Tag Archives: Frederick Pohl

Serial

[January 8, 1966] Seems like old times (February 1966 Galaxy)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Nostalgia

Stop me if you've heard this one before ("Stop!  Stop!") but when I picked up that first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1950, I was hooked.  I had encountered SF previously, as a kid with Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne.  I'd devoured L. Frank Baum's works.  And through the 30s and 40s, I leafed through the odd issue of Astounding.  But it wasn't until I read H. L. Gold's mag that SF really seduced me.  Here were mature stories for adults going beyond the "gimmick" story.

In 1954, I became voracious, buying every mag in sight.  Some were worthy, like Fantasy and Science Fiction, Satellite, Beyond and (often) Astounding and Fantastic Universe.  Others were…less than worthy: Amazing, Infinity, Imagination, Super Science, and on and on.  But I read them all.  I was hooked.

Gold left the editorship in 1961, and the esteemed Fred Pohl took over.  The magazine has been in a bit of a holding pattern since the turn of the decade, rarely being outright bad, but rarely evoking the heights of those first few years of publication, when virtually every story was a stunner.

The latest issue is a stunning return to form. 

The Issue at Hand


by Virgil Finlay

Under Old Earth, by Cordwainer Smith

The enigmatic Mr. Smith has been a staple of Galaxy from early days, and I understand he is one of the folks Mr. Pohl regularly visits to obtain new stories.  Under Old Earth is the latest installment in the Instrumentality series, portraying a happy, fatuous humanity atop a slave class of altered beasts and robots. 

In this particular story, Sto-Odin, a dying Lord of the Instrumentality heads to the Gebiet, the vast underworld separate from the laws and enforced happiness of the surface world.  There, he expects to find the vital spark of humanity that can restore the race.  He encounters a self-styled Sun-God who has purloined a piece of the congohelion, a vast structure that regulates the output of stars, to make inhumanly powerful music.  And tending his altar is Santuna, dismayed with what the Sun-God has become, and destined for a great role in the eventual Rediscovery of Man.

As always, it is lyrical and lovely, different from anything else you'll ever read.  Four stars.


by Virgil Finlay

Courting Time, by Tom Purdom

The excellence continues with this marvelous treatment of polygamy in the mid-21st century on the eve of a great world fair: A composer in love with a woman comprising one eighth of an 8-way marriage wishes to become the next spouse in the cluster.  But he has strong competition in the form of a ruthless and irresistable playboy.  What's a lovelorn fellow to do?

Tom happens to be a friend of mine, and here are his notes on the genesis of this tale:

I got the idea several years before I wrote the story, when one of the older women in the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society told me she thought every woman needed four husbands, each one good at a different specialty–making money, romance, companionship, parenting.  I felt that would work for men, too.

Most stories about group marriage that I'd read, it seemed to me, were stories about group sex.  Courting Time is about the sociology of marriage.  It owes something to Morton Hunt's The Natural History of Love, a book about the history of Western ideas about sex and marriage.  Hunt concludes that our modern vision of marriage essentially demands that a two person relationship fulfill all the needs people once satisfied with their relationships with larger groupings like the extended family.  You're supposed to find one person who can be your business partner, sexual partner, romantic partner, parent to your children, and lifelong companion.  No single individual can do a five star job in all those roles.

I really liked the idea of the global world's fair.  The world fair in New York was going on at that time and I asked myself what a world fair might look like in the future.

I called the story "Courting".  I like one word titles.  Fred Pohl changed it to "Courting Time", querying my approval, which has more of a lilt.

Other than Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Courting Time is the only SF story dealing with polygamy I've read in recent history.  It's a very good story, though it could use a little more development with the protagonist's falling in love with each of the spouses.  Tom agrees with my four star assessment.

Read it!

For Your Information: The Wreck of La Lutine, by Willy Ley

160 years ago, the gold ship, La Lutine, was capsized in a storm off the coast of Holland.  Since then, numerous attempts of increasing sophistication have been made to recover the lost bullion, with limited success.  Ley's account of these efforts is fascinating — maybe the Journey should put together a recovery mission of its own!

Four stars.

The Echo of Wrath , by Thomas M. Disch

Little Ilisveta, an eight year old Martian, is bored with her rough frontier life and yearns for something better, something like the Earth-trotting days her grandfather Dmitri and grandmother Sally enjoyed some sixty years prior.  But such a life can never be.

Echo is a relatively unremarkable story until the end, which struck me in the gut with the force of a train.  You've done it again, Mr. Disch.

Four stars.

Where the Changed Ones Go, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

Just last issue, Robert Silverberg gave us the second in a series one might call Blue Fire, a collection of loosely related novellas set in a future where the secular scientific religion of Vorsterianism has achieved currency across the Earth. 

But not across the planets.  The aloof Martians and the arrogant Venusians will have no truck with the Vorsterians.  However, for some reason, the heretical Harmonists have managed to get a foothold on the hostile second planet from the Sun.  So Nicholas Martell, a Vorsterian minister from Earth discovers when he runs across Brother Mondschein (who we met in the last story), who warns Martell that his errand is futile.

Martell, who has undergone a massive physical alteration just to live on Venus, will not be easily deterred — especially as he seems to have found his first potential convert, a young boy with the power of telekinesis.

Silverberg's Venus might as well be a random alien world, so little resemblance does it bear to the actual Venus.  Astronomical quibbles aside, however, it's a fine story.

Four stars.

Eye of an Octopus, by Larry Niven

The first expedition to Mars finds Martians, and they're far more like (and unlike!) humans than they could have imagined.  Is the well they discover for drinking or something else?

A well-drawn little puzzle story.  We've taken to reading Niven stories, when they come out, at bedtime.  Janice appreciated the wealth of detail briefly described and gave it four stars.  Lorelei was less thrilled, giving it a solid three.

I'd split the difference if I could, but it's not a novel, so I can't.  I'd say it's a worthy three star tale.

In the Imagicon, by George H. Smith

What do you give to the man who has everything?  Why, nothing of course.  A whole lot of it. 

And vice versa.

Smith is a fellow who used to write for the lesser mags back in the 50s.  He's been AWOL pretty much since I started the Journey so, until I did some digging, I thought he was a new author rather than a veteran.

Anyway, Imagicon is a pretty obvious tale.  Not bad, just primitive by Galaxy's standards.  I wavered between two and three stars, but just as suspots are pale in comparison to their surroundings despite their great heat, so Imagicon suffers for being in the company of so many good stories.

Two stars.

Mulligan, Come Home!, by Allen Kim Lang

Okay, Imagicon does have the virtue of being next to the only dud story in the issue.  Lang's tale is about a fix-it man dispatched by the government to find the elusive trickster and malcontent Mulligan Mondrian.  Along the way, we get Mondrian's full life history, detailing his start as a two-bit con man and womanizer and onward to his culmination as a larger-than-life, interplanetary con man and womanizer.

Some cute turns of phrase, but the story collapses under the weight of its own attempted cleverness.

Two stars.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 3 of 3), by Frederik Pohl


by Wallace Wood

At last, we come to the thrilling conclusion of The Age of the Pussyfoot, the misadventures of a 20th Century man unfrozen after death in a 26th Century utopia.  When last we left Chuck Forrester, he had not only been fired by his alien employer, he had unwittingly been an accomplice to the alien's escape from Earth.  But when the Sirian left, presumably to return at the head of an invasion, he left the penniless Forrester nearly $100 million.

But profound wealth does little to assuage the guilt of the man out of time, especially when he is abandoned by all his newfound friends and his romantic partner.  Is he the lynchpin to humanity's salvation or its ruin?

A sparkling, farcical story, just serious enough to keep your attention, Pussycat reads like a Sheckley short story at novel length (Pohl succeeds here where Sheckley, himself, usually can't quite make long pieces work).

That said, it's a little too sketchy and silly to merit four stars.  Call it three and a half — worth reading, but probably not good enough to clinch a Galactic Star this year.

Summing Up

What a good issue this was!  3.4 stars is nothing to sneeze at.  In fact, it might well end up being the best mag of the month, though we still have five more titles to review.  If you're a long time Galaxy reader, enjoy this breath of fresh air.  And if you're new to Galaxy, perhaps this issue will tempt you into a subscription, just as that first issue did for me more than fifteen years ago…




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

[November 16, 1965] Crime and Punishment (January 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

6 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

Breaking The Law On Stage

An incident in the United Kingdom earlier this month caught my attention and made me think about the limitations on artistic expression. The play Saved by Edward Bond had its premiere on November 3rd at the Royal Court Theatre in London. What does this have to do with violations of the law? Well, that requires a bit of explanation, particularly for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

You see, ever since 1843, all plays produced for the public in England have to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. (Please don't ask me to explain what a Lord Chamberlain might be. That's far beyond my feeble American mind.)

The current Lord Chamberlain refused to grant a license to Saved unless it were severely censored. The folks at the Royal Court Theatre put it on anyway, trying to get around the letter of the law by calling it a private performance. From what I hear, they're going to get in trouble with the authorities anyway.


A scene from the play, in which a baby is stoned to death. You can see why this might be considered controversial.

Justice Between The Pages

Fittingly, many of the stories, and even a nonfiction article, in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow deal with criminals and crimefighters, in literal or in metaphorical ways.


Cover art by Mclane. Once again, the only thing I can find out about this artist is a last name.

Project Plowshare (Part Two of Two), by Philip K. Dick


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

It takes a while for the crime aspect of this novel to show up. Meanwhile, let's recap a bit.

In the future, the Cold War has evolved into a purely symbolic struggle. Each side has a psychic who uses drugs to perceive visions of designs for weapons. The trick is that these things are really used to manufacture odd consumer items. The ruling government, capitalist or communist, fools the public into thinking it's winning the arms race. When threatening alien spacecraft show up, the two powers bring the psychics together, hoping that they will be able to come up with a real weapon.


The invaders, who never directly appear in the story.

Things get pretty darn complicated in the second half of the novel. We find out quickly that the weapon designs perceived by the psychics come from a trashy comic book, which doesn't offer much hope for victory against the aliens. They're a serious menace, as we learn when entire cities disappear behind obscuring mists. Meanwhile, romance blooms between the two psychics, leading to a classic example of the Eternal Triangle.


Jealousy rears its green-eyed head.

Add in androids and time travel, and you've got a convoluted plot that leaves the reader dizzy. Oh, and the criminal subplot I hinted at above? That comes in the form of a nasty fellow who, for his own petty reasons, plots to assassinate members of the government who rejected him. He even kills folks who were foolish enough to join his conspiracy.


A man and his gun.

The author tosses everything but the kitchen sink into this yarn. At times, I thought he was making fun of science fiction, given the large number of mixed-up SF elements. There's definitely a touch of satire here and there, but it's not a comic novel. Some parts, in fact, are tragic. It definitely held my interest throughout, even if the climax seems to be thrown together hastily.

Four stars.

The Sleuth in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction traces the development of detective stories in the field. Starting with a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, he delves into the dusty pages of very early pulp magazines. Much of the stuff he digs up has to do with lie detection technology. This article takes the reader up to about 1930, and a sequel is promised.

Moskowitz certainly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. I can admire his scholarship, but the resulting essay makes for very dry reading.

Two stars.

Sunk Without Trace, by Fritz Leiber

The weird creatures on the cover of the magazine appear in this story. One of them has a dream about an object that landed on their world, while his more practical wife insists that he get back to processing the seaweed that serves as their food. It's clear from the start that the thing is a spacecraft from Earth — the editor's blurb gives it away, too — but the rest of the plot may be a bit more surprising.

There's not much to this work other than the premise and the setting, but those are intriguing enough to make it worth a look. Of course, Leiber is incapable of writing a bad sentence, so the style adds a lot. Overall, it's a decent effort from an author who often does much better.

Three stars.

At Journey's End, by J. T. McIntosh


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

We jump right into a confrontation between criminals and law enforcement, in a particularly crude form, near the beginning of this story of a starship on its way to a new home for humanity.

After decades of travel, it seems that tensions among the crew have reached the boiling point. A couple of murders result, and the captain acts as judge, jury, and executioner, killing those guilty on the spot. Without giving too much away, let's just say that justice is truly blind here, playing no favorites at all.

After this grim opening, we watch the ship approach the planet. They have a big surprise waiting for them when they arrive. It all leads up to a darkly ironic ending.


Our three protagonists, awaiting their fate.

At first glance, I thought the first part didn't have much to do with the resolution. After musing over it for a while, however, I realize that the author intended the two scenes to provide a sort of thematic contrast. Some of what happens may be predictable. Taken as a whole, this is a serviceable, if undistinguished, story.

Three stars.

Stars, Won't You Hide Me?, by Ben Bova

In this case, the criminal is the human race as a whole, and the punishment comes from aliens determined to wipe out the entire species. When the story begins, in fact, there is only one human being left alive, alone in his automated spaceship, wandering through the cosmos in an attempt to escape judgment.

During his eons-long journey, which leads him across gigantic distances in space, he learns of humanity's crime and discovers what became of Earth. The climax leads to a final scene of almost unimaginable immensity.

The most notable thing about this story is the vastness of the author's vision. I don't think I've read anything that covers such enormous amounts of time, except maybe the works of Olaf Stapledon. In addition to that, there's a great deal of emotional appeal. If you think Bova is just a decent science writer, you may be surprised.

Five stars.

How To Understand Aliens, by Robert M. W. Dixon

Let's get away from criminology for a while and talk about linguistics. The author imagines the difficulty of communicating with the inhabitants of other worlds. As examples, he creates beings who spend most of their time burrowing underground, as well as aliens who fly. The point seems to be that culture has an important effect on language, and it's not just a matter of translating things word-for-word.

Dixon seems to know his stuff, as evidenced by his discussion of human languages unfamiliar to most speakers of English. The fictional aliens make the article more readable than just a dry discussion of the topic.

Three stars.

Buggaratz, by John Jakes

The military has its own system of justice, dealing with such crimes as lack of discipline. That's a problem for the commander of a small outfit on another planet. The only function of the unit is to produce inflatable uniforms as toys. Given this dull and trivial chore, it's not a shock to find out that things have gotten awfully lax around the place.

A visit from an inspecting officer threatens to expose how badly the situation has gotten out of hand. The presence of the habit-forming substance named in the title doesn't help matters.

This is a pretty silly comedy, with maybe a trace of satire directed at military thinking. It's an inoffensive bit of fluff, unlikely to make much of an impression on you.

Two stars.

Riverworld, by Philip Jose Farmer


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

As you may recall, one year ago the magazine offered Farmer's novella Day of the Great Shout, wherein everybody who ever lived on Earth was resurrected on a planet dominated by one huge river. This new tale takes place in the same setting.

The hero is cowboy movie star Tom Mix. Along with a woman who lived during the time of Moses, and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, he sails down the river, escaping a brutal religious dictatorship. The trio join forces with some friendly folks from the Renaissance, and war breaks out with the bad guys.


A battle along the river.

There's lots of violent action, to be sure, but that's not really the most important part of the story. The author deals with religion in ways that may seem blasphemous to many readers.

The identity of the fellow traveling with Tom Mix is clear from the start, but I won't reveal it here. Suffice to say that this is likely to be the most controversial part of the story. The fact that the two men look almost exactly alike raises a lot of questions in my mind, which seem likely to remain unanswered.

Farmer has his hands on a strong premise here, with lots of possibilities. (Another story in the series is promised for the next issue.) I'll definitely keep reading to find out who else I'll run into along the river.

Four stars.

The Verdict

In the case of The People v. FP et al., the court dismisses all charges against PKD and PJF, with special commendation for BB. The other defendants are released with a warning to avoid tedium in the future, an admonition particularly directed at SM and JJ. The court further directs FP, leader of the accused, to retain the services of a good lawyer, in case of further charges in the future.


I don't think this guy ever lost a case.




6 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Conventions/Performances

[October 8, 1964] Through Time and Space (November 1964 IF)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

In the presence of greatness

This weekend, I attended a small gathering of SF fans in San Diego.  I'd been invited to give a talk on the first season of Doctor Who, a new science fiction show currently playing across the Atlantic in the UK.  While I've never actually seen any episodes (it doesn't air here, of course), thanks to the wonderful summaries of Jessica Holmes, and various promotional pictures and script transcripts I obtained, I was able to do a reasonable job of summarizing the Doctor's first year of adventures.

It appeared I wasn't the only one at this gathering who was familiar with Doctor Who — some enterprising fan had mocked up a full-size Dalek, one of the aliens featured on the show.  It even had a little engine in it!  Either that or the rope used to pull it along the floor was well-camouflaged…

What I absolutely did not expect was a surprise appearance from none other than Verity Lambert, herself — she is the youngest and only woman producer for the BBC, and she runs the production of Doctor Who. 

Does her presence in the States mean that her show will debut soon on American airwaves?  Stranger things have happened — after all, Danger Man (Secret Agent) made the jump in 1961, not to mention Supercar and Fireball XL5.

Fingers crossed!

The Issue at Hand

In the quiet spaces of the day, I pulled out my copy of the latest issue of IF, which clearly was supposed to have an October cover date, but thanks to problems with the printer, went out with one for November.  While this latest edition didn't have moments quite as stunning as those that transpired at the fan gathering, it was still worthy entertainment.


by Ed Emshwiller

The Hounds of Hell (Part 1 of 2), by Keith Laumer

We start on the baked desert city of Tamboula in the Free Republic of Algeria.  It is the early 21st Century, and this Mahgreb city is a latter-day Casablanca where intrigue abounds by night, and by day, warring Moroccans and Algerians drink together in an intoxicated armistice.  Enter Brigadier John Bravais, a secret agent posing as a journalist, sent to get the inside story on the North African conflict.  At first, the story reads like an Earth-bound Retief tale, with a smart-allecky agent quipping his way out of the hearts of the local authorities.

But in the middle of a battle-torn wasteland, John encounters something most horrifying — a wolf-headed, human-handed alien, fearsome and supremely powerful, appears and kills an Algerian officer with his mind, proceeding to surgically remove and store his brain. 


by Ed Emshwiller

The Brigadier is able to kill the alien, but when he returns to Tamboula to alert the authorities, he finds that the aliens are everywhere, in human guise, and with (apparently) android servants.  Now Bravais must make it back to the United States before he is captured…but who will he find when he gets there?

Keith Laumer is a facile action writer, and once he settles in, this piece is engaging.  The problem is, Bravais is a virtual cipher — his background, his personality, his motivations.  The setting is a mere thumbnail (unlike, say, the future Africa of Mack Reynolds).  And Laumer struggles with the bugaboo all writers (including me!) face when writing the first person viewpoint: excessive use of sentences starting with "I".

It may well be that this is a chopped down version, and when this two part serial be novelized, we'll get some expansion.  As is, Hounds is a decent adventure but will not be one of Laumer's enduring classics.

Three stars.

The Perfect People, by Simon Tully

Thirty years to finish a doctoral thesis?  It's possible, especially when the alien race you're studying remains stubbornly enigmatic.  The "symetroids" spend their day strolling and eating, making perfect circuits of their sea-side area over the course of several months.  They don't converse or use tools, yet their investigator is certain their is a pattern to their movements, a code to their sentience that he just needs a little more time to crack.  Sometimes perfection is perfectly impenetrable. 

Sadly, while this tale by neophyte Tully shows promise, its end does not pay off the beginning.

A high two stars.

The Ultimate Racer, by Gary Wright


by Ed Emshwiller

Newcomer Gary Wright's first work appeared in IF nearly two years ago.  Captain of the Kali was an interesting tale of naval combat on an alien world.  Wright's second work is more down to Earth, literally. 

In Racer, it is the 1990s, and auto racing has become truly "auto" — due to the lethality of the sport, humans have been banned from the driver seat, and cars are remote controlled or self-driving.  Among the sleek IBM-GMs and Volgas and Lotuses, one aging duo insists on racing their vintage 1980 Ferrarri.  But on the eve of the big race, one of the car's solenoids goes kaput, making telemetered driving impossible.

If you've read the classic Matheson story, Steel, then you'll recognize where this is going.  It gets there vividly and with great affection for the sport, but it also takes too a bit too long to reach the finish line.

Three stars.

The Diogenes Planet, by L. J. Stecher, Jr

How can a space merchant captain make a living if he's compelled to be 100% honest?  It all hinges on what truths he decides to tell…

If this shaggy dog tale is not one for the ages, there is certainly nothing unpleasant about it.  A good three stars.

Assassin & Son, by Thomas M. Disch

There's been much discussion here about how newcomer Tom Disch ranges from superb to, well, disappointingly less superb than he can be.  Rest easy — this is one of the good ones.

Around the far sun of Sepharad lies a hot world inhabited by the blob-like and telepathic Sephradim.  These seven-gendered aliens possess a particular racial quirk: when one is murdered, the killer augments their own powers with that of the victim.  For this reason, murder is specifically and rigorously outlawed.

By other Sephradim.

And so, a busy import business of human assassins has built up.  Highly esteemed and ritualized, the assassin tradition is a proud one, passed on from father to son.  But what role can a second-born have in such a system?  It's all a matter of opportunity.

Disch spins a beautiful tapestry here, creating truly alien extraterrestrials, and defining a unique culture that is as compelling as that of Frank Herbert's Dune World, developed with far fewer words.  My only complaint is that the novelette reads like the first few chapters of a book.  While being left wanting is usually a good sign, there is far too much left to be said!

Four stars…and fervent hopes for expansion.

Father of the Stars, by Frederik Pohl


by Ed Emshwiller

So far as I know, Fred Pohl is the only editor who contributes significant amounts of his own material to his magazines.  Far from being a self-aggrandizing enterprise, the issues in which his stuff appears are generally the better for it.

This concluding novelette features the last days of the man who gave humanity the stars, spending his fortune and life to fund 26 slower-than-light generation ships, only to see the development of FTL drives before any of the slowboats make planetfall.  What place can this superseded man have in history?

While Pohl never turns in a bad piece, there's not a great deal to this story.  This is a shame because the premise is fantastic, and I'd love to see a novel that expands on this theme.  Imagine generations of humans living and dying in their tiny mobile world, and once they reach their destination, it's already fully inhabited.  I know there have been stories that touch on the subject, but I don't think any have made it the central premise.

Add to that the superfluous bits about spacers grafting their consciousnesses to chimpanzees while their bodies remain in suspended animation, and the piece feels both undeveloped and misfocused.

But not bad.  Three stars.

Things to Come

Between meeting Ms. Lambert and exploring the wealth of worlds offered in this month's IF, October has started with a bang.  I can't wait to see what wonders the coming weeks have to offer!

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




6 Comments Leave A Comment