[Don't forget to vote for the Hugos — the deadline is here!]
by Gideon Marcus
Across the globe, under the medieval spires of the Kremlin, three ambassadors and their teams vigorously discussed the terms of what may be the precursor to Peace in Our Time (where have we heard that before?)
It all started in 1961, when the Soviet Union began testing gigantic atomic bombs in the air and on the Siberian tundra after a three year moratorium. America followed suit with a series of tests in the Pacific and high in the atmosphere. These provided a wonderful show for residents of Hawaii but also made planning for Mercury shots a bit more tricky.
Then, in October 1962, the two superpowers came to the brink of war over the Soviet Union's placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida cloast. Nikita blinked when Jack glared, and the Doomsday Clock, fluttering at seven minutes to midnight, did not tick.
Nevertheless, it was a close shave, and since then, great strides have been taken to ensure the ongoing survival of our species. For instance, a teletype "hotline" is being established between Washington D.C. and Moscow. If things heat up, the President and the Premier can be chatting (via text) in short order, no need to work through ambassadors.
More significantly, W. Averell Harriman, a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union; Lord Hailsham of Britain; and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko have just put together the first Partial Test Ban Treaty. It will establish a moratorium on atomic testing in the oceans, in the air, above ground, and in space. Enforcement of the ban will be done by satellite, which can detect the flash of a nuclear detonation.
Why are underground tests excluded from the ban? Because we can't easily verify when they've happened, and the Russians don't want us prying too deeply into their affairs. That said, it is a first step, and one that should greatly reduce atmospheric and orbital radiation — a boon that cannot be understated. With the ban's ratification (hopefully within the next couple of months), the Free and Communist Worlds may inch permanently back from the potential of war.
Meanwhile, in the United States, editor John W. Campbell appears to have done his utmost not to distract from the unquestionably big news described above. Indeed, the August 1963 Analog is so unremarkable that it might well have not even been published. I suppose I prefer good real news to good science fiction, but on the other hand, I pay for my subscription to Analog.
Well… maybe not for long. See for yourself.
Change, by R. A. J. Phillips
For once, the "Science Fact" article is neither silly nor dry as dust. This month's piece is on the Eskimo people of the Arctic, the consequences of their interactions with the industrialized peoples to the south, and the lessons we might carry over to our first contact with aboriginal aliens.
Pretty interesting, actually. Three stars.
The Hate Disease, by Murray Leinster
I adore the stories of Dr. Calhoun of the interstellar "Med Service" and his cute little monkey/cat, Murgatroyd. So enchanted have I been by his universe that I have unabashedly cribbed some aspects of it (like the jump drive and the independent nature of the various worlds) for my own stories.
Thus, it is with great sadness that I must levy a two-star rating on this piece, whose premise involves a contagion that had infected nearly half of a planet's population. It's just poorly put together, difficult to follow, and the chemical basis for the plague is both abstruse and ridiculous.
"To Invade New York … ", by Irwin Lewis
A mild professor believes he has discovered a plot to paralyze the Big Apple by seizing control of its traffic lights. This first tale from Irwin Lewis is a shaggy dog bar story without a lot of there there. Two stars.
Patriot, by Frank A. Javor
An extraterrestrial invasion of Earth is repulsed when one brave man tricks the conquering enemy into raising the flag of a terran nation (presumably the United States). The hook is that the fellow wends his way into the alien camp by wearing a deliberately mismatched enemy uniform — but it is never explained how that accomplishes his goal. I read it twice and couldn't figure it out. It was a silly story, too. Two stars.
Controlled Experiment, by Arthur Porges
The prolific (if not terrific) Arthur Porges returns with an unnecessary sequel to The Topper, depicting another magical hoax and its scientific explanation. Forgettable. Two stars.
The Ethical Engineer (Part 2 of 2), by Harry Harrison
At last we come to what you all will probably (as I did) turn to first: the conclusion to the second novel in the Deathworld series. When last we left Jason dinAlt, interstellar gambler and lately resident of the dangerous world of Pyrrus, he had been enslaved by the D'sertanoj of a nearby primitive planet. These desert-dwellers know how to mine petroleum, which they trade to the people of the country, Appsala, in exchange for caroj — steam powered battle wagons. When dinAlt reveals that he can produce caroj himself, he is promoted to "employee" status and given run of the place. He eventually escapes with his native companion, Ijale, as well as the obnoxiously moralistic Micah, who kidnapped dinAlt in the first place. Adventures ensue.
The original Deathworld was a minor masterpiece, a parable about letting go of destructive hatred, suffused with a message on the importance of environmentalism. It was also a cracking good read. This new piece is just a yarn, one almost as clunky as the caroj dinAlt works on. The theme is that universal morality is anything but, and ethics must be tailored to the society for which they are developed.
I don't disagree, but the passages that deal with ethics are long-winded and poorly integrated; Harrison never matches the message to the underlying carrier wave. The result reads as if the author had digested a bunch of recent Heinlein before putting finger to typewriter.
The second Deathworld is not bad, just disappointing, particularly given the brilliance of the first story. Three stars.
It's time to crunch the numbers. Firstly, I note that the readers of Analog found that Norman Spinrad's first story, the exquisite The Last of the Romany, was the worst story of that issue. Well, I hope they're happy now. This latest issue ranks a lousy 2.4 stars, easily at the bottom of the pack this month.
By comparison, F&SF got a lackluster 2.7 stars, and all the other mags finished above water: Fantastic (with the best story, the Leiber), New Worlds, and Galaxy all got 3.2; Amazing scored an atypical 3.5. Editor of Fantastic and Amazing, Cele Goldsmith, is the winner this month for certain.
Women fared less well otherwise — out of 39 pieces of fiction (lumping together the various vignettes in this month's Fantastic), only two were written by women — one a short poem co-written with her husband. Yes, folks. It's getting worse.
Maybe the SF editors have signed a Partial Woman Ban Treaty?
"The Hate Disease" — Pretty bland reading, and the gimmick wasn't very plausible.
"'To Invade New York . . .'" — A one idea story. Using the structure of a story told to somebody within a story told to somebody wasn't very effective.
"Patriot" — A little better written that the stories above, but it was hard to believe in the aliens who can't be told from humans. I guess this was the best short story in the issue, by a tiny bit.
"Controlled Experiment" — Just a joke, of course, and a trivial one at that.
By the way, either Analog isn't proofreading their table of contents very carefully, or they're calling any story in the magazine a "novelette." Even the Porges, and it's only two pages long!
Nice cover, though. Schoenherr, I take it?
Yep. At least, that's to whom credit is given on the table of contents.
I've been overly busy and haven't had time to get all the way through this month's Analog, but I finally made it to the point where the Deathworld sequel is all that's left. It's been pretty disappointing so far.
Like the Traveler, I really enjoy the Med Ship stories. "The Hate Disease" was, alas, not at all enjoyable. I actually gave up about halfway through and skimmed the rest. Part of the problem is that Leinster needs to raise the stakes in every story to keep them from all being the same. The stakes may have gotten too high for a decent story. Another problem is that I really hate the new format of the magazine and have trouble reading it. I may need new glasses.
Aside from all the other problems with "To Invade New York" it the absurdity of the plan. Sure, you could cripple the city by taking out the subway and traffic lights. And then the New York National Guard would come in and restore order. If you pulled enough military to essentially cripple the US's defenses elsewhere, they'd be packed shoulder to shoulder in every bit of empty space in the city. Ridiculous.
"Patriot" wasn't poorly written and was mildly interesting. But again the resolution made little sense. The raising of one flag works up a crowd locally and suddenly the invaders decide to run away?
The Porges was also fairly stupid. I would have thought this was a sequel to the cricket chirp story, not the one with the trained cockroaches. In any case, neither story was in need of a sequel in the first place.
Here's hoping Harrison can keep this issue from being a complete waste of time.
The photograph on the bottom shows a woman with a Royal Precision LGP-21 general purpose computer. This is the transistorized version of the LGP-30 computer. Much smaller, but, sadly, about 1/3 as fast. The round spools on the machines on the right are a paper tape reader and punch made by Tally. The "typewriter" is also a paper tape punch — a Friden Flexowriter. More about the Flexowriter in my next article.
"Women fared less well otherwise — out of 39 pieces of fiction (lumping together the various vignettes in this month’s Fantastic), only two were written by women — one a short poem co-written with her husband. Yes, folks. It’s getting worse.
Maybe the SF editors have signed a Partial Woman Ban Treaty?"
The idea that there are not that many women interested in writing (and reading) SF in 1963, or that women maybe should make more of an effort, is of course totally alien to a time traveling White Knight from 2018. No, we must blame everything else, because women are so weak and helpless, right?
The reason for the dwindling number of women at this point in the field’s history is in no small part economic, and also the fact that there are far fewer outlets for short fiction to be published at this time. The brutal reality is that there’s not much money in pumping out short stories unless you’re at Philip K. Dick or Robert Sheckley levels, and even then Dick turned largely to writing novels once he got that ball rolling and Sheckley started writing fewer short stories and submitting them to higher paying “slick” outlets like Playboy. Some turned to greener pastures, or at least pastures with more greenbacks. How much money do you think Leigh Brackett made as an SF writer versus as a Hollywood screenwriter? But also, fewer outlets means fewer chances to get published. In the US in 1963 you had a total of seven (if I remember right) SF magazines, versus something like 20+ in 1953. If you know the context it’s hard not to lament how the field had narrowed, especially for women.
I should probably add that yes there was also a bit of male chauvinism from the editors at this time, particularly from John Campbell and Avram Davidson, but that's only one contributing factor.
Thank you for that, Brian.
I mostly resent the suggestion that noting the paucity of women, particularly compared to their relative abundance in the last decade, was something no one in 1963 would note.
Betty Friedan felt differently.
(Knut wonders why I keep carping on this issue; I wonder why Knut keeps carping on my carping–I've never made a secret of what this 'zine would be talking about.
Knut, I'm glad you're here. I'm flattered you're still plugging through the Journey. You're simply incorrect that women weren't interested in reading and writing science fiction in 1963. Read the ad copy for F&SF–a third of its readership is women. As for "those women should fight for themselves!", well, that's what women's liberation is all about. Stay tuned.)
I completely agree. The number of science fiction magazines has been dwindling and several magazines known as particularly friendly towards women writers such as Weird Tales or Other Worlds have closed in the last decade.
Furthermore, many women writers found greeners pastures and probably a more friendly reception elsewhere as film and TV screenwriters, writing paperback gothics and Harlequin romances, writing for confession magazines, women's magazines, etc… Hell, we lost Cele Goldsmith Lalli, one of the best editors in the field, to Modern Bride magazine of all things.
Davidson, maybe. But Campbell published the first stories of many women writers. Like Katherine MacLean, Pauline Ashwell, Judith Merril, Kate Wilhelm, Julian May, Leigh Bracket and maybe more.