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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 22, 1966] Ha ha.  Very funny.  (December 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Joke's on me

I have a buddy in the Costume Designers Guild (you know her, too — she's Gwyn Conaway).  She keeps me up to date with the inside dope on Hollywood.  One tidbit she offered up recently was something she paraphrased from a manual for actors published this year: the last words of the actor, Edmund Gwenn, who passed away in 1959.  A visitor to his deathbed exclaimed that his final ordeal must be hard for him.

Gwenn replied, "Dying is easy.  Comedy is hard."

I think it was in Lighthouse, a fanzine for pros, that Lester del Rey suggested more writers should go into comedy rather than flogging the same tired "serious" science fiction canards.  The problem is that humor is harder than seriosity.  An inexerpt attempt to make one laugh produces the opposite effect.

And God help us all if an editor decides to fill an entire magazine with failed attempts.  This month's Fantasy and Science Fiction, for example…

No laughing matter


by Howard Purcell

Sabotage, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil normally writes for Analog.  His stories often pit humans outstmarting aliens with a bit of clever sophistry those stupid ETs (inevitably made of straw) could never conceive of, let alone counter.  How one of these tales got into F&SF, I'll never know.

The setup: the vaporous Tamar and Earth are in a stalemated war.  Earth has the technology, but Tamar has the psychology.  They possess our people and try to sabotage our efforts.  None of their attempts have been particularly successful, but the latest threatens to be a doozy.  College students are becoming increasingly disaffected by something they're being taught, and while the immediate effect is small, the cascade could be disastrous.  Luckily, Officer McAmerican (every character's name is in Rank Surname format) is able to counter the insidious teaching with a lesson plan of his own.

Obviously, this is some kind of anti-Communist metaphor; again, one wonders why Campbell didn't pick it up.  Perhaps he's full up on Anvil stories.  F&SF may pay more these days, too.  Anyway, Sabotage is three times longer than it needs to be — or it's infinity times longer, if you feel the story never needed to be written.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Mystery of the Purloined Grenouilles, by Gerald Jonas

In his first published story, Jonas gives us a baroquely told tale of a man who creates energy through reverse Galvanism: he hooks frogs up to a generator and tickles their legs.

Two stars.

Doubting Thomas, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is an author who started so promisingly, but if this story, of a computer designed to suss out the veracity of magical events, is any indicaton of where he's headed, he might as well throw in the Smith-Corona. 

It just ain't funny, nor is it fun to read.  One stars.

The Martian Atmosphere, by Theodore L. Thomas

The "science" article describes what we know about the components of Mars' atmosphere.  Thomas seems to believe that because there's no oxygen that something must have happened to it.  Which presupposes it was ever there in the first place.  He also assumes that the carbon dioxide that makes up the majority of the Martian atmosphere is a byproduct of respiration.

At some point, we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that there's no life on Mars.

Two stars.

Von Goom's Gambit, by Victor Contoski

Take any position of the pieces on the chessboard. Usually it tells of the logical or semi-logical plans of the players, their strategy in playing for a win or a draw, and their personalities. If you see a pattern from the King's Gambit Accepted, you know that both players are tacticians, that the fight will be brief but fierce. A pattern from the Queen's Gambit Declined, however, tells that the players are strategists playing for minute advantages, the weakening of one square or the placing of a Rook on a half-opened file. From such patterns, pleasing or displeasing, you can tell much not only about the game and the players but also about man in general, and perhaps even about the order of the universe.

Contoski's tale, also apparently his first, is about an opening so repulsive, it is irresistible.  I'm a sucker for chess stories, and this is the first readable piece in the issue. 

Three stars.

The Green Snow, by Miriam Allen deFord

At first, it seems deFord will provide a bulwark against the droll tide.  After all, deFord is quite deft with menace and creep, skilled at eliciting deep and dark emotion, but she doesn't do comedy.  Thus, while a story that begins with the gentle falling of green-tinted snowflakes could have been a romp for others, in deFord's hands, it's clear we're in for a horror.

She executes it well-enough, though there's something of the last decade about it in its flavor.  But then, as if prodded by an editor overeager to have every story fit his chosen theme for the month, deFord adds a heavy handed joke at the end.

Which, of course, falls flat.  deFord doesn't do comedy…

The Gods, by L. Sprague de Camp

If there is humor in this short poem about the passage of the gods from human devotion, it is ironic.  In all fairness, I did enjoy this piece quite a bit.

Four stars.

The Symbol-Minded Chemist, by Isaac Asimov

The always good-humored Doctor A manages to stave off the jokeyness for another dozen pages, writing on the origin of chemistry's alphabet soup.  I always enjoy etymological articles, although the list of elements by alphabetical order of their chemical name seems a bit of padding.

Four stars.

Bumberboom, by Avram Davidson

It is centuries after The Bomb, and the resulting, almost anarchic society that sprawls across the Eastern Seaboard is threatened by Bumberboom.  It is a great cannon, though it has not fired a shot in generations, tended by an increasingly inbred crew, whose Captain Mog, somewhere between an idiot and a moron, is the brightest of the bunch.

Enter Mallian, son of Hazelip, who sees the ancient gun as an opportunity to carve a feudal realm out of the upstate New York, with him as its sovereign.

Bumberboom reads something like a cross between Jack Vance and R. A. Lafferty, combining the poetic resonance and creative settings that are the signatures of the former with the sometimes incomprehensible whimsy of the latter.  Davidson's problem is that when he decides to go for funny, he often writes himself into a twisted corner, his sentences meandering to get free of themselves.

Still, once you're into it, it's not so bad. Three stars.

The punchline

But not so bad is also not so good.  My nephew, David, called me last month to let me know he'd let his subscription to F&SF lapse.  I told him he was overreacting, that things had gotten better since Ferman had taken over from Davidson.  Now I can already hear an "I told you so" coming my way.

No joke!


Not me this month.



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[October 31, 1966] Respite from the horror (November 1966 Analog Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Boo!

It's a scary world out there.  If ever there was an appropriate time to be reminded of it, it's today, Halloween.  These days, it's not the supernatural or the spooky that frightens the bejeezus out of us (though UFO sightings are at a record high).  No, it's real-world issues like the ongoing, escalating war in Vietnam.  Thousands of our boys have died over there, and there's no end in sight.  The other day, Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said he had no intention of fighting were he to be drafted.  He's currently living with the Sword of Damocles of his latest physical fitness exam — will he be judged fit for duty?  Is prison preferable to serving in an unjust war?

There are fears on the domestic front, too.  Grocery prices have spiraled to ridiculous levels, and an organized army of housewives has picketed the stores in at least 15 cities across America.  Can they effect change before basic foods get too expensive too afford?

I think all of this existential dread is why folks turn to fiction.  I've now had several fans of my Kitra series note their appreciation that, while they find Kitra's adventures riveting, they take comfort in knowing that she and her crew will come out safe in the end.  It's a reassurance they aren't finding in real life

I felt similarly reading the latest issue of Analog.  Sometimes science fiction paints grim futures, even seeming to relish in the despondence of the characters who inhabit them (q.v. Harrison's overpopulation nightmare, Make Room!  Make Room!).  Such works are important.  Cautionary tales are important.  They show us potentialities to avoid.  They challenge us to think.  But sometimes, you just want an interesting story where you know things will all work out.  Analog's editor John Campbell has given us two quite good ones this month (and some other stuff).


by Kelly Freas

Yay!

Quarantine World, by Murray Leinster


by Kelly Freas

Dr. Calhoun of the Med Service has reason to be suspicious.  The planet Lanke is ostensibly perfectly healthy, yet the government is going out of its way to hide something from him.  Moreover, Lanke's politicians are keenly interested in the public health specifically for its insuring the bottom line of their economy.  It is thus with appropriate shock to all concerned that a plague-infested person, obviously an off-worlder, crashes Calhoun's reception.  More shocking — the Lanke government insists Calhoun have nothing to do with the individual, who is shot by the authorities.  When he performs a cursory examination of the corpse, he is summarily ejected from the planet.

Whereupon he contracts the deadly disease, and his trusty tormal, the antibodies-producing cat/monkey called Murgatroyd, is unable to synthesize a cure!  Calhoun's only clue (and hope!) is the existence of a failed colony on the nearby planet of Delhi.  Perhaps there he can solve the mystery of his illness before he…and the population of Linke…succumbs to it.

Murray Leinster is often called the dean of science fiction.  He's been writing for decades, and sadly, the tape is starting to wear a little thin.  He pads out his work a lot, and his characters mostly sound alike.  There is a strange, juvenile character to his writing that feels out of place in Analog.  Honestly, it may be less a matter of literary senility, and more that of bilking an extra hundred bucks from Campbell for the extra verbiage; writers are paid by the word, after all.

But.

It's a good story, highlighting several interesting social issues (capitalism uber alles, the treatment of criminals and political dissidents, the role of medicine).  It's a great universe, one I've drawn inspiration from for my Kitra books.  And Murgatroyd is an absolute joy to read about. 

So, three stars. 

Facts to Fit the Theory, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

The human colony of Cyrene IV is about to be invaded by the rapacious Stath.  Yet the Cyrenicans refuse to join the Terran Federation, which would protect them under the auspices of a non-aggression pact with the Stath.  All attempts to coerce an application to the Federation are thwarted by increasingly improbable events, all of which point to some kind of religio-psychic interference on the part of the colonists.

Then the Stath arrive.  Their attemps to be mean and nasty are also countered by freak occurrences, up to and including a planetary hurricane.  They leave, tail between their legs.  The human military officers are admonished to write up a full report, but to explain the chronology without invoking ESP.

Could there be a more archetypical Chris Anvil Analog story? 

  • Tongue-in-cheek?  Check.
  • Humans come out ahead?  Check.
  • Prominent figuring of psionics?  Check.
  • Authorities are stupid for not acknowleding the existence of psionics?  Check.
  • The Traveler sick of stories like this?  Check and Check.

Two stars because it's readable, but please, no more.  I beg you.

Dimensions, Anyone?, by John D. Clark, Ph.D.

A fascinating if abstruse piece from Dr. Clark.  It's about the importance of a matching set of physical dimensions for rendering useful measurements.  Forget the "English" system, and even the metric system isn't truly universal.  Clark offers up one of his own, while describing the history of the ones we currently use. 

Much denser than Asimov's stuff, but it was in my wheelhouse.  Four stars.

Letter from a Higher Critic, by Stewart Robb


by Kelly Freas

In which folks in the 22nd Century, having lost most historical sources of the 19th and 20th Century, deem that World War 2 is too improbable to have occurred as recounted.  The primary objection is that the names of all of the major players, from Roosevelt to Churchill to Adolph Hitler to Stalin, are too on-the-nose to represent real people. 

Very slight stuff.  Blink and you'll miss it.  Read and you'll forget it.

Two stars.

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


by John Schoenherr

And now we come to the end, both of the magazine, and of this most promising murder mystery serial from Randall Garrett.  Good luck putting it down — it is a rollercoaster from the opening sequence, in which Lord D'Arcy has just dived into the Thames to rescue a bewitched woman, to the final scene, in which Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy identifies the culprit from among nine suspects.

It's a well-drawn whodunnit, weakened only by its separation into four parts (which the assured novelization will fix).  The solution is plausible and (mostly) independently deducible.  The guilty party makes sense.  I appreciated the quantum mechanics element of the case, too; it is impossible to observe matters without affecting them.  It makes this particular Lord D'arcy case quite dynamic.  I also noted the homage to Twelve Angry Men in one scene.

Garrett has gotten much better at handling woman characters: Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, and Demoiselle Tia Einzig are nicely realized and pivotal players.  Hard to believe this is the same fellow who wrote Queen Bee.  For the same magazine!

So, five stars for this segment, four and a half for the story as a whole, and I won't be surprised if this gets a Hugo nod in New York next year!

Summing up: Two tricks and three treats

Setting aside the Anvil and the Robb, Analog really delivered the goods this month, providing a bubble of reassuring entertainment in a frightening era.  Clocking in at 3.4 stars, it surpasses or ties with the other magazines this month except for the exceptional Science-Fantasy/Impulse (3.7 stars). 

Technically, Fantastic (3.5 stars) was also better, but given that it was largely reprints, I don't know that it's a fair comparison.  Of the all-new material mags, the order goes Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.4), New Worlds (3.1), IF (3), and Worlds of Tomorrow (2.3).

It was actually a great month for fiction.  One could fill three whole magazines with all the four and five star stuff.  Sadly, there was not a single woman-penned piece of fiction published in a pro mag with a November 1966 date. 

And with that, the unpleasant real world intrudes again.  Ah well.  I managed to avoid it for most of an article.  Maybe next month will bring happier news on this front.

[Actually, there's happier news right now!  Sirena, the second book in The Kitra Saga, has been a smash hit, and I think you'll dig it, too.  Buy a copy…you'll be supporting me and getting a great read at the same time!]



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

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

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

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

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

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


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

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

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

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

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

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

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


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

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

Reading the Results

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

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

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

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



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Nonstandard Deviation

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

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

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

Charting new terrain


by John Schoenherr

The Mechanic, by Hal Clement

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

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


by Kelly Freas

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

Three stars.

A Matter of Reality, by Carole E. Scott


by Leo Summers

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

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

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

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

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

… Not a Prison Make, by Joseph P. Martino


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Challenge, by Joe Poyer

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

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

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

Symbols, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

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


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

Four stars!

Charting a New Course

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

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

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

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

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




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Serial

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Common meaning

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

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

Five by Five (plus two)


by John Schoenherr

The Message, by Piers Anthony and Frances Hall


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

Three stars.

The Signals, by Francis Cartier


by Kelly Freas

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

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

An Ounce of Dissension, by Martin Loran


by Kelly Freas

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

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

Two stars.

Meaning Theory, by Dwight Wayne Batteau

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

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

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


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Survivor, by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

Two stars.

The Missile Smasher, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

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

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

Two stars.

Wrong number

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned!

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




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers.  This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front.  There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard.  More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture. 


by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years.  The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party.  But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith.  The editors seem to have been listening.  This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing.  More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished.  Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens.  Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened. 

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil.  In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture.  Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians.  Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing.  At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range. 

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants.  But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic.  Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution.  Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one.  The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year. 

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary.  R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse.  It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer.  Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent.  (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off.  The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing.  Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy.  Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes.  Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes.  Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left.  This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction.  In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked.  One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on.  In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one.  It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma.  The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency.  It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career.  Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad.  Better than not bad.  The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better.  The kid may amount to something some day.

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




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Serial

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Decoration Day

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

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

The Issue at Hand

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


by Chesley Bonestell

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

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


by John Schoenherr

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

Four stars so far.

Early Warning, by Robin S. Scott


by Stan Robinson

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

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

Two stars.

CWACC Strikes Again, by Hank Dempsey


by Gray Morrow

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

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

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

Live Sensors, by Carl A. Larson

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

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

Stranglehold, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

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

Gee, I wonder how this story got published.

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

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

Two stars.

Escape Felicity, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

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

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

Three stars.

Doing the Math

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

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

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

Until next month…

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 2, 1966] By Any Other Name (June 1966 IF)

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by David Levinson

That which we call a purge

Successful revolutions often seem to devolve into vicious internal fighting as various factions turn on each other. Many of us are old enough to remember Stalin’s purges in 1937, and I’m sure we all remember learning about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution when we were in school. Now it looks as though China may be gearing up for some purges of its own.

The five year plan of 1958, dubbed the Great Leap Forward, proved to be a disaster. The plan’s policies produced three years of famine, killing an untold number of people. As a result, Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung stepped back and left the day-to-day running of the country to Liu Shao-ch’i and Teng Hsiao-ping. But Mao may be attempting to seize the reins of power once again.

Last November, an opera by a playwright named Wu Han was attacked as being subversive and critical of Mao’s leadership. On April 10th, the Communist Party issued a directive that condemned almost all literature written since the end of the revolution as “anti-party and anti-socialist.” Every author and poet is now considered suspect. Six days later, poet and journalist Teng T’o was chastised as counterrevolutionary in the official government newspaper. On the 18th, the new movement was given a name in the army’s daily newspaper: the Great Socialist Cultural Revolution. Now, President Liu Shao-ch’i, Mao’s chosen successor, has been publicly criticized as a capitalist and insufficiently supportive of Mao. I’d say the purges are about to begin. It remains to be seen just how bad they will be.


Chairman Mao Tse-tung (r.) and President Liu Shao-ch’i (l.) meet last year with Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia (in the dark jacket).

Smells, sweet and otherwise

This month’s IF offers a mixed bouquet. Overall, it’s visually disappointing, and a couple of the blossoms really could have used a different name.


This allegedly illustrates “The Weapons That Walked”. It doesn’t. Art by McKenna

Mandroid, by Piers Anthony, Robert E. Margroff and Andrew J. Offutt

In the forests of Oregon, the last two humans left alive, Bill Jackson and Tony Baker, finish killing the last android. The androids were created as servants, but were made to be stronger, faster and maybe smarter. Eventually, a war of extinction broke out when the androids asked for equality. Suddenly, the narrative is interrupted by a click, and strange voices which speak in the present/past/future ponder their failure in getting Man and Android to mate. And the story begins again from a little earlier. And so it goes, each time getting a little closer to success, but ending in failure. Finally, one of the strange voices concocts a dangerous plan. If it fails the fabric of TimeSpace will be/is/was ripped beyond repair.


Bill and Tony are observed from outside of time and space. Art by Gaughan

Mandroid sounds like a B-movie from a decade ago. And with three authors, you wouldn’t be at all surprised by something that schlocky. While Margroff only has the sub-par “Monster Tracks” to his credit, and I’ve not read either of the stories credited to Andy Offutt, Anthony (a Cele Lalli discovery) has produced some good work. Maybe it’s his hand that keeps all these cooks from spoiling the broth. This is a good story with a couple of flaws that keep it from reaching four stars. The first is the heavy-handed Biblical allusions at the end; the second, unless I’m reading something that isn’t there, is the veiled hints at Bill’s sexuality that promote some unpleasant stereotypes.

Three stars.

Fandom U. S. A., by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom takes a look at fan clubs. Carter takes a quick look at some of the better known clubs on the east and west coasts and in the mid-west, and then talks about what happens at meetings, whether they be formal or informal. It’s a handy resource that could help a lot of people in the States to find a club near them and maybe encourage others to start a club. Plus, Carter finally has a handle on his voice.

Three stars.

The Weapons That Walked, by D. M. Melton

Explorer Joe Hanley’s landing craft fails on the way down to Kast III, and he’s forced to bail out. Unfortunately for Joe, the scouting group on Kast IV is in even worse shape, and the main ship has to go to their aid first. Joe is going to have to make do on his own for several days. Fortunately for Joe, he grew up among the redwoods of northern California and he’s one of the few nature-lovers left. He’s got a plan and this planet might be just what he’s looking for. But then the animals in the area start acting as though they’re being directed by some greater intelligence.


Joe encounters a local predator. Art by Adkins

From the title, you’d expect something from 1926, illustrated by Frank R. Paul, that Joe Ross would think twice about before reprinting it in Amazing. It’s better than that. This is Melton’s second story, following “The Fur People”. Like that story, it’s fairly unobjectionable and shows promise. Better, the female character actually has a name. Showing promise is all well and good, but Melton needs to improve if he wants to stick around.

A low three stars.

The Dream Machine, by Carol Easton

Harry Carver invents a machine that allows users to have extraordinarily real dreams of the things they want. There are consequences.

Easton is this month’s first-time author. I’m not impressed. There are one or two decently written passages, but that’s it. There aren’t really any characters, there’s no actual story (just a recounting of events) and it’s painfully obvious where things are going.

Two stars.

Sweet Reason, by Christopher Anvil

Dr. Garvin, a human psychologist, has come to observe the work of Centran military psychologist Major Poffis. The Centrans have astonishingly high success rates, achieved quickly. Garvin observes the Major treating a patient and the two discuss the theory and practice of psychology. Are human and Centran approaches compatible?


The Centran patient, prior to his treatment. Art by Nodel

Why wasn’t this in Analog? I’m sure I’ve read most of the criticisms of psychology as a science in Campbell’s editorial rants, and the quality is about what Campbell usually gets out of Anvil. A couple more stories like this and we can officially say that Campbell has ruined Anvil as a writer.

Two stars.

Earthblood (Part 3 of 4), by Keith Laumer and Rosel G. Brown

When last we left our hero, Roan’s ship had been disabled by a Niss warship, he had shot his mentor and now had to leave behind his only friend, Iron Robert, who can’t fit into a lifeboat. Under Roan’s leadership, the crew is able to board the Niss ship, only to find it uninhabited. It was the automatic defenses that destroyed Henry Dread’s ship. Fortunately, there is another Terran ship aboard for Roan and his crew to commandeer.

Roan’s first stop is his homeworld. He learns of his mother’s death, but is able to track down his family’s Yill servant. He makes his way to the shop where his parents bought his embryo and learns he was the only viable embryo out of several. He also finds out he came from an ITN experimental station on Alpha Centauri. That means a very long run through backwater territory to find out where he came from.

Nearly a decade later, he and his crew reach his destination. Roan would like to go on alone, but his three most loyal crewmen insist on accompanying him. Eventually, they reach naval headquarters on Nyurth. It turns out that the Imperial Terran Navy has grown decadent and is riven by factions. Most notably, Captain Trishinist believes Roan to be part of a large conspiracy to assassinate Admiral Starbird and seize control of the navy. The Admiral has grown old in service, but still has a plan and a hidden fleet to retake Earth. Time and politics have kept him from ever carrying it out. Now he places it all in Roan’s hands. That evening, Commodore Quex tries to arrest Roan, but Roan and his crew escape easily. To be concluded.


Roan leads with his left. I picked this one as representative of how bad the art is. Art by Wood

Well, this is a big improvement over the last two installments. It’s not without its flaws. When Roan learns that the family servant was originally part of the group sent to acquire his embryo, he fails to ask who hired them. There is also some confusion about time. The run to Alpha Centauri is nearly ten years, but Roan says it’s been four years since Dread’s death. In addition, there are inconsistencies in the relationships and communications between Naval HQ at the end and Rim HQ, which Dread worked for. Hopefully, those things will be cleared up by an editor before book publication.

Despite those flaws, this is a very good installment and gives me hope for the story as a whole. Laumer is much more present this time, in the various military plans and action sequences. But what makes it better is all Rosel Brown. Roan is greatly matured here, more introspective, and the story is improved for it.

Four stars.

By Mind Alone, by Larry Niven

In 1972, a group of UCLA students who have learned the mental power of teleportation and the professor who taught them are having a weekend party in Lake Arrowhead, up in the San Bernardino mountains. When the cigarettes run out, they can’t get more, because it’s Sunday and the stores are all closed, so their hostess teleports back to her parent’s home in Hermosa Beach. But when she arrives, she is stricken by an almost fatally high fever, which quickly diminishes. The professor puts a halt on all teleportation until they can figure out what happened. Have they violated some heretofore unknown law of the universe, or are they being punished for hubris?

Niven has given us a decent little problem story. He’s clearly inspired by Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and, not to give too much away, if he’s right, then Gully Foyle would be nothing more than some soot and a thin smear of organic matter after his first jaunt. I think the “magic” method of teleportation weakens the story somewhat, but it’s still a fun read. I’d like to see how someone using a more scientific approach would solve the problem revealed here.

Three stars.

Summing Up

A rose, Shakespeare says, by any other name would smell as sweet. But if it were called a dungflower, might those who stopped to smell it find the scent sweeter, because of low expectations, or maybe not as sweet, since something with that name can’t possibly smell good? I find myself wondering how much my opinions of the first two stories are influenced by their B-movie and Gernsbackian titles. What we call a thing can make a difference, and boy do those stories need to be called something else.

On the art front, Galaxy Publishing needs some new blood. The sub-par comic book stylings of Wally Wood and Dan Adkins are a waste of space and ink. Jack Gaughan’s abstract elements and heavy blocks of black are often oppressive and rarely fit the mood of the story they illustrate. When Norman Nodel produces the best illustrations in your magazine, it’s time for a change.


Been a while since we’ve seen something from Blish.




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Magazine

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

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

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

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

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

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

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

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

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

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

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

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

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

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

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

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

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

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

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

Doing the math


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Book

[March 10, 1966] Top Heavy (April 1966 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Stacked

For as long as I can remember, American culture has really liked people who have extra on top.  Whether it's Charles Atlas showing off his wedge-shaped physique or Jayne Mansfield letting herself precede herself, we dig an up front kind of person.

So I suppose it's only natural that this month's issue of Galaxy put all of the truly great material in the first half (really two thirds) and the rest tapers away to unremarkable mediocrity (though, of course, I'm obligated to remark upon it).

Dessert first


by Jack Gaughan

The Last Castle, by Jack Vance


by Jack Gaughan

Millenia after the Six-Star war, Earth has been resettled in a series of citadels by a league of aristocrats.  Their stratified society disdains the wretched nomads who remained on the birthplace of humanity, instead living an effete life served by a variety of caste-bound aliens: The ornamental Phanes, the laboring Peasants, the conveying Birds, and the technician Meks. 

That is, of course, until one and all, the Meks rebel.  They sabotage the human equipment and begin a methodical campaign to destroy all of the castles.  Presently, only mighty Hagedorn remains.  Can our race survive?  Should it?

In the Algis Budrys' review column this month, he laments that Frank Herbert could have made a real epic out of Dune if someone had told him they don't have to be 400+ pages long.  After all, the Odyssey, the original epic, is less than 200.  And Jack Vance has created a masterfully intricate and beautiful epic in just 60. 

There is sheer art in beginning a story in medias res, then retelling the opening scene with further detail, and then elaborating still further on this scene once more, and the result being utterly compelling.  Storytellers take note: Jack Vance knows his craft.  Not since The Dragon Masters (also Vance's) has there been such economy of impact.

Five stars.

The Crystal Prison, by Fritz Leiber

The Last Castle is a hard act to follow.  Luckily, the aforementioned Budrys column forms a refreshing interlude.  I don't always agree with Budrys, but the instant article is passionate and poetic.

Leiber's piece is rather throwaway, about two ardent striplings barely in their thirties, suffocating under the oppressive ministrations of their several century-old great-grandparents.  He is forced to wear a padded suit, and She must wear a virtual nun's habit.  Both are required to have eavesropping electronics on their persons at all time.  Oh, the old biddies mean well, but is that living?

The young'ns don't think so, and thus they hatch a plan to get away.

Three stars for this trifling cautionary tale.

Lazarus Come Forth!, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

Ah, but then back to the meat.  We've now had three tales in Silverberg's Blue Fire series, involving a pseudo-scientific cult (reminiscent of Elron Hubbored's, in fact) having taken over the Earth circa 2100.  Author Silverbob clearly intends making a book out of all of these, and Editor Fred Pohl is probably delighted to be able to stretch out a thinly disguised serial in his magazine. 

In this latest installment, which features lots of characters we've met before, we finally get to see Mars of the future.  The Red Planet has chosen neither the cobalt-worshipping Vorsterism of Earth nor the heretical Harmonism sect that is taking Venus by storm.  But the individualistic Martian culture is thrown for a loop when they discover the tomb of Lazarus, founder of the Harmonists.  According to legend, Lazarus had been martyred.  Actually, he is simply in cold sleep, and the Vorsterites now have the ability to restore him.

But is this merely providence or part of old man Vorster's long range plan?

By itself, I suppose it might only merit three stars, but I really like this series, and I was happy to see more.

So… four stars.

The Night Before, by George Henry Smith

When the world is going to pot, and atomic annihilation seems a button press away, it's natural to seek out wiser heads to right things.  And when all of humanity has gone nuts, your only option is to look elsewhere for guidance.

And hope they aren't in the same boat…

Smith is a new name to me, though my friends assure me he appeared in the lesser mags in the '50s and that he maintains a decent career outstide the genre.  Three stars for this somewhat inexpert yet oddly compelling story throwback of a story.

For Your Information: The Re-Designed Solar System, by Willy Ley

One of the fun things about being a science writer for decades is being able to compare the state of knowledge at the beginning of your career to that at the current moment of writing.  Ley was penning articles back when Frau im Mond debuted, more than 30 years before the first interplanetary probes.  In this latest piece, he talks about how our view of the planets has changed in these three decades.

Good stuff, interspersed with pleasant doggerel.

Four stars.

Big Business, by Jim Harmon

And now, after admiring the impressive pectoral, the well formed abdominal, and the fetching pelvic zones, we arrive at the sickly thighs, the slack calves, and the flat feet.  What remains is serviceable — after all, the body still stands — but little more can be said of these lower extremities.

Jim Harmon's piece is one of those overbroad talk pieces.  In this one, a man from the future and an extraterrestrial compete against each other for the patronage of a rich old cuss who'll see humanity burn if he can keep warm by the fire.

It's not very good.  Two stars.

The Primitives, by Frank Herbert


by Wallace Wood

Speaking of throwbacks, this is the tale of Conrad "Swimmer" Rumel, a man of surpassing intelligence but brutish appearance who, as a result, turns to a life of crime.  He ends up blowing up a Soviet sub to steal a Martian diamond, but the only one who can cut the thing is a four-breasted Neanderthal stonecutter from 30,000 B.C.  Can the neolithic Ob carve the diamond before the mobster fence's impatience proves Rumel's undoing?

Herbert crams a lot of science fiction canards into this short story (which is still half again as long as it needs to be).  It's got the same writing crudities that plague the author, but somehow I stayed engaged to the end. 

A low three stars.

Devise and Conquer, by Christopher Anvil

A joke story in which the American race problem is solved by the simple expedient of making it impossible to know what race anyone is.

Less annoying than when he appears in Analog — another low three.

Twenty-Seven Inches of Moonshine, by Jack B. Lawson


by Jack Gaughan

Finally, we peter our with this nothing "non-fact" article about fishing on the Moon in the 21st Century.  Maybe I'd have enjoyed it more if I were a rod and reel man.  Or if it were science fiction.

Two stars.

Shave a little off the bottom

Of course, the ironic thing about all this is that if you took out the subpar stuff, you'd still have a full issue's worth of material.  Ah, but people already grouse about having to pay that extra dime (Galaxy is 60 cents; the other mags are 50) for 194 pages.  They'd scream their heads off if Galaxy went to 128.  So, we end up with a mag that looks great from the waist up, but less good as you gaze goes down.

Ah well.  You can still do a lot, even with half a loaf.  Or a pair of pastries.

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

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