Tag Archives: algis budrys

[December 2, 1966] Mixed Bags (January 1967 IF)


by David Levinson

November was no more or less eventful than most months, but nothing really caught my eye. The Republicans made modest gains in the mid-term elections, California elected a so-so actor as governor and New Orleans is getting a football team in what certainly looks like recompense to Representative Hale Boggs and Senator Russell Long for shepherding the merger of the American and National Football Leagues through Congress. But there’s really nothing there to talk about. So, as with the last time this happened, let’s talk about the art.

Art matters

Regular readers of this column will know that I am often less than complimentary to the art in IF, especially the interior illustrations. There have been some changes in Fred Pohl’s stable of artists over the last year, some, but not all, for the better. John Giunta seems to have disappeared entirely, but several artists have stepped in to fill his shoes. We’re seeing a lot more from Wallace Wood and his assistant and imitator Dan Adkins, neither of whom is all that good, despite their years in the industry. On the other hand, Virgil Finlay has returned after a long absence, and he’s one of the best in the business.

We’re also seeing more of the mononymous Burns after a short absence. Unfortunately, his current style seems to combine the worst of Nodel and Giunta (and I like Giunta’s work generally). This month brings us a new artist: Vaughn Bodé. His figures are a bit cartoony, but not objectionable. I also like his landscape and VTOL aircraft. I won’t be sorry if we see more of his work.

A return to form

Something of a mixed bag in this month’s IF. A decent end to one serial and a promising start to a new one. A silly story and something experimental from established writers. Let’s take a closer look.


Just for a change, the cover actually depicts something inside. Art by Morrow

The Iron Thorn (Part 1 of 4), by Algis Budrys

Honor (pronounced “honner”) White Jackson is pursuing a bird-like Amsir across a red desert. As long as he wears his pointed metal cap and maintains line-of-sight to the Iron Thorn, he will be warm and able to breathe the thin air. If he can make his kill and bring it home, he will become a full-fledged Honor. Surprisingly, his quarry carries a metal spear (his own equipment is made largely of Amsir parts) and speaks, ordering him to yield when it thinks it has the upper hand.

On his way back, he is met by his older brother Black, who cautiously tests his reaction to the discoveries he has made. Disturbed by what he has learned, White (now Secon Black) enters the Iron Thorn for the first time and speaks with the Eld Honor, who says he may have what it takes to become Eld himself one day. Our protagonist comes to the conclusion that if he stays, he will be killed, and so, after giving a drawing of an armed Amsir to a girl he’s had his eye on, he sets out into the desert to be captured by an Amsir. He succeeds after killing the man who killed his father (making him Red Jackson) and is taken to a giant dish-shaped valley, filled with green plants and air dense enough to let the Amsir fly. There is also an Iron Thorn at its center, upright and shining, unlike the one his people call home. A vision of his people’s heaven, Ariwol. To be continued.


Honor White Jackson chases his prey, but who is hunting whom? Art by Gray Morrow

Last month, I noted that I’ve never really enjoyed Budrys’s work, but was pleased to learn that I liked his story in that issue. The streak continues. There’s an awful lot packed into these 35 or so pages, but it mostly works. The exposition, in particular, is a masterpiece of “show, don’t tell”. Parts of it are a bit rushed; the protagonist goes through three names (and has a secret fourth, Jim), and his decision that his life is in danger seemed precipitous. Maybe that will be fleshed out more if this appears as a novel. It’s a good start, though, and I look forward to more.

A solid three stars.

A Hair Perhaps, by J. F. Bone

Major William Bruce has arrived at the remote, top secret tracking station where he will spend the next two weeks all alone. When he is kidnapped, along with his living quarters, by aliens who plan to use him as their first test subject to determine if humans are worth enslaving, he has to find a way to defeat them with the limited tools at hand.


Two examples of Bodé’s art I mentioned earlier. I like the first one, but the figures need a little work, especially the human. Art by Vaughn Bodé

It’s been a few years since we saw anything from Bone. Unfortunately, like his last offering, this one is a stinker. Not as bad as “For Service Rendered”, but not up to his usual quality by a long shot. Bruce is thoroughly unpleasant (and explicitly stated to be so in the text), and the whole story is in service of a weak punchline.

Two stars.

– Still More Fandoms, by Lin Carter

Our Man in Fandom picks up where he left off and gives us some more fandoms that appeal to many science fiction fans. He starts off with one of the biggest groups, the Baker Street Irregulars, devoted to Sherlock Holmes, moves on to a couple of fellows in Missouri who are trying to start a fan group dedicated to James Branch Cabell, and on to the well-established Oz fandom. He finishes up with a look at the somewhat fragmented comics fan groups. Contact information is provided for the Cabell group and a couple of comics groups.

Three stars.

The Scared Starship, by D. M. Melton

Mars has been divided between the western and Sino-Sov blocs, with some neutral territory where finds must be shared. Rainbow Smith tells us how the group he was exploring with found a dead alien and a starship. The captain and the geologist rescue the find from the machinations of the evil Mao Lee, but it’s computer specialist Margot Harris who figures out how to get to the starship and win it over for the “good guys”.


Brains and beauty, but I don’t know how she gets all that hair in her helmet. Art by Nodel

Melton’s biggest problem thus far has been the handling of female characters. That’s largely corrected here, though there is one passage that feels more like “how men think women think”. Unfortunately, we have a nasty bit of Yellow Peril storytelling in the vicious Mao Lee (and an accompanying picture by Nodel). The whole Cold War tension subplot could have been dropped, leaving a decent problem story.

A low three stars.

By the Seawall, by Robert Silverberg

A great stone wall, sixty meters high and twenty meters thick, extends six thousand kilometers along the Eastern seaboard to protect humanity from the monsters which have risen from the sea. Micha-IV is an artificial person whose job is to patrol a one kilometer section of the wall, triggering additional defenses against monsters that scale the wall, reporting damage and also conducting tours. Suddenly, people have begun jumping off the wall, with or without a parachute; suicide either way. Micha-IV struggles to understand.

This can best be summed up as Robert Silverberg writes a J. G. Ballard story. How you feel about both those writers will probably determine how you feel about the story. I like Silverberg and don’t care for Ballard, but I can see that others might enjoy this.

Three stars.

On the Shallow Seas, by Robert Mason

Lant is a convict on the prison world of Exonam. Prisoners spend their days harvesting golden oysters. Fail to meet your quota of meat and you don’t eat, but find a rare gold pearl and you’ll be pardoned.


The “oysters” aren’t much like Earth shellfish. Art by Burns

Mason is this month’s new author. There’s enough here that shows promise. Line by line, the writing is good, though we’re treated to almost every prison story cliche there is. My biggest problem is the use of gold as the plot's linchpin. There’s no real reason for it to be that valuable. Mason would have been better served by using something much scarcer or making up his own element or alloy.

A low three stars.

The Impersonators, by C. C. MacApp

Inspector Kruger of the Interstellar Division has been sent to the planet Phrodd to arrest the embezzler Borogrove O’Larch. It’s diplomatically sensitive, because Phrodd is an alien world, so Kruger will have to step carefully. The locals are also perfect mimics, and O’Larch has hired a lot of them to pretend to be him. Kruger is soon at his wits’ end.

I usually groan when I see MacApp’s name and breathe a small sigh of relief when I see it’s not a Gree story. I sighed too soon. MacApp does not have a hand for humor. Laumer or Goulart could have had moderate success with this, but the story here is just plain bad.

Two stars.

Snow White and the Giants (Part 4 of 4), by J. T. McIntosh

A group of strange young people have come from the future to witness the Great Fire of Shuteley. They also have an interest in Val Mathers and his cousin Jota. Now trapped in the heart of the fire storm in a protective dome set to disappear at dawn, Miranda guides Val through his memories of Jota to help him understand what they hope to do. All his life, two things have been true for Jota: people who got in his way died, and he could have any woman he wanted.

In Miranda’s day, some three percent of people have the Gift, and they’re making society ungovernable. The much smaller percentage who are immune aren’t enough to stop them. Miranda and her team have come to the past to save Jota’s life in the hope that will eliminate the Gift, but they’ve failed. However, by convincing Val that he can have children without them turning out mentally handicapped like his younger sister, Miranda has accidentally succeeded. Now, Val and his sister just need to survive the collapse of the dome. Can Miranda meet the price he demands?


Val and Greg fight for the future. Art by Gaughan

And so McIntosh brings everything to a reasonably satisfying conclusion. There’s a small flaw in the plot, in that Jota has no children and so his death ought to have eliminated the Gift. But there’s a bite in the final paragraph that more than compensates for any weaknesses elsewhere.

Three stars for this installment and for the novel as a whole.

Summing up

After last month’s excellent outing, this issue is something of a return to form. The serials are the main reason to read the magazine, and the stuff in between is average at best. Next month we have the continuation of the Budrys novel, which is promising, as is a new Niven tale. A new Retief could go either way. But the March issue will have a contribution from every winner of a professional Hugo at TriCon: Asimov, Ellison, Herbert and Zelazny, plus a cover by Frazetta. So we’ve got that to look forward to.






[November 6, 1966] Starting Over (December 1966 IF)


by David Levinson

Autumn is a strange time for new beginnings, but that seems to be something of a theme, both in life and in the latest edition of IF.

Carnival atmospheres

On October 5th, the highest appeals court in Texas ruled that Jack Ruby, the man who shot the man who shot President Kennedy, should be granted a new trial. The court said that, given the tremendous amount of publicity in Dallas about the shooting, the judge should have granted the request for a change of venue made by Ruby’s lawyer, Melvin Belli. The court also ruled that some statements made by Ruby to the police should have been excluded. Oddly, the court didn’t have a problem with people who watched the shooting on television being on the jury. The new trial will probably be the big news story early next year.


Jack Ruby shortly after his arrest.

The Texas court may have followed the Supreme Court ruling in Sheppard v. Maxwell back in June. In 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard was convicted of the brutal murder of his wife Marilyn. He maintained that she was killed by a “bushy-haired” man, but he was tried and convicted in the press before he was even arrested. The story became a national sensation, and the jury was exposed to further declarations of Sheppard’s guilt in the press throughout the trial. Before the trial began, the judge even told Dorothy Kilgallen that Sheppard was obviously “guilty as hell.” Jury selection for a new trial began on October 24th, and the prosecution should have begun to present their case by the time you read this.


Sam Sheppard’s mug shot from 1954.

Rising from the ashes

In this month’s IF, it seems like almost everybody is starting over. Whether it’s their personal lives, civilization or the human race, they’re all trying to put things back together.


This doesn’t look like it has anything to do with the Niven story. And they got the title wrong. Art by Gaughan

Be Merry, by Algis Budrys

Several years ago, a Klarri interstellar liner suffered an accident. The people aboard piled into lifeboats and made a crash landing on Earth. Unfortunately, they were unable to take any precautions and Klarri diseases swept through the human population, while human diseases did the same to the Klarri. Both populations were cut in half, and human civilization collapsed. The survivors have pulled together, human and Klarri alike, in small communities outside of the big cities. Rations are short and no one is really healthy, but the communities support each other as best they can.

Ed Dorsey and his Klarr partner Artel are investigators in the Western District of Greater New York. Their boss sends them to check out Ocean Heights, New Jersey. Unlike other places, the people there take whatever they’re sent without complaint, not even begging for more medical supplies. Entering the town late at night, they find signs of a pre-pandemic lifestyle, as well as a crashed lifeboat and a building that seems to be holding a number of Klarri prisoner. Returning in daylight, they find people in robust health who are very cagey about conditions in the town.


Ed and Artel make a discovery. Art by Gray Morrow

Historically, I’ve not been a big fan of Algis Budrys’s work. I can see the skill in his writing, but never really connect with it. This story is another matter entirely. I found myself fully invested and eager to solve the mystery of Ocean Heights. I also liked that, unlike in many stories, survivors were pulling together instead of being at odds, even recognizing that the Klarri are also victims and integrating them into their communities.

Four stars.

The Thousandth Birthday Party, by Durant Imboden

It’s Ogilvy Carr’s one-thousandth birthday. Since medical science can keep almost everyone alive indefinitely and birth control, and interplanetary colonies aren’t enough to reduce population pressure, a solution had to be found. Anyone who reaches the age of 1,000 has to draw a ping pong ball from a bin. A lucky few are named Immortals; the rest are shot in the head by a sniper before they know they’ve lost. It’s no wonder Ogilvy is nervous.

Imboden is this month’s first time author. A more seasoned writer could have found a way to explain the significance of the birthday without two full pages of flat exposition interrupting the flow of the narrative, but this isn’t a terrible first outing.

Three stars.

Starpath, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

The Starpath is an energy-intensive method of instantaneous travel between planets that few men are capable of using. Major Keith Waldermann is taking Cadet Matt DeLuso on his first tour. After five quick jumps, they get some unexpected R&R on the planet Primera. But while there, a Priority Red is announced. Hostile aliens have been encountered, and the entire power output of dozens of planets will be consumed to get men and materiel to the point of contact as quickly as possible.


Priority Red means all hands on deck. Art by Adkins

This story starts out as an Arthur C. Clarke travelogue as written by Robert Heinlein, before shifting gears to a war story at the halfway mark. If you’ve seen a war movie made in the last 20 years, you know how it’s going to turn out. Still, it’s an engaging tale and worth the read.

Three stars.

A Relic of the Empire, by Larry Niven

Dr. Richard Schultz-Mann is on a planet orbiting the double star Mira. He’s studying the stage trees left over from the ancient Slaver empire in the hopes writing a book that will sell well enough to restore his lost fortune. (With a trillion potential readers, getting just one percent to buy your book means a lot of money.) His investigations are interrupted by the arrival of a ship under the command of a man calling himself Captain Kidd. The captain and crew have done the impossible and made money at space piracy, because they managed to stumble across the puppeteer home world. Now they’re on the run from the police. Mann’s only hope is his knowledge of the local flora. Maybe he can find another way to get rich.


Richard Mann makes his escape. Art by Burns

Niven appears to be pulling his stories together into a future history. Mentions of puppeteers and Slavers connect the Beowulf Schaeffer stories and World of Ptavvs. As for the story itself, pretty good. Not as good as the two about Beowulf Schaeffer, much better than some of Niven’s other recent work.

A solid, maybe a high, three stars.

The “Other” Fandoms, by Lin Carter

This time out, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at fan groups outside of, but somewhat adjacent, to science fiction fans. Some of them even hold their annual meetings at the World Science Fiction Convention. Carter takes us on a whirlwind tour of groups dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Conan, Tolkien, horror and movie monsters. Better, he provides contact information for most of them. If none of these catch your interest, there are more to come next month.

Three stars.

Call Me Dumbo, by Bob Shaw

Dumbo lives in a pretty little cottage far outside the village with her husband Carl and their three sons. She has begun to have disturbing thoughts about things other than hoping for a daughter; things like her name. Following Carl to the village in secret, Dumbo discovers that there is no village, just a cylinder of black metal, lying on its side. She also spies Carl throwing away a glass box that turns out to contain an eyeball. As her world spins ever further out of control, Dumbo makes a number of alarming discoveries.


Dumbo makes a discovery. Art by Virgil Finlay

This dark and disturbing story deals with a theme we’ve seen before. It can be seen as the unpleasant flip-side of “Another Rib” by John J. Wells and Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as more directly (though less poetically) dealing with a theme in Cordwainer Smith’s “The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal”. I honestly don’t know what to do with this one. It might well be a four-star story, but the ugliness at the core of it makes me want to go take a shower.

I just can’t give this more than three stars.

The Forgotten Gods of Earth, by Andrew J. Offutt

The barbarian Kymon of Kir has come to the ancient world of Earth in search of a treasure worth an emperor’s ransom and a captive princess. Armed with powerful magics and his mighty blade Goreater, he overcomes the guardian monsters and penetrates deep into the Black Castle of Atramentos, home of the sorceror Gundrun.

This cross between Conan and Clark Ashton Smith’s Dying Earth straddles the line between parody and pastiche, though more firmly on the side of the latter. An entertaining, though occasionally turgid read, it would have fit perfectly in the pages of Weird Tales 30 years ago. As with the tales of Brak, I find myself asking if we really need this sort of old-fashioned guff. Fritz Leiber has shown that it’s possible to keep the tone and still write a modern story.

Three stars.

Snow White and the Giants (Part 3 of 4), by J. T. McIntosh

Shuteley, England has been visited by a strange group of young people whom Val Mathers and his old friend Jota have figured out are from the future. Leaving Jota with the giants, Val has begun to repair his marriage, but as he and his wife return they find the whole town on fire. After helping organize the fire brigade, Val heads upriver to investigate the giants. He sees them guiding many of the people of the town out of danger and apparently sending them to the future.

After witnessing a fight between Greg, the giants’ apparent leader, and Miranda, the Snow White of the title, and losing his own fight with Greg, Val regains consciousness in a protective dome in the heart of the firestorm consuming the city. He discovers Jota apparently about to rape Val’s mentally handicapped sister, and the two fight. Jota is pushed out of the dome and is instantly killed by the intense heat. Soon after Miranda shows up and begins to explain things. Val will be considered the villain of the fire, because he failed to enforce modern standards of fire prevention. But the point of the expedition was to save Jota’s life, because he possesses “the Gift”. As the story ends, Miranda guides Val through his life to understand what that means. To be concluded.


As Shuteley burns, only the protective gear of the giants can withstand the firestorm. Art by Gaughan

Lots of action this time. McIntosh spends a little too much time describing the course of the fire, perhaps because the extreme destruction it causes seems rather improbable. We’re teased with learning the purpose of the visitors from the future, but we still don’t know what the deal is with Jota or why most of the supposed victims of the fire are being rescued. Hopefully, all will be made clear in the finale.

Three stars.

Summing up

Just looking at the ratings, this is a pretty good issue. Unfortunately, the darkness of “Call Me Dumbo” sits atop it all. It’s counterbalanced to some extent by the hopefulness of “Be Merry”, but I don’t know that it’s enough. I suspect most of the discussion will be about the Shaw piece.


After his story in this issue, I’m more interested in a new Budrys novel.






[October 16, 1966] Only the Lonely (November 1966 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf
with apologies to Roy Orbison

Solitary Confinement

To be a citizen of a nation inside another nation must be a very lonely feeling. Italy contains two of these countries, the tiny nations of San Marino and Vatican City. A third member of that exclusive club came into existence on October 4, when the former British colony of Basutoland won full independence, changing its name to the Kingdom of Lesotho. Lesotho is completely surrounded by the nation of South Africa.


King Moshoehoe II, constitutional monarch of Lesotho.

A Song for the Sorrowful

You don't have to be living in any of those three countries to feel lonely, of course. People experiencing that painful emotion might obtain some solace from the current Number One song on the American popular music charts. The Four Tops have a smash hit with their powerful ballad Reach Out (I'll Be There), with lyrics that are clearly aimed at a lonesome listener.


They seem to be reaching out to the record buyer.

Fiction for the Forlorn

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic is full of stories featuring characters who are literally, or metaphorically, isolated.


Cover art by Bob Hilbreth, stolen from the December 1946 issue of Amazing Stories.


The original, illustrating a story that was part of the infamous Shaver Mystery.

Broken Image, by Thomas N. Scortia


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

The only new story in this issue features a protagonist who feels himself estranged from those around him, human or not.

His name is Baldur, and he has been surgically altered to resemble one of the humanoid aliens inhabiting a planet for which Earthlings have plans. It seems that humanity has evolved beyond sectarianism and violence, and seeks to bring the blessings of peace to other worlds.

(If I sound a little sarcastic, that's because the story's view of humanity is somewhat ambiguous. Baldur is completely loyal to the idea of Man as a perfect being, but his vision of the species is, as we'll see, a little distorted.)

One group of aliens oppresses another, going so far as to execute rebels in a particularly gruesome way.


Such as this.

The plan is to have Baldur act as a messiah for the lower class. Highly advanced technology allows him to perform healings and other miracles.

(At this point, you've probably figured out that Baldur is intended as a Christ figure. The oppressors are kind of like the Romans, the lower class is sort of like the Judeans, and so on. Given that analogy, some of what happens won't surprise you. The character's name also suggests an allusion to myths about the Norse god Baldr, sometimes spelled Balder or — a ha! — Baldur.)

There's a human woman, also in disguise, to help Baldur in his role as the savior of the oppressed. However, it turns out that she's hiding something from him, and that the folks in the starship orbiting the planet have schemes of which he is not aware.

This is a pretty good story, which held my interest all the way through. The Christian metaphor might be too blatant, and there's a twist ending that made me scratch my head. It explains why Baldur thinks of humanity as superior to other species, but I'm not sure if it really works.

(One interesting thing is that Baldur is not only physically changed, but mentally as well. His memories seem to be slightly distorted. Since we see everything from his point of view, although the story is told in third person, he serves as what some literary critics are starting to call an unreliable narrator. This all goes along with the twist ending.)

Three stars.

You're All Alone, by Fritz Leiber


Illustrations by Henry Sharp.

There's a title that suggests loneliness, for sure.

Before I get into the story itself, let me go over the rather complex history of the text. It seems that Leiber intended it to appear in Unknown, the fantasy magazine edited by John W. Campbell, Jr. as a companion to Astounding. Unknown died before the story could be published.

Leiber expanded the work from about forty thousand words to approximately seventy-five thousand, hoping to have a book publisher accept it as part of their fantasy line. The company stopped publishing fantasy before it sold.

Back to the drawing board! Leiber next sent it to Fantastic Adventures, who agreed to buy it if — guess what? — it was cut back to forty thousand words. It finally appeared in the July 1950 issue. That's the version that's been reprinted in the current issue of Fantastic.


Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.

We're not done yet! The seventy-five thousand word version wound up as one half of a double paperback, under the name The Sinful Ones. The publisher came up with the suggestive new title, altered the text slightly to make it racier, and added sexy chapter titles like The Strip Tease and Blonde Prostitute, trying to convince the reader that it was hot stuff.


Anonymous cover art. The companion novel, about a lady bullfighter, looks . . . interesting.

Back to the story itself. (At forty thousand words, it actually justifies, if just barely, its label by the magazine as a Complete Novel.)

Carr Mackay works at an employment agency in Chicago. A frightened young woman comes into his office, followed by a big blonde woman. The younger woman is obviously terrified of the blonde, but tries to ignore her. She talks to Carr, pretending to have a job interview, and asking him if he's one of them.


By the way, the blonde woman has a big, vicious, scary pet dog, but it's not anywhere near as large as shown in this illustration, or the cover of Fantastic Adventures!

Before leaving, she scribbles a note warning him to watch out for the blonde and her two male companions, and leaving a cryptic message to meet her at a certain location if he wants to learn more.

Of course, this all sounds like the paranoid ravings of a lunatic. Things get weirder when the blonde slaps the young woman across the face, and she forces herself not to react. Then a co-worker shows up, acting as if he's introducing Carr to somebody, but there's nobody there. Some kind of practical joke?

It's hard to deny that something strange is going on when Carr shows up at his girlfriend's place, and she goes through the motions of greeting and kissing him, but he's not where she apparently thinks he is. She ignores the real Carr, and continues to interact with an imaginary one.


She should really be smooching the empty air instead of a ghostly figure, but that's artistic license for you.

Although he's reluctant to accept the truth, Carr realizes that almost all humans are mindless automatons, just going through the motions like wind-up toys. Only a very few, like the young woman, the blonde and her companions, and himself, are conscious beings. He meets with the woman, leading to dangerous encounters with sinister folks and wild adventures in a world full of clockwork people and those who take advantage of the situation.


A moment of happiness in a public library after hours. I like the subtle hint that the light above their heads is an eye watching them.

The premise is a fascinating one, and the author conveys it in a convincing manner. There's some philosophical depth to the idea, too. Who among us hasn't felt like a cog in a big machine? It moves very quickly, almost like a Keith Laumer novel. (Maybe the longer version allows for more exploration of the concept.)

I could quibble that not everything about the plot is completely logical. Inanimate objects sometimes act as if they're part of the mindless mechanism of life, and sometimes don't. The conscious people are able to knock off the hats of the automatons, for example, and steal their drinks, but the keys of a piano move by themselves when the person supposed to be playing them isn't there.


The floating hands are more artistic license.

Despite this tiny flaw, and the fact that the ending seems rushed, it's an enjoyable short novel. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's well-written. As a bonus, it provides a vivid portrait of the city of Chicago, in all its bright and dark aspects.

Four stars.

Breakfast at Twilight, by Philip K. Dick


Cover art by Clarence Doore.

From the July 1954 issue of Amazing Stories comes this tale of a family isolated from their own time.


Anonymous illustration.

Mom, Dad, and three kids are enjoying a typical morning at home, although there's some kind of fog or smoke outside, and the radio isn't working. The lone boy heads off for school, but quickly comes back. There are soldiers everywhere blocking his way.

It turns out that their home is now seven years in the future. The Cold War has heated up, leading to a dystopian society. (Apparently a bomb caused the time travel effect.) The soldiers are stunned to see a woman and children out in the open, and are even more amazed at the food available in the house.

A political officer (another sign that the United States government has become authoritarian, along with the casually mentioned book burning) suggests that they wait for another bomb to send them back to their own time.

Although the plot is simple enough for an episode of Twilight Zone, this is a powerful story, sending a clear warning of the dangers of escalating world conflicts. (The theme seems even more relevant today, with the situation in Vietnam, than it did just after the Korean War.)

Four stars.

Scream at Sea, by Algis Budrys


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

The January-February 1954 issue of the magazine provides this example of extreme loneliness.


Illustrations by Ernie Barth.

A man survives an explosion that destroys his ship. He manages to hang on to a piece of the vessel that's got some canned ham and water, so it serves him as a sort of raft. The ship's cat happens to escape the disaster as well.


The only other character in the story.

The author manages to create a true sense of isolation and desperation. It's not a bad piece, but there isn't a trace of science fiction or fantasy at all! There's a twist in the tail that would have been more appropriate for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than Fantastic.

(By the way, the editor's blurbs for the last two stories are backwards! I guess that's a sign of how little the publisher cares for these poorly funded magazines full of unpaid reprints.)

Three stars.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Artists Behind Him, by Anonymous

Serving as a coda is this portfolio of illustrations for stories by ERB that appeared in Amazing years ago.


For The Land That Time Forgot (1918, reprinted 1927), illustration by Frank R. Paul.


Same credits as above.


For The City of the Mummies (1941), illustration by J. Allen St. John.


For Black Pirates of Barsoom, same year, same artist.


For Goddess of Fire, same year, same artist.

I don't have much to say about these old-fashioned pictures. They're OK.

Three stars.

Some Solace For Solitude

If you're feeling lonesome, picking up a copy of this issue might provide some relief for a few hours. All the stories are worth reading, and a couple of them are better than average. If that doesn't raise your spirits sufficiently, visiting your neighbors might do the trick.


That astronaut won't be lonely. Cartoon by Frosty from the same issue as the Budrys story.






[April 9, 1963] IFfy… (May 1963 IF Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Every month, science fiction stories come out in little digest-sized magazines.  It used to be that this was pretty much the only way one got their SF fix, and in the early '50s, there were some forty magazines jostling for newsstand space.  Nowadays, SF is increasingly sold in book form, and the numbers of the digests have been much reduced.  This is, in many ways, for the good.  There just wasn't enough quality to fill over three dozen monthly publications.

That said, though there are now fewer than ten regular SF mags, editors still can find it challenging to fill them all with the good stuff.  Editor Fred Pohl, who helms three magazines, has this problem in a big way.  He saves the exceptional stories and known authors (and the high per word rates) for his flagship digest, Galaxy, and also for his newest endeavor, Worlds of Tomorrow.  That leaves IF the straggler, filled with new authors and experimental works. 

Sometimes it succeeds.  Other times, like this month, it is clear that the little sister in Pohl's family of digests got the short end of the stick.  There's nothing stellar in the May 1963 IF, but some real clunkers, as you'll see.  I earned my pay (such as it is) this month!

The Green World, by Hal Clement

Hal Clement (or Harry Stubbs, if you want to know the name behind the pseudonym) has made a name for himself as a writer of ultrahard science fiction, lovingly depicting the nuts and bolts of accurate space-borne adventure.  The Green Planet details the archaeological and paleontological pursuits of a human expedition on an alien planet.  The puzzle is simple — how can a world not more than 50 million years old possess an advanced ecosystem and a hyper-evolved predator species? 

Clement's novella, which comprises half the issue, is not short on technical description.  What it lacks, however, is interesting characters and a compelling narrative.  I bounced off this story several times.  Each time, I asked myself, "Is it me?"  No, it's not.  It's a boring story, and the pay-off, three final pages that read like a cheat, aren't worth the time investment.  One star.

Die, Shadow!, by Algis Budrys

Every once in a while, you get a story that is absolutely beautiful, filled with lyrical writing, and yet, you're not quite sure what the hell just happened.  Budrys' tale of a modern-day Rip van Winkle, who sleeps tens of thousands of years after an attempted landing on Venus, is one of those.  I enjoyed reading it, but it was a little too subtle for me.  Still, it's probably the best piece in the issue (and perhaps more appropriate to Fantastic).  Three stars.

Rundown, by Robert Lory

Be kind to the worn-out bum begging for a dime — that coin might literally spell the difference between life and death.  A nicely done, if rather inconsequential vignette, from a first-time author.  Three stars.

Singleminded, by John Brunner

In the midst of a ratcheted-up Cold War, a stranded moon-ferry pilot is rescued by a chatty Soviet lass.  The meet cute is spoiled, by turns, first by the unshakable paranoia the pilot feels for the Communist, and second by the silly, incongruous ending.  I suspect only one of those was the writer's intention.  Three stars.

Nonpolitical New Frontiers, by Theodore Sturgeon
ans. Al Landau, gideon marcus, hal clement, harry s
Sturgeon continues to write rather uninspired, overly familiar non-fiction articles for IF.  In this one, Ted points out that fascinating science doesn't require rockets or foreign planets — even the lowly nematode is plenty interesting.  Three stars.

Another Earth, by David Evans and Al Landau

When I was 14, (mumblety-mumblety) years ago, I wrote what I thought was a clever and unique science fiction story.  It featured a colony starship with a cargo of spores and seeds that, through some improbable circumstance, travels in time and ends up in orbit around a planet that turns out to be primeval Earth.  The Captain decides to seed the lifeless planet, ("Let the land produce…") thus recreating the Biblical Genesis. 

I did not realize that Biblically inspired stories were (even then) hardly original.  In particular, the Adam and Eve myth gets revisited every so often.  It's such a hoary subject that these stories are now told with a wink (viz. Robert F. Young's Jupiter Found and R.A. Lafferty's In the Garden).

Why this long preface?  Because the overlong story that took two authors (and one undiscerning editor) to vomit onto the back pages of IF is just a retelling of the Noah myth.  An obvious one.  A bad one.  One star.

Turning Point, by Poul Anderson

Last up, the story the cover illustrates features a concept you won't find in Analog.  A crew of terran explorers finds a planet of aliens that, despite their primitive level of culture, are far more intelligent than humans.  The story lasts just long enough for us to see the solution we hatch to avoid our culture being eclipsed by these obviously superior extraterrestrials.  Not bad, but it suffers for the aliens being identical to humans.  Three stars.

Thus ends the worst showing from IF in three years.  Here's a suggestion: raise the cover price to 50 cents and pay more than a cent-and-a-half per word?




[May 4, 1962] Cleft in Twain (June 1962 Galaxy, Part 1)


by Gideon Marcus

A few years ago, Galaxy Science Fiction changed its format, becoming half again as thick but published half as often.  196 pages can be a lot to digest in one sitting, so I used to review the magazine in two articles.  Over time, I simply bit the bullet and crammed all those stories into one piece – it was cleaner for reference.

But not this time.

You see, the June 1962 issue of Galaxy has got one extra-jumbo novella in the back of it, the kind of thing they used to build issues of Satellite Science Fiction around.  So it just makes sense to split things up this time around.

I've said before that Galaxy is a stable magazine – rarely too outstanding, rarely terrible.  Its editor, Fred Pohl, tends to keep the more daring stuff in Galaxy's sister mag, IF, which has gotten pretty interesting lately.  So I enjoyed this month's issue, but not overmuch.  Have a look:

The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass, by Frederik Pohl

Instead of an editor's essay, Pohl has written a cute vignette on overpopulation without remediation.  Old Man Malthus in a three-page nightmare.  Apparently, good old Phineas didn't think to pack Enovid when he brought perfect health back in time to the Roman Empire.  Anyway, I liked it.  Four stars.

For Love, by Algis Budrys

Budrys strikes a nice balance between satirical and macabre in this post-alien-invasion epic.  The last remnants of Homo Sapiens, driven underground after a tremendous ET tetrahedron crashes into the base of the Rockies, launch a pair of daring attacks against the invaders.  But at what cost to their humanity?  Four stars.

The Lamps of the Angels, by Richard Sabia

I viciously panned Sabia's first work, I was a Teen-Age Superweapon; his latest is an improvement.  A thousand years from now, the human race is on the verge of reaching out for the stars, and one Mexico City-born pilot is selected for the honor of scouting Alpha Centauri.  But if humanity was meant to explore beyond the sun, surely God would have given us hyperdrives at birth.  A bit clunky in that "translated foreign languages way" (and I can be guilty of the same charge), but also compelling.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Names in the Sky, by Willy Ley

Every now and then, Ley returns to his former greatness and gives us a really good article.  This one, on the origins of the names of planets and stars is filled with good information pleasantly dispensed.  Of course, I'm always more kindly disposed towards articles that deal with etymology and/or astronomy… Four stars.

On the Wall of the Lodge, by James Blish and Virginia Blish

The latter portion of the magazine takes a sad turn for the worse.  Lodge is an avante garde piece about (I believe) a fellow whose life takes place in a television show.  It tries too hard and doesn't make a lot of sense.  More significantly, it lost my interest ten pages in.  Thus, I must give it the lowest of scores: one star.

Dawningsburgh, by Wallace West

A cute piece about a callow tourist on Mars, who resents the other callow tourists of Mars, and the attempts to revive departed Martian culture with robots, to make a few bucks for the callow tourist industry.  Three stars.

Origins of Galactic Philosophy, by Edward Wellen

Wellen's Origins series has deteriorated badly.  This latest entry, involving a space entrepreneur and the robot society he finds, is utterly unreadable.  One star.

Dreamworld, by R. A. Lafferty

Last up is a whimsical piece on a literal nightmare world with an telegraphed ending made tolerable by Lafferty's unique touch.  Worth two or three stars, depending on your mood (and on which side of the bed one woke).

***

I'll save The Seed of Earth, by Robert Silverberg, for next time.  Here's hoping it is in keeping with the first third rather than the second third of the magazine.  In the meantime, stay tuned…and try not to get drafted.

[January 12, 1962] Odd one out (February 1962 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

Science fiction is a broad genre.  It includes hard scientific, nuts-and-bolts projections that read like modern tales with just a touch of the future in them; this is the kind of stuff the magazine Analog is made up of.  Then you've got far out stuff, not just fantasy but surrealism.  The kind of work Cordwainer Smith pulls off with such facility that it approaches its own kind of realism.  In this realm lie the lampoons, the parables, the just plain kooky.  They get labeled as "science fiction," but they don't predict futures that could actually happen, nor do they incorporate much real science.  Rather, they end up in the sf mags because where else would they go?  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction showcases this type as a good portion of their monthly offerings (appropriately enough — "Fantasy" is in the name).

Galaxy magazine has always trod a middle road, delivering pure scientific tales, fantastic stories, and pieces of psychological or "soft" science fiction that fall somewhere in between.  It's that balance that is part of what makes Galaxy my favorite magazine (that and stubborn loyalty – it was my first subscription). 

The first Galaxy of 1962, on the other hand, veers heavily into the fantastic.  Virtually every story presented has a distinct lack of grounding in reality.  Does it work?  Well…see for yourself.

Fred Pohl and his lately deceased frequent partner Cyril Kornbluth wrote a whole lot together.  In fact, I think they've published more since Kornbluth's death than while he was alive!  I have to think Pohl is doing most of the work on Kornbluth's outlines, but perhaps there's something mystical going on.  Anyway, Critical Mass is the latest from this duo, a satirical "if this goes on" piece combining the mania for construction of bomb shelters and the public passion for baseball.  An entertaining piece though lacking in nuance.  Three stars.

LaGrange points, those places of gravitational stability involving two celestial bodies, were the topic of a recent Asimov piece.  Willy Ley now discusses them in his latest science column, For Your Information: Earth's Extra Satellites.  There's interesting stuff here though I'm afraid the Good German no longer has the gift for presentation that the Good Doctor possesses.  Three stars.

Shatter the Wall is an odd piece by newcomer, Sydney Van Scyoc.  Television, now taking up entire walls of houses, has become the object of the world's attention.  In particular, a prosaic domestic drama featuring four stars whom everyone tries to emulate.  Wall reads like a dream, and if taken in that way, is a neat story.  I found it a little too off-kilter to really connect, however.  You might feel differently.  Three stars.

There's a new hobby I've discovered called "board wargaming."  Players do battle using cardboard chits representing military units and a set of rules considerably more involved that those of, say, Chess or Checkers.  Avalon Hill, a publishing company, started the fad with Tactics II, a simulation of modern strategic warfare, and recently followed it up with a D-Day game and a couple on Civil War battles.

Now, imagine if the world stopped settling their differences with armed conflicts and instead resorted to simulated fighting. 

That's the premise of James Harmon's The Place Where Chicago Was.  All war is simulated, presumably facilitated by computer.  Big cities are not actually destroyed in enemy pseudo-attacks.  Rather, they are simply quarantined for twenty years and left to fend for themselves.  Residents are forbidden to leave; outsiders are restricted from entering.  To enforce the peace, giant psycho-transmitters are set up that broadcast pacifistic thoughts to the populace. 

It's such an implausible idea that I have to think Harmon is attempting some kind of satire.  On the other hand, it doesn't read like satire.  It's well written, but I don't quite know what to make of it.  Three stars.


by Cowles

The Martian Star-Gazers is a "non-faction" piece by Ernst Mason, whom I've never heard of.  It tells the sad story of the erstwhile inhabitants of the Red Planet, done in by their fear of the heavens.  I appreciated Mason's take on Martian constellations, particularly their contrast with terrestrial counterparts.  Three stars.

Algis Budrys writes deep, thoughtful stuff with a somber edge.  The Rag and Bone Men features a stranded alien intelligence that has taken over the Earth but only wishes to be able to go back home.  Terran science simply isn't up to the task, and neither are the mind-slaved humans who labor at it.  A weird, perhaps overly poetic story.  Three stars.

Ed Wellen is back with another non-faction "Origins" piece, Origins of Galactic Fruit Salad.  A catalog of intergalactic service decorations, it's in the same vein as his last piece: Origins of the Galactic Short-Snorter.  Sadly, unlike that work, Galactic Fruit Salad commits the cardinal sin of any comedic piece – it's not funny.  One star.

The Big Engine, by Fritz Leiber, is solipsism done backwards.  The world is a giant machine, all of its pieces playing preordained parts save for the few components that become self-aware.  There's not much to this story, but I must confess that I found it all the more memorable for having read it on a busy street corner, where the thrum of Leiber's mechanical world was most immediate.  Three stars.

The balance of the issue comprises Part 2 of Poul Anderson's Day after Doomsday, which as I said in my last article, was disappointing in comparison to the promising first half. 

While I applaud the effort toward experimentation in this issue, the result is an oddly monotonous clutch of stories, no "real" sf here.  Each of the tales might have been decent sandwiched between traditional stories, but they become an abstract, off-putting blob in unrelieved combination.  Galaxy would do well to return to its heterogeneous mix of sf types; I think trying to beat Analog or F&SF at their own games would be a bit of a forlorn hope.

See you in two with a "Fantastic" update!

[November 8, 1961] Points East (Air Travel and the December 1961 Galaxy)


by Gideon Marcus

How small the world has gotten!

Less than a decade ago, trans-oceanic travel was limited to the speed of a propeller.  If you journeyed by boat, as many still do, it would take two weeks to cross the Pacific.  Airplanes were faster – with a couple of stops, one could get from California to the Orient in less than two days.  As a journalist and travel columnist, I spent a good amount of time in both hemispheres during the early 1950s.  I got to be quite seasoned at the travel game.

I have to tell you, things are so much faster these days.  The jet engine has cut flight times in half, taking much of the tedium out of travel.  Oh, sure, I always had plenty to do in the air, between writing and reading and planning my next adventures, but for my poor fellow travelers, there was little to do but drink, smoke, and write letters.  For hours and hours. 

These days, the Journey is my primary occupation.  I can do it from anywhere, and I often do, bringing my family along with me.  As we speak, I am writing out this article with the roar of the Japan Airlines DC-8's jets massaging my ears, music from pneumatic headphone cords joining the mix.  It's a smooth ride, too.  It would be idyllic, if not for the purple clouds of tobacco smoke filling the cabin.  But again, I suffer this annoyance for half the time as before.  I'll abide. 

We've just lifted off from Honolulu, and in less than 8 hours, we will touch down at Haneda airport, in the heart of Tokyo, Japan's capital.  We will be in the Land of the Rising Sun for two weeks, visiting friends and taking in the local culture.  I'll be sure to tell you all about our adventures, but don't worry.  I've also brought along a big stack of books and magazines so I can continue to keep you informed on the latest developments in science fiction.  Moreover, I'm sure we'll see a movie or two, and we'll report on those, too.

Speaking of reports, I've just finished up this month's Galaxy Science Fiction.  I almost didn't recognize this December issue as it lacks the usual fanciful depiction of St. Nick.  Instead, it features an illustration from Poul Anderson's new novel, The Day After Doomsday, whose first part takes up a third of the double-sized magazine.  As usual, I won't cover the serial until it's done, but Anderson has been reliable of late, and I've high hopes.

The rest of the magazine maintains and perhaps even elevates Galaxy's solid record.  The first short story is Oh, Rats!, by veteran Miriam Allen DeFord (the first of three woman authors in this book!) Rats reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone — I could practically hear Serling's narrating voice as the story of SK540, a super-rat bent on world domination, unfolded.  Tense and tight, if not innovative.  Three stars.

Willy Ley has returned to original form with his latest non-fiction article, Dragons and Hot-Air Balloons.  Did the Montgolfier brothers get their lighter-than-aircraft ideas from the Chinese?  Have balloons been around since the Middle Ages?  Has the winged ancestor of the pterosaurs been discovered?  And, as an aside, did the Nazis really invent the biggest cannon ever?  Good stuff.  Four stars.

Satisfaction Guaranteed is a cute tale of interstellar commerce by Joy Leache.  Washed up salesman and his assistant try to figure out a profitable-enough endeavor for the elf-like denizens of Felix II such that they might join the Galactic Federation.  It's a genuinely funny piece.  I've only one complaint: very early on, it is made clear that the woman assistant is the brains of the operation, yet she feels compelled to give credit the the fellow.  I prefer my futures looking a little less like the present!  Three stars.

Now, Algis Budrys, on the other hand, has no trouble breaking with the familiar entirely.  His Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night, involving a corporate executive whose plan to release television's successor is thwarted by a seemingly immortal competitor, is a chilling mystery.  Just what gift did the Martians grant the businessman's rival to make him so powerful?  And was it really a boon after all?  Four stars.

R.A. Lafferty tones his whimsical style down just a touch in his latest, Rainbird.  It's a sort of biography of one Higgston Rainbird, an inventor who could have been, in fact was the greatest tinkerer in human history.  It just goes to show that a person's greatest ally, and also one's greatest impediment, is oneself.  Four stars.

An Old Fashioned Bird Christmas is Margaret St. Clair's contribution, delivered in that off-beat, slightly macabre, but ever-poetic fashion that is her trademark.  A story of good vs. evil, of Luddism vs. progress, archaic religion vs. new, and with a strong lady protagonist to boot!  Four stars.

We're treated to a second piece of science fact by Theodore L. Thomas, called The Watery Wonders of Captain Nemo.  Thomas praises the literary great, Jules Verne, for his writing skill, but then excoriates the French author's use (or rather, lack of use) of science.  Every technical aspect of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is evaluated and picked apart.  To hear Thomas tell it, Verne knew about as much about science as his contemporary laymen…perhaps less.  An interesting blend of education and critique.  Three stars.

The issue is wraps up with a bang: The Little Man who wasn't Quite, by William W. Stuart, is a hard-hitting piece about the horror that lies at the bottom of Skid Row.  A sensitive piece by a fellow who seems to know, it's the kind of gripping thing Daniel Keyes might have turned in for F&SF.  Five stars.

And so Galaxy ends the year on a strong note.  Fred Pohl, now firmly in the editor's seat, has done a fine job helming one of s-f's finest digests into the 1960s.  This is the kind of magazine that could win the Hugo – it may well secure the Galactic Star this year.  It all depends on how F&SF is this month, the two are that close.

Next up… an article from our British correspondent, Ashley Pollard!

[Oct. 26, 1961] Fading Fancy (November 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Have you ever ordered your favorite dessert only to find it just doesn't satisfy like it used to?  I'm a big fan of crème brûlée, and I used to get it every chance I could.  That crispy carmelized top and that warm custard bottom, paired with a steaming cup of coffee…mmm. 

These days, however, crème brûlée just hasn't done it for me.  The portions are too small, or they serve the custard cold.  The flavor doesn't seem as bold, the crust as crispy.  I've started giving dessert menus a serious peruse.  Maybe I want pie this time, or perhaps a slice of cake.

Among my subscription of monthly sf digests, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction used to be my dessert — saved for last and savored.  These days, its quality has declined some, and though tradition will keep it at the end of my review line-up, I don't look forward to reading the mag as much as once I did.  This month's, the November 1961 issue, is a typical example of the new normal for F&SF:

Keith Laumer is an exciting newish author whose work I often confuse with Harry Harrison's — probably because Retief reminds me of "Slippery Jim" diGriz.  Laumer has a knack for creating interesting sentient non-humans.  He gave us intelligent robot tanks in Combat Unit, and this month, he gives us sentient, symbiotic trees in Hybrid.  It's a story that teeters on the edge of greatness, but its brevity and rather unpleasant ending drag it from four to three stars.

The Other End of the Line is the first new story from Walter Tevis in three years.  Ever wonder what happens if you break a bootstrap paradox (i.e. one where your future self gives your present self a leg up)?  Well…it's not a good idea.  Cute stuff.  Three stars.

Rick Rubin is back with his second story, the first being his excellent F&SF-published Final MusterThe Interplanetary Cat is a weird little fantasy involving an incorrigible feline with an insatiable appetite.  It's almost Lafferty-esque, which means some will love it, and some will hate it.  I'm in the middle.  Three stars.

Faq' is the latest by George P. Elliott, whose Among the Dangs was a minor masterpiece.  Elliott's new story is in the same vein — a Westerner who finds a fictional yet plausible tribe of people, alien from any we currently know.  It's got a nice, dreamy style to it, but it lacks the depth or the powerful conclusion of Dangs.  Three stars.

Doris Pitkin Buck is another F&SF new author.  Green Sunrise, like Buck's last work (Birth of a Gardner), Sunrise features a lovers' squabble between a scientist man and a non-scientist woman.  Once again, the language is evocative, but the plot is weak, the impression fleeting.  Two stars.

The Tunnel Ahead is an overpopulation dystopia-by-numbers tale by Alice Glaser.  Cramped living conditions?  Check.  Algae-based food products?  Check.  Drastic, random population reduction methods?  Check.  Two stars?  Check. 

Randy Garrett's been skulking around F&SF lately, but I don't know that it has been to the magazine's benefit.  Mustang is essentially Kit Reed's Piggy, but not as good.  Two stars.

Dethronement is Isaac Asimov's latest article, a sort of screed written in response to a bad review of his Intelligent Man's Guide to Science by biologist Barry Commoner.  The latter objected to the former's obliteration of the line between non-living and living matter.  This, Commoner maintained, destroyed the field of biology entirely.  The Good Doctor explains that finding bridges between disciplines does not destroy the disciplines any more than bridging Manhattan with the other four burroughs of New York makes Manhattan no longer an island.  It's a good piece.  Four stars.

Alfred Bester covers Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land in his books column.  He didn't like it either. 

John Updike has a bit of doggerel about scandalous neutrinos called Cosmic Gall.  It is followed by Algis Budrys' rather impenetrable article on science fiction, About Something Truly Wonderful.  Both rate two stars. 

Part 2 of Gordy Dickson's Naked to the Stars rounds out the otherwise lackluster issue.  It deserves its own article, but you're going to have to wait for it, since Rosemary Benton and Ashley Pollard will be covering some exciting scientific developments, first.  I'll give you a hint — they involve the biggest rocket and the biggest boom.

[Nov. 26, 1960] Damaged Goods (Algis Budry's Rogue Moon)

Sometimes, I just don't get it.

The December 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction is almost completely devoted to one short novel, Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys.  I like Budrys, and F&SF is generally my favorite magazine, so I've been looking forward to this book since it was advertised last month.

To all accounts, it is a masterpiece (and by "to all accounts", I mean according to the buzz in the local science fiction circles).  The premise is certainly exciting: there is an alien structure on the moon, an amorphous multi-dimensional thing, that kills all who enter it.  To facilitate its exploration, the navy utilizes a matter transporter that disassembles one's molecules in one place and reconstructs them elsewhere.  Volunteers are sent from Earth to their certain death to push a few more feet into the deadly extraterrestrial maze.

Of course, the transporter doesn't actually send anyone anywhere; it destroys the original and creates a copy that thinks it is the original.  In fact, it's possible to make multiple copies of a person, and that is what is done: one copy goes to the moon to die, while the other stays on Earth to live on.  It turns out that the two copies have a limited degree of telepathic contact for a short time, so the Earthbound copy can report on what his moonbound copy experiences.

The project's main hurdle is that it takes a special kind of person to experience one's own death and not go insane.  How, indeed, to find such a person to unlock the riddles of the maze?

Sounds pretty intriguing, doesn't it?  Sadly, Budrys hardly wrote this story.  Instead, he gave us a florid, comically humorous soap opera with personalities as flat as the pages they are printed on.  Here's the dramatis personae:

Edward Hawks: The project's director.  A detached scientist, coldly resigned to his status as a murderer (both in terms of sending people to their death and the destruction of those who go through the transporter), desperate to understand how a person's existence can survive one's death.

Al Barton: A suicidal thrill-seeker. he's already lost a leg to his obsession for death-defying escapades–racing, mountain-climbing, parachuting.  Setting records isn't enough for him; he's got to risk his life doing something no one else has done before.  He spends most of his time attempting to prove his manliness to Hawks (in vain, as Hawks is too coldly impersonal to be impressed).

Vincent Connington: The project's director of personnel who introduces Hawks and Barton.  A fellow whose brash arrogance is really just a facade that hides his love for…

Claire Parks: Barton's gorgeous girlfriend: She spends her entire "screen time" attempting to seduce Hawks and Connington and enrage Barton; she's afraid of men, you see, so she is always trying to manipulate them so she can keep her interactions in a safe, nonthreatening place. 

Elizabeth Cummings: A wholesomely beautiful random stranger whom Hawks falls in love with.  Her primary story function is to listen to Hawks' morose reflections on life and occasionally offer pithy observations.

Virtually no time is devoted to the actual exploration of the moon structure, and when the reader finally does get to see the jaunt through the maze, Budrys manages to make it the dullest part of the book. 

Budrys does largely succeed at exploring the fascinating ramifications of "soul" duplication.  What happens when there are two of you, when a moment ago, there was just one?  And are the copies really you?  Are you more than the sum of your memories?  If not, is the communication of your memories to others, no matter how imperfectly, a kind of immortality (this is implied in the last line of the book, an admittedly powerful one.)

Which would have been great had it been less mawkishly presented, and the characters at all plausible.  Budrys set out to make an insightful character study in the Sturgeon vein, depicting a disparate brood all struggling to find "The Meaning of Life."  Instead, he ended up writing something more akin to Merril's The Tomorrow People: full of stilted dialogue, expository speeches, and precious little story.  Fully 30 pages go by before we even get into the plot, which is a lot of time to waste in a 90 page novella.

I'm not sure how to rate Rogue Moon.  Despite all the eye-rolling moments (quite literally), I did finish the short book in one sitting, which suggests there must have been something compelling about it.  There were thought-provoking ideas.  It was the execution which was disappointing, particularly for being by the normally excellent Budrys.  I think, in the end, the book's prime failure is the introduction of so many interesting elements which are completely subordinated to the inferior, implausible psychological drama that Budrys, for some reason, was so hot to present. 

Maybe the book, due to be released next month, will be better. 

Two stars.

Stay tuned for the rest of the magazine!

[Feb. 6, 1960] Finding my way (February 1960 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

Science fiction is my escape.  When the drudgery of the real world becomes oppressive, or when I just need a glimpse of a brighter future to make the present more interesting, I turn to my growing collection of magazines and novels to buouy my spirits.

I like stories of interstellar adventure filled with interesting settings and characters.  I do not like the psychological horrors that have become popular of late.  Sadly, the February 1960 F&SF contains several such pieces.  But it does end well.

I wrote last time about the flaws in Howard Fast's lead novella that kept me from fully enjoying it. 

Richard McKenna's Mine Own Ways is particularly chilling.  It involves a rite of passage designed by interstellar anthropologists to winnow the intellectually mature of a race from the primitive by essentially torturing them; one passes the test by realizing that the torture is transitory and enduring it.

Apprentice, by Robert Tilley, isn't so bad.  It involves an alien who can take over a person's mind (without ill effect).  The would-be invader possesses a junior flunky on a military base and is revealed when he is able to fulfil tasks that should have been impossible (along the lines of catching snipe, procuring a bottle of headlight fluid or a jar of elbow grease). 

I suppose Jane Rice's The White Pony, about unrequited love in a future of post-apocalyptic scarcity is decent, too, and well-drawn.  It even has a happy ending, after a fashion even if the world has that feeling of best-days-past shabbiness.

Battle-torn France is the setting for The Replacement, in which a Platoon Sergeant is convinced by a certain Private "Smith" that the war is all in his head, and that the world is nothing but solipsistic figments of his imagination.  It is only after Smith unsuccessfully tries the same trick on the company's First Sergeant that we see the trick for what it is.  A creepy piece.

Evelyn Smith's Send Her Victorious is a pun piece whose ending I should have seen coming.  All about a communal colony of aliens who take on the general form of a middle-aged female before time traveling to 19th Century England. 

Algis Budrys has a vignette called The Price about a centuries-old Rasputin(?) surviving an atomic holocaust only to find himself a captive of the few humans who are left.  Are they willing to become gnarled, deranged hunchbacks like him in exchange for eternal life?

Dr. Asimov's piece, The Sight of Home, is a nice astronomical article about the greatest distance at which the sun might still be visible to the naked eye (answer: 20 parsecs.  Not very far, indeed). 

Then we're back to the horror.  We are the Ceiling, by Will Worthington, depicts a fellow who books himself into a sanitarium when it appears his wife has begun consorting with troglodytes.  Of course, she turns out to be one, as does his doctor. 

That leaves us the subject of the cover art, The Fellow Who Married the Maxill Girl, by Ward Moore.  This is the kind of story I read F&SF for—gentle, poignant, starring a woman.  It's a girl meets boy story set in the depths of the Depression; the boy happens to be an alien.  I shan't spoil more, and I hope you like it as much as I did.

I'll have a quick non-fiction stop press tomorrow, and then on to March's batch of magazines!

Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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