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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1966] Return to Base (October 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

One of the brilliant things about the new show, Star Trek, is that it combines the storytelling breadth of a science fiction anthology show (a la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with the anchoring of a returning ensemble cast.  This has never really been done before (at least in the United States — the UK has Doctor Who and the various marionette shows).  In addition to the exciting new situations that arise every week, we can also enjoy watching our favorite characters grow over time.

Many science fiction magazines are like the older anthology shows, offering a brand new cast of characters and new ideas with every montly set of stories.  Others, like Analog, and in particular this month's issue, are like Star Trek, bringing us back to familiar territory for further explorations of a known universe.

I think both are valid formats, particularly if the established properties are successful.  Analog did a pretty good job this month.  Let's dive in…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil is an author who has occasionally shown flashes of promise — but always in other magazines.  In Analog, he has dug himself a rut with an anvil-weighted plow and happily buried himself in it.


by John Schoenherr

Strangers is yet another story that takes place in his galactic trade universe.  This one involves a ship whose gravitor has broken down, and whose crew has made planetfall to seek repairs.  Unfortunately, though the Michelin guide said there was a Class II repair facility on the colony world, it was never actually built.  Instead, the colonists proved so unruly that the computer running the outpost established draconian control.  The technicians who could override the machine exiled themselves rather than deal with either the colonists or the computer!

To fix their ship, the traders need help from the city dwellers.  But to get the help, they need the technicians back.  How do they repair the impasse?

I thought this might be setting up a Deathworld scenario, where the immigrants are the key to restoring harmony.  But this is Chris Anvil in Campbell's mag.  Instead, they accidentally develop a psychic projector, able to instill any emotion into any human at any range.  Over the course of many pages, they manipulate the entire planetary population in a haphazard fashion, ultimately getting what they need.  In the end, they consider dismantling the device as an unethical abomination…but decide to keep it.  Just too useful to destroy, you know.

I found this story quite distasteful.  Less glib than Anvil's other tales, but callous in a way that suggests support rather than condemnation for the actions of the shipwrecked crew.

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

Sons sees the return of a fine new author who you've not only seen before, but who has even written a guest article for the Journey!  (the line between fan and pro in the 'zines is a blurry one.) This new tale appears to be set in the compelling timeline set up in What Size are Giants? and the amazing Down to the Worlds of Men.

The premise: on the brink of atomic self-destruction, Earth sends out more than a hundred colonies.  Fifteen years later, Earth is a radiated wasteland.  The only humans left live either in struggling settlements or rather comfortably as crew and passengers on starships.  This sets up a haves and have-nots situation.  The planeteers are primitive, suspicious folks.  The ship dwellers have limited resources to assist.

This particular tale involves a fellow named Tansman, who embeds himself on a plague-infested colony to conduct anthropological research.  His ultimate dilemma: does he offer what limited medicine he can to save a few, revealing himself, putting his mission and possibly his person in danger?  Or does he watch as the colonists die in droves?

It's a vivid story, though I feel it doesn't do quite enough with the setup.  It also stacks the deck a bit toward a certain outcome.  I also could have done without the extremely graphic, drawn out scene in which Tansman puts a suffering colonist out of his misery (warning: it's in the last third of the tale).

So, three stars, but I wouldn't mind seeing more in this setting.

Challenge: The Insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent (Part 2), by Joe Poyer

With the non-fiction column, we return to last month's topic — namely counterinsurgency.  Poyer notes the great strides that have been made in tracking insurgents, using infrared, electronic bugs, even scent.  He correlates this increase in counterinsurgency effectiveness with the decline in successful insurgencies since 1956.  He makes the hopeful prediction that the golden age of guerrilas may be at an end.

The problem, of course, is that better counterinsurgents only addresses one prong of the problem.  As even Poyer notes, until the populace's needs are addressed, insurgency will thrive.  Moreover, I was reading in the latest diplomatic journals that few expect the United States to be successful in Vietnam, our latest counterinsurgent operation.  That is because the issue is an Asian problem, and the US has limited ability to project force and influence in another continent.  Vietnam is not a colony.  It is a sovereign country riven with civil war.  One way or another, they're going to have to solve their own issues.  Our presence is an ephemeral condition, and it is arguable that it is making the situation any better.

Three stars for an interesting read and lots of pretty charts, but I doubt the author's conclusion.

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Back to the world of Joe Mauser, where the Earth of the 1980s is divided into four camps: the free countries of Latin America and Africa, Common Europe, the somewhat democratic SovWorld, and the "People's Capitalism" of the West.  The United States has calcified into economic castes, and upward mobility is virtually impossible.

Enter Rosy Porras, born into the long-dead job of pretzel twister.  He has figured out how to live a life of crime in an ostensibly crimeless world.  When his latest "romp" goes sour, he has to make a run for the border.  Can he make it in time?

I find the Mauser setting fascinating if based on increasingly unlikely premises.  This story is a bit too pat, but it's a competent thriller.  Three stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 3 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we return to the world of Lord Darcy, a timeline in which magic has displaced science, the Angevin Empire is squared against the Polish Confederation, and a Holmes analog is tasked with solving two murders.  We learned in the last installment that both were secret agents in the employ of HRM, and that their deaths are connected with a super secret magical confusion ray.

What we don't know is how one succumbed in a locked room, how Demoiselle Tia Einzig (accused of dealing in the Black Arts) of a southern slavic state was involved, or how certain was the loyalty of the murdered agents.

This continues to be a fun novel, and the setting is positively lavish.  If there's just one thing that's mildly unconvincing, it's the development of modern-style military ranks, as well as English colloquialisms, in a timeline that diverged from ours nearly a millennium ago.

Also, it can be a little tough to keep track of an intricate mystery spread out over four months of reading.  Nevertheless, four stars for another fine installment, and high hopes for a satistfying ending in October!

Reading the Results

It's a shame about the Anvil, as it drags the issue down to a straight 3 stars.  The issue feels better than that because it improves as it goes along.  Ah well. 3 still puts Analog alongside Alien Worlds (3.0) and just below Galaxy (rounds to 3 but was slightly above).

This makes Campbell's mag better than New Writings #9 (2.9),
Amazing (2.5), and IF (2.5) this month, and not as good as Impulse (3.2), New Worlds (3.3), or Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).

Worthy stuff (four and five stars) could easily fill two magazine's worth, but women wrote just 7.5% of the new fiction this month.  So much for the renaissance I predicted last month.

That wraps up the October 1966 magazines.  In two days, the November crop comes in!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 31, 1966] Flights of Fancy (September 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Nonstandard Deviation

Mr. Campbell of the good ship Analog is an interesting character.  Known for his strident, occasionally downright offensive editorials, his fetish for pseudoscience, and his increasingly inconsistent (one might say half-hearted) story selection, he is both much-loved and much-maligned.

But, as Galactic Journey's editor likes to say, people contain multitudes.  Or more simply, he and his magazine aren't all bad.  If Analog sometimes hits disappointing lows, it also still reaches highs reminiscent of Analog's golden days (when it was called Astounding).  His story sets are not monolithic.  Sometimes they're downright surprising.

As Exhibit A, I submit the September 1966 Analog, a most unusual issue:

Charting new terrain


by John Schoenherr

The Mechanic, by Hal Clement

Hal Clement is best known for his nuts-and-bolts science fiction, as crunchy as unmilked cereal — and often as dry.  This piece tells the tale of a near-future hydrofoil dispatched to the Arctic to determine what's causing the extinction of zeowhales.  These cybernetic creatures have metal bodies but psuedoliving flesh, and some disease is dissolving them from the inside out.

Of course, the hydrofoil is also metallic, and bad things happen to a disintegrating ship zooming along at hundreds of miles per hour.


by Kelly Freas

Slow to start and very very explanatory, but the ideas are interesting and the latter half riveting if gruesome.

Three stars.

A Matter of Reality, by Carole E. Scott


by Leo Summers

A common charge leveled at Campbell is that he doesn't like to publish women.  I don't think that's fair.  The industry as a whole has an unfortunate shortage of woman-penned stories.  If Analog tends to be mostly a stag mag, it's just at one end of the bell curve, not a true outlier.  Indeed, Campbell discovered Pauline Ashwell and Katherine Maclean, two of the field's brightest lights.

Women not only write for Analog, they read it, too: A Matter of Reality came off the slush pile, submitted by Ms. Scott, a self-proclaimed admirer of Campbell and his mag for nearly two decades. 

Her first story contains none of the Campbellian touchstones: no psionics, no smugly superior Terrans, etc.  Instead, it's an interesting piece about an old man's final act, a literal embodiment of the phrase, "All the world's a stage."

I'd expect to find such a fantastic piece in Galaxy or F&SF, but Scott likes Analog the best, and her story makes for a nice change of pace in Campbell's mag.

Three stars, and I look forward to her next piece.

… Not a Prison Make, by Joseph P. Martino


by John Schoenherr

With the Vietnam war escalating and the President calling for double the troops (600,000 — this proposal just rejected by Congress), it's not surprising that the situation is finding echoes in our science fiction.

Martino offers up a proxy war between the Terrans and the Kreg on a third-party planet peopled by primitives.  The humans are subject to the most debilitating hit and run raids by the indigenes, who possess the powers of teleportation and limited clairvoyance.

Two viewpoints are espoused in the story: the military leader opines that the raiders are bandits, and the best bandit is a dead one.  The civilian expert believes that the hearts and minds of the populace must be won or the insurgency will have infinite longevity. 

Some clever defenses are built up against the natives, but they only constitute delaying actions.  The paradigm must be radically altered if success is to be had.

This story really had potential, but it ended just as it was getting interesting, and with none of the more profound points addressed.  Of course, no one really knows how to end a guerilla insurgency (predicting its death by the close of this century seems optimistic), but I'm dissatisfied with a story that concludes essentially with "then we won!"  I did appreciate that the characters were all South/Southeast Asian (from what I know of surnames).

Three stars.

Challenge, by Joe Poyer

The fictional piece is followed by an in-depth analysis of insurgency and counter-insurgency.  The author suggests that until the counter-insurgents learn to fight the insurgent game, and better than the insurgents, they won't win.  Interestingly, the latest plan for Vietnam is to field division-sized battlefield units, not just to quell the VC, but also to engage in peaceful, nation-building activities.  I'm not hopeful.

Anyway, Challenge is not a bad piece, though I don't know that it qualifies as "science."  Also, I would not classify the Watts riots as an insurrection.

I miss Robert S. Richardson's astronomy articles.  Three stars.

Symbols, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

The river has frozen a month early, and the Gurt are under attack.  The Ghisrans are pouring across the ice now, threatening a precious mine that is vital to the Terran Navy.  If a handful of agents with an unarmed spaceboat are unable to stop them, the sector may fall.

I'm not sure what's more offensive: the portrayal of the lone female character as "hysterical" or the padding of this vignette to double size with Campbell-pleasing folderol about symbolic logic. 

Definitely the most reactionary of this month's pieces.  Two stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 2 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

Ahh, but all that is washed away with the latest installment of the adventures of Lord Darcy, investigator in an alternate 1966 where thaumaturgy has trumped science.  As we saw last time, there had been two murders by unknown assailants, both by similar knives.  One of the victims was an Imperial double agent, killed while trying to ferret out a traitorous Anglo-Frenchman.  The other was an exalted state wizard.

The bombshell of this installment is that the two murders are connected, tightly.

A lot of great detective work in this one, as well as a tour to magical London's equivalent of a World Expo.  Garrett channels Doyle more and more these days, but so far it's working.

Four stars!

Charting a New Course

This experimental issue of Analog doesn't break any records, finishing dead-averagely at 3 stars.  Nevertheless, I applaud Campbell's willingness to experiment, and I enjoyed the issue.  Finishing above it were the superlative New Worlds (3.8 stars), the fine Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5 stars), and the decent (but mostly because of a reprint) SF Impulse (3.2 stars).

Analog barely edged out IF (3 stars) and decidedly beat Fantastic (2.7 stars).

It was a good month overall for reading.  If one took all the magazine stories/serials that got 4 or 5 stars, they could potentially fill three magazines!  Also, women were responsible for 15.6% of all new fiction, a high water mark for sure.

On this triumphant note, I am off to Cleveland for this year's Worldcon.  Who will win the Hugos?  We'll have to wait a week to find out!  Rest assured, you'll be able to read all about it here long before the next edition of Ratatosk or Focal Point (or Skyrack, for my British friends) hits your mailbox.

And if you are in Cleveland next weekend, be certain to join us for the showing of the first Star Trek pilot at 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific!).




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Magazine, Serial

[July 31, 1966] Dimmed lights (August 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Blackout

This morning, Janice noted sparks coming from the socket by her typewriter desk.  With great swiftness, she unplugged the lamp and radio.  There was a respite, but only briefly, and soon the wall was spurting flame again. 

I heard her calm bellow, "Gideon, hit the circuit breaker.  Now."  You never saw someone descend a flight of stairs so fast (at least in control of their feet).  She called an electrician – fortunately the phone company have a separate power supply – and we went out for breakfast until the fellow could arrive.

That afternoon, we got a stern lecture on overloading our poor house's circuits.  We thanked and paid the fellow and were back to work by 1 pm.

Whereupon the entire neighborhood's power went out.

And that, dear readers, is why this article was typed by the light of the window rather than artificial incandescence!

Flicker, flicker

It was fitting that we should be failed by the men and women of our investor-owned, business-managed electric light and power company just as I turned to write about this month's Analog.  It's not that the stories were horrible, but I've definitely seen better in these pages.


by John Schoenherr

Too Many Magicians (Part 1 of 4), by Randall Garrett

To date, the Lord d'Arcy stories, set in an alternate 1960s with Victorian technology but replete with magic, have all been novellas or shorter.  This latest piece is the first full length novel.

A naval courier has been killed, perhaps while bearing crucial intelligence.  The Anglo-French Empire's most renowned magical detective is contracted to get to the bottom of the case.  Meanwhile, Sean O'Lochlainn, d'Arcy's sorcerer assistant, is thrown in the Tower after witnessing a second death at a wizards' conference; this locked-room murder has a similar murder weapon to the first.

And so, the setup for a magical who/howdunnit.  As with the rest of the series, Garrett's tale compels (though none engage so thoroughly as the excellent first d'Arcy adventure.) If I have a complaint, it's that Garrett is starting to rely a bit too much on pastiche: d'Arcy gets more like Holmes with every installment.  Indeed, his cousin, the Marquis, is Mycroft in all but name.  I half-expect our hero will take up the violin and acquire a cocaine habit.

Four stars so far, but we'll see.

Spirits of '76, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

A representative from the UN pays a visit to a lunar squatter, who has illegally laid claim to a piece of the Moon's surface and established a distillery.  After a great many homebrewed drinks, the agent decides that free enterprise and private ownership are actually just fine.

I suspect maintaining an independent habitation on our airless neighbor will be a lot harder than this story would have us believe.  Still, the libertarian spirit of the piece surely tickled Campbell's capitalist heart.

It'll go in one eye and out the other, but it's harmless, at least.  Three stars?

One MOL Step Forward , by Lyle R. Hamilton

Hamilton opens up this non-fiction article with a promise to explain how the X-20 "Dynasoar" spaceplane was killed by paperwork.  Instead, he offers up a meandering piece, told largely in contractor interviews and press releases, which culminates in a description of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.  This budget space station, serviced by an Air Force Gemini, is the current DoD space project of size.

I suppose there's useful information in the piece, but not much point.  I've gotten much better insight from my subscription to Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Two stars.

Psychoceramic, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The fearless editor follows Hamilton with a shorter piece on a ceramic that can apparently extract pure oxygen and produce power at the same time.  Typical Campbellian kookery, or is he onto something?  I guess only time will tell.

Two stars for the unnecessary smugness and having cried wolf too many times.

By the Book, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

An aged troubleshooter is summoned from retirement to fix a big beam.  It's some kind of launching laser that propels seed packets (vegetable and human) toward colony worlds.  Problem is, it keeps killing technicians trying to service it.

I had many problems with this story, the biggest of which was the devotion of so many words to setting up a technical problem whose resolution I had no interest in.  A real snoozefest of gizmo-speak.

One star.

Technicality, by Norman Spinrad

The MPs have arrived, fearsome conquering aliens whose greatest strength is their ability to vanquish whole armies without firing a shot.  But does their nonviolent rapaciousness hide an Achilles Heel?

While the gimmick falls a little flat, Spinrad tells this no-blood-or-guts tale with fine detail and not a little subtle satire.

Three stars.

Light of Other Days, by Bob Shaw


by Kelly Freas

A quarreling married couple touring the Scottish Highlands come across a purveyor of "slow glass."  This remarkable substance passes light so slowly that, after ten years of absorption, will replay the scene that played across it for the next decade.  Thus, a city dweller might install one of these wonder panes and enjoy ten years of a view of the rugged north of Scotland rather than local squalor.

The technical bits felt a little overdone, but Shaw tells the story with a light, domestic touch that reminds me of Cliff Simak.

Three stars, and eagerness to see him tackle a longer subject.

Something to Say, by John Berryman


by Leo Summers

Last up, the fellow who gave us the Walter Bupp psychic stories gives us, instead, one of his more nuts-and-bolts tales.  The Earth Federation (apparently an evolution of the UN) has reason to believe that Soviet-aligned agents have infiltrated a primitive world to poison the natives against the West.  Said planet has a breathable atmosphere some six times as dense as Earth's.  This affords a far more airborne ecology, and even the indigenes have Bronze Age flying machines.

A troubleshooter is dispatched to thwart the Soviet plot, but is overpowered by a Communist.  The two crash land and are taken prisoner.  The Sovworld agent seems to have the leg up, as she is fluent in the indigenous tongue, but our plucky hero has an ace up his sleeve: an encylopedic knowledge of gliders.

There is a good story lurking in here, with a great setting and a decent setup.  It is hampered by its truly insufferable and two-dimensional characters.  As well, Berryman seems to have forgotten much that he's learned about pacing.

An uneven three stars.

After the lights go out…

2.7 stars is not a great score, though it's actually the median for this year's crop of Analogs.  And also for the month.  Coming in below it are IF (2.6), Galaxy (2.5), Worlds of Tomorrow (2.2), and Amazing (1.9).  Note that three of those four are Fred Pohl's triplets.

Ahead of Analog are Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), New Worlds (3.2), and Impulse (3.4)

There was exactly one woman-penned new story this month, and four/five-star stories would have barely filled two slim magazines (and one of them is a reprint of Make Room, Make Room!).

Ah well.  At least there's only one more month of summer, after which, ironically, things should get brighter!

Have you gotten your copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue?  If not, get down to your local newsstand and pick it up!




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Serial

[June 30, 1966] Not Reading You (July 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Common meaning

Every so often, a science fiction magazine editor has enough of a backlog to run a "themed" issue.  For instance, there was the time Fred Pohl bunged together an issue of IF with stories all by someone named Smith.  This time around, Analog editor John Campbell has accumulated a supply of tales on the subject of communication.

The problem with themed issues, of course, is that quality is often secondary to topic.  But not always.  Let's see how the July 1966 Analog fares before we make a hasty conclusion!

Five by Five (plus two)


by John Schoenherr

The Message, by Piers Anthony and Frances Hall


by John Schoenherr

Mysterious Thargans have settled amidst the tiny human colony on Tau Ceti.  Though not overly aggressive, they aren't terribly congenial either.  But they are very inquisitive, about our technology, our physical capabilities, and our mental talents.  And their spaceship has a lot of cargo space — enough to fit a thousand slaves, for instance…

Rivera, a linguist who speaks the alien tongue, is tapped to assess the danger posed by the Thargans.  And when disaster inevitably strikes, he must recapitulate an era early in his life, when he managed to foil four would-be muggers not by force, but by the right verbal approach.

An interesting tale by a pair of newish writers, though a bit choppy and with flattish characters. 

Three stars.

The Signals, by Francis Cartier


by Kelly Freas

For the last half-decade, astronomers have been training their radio telescopes upon the stars, hoping to eavesdrop on transmissions from an intelligent alien race.  So-called Project Ozma hasn't found anything yet, and Cartier's tale explains why.  It's not that aliens aren't trying, it's just that we don't know how to listen.  Or more accurately, the fundamental theory of communication is too different between the species for intelligible contact.

Something of a throwaway piece, it is nevertheless cute and probably not far from the truth.  Three stars.

An Ounce of Dissension, by Martin Loran


by Kelly Freas

Quist of the interstellar Library corps is visiting the planet Rayer after a long trip through space.  Upon landing, the brutalist police troops burn his entire stock of books.  The planet is ripe for a revolution, but it needs a catalyst to do so.  Luckily, in Quist's cargo is a crate-sized book printer with a very large memory core…

Essentially a smug Fahrenheit 451, I can see why this piece appealed to Campbell.  But it takes too long to get where it's going, and it utilizes enough straw men to staff all the fields of Iowa.

Two stars.

Meaning Theory, by Dwight Wayne Batteau

This nonfiction piece is all about how the communication of information destroys meaning, and the imparting of meaning destroys information…or something like that.  Frankly, I couldn't make heads or tales of it.  The pictures are cute, the graphs seem useful, the text is in English.  Perhaps someone smarter than me will glean something from it.

Or maybe not.  One star for this failure to communicate.

The Ancient Gods (Part 2 of 2), by Poul Anderson


by John Schoenherr

Last issue, the crew of the starship Meteor had space-jumped 200 million light years from Earth to a feeble red dwarf out in intergalactic space.  They had hoped to establish trade relations with the advanced "yonderfolk" of the system.  Instead, they transitioned into real space too close to the next planet closer to the sun and crash landed.  Only six were left alive.

Hugh Valland, oldest of the more-or-less immortal group of spacers, hatched a plan to salvage a lifeboat so as to make the interplanetary trek to the yonderfolk planet.  But such a massive undertaking would require more than the half dozen remaining crew.  Luckily, intelligent (if primitive) beings exist on the swampy world.  Contact was made with the Azkashi, and it looked as if the plan might work.  As the first half came to a close, it seemed we might be getting a Flight of the Phoenix story. 

Instead, the second half begins with Hugh taken prisoner by the Askashi while the related but more advanced Gianyi abscond with the captain and the mentally unstable Yo Rorn.  It is quickly determined that the Gianyi are in the telepathic thrall of the Ai Chun, a race perhaps a billion years old.  They have stagnated to almost fossilization, and no amount of parley can dissaude them from their goal to strip the downed spaceship for its valuable metal and to work the humans as slaves until they die.  The captain escapes, and with Valland (who is freed by the Azkashi), plans a battle for their liberty.

Much of this installment is given to the war between the human-led Azkashi and the Ai Chun-controlled Gianyi.  It is effectively told, but the outcome is never in doubt, and I found myself less enamored with this wide swath of the text.  Long story short, there are happy endings and Hugh is ultimately reunited with his long lost love (of whom much is sung but little is known).

What I liked: Poul Anderson is a bard, and his stories are lyric performances.  His wistful, archaic prose is sometimes ill suited to its subject, but it works here.  The characters are nicely drawn and compelling.  The unique setting and the nifty aliens are all cutting edge science.  I appreciated the frank polygamy practiced by the captain and his genuine puzzlement with Valland's monogamy.  There's also the suggestion that strict heterosexuality is not observed in the far future.

What I was less delighted with: I felt like Anderson marked a lot of time with the war sequences, which did not bring much new to the table.  The acute lack of women, both on the crew of the Meteor and among the aliens (they exist in the background to do domestic chores, just like Earth females) marked another missed opportunity.  I also suspect that the Ai Chun and Gianyi are supposed to be metaphors for China — grand but hidebound.  Certainly Anderson draws a stated parallel between the Azkashi and the American Indians (for whom the author has an obvious fondness; viz. his tale in Orbit).  The racial comparisons made me slightly uncomfortable, though it's a minor thing and I could be wrong.

Finally, the revelation of Mary O' Meary's current condition in the story's epilogue is a bit trite, and quite unbelievable.  Here's the thing (and don't read on until you've either read the end or in the event you don't mind me giving away the gimmick): Mary has been dead for thousands of years, having passed away just before the advent of immortality.  She died at the age of nineteen.  This means that the immortal romance between she and Hugh could have lasted a few years at the most.

Now look, I love my wife more than anything.  If she passes before me, I may well stay single for the rest of my life.  But she and I have been together almost 30 years.  I balk at the idea that a teenage fling could possibly compel me to asceticism for thousands of years.  At that point, it's less about love and more a case of emotional masturbation.

Anyway, it's a solid three and a half stars.  I can imagine some ticking it up to a full four stars and others finding it all a bit tedious and giving it just three.

Survivor, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

The threat of nuclear war looms, raising tensions to the breaking point.  When the klaxons go off, signalling the end of the world, millions flee the cities to find refuge, fighting over the quickly dwindling resources. 

But have the bombs actually fallen, or is it all a miscommunication? 

The premise to Survivor is pretty darned silly — that everyone will lose their collective minds out of fear.  I do believe that, in the case of a false alarm, there'd be panic and rioting and looting and mass disruption.  But not to the point that society completely breaks down such that both sides aren't even able to wage the war that frightened everyone in the first place!

Two stars.

The Missile Smasher, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, Anvil offers up a predictably slight tale of a series of rocket launch mishaps, the discovery of the focused light projector that is causing it, and the removal of said projector by a government troubleshooter.

I think it's meant to be funny or something.  It's not very good.

Two stars.

Wrong number

I'm afraid a common theme did little to elevate the current issue.  Indeed, in many cases, background noise might have been preferable to signal.  All told, the July Analog clocks in at a dismal 2.3 stars, placing it at the bottom of the heap.  The top is dominated by paperback-format periodicals: New Writings #8 (3.9), Fantastic (3.4), and Orbit #1 (3.4)

The middle of the pack is composed of the usual suspects: Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), Impulse (3.1), New Worlds (2.8) and If (2.7).

Women were responsible for a whopping 14% of this month's output of new fiction (mostly thanks to Orbit, which featured five female authors).  If you took all the really good stuff published this month, you could comfortably fill two magazines.  Or just buy New Writings and Orbit!

So, whither Analog?  Will there be another theme next month, one that will drag the magazine ever closer to the dreaded 2-star rating?  Will it plunge even without a common thread?  Or will we get a sudden reversal, the kind we've seen several times over the past few years?

Stay tuned!

Speaking of tuning, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Our theme is quality and diversity!




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Serial

[May 31, 1966] Worth Remembering (June 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

First the war, then the licking of wounds.  Not all wounds are physical.  After the Civil War rent this nation in two, spring became a time for remembering the dead, their blood shed in almost incomprehensible numbers.  In 1868, the ritual honoring of fallen veterans became an official holiday known as Decoration Day (for the decoration of graves).  Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and last month, President Johnson proclaimed the custom's birthplace to be Waterloo, New York, the event first occurring a century ago.

The last Civil War veteran passed away in 1956, but this year's Memorial Day still found us licking our wounds.  Indeed, last week marked the bloodiest seven days for American soldiers since Korea: 966 casualties in Vietnam alone, 146 of them fatal.  Will next year's day of remembrance be worse?

The Issue at Hand

A cute segue would be in poor taste at this juncture, so I'll simply proceed to the review.  The latest issue of Analog drew my attention with its striking astronomical cover.  Let's turn the page and see what delights and disappointments Herr Campbell has for us this month.


by Chesley Bonestell

The Ancient Gods (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

In the letter column, Poul Anderson talks about discovering a beautiful painting by Chesley Bonestell.  It depicts a the night sky as seen from a planet perhaps 200,000 light years north of the Milky Way.  I would guess that this painting, as well as perhaps a viewing of last year's film, Flight of the Phoenix, provided the inspiration for the author's latest tale. 


by John Schoenherr

I shall give nothing else away save that those who know me know I'm a sucker for astronomically correct tales of exploration, and that Flight of the Phoenix got my nomination for the Best Dramatic Hugo.

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott


by Stan Robinson

Lee is a big man, a skilled man, a man whose job is to throw monkey wrenches into supposedly foolproof systems like the D.C./Kremlin Hotline and Pentagon intelligence computers.  Is he a double-agent?  A mole?  Or something more?

There's really not enough to this story to engage; it feels more like a fragment of a Joe Poyer thriller than a complete piece.  Just some workmanlike action writing and a smug, Campbell-pleasing sting. 

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey


by Gray Morrow

"Hank Dempsey" (I have it on reliable information that this is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison, apparently trying to make the big lucre by pushing all of Campbell's buttons) is back with CWACC: the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control, last seen last year.  Pronounced "Quack," the goal of this two-person operation is the support and representation of eccentric inventors.  You see, to the scientific community, they're just kooks, but we all know that those industrious garage inventors produce way more of the world's innovation than the anonymous folks in white coats.  Right?

Anyway, in this episode, CWACC's administrator teams up with an enemy, the local kook-catching flatfoot, to rescue a CWACCer, whose invention is being used by con artists to sucker in, of all people, the police commissioner.  Along the way, "Dempsey" gets some pseudo-scientific shots in, like the assertion that the common cold can be defeated by sufficient vitamins in one's diet. 

Vaguely readable garbage.  One star.  I hope it was worth selling your soul for four cents a word, Harry!

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

This nonfiction article started auspiciously, promising to compare the biological sensors with which animals are naturally equipped to the most refined artificial detectors.  The overall package is lacking, however.  There are lots of interesting tidbits on the capabilities of creatures, but they are interspersed with larder passages that don't do too much.  Never do we find out how we might utilize or at least learn from natural sensing devices. 

It would also help if Analog employed subheadings.  Three stars.

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

My nephew David rang me the other day (on Sunday, when the rates are lowest) to tell me how much he enjoyed the new Chris Anvil story.  This may be a ringing endorsement (ha ha!) but I always take David's recommendations with a grain of salt, especially where Anvil is concerned.

A scout team following up on a lost comrade lands on a planet despite receiving a warning that such would be dangerous.  Once planetside, they find themselves subjected to illusion after terrifying illusion, only their unshakeable monitors telling the truth about reality (why wouldn't their perception of the monitors also be changed?)

Turns out the inhabitants have some kind of telepathy and can change their perception of reality and those of others.  After the team escapes with their rescued friend, they determine that a race with psychic phenomena cannot develop science since they fudge the results to their liking.  Contrarily, a race that chooses a scientific path atrophies psychic phenomena because…well, just because.

Therefore, all races, including humanity, have psychic potential, and it's only because we chose the path of science that spoonbending isn't more prevalent.  Q.E.D.

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

What I really don't understand is what possible advantage the alien trait of mass hallucination affords.  If it were real transmutation being employed in this story, there might be something to it, but there isn't.  A being that thinks it is having its physical needs met when it is not quickly becomes a sick and/or dead being.  Maybe it's more of a reality enhancer, as in the first Cugel the Clever story, which I guess would make more sense.

Anyway, Stranglehold feels like what would happen if Bob Sheckley ever wrote for Campbell.

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

In Frank Herbert's latest, a lone interstellar scout plunges his ship deep into a nebulous cloud.  He is determined to fight off the "push" that causes all of his corps to return to Earth after a certain point.  But is the compulsion programmed in by BuPurs to keep scouts from going native?  Or is there an external agency involved?

I found this one of Herbert's more compelling pieces, though it falls apart a bit at the end.  And it feels like the title is a pun in search of a story; I can't figure out its applicability to this one.

Three stars.

Doing the Math

Thus, Analog ends up near the bottom of the pack with a 2.6 star rating, only beating out the mostly-reprint (and consistently lackluster) Amazing 2.5.  Ahead of Campbell's mag are New Worlds (3.1), Galaxy (3.1), Impulse (3.0), IF (3.0), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8).

Worthy material comprised about an issue-and-a-half out of six this month.  Women produced 11.25% of the new fiction, at the high end of the usual range.

All told, June 1966 may not be remembered in times to come, particularly as impressive as last month was.  But, as noted at the beginning of the article, sometimes having to remember is painful.

Until next month…

If you need a mood-lifter now, tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




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[April 30, 1966] Ormazd and Ahriman (May 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

The ancient Persians believed in two roughly co-equal deities: Ormazd, the God of Creation and Light, and Ahriman, the God of Destruction and Darkness.  Unlike, say, the dual concept of the Chinese Yin and Yang, one was decidedly good and the other bad.  Indeed, these twin deities may have inspired the near parity of the Christian God and Satan.

Apparently, these forces hold sway even today.  This month's Analog started off so well, it bid fair to be a contender for best magazine of the month.  Then about half way, the influence of Ahriman took ascendance, and the issue faded away to a truly dreadful ending.  Ah well.  I come not to bury John Campbell but to review him.  At least we start with the good stuff…

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

Anyone who's anyone knows that Paul Ash is really Pauline Ashwell, one of 1958's Hugo nominated Best New Writers — and boy, she's still just great.

Her latest tale stars a middle-aged doctor cum veterinarian stationed at Indication One on the shores of Lake Possible.  Cycads and dinosaurs dominate the landscape, and with good reason: Indication One is based sometime in the Cretaceous!  Against all of his instincts and inclinations, said doctor is tasked with raising a baby pteranadon named Fiona. 

Part country vet story, part mining camp adventure, this tale is by turns and sometimes simultaneously witty and exciting.  I loved it so much, I immediately read it a gain, this time aloud to the family as their bedtime story on two consecutive nights.

If this doesn't get nominated for the Hugo and/or the new SFWA Nebula awards, there's something wrong with the universe.  Five stars!

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Centuries from now, when Earth is just one of many hundreds of human planets, the crown prince of the Empire is dispatched to humanity's cradle for a tour.  One man is tasked to be his bodyguard, escorting the arrogant man-child as he rides, wenches, and bullies his way across the countryside.  But is this a mere sight-seeing tour…or a test?

While the story is slightly overdrenched in testerone and stoic manliness, Dickson is an excellent writer and his tale compels.  I dug it.  Four stars.

The Meteorite Miners , by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Earth has been the site of countless meteor impacts, many of them secondary strikes of ejecta loosed from prior events.  What we learn from the mineral concentrations at these craters can tell us a lot about the primordial history of our planet…and even the universe.

It's a fascinating topic, and it should have gripped me, but the presentation was a bit too abstruse and disjointed to hold my attention.  It took me several sessions to finish.

Three stars.

Titanium – The Wonder Metal (uncredited, but probably John W. Campbell, jr.

The piece is followed by another non-fiction article, this time a more lay-oriented essay on titanium, what makes it great, and what made it so hard to use economically. 

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

When an inventor develops a universal receiver that allows the owner to transmit right into an announcer's microphone, chaos ensues.  Is it the ultimate democracy or a recipe for anarchy?

In this cute story, Anvil argues the former.  With constant and immediate input (and censure) the vast wastelands of radio and television are made verdant with quality programming.  The author forgets two important factors: 1) most TV and much radio isn't live these days, so interruptions at the source wouldn't have as much effect as depicted — this isn't 1951 after all; 2) people are jerks — interruptions would be constant and annoying.

Still, it was not unpleasant reading.  Call it a low 3 stars.  Ormazd and Ahriman are wrestling, but neither has ascendance.  Yet.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

In this edge-of-the-future story (indeed, the depicted Gemini 9 mission is scheduled to occur less than three weeks from now), one astronaut is lost during an extravehicular jaunt.  His partner must use all of his wits to rescue him before their oxygen and fuel run out.

Joe Poyer has written a couple of other stories for Analog, both of which showed a fair ability when it came to depicting technology but little talent for characterization or detailed plot.  Starry Sky plays to the author's strengths, presenting a nice little Marooned-esque tale in a vivid fashion.  It ends quickly enough that you don't mind where it's undeveloped.

Three stars.  There are stars of light among the black sky.

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

Ah, here's where it all goes to Hell.  This long, flip, utterly unengaging tale manages to combine alchemy, psionics, making the Russians look stupid, and making scientists look stupid, all in one sure-to-please-the-editor package. 

This is truly an example of Ahrimanic possession as the last story by the author was one I liked very much.  But The Alchemist?  One star.  Feh.

Doing the math


Geraldine "Gerry" Myers, mathematician at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Space Craft Center in Houston

As might be expected from such a violent collision of positive and negative forces, the whole thing ends up about a wash: 3.1 stars.  This puts it above IF and New Worlds (3 stars) as well as Worlds of Tomorrow (2.6)

The May 1966 Analog finishes below Impulse (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), and the astonishing, but mostly reprints, Fantastic (4).  Thus, Analog is the dead median for this month!

Nevertheless, it has contributed two stories to one of the best months for 4 and 5 star material since the Journey began.  You could fill three big magazines with nothing but excellent stuff.

Women did so-so in April, only writing ~6% of new material, though Judy Merril had a good reprint in Impulse.

And so, the battle between good and bad (quality) continues.  Will Ormazd be ascendant next month?  Or will Ahriman have the final laugh?  Stay tuned…

[Don't miss the next (and FINAL) episode of The Journey Show:

1966 and the Law — smut, marriage, voting rights, justice, and more. With Erica Frank and Ethan Marcus! With special musical guest, Nanami!

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[March 31, 1966] Shapes of Things (April 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Change

Out in the world of music, there's a change brewing. One can hear it in the experimentation of the Beatles' Rubber Soul album or the otherworldly tinge of The Yardbirds' latest hit, Shapes of Things. I've been long planning to write an article on the musical scene, and I'd best get it done quickly before the landscape changes entirely!

My friend and associate, Cora Buhlert, has noted that although the Stones and Beatles are popular in Germany, the number one hit right now is the syrupy Schlager tune by Roy Black, "Ganz in Weiß" (All in white). In other words, even in times of great flux, conservative forces remain steadfast, like stubborn boulders in a stream.

Oh look — it's time to review the latest issue of Analog.

Stagnation


by Kelly Freas

Moon Prospector, by William B. Ellern

It would be hard to find a more emblematic story of the reactionary SF outlet that is Analog than this, the lead story in the April issue. Set early in E.E. Smith's Lensman series, it apparently got the full blessing of "Doc" Smith just a few days before he died! That's pretty remarkable.

The story, however, isn't. A lunar prospector in is semi-sentient "creeper" gets a distress call. Turns out an old buddy has been buried in the aftereffects of a meteor shower, and ol' Pete has to dig him out. But what was the fellow doing out in that quadrant of the Moon to begin with, and does it have anything to do with a centuries-old missile base abandoned around there?


by Kelly Freas

There's no water on the Moon, so I suppose it's appropriate that the story, itself, is dry as a bone. Perhaps it would have been more exciting if I'd had some stake in the universe. Maybe I'd have thrilled at the mention of the Solar Patrol being evolved into a Galactic Patrol. The fact is, I didn't care for Doc Smith's stories much when I was a kid, so they evoke no nostalgia for me now.

Two stars.

Rat Race, by Raymond F. Jones


by Kelly Freas

A century and a half in the future, when a completely computer-planned economy has resulted in plenty for all of humanity, a fellow decides to recreate the hobby of model train running (though not in the destructive manner of the Addams family, more's the pity).

This hobby runs the fellow afoul of the Computer, for when he tries to make his own trains, he is accused of attempting his own production, which will upset the finely balanced economy and lead to scarcity. Our protagonist must find a way to satisfy the human urge to create while not upsetting the economic apple cart. The story ends with the suggestion that do-it-yourselfism will spread and eventually topple the current order.

It's a pleasant-enough story, and I suppose the "stick-it-to-communism" sentiment appealed to editor Campbell. On the other hand, while I appreciate that some folks really like to build things even when they could just be bought (and I have to think that hobbyist building would not break a planned economy), the notion that we've become too centralized and folks should all be able to be self-sufficient, making a living from the land, is unworkable.

The fact is, we've long since populated the Earth beyond its ability to sustain a society of independent farmers. The great island cities, the vast modern nations, they only support their teeming millions through coordinated and interconnected systems. The writer in the air-conditioned apartment, who bangs out a paean to independent living before catching a television show and then popping off to the deli for dinner, is a dreamer, not a visionary.

Three stars.

The Easy Way Out, by Lee Correy


by John Schoenherr

Aliens conduct a survey of planet Earth, evaluating its species for aggressive tendencies. After coming across a grizzly bear and a wolverine, and then the human family that has adopted the latter, they decide Earth is more trouble than it's worth.

Typical Campbellian Earth-firsterism. Two stars.

Drifting Continents, by Robert S. Dietz


by John Holden

If it's a crackpot theory that flies in the face of the scientific establishment, chances are you'll read about it in Analog. But sometimes a theory is crackpot, flies in the face of the scientific establishment, and is probably right. As someone born in earthquake country, I've probably heard more about "continental drift" than many. It's the idea that the continents very slowly move around the globe. It's why the coasts of South America and Africa seem like edges of the same torn newspaper. It explains why there are similar fossils at similar depths across continents that are nowhere near each other…today.

It's a theory I found little reference to in my science books of the 50s, including Rachel Carson's seminal The Sea Around Us. But damned if Dietz doesn't make some very compelling arguments. I would not be surprised if continental drift, as has happened recently with the Big Bang Theory and global warming, did not become thoroughly accepted this decade.

Five stars.

Who Needs Insurance?, by Robin S. Scott


by Kelly Freas

Pete "Lucky Pierre" Albers has always been blessed with good fortune. Twenty years a pilot, he has always managed to avoid even the slightest injury, despite 8500 hours of flying time. He first suspected that his lucky streak was not completely due to chance after a harrowing mission over Ploesti left his B-24 with just one working engine. That tortured device not only held together all the way back to Libya, but it spun with the 800 horsepower needed to keep the plane in the air. After the crash landing, Albers found a little gray box attached to the driveshaft.

Twenty years later, over Vietnam, Colonel Albers was in a bullet-riddled Huey whose engine somehow held together long enough to get him and his charges back to base. Sure enough, a little box was installed on the engine.

Clearly someone, or something, has taken an interest in Albers' survival. It's up to Albers and his closest friends to discover the secret.

I really enjoyed this story, told in narrative fashion. It's a fun mystery, the details are evocative, and I like when a piece includes a competent woman scientist (in this case, Marty the programmer, with her pet 2706).

Four stars.

A Sun Invisible, by Poul Anderson


by Domenic Iaia

With this latest installation in the adventures of David Falkayn, the momentum gained by the magazine comes to a shuddering halt. Anderson's writing is of widely varying quality, and the adventures of this troubleshooting young protogé of Nicholas van Rijn are among the worst.

The plot takes forever to develop, but it's something about a planet of Germanics looking to take on the Polesotechnic League by working with the belligerent Kroaka. The trick is that Falkayn has to figure out where the would-be enemies make their home. By getting the female leader of Neuheim drunk and talkative, Falkayn learns enough astronomical clues to deduce the star around which the insurgents' planet revolves. Falkayn stops the threat and gets the girl.

I do like the astronomy Anderson weaves into these stories and I also appreciated the seamless way he introduced a new pronoun for an alien race with three sexes. Other than that, it's a deadly dull story, and smug to boot. Falkayn is like a boring, Sexist Retief.

Two stars.

Computation

After all that, the conservative reef that is Analog finishes near the bottom of the pack, though that is as much due to the relative excellence of the other mags that came out this month. Campbell's mag clocks in at a reasonable 3 stars, beating out the truly bad, all-reprint Amazing (2.3).

Above Analog, starting at the top, are Impulse (3.5), Galaxy (3.4), IF (3.3), New Worlds (3.1), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1).

It was something of a banner month for SF mags, actually. Enough worthy stuff was printed to fill two full-size mags (and if you take out Amazing, that means a full third of everything printed was four stars and up). Also, women produced 11.5% of the new fiction published this month, the highest proportion I've seen in a long time. We'll see if this trend holds out.

That's it for March! April is a whole new ballgame, starting with the next issue of IF. I'm very keen to see how that magazine does now that the excellent Heinlein serial has ended (I've high hopes for the Laumer/Brown novel.)

Until then, all we can to is keep trying to discern the pattern of Shapes of Things to Come…

Don't miss the next exciting Adventure-themed episode of The Journey Show, taking you to the highest peaks, the deepest wildernesses, the coldest extremes, the vacuum of space, and the depths of the sea. April 3 at 1PM — book your (free) ticket for adventure now!)




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[February 26, 1966] Such promise (March 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tuckered out

Imagine training your whole life to run in the Olympics.  Imagine making it and competing in the quadrennial event, representing your nation before the entire world.  Imagine making perfect strides, outdistancing your competitors, sailing far out in front…and then stumbling.

Defeat at the moment of victory.


Ron Clarke of Australia, favored to win 1964's 10,000 meter race, is blown past at the last minute by American Billy Mills (and aced by Tunisia's Mohammed Gammoudi )

Every month, as a science fiction magazine reviewer, I am treated to a similar drama.  Usually, the law of averages dictates that no month will be particularly better or worse than any other.  But occasionally, there is a mirabilis month, or perhaps things are really getting better across the entire genre.  Either way, as magazine after magazine got their review, it became clear that March 1966 was going to be a very good month.  Not a single magazine was without at least one 4 or 5 star story — even the normally staid Science Fantasy turned in a stellar performance under the new name, Impulse.

It all came down to this month's Analog.  If it were superb, as it was last month, then we'd have a clean sweep across eight periodicals.  If it flopped, as it often does, the streak would be broken.

As it turns out, neither eventuality quite came to pass.  Indeed, the March 1966 Analog is sort of a microcosm of the month itself — starting out with a bang and faltering before the finish.

Frontloaded


by John Schoenherr

Bookworm, Run!, by Vernor Vinge


by John Schoenherr

Norman Simmonds is on the lam.  Brilliant, resourceful, and inspired by his pulp and SF heroes, he breaks out of a top security research facility in Michigan, his mind full of inadvertently espied government secrets.  His goal is to make the Canadian border before he can be punished for his accidental indiscretion. Thus ensues an exciting cat and mouse chase toward the border.

Did I mention that Norman is a chimpanzee?

With the aid of surgery and a link to the nation's most sophisticated computer, Norman is not only smarter than the average human, he has all of the world's facts at his beck and call.  His only limitation (aside from standing out in a crowd) is that he can only get so far from his master mainframe before the link is strained to breaking.  The pivotal question, then, is whether Canada lies inside or beyond that range.

Bookworm is a compelling story whose main fault comes (in keeping with this month's trend) near the end, when we leave Norman's viewpoint and instead are treated to a few pages' moralizing about why such technology must never be allowed to be used by humanity lest one person gain virtual godhood.  I have to wonder if that coda was always in the tale or if it was added by Campbell at the last minute to make less subtle the themes of the story.

Anyway, four stars for Vinge's first American sale (and second overall).  I look forward to what he has to offer next.

The Ship Who Mourned, by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Speaking of intelligence in unusual forms, The Ship Who Mourned is the sequel to the quite good The Ship Who Sang, starring a woman raised nearly from birth as a brain with a shapeship body.  In that first story, her companion/passenger/driver, Jennan, died, leaving Helva-the-ship distraught.

But with no time to grieve.  Her next assignment comes almost immediately: take Theoda, a doctor, to a faraway world so that she might treat the aftereffects of a plague that has left thousands completely immobile, trapped in their nonresponsive bodies.  Though Helva is initially frosty toward Theoda, they bond over their own griefs, and together, they manage to bring hope to the plague-blasted planet.

This is a good story.  I'm surprised to see it in Analog in part because the series got its start in F&SF, and also because the mag has been something of a stag party for a long long time (even more than its woman-scarce colleagues).  Despite enjoying it a lot, there is a touch of the amateur about it, a certain clunkiness of execution.  McCaffrey may simply be out of practice; it has been five years since her last story, after all.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the cobwebs will come right off if she can get back to writing consistently again.  A high three stars.

Giant Meteor Impact, by J.  E.  Enever

Asteroid impact seems all the rage this month.  Asimov was talking about it in his F&SF column, and Heinlein may soon be talking about it in If.  Enever describes in lurid detail the damage the Earth would suffer from an astroid a "meer" kilometer in width — and why an ocean impact is far, far scarier than one on land.

The author presents the topic with gusto, but a little too much length.  It wavers between fascinating and meandering.  Had we gotten some of the juicy bits included in Asimov's article, that would have made for a stellar (pun intended) piece.

As is, three stars.

Operation Malacca, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

And it is here, at the two thirds mark, that we stumble.

Last we heard from Joe Poyer, he was offering up the turgid technical thriller, Mission "Red Clash".  This time, the premise is a little better: Indonesia has planted a 5 megaton bomb borrowed from the Red Chinese in the Straits of Malacca.  If detonated, it will wipe out the British fleet and pave the way for a takeover of Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.  Only a washed out cetecean handler and his dolphin companion can save the day. 

Sounds like a high stakes episode of Flipper, doesn't it?

Well, unfortunately, the first ten pages are all a lot of talking, the dolphin-centric middle is utterly characterless, merely a series of events, and then the dolphin is out of the picture the last dull third of the story.

Unlike McCaffrey, my predictions for Joe's writing career are rather pessimistic.  But we'll see…

Two stars.

10:01 A.M., by Alexander Malec


by John Schoenherr

At 10:01 A.M., a couple of joyriding punks cause the hit and run murder of a little girl.  Within the space of an hour, they are swallowed by a floating "fetcher" car, hauled before a detective, thence to a judge, and capital sentence is rendered.

Malec writes as if he was taking a break from technical writing and could not shift gears into fiction writing. Compound that with a lurid presentation that betrays an almost pornographic obsession with the subject matter (both the technological details and the grinding of the gears of justice), and it makes for an unpleasant experience.

Two stars.

Prototaph, by Keith Laumer

And lastly, a vignette which is essentially one-page joke story told in three.  Who is the one man who is uninsurable?  The one whose death is guaranteed.

Except they never explain why his death is guaranteed.

Dumb.  One star.

Tallying the scores

And so Analog limps across the finish line with a rather dismal 2.6 rating.  Indeed, it is the second worst magazine of the month (although that's partly because most everything else was excellent). To wit:

Ah well.  At the very least, Campbell took some chances with this issue, which I appreciate.  And the first two thirds are good.  There was just a lot riding on the mag this month.  The perils of getting one's hopes up!

As for the statistics, I count 8.5% of this month's new stories as written by women, which is high for recent days.  If you took all of the four and five star stories from this month, you could easily fill three magazines, which is excellent.

Always focus on the positive, right?

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.

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[January 31, 1966] Milk of Magnesia (February 1966 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Hornet's Nest

Last month, I wrote a rather savage review of the January 1966 issue of Analog, one of the more egregious examples of Campbellian excess married with an aggrieving nadir of quality.  In short order, my mailbox was deluged with denouncing letters asserting that:

  • Campbell, as the genius who founded modern Science Fiction, could do no wrong
  • I clearly could never understand why people appreciated Analog

It is instructive that when I give an issue of Analog a favorable review, which happens reasonably often, my mailbox stays empty.  But disparage the mighty Campbell at your peril!  Such are the occupational hazards of the Reviewer.

Anyway, what goes down must come up, and this month's issue of Analog is actually pretty good.  Let's take a look at the final mag of the month, shall we?

The issue at hand


by Kelly Freas

The Searcher, by James H. Schmitz

Two guards at an interstellar space port watch with momentary horror as a purple cloud of radiation erupts from a star yacht and devours them in an instant.  The alien marauder has traveled light years, from the dense nebula known as The Pit, in search of a purloined navigational beacon.  Meanwhile, a local professor with an eye to make a buck, is preparing to fence said beacon, hoping to do so before two private agents hired by the University League thwart his plans.

Thus ensues first a cloak and dagger story followed by a crime thriller and topped off with a mad chase from alien horror.


by Kelly Freas

I was excited to see James H. Schmitz' name on the cover as he's written some of my favorite works.  He also has a preference for writing women protagonists, which is refreshing. I'm afraid my review of this piece must be somewhat alloyed.  The concept is great, the characters are interesting, and I enjoyed the piece.  But.

I think the biggest problem with The Searcher is its length.  Had this been a novel length story, Schmitz could have unfolded the mystery of the alien's existence and motivations more organically, rather than relying on straightforward exposition.  We get a lot of solid chunks of explanation interspersing the action.  And it's certainly not the case that Schmitz can't write action; he does so quite admirably, beginning with the very first scene. 

Had I received this manuscript, I'd have asked for an expanded rewrite — and been happy to publish it!

As is, it's a promising but uneven three star work.

The Switcheroo Revisited, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

A rather bumbling young Lieutenant in the KGB is dispatched to the United States to find a marvelous invention first depicted in the pages of a science fiction magazine (name unknown, but I think it starts with an A).  He's intercepted by the CIA, but rather than simply arrest him, instead they do their best to convince the agent that the fictional invention is real.  There's a cautionary sting at the end of the story.

Cute, but rather trivial for Reynolds.  I do enjoy how the author has woven a future history of the Superpowers, though, based on his extensive world travels.  The geopolitics and slang lend a tang of verisimilitude. Three stars.

Twin-Planet Probe, by Lee Correy

This is a fun piece that purports to report the results of the first Martian probe to the twin worlds of Earth and Luna, written so as to mirror the sparse and potentially misleading data obtained from Mariner 4.  The moral of the story is that we don't have enough data to make sweeping conclusions yet.

Four stars (and let's get some more data!)

An Ornament to His Profession, by Charles L. Harness

Patrick Conrad, once a chemist, later an attorney, and now a patent lawyer, is a haunted man.  Three years ago, he lost his chemist wife and their young daughter in a car accident.  This trauma has left him in something of a working daze, redoubling his vocational efforts in an effort to put the pain out of his mind.

His current problem: the patenting of a company chemical is threatened from several corners, most trivially by the impending poaching of Conrad's highly efficient secretary by another department, more seriously by a key team member's certainty that he has made a deal with the Devil to ensure success of the chemical's synthesis, and most critically by the revelation that the patent is based on a previously published college thesis.

Conrad must untangle all of these intertwined issues, all while wrestling with the pain of loss that seems also to be directly involved with the patent somehow.


by Kelly Freas

While Charles Harness is a name that may be unfamiliar to you, as it is a byline that has not appeared in more than a decade, Analog readers will certainly remember "Leonard Lockhard", a pseudonym for the combined talents of Harness and Theodore L. Thomas, who currently writes for F&SF.  I'm pretty sure Harness is a patent attorney in real life as his knowledge of the law seems prodigious.

In any event, Ornament is a beautiful story, lyrical and thoughtful — almost misplaced in this magazine, honestly.  I'm not quite sure I understood the ending, though I reread the piece to see if I had missed something; I may have simply missed a subtle reference.  In any event, it's my favorite story of the issue.

Four stars.

Minds Meet, by Paul Ash


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, we have the welcome return of Pauline Ashwell (a Campbell discovery from England who goes by both feminine and masculine bylines for some reason).  In this tale, a human and alien finally achieve true communication after seven years of frustratingly dissatisfying, if technically successful, discourse.  All it took was a little filthy intoxication.

A pleasant three stars.

Summing up

I'm sorry to disappoint those hoping to yell at me for "not understanding why people like Analog", but I liked this month's Analog.  Indeed, this issue virtually ties the (similarly returned to form) latest issue of Galaxy with a 3.4 rating, the best of the month.  Close behind are New Worlds (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), and Science Fantasy (3).

Only IF (2.9) and Amazing (2.1) finished below the mediocrity line, and IF has the new Heinlein serial to commend it.

We are back to late 50s levels of female engagement in the genre: 10.2% of the new fiction was by women.  There was also a full two magazines' worth of superior content this month, more than twice as much as in December.  It really was a pleasure to be a fan this first month of January 1966!

Let's see how February fares…

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.




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Serial

[December 31, 1965] Untermag (January 1966 Analog

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by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos next year.]

Ubermensch

There's no question that John W. Campbell's got an axe to grind.  Not too long ago, he wrote an editorial about how the bipedal humanoid form, the best, most efficient, most effective of body types, was the natural end result of evolution on an Earthlike planet.  In another screed, he opined that slavery warn't so bad, and that Black Americans did better ante-bellum than we think.

These aren't anomalies: from what Isaac Asimov and others have said (I've never met John personally), the editor of Analog has some very fixed views of the world, and they include a belief in a hierarchy of races, a natural superiority of some to others.

Because of this, the stories in his magazine tend to reflect this view, one way or another.  Either John adds these elements in post-production, or his authors know to include them as a way to guarantee a sale. Analog is a prestige publication, after all.

And lest you think that's John's quaint views are simply emblematic of the less-than-enlightened times we live in, I will simply point out that we review all science fiction mags at the Journey, and Analog definitely is the odd man out.

Anyway, this month's magazine is a particularly egregious example of the Campbellian Mystique.  Let's dig in, shall we?

Sein Kampf


by Kelly Freas

Second Seeded, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

In FitzPatrick's earlier story Half a Loaf, we were introduced to a revolutionary institute whose surgeons could transplant a healthy mind from a ruined body into the healthy body of a mental vegetable.  The story explored some of the ethical concerns involved and, while it didn't hit it out of the park, it was pretty interesting.

The sequel is dreadful.

A Marine Major, name of Adams, is killed along with his wife in action in Borneo.  Their infant son becomes brain dead from hypoxia, all hope of regaining cognitive functions lost.  Around the same time, the infant son of two concert pianists is in a car accident that kills his parents and leaves him a quadriplegic.  Thus, the stage is set for a human brain transplant; the new wrinkle is that the patient won't have memory of the event, will be raised by the extended Adams clan.

This would be fine, even interesting save for the endless screeds in favor of eugenics that come out of the mouths of the protagonist.  The basic argument is that there aren't enough "Great Men" in the world as it is (women, explicitly, don't count) so saving as many as possible through this surgical technique is of utmost importance.  Beyond that, it's vital that the transplanted infant brain be an Adams because the Adams family is amazing and has been so since the time of the Revolution.  As an "Adams," the pianist boy will not only be an exemplary person because his parents were prodigies, but his gonads will house Adams sperm, which will ensure the Adams genes continue.  The espouser of this view gets a bit vague and contradictory when asked if it's the actual genetics or simply the continuity of family that ensures the Adamses produce a Great Man every generation, but it's clear he tends toward the former (and this is borne out by events in the story). 

Two stars rather than one, because it's not badly written.  But yech.

Now, since I had to pay to read FitzPatrick and Campbell's offensive rant, you can get mine for free.  In my experience, all human beings are of roughly equal potential.  Sure, there are smart ones and stupid ones — abilities distribute in bell curves — but whether a person will be smart or stupid does not correlate to genetics.  This means that everyone, given resources and opportunity, can develop to the fullest of their physical capabilities.  They can be as smart, strong, and talented as is possible for them. 

There are almost three billion people on this planet.  Some of them are stupid.  Most of them are average.  Some of them are brilliant.  If we want more "Great Men", there are much better ways of growing them than cherry picking a few children with presidential surnames. 

One is to raise the standard of living for everyone so that all children have the ability to develop to their full potential.  LBJ has the right idea with his Great Society; I expect the next generation will see a lot more geniuses (and happiness) in Appalachia. 

Another is to broaden the pool from which "Great Men" are drawn.  Here's a crazy thought: what if women weren't excluded from the pool?  Wouldn't that, in and of itself, double the number of Great "Men"?  And indeed, that's just what's started to happen already.  I have written about the women scientists and engineers involved in space exploration.  Their work has been critical to the success of our space-related endeavors, and there is no guarantee that their contributions would have (or could have) been made by anyone else, at least at that juncture in history.

So I disagree with the the theme of Second Seeded.  Like all bad philosophies, it collapses in the face of empirical evidence to the contrary.  And on a related note, I disagree that future Presidents of the United States will all have to have socially acceptable WASP names like Adams, Lincoln, and Jackson (as one of the characters opines in the story).  Does anyone remember the fellow with the funny name of "Eisenhower"?  Or the Irish Catholic name of "Kennedy"?

I fully believe that we'll have a President in my lifetime with the "exotic" name of Takahashi, Singh, or Okoye.  Perhaps her first name will be Mildred.

Untropy, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Shaggy dog tale about a trading vessel that gets lost in hyperspace in a zone where the laws of probability leave nothing to chance.  The way they get back is obvious, and the story is rather trivial, but it's not bad reading.

Three stars.

A Bit Player, by Lyle R. Hamilton

All about the evolution of telemetry and its application to missiles and space travel.  Long, engaging, but way too high level for me (and I majored in astrophysics!) it will probably go over your head as well.

Three stars.

Kelvin Throop Rudes Again!, by E. Silverman

My outspoken nephew, David, has a habit of dashing out discourteous memos when he's peeved.  He calls them "nastygrams".  In Throop, new author Silverman offers up a collection of memos (it's not really an epistolary story as there's no story) of a middle manager kvetching at subordinates and vendors.

Not science fiction.  Not good.  One star.

Beehive (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

And, at last, the conclusion of Beehive, which began last issue.  Genetics takes the fore again when we learn that the enemy "Dawnworlders" have divided themselves into rigid castes, and in so doing, have thus been able to progress to tremendous technological heights.  Of course, if non-caste human beings had been given millions of years to accomplish the same feats, I'm sure we could have…

Anyway, the second half of the story is just as glib and silly as the first, with lots of speeches and exposition.  I did appreciate that there was some self awareness that Section G of the United Planets is as much a dictatorship as Phrygia, home of Baron Max, the would-be galactic Mussolini.  This was alloyed by the constant reinforcement that the protagonist's sidekick is an Indian.  He's referred to as "the Indian" and he uses the words "squaw," "scalp," and "firewater," whenever he can.

This isn't the first time Mack Reynolds has had trouble with this particular ethnicity.

Anyway, there are some interesting Laumeresque bits, but for the most part, this is a Reynolds that can be skipped.

Two stars.

Calculating the damage

Feeding the pages of the January 1966 Analog into the Star-o-meter (and setting the machine to "destroy copy after processing") I get a result of 2.3 stars.  Depressingly, I'm sure this will be one of the more popular issues of the magazine this year.

How did the other mags fare this month?  Well, Worlds of Tomorrow and New Worlds both scored 3.3 stars.  The less daring Science Fantasy got 2.8 as did IF, even though the latter was buouyed by the new Heinlein serial.  Fantasy & Science Fiction turned in a disappointing 2.5 star performance, and the mostly reprints Fantastic barely got 2.4.

They were still all better than Analog.

Speaking of shallow selection pools, women continue to be barely represented, producing two of 36 fiction pieces for a whopping 5.5% share.  Better than the 0% of last month, I suppose.  All told, the truly good stories this month would struggle to fill the pages of IF, much less a bigger mag like Galaxy. 

Well, tomorrow is a new year.  Perhaps Janus will favor us with auspicious auguries, and our fortunes will turn around.  And hey…Campbell won't live forever.

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