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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 26, 1968] Stormy Weather (March 1968 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

There's no sun up in the sky

Out in the vastness of space, a constellation of man-made moons keeps watch on the Earth below.  Unlike their brethren, the military sentinels that look out for rocket plumes and atomic blasts, these benign probes monitor the planet's weather with a vantage and a vigilance that would make a 19th Century meteorologist green with envy.

In addition to the wealth of daily data we get from TIROS, ESSA, and Nimbus, the West is now getting aid from an unlikely, but no less welcome, source: behind the Iron Curtain.

Two years ago, the Soviets rebuffed the idea of exchanging weather satellite imagery.  "No need," was what they said; "no sats," was probably the real story.  For in August of 1966, all of a sudden, the USSR activated the "Cold Line" link between Moscow and Washington for the exchange of meteorological data.  This action coincided with the recent launch of Cosmos 122, revealed to be a weather satellite.

This constituted a late start in the weather race–after all, TIROS had been broadcasting since 1960.  Nevertheless, better late than never.  Unfortunately, the Soviets first sent only basic weather charts with limited cloud analysis.  Not much good without the raw picture data.  When we finally got the pictures, starting September 11, 1966, the quality was lousy–the communications link is just too long and lossy.  Our ESSA photos probably didn't look any better to them.

By March 1967, however, the lines had been improved, and Kosmos 122 was returning photos with excellent clarity.

We also got infrared data.  The resolution was much worse, but the Soviets maintained they did first discover a pair of typhoons bearing down on Japan.

Since then, the USSR has orbited at least two more weather satellites, Kosmos 144 and Kosmos 184, both returning the same useful data, often from different orbital perspectives than we can easily reach.  For instance, the Soviet pictures offer particularly good views of the poles and northern Eurasia.

It's a little thing, perhaps, this trading of weather data between the superpowers.  But anything that promotes peaceful exchange and keeps the connections between East and West ready and friendly is something to appreciate.  Sometimes the Space Race is more of a torch relay!

Raining all the time


by Kelly Freas

In sharp contrast, Analog remains an island unto itself, and like all inbred families, often produces challenged offspring.  Such is the case with the March 1968 issue, which ranges from middlin' to awful.

The Alien Rulers, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

We start with the awful.

Fifteen years ago, the blue-skinned Kaozo engaged our space fleet, destroyed it utterly, and became the benevolent masters of Earth.  They created a working socialist society, implementing tremendous public works projects, and humanity proved remarkably complacent under their rule.  Nevertheless, a revolution of sorts has been hatched, and Richard Henrys is tasked with the stickiest assignment–assassinate the Kazo leader, Bitool.

Henrys is quickly captured, but instead of facing execution, Bitool offers him a deal: protect Seren, the first female Kazo on Earth, during the next three days of the revolution, and he can go free.

Sounds like a decent setup.  It's actually a terrible story.  For one thing, the author of Chthon has all of his off-putting tics on display.  Seren is a straw woman, whose vocabulary is largely limited to "Yes, Richard," and "No, Richard."  The social attitudes of this far future world seem rooted in the Victorian times, with passages like this:

"You'll pose as my wife.  Hang on to my arm and–"

"Pose?" she inquired.  "I do not comprehend this, Richard."

Damn the forthright Kazo manner!  He had five minutes to explain human ethics, or lack of them, to a person who had been born to another manner.  Pretense was not a concept in the alien repertoire, it seemed.

He chose another approach.  "For the time being, you are my wife, then.  Call it a marriage of convenience."  She began to speak, but he cut her off.  "My companion, my female.  On Earth we pair off two by two.  This means you must defer to my wishes, expressed and implied, and avoid bringing shame upon me.  Only in this manner are you permitted to accompany me in public places.  Is this clear?"

And this one:

"I promised to explain why this subterfuge was necessary.  I didn't mean to place you in a compromising situation, but–"

"Compromising, Richard?"

"Ordinarily a man and a woman do not share a room unless they are married."

And then, there's the scene where the feminine disguise Richard puts together for Seren falls apart because her body lacks mammalian contours.  Why doesn't he then dress her in male clothes?  And when her stockings start to fall off her legs, I couldn't help wondering how they'd somehow uninvented Panty Hose in the 21st Century.

But then, I'm not sure if Piers Anthony has actually ever talked to a woman, much less seen her in her underthings.

On top of that, the final revelation that the Earth fleet was never destroyed, but instead went on to conquer Kazo, and the two planets have swapped overlords (both governments populated only by the very best technocrats) is so ridiculous as to beggar belief.  That Henrys is invited to become one of the ruling class largely for his novel ideas on how to cut a cake fairly, well, takes the cake.

One star.

Uplift the Savage, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Members of an interstellar agency learn that the best way to increase the technological sophistication of a primitive race is not to give them expertise, but allow them to steal it.  The two-page point is hammered in using fourteen pages of digs at women, higher education, and educated women.

One star.

The Inevitable Weapon, by Poul Anderson


by Harry Bennett

A scientist discovers teleportation.  Useless for interstellar travel, at least for a while, it's great for beaming in concentrated starlight–as a weapon at first, but potentially, to provide energy.

This would be a decent, one-page Theodore L. Thomas piece in F&SF.  Instead, it's fourteen pages of bog-standard detective/secret agent thriller.

Two stars.

Birth of a Salesman, by James Tiptree, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

Jim Tiptee's freshman story is an Anvilesque tale of breakneck pace and nonstop patter.  T. Benedict of the Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance (XCGC) has got a tough job: making sure the trade goods of the galaxy not only take into account the taboos or allergies of alien customers, but also the transhipment longshorebeings. 

Tedium sets in by page two, which, coincidentally, is how many stars I rate it.

The Horse Barbarians (Part 2 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

A lot and very little happen in this installment of Jason dinAlt's latest adventure.  Last time on Deathworld III, Jason offered up his fellow Pyrrans as mercenaries to wipe out the horse barbarians on the planet Felicity.  It's fair play, after all, since these barbarians (absolutely not the Mongols, because they have red hair!) slaughtered the last attempt at a mining camp on their frozen plateau.

So, Jason accompanies "Temuchin", the warlord, on an expedition down a cliffside to the technologically advanced civilization on the plains below.  There, they steal some gunpowder, kill a lot of innocent people, and come back–in time to link up with the rest of the Pyrrans for a raid on the Weasel clan.  More slaughter ensues.

Jason feels kind of bad about his part in the killing, but it's all a part of a master plan to someday, eventually, pacify the warriors with by opening up a trade route with the south (as opposed to setting up off-world trade, since the barbarians hate off-worlders).  So whaddaya gonna do?

Well, personally?  Pick a different career path.  Even if the nomads are the biggest savages since the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phantasms, what right do the Pyrrans have to kill…anyone? 

Setting aside the moral concerns, Harrison is still an effective writer.  I wasn't bored, just a bit disgusted.

Three stars.

Practice!, by Verge Foray


by Kelly Freas

A shabby little private school for problem children is suddenly the subject of a set of accreditation inspectors.  There's nothing wrong with the kids or the staff–the problem is that the snoops might discover it's really a training ground for junior ESPers!  Luckily, the tykes are on the side of management, and the inspectors are snowed.

I went back and forth on whether this very Analogian tale deserved two or three stars.  On the one hand, I'm getting a little tired of psi stories (the headmaster in the story even says there's no such thing as something for nothing–and that's what psi is), and I resented the smug digs at public school.

But what swayed me toward the positive end of the ledger (aside from the unique and lovely art) was the bit at the end whereby it's suggested that the reason for the school, and the reason psi is so unreliable, is because, like music or language, it's something that needs to be practiced from an early age.  It's a new angle, and pretty neat.

So, three stars.

Can't go on…

Wow.  2.1 stars is bottom-of-Amazing territory, and it easily makes this month's Analog the worst magazine of the month.  Compare it to Fantastic (2.2), IF (3), New Worlds (3.3), and the excellent Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.6), and the contrast is even stronger.

Because of the paucity of magazines, you could fit all the really good stuff into, say, one issue of Galaxy.  On the other hand, women wrote 12% of new fiction this month, which is decent for the times (not to mention the episodes of Star Trek D. C. Fontana has been penning).

It's 1968, an election year.  Maybe this is the year Campbell hands the reins over to someone else.  It certainly couldn't hurt the tarnished old mag.

And then, maybe the sun will come out again!

Speaking of election news, there's plenty of it and more on today's KGJ Weekly report.  You give us four minutes, and we'll give you the world:



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 4, 1967] Devaluation (New Writings in SF-11 & Beyond Infinity December 1967)

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by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

With so much news about social reforms or issues in Rhodesia and Aden, it is easy to forget that the economy was one of the main issues that led to Wilson’s election as Prime Minister, in particular dealing with the trade deficit.

For almost a decade now Britain has been importing more than it has been exporting. With this many British consumers are choosing foreign made goods over domestic ones causing problems for local industry, not a good look for a country that was once dubbed “The Workshop of the World.”

The reasons for this date back a long way. From early adoption of manufacturing and overreliance on imperial exploitation, to the spending of Post-War American aid on military ventures (instead of the intended economic strengthening). However, one of the biggest is the value of the pound.

Whilst other countries trying to recover after the Second World War, such as Japan, had their currency set low, Britain strived to keep its value high. It has even become a point of national pride to have the Sterling as a major player in international trade, and devaluing had been something that had to be avoided at all costs.

Wilson and Callaghan
Wilson and Callaghan, probably not as happy any more

However, world events have continued to put trade and the currency under strain. With the Arab-Israeli war, the fighting in Aden and failure to join the EEC, it was seen by Wilson as a necessary act. Whilst the economic impact will likely come later, the political impact has already been major. The chancellor, Jim Callaghan, has resigned and there have been attacks from all ends of the political spectrum that this is a breach of trust.

As I read this month’s stories in the anthology "New Writings in SF 11" and magazine "Beyond Infinity", I could not help but wonder if there was some devaluation going on here as well. The quality I was getting for my money seemed to decline as I read on:

New Writings in SF 11

New Writings in SF 11

Dobson’s hardback release was delayed, meaning we get the Corgi paperback (and their much prettier cover) first this time.

In another change the theme here is much broader, with imaginative looks at humanity’s future.

The Wall to End the World by Vincent King

Following his brilliant Defence Mechanism, Vincent King gives us another spectacular tale. Five thousand years earlier, the ancients built the Wall, a thousand-mile circle to protect the ordinary people in the City and the Teachers in their Citadel. Our narrator is an officer of the Wall, determined to protect it from all invaders. When he discovers the return of the ancient ones and the appearance of a new star in the sky, he knows the prophecy of the end is coming true.

In a beautiful and cleverly written 25 pages, King gives a deeper more complex world brimming with science fictional concepts than most writers manage in an entire novel series. There is fascinating mix of old & new technologies, with looking screens and robots mentioned in the same breath as horses and crossbows. But it is never ponderous or boring. Throughout it races along like the best adventure stories.

Five stars, only because I can’t give it a sixth!

Catharsis by John Rackham

Professor Caine is on the verge of a major breakthrough in particle physics, when he starts getting terrible headaches. After he checks into Dr. Halleweg’s clinic he discovers he only has 48 hours left to live.

A more experimental story than I would expect from Rackham with limited SFnal content. It is solid but feels like it is aiming for the current New Worlds style without really getting there.

Three Stars

Shock Treatment by Lee Harding

Pietro struggles to keep his memories and personality intact as he searches for The Great Engine of the world.

This is the kind of slow atmospheric apocalypse that seemed to fill the British magazines after Aldiss’ Greybeard was published. Not bad but nothing new.

Three Stars

Bright Are the Stars That Shine, Dark Is the Sky by Dennis Etchison

Space travel has failed to provide a suitable home for humanity and has been abandoned. With Los Angeles’ population reaching twenty million the old city is being torn down to provide enough housing for everyone. This vignette follows a young boy and an ex-spacer night watchman as they visit The Museum of Space Science and Technology before it is destroyed.

This is a lovely melancholy tale of the loss of innocence and the danger of losing hope in the future. Simple but memorable.

Four Stars

There Was This Fella… by Douglas R. Mason

Alf Pearson has a problem: he keeps jumping between planes of reality. His doctors think he is just highly suggestible, but what is real?

I felt this concept was already used to better effect in de Camp’s Wheels of If. I am not sure if I missed something important or if it was all just a bit hollow.

Two Stars

For What Purpose? by W. T. Webb

After an explosion at the Grenville Power Station, Tom Berkley finds himself in Marginburg: town like Grenville but tinged with bizarre touches, such as the sky being patched up with newspaper, an enormous house with no windows, and regular raids from pirates. How did he get here? And can he get back home?

This one is tough to know what to make of, because much of it has the surrealism of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and then it ends in a manner that could either be read as genius or nonsense. I will be generous and choose the former.

Four Stars (or Suit-of-Armour Newsprint in Marginburg).

Flight of a Plastic Bee by John Rankine

Paul Karadoc is sent to investigate Station K, repository of secure knowledge in orbit around planet Earth, populated by artificially prolonged humans known as Biomechs. Information has been leaking out of the station and it is up to Karadoc to discover how and why.

This is the second tale from Mr. Mason and an even weaker one, I found it dull and often incomprehensible. Even Doctor Who’s Cyberman adventures do a better job of exploring some of these themes.

One Star

Dead to the World by H. A. Hargreaves

I have been reliably informed this is the same Hargreaves who wrote Tee Vee Man 4 years ago, just with a different first initial, possibly a typographical error. Talking of mistakes, this is the story of Joe Schultz, a man accidentally declared dead in a future where administration is primarily run by computers.

This starts out as an interesting Kafkaesque tale, but soon descends into pure silliness.

Two Stars

The Helmet of Hades by Jack Wodhams

On the planet Albermarle, the inhabitants have been turned blind by the farmer Galig as part of a plot to rule over it as the only sighted adult. Marshal and Cresswell work to resist him.

Wodhams is not an author who has appeared in New Writings before but seems to have done quite well for himself writing mediocre tales for Campbell. Unfortunately, this is even more disappointing. It doesn’t seem to make a real attempt to understand blind people or communities, is overlong and the concept had a better treatment from Wells decades ago.

One Star

Beyond Infinity Dec. 1967

Beyond Infinity
Cover and all illustrations by Lynn Goller

With the continued disappearance of SF magazines from the market and others turning to reprints, any time a new publication appears, I am keen to give this new magazine a try.

It opens with a strong editorial from Doug Stapleton, saying you will not see a “wild, Bondian adventure on the outer rim of the universe” within. Instead, he says, this is more devoted to “What-if-ness”, tales of the strange and uncanny.

Perhaps that is why they chose to print the contents in a randomised order?

Beyond Infinity Contents

Anyway, let’s explore these “other dimensions”:

Of Human Heritage by Wade Hampton

Of Human Heritage by Wade Hampton Illustration: Dying Man

Years ago, a ship full of pioneers crashed onto an unknown planet and no Earth ships have found them. As the last of the original colonists, Old Pendennis, lies dying, he worries whether or not the future generations will be able to maintain their humanity.

This is not a bad tale. It is well written, with a nice narrative style and strong ending, but it also feels like a missed opportunity to me, as it could easily have explored some much deeper themes.

Three Stars

Communication Problem by John Christopher

Communication Problem by John Christopher Illustration: Two Aliens Looking at communication equipment

In 2049 instantaneous warp travel between nearby stars has become safe and routine, that is unless you are travelling after Burns Night with a Scottish duty officer. When the Wayfarer lands inside a sub-electronic storm the ship is forced to crash on to a planet, the last survivor of the crew is rescued by The Mori, but why can the two species not communicate?

This feels like a story intended for Analog that was rejected. We have lots of dull explanations of engineering, aliens being baffled by humans, even mentions of ESP. I do get the sense from some of Christopher’s writing he isn’t all too keen on the other nations of The United Kingdom, and this tale is obviously no exception. Maybe the anti-Scottishness was too much for a Campbell?

One Star (and a big apology to my friends north of the border)

Whirligig! by John Brunner

Whirligig! by John Brunner Illustration: Saxophonist in front of various jazz club signs

Of late Brunner seems to be returning to some of his creations from the 50s. We recently got a serial set in his future Empire, and a sequel to Imprint of Chaos. Now it is the turn of his strange jazz troupe, Tommy Caxton and the Solid Six.

This gives us one side of a conversation, as Caxton tries to convince his record label to include Gumshoe Stumble as their next single.

Unfortunately, this is no Traveller in Black. Instead it is a series of run on sentences with barely any SFnal content (at least that I could understand). I know I am in no position to critique another’s grammar but I found it near unreadable. But it is also true that I don’t get jazz.

One Star

Talk to Me, Sweetheart by Ben Bova

Talk to Me, Sweetheart by Ben Bova Illustration: Astronaut in front controls

Finishing the trilogy of big names, we get Bova giving us another space-flavoured tale. Here an astronaut in orbit is losing control and only the woman’s voice on the other end of the communicator can help him.

Basically this is the opening scene of A Matter of Life and Death transferred to space, albeit with a different ending, one most readers will see coming from eight miles high.

Two stars

5-4-3-2- by James McKimmey

5-4-3-2- by James McKimmey Illustration: Man running away from alien face

Christopher Raamsgaard has been hit hard by the death of his business partner and has been working incredibly hard. Is this why he has started doing everything backwards? Or is something stranger going on?

Mr. McKimmey seems to be returning to SF, with two sales to Pohl’s magazines recently. However, just like those, this is not a good piece. Hoary, dull, silly, it would have been a space filler a decade ago.

One Star

The Deadly Image by McHugh Ferris

The Deadly Image by McHugh Ferris Illustration: Two people working on a robotic Abraham Lincoln

Emile Varner creates a robotic recreation of Lincoln and puts on a hugely successful show where people can experience his last night at Ford’s Theatre. But is history doomed to repeat itself?

Pointless piece of filler barely moving on from the current Mr. Lincoln Speaks attraction.

One Star

Revenge at the TV Corral! by J. de Jarnette Wilkes

Revenge at the TV Corral! by J. de Jarnette Wilkes Illustration: Cowboy at various stage of drawing a gun

Ken Dexter was the star of the major TV western, Western Marshal. Now he has been killed off and replaced by Bill Todd. When his wife also left him for Todd that was the last straw and he goes to murder them.

This is an odd story, that seems to be attempting some sort of metafiction, but never really works for me.

Two stars for effort.

The 13th Chair by Michael Quentin Lanz

The 13th Chair by Michael Quentin Lanz Illustration: Short man with briefcase talking to another man in front of a door

Wes Pepper’s syndicated column is extremely popular but, with a huge libel suit against him and twelve deaths resulting from his distortion, his publisher want rid of him. But Mr. Pepper is not so easily got rid of.

A nasty story without much depth and the feel of Weird Tales.

Two Stars

Upon Reflection by Gilmore Barrington

Upon Reflection by Gilmore Barrington Illustaration: Man being surprised by devil figure in front of carnival posters

Wilbur Trimble hates his wife and wants to kill her. Perhaps the Christian carnival that has come to town will provide an opportunity.

A bad horror story about a terrible man.

One star

Mommy, Mommy, You're a Robot by Dexter Carnes

Mommy, Mommy, You're a Robot!! by Dexter Carnes Illustration: Boy between a winding key and cogs

Stevie Bellamy is an ordinary kid during the day, but at night he dreams of travelling from Omicron and that his mother is actually a robot. Do I even need to say where this is going? Unoriginal, poorly put together and speckled with random racist language.

One Star

Greetings, Friend! by Dorothy Stapleton and Douglas Stapleton

Spaceman standing in front of wrecked spaceship

The Ecknode crashes on an unknown planet without any hope of escape. Suddenly he sees another craft come across the sky, is it his chance of escape?

It is ironic, given his introduction, that the editor gives us the most traditional science fiction story. Whilst not a “Bondian adventure” it is a dull old-fashioned first contact story that wouldn’t be out of place in '40s Astounding.

One Star

The New Way by Christopher Anvil

The New Way by Christopher Anvil Illustration: Collage of images, a gun, a dead man, a man falling backwards, a spiral, a chequerboard patten

Burr Macon is Chief of Crime Documents, here helping deal with a prisoner who has confessed to murder. He gets to experience a new form of punishment and rehabilitation instead of the death penalty, reliving his victim’s experience.

If the last story felt like '40s Astounding, this was pure '50s Galaxy. Unfortunately, Anvil is not William Tenn or Robert Sheckley, and the whole thing feels rote. At least it is competent, which is more than I can say for most of this magazine.

Two Stars

The DNE?

END between a series of overlapping circles, reflected horizontally
Odd ending image used throughout Beyond Infinity

Whilst there were some good stories at the start of New Writings and a reasonable one at the start of Beyond Infinity, there was a decline throughout. Hopefully this devaluation can stop and not continue into subsequent issues.



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 30, 1967] One door closes… (December 1967 Analog and Australia joins the Space Race!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Mags or paperbacks?

The latest issue of Yandro has got a nice piece from Ted White reviewing the latest (and best?) tome on science fiction by Alexei Panshin.  The best part of White's article is his gentle but lengthy disagreement over the status of magazines versus paperbacks.  Both White and Panshin agree that the paperback novel format is The Next Big Thing (indeed, it's already here), but they disagreed on their role and prospects.

Panshin sees the science fiction digests as a continuation of the pulps, with all the negative connotations attached thereto.  He thinks they will eventually die.  White strongly disagrees.  Firstly, he notes that pulp does not equal bad–many extremely talented authors got their start cranking out a half million words for the old mags.  Indeed, White says magazines are now populated by a stable of established writers who have perfected their trade while the paperbacks, since they are a buyer's market, will publish anything.  Essentially, the books have taken the role the magazines had in the glut days of the early '50s.

White goes on to say that paperbacks are great, but 1) mags are the main outlet for short stories, and some authors are just better at the short form, and 2) editors keep mags going for the love of it.  This means they are likely to survive longer than purely economic considerations would suggest.

It's a good piece.  I'd give it a read.

The issue at hand

Speaking of which, should you give the strikingly covered latest issue of Analog a read?  Well, if you're one of the 30,000 subscribers who gets it delivered, sure go ahead.  If you're eyeing it at a newsstand, you'll want to read further…


by John Schoenherr

Dragonrider (Part 1 of 2), by Anne McCaffrey

In Weyr Search, the first installment of this serial-in-all-but-name, we were introduced to planet Pern.  It is a fraught former Earth colony, severed from its homeworld for thousands of years and ravaged periodically by rhizomic attacks from a nearby world.  The only defense against the "threads" are fire breathing dragons ridden by telepathically connected humans.

The problem is it's been four centuries since the last attack and the "weyrs" of dragronriders have been allowed to go fallow.  Only Benden Weyr is left, and it is woefully undermanned and underdragoned.

This latest installment in the saga of Pern opens up sometime after the last.  Lessa, heir to the Hold of Ruatha and now Weyrlady by virtue of her communion with the dragon queen Ramoth, has shacked up with the F'lar, head of the dragonriders.  Not because the two like each other, but because that's the law: Weyrladies and Weyrleaders must get hitched.

The thread has begun to fall, and the dragons are sorely taxed to meet the challenge, teleporting in and out of the frigid between to intercept the alien spores.

(Note: What do you call it when a dragon relieves itself between?  An ICBM!)

Despite the perseverence of F'lar's crew, the thread has the upper hand–until Lessa accidentally discovers that dragons not only can teleport and telepath, but they can also time travel, too!  (telechron?) As one might expect, this changes the whole equation…but maybe not for the better.


by John Schoenherr

I dunno.  I was expecting a rousing Battle of Britain story, with never so much being owed by so many to so few.  The thread would start gradually, the brave fighters would fight to their limits, and through ingenuity and tenacity, eventually win.  The story would get extra points for being by and from the viewpoint of woman, a rare thing in science fiction, particularly in the mag that Campbell built.

Instead, the story is badly paced, lurching from scene to scene.  There is no build-up to the thread strike, no mounting of tension; it is just suddenly upon them.  McCaffrey throws psionic conceits against the wall to see which ones stick (Lessa not only discovers time travel, but she is the only one who can communicate with all of the dragons–unlike the other riders, who can only communicate with their bonded dragon).

Beyond that, the two main characters are thoroughly unlikeable, by turns yelling and sardonically sniping at each other.  An element of violence suffuses their interactions, with F'lar and Lessa's couplings being referred to as not less than rape.  It all feels very Marion Zimmer Bradley.  I've said before that Lessa feels like a wish-fulfillment character for the author.  This hypothesis is only becoming more concerning.

What's frustrating is I feel there could be an interesting story here in the hands of someone else.  Jack Vance has already written a thematically similar tale with his The Dragon Masters.  It's clear that Campbell wants Pern to be the next Dune, complete with striking Schoenherr covers.  Thus far, I'd say McCaffrey isn't up to the task.

I was originally going to give the installment a bare three stars, but I think I've talked myself out of it.

Two stars.

The Destiny of Milton Gomrath, by Alexei Panshin

In this short short, an orphaned garbage collector spends his life convinced that his existence of drudgery is a mistake, and that someone, somehow, will rectify the mistake some day.

Turns out he's right, but that may not be a good thing.

This could be the start of a mildly entertaining Laumer novel.  Instead, it ends right after the first punchline.

Blink and you'll miss it: three stars.

Whosawhatsa?, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Picture a world where a sex change is as complete and easy as an appendectomy…and reversible, to boot!  Now picture the most complicated legal case possible involving a married couple seeking a divorce, both parties of which have swapped genders.  And there are children involved, multiple paramours, probate issues, and a Strong Public Interest.

On the one hand, this story is a drag.  The attempts to make it "funny", mostly consisting of endless scenes in which the judge assigned the case contemplates suicide rather than attempt presiding, are a flop.  Also, one gets the feeling that if women's lib had advanced in the story as much as medical science, most of the legal issues and many of the social ones would be irrelevant.  Particularly if 1) we could extend the legal rights currently afforded women in the federal government to all women, and 2) we could approach homosexuality with a less than medieval attitude.

That said…

There is very interesting exploration of what it means to change genders and the motivations that underly the desire to make such a transition.  While the situation is made as ludicrous as possible, the subjects, for the most part, are taken seriously.  I actually found the piece remarkably progressive, especially for Analog.  Certainly, I've never read anything like it before.

Three stars.

Beak by Beak, by Piers Anthony


by Kelly Freas

An alien spacecraft orbits the Earth, neither communicating nor responding to communications.  Meanwhile, a red parrakeet arrives at the home of a bird-keeper and joins his avian pet family for a time.

This is a pleasant pastoral piece that tries a little too hard to get its message across.  Still, I'll read something like this a thousand times before I'll read Chthon again.

Three stars.

Venus and Mercury—Locked Planets? by R. S. Richardson

Dr. Richardson writes so-so science fiction, but I generally quite like his science fact articles.  This one talks about the newly discovered rotation rates of Venus and Mercury, as well as what they might mean in relation to the history of the solar system.

On the one hand, I learned a bit, and that's significant given that I know a lot of astronomy.  On the other, I felt the pictures were worth a thousand words, and I found myself skimming a lot of the text.  In other words, maybe 20 pages wasn't necessary to make the point (God help us–next month's science article will be 10,000 words!).

Still, four stars.

A Question of Attitude, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A recruit for the interstellar patrol finds himself in an increasingly difficult series of imaginary tests, ones that stick him in mortal peril in a simulated alien planet environment.  He seems to fail each one, ending up "dead", yet the Lt. Colonel in charge of training seems to think he has promise.

Normally, Anvil and Campbell are a toxic combination.  This time around, the story is kind of interesting.  I also rather enjoyed the nihilistic suggestion that the recruit's success is measured in the degree of his failure, and also that passing the tests only means his life is about to get worse.  It fits with the whole zeitgeist of our current engagement in Vietnam.  Even if Joseph Heller did it better.

Three stars.

Psi Assassin, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

Lastly, yet another of Reynolds' tales of Section G, the interstellar agency whose job is to make sure no human planet ends up too backwards, lest the race become prey to an ominous but yet unmet alien menace.  This time, a psionic assassin is sent to kill the head of a Latin dictatorship.  The problem: agent Ronny Bronston has already dispatched said leader and taken his identity!

We have all the hallmarks of a Reynolds Section G story: endless historical lectures (that never seem to have any object lessons beyond the mid-20th Century), flippant personalities that leach the story of any gravitas, the lone female agent (Reynolds never lets us forget her sex), and a happy ending.

Reynolds has done decent work with this series, but less often than not.

Two stars.

Doing the math

So who's right?  Alex or Ted?  Based on this month, I'd give the nod to Ted.  While Analog was on the mediocre side, managing just 2.8 stars, other magazines fared much better.  Both Galaxy and New Worlds scored 3.2 stars.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was also pretty good (3.1).  If was a bit tired, but par for the course (2.8), and while Amazing's 2.7 score puts it at the bottom of the pack, it actually is on an upward trend.

You could fill two magazines with all the superior stuff that came out this month, which is a good crop.  Sadly, McCaffrey wrote the only woman-penned piece, and it wasn't very good (though it was better than Poul Anderson's novella in Galaxy).

I give magazines at least a few more years…

But that's not all we have for today.  All the way from Australia comes this exciting stop press in the world of space news!:


by Kaye Dee

“Australia Joins the Space Club!”

Although Australia has supported American and British/European space efforts over the past decade, just yesterday, on 29 November we finally gained our own membership of the Space Club by placing our first satellite, WRESAT-1, into orbit. I’ve written articles previously about the first satellites of France and Italy, so it gives me great pride to report on Australia’s own satellite launch.


WRESAT-1 under construction in at the WRE

WRESAT-1 (WRE Satellite) has been a joint project of the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) and the University of Adelaide, with significant support from the United States. In 1966, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) offered Australia a spare Redstone rocket from the ARPA-led Project Sparta programme at Woomera as a satellite launcher. Sparta has been the final phase of a US/UK/Australian re-entry physics research programme commenced in 1960, investigating radar-echo phenomena created by re-entering missile warheads. The Sparta team even offered to prepare and fire the Redstone for the WRE.

“A Rush Job!”

The scientists and engineers involved in the Australian upper atmosphere research programme took advantage of the proposal to move their instruments from sounding rockets to satellite. However, the Sparta launch offer placed the satellite project on a very tight schedule, as the spacecraft would have to be ready for launch by the end of 1967, when the Sparta project would be complete and the Americans returning home. So, in just 11 months Australia’s, WRESAT has been designed, constructed, tested and was finally launched on 29 November. Its development has been an example of local “make-do” ingenuity, as much of the testing equipment needed was not available in the country.

Australia’s first satellite has been designated WRESAT-1 because my WRE colleagues hope that it will have many successors. Australia doesn’t yet have a space agency like NASA, but the WRE is putting a proposal to the Australian Government for a national space programme, and we hope that it will be funded, with the WRE formally designated as the Australian national space agency.


Diagram showing the internal layout of WRESAT’s systems and scientific instruments

Given the short development period, WRESAT’s scientific payload consists of instruments similar to those already flown in the Australian sounding rocket programme conducted in conjunction with the University of Adelaide Physics Department. The university team has developed a suite of instruments to study solar and ultra-violet radiation, atmospheric ozone and molecular oxygen density, as well as measuring the temperature of the solar atmosphere.

“Going Up From Down Under”

After an aborted launch attempt on the 28th, the Redstone lifted-off flawlessly on the 29th to place WRESAT into a polar orbit, where it is being tracked, and its telemetry signals recorded, by NASA’s Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Network – a service also generously provided free to Australia.


WRESAT soars on its way to orbit from Launch Area 8 at Woomera

Because of its short development time, a solar array could not be designed for WRESAT, and the satellite is only battery-powered. This means it will have a very short operational lifespan, but we expect it to gather a large amount of data on the upper atmosphere that will provide a check on the data already gathered by sounding rockets.

Let’s hope that WRESAT-1 marks the start of Australia’s true Space Age, and that this country will soon “shine as brightly as the Southern Cross”, as President Johnson has put it in his congratulatory telegram on our first national launch!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 31, 1967] I wouldn't send a knight out on a dog like this… (September 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Reversed metaphors

As we speak, I am packing for my trip to this year's Worldcon.  I'm not sure what to expect other than I understand I'll be on a lot of panels.  I'm mostly looking forward to seeing friends like Tom Purdom, Larry Niven, Ted White, and more.

My excitement is somewhat alloyed by the most recent magazine I've just finished.  After reading this month's Analog, I find myself asking, "Is this the state of science fiction?"


by Kelly Freas

The King's Legions, by Christopher Anvil

This month in Science Fiction Times, Norm Spinrad talked about how every editor has their pet authors.  Chris Anvil is the one who panders the most to Campbell's sensibilities, producing story after story of farcical garbage.  Legions continues the tale in which three planetary exploiters, who dealt with a planet controlled by robotic overlords by developing a emotional control nerve agent. 


by Kelly Freas

Last installment, said trio dealt with the collapse of society that ensued by assuming the roles of agents of competing feudal overlords, creating the illusion of a threat too big to contest by the planet's ragged revolutionaries.

This time around, a cadre of pirates, lured by the treasure said planet might offer (as well as the representatives' ships) have arrived bent on conquest. 

I'll be honest.  I got about four pages into this, flipped through to see that the damned thing is nearly 70 pages, and decided for once I would abrogate my responsibilities.  To quote Buck Coulson in this month's Yandro, "I can't read all this crap, and this seemed to be a good one to miss."

Two stars.

The Pearly Gates of Hell, by Jack Wodhams


by Rudolph Palais

Lurid account of a man's endless attempts at suicide, thwarted by a society that really wants its members to stay alive–forever.

Of course, even if one is successful, that doesn't mean surcease…

Bit of a tired one-note, this one.  Two stars.

The Usefulness of Nicotine, by Professor J. Harold Burn, FRS

This month's science article is a reprint, cacklingly presented by John W. Campbell, inveterate smoker.  Oh sure, the article writer concedes, smoking might kill you, but look how happy and productive you'll be before cancer does you in!  And here are all the gruesome details of the cats and rats vivisected to prove our point.

No thanks.  One star.

Fiesta Brava, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

The misadventures of Section G, whose task is to ensure none of the United Planets gets too backwards lest they be easy prey for the (yet unmet) alien menace, continue.  This time, the agents sent by Director Sid Jakes are a botanist from a heavy gee planet, a cordon bleu chef with a talent for object throwing, a colorless matron with a photographic memory, and a diminutive 25 year-old who looks like she's eight.

This quartet is sent off to Falange, a colony of Spanish emigrants who have elected to preserve the police state of Francisco Franco long after his passing.  High jinks ensue.

Fiesta reads like Heinlein writing a Retief story, with Reynolds' patented history lessons thrown in.  To wit, this time we learn about bullfights (which Mack presumably saw when he was in Spain), the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and why slaves really are happier than we give them credit for. After all–it's not as if there were ever any slave revolts.

I guess Reynolds' travels never took him to Haiti.

Anyway, it's not very good, but if you go for this sort of thing, it is readable.  I guess I'll give it a three.  I'm trying to be nicer these days.

Important Difference, by E. G. Von Wald


by Kelly Freas

Humanity has been at peace for 500 years, but this tranquility is disturbed when (putatively) bug-eyed aliens appear and start shooting.  One three-man scout becomes the first recon ship to successfully engage the enemy…and discover their true shape.

The "twist" is telegraphed as loudly as "What hath God wrought?" but I did appreciate how our race might evolve to the point that, even if our enemy looks like us, we could find a warlike nature so repellent as to mark a drastically different species.

Another low three star.

Lost Calling, by Verge Foray


by Leo Summers

Ingenuous young Dalton Mirni is picked up by a tramp freighter after being (so he says) in the captivity of aliens for 16 years of his life.  The problem is there are no aliens, at least that humanity knows of.  Not only that, but there is a big blank in his memory.  He knows he was being trained for a singular profession, but he has no idea what it was.

Still, he looks on the bright side.  After all, he is universally liked, by the crew that picks him up, the planet of Fingal (enemy of Earth), and the Earth people themselves.  And Mirni has the uncanny ability to solve people's interpersonal problems.

Of course, there can't be any connection between this skill and his lost memories…

I appreciated the tone of this story, and it's also pretty well done.  Definitely the best thing in the magazine, though I don't think I'd give it a fourth star.

Bad data

All in all, pretty grim.  Even being generous with my ratings, Analog clocks in at a dismal 2.3 stars, beaten by every other magazine and short story collection this month.  In order of decreasing badness, we have Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.8), IF (2.9), Orbit 2 (3), Fantastic (3), New Worlds (3.2), and The Devil His Due (3.2).

You could take all the four and five star stories and fill two digests (or thin books), which is pretty bad given we had seven to choose from.  It was a bright spot for women, though, as they contributed nearly 16% of the new stories published.

So is all hope lost?  Not necessarily.  I've already started on next month's Galaxy, and Budrys' book column discusses how the New Wave of authors (Aldiss, Ballard, Zelazny, Delany, et. al.) are revolutionizing the field.

They just aren't doing it in the pages of Analog.  So long as Campbell remains in the editorial chair, I suppose the revolution will remain untelevised.

We'll see how long that lasts.  Even Alabama integrated…




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 31, 1967] Canceling waves (August 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Phase shift

Every science fiction magazine has a stable of regular contributors.  Maybe there just aren't enough good writers to fill a magazine otherwise.  Perhaps it's a reflection of the conservative tendency to stick with what works.  Occasionally, you'll see a mag make an effort to recruit new talent, with mixed results.  Others, like Analog are famously steady.

Thus, it is usually with a heavy sigh that I open each new issue of John Campbell's mag.  It's not that his stable is bad per se.  But reading the same authors, month in and month out can get monotonous.  Also, because they are guaranteed spots, quality can be somewhat, shall we say, variable.

On the other hand, that variability means that it's rare that any single issue of Analog is all bad (or all good).  August 1967 Analog is no exception, with the bad turns being more than counteracted by the good ones.  Throw in an excellent science fact article from a newcomer, and this issue is one of the better mags of the month.

Interference pattern


by Chesley Bonestell

Starfog, by Poul Anderson

The latest Poul Anderson story inspired by a lovely Chesley Bonestell painting (this one of a planet around a red supergiant), is pretty neat.  The Makt, an incredibly primitive hyperdrive ship, makes planetfall at the farflung human colony of Serieve.  The crew are human, though of a somewhat radical type, far more resistant to radiation than baseline homo sapiens, and with a taste for arsenic salt.  More remarkable, they claim that their homeworld, Kirkasant, lives in another universe.  This universe is just a few hundred light years across, and jam packed with bright young stars.

Ranger Daven Laure and his sapient ship, Jaccavrie, are dispatched to Serieve to deduce just where Kirkasant is, and, if possible, to get the crew of the Makt home.  Easier said than done — how does one go looking for a pocket universe?  And if it posssess the properties described, then navigation in that electromagnetic hell would be virtually impossible.


by John Schoenherr

This is one of those highly technical stories that Anderson likes, but done with sufficient characterization that it doesn't require the Winston P. Sanders (Winnie the Pooh) alias that Anderson's lesser works go under.  Laure's solution to finding Kirkasant requires a bit too much overt hiding from the audience, but it is pretty clever, at least in a society of libertarian worlds motivated by little more than personal profit (a society that does make sense, in the context portrayed).

Four stars.

Babel II, by Christopher Anvil


by Rudolph Palais

Chris Anvil, on the other hand, is at a low ebb.  This piece is less of a story than a series of examples of how technical speak makes advanced technology all but inaccessible to anyone but the most arcane experts.  I suppose this is a point to be made, but I disagree with the conclusion that a user of technology must know everything about the technology.  That is, after all, the whole point of the new programming language, BASIC.  One can avail themselves of the nearest Big Iron computer and make sophisticated calculations without having the first clue how to IPL an operating system from a DASD.

Two stars.

The Misers, by William T. Powers

This month's science article is unusually excellent.  It's about the latest advances in digital imaging for astronomy, and how it might someday supplant the astronomical photograph.  Chatty and engaging, but not dumbed down, its only sin is length.  To be fair, there is a lot to cover.

Five stars.  An invaluable resource.

The Featherbedders, by Frank Herbert


by Leo Summers

Here's a real surprise: a Frank Herbert story I unreservedly like!

The Slorin are shapeshifters bent on infiltrating Earth's society for possibly sinister, but mostly benign purpose.  When a scattership breaks up before it can safely land, two members of the crew, Smeg and his son, Rick, go off looking for a rogue comrade who has gone native.

And how.  Using his mind control powers, this renegade has taken up residence in a small Southern town as a sheriff, maintaining order with an iron fist, thought control, and the use of hostages.  But when Smeg finally confronts the sheriff, he encounters an even deeper secret — one that threatens the entire Slorin operation.

Aside from the final twist, which I found a little superfluous, the only other off-putting issue is the use of the exact same poem that ends this month's F&SF story, Bugs.  One wonders if the poem was prominently featured a few months ago or something.

But all of Herbert's typical tics, including copious italics and ever-shifting viewpoints, are completely absent from the piece.  It's light rather than ponderous, but not overly frivolous.  I'd not have been surprised to find it in the pages of Galaxy in the first half of the last decade (when that magazine was at its zenith).

Four stars.

Cows Can't Eat Grass, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Kelly Freas

Galactic Surveryor Harry Gideon (great surname, by the way) is marooned on a planet that should have killed him.  Somehow, he has managed to find sufficient edible foods to sustain himself until relief arrives.  But all of their tests show the alien life to be completely toxic.  What's Gideon's secret?

The Richmond combo has produced some of the worst stuff Analog's printed, but they've gotten better of late (and I quite enjoyed their first book, Shockwave.  This latest piece is on the good end of things.

Three stars.

Depression or Bust, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Reynolds, on the other hand, offers up another one of his history lessons wrapped in a throwaway story.  When Marvin and Phoebe Sellers decide to return their brand new freezer, it starts a chain that results in a national depression.  The only way to fix it is by reversing the trigger.

This is not only a rather pointless piece, it is so clumsily exaggerated, the characters made of straw (the President has never heard of the Depression, and it must be explained to him by an adviser).  And Reynolds can't help making a dig at Indians.  Reynolds has an issue with Indians.

One star.

Plugging in the oscilloscope

What have we got?  Two clunkers, one decent piece, and two good long ones, not to mention a great article.  That puts us at 3.2 on the star-o-meter.  Not bad at all! That barely beats out Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2) and roundly trounces Galaxy (2.9), IF (2.8), Famous Science Fiction #1 (2.7), Famous Science Fiction #2 (2.4), and Amazing (2.4).

Only New Worlds (3.3) and Famous Science Fiction #3 (3.4) score higher.

For those keeping score, women wrote 9% of the new fiction pieces this month (including all the back issues of Famous). 

Last week, I wondered if a copy of a copy could be better than the original.  Thus far, it looks like the answer is no.  Keep it up, Analog!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 31, 1967] Phoning it in (June 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Monopoly Bell

For nearly a century, the telephone lines crossing this great nation of ours have been the property of one big mother–specifically "Ma Bell", the colloquial name for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T).  Practically an arm of the government, this entity employs a million people and (for the most part) has no competition. 


The Belles of Southwestern Bell

Now, I'm not saying that it's not a near miracle to be able to call anyone, any place in the country, now that direct dialing has replaced operator-assisted station-to-station calling (for the most part).  I'm not even complaining that I have to dial seven digits when I call a local friend instead of just four.

I will say that it seems like highway robbery to have to pay 50 cents for a three minute call to my brother in Los Angeles.  We've gotten to the point where we don't actually call to let the other know that we got home safe after a visit; we just ring the phone once–that's free.  And how about the whopping $12 to (try to) phone my Journey pals in the UK? 

Of course, we have the luxury of being fantastically rich–how else could we have a dedicated line and a telefax machine to transmit articles and images? 

But for the regular schmo on the street, long distance calling is expensive…and Ma Bell wants you to make it a habit.

Thankfully, their switch to multi-frequency (MF) circuits, where operator-switched connections have been replaced by tone-controlled automatics, has proven quite the blessing, making Ma Bell more efficient, which has in some cases translated to reduced rates.

And for some people, it's resulted in absolutely phree phone calling…

You see, the phone system is controlled by tones, and the tones are consistent–and meticulously cataloged by the phone company in easy-to-obtain manuals.  So if you can find some way of producing the tones yourself, you decide whether a call is going to cost money or not.  Particularly if you have some way of producing, at the beginning of your call, the 2600 hz tone that indicates to the automatic system that a line is not being used, and therefore should not incur a bill.

If only there was some cheap, easy to find item that would enable you to do that…

That would be MF-ing great!

Broken Monopoly

It used to be that Analog, back when it was called Astounding, was the one game in town if you wanted what we now call "hard science fiction", that crunchy stuff based on real science, and not Buck Rogers stuff.  Astounding editor John Campbell ushered in what folks are calling the Golden Age starting the end of the '30s. 

It's now thirty years later, and Campbell's still around, and so's his magazine.  Unlike the phone company, however, Campbell is content not to innovate, letting the latest trends in the field pass him by.  The latest issue is a particularly regressive example.


by John Schoenherr

Computer War (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

SF veteran and globetrotter Mack Reynolds has as one of his settings a future in which humanity has spread out to dozens, if not hundreds, of worlds, each free to develop its political institutions as it sees fit.  Reynolds has used this backdrop as a way to explore several different types of government taken to extremes.  For instance, most recently, he took us to a (seemingly) woman-dominated world in Amazon Planet, which turned out to be something of a paradise.  I liked that one.

This particular story features a world with two main nations: Alphaland and Betastan.  Between them are 21 neutral nations that don't count too much.  The head of Alphaland is contemplating a war on Betastan, which though it will be costly, has been deemed necessary by the computerized statisticians if he is to maintain his grip on the totalitarian country.  To get the populace behind the move, he concocts a "Crusade" againt the "Karlist Amish" minority that have corrupted Betastan and threaten to bring the whole world to heel.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Mixed in is a bit of political thriller involving a minister and his Betastani spy mistress.  But for the most part, it's lukewarm historical allegory.  Reynolds can be quite good at this kind of thing, but he's just going through the motions on this one.

Three stars so far, barely.

The Double-Edged Rope, by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.


by Kelly Freas

East meets West in a Yugoslav greasy spoon as two agents swap stories of a rumored UFO invasion.  When the Eastern spy goes to make his report, he finds that the BEMs-in-human-form have already taken over, betrayed by their signature stiff pinky fingers.

Oh wait, that's The Invaders.  In this story, it's their really small ears.

Either way, it's a stupid story.  Two stars.

Political Science, by Douglas M. Dederer

Newcomer Douglas Dederer offers us a detailed and exciting (if one-sided and slightly incomplete) account of how Von Braun's Army team didn't and then did become the first to orbit an American satellite.  It's very pro-Nazi…er…Von Braun, and rather anti-Vanguard and Eisenhower, but I learned a lot.

Four stars.

Security Measure, by Joseph P. Martino


by Kelly Freas

A Russian-born American is inserted into the Soviet Union to survey any anti-revolutionary groups that might exist.  Once he finds one, he finds himself hip deep in a plot to seize a nuclear missile base and atomize army garrisons around the country as a prelude to a massive internal takeover.  Can Michael Antonov stop the plan before millions are vaporized?

Martino's written a lot of edge-of-the-future spy thriller stuff, generally exhibiting decent writing in otherwise trivial pieces.  I quite liked this one, however.  It feels quite grounded in reality, and the solution doesn't offend credulity or sensibility.  If anything, Security Measure feels like an episode of Secret Agent.

Four stars.

Project Lion, by Lawrence A. Perkins


by John Schoenherr

Back down we go with this short piece about visitors from Procyon.  The rulers of Earth are convinced that if they don't make first contact, they will be destroyed just like the Incans, the Neanderthals, and every other beaten culture of humanity that got off the second shot.  A scramble is made to select the optimum personnel for such a mission.

This story really doesn't make any sense, neither the "logic" involved in the puzzle nor the puzzle's solution.

Two stas.

The Dukes of Desire, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Several months ago, we followed the exploits of a three-man team trapped on a planet under the thumb of robot overlords in Strangers to Paradise.  They overcame their difficulties through the use of mind control through scents.

Well, now the team is back.  The planet has fallen further into anarchy, and the trio have to figure out a way to put things to rights.  A combination of scent application and false identity does the trick, making the planetary population believe that the two ships flown by the trio are actually flagships in an interstellar war.  The idea is that an external foe might unite the people of the planet.  Or something.

I didn't much like the last story, and I really didn't like this one, even if my nephew, David, sang its praises.

Two stars.

Tallying the Bill

At 2.8 stars, the latest Analog definitely ends up near the bottom of the pack this month, only beating out the perennially puny Amazing (2.2).  Scoring better were Fantasy and Science Fiction and If (3.2), with Galaxy sitting on top with 3.3 stars, mostly thanks to the new Niven novella. There was but one woman-penned piece the entire month, and that done under initials. 

We did get some bright news this month–apparently Galactic Journey has finally made the Hugo ballot after several years of dashed hopes.  So there's the possibility we may actually come home from Nycon with the big rocket ship.

And that would be something to phone about!  On Sunday, when the rates are cheaper…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[April 30, 1967] Strange New Worlds and Staid Old Ones (May 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

To Boldly Go

In the days of the Gold Rush, the Forty-Niners staked out the most promising spots in the hopes of striking it rich.  They set out across thousands of miles, making harrowing overland or overseas trips to California, setting wobbly feet in the land that would soon be The Golden State, hoping that a survey of their claimed land would be a promising one.

Two Surveyors have made their way to the Moon, the second of which (Surveyor 3–Surveyor 2 didn't make it) has just broken ground on our celestial neighbor.

While we can't pan for gold on the Moon (and, indeed, if there is a precious resource we're hoping to find there, it's water), Surveyor did spread lunar soil on a white surfaced background.  This has allowed geologists…well, selenologists now…to make tentative guesses as to the composition of the Moon.  More importantly, it has been categorically shown that the lunar surface is solid and can be landed upon by Apollo astronauts!  Together with the photos from the several Lunar Orbiter spacecraft, the Sixty-Niners will have a good lay of the lunar land they'll be exploring.

By the way, the first Apollo crew has been chosen.  These are the folks originally slated for Apollo 2, an orbital flight that would have flown a few months after the tragically lost mission of Apollo 1.

They are Walter M. Schirra, Donn F. Eisele, and R. Walter Cunningham.  The first name should be a well known to readers; the other two are rookies from the third group of astronauts, folks recruited specifically for Apollo.  It is unlikely that their flight will take place before 1968, and there will be at least one more manned test before the big jump to the Moon.  There's currently even talk of a trip around the Moon before a landing attempt.

To Timidly Creep

The latest issue of Analog isn't bad, per se.  It's just more of the same.  I suppose it's a winning formula to keep doing what works, but I expect a little more innovation from my scientifiction.


by Kelly Freas

Of Terrans Bearing Gifts, by Richard Grey Sipes

Things don't start promisingly.  We last saw Mr. Sipes in a truly awful epistolary piece a couple of years back.  In his sophomore work, a smug Terran trader, name of Winslow, arrives at planet Nr. 126-24 Wilson Two, UTCC, and proceeds to turn things upside down.  His store for sale includes a teleporter, an instant translator, a nuclear nullifier, a matter duplicator, and much more.

It's all really smug, which I suppose it's possible to be when you're wielding Godlike power.  Winslow justifies his toppling of Wilson Two's society by noting less scrupulous folks will show up sooner or later and do the same thing.  It still doesn't make the story fun reading.

Two stars.

Experts in the Field, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

Terran linguists assigned to the planet Marshak III are convinced that the indigenous apex animals are sapient, language-using beings.  But since they can't decipher the language they use, an interstellar rest stop construction concern is going to come in, claim the planet, and pave over the preferred lands of the aborigines.

It's up to Lieutenant Commander Andrew Doyle to solve the linguist riddle and save the day.

For a Chris Anvil story, particularly one appearing in Analog, it's not bad.  Sure, it begins with "[Rank] [Man Name] strode onto the scene…" like virtually every other Anvil story.  Yes, the ending paragraphs seem custom made to tickle editor Campbell's fancy (and guarantee a sale).  But I liked the puzzle, and it was reasonably well written.

Three stars.

Burden of Proof, by Bob Shaw


by Kelly Freas

There's one ray of bright light in this issue, if I may be indulged the pun.  Scottish author Bob Shaw offers up a sequel of sorts to his promising story, Light of Other Days.  In this one, he explores the criminological effects of his "slow glass", a substance that rebroadcasts all of the light received from a certain time over that length of time.  It is the perfect impartial eyewitness to any crime–provided one is willing to wait long enough to get it (a "ten year" pane might well not disgorge its evidence for a decade, and no speed-ups possible).

This particular tale is told from the viewpoint of a judge, who sent a man to the chair for murder…on circumstantial evidence.  What if the eyewitness pane of slowglass, due to show the actual scene ten years after, says something contrary?  Is it a miscarriage of justice?  Can justice wait a decade?

I particularly liked this tale for questions it raises.  It might not be slow glass, but certainly some other technology will arise in the future, like a perfect polygraph or enhancements in fingerprinting, may cause old evidence to be superseded.  Does justice wait for these improvements?  Can it?  And how irrevocable is a decision made on an imperfect data set?

Shaw still is a little clunky in incorporating the explanations of his technologies.  Nevertheless, he has a deft, romantic touch to his writing, sorely needed in his magazine.  I'm glad Campbell found him.  Four stars.

Target: Language, by Lawrence A. Perkins

Mr. Perkins discusses the differences between a variety of languages, and the commonality that may underlie them all.  I don't buy his idea that humans develop an internal language that they then translate/adapt to the local vernacular, but it is clear that our species instinctively picks up language at an early age, and what it doesn't learn, it creates on the fly.

If nothing else, it's one of the most readable pieces I've yet encountered in Analog, and on a subject quite interesting to me (and I can verify much of what he says, having studied Russian, Spanish, Japanese, and Hebrew).

Four stars.

Dead End, by Mike Hodous


by Kelly Freas

Did you ever read The Man Who Never Was?  It's the engaging true tale of how the British hoodwinked the Nazis into thinking the Allied invasion would go through Sardinia rather than Sicily.  It involved seeding a corpse, dressed in a Major's uniform and handcuffed to a briefcase full of forged documents, off the coast of Spain.  He was picked up, turned over to German agents, and the story was swallowed, hook, line, and sinker.

Dead End involves a Terran spaceship disabled by belligerent aliens, the capture and investigation of which is certain to give them the secret to our faster-than-light.  Or lead them down a blind technological alley…

It's an eminently forgettable story, not helped by the aliens being human in all but name (and extra pair of legs), and the humans being smug in the Campbellian tradition.

Two stars.

The Time-Machined Saga (Part 3 of 3), by Harry Harrison


by Kelly Freas

At last, the exploits of Barney Henderson, movie producer extraordinaire, come to a close.  As expected, the only reason there is archaeological evidence of a Viking settlement in Vinland is because Climax Productions made a movie starring Vikings in Vinland.  The whole thing is a circle with no beginning and no end.

It's a compelling thought, further exemplified by a piece of paper that switches hands endlessly between two iterations of Barney.  When did it start?  Who initially drew the diagram on the paper?  Of course, unsaid is the fact that, after endless passings back and forth, the paper should disintegrate…

If the first installment was a bit too silly and the second rather engaging, this third one feels perfunctory.  Harrison tells us how the film got done, but the whole thing is workmanlike.  Not bad, just a bit sterile.  Also, given then carnage involved in the making of the film, I would have preferred a more farcical tone or a more serious one.  The middle-of-the-road path makes light of the horror of first contact and the bloodshed that stemmed therefrom, and it taints the whole story.

So, three stars for this segment and three and a half for the book as a whole.

Summing Up

What a lackluster month this was!  The outstanding stuff would barely fit a slim volume of a single digest.  Analog garnered a sad (2.9) stars.  It is only beaten by Fantasy and Science Fiction (3), and it very slightly edges out IF (2.9) and Fantastic (2.9)–they rounded up to 2.9, while Analog rounded down.  The last issue of Worlds of Tomorrow (2.4) is left in the dust.  We won't have WoT to kick around anymore…

Women wrote 7.41% of the new fiction this month–dismal, but par for the course.  On the other hand, we've got a new star in the screenwriting heavens in the form of Star Trek's D.C. Fontana.  Perhaps TV is where the new crop of STF women will grow.

In any event, I've already gotten a sneak preview of next month's IF.  We have a stunning new Delany to look forward to.  Stay tuned!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 10, 1967] Mediocrités, Slayer of Magazines (April 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Not with a Bang

A rising tide floats all boats, but a tidal wave swamps them.  16 years ago, Galaxy magazine was the vanguard of the Silver Age of Science Fiction, along with Fantasy and Science Fiction and Astounding leading a pack of nearly forty monthly/bimonthly/quarterlies.  By the end of the decade, we were down to just six mags, but the quality, by and large, was still there.

Now we're entering a new era.  The number of mags is the same, but the stories are mediocre most of the time.  Even the competently rendered ones feel like rehashes.  In a letter I received last week, the writer said that there are yet too many outlets for the current crop of talent to supply with quality stuff. 

I don't know that I agree, given that the British mags have folded and Amazing and Fantastic are mostly reprints these days.  Plus, Galaxy's sister mag, Worlds of Tomorrow, has gone irregular (and Milk of Magnesia is no cure for this illness).  No, I think there's some kind of general malaise in the genre.  Maybe it's competition from the real world.  Maybe it's higher pay-outs from the slicks.

No matter what the cause, we've got to find some way to get an influx of talent into this field.  The alternative is, well, more magazines like the April 1967 issue of Galaxy.


by Douglas Chaffee

A Vast Wasteland

Thunderhead, Keith Laumer

Editor Fred Pohl saved his best for first.  Laumer is a competent science fiction/adventure writer when he's not writing his increasingly tired satire, and Thunderhead is nothing if not a competent science fiction/adventure.

Lieutenant Carnaby has been more than twenty years in grade, stuck on the most frontierward of planetary outposts.  Indeed, it seems the Navy has forgotten all about him, since it was supposed to pick him up fifteen years ago.  The world he's on has slowly decayed to one dying settlement.  Yet, he remains attached to his duty, to maintain and, in an emergency, activate the beacon that will turn this rim of the galaxy into an effective defense grid.


by Gray Morrow

Said emergency occurs, with the formerly contained enemy Djann breaking out of their containment, the Terran ship Malthusa in hot pursuit.  Carnaby and a young friend begin their ascent of the snowbound peak on which the beacon rests, and the story alternates between the Lieutenant, the Djann crew, and the driving Commodore of the terran cruiser.

The writing is deft, the setup interesting, and the Djann particularly interesting and innovative.  On the other hand, the other characters are caricatures, and the resolution by-the-numbers. 

Thus, a pleasant three stars, but no more.

Fair Test, by Robin Scott

Two aliens land on Earth to resupply with fuel and food.  They are successful despite the efforts of American local law enforcement.  The end of the story is a bit of social commentary as the extraterrestrials note that light meat and dark meat taste the same.

I'd have expected this story in a lesser mag, circa 1954.  Not Galaxy.

Two stars.

For Your Information: The Orbits of the Comets, Willy Ley

It's no exaggeration that, for a long time, Ley's science articles were my favorite part of the magazine.  They have since gotten desultory.  This one, in particular, meanders all over the place and, in one particular table, is nonsensical.  I suspect a misprint.

Anyway, I think this is my first two-star review for Mr Ley.  It is a sad day.

The New Member, Christopher Anvil

It's also a sad day whenever Anvil's name appears in the table of contents.  It has been said that one can smell an Analog reject a mile away, and the stench of this one is profound.  It's about a fictional Third World island country called "Bongolia".  Said nation joins the United Nations and sets about trying to make a living by extorting the richer countries as payment for centuries-old crimes against their state.

There could be a satire here, albeit not in great taste given how recent (and not very well handled) decolonization has been.  Instead, it's just a bunch of unfunny cheap shots.

One star.

The Young Priests of Adytum 199, James McKimmey

Forty young men and women, the last survivors of a nuclear war, live in a coddled paradise in one of the many American shelters.  They do little more than eat and mate, save for the one oddball, Peter the Funny, who prefers the clarinet.  He comes to a sticky end for his noncomformity.

I guess the moral is "Never Trust Anyone Under 30".  Two stars.

The Purpose of Life, Hayden Howard

Could it be?  Have we finally reached the last chapter in the sage of the Esks?

For the past year (or has it been two, already?) we have been following the viewpoint of Dr.  Joe West, an ethnologist sent out in the 1960s to do a survey on Eskimos in the Canadian North.  There he discovered a new race of beings, an unholy hybrid of human and alien.  They look like Eskimos, but their pregnancies last but a month, and their children mature in just a few years.  These "Esks" quickly supplant their human cousins and threaten to outrun their food supply.  Luckily, the bleeding hearts of the world recognize the Esks as fully human and open their doors and purses to succor them. 

West, unable to convince governments of the Esk threat, unsuccessfully tries to sterilize the half-aliens with a disease of his own devise, but only succeeds in killing a few innocent humans.  He is then locked up in a padded cell, then put to sleep for fifteen years.  When he is awoken, he is dispatched to mainland China by the CIA.  Aided by telepathic control devices implanted in his legs, he is emplaced close to the Communist leader, Mao III, whose brain he takes hold over–for purposes unknown to Dr. West.  So begins the latest and longest installement.

This bit takes place on an Earth whose societies are already being rocked by Esk overpopulation.  In China, the few hundred relocated to the barren hillsides two decades ago now number more than a billion.  The vast Communist land is suffering the least ill effects thus far, as the import labor has produced a terrific farm surplus and as yet is not integrated with Chinese society.  In America, however, every household has an Esk slave…er…servant, a situation which cannot last much longer as the subordinate race will soon vastly outnumber the master.  In Canada, civilization has collapsed, and the cities are populated by starving bands of Esks.

None of this seems to bother the Esks, who endure everything with endless patience and joy.  They know that someday, "the Great Bear" will return to take them all back to the sky.  Such is imprinted on their racial memories. 


by Jack Gaughan

In China, Mao III's generals revolt, sealing the invalid leader in a mountain redoubt-cum-tomb along with his controller, Dr. West.  All efforts to curtail the Esk population so as not to outstrip the food supply meet with failure.  Only one option is left — to impress the hybrids into an operation to dig the thousands of feet through solid rock to the surface.

But there is a spark of anticipation in the air.  Will the Great Bear arrive before the Esks liberate themselves from their underground prison?  And if so, what will happen if they arrive at the surface with their brethren all departed?

It's really hard to properly rate this segment, and the series as a whole.  The premise is dumb, the conclusion rather vague and dissatisfying, and for the most part, Dr. West is either ignored or ineffectual, or both.

Yet, damned if I didn't find myself vaguely looking forward to this chapter.  Damned if I didn't read the current installment in one sitting despite having resolved to take a nap instead (I do like my naps). 

And damned if I didn't spend way longer on this review than I'd intended.

Call it 3 stars for this chapter and 2.5 for the whole thing.  I'm not sorry I read it, but I'm glad it's over.

Within the Cloud, Piers Anthony

I think this is the first solo piece by Mr. Anthony.  The premise of this vignette is that the faces we see in the clouds are actually faces, and they have something to say.

Trivial stuff.  Two stars.

Ballenger's People, Kris Neville

An insane fellow, whose fragmented mind is under the delusion that it is a polity of many parts rather than a single entity, becomes homicidal when threatened by "other nations" (i.e. other human individuals).

It started promisingly, but didn't really go anywhere.  Two stars.

You Men of Violence, Harry Harrison

Finally, a tidbit from a fellow whose work I often confuse with Keith Laumer's.  A pacifist on the run from military types figures out how to kill without being the killer.

Rather obvious and somewhat pointless.  Two stars.

Gasping for breath

Wow.  That wasn't very good, was it?  And with one of Pohl's major talents, Mr. Cordwainer Smith, gone to the ages, we really don't have much to look forward to.  At least until Messrs. Niven and/or Vance return. 

Or Pohl finds some new talent.  Maybe there's a large, mostly untapped demographic he could plumb…



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 28, 1967] The Big Stall (March 1967 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

The Big Push

After a year of build-up, air raids, and smaller actions, the United States and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam have opened up the largest offensive of the war.  Operation Junction Central involves some 50,000 troops pouring into the logistical heart of VC-controlled South Vietnam west of Saigon.  Their goal: to find the communist equivalent of the "Pentagon".  It's a classic hammer and anvil style operation, with nearly a thousand paratroopers forming the brunt of the anvil behind enemy lines.  The push is accompanied by the biggest logistical bombing raid we've seen in weeks.

Whether this colossal effort will bear fruit remains to be seen.  The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army have only seemed to grow despite constant combat.  More and more often, the fights occur on even, conventional terms rather than as furtive guerrila efforts.

But with half a million soldiers "in country", I suppose it was time to do something.  Perhaps the momentum of operations will switch to the allied forces.

Business as Usual

Analog editor John Campbell seems unaware that institutional decay has set in.  And with no great competitors from without, he is unwilling to change a formula for his magazine that has remained for the past two decades.  I suppose that, as long as he sells more than everyone else, he doesn't need to.

On the other hand, I read that Analog's monthly distribution is down from the 200K+ it enjoyed early in the decade.  Maybe the wolves at the door will instigate a sea change.  Or a palace coup…

In any event, until that happen (note the subjunctive mood), we can expect more issues like the one for March 1967.  Dull.  Uninspiring.


by John Schoenherr

The Time-Machined Saga (Part 1 of 3), by Harry Harrison

Harrison once again displays his near interchangibility with Keith Laumer, at least when he writes "funny" stuff (his dramatic prose is a notch above Laumer's, I think).  This serial involves a film company on the verge of bankruptcy.  Salvation appears in the form of a time machine.  Said "vremeatron" will not be used to alter history, purloin lost treasures from the past, or other, potentially lucrative (but old hat) endeavors.  No, instead, the movie house is going to travel back to A.D. 1000 to film the True Story of Leif Erickson…Hollywood style.

Said on-location filming will cut costs dramatically: no need to hire extras, no unions, and best of all, since the time machine can come back to the moment after it departed, no time involved!  (the production company still gets paid for the time it spends in the past, though).  What could go wrong?

I suspect we'll get the answer to that question next installment.

A tepid three stars thus far.  I could take it or leave it.

Radical Center, by Mack Reynolds


by John Schoenherr

In a piece designed for Campbell's reactionary heart, Reynolds writes about a time in the not-too-distant future when the trends of apathy, crime, and downright down-on-Americanism have reached a zenith.  A hack journalist, badly in need of a story, posits an imaginary illuminati bringing this malaise upon us intentionally.

Little does he know how right he is.

I can't help but deplore the sentiment behind and suffused into this piece.  Next, we'll have stories about how long hair is Ruining Society.  On the other hand, I feel Reynolds has something when suggests that unscrupulous forces will utilize apathy of the masses to allow their comparatively small blocs to sway policy.  Also, I really liked the line, regarding a clown of a politician, "He was laughed into office."

So two stars and a wrinkled nose.

Countdown for Surveyor, by Joseph Green

My eyes lit up at the title of this one.  I love pieces on the Space Race, and this inside dope promised to be exciting.

It wasn't.  It's as dull as reciting a checklist, and three times as long.

Two stars.

In the Shadow, by Michael Karageorge


by Kelly Freas

After a short piece (probably by Campbell) about ball lightning and free-floating plasma (interesting so far as it goes), we have the latest story by Michael Karageorge, whoever he is.

The space ship Shikari is exploring a new gravitational source zooming through our solar system.  It emits no light, but it has the mass of a star.  Is it a cold "black dwarf"?  A rogue neutron star?  Or something else entirely?

The characterization in this one can be reduced to a set of 3×5" index cards each with two or three words on them.  Things like "irritable, downtrodden genius".  "Absent-minded professor."  "Weeping woman."  "Comforting woman." 

On the other hand, the science is pretty neat, even if I don't buy it for a minute. 

I didn't hate it.  It's not as good as Karageorge's first story, though.  Three stars.

The Uninvited Guest, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

A shiny ellipsoid appears on a launch pad and starts to take nibbles out of everything: walls, roads, machinery, people.  It appears invulnerable to attack, but it also seems to be of failing vitality.  The problem, it is deduced, is that if the thing dies entirely, it will explode with the power of an atom bomb.

Can the alien visitor be thwarted or succored before time runs out?

For an Anvil story, it's not bad.  Which means a high two or a low three.  I'm feeling charitable today.

The Compleat All-American, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

A young man, good at anything he wants to be, is dragooned by his father into playing football.  His remarkable abilities, largely consisting of not getting hurt and performing miracles with the pigskin when under pressure, catch the eye of two government investigators.

After fifteen pages of shaggy dog fluff, we learn that said All-American is invulnerable and unstoppable.  He also, luckily, has no ambition.  Three more shaggy pages of dog fluff follow this revelation.

I guess this is what's under the barrel.  One star.

What's the score?

Half way around the world, forces clash in a titanic struggle between Democracy and Communism.  Or maybe it's pitched fight between a downtrodden people and the venal imperialists and their running dog lackeys.  However you characterize it, Something Big is Happening.

But here on the pages of Campbell's mag, not much of interest is happening at all.  Analog finishes at just 2.3 stars, by far the worst mag of the month.  Above it are Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Fantastic (3.2), New Worlds (3.25), and IF (3.3). 

Things are actually worse than it seems.  Only the last of these mags was really outstanding (Fantastic is mostly reprints, New Worlds was basically an Aldiss novel with a few vignettes for ballast).

Adding insult to injury, just one woman-penned story came out this month, and there were only 25 pieces of fiction in all the magazines, period. 

Something's gotta change soon.  This can't go on forever…



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 10, 1967] Return to sender (February 1967 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

President Johnson commissioned noted (and favorite of our editor, Janice) artist Peter Hurd to draw his official Presidential portrait.  This was the result:

Reportedly, upon seeing the painting, Johnson described it as the ugliest thing he had ever seen.  Aghast, the artist asked what the President had wanted in a portrait.  Lyndon whipped out this piece painted by Normal Rockwell:

I understand that Hurd returned his commission and that a new picture will be made.  Maybe by someone with the initials L.B.J.

Law of Analogy


by Jack Gaughan

It was certainly a blow to the shocked Hurd, but I kind of know how Lyndon felt.  I had a similar reaction upon finising the latest issue of Galaxy.  This was, for the most part, not the magazine I was hoping for.

Our Man in Peking, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Yes, as Winter follows Fall, so we have yet another tale in the saga of Dr. West and the half-alien Esks.  Briefly: an alien came to Earth and bred with a local woman.  Her progeny, and their kids, too, all breed humanoids who look like Eskimos, but who mature in three years and give birth in a month.  Twenty years after the first was born, there are now more than a billion of them.  And instead of being stopped or even investigated to any real degree, the governments of the world refuse to see them as anything other than mutant Eskimos, deserving of love, affection, and free food.  The Chinese have welcomed them with open arms to till hitherto unprofitable fields, but Canada, Scandinavia, and other places have also taken them in.

Only one man, the notorious Dr. West, who tried but failed to sterilize the Esks with a tailored plague, will admit the true menace of the Esks.

Last installment, West was in a comfy Canadian prison for his attempted genocide.  In this one, he has been sent on a mission to Red China, brainwashed to learn the details on an as-needed basis, mind-controlled to have no say in his actions.  He is shot down over the mainland along with an Air Force Major so caricatured in his manner that I wondered if Gaughan's art would depict him with straw coming out of his joints.

After much rigamarole, West finds himself in the presence of the current Communist leader, Mao III (do the Chinese give descendants appellations like that?) And then the true nature of West's mission is revealed…

Hayden Howard really isn't a very good writer, and there aren't actually any characters in this story–only marionettes who dance to the author's strings without any will of their own.  I also could have done without the word "Chink" used a couple dozen times.

What keeps the tale from getting just one star is this morbid fascination with how this wholly unrealistic scenario will turn out.  We're supposed to get the conclusion next month.  God willing, that'll be the end of the Esks, one way or another.

Two stars.

Return Match, by Philip K. Dick

The outspacers have gambling casinos across the galaxy.  The only problem?  They tend to be lethal for their patrons.  Joseph Tinbane, a cop for Superior Los Angeles, takes on the aliens' latest contraption: a pinball machine that evolves not only to be unbeatable, but ultimately to attack the player!

Dick's vivid writing is on display here, so there's nothing wrong with the reading.  But the concept is pure fantasy, up to and including the conclusion where Tinbane is menaced by giant pinballs.  I can only imagine that PKD turned on, dropped out, and dashed off this tale before the hallucinations disappeared from his memory.

Three stars.

For Your Information: Who Invented the Crossbow? by Willy Ley

Ley's latest piece is an interesting, but somehow perfunctory piece on the evolution of the crossbow.  A few more pages of Asimov treatment would have helped.

Three stars.

The Last Filibuster, by Wallace West

War between North and South America is averted when the governments of both nations are captured and impressed to do the fighting.

I like the sentiment: politicians would be a lot less willing to send their sons (and daughters) to war if their lives were on the line.  But the story is just sort of silly and obvious.

Besides, who could believe that an armed mob could invade the Capitol to kidnap Congress?  It beggars the imagination.

Two stars.

They Hilariated When I Hyperspaced For Earth, by Richard Wilson


by Vaughn Bodé

The leader of a boring world that has stalled in its progressive mediocrity comes to Earth to steal our Secretary General, an efficient Ugandan who knows how to get things done.  A lot of "comedy" ensues.

Not only is the story a bore, but I can't forgive it for getting "They all Laughed" stuck in my head.

Two stars.

The Trojan Bombardment, by Christopher Anvil

How we defeat an enemy without firing a shot?  Why by shooting shells filled with booze, cigarettes, and sexy ladies at them!  After all, that's what they're really fighting for, isn't it?

Fellow traveler Cora Buhlert recently noted that she can smell a Campbell reject a mile away, and Bombardment is almost assuredly an Anvil story too stupid even for Analog.

One star.

The Discovery of the Nullitron, by Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek

Speaking of stupid, here's another "funny" piece, in the style of a Scientific American article, on the new decidedly supra-atomic particle called the Nullitron, putatively discovered by the authors after a jag in Ibiza.

One star.

Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne, by R. A. Lafferty

A dozen of the Earth's greatest scientists team up with a computer to improve history.  Their first time traveling target: to salvage relations between Charlemagne and the Caliph, allowing Arabic knowledge to flow freely.  They will know that they have succeeded because all of their records will change before their eyes!

Of course, if they had read William Tenn's The Brooklyn Project, they'd know that, as part of the time stream themselves, they'd never know what had changed.

Still, it's kind of a fun piece.  The journey's the thing, not the destination.

Three stars.

The Palace of Love (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Vance


by Gray Morrow

The saving grace of this magazine is this final installment of Vance's latest serial.  Keith Gersen has tracked down Viole Falushe, one of the five "Demon Kings" crime lords who killed his parents, to the mobster's private domain.  The Palace of Love is a mystical retreat, designed to provide pleasure to discerning patrons.  But its staff and denizens are all slaves of Falushe, though they aren't completely aware of the fact.

Half of this last act involves the long, meandering road to Falushe's Palace of Love.  It is only in the final sixth that we learn the truth about the place, who Drusilla is and her relation to Falushe's object of childhood infatuation, Jheral Tinzy, and whether or not Gersen can succeed in his revenge.

I found it all gripping stuff.  Vance has a knack for sensual writing; you always know what things smell like, what color they are, how they sound.  Yet the prose is never overlabored.  If the first book in the series starts auspiciously and ends with a dull thud, this second one only has one slow patch, in its second sixth.

For that reason, I give this installment and the book as a whole four stars, and it'll be in the running for the Galactic Star at the end of the year.

Summing up

Even with Palace shoring things up, this month's Galaxy clocks in at a dismal 2.4 stars.  And given that the Vance is likely to end up published in paperback, it's probably not even worth buying this mag for the one story (unless, of course, you want the serial complete in original form).

I'll be surprised if Galaxy doesn't come in last this month.  I'll also be really disappointed in that event; I don't think I could easily face another, worse slog!

That would truly be the ugliest month I've ever seen…



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