As far as I know, there aren't a lot of science fiction mystery novels out there. The most famous, of course, are Isaac Asimov's tales of police detective Elijah Bailey and his robot partner R. Daneel Olivaw. The Caves of Steel (1953) and The Naked Sun (1956) are classics in this specific combination of genres.
A new book continues the tradition of a detective investigating a murder case in the far future. Will it be up to the level of the Good Doctor's predecessors? Let's find out.
The novel takes place aboard a luxury starship on its way from Earth to Altair. On board is police lieutenant/doctor of psychology Claudine St. Cyr. Her job is to make sure that the king of a planet orbiting Altair gets home safely. This seems like an easy assignment, as the king claims that everybody on his world loves him. It turns out this isn't quite true.
After foiling an assassination attempt on the king, things start to go very badly indeed. Somebody has sabotaged the gizmo that allows the starship to travel faster than light. This threatens to make the whole darn thing blow up, killing hundreds of passengers and crew.
As if that weren't enough, both the captain and the second in command die in mysterious ways. Can St. Cyr solve the crime and save the ship?
Suspects? We've got plenty of 'em. Just about everybody we meet has some kind of secret, from the king to a shopkeeper who sells St. Cyr a wristwatch with a second hand that runs backwards.
Notable among the possible killers are a wild-eyed religious fanatic and a guy with telekinetic powers. It takes a while for the plot to get going, but towards the end the author throws in a ton of twists and turns.
As a murder mystery, it generally plays fair with the reader. There are lots of clues scattered here and there, from a mysterious message left near the sabotaged gizmo to the aroma of a certain brand of cigar. My one quibble with the whodunit plot is that some of the twists depend on people concealing information from St. Cyr (and the reader) for pretty weak reasons.
As science fiction, well, that's a different matter. There's a long discussion of the way the starship gizmo works that is pure doubletalk. We also learn a lot about the way telekinetic powers work; more than I wanted to know, really. Despite the far future setting, it feels more like we're aboard the Queen Mary during the golden age of cruise ships.
A word about St. Cyr as a character. She's highly skilled as a detective and as a psychologist. She is also very beautiful, and just about every male character in the novel falls madly in love with her. She isn't afraid to use her feminine wiles to get information out of these besotted fellows, and this gets to be a bit much at times.
Overall, a light piece of entertainment that passes the time pleasantly, but will fade from memory as soon as you reach the last page.
Three stars.
by Gideon Marcus
The Nets of Space, by Emil Petaja
I've only recently discovered Petaja, a Finnish-extraction author with a fantastical sense imbued in his writing and a penchant for incorporating themes from various mythologies. He's sort of a rip-roaring version of Thomas Burnett Swann, and I always enjoy (though not necessarily love) his work. His latest is no exception.
Cover art by Paul Lehr
The opening is a grabber: Don Quick is a technician bounced from the Alpha Centauri expedition at the last minute. The first scene of the book is a dream sequence in which he is in an enormous cocktail glass with dozens of other naked humans, glazed in brine, and they are one-by-one pulled out and dipped in sauce before being eaten by giant alien crabs.
When he awakens, Don finds himself back on Earth and recalls that he has been a mental patient for months. Is his dream a kind of clairvoyance? Or merely a kind of shell shock from the time he inhaled hyperspatial gas during a pre-launch accident involving the Centaur III? And why, when he falls asleep, does the dream continue sequentially and seem to portend an extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth?
Cervantes' classic Don Quixote figures strongly in this book; it is the external influence Petaja has chosen for his latest adventure. The whole thing is lighthearted enough that you're never too worried about Earth's possible impending disaster. Indeed, The Nets of Space is essentially a comic book in literary form—never mind the science or consistency. But it reads quickly: I finished it on a single flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka.
The Day of the Dolphin is a work of fiction of great contradictions: it’s lighthearted and downbeat, escapist and embedded in the world; engaged in technological innovation and driven by characters; and written in manners both straightforward and elliptical.
If there ever was a book to drive a reader crazy, it’s this one.
At the heart of Robert Merle’s new novel is a fascinating concept. We all know that dolphins are smart animals. As this book reminds us, the brain size and complexity of the average dolphin is roughly analogous to those of a human brain. So what if a wise researcher was able to talk to dolphins in their language and teach dolphins to talk to us in ours? How would those dolphins navigate their learning, how would their approaches to the world be different from those of humans, and what would make those majestic creatures truly happy?
When Merle explores those ideas, The Day of the Dolphin leaps ecstatically like a dolphin leaping out of the water to shoot a basketball through a hoop. There’s a thrilling element of discovery as a secret government laboratory of scientists patiently work with a young dolphin to teach him a few words of English. When he starts to learn English, the scientists provide that dolphin a mate. And the courtship and love affair between the dolphin couple is fascinating and sweet and surprisingly moving. My favorite parts of the novel were the sections in which Merle shows the creatures change each other, drive their relationships and truly build a bond between themselves and the scientists who care for them.
But if a scientific agency is driving this research, you know there has to be some geopolitics involved, and of course there is. In fact, one character notes in a clever bit of metafictional dialogue the moment when the plot takes on Bond or Flint elements. There are human romances inside the research group. But there is also espionage, and secret taping, and a “dolphin gap” argument with the Soviets, and it is to sigh.
Mr. Merle
Because to me, all those moments of connection to the real world take away the most intriguing aspects of the book. The book pivots at its midpoint. At that point. The book swiftly changes from an intellectually absorbing exploration of science into an often dull, often by-the-numbers tale of espionage and intrigue. I predicted around page 20 that the dolphins would be sent on the mission they go on towards the end of this novel, and the impact of those actions were equally as obvious.
Merle writes much of this book in a kaleidoscopical style, full of long paragraphs with stream-of-consciousness approaches which kind of wander and meander from first person to third person, from grounded reality to revelations of emotion and often to outright gibberish. At first this style is thrilling or at least intriguing, but when Merle breaks up that approach with excerpts from letters or interviews conducted by government agencies, that break often feels like a necessary breath of fresh air. I kept finding my mind drifting as the characters’ minds drifted, ungrounded in reality or in this story but instead of my own thoughts about dolphins or work or the Miami Dolphins of the NFL.
It sounds like I hated this book but in truth I enjoyed The Day of the Dolphin for its brazen oddness and for Merle’s obvious passion for both the way he presents his story and the story itself. The more I read about them in this book, the more I wanted to read about our aquatic friends. I now have a nice stack of library books on my desk about Cetaceans because I find that species so interesting. I just wish The Day of the Dolphin had a bit more dolphin and a bit less human in its pages.
Emil Petaja is an American writer of Finnish ancestry. His best known works are a series of novels based on the Finnish national epic the Kalevala. (Saga of Lost Earths, The Star Mill, The Stolen Sun, and Tramontane. These were all published from 1966 to 1967.)
Petaja's latest novel, although not part of this series, also deals with themes from Finnish mythology.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
Doctor Stephen McCord is an anthropologist. Although he's the only major character who isn't of Finnish descent, he's studied the culture and knows something of the language.
Before the novel begins, his college buddy Art Mackey took off for a remote area of Montana, in search of his girlfriend Ilma, who mysteriously returned to her old homestead. Stephen gets a tape recording from his friend, giving him a few hints as to what's going on. (It also serves as exposition for the reader.)
It seems that the former logging town of Hellmouth, inhabited by Finnish immigrants, was completely destroyed in a huge forest fire in 1906. When Art arrived in search of Ilma's nearby farmhouse, he found the place looking exactly the way it did six decades ago, with some of the former citizens still alive and kicking.
Intrigued by this mystery (and wondering if his pal has gone nuts), Stephen makes his way to the supposedly vanished town. He discovers that Hellmouth is indeed still around. Furthermore, the inhabitants worship Ukko, the chief god of Finnish legend. (Roughly comparable to Zeus or Thor, I believe.)
Stephen finds Art, and they both search for Ilma. Things get weird when they actually run into what seems to be Ukko, a being whose presence is so overwhelming that it's almost impossible not to fall to one's knees in adoration. The apparent god promises to make Earth a utopia, in exchange for worship. Ukko also has plans for Stephen.
What happens involves Ilma's elderly father Izza, her hunchbacked brother Yalmar, the local schoolteacher/librarian, and the steel plate inside Stephen's head, a souvenir of his time as an ambulance driver during a conflict in Southeast Asia. (Maybe Vietnam, as the story takes place just a little bit in the future, some time in the 1970's.)
The author writes clearly and elegantly. I always knew what was going on and was able to keep track of the characters. There are many vivid descriptions of Petaja's home state of Montana. (He now lives in San Francisco, which is also depicted excellently in the early part of the book.)
Besides having a compelling plot that kept me reading in one sitting, the novel has some intriguing and controversial things to say about the nature of deity and its relationship with humanity. Even at the very end of the text, Stephen still isn't sure if opposing Ukko was the right thing to do.
Four stars.
Comedy and Tragedy
The latest Ace Double to fall into my hands (designated as H-85, for those of you keeping score) offers a pair of short novels with contrasting moods. One is lighthearted, the other is serious. Let's start with the humorous one.
David Grinnell is actually the well-known fan, writer, and editor Donald A. Wollheim. He also created the Ace Double series, so he must feel right at home.
This novel was published last year in hardcover.
Cover art by Michael M. Peters.
The protagonist is a filthy rich and rather egotistical fellow named Ajax Calkins. A little research reveals that Wollheim (without co-author Carter) has been writing about him since 1941, sometimes under the pen name Martin Pearson. Most recently, this old material was recycled into the novel Destiny's Orbit. The Noble Editor gave it a lukewarm review a while back, calling it a juvenile space opera.
In the current volume, Ajax is the king of an asteroid that is actually a gigantic spaceship built by the civilization that was destroyed when their home planet blew up long ago, creating the asteroid belt. He and his fiancée Emily Hackenschmidt are on Earth, leaving the asteroid in the hands (so to speak) of their loyal Martian friend, a spider-like being called Wuj.
Dastardly amoeba-like aliens, the inhabitants of Saturn, are the sworn enemies of Earth. (In a touch of satire, we find out that they were perfectly nice folks until they learned aggression from humans.) Two of the Saturnians disguise themselves as Ajax and Emily and convince Wuj they're the real thing. They set off for Saturn, eager to uncover the ancient spaceship's secrets and use its advanced technology to conquer the solar system.
What I've failed to convey is the fact that this is a comedy. Ajax manages to save the day, of course, but he's also something of a fool. The more levelheaded Emily is often exasperated at him, with good reason.
The novel is written in a dryly tongue-in-cheek style that is more amusing than the usual science fiction farce. There are quite a few witty lines. I'm not a big fan of comic SF, but this one is better than some.
Let's flip the book over and take a look at something without laughs.
Cover art by Jack Gaughan.
The cover proudly announces that this is the novel's first book publication. I assume that's true, but there's also a British hardcover edition that came out this year.
Cover art by Colin Andrews.
The story takes place a few hundred years after society fell apart, for reasons not apparent until later in the novel. Humanity has managed to build itself back up, but there's been a strange change in people. They're divided up into castes. Again, the explanation for this is unknown.
Roughly half of the population consists of Norms; ordinary folks. The other half are Delinks; murderers and other violent criminals. Some Norms and Delinks are also Scuttlers. These are people who have an intense phobia about the sky, and can't bear to look at it.
A small number of folks are Stinkers. Everybody else hates these people; so much so, that few of them survive. Those who do isolate themselves and protect their lives with various resources.
Michael Craig is a Stinker. (That looks like an example of nasty graffiti, doesn't it?) He gets a message from the police (by mail; if he came anywhere near them they would try to kill him) asking him to try an experiment. The cops want to know what would happen if two Stinkers met. Would they loathe each other on sight?
Michael agrees to meet Geo Hastings, a Stinker who lives in Africa. The oddly named Geo turns out to be an attractive woman. If you think the two are going to fall in love, give yourself an A in predicting familiar plot developments.
Besides not trying to kill each other, the two discover that they can communicate telepathically. Things would seem to be turning out nicely, if it were not for the Geeks.
A Geek is a type of human being that has just appeared recently. They are physically superior, tend to be cold-bloodedly calculating, and are intent on wiping out the rest of humanity. In particular, they are bent on destroying the Stinkers; not for the usual reason (pure, unexplained hatred) but as part of their plan to conquer the world.
Without giving anything away (although you may be able to predict the novel's plot twists), let's just say the reason for all these weird happenings is revealed. Can Norms, Delinks, and Stinkers work together against the Geeks and the secret menace behind them? Not to mention the Scuttlers, who have a vital role to play.
This isn't a bad novel. Not great, but not bad. The story held my interest. (I haven't mentioned Michael's three heavily armed robot birds, who are the most charming characters.) It's worth reading once.
Science fiction may be my first love, but I read other genres as well. And so my latest pick-up at the local import bookstore was a crime novel entitled God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake. The reason I bought the book is that it just won the prestigious Edgar Award, i.e. the mystery genre's equivalent to the Hugo and Nebula Awards, for the best crime novel of the year, beating out Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. Any novel that can beat a juggernaut like Rosemary's Baby is certainly worth checking out, so I picked it up. And reader, I was not disappointed.
The Most Gullible Man in New York City
The protagonist of God Save the Mark is one Fred Fitch, who must be the most gullible man in New York City. Fred is a magnet for con artists and there's not a scam in existence that Fred will not fall for.
The novel opens with Fred getting a phone call from a lawyer that his Uncle Matt has died and left Fred more than three hundred thousand US-dollars. This makes even the extremely gullible Fred suspicious, especially since he does not have an Uncle Matt.
So Fred alerts his friend his best and probably only friend, Detective Jack Reilly of the NYPD's "bunco squad", i.e. the police department dealing with fraud. Reilly tells Fred to go to the appointment with the fake lawyer, so Reilly can arrest him red-handed. Alas, Fred is late for the meeting because he got scammed… again and it turns out that the lawyer is not a fraud after all, but the real deal. As is the will of the late Uncle Matt. Fred really did inherit more than three hundred thousand US-dollars.
However, there's a catch or rather several. For starters, Uncle Matt was a con artist himself and the black sheep of the family, which is why Fred has never heard of him. What is more, Uncle Matt, though terminally ill, was murdered. Which makes Fred the prime suspect.
A City of Con Artists
The situation quickly escalates. To begin with, Fred's new found riches make him a target for even more would-be con artists, including a childhood sweetheart who intends to hold him to a marriage proposal made as a kid or sue him for breach of promise and a neighbour who wants to publish his alternate history novel Veni, Vidi, Vici with Air Power via a predatory vanity press. Worse, whoever murdered Uncle Matt is now taking potshots at Fred. Finally, Fred also finds himself entangled with two very different women, Gertie Divine, a former stripper who was the late Uncle Matt's nurse, and Karen Smith, Reilly's bit on the side who still hopes he'll marry her someday, once he gets over his Catholic guilt induced reluctance to divorce his wife.
The intense pressure under which Fred finds himself finally makes him wise up. He tells off several would-be con artists and also puts his skills as an independent researcher to use to investigate Uncle Matt's murder himself, since he no longer trusts the police.
However, there are still many twists and turns ahead, including a hilarious chase scene where Fred steals a child's bicycle to escape his pursuers and ends up tumbling headfirst into a pond in Central Park.
This was the first novel by Donald E. Westlake (who also writes as Richard Stark and under a number of other pen names and has even dabbled in science fiction on occasion) that I read, but it certainly won't be the last, because this book is laugh out loud funny and a complete and utter delight.
In many ways, God Save the Mark is a reminiscent of the screwball comedies of thirty years ago, yet it is also a solid mystery that plays fair with the reader and delivers plenty of red herrings as well as all the clues needed to solve it. The novel also offers an excellent overview of the various cons and scams going around, some I was aware of and others that were completely new to me. The ending is a perfect fit.
A Deserving Winner?
So is this novel better than Rosemary's Baby? Well, the two books are difficult to compare, because they are so very different. But all in all, I'd agree with the verdict of the Mystery Writers of America that God Save the Mark is a most deserving winner of the 1968 Edgar Award.
A fluffy, frothy caper that will leave you rolling on the floor laughing and guessing till the end.
Sometimes as a reviewer you just don’t quite trust yourself when you encounter something totally unexpected. When you read a work which feels sui generis for science fiction, a book which draws comparison to literary fiction like Dos Passos, Burges and Nabokov, it’s hard to assess that book in its own context.
John Brunner’s fascinating new novel Stand on Zanzibar is the spiritual successor to those modernist writers.
Brunner’s novel reads as part pulp fiction and part assault-the-senses bursts of information. Zanzibar is a prophecy and a critique, a satire and a work of deep seriousness. It has plot lines and complex emotions and an energy that won’t quit, and at 576 pages of very short chapters, it somehow felt exhausting and left me craving more. It’s also extremely hard to describe, so be aware I’m barely skimming the surface here, and I welcome anybody who’s willing to add their own comments in an LoC to this magazine.
Let’s start with the easy parts to describe. On its most basic level, Stand on Zanzibar is about the problem of overpopulation. When we all were in diapers, if stood side by side, all of humanity could take up a space roughly the size of the Isle of Wight. By the distant year of 2010, however, as Brunner writes, "If you allow for every codder and shiggy and appleofmyeye a space of one foot by two, you could stand us all on the 640 square mile surface of the island of Zanzibar."
There’s so much information contained in one sentence. You get one of the key themes of the novel and also a feeling of Brunner’s approach to his writing. Like Burgess’s punks in Clockwork Orange, the characters in this book chatter and mumble in an invented slang which feels clever and becomes part of the larger reading experience of the book. (Brunner admits a strong influence on him from Burgess.) The language forces readers out of our comfort zones and therefore pay closer attention to the often fractured way Brunner chooses to tell his tale. (A codder is a certain type of man and a shiggy a certain type of woman and an appleofmyeye is a child, by the way.)
Mr. Brunner
The other key piece of information in that sentence above how fears of world overpopulation has led to strong laws against procreation. Those restrictive rules in turn have created a vast black market in child-rearing, as citizens are shown considering traveling to the state of Puerto Rico to have kids, much as one might escape their home state for an abortion or divorce to defy difficult local laws. World society also angles towards eugenics, forced sterilizations and genetic modifications. Can suicide booths be far behind?
All of the above is mere background – though thoughtful, fascinating background – for the main thrust of this sprawling exercise. Much of the book tells the story of the small calm African country of Beninia, population 900,000, which has become the main staging point for refugees from wars in three neighboring countries. Those refugees despise each other, but the country has a kind of tenuous peace under the benevolent rule of President Zadkiel F. Obomi. However, President Obomi wants to retire. And when he retires, what will happen to the peace he worked so hard to broker?
Enter another key aspect of this book’s fascinating plot. Obomi is good friends with American Ambassador Elihu Masters, and as they discuss the problem, Masters comes up with an unexpected suggestion: what if American corporation General Technics (motto: "The difficult we did yesterday. The impossible we're doing right now") took over the country? What if the country exchanged its vast offshore mineral and oil reserves for education and infrastructure creation?
Parts of the book alternate between reveries by Obomi and the life in New York City shared by roommates Donald Hogan and Norman House. House is “Afram”, African-American, and has astutely used his race and his native intelligence to gain himself a powerful role inside GT. That means he will be on the ground while GT moves operations to Beninia – that is, of course, if Norman can shake his deep feelings of melancholia and dissatisfaction with his life and his career. Hogan, meanwhile, seems innocent since he spends most of his days at the New York Public Library. But in fact Hogan is a “Dilettanti”, a spy recruited by the government because of his preternatural skills at discovering patterns in seemingly normal experiences. Hogan is passive until “activated” by the government, and he worries about that aspect of his life.
Until he actually is activated and sent to Socialist Asian country of Yatakang, where the government has announced how eminent geneticist Dr. Sugaiguntung has invented a way for everybody around the world to give birth to perfect children. But is their assertion true, or it just a lie on top of all the other lies circulating in this complex world? Can Donald prove the Yatakang government’s announcement is a lie? Can he persuade the people of Yatakang to support the leader of a guerilla rebellion which is happening in the country’s mountains?
Shades of ol' Fidel
*Whew.* There’s so much there just in the plot. I’m sure you can see the pulpy outlines of a Le Carre style spy novel, as well as chances for Swiftian social satire in both storylines I’ve described, and yet all that description barely scratches the surface of this most profoundly wild novel. Because underpinning this entire book is a deeper critique of world society, a society full of selfishness and cheap thrills and tawdry media which creates false reality in its shows.
Most damningly, Brunner presents a world in which people seem constantly interconnected and yet somehow deeply distant from each other. Hogan and House, for instance, despite being roommates, scarcely know anything about each other. The media consumed by the people in this world prevents them from being social, and that gap has vast societal consequences. When people can literally project fictionalized versions of themselves on fantasy television shows, what attraction does the real world have? Drugs are all pervasive. Suburbs are collapsing. The planet is groaning from the weight of all the people living upon it. Yet the vast majority of men and women in this world care much more about the shows they consume than they do about the world they have created.
And there’s so much more here. There’s Shalmaneser, the super computer which makes critical decisions on Earth (wonder if Brunner heard about Clarke and Kubrick’s 2001 ideas?). There’s the muckers, a group of random people who go on killing sprees for no reason. There’s a drug which forces people to tell the truth which is given to a bishop who spends a Sunday mass telling everyone his real feelings about God. I could go on and on, and dear reader, I know I’m skipping one of your favorite elements of this book.
But I grow filled with a bit of despair that I could do an adequate job of explaining any element of this book; even more, I despair at the idea a mere plot summary would be useful to anybody who might be considering reading this astounding book.
So let me sum my feelings up this way. Like many of us here at the Journey, I’ve long been a fan of Mr. Brunner’s writing. But Stand on Zanzibar takes all of John Brunner’s writing abilities and takes them to a quantum level. He displayed massive potential in many of his earlier works, but here Brunner shows that potential paid off in spades.
No matter the context, on first read, Stand on Zanzibar Brunner has delivered the wildest, weirdest, most successful book of the year so far. Previously I called Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage the best book I had read in 1968 up to that point. Brunner’s achievement far exceeds Panshin's. I hope to be rereading this book in that far-flung future of 2010 and seeing how many of Brunner’s prophecies came true.
Five stars.
[And new to the Galactoscope, we are pleased to introduce poet and author Tonya R. Moore, who has dived into New Wave's deep end with her first brush with Chip Delany….]
Nova was my first encounter with the work of Samuel R. Delaney who has, thus far, proven himself exemplary of the originality and innovativeness one would expect from the current New Wave of Science Fiction writers. Set in a distant future where humans have migrated to other worlds, this book paints a chaotic but beautiful picture of human turmoil and adventurousness in an ever expanding universe.
Lorq Von Ray is a born upstart from a family of nouveau-riche propelled into high society by their ill-gotten gains. He makes friends and, eventually, enemies with Prince and Ruby, quintessential Earth-nobility driven by power, greed, and a keen sense of self-entitlement.
Von Ray grew up haunted by constant reminders of the social stratum wedging a vast chasm between himself and the siblings. Ever ambitious, Von Ray pits wills and wits against Prince and Ruby, aiming to upset the economic balance of power between the Draco and Pleiades systems.
Further embittered by their twisted and broken friendship, he sets out, with dogged determination, to hit the motherlode of interstellar treasures in the form of illyrion, the ephemeral byproduct of a nova and the most valuable and potent energy source known to mankind.
Should Von Ray succeed in this second attempt to capture this precious material in abundance from the nova, his payload promises to transform the economy of the Pleiades system and upend Prince’s monopoly on interstellar travel technology which allows them to hoard most of the wealth and stratify the balance of power between the Draco and Pleiades systems.
This book introduces a motley cast of characters who are destined to be enmeshed in the many dangers and high drama that comes along with being employed by Von Ray.
Mouse, for example, is a nomadic troubadour eking out a meager living while playing interplanetary hopscotch in the Draco system. He winds up on Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, while seeking employment on one of the spaceships bound for other star systems and greater opportunities.
Here, Mouse encounters Lorq Von Ray, scion of the richest family in the Pleiades system and jumps at the opportunity to join the ragtag crew of cyborg studs on Von Ray’s spaceship bound for the heart of an exploding star.
Ruby Red and Prince don’t appreciate Von Ray’s intent to rise above a station they consider beneath them, not to mention shift humanity’s prosperity from Draco to the Pleiades system. A cargo hold filled with seven tons of illyrion would certainly help him achieve that.
Mouse and his syrynx, a musical instrument that conjures holographic imagery, bear witness to the changing times while the melodrama of a twisted love triangle unfolds among Von Ray, the selectively diffident Ruby Red, and the pridefully neurotic Prince.
The gypsy troubadour playing his syrynx is a recurring motif representing the backdrop humanity's culture and history against which the story unfolds. The syrynx, a stolen object, ironically foreshadows the climax of the story where it is once again stolen then turned into a weapon.
Delany’s command of astrophysics and the science behind supernovas is reasonably solid. He proves himself a master of using literary language to describe scientific concepts and the murky dynamics of human interpersonal entanglements but there are elements of Nova that make little sense.
Ruby Red’s complicity with Prince’s cruelty and neurotic behavior seems arbitrary, for instance. As a character, she seems to lack a will of her own. Despite her prominence in the story, we’re never given a real glimpse inside the mind of the woman. What does Ruby Red want? Why does she do the things that she does?
Ultimately, Nova is a beautifully chaotic and original tale rife with vivid, sometimes visceral prose, exuberant dialogue, and an intriguingly colorful cast of characters.
Whilst reading the Times a couple of months I was surprised to see a mention of my favourite SF periodical turn up.
Source: The Times 28th September 1967
As regular readers of the publication will know they have managed to get a new publisher (Stonehart) and are continuing on with only a single month’s break to reorganize. What interested me most was the third paragraph, that there were some more adventure stories he was writing specifically for the US market. I have not come across The Jade Man yet but The Twilight Man actually is the book form of his The Shores of Death already released.
And I was able to discover that The Jewel in the Skull was coming out in America in December.
Now Moorcock’s adventure stories are a mixed bag. For every Elric there is a Michael Kane. But with such an anti-endorsement from the writer himself, how could I not want to read it?
In one of my favourite kind of settings, post-apocalyptic fantasy, the world has returned to a state of medieval kingdoms fighting each other, with modern technology treated as ancient sorceries people struggle to understand.
This book is primarily set in the Europe of this future, where the dark empire of the Granbretans is attempting to conquer the continent in the name of its King-Emperor. The powerful kingdom of Kamarg remains independent with Count Brass and his fortress of Castle Brass. Baron Meliadus of Kroiden attempts to gain their support for the empire but is thrown out when he attempts to rape the Count’s daughter Yisselda. Swearing an oath by the Runestaff to control the count and seize his daughter for himself he concocts a plan to do so.
In the dungeons of Londra is the rebellious Duke of Köln, Dorian Hawkmoon. He gives Hawkmoon an offer he can’t refuse, granting him his lands back and his freedom if he goes to Castle Brass, kidnaps Yisselda and brings her back to London. As additional motivation, a black jewel is implanted in his skull. This will allow the Granbretans to monitor him at all times and they can also use it to destroy his mind whenever they choose. And so Hawkmoon rides to Castle Brass on this fraught mission.
When I first opened this book I was worried this was going to be another Barbarians of Mars, with some incredibly overwritten descriptions and cod-Shakesperean dialogue. Thankfully, the style soon settles down and we get something much thicker than the Sub-Tolkien fantasy at first suggested. In fact there are some wonderful choices of imagery, a kind of combination of the gothic and the psychedelic.
As you can probably see from the description, this is not a setup where there are any easy heroes. It is also fascinating to see a tale where the British are explicitly setup as “The Dark Empire”, with people regularly suggesting the entire nation has gone insane and our representative of them a manipulative rapist. Instead, our lead character is a German, the inverse of what you will see whenever you go to the cinema.
This is only the first story in a series, so there is a lot left to be told, but, overall, this is an interesting and entertaining fantasy.
Four stars
by Victoria Silverwolf
Synchronicity
As fate would have it, I recently read two new science fiction novels featuring psychiatrists named Paul. In addition to that, both protagonists are involved with women who have a hard time pronouncing that name. Other than this odd coincidence, the books have little in common, except that they both involve people who have traveled a long distance.
The first mental health professional we'll meet is Paul Marlowe. He's a psychiatrist aboard the starship Gloria Mundi. (Given the familiar Latin phrase containing those words, that seems like asking for trouble.)
When the novel opens, he's in prison on an alien world. Two other members of the crew, captured at the same time, are dead. Before all this happened, the nine remaining folks aboard the ill-fated vessel disappeared while exploring the planet. For some reason, the locals have supplied him with a concubine, even in prison. That's the woman who can't pronounce Paul correctly. Her name, by the way, is Mylai Tui.
Meanwhile, Gloria Mundi destroys itself, as it's programmed to do when all the crew is gone for a certain amount of time. Sounds like a design flaw to me, but the idea is to keep it from falling into the hands of hostile aliens.
With no way to return to Earth, Paul Marlowe decides to fit into his new world. He does this by creating a second self, in a way. When acting like one of the locals, he calls himself Poul Mer Lo. This mental exercise allows him to control his emotions when witnessing things like child sacrifice.
(I couldn't help wondering if this was a sly allusion to Poul Anderson, whose first name is famously difficult to pronounce unless you're Scandinavian.)
Paul pretty much accepts Mylai Tui as his wife, although he was already married to one of the missing crew members. The marriage was one of convenience, mostly, although the two were fond of each other. Paul left his true love back on Earth, because he wanted to travel to the stars so badly. Be careful what you wish for!
A parallel to Paul's double identity is found in the local god-king, a young man who often takes on a second persona as a peasant, in order to speak freely with Paul in a way he can't as a divine ruler. Their relationship, in which the god-king is eager to learn Earth ways from Paul, may be the most intriguing part of the book. It also creates some suspense, as the god-king is only allowed to rule for a year, after which he is ritually killed.
The plot really begins when Paul and some local companions make a dangerous journey through enemy territory and deadly jungles to an ice-covered mountain. He makes an extraordinary discovery, learns what happened to the missing crew members, and even finds out why the inhabitants of the planet are very similar to Earthlings but have only four fingers on each hand.
The alien culture is interesting and vividly portrayed. Paul is not a very sympathetic protagonist. He beats Mylai Tui when she struggles to pronounce his name correctly, for one thing. The latter half of the book turns into a quest adventure, which is fine if you like that sort of thing. The revelation at the end of the trek to the mountain strains credibility. Overall, a mixed bag.
Our next psychiatrist is Paul Fidler. He works at a mental hospital. You'll get to know him well, because much of the book consists of his interior monologues. They're set off from the rest of the text in the manner I'll demonstrate in the next paragraph.
–I hope the editor likes this article.
Paul has doubts about his career and his marriage. He also has a habit of imagining the way that things might have gone badly in the past. It's kind of the opposite of the wistful thinking we probably all do. You know, something like If only such-and-such had happened. Besides all this, he hides the fact that he had a nervous breakdown some time ago from everyone, even his wife.
After spending some time with this sad fellow, the plot gets going when a badly injured man staggers into a pub. He claims a naked woman attacked him. Could it be one of the inmates at the hospital?
Nope. Paul soon runs into the woman, a tiny little thing, sort of like the diminutive Sister Bertrille. Don't worry, she doesn't fly.
As I've indicated, she has trouble saying Paul correctly. She speaks an unknown language, but manages to indicate that her name is Arrzheen. That gets distorted into Urchin by the folks at the hospital, which fits her pretty well.
Much of the book deals with Paul's attempt to solve the mystery of Urchin. What was she doing naked in the woods on a cold, rainy night? How did such a small woman, who hardly seems out of her teens, severely injure a much bigger man? (We'll find out later it was self defense.) Why can't expert linguists identify her speech or her written language? Why does she seem baffled by ordinary objects?
A strange form of mental illness, or something else? (Hint: this is a science fiction novel.)
Urchin proves to be extraordinarily intelligent, and she picks up English quickly. Paul's marriage falls apart completely. Through the use of hypnosis, he learns more about Urchin. He tries to help her adjust to the outside world.
Let's just say that things go a little too far. After some misleading hints about Urchin, we find out the truth at the very end. Don't expect a happy ending.
As with the Cooper's novel, the protagonist is not always very likable. What he does at the end may disturb you. The book seems almost like introspective mainstream fiction, with a science fiction premise forced into it. It's more to be admired than loved, I think.
Three stars.
by Gideon Marcus
The fourth book for this Galactoscope turns out to be another kind of fourth book: Emil Petaja has written the fourth (and final?) book in his science fiction translation of the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala. It's an unusual novel in that it stars a villain, of sorts. Let's learn more about the…
Kullervo Kasi is a most unlovely man. Born of the chance interaction between a rent in the universe and a random act of sex, he is half human/half evil energy. Physically, he is a gnome-like character, though not without a strong back. Humans instinctively recoil from him. When we first meet him, he is on one of the thousands of colonies of humanity, the race exiled to the stars after their home world had been exhausted. Kullervo is bullied near to death, from which he escapes by a jump into a chasm to (he believes) his doom.
But Louhi the star witch has other plans. She takes Kullervo under her wing, unlocks the intelligence lying dormant in his genes as the reincarnation of the ancient Kalevalan anti-hero, Kullervo, and sends him to the wasted Earth. His mission: to destroy any remnants of humanity–the Vanhat race–that may yet survive on the ruined world.
This is for whom we should be rooting?
Well, yes. It's hard not to feel sorry for Kullervo. He was born with a handicap; his human tormentors have no such excuse. Once he arrives on Earth, and through cunning, endurance, and not a little (if grudging) selflessness, surmounts obstacle after obstacle, one can't help admiring the guy. In the end, if he is not exactly the hero of the story, he certainly is the catalyst for a great good.
Such an unusual protagonist is refreshing, indeed. Plus, Petaja really can spin a quill, offering a neo-pulp adventure with a mythical base. His depictions of the rusting supercities, the floating junk islands, and the recovering crags of Scandinavia have a rich, Burroughsian flavor. I particularly enjoyed Kullervo's adventures with Billyjo, a renegade coast-dweller. Their run-in with the pirates of the roving islands, and Kullervo's short-term subjugation to Queen Fiammante, reminded me somewhat of my favorite Baum book, John Dough and the Cherub. I also found interesting the implication that Kullervo, hideous as he was, had a strange appeal to women–both Fiammante and Louhi make him their lover, and the people who treat Kullervo poorly are invariably men.
Tramontane is not a great book: for one thing, it's not science fiction, but space opera. It's also not consistently written: the middle third is excellent, but the last third lags a touch and is quite literally a deus ex machina situation. Still, it is a thoroughly enjoyable book, and it stands well enough alone (I haven't read any of the other books in the series: Saga of Lost Earths, The Star Mill, or The Stolen Sun.)
Three and a half stars.
(Note: Tramontane comprises one half of Ace Double H-36; the other half is Moorcock's The Wrecks of Time, previously reviewed by Mark Yon. The Ace version has apparently been butchered to fit the format, the greatest casualties being the naughty bits.)
by Cora Buhlert
Sex in the Real World
The most shocking film of the year is currently playing in West German cinemas. It's called Helga – Vom Werden des menschlichen Lebens (Helga – About the Development of Human Life) and has caused scores of cinema goers to faint.
But what exactly is so shocking about Helga? Well, Helga is a movie about – gasp – sex. The plot is simple. An interviewer asks pedestrians in the street about sex education and birth control. Next we meet the protagonist: Helga (newcomer Ruth Gassmann), a naïve young woman pregnant with her first child. Like many women, Helga knows very little about her body and what is happening inside her womb. Luckily, a kindly gynecologist explains the mechanics of conception and pregnancy to Helga and the viewer. The movie then follows Helga through her pregnancy and also documents the birth of her child. It's this birth scene – shot in full, gory detail – that makes particularly male viewers faint in the cinema… and hopefully think twice before impregnating a woman.
In spite of the frank scenes, Helga is not pornography, but an educational film intended to teach West Germans about human sexuality. Shot in a pseudo-documentary style and interspersed with animations showing the human reproductive system, Helga does what parents and schools all too often fail to do, namely teach young and not so young people about their bodies. The film was produced by West German Secretary of Health Käte Strobe, a sixty-year-old lady from Bavaria and unlikely champion of sex education.
West German Secretary of Health and champion of sex education Käte Strobel
But don't take my word for it. Because American International has purchased the distribution rights for Helga, so you can soon see it in a theatre near you.
I wasn't enamoured with John Norman's debut novel Tarnsman of Gor and didn't plan on reading the sequel. However, December 6 is St. Nicholas Day and since St. Nick was kindly enough to put a copy of Outlaw of Gor into my stocking, I of course felt obliged to read and review it.
When I reviewed Tarnsman of Gor earlier this year, I noted that John Norman was obviously inspired by the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This influence is even more marked in Outlaw of Gor, for while Tarnsman opened with protagonist and first person narrator Tarl Cabot, Outlaw uses a Burroughs type framing device and opens with the statement of an attorney named Harrison Smith, who describes at great length his relationship with Cabot, Cabot's physical appearance, his mysterious disappearance and reappearance.
Years later, Cabot and Smith rekindle their acquaintance. Eventually Cabot hands Smith the manuscript for Tarnsman of Gor and vanishes again. Smith publishes the manuscript, as the law of framing devices demands, as well as the sequel, which he finds waiting for him on his coffee table.
It is helpful to briefly recapitulate the previous book in an ongoing series for the reader, but the statement of Harrison Smith goes on for pages upon pages. Nor does the novel need a framing device, because this is 1967, not 1912, and readers are accustomed to fantastic adventures in alien worlds by now.
A Gorean Travelogue
The story proper finally starts with Tarl Cabot giving us an extended description of the Gorean scenery, customs, flora and fauna. One of my complaints about Tarnsman was that the opening third of the novel was a dull and interminable lump of information, because Norman was an inexperienced writer uncertain how to present information about his world to the reader. I had hoped that Norman's writing skills would have improved by his second book. Sadly, they have not.
After a trek through the wilderness, Tarl Cabot finds his hometown Ko-Ro-Ba destroyed by the Priest-Kings and its people, including Cabot's father and his mate Talena, scattered to the four winds. Cabot himself is now an outlaw and decides to avenge himself on the Priest-Kings. Again, the parallels to Burroughs are notable, because John Carter also found himself separated from his hometown and wife upon his return to Barsoom and forced to deal with overbearing godlike beings in The Gods of Mars back in 1913. Indeed, many things in Tarnsman and Outlaw of Gor only happen to Tarl Cabot because they happened to John Carter first.
Before meeting the Priest-Kings, Cabot pays a visit to the city of Tharna, which is remarkable for two reasons. One, all Goreans, regardless of their origin, are welcome in Tharna. Two, Tharna is ruled by a woman and – unlike the rest of Gor – women are revered in Tharna and not treated as slaves or possessions.
It's a Women's City… or is it?
The position of women and the institution of slavery on Gor played an important role in Tarnsman and crops up again in Outlaw. And indeed, the descriptions of Gorean slave girls seem to be what attracts many readers to these books. As a modern man of the Sixties, Tarl Cabot abhors slavery and the oppression of women in general, though it is not clear, if the author shares these views, since the narrative repeatedly notes that the slave girls are happy with their lot after initial resistance and that the free women of Gor, who are kept locked up and only venture outdoors in heavy veils, comparable to practices in many Muslim countries, which are thankfully modernising, secretly envy the slave girls their relative freedom. These aspects make the Gor books more disturbing than a simple Burroughs pastiche should be.
Compared to other Gorean cities, Tharna is described as a grey and depressing place full of grey and depressed men. Apparently, treating women like human beings tends to make cities grey and men depressed. In general, Cabot seems inordinately concerned with cities and their appearance, at one point comparing the run-down New York City unfavourably to Gorean cities. I wonder if Cabot (and his creator) blames women for the sorry state of New York City, too.
Revenge of the Masked Lesbians
Cabot has only been in Tharna for a few hours, when he is approached with an offer to kidnap the Tatrix Lara, the city's ruler. He refuses, finds himself framed for a crime and condemned to die in the arena for the amusement of the Tatrix and the haughty masked women of Tharna. Cabot also learns the reason why Tharna is uncommonly hospitable towards strangers – because they are enslaved to labour in the fields or mines. What is more, men are viewed as little more than animals in Tharna and the women are forbidden from loving men, though encouraged to love each other.
Cabot manages to escape with the help of his tarn, the giant bird creatures warriors of Gor ride into battle. However, rather than continuing his journey to see the Priest-Kings, Cabot instead decides to liberate Tharna from the haughty masked lesbians. Needless to say he succeeds and decrees that what the masked lesbians of Tharna need is a man and some good old fashioned Gorean slavery to teach them how to love. Reader, I puked.
Honestly, just read Burroughs
Tarnsman of Gor was mildly spicy Burroughs pastiche. But while John Norman's fascination with slavery, whips, hoods and shackles was already evident, I did not sense anything prurient or anti-feminist in Tarnsman.
Outlaw, however, is another matter. Particularly the second half of the novel and its anti-feminist conclusion gave me the same creepy crawly feeling that Piers Anthony's Chthon did. Worse, since Cabot has neither found the Priest-Kings nor his true love Talena by the end, I fear there will be at least one more Gor book. However, I will not read it.
If you like swashbuckling adventures on alien worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' entire catalogue is back in print and the excellent planetary adventures of Leigh Brackett are easy enough to find as well. If you like the spicier aspects, there is plenty of sleaze to be found in the paperback spinner racks, some of it – so I am reliably informed – written by genre stalwarts such as Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison under pseudonyms.
However, don't bother with Outlaw of Gor or its predecessor.
One star.
St.Nicholas and his helper Knecht Ruprecht deliver treats and presents to kids in Bremen's historical Schnnor neighbourhood
There's a new novel out by Ted White, the longtime assistant editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Despite its goofy title, the new Secret of the Marauder Satellite is a wonderful quick read with some clever turns of phrase and interesting insights into its lead character.
Our lead is a young man named Paul Williams, recently graduated from "space cadet" school (as he half-dismissedly calls it) and ready for his first major assignment, aboard a satellite orbiting the Earth which also works as a staging site for mankind's further trips through the Solar System.
As you might imagine from a book like this, Paul is a bit of a prodigy in a space suit. He receives a plum assignment, as a roving salvage man assigned to pick up space junk and haul it back to the station for recycling. With resources short on the station, such a job is extremely useful and important. But during his second mission in that role, Paul makes a fateful and surprising discovery which indicates mankind might not have been the first race to orbit Earth's moon.
White separates his prose from his peers with its vividness of description and clever ways he brings common events to life. For instance, he explains why rocket launches require countdowns in the kind of matter-of-fact detail that had me nodding my head, and his explanation of gravitational inertia is as elegant as it is concise.
Mr. White
But the element that really elevates this book is the way White explains Paul's inner life. We learn early on that Paul is an introvert and has trouble talking with people. But White takes pains to show readers Paul's vast intelligence and his completely broken childhood, with Paul's arrogant unfeeling parents seldom giving their small child more than a smidge of attention as they slept and drank their ways through their hedonistic lives. With this background, it becomes clear why Paul was motivated to be a high achieving astronaut, but it also explains why he had trouble with peers and with members of the opposite sex.
Secret of the Marauder Satellitepacks a lot into its short length, and every word was necessary. This book teases at the potential for Ted White to deliver a masterpiece, but its brief length does work against the story. The story moves at a breakneck speed but that rapid pace doesn't quite give the reader enough time to consider all the impacts of its events. Ignore the goofy title and spend an enjoyable couple of hours with Paul White.
As you may know, I am a big fan of Tom Purdom. He's a very nice fellow, and his first book, I Want the Stars, was a stand-out. Thus, I was quite excited to see that the new Ace Double at the local bookstore featured my writer friend.
The first two chapters do not disappoint. We are thrown into the action as Migel Lassamba (explicitly of African descent; no lily-white casts in Tom's books) holds up a rich man and his personal doctor. His goal: to get an artificial heart for his companion and love, Anata. Why doesn't he just get one for free from the government hospitals? Because Migel, Anata, and three others are rebels whose goal is to topple Jammett, dictator of the planet Arlane. Five against Arlane, you see?
Thus ensues a ever-widening conflict between the outnumbered but canny rebel troops and Jammett, who resorts to increasingly draconian methods to retain control. His biggest ace in the hole is his ability to slap mind-control devices onto citizens. These "controllees" are fully conscious, but their bodies belong to the dictator, obeying his every whim. As Migel's cadre begins to turn the tide against Arlane's leader, the abuse of the controllees gets pretty grim.
There's a lot to like about this book. Arlane is a nicely drawn world, mostly tidally locked so its days last forever and only the pole is inhabitable. The descriptions of technology and society are largely timeless. Purdom is excellent at conveying material that will not be dated in a decade. As in Tom's other stories, we have intimations of free love and even polygamy/andry, and there is no real distinction between sex or race.
Sadly, where the book falls down is the execution. After those exciting first chapters, the chess-like contest between the rebels and Jammett feels perfunctorily written, as if Tom had to get from A to C, and he wasn't particularly interested in writing B. It almost reads like a chronicle of a homebrew wargame (ah, what a wargame this novel would make!) If I'd been the editor, I'd have sent it back and asked for…more. More emotion. More characterization. More reason to feel invested. And a more fleshed out ending (but perhaps that was a fault of the editing, not the writing).
I noted that the weakest parts of I Want the Stars and Tom's latest short story, Reduction in Arms, were the curiously detached combat scenes. Where Tom excels is the thinky bits. I suggest he either work harder on the fighting pits, or stick to thinky bit stories (like his excellent Courting Time).
Emil Petaja is a new writer perhaps best known for his science fiction sagas based on the Karevala, the Finnish body of mythological work. Now, Petaja plumbs Irish myth for this truly strange, but also rather conventional science fantasy.
Diarmid Patrick O'Dowd (a fine Jewish name) is a scout captain for X-Plor, Magellanic Division. His flights of exploration frequently take him close to a mysterious, green-shrouded object. Finally unable to resist, he becomes the first of his corps to pierce the viridian veil. His ship crashes and disintegrates, leaving him stranded in a Celtic nightmare. On one side, the towers of the islands, inhabited by Irish lords whose beautiful works are created on the backs and tears of countless generations of peasants. On the other, the fetid swamps of the Snae–froglike magicians who seem to predate the human colonists. And up in the tower of T'yeer-Na-N-Oge resides the Deel, Himself, who rules over the world with a song whose lyrics none can deviate from, enforced by a panoply of beasts, flying, swimming, and creeping.
Of course, there is a personal element as well. The beautiful but utterly rotten-hearted Lord Flann plans to unite the islands and lead a crusade against the Nords. But first, he would marry his fair and kind cousin, Fianna. Fianna, on the other hand, has other designs. After rescuing Diarmid upon his arrival, she falls for the fellow, teaches him swordplay, and helps him fulfill his geassa to save the planet from the domination of the Deel. Along the way, there is plenty of swashbuckling, mellifluously articulate sentences, weird foes, and a twist.
It's pure fantasy, more akin to Three Hearts and Three Lions than anything else. But it's fun. And it has warcat steeds (Purdom's book has watchcats–I guess oversized felines are in this year).
Three and a half stars — and I'll wager Cora and/or Kris would give it four.
Triads
by Victoria Silverwolf
Two new science fiction novels deal with the relationships among three characters. As we'll see, in one of these the trio is very intimately connected. First of all, however, let's take a look at the latest book from an author known for prolificity.
The novel begins and ends with the same words, spoken by two very different characters and having different implications.
Pain is instructive.
In this way, the author announces his theme from the very start. Thorns is all about suffering. Physical pain, to some extent, but, more importantly, emotional pain.
Duncan Chalk is a grotesquely obese, incredibly rich man who controls just about all forms of entertainment throughout the solar system. Secretly, he is also a kind of psychic vampire, feeding off the misery of others.
Minner Burris is a space explorer who, against his will, was surgically transformed by aliens. His two companions died during the procedure and he barely survived, monstrously changed outside and in. As a result, he is a loner, seen as a freak by other people.
Lona Kelvin is a teenage girl who had a large number of her ova removed and fertilized outside her body. The resulting babies were developed inside other women, or in artificial wombs. Although her physical appearance remains unchanged, the resulting publicity made her as much of an outsider as Minner.
Duncan's plan is to bring these two miserable people together, both as a form of voyeuristic entertainment for an audience of millions and to feed on their suffering. To win their cooperation, he promises to give Minner a new body and to allow Lona to raise two of the infants produced from her eggs as her own children.
At first, the pair simply share their mutual pain, sympathizing with each other. As Duncan sends them on a luxurious vacation to all the pleasure spots in the solar system, they become lovers. As he predicted, however, their differences soon lead to ferocious arguments. Minner sees Lona as an ignorant child, and Lona comes to hate Minner's bitterness and anger. Can they escape from Duncan's scheme, and find some kind of peace?
Reading this book is an intense, almost overpowering experience. It is the most uncompromising work of science fiction dealing with human suffering since Harlan Ellison's story Paingod. Although set in a semi-utopian future, the settings — a cactus garden, Antarctica, the Moon, Saturn's satellite Titan — are almost all stark and bleak. There are other characters I have not mentioned — an idiot savant, abused by his family; the widow of one of Minner's fellow astronauts, obsessed with him in a masochistic way — who offer more examples of the varieties of pain.
In addition to offering a vividly described, detailed future, Silverberg writes in a highly polished style, full of metaphors and literary allusions. I believe this is his finest work since the outstanding story To See the Invisible Man. With this novel, and his highly praised novella Hawksbill Station, I think we're seeing a new Silverberg, adding greater sophistication and more serious themes to his inarguable ability to produce an unending stream of fiction.
Andrew Blake is a man with a problem. First of all, that's not even his real name. He picked it at random.
You see, Andrew (as we'll call him in this review) was discovered in deep space, after having been in suspended animation for a couple of centuries. He has no memory of his past, although he is familiar with Earth the way it was two hundred years ago.
In order to discuss this novel at all, I need to talk about something that the author reveals about one-third of the way into the book. I don't think that gives too much away, but if you'd rather dive into it without knowing anything about the plot you should stop reading here.
Still with me? Good.
Andrew is actually an android, an artificially grown human being with a mind taken from another person. He was designed to copy the mental and physical forms of aliens he encountered while exploring other star systems. The idea is that he would record this information, then revert to his previous condition. It didn't quite work out that way.
Andrew shares his mind with two other beings. One is a wolf-like alien, although it has arms that allow it to carry things and manipulate objects. The other is a sort of biological computer, a relentlessly logical entity that often takes the form of a pyramid.
Andrew's body changes shape, depending on which mind has control. After a brief period of confusion, during which these alterations happen at random, Andrew recovers some of his memory. The three minds and bodies work together, evading the folks who think he's some kind of monster.
There's a lot more to this book than the basic plot. Simak throws in a lot of futuristic details. Notable among these are talking, flying houses, and aliens who are essentially the same as the brownies of folklore.
Not all of these concepts mesh together smoothly, although they provide proof of a great deal of imagination. The overly solicitous robot house offers some comic relief, and the so-called brownies may seem too whimsical for some readers. Otherwise, the novel is quite serious, even offering a mystical vision of the unity of all life in the universe.
My major complaint is a plot twist late in the book, revealing the true nature of a character I haven't even mentioned. It comes out of nowhere, depends on a wild coincidence, and creates an artificial happy ending.
Despite these serious reservations, I actually liked the novel quite a bit. It's not a classic, but it's well worth reading.
Last weekend, the world's greatest stars and movie-makers assembled in Santa Monica for the annual celebration of the best the silver screen has to offer. It was a cavalcade of prominent names, from Sidney Poitier to Lee Remick to Julie Christie to Omar Sharif. Some of the contestants were unfamiliar (Herb Alpert has a short animated film?) Some were surprising but welcome in their inclusion (like The Wargame for best documentary). Some were inevitable (If Grand Prix hadn't won Best Sound and Best Editing, I'd have written letters…) Two titans towered all the rest (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and A Man for All Seasons–both of which I still haven't seen yet).
And throughout it all, Bob Hope was host, narrator, and satirist. Lorelei observed that this time, the jokes about recognition still eluding the aging comedian seemed more pointed and bitter than usual. Maybe it's time he got some kind of lifetime achievement award, as did Isaac Asimov at a recent Worldcon…
Print City
The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction features a similar assemblage of luminaries–and it's not even an "All-Star Issue"! Presented in a format that has been standard and familiar since 1949, this month's read was as comforting and entertaining as two primetime hours at the Oscars.
With the added benefit that one can reread favorite stories!
by Ronald Walotsky
Planetoid Idiot, by Phyllis Gotlieb
Our first star is Phyllis Gotlieb, a woman writer who joined the SF ranks one year after Mses. Rosel George Brown, Kit Reed, and Pauline Ashwell. Her latest is a fine novella in the Analog tradition–indeed, it reads like something Katherine MacLean might have penned.
A mutli-species spaceship has landed on the ocean planed of Xirifor. Their goal is to save the indigenous race from a pandemic of gill rot such that they can better represent themselves when representatives of the Galactic Federation come to negotiate for the pearls the aliens harvest.
The crew of the contact ship are a beautifully heterogenous group: Hrufa, an eight foot telepathic amphibian is their leader, keeping the rest of the team in order, if not harmony. Thlyrrh is a protoplasmic being with a shape-shifting carapace; it can do almost anything…except compose an original thought. And then there are the two humans, or "solthrees" (I really like that phrase): Olivia the exobiologists, and Berringer, the generalist.
Despite their vast collective knowledge, they are hindered in their task by politics, internal and external. But in the end, working together, they deduce a solution that is completely scientific and plausible.
It's all very satisfactory, and if I have any complaint, it is only the title, which I found misleading (I thought "planetoid idiot" would be a play on "village idiot"). Definitely a candidate for the next volume of Rediscovery.
Four stars.
Sleeping Beauty, by Terry Carr
It's nice to see Ace Books publisher, Terry Carr, slinging the pen again. His latest story is a beautifully written if rather inconsequential tale of a landless prince, galloping across Europe looking for that most endangered of modern creatures: the single (and wealthy) princess. There is, of course, a sting in the story's tale.
You'll forget it soon after you read it, but you'll enjoy the journey. Three stars.
If Ralph Nader has his way, all cars of the future will be like the one presented in this, the latest tale to take place in Niven's "Known Space". It's his most humorous piece, almost Sheckleyesque, and it accomplishes a lot in a brief space.
Two years ago, Air Force astronaut Chet Kinsman was tested in orbit when he had to go mano-a-mano with a Communist spacewoman. Now Kinsman is on the moon, haunted by the memory of the lady he had to slay. Will his guilt get in the way of his rescuing a fellow astronaut trapped in a lunar crevice?
This is another grounded SF tale I'm surprised (but pleased) to find in F&SF. I've not yet found Bova brilliant (though Victoria Silverwolf has), but I always enjoy him.
Three stars.
The Red Shift, by Theodore L. Thomas
Thomas explains in his nonfiction vignette how quasars, which must be extragalactic yet near objects, give lie to the Doppler shift, and thus rewrite physics. Specifically, he says that the redshift of quasars indicates that they are far away, but that radio astronomy locates them much closer to Earth.
I do not know how he makes this assertion, as it is radio astronomy that detects these quasars at all–including their red shift. According to the article I read in Britannica's 1966 year book of knowledge, quasars are very interesting in that they point up an asymmetry between the young universe (quasar-rich) and the curent universe (quaser-poor). But there's nothing that suggests quasars exist close by, or that there's anything wrong with Doppler.
There does seem to be something wrong, however, with Thomas.
One star.
Cyprian's Room, by Frances Oliver
Onward to the second woman-penned story, by an author about whom our editor knows virtually nothing. A pity, because her first story is a good one. Romantic Hilda Wendel takes a room in the big city hoping to meet someone interesting in her boarding house. She finds a tubercular artist whose views on art are maddeningly contradictory, yet irresistably compelling.
Is he just an avante-garde…or something otherworldly?
A high three.
Interview with a Lemming, by James Thurber
This putative dialogue between man and lemming, to indulge in adjectives solely beginning with "i" is inconsequential, irritating, and inspid–particularly the thinks-itself-clever ending.
Two stars.
Where is Thy Sting, by Emil Petaja
One of the last fertile men in a post-atomized Earth, racked with suicidal desires, must be kept alive at all costs, even if it means subverting his reality.
I'd have liked this story more had I not read one so similar to it (The Best is Yet to Be) in the pages of this same magazine not many months before.
Two stars.
Times of Our Lives, by Isaac Asimov
All about time zones. I actually found this atlas-derived article educational and interesting.
Four stars.
Fill in the Blank, by Ron Goulart
Finally, the return of a perennial star with a series with more installments than James Bond. Max Kearney is dragooned into investigating what appears to be an infestation of poltergeists. The culprits are all-too-temporal…but it doesn't mean magic's not involved!
It's funnier in the latter half. Three stars.
House Lights Return
By strict mathematical computation, the latest F&SF only scores an average three star rating. Nevertheless, the brilliance of the first piece, the general competence of most of the rest, and the edification provided by the Good Doctor leaves a most pleasant impression.
Let's keep our stars around for a while. They make good illumination.
As you know, in addition to Galactic Journey, I also run Journey Press, devoted both to republishing classics discovered while on this trek through time, but also to publish new works of science fiction in fantasy that (I hope!) live up to the quality and tradition of the classic works we offer.
If anyone would enjoy these works, we know it will be you. This holiday season, pick up a title or three from Journey Press! It's the best present you can give yourself, a loved one…and us!
Andre Norton has maintained a steady output of books, mostly adding to existing series like Witch World and Crosstime. With Moon, she opens up an entirely new (at least to me) vista, and it's a beautiful view.
Krip Vorlund is a Free Trader, one of two merchant leagues with stops at a myriad of planets through the galaxy. Moon takes place on Yiktor, a backwards world at the edge of known space, where Vorlund's ships makes planetfall. There, in the trading town set up for star merchants, he encounters Maelen, member of the native Yiktor race, living among the more primitive human settlers.
Maelen is a beast tamer, with a menagerie of disparate creatures that can make the performances on Hollywood Palace look like child's play. Krip is enchanted, with the show and the showmaster, but this causes the spaceman to become thoroughly embroiled in a local political struggle with galactic ramifications.
Before Krip now lies imprisonment, physical and then mental as the only way to avoid capture by rival factions is to transfer his consciousness into the body of a native animal. So begins the parallel journeys of Krip and Maelen, one to return to his original form, and the other to weave a destiny that allows the aid of Krip while betraying as few of her race's principles as possible.
The more I think about this book, the more I like it. Both Krip and Maelen get equal time as viewpoint characters, the perspective shifting every chapter. Their "voices" are distinct, Krip's being straightforward (if a bit formal) and Maelen's more abstruse (yet eminently readable), as befits an alien. Any animal-lover will find this book compelling, as the actions and feelings of the various beasts are integral to the story. Norton is particularly good at having two characters of different sexes forming a deep bond without being lovers.
In true Norton style, she's also set things up for this to become a series. I don't know if further adventures of Krip Vorlund and Maelen will be quite as compelling as their first (you'll understand why once you're done with this book) but I'll probably read them, nonetheless.
The return of Emil Petaja to science fiction was a delightful surprise to me. A writer from the pulp era who I had no memory of, produced one of my favourite novels of last year, Alpha Yes, Terra No!, along with a number of other strong pieces. So, when I heard he was doing a science fantasy series for Ace, you can be sure I picked them up.
Let us start with a quick summary of the context of these books. In the future, the world has eliminated violence through selective breeding, in order to avert yet another atomic war. In Saga of Lost Earths, a strange metal is found that appears to be causing destruction. Into this situation comes Carl Lempi who, according to Dr. Enoch, has the three characteristics required to face this new threat: 1. The capacity for violence, 2. A high level of extra sensory perception, and 3. A knowledge of Finnish and early legends.
In The Star Mill, we meet Ilmar, man who is rescued from an asteroid by a space crew and finds he has no memory of his life before. But then the space crew start dissolving around him. Is he a weapon designed to destroy humanity? Or its saviour from the approaching black storm?
These tales most remind me of Andre Norton’s adventures. Like in her recent work Moon of Three Rings, Petaja blends the kind of fantasy tale you would expect from Moorcock, Lieber or Jakes with well-conceived futures, without it being the Burroughs\Flash Gordon style of Sword and Wonder tales. A fusion of spaceships and sorcery that does not sacrifice either. Perhaps the best equivalent is Anderson’s The High Crusade. A clash of genres that avoids feeling anachronistic.
If there is one concern I have, it is the tendency, which does occur in a number of fantasy stories, to imply there is something magical about Northern European DNA. Whilst clearly stemming from fairy stories, this has two flaws; one, these kinds of myths exist within a number of cultures and there's no reason to assume that people of African descent have fewer myths and legends. Two, and more problematically, it obviously links into a kind of Nordic racial superiority. I do not assume this was the intent, but it is something that should be acknowledged, and of which other fantasy writers should be wary.
Also, like the aforementioned Norton tales, they contain solid character work and entertaining plots. But, at least for me, they also fail to rise above the level of escapist adventures. They are fun books that I will read once, enjoy, and probably never pick up again.
The next book in the series is scheduled for March and I am certainly going to be ordering my copy. After all, as Prof. Tolkien said:
The first opera written in the English language is called "Dido and Aeneas" by Henry Purcell, based on Vergil’s 19 BCE epic poem The Aeneid. First performed by an all-women company in 1689, it is a love story of equals: Dido, the African queen of Carthage and Aeneas, the erstwhile Trojan hero. In the final scene of the opera, Dido holds her best friend and sister Belinda’s hand as she sings what is known as Dido’s Lament, before climbing onto a pyre and setting it alight (it’s opera; it’s always this dramatic). Purcell’s Dido is a complete person: a ruler, a lover, a strategist, a flawed and tragic figure. Singing her lament was what made me fall in love with opera when I was 14, and the hope that Douglas R. Mason’s From Carthage then I came might include references to her was what made me pick up this book.
None of the women in Mason’s piece live up to Purcell’s Dido; when Tania Clermont dies by fire, she dies simpering and the narration swiftly focuses on her abuser's pain. All of Mason's women are poorly written and one-dimensional; incapable of forming strong bonds with other women and only existing in the negative space that the male characters permit them. I found it telling that in two separate scenes I was unable to tell if one of the women characters was unconscious or not, given how much the men around her were tossing her body around like a sack of potatoes (in one scene a man had knocked her out; in another she was theoretically awake). In From Carthage then I came, one male hero gropes a woman he is holding captive and forces her to sleep in his bed. The author makes clear we are to read this as romance.
The best thing about From Carthage then I came is its premise. The book opens on a prelude to revolution. For 7,000 years a pocket of humanity has been frozen inside of a climate-controlled dome as an ice age raged around them. Gaul Kalmer believes it is safe to leave, and is gathering a group to escape the mind-monitors and electric sun of Carthage to form a more natural colony called New Troy past the newly iceberg-free but still wine-dark Mediterranean Sea. But the weak writing fails to live up to the possibilities of the plot.
Instead of reading From Carthage then I came, let me recommend hunting for a recording of last summer's London Philharmonic’s performance of Dido and Aeneas at Glyndebourne, with the incredible Janet Baker as Dido. I promise it will transport you just as far as Mason’s piece promised to, contain just as many classical references as Mr. Kalmer tried to shoe-horn into his many speeches, and give you a newly rich appreciation for the now-Tunisian island of Carthage. I hear that Mason will be publishing more soon; let’s hope the next women he writes aren’t so lamentable.
Two stars.
(Did you remember to check out Journey Press? I promise our offerings as good as the best books reviewed here!)
There has been intense heat in many major cities in the eastern United States this month, particularly over the Independence Day weekend. On Sunday, July 3, New York City reached an all-time high for that date with a temperature of 107 degrees. Newark wasn't far behind, at 105 degrees, and Philadelphia was close, with 104.
As if editor Frederik Pohl wanted to help us forget about the blistering heat wave, the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is centered around a topic that is literally chilling.
Cover art by Paul E. Wenzel.
Before we step into the freezer, however, let's take a look at the lead story, mistakenly called a Complete Short Novel on the title page, although even the magazine's table of contents admits that it's just a novelette.
Heavenly Host, by Emil Petaja
Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.
Our hero's name is Kirk. If what I read in the trade papers is correct, that is also the name of the main character in the upcoming science fiction television series Star Trek. I assume that's just a coincidence. I guess Kirk is a good, manly name.
Anyway, this Kirk serves aboard a spaceship. He's a bit of a rebel, and winds up punching the tyrannical captain of the vessel. He's thrown into the brig, but manages to escape in a sort of lifeboat. (The implication is that the captain and the ship's cook kind of encouraged him to get away.)
This seems to be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and landing in the fire. (Pardon the corny metaphor. The heat must be getting to me.) Kirk winds up on a planet that is covered with a tangle of stinky vines. He manages to survive by eating the smelly plant and drinking rainwater, but life is hardly pleasant. There are holes here and there in the vines, so Kirk goes down to take a look around.
Exploring the world below.
After narrowly escaping being devoured by a giant worm, Kirk discovers that there's a wondrous Utopia under the odoriferous flora. He meets a beautiful woman, dancing gracefully, who quickly starts smooching on him and takes him on a boat ride.
A self-propelled gondola is the best way to travel in style.
At this point, the reader figures that the woman is just a figment of Kirk's imagination. Her name is Sombra, Spanish for shadow, which seems at first to be another hint that she's a phantom. Besides that, we already know that Kirk has imaginary conversations with his wise Mexican grandfather. However, she and the lovely community wherein she dwells turn out to be quite real.
Is this the Emerald City of Oz?
It seems that a bunch of colonists landed on the planet long ago, and managed to create a society without want, the population devoting all its time to artistic endeavors. This seemingly impossible task, they say, was done with the help of a benign deity called Hur. Kirk and Sombra are in love, of course, and he's eager to marry her, but things change when he gets his first look at the god responsible for this paradise.
Kirk meets Hur.
This is a strange story. It starts off as a tale of survival, becomes something of a wish-fulfillment fantasy, adds a touch of horror, and ends in an ambiguous fashion. I wouldn't call it boring, but I never believed anything that was happening. (One major quibble occurs to me: the people in the utopian city claim that they depend on folks like Kirk showing up to avoid inbreeding. Am I supposed to believe that people randomly land on this seemingly worthless planet frequently?)
Two stars.
Immortality Through Freezing, by Long John Nebel, et al.
This is actually an abridged transcript of a panel discussion broadcast on a New York City radio station. The topic is the possibility of freezing people at the moment of death and reviving them in the future, when medical technology will be able to cure their ailments and bring them back to life.
Besides the host, radio personality Long John Nebel, the group included Frederik Pohl, editor of this very magazine; R. C. W. Ettinger, who wrote a book on the subject, an excerpt from which appeared in the second issue of Worlds of Tomorrow; Joseph Lo Presti, an ophthalmologist; Shirley Herz, a public relations consultant; and the famous pianist/comedian Victor Borge.
That's an oddly mixed group of folks, and I wonder if they just happened to grab whoever was hanging around the radio station at the time. In any case, the guests discuss the definition of death and whether extreme cold could keep people in a state of suspended animation. This is nothing new to science fiction fans, and it pretty much just rehashes the previous article I mentioned. At least the subject matter might help you feel a little cooler and beat the heat.
Two stars.
Deliver the Man!, by Ray E. Banks
Illustrations by Norman Nodel
A starship is on its way to a conference of various alien civilizations. It seems that Earth is considered as something of a backwater, worthy only of being conquered. The ambassador aboard the vessel must reach the meeting on time and manage to convince the extraterrestrials otherwise.
Complicating matters is the fact that Martian colonists, now the enemies of Earth, attack the ship while it's on its way. A space battle follows.
A female warrior in a dogfight in space.
Our hero comes to the rescue of an inexperienced pilot, saving her bacon when she faces two opponents at once. She is hurt but survives the skirmish, only to face further challenges aboard the vessel.
Injured in battle.
There's a planet that insists the ship wait around while they celebrate an anniversary, so that the ambassador will be much too late to save Earth from destruction. The captain stays behind, allowing the vessel to sneak away, although he knows this will mean his death when the deception is discovered. An unpleasant fellow takes command, leading to a love triangle that ends in tragedy.
A crime of passion.
As if that weren't enough trouble, there's the possibility that an alien spy, disguised as a human being, is aboard the ship, intending to sabotage the mission. More deaths follow.
Another murder aboard ship.
All seems hopeless by the end, until our hero steps up and does what has to be done. The conclusion involves the ship's navigator, an eccentric woman who also serves as the hero's love interest.
The enigmatic navigator.
There's certainly enough action going on to satisfy readers looking for slam-bang adventure. The hero has so many obstacles in his way that it almost becomes ludicrous. You also have to assume that starship officers are going to act in completely irrational ways out of sexual jealousy.
Although partly depicted as objects of lust, it was nice to see women aboard the ship in important positions. The navigator, in particular, is an interesting character, although you'll probably figure out what role she plays in the plot.
Two stars.
The Most Delicious Foe, by Lawrence S. Todd
Illustrations by the author.
Our hero runs a business that will perform just about any service for the right fee. (I was reminded of Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 story "–We Also Walk Dogs". Proofreader, please note that the dash and quotation marks are part of the story's title.)
His latest job is to stop a war between two alien species. Each one wants to eat the other. The reptilian aliens just think the centipede-like aliens are tasty, while the centipede-like aliens savor the experience of imagining the lives of the reptiles while devouring them.
Two reptilian aliens read the news. Yes, the text states that they wear tam-o'-shanters.
Our hero has to figure out a way to please the appetites of both species in order to prevent wholesale slaughter.
Who is having whom for dinner?
As you can tell, this is a silly story, apparently intended as a comedy, although nothing particularly funny happens. The author is much better known as a cartoonist and illustrator, and he might want to stick to that line of work in the future.
Two stars.
Tom Swift and the Syndicate, by Sam Moskowitz
The indefatigable historian of all things related to science fiction delves into the subject of children's adventure books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the title suggests, the main focus is on the countless stories of Tom Swift and his amazing inventions. However, the article also includes many other endless series, such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The bulk of these were plotted by a single man and actually written by a bunch of authors under house names. The Tom Swift, Jr., series continues to this day.
As usual, the author possesses an absolutely astounding amount of information about the subject. Also as usual, the resulting essay is less than compelling.
Two stars.
Homogenized Planet, by Allen Danzif
Illustrations by Dan Adkins.
One of the members of an exploration team on Mars goes off for several days, much longer than he could possibly survive with his limited air supply. Incredibly, he comes back just fine. In fact, he can survive in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere without any problems.
The other folks sedate him and strap him down during the voyage back to Earth. I guess they don't want to take the chance that he's really a Martian shapeshifter or something. Despite their precautions, things start to go wrong. People change from one person into another, or disappear entirely.
An eerie transformation.
At this point, you might think of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, with its shapeshifting alien. (Not so much the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, which eliminated the shapeshifting. On the other hand, I was reminded of the 1958 film It! The Terror from Beyond Space.)
However, things turn out quite differently than expected, and the mood changes drastically. When we finally find out what's really going on, the premise is of some interest, but it requires pages and pages of exposition. The story really grinds down to a halt during its last section.
Two stars.
Island of Light, by Lawrence A. Perkins
Illustrations by Arkin. I have not been able to discover the artist's last name. Could it possibly be Alan Arkin, the star of this year's hit comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming? He's had a couple of stories published in Galaxy.
In the near future, a city in the northwestern part of the United States takes drastic measures against crime. There is only one way to get into the place, which has expanded so greatly that it takes up part of three states. The normal activities of everyone in the city are recorded, so that computers can predict their whereabouts at any particular time with reasonable accuracy. There are many other methods used to ensure that it is nearly impossible to get away with a crime.
Citizens of Utopia?
A detective from outside the city arrives to observe the local crimefighters. A woman is beaten and robbed, left alive but in a coma. The investigation demonstrates the city's unusual methods, and reveals something about the visiting detective.
The premise is an interesting and provocative one, raising many questions about the proper way to balance freedom and security. Frankly, this story came as something of a relief after all those outer space adventures. The biggest flaw is that it's full of long expository speeches, as the local detective explains things to his guest.
Well, that was a disappointing issue, not doing much to take my mind off the hot weather. Perhaps the best way to use it would be to flap the pages against your face to cool down. Either that, or read it while sitting in a room made nice and comfortable by modern technology.
You don't really need to wear a snowsuit while running an air conditioner.
Tune in to KGJ, our radio station, for the coolest and the hottest hits!
[Kris Vyas-Myall and Cora Buhlert team up to cover two of the better Ace Doubles to have come out in a while. Enjoy!]
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
The Ballad of Beta-2, by Samuel R. Delany, and Alpha, Yes! Terra, no!, by Emil Petaja (Ace Double M-121)
I have generally been disappointed by the Ace Doubles so far this year. Those I have read have seemed to me to be quite old fashioned and I had been wondering if they were going to be heading into a more conservative route with them this year. Thankfully, this new Double I have found has been one of their best:
I have been a fan of all four of Delany’s Ace novels, however I approached this with some excitement but also trepidation. For three of those former works were in the same Toron series and The Jewels of Aptor was also set in a similar post-catastrophe future. So, whilst I know he is an excellent writer I wondered how he would do with a generation starship story. I can definitively say he has not only succeeded but produced his best work to date.
This is an interesting take on the well-worn theme, where the generation starship became obsolete long before the crew reached their destination. The inhabitants found hyperdrive had resulted in the systems already being colonized and they themselves were outdated relics who were simply content to live on their ships. At the same time, it appears some form of reversion has taken place and those on board lack much of the knowledge they would have had at the start of the voyage.
Galactic anthropology student Joneny is forced to do an assignment on these Star Folk’s culture, specifically the titular “Ballad of Beta-2”. Originally Joneny assumes that the ballad is nothing but meaningless “cotton candy effusions”, but as he investigates further, he discovers this may hold the truth of what terrible fate befell the Star Folk on their long voyage.
This story starts off fairly leisurely and I assumed this was going to be a sedate academic kind of novel, travelling around exploring the starships. However, as it goes on you do discover that the terror listed on the front cover is justified, my heart pounding as I read some passages. And it should be said there are multiple unforeseen twists within its pages.
Delany clearly has a gift for poetry, with the ballad itself being a beautiful piece and with a clearer understanding of metre and imagery than may others in the fantasy field. He also uses a number of other clever literary devices which I loved, such as building up a mosaic story from framed narratives.
Throughout this Delany explores numerous interesting ideas. First is the value of the fantastic in storytelling and how easily it is dismissed by literary critics (something I am sure we have all seen).
Second is the problem of unchecked biases in academia. The only first-hand account Joneny can find is the original contact when the Star Folk entered the system and the Ballad was only picked up by sending in a robot to record, which the original anthropologist changed the lyrics he thought were clearly incorrect. It is off the back of this information that the common truth about the nature of the Star Folk is held.
Third is the danger of cultural assumptions. Thinking about who is civilized and what it truly means to be human. Throughout we are called on to challenge what we think we know and reassess that which we hold to be true.
Then this also acts as a reality check on the space romances, that see an ease to zipping around the universe, showing how hard this could really be. But then the story dives further into the dangers of anti-intellectualism and religious fundamentalism.
I could keep on about all the ways this work is fascinating. It should be noted this part of the Double is pretty short, only 96 pages, but within it he crafts a story with more depth than most writers manage in triple that time. And yet I would not say any of the concepts are treated at a surface level, he weaves it all together like a stout rope and you can see more ideas every time you look closer.
Needless to say, I fell in love with this short novel. I would recommend it for everyone, but it is not for the faint of heart or those looking for a light read. It is tough, intellectually challenging and really brutal at times.
Delany has once again proven himself to be one of the most exciting new voices in science fiction. If he is not to be my favourite writer of the year, someone else is going to have to produce something spectacular in the next six months!
Emil Petaja is an old hand of the genre but has been out of the writing game for almost a decade, only just beginning to sell new short stories and (I believe) this is his first novel. As such I was very curious what it would be like.
Humanity has fully conquered the Solar System and is preparing interstellar ships for further expansion. In Alpha Centauri they had been initially deflecting ships with their barrier, but the tribunal has decided it will be necessary to wipe out humanity completely.
The novel opens with an alien from Alpha Centauri arriving in San Francisco and ending up mingling with the homeless of the city. This person (who is initially called The Tourist but who will have more names as the story unfolds) has psychic powers and uses them to take a look at the differences in humanity and what life is like on Earth. However, his mission is not authorized, and a tracker has been sent to kill him.
Trying to summarize beyond this jumping on point seems like a fool’s errand as it become very complex. This story then evolves into a tapestry of life across the solar system, all of it linked together through a range of different characters, touching on ideas of power, mythology, belief and humanity.
Petaja makes a real effort to show what a future of ever-growing space colonization would be like rather than purely projecting the present into the future. This drive is leaving ordinary people’s lives in shambles as everyone has their eyes on space; crime and unemployment are rampant. Drug use is common. The natives of the planets that are being colonized are being exploited but it only manifests as power for a small number and as a means to fuel further expansion.
The author has an easily readable style which is useful as what he is doing could easily collapse under its own weight but somehow, he manages to juggle it. There were times when I would have to backtrack to check I was indeed following everything that was happening, but I never found myself becoming lost. I do think he could possibly have done more if this had been a full-length novel rather than squeezed down into one half of a Double, but he still works admirably with the page count he is given.
I expect this will be compared to Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (although that itself is an old concept, dating at least as far back as Montaigne’s Of Cannibals) but it is really doing something different. This more a dialogue on humanity’s future weighing up the optimistic and pessimistic views we have emerging in science fiction and considering whether there is something worth saving in us.
So overall, Petaja’s return has proved to be a welcome surprise and I will be interested to see what he comes up with next. He clearly has a great affinity with Finnish myths, so perhaps a book based around that would be welcome?
Rating: Four Stars
by Cora Buhlert
The Rithian Terror and Off Center by Damon Knight (Ace Double M-113)
Summer has come to West Germany, though you wouldn't know it by the wet and miserable weather we've been having.
Nonetheless, there are some good news. My hometown team Werder Bremen has won the West German football (soccer to our American friends) championship for the 1964/65 season.
The Werder Bremen team celebrates winning the 1965 West German football championship
The 83rd Kieler Woche, one of the biggest sailing regattas in the world, kicks off today in Kiel-Eckernförde. In addition to the sailing competition, there is also a parade featuring 23 tall ships from all over the world.
The West German police boat SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN and the French tall ships ETOILE and BELLE POULE, the Swedish tall ships GLADAN and FALKEN and the Chilean tall ship ESMERALDA at the Kieler Woche.This striking minimalist poster, designed by Michael Engelmann, advertises the 1965 Kieler Woche sailing regatta.
On to reading: In the spinner rack of my local import bookstore, I came across yet another Ace Double, No. M-113 to be precise. This one contained a novel as well as a short fiction collection by Damon Knight. In the past, I have enjoyed Damon Knight's works of literary criticism, so how would his fiction stand up?
Monster Hunt
Quite well, it turns out. The novel The Rithian Terror starts out with Security Commissioner Thorne Spangler, currently the most important official in the Earth Empire, on the hunt for a monster. That monster, the titular Rithian terror, is a tentacled horror that can take on the appearance of anybody it wishes. Seven Rithians came to Earth, but only one is still at large.
However, Spangler is certain he has the monster cornered. After all, there are house by house searches and roadblocks on every street, where everybody has to pass through a scanner. This is the one test a Rithian can't pass, for the scanner detects human skeletons and Rithians have none.
Spangler is accompanied by Jawj Pembun, an official from Manhaven, one of Earth's colony worlds, which recently gained its independence. Manhaven has regular contact with the Rithians, so Pumbun was brought in as an expert.
Spangler clearly resents Pembun's involvement in what should be his moment of glory. For starters, Pembun comes from a small backwater planet, one that only gained its independence, because the Earth Empire with its 260 planets let them. Furthermore, Pembun speaks in heavy dialect, while the Empire prizes precise language. Finally, Pembun is a black man, descended from African and Caribbean colonists, and Spangler is the sort of person who is very bothered by this and not shy about expressing it.
I have to admit that after the first fifteen pages or so, I came close to throwing the book against the nearest wall. There are enough racists in the real world, so I really don't need to spend time with racist characters while reading. However, I quickly realised that Knight was a better author than that. For even though Spangler may be the POV character, we're not meant to sympathise with him or his Empire. After all, Spangler and the Empire he serves are rigid, overorganised, xenophobic, have a massive superiority complex and are racist to boot. Spangler is also unpleasant in his personal life, a social climber who only courts his girlfriend Joanna because she is a member of a patrician family and will be useful to him. At one point, he even hits Joanna.
As a result, I quickly found myself sympathising with Pembun and cheered as he deflated Spangler and his smug compatriots. For starters, those scanners at every roadblock that Spangler is so proud of won't work, for while Rithians don't have skeletons, they could just swallow one to pass the test. Also, if the Empire wants to capture a Rithian alive, then maybe shooting six of the seven Rithians who crashlanded on Earth dead is not the best idea. Finally, Pembun casually drops the bombshell that the Rithians have hypnotic abilities as well as a nasty sense of humour.
A Game of Spies
What began as the hunt for an alien spy quickly turns into a game of cat and mouse between Spangler and Pembun. Spangler decides that Pembun must be a traitor and wastes a lots of resources trying to catch him redhanded. But the meeting of supposed offworld insurrectionists Spangler has his forces storm only turns out to be a Christmas party, where Pembun hands out gifts to children while dressed up as a legendary figure called the Grey Parrot.
While Spangler fails at every turn due to his rigid mindset, Pembun's unorthodox methods get results. And so Pembun manages to unmask the Rithian two thirds through the novel, using the Rithian's sense of humour against him. It turns out that the alien is posing as a junior member of the very committee dedicated to hunting him down. However, in the attempt to apprehend the Rithian, the alien is killed and Colonel Cassina, the military official the Rithian had hypnotised into giving him access to the security headquarters, is grievously wounded.
However, the crisis is not yet over. For the Rithians have planted bombs on Earth as leverage against the Empire. The key to the location of the bombs is in Colonel Cassina's head, only Cassina will not talk. And once Spangler's people finally manage to extract the message, destroying the Colonel's mind in the process, it turns out to be useless.
For Pembun points out that even though language has frozen and standardised in the Empire with every word having only a single meaning, it continued to evolve on the colony planets, where the same term can have many different meanings. So the location given in the message could be anywhere on Earth. Spangler and his security forces have no chance of locating the bombs. The Empire is finished, destroyed by its own rigidity, and so is Spangler's career. However, Spangler and Pembun have developed a grudging respect for each other and Pembun offers him a place on his homeworld Manhaven. Spangler's girlfriend Joanna, who up to now had refused to marry him, knowing fully well that Spangler wanted her not for herself, but for her position, agrees to go with him.
A Tale with Multiple Meanings
As a linguist, I enjoyed that the solution to the central mystery of the novel lies in the ambiguity of language. Another thing I liked was that Pembun's native tongue, which he occasionally speaks throughout the novel, is a Creole based on French, Spanish and English. I have no idea if Knight used a real Creole language, but it certainly feels convincing enough.
Just like the solution of the linguistic mystery, The Rithian Terror is a novel with multiple layers and meanings. On the surface, it is a hunt for a literal bug-eyed monster that has infiltrated Earth. However, it is also a John Le Carré like spy novel about two agents, both nominally on the same side, trying to outmanoeuvre each other. Finally, The Rithian Terror is a novel about colonialism and the slow decline and death of empires.
It is this last aspect that is also the most topical, for in the past fifteen years, we have seen the once great colonial empires of Britain and France as well as smaller powers like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy slowly fall apart, as more and more nations in Africa, South East Asia and the Caribbean gain independence. And it is certainly no accident that Pembun, the representative of a newly independent world, is also a black man speaking Creole, while his counterpart Spangler is an overly rigid white man with the proverbial stick shoved up his backside. Knight makes it very clear to which of these two very different men the future belongs.
Four stars.
Off Center
Of Immigrants and Dolpins
Off Center, the second half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five pieces of short fiction originally published between 1952 and 1964.
The first story "What Rough Beast?" is the story of a young immigrant named Mike Kronski trying to make his way in America. However, Mike is not the simple East European immigrant he appears to be. He comes from far further afield, from an alternate universe. He also has the ability to bend reality to his will and has accidentally changed his world into ours.
Through a series of misadventures, Mike meets a young woman called Anne with burn scars on her body. He uses his ability to heal Anne's scars, which causes Anne's father and a greedy friend to capture Mike to exploit him. Mike tries to run away and is shot. In his terror, he accidentally erases New York from existence. Only Anne remains. Mike takes her to a different version of New York, where she can feel at home, and then departs to a new reality, hoping that this time, he will fit in.
A touching tale about the alienation and profound sense of homesickness many immigrants feel. Knight captures Mike's voice and his imperfect English well. Our editor Gideon Marcus also loved the story.
"Second Class Citizen" is the story of researcher Charles Craven and the subject of his studies, the dolphin Pete. Craven has taught Pete to understand and speak English, spell simple words and even do chemical experiments. While Craven patronisingly presents Pete to some visitors, we learn from background conversations that there is an international crisis going on. Craven is convinced that this crisis will blow over, like any other crisis before.
However, Craven is wrong, for shortly after the visitors have left, the TV program is interrupted for a special bulletin before dropping out altogether. Craven correctly deduces that war has begun and manages to dive to the underwater station of his research base just before heat bombs fall all around him. Craven survives the attack, but once his food runs out, he will be doomed, unless he manages to catch enough fish to survive. However, Craven has no idea how to catch fish. Then Pete appears, easily catching the fish. The roles are reversed now, the teacher has become the student.
The novella "Be My Guest" is the story of Kip Morgan, a young man who finds himself possessed by four bickering ghosts after a poisoning attempt gone wrong. Kip also has another problem, he as well as two women of his acquaintance have become invisible to everybody but each other.
The novella follows Kip through his increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of his unwanted tenants and solve his invisibility problem. Kip finally realises that everybody had multiple ghosts living inside them and that these ghosts influence their decisions. He also realises that his invisibility problem is a form of quarantine to keep Kip from talking about the ghosts. Eventually, he blackmails some very powerful ghosts inhabiting the body of a rich man into lifting the quarantine and make sure that he and the two women are given only beneficial and helpful ghosts. Finally free, Kip also realises that the woman he thought he loved is not the person who's really good for him.
"Be My Guest" is an fascinating attempt at a science fictional ghost story. Knight viscerally conveys Kip's growing desperation. It does feel a little long, though, and would probably have worked better as a novelette or short story.
"God's Nose" is a short vignette that does exactly what it says on the tin. The unnamed narrator and his female friend debate what the nose of God would look like. Eventually, her lover Godfrey arrives. He has a very prominent nose.
Inconsequential without much in the way of plot or point.
The final story "Catch That Martian" feels very much like a mix between The Rithian Terror and "Be My Guest". Once again, we have a dangerous alien, the titular Martian, who can take on the appearance of any human being. And once again, we have people abruptly taken out of the real world and turned into "ghosts". A young police officer is determined to crack the mystery of the ghosts and catch the Martian in the act. He deduces that the ghosts must have annoyed the Martian somehow, mostly via making noise, and that the Martian has a taste for musical theatre. So the narrator traces the Martian to a Broadway theatre, determined to apprehend him. But before he can give chase, he falls into the orchestra pit, straight onto a bass drum.
Well written and Knight once again captures the distinctive voice of his first person narrator perfectly. However, the story is also slight and a little silly, particularly compared to the two similar stories in this Ace Double.
All told, Off Center is a nice collection that showcases Knight's writing skills, even though some of the stories are a little slight.
Three stars.
[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring singer-songwriter Harry Seldon. He'll be playing a mix of Dylan, Simon, and some unique original compositions!]
Gathered around the dinner table with the family, or just chatting with friends, it's generally a good idea to avoid controversial subjects. Religion and politics, for example, are likely to lead to unpleasant arguments. Maybe Uncle Fred is a Goldwater buff, and Cousin Sue goes all the way with LBJ. Possibly you've got buddies who belong to different faiths, or none at all. Better to let sleeping dogs lie, and talk about something else.
The topic of money, or economics in general, may not be as controversial, but talking about how much you've got, or what somebody else earns, is generally considered to be in bad taste. As for sex, well, that's usually too personal to discuss, particularly if the kiddies are around.
Maybe it's a sign of the times, or maybe it's the influence of the British New Wave on science fiction, but the lead serial in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow deals with religion, politics, and economics. That leaves sex, which shows up at the end of the magazine, like a tempting dessert.
As indicated in the picture above, this novel takes place in a world of flying cars and other futuristic stuff. More relevant to the plot is the fact that automation results in a majority of folks being unemployed, but enjoying a reasonably comfortable existence in an affluent welfare society.
The protagonist hosts a radio show dealing with flying saucers, reincarnation, and other weird stuff. He's dating the daughter of the tycoon who owns the station, mostly in an attempt to move up to a position in television. Dad, daughter, and the station manager all belong to a right-wing organization dedicated to ferreting out commies and pinkos. (To give you some idea of this group, they think of the John Birch Society as too liberal.)
The manager asks our hero to check out the revival meetings of a preacher whom they suspect of subversion. He's supposed to be on a date with his wealthy girlfriend, so she reluctantly tags along.
The preacher speaks in vaguely religious language of an eccentric sort, frequently making reference to something called the All-Mother. What he really talks about, however, is the world's economic system, condemning wasteful practices such as pointless changes in car design, fads and fashions that come and go, planned obsolescence, and conspicuous consumption.
This is too much for the rich woman, so she heckles him. The preacher loses his temper and rants against makeup, fancy clothing, and elaborate hairdos. The next thing you know, the woman changes her ways, dressing simply and avoiding cosmetics. Not that she agrees with the guy, you understand; it's just that those things make her itch unbearably. Pretty soon the same thing happens to women all over the world, ushering in an era of down home, farm girl fashions.
Crisis in the radio studio!
The preacher winds up on the protagonist's radio show. Things get out of control, so the fellow goes into another tirade, this time against radio and, by extension, television.
The reader is way ahead of the characters by this point, so it's not a big surprise when all broadcasting goes haywire, forcing people to abandon their favorite forms of entertainment. With all those unemployed folks desperate for something to fill their hours, there's a sudden shortage of comic books and magazines. Bars and movie theaters are packed to overflowing. Even the preacher's revival meetings attract huge crowds, just because they have nothing else to do.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
Although not comic in tone, the novel has a strong satiric edge to it. The setting may be some years from now, but the author is really talking about today. The targets of his barbed examination of modern society are overproduction and excess consumption, as well as the seductive power of the electronic media.
The style is very readable, carrying you along as you follow the misadventures of the hapless hero. The preacher's astonishing ability to transform the world may not be particularly plausible, but once you swallow the premise the way it plays out is enjoyable.
Reynolds likes to play games with politics, and perform thought experiments with different economic systems, so I predict the second half of the novel will portray a new society, possibly a utopian one. We'll see if I'm right a couple of months from now.
Four stars.
Coming Out Party, by Robert Lory
Illustration by Norman Nodel
This brief tale begins with a young woman getting ready for the event mentioned in the title. Our first hint that something strange is going on is the fact that she's stark naked in front of her parents. The ceremony is also full of nude women. (Sorry, ladies, all the erotic content of this issue is obviously aimed at a male audience.)
I dare not say anything else about what happens, except to mention that the shock ending is an effective one. This is one of those stories that depends entirely on the twist in its tail. It succeeds at the modest goal it sets for itself.
Three stars.
The Shape of Us to Come, by Michael Girsdansky
Let's take a break from controversial topics of discussion and learn something about the way people might alter their bodies in the future. The author considers the fact that viruses inject their genetic information into the cells of other organisms, using the biological machinery of their hosts to reproduce themselves. The article speculates about the possibility of harnessing this ability to alter the genetics of humans in desirable ways.
Using this technique to treat diseases such as cancer seems reasonably plausible. The suggestion that the body might be changed in radical ways, to ensure survival on alien worlds, is a little less so. In any case, it's an interesting subject, and I learned something about viruses.
Three stars.
World of the Spectrum, by Emil Petaja
Illustrations by John Giunta
Take a look at that picture. We've got a muscular hero with a bladed weapon and a big, ugly monster. Am I reading the wrong magazine? Is this a sword-and-sorcery yarn, rescued from the yellowing pages of Weird Tales?
That's what it seems like at first, but we soon find out that this world of mighty barbarians fighting bizarre creatures exists for the amusement of the upper class on Earth, who vicariously experience the thrill of battle through a kind of telepathic sensory television.
The hero is in mental communication with a woman he thinks of as a princess in a castle located at the top of a cliff that nobody can climb. Naturally, he overcomes impossible odds and reaches the place, only to discover that things are not what they seem.
Don't look down!
The woman is actually a member of the upper class, who secretly belongs to a group of folks working to overthrow their repressive society. She uses a teleportation device to bring the man to Earth, teaching him about the place and enlisting him in her struggle. After many adventures, she confronts the ruler of the world, who turns out to be truly grotesque.
The heroine is shocked by what she sees.
Despite the science fiction explanation for everything, the story feels more like a fantasy adventure. The ruler of Earth might as well be another hideous monster for the hero to destroy. At first, the woman seems to be nothing more than a sexually provocative nitwit, but this is only a role she plays in order to further her plans. The main flaw is the need for a lot of expository dialogue to explain the complex background, with people telling each other things they should already know.
Three stars.
Lunar Weapons Tomorrow, by Joseph Wesley
Before we move on to sex, let's talk about something much less shocking, like war. (There's something wrong with that sentence, but I'll think about it later.)
The author starts this piece about military use of the Moon by dismissing the idea that it could be used to launch missiles at an enemy on Earth. He points out that this method is more difficult, more expensive, less effective, and less defensible than other ways of destroying the planet. Somehow I'm not reassured.
He goes on to imagine lunar military installations, assuming that these will be common in about twenty years or so. His prediction is that these will engage in a kind of lukewarm war, neither one completely destroying the other lest it be wiped out as well. Instead, the opposing forces make relatively minor forays against each other, fighting for territory in a futuristic version of the trench warfare of World War One.
The dry and rather frightening subject of this article is made more readable through the use of a fictional soldier on the Moon. We follow him as he watches for an enemy advance, and even engages in hand-to-hand combat, of a sort, in a spacesuit.
Three stars.
A Glass of Mars, by Robert F. Young
Illustrations by Gray Morrow
The version of the Red Planet depicted in this story is closer to the imaginings of Ray Bradbury than what most scientists believe. Maybe the Mariner 4 spacecraft, now on its way to Mars, will tell us who's right. Anyway, the plot takes place at least a full generation after people colonized the planet, building on the ancient ruins of the long-vanished Martians.
The main character is a new arrival, with romantic ideas about the distant past. In sharp contrast, his secretary, born on Mars, is all about the present. Like other women native to the planet, she is sexually assertive, openly boasting about her measurements, calling herself a sex machine, and offering to sleep with her boss (with the assumption that they will be married soon after.)
While commuting across the surface of Mars, the fellow is miraculously transported to the past. He meets a Martian woman, as delicately beautiful and demure as he imagined.
(In just about all ways except language, the Martian is completely human. We're told, more than once, that she has hyacinth hair. This rather obscure metaphor is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's ode To Helen, and it's not much clearer in the original. The allusion seems designed to suggest the man's dreamy vision of the ancient Martian woman, as romantic as Poe's poem.)
The ancient Martian and the modern human. Gentlemen, which one would you pick?
Without giving too much away, let's just say that the man's assumptions aren't completely accurate. I expected this to be a simple fable about the superiority of the past over the vulgarity of the present, but it's a little more complex than that. The author, no stranger to sentimental love stories and idealization of women, almost seems to be chiding himself for his romantic tendencies. The plot is pure fantasy, of course, but if you can get past that, it's worth a look.
Three stars.
Shall We Talk About It?
Overall, this was a pretty decent issue. Nothing was less than average, and the serialized novel was a high point. Maybe I'm just in a good mood. In any case, I would caution you to make sure that you discuss the themes raised in the magazine only under the right circumstances. Remember what Mom told you!
She didn't mention money or sex. Two out of four ain't bad.
We're at a bit of a lull here in early February. Not that things haven't been exciting, but they've been familiar headlines. For instance, Sheriff Clark and his merry men locked up nearly 3000 Afro-American demonstrators who were marching in Selma, Alabama for their voting rights.
In Laos, one of the two right-wing factions supporting the neutralist government tried to coup the neutralist government. It was defeated by the other right-wing faction. Meanwhile, the Pathet Lao Communists continue to fester in the margins.
And China, a new member of the nuclear club, maintains its fracture with its Communist brethren to the north, the USSR (although the current meeting of Soviet Foreign Minister Kosygin and Chinese Head of State Zhou Enlai may thaw things).
Similarly, the March 1965 IF offers nothing particularly outstanding, as has been the case for several months now. I really think editor Fred Pohl should consider returning IF to a bimonthly schedule. Or perhaps Worlds of Tomorrow needs to be retired so that IF can get choicer stories.
First up is the latest in Saberhagen's Berserker tales. If you've been reading IF for a while, you know that this series involves enormous, sentient battleships that hate life, destroying human fleets and colonies wherever they can. The author has done a good job developing the unearthly logic of the alien destroyers as well as written good yarns about the victories Terrans have managed to pull off against them.
Stone Place is the final battle. The Berserkers have pulled together all two hundred of their ships scattered throughout the galaxy. In counter, the Terrans have assembled a nearly equivalent armada. The problem is that the human ships do not all owe allegiance to a central government, and there is friction aplenty. Can humanity unite for long enough to defeat a threat to the entire species?
by Jack Gaughan
A few things make this latest outing a comparative disappointment: the beginning is slow, the politics are frustrating, and the cruelty of the Berserkers shockingly lurid. Moreover, the tactics employed against the Berserkers are somewhat glossed over, making the ultimate result feel informed rather than earned. I wish such a momentous chapter in the saga had been given a novel's worth of development. Without the nuance and cleverness of the prior stories, and because of the heightened nastiness, three stars is all I can award Stone Place.
On an interstellar cruise liner, one of the veteran ship's officers makes the acquaintance of a grizzled, cantankerous marine. Conversation ensues.
And that's about it. I'm not sure what the point was. Two stars.
All We Unemployed, by Bryce Walton
Written as half screenplay, half epistolary, All We Unemployed details the horrors of being the last employees in a automated factory that has decided that human elements are undesirable. It's a pretty dumb story, saying nothing new (and in fact, feeling queerly familiar).
One star.
Of One Mind, by James Durham
by Gray Morrow
James Durham is the novice writer of the issue. He offers up a piece in which humanity discovers barrier-less telepathy before it is ready, with disastrous results. Very few survive the ensuing massacre, including the protagonist, an astronaut on his way to Mars.
There are some nice bits in Mind, particularly its realistic portrayal of space travel. But on the whole, it doesn't hang together well at all. It might make a decent novel, if the writer develops his chops some more.
Three stars
Million-Mile Hunt, by Emil Petaja
By contrast, Petaja is an old hand, a veteran of the pulp era. However, he's been on hiatus for more than a decade…and it shows. Hunt, about an ornery space prospector and the odd alien who dogs him mercilessly, just trying to help, is outdated stuff. The solar system is home to half a dozen alien species, and people zip from setting to setting as if driving from block to block of a city. The revelation at the end is weird and not particularly well-joined with the narrative.
Two stars.
Starchild (Part 3 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson
by Gray Morrow
And finally, we come to the end of this three-part serial, sequel to The Reefs of Space. At last, we will find out who the mysterious Star Child is, and how the rebels living in the reefs that gird our solar system have been able to subvert Earth's authoritarian Planning Machine and even blink out the Sun.
Except, we don't. Instead, we're treated to forty pages of exposition that tell us that the ultimatum made to Earth (by whom? some mystical stellar force centered about the star, Deneb? it's not clear) to overthrow the Plan of Man involved dozens of years of perfect timing that indicate the outcome was predestined. See, before the Sun went out, all of the nearby stars winked in succession. Since light travels at a finite rate, that meant the scheme required not only synchronization of efforts on a galactic scale, but also knowledge that it would work (since they only made plans to do it once).
Plus, it was apparently child's play for the Denebians(?) to take over not only the Planning Machine on Earth, but its copy that was sent to the reefs on the Earth vessel, Togethership. In any event, none of the characters are given anything to do but watch. Not Boysie Gann, the putative protagonist. Not the stubborn Earth general bent on recovering the Togethership. Not Quarla, the young woman from the reefs who sails from plot point to plot point on her seal-like fusorian, as the story requires.
It's the worst kind of pulp space opera. Not even the settings are interesting, and setting is all we have at this point. The first story of the series was fair, with an exciting middle. This second installment had promise but quickly went to the dogs.
One star, and please let's not have another.
Summing Up
Wow, that was a stinker. It's clear Pohl is shoving all of his junk into one drawer, including the stuff he probably couldn't sell anywhere else (Starchild). And Pohl is touting that we've got novels from Schmitz and Doc Smith to look forward to. Given that those two produce stuff in the same vein as Starchild, I am really not looking forward to the next several months.
Perhaps it's time I passed on the mantle. Any volunteers?
![[June 16, 1969] The Voyage to Net a Dolphin (June 1969 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/690616covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[September 18, 1968] Dangerous Visions (Not Those Dangerous Visions!) (September 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680920books.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[December 16, 1967] Long Distance Travel (December 1967 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/671216covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[August 12, 1967] Planetary Adventures (August 1967 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/670812covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[April 18, 1967] Bright Lights (May 1967 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/670418cover-scaled.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[December 10, 1966] Hot and Cold (December Galactoscope #1)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/661210covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 12, 1966] Cool It! (August 1966 <i>Worlds of Tomorrow</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Worlds_of_Tomorrow_v04n01_1966-08_0000-2.jpg?resize=672%2C330)
![[June 20, 1965] Ace Quadruple (June Galactoscope #1)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/650620cover.jpg?resize=397%2C372)
The first story "What Rough Beast?" is the story of a young immigrant named Mike Kronski trying to make his way in America. However, Mike is not the simple East European immigrant he appears to be. He comes from far further afield, from an alternate universe. He also has the ability to bend reality to his will and has accidentally changed his world into ours.
"Second Class Citizen" is the story of researcher Charles Craven and the subject of his studies, the dolphin Pete. Craven has taught Pete to understand and speak English, spell simple words and even do chemical experiments. While Craven patronisingly presents Pete to some visitors, we learn from background conversations that there is an international crisis going on. Craven is convinced that this crisis will blow over, like any other crisis before.
The novella "Be My Guest" is the story of Kip Morgan, a young man who finds himself possessed by four bickering ghosts after a poisoning attempt gone wrong. Kip also has another problem, he as well as two women of his acquaintance have become invisible to everybody but each other.
"God's Nose" is a short vignette that does exactly what it says on the tin. The unnamed narrator and his female friend debate what the nose of God would look like. Eventually, her lover Godfrey arrives. He has a very prominent nose.
The final story "Catch That Martian" feels very much like a mix between The Rithian Terror and "Be My Guest". Once again, we have a dangerous alien, the titular Martian, who can take on the appearance of any human being. And once again, we have people abruptly taken out of the real world and turned into "ghosts". A young police officer is determined to crack the mystery of the ghosts and catch the Martian in the act. He deduces that the ghosts must have annoyed the Martian somehow, mostly via making noise, and that the Martian has a taste for musical theatre. So the narrator traces the Martian to a Broadway theatre, determined to apprehend him. But before he can give chase, he falls into the orchestra pit, straight onto a bass drum.
![[May 14, 1965] Keep A Civil Tongue In Your Head (July 1965 <i>Worlds of Tomorrow</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Worlds_of_Tomorrow_v03n02_1965-07_0000-2.jpg?resize=672%2C318)
![[February 6, 1965] Too much of a… thing (March 1965 <i>IF</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/650204cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
