  In this vignette, wide-eyed princess meets a crone on a beach, is told many things that come true, and the maid ultimately becomes the next crone.

I like poetic stuff as much as the next person, but this one didn't do it for me.

Two stars.

The Intelligent Computer, Ted Thomas

As usual, Ted starts with an interesting premise (how do you copyright/patent something developed by a computer?) and utterly flubs it.  Mr. Thomas needs to write a real article or stop writing these half-efforts.

Two stars.

The Little People (Part 2 of 3), by John Christopher

The serial continues.  Last month took us to a run-down hostel in rural Ireland where a collection of eight neurotics discovered what they thought was one of The Little People.

In this chapter, we learn that the foot-tall girl and her friends are not faerie folk at all, but something much more sinister–the result of a Nazi experiment in longevity. 

I honestly have no idea where this story is going to end up.  I am still enjoying it, though perhaps not quite so much as last time.

Four stars.

Impossible, That's All, by Isaac Asimov

In this month's article (the Good Doctor's 100th… and we've covered all save the first!), Dr. A talks about why it's impossible to go faster than light, and why we should all just stop bugging him about it.

It's a good piece, particularly in talking about how our advancements in science serve to refine models rather than completely overthrow them (q.v. Newton to Einstein).  On the other hand, sometimes model changes are revolutionary.  Discovering subatomic particles didn't change the life of the average citizen…until we used the knowledge to make atomic bombs and reactors.  We now seem to be on the edge of a revolution in sub-sub-atomic physics as we speak, giving rhyme and reason to the veritable zoo of particles, just as subatomic theory made sense of Medeleev's periodic table.  Who knows if that will result in discoveries in previously impossible fields such as antigravity and faster than light travel?

Asimov is facile, but I suspect he's missing something.  Three stars.

Blackmail, by Fred Hoyle

The champion of out-of-date theories (e.g. "Steady State") offers up this bizarre little fantasy in which a fellow learns to communicate with animals.  Turns out all they want to do is watch people beat each other up on television.  Think of the effect on the Nielsen's!

Forgettable fluff.  Two stars.

Falling out

This sunken mess of a mattress garners a lousy 2.6 stars.  That's still better than most of the other mags out this month, which tells you how bad our job here at the Journey can be.

That said, between the Conan and the Christopher (not to mention Merril's column and Asimov's article), more than half of this month's issue is worth a read.

I'll just have to learn to sleep on the edges, that's all!






5 thoughts on “[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)”

  1. I found de Camp's Conan to be a pale imitation. There's some quality missing that I can't quite put my finger on. Part of it, I think, is that de Camp seems less comfortable with the purplish pulp prose than Howard was. It wasn't terrible, but not more than three stars for me.

    Dennis Etchison clearly has talent from what we've seen from him so far. I could see what he was trying for, but he definitely didn't achieve it. The story probably could have been about 25% shorter, if nothing else. I still liked it a little better than you did, though.

    Now, "The Next Step"? We're in complete agreement. A big chunk of this issue feels like Ferman just dumping in a bunch of stuff that he needs to get into print, but couldn't fit in another issue.

    The Stevenson was a little too much of its day. The faux fairy tale style just doesn't work any more.

    Ted Thomas raises an interesting question (gosh, you might think he knows something about patent law), but takes things in a predictably uninteresting direction. I guess if he could do anything with these ideas, he'd write the story instead of tossing the idea out for everybody else.

    I liked this segment of "The Little People" more than I did the first. Still not four stars for me, but I am curious to see where it's going.

    A decent article by Dr. A, though nothing special. At least he's not making a list of geographical whatnots.

    I don't think I've liked anything I've ever read by Hoyle. This hasn't broken the streak.

    1. I just read two of the new De Camp edited Conan paperback collections (first review coming in two days), which includes another story De Camp finished based on a fragment and an outline. My verdict is that De Camp does a decent enough job, but he doesn't have the energy or poetic sensibility of Howard. De Camp is simply a very different writer from Howard. Maybe another writer would be better suited to finishing incomplete Howard manuscripts. Leigh Brackett is someone I could see doing it, but we seem to have lost her to Hollywood. And C.L. Moore, another writer I could see pulling it off, seems to have retired altogether. Zelazny or Michael Moorcock would be interesting choices, though I think they're too busy with their own writing.

      1. Maybe Emil Petaja?  He wrote for weird tales back in and his Kalevala novels are kind of Sword and Sorcery crossed with weird science fiction.

  2. Not a great issue.  Conan isn't my thing, and I'm not getting anything out of the serialized novel.  I think my favorite piece was the reprint from RLS!

  3. Another poor issue the Conan I thought was enjoyable but not amazing and the rest did nothing for me. Given that I am sure it won't be long before L. Sprague de Camp puts this piece in another collection, not really worth my money.

    I don't think we have had a particularly good issue of F&SF since November. I really hope we are not heading back to the doldrums of the Avram Davidson era…

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