Tag Archives: Fred Hoyle

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


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…)





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


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!






[July 14, 1966] October's Judgment (July Galactoscope)

This month's Galactoscope features a pair of tales from two of the genre's bigger names.  Just the sort of mid-summer pick-me-up to get you through the Dog Days… Siriusly!"


by Gideon Marcus

October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle, a prominent British astronomer and also a popular science fiction author (recently of A for Andromeda fame) has come out with quite an interesting little novel.  October the First is Too Late is several things in one, which I suppose makes sense given the subject.

The story begins in modern day.  Our protagonist, Richard, is a rather prominent composer coming off a disappointing show in Germany.  He meets up with an old college buddy, a brilliant physicist (John Sinclair), and the two head off to the Scottish Highlands for a trek.  It's a pleasant jaunt with one odd episode: halfway through, John disappears for 30 hours, and when he turns up, he is missing a birthmark he's had all his life.

Coincident with this, the interplanetary rocket for which John prepared some of the experiments has detected odd emanations from the Sun.  Perhaps they are modulations of an extraterrestrial beacon system, or maybe their tremendous energies have a more sinister purpose.  Sinclair and our viewpoint character head to Hawaii to process the latest data — only to find themselves hurled into a crazy, splintered world.  Hawaii is alright, and Fiji, and maybe England.  But the rest of the world has become a jumble of different timezones, assembled like a strange jigsaw puzzle. 

Why has this happened, and if it be an artificial occurrence, who is responsible?

October is a strange, meandering piece.  It hardly does anything for 52 pages, then becomes an exciting voyage of discovery.  The last third is something else yet again, something like G.C. Edmondson's The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream.  It shouldn't work, with its chatty digressions and frequent scientific/philosophical expositions…and yet it does.  October is a highly readable, breezily intelligent novel.  It's one I can see myself picking up again for a few more reads, and I imagine it could appear on next year's Hugo ballot.

Four stars.

The Judgment of Eve, by Edgar Pangborn


by John Boston

Edgar Pangborn is one of the finer writers and more luminous spirits to grace SF’s disreputable precincts.  After winning the International Fantasy Award for his second SF novel, A Mirror for Observers (1954), he took a detour and published a historical novel, Wilderness of Spring (1957), and a contemporary novel, The Trial of Callista Blake (1961).  But in 1964 he returned to SF with Davy, a post-nuclear-war story which made the Hugo ballot and to my taste probably should have won.

Davy portrayed a world centuries after nuclear war in which our present society's knowledge has mostly been lost, and the remainder forbidden by a repressive church.  That is, absolutely nothing original; the book was made by the characters and by the vivid detail in which Pangborn imagined a world whose outlines have grown all too familiar during the post-Hiroshima course of SF.  The frame is that Davy is writing a memoir of his picaresque adventures, with a goodly dollop of libertarian philosophizing along the way.  The result is sometimes reminiscent of Mark Twain, though hints of Jubal Harshaw drift in occasionally.


by Lawrence Ratzkin

Pangborn’s new novel The Judgment of Eve is another, and less satisfactory, kettle of fish.  It is set about 30 years after the war, which it turns out involved few actual bombs, but a long siege of plagues, greatly depopulating the world but not irradiating it.  Eve Newman, 28 years old, lives with her elderly and blind mother in a farmhouse far down a gravel side road; they’ve had no contact with other humans for many years, except for Caleb, seemingly a half-witted mutant.

Then three guys show up at the door, fleeing from a repressive settlement, and of course they are all smitten by young Eve, and she is smitten by the idea of having a mate.  But she has to make a choice, obviously (at least in this book’s moral universe).  So she sets them all a task: go forth and figure out what love is, and report back at the beginning of October, a few months away.  The rest of the book consists of the separate accounts of what each suitor does and finds before their reunion at Eve’s place.

Sounds like a fairy tale, and if you don’t figure it out on your own, the point is rubbed in by a brief reading from Grimm before Eve issues her orders.  Further, this purports to be a critical edition of the Judgment of Eve legend by scholars of later centuries, meaning that as you read the novel, obtrusive commentary pops up all too frequently concerning the relative plausibility of this and other versions, with occasional bursts of sarcasm concerning competing scholarly points of view.

It’s unusual to see a writer so gifted get in his own way so conclusively.  Pangborn is an unassumingly graceful stylist and a compelling story-teller, with a special talent for portraying physical settings and for convincingly developing the inner life of his characters.  The supposed critical commentary here has about the same effect on the reading experience as auto horns honking outside the window, while the fairy-tale frame distances the reader from the otherwise engaging story and characters. 

But still, most of the time it’s a pleasure to read.  Pangborn’s failure is more worthwhile than many writers’ successes.  Three and a half stars.






[August 20, 1962] A Galaxy of Choices (British TV: The Andromeda Breakthrough)


By Ashley R. Pollard

Science fiction on British television used to be one of those once-in-a-blue-moon events.  When it happened, what we got could often be very good.  Certainly Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass series was compelling viewing, which drew in a large audience from the general population with millions tuning in each week to find out the fate of the infected astronauts.

The impact of Quatermass cannot be over stated, the name having taken root in the British public's imagination.  And, now we have a sequel to A for Andromeda, which I reported on last year, to carry the torch for science fiction on British TV, which also looks like it will enter public’s lexicon.  With the additional transmission of the anthology show, Out of this World, we seem to be entering a golden age of science fiction on television.

For those unfamiliar with A for Andromeda, let me do a recap.  The first series, a story set in the future circa 1972, was about a group of scientists building a super computer for the military made from plans decoded from a signal sent from the Andromeda galaxy.  This signal is a Trojan horse designed to take over our planet by creating an artificial human called Andromeda that the computer can control.  It’s all very clever how this is revealed, and when the hero, Dr. Fleming, discovers that Andromeda is a slave of the computer he saves her by destroying the computer with an axe.  Andromeda then burns the plans for the computer, and together they try to make their escape.  Unfortunately, she falls into a pool and apparently dies, while Dr. Fleming is captured by Army personnel.

The Andromeda Breakthrough therefore has to square the circle of how to carry on the story without undermining the climax of the first series.

It should be noted that Andromeda was played by Julie Christie in the first series.  This was a breakout role for her, and as a result she was cast in the film Billy Liar, and was too busy to reprise her role.  So the role was recast, with Susan Hampshire playing Andromeda for the sequel, who is generally referred to as Andre during the story.

The opening episode, Cold Front, starts with a shot of Dr. Fleming being unceremoniously brought back to the base in the back of a British Army Land Rover.  From there we are given a précis of what happened before.  The reveal that Andromeda had not drowned in the pool comes after the Army reports that they dragged the pool and didn’t find a body.  This is quite an effective way of introducing Susan Hampshire playing a traumatized Andromeda.  From there the plot proceeds apace as Fleming absconds with Andromeda to a remote Scottish isle.  But, after some dramatic shenanigans with lots of to-ing and fro-ing, they are captured by the British government.

The second episode, Gale Warning, ramps up the tension with the shadowy Intel Consortium, a multi-national corporation with lots of fingers in many pots.  It is revealed they have copies of everything that our heroes assumed they destroyed, and their own version of the computer.  They now want Fleming and Andromeda to complete their package.

Amongst all the action, the main plot is revealed: the weather of the world is changing, and not for the better, with storms increasing in both number and intensity.  Skullduggery proceeds as the agents of the Intel Consortium, led by Mr. Kauffman from Dusseldorf, eliminates loose ends and brings Fleming and Andromeda to Intel’s facility based in the newly independent middle-eastern country of Azaran.

Episode three, Azaran Forecast, now has Andromeda talking to the new computer, and the plot thickens as Fleming and her are reunited with Dr. Madeleine Dawnay, the biochemist who helped create Andromeda.  The Intel Consortium want the three of them to work for them as part of a plan to feed the world. The strangeness of what is happening to the world's weather comes to the fore, and we discover that Andromeda's health is failing.  Fleming and Dawney race to develop a formula to restore Andromeda, who is deciphering the signals from the computer, to health — but can the Earth be saved from what is happening?

The fourth episode, Storm Centres, has the Intel Consortium backing a military coup in Azaran because they are evil, which we know because only an evil corporation would murder people to further its agenda.  We are also shown the world being ravaged by storms, as the weather creates chaos through starvation and droughts.  Conflicts over food become wars as governments try maintain order

Episode five, Hurricane, piles on the effects of the changing weather, and the destruction of the world as we know it.  The scientists realize that an alien enzyme released by accident, flushed down the sink by Fleming in the first series, is behind the Earth’s atmosphere becoming thinner, which is what is driving the climate change.  Intel use this to get our heroes to develop a solution, which can be marketed to make the consortium money.  However, these plans are hanging in the balance as a counter-revolution occurs that overthrows the Intel Consortium.

The final episode is called Roman Peace.  The episode title is a reference to the peace that comes after war.  The series denouement is that mankind must be free to make its own mistakes, if it wants to save itself, and not rely on the hidden message within the message from Andromeda, which turns out to be a cunning alien plan to socially engineer mankind’s survival.  I have to say that I was swept along by the story, and having to wait each week for the next episode kept me fully engaged with the plot.  However, on reflection, mostly from writing this piece in fact, I have to say it all feels a bit melodramatic.  But, still a lot of fun to watch.

Nevertheless, mustn’t grumble because there are still five more episodes of Out of this World to come, and I can say that so far, the standalone stories have been well worth viewing.  Next month I will write up my thoughts for you all to read.  Until then, keep watching the skies.




[Oct. 31, 1961] A is for Atomic (UK TV Sci-fi… and the Tsar Bomba)


By Ashley R. Pollard

A is for atomic and apocalypse, and this month also for Andromeda.  Of the three, the most entertaining is the new TV series on the BBC, called A for Andromeda, written by Frederick Hoyle and John Elliot.  Hoyle is an astronomer and noted cosmologist who also wrote the science fiction novel The Black Cloud, while Elliot is novelist, screenwriter and television producer.

Andromeda gripped me from the very first episode, called The Message, the opening sequence being an interview with Professor Reinhart, explaining the project as something that had happened in the past.  The story cuts to the professor and his research assistants, Jason Fleming and Dennis Bridger, working at the new radio telescope at Bouldershaw Fell…in 1970.  If that’s not a hook that grabs your attention then I don’t know what is.  The episode title gives the gist of the plot — alien message — and the series title tells you where the aliens are from — Andromeda.

The second episode, The Machine, builds on the message and we discover it is the plans to build a better computer, which the British government decide to do at a military base in Thorness, Scotland.  Here the plot starts to twist and turn with Dennis Bridger selling the information to a slightly sinister corporate conglomerate called Intel (a clever name; someone should put it to good use).

The third episode, The Miracle, moves the story into Hoyle's special area of interest: life from space.  You may have heard of his famous stellar nucleosynthesis paper of 1954 — Frederick Hoyle is one of the foremost scientists of his generation and a populariser of the philosopher Anaxagoras theory of panspermia, a controversial theory.  The story introduces Madeline Dawnay, a biologist, who joins the team to help with the creation of a synthetic life-form that the computer instructions have given them.  Dennis Bridger’s betrayal is discovered, and he gets his just desserts while fleeing justice…when he falls off a cliff.

In last week’s episode, The Monster, the story has moved forward to 1971, where we bear witness to the creation of a protoplasmic life form named "the cyclops."  Fleming, our hero of the series, is skeptical of the machine’s agenda and worried that it can affect the minds of those who come into close proximity to the machine.  We are left wanting more, and next week’s episode title, The Murderer, certainly leaves us something exciting to look forward to!

However, this time, reality has the jump on fiction, excitement-wise.  It comes in the shape of what the press is calling the Tsar Bomba or Kuz’kina Mat’ — Russian for "Kuzma’s mother" — a reference to Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s promise to show the United States the true might of Soviet power during the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month.

Or more simply, the mother of all bombs.

The Russians turned their premier’s statement into a demonstration of their nuclear might at 11.32 Moscow time on October the 30th by detonating a 50 megaton bomb over the Mityushika Bay the Soviet nuclear testing range.  For those of you whose geography is a little hazy, this is just north of the Arctic Circle over the Novayo Zemlya archipelago.  The shock wave from the blast is reputed to have circled the Earth four times.  Reports of seeing the explosion came from a nearly thousand kilometres away from the blast site.

The size of the explosion is almost beyond comprehension.  The only way I can get my head around it is knowing that it’s the equivalent to ten percent of all the nuclear bombs detonated to date or ten times the combined energy from all the bombs dropped during the second world war.  Such numbers are frightening and make the threat from aliens trying to take over the Earth pale into insignificance by comparison.

Perhaps it is because the threat to all life on Earth becoming extinct is an existential one, now that we live in the atomic age, that we enjoy such outrageous fare as Andromeda.  When we consider such matters, our minds are overwhelmed by prime emotions, which reduce our reasoning to that of the hominids we’re descended from.  I would argue that science fiction allows us to discuss that which is too frightening to comprehend.

So whether A is for atomic, apocalypse or Andromeda is really not the question.  Rather, our need to tell stories to understand ourselves is the way we face the end of life.