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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 18, 1967] The Best and the Brightest? (September 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Inside baseball

In the latest issue of Science Fiction Times, author Norman Spinrad complains that with just four science fiction magazines left, under the helm of three editors, it is impossible for the 250 members of the newly formed Science Fiction Writers of America to make a living at short story writing.  Spinrad also says that the editors have their chosen pet authors (Spinrad calls them "whores"), and because they are gauranteed slots, other writers are left in the cold. This, Spinrad maintains, is why so many folks are turning to novels or TV to make ends meet.  He feels this is a shame since you can do things with short stories and novelettes you can't do with novel-length pieces.  Spinrad notes that we'll never get another Sturgeon, Bradbury, or Cordwainer Smith under the current situation (I note with some amusement that Cordwainer Smith was one of Pohl's so-called "pets", which I guess makes him a brilliant "whore", according to Spinrad's definition).

Spinrad ends his piece urging that writers demand that Amazing and Fantastic end their mainly-reprint policy (they don't pay for them, which has provoked an SFWA boycott) and that Pohl be fired from at least one of his magazines.  This, Spinrad asserts, will create more slots, which will encourage more writers, which will generate audience demand, which will promote the creation of more short length outlets, whether magazines or paperbacks.

A name Spinrad does not specifically mention as having a pet policy is Ed Ferman, editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Ferman is fairly new to the job, and F&SF has typically cast a wider net to gather its stories.  There are also more slots per issue, as F&SF tends toward shorter pieces.

I would thus conclude that, if any place in science fiction would still offer a quality selection of stories, it would be F&SF.  They can, after all, print the best of the best that the 250 SFWAers can offer.

Let's open up this month's F&SF and see if that be the case.

Off the slush pile


by Richard Corben

Out of Time, Out of Place, by George Collyn

The lead piece is by a fellow we normally see in mags on the other side of the pond (Spinrad did not mention the UK mags as potential markets, but to be fair, there's only one left).  Collyn's tale features a spaceman returned from a fifty year voyage to find the world completely changed.  He is but ten years aged thanks to relativity, and so he is a young, lonely man utterly divorced from society.

But one day, he finds the most extraordinary woman, and they marry and live in bliss.  Until he discovers what she does for a living, and how it relates to an advance in mass media technology called "altrigo"…

The problem with this story, aside from the disturbing ending, is that it's just been done by Kate Wilhem in her piece, Baby, you were great!, which just appeared in Orbit 2.  Thus, I knew what was coming miles early.  Very distracting.

Three stars.

The Cyclops Juju, by I. Shamus Frazer

The next two stories involve African magic clashing with Westerners.  I'm always leery of such tales.  They smack of parochialism and usually hinge on a pretty narrow idea of what goes on in the vast continent that straddles the equator.  Neither of these pieces disabused me of this view.

Juju takes place in an English boarding school.  One of the students has brought a wooden statue of a cyclops, apparently modeled on the prow of an old slaver ship and worshiped as a totem by an African tribe.  All of the students who sleep in the same room with it begin experiencing a sequential dream, that they are captive slaves on the ship who break free and land on an island with the slaver crew as captives.  Over time, the totem exerts greater and greater control over the students until it is uncertain what is dream and what is reality.

Of course, stories like this depend on willful ignorance on the part of the authority figures so things can get sufficiently out of hand.  In the end, this is a reasonably well told horror/fantasy that feels like it would have done well in a prior decade.  It feels out of touch here.

Three stars.

Night of the Leopard, by William Sambrot

Faring worse is this piece, involving missionaries sent to Sierra Leone on a peace-corps-esque endeavor.  Opposing them is a witch doctor with a draconian control over a starving village and the putative ability to turn into a leopard.  The linchpin to defeating him is Eunice Gantly, an American of African extraction (specifically Masai).  The witch doctor's attempts to seduce and subvert Eunice end up backlashing.  The result is pure Twilight Zone corn.

The problems with this story are several-fold.  For one, it was done before, and better, by Richard Matheson in 1960.  For this same magazine.  Moreover, I take umbrage at the idea that people have these racial memories that can be unlocked.  And even then, Eunice and the witch doctor are as related as me (Eastern European Jew) and my wife (Western European mutt).  That is to say, we might be the same color, but I doubt our genetics have been within a thousand miles of each other.  The idea that all Africans, or even all Sub-Saharan Africans, belong to a single society is laughable and a bit offensive.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson — I think his feature does not better this magazine

The Saw and the Carpenter, by J. T. McIntosh

SF veteran McIntosh offers up this serviceable murder mystery: the son of a space station commander is murdered by a robot.  Since robots must be programmed, the culprit must be human.  A robot expert is sent to investigate.

The story is reasonably executed, even if the characters all have exotic names like "Bob" and "John" and "Lucy" (one wonders if they were placeholders the author forgot to modify).  The ending is…interesting.  Apparently, Asimov's Three "Laws" don't always apply.

Anyway, three stars.

A Thousand Deaths, by Jack London

Because there are so many writers submitting pieces to F&SF, it follows that the editor would run…a 70 year old reprint.  This early London tale is about a seaman who is subject to a hideous series of experiments in resurrection.  Captive of a mad scientist, said sailor is murdered again and again, only to be brought back by a wonder process.  But is a life of dying really what you'd call living?

It's all very breathless and pre-pulp, and while fun to an extent, and valuable historically, I'm not sure I'd rather have it than a new story.

Three stars.

Donny Baby, by Susan Trott

A married couple, part of the avocado tree crowd, have a baby the same day their seed finally sprouts.  The sapling and the infant seem to have intertwined lives.

Had I read this as I was putting together Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1953-1957), I might have given it three stars.  Ten years after the fact, I'm afraid it merits just two.

The Great Borning, by Isaac Asimov

The science article by Dr. A is something of a highlight.  I had grown up with all of the names of the geological eras, periods, epochs, etc., but I'd never grasped their meaning.  This is an informative etymological piece.

Four stars.

A Secret from Hellas, by I. Yefremov

Finally, another reprint, though it is probably more accurate to call it an import.  A sculptor feels compelled to make a particular kind of statue, though he is hampered by an injury to his hand sustained in the war.  This piece bears some kinship with the African duo earlier in the piece, although the dreamscape and racial memories in this tale are of Greek origin rather than African.

It is the definition of forgettable but inoffensive.  Three stars.

Throw it back

One of Spinrad's points was not only that writers can't find enough short story slots to make a living, but that writers are so discouraged that they aren't even trying to write SF short stories anymore.  I suppose that could be the explanation why the once proud Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is reduced to publishing tired clichés and reprints.

But it's a chicken and egg thing, right?  If there's no supply of good stories, demand wanes.  Once demand wanes, how do you build it back up?  Maybe Damon Knight has found the answer with his Orbit series.  It may well be time to think about new media for shorter pieces.  I think I'd rather have several paperbacks of excellent stuff than a dozen issues of mediocrity.  Sure, I'll miss the attendant quirks of each publication — the science articles, the lettercols, the editorial comments, etc., but I think I'd rather just have the good stories and save the auxilary stuff for fanzines and Scientific American.

What do you think?

Better stories from the heyday of science fiction magazines can be found in the two Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women volumes.  Highly recommended!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 20, 1967] An Analog of Analog (August 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Imitation is…

I think it's safe to say that, for almost twenty years there have been three Big Science Fiction Magazines.  Each aims at a specific branch of the scientification fandom.  For instance, John Campbell's Analog (formerly Astounding) is at once the hardest of the Big Mags, focusing on near-future gizmo tech or sweeping galactic epics with a scientific core, and also one of the softest, given John's weakness for psi stories.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction covers the literary end of the STF spectrum, and it also veers into the outright fantastical (q.v. the masthead).  Galaxy navigates a sort of middle path between the two.

But the most recent issue of FS&F had me wondering exactly which magazine I was reading again, for this month, Ed Ferman's publication feels a lot like Campbell's.  Perhaps writers have finally answered FS&F's plea for harder works, or maybe Ferman finally had a sufficient number of such pieces to fill (most of) an issue.  Either way, it's an interesting departure, especially with the increased art throughout.  Does it work?  Let's find out!


by Ronald Walotsky

Nuts, Bolts, and Dragons

Reduction in Arms, by Tom Purdom

My good friend Tom Purdom offers up this fascinating piece set in the early '80s.  The superpowers have bound themselves by the Treaty of Peking to curtail the development and implementation of terrible weapons.  But there is always the suspicion that one side or another is working on some version of a "ninety-five plus virus"–one that will wipe out most of a non-incoluated population.

Sure enough, American agents are tipped off when a Soviet biologist, supposed to be a patient in a specialized "role-play" treatment center, is found cavorting with ladies at a bar 30 miles away.  A raid is authorized.  Between hostile Soviets and rogue team members, the investigation quickly becomes fraught with peril.

Tom himself has this to say about the tale:

After I got out of the army in 1961 I became very interested in arms control and disarmament.  I did a lot of reading on the subject and ended up writing two articles for the Kiwanis magazine (a good middle market for a new writer).  An opportunity to write an article for Playboy didn't work out but I got to interview some of the people I'd been reading.

Fred Pohl suggested I write a story on the subject for Galaxy.  I didn't think I could handle the technical stuff needed for a story about detecting nuclear weapons so I decided to write about biological weapons which seemed like they might be the next big threat.  Microbiology labs, in addition, can be hidden in all sorts of small spaces.  I decided to focus on a treaty banning secret research because I had come to the conclusion we tended to run the arms race against ourselves.  Our people thought up a possibility and we had to work on it because the Russians might be working on it.  If we could determine they weren't, both sides could avoid another cycle in the arms race.

I picked a mental health facility as the hiding place because it raised interesting human and moral issues.  The story revolves around ethical and political issues instead of a duel between inspection technologies and evasion technologies.  The programmed environment therapy seemed like a natural extension of Pavlovian conditioning.

Fred Pohl rejected the story.  My agent, Scott Meredith, tried it on Redbook and Esquire with near misses at both places.  The fiction editor at Esquire said he wanted to buy it but he was overruled by higher ups.

The story was a novelette, about ten thousand words.  Playboy said they'd buy it if I could cut it in half.  I did but they rejected it.  Ed Ferman at F&SF liked the short version but felt it needed to be longer.  So I expanded it to its original length.  He bought it and now it's the August cover story.  One of the peak moments in my writing career, so far.

The story grew out of intense, solid research and some deep thinking on the whole problem of arms control.  When I finished it, I felt I had summarized and dramatized the key issues and dilemmas.  Perhaps the sweeping treaty in the story isn't very plausible.  We live in a time when the advance of technology makes serious arms control seem a necessity–so necessary even the politicians will have to see it.  Science fiction explores What might happen if?  The If may seem unlikely, but is still worth exploring.

I originally called the story "1980".  Ed Ferman asked for a change and I thought Reduction in Arms had a nice military clatter.  I also suggested War and Peace and A Farewell to Arms but he preferred Reduction in Arms.

There's no question that Tom has gotten a feather in his cap for the placement of this tale.  I will say that, although I found the concept interesting, it suffers for being an action piece told in third-person by a largely uninvolved party.  Visceral immediacy would have given the story more punch.

Still, it was interesting to see a Reynolds-esque thriller outside of Analog— and without the nardy slang Reynolds employs.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Conflict, by Ilya Varshavsky

Here is an import from the Soviet Union, about the large and small scale strife between humans and their increasingly sapient "servants".

I think it loses something in translation.  Two stars.

The Baron's Dog, by L. J. T. Biese

When an unemployed governess in Italy is offered 25,000 lira a month to walk a Transylvanian wolfhound, what's a girl to think?  Especially when the employer is tall, dark, handsome…and strictly enjoins against photography of his pet?

I found this tale delightful, such a nice contrast from all the creeping horror that such a setup normally would have entailed.  It's not quite Analogian, but it is good.  And if L.J.T. Biese isn't a woman, I'll eat my hat.

Four stars.

Soft Come the Dragons, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is a brand new author, and he offers up the tale of a far-off world, the miners who live in fear upon it, and the gossamer dragons that turn beholders to stone.  It's all rather metaphorical and lyrical and not quite sensical, rather as if Koontz spent the night reading Zelazny's works and then tried his hand at it.

I'd say it works more than it doesn't, but Koontz' rawness definitely shows through.  Three stars.

Earthwoman, by Reginald Bretnor

Will Adamson, born on a distant world, is human in all qualities save one: he and his race are possessed of telepathy, knit into a consciousness collective.  He is sent to Earth to discern how it is that we can love without the possibility of true connection.  And if we truly be human, is there an innate telepathic skill just waiting to be awakened?

Bretnor usually write silly stories or bad puns, so this more serious piece is a welcome change.  I found it a touch too affected, but otherwise enjoyable.  And definitely something that could have appeared in Analog.

Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

Mosquito, by Theodore L. Thomas

F&SF's story seeder suggests mosquitos might be laden with vitamins and inoculants such that their bite becomes a beneficial distribution method.  As usual, he misses some important aspects of his invention.  To wit, mosquito bites are not controllable in distribution or quantity.  And even if they provide needed drugs and nutrients, they still aren't pleasant to receive.

Two stars.

Bugs, by Charles L. Harness

Speaking of bugs, Charles L. Harness (who used to team up with Thomas under the pen name Leonard Lockhard) has authored this story of living bugs employed as espionage bugs.

There's a lot of "as you know" explanations, and the smugness with which the Americans subvert their KGB counterparts is pure Analog.

Mildly interesting, but just a bit too glib as well as prolix.  Two stars.

The Bubble, by J. W. Schutz

The destruction of humanity's first and only space station has spooked the government, and now they've decided to pull the plug on space investment.  Deane Aircraft, the largest space contractor, is faced with a pivotal decision: retool back to making conventional vehicles, or become the first private space presence.  The linchpin to the success of the operation isn't Theodor Deane, President of the company, nor the thousands of engineers he employs.  It's certainly not Theodor's greedy wife, Lillian, nor her paramour, Briggs, who is also Theodor's financial wiz.

It's Georgia Lighton, Theodor's secretary, who comes up with all the brilliant, cost-saving ideas.

The whole thing reads like a cross between Silverberg's Regan's Planet and a soap opera.  Again, very Analog.

Not great, but Analog.  Three stars.

Moondust, the Smell of Hay, and Dialectical Materialism, by Thomas M. Disch

The first man on the Moon, Mikhail Andreivich Karkhov, is dying.  Does he die for science?  For love?  For the state?  Or something else entirely?

A beautiful, moving piece, made all the more poignant by the recent twin tragedies that claimed the lives of three astronauts and one cosmonaut.

Five stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

Argent Blood, by Joe L. Hensley

A man is being treated in a ward for the incurably insane.  Between fits of "disturbance" he begins to mistrust the charitable nature of his doctor and nurse.  But he has a plan…

A good, atmospheric piece.  Three stars.

Kaleidoscope in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov

In a rare return to topics astronomical, Dr. A. submits a nonfiction piece on the moons of Mars, and how these extremely low flying rocks would appear to a surface observer.  If, indeed, they are even suitably placed to see them, for unlike our Moon, Phobos and Deimos orbit so close to their planet that Martian pole-dweller could not see them.

Good stuff.  Four stars.

Quick with His Hands, by Avram Davidson

Capping things off, this vignette of sibling rivalry on Mars, ably told and with a tearjerking finale.

Four stars.

Doing the math

So, did F&SF's experiment in apery succeed?  Well, there were high points and low points, but the overall impression I was left with was favorable.  We'll just have to compare it to the real thing in just over a week to see if Brand X beat the competition!

(Speaking of kooky stunts, it looks like F&SF is joining forces with several other organizations to hold a writing contest.  I wish them the best of luck, although the last time a magazine (Galaxy in that case) did this, in the early '50s, they got bupkis, and Fred Pohl had to write as a novice under a pseudonym to give them anything worth publishing.)



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Magazine

[June 20, 1967] Yours sincerely, wasting away (July 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

When I get older, losing my hair

Age afflicts us all.  I remember once having a beautiful mop of curly hair with a line that was two inches from my brows.  Now, the front is racing toward the back, and my only compsensation is the flourishing stuff coming out my ears.

Of course, people age in different ways.  Robert Preston sang in last year's musical hit, I do! I do!–"Men of forty go to town. Women go to pot," but in my experience, it's quite the opposite. I'd like to think that I'm "entering my prime," but who knows?

Science fiction magazines are going through a midlife crisis, too.  The oldest of them, Amazing, turned 41 this year.  But is it "delightfully witty" and "wise"? Has it "stood the test of time"?  In fact, the magazine that Gernsback built is consistently the lowest rated of the SF digests, packed mostly with cheap reprints.  How about Analog, neé Astounding, rapidly approaching its Jack Benny birthday (he's eternally 39, you see)?  Well, I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but I think it's safe to say that Campbell's mag is definitely in a rut, fossilized into the features it had some fifteen years ago.

Even the newer crop has had a stormy adolescence.  Galaxy is 17.  Once a brilliant child, it is now an often insipid teenager.  If it stays this staid, it may not make it to voting age.  And how about Fantasy and Science Fiction, which just left its minority this year?  The venerable mag, the most literary of its kind, has had an unstable family life, with revolving editors through its teen years.  As a result, the wrinkles are already showing in this 18 year old.

Ed Ferman seems to be aware of his institution's aging.  Indeed, this month's issue, which begins and ends with (and devotes half its words to) the subject of growing old, seems a deliberate acknowledgement of the predicament.


by Jack Gaughan

The Day Before Forever, by Keith Laumer

Steve Dravek, late a denizen of the 20th Century, finds himself on a street near the end of the 21st.  Only shreds of memory remain, enough to give him a sense of identity, but no idea how he arrived in the future (young again, when he had been middle aged) nor why the black uniformed mooks of Eternity Incorporated (ETORP) are after him.

After being beset by "the lowest of the low" in a park, he is apprehended by "Jess", self-proclaimed "highest of the low", for purposes unknown.  Dravek uses force and wit to turn the situation around, making Jess take him to the heart of ETORP's facility on Long Island in pursuit of the truth…and himself.

Forever uses the latest gimmick everyone seems to have latched onto lately: cryonics.  That's the idea that one can be flash frozen before death in the hopes that any malady one is suffering from can be cured in the future.  Fred Pohl, editor of Galaxy and IF has gone into it in a big way, but now it's showing up here, too.

Anyway, there are more twists and turns than a new Los Angeles freeway interchange, and a lot of it gets explained in the end rather than shown as the story goes, but it's a readable potboiler, the kind Laumer can crank out in his sleep.

Three stars.

Balgrummo's Hell, by Russell Kirk

60+ years ago, Laird Balgrummo was sealed in his decaying manor house after committing an unspeakable crime against humanity and nature.  Now the world is waiting for him to shuffle off this mortal coil…save for Horgan, a greedy thief who would rob Balgrummo of his fortune of paintings while he sleeps.

Except Balgrummo sleeps not.  He lurks.

There are no surprises in this story, which reads like something out of Weird Tales' early days.  But the telling is delicious. 

My favorite story of the issue: four stars.

Alter Ego, by Hugo Correa

If you could make an identical new you, one unhindered by all of your life's wrong choices, who would be the better person?  You, or the android duplicate?

More a philosophical piece than science fiction, I found it stayed with me.  Three stars.

Encounter in the Past, by Robert Nathan

On the other hand, Nathan's story of the rediscovery of a Mesozoic human civilization doesn't make a lot of sense.  I reread the short piece a few times, and I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Two stars.

The Master's Thesis, by David Madden

Worse still is this pointless piece about a Professor Swinnard and the young man who insists on afflicting him with his master's thesis.  The story goes 'round in circles as Swinnard is increasingly disarmed and discomfited by the student's rudeness and the haste with which he finishes his project…yet I am at a loss to understand whence stems the horror, nor what the final thesis is actually about.

Am I stupid?  Is the point obvious to anyone else?

One star.

Flight Between Realities, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Buck's poem from the standpoint of an omniscient being sipping her sherry is a bit hard to parse, but seems to be of great moment.

Three stars.

The Sea Monster and the Mayor of New York City, by Gahan Wilson

On the perils to a monster's digestion due to the consumption of a fraught metropolis. 

Frivolous.  Two stars.

Twelve Point Three Six Nine, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor explains the foolishness of associating significance to chance juxtapositions of numbers by creating his own, tying together the relation of the lunar and solar calendars to the Bible.

It's cute, and I found some of the historical bits interesting.  Three stars.

The Vitanuls, by John Brunner

In the early 21st Century, the birthrate has slackened.  But new births are not unknown, and as a kind of medical immortality is introduced, more and more babies are born healthy but vacant.  Void of intellect or animus.  Could there be a connection?

This story has a lot of problems.  Not only is the piece structurally flawed, telegraphing its ending from the beginning but taking forever to get there, but it also doesn't seem to understand how souls work.  Set in India, there is much reference to Hindu reincarnation and such.  But the story suggests that there is a limited number of human souls, and by cheating death, we're robbing the young of life. 

I'd always understood that, per Hinduism, animals and plants and…everything…had souls, all of which could serve in a human form.  Even if that were not the case, I think Brunner's math is off.  Yes, it's true that half of the people who've ever lived are alive today, but if the living outnumber the dead, it won't be because of immortality, but simple birthrate.  And does the store of human souls grow over time, or was it fixed, like the memory store of a mainframe, at a specific number deemed sufficient a million years ago, but now inadequate?

Two stars for this poorly thought out shock tale.

Will you still need me?  Will you still read me?

I understand summer is when magazines put out all their inferior stuff since readership is at its lowest ebbs during the dog days.  Still, if this latest issue (which scores just 2.7 on the Starometer) be any indication of where the magazine is headed, quality-wise, I have distinct concerns that it may never make it to the ripe old age of 64…


by Gahan Wilson



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[May 20, 1967] Field trips (June 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

A peach of a visit

Here we are again in Atlanta, Gateway to the South.  Our last visit to the Dogwood City was at the invitation of Georgia Tech, who asked me, as a science fiction writer, to discuss predictions of the future.  Particularly, they wanted my opinion on the dangers of overpopulation, pollution, and nuclear annihilation–and what might be done to avoid catastrophe.

The talk went off rather well, and so now I'm at a conference addressing a bevy of biologists on the nascent science of exobiology, or more accurately, how aliens have figured in science fiction, both in our solar system and without. 

I must confess, there is a great feeling of accomplishment in being paid good money to talk about the things I love.  And the pastries are free, too!

A peach of an issue

Accompanying me on this trip is the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  It has made a most pleasant companion (for the most part).  Let's take a tour, shall we?


by Bert Tanner

Death and the Executioner, by Roger Zelazny

First up, we have the sequel to Dawn in what is clearly a serial by another name (like Poul Anderson's The Star Fox).  As such, I will try to judge each piece as part of a great whole.

And what an excellent part!  Zelazny returns us to an unnamed world that is nevertheless explicitly not Earth (betrayed by its two moons).  Millennia ago, its colonists split into two castes: The Firsts, blessed with psychic powers, have effective immortality by swapping consciousnesses into other bodies.  Everyone else lives in enforced medieval squalor patterned after Hindu tradition.  The Firsts are, of course, associated with the Indian pantheon.

One rebel First, name of Sam, has styled himself the Buddha and is reintroducing Gautama's creed.  In this installment, the First who has made himself Yama, God of Death, arrives at Sam's purple grove to deliver a fatal message from Kali, head of the Firsts.

Just last article, Jessica Dickinson Goodman lamented that there were precious few f&sf stories that didn't derive their settings from a strongly European tradition.  Zelazny has shown that the subcontinent is as fertile a source for inspiration as any other.  And where Herbert's Persia-as-SF (Dune) fell flat for me, mostly due to Herbert's inexpertise as an author, in the hands of Zelazny, ancient India-turned-scientifiction sparkles.  Plus, there's lots of mighty thews-type combat for those who are into that sort of thing (paging Ms. Buhlert.)

Five stars for this segment.

The Royal Road to There, by Robert M. Green, Jr.

The Jackson family is on a seemingly endless freeway, headed for the unveiling of their uncle's will.  Said uncle was an eccentric who kept a horse-and-buggy factory going long after the automobile had become ascendant.

In a Twilight Zone-ish bit, the freeway ensnares the family, depositing them in the town his uncle built, where they are presented with a most unique offer, which may just require them to give up their gas-guzzling beast. 

Is the story anti-progress?  Or does it simply advocate smarter progress?  My brother, Lou, still laments the removal of the little red trains that used to knit Los Angeles together.  Now, the San Gabriel Valley is a basin of smog and a snarl of endless traffic.  If there had been more sensible city planning and incorporation of public transit and rail, perhaps it wouldn't be this way.

Three stars.

Gentlemen, Be Seated, by Charles Beaumont

In the future, comedy is dead.  It seems the progressive types who were offended by racial humor and violent slapstick inadvertently caused the extinction of laughter.  It's up to a secret society, armed with bad puns and blackface, to restore hope to mankind.

I hate to speak ill of the dead (Beaumont died on my 48th birthday this year), but this story is as bad as it sounds.

One star.

"…But for the Grace of God", by Gilbert Thomas

A predator of the masculine variety comes across a much more capable predator of the feminine variety.  A bit too long-winded and predictable to be truly effective, but I appreciate what the author is doing, nevertheless.

Three stars.

Non-Time Travel, by Isaac Asimov

Every so often, the Good Doctor finds himself so at a loss for ideas, that he picks a pointless subject to expound upon.  His piece on the International Date Line is pleasant enough, but it could just as easily have been a paragraph long.

Three stars.

The First Postulate, by Gerald Jonas

On a remote Mexican island, where the Mayan tradition still runs strong, the first two deaths due to natural causes in over forty years of worldwide immortality have been reported.  The scientific team dispatched there encounters increasing resistance from the locals, who ultimately fire their base to retrieve the corpses.  Is it a kind of insanity that drives the indios?  Or is it a natural reaction to an unnatural situation?

Readable, vivid, if not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

A Discovery in the Woods, by Graham Greene

Lastly, another after-the-bomb tale, told from the perspective of a band of bandy youths who encounter a house of the giants.  This one is all in the telling, a lovely tale that reminds me of Edgar Pangborn's Davy.

Four stars.

Miles to go before I sleep

So ends a perfectly suitable (with one small exception) issue.  My only real complaint is that I finished it on the flight out!  Luckily, I've got another book reserved for the flight back, which you'll hear about next month.

In the meantime, please wish me luck for tonight's speech!


by Gahan Wilson



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 18, 1967] Bright Lights (May 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Tinsel Town

Last weekend, the world's greatest stars and movie-makers assembled in Santa Monica for the annual celebration of the best the silver screen has to offer.  It was a cavalcade of prominent names, from Sidney Poitier to Lee Remick to Julie Christie to Omar Sharif.  Some of the contestants were unfamiliar (Herb Alpert has a short animated film?) Some were surprising but welcome in their inclusion (like The Wargame for best documentary).  Some were inevitable (If Grand Prix hadn't won Best Sound and Best Editing, I'd have written letters…) Two titans towered all the rest (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf and A Man for All Seasons–both of which I still haven't seen yet).

And throughout it all, Bob Hope was host, narrator, and satirist.  Lorelei observed that this time, the jokes about recognition still eluding the aging comedian seemed more pointed and bitter than usual.  Maybe it's time he got some kind of lifetime achievement award, as did Isaac Asimov at a recent Worldcon…

Print City

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction features a similar assemblage of luminaries–and it's not even an "All-Star Issue"!  Presented in a format that has been standard and familiar since 1949, this month's read was as comforting and entertaining as two primetime hours at the Oscars.

With the added benefit that one can reread favorite stories!


by Ronald Walotsky

Planetoid Idiot, by Phyllis Gotlieb

Our first star is Phyllis Gotlieb, a woman writer who joined the SF ranks one year after Mses. Rosel George Brown, Kit Reed, and Pauline Ashwell.  Her latest is a fine novella in the Analog tradition–indeed, it reads like something Katherine MacLean might have penned.

A mutli-species spaceship has landed on the ocean planed of Xirifor.  Their goal is to save the indigenous race from a pandemic of gill rot such that they can better represent themselves when representatives of the Galactic Federation come to negotiate for the pearls the aliens harvest.

The crew of the contact ship are a beautifully heterogenous group: Hrufa, an eight foot telepathic amphibian is their leader, keeping the rest of the team in order, if not harmony.  Thlyrrh is a protoplasmic being with a shape-shifting carapace; it can do almost anything…except compose an original thought.  And then there are the two humans, or "solthrees" (I really like that phrase): Olivia the exobiologists, and Berringer, the generalist.

Despite their vast collective knowledge, they are hindered in their task by politics, internal and external.  But in the end, working together, they deduce a solution that is completely scientific and plausible.

It's all very satisfactory, and if I have any complaint, it is only the title, which I found misleading (I thought "planetoid idiot" would be a play on "village idiot").  Definitely a candidate for the next volume of Rediscovery.

Four stars.

Sleeping Beauty, by Terry Carr

It's nice to see Ace Books publisher, Terry Carr, slinging the pen again.  His latest story is a beautifully written if rather inconsequential tale of a landless prince, galloping across Europe looking for that most endangered of modern creatures: the single (and wealthy) princess.  There is, of course, a sting in the story's tale.

You'll forget it soon after you read it, but you'll enjoy the journey.  Three stars.

Safe at Any Speed, by Larry Niven

If Ralph Nader has his way, all cars of the future will be like the one presented in this, the latest tale to take place in Niven's "Known Space".  It's his most humorous piece, almost Sheckleyesque, and it accomplishes a lot in a brief space.

Four stars.

Fifteen Miles, by Ben Bova

Two years ago, Air Force astronaut Chet Kinsman was tested in orbit when he had to go mano-a-mano with a Communist spacewoman.  Now Kinsman is on the moon, haunted by the memory of the lady he had to slay.  Will his guilt get in the way of his rescuing a fellow astronaut trapped in a lunar crevice?

This is another grounded SF tale I'm surprised (but pleased) to find in F&SF.  I've not yet found Bova brilliant (though Victoria Silverwolf has), but I always enjoy him.

Three stars.

The Red Shift, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas explains in his nonfiction vignette how quasars, which must be extragalactic yet near objects, give lie to the Doppler shift, and thus rewrite physics. Specifically, he says that the redshift of quasars indicates that they are far away, but that radio astronomy locates them much closer to Earth.

I do not know how he makes this assertion, as it is radio astronomy that detects these quasars at all–including their red shift.  According to the article I read in Britannica's 1966 year book of knowledge, quasars are very interesting in that they point up an asymmetry between the young universe (quasar-rich) and the curent universe (quaser-poor).  But there's nothing that suggests quasars exist close by, or that there's anything wrong with Doppler.

There does seem to be something wrong, however, with Thomas.

One star.

Cyprian's Room, by Frances Oliver

Onward to the second woman-penned story, by an author about whom our editor knows virtually nothing.  A pity, because her first story is a good one.  Romantic Hilda Wendel takes a room in the big city hoping to meet someone interesting in her boarding house.  She finds a tubercular artist whose views on art are maddeningly contradictory, yet irresistably compelling.

Is he just an avante-garde…or something otherworldly?

A high three.

Interview with a Lemming, by James Thurber

This putative dialogue between man and lemming, to indulge in adjectives solely beginning with "i" is inconsequential, irritating, and inspid–particularly the thinks-itself-clever ending.

Two stars.

Where is Thy Sting, by Emil Petaja

One of the last fertile men in a post-atomized Earth, racked with suicidal desires, must be kept alive at all costs, even if it means subverting his reality.

I'd have liked this story more had I not read one so similar to it (The Best is Yet to Be) in the pages of this same magazine not many months before.

Two stars.

Times of Our Lives, by Isaac Asimov

All about time zones.  I actually found this atlas-derived article educational and interesting.

Four stars.

Fill in the Blank, by Ron Goulart

Finally, the return of a perennial star with a series with more installments than James Bond.  Max Kearney is dragooned into investigating what appears to be an infestation of poltergeists.  The culprits are all-too-temporal…but it doesn't mean magic's not involved!

It's funnier in the latter half.  Three stars.

House Lights Return

By strict mathematical computation, the latest F&SF only scores an average three star rating.  Nevertheless, the brilliance of the first piece, the general competence of most of the rest, and the edification provided by the Good Doctor leaves a most pleasant impression.

Let's keep our stars around for a while.  They make good illumination.


by Gahan Wilson



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Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[March 20, 1967] Vistas near and far (April 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

I see you!

We have now entered a phase of the Space Race where there's enough stuff in orbit that other stuff in orbit can take pictures of it.  Not just deliberate rendeszvous' like dual missions of Gemini 6 and 7, but snapshots of opportunity, like Gemini 11's photo of the Soviet Proton 3.

Last week, NASA released perhaps the most extraordinary example of this nature: the first snapshot of a spacecraft sent to the Moon…by a spacecraft sent to the Moon!  Lunar Orbiter 3, launched early last month, has been busily mapping our celestial neighbor, searching for the choicest landing spots for Apollo (whose first manned mission, I've just learned, has been delayed until next year due to the Apollo 1 fire.) In the course of its surveying, Lunar Orbiter 3 caught a glimpse of Surveyor 1, the first American soft-lander.  It all makes the Moon feel that much closer.

While the newspaper brings us tales of science fiction-made-fact, the stf mags continue to provide the visions of science-to-be.  The latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers several visions of the future: some poetic, some bleak, and some not really worth reading.  Good thing I'm here to tell you which is which, huh?

A pail of tomorrows


by Gray Morrow

Dawn, by Roger Zelazny

Lord Siddhartha, the Buddha, arrives as the capital for a bit of revelry.  There, he is greeted with honors, for he is a prince of this land, redolent with the smells of spice, the bustle of medieval commerce, the prayers of the devoted.  At first glance, Dawn seems as if it will be a pure fantasy in a richly drawn world.  But there are signs that underneath the veneer of ancient India lies a strictly scientific core.

Indeed, we learn quite soon that Siddhartha is actually Sam, one of the original colonists on this world, a planet whose technology has been deliberately restrained by the cabal of the Firsts and their lackeys, the Masters.  Their firm grip lies in their stranglehold on immortality, facilitated by their ability to transmigrate souls from body to body at will.

Sam wants to bring progress to the world.  Can he and his band of rebels undo the work of centuries?

Zelazny's latest novella is reportedly the first part of a longer work, to be titled "Lord of Light".  If it is as expertly rendered as this fine start, then it'll be a good read, indeed!

Four stars.

The Two Lives of Ben Coulter, by Larry Eisenberg

"The greatest disappointment of Ben Coulter's life was his inability to play the violin well."

So begins the tale of a fellow who turned instead to engineering for the purpose, failing to find it there until he co-developed a technique for the remote control of a living being.  Perhaps, at last, he could program mastery into himself.

Most science fiction authors take inspiration from the science news of the day.  Some, like Doc Smith, are actually scientists.  Larry Eisenberg is perhaps unique in the SF community for extrapolating a scientifiction application of his own invention, the remote controlled pacemaker.

His story, if not quite as personally affecting as his crowning scientific achievement, is a pleasant little piece, nonetheless.

Three stars.

Cloud Seeding, by Theodore L. Thomas

In this fictionless vignette, Thomas suggests combining cloud seeding with chemical distribution.  After all, if you're putting stuff in the sky to make rain, why not use fertilizer or poison of what have you.

Thomas forgets that the seeds for the raindrops are necessarily uselessly tiny.  I almost feel as though these little exercises are not to present interesting ideas, but are puzzles for the reader: spot the fallacy and win a hundred dollars!

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Problems of Creativeness, by Thomas M. Disch

The 21st Century is an overcrowded, socialist paradise.  Everyone is on the childless dole, unless they can prove themselves exceptional, finish college, or join the guerrila forces.  Birdie Ludd, the least exceptional of young men, doesn't want to do any of these things.  But for the love of Milly, pretty enough almost to be a movie star, he was willing to endure almost anything.

Less a story and more a slice-of-life from the perspective of an indolent youth, Problems relies mostly on a vivid stream-of-consciousness style and copious use of the first profanity I've read within F&SF's pages.

Three stars, I guess.

The Sword of Pell the Idiot, by Julian F. Grow

Farquhar Orpington-Pell, late a subaltern in Her Majesty's Own Midlothian Dragoons, falls in with a Western doctor on the late 19th Century range.  Their crooked path takes them to a subterranean complex inhabited by aliens.  Things Happen.  Supposed-to-be-funny-but-just-tedious things, capped off by the rather insulting punchline that the transpirings inspired a much better, well known set of books.

Feh.  One star.

"Virtue. 'Tis A Fugue!", by Patrick Meadows

An advanced world refuses the entreaties of humanity to join a terran federation.  Professor Thomas Gunn, a musicologist, provides the key to reaching the hearts of the aliens.  Their language is the culmination of tonality, you see, each sentence its own song.  Our hyper-efficient, sound-codified speak was too declassé to appeal.

It's all a lot of "mun, mun" to me, and in any event, the revelation came out of nowhere.  Indeed, Gunn's story and that of the contact team are completely unrelated until he suddenly appears on the planet in the story's last scenes.

Two stars.

A Matter of Scale, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor goes way out with his latest article.  You know those "the sun is a beachball, and the planets are various small fruit several hundred feet away" models you read in all the science books for kids?  He's decided to go one better, substituting atomic analogs so the distances can be more relatable.

I'm sure it was a fun exercise for him.

Three stars.

Randy's Syndrome, by Brian W. Aldiss

Lastly, another tale of the next, shoulder-to-shoulder, anti-utopian 21st Century.  The foetuses of the world go on strike, refusing to be born into such an awful place.  But is it really a mass strike of the unborn, happy in their womb world of racial memory and distorted, second-hand sensory inputs?  Or is it some kind of planetary neurosis of the mothers?

Whatever it is, it's not science fiction, more a modern myth.  Some might find it clever.

Two stars.

Under the Moon

After such a bright beginning, the April 1967 F&SF stumbles to a finish.  I recognize that science fiction is cautionary as well as aspirational, but I feel one needs to say more than "this future we're heading toward is gonna stink..and by the way, the future is now." 

The Zelazny is worth your time, however.

And, hey, at least the newspaper brings us pretty pictures!



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[February 20, 1967] To Ashes (March Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Kaye Dee

Tasmania’s Black Tuesday

The poet Miss Dorothea Mackellar refers to Australia as a “sunburnt” country, but the recent devastation in Tasmania reminds us that Australia is also very much a “sun-burned” country.
Bushfire disasters are nothing new in Australia, but the horrific catastrophe of 7 February, which has already been dubbed “Black Tuesday”, ranks as one of the worst this country has experienced. In less than a day, 62 people were killed (the second largest number in the nation’s bushfire history) and more than 900 injured. Almost 1300 homes are believed lost and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. It has been estimated that at least 62,000 farm animals have also perished.

After a long dry spell, it seems that an unfortunately “ideal” combination of weather factors on the 7th led to the disaster. Across southern Tasmania, the island state that lies to the south of the Australian mainland, there were already extremely high temperatures (the maximum was 102 °F!) and very low humidity when intense winds from the northwest fanned a number of bushfires burning in remote areas into raging infernos.

110 separate fire fronts burned through around 652,000 acres in the space of just five hours! Within a forty mile radius around Hobart, the state capital, many towns and rural properties have experienced significant damage: twelve towns have been completely destroyed. Even Hobart itself has not escaped unscathed, with hundreds of homes and businesses razed, including the famous Cascade Brewery. With most communications and services cut, thousands were evacuated to Hobart at the height of the emergency, and it is believed that up to 7000 people are now homeless. The total damage bill is already being estimated at a staggering $40,000,000 Australian dollar values! But recovery efforts are underway and help is pouring into the “Apple Isle” from all over Australia. Southern Tasmania will rise from the ashes, but recovery will be a long process that will take many years.


by Gideon Marcus

Literal tragedy

Kaye's tragedy is heartbreaking, the sort of thing one for which one flees into fiction.  Sadly, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers little in the way of solace.

Sooty pages


by Jack Gaughan (these folks don't actually appear this issue…)

The Sea Change, by Jean Cox

The editors Ferman have saved perhaps their best for first.  A young failure, son of a brilliant marine biologist who committed suicide at the height of his career, attempts one final emulation of his father.  In a poignant scene, he doffs his clothes, dives into the water, and drowns.

But rather than die, he finds himself kept alive via a biological symbiote on his back.  He is welcomed into an underwater commune of sorts, a living socialism of sea creatures for which his hands and intellect are desired additional traits.  Recruited to dispose of their failed attempts to create humans underwater, he is faced with a choice: a blissful existence as part of a hive mind underwater, or a sorrowful existence as an independent failure on dry land.

In a way, this tale is the opposite of Bob Sheckley's Pusher, one of my very favorite stories.  Sea Change is beautifully written, but I found the end unconvincing, and the decision disappointing.

It teeters on the edge of four stars, but just misses, I think.

The Investor, Bruce Jay Friedman

Odd piece about a stock broker whose pulse becomes directly tied to the share price of one of his investments.  I think it's supposed to be satire?

Two stars.

Zoomen, Fred Hoyle

On a trip in the Scottish Highlands, a fellow is scooped up by aliens and imprisoned on a ship with eight other humans of many backgrounds, four men and four women.  Our hero believes that they are destined to be seeding stock for an interstellar menagerie.  Clues include the even gender make-up, their indifferent treatment, and their rough conditioning (made to be nauseated as a goad). 

This tale is nicely written, a bit reminiscent of the beginning of Hoyle's October the First is Too Late, which also started with a Scottish trek.  Like that novel, but even more so, the ending is a let down, and without any of the attendant philosophical interest.

Three stars.

The Long Night, Larry Niven

A momentary uptick with this bagatelle, a variation on the deal with the devil theme.  A student of magic decides to cap his doctoral thesis by summoning a demon.  Of course, now his soul is forfeit, unless he asks for the right gift–and uses it to its fullest.

It's fun, and apparently utilizes the author's B.S. in Mathematics.

Four stars.

Relic, Mack Reynolds

Like all mountains, once one reaches the summit, it's all downhill from there.  In this tale, we meet an octogenarian Lord Greystoke, now mostly insane and very violent.  The slightest affront sends him into a murderous rage, and he soon builds up a trail of bodies, punctuating each kill with an ululating bull gorilla roar.

Another "funny" piece.  I din't like it.

Two stars.

Crowded!, by Isaac Asimov

It's been nearly a decade since Dr. A started this column, and of late, he's been running out of ideas.  He's back to geographic lists, taking a hodgepodge of mildly interesting facts from almanacs and atlases.  This time, it's a list of "great cities" (over a million residents) and their world distribution.

I've got an atlas, too, Isaac.  A couple of 'em.

Three stars.

The Little People, by John Christopher

Which leaves us with the much-anticipated conclusion of the serial.  In the first installment, we were introduced to Bridget, heir to a dilapidated Irish hostel…and a secret.  After her first group of neurotic guests have been assembled, they find hints that the place is inhabited by Little People. 

In Part 2, we find that they are not of magical provenance at all, but are actually tiny Jews, forced into diminution and then tortured by an exiled Nazi scientist.  Much brouhaha is made regarding their disposition.  I assumed Part 3 would resolve the outstanding threads.

It does not.  Instead, each of the lodgers has some sort of vision, mostly unpleasant.  A good forty pages is taken up with these nightmares in which the eponymous tiny ones make no appearance whatsoever.  In the end, the episodes are explained as some kind of ESP-as-torment, and the manor is abandoned.

It's the worst of cop-outs, redolent with sex.  I'm afraid no amount of attempts to titilate can cover the fact that there's no there there.

Two stars for this segment, and two and a half for the serial as a whole.  I prefer consistent mediocrity to an undelivered promise.

Scorched Earth

And that's that!  A disappointing 2.7 star issue with only one unalloyed success, and that one very short.  In the latest Yandro, Don & Maggie Thompson maintained that F&SF is the best of the SF mags.  That may have been true a decade ago.  It hasn't been true in a while.

Just as Tasmania may rebuild, so F&SF could return to greatness.  I just hope I live long enough to see it…


by Gahan Wilson (by way of Mack Reynolds, it seems…)



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 20, 1967] Sag in the middle (February Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Tossing and turning

When I was a kid, I had (like everyone else) a cotton-filled mattress. In a lot of ways, I was lucky. I was a skinny kid so I didn't weigh much, and I was just as lief to sleep on the rug as in a bed, so I wasn't picky about where I lay down. Plus, bedbugs weren't a problem in sunny El Centro. They hated the lack of air conditioning as much as we did. So that ol' mattress did me fine.

But I got spoiled by my first innerspring in the 50s. That's sleeping comfort.

The only problem with coil mattresses, of course, is that after a while (unless you managed to stay teen skinny into your middle years) the middle sags. Eventually, you're in this little self-made pit. Oh your aching back!

The latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a bit like a saggy mattress.  It's great at the ends, but the middle is the absolute pits.

It started so well


by Chesley Bonestell

The Hall of the Dead, by L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is having the best decade in a long time.  It's a pity he's not around to enjoy it, having passed away more than 30 years ago.  But his mighty thewed creation "Conan", warrior of Hyboria, has found new life in the hands of famed Fantasist L. Sprague de Camp.  In addition to compiling (and lightly editing) Howard's old stories for a pair of collections, which Cora will be reviewing in two days, Sprague has also taken unfinished pieces and raw outlines and given the bones flesh.

The Hall of the Dead was only a 650 word outline when Sprague found it.  It is now an intriguing new novelette in the Conan canon, one that I found every bit as exciting as the various pieces I've found in old pulps. 

It's a tale set very early in Conan's life.  He is on the run from the wicked city of Shadazar, a company of police soldiers on his tail led by the Aquilonian mercenary, Nestor.  Conan seeks refuge in the cursed dead city of Larsha.  There, he and Nestor must team up to face a variety of horrors, living and dead.  The reward if they succeed?  Treasure beyond imagining!

It's great, riproaring stuff.  More please.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

A Walk in the Wet, by Dennis Etchison

The lone survivor of a spacewreck is haunted by more than the deaths of dozens.  For, as a telepath, he experienced the fatalites as well as witnessed them.  Now faced with the truth of how he became the mutant he is, the spacer has taken on a grisly mission…if only he can remain sober long enough to carry it out.

That summary makes this sound like a pretty good story.  It's not.  It's impenetrable and rather disgusting.  I suppose its lone virtue is that it's memorable.

One star.

The Next Step, by E. A. Moore

On an overcrowded world, the only hope for humanity is colonizing the stars.  It turns out that the inevitable leukemia that the settlers acquire on their relativistic jaunts is the key to their transcending their physical form and becoming one with the universe.

In addition to being rather amateurishly written, this story requires a lot of leaps of faith.  I have trouble buying the premise that cancer is actually a beneficial development.

Two stars.

The Song of the Morrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Ferman is really scraping the barrel if he has to go back 70 years for a piece.  In this vignette, wide-eyed princess meets a crone on a beach, is told many things that come true, and the maid ultimately becomes the next crone.

I like poetic stuff as much as the next person, but this one didn't do it for me.

Two stars.

The Intelligent Computer, Ted Thomas

As usual, Ted starts with an interesting premise (how do you copyright/patent something developed by a computer?) and utterly flubs it.  Mr. Thomas needs to write a real article or stop writing these half-efforts.

Two stars.

The Little People (Part 2 of 3), by John Christopher

The serial continues.  Last month took us to a run-down hostel in rural Ireland where a collection of eight neurotics discovered what they thought was one of The Little People.

In this chapter, we learn that the foot-tall girl and her friends are not faerie folk at all, but something much more sinister–the result of a Nazi experiment in longevity. 

I honestly have no idea where this story is going to end up.  I am still enjoying it, though perhaps not quite so much as last time.

Four stars.

Impossible, That's All, by Isaac Asimov

In this month's article (the Good Doctor's 100th… and we've covered all save the first!), Dr. A talks about why it's impossible to go faster than light, and why we should all just stop bugging him about it.

It's a good piece, particularly in talking about how our advancements in science serve to refine models rather than completely overthrow them (q.v. Newton to Einstein).  On the other hand, sometimes model changes are revolutionary.  Discovering subatomic particles didn't change the life of the average citizen…until we used the knowledge to make atomic bombs and reactors.  We now seem to be on the edge of a revolution in sub-sub-atomic physics as we speak, giving rhyme and reason to the veritable zoo of particles, just as subatomic theory made sense of Medeleev's periodic table.  Who knows if that will result in discoveries in previously impossible fields such as antigravity and faster than light travel?

Asimov is facile, but I suspect he's missing something.  Three stars.

Blackmail, by Fred Hoyle

The champion of out-of-date theories (e.g. "Steady State") offers up this bizarre little fantasy in which a fellow learns to communicate with animals.  Turns out all they want to do is watch people beat each other up on television.  Think of the effect on the Nielsen's!

Forgettable fluff.  Two stars.

Falling out

This sunken mess of a mattress garners a lousy 2.6 stars.  That's still better than most of the other mags out this month, which tells you how bad our job here at the Journey can be.

That said, between the Conan and the Christopher (not to mention Merril's column and Asimov's article), more than half of this month's issue is worth a read.

I'll just have to learn to sleep on the edges, that's all!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 20, 1966] Above and beyond (January 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction and a space roundup)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]


by Gideon Marcus

Science Fact

In '57, Asimov stopped being a full-time science fiction writer to become a full-time science columnist, a change in vocation that has largely been a positive one.  Why did the creator of Nightfall, Foundation, and Susan Calvin make the leap?  Because, with the launch of Sputnik, science fiction had suddenly become reality, and the front page of the newspaper contained some of the most thrilling SF headlines going.

That trend has only accelerated.  This month, we entered the next stage of space travel, not with a flashy Gemini launch (though those are nifty!) or our first manned trip to the Moon, but with something called ATS.

NASA's "Advanced Technology Satellite" went up on December 7, 1966.  Some satellites, like TIROS, are weather satellites.  Some, like SYNCOM, relay communications.  ATS is the first to do both, and from geostationary orbit.  At its altitude of 36,000 km, it takes exactly 24 hours to circle the Earth.  Thus, from the ground, it appears to be standing still.  Equipped with a "spin-scan" camera, every 20 minutes, ATS sends back a full-globe image of the Earth with a resolution of just 3km.  For the first time, we have essentially real-time weather coverage of an entire hemisphere.

No less ambitious, but sadly less successful, was last week's three-day "Biosatellite" mission.  Biosat is the first in a series of spacecraft that will observe the long term effects of orbital life on a variety of organisms.  On board are a menagerie of bugs (including the ever popular fruit flies) as well as seeds and plants.  The plan was to launch the mission on the 14th and then bring it back on the 17th, observing the effects of weightlessness and radiation on the living cargo.  A retrorocket malfunction stranded the satellite in orbit, however.  I suspect the SPCA is filing a lawsuit as we speak…

NASA isn't the only American agency conducting science.  Last week, the Air Force launched two satellites at once in its low-cost "Orbiting Vehicle" series, OV1-9 and OV1-10.  Normally, these go into polar orbits, but the latest duo follow more conventional paths.  For the most part, these little guys investigate radiation, radio propagation, and other near-Earth conditions.  This is all of great interest to an organization that wants to put flyboys in a Manned Orbiting Laboratory next year, but there's also a valuable scientific yield for the rest of us.

Science Fiction (and Fantasy)

After all that exciting real-world news, could an SF magazine hope to provide the same thrills?  Turns out the first 1967 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction does!


by Gray Morrow

The Little People (Part 1 of 3), John Christopher

Bridget Chauncey is the heir to a most unusual estate in rural Ireland: a run-down country home built on the site of a ruined castle.  Enchanted with the place and its commercial opportunities, she essays a trial season running the place as a vacation lodge.  An odd assemblage of characters are introduced: a bickering middle-aged couple and their daughter on the edge of womanhood, a ruddy Wehrmacht veteran and his half-Jewish wife, Bridget's practical fianceé, Daniel, the estate handler's son, Mat, and the cook and maid. 

The Little People is slow to start, author Christopher allowing us to settle into the heads of each member of this queer group.  But when a two-inch sandaled footprint is discovered, and linked to the recent rash of minor thefts, the identity of the culprit(s) quickly is determined.

Fairies are real.

This is where we leave off this compelling chapter.  I look forward to the ramifications of "first contact" between giant and wee folk.  Four stars.

The Star Driver, J. W. Schutz

Less impressive is this tale of a man stranded on an asteroid with rapidly diminishing air reserves.  Rescue depends on propelling a beacon to orbital velocity.  This Analog-ish tale would have been better served had the ending not been spoiled from the start by editor Ferman (and to some degree, the title). 

On the other hand, I don't want to discourage F&SF from publishing, well, SF.  So, a low three stars.

Interplanetary Dust, Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that the flux of micrometeoroids around the Earth might be netted up and squashed into a planetoid to live on.  I don't think he's researched how thin that flux actually is.

Two stars.

The Disenchanted Symphony, James G. Huneker

Here's a reprint from the turn of the century!  A Russian composer, infatuated with the link between music and mathematics, creates a symphony that punches a hole through the fourth dimension, whisking his wife and his orchestra away from our plane of existence.  Can he get them back?

I was impressed with how modern this story felt.  Judith Merril expressed in her Books column this month that SF owes much of its present sparkle to works created more than fifty years ago.  She was talking about H.G. Wells.  This sentiment could easily be said of Mssr. Huneker as well.

Four stars.

Bait, Bob Leman

Sometimes what a door-to-door salesman is peddling isn't the product he has on display.  This is a deliciously subtle tale that gets better after a night's thought on it.

Four stars.

The Knight-Errant, the Dragon, and the Maiden, Gahan Wilson

Sometimes the dragon is a chaperone, not a jailer.

Cute.  Three stars.

Right Beneath Your Feet, by Isaac Asimov

We're back to lists and geographical tidbits from The Good Doctor this month, this time describing what places lie directly opposite others on the globe.  Well, at least I learned the etymology of the word "antipodes" (still don't know how to pronounce it, though…)

Three stars.

Kingdom Come, Inc., Robert F. Young

Last up, a Christmas story.  Robert F. Young has never found a myth he hasn't wanted to shoehorn into a science fictional story.  This time, he adapts a reliable well: Christianity.  On the Seventh Heaven pleasure satellite, an angelic fellow named Mike shows up looking for a job.  He and his six brothers (Gabe the trumpter, Raf, etc.) are out of work of late since no one has gotten into their particular establishment for many years. 

It's an obvious tale and a tedious one, opting for the easiest, least challenging conclusion.  Two stars.

Back to Earth

With the exception of the final tale (accepted more for its fortuitous length and timely theme, perhaps), this is a quite good issue.  And with the unusual inclusion of a serial, there's all the more reason to look forward to the February issue when it arrives early next month.

Happy New Year, indeed!


by Gahan Wilson

[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Joke's on me

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

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

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

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

No laughing matter


by Howard Purcell

Sabotage, by Christopher Anvil

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

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

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

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Mystery of the Purloined Grenouilles, by Gerald Jonas

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

Two stars.

Doubting Thomas, by Thomas M. Disch

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

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

The Martian Atmosphere, by Theodore L. Thomas

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

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

Two stars.

Von Goom's Gambit, by Victor Contoski

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

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

Three stars.

The Green Snow, by Miriam Allen deFord

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

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

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

The Gods, by L. Sprague de Camp

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

Four stars.

The Symbol-Minded Chemist, by Isaac Asimov

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

Four stars.

Bumberboom, by Avram Davidson

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

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

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

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

The punchline

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

No joke!


Not me this month.



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