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[June 12, 1964] RISING THROUGH THE MURK (the July 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Wishing Waiting Hoping

Can it be . . . drifting up through the murk, like a forgotten suitcase floating up from an old shipwreck . . . a worthwhile issue of Amazing?

You certainly can’t tell by the cover, which is one of the ugliest jobs ever perpetrated by the usually talented Ed Emshwiller—misconceived, crudely executed, and it doesn’t help that the reproduction is just a bit off register.


by Ed Emshwiller

Mindmate, by Daniel F. Galouye

This hideous piece illustrates Mindmate, an amusingly hokey long novelet by Daniel F. Galouye, an improvement over his last two pieces in Amazing if not up to the standard of his Hugo-nominated novel Dark Universe.  In the near future, the Foundation for Electronic Cortical Stimulation, a/k/a the Funhouse chain, is raking it in selling ersatz experience, but is being chivvied by the Hon. Ronald Winston, chairman of the House Investigative Subcommittee on Cultural Influences, who thinks the Funhouses are addictive and should be stopped. 


by Ed Emshwiller

So the Funhousers do the only sensible thing—they kidnap Winston and, before killing him corporeally, use their technology to install him as a secondary personality in the brain of protagonist Sharp, who has been surgically altered to be a dead ringer for Winston.  It’s Sharp’s job to subvert the Subcommittee’s investigation, though he’s actually thinking of playing a double game. 

Sharp’s access to Winston’s memories and habits permits him to impersonate Winston quite successfully, to the point where he sometimes wonders whether he or Winston is really in charge.  And that, along with his mixed motives, sets the theme for the story: he’s not the only one playing a double game, or the only one with a double personality and questions about who is dominant. The attendant rug-pulling is executed reasonably well, though the author cheats a little: which personality emerges as dominant seems determined by plot needs and not by any identifiable aspect of the invented technology.  And it’s all acted out in the slightly incongruous context of a gangland melodrama.  But it’s sufficiently well turned and entertaining to warrant some generosity.  Four stars.

Placement Test, by Keith Laumer


by Virgil Finlay

There are two other novelets.  Keith Laumer’s Placement Test is one of his aggressively dystopian pieces, similar in degree of oppression but much different in mood from The Walls in the March 1963 Amazing, and less effective.  In a hyper-stratified future society, protagonist Maldon, who has done everything by the book, is excluded from his chosen career path through no fault of his own, relegated to Placement Testing for a menial future, and, if he doesn’t like it, Adjustment (of his brain). 

Instead of accepting his fate, he rebels, and through a combination of chutzpah and chicanery manipulates the rigid and stupid system to get what he wants . . . only to be told (here’s a revelation as massive as the cliche involved) that it was all a set-up, his rebellion was the real placement test, and he’s going to be a Top Executive (sic).  The hackneyed gimmick is offset by Laumer’s usual propulsive execution, so three stars for competence.  But if this is Laumer’s placement test . . . he’s not quite as promising as we might have thought from The Walls, It Could Be Anything, and others. 

A Game of Unchance, by Philip K. Dick


by George Schelling

The third novelet is Philip K. Dick’s A Game of Unchance, set among colonists on a Mars every bit as unrealistic as Ray Bradbury’s, but much more depressing.  A spaceship lands at a settlement, promising a carnival: “FREAKS, MAGIC, TERRIFYING STUNTS, AND WOMEN!”—the last word painted largest of all.  But the colony has just been fleeced by another carnival ship!  This time, though, the colonists have a plan: their half-witted psi-talented Fred can go to the carnival and win the games with the most valuable prizes.

The prizes turn out to be dolls with intricate internal wiring (microrobs, they’re called), which attack and escape, and later prove bent on harm to the colonists, wiring up the local fauna and the livestock.  The UN says the colonists will have to evacuate while they flood the area with poisonous gas; then a higher-powered UN guy shows up and says that they will probably have to evacuate Mars entirely in the face of this extraterrestrial invasion, for that is what it is.  At story’s end, yet another carnival ship has shown up—this one with prizes consisting of little mechanical devices claimed to be “homeostatic traps” that will catch the little things the colonists can’t catch themselves—and at the end, they are falling for it. 

In outline, this sounds like a tight little piece of irony, but on the page it’s quite atmospheric.  Dick has become hands down SF’s master of dreariness.  (“The night smelled of spiders and dry weeds; he sensed the desolation of the landscape around him.”) But more than that, he is a master of a particular kind of horror, the horror of being trapped, not necessarily physically, but in events and situations that can only have a bad end and that his characters cannot turn away from.  The fact that some of the situations (like this one) make very little sense does not detract from their power; this is a sort of dream logic at work.  It doesn’t work for everybody, but for my taste, four stars.

The Mouths of All Men, by Ed M. Clinton, Jr.


by McLane

Ed M. Clinton is a very occasional SF writer, with eight stories scattered over the past decade, almost all in second-tier magazines.  In his short story The Mouths of All Men, Soviet and American astronauts are launched simultaneously, intending to meet in space and return together in a show of brotherhood, but while they’re en route someone triggers World War III, destroying humanity.  So they match velocities, dock, and immediately try to kill each other; then they calm down, show each other their pictures of their now incinerated families, inscribe a proclamation on their viewport, and purposefully botch re-entry so they’ll be killed on the way down.  This is more of a harangue than a story—not a badly done harangue, but the sentiments are quite familiar to SF readers, and starting to get that way for everyone else.  Two stars.

The Scarlet Throne, by Edward W. Ludwig


by Blair

The Scarlet Throne by Edward W. Ludwig, a little more prolific but about as obscure as Clinton, is another Message story, this one less well done than Clinton’s.  Esteban, the patriarch of a poor Mexican family who lives near a desert rocket launching facility in the US, is troubled by the fact that space is being conquered while his family and his neighbors still lack indoor plumbing, and decides to take his message to the launch site where the President will be in attendance.  He doesn’t get far.  The story ends with a crude but appropriate joke.  The worthiness of the message is overtaken by the story’s heavy-handedness and the rather patronizing portrayal of the Mexican family.  Two stars.

Operation Shirtsleeve, by Ben Bova

Ben Bova soldiers on with Operation Shirtsleeve, discussing how to transform Venus and Mars so we can walk around in our shirtsleeves on them—i.e., terraform them, though Bova avoids this term for some reason.  Instead, he uses “shirtsleeve” as a verb at least once.  I don’t think that usage will stick.  Anyway, the answers, respectively, are bombard Venus with algae and bombard Mars ith energy and hydrogen.  (I am simplifying a little bit.) It’s the usual fare of interesting information presented dully. 

Bova does venture outside his specialties with one observation: “While the moon has some political and perhaps even military advantages, Mars is too far away for any nation to attempt to reach single-handedly.  Manned expeditions to Mars will probably be international efforts supervised by the United Nations.” I wonder if he’s giving any odds.  Bova then concludes: “The real question is: Why bother?  That is a question that can only be answered by the men who actually land on Mars.” I would think that the people who will pony up the trillions of dollars or other currency needed to pay for this project, and their representatives, might have something to say about it too.  But the fact that Bova is even asking this question gets him a grudging three stars.

In Conclusion

So: nothing terrible, everything readable, and a couple of items distinctly above average.  Celebrate! . . . while you can. 

Next month . . . Robert F. Young.

[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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[August 2, 1963] Sinister Geometry (Daniel F. Galouye's Lords of the Psychon)

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by Rosemary Benton

Whenever we read the newspaper, listen to the radio or watch Walter Cronkite's trustworthy complexion on CBS, we are looking for answers to some very basic but very important questions that will help us break down and normalize that which we don't understand. In much of science fiction, that which we don't understand comes hurtling at us because some dramatic change and the utterly unearthly have collided. In equal parts fear and curiosity the characters react, but ultimately and almost unerringly, logical thinking and scientific reasoning are then able to parse out what the characters should do in reply.

But what if the shift in humanity's daily life is beyond explanation, bordering on paranormal? And what if the alien force that is bringing about that change is so far removed from known biology that it appears extra-dimensional? Daniel F. Galouye's new book, Lords of the Psychon, takes the reader to that terrifying reality with an invader that is unnervingly simple – a large, floating, metallic sphere – and their mission which can be surmised as absorbing compatible human minds and letting the rest die in the grip of mind shredding madness.

As the last aging remnants of humanity squeak out an agrarian living in sporadic villages, the remaining ranks of the US military are trying everything to disrupt the geometric cities made of “pink stuff" that are growing like tumors all over the Earth. There is little to nothing known about the aliens save for odd ritualistic behavior, namely The Selection, The Chase and Horror Day.

The free moving agents of these alien city structures, fittingly named Spheres, are regarded with terror. Not only will they defend themselves with bolt of electricity if intercepted, but they are seen as the harbingers of death. Seemingly at random, a person will be selected by a Sphere for absorption. The Sphere will proceed to hover slowly after them until it has driven them to exhaustion or death. What happens once the victim passes through the floating orb and reemerges a corpse is unknown. If the Spheres, the expanding cities, and the annual occurrence of Horror Day can not be stopped then humanity will be completely hunted down or driven mad within a few decades. But how do you fight an enemy that seems to be capable of warping the very fabric of reality?

Like H. P. Lovecraft, Galouye's signature style for science fiction leans heavily on pitting humans against a threat that can weaponize the evolutionarily lacking perceptions of humanity. In his previous novel Dark Universe (1961), it is reasoned that an underground-dwelling humanity would have no use for sight and instead perfect their sense of smell, touch and hearing to compensate for the loss of sight. Predators, both animal and competing branches of humanity with evolutionarily adventitious infrared perception, could gain an upper hand on distracted, sightless humans. But a human who had plenty of experience listening, feeling and tasting the air of the world around them could adapt to better survive.

In both Lords of the Psychon, as well as the short story that spawned it, The City of Force (Galaxy, 1959), a humanity that hasn't the innate mindset and will to manipulate the structural substance called “pink stuff" or “psychon" is powerless to stop an entity that is so far evolved beyond physical form that it can traverse space and dimensions. It is via self administered meditation and strict perception training that this difficult task can be achieved, and while not everyone who manipulates the psychon does so exceptionally well, their alternative option is too dire to leave much of a choice. 

This story progression through learning and self education is an aspect of Lords of the Psychon that is very true to Galouye's style. In any of his writing Galouye does not initially arm his characters with much innate experience and knowledge. In the very first chapter of Lords of the Psychon we follow Jeff Maddox and his team into an alien “City of Force" on a self described suicide run to desperately try and do something to damage the aliens. The language and brevity of sentence structure only serves to drive home the desperation of the situation and how little they know compared to the knowledge they will need to again:

“On the Eve of Horror Day, 1993, Geoffrey Maddox, Captain, USA, lead a suicide detail from Headquarters, Third Army."

Some authors would have their protagonists win the day through cleverness, observation, and scientific evidence, and to be sure Jeff Maddox and the young lady, Eddie, do employ this formula for success against their alien invader. But it is due to not just cleverness, but an unmatched, almost panicked dash to save the human species that allows Galouye's protagonists to methodically gather information so that they may teach themselves how to stave off extinction. Galouye's message is clear – adapt or perish.

His progress in emotionally manipulating his readers is far reaching, even in his characterization. Jess Maddox makes a much more likable, empathetic and individualized protagonist over Jared from Dark Universe. Likewise, Eddie is a much more logic-driven, quirky but intense personality than Jared's betrothed, Della. But it is that specific flavor of almost-defeat and near panic that Daniel F. Galouye is cultivating which is making his work consistently worth reading. It thrums beneath Lords of the Psychon and I hope to see it again in his next book. As an example of the author's improvement as a writer, Lords of the Psychon shows a bright future for Galouye, especially if he keeps up with the speed at which he is currently writing.

Four and a half stars.

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Magazine

[July 12, 1963] Shine, little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer (the August 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

The August 1963 Amazing features Daniel F. Galouye’s novella Reign of the Telepuppets, a splendid title that apparently evokes a bit of editorial discomfort.  “Editorial director” Norman M. Lobsenz is at pains to explain that “‘Telepuppets’—despite its pulp-fictiony sound—is a word already in good repute with the soberer elements of the scientific community,” brandishing as evidence a statement from the National Research Council.

The story itself, like Galouye’s earlier novella Recovery Area, is ambitious but a bit of a misfire.  The Bureau of Interstellar Exploration has left a crew of telepuppets—robots designed for particular tasks—somewhere (“a satellite,” no explanation) in the Aldebaran system.  They are named to fit their tasks: Bigboss, Sky Watcher, Scraper, Peter the Meter, etc.  Bigboss has decided he’s the Supreme Being who created everything but somehow forgot the details, which doesn’t affect the puppets’ work or Bigboss’s role in supervising them, but they have stopped communicating with Earth.  Also, Minnie—Mineral Assessor—is jealous of Bigboss’s position and keeps attacking him.  The source of these derangements is not clear, in part because the telepuppets’ capabilities and limits are not much explained, compared, say, with Asimov’s I, Robot sequence, which contains much more and better handwaving on that subject. 

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Bureau is mounting an expedition to stop off at Aldebaran and straighten out the puppets en route to the more distant Hyades, where seven or eight Earth-type planets have been discovered.  But upon their arrival, the telepuppets quickly fade out—there’s a spaceship full of reptilian aliens lurking, its megalomaniac captain looking for an opportunity to start an interstellar war.  That plot line is followed for a bit, then the rug is pulled out entirely: nothing is what it seems.  Then the rug is pulled out again; there’s a new revelation, and the story ends rather quickly thereafter.  While some SF writers have made effective use of this kind of plot device, here it just seems that Galouye couldn’t decide which story he wanted to write and wound up with something of a mess.

Galouye does decide to let the girls into this clubhouse, though execution does not quite match good intentions.  Carol Cummings joins the crew because she is a “radio empathy specialist,” practicing a talent which is mainly confined to women.  The men refer to her as the Maid of the Megacycles.  When she pulls a mild prank on one of them, he is about to spank her when another crewman appears and interrupts him.  She is (of course) good-looking (pause for mention of “the shapeliness of her lithe, five-foot-four frame”), and by the end she is (of course) paired off with the main character.  For a while it seemed like a nice try, though.  Overall, three stars for competent and readable copy, and a clever idea (the telepuppets’ becoming independent) poorly developed.

Galouye’s long novella is followed by four short stories—very short, in the case of Thomas M. Disch’s three-page “Utopia?  Never!” It’s a well-written but cartoony gimmick story, in which a visitor insists to his tour guide that this planet can’t be the Utopia it seems, and finds out all too quickly that he’s right.  Three stars for arid but well-turned cleverness.

Next up is John Rackham’s Dr. Jeckers and Mr. Hyde, in which young Katherine, secretary at a research facility, makes a play for mild and befuddled Dr. Jeckers, whom she drives out to her aunt’s country house, except that he gets so unexpectedly fresh en route that she shoves him out the door and over a cliff.  But . . . moments later, Dr. Jeckers, driving his own car, is right behind her, trying to get her to stop.  She doesn’t, and he goes over the cliff too.  Suffice it to say we have not seen the last of Dr. Jeckers, or Dr. Jeckerses.  This ridiculously amusing story might make a good Twilight Zone episode if TZ had a sense of humor.  Four stars, believe it or not, for the usually mediocre Mr. Rackham, or John T. Phillifent as I believe he is known to Inland Revenue and readers of Analog.

David Rome’s The Lesson for Today sharply changes the mood.  It’s a child’s-eye view of going to school in a starship fleeing an apparently ruined Earth, told seemingly with Bradbury in the back of the author’s mind and a prudent study of David R. Bunch in front.  Remarkably, Rome brings off this tightrope walk; four stars for avoiding mawkishness.

Mine is the Kingdom by Roger Zelazny, disguised once more as Harrison Denmark, is something else entirely.  There’s one human left on another ruined Earth, and aliens—the “puffies”—are trying to persuade him to leave, to go where the other humans went, so they can convert what’s left of Earth to their own liking.  The protagonist is apparently being cared for by nearly omnipotent machines who can manufacture any illusion that he wants while keeping him drunk, as he demands.  It’s theatrical in the most literal sense; Zelazny is making the most of his education in drama here, with the events obscured, or transfigured as you prefer, in oratorical language and gaudy imagery.  (“The walls were rough-woven allegories of bright color, the heads of vanquished predators, and axes with complexions of smoke and eyes of rust.”) Pretentious?  Yeah, but hand it to the guy, he delivers on his pretenses, at least to my taste.  Feller does have a way with words.  You could also call it decadent, I suppose, but who cares?  Four stars, leaning towards five.  Nothing rotten in this Denmark.

Gosh—three stories in a row in Amazing that I am actually glad I read.  That is amazing! and suggestive of better things to come, except we’ve been around that track before.

Coming down to Earth, here’s Sam Moskowitz again, with John W. Campbell: The Writing Years.  This task is tailor-made for Moskowitz, who doesn’t like to acknowledge work from any later than the 1940s, since with one minor exception Campbell stopped writing in 1940 or so.  It’s the usual perfectly competent rehash of a (brief) career, enhanced by much hitherto-unknown (to me at least) biographical data.  Most interestingly, Campbell’s mother had a twin sister who didn’t much like him, and at times young Campbell didn’t know who he was dealing with, an experience that gave rise to Campbell’s most powerful story, Who Goes There? It’s not clear to what extent that is Campbell speaking, versus Moskowitz amateur-psychologizing.  In any case, three stars, and a more interesting job than some recent entries in this series.

So, three pretty good stories, and two adequate ones.  Amazing is above water for now, but it never seems to last.  What ho—be that the specter of Robert F. Young, there lurking in the shadows?

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Magazine

[January 13, 1963] LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT (the February 1963 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Last month’s issue raised high expectations, but this February Amazing reminds me of an infantile and scatological joke which I believe I heard in fifth grade, the punchline of which is “Coffee break’s over, squat down again.” If you never heard it, count your blessings.

Daniel F. Galouye’s novella Recovery Area comes highly touted.  Last month’s Coming Next Month squib described it as “destined to become a classic” and “brilliantly original, and with a depth of meaning and emotion”; the story blurb says “There is no reason to write a blurb that will try to lure you into being interested in this story.  It will grip you of itself within ten lines, and hold your mind and heart far beyond its last sentence.”

Actually, it’s a decent and well-meaning pulp novella, recalling the beginning of Galouye’s career in SF: 20 of his first 21 published stories appeared in Imagination, that most pulpish of digest magazines, in the space of two years.  But it’s a step backward from the much more sophisticated Dark Universe. 

On Venus, it’s proposed, there is a species of giant humanoids (hideously illustrated on the cover by Vernon Kramer) featuring “quazehorns.” Say what?  Horns that quaze, obviously—that is, they endow the bearer with a not-well-defined extrasensory power to perceive objects and entities at a distance, read personalities and attitudes if not quite thoughts, and perceive the nature of the contents of closed containers (i.e., the supply capsules for the Earth expedition that is about to land, which are dropped at various points near the landing site; hence the title.)

The Venutians (author’s spelling [others are using it, too.  (Ed.)]) are materially primitive but highly philosophical, as attested by the extensive deployment of capital letters.  In the first couple of pages, we encounter Meditative Withdrawal, Cognitive Posture, Ascetic Ascendancy, the First Phase of Ascendancy, the Dichotomy of Endlessnesses (comprising Upper and Lower), and the Eternal Day (where the Venutians live, squeezed in between the two Endlessnesses).  These are the preoccupations of K’Tawa, the Old One, who is constantly beset by interruptions from the youngster Zu-Bach, always Materialistic.  Right now Zu-Bach is concerned with Presences from the Upper Endlessness, who of course are the Earth explorers, and who Zu-Bach is convinced are malign after he sees one of their dropped capsules snatching an animal specimen which later turns up dead.  Matters escalate when the explorers arrive and the Venutians quaze hate, scorn, treachery, and greed, mostly from one misfit member.  Violent conflict ensues.  Meanwhile, K’Tawa is achieving Phase Eight Meditation, putting him in touch with the memories of his ancestors, which murkily reveal a local cosmological history reminiscent of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky, and suggest a startling provenance for the Venutians and a revised view of the universe.  Understanding triumphs, facile happy ending follows.  It’s competent and well-intentioned product, but we’ve come to expect better, from Galouye and everyone else, especially from something that is presented (and presents itself) as a major work.  Three stars with a side of nostalgic indulgence.

The biggest name here, also featured on the cover, is Philip Jose Farmer, with his short story How Deep the Grooves, which is pretty terrible.  In a future police state, Dr. Carroad has, through the magic of electroencephalography, devised a machine that can turn thoughts into audible words, thereby unmasking deviationists.  Now, with high officials watching, he’s going to use it to transmit, not receive, and indoctrinate his own unborn child to be unable to question the dictates of the state.  Instead, the machine keeps receiving, and broadcasts the child’s thoughts at various future ages, demonstrating that we are all automatons programmed to play roles, and ending with an unsavory revelation about the futures of father and son.  It’s reminiscent of an old silent movie filled with posturing and mugging, and all for the sake of an idea that would have seemed pretty silly even in the days of Hugo Gernsback.  One star.

Speaking of Gernsback, he was six years gone from Amazing but his spirit was clearly still around when this month’s Classic Reprint was published (February 1935 issue).  The Tale of the Atom, fortunately the only story by Philip Dennis Chamberlain, rings another silly change on the silly universe-as-atom theme, the silliness of which has been apparent since before this story was published.  One star.

A higher class of silliness, maybe, is represented by Phoenix, a short story by Ted White and Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Protagonist Max is standing swathed in flames, which it says here “feels like satin ice,” when his girlfriend walks in.  Extinguishing himself, he says, “Hell of a time for you to show up, Fran,” noticing that the carpet is singed and smoking where he’s been standing on it.  Oops!  Max has had a sudden accession of psi powers, or something, including levitation and the ability to heat up his coffee by thinking about it and to dress himself psychokinetically, in addition to cloaking himself in flames and perceiving all of reality at the molecular level, or something like that.  The story is his losing effort to maintain some human contact in the face of this transcendent experience, and his surrender to the latter.  Something might have been made of this at greater length and with more writerly competence (Bradley’s been around but this is White’s first professionally published story), but in this form it’s alternately risible and merely inadequate.  Two stars for ambition.

The remaining item of fiction is Jack Sharkey’s The Smart Ones, which is reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode, both generally and specifically.  (You’ll know the one.) Nuclear war is on the way, and ordinary people!  just like you and me! are trying to figure out what to do.  The story proceeds in a series of scenes that are both strongly visual and carried by dialogue—whether to go to the fallout shelter, whether to take the opportunity to get onto a Moon-bound ship—the best of which is the couple arguing about whether Vanity Fair and Coningsby should get space on the fallout shelter bookshelves.  Later, after the bombing:

“ ‘I think the baby needs a change, or something,’ said Corey, looking down at his infant son.

“ ‘Read him Coningsby,’ said Lucille.  Then she started laughing again, until Corey was forced to slap her face crimson to quiet her.”

You just know this guy wants to write for TV, or at least the stage, and he’d probably be pretty good at it.  The more I look at this the better I like it in its black-humoresque way.  Four stars, if only by comparison to its company.

Sam Moskowitz is back with another SF Profile, Arthur C. Clarke (guess he couldn’t think of a snappy title or subtitle), which bears the usual virtues and faults: interesting biographical material, sometimes dubious critical judgment, and a close focus on Clarke’s earliest work at the expense of the more recent.  In Clarke’s case this is less jarring than in some of the other profiles, since Clarke didn’t start publishing SF professionally until 1946 and all but one of his novels are from the ‘50s and later, so Moskowitz has to discuss some recent work (he even mentions the 1961 A Fall of Moondust a couple of times, though he can’t get the title straight).  Three stars.

So: a step forward, a step back.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




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Magazine

[January 14, 1962] Horrors! (February 1962 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Since the demise nearly a decade ago of the fondly remembered magazine Weird Tales, there has been a dearth of markets for horror stories.  Occasionally a tale of terror will appear in the pages of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but otherwise there are few places where fiction dealing with the deepest, most irrational fears of humanity can be found.  Perhaps this is due to the burgeoning popularity of science fiction as an expression of modern anxieties in this age of space exploration and atomic energy. 

Even at the local movie theater one is more likely to find radioactive mutants and creatures from outer space than vampires, werewolves, and mummies, though the recent revival of these Gothic monsters by the British film production company Hammer hints that the tide may be changing, as does the popularity of classic horror movies on television programs such as Shock Theater.  The new publication Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by well-known science fiction fan Forrest J. Ackerman, also proves that there are many readers still interested in the dark side of fantasy.

A striking exception to above trend is Fantastic, which often features supernatural horror stories along with the kind of science fiction found in its sister publication Amazing.  In particular, the February issue of the magazine contains at least as much of the former as the latter.

The surrealistic cover art by Leo Summers aptly conveys the mood of Fritz Leiber’s lead novelette “A Bit of the Dark World.” The story is set in modern Southern California.  (Leiber has been a pioneer in bringing the supernatural into the Twentieth Century ever since his story The Automatic Pistol appeared in Weird Tales in 1940.) Four passengers are driving through steep hills near Los Angeles.  In the back seat are the narrator and his lover, who are in the movie business.  (In a sly nod to his roots, the author gives these characters the surnames Seabury and Quinn, Seabury Quinn having been a prolific writer of horror fiction, with hundreds of stories to his credit, many in Weird Tales.)

In the front passenger seat is their host, who is bringing them to his small but luxurious home for the night.  At the wheel is a neighbor.  On the way they share a strange vision at a peculiar rock formation.  The driver sees nothing, and this character soon vanishes from the story.  He seems intended to represent those who have no ability to sense anything beyond the physical world, and thus he is completely safe from it.

The other three are not so fortunate.  As the night progresses they experience unnerving sensations; a burning smell, a metallic flavor, the feeling of cobwebs, the sound of falling gravel.  Most of all they perceive vague shapes, shining black against an equally black night sky.  Leiber creates an effective sense of inexplicable menace which leads to a dramatic conclusion.  Four stars.

Before returning to tales of terror, Daniel F. Galouye (a likely Hugo contender for his recent novel Dark Universe) offers us a taste of his skill at creating imaginative science fiction in A Silence of Wings. Set in the far future, when humanity has made contact with many different alien species throughout the galaxy, the story takes place on a planet inhabited by flying telepaths.  Although friendly to the visiting humans, they have no interest in learning about Earth technology and are to content to remain gliding from place to place in their treetop homes.  The Terrans are not entirely altruistic in offering to bring advanced science to the flyers; a prime motivation is to enlist them in exploiting the planet’s resources.  In a foolish attempt to force the aliens to adopt machinery, one of the humans uses logic to “prove” that their wings are far too frail to allow them to fly.  Since this ability is the only thing which prevents them from being destroyed by ravenous ground-dwelling predators, a crisis ensues.

The story reads in some ways like a typical Analog story reflected in a funhouse mirror.  The self-confident humans smugly think themselves superior to the local natives.  The author is careful to avoid depicting them as one-dimensional villains, however, resulting in a believable set of characters.  Three stars.

Although also set in a future of space travel, this time confined to the limits of the Solar System, Joseph E. Kelleam’s story The Red Flowers of Tulp is really an old-fashioned horror story decked out with science fiction trappings.  It deals with three vicious space criminals who encounter the title plants at a carnival on Mars, just after reaping the benefits of their latest felony.  The flowers not only talk, but predict their futures (they really serve only as a plot gimmick, and could easily be replaced by a Gypsy fortuneteller.) They state that one of the men will die by cold, one by fire, and that one will never die.  The reader is not terribly surprised to discover that these predictions all come true.  It’s a moderately effective tale of just desserts, worthy of two stars (three if you're more generous than I am).

Appropriately, this month’s reprint is credited, in part, to the late H. P. Lovecraft, another veteran of Weird Tales whose name is associated with stories of terror.  I suspect that “The Shadow Out of Space” is primarily the work of co-author August W. Derleth.  Derleth, along with Donald Wandrei, founded the Arkham House publishing company with the goal of preserving the work of Lovecraft in hardcover.  Derleth and other authors have expanded on Lovecraft’s concept of ancient, god-like beings far beyond human comprehension into the so-called “Cthulhu Mythos.”

Taking its title from Lovecraft’s 1936 story The Shadow Out of Time, this variation on the same theme was first published in The Survivor and Others, a 1957 Arkham House collection of Derleth’s elaborations on notes and outlines left by the deceased author.  The story is told from the point of view of a psychiatrist examining a patient who suffers from terrifying dreams.  These involve inhabiting the body of an inhuman creature in a vast library located on a distant planet.  It is eventually revealed that these aliens are able to send their minds into the bodies of others, including human beings, over vast distances of space and time.  Derleth weaves together many themes from Lovecraft in an apparent attempt to make a coherent whole.  Fans of H. P. Lovecraft will appreciate the effort, but the story itself is rather dry, and the author forgets the important rule to show and not tell.  Two stars.

We turn from cosmic terror to more mundane fears in our final story.  William W. Stuart’s What If? has something of the flavor of an introspective The Twilight Zone episode.  The protagonist is a fellow who has been so dominated by a willful mother and a bureaucratic job with the IRS that he is unable to make the simplest decisions on his own.  When he is asked to make a trivial selection between a ham sandwich and a cheese sandwich, he foresees the tragic consequences of each choice.  Unwilling to hurt anyone because of his actions, he goes into a catatonic state.  Years later, in a psychiatric institute, he emerges from his trance and decides to act only in his own self-interest, disregarding how his decisions will harm others.  Although his strange ability to predict the exact consequences of all his actions allows him to become rich and powerful very quickly, the outcome is not entirely pleasant.  Three stars.

Overall, this issue provides solid entertainment, even if it may not be the best choice to read all alone in the dark…

[Then again, who reads in the dark?  Best to, at least, bring a flashlight!  Ed.]

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[November 13, 1961] (un)Moving Pictures (December 1961 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

The last decade saw a boom in written science fiction as well as science fiction cinema, due in part to both the fear of atomic warfare and the promise of space exploration.  Both trends have tapered off recently, possibly due to the many stories and films of poor quality offered to a public grown tired of cheap thrills.  (No doubt such a fate awaits the countless Westerns currently dominating American television screens.)

In any case, the two media have had an influence on each other, not always to the advantage of either.  Although science fiction movies have sometimes made use of the talents of important writers within the genre, such as Robert A. Heinlein’s contribution to Destination Moon, too often they have turned to the most juvenile pulp magazines and comic books for inspiration.  In turn, some written science fiction has lost the sophistication it gained under editors such as John W. Campbell, H. L. Gold, and Anthony Boucher. 

These musings come to mind when one peruses the pages of the latest issue of Fantastic.  Of the two longest stories in the magazine, one is reminiscent of recent science fiction films, while the other deals directly with the movie business.

It seems likely that Daniel F. Galouye’s lead novelette Spawn of Doom (note the melodramatic title, which would not be out of place on a theater marquee) was inspired by Lloyd Birmingham’s cover painting.  The scene depicted by the artist is described in great detail within the story, down to the exact number of tentacle-like things coming out of the meteorite on display in a museum.
This tale of a dangerous alien life form brought to Earth on a chunk of rock from outer space inevitably reminds the reader of movies like The Blob.  However, the author brings imagination and intelligence to a familiar theme.

The story is told from three points of view.  First we meet the humanoid Lumarians, aliens who patrol the galaxy in search of deadly creatures known as EGMites.  These beings subsist on electro-gravito-magnetic energy, hence their name.  When they land on a world after traveling through empty space in an unconscious state for immense periods of time, they prepare for reproduction by tearing the planet apart and sending spores out in all directions.  Obviously this poses a threat to life everywhere in the cosmos.
Next we enter the newly awakened mind of an EGMite which has reached Earth.  Filled with the desire to reproduce, and to destroy anything which seeks to interfere, it soon begins wreaking havoc on its surroundings, starting on a small scale but quickly escalating to the point where it is demolishing entire buildings.

Providing the viewpoint of endangered humanity is the curator of the museum where the EGMite’s meteoric hiding place is being exhibited.  This rugged young hero is ably assisted by a capable and attractive archivist, who not only provides romantic interest, but is on hand to scream when the monster from space attacks.  One can’t help wondering if the author has his tongue firmly in his cheek while describing these characters.  However, the tale never degrades into farce, and the quick-moving plot builds the necessary amount of suspense.  The transitions between the three points of view are sometimes abrupt, and the story has nothing particularly profound to say, but it’s solid entertainment.  Three stars.

During the intermission between our two feature presentations, let’s take a look at something quite different.  David Ely’s unusual story, The Last Friday in August, offers much food for thought.  The protagonist dwells in a large city, and finds the crushing presence of the vast crowds nearly unbearable.  He only finds peace through long periods of meditation.  One day he finds that he has a strange power over others.  This leads to an unexpected climax, which will leave the reader pondering its meaning.  Well-written, subtle, and evocative, this tale is likely to haunt the reader for a long time.  Four stars.

Back to the movies.  Point, by John T. Phillifent (perhaps better known under his pen name John Rackham), deals with a group of filmmakers who travel to Venus to make their latest blockbuster.  The proposed feature involves beautiful female Venusians, and seems intended to provide a bit of satire of silly science fiction movies such as Queen of Outer Space.  Although the author’s description of Venus is a bit more realistic than that, it’s still not terribly plausible.  The Planet of Love is a very dangerous place, inhabited by all kinds of deadly creatures, but its atmosphere is breathable, and humans can walk around on its hot, steamy surface without spacesuits.  The plot deals with a pilot who agrees to take the film crew into the Venusian wilderness.  As you might expect, things quickly go very wrong, and the story turns into a violent account of survival in a hostile environment.  All in all it’s a fairly typical adventure yarn, competent but hardly noteworthy.  Two stars.

After the double feature of novelettes we have a pair of short stories, one new and one old, to round out the magazine.  Up first is The Voice Box, by Allan W. Eckert, a very brief tale about a man who hates and fears telephones.  Written in a rather baroque style, it leads to a grim conclusion.  Since I share the narrator’s loathing of that terribly intrusive instrument, I am forced to award three stars to what is admittedly a minor piece.

This issue’s "fantasy classic" is by Robert E. Howard, a prolific author of pulp fiction who committed suicide decades ago at the age of thirty.  Best known to readers of speculative fiction for his tales of Conan and other fantasy adventures and horror stories, Howard also produced numerous stories in other genres ranging from sports fiction to Westerns.  Published near the end of his life in the August 15, 1936 issue of Argosy, The Dead Remember is a tale of the supernatural set in Dodge City in 1877.  The first part of the story takes the form of a letter from a cowboy to his brother, in which he confesses to the killing of a man and his wife during a drunk argument over a game of dice.  Before she dies the woman places a curse on him.  The second part of the story consists of several formal statements of witnesses to the fate of the murderer. 

Although this is a typical story of revenge from beyond the grave, the unusual structure provides some novelty.  Of most interest, perhaps, are the racial implications.  The murdered man is a Negro, and his witch-like wife is a "high yellow" of mixed race.  Although at first the killer seems to treat the married couple no differently than whites, when tempers flare the racial insults come out.  The author seems to imply that a woman of mixed race would be closer to the supernatural than others.  For its historical value, I’ll give this story two and one-half stars.

Overall this issue comes very close to a three star rating.  It certainly provides a wide variety of reading material, and is almost certain to have something to please any reader of imaginative fiction.

See you at the movies! 

And as luck would have it, the next article will feature a movie – the latest monstrous spectacular straight from Japan.  Stay tuned! [the Traveler].

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[September 23, 1961] Seeing the Light (Daniel Galouye's Dark Universe)

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The human experience is a visual one.  While each of the five senses has its function and importance, we rely primarily on our eyes to navigate the world.  Sighted people take this fact for granted – even the verb "to see" means "to understand."  Inability to see is considered (by the sighted) to be a devastating plight, the resulting world of darkness unbearable.

But is it?  In his latest book, Dark Universe, Daniel Galouye takes the horror out of blindness, putting us in the viewpoint (or more accurately, the "hearpoint") of a post-apocalyptic civilization of humans that has lived for generations underground without any sources of light.  While their eyes may technically still work, they are useless.  Hearing and smell have become the operative senses for interpreting the world.  Over the generations, even the memory of sight has become forgotten, and many inhabitants of this subterranean world spend their lives with their eyes tightly shut, their hair grown long over their face.  Yet they live, even thrive, in a beauty that goes beyond the visual.

It is a fascinating set-up, and it's rendered beautifully by Galouye.  The universe of caves, the communities of the blind, the strange animals and plants that surround them, they are doubly weird, portrayed as they are vividly and effectively without a single visual cue.  But these are just backdrop to the real story, that of the young man, Jared, who is groping for the truth of his world.

For in the land of eternal night, Light and Darkness have lost their physical meaning.  They are now abstract religious concepts.  As Jared explores the full compass of the underground, he starts to wonder if light, and its dark counterpart, might be something real.  The evidence mounts in the form of unanswered questions: How does another underground tribe, the Zivvers, seem to sense with a keenness beyond hearing, detecting the very heat of objects?  What does it mean when the gnarled old priest stimulates another's eyes in the ritual of Excitation of the Optic Nerve, causing double rings of soundless noise to appear in one's conception?  And just what are these Monsters that have begun to raid the caves, kidnapping members of the tribes, waving wands that project cones of dazzling silent sense?

Dark Universe is a detective story, but not in the usual sense.  The reader already knows the answer to the mystery; the unknown element is how Jared will deduce the truth about his world, the invaders, and his situation.  Galouye has profound things to say about the nature of religion, which in this book is a literal search for enlightenment.  The questions are all familiar to us: Where do we go when we die?  Is there Truth behind holy writ and sacred artifacts?  When is it safe to abandon superstition? 

Then there are the even more fundamental questions.  Is it a handicap to be blind?  Is vision even a desirable ability for one raised in, even deft in, blindness?  What does one give up when one loses one's "disability"?  Galouye presents and attempts to answer these questions without being didactic, for he does it all in metaphor, couched in the trappings of a science fiction novel.

And it's a crackingly exciting novel, at that.  Beyond the book's philosophical underpinnings, Dark Universe is a gripping adventure, with all the derring-do, narrow scrapes, and romance of a Burroughsian Pellucidar tale.  As a result, Galouye delivers his philosophy in a far sweeter pill than, say, Heinlein in his latest book.  Galouye's first motivation is to entertain, and he succeeds at this task admirably.  Four and a half stars.

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[August 5, 1961] In the good old Summertime! (September 1961 IF science fiction)

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Gideon Marcus


by Ron Church

Summer is here!  It's that lazy, hot stretch of time when the wisest thing to do is lie in the shade with a glass of lemonade and a good book.  Perhaps if Khruschev did the same thing, he wouldn't be making things so miserable for the folks of West Berlin.  Well, there's still time for Nikita to take a restful trip to the Black Sea shore.

As for me, I may not have a dacha, but I do have a beach.  Moreover, this month's IF science fiction proved a reasonably pleasant companion during my relax time.  If you haven't picked up your copy yet, I recommend it.  Here's what's inside:

Keith Laumer has made a big splash in just the last few years.  He wrote a fine three-part alternate Earth novel that came out in Fantastic earlier this year.  I look forward to covering it when it's novelized in a few months.  Meanwhile, this month he offers us a prequel to Diplomat-at-Arms, starring his interstellar man of mystery, Retief.  It's called The Frozen Planet, and while the setting is interesting (a quartet of frozen human worlds on the edge of the evil Soetti empire), I found it a bit too smug.  When the secret agent is too powerful, where's the drama?  Two stars.

Mirror Image is a Daniel Galouye's story, about a raving (but not necessarily mad) man who claims to have built a bridge to the parallel universe behind every looking glass.  It's a B-grade plot, something you might find in the lesser annals of The Twilight Zone, but I found it engaging, nonetheless.  Three stars.

It looks like Lester del Rey has returned from vacation.  His story in August's Galaxy, was his first in a few years.  Now, hot on its heels, is Spawning Ground, about a startling discovery made by a colonial group upon planetfall.  The set-up is good, and I greatly appreciated the inclusion of a mixed-gender crew, but the ending was too mawkish and abrupt.  Three stars.

H.B. Fyfe, whose byline can be found all over the magazines of the pulp era, has been a consistent Analog and IF contributor for the past couple of years.  None of his stories have been strong stand-outs, and this month's Tolliver's Orbit is no exception.  It's a thriller set on the wastes of Ganymede featuring a pair of an interesting characters: an honest space pilot who wants no part of the graft rife in the local commercial concern, and a woman vice president of said business, sent to investigate wrong-doing.  In the hands of an expert, it could have easily garnered four or five stars.  Sadly, Fyfe phoned this one in, telling rather than showing at too many critical junctures.  Two stars.


by Ritter

On the other hand, the succeeding novella, by newcomer Charles Minor Blackford, is solid entertainment.  The Valley of the Masters depicts a space colony generations after establishment.  Its people have forgotten their technological past, and the automatic machines are beginning to fail.  Without them, the community will be swallowed by a hostile environment.  Is an enterprising young couple the only hope?  If Valley has any faults, it is that it is too short.  Four stars.

Robert Young's The Girls from Fieu Dayol presents us with a cautionary tale: be careful when eavesdropping on a note-passing conversation — You just might end up embroiled in an interstellar husband hunt!  Cute.  Three stars.

Full disclosure: Any story with my daughter's namesake is subject to extraordinary scrutiny.  Thankfully, Charles de Vet's Lorelei, featuring a seductive shape-changer who haunts the stranded crew of the first Jovian expedition, is good stuff.  Three stars.

Wrapping up the issue is Donald Westlake's novella, Call him Nemesis.  If you're a fan of child superheroes, you'll like it; it's a simple story, but the execution is charming.  Three stars.

All told, the September 1961 IF clocks in at 2.9 stars out of 5.  That's pretty respectable for this magazine, and certainly good enough for a couple of hours of summer lolling. 

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[March 12, 1961] Mirror Images (April 1961 Galaxy, second half)

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Last time, my theme was "more of the same," pointing out that Galaxy is keeping its content as consistent as possible, at the expense of taking any great risks.  It is ironic that, as I pound the keys of my typewriter, my radio is playing a new version of "Apache."  This bossanova version by a Danish cat, name of Jörgen Ingmann, is fair, but I like the British one better, the one compellingly performed by The Shadows. 

You are, of course, here to find out if the rest of the April 1961 Galaxy follows the trend set by the first half.  The answer is "yes."  It's a good issue, but not a great one.

Let's start with the next story, I can do Anything by J.T. McIntosh.  I know I have readers who aren't particularly fond of him, but I find he usually turns in a good show.  So it is with this story, about a man exiled to a miserable mining world for the crime of being a bit more than human.  His power is an unsettling one; I'm glad to see it employed solely for good.  A gritty piece with depth.  Four stars.

Homey Atmosphere is a cute tale about the virtues and difficulties inherent in employing sentient computers in one's starships.  Daniel Galouye is another author on whom I often find opinion divided.  I generally fall on the side of liking him.  This story has an ending you might suspect before it occurs, but that doesn't make it a bad one.  Four stars.

All the People is a strangely unwhimsical and straightforward piece by R.A. Lafferty about a man who knows everyone on Earth despite never having met most of them.  The story gets a quarter star for mentioning my (obscure) home town of El Centro, California, and it loses a quarter star for spoiling the ending a page early with a telling illustration.  Three stars.

I don't know Roger Dee very well.  In fact, I've never reviewed any one his stories in this column, and though my notes suggest I've encountered him before, none of his creations stuck in my mind.  I suppose, then, it should come as no surprise that his The Feeling similarly failed to impress.  The notion that astronauts should feel an overwhelming sense of homesickness immediately upon leaving their home planet is not justified by any scientific research, and while, as the spacemen's ship approaches Mars, the story careens near an exciting resolution, Dee adroitly manages to avoid it.  Two stars.

But then there's Ted Sturgeon, who can write three-star stories in his sleep (and probably does, to pay the bills).  Tandy's Story reads like a Serling preamble to an episode of The Twilight Zone and features two poignant themes.  The first is a Sturgeon perennial: the symbiotic merger of minds with a result decidedly greater than the sum of the parts involved.  The other is a human perennial: the unease at watching one's children grow up far too fast… 

A very good story, but it doesn't tread any new ground for Sturgeon or Galaxy.  Thus, just four stars.

On the plus side, we have a 3.5-star issue, and only one below-average entry in the bunch.  In the minus column (paradoxically) are the good stories, none of which are outstanding.  That said, I do like the fellows they've now got doing the art.  I say if you're going to include pictures in your literary magazine, make them good ones.

Give me a couple of days for next entry—I'm making my way through James Blish's Titan's Daughter.  It's not bad, so far, though it feels a little dated, which makes sense given that the first half of the novel was written as the novella, Beanstalk, nine years ago.

Stay tuned!

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[January 12, 1961] A matter of taste (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 2)

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How should I rate a story which is objectively well done, but which I just don't like? 

We taught our daughter manners at a very early age.  When she encountered a food she didn't enjoy, she was to say, "This is not to my taste," rather than something more forceful and potentially bruising of feelings.  I recognize that my readers are turned on by different things than I am; one person's trash is another's treasure, etc.  But at the end of every review, I have to come up with a numerical score, and that score necessarily reflects my views on a piece. 

This conundrum is particularly acute with the current issue of Galaxy, dated February 1961.  None of the stories are bad.  Many are well crafted, but I found the subject matter in some of them unpleasant.  But they may be the bees knees for you.  Take my reviews with that disclaimer in mind, and you should be all right.

I covered the first half the issue time-before-last.  I'd rated all of the stories a solid three stars–reader feedback indicated that they liked the stories more than I (which is what led to the musings with which I started this column).  Part two begins with C.C.MacApp's The Drug.  Is the ability to transcend one's consciousness beyond one's skull the key to eternal health and happiness?  An exploration of a fun idea as well as a pleasant slice-of-life depiction.  Three stars.

Gordy Dickson is back with An Honorable Death, contrasting a decadent but advanced Terran society with a primitive, vibrant aboriginal culture.  It's got a wicked sting in its tail.  This is one of those stories that made me uneasy, but whose quality is undeniable.  Three stars… but you may give it more.

One of my readers once said that he "bounces" off Daniel Galouye, a writer with real talent, but whose writing is not to everyone's taste.  I happen to like his stuff quite a lot, though his latest, The Chaser, about two spacewrecked fellows on a planet whose population is engaged solely in romantic games of tag, doesn't seem to have much of a point.  Three stars.

Damon Knight offers the cutting and unpleasant Auto-da-fe, about the last man on Earth and the 59 sentient canines over whom he reigns.  As he reaches his last years of life, will he allow the dogs to breed and thus become master of the Earth?  Another off-putting story of high quality.  Three stars.

Rounding things out is a delightful novelette from the master of interstellar adventure, Murray Leinster.  Doctor shows us a galactic polity of humans imperiled by a plague that appears unstoppable, but is, for the moment, limited in scope.  Just one planet has succumbed, but its sole survivor, a precocious 10-year old girl who has lived her life in an aseptic bubble, has been shipped off-world in defiance of quarantine.  Is she infected?  If so, has she doomed the inhabited universe to destruction?  Or is she the key to the plague's eradication?  Leinster's viewpoint character, the spaceship's doctor who must deal with the enormity of the situation, is a compelling one, and I greatly liked the relationship forged between him and the girl.  Four stars.

Add it all up, and you've got an issue that barely tops three stars–enjoyable, but not superlative.  I don't think that tells the whole tale, however.  Galaxy (and its sister, IF) are taking chances, and for that, they are to be commended.  I'm very interested to know how you feel about these stories.  Drop me a line, would you?

My editor says I'll get more response if I include a picture of a pretty girl and a cat…  Is she right?

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