Tag Archives: Dannie Plachta

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

2 Comments

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Time for a change

My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times.  But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies).  Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:

Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped.  More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.

Transistors have made it to geology.

We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life.  Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy.  They changed editors.  They lost their science columnist.  And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

The revolution does not begin with this piece, a direct sequel to "Kendy's World", which came out at the end of last year.  If you'll recall, Kendy was a boy during the National Emergency, a time of civil and racial strife that rocked the nation into a semi-permanent police state.  Kendy was recruited by a Mr. Smith, who gave him a scholarship at National University—which turned out to be a training camp for spies.  "Tomorrow Cum Laude" details Kendy's first mission.

He is sent to the University of Southern California to take pictures of a biological centrifuge.  Why he is sent on a domestic espionage mission when he has been trained in Russian is never explicitly stated.  Moreover, the overarching mystery remains: why did the first cosmonaut to Mars chicken out after finding…something…on Phobos, and why are the Soviets building a secret base on the Moon?  Did they find a monolith?  Two?

All of this is background to Kendy's personal story, his slow, jerky maturation into adulthood.  His growing feelings for his accidental roommate, the beautiful woman, Amani, from the southern Californian all Black city-state of Nairobi.  His conflicted loyalties to the government of the United States.

Aside from an overuse of the word "amble" (hint: try sprinkling in a "saunter" or two), it's not a bad story, actually.  It reads a bit like a juvenile except the subject matter is rather deep, and at one point, Kendy describes himself as, frankly, horny.

I'm enjoying this series more than his first one, about the Esks.

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

Here is where the change becomes noticeable.  Knight, who predates but has embraced the New Wave, offers up this interesting piece about triune aliens, who can only think as trios.  They abduct three humans to see if they can be adapted to their way of thought.  The test is, unfortunately, not altogether scientific.

The beginning and end are the most interesting bits, creatively rendered.  The middle part is wanly droll, though effectively conveyed.

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

A smuggler is shot by fellow gang members on the steps of the hospital.  As he had willed his body to the organ banks, he finds life after death in a myriad of don-ee bodies.  There are three wrinkles:

  1. The recipients of his organs end up being members of his gang;
  2. The smuggler retains a degree of consciousness in his frozen state; and,
  3. The smuggler retains a degree of control over his scattered parts…

The setup sounds a little silly, but I actually found it quite an effective story.  It's not played for silly, as it might have been in F&SF, and it doesn't try to explain the psi in scientific terms, as might have happened if it had shown up in Analog.  It sure wouldn't work in Niven's universe as detailed in "The Organleggers" and "Slowboat Cargo", though!

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

Cytheron is a young being on the cusp of adulthood.  He fears maturity, afraid to lose his identity in the adult shared mind, so he flees to the edge of a quasar.  There, he believes he is free from pursuit as no information can leave the gravitational warping of the dead star/collection of stars.  But he is also trapped—and for him to be freed will require a minor supernova, one which might have an effect on a neighboring star system with a familiar number of planets.

It's a mildly cute story, but I am generally averse to Catastrophism in my science fiction.  The universe seems to work by general rules; our Sun is not unique.  In any event, the piece feels like a veneer of fiction on a science article Shaw happened to read recently, sort of how Niven's "Neutron Star" is based on an Asimov science fact article (I can't remember when it came out—probably '64 or '65).

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

Yet another tale of John Grimes, this one from early in his career when he was a Lieutenant in command of a tiny courier ship.  It is, in fact, the direct sequel to "The Minus Effect", which came out just two months ago.  Is a fix-up novel in the works?

In this tale, the exalted passenger isn't a chef-cum-assassin, but rather an amiable robot on a mission—to lead a mechanical movement that places humans on the bottom of the command chain for a change.  Luckily for Grimes, not all computers think alike.

As always, pleasant but not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

Two aliens have been playing a competitive sport for the last forty years.  Their playing pieces are one human being each, born at the same time.  The winner of the game is the one whose human survives longer.

At first, it seems one alien has all the advantages: his human can do no wrong, suffer no lasting malaise.  He is, however, bored and reckless.  The other alien's piece is a slob whom the breaks never favor.  These circumstances lead to the rare invocation of Ersalz's Rule, which affords the possibility of the two pieces switching places.  It's a Hail Mary gambit, but it's all the player's got at this point.

The problem with this tale, aside from its heavy handed clunkiness, is that everything is arbitrary.  The rules of the game are introduced such that there are no real stakes, and the ending is just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

On a train trip through France with his distant wife, a fellow discovers that his garage opener doesn't just trigger his door—it also swaps out his spouse with parallel universe versions of herself.  Investigating further, the man determines that the gizmo does a lot more than just that, and he ends up hip-deep in a temporal, spatial, and emotional trip from which he may never return.

This would have been a fantastic setup for a stellar novel, perhaps by Ted White.  As it is, I still enjoyed the romantic and fulsome writing of the the piece.  I also appreciated the protagonist's mixed feelings toward the various might-have-been marital partners.  Taves never does explain how how our hero acquired the device, though there are hints.

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, October 1969), by Willy Ley

At the beginning of the century, there were just 92 "natural" elements.  Humanity has added 12 to the roster by dint of atom-smashing effort.  Ley talks about them and provides tables describing their stability (or lack thereof).

Asimov would have done it better (though we might not have gotten tables in F&SF).  Three stars.

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

A lonely man, perhaps one of the last, is sitting on the frozen surface of his world, watching as The Last Star rises.  He is alone, as his estranged wife has sought shelter and warmth underground.  Only a surgically implanted broadcast power receiver protects him from the elements.

Then Stella arrives on a dot of blue flame.  She is invisible, but she describes herself as desirable, and her voice and touch certainly indicate that she is.  When she begs the man for his receiver, he finds he cannot resist her entreaty, though it means his death.

It's all very unclear and metaphorical, and I suspect if I knew what Plachtas was trying to say, I might like it less than I did.  Nevertheless, I found it moving.  Maybe it's a Rorschach Test of a story and it hit me at the right time.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 4 of 5), by Frank Herbert

This was supposed to be the final installment of Dune Messiah, but the editor said he had just too much good stuff to fill the magazine.  Hence Part 4 rather than Part Ultimate.  Of course, having trudged through the prior three bits, I was not looking forward to yet another slog.

I was pleasantly surprised.  Oh, it's still a series of conversations.  Sure, not a whole lot happens.  But we do have an interesting situation set up and then resolved: Hayt, the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho, is mesmerized by Bijaz the Tleilaxi dwarf and given a frightful compulsion.  The tension of Part 4 is how this episode will play out, and Herbert manages it reasonably well.

Sure, there is way too much time spent on the now eyeless Paul and his frightening visions.  Yes, I could give two figs about Chani, Paul's true love, destined to die for the last two installments.  True, everything in the last 150 pages could probably be compressed to 50, and I'm still not sure if the payoff will be worth it.

That said, I was not disposed to skim, as had happened in each of the prior sections.  For that, Frank Herbert, you get…

Three stars.

Aftershocks

Thus, nothing Earth-shattering.  Nevertheless, there's a certain gestalt to this issue that feels a bit fresher than prior ones—even though almost half of the issue is devoted to continued serials!  Maybe it's because those authors are finally turning in better work than they have in a while.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a moment of change for this fading pillar of SFnal fiction.  It would be pretty neat to see Galaxy transform itself into a leading magazine again.

Stay tuned!


Hopefully, the magazine will fare better than this Ocotillo Wells home that got damaged in last April's quake…




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 14, 1969] Twin tragedies (September 1969 Galaxy)

4 Comments

photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Murder in Hollywoodland

Senseless mass death is no stranger to the headlines these days.  We've had the Boston Strangler.  The Texas sniper.  The Chicago nurse murderer.  But this last week, southern California got a shocking introduction into this club.

At least seven were killed on the nights of the 8th/9th and then the 9th/10th, including Valley of the Dolls actress, Sharon Tate (pregnant with her first child), in two Los Angeles neighborhoods: ritzy Beverly Crest and SilverLake.  At first, the scenes were so grisly and bizarre that police suspected some kind or ritual.  Jay Sebring, the famous hairstylist who gave Dr. McCoy his "brainy" JFK-style hair-do, and Tate were found stabbed, tied up and hanging on alternate sides of the same rafter, both wearing black hoods.  Market owners Leon and Rosemary La Bianca, the SilverLake victims murdered on the second night, were similarly hooded, the latter with red X marks carved into her body.


Wheeling Sharon Tate from her home

Homicide squads are currently swarming the San Gabriel Valley, and while Inspector Harold Yarnell and medical examiner Thomas Noguchi had no insights to offer when they appeared before NBC's cameras on the 10th, police do see connections.  "Pig" was scrawled on the door of the Tate home, while "Death to Pigs" was found on the home of the La Biancas, formerly the residence of Walt Disney.  Police have not indicated whether they believe the homicides were done by the same person or persons, or if a copycat was inspired by the first murders.

It's shocking, senseless, and tragic.  While the murders took place in upper class homes (one of the deceased was heir to the Folger coffee fortune), the motive appears not to have been robbery.  Just angry, hateful death.  It's not a happy time in the Southland right now.

Death in New York

While not of the same magnitude, at least in terms of human misery, nevertheless the latest issue of Galaxy science fiction is so bad, that one wonders if someone is trying to put the institution down.


by Donald H. Menzel

Humans, Go Home!, by A. E. van Vogt


by Jack Gaughan

A married human couple, immortal but catching the death-wish that has killed most of humanity, has lived on the world of Jana for 400 years.  They have used that time to accelerate the development of the humanoid species there, urging 4000 years of technological advance in that time—in part through the use of Symbols, abstract concepts made real by the power of belief.  The Janans have their own problems: the women don't like procreation or children, and the men must rape them to propagate the species.

Eventually, the humans are put on trial for their efforts, and (I'm told) we learn there is a lot more to the setup than meets the eye, and that everything the characters believe is actually some kind of falsehood.

I found this first piece impenetrable, giving up about halfway through.  Thankfully, a friend of mine, who is fonder of Van Vogt, gave the piece a write up in his 'zine.  That's good, as I was dreading having to slog through this one and analyze it, as if it were a book report for a hated school-assigned novel.  At 50 years old, I'm allowed to pick my poison.

One star.

Martians and Venusians, by Donald H. Menzel


by Donald H. Menzel

Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Harvard offers up his clairvoyant images of Martian wildlife, complete with pictures (q.v. the cover).  I wonder if Dr. Menzel has an eight-year old child who really wanted to get published, as well as some blackmail leverage on Galaxy editor Jakobssen, because I can't see any other way this peurile, pointless piece ever saw print.

One star.

Out of Phase, by Joe Haldeman

Braaxn the G'drellian is the adolescent member of an alien anthropological team.  He was selected to infiltrate the humans for his shape-changing abilities; unfortunately, the youth also has a racial fetish for the infliction and appreciation of pain—common to all of his kind at that age.

Can he be stopped before he unleashes a terror that will exterminate the entire human race?

An unpleasant, but competently written story.  Haldeman is new, so of course, there's a "clever" twist to finish things off.

Three stars

The Martian Surface, by Wade Wellman

Wellman's wishful thinking in poetry is that, despite the obvious hostility of the Martian surface, life could still somehow cling to it.  Written to coincide with the arrival of the new Mariners, it is no more or less accurate for their flyby.

Three stars.

Passerby, by Larry Niven


by Jack Gaughan

A ramscoop pilot stumbles upon a professional people-watcher in a park.  The "rammer" has a story to tell, a tale of being lost among the stars, and of the titanic alien he encounters in the blackness of space.

This is one of Niven's few stories not set in "Known Space", and it's a simple one.  That said, it reads well, particularly out loud, and there is the usual, deft detail that Niven imparts with just a few, well-chosen words.

Janice liked it, but thought it rather shallow.  Lorelei, on the other hand, loved that it had a philosophical message beyond the good storytelling.

So, four stars, and easily the best piece of the issue (not much competition…)

Citadel, by John Fortey


by Jack Gaughan

Aliens descend on Earth, erecting mysterious edifices and offering the secrets of the universe.  Twenty years later, most of humanity is under their thrall; those who enroll for alien "classes" invariably leave society and end up part of the worldwide hive mind.  One organization has a plan to infiltrate the extraterrestrials, to at least find out what's going on, if not stop them.

But can they handle the truth?

Answer: probably, especially if they've seen The Twilight Zone.

Nice setup, but a really novice tale.

Two stars.

Revival Meeting, by Dannie Plachta


by M. Gilbert

A "corpsicle" wakes up after a century, but instead of finding a cure for his disease, he finds he's been roused for a more sinister purpose.

This story doesn't make much sense, and it's also about the bare minimum one can do with the concept of frozen people (again, Niven's covered these bases pretty thoroughly with The Jigsaw Man and A Gift from Earth.

Two stars.

For Your Information (Galaxy, September 1969), by Willy Ley

For reasons that will shortly become apparent, it's a real pity that this non-fiction column is not one of Ley's best.  It's a scattershot on rocket fuel (well, the oxidizer one combines with the rocket fuel to make it burn), modern pictographic writing, and the latest crop of satellites.

It's just sort of limp and dry, a far cry from the scintillating stuff that helped make early '50s Galaxy such a draw.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 3 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

It is astonishing how little Frank Herbert can pack into 50 pages. In this installment, Paul Atreides, Emperor, is trying to make sense of a recurring vision, that of a moon falling (his precognition having been hampered by the presence of a clairvoyant "steersman"—the spice-addicted navigators of the space lanes).

He visits the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, whom he has locked up in prison, to let her know that his consort, the Fremen Chani, is finally pregnant (despite Paul's wife, Irulan, furtively feeding her contraceptives for years).  But Paul also knows that the birth of the heir will mean Chani's death.

Then Paul heads out to the house of a desert Fremen, father of the girl who had been found dead by Alia last installment.  The Emperor heads out there at the girl's invitation—she's not actually alive, but rather, her form has been taken by a shapeshifting assassin.

At the home, Paul meets a dwarf who warns him of impending danger.  Whereupon, an atomic bomb explodes overhead.

Along with the endless viewpoint changes and the nonstop italicized thought fragments, we also have more of the innovation Herbert came up with for this book: repetition of dialogue through slightly different permutation.  Seriously, the whole story so far could have been a novelette, and we're almost done!

Anyway, I didn't hate Dune, but I felt it was overrated.  This sequel, however, is just wretched.

One star.

Credo: Willy Ley: The First Citizen of the Moon (obituary), by Lester del Rey


by Jack Gaughan

And now the real tragedy—Willy Ley is dead.  He was only 62.

I knew that he was a science writer who fled Nazi Germany.  I did not know how integral he was to the field of rocket science.  A key member of the German rocketry club, he was a mentor to Wehrner von Braun.  The key difference between the two is Ley immigrated to the U.S.A. rather than serve Der Fuhrer.  Von Braun did not.

Ley went on, of course, to be one of the most esteemed science writers—up there with Asimov, at least in his main fields, zoology and rocketry.  He died less than a month before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped on the Moon.  Denied the Holy Land, indeed.

I have no idea whether there are more Ley articles in the pipeline.  There was supposed to be a new, twelve-part series, but who knows if it was ever completed or submitted.

Sad news indeed.  Four stars.

Autopsy report

Galaxy hasn't topped three stars since the June hiatus accompanying editor Pohl's departure/sacking, but this is, by far, the worst issue of the magazine in a long time.  Was Pohl fired for his declining discernment?  Or did he accept a bunch of substandard stuff as a flip of the bird to the new ownership?

Whatever the answer, I certainly hope things improve soon.  Without Ley, without quality stories, Galaxy is heading for the skids, but quick.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 10, 1966] Let's Take A Trip (November 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

4 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Acid Test

I believe that certain young people — hippies is the term, I think — are using the word trip to refer to something other than hopping on a bus, train, or airplane. In particular, they often mean taking a dose of lysergic acid diethylamide, understandably shortened to LSD, and known informally as acid.


A poster for an event held in Vancouver earlier this year.
Note the name of the festival, and the psychedelic art.
I'll bet lots of attendees took a trip to Canada in order to take a trip elsewhere.

Until this month, this hallucinogenic drug was legal everywhere in the USA. On October 6, it became illegal in the state of California. In response to the new law, on the same day thousands of people showed up for a so-called Love Pageant Rally in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. They enjoyed music from local artists, and many took doses of LSD in defiance of the law.


Some guys calling themselves the Grateful Dead entertain the crowd. There was also a young blues singer from Texas named Janis Joplin.

Way, Way Out

Even if you live in California, you can enjoy a trip deep into your imagination in a perfectly legal manner, simply by opening the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow. Fittingly, almost all the fiction takes place in the far reaches of interstellar space.


Cover art by Sol Dember.

Crown of Stars, by Lin Carter


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Here's a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek adventure yarn featuring an ultra-competent protagonist. The editor's blurb compares him to James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, but he reminds me more of Derek Flint.


Our hero and his pet dragon.

Mister Quicksilver is a professional, legal thief. (There's some nonsense about how crime is legal and legal activity is outlawed, but forget about that. This isn't the most logical story in the world.) He lives in a castle on an asteroid, hidden among other chunks of rock orbiting a distant star. This method of concealing his location — which doesn't seem to prevent folks from finding him — offers the opportunity for the reader to enjoy the first of several bits of doggerel that present Quicksilver's philosophy in poetic form.


Home Sweet Home.

Three people show up, one at a time, each wanting to hire Quicksilver to steal a jeweled crown, a relic of an ancient, extinct race of reptilian aliens. The prize is guarded by a sect of fanatical cultists. The three clients include a scholar who turns out to be an imposter, an aristocrat, and a government agent. The latter is a woman who is in love with him. For his part, Quicksilver prefers women who (unsuccessfully) resist his charms.

The quest involves a trip to a planet of criminals, to learn the current whereabouts of the only thief who escaped from the cultists with his life. A clue leads Quicksilver to Earth, where the fellow resides. Meanwhile, multiple assassins make attempts on our hero's life.

Eventually, with the help of the government agent, Quicksilver arrives on the planet of the cultists, where a surprise awaits him. Is there any doubt that Quicksilver will prevail, and that the woman will fall into his arms?


The reptilian aliens, who don't actually show up in the story.

The author revels in the clichés of space adventure, offering tons of odd names and exotic details. Although it's not an out-and-out comedy, there are silly jokes along the way. (There's a reference to various folk heroes from the local religion of far future Earth: Abe Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, Fidel Castro, and Joan Blondell.) These quips tend to take the reader out of the story, which is pretty hard to take seriously anyway.

Quicksilver is an arrogant son-of-a-gun, and the way he forces a kiss on the protesting heroine at the end isn't very pleasant. The whole thing is like a great big bowl of whipped cream; tasty at first, maybe, but you'll soon wish for something more substantial.

Two stars.

The 1991 Draftee, by Joseph Wesley

The author has written about the future of the military several times for the magazine. This latest article includes letters from a young guy serving in the army a quarter of a century from now. It's a pretty depressing picture.

The military secretly induces hypnotic suggestions into the minds of its recruits. There's also some discussion of small robotic weapons that crawl like spiders or fly like insects. Nonlethal but debilitating gases fill the battlefield, so the soldiers wear protective, air-conditioned suits.

It's all highly speculative, particularly the idea that young men of the future will want to shave their heads bald, so the army has to give them regulation haircuts by applying hair-growing treatments! (A wry comment on today's fad for long hair on male hippies?)

Two stars.

Frost Planet, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

With the permission of the bear-like aliens who inhabit the place, humans have set up mining facilities and a colony under the ice of a frozen world. A crisis threatens to upset the uneasy relationship between the two species when a man is found stabbed to death with an alien knife. A military officer investigates the crime.

Things get even worse when small atomic heating devices go missing. It turns out that several of them have been placed in the ice near the human outpost, intended to destroy the colony. Later, an alien is killed by a human rifle, leading to open conflict. Can our hero prevent disaster?


Firing at a mysterious enemy.

This is a pretty decent science fiction suspense story, which develops quite a bit of tension. You may be able to figure out the whodunit aspect of the plot. The aliens are intriguing, but not enough is done with them.


A duel to the death.

I had to wonder why people are here in the first place. The extreme cold (effectively conveyed, by the way) is hardly conducive to human habitation, and we never find out what the mines produce.

As in many SF stories, the assumption seems to be that future folks will inhabit lots and lots of alien worlds, even those with their own native population. In any case, it's a lot better than the author's seemingly endless Gree series.

Three stars.

Report on the Slow Freeze, by R. C. W. Ettinger

From fictional cold to (possibly) factual cold. The magazine has discussed the possibility of freezing people at the time of death and then reviving them in the future a couple of times before. In this current variation on the theme, the author offers a history of the idea, and speculates about why it has failed to catch on.

A lot of this is going over old ground. The most interesting aspect of the article may be that the author seems to believe that appealing to the emotions, rather than the intellect, is the most effective way to promote the technique.

Two stars.

To the War is Gone, by Richard C. Meredith


Illustrations by Burns. I have been unable to discover the artist's first name.

There's a war going on between ordinary humans and those who have become attached to alien symbiotes that give them a single group mind. After a space battle that destroyed both ships, a lone human survivor with a broken leg waits for death, stranded in a detached segment of the vessel. There's an intact lifeboat not too far away, but he has no way to get to it.


The man. That buzz is goofy.

The only living inhabitant of the enemy ship shows up, floating through the void in a spacesuit. She can reach the lifeboat, but can't operate it. The two can communicate through radio, but can they work together to survive? More importantly, can they trust each other?


The woman, apparently producing the buzz.

I was reminded both of Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters (1951) and Tom Godwin's story The Cold Equations (1954) when I read this piece. Unfortunately, although it was compelling at first, it collapsed into melodrama by the end.

One interesting aspect of the story is the fact that the protagonist is a musician, and the text includes excerpts from real folk songs, as well as fictional ones of the future. Less enjoyable was making the other character a member of a group of women noted for their erotic appeal. This makes the man's decision to help her a matter of sheer lust. (Many of his folk songs are pretty bawdy, too.)

Two stars.

Until Armageddon, by Dannie Plachta

As a break from all this deep space stuff, we have a tiny story set on good old Mother Earth. The Pope and the Premier of Israel (sounds like the start of a joke) meet to ask a super-computer how to achieve world peace. The response is unexpected.

I said a joke, and this thing ends with a punch line, but it's not intended to be funny, as far as I can tell. I don't really know what to think about the twist the author throws at me.

One star.

The Jew in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

Starting with an analysis of the 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., the author delves into the way that science fiction has depicted the Chosen People. With a few exceptions, it's a depressing account of virulent antisemitism. The article includes a discussion of the many talented Jewish writers and editors in the field, noting that they have produced hardly any works relating to the topic.

This was much more interesting than the author's previous scholarly but lifeless articles. I suspect this is because he cares passionately for the subject. The conclusion serves as something as an indictment of the supposedly progressive genre of science fiction, which Moskowitz sees as less enlightened than mainstream fiction.

Three stars.

Seventy Light-Years From Sol, by Stephen Hall


Illustrations by Dan Adkins

Back to voyages to faraway worlds. A team of experts explore an Earth-like but very strange planet. The only form of life seems to be plants resembling lettuce covering the ground. While investigating holes in the dirt, they discover what appear to be millstones.

That's weird enough, but things really get odd when big cubes of various colors show up out of nowhere. (They're actually quite a bit larger than shown in the illustrations.)


The team's biologist, surrounded by cubes.

It seems that the cubes are alive, and are able to communicate, to some extent, with the humans telepathically. The millstones are predators of the cubes, spewing out a substance — which turns out to be aspirin! — that dissolves their prey so they can absorb them.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the planet's other continent is inhabited by gray, imperfect cubes, that threaten to invade the land of the perfect, colorful cubes.

As you can see, this is a really nutty plot, almost like something out of one of Lafferty's tall tales. What makes it work reasonably well is the fact that the human characters are a likable bunch, each with their own quirks. I particularly like the fact that the crew includes a painter, an eccentric older woman. She's a refreshing change from the scientists, officers, and technicians aboard the exploratory starship.

Three stars.

Down to Earth

Coming back home after this imaginary voyage to other star systems was something like returning from a disappointing LSD trip. Some of the pieces were moderately diverting, but nothing was outstanding. Maybe it's time to turn to some other form of entertainment.


A recent children's book. It might be a safer way to travel than acid.




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 2, 1966] Bad Decisions (July 1966 IF)

6 Comments


by David Levinson

Trouble at the Cactus Curtain

It may surprise many of you to learn that there is a United States military presence in Cuba. Since 1903, the U. S. has maintained a naval base at Guantanamo Bay, near the south-eastern end of the island. Originally, it was a coaling station and then served as a shipping center during the War. Now it’s largely the base for American operations in the Caribbean.

Naturally, the Castro regime is none too happy about the situation, even though the base employs a large number of Cubans, pumping money into the local economy. Along with the perimeter fence, patrols and watch towers, the U. S. began emplacing mines “as a precaution” following the 1959 revolution, and the Cubans soon followed suit. At least 10 people have been killed, either by blundering into the minefields or through engineering accidents. In 1961, the Cubans also began planting a cordon of prickly pear cactus, quickly dubbed the Cactus Curtain.

On May 21st, a Cuban sentry by the name of Luis Ramirez Lopez was shot and killed by a Marine guard. According to the Department of Defense, Lopez was inside the fence and ignored a warning shot. The Marine then fired again, wounding the Cuban, who was able to climb back over the fence and leave. Two days later, six Cuban soldiers may or may not (depending on which side you believe) have crossed the fence and definitely exchanged fire with several Marines. No one on either side was injured.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk announced his intention to send a diplomatic note via the Swiss, insisting that Cuba cease these provocations and respect the boundary. Castro reportedly said not to bother, and then gave a fiery speech declaring that Rusk had practically threatened war and warned the Cuban people to be ready for an invasion. Tens of thousands of Cuban reservists have apparently been recalled to active duty. Now, Castro’s been pounding the drums lately, probably trying to bolster his support among his people in the face of the struggling economy, but daring the United States to attack seems more foolish than bold. Maybe he feels that with the U. S. tied up in Viet Nam, there’s no chance of them taking up his dare.


A Marine patrols the perimeter at Guantanamo Bay.

Doing the wrong thing

Nobody always does the right thing. Authors often derive interesting situations from their characters acting on bad ideas. Sometimes, though, they go too far and rely on those characters acting like absolute idiots. Boy, is that the case in this month’s IF. From super-genius teenagers to drunken conmen to high-ranking politicians, it seems like everybody left their brain at home.


This supposedly illustrates The Hour Before Earthrise. Maybe a later installment. Art by Morrow

The Hour Before Earthrise (Part 1 of 3), by James Blish

Sometime in the 1980s, the Apollo program has yet to have a manned flight and no human has been beyond Earth orbit, though automated probes have been to Mars and returned with samples. Teenager Dolph Haertel has invented anti-gravity. Rather than sensibly applying for a patent and demonstrating his invention to someone other than his almost girlfriend Nanette, he decides to go to Mars and bring back proof he’s been there. So he space-proofs a packing crate as best he can, kits it out for a round-trip and sets off. Arriving at Mars, he lands in a deep crater and finds some plant life. Unfortunately, he is unable to leave, because a vacuum tube, the one thing he didn’t bring a replacement for, has burned out. He’s stranded on Mars and is going to have a hard time staying alive.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Nanette has figured out what Dolph is up to. She gets her hands on all of his plans, cobbles together her own ship and sets out after Dolph, taking all the plans with her. At least she leaves a note explaining what’s going on. All of this, mostly Dolph’s sections, are interspersed with lots of science. As the installment ends, Dolph is surprised to see another packing crate crash not far from his own. To be continued.


Dolph demonstrates his invention to Nanette. Art by Morrow

I admit that this story and I got off on the wrong foot, with all that stuff about the space program being a boondoggle. But with all of the science interspersed through the action, I finally came to the conclusion that the only way this thing makes sense is as a parody of juvenile SF in the Danny Dunn or Tom Swift vein. It takes itself too seriously to be parody, though. There’s undoubtedly a good story to be told about someone stranded on Mars having to do tons of science to stay alive. This ain’t it.

Two stars.

Feodar’s Box, by Robert E. Lory

When a non-descript man carrying a black box suddenly appears in the secret office of chief secret agent Chlebnik, the number three man in the Soviet Union orders the stranger seized and rushes off to the even more secret office of Palakov, the number two man. To his great consternation, the odd man and his box are already there. The little man proves to be Feodar Rodumetoff, who has been living in isolation, working on a project assigned him by Stalin. Official records state he was executed during the purges following Stalin’s death. His box allows its bearer to become invisible and insubstantial. Palakov sees opportunities in the box. There will be consequences.

Robert Lory has turned out a handful of mostly decent little tales, usually with a bit of a sting in the tail. Here, he does much the same, though striking one line from the antepenultimate paragraph might improve it slightly.

Three stars.

Bircher, by A. A. Walde

In a society tightly controlled by computers, the police tend to solve murders in a matter of minutes. When the naked body of a male in his late teens is found dead in an alley, it should be no problem for our unnamed narrator. But when the boy appears nowhere in any records, our protagonist must do lots of old-fashioned legwork while facing tremendous pressure from the press and a reporter who hates him.


Victim and detective prove to be bound by more than just the case. Art by Gaughan

Walde is this month’s first time author, and this is an ambitious undertaking, both in length and content. The author makes a strong showing – this is probably my favorite story this month – but there are a few neophyte flaws that deny the story a fourth star. Most importantly, the resolution of the mystery could have used a lot more foreshadowing. Also, the title doesn’t refer to that group of extreme conservatives who called Eisenhower a communist and voted for Goldwater despite his left-wing tendencies, but to a gang that took its name from them. So the story isn’t what you’d expect going in. Finally, the noir-ish wordplay, while often good (I heard Bogart’s voice in my head about half the time), is also a bit overdone. Still, a good story and I hope to see more from this author.

A very high three stars.

The Man from When, by Dannie Plachta

Mr. Smith is mixing a martini when there is a tremendous explosion. Investigating, he finds a time traveler, who made his journey in spite of a certain risk. Was it worth it?

Another vignette from Plachta with an attempt at an ironic ending. Possibly one of his better efforts. It’s short and not a joke this time.

A low three stars.

Cybernia, by H. H. Hollis

Gallegher is back. This time, he finds himself stranded on Mars. He falls in with a carnival mind-reading outfit and gets back to Earth with them. There, they all set up an elaborate money-making scheme that borders on a con. Eventually, Galeg’s past catches up with him.


Not sure this has anything to do with the story. Maybe some files were mislabeled. Art by Lutjens

It’s rambling. It’s tedious. Gallegher is an unpleasant character. At best, this story is marginally less offensive than Gallegher's first outing. Hollis appears to be creating a series. That’s unfortunate.

Two stars.

Science Fiction’s Holiday, by Lin Carter

This month, Our Man in Fandom looks at the Annual World Science Fiction Convention. He talks about the history of the con and what goes on at one, and then explains how the locations are chosen. Finally, he tells us about what to expect at this year’s convention in Cleveland. The best part of the article is his description of this year’s Guest of Honor, L. Sprague de Camp.

Three stars.

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

Having escaped arrest at Imperial Terran Navy headquarters, Roan sets out with his men to prevent the assassination of Admiral Starbird. Alas, a stray shot kills the admiral and one of Roan’s men is killed. Briefly arrested, they escape again, and Roan stays behind to cover his men’s retreat. Eventually, they return and rescue him. Then it’s on to Earth.

The Niss fleet proves to be as dead as the Niss ship at the beginning of the last installment. Down on the planet, Roan finds Earth ruled by the decadent Uppers, served by their intelligent dogs (less anthropomorphic than Cordwainer Smith’s Underpeople, more so than Cliff Simak’s dogs in City), while the Lowers live in squalor. After learning the final truth about his origins, Roan falls out with the Uppers. In the end, he must once again rely on his men to come to his aid.


The Lady of Shallot… no, wait. That’s Roan’s new love interest, Desiranne. The art is so bad. Art by Adkins

And so it all comes to a satisfactory conclusion, much different from what I expected after all that human superiority stuff in the first installment. I noted last month that Roan had matured and become more thoughtful and introspective, which led to me giving that piece four stars. Unfortunately, it all goes out the window this month. Roan is as rash and impetuous as he was as a teen. The redeeming factor is that he’s less selfish and has learned to rely on others. But it weakens the story as a whole for me.

A high three stars for this installment and the novel as a whole

Summing Up

There we have it. About the only people who do anything smart in the whole magazine are Feodar and the unnamed detective. Roan manages to do a couple of smart things, but only after doing something spectacularly stupid that far outweighs the smart thing. In his editorial, Fred Pohl calls on science fiction authors to stop writing about doomsday and the day after and start turning out more optimistic stuff. I fully support this, but to do that, Fred, they’re going to have to stop giving us characters who do dumb things just to make the plot more interesting.


Hal Clement. That’s a good start.

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!  Nothing but the newest and best hits!




6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

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

5 Comments


by David Levinson

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

Great Balls of Fire

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


Meteorite hunters descend on Barwell.

Death from above and below

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


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

Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp

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

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


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

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

Build We Must, by Dannie Plachta

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

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

The Kettle Black, by Steve Buchanan

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


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

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

Nine Hundred Grandmothers, by R. A. Lafferty

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

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

Not by Sea, by Howard L. Morris

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


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

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

The Peak Lords, by Miriam Allen deFord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

The Warriors, by Larry Niven

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

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

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

Summing Up

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


Hope springs eternal.




5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

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

5 Comments


by David Levinson

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

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

A long shortcut

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

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


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

Flash!

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

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


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

An electrifying performance

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

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

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

The Mysterious Doctor X

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

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

It’s bigger, but is it better?

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


A deadly duel begins. Art by McKenna

Under Two Moons, by Frederik Pohl

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

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


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

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

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

Moon Duel, by Fritz Leiber

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

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

The Planet Player, by E. Clayton McCarty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Giant Killer, by Keith Laumer

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


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

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

Alien Artifact, by Dannie Plachta

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

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

Gree’s Damned Ones, by C. C. MacApp

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Dick Seaton takes a call. Art by Morrow

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

Summing up

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

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




5 Comments Leave A Comment