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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 16, 1966] Getting There Is Half The Fun (March 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Modes of Transportation


I hope that the Cunard Line will forgive me for stealing their famous slogan. By the way, isn't this a lovely advertisement?

In this modern world, there are all kinds of ways of getting around. There are luxury liners, as shown above. There are airplanes, complete with friendly attendants to cater to your every whim.


This ad is about ten years old. It must have come from a magazine in a doctor's waiting room.

There are, of course, automobiles, that you can either own or rent when you need them.


I do not, however, recommend jumping directly from a plane to a car.

In science fiction, we have lots of futuristic devices to send us from one place to another, from moving sidewalks to starships. The latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow features people transported through space and time in various ways. The lead novella includes a method of getting from Point A to Point B that I haven't seen before, and that I don't think I would enjoy.

Dying To Be Somewhere Else


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

The Suicide Express, by Philip Jose Farmer


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

We return to the planet known as Riverworld, where everyone who has ever lived on Earth is reincarnated into a young and healthy body. Our hero is, once more, the Nineteenth Century adventurer Richard Francis Burton. It turns out that anyone who dies on Riverworld is reincarnated again, but in a different location on the giant planet.

Burton discovers that his old nemesis, the infamous Nazi leader Hermann Goering, has been reincarnated in the same place he now resides, after Burton killed him. We'll find out later that the two enemies come back to life in identical locations more than once. There is some kind of bond between them, it seems, although why remains a mystery.

The enormous river that gives this world its name runs from the north pole, all the way around the planet, then back to where it started. That doesn't make geographic sense, of course, so it's clear that some kind of super-advanced technology is involved. There are tales of a bold explorer who spotted a vast tower at the head of the river, beyond impassible mountains. Determined to unlock the secrets of Riverworld, Burton sets out to find the tower. Because sailing all the way to the north pole, if it is even possible, would take many decades, he uses another method of travel.

He kills himself. Seven hundred and seventy-seven times, to be exact. The odds are low that he'll be reincarnated near the north pole, but he's willing to take the chance.

Meanwhile, the so-called Ethicals who created Riverworld are hunting down Burton, apparently because he seems to be the only person who was conscious, in some kind of storage area, before being reincarnated. There's also a rogue Ethical, working against the others, who claims to be protecting Burton.

Along the way we meet John Collop, a Seventeenth Century poet. Like Burton and Goering, this is a real historical figure, if not quite as famous. In Farmer's tale, he's a saintly fellow, who is an evangelist for a new religion, the Church of the Second Chance. We also witness the transformation of the guilt-ridden, drug-addicted Goering into what possibly might be a better human being.


Burton meets the Ethicals.

The plot moves swiftly, and there's always something interesting going on. Farmer has latched on to a premise that allows him a lot of room to bring in folks from all sorts of places, from the prehistoric past to the near future. My only quibble is that he raises more questions than he answers. I assume there will be more stories in this series. They might clear things up.

Four stars.

The Kindly Invasion, by Christopher Anvil

Let's see; a story by Christopher Anvil. Do I even have to read it to find out that it's about clever humans outwitting technologically superior but foolish aliens?

In this variation on his favorite theme, the extraterrestrials come to Earth bearing gifts. Among other blessings, they offer a serum that prevents aging. They communicate with humans via telepathy.

Our main character smells something fishy. He assumes the telepathy is really brainwashing. He's the big boss of an arms company, and he decides to sell an excellent firearm to the public dirt cheap, so that lots of people will buy them. (Can you see where this is going?)

Sure enough, the aliens turn out to be bad guys, and the heavily armed folks who didn't fall for their propaganda are ready to take them on.

I was really, really hoping that the arms dealer's suspicions would turn out to be unjustified. Instead, there is nothing at all surprising about the plot. This yarn would have found a more appropriate home in the pages of Analog.

Two stars.

The Super-Sleuths of Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

In the previous issue, we had the first part of a look at crimefighters in SF. This section is exactly like the other. We get a long list of science fiction detective stories, most of which sound really lousy. At the end we get a quick look at modern examples, such as Asimov's robot novels.

My opinion has not changed. I admire the author's scholarship, but the resulting article is as dry as dust.

Two stars.

Like Any World of Gree, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Peter Lutjens.

A bunch of stories about a resourceful hero fighting the slaveholding minions of Gree have already appeared in If. I'm not sure why this one appeared in its sister magazine, but maybe editor Frederik Pohl ran out of room for it.

Anyway, in this adventure we're on Earth. The home world is already occupied by the villains, but the good guys are coming to the rescue. There's just one big problem. Once the followers of Gree are defeated in a space battle, they'll wipe out all life on the planet. Our hero has to sneak in, disguise himself as a human bounty hunter working for the bad guys, work with the local resistance underground, and, as usual, sneak his way into the enemy compound.


Take that, Gree-loving scum!

The series as a whole has been a little repetitious. This one has the novelty of being set on Earth, but otherwise it's the same old espionage and sabotage plot we've seen before.

Two stars.

Umpty, by Basil Wells

A couple of hundred years from now, most folks are unemployed. Some of them eke out a living with subsistence farming, other are outlaws. The protagonist, a fellow hoping to get a job, rescues a woman from a gang of hoodlums. She claims to be from the past, with her mind transported into a body of the future. After some adventures, they find out what's really going on.

There really isn't much to this story other than the twist ending, which I thought was kind of silly. I suppose the background is mildly interesting, but that's about it.

Two stars.

Comets Via the VJSEH, by Robert S. Richardson

The author speculates about the origin of comets having orbits associated with Jupiter. He dismisses the idea that they were captured by the gravity of the giant planet, because there are far too many of them still around, considering their relatively short lifetimes. Did they emerge from Jupiter? No, because they could not possibly escape the immense gravitational pull. Instead, he promotes the hypothesis that they were ejected from Jovian moons, due to volcanic activity.

It seems to me that the argument falls apart if you accept the possibility that there's a steady supply of comets coming from deep in space, maybe beyond Pluto. In that case, there would be plenty of them for Jupiter to grab. The article also has some illustrations that are not reproduced very well, so I haven't bothered to photocopy them here.

Two stars.

Choice of Weapons, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustration by Gray Morrow

A motley collection of folks gets transported from all kinds of places on Earth, and from different times, in this yarn. There's the hero, an American (I presume) hunter of the present; there's a naked, seemingly comatose little girl; a royal woman of ancient Egypt; a huge fellow of prehistoric times; a woman from a decadent future; an ancient Roman soldier; an Asian woman who might be from just about any time; and a soldier from a brutal future dictatorship.

These very confused people find themselves in a metal room. Food appears from time to time, but the amount keeps shrinking. Given this threat to their existence, not to mention conflict over the affections of the sexually provocative woman from the future, it's not a big surprise when violence breaks out. (I forgot to mention that the hunter has his gun, the Roman has his sword, and the man from the future has his laser. The prehistoric man just has his body, which is enough of a weapon.)

There's an explanation for their situation, of course. It also turns out that the little girl, who does not respond to anything at all in any way until the end of the story, is the key to saving the lives of those who survive the ordeal.

I have very mixed feelings about this tale. The frequent killing, along with implied rape, make it disturbing to read. On the other hand, the way in which the author portrays characters from many different times and cultures is convincing. In particular, the half-intelligible language spoken by the woman from the future is fascinating.

Three stars.

Did You Have A Nice Trip?

The good ship Worlds of Tomorrow, under the command of Captain Frederik Pohl, set sail with streamers flying. Her first port of call was well worth the price of boarding. The rest of the voyage, maybe not. As we disembark, we may wistfully wonder if the excursion was really a vital one.


If it's a Galactic Journey, I have to say Yes!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 4, 1966] Keep Watching the Skies (February 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

I’m sure many of the Journey’s readers will remember the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, which featured Marshal Dillon himself, James Arness, as an alien super-carrot. Based loosely on John Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, it’s a fine piece of Red Scare paranoia, though not quite as good as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Once the heroes have defeated the alien menace, reporter Ned “Scotty” Scott broadcasts a warning to the world to “Keep watching the skies!”

Great Balls of Fire

1965 has been a good year for watching the skies. From the return of American astronauts to space after a hiatus to the brilliant display of Comet Ikeya-Seki. The year wrapped up spectacularly in December. As my colleague Victoria Silverwolf reported, a brilliant fireball shot through the heavens over Ontario, Michigan and Ohio before crashing near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Despite rumors, no sign has been found of Russian satellites or little green men. Then on Christmas Eve, a meteor exploded over the village of Barwell, England. This time numerous pieces made their way to Earth. No one was injured, but there was some property damage. Pieces have been found, confirming the object was a stony meteorite of the sort known as a chondrite.


Meteorite hunters descend on Barwell.

Death from above and below

There’s plenty of menace from the skies in this month’s IF. Actually, the threat is mostly humans attacking other humans, but not always. Sometimes it’s humans attacking aliens.


A triphib attacks. The story isn’t as Burroughs-esque as you might think. Art by Pederson.

Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp

Six hundred years before the story begins, a colony ship from Earth reached the planet Durrent. The planet is low in metals and has a very dense atmosphere. Humans can live comfortably atop the numerous mesas, while the heavy air and vicious wildlife make the lower elevations dangerous. Mesa Mederlink is out to conquer the world, and Mesa Lowry is under siege, unable to get the guano they need for fertilizer.

Altern Raab Garan is under a cloud. The fleet led by his father several years ago was wiped out by Mederlink and there is suspicion of treason. Raab has proposed a lightning raid by a single airship out to the guano islands in the hopes of obtaining the fertilizer the mesa needs to continue holding out. He’s been given a chance, but the ship is old and poorly armed, the crew is largely civilian volunteers, one of his officers hates him and there may be a traitor on board.


This minor incident doesn’t cover even a full page, but it seems to have caught the imagination of both artists. Art by Morrow

This is actually a rather good story. MacApp has borrowed a lot from various submarine films and has done a good job of getting the tension of those films on the page. It’s nowhere near as pulpy as the art might make you think. My biggest complaint is that the author forgot about the extremely dense atmosphere and the climax mostly takes place at sea level. The story ends on a cliffhanger, so we can probably expect more. A solid three stars.

Build We Must, by Dannie Plachta

Inspired by the theory that the moons of Mars are actually space stations, the unnamed narrator became an astronaut. On the first mission to Mars, the crew is met by Martians and the narrator is chosen to make first contact.

Plachta’s sophomore effort is a joke story. In fact, it’s basically his first story retold with the shocker reframed as a punchline. At least it’s mercifully short. Plachta does seem to have some skill, but it’s time for him to put it to better use. Two stars.

The Kettle Black, by Steve Buchanan

Xenologist Stade is on his deathbed, waiting on a visit from Witten. As he waits, he reflects on the mission they were on together only a year earlier. Along with the third member of the team, Skinner – a cyborg whose only organic parts are his brain and spinal column – they discovered a planet with a civilization just short of space travel. Initially, things go well, and Stade makes excellent progress in establishing relations with the natives and learning their language. When he is invited to attend a ceremony, Skinner overrules him and goes in his place. The natives attempt to kill Skinner and the humans wage a three-man war to return to their ship.


Human-native relations take a turn for the worse. Art by Nodel

Buchanan is one of two first time authors in this issue. I’m not terribly impressed. The story plods, even during the action, and I had a very hard time keeping the characters straight. It is apparent from the ending that the author thinks he has made an important point about modern race relations, but I certainly can’t tell what it might be. Two stars.

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R. A. Lafferty

Ceran Swicegood is a Special Aspects Man. Unlike his fellows, he refuses to take on a manly name like Manbreaker Crag or George Blood. The expedition he’s on is investigating the large asteroid Proavitus. Ceran is interested in the native claim that they never die and is eager to meet some of the eldest of the race to find out how they came to be.

Lafferty is Lafferty, and you either like his stuff or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. This isn’t really one of his better pieces, lacking a lot of that quality of oddness which is his trademark. Even Homer nods, and mediocre Lafferty is still worth a read. Three stars.

Not by Sea, by Howard L. Morris

In an alternate timeline, Sir Hubert Wulf-Leigh is a decadent drunkard who works a few hours a day as a Confidential Clerk to the Board of Lord High Admirals. Through a rather brilliant bit of intelligence work, he determines that Naflon the Usurper, King Elective of Fraunce, is planning to invade England using hot air balloons. Not believed at first, when he’s proven right Hubert is put in charge of the defense of Plymness, where the Freunch do indeed attempt their landing.


I’m not even going to try to come up with a better caption. Art by Gaughan

Morris is the second newcomer this month. The story is light and largely comedic. Its greatest flaw is that the author goes far too often to the well of the English tendency to pronounce names oddly. Wulf-Leigh is pronounced Wilfly, Mountcourtenay is Munkertny and so on. The joke gets old fast and there’s a tendency to repeat it several times for the same character. It’s also a little long. That said, it does read easily. A low three stars.

The Peak Lords, by Miriam Allen deFord

A young man claiming to be the son of a Peak Lord who was kidnapped and left Below among the mutants is making his statement in court. From him, we learn how a few powerful individuals fled growing pollution by retreating to ever higher altitudes, eventually warring over the limited space and taking on retainers, while the rest of humanity was slowly mutated by the foul air and water. Eventually, we learn the truth of his kidnapping.

The best thing I can say for this story, is that deFord has perfectly captured the voice of an arrogant, entitled young man. Unfortunately, that makes for a very unpleasant narrator. On top of that, most of his statement is the worst sort of “As you know, Bob” rehashing the history of his people with no point other than to inform the reader. Worst of all, the story relies on a typographical trick at the end to achieve its impact. If only it were as simple as some screaming italics and an excess of exclamation points. Two stars.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (Part 3 of 5), by Robert A. Heinlein

In the previous installment, preparations for the Lunar revolution were proceeding apace. Companies created by computer intelligence Mike were financing recruitment and the construction of a secret orbital launcher for throwing rocks at Earth if necessary. As we left our heroes. Mannie dropped in to visit a friend who works as a judge. An event which would have a great effect on the course of the revolution.

A group of youngsters have dragged in a tourist who got a little too friendly with the girl at the core of their group. They want to stuff him out an airlock, but feel the need to go through proper procedures first. Since the judge is off drinking his lunch, Mannie agrees to hear the case. He succeeds in resolving the situation peacefully, teaching a lesson to both the tourist and the stilyagi who dragged him to court. Said tourist proves to be one Stuart Rene LaJoie, Poet – Traveler – Soldier of Fortune, a wealthy Earthman who will become the revolution’s chief lobbyist and advocate back home.

Stu gives Mannie a chance to expound on the role of women in Lunar society, the economics of the Moon and much more. At long last, we finally find out the meaning of TAANSTAFL, seen on the cover of the issue with the first installment: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. There is always a hidden cost to something claimed to be free.

Before the revolutionaries are really ready, the balloon goes up. A group of Peace Guards rape and kill a young woman, and the Loonies explode. Mannie, Mike and the Prof are able to direct the flood of rage, and Lunar Authority goes down easily. The hard part is yet to come when Earth responds. They attempt to keep the lid on, with Mike faking normal communications Earthside, but a group of Earth scientists manage to get a message back home. Meanwhile, Prof gets a sort of ad hoc congress to issue a declaration of independence, largely cribbed from the American Declaration, on July 4th, 2076. Finally, Mannie and Prof are preparing to be smuggled down to Earth in a grain shipment, and the night before they leave Wyoh is brought into Mannie’s family.


This won’t actually happen until next time, but the other illustrations aren’t very good. Art by Morrow

Once again, Heinlein take what should be a dry recitation of people sitting around talking about politics and sociology and grabs readers’ attention and keeps them turning the page. It’s a remarkable skill and one he’s shown too little of in recent works. The events of the revolution are exciting, too, but we see them at a bit of remove. Our protagonists are too important to be involved in the fighting, though Mannie does see some of it from the sidelines. The only real complaint for me is that Wyoh largely moves into the background. Four stars.

The Warriors, by Larry Niven

In deep space, a kzinti warship has discovered a strange vessel. Alien Technologies can detect no weapons, and Telepath reports the beings aboard are peaceful. Captain is delighted, sensing the opportunity to bring in a new slave world and earn himself a name. He orders the use of inductors to raise temperatures on the alien ship to kill everyone aboard, so that the kzinti can learn as much as possible about their prey.

Aboard the Angel’s Pencil, the human crew are puzzled by their inability to communicate with the alien ship. They assume it must be a question of technology. There hasn’t been a war among humans in over three centuries, and there hasn’t been a murder in well over a century and a half. In fact, most people never even learn about war and the less pleasant aspects of history. Hostility is the furthest thing from the crew’s minds.

Another solid outing by Niven. His kzinti are a pretty good answer to John Campbell’s challenge to write aliens who think as well as a man, but not like a man. These catlike people are predators through and through, and Niven does a good job of telling us things about their society without excess exposition or characters talking about things they all know. He’s a little less successful at that when telling us about the peaceful human society. It’s a good story that could, perhaps, have used a final bit of polish to really make it shine. A solid three stars.

Summing Up

There we have it. Another base of not very good stuff with a smattering of decent, if nothing special, stories. Only the Heinlein really stands out. That alone might be worth your 50¢. I recently heard a rumor that Fred Pohl uses IF for stories from name authors they can’t sell elsewhere in the hope they’ll also sell him their good stuff. I’m not sure that’s the way to run a successful magazine.


Hope springs eternal.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 10, 1965] Strangers in Strange Lands (December 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time for the Stars

I was having a lovely conversation with fellow traveler Kris about the mixed reviews for the British anthology show, Out of the Unknown.  Some critics are saying the stories aired would have been better served in a conventional setting rather than on Mars or wherever.

Indeed, this has been a common complaint for decades, that science fiction should be uniquely SF with stories that depend on some kind of scientific difference/unique setting, even if many of the trappings are familiar.

Galaxy is a magazine that has led this charge since its inception in 1950 and it therefore comes as no surprise that this month's issue features a myriad of settings that are in no way conventional, backdrops for stories that could take place in no genre but science fiction.

Citizens of the Galaxy


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Mercurymen, by C. C. MacApp

On the face of things, Mercury would seem a most inhospitable planet for colonization.  Until this year, the general conception of things was that the innermost planet of our solar system was tidally locked, presenting just one baked hemisphere eternally toward the sun, while the other remained in perpetual frigid night.


by Gray Morrow

C. C. MacApp offers up a most imaginative tale set on this half-cooked world.  The planet, or at least the twilight zone between the hot and cold sides, is overrun with the vines of a plant, the interiors of which are large enough and contain sufficient air and water to support human inhabitants.  How they plant came about or how the settlers came to dwell in them is a mystery, but hundreds of years later, the colonists have reverted to near savagery.  The ecosystem of the vines provides most of their needs: latex for vacuum suits, luminescent mold for light, oxygen-producing fungus for air.  But for precious metals and for new soil for crops, the denizens must venture into the airless waste outside.

Similarly, population pressure periodically forces tribes to split, members of a certain age tasked to form a new settlement further along the vine. The Mercurymen is the tale of Lem, eldest son of a recently expired chief, who leads a party out over the bleak landscape of Mercury in search of a new hope.  Along the way, he must deal with a deadly environment, hostile tribes, and treachery within the group.

Because so many of the concepts are alien, even as the characters are human, The Mercurymen can occasionally be a detailed, hard read.  Nevertheless, I appreciated MacApp's world building quite a lot, and I was carried along with Lem on his engaging, difficult adventure.  The novella would merit expansion into full length novel though the following discovery may require a complete change in setting to make it work:

From Nature, Volume 208, Issue 5008, pp. 375 (October 1965):

Rotation Period of the Planet Mercury, by McGovern, W. E.

The recent radar measurements of Mercury indicate that the period of rotation of the planet is 59 +/- 5 days1. This result is in complete disagreement with the previously quoted value of 88 days based on the visual observations of the markings on Mercury2-6. In this communication we show that the same visual observations can not only be reconciled with the radar-determined rotation period of Mercury but, in addition, can be used to derive an improved value for the period of rotation of the planet, namely, 58.4 +/- 0.4 days.

Yes, Mercury isn't tidally locked at all, and the stories that made use of this presumption are now all obsolete.  Editor Pohl may even have known this even when he put this issue to bed, as the news first broke in June.

Still, it's a good story, and again, you can squint your eyes and pretend it takes place on a different one-face world entirely.

Three stars.

Galactic Consumer Reports No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines, by John Brunner

The latest Galaxy non-fact article is written in the style of the venerable magazine Consumer Reports, offering evaluation of six cut-rate personal time machines. 

The aforementioned Kris noted that there seem to be two John Brunners: one who writes Hugo-worthy material like The Whole Man and Listen! The Stars… and another who churns out hackwork.  I'd say this piece is representative of a third Brunner, neither outstanding nor unworthy.  It's a cute piece, although I would have appreciated a little more time travel in it.

Three stars.

Laugh Along With Franz, by Norman Kagan


by John Giunta

In a disaffected future, "None of the Above" (the so-called "Kafka" vote) threatens to become the electoral candidate of choice.

More pastiche of outlandish societal explorations than tale, I found myself falling asleep every few pages.  I'm afraid Norm Kagan continues not to do it for me.

One star.

For Your Information: The Healthfull Aromatick Herbe, by Willy Ley

A rather defensive Willy Ley discusses the history of tobacco in his latest science article.  It's actually pretty interesting, though I am no closer to taking up the still-ubiquitous pasttime than I was before.

Four stars.

The Warriors of Light, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

In the previously published story, Blue Fire, Silverberg introduced us to an Earth of the late 21st Century, one that worships the Vorster cult.  Vorster and his disciples cloak the scientific pursuit of immortality with a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo, complete with a rosary of the wavelengths of light.

Warriors of Light is not a sequel to Blue Fire, per se.  Instead, it is a story from a completely different perspective, that of an initiate of Vorsterianism who is recruited by a heretical group to steal some of the cult's deepest serets.

Reportedly, Silverbob produces 50,000 words of salable material per week, enough to make it seem like SF is his full time career even though it's just a fraction of his overall output.  Light is not the brilliant piece that its predecessor was, but the Cobalt-90 worshipping future Earth remains an intriguing setting, and I look forward to the next story that takes place therein.

Three stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison

In Ellison's latest tale, The Master Timekeeper, a.k.a. the Ticktockman, is the arbiter of justice for a chronologically regulated humanity.  Everything runs to schedule; tardiness is punishable by the lost of years from one's lifespan.  There is no room for deviation, nonconformity.

Yet one clownish fellow, known as The Harlequin, cannot be restrained.  His antics distract, his capers disrupt, his personality compells.  This dangerous threat must be stopped.  But in erasing the heretic, can even the master inquisitor escape just a little of the nonconformist contagion?

This is the most symbolic of Ellison's work to date, and with a deliberate, almost juvenile storytelling aspect that veers toward the Vonnegutian.  I appreciate what Harlan is doing here, but there's a lack of subtlety, a ham-handedness that makes the piece less effective than much of his other work.

Oh, my telephone is ringing.  One moment. 

Ah.  Harlan says I'm an ignorant so-and-so and if I withdrew my head from my seat, I might be able to better comprehend his work.  (Note: this is not an exact transliteration).

Anyway, three stars.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl


by Wallace Wood

Last up is the continuation of last month's serial by editor Pohl, who is indulging himself in his first love, writing.  Forrester, who died in the late 1960s only to be ressurrected in the 25th Century when medical technology was up to the task, has run out of dough and has become employed by the one boss who will have him, an alien from Sirius, member of a race with whom Earth is currently in a Cold War.

In this installment, we learn about how this state of not-quite conflict came to be, as well as about the Forgotten Men, the penniless humans who make a living outside of normal society.  We also learn how difficult it is to survive when one cannot pay the bill on one's "joymaker," the ubiquitous hand-held combination telephone, personal computer, and electronic valet. 

Let us hope that we never get so reliant on this kind of technology that we find ourselves similarly helpless without them!

Pussyfoot continues to be entertaining and imaginative, far more effective in execution of its subject than similarly themed Kagan piece, though less satirical in its second installment than its first.

Four stars.

Beyond This Horizon

My Heinlein motif for the article section titles may be a little misplaced given that R.A.H. doesn't appear in the pages of Galaxy this month. Call it artistic license since his most recent novels are coming out (or have come out) in sister mags Worlds of Tomorrow and IF.

Anyway, at the very least, the stories in the December 1965 Galaxy hold to the Heinlein tradition of fundamentally incorporating unique settings. No transplanted Westerns or soap operas here!

For the most part, it works, resulting in a solid 3-star issue. Why don't you pick up a copy, Space Cadet, and see if you agree!




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Magazine, Serial

[August 2, 1965] Expansion and Contraction (September 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

It seems like the world gets a little smaller every day. Jet planes are gradually replacing larger propeller-driven planes in the passenger market, reducing the time it takes to get from one place to another. As they become more ubiquitous even the middle class may be able to travel like the jet set. Communications satellites are making it possible for news to spread faster, and we can even see some events on television as they happen on the other side of the world.

On the other hand, the world seems to be getting bigger, too. We hear constantly about remote places where this conflict or that independence is taking place. The wealth of human knowledge is growing so fast, it’s almost impossible to keep up. Growing, shrinking, let’s look at some things that have done one or the other lately.

A long shortcut

France and Italy are now closer. Not diplomatically, and it’s not conclusive proof of continental drift, but the time to travel between them has shrunk thanks to the opening of a tunnel underneath Mont Blanc. The two countries agreed on building the tunnel in 1949, but excavation didn’t begin until a full decade later, with a company from each country drilling from their own side. The excavations met on August 4th, 1962, with an axis variation of a mere 5 inches. The tunnel was inaugurated at a ceremony on July 16th, attended by French President Charles de Gaulle and Italian President Giuseppe Saragat, and opened to traffic three days later.

At 8,140 feet below the surface, the two-lane highway tunnel is the deepest operational tunnel in the world, and at 7.2 miles, it is also the longest highway tunnel, some three times longer than the previous record holder, the Honshu-Kyushu tunnel in Japan. The travel distance from France to Turin is now 30 miles shorter, and the distance to Milan is 60 miles shorter.


Presidents de Gaulle and Saragat in front of the Mont Blanc tunnel connecting Chamonix to Courmayeur during the official inauguration

Flash!

Kodak made a big splash when they introduced the Instamatic camera two years ago. Like the venerable Brownie, the Instamatic makes it easy for amateurs to take snapshots. There’s even a model with a built-in flashgun that takes so-called peanut bulbs. The problem with those is that bulbs have to be removed before you can take another shot with the flash, and they get very, very hot. Kodak, working together with Sylvania Electronics, has come up with a solution: the flashcube.

As the name suggests, it’s a cube with a mount that connects to the camera on the bottom, and four flashbulbs around the sides. Trigger the shutter, the flash goes off, the cube rotates 90° and it’s ready for another picture immediately. Plus, by the time you’ve taken the fourth picture, parts of the cube should be cool enough to touch, so you can replace it right away. This should mean lots more candid snaps and a lot less dragging everybody outside to squint into the sun at family gatherings. A big innovation in a very small package.


$100 is a little pricey, but there are less expensive models, and we are talking about a lifetime of memories

An electrifying performance

The folk world had their horizons expanded last week, perhaps to their dismay. Despite his bad boy antics off stage last year, Bob Dylan was the most eagerly anticipated act at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, but his performance was met with a chorus of boos. It seems young Mr. Dylan felt that Alan Lomax was rather condescending when introducing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at a workshop on Saturday the 24th and decided he would play electric to prove to the organizers they couldn’t keep it out. He hastily assembled a band from a couple of members of the Butterfield Band and some others and spent Sunday afternoon rehearsing. The crowd was shocked at the sight of Dylan accompanied by an electric band, and the short set of “Maggie’s Farm”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Phantom Engineer” was met with both boos and cheers. MC Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary) dragged Dylan out for a quick acoustic encore of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. The crowd exploded and begged for another encore.

So why the booing? Ask three different people and you’ll get four different answers. Some say it was folkies mortally offended at the mere presence of electric instruments or a rock sound, others that fans were upset at the shortness of the set and the fact that the band used most of their allotted 15 minutes for tuning and switching instruments and/or poor sound quality. Some will tell you it was definitely the fans booing, others blame the press or even the organizers. We may never know the truth of the matter, but there’s no question that Bob Dylan has made another big impact on music.

Dylan with electric guitar and harmonica. Completely different from his usual acoustic guitar and harmonica. (Band not shown)

The Mysterious Doctor X

If you drop by your local library and take a look at the Sunday New York Times for July 25th (assuming they carry it and it has already come in) and flip to the list of best sellers, you’ll see a new title, Intern by Doctor X. It is, by all reports, a rather harrowing account of a young doctor’s period of interning at a hospital a few years ago, taken from his daily journal. The names, as Jack Webb would say, have been changed to protect the innocent, and the doctor has chosen a pseudonym to further protect confidentiality. “What has that got to do with science fiction,” you ask. Well, a little bird told me that Doctor X is in fact a reasonably well-known science fiction writer. Since he has good reasons for concealing his identity, I won’t give it away, but I will say that I once thought he was a pseudonym for Andre Norton and that his last name closely resembles a different medical profession mostly practiced by women.

Another hint: It’s not Murray Leinster or James White

It’s bigger, but is it better?

As promised last month, IF is now 32 pages longer, making it the same size as its bi-monthly sister publication Worlds of Tomorrow. Fred Pohl claimed that’s enough for two more novelettes, four or five short stories, a complete short novel, or an extra serial installment. How well did the editorial team make use of that extra room this month? Let’s take a look.


A deadly duel begins. Art by McKenna

Under Two Moons, by Frederik Pohl

We open in medias res in a seedy corner of Marsport. Secret agent Johan Gull is tied to a pillar in a room full of gunpowder as a beautiful woman sticks a lit matchcord in his mouth and then declares her love for him. After escaping, he goes for a shave and retrieves a jacket not his own, but which holds a key that lets him access headquarters behind the barber shop. A seemingly reasonable bit of spycraft, until he has to go for a shave every time he needs to go to a different department. He meets with .5, the head of the agency, who speaks only through his personal secretary. His new assignment is to go to Syrtis Major and investigate a couple of prospectors who claim to have been granted powers by beings from a flying saucer. Are the Black Hats behind it, or something more?

Aboard the submarine taking him to his destination, he once again meets the mysterious woman. She helps him escape from the submarine when it is sabotaged, and together they struggle through the Martian desert. They’re saved by the appearance of Tars Tarkas riding a thoat. It seems they’ve stumbled into Barsoomland, and Tars is a robot. Eventually, they make their way to Heliopolis. Further spy shenanigans take place, culminating in a big showdown in a casino.


I love you Meestah Gull. I expect you to die. Art by Wallace Wood

It’s quite the zany – at times bordering on insane – send-up of James Bond, more so the movies than the books. Gull is a drunk, a womanizer, and unbelievably stupid. Only a few hours pass between the first scene and the woman’s appearance on the submarine, yet he has no idea who she is, and she has to remind him several times throughout the story.

While it isn’t bad, the humor really isn’t to my taste. There’s a sort of overly arch cleverness to it that grates. Worse, the first thing we get with 32 extra pages is a 32 page story by the editor. Admittedly, Fred has a problem in that the best market for the kind of thing he writes is the trio of magazines he oversees, and I’m sure there’s a process for deciding whether or not to buy one of the boss’s stories, but it’s not a good look. It might have been better to wait a couple of months before running this one. The flying saucer aspects of the story probably also prompted the longish editorial. Three stars, at the low end for me, maybe higher for you.

Moon Duel, by Fritz Leiber

On the rim of Gioja crater, the unnamed narrator and his partner Pete are setting up a miniradar when Pete is killed by a sniper on the other side of the crater. The killer is a “crusoe”, one the many aliens marooned on Earth’s moon, all of whom fight and kill each other and the growing number of humans for the scarce resources that allow them to survive. The narrator manages to get off a few quick shots and a mayday signal. What follows is a deadly game of cat and mouse for the hours it will take for help to arrive. But at one point the antagonists begin an attempt at communication.

This is a very atypical story for Fritz Leiber. Even though I tend to think of him primarily as a writer of fantasy and horror, he’s no stranger to science fiction. “A Pail of Air” is one of my favorite stories. But the science comes on very strongly here, often shouldering aside character, which is Leiber’s real strength. It’s also shoehorned in at times, such as the clumsy footnote about the muzzle velocity of the narrator’s weapon. The climax also shares a factor with the rather poor Men of Good Will by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis, although Leiber is far more scientifically rigorous. Still, I’m not sure Leiber can write a bad sentence, and there is some genuine tension. To be honest, I probably would have liked this more if someone else’s name had been on it and I’d come in with a different set of expectations. Three stars.

The Planet Player, by E. Clayton McCarty

Archaeologist Charles Maxwell has joined the expedition to planet S-60 to investigate signs of a lost civilization. He gets off to a poor start with Litzanov, the expedition’s director. The director is a prickly authoritarian, who as it turns out is completely tone deaf and greatly annoyed by “sound in a measured tempo”. Maxwell, on the other hand, had dreams of being a concert pianist, has brought his guitar along, and reacts badly to being pushed around. Early in the journey, a stowaway is discovered, a fifteen-year-old deaf-mute known to the crew as Binky, the son of an early space scout. Bothered by the way the crew handles the boy, Maxwell takes him under his wing.

When they arrive at the planet, Litzanov proves to be a glory-hound. All photographic and video records are carefully rehearsed and staged to put him front and center, depicted as a wise man of science. The team also discovers massive structures made of a crystalline material which resonates to slight touches, though not to hard blows. At the heart of the alien complex, they find a theater with the remains of the dead in every seat. Spot checks all around the world find evidence that every single inhabitant of the planet died at the same instant, utterly without warning. The team probes the mystery, and as we are warned at the beginning, not everyone will survive.

Talk about a dead audience. Art by David A. Kyle

What a beautiful story. It’s not without its flaws; the reader figures out what destroyed this civilization and what is going to happen to the expedition fairly quickly, and the rather quick and easy decoding of the written language is highly improbable. But that all gets washed away by the ending, especially the final paragraph. This is McCarty’s second story. His first, Small One, was overly long and lacked subtlety, though Gideon rather liked it. This one however is excellent. A solid four stars.

M’Lord Is the Shepherd, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

From Moonbase One, M’Lord oversees the development of the people of Alterra. Although they are 50,000 to 100,000 years from being ready to be contacted by the Galactics, M'Lord has received orders to get them to that stage within 200. The Korm’aans are predicted to sweep through that spiral arm of the galaxy and the Galactics need an ally. That sort of forced stimulation usually destroys those subjected to it, but while a weak ally is preferable, a planet that can be used without interference from a native race is acceptable.

M’Lord decides that electric current is the ideal way to carry out his orders. First, he introduces the battery. After 75 years have passed, he sends his chief teslar down to the planet to get them to use 60 cycle alternating current. The results are astonishing. After only a few decades, the Alterrans are reclassified from “Sheep” to “Predator”. In fact, they represent a greater threat than Korm’aan. The solution is to fill the atmosphere with ultra-high frequency, ultra-short wave broadcasts. This attempt fails and he is ordered to apply hypnotic stupidifiers. This too fails, and the Alterrans are predicted to take over the galaxy within 500 years. The Galactics and Korm’aans have made common cause, and M’Lord must now act as ambassador and plead for no retribution.

Great Ghu, the Richmonds have escaped from Analog! The whole thing is ridiculously obvious, with the possible exception of the teslar. Unless you’ve read up on the early days of electricity, remember some of the articles Hugo Gernsback wrote back in the 1910s and 1920s, or have some reason to measure magnetic flux, you’ve likely not heard of Nikola Tesla. In any case, the question is why Campbell didn’t want this one. I mean, it has humans as the biggest, meanest, fiercest thing the galaxy has ever seen. Maybe he was put off by the scientific advancement of the last century or so coming from aliens rather than the natural superiority of northwestern Europeans. I should also note that it was only during the writing of this review that I realized the M’Lord is not a contraction such as one would use to address an English judge, but rather an alien name with obligatory apostrophe. A very low 2 stars.

Giant Killer, by Keith Laumer

On the planet Rockamorra, the CDT mission under Ambassador Splitwhistle is about to become the first formally credentialed embassy on the planet – a veritable coup over the Groaci – when Retief arrives late and tries to persuade the ambassador not to go through with it. He fails, but Splitwhistle really should have listened. It seems he has committed himself and his people (except Retief, who refused to go through the ceremony) to slaying a dragon. After the ambassador gets everybody thrown in jail by refusing to carry out his duly appointed task, it’s up to Retief, with a slight assist from Ben Magnan, to save the day.


The ambassador is supposed to kill it with a sword. Retief has a different plan. Art by Gaughan

I said last month that Retief’s shtick is getting stale. All the usual beats are here: the mission gets in trouble because no one listens to Retief, Retief enlists the aid of a slick talking local, Ben Magnan blunders about and accidentally helps, Retief saves the day. The only thing missing is a pulchritudinous female to offer her affections as a reward. Laumer seems to just be going through the motions in order to turn out one of these every month. I suppose it’s an easy, guaranteed sale. We’re promised the start of a Retief novel next month. We’ll see if the extra room for development of plot and character is a good thing or not. A low three stars, but probably a firm three if you’re new to the series.

Alien Artifact, by Dannie Plachta

A billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto, the patrol ship Solar Sea picks up a large object on radar. It proves to be a giant ship, the alien artifact of the title. The crew explores and makes a shocking discovery.

Dannie Plachta is this month’s new writer. This short tale is afflicted with the desire for a Twilight Zone shock ending. While not a poor representative of the form, it’s not all that shocking either. And even at 2 and a half pages, the story is a bit long for what’s in it. On the other hand, it’s a decent freshman effort. I vacillated between two and three stars. The writing isn’t bad, and I wouldn’t immediately roll my eyes on seeing Plachta’s name again in the table of contents. Plus, it’s short. So, three stars, I guess.

Gree’s Damned Ones, by C. C. MacApp

Steve Duke has been infiltrated into a Gree punishment detail. The others aboard the transport have sinned against Gree, but are being given a chance to redeem themselves. Steve is here to find out why Gree and its slaves are showing great interest in a planet near the center of the galaxy.

Placed in charge of a large unit, Steve is ordered to make his way to an enormous cliff in some distant mountains and find a way to report back. The first night out, he finally activates the device that will give him his orders from the Birds of Effogus. Unfortunately, he left the device containing the means to let the Birds know exactly where he is so they can null in back in camp. He’ll just have to complete his mission and get back.

After a long and dangerous journey, Steve’s group meets up with another, under the leadership of Fazool, the B’Lant Steve befriended and betrayed in the first Gree story. Fortunately, Fazool was brain-burned and doesn’t recognize Steve, though in moments of distraction he does call him Jen. Ultimately, the two of them are the only ones to penetrate to the final mystery of the planet.


Steve and one of the B’Lants under his command encounter some dangerous plant life. Art by Giunta

I’m getting tired of these Gree stories. After a couple of dismal outings, the last couple have been better, but it’s time for MacApp to wrap this saga up. This one offers some interesting mysteries, and most of it is taken up by a sort of Arthur C. Clarke travelogue melded with a pulp jungle adventure. The end is rather perfunctory and raises as many questions as it answers, while seeming to move the war against Gree at least to the end of the mid-game. Still, it’s readable for the most part. A low three stars.

Skylark DuQuesne (Part 4 of 5), by E. E. Smith

The revolution on Ray-See-Nee in the Chloran galaxy is a success, but the locals whom Dick Seaton has put in power are worried about their first report back to the Chloran headquarters. The daily report shouldn’t be a problem, but the change in government will be closely scrutinized, and the reporter will likely die or have his mind shattered and will certainly give the game away. Fortunately, Seaton once went frontal lobe to frontal lobe against the Supreme Great One of the Chlorans and won. (Ignore the fact that that was halfway across the universe. Chlorans are Chlorans everywhere.) So Seaton makes the call and successfully dupes the bad guys. That taken care of, the Skylarkers head off to more familiar regions to repair the Valeron and come up with a way to improve coordination and reaction times on a planet-sized vessel.

Cut to the Jelmi. After some friendly political maneuvering, Mergon is now in charge. He picks out an uninhabited Tellus-type planet, and the Jelmi set about created an armed and well-defended base. Contact is made with the Llurdi, and after the Jelmi demand independence, the Llurdi throw everything they have at their former slaves. Holding out by the skin of their teeth, the Jelmi then contact the Llurdi, give them the teleporter, and restate their desire to live in peaceful independence. Being supremely logical, the Llurdi agree.

Meanwhile, repairs to the Valeron are complete, but Seaton is extremely fidgety. He only calms down once they start heading back to their new friends in the Chloran galaxy. It seems the woman who aided him in the revolution and her mother are witches, and they put a spell on him to summon him back. The new government is trying to weed out corruption, but are facing a lot of resistance from corrupt elements that are left over and new corrupt elements who want a piece of the graft. There’s a big shoot-out and the problem is resolved.

The Fenachrone are withering in Llurdi captivity. On his deathbed, their leader sends out a mental distress signal and makes contact with DuQuesne. The latter offers to help them and teleports their leader and a couple of others to his ship. He then heads for the Llurdi galaxy, as are the Skylarkers, who have figured out how DuQuesne tricked them and where the Jelmi must have come from. The leader of the Llurdi detects the Valeron (the DQ is shielded to the point of invisibility) and sends out a powerful mental probe. The Skylarkers read the probe as an attack and throw up their shields. The Llurdi decide they must attack and so throw everything at the Valeron. Seaton counterattacks and as the two forces are nearing mutual destruction, Seaton is mentally contacted by Mergon of the Jelmi. To be concluded.


Dick Seaton takes a call. Art by Morrow

Only one more installment to go. I must admit there is a certain crude vigor here that… well, it hasn’t grown on me, but I’m less offended by it than I was. It still doesn’t make a lot of sense, it’s still badly plotted, Smith still starts paragraphs with “wherefore”, but I guess I can see the nostalgic appeal if you first read Smith at an impressionable and less discerning age. Two stars.

Summing up

Before wrapping this up, let’s talk about the art. At least since I took on reviewing IF the interior art has been provided by a steady stable of four: Gray Morrow, Norman Nodel, Jack Gaughan and John Giunta. For me, Morrow is far and away the best of them, but he’s been tied up with Skylark for four issues now. I’m also not a big fan of Nodel’s smudgy look or Gaughan’s abstract elements. Still, all four are good, but there’s been a lack of freshness. This month saw two new additions. Wally Wood, of course, is primarily a comic artist (and former studio partner of Harry Harrison), but he’s done some illo work for IF’s sister publications, although we haven’t seen him for a couple of years. David Kyle is a long-time fan (he’s the man who got his fellow Futurians banned from the first Worldcon), occasional artist and rarely author. While there’s really nothing stylistically all that different, both artists have injected enough of a difference to seem fresh.

So, has IF made good use of its expanded space? It’s hard to say. Skylark DuQuesne continues to weigh the magazine down, and I think we’ll have to wait a couple of months to see what Fred Pohl does once it’s gone. As I noted above, no matter what you might think of the story, running a piece written by the editor which is exactly as long as number of new pages is not really the best way to start. On the other hand, we have eight titles this month, which increases the chances of there being something for everybody. And next month, Pohl is trying out another innovation. As one serial ends, we’ll also start another. If the typical serial is three parts, that’s an increase from four a year to six. That also raises the chances of more good work. Only time will tell.




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 18, 1965] The Prodigal Returneth (September 1965 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

It's Great To Be Back

Those of you who keep track of minutiae may have noticed that I haven't been around these parts for a while. Blame it on seismic changes in the world of magazine publishing. To wit, the fact that Fantastic will now be published bimonthly removed that magazine from the newsstands for a couple of months, in order to have it alternate with sister publication Amazing. I had to wait until the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow arrived on my doorstep before I could get back to the typewriter and churn out a review. Let's get started, shall we?

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder


Cover art by George Schelling, illustrating a macabre scene from Fritz Leiber's story

Maybe it's only because I haven't done this for a while, but I look forward to analyzing this issue with more enthusiasm than usual. Let's see if I retain my critical passion as we make our way through the crisp white pages of the youngest member of Frederik Pohl's family of publications.

Catch a Tartar, by Gordon R. Dickson

The hero of this lighthearted romp through the cosmos is one Hank Shallo, a jolly giant of a man, fond of beer and singing. When he's not belting out a tune or quaffing a brew, he works as a deep space scout, seeking out new planets for humanity. The woman who gives him his assignments is a certain Janifa Williams, a statuesque blonde who would like him to settle down on Earth with her.


Illustrations by Norman Nodel. This is not Janifa, by the way, but a no-nonsense physician who treats our hero for a hangover.

Janifa arranges to meet Hank on a colony world with a serious problem. It seems that the computer that controls the planet's environment, so people can live there, thinks it's a god. It demands a human sacrifice before it will go back to work. Hank is the lucky fellow who's supposed to be offered up to the mechanical deity. There's an escape plan, but Hank has a scheme of his own.


Hank arrives.

Complicating matters is the presence of the guy who created the computer, a mad genius who is in love with Janifa. Hank has to figure out a way to defeat the computer, save Janifa from the unwelcome advances of the scientist, and retain his happy-go-lucky lifestyle.


The madman, Janifa, and a few of her many admirers.

Hank is a likable rogue and something of a con artist, as he uses his wits to get the better of everyone. I found the story to be more enjoyable than most attempts at science fiction comedy, which tend to be full of sophomoric slapstick. The female characters are decorative, to be sure, but also intelligent, competent, and professional. It's not the most profound tale in the world, but worth reading.

An amused three stars.

The Light Outside, by C. C. MacApp

This strange little story consists of a series of messages, ranging from prayers to scholarly articles, over a very long period of time. (That's true in one sense, but not in another. Confused? That's how I felt when I started reading.) We eventually figure out that the beings responsible for these writings live at a much faster pace than those who are observing them, known as the Watchers. At the end we learn something more about the Watchers, and those who are watched.

The narrative structure tends to have a cold, distant feeling to it, so it's hard to connect with the story on an emotional level. On the other hand, the premise is original and interesting.

An intrigued three stars.

The Tinplate Teleologist, by Arthur Sellings


Illustration by Brock. I have been unable to find out anything about this artist, not even his or her full name.

Davie — more formally, DA 38341 — is an obsolete household robot, kicked out of his home when a more advanced model takes his place. He has a limited amount of time to find somebody to purchase him, at a price hardly anybody is willing to pay for an old machine. If he fails, he goes back to the factory to be turned into scrap metal.

The episodic plot follows Davie as he meets a sympathetic but powerless dealer in used robots, a bitter robot who plans to rob a human being, the elderly inhabitants of a retirement community who welcome his help, but can't afford to pay for him, and an impoverished painter who finally gives him the opportunity to save himself from the junkyard.

This sentimental yarn feels like a science fiction fairy tale. Davie is one of those meek, gentle characters who overcome all obstacles with quiet bravery. Mix a little Asimov with a little Bradbury and you might have something like this slick tearjerker.

A wistful three stars.

Theories Wanted, by Robert S. Richardson

The author presents various astronomical mysteries, offers hypothetical solutions, and suggests that amateurs might be able to help professionals figure things out.

I had to let out a weary sigh when the article began with the hoary old chestnut of trying to account for the Star of Bethlehem in scientific terms. To nobody's surprise, Richardson thinks a nova is the most plausible explanation, if any is needed. (I guess he's read Arthur C. Clarke's decade-old story The Star.)

I was more interested in the peculiar star Mira Ceti, which varies in brightness in irregular ways. It also has a much fainter companion star, difficult to observe, which presents a similar enigma. I would have preferred an entire article about Mira Ceti.

Other subjects include the Trojan asteroids, which occupy a stable point in Jupiter's orbit, and a comet known as P/1925 II. Like a smorgasbord, there are several items to choose from, and not all of them are tasty.

A highly variable three stars.

At the Institute, by Norman Kagan


Illustrations by Gray Morrow

This razor-sharp satire takes the narrator through the halls of a research institute full of eccentric scientists involved in outrageous projects. We get our first hint of how wild things are going to get when he has to ride a tank (see above) through a ring of solid uranium to get into the place. After encountering a number of researchers working on experiments as bizarre as anything found in Jonathan Swift's Balnibarbi and Laputa, he meets the director of the place.


The infantile director and the narrator, facing the institute's defense system. Please excuse the way I had to fold the magazine to show you the whole picture.

Although the narrator seems at first to be the voice of sanity, exposing the madness of so-called pure research, it turns out that his own more practical studies are equally insane. The author casts a jaundiced eye at all aspects of science and government.

The story moves at a breakneck pace, with jokes, puns, paradoxes, and lampoons of human foibles in nearly every sentence. The tone reminds me of the recent novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, in the way it mixes surreal comedy with a dark view of humanity's tendency to destroy itself.

A sardonic four stars.

Cyclops, by Fritz Leiber

Three astronauts set out on a journey to investigate why an interstellar vessel, under construction in orbit around the Moon, is out of communication with Earth. Similar problems in the past turned out to be minor, so the spacemen aren't too worried. During the voyage, they discuss the possibility of life existing in empty space. Since one of the astronauts is psychic, it's not a big surprise that their speculations turn out to be all too real.

Although the plot is predictable, this is an effective science fiction horror story, full of striking images. As you'd expect from Leiber, it's very well written. A minor work from a major author.

A frightened three stars.

Of Godlike Power (Part Two of Two), by Mack Reynolds


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan

Let's recap. Part One of the novel took us to a near future United States of flying cars and automated bars. More importantly, it's a place where most people are unemployed, but enjoy a reasonably comfortable life in a prosperous welfare state. The protagonist is the host of a radio talk show dealing with UFO's and other speculative stuff. His job leads him to an eccentric preacher who has the ability to prevent people all over the world from enjoying certain pleasures of which he does not approve. His miraculous power strikes first at female vanity, eliminating makeup, fancy hairdos, and fashionable clothing. The next targets are radio, television, and movies. The lack of entertainment for the jobless masses leads to chaos.

In Part Two, the radio host, one of the few people who know the reason for these sweeping changes, is forced to join a massive government project designed to investigate and solve the problem.


Forced, as in men with guns come to get him.

The guy manages to convince the authorities that the preacher is responsible. Meanwhile, almost all fiction and comic strips become unreadable, another sign of his power. (He leaves certain things alone, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Pogo, proving he has good taste.)


An example of a distorted text. I think it says something like He took aim right at her . . .. I can't read the last word.

Our hero visits the preacher's rural community, which proves to be almost entirely self-sufficient. He is reunited with the preacher's daughter, whom he met in Part One, and romance blooms.


Her real name is Sue, and she's got other secrets.

When the real story reaches the public, the radio host has to save the preacher from an angry mob, then work out a compromise with him. In return for undoing at least some of his miracles, he'll get the chance to broadcast his socioeconomic message to the world.


Rescuing his future father-in-law.

Beneath the surface of a semi-comic plot, the author deals with a lot of serious issues. He considers overproduction, excessive consumerism, waste of natural resources, automation, shallow media, lack of meaningful work, mob violence, authoritarianism, and a bunch of other things. It takes a special kind of skill to mix all this stuff into an entertaining novel.

A thoughtful four stars.

Feasting on the Fatted Calf

(That's just a metaphor. I don't eat meat.)

I'm delighted to see that I came back to write about an above-average issue of the magazine. Everything was worth reading, even if not all of it was outstanding. There was a welcome variety, from comedy to horror, with a large serving of satire. You can choose among the breezy style of Dickson, the savage bite of Kagan, and the elegance of Leiber, to name just a few. All in all, it made for a very pleasant homecoming.


The first novel about Captain Horatio Hornblower. Good stuff.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 12, 1965] The Number of the Bests

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by John Boston

The Collectors

SF anthologies are not neutral vessels.  They are shaped by editors with agendas.  Sometimes these are as simple as “what can I throw together to make some money,” but usually they advance the editor’s conception of what the field is, or should be. 

The first “best of the year” compilation in SF was the well-received The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949, edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T.E. Dikty, published by Frederick Fell in 1949 but containing stories from 1948.  The Bleiler-Dikty anthologies spawned a companion series, TheYear’s Best Science Fiction Novels (i.e., novellas), which ran from 1952 through 1954.  Bleiler left the project in 1955, to the detriment of its quality, and the series died with a final single volume from Advent, a small specialty publisher, in 1958.


by Frank McCarthy

There was abortive competition along the way.  Donald A. Wollheim of Ace Books, a long-time anthologist, published Prize Science Fiction (McBride, 1953), containing 1952 stories supposedly comprising the winners and runners-up for that year’s Jules Verne Prize, an award and a book title that were not heard of again.  The next year August Derleth, another veteran anthologist, published Portals of Tomorrow (Rinehart, 1954), collecting stories from 1953 and pointedly subtitled The Best of Science Fiction and Other Fantasy.  The editor described it as “covering the entire genre of the fantastic: not only supernatural and science-fiction tales, but also every kind of whimsy and imaginative concept of life in the future or on other planets,” apparently distinguishing it from the Bleiler-Dikty series without mentioning it.  There was no second volume.

But Judith Merril achieved ignition, and kept it.  Her series of annual anthologies shows no signs of flagging after nine years.  The first, SF: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, appeared in 1956, with 1955 stories, from the SF specialty publisher Gnome Press, in an unusual publishing arrangement: a Dell paperback edition appeared in newsstands, drugstores, etc., more or less simultaneously with the publication of the Gnome hardcover, rather than after the usual year or so interval before paperback publication.  After four volumes, as Gnome tottered towards oblivion, Merril jumped to Simon and Schuster, which published the fifth through ninth books.  We await the tenth, slated for December.


by Ed Emshwiller

Merril’s angle from the first was good SF as good literature, accessible to the non-fanatical reader, with emphasis on character—not necessarily character-driven, but more concerned with the perspective and experience of recognizable human individuals than much SF.  Her taste in cherry-picking the SF magazines was near-impeccable.  She also looked beyond the SF magazines and the writers identified with them.

The latter practice has been both a strength and a weakness, bringing to the SF-reading public many worthy stories that they otherwise would never have heard of, but also including some items that seemed trivial or misplaced but came from a prestigious source or with a prestigious byline.  As a result, the Merril series has become woolier and more diffuse in focus over the years.  Her last volume included stories from Playboy (two), the Saturday Evening Post, the Saturday Review of Literature, the Peninsula Spectator, The Reporter, and the Atlantic Monthly, and such large literary bylines as Bernard Malamud and Andre Maurois, the latter with a novelette that may have been the best of 1930, when it was first published.  Oh, and three cartoons.  Of course it also included, as always, a large and solid selection of indisputable SF and fantasy, both from the genre magazines and from other sources.

Merril’s agenda is clear.  Let her tell you about it.  In her introduction to the last of the Gnome volumes, she wrote:

“The name of this book is SF.
“SF is an abbreviation for Science Fiction (or Science Fantasy).  Science Fiction (or Science Fantasy) is really an abbreviation too.  Here are some of the things it stands for. . . .
“S is for Science, Space, Satellites, Starships, and Solar exploring; also for Semantics and Sociology, Satire, Spoofing, Suspense, and good old Serendipity. . . .
“F is for Fantasy, Fiction and Fable, Folklore, Fairy-tale and Farce; also for Fission and Fusion; for Firmament, Fireball, Future and Forecast; for Fate and Free-will; Figuring, Fact-seeking, and Fancy-free.
“Mix well.  The result is SF, or Speculative Fun.”

English translation, if you need one: What she thinks the SF field is, or should be is . . . not really a field.  That is, not categorically distinguishable in any clear-cut way from the general body of literature, though having a somewhat different set of preoccupations than the typical contemporary novel or short story.

You can debate her argument, but I’m not inclined to.  I think if Merril did not exist it would be necessary to invent her, or someone similar, to help rescue the field (that word again!) from excessive insularity.  I am also glad to have her book to read each year, exasperating as some of its contents may be. 

Yin and Yang

But not everyone feels that way, and it is not surprising that there is once again some competition.  Donald Wollheim is back for a second try, with co-editor Terry Carr, a long-time SF fan and shorter-time author now working at Ace Books, with that publisher’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1965, a chunky original paperback with a distinct “back to basics” air about it, though there’s no comment at all about Merril’s book and nothing that can be read as a disguised dig at it.

So what’s the more overt angle, besides “here are some stories we think are good”?  First, the title does not include “Fantasy,” a word which for Merril covers a multitude of exogamies.  And the “World’s Best” in the title is not ceremonial; the editors make much of having scoured the world, and not just the US, for stories.  The back cover says “Selected from the pages of every magazine regularly publishing science-fiction and fantasy stories in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and the rest of the world. . . .” The yield: five non-US stories, of seventeen in the book.  Two of these are from the British New Worlds, which is not exactly news, but the others are from less familiar sources, though they are closer to the Anglo-American genre core than some of Merril’s catches.

First of these three is Vampires Ltd., by Josef Nesvadba, a Czech psychiatrist and well-known SF writer, the title story of his recent collection, about the current preoccupation with fast automobiles; the protagonist accidentally gets his hands on an especially fine one, and per the title, finds out that it doesn’t really run on gasoline.  We reach that denouement by way of a surreal and hectic series of events which makes little pretense to plausibility.  But that is beside the author’s point, which is satire.  It’s an interesting look at a different notion of storytelling than you will find in the US SF magazines.  The Weather in the Underground, by Colin Free, best known for his work for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, from the Australian magazine Squire, is more consistent with US conventions.  It takes place in an underground habitat where part of humanity has fled for safety, leaving the rest to freeze in a new ice age.  This life is made tolerable by constantly renewed psychological conditioning, but our protagonist’s conditioning never quite took hold, so he’s miserable and maladjusted, leading to banishment and a sorry end.  It’s a strikingly vehement story, very tightly written and forceful, and one of the best in the book.

The third non-US/UK offering is What Happened to Sergeant Masuro?, by Harry Mulisch, from The Busy Bee Review: New Writing from the Netherlands.  Mulisch is apparently a notable Dutch literary figure, with eight books published.  Sergeant Masuro was a soldier in a Dutch patrol in Papua New Guinea; one of the other soldiers raped a native girl, or tried to; the headman was later seen skulking around; and Sergeant Masuro began to undergo a terrible transformation.  The story is the report to headquarters by the patrol’s superior officer, who recounts both the events and his own anguish at some length.  Amusingly, the plot—white men go into the jungle, transgress against the natives, and are cursed—is a long-familiar pulp plot of which dozens of examples could no doubt be exhumed from Weird Tales, Jungle Stories, and the like.  The literary gloss doesn’t add much to it.

Aside from these foreign trophies, the book is a stiff gust of de gustibus.  Of the five stories which one of us at Galactic Journey thought worthy of five stars (excluding several outright fantasies from Fantastic), none are included.  Nor are any included from our longer end-of-the-year Galactic Stars list.  Of the stories that are in the book, only two were awarded four stars, and one—Leiber’s When the Change-Winds Blow—fled the wrath of Gideon with only one star.

And much of what is here is remarkably pedestrian or worse.  The editors seem determined to reproduce the genre’s weaknesses as well as its strengths.  Starting the book is Tom Purdom’s Greenplace, which features such lively matters as a psychedelic drug and a man in a wheelchair being beaten by a mob, but is essentially an extremely contrived and implausible warning about a genuine problem: how democracy can survive, or not, as psychological manipulation becomes more sophisticated.  Next, and proceeding downhill, Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis’s Men of Good Will is an equally implausible, but more trivial, story built around a scientific gimmick that’s not even entirely original (remember Jerome Bixby’s The Holes Around Mars?). 

This is followed by Bill for Delivery, by that faithful purveyor of contrived yard goods Christopher Anvil, about the problems some salt-of-the-earth spacemen have carrying a cargo of unruly and dangerous birds from one star system to another.  At this point, a reader who bought the book thinking it was time to check out this “science fiction” stuff people are talking about would probably start to think “How can anybody possibly be interested in this?” and toss it or leave it on the bus.

There’s more of this ilk later on: C.C. MacApp’s weak and gimmicky For Every Action, and Robert Lory’s The Star Party, an annoyingly slick rendition of an original but silly idea.  And Leiber’s When the Change-Winds Blow answers the question that hardly anyone is asking: “What does a talented author do when he can’t think of anything of substance to write?”

But that’s the bad news.  The good news is a number of worthwhile stories.  Four Brands of Impossible by new writer Norman Kagan is at once an amusing picture of aspiring math and science brains in their element, and a chilling one of the uses to which their talents may be put, wrapped around an interesting mathematical idea.  William F. Temple’s A Niche in Time is a smart time travel story that goes off in an unexpected direction.  John Brunner’s The Last Lonely Man (one of the New Worlds items) develops a clever piece of psychological technology in the author’s earnest and methodical way.  Edward Jesby, another new writer, contributes the stylish and incisive Sea Wrack, which starts out as a tale of the idle and decadent rich in a far future where some humans have been modified to live undersea, and and turns into a story of class struggle, no less. 

Philip K. Dick’s Oh, To Be a Blobel! is a sort of slapstick black comedy updating Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.  Thomas M. Disch’s Now Is Forever is a sharp if overlong piece of sociologizing about the effects of wide availability of matter duplicators, which kick the props from under everyone’s getting-and-spending way of life.  New writer Jack B. Lawson’s The Competitors is a breezy rearrangement of stock SF elements that reads to me like a facile parody of the genre, probably done with A.E. van Vogt in mind.

To my taste the most striking item here is Edward Mackin’s New Worlds story The Unremembered, a sort of religious fantasy framed in SF terms.  In the automated and urbanized future, lives have been extended for hundreds of years, but the show seems to be closing from sheer ennui: the birth rate is falling and the youth suicide rate is rising, and older people are queueing up at the euthanasia clinics.  Apparitions of people are appearing and disappearing seemingly randomly, because (it is hinted) the human span has become divorced from its natural length.  The elderly protagonist becomes one of the apparitions, and his consciousness takes a Stapledonian journey through the cosmos before arriving at the final revelation.  C.S. Lewis would appreciate this one if he were still around.  It is quite different from anything I’ve seen from Mackin before, or from anybody else for that matter.

But that’s the only really strikingly memorable story here; closest runners-up are the Colin Free and Edward Jesby stories, based mainly on their intensity in presenting relatively familiar sorts of material.  The writers who are pushing the SF envelope in notable ways are not here—no Lafferty, no Zelazny, no Ellison, no Cordwainer Smith.  And there is too much overt dross.

So, the bottom line: a pretty decent book with much solid material, but it mostly fails the “Surprise me!” test.  Maybe the next one will be more startling.  Meanwhile, Merril will be back to argue with in a few more months.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Magazine

[March 8, 1965] An Alien Perspective (April 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Understanding the Other

Civilization is about building a society out of disparate units.  It has to go beyond the family and clan.  The key to organizing a civilization is empathy, recognizing that we are all different yet we share common values and rights.  Once we understand each other, even if we don't agree on everything, then we can truly create "from many, one."

Science fiction allows the exploration of cutting edge sociological subjects, one of them being the understanding of the "other".  That's because the genre has a ready-made stand-in for the concept: the alien.  Indeed, many science fiction stories are allegorical; they address colonialism, the Cold War, societal taboos, in ways that might currently be too touchy or on-the-nose for conventional fiction.  We can hope that, with the bottle uncorked, less allegorical stories will be required in the future. 

Of all the science fiction magazines that come out every month, I think Fred Pohl's trio of Galaxy, IF, and Worlds of Tomorrow has the strongest tradition of incorporating aliens (Analog also has aliens, but thanks to its editor's sensibilities, they are almost invariably both more evil and inferior to human beings; Campbell likes a certain kind of allegory…)

Meeting the Minds


by George Schelling (it says it illustates War Against the Yukks, but it doesn't)

This month's Galaxy is a case in point, with six of its nine tales involving aliens of one kind or another.  There's some good stuff in here, as well as a number of slog stories.  Let's look, shall we?

Committee of the Whole, by Frank Herbert


by Nodel

Watch your step — there's a rough patch right at the start. 

Whole is a meandering preach piece about an inventor who appears before a Congressional committee with news of a new, revolutionary invention.  I'll just tell you about it because the first two thirds of the story are less suspenseful than obtusely annoying: it's a ray gun.  Its applications are infinite, but the one most of the Congressmen are worried about is that every owner has a weapon more powerful than the atom bomb at their disposal.  And, because of the way the invention has been disseminated, everyone in the world has access to them.

The result, the inventor opines, is going to be a world of true libertarian equality.  "An armed society is a polite society" is how the expression goes.  It's the kind of naive sentiment that would go over well at Analog, but for adults, it's just ridiculous.  In equalizing humanity through armed neutrality, the inventor has made aliens of us all.  I'll wager that Earth's population of humans will be dead inside a week…and probably most of the animals. 

One star, and yet more disdain for the Herbert byline.

Wrong-Way Street, by Larry Niven

Ah, but then our fortunes truly turn around.  Wrong Way Street gives us the unplanned adventure of Mike Capoferri, a scientist stationed on the Moon late this century to investigate an alien base and space ship.  They have lain on the lunar plain for countless millions of years, and their provenance and function are completely unknown.  That is, until Mike unwittingly not only discerns the motive force for the space ship, but also activates it.  Here, understanding the alien way of thinking proved hazardous to Mike's health.  Can he get home?  Will the human race survive his journey?

This is author Niven's third story, and he continues with the same deftness he displayed with his recent short novel, World of Ptavvs.  I guarantee that the ending of Street will stay with you.

Four stars.

Death and Birth of the Angakok, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Peterluk is a young Eskimo out hunting when a horrifying bunch of one-eyed Seal People arrive.  He panics and entreats his powerful Grandfather, holed up in Peterluk's igloo, to aid him with his mystical powers.  But Grandfather is too weak to assist and, in the end, Peterluk is left to defeat one of the aliens with a conventional rifle.

When the Seal People ship surfaces from beneath the ice, much to Peterluk's surprise, it disgorges not aliens but white people in uniform.  And Peterluk begins to doubt the power, and even the human nature, of his strangely humped, ever demanding Grandfather.

Confusing at first, Angakok is actually a pretty neat tale of two types of aliens (human and truly extraterrestrial) as seen from the point of view of one completely naive to other cultures.  While the bones of the plot are fairly conventional, I appreciated the novel viewpoint.

Three stars.

Symbolically Speaking, by Willy Ley

Any meeting of the minds between human and alien will require a common symbology to convey ideas.  A science fiction writer looking for inspiration for such a symbol set could do worse than to read Willy Ley's latest science article for Galaxy, in which he discusses the evolution of symbols for the planets, alchemical substances, numbers, etc.

Fairly dry, but there's interesting information here.  Three stars.

A Wobble in Wockii Futures, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Gray Morrow, channeling Bill Gaines

Tom and Lucy Reasoner are a recurring pair in a series of stories, this being the fourth.  Sort of a "Nick and Nora" meets Retief, the stories of the Reasoners began charmingly enough, with Tom an interstellar diplomat with a mystery to solve, and Lucy his sometimes discerning assistant.

Last time around, Tom had not only gotten inducted into the interstellar assassin's guild, but he'd also catapulted Earth onto the galactic scene, dramatically increasing his home planet's clout.  Now the humans have gotten themselves hip-deep in a planetary investment that made turn out to be completely worthless.  Tom must find out who hoodwinked the Terrans and why before humanity is bankrupted.

This installation has the same problem as the last one — Lucy is sidelined and played for stupid, and the humor of the tale just isn't funny.  Dickson can, and usually does, do better.

Two stars.

Wasted on the Young, by John Brunner

The concept of the "teenager" is a fairly recent one.  It used to be that kids enjoyed a relatively short childhood before transitioning to the labor force and/or marriage.  Now there is an intermediate phase before adulthood during which a youngster can learn the ropes of grown-up society.

Brunner's latest story posits an even longer period of immaturity, one in which kids are given free credit until age thirty to do whatever they want.  The catch: once they reach their fourth decade, they have to pay back what they've spent by being productive members of society.  Thus, the wastrels find themselves indebted indefinitely, while those who lived a spartan life get to be free agents.

Hal Page, age 32, believes he knows a way to cheat the system…but in the end, society has use for people who have spent it all, even their life.

There's a great idea here, but I feel it was somewhat wasted on the gimmick (and not particularly logical) ending.  Still, three stars.

The Decision Makers, by Joseph Green


by Jack Gaughan

Allan Odegaard is a Practical Philosopher, a kind of emissary for humanity to other worlds.  His job is to judge whether a planet is inhabited by intelligent life or not; if so, Terran policy is to keep hands off.  As one would expect, such a determination is often strongly opposed by financial interests.

Capella G Eight is an ocean planet, though during times of Ice Age, three continents emerge from the sea as the water level drops.  Its dominant life form is a seal-like creature.  Though it possesses a relatively tiny brain pan, somehow it lives in a communal society and can use tools.  Is it intelligent?  Does the fact that these creatures live near a rich uranium deposit factor into Odegaard's decision?

We've seen this kind of story before — H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series is probably the purest example, though J.F. Bone's The Lani People should also be noted.  It's a worthy subject, and Green does a pretty good job, though the ending is abrupt and not quite as momentous as I would have liked.

All in all, it's the best story I've seen from Green in an American publication (he tends to stick to the English side of the Atlantic.) Three stars.

Slow Tuesday Night, by R. A. Lafferty

We're back to Earth for this one.  We all know that the pace of life has only quickened over the generations.  Lafferty, whose middle name would be "whimsy" if the initial were a W. and not an A., writes of a future society in which society is speeded up a hundred-fold compared to now.  Fortunes are made and lost in minutes.  Marriages last an hour on a good night.  And a lifetime can be lived in a week.

It's cute, but the satire wears thin about halfway through.  Also, there are only two female characters, and their sole goal appears to be competing for the earliest wedding of the evening.

A low three, I guess.

Sculptor, by C. C. MacApp

Eight years ago, a disgraced spaceman abandoned his crewmates on an alien world, rushing home with a set of invaluable statues — and a hole in his memory about the affair.  Now he has been shanghaied by a criminal bent on returning to this world and plundering it for more of the exquisite figurines.

What race made these wrought-diamond minatures?  And why does the amnesiac spaceman feel such dread on the planet's surface?

This is another "they looked like us" yarn that has been around since Campbell kick-started the genre with Who Goes There (and Heinlein made it popular with The Puppet Masters).  It's so prevalent, in fact, that there's another example of it in this very issue! (Angakok) Despite not really treading on new ground, it may well be the best work I've seen from C. C. MacApp, a fairly recent author who never fails to never quite succeed.

Three stars.

War Against the Yukks, by Keith Laumer


by Gray Morrow

Six years ago, the Journey had the (dubious) pleasure of reviewing Missile to the Moon.  It was one of a long line of movies involving a man-less society, run by a bunch of sex-starved female beauties just waiting for a hunk to tip the order on its ear.

Laumer's latest is the same old story: this time, the men are an anthropologist and his stereotypically British assistant, who are whisked to Callisto where they encounter the last remnants of an ante-diluvian war between the sexes.  High Jinks ensue(s?)

Only the author's puissance at writing elevates this story above the level of dreck.  Even then, it's a disappointment.  I understand that satirizing a hoary cliche can be fun, but the whole point of Galaxy is that the magazine doesn't even acknowledge the existence of said cliches, much less indulge in them.

It really deserves two stars.  I'll probably give it three anyway.

Summit's End

This month's Galaxy was as alien-heavy as usual, and there was a broad variety of stories.  On the other hand, with the exception of the Niven, there were no stand-outs.  Indeed, the issue read more like an overlong issue of IF (which has also dipped in quality) than Galaxy of old.

Nevertheless, Ad Astra per Aspera.  What goes down must come up again, and when humanity finally does meet the alien denizens of the stars, should they exist, our starship crews will doubtless have been inculcated with the lessons learned in SF, particularly in magazines like Galaxy.




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Book, Magazine, Serial

[March 4, 1965] OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES (April 1965 IF)

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by David Levinson

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

When Gideon contacted me about taking on the reviews for IF, I took President Roosevelt’s words to heart and said, “Yes.” It’s tougher than it looks. I’m stretching some mental muscles I haven’t used in some time.

New Beginnings

March is a good time for new beginnings. Spring isn’t quite here yet, but its promise is apparent. Depending on where you live, the crocuses may have started to bloom, or at least the snowdrops. And until Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar almost exactly 2,000 years ago, it was the first month of the year (which is why our ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months are named Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten). It even stuck around as the first month for some into the Eighteenth century under the Old Style.

So what’s new? Well, we have another new country: The Gambia. This tiny nation on the west coast of Africa was granted independence by Great Britain on February 18th. It closely follows the lower course of the Gambia River to its mouth on the Atlantic and is surrounded on three sides by Senegal. I wouldn’t rush out to buy a new map or globe any time soon. There are still plenty of colonies in Africa and elsewhere around the world seeking their independence.


The Duke of Kent at the official opening of Gambia High School during the independence celebrations

There’s also a new measles vaccine. Unlike the current vaccine, which requires a series of shots, this requires only a single injection. Fewer injections are bound to be a relief to children and their parents.

A little closer to the interests of the Journey, MGM has announced that Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove) is working on a science fiction film, tentatively to be called Journey Beyond the Stars. There isn’t much information at this time. It will be shot in Cinerama, and Arthur C. Clarke is apparently involved in some fashion. Maybe we can dare hope for more than ray guns and schlocky monsters.


Stanley Kubrick in the Dr. Strangelove trailer

What about IF?


Art by McKenna

Are we getting anything really new this month? Has Fred Pohl started to turn the decline in quality around? The answers are “A little” and “Not really”. As for the first question, five of the six authors in this issue are new enough that the Journey actually covered their first story. (Well, in the case of this month’s first time author you’ll have to wait a few paragraphs for that to be true.) For the second, read on.

The Altar at Asconel (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

Brother Spartak, a monk in a scholarly order on Annanworld, is just about to begin writing a history of his homeworld of Asconel, when he is interrupted by the arrival of his brother Vix. It turns out that these two are brothers to Hodath, the Warden of Asconel, who fell victim to a coup staged by the leaders of a cult (one of whom is a telepathic mutant) from the world of Brinze which worships Belizuek. Neither Brinze nor Belizuek is known to the monastery’s encyclopedic computer. The two leave, first to find their remaining brother, Tiorin, and then to make contact with the resistance in the Asconel system. But before leaving, Spartak is reminded by his abbot that he took a vow of non-violence and that committing a single violent act will forever bar him from returning.

Aboard his ship, Vix is attacked by an assassin. Spartak is able to stop the attack by rapidly reversing the ship’s artificial gravity. (Is slamming someone repeatedly into various surfaces not an act of violence, just because you only twisted a dial?) We also meet Vix’s mistress, Vineta, and learn that Vix is hot-headed and occasionally verbally abusive to her.


Art by Gray Morrow

They travel to Delcadore, hoping to get a lead on their brother. There, the ship is impounded by the Imperial bureaucracy and the brothers are dragooned into taking a telepathic mutant to the world of Nylock. They are psychologically conditioned to fulfill their assignment, but are able to delay take-off long enough to make contact with Tiorin and for him to come aboard. The delay is brought about by Spartak pointing a weapon at an administrator and threatening to shoot a bunch of people. (Is that an act of violence if he didn’t actually mean to go through with it?)

The mutant, a teenage girl named Eunora, is brought aboard in an artificially induced catatonic state. Spartak insists on bringing her out of it, and a few days later, she breaks the conditioning of the others. However, she has no interest in going to Asconel and is planning to condition them herself to take them where she wants to go. Once she figures out where that is.

That’s really not a lot of action for 47 pages. The rest is taken up by exposition. Some good, some of the “As you know, Bob” variety. We learn that there is a galaxy-wide human empire, but it is in decline, gradually contracting its borders. A few places that have left the empire, such as Asconel and Annanworld, have retained imperial values and systems, but others have lapsed into piracy and barbarism. The empire is nearly 9,000 years old and the ships are even older, created by an ancient vanished race and found by humans when they first ventured out to the stars.

John Brunner is the grand old man of this issue, having been writing since the early 50s. He has apparently written a couple of things in this setting before. The Brunner I’ve read before has been closer in tone to the newer British style. This is pure space opera. As is typical of space opera, the women characters don’t do too well. Vineta submits weakly to Vix’s abuse, though she may be developing an interest in Spartak, and there are at least some hints at a bit of depth. We don’t see much of Eunora, but she’s not off to a good start. The only other woman is the bureaucrat, described repeatedly as fat and foolish.

Despite the excessive exposition and reliance on coincidence, a tentative three stars for readability and some decent writing in spots.

What T and I Did, by Fred Saberhagen

An amnesiac wakes imprisoned in a Berserker. One eye is bandaged, and he assumes he is horribly disfigured, because the others trapped with him seem to be repelled by him.

It’s difficult to say much more about this without giving the whole thing away. If you read “The Stone Place” last month, the answer to at least some of the mystery will be obvious, but that’s far from the whole story.

This is Saberhagen’s fifth story about the dreaded Berserker killing machines. Clearly he does have more he can say with the Berserker stories, but I would like to see him stretch his legs a little more with something else. A solid, high three stars.

Across the Sea of Stars, by Jeff Renner

This is a poem which uses the title of at least one science fiction work in every line. The meter here (when the author sticks to it) is the sort of sing-song I associate with bad children’s poetry. The only good thing is that the poem is barely longer than the list of authors offered an apology. Renner had another bad poem in F&SF in March of last year. He shouldn’t quit his day job. One star for me, maybe two if you enjoy the game of figuring out how many of the referenced works you’ve read.

Gree’s Hellcats, by C.C. MacApp

Colonel Steve Duke is back. During a boring (for the reader) space battle, he learns that the Gree has a new species working for it. From pictures he took, the bird people figure out that these are “upgraded” animals. Col. Duke is once again sent behind enemy lines to investigate.


Art by Nodel

Once again, he spends some time in the bush. Once again, he waltzes into the enemy base by pretending to be wounded. After crawling around in the ductwork, he eventually locates some electronic devices being implanted in the creatures’ horns. He steals one and has the brilliant (read: blindingly stupid) idea of trying it out on himself. It proves to be some sort of computer-aided thinking device that also punishes thoughts against the Gree. Steve steals a spaceship with the aid of the device. The end.

Why hellcats? A reference to the Grumman F6F? The M18 tank hunter? The 12th Armored Division? Hellcats of the Navy starring Ronald Reagan? Mary Todd Lincoln? Who knows? Or cares? I’m not sure even the author does.

MacApp has written some decent stuff. “A Guest of Ganymede” comes to mind. Even the first of the Gree stories wasn’t bad, but this and the previous installment have been awful. If MacApp must write space opera, might I suggest a sequel to “Under the Gaddyl”? Two stars and no more Gree, please.

Our Martian Neighbors, by John McCallum

An astronaut has crashed in the Martian desert. After days struggling through the heat, he comes upon a glass dome. In it are two children and their mother. He can hear them speaking, but they can’t hear him desperately pleading for water.

McCallum is this month’s new author. He shows some skill, but the story is very unpleasant. Imagine a Mars story written by an evil Ray Bradbury. I’ve no idea why this got the cover. Well written, but only two stars for egregious cruelty and not really having a point.

White Fang Goes Dingo, by Thomas M. Disch

In 1970, the Masters, beings of pure energy, came to Earth. They took over the power grid and made pets of some humans, especially the beautiful and artistic. They use the Leash, some sort of electric stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain, and the pets are eager and glad for it. It is now a few generations later.

Our protagonist is known at various times in his life as Dennis White, White Fang, and Cuddles. He is the son of Tennyson White, who wrote a very popular book about Masters and pets through the allegory of dogs. A few years after White Fang’s birth, his mother left for another solar system and his father was captured and killed by wild humans, also called Dingoes. White Fang and his brother Pluto live in a poorly run kennel for a few years and are then adopted by a Master after meeting a human girl, Julie, on an abandoned farm. A decade later, White Fang and Julie are let off the leash while visiting Earth, but their Master never returns. Eventually, they are captured by Dingoes and get to see what is left of human civilization.


Art by Gaughan

You might expect this to be a broad comedy from the title. It isn’t. There is humor and satire here, but it’s subtle. The story is up to Disch’s usual standards, but might need more room to really develop. It’s either too long or too short. I can’t quite decide. A very high three stars; it’s missing that certain something to get a fourth.

Wrapping it up

So, are there signs of Pohl righting the ship? Not really. These are hoary old clichés for the most part. Space opera, a hostile but habitable Mars, humanity enslaved by aliens. Only Saberhagen and Disch do something new and different with them. Maybe Brunner will, too, but not this month. Come on, Fred. Don’t make me regret taking this gig.




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Magazine

[January 26, 1965] Down the Rabbit Hole…Again (February 1965 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

TV Triplets

Back when the Young Traveler and I were watching The Twilight Zone, we accidentally picked the wrong time to turn on the set and ended up getting introduced to Mr. Ed, Supercar, and The Andy Griffith Show, in that order.  It made for an amusing night, and we learned a lot about the prime-time schedule for that season.

Recently, we once again fell down the rabbit hole, though not quite by accident. 

It all started with an amazing new import form England.  You may have seen the American rebroadcast of Danger Man back in the summer of '61.  It was a smart spy show starring NATO agent, John Drake, played by Patrick McGoohan.  Well, he's back, and this time his episodes are a full hour rather than just half.  It's gripping stuff, albeit a bit heavier and more cynical than the first run.  Realistic, idealistic, and respectful of women, it's a delightful contrast to the buffoonish Bond franchise.

So gripping was the show that we ended up somehow unable to change the channel when Password came on.  This game show is sort of a verbal version of Charades where a contestant tries to get their partner to say a word using single-word clues.  Play goes back and forth until one team gets it right.

It's kind of a dumb show for the viewer because we already know the answer.  On the other hand, the contestants always include celebrities, and it's fun to watch them struggle through the rounds.


Gene Kelly looked like he wanted to kill his partner.  The whole time!


Juliet Prowse, on the other hand, was adorable and funny.

After half an hour of that, we had summoned enough energy to reach toward the television remote…until we heard the bugle strains heralding the arrival of Rocky and Bullwinkle (and friends).  It had been my understanding that the show had completed its five year run, but it has apparently gone into reruns without missing a beat.  Since we had missed the first couple of years, well, we couldn't turn off the television now!

The only thing that saved us was the subsequent airing of Bonanza, a show I am only too happy to turn off.  Who knows how long we'd have cruised The Vast Wasteland otherwise.  Of course, now we're stuck watching all three shows every week (homework permitting).

Print Analog

Science fiction magazines are kind of like blocks of TV shows.  They happen regularly, their quality is somewhat reliable, but their content varies with each new issue.  This month's Worlds of IF Science Fiction defined the phrase "much of a muchness".  Each (for the most part) was acceptable, even enjoyable, but either they were flawed jewels, or they simply never went beyond workmanlike.  Read on, and you'll see what I mean:


This rather goofy cover courtesy of McKenna, illustrating Small One

The Replicators, by A. E. van Vogt

Steve Maitlin is an ornery SOB, a Marine veteran of Korea who knows the world is all SNAFU, especially the moronic generals who run the show.  Not only does this attitude make life miserable for those around him, but it also brings the Earth to the brink of interstellar war.  It turns out that the alien BEM Maitlin shoots one day on the road to work is just one of an infinite number of bodies for an IT, and the replacement body ends up with Maitlin's cussedness as part of its basic personality.

Said IT also has the ability to replicate any weapon the humans throw against it, but magnified.  Shoot at it?  It builds a big-size rifle.  Bomb it?  It comes back with an extra-jumbo jet and a bigger nuke.  In the end, Maitlin is the only one who can stop the thing, which makes karmic sense.  But can the vet change his nature in time to meet minds with the alien?


by Gray Morrow

This story doesn't make a lot of sense, but Van Vogt is good at keeping you engaged with pulpish momentum.  Three stars.

Reporter at Large, by Ron Goulart

In a future where mob bosses have replaced politicians (or perhaps the politicians have just more nakedly advertised their criminal nature!) power is entrenched and hereditary.  Only an honest journalist can bring about a revolution, but when any person has his price, only an android editor's got the scruples to speak truth to power.

Ron Goulart writes good, funny stories.  Unfortunately, while I see that he tried, he failed at accomplishing either this time out.  Two stars, and the worst piece of the mag.

Small One, by E. Clayton McCarty

A young alien has exiled himself as part of its first stage of five on the journey toward maturity.  Its isolation is disturbed when a tiny bipedal creature lands in a spaceship nearby and finds itself trapped in a cave.  The child-being establishes telepathic contact with the intruder (obviously a human) and an eventual rapport is established.  But everything falls apart when the Terran's rapacious teammates land and fall into conflict with the alien's infinitely more powerful family…


by Jack Gaughan

I am a sucker for first contact stories, especially when told from the alien viewpoint.  This one is good, but it suffers from a certain lack of subtlety, a kind of hamfisted presentation of the kind I normally see from new writers.  That makes sense; this is his (her?) first story.

Three stars, and my favorite piece of the magazine.

Blind Alley, by Basil Wells

A year after settling the planet of Croft, the human colonists and their livestock all become afflicted with blindness.  Against the odds, they survive, shaping their lives around the change.  But can their society take the shock when a new arrival, generations later, brings back the promise of sight?

Blind Alley treads much of the same ground as Daniel Galouye's excellent Dark Universe from a few years back.  The question is worth asking: when is a "disability" simply a different way to be able?  That said, Wells is not as skilled as Galouye, and the story merits three stars as a result.

Gree's Commandos, by C. C. MacApp


by Nodel

On a thick-atmosphered planet, Colonel Steve Duke assists a race of Stone Age flying elephants against the interstellar aggressors, the Gree, and their mercentary cohorts.  It's a straight adventure piece with virtually no development, either of the characters or the larger setting.  Somewhat similar to Keith Laumer's latest novel (The Hounds of Hell, also appearing in IF), it doesn't do anything to make you care.  Sufficiently developed, it could have been good.

Two stars.

Zombie, by J. L. Frye

Here is the second story by a brand new author…and it shows.  In the future, it becomes possible to transplant a personality in the short term to a physically perfect body.  Said transfers are used almost exclusively for espionage and sabotage — it's not much fun living in a shell of a form that can't really feel or enjoy anything other than the satisfaction of a job well done.  Indeed, the only people willing to endure the hell of personality transfer (back and forth) are the profoundly crippled.

This story of a particularly hairy mission has its moments of poignance, but again, Frye is not quite up to the challenge of a difficult topic.  Plus, he needs more adjectives in his quiver; I count seven times he used "beautiful" to describe the sole female character.  Even Homer varied between calling Athena "grey-eyed" and "owl-eyed".

Three stars.

Starchild (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson

Last up is the second installment of three (that number again!) in this serialized sequel to The Reefs of Space.  It's a short one, barely long enough to cover the harsh interrogation of Bowsie Gann.  Gann was the loyal spy servant of The Plan, returned to Earth at the same time the star-reef-dwelling Starchild began to turn off the local suns to scare Earth's machine-run government.


by Nodel

It's a most unpleasant set of pages, with lots of torture and cruelty (something Fred Pohl does effectively; viz. A Plague of Pythons).  That said, Pohl and Williamson can write, and I am looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up.

Three stars.

Stay Tuned

Like much of the Idiot Box's offerings, IF continues to deliver stuff that's just good enough to keep my subscription current.  I'd like editor Fred Pohl to tip the magazine in one direction or another so I can either stop buying it or enjoy it more…

Until then, I guess my knob stays tuned to this channel!

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 6, 1965] Plus C'est La Même Chose (February 1965 Galaxy)

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[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine!  We work for egoboo…]


by Gideon Marcus

Things in Flux

I read an article yesterday about how America was retiring all of its first-generation nuclear missiles, the hundreds of Thors, Jupiters, Atlas Ds, Es, Fs, and Titan Is.  It's astonishing when you think how short their operational lifespan was.  The first Atlas D base came online in 1959; the first Titans were activated in 1962!  Yet there they go, replaced by just two types: the solid-fueled Minutemen and the liquid-fueled Titan IIs, both of which can be launched straight from atom-proof silos. 

It reminds me of the big science fiction magazine boom at the end of the 1940s.  After the War, Amazing and Astounding were among the few genre mags remaining in publication after the big pulp bust.  But around the turn of the decade, Fantasy and Science Fiction came about, and New Worlds and Galaxy…and the floodgates were opened.  By 1953, there were some forty magazines in more-or-less regular production.

Well, there wasn't enough talent to fill those pages, and probably not enough readers either (I remember struggling to keep up with seven mags in 1957), and by the end of the '50s, we were back down to six.  That number has grown a bit since then, but it's nothing like the old "glory days".

Even the magazines that still exist have changed substantially.  Astounding changed its name to Analog and went "slick".  F&SF is now on its fourth editor, and the quality of its contents is markedly diminished since last decade.  Amazing and its '50s born sister, Fantastic, not only got new management under Cele Goldsmith, but she recently got married and changed her name to Cele Lalli!

But Galaxy, my favorite since its establishment in October 1950, seems virtually unchanged.  Sure, it went to bimonthly in 1959, it's a little thicker, a little more expensive.  Fred Pohl, one of the magazine's primary contributors, now runs the show.

Nevertheless, Willy Ley still does the science column, the contents are still more thoughtful than technical (though less toward the extreme than F&SF), and the names remain familiar: Cordwainer Smith.  J.T. McIntosh.  James H. Schmitz.  Robert Silverberg (though he was in short-pants when the magazine first started.)

And quality-wise, I think it's still, pound-for-pound, the best sf mag on the market.  Is it perfect?  Hardly, but always worth a subscription.  Check out the February 1965 edition, and tell me if you don't agree.

An Island of Stability


A fascinating cover by newcomer "Wright" — it's not connected with any of the stories, as is common for Galaxy.

On the Storm Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

The neat thing about Smith's Instrumentality series, detailing an odd far future, is that it has been around long enough to have a near infinite number of plot threads.  In Storm Planet, we are reintroduced to Casher O'Neill, an exile from the planet Mizzer, who had previously searched for aid and arms on a planet of jewels.  Now, he has come to Henriada, a tempest of a world where cyclones run amok, and where once 600 million lived, just 40,000 remain — deterred by economic failure in the distant past. 


by Virgil Finlay

Upon arriving, Casher is offered a powerful cruiser by the planet's Administrator.  The price?  Casher must kill a girl.

Not just any girl.  She is an underperson, a rightsless animal shaped into human guise to be a servant.  Yet, somehow she is the most powerful person on the planet, someone who has resisted countless assassination attempts.

Who T'ruth really is, and why she holds such sway, are the central mysteries of this excellent novella, to which I find I must award five stars.

A Flask of Fine Arcturan, by C. C. MacApp

An interstellar whiskey company has a rather spectacular failure when the aliens responsible for the bottling go on an unplanned jag.  A cautionary tale against poor interdepartmental company communications, this epistolary is something of a throwaway.  Barely three stars.

Forerunners of the Planetarium, by Willy Ley

If you're of my generation, you grew up during the great planetarium boom, when every educational facility of merit was getting its own interior star chamber.  And over the last two decades, they've gotten cheap and portable enough that they're practically everywhere now.

Willy Ley does his usual competent job of explaining the origin of the planetarium and its ancestors, the orrery, the armilla, and the astronomical clock.

Four stars.

The Sixth Palace, by Robert Silverberg

The greatest treasure in the galaxy is guarded by a clever robot who, sphinxlike, demands correct answers to its questions.  Two men believe they have an ace up their sleeve that will let them prevail where others have failed: a little computer that knows everything.

Can it be that simple?

There's not much to this tale, but it's told very well.  Four stars, I think.

The Man Who Killed Immortals, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gary Morrow

McIntosh has already written about immortality, in his excellent Immortality for Some from five years ago.  This time, he adds an interesting twist.

Several hundred years from now, a costly operation enables those who undergo it to live forever — unaging, unchanging.  But the downside is enormous: they are unable to heal from any wounds.  These "elsies" (for LC or Living Corpse) accumulate great wealth, but they mostly use it to cocoon themselves in exquisite safety.

But someone who calls himself The Avenger, wants to change the status quo.  He's begun demanding millions of dollars of elsies lest he slice their vulnerable skin.

A fairly unremarkable whodunnit, it lacks the deep interest of his last story of immortals.  Three stars.

Harry Protagonist, Brain-Drainer, by Richard Wilson

Mr. Protagonist sells mental taps on four astronauts so that the American population can vicariously experience the first Mars Landing.  Unforseen events interfere.

This joke tale falls pretty flat, though I did appreciate this line:

The Marsbound astronauts…each had an I.Q. no lower than 130 and no higher than 146 (the NASA director's I.Q. was 147).

Two stars.

Fin's Funeral, by Donald H. Menzel

Frederick I. "Fin" Nolan is a brilliant physicist who passes away at the age of 68, just after coming up with a theoretical way to reverse the passage of time (something to do with Steady State expansion of the universe).  His will includes the curious request that his coffin be left sealed, and that, at his funeral, the dials on it be set just so.

I'm pretty sure you can guess what happens.  It's a pretty prosaic story, the sort of thing I'd expect of a first-timer who hasn't been reading our genre for decades.

(Interestingly, I understand the fellow is actually a brilliant theoretical astronomer — his nonfiction is probably pretty good; Funeral isn't badly written, just novice plot material.  Also, I'll put good money down that that the Steady Staters are going to lose to the Big Bangers.  Any takers?

Two stars.

Planet of Forgetting, by James H. Schmitz


by Jack Gaughan

Last up is a piece by an old pro.  Schmitz is inclined to storytell through exposition, which suits this first-person thriller.  It starts intriguingly enough, with a special agent awakening on a wilderness planet with only gradually returning memory of how he got there.  The novelette then meanders through a workmanlike adventure story of no particular interest, but the interesting ending brings things back into three-star territory. 

All's Right in the Galaxy

As you can see, Galaxy is amazingly consistent.  Any of these stories would have been suited to any of the issues over the last 15 years of publication.  I'd worry about stagnation, but with a 3.5 star aggregate rating, I don't mind things remaining as they are for a while.

Analog and F&SF, however…they could afford a little change!




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