Tag Archives: charles finney

[December 12, 1968] Playing your fish right (The Alvin Submersible, New Job, Book Review)


by Victoria Lucas

The Aquarium


Do you think the fish can hear us?

Today’s title is a result of having two reports and a book review to present to you, dear readers. There is no common theme except for me as narrator. I am inviting you to assist in performing a silent(?) version of a musical piece, “Tropical Fish Opera,” by Ramon Sender. I first experienced it at the Tape Music Center in San Francisco a few years ago. Picture three musicians sitting with their instruments around an aquarium, with another person standing at a microphone. The score is simple, and they have easily memorized it. The person at the microphone has a list of apparently random words that he or she recites as the musicians play. Each musician has been assigned a particular fish that must be followed as a guide for how to improvise in collaboration with the other musicians. The fish in this aquarium are swimming below, and I will act as a narrator who is trying to string words together in an understandable way, so that your silent(?) experience can have some meaning. Think of your voice as your instrument, although if you improvise drums or other means of making sound you can of course add to my silent voice.


The DSV Alvin

The Sinking of the Alvin submersible (Fish No. 1)

If you have never heard of the Alvin, you haven’t been keeping an eye on your fish. The Alvin is the most recent and innovative submersible paid for by the US Navy, assigned to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Commissioned in 1964, it was named after the mover and shaker who pushed for its creation, Allyn Vine. The Alvin is essentially a large steel sphere (holds 3 people) with plexiglass windows, using syntactic foam for flotation, with weights, hung with cameras, sample containers, and a mechanical arm, and certified for dives of 6,000 feet.

On October 16 the Alvin made an unscheduled dive to almost 5,000 feet, from which it has not been recovered. Yet.  It seems the hatch was still open when the chains holding its cradle snapped, and the submersible slid down its usual course into the ocean, with the pilot and two observers leaving their workday lunch behind in the sphere as they scrambled to safety. Water poured into the hatch, and the Alvin quickly sank to almost 5,000 feet as the crew of its tender, Lulu, threw everything that would float overboard to try to mark the spot. Although the Navy bought the argument that Woods Hole (WHOI) made that no recovery had yet been made from that depth, and backed the experiment of finding and raising the submersible, storms have so far prevented the consummation of the plan. Stay tuned to this story. I think they will succeed.

New Digs, New Job (Fish No. 2)


Ah, a California winter!

I’m also the performer keeping my eye on this fish. My husband Mel and I moved from Fortuna, California, where we had rented a house, to the non-metropolis of Rio Dell nearby, pooling our money to buy a piece of land. We have fruit trees, a walnut tree, and a small garden, and interesting phenomena like different weather visible from windows on every side of the house except one. I’m happy there are no windows on the 4th side, because I only know 3 general kinds of weather: rain (including fog, drizzle, etc.), snow (including sleet), and sun. I don’t want to know about that 4th side. We also have a neighbor, a teenager, who received our permission to hunt deer in our backyard with a bow and arrow. We can sometimes see him up in the walnut tree, waiting patiently. He lets us know when he will be hunting. Just in case he mistakes one of us for a deer. In the meantime, both of us are temporary workers for the County of Humboldt, Mel at the airport, and me in different office gigs. Sometimes we wave to each other as he drives home in the morning in the Jeep from his shift at the airport, at the same time I’m leaving in our car to start my day wherever the County sends me. Wish us luck. We’ll need it as we head into winter weather and knee-deep mud.

Book Review: The Unholy City (and) The Magician Out of Manchuria (Fish no. 3)


Great book!

This is your fabulous fish. I think you will find it delish. I do. Charles Finney (author of The Circus of Dr. Lao) saw the first publication of The Unholy City, in 1937 but this paperback edition (Pyramid Books) published last January combines that irreverent and self-referential story with the delightful Magician Out of Manchuria, which is my favorite of the writings of this Arizona Daily Star editor. Finney is not as prolific as some authors, although he has written many short stories and a couple of articles published in magazines aside from the occasional book. However, when away from his desk at the Tucson newspaper, he has the opportunity to take as few words as possible and place them carefully to weave weird tales, and he seizes that opportunity with both hands. These two yarns are very different from one another, and The Unholy City is not to everyone’s taste, dealing cynically not just with excesses of the consumer society, but (as the “plot demands”) with poor impulse control involving large “zellums of szelack” that seem to have an intoxicating influence. Nevertheless, I find the “Magician” with his manipulative ways, along with the woman he discovers and enhances, and his poor young servant who keeps (literally) losing his head, to be utterly irresistible. Only one of the two has a happy ending. (Guess which one.) I award this fish 5 stars out of 5.

Applause?

I once heard one musician say to another during a lecture and demonstration of the original Opera, “You’re not playing your fish right.” So if you and I were playing our fish right (right for you, that is), perhaps you enjoyed our little experiment. I hope you did.

There will be further adventures of Mel and Vicki. Where will they keep their Jeep while they wade through the mud to their home in the mountains? Will Vicki be able to work in an office where the regular secretary (on vacation) has locked up all her work? Will Mel be able to get along with his temporary boss as the airport enters a study of how it copes with the fog that envelops it every morning?

Stay tuned for the next episode!






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[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao)


by Victoria Lucas

Place Number 1: Denver

The neat thing about film festivals is not just being able to see more than one film in a short period of time.  It's the gossip, the revelations, the people who show up, some of them onstage.  In this case the festival site was Denver, Colorado.  Seem an unlikely place for a film festival?  But there it was that "7 Faces of Dr. Lao," made last year, enjoyed its first U.S. release on March 18.  I went there basically to see that one film, but my ride-sharing friend went to see many.  So I saw a little of Denver outside the movie theater.  But I'm not here to review Denver. 


My mom's postcard—I don't have a camera

Place Number 2: the MGM lot

If you saw my review of Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie.  It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot.  The "Circus" was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that's so.  My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa.  All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.

Place Number 3: Chujen, Chu, China

This was the last place Laozi was seen alive (531 BC), if indeed he did live.  In the movie, but not the book, the Abalone newspaper editor, Ed, asks where he is from, and after Dr. Lao tells him this place, Ed looks it up (providing an opportunity to see his love Agnes, who in the movie is a librarian as well as a teacher) and confronts Dr. Lao with the news that Chujen no longer exists, so what is going on?  So we and Ed see the circus tent and Merlin (not in the book) for the first time.  And that provides me with an excuse to tell you the following.  The plot of both Finney's story and the film was, very briefly, that the circus comes to town, the town of Abalone, to be exact.  But it's not a Barnum & Bailey-type circus.  It arrives somehow with, or in the person of, the Chinese legend Laozi (Lao-Tse, Dr. Lao, or as you wish), since in the movie he arrives on a donkey with only a fishbowl and fish, as well as a pipe, which he ignites with his thumb as lighter.  It consists of other legends, myths, and gods in—as it were—the flesh.  The rest is what happens to, of, with, by, and from the circus and its hawker, guide, medicine man, and (in the movie) magical self, Dr. Lao.


Courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

Place Number 4: Abalone, Arizona

MGM's Abalone, understandably, looks just like all those old western towns you see in television shows and movies, more than one horse, but not more than half a dozen, and not more than that many streets.  I always thought of Finney's Circus as taking place in the late 1920s, when he began the story while he was still billeted in China by the U.S. Army.  But this version of the story takes place in that same smeared-out time zone that westerns always use—somewhere between 1890 and 1910, when record players were known as gramophones, and when men were men and women were uh … unable to take care of ourselves. 

Place Number 5: Tucson, Arizona

Many people, including me, think that Abalone, Arizona—the setting of more than one Finney story—was actually Tucson.  And there is an "Old Tucson," a movie set just outside Tucson that became a tourist attraction in which the stagecoach gets robbed twice daily.  The set really epitomizes that "Old West" stereotype that dominates in "7 Faces."  But in desert scenes, saguaro cacti figure heavily in the movie's landscape.  Most people don't know that saguaros are not found anywhere but in the Sonoran Desert.  There is a certain creep, perhaps a foot or so per year, as the cacti spread around mainly southern Arizona (U.S.) and northern Sonora (Mexico), but at this point they only live in the Southwest, and not on the MGM lot in California.  The ones on the MGM lot look pretty strange.  I would have said that the cacti were the worst things about the movie, were it not that I realized that their strange appearance (looking like cardboard cutouts) adds to the surreal nature of the film.


A real—not surreal—saguaro cactus near Tucson, Arizona

Place Number 6: Dr. Lao's circus tent

The circus tent of the good doctor is said to be "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" by one observer in the movie, and indeed it has many twistings and turnings.  In fact it is rather like a layered labyrinth and is a remarkable movie set, one of the best inventions of the movie, I think.  There is a lair for every beast, a spiel for every part of the tent.  Steps up, steps down– Hurry! Hurry!–a very strange circus tent that provides the setting for the fish from Dr. Lao's fishbowl, not in the book, but in the movie an excuse for some animation when it grows to the size of the sea serpent advertised.  The book ends with the story of Woldercan (below), but the movie has a showdown with villain Clint Stark's henchmen that burns the tent.

Place Number 7: Woldercan

Woldercan was a city dominated by a vengeful god in Finney's Circus, and now, in the movie, destroyed by improbable cataclysms.  In both the movie and the book, Woldercan is shown as if unfolding outside as the rear of the tent rolls up, but in the movie the people of the city look like the people of Abalone, and they are led astray by a man who looks like Stark.  In the book they are threatened by starvation and flock to the temple, where a dispute over which virgin to sacrifice leads to the deaths of three people—not the whole city.  In the movie the story of Woldercan becomes the turning point in the Stark v. Abalone battle.


The author, courtesy of University of Arizona Special Collections

As I think of it, the movie was funny although not Finney, worth seeing for the performances of Randall and Barbara Eden (Angela), the jokes and pokes at westerns—oh, and don't forget the surrealism.  Go see this circus when it comes to town.

And now for a little catalog.  Finney put one at the end of his story, so I thought I'd put just a short one in:

Plots & bits interposed in Finney's tale:

  • romance of Angela & Ed
  • politics of Clint Stark v. Abalone, including meetings, printshop destruction
  • Lao's interruption of beating of George who is supposed to be a Navajo (Indians from Northern Arizona) played by a Lakota (Plains) Indian
  • inflation of sea monster
  • Lao's trick of lighting his thumb
  • Lao's trick of speaking any dialect, not just perfect English v. Chinee American stereotypical dialect.

Men-like creatures not in book:

  • abominable snowman (screenwriters' solution to the book's Russian v. bear problem)
  • Mike (Angela's son)
  • Clint Stark
  • cowboy muscle and snark
  • Merlin the magician (Apollonius was the magician in the book)
  • Ed Cunningham (Angela's honey and editor of the newspaper)

Woman-like creatures not in book:

  • Angela's mother-in-law

Ending as it began

As for Laozi (not pronounced LOWzee), he was last seen riding into the west, but in the 6th century BC that was on a water buffalo.  On the MGM lot in 1963 it was on a donkey, and in the direction of some cardboard saguaros.  Or, as the movie's Dr. Lao (pronounced LOW) would say, "Hello.  Goodbye.  Thank you."

[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…]




[June 16, 1962] Picking Up Charles Finney (The Circus of Dr. Lao)


by Victoria Lucas

I am so honored to be taking up space here!  The Traveler thought enough of my letters to the editor that he asked me to become a regular contributor.  In my letters I mentioned how I've just graduated from Stanford and am going back to my old job in the Drama Department at the University of Arizona, and my mother's home, where I'm typing on an old portable Smith-Corona that has seen far too many papers, dissertations, theses, and so on as I've struggled to work my way through college. 

Last fall I tacked up on my bulletin board (unfortunately in the sun) a short column of news about somebody with whom I sometimes work in Tucson little theatre–Bob Hammond, a French professor at the University of Arizona who once won a Fulbright to Paris and never recovered.  He writes his plays in French and English and translates from each language into the other.  The blurb introduced Hammond as one of four playwrights who formed a producing group for their work.  One of the other playwrights was a fellow by the name of Charles Finney who was supposed to produce a play of his this year. 

The article reminded me that I may have met Finney as I house-managed and assistant-directed Bob's plays.  Or I might have seen him in his workplace, the newspaper building downtown, where he has been editor of the Arizona Daily Star for 32 years (I spent my Saturdays at the Tucson Daily Citizen my senior year in high school helping to put out the "Teen Citizen," a section of the paper.) So when I ran across The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories I picked it up.  It's edited by Ray Bradbury and published by Bantam Books, first out 1956.

In the very first sentence of his introduction to this book of short and long stories, Bradbury asserts that the works in this book "are fantasies, not science-fiction." He goes on to list some adjectives and statements that contrast science fiction and fantasy as genres (or at least his idea of the genres).  Then, in two short, strident paragraphs, like trochees in a poem, he argues:

"Science-fiction balances you on the cliff.

Fantasy shoves you off."

This book of short stories (and one long one) conforms to that opinion.  At least the shoving-off-cliffs part.

Charles Finney's novella The Circus of Dr. Lao is on the cover and first in the book.  Finney uses figures of mythical people and animals to produce what seems like an almost metaphorical story of Abalone, Arizona, which apparently is what Charles Finney calls Tucson.  He began the story while he was in the US Army in China in 1929, and it has seen numerous editions since it was first in print in 1935. 

Lao Tzu (or Laozi, or Lao Tse or …) is a mythical/historical figure who is said to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, a book of philosophy, and the founder of Taoism (Daoism), variously a religion and a philosophy.  The presence of this part man part myth as the owner of a circus is better understood when you see who and what the circus animals and people are: a medusa, a sea serpent, Apollonius of Tyana (15 to 100 AD, a Christ-like figure who incongruously wears and uses a cross), a satyr, a Roc chick, Sphinx, Chimera, and so on.  The real venerable philosopher (Dr.) Lao did not preach withdrawal from the world but discernment and enjoyment of what is in it, apparently here containing the inventions of the human imagination that might include himself (does that tangle your nervous system?)

These animals and humanlike entities do not mix well, and they look strange marching through the town of Abalone as circuses used to do.  They are so bizarre that the people of Abalone do not know what to make of them, and they argue incessantly about whether one of the circus figures is a bear, a "Russian," or a man.  Finney doesn't even settle the matter in his ending "Catalogue" of characters, questions, and other matters at the end.

I cannot recommend this story enough.  Although Bradbury calls it fantasy, it fits in no genre, has no particular moral, steps in no one else's shoes.  I am only familiar with one other book of Finney's, The Unholy City, which seems to me again to be without identifiable genre, one that calls out human foibles but does not condemn them.  Both books are funny but not laugh-out-loud funny.  Their humor emanates quietly from human (and mythic) limitations and self-aggrandizement.

What I find most amusing is the way the good (or not-so-good) doctor can change in an instant back and forth from a stereotype of an ignorant and hysterical "heathen Chinee," misplaced letters "L" and all, to a calm, philosophical global traveller speaking perfect English. 

In one scene, he "came dashing up, 'Whatsah mattah Glod damn college punks come this place?' …'You no savvee nothing here.  Glet to hell out!  This my show, by Glod!'" Eventually he "glets" them out by shouting, "Hey, Lube!  (instead of the circus/carnival rallying cry, "Hey, Rube!").

A little later he expounds on his Hound of the Hedges (supposedly a living dog made out of vegetable matter).  He begins with "Epitomizing the fragrance of grassplots, lawns, and hedgy, thickset places, this behemoth of hounds stands unique in the mysterious lexicon of life."  Elsewhere he maintains his innocence of fraud by saying "You see: I no fool you.  This place no catchum fake." 

(In my experience, some clever people conceived in foreign lands or looking still foreign in this one use this ability to believably imitate their stereotypes in order to maintain their privacy and ward off unwelcome demands.)

As the show goes on, there are casualties, mainly from the Medusa's ability to turn people to stone, but Dr. Lao is almost killed himself.  He survives, though, and just as he came to town by no visible means (not by truck or train), he leaves with his menagerie the same way.

"I am a calm, intelligent girl." Miss Agnes Birdsong reassures herself.  "I am a calm, intelligent girl, and I have not seen Pan on Main Street." Circus of Dr. Lao

"When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be." Lao Tzu

The rest of the book consists of short stories of varying length.  The first, Nigel Kneale's story The Pond, seems to me to have congealed around a particular idea the way the white of a boiled egg encircles the yolk.  Anything I say about it will probably spoil the ending of this extremely short story, so I will just state that it is of frogs and men.

The Hour of Letdown by E. B. White pits men against an artificial brain.  One that likes to get drunk after a hard job well done.

So far humans aren't doing very well.  Let's see how things go with Roald Dahl's The Wish.  Hmmm.  Imagination 3, human beings 0. 

And "The Summer People"?  Well, I know Shirley Jackson's work, and her imagination tends to the … let's just say she's well known for The Haunting of Hill House, a ghost story.  A couple lucky enough to have a summer home decide to stay there after Labor Day, something they've never done before.  Be prepared for unending suspense.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of the next story, is taught in school as one of America's first, most celebrated authors.  He is probably best known for his book The Scarlet Letter (1850), about fictional events 200 years earlier in Puritan Boston, where an adulteress is forced to wear a red letter "A" on her dress.  This story, Earth's Holocaust, dates from 1844 and is strongly reminiscent of Jonathan Swift, whose work Hawthorne probably would have read.  Its moral: beware of reforms, because evil will spring forth anew.

Loren Eiseley is an anthropologist, not a writer of fiction, but this story (essay?) was published in 1948 in Harper's Magazine, when he was head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.  "Bone hunters," he writes, "are listeners.  They have to be."  He hears about Buzby's Petrified Woman (the story title) while hunting for fossils, and he has to find out if it's "a bone."  Because it's in this collection I would think it's fantasy.  Because it's Eiseley I'm inclined to believe it's a memory.  You judge.

Oliver La Farge is also an anthropologist, but he wrote recognized fiction.  This story, The Resting Place, also became part of his collection A Pause in the Desert (1957) (Oh, I wish they hadn't misspelled "Chinle"–with an extra "e."  It's one of my favorite spots.) So I do understand "the old man's" obsession with Navajo country.  Its beauty is formidable, its mystery eternal.  This story does not challenge that view.

Threshold is by Henry Kuttner – an author with more pseudonyms than anyone else I know.  His most frequent one was Lewis Padgett, a name he used when he wrote with his wife C. L. Moore, but apparently Kuttner attributed this story to himself.  Kuttner is notable for his correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft, the inventor of the world of Cthulu.  If you have read or read about Lovecraft's work, you can guess the atmosphere and maybe one of the few characters in this story, which has been described elsewhere as "horror."  Apparently the husband-and-wife team of Kuttner and Moore did not have two egotists on it, because Kuttner writes here, "egotists cannot live together."  Beware: this is the second time a devil has appeared in this book.  Third time's a charm.

In James H. Schmitz's Greenface a barking dog begins to "churn up the night" as the owner of a fishing camp tries to decide how to deal with a green horror that has driven away his campers–and his girlfriend. 

The Limits of Walter Horton features this quote by author John Seymour Sharnik: "Even if one accepted Horton's rare talent as the purest sort of inspiration, that didn't explain what was happening." 

What if, while you are woolgathering, you are really not all there?  What if part of you is truly in the place and time you are thinking about, and the you in the present has somehow diminished?  Maybe this story, The Man Who Vanished by Robert M. Coates, would be the result.

For me, the stories in this book are uneven in quality and interest, but however you can get it, I absolutely recommend The Circus of Dr. Lao.  If you like Galactic Journey, you'll like Finney.

[September 29, 1961] Slim Pickings (October 1961 Fantasy and Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Each month, I look forward to my dose of new science fiction stories delivered in the form of digest-sized magazines.  Over the decade that I've been subscribing, I've fallen into a habit.  I start with my first love, Galaxy (or its sister, IF, now that they are both bi-monthlies).  I then move on to Analog, formerly Astounding.  I save The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy for last.  This is because it has been, until recently, the best of the digests– my dessert for the month, as it were. 

These days, the stories aren't as good.  Moreover, this time around, the latter third of the magazine was taken up with half a new Gordy Dickson short novel, which I won't review until it finishes next month.  As a result, the remaining tales were short and slight, ranging from good to mediocre.

In other words, not a great month for F&SF, especially when you consider that the novels they print seem to be hacked down for space (if the longer versions that inevitably are printed in book form are any indication).  Nevertheless, it is my duty to report what I found, so here it is, the October 1961 F&SF:

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who is not exactly a science fiction author but dabbles in the arena, leads with Harrison Bergeron.  It's a deceptively juvenile satire against Conformity and Communism, and while it may not impress upon first reading, it stays with you.  Four stars.

One of my favorite new authors is Rosel George Brown, and I have to give her credit for being willing to take chances.  The Ultimate Sin, however, is a bit avante garde for me.  Something about a social misfit interstellar explorer who finds a planet where gravity depends on whim rather than mass, and where the entire ecology is a unit, its pieces constantly consuming each other and exchanging knowledge in the process.  I didn't like it at first, but as with the first story, I found it engaging in retrospect.  Three stars.

Charles G. Finney's The Captivity isn't science fiction at all; it's more an analysis of captivity on humans, particularly when they discover that they aren't really captives at all.  What is there left to push against when external forces are removed?  Only each other, and themselves.  Three stars.

Robert E. Lee at Moscow is Evelyn E. Smith's attempt at satire this issue.  She's produced some real doozies, but this one, an extreme logical extension of turning our political ambassadors into cultural ambassadors, falls flat.  There is a laugh-inducing line on the last page, however.  Two stars.

The half-posthumous team of Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth bring us The World of Myrion Flowers, which tells the tale of a driven Black philanthropist whose attempts to raise a cadre of Negro executives end unhappily.  The moral: it's best when a disdained class doesn't have too clear an idea of what the favored class thinks of them.  I can only imagine what insanity I would derive from having telepathy while living in 1930s Germany.  Three stars.

Isaac Asimov hasn't written much fiction lately, and when he does, it tends to be old fashioned.  So it is with The Machine That Won the War, a very slight computer-related piece that probably got accepted more out of respect for the author than for its quality.  Two stars.

Meanwhile, George Langelaan, the Paris-born Britisher who penned The Fly in '57 brings us The Other Hand, a macabre story of digits that move as if possessed, compelling their owners to strange activities.  Rather overwrought and archaic.  Two stars.

If Asimov's fiction fails to impress, his fact remains entertaining.  That's About the Size of It is all about the comparative sizes of Earth's animals, all done logarithmically for easy data manipulation.  It turns out that people are medium-biggish creatures, all things considered.  Four stars.

The Vat is Avram Davidson's latest, featuring a bit of alchemy and misadventure.  Short but readable.  Three stars.

Grendel Briarton's latest pun, Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: XLIV, is as always, perhaps a bit more.

And that leaves us with Dickson's Naked to the Stars (Part 1 of 2), which I'll cover next week.  All in all, a 3-star issue that will not revulse but neither will it much impress.  Faint praise, indeed.

Farewell, older brother (June 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction;5-14-1959)

We live in such exciting times that it's no wonder science fiction is flourishing.  It seems not a month goes by without some kind of space shot, and yet we're still perhaps years away from the first manned orbit (not to mention a lunar jaunt).  Science fiction lets us see the headlines of tomorrow long before they are thrown onto our doorstep.

Of course, not all science fiction deals with space, and not all science fiction magazines deal exclusively in science fiction.  The latter half of this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction comprises naught but fantasies.

Not that this is a bad thing.  With Berlin under siege, Israel and its neighbors barely restrained from coming to blows, Cuba in the throes of revolution, any kind of escape is a welcome one.

You've hopefully read my review of the rest of the June 1959 Fantasy and Science Fiction. Most of the rest of this month's ish is taken up by Philip Jose Farmer's The Alley Man, a gritty, rambling story that is as hard to take as it is to put down.  It spotlights the grubby life of the what may be the last of the Neanderthals consigned, like the rest of his race, to survive off the scraps cast off by the superior Homo Sapiens Sapiens.  Not that Old Paley is any dumber than us.  Quite the contrary.  While he has the rough manner and speech as might be expected of the lowest of the lower economic class, he is a fine raconteur and rather wise. 

No, what did in the Neanderthals 50,000 years ago, was the loss of their chieftain's sacred headpiece (and the fact that Neanderthals were worse shots with the bow and arrow).  Over the millenia, the Neanderthals have slowly dwindled away, until just one remained (though it appears there are plenty of half-breeds and quatroons around).  Old Paley is a garbage scavenger who lives with a half-Neanderthal woman called "Gummy" and a physically blemished former socialite intellectual named Deena with a fetish for rough treatment.

Enter Dorothy, the aide of a physical anthropologist, who befriends Old Paley to study him.  It becomes clear over the course of the story that she becomes rather attracted to him (in part due to the powerful stench of the Neanderthal, like "a pig making love to a billy goat on a manure pile," but laden with powerful pheremones), but theirs is not fated to be a happy relationship.  In fact, the resulting love quadrangle is all kinds of dysfunctional and, ultimately for Old Paley, fatal.

But you can't deny it's well-written and compelling.

There are three remaining odds and ends: an interesting article on orbits, Satellite Trails by Ken Rolf, about not just the course satellites take around the Earth, but the interesting and sometimes unintuitive patterns they make to ground observers (something like Ptolemy's epicycles); Charles Finney's Iowan's Curse, a cautionary tale about the karmic danger of being a Good Samaritan; and Robert Young's Production Problem, a short-short about a creativity shortage in the far future.  They fill the pages, but are not particularly noteworthy.

I think that leaves us at an uninspiring 3.5 or so for the issue.  The lead story is very good, and Alley Man is worth reading, I suppose, but the rest is lackluster.

But you can decide for yourself!  And should.  Until next time (and do stay tuned–I have many interesting updates to come).

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