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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[February 4, 1965] Space Prison of Opera (February Galactoscope #1)

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Please enjoy this duet of stories by a pair of veterans (both the authors and the reviewers!)


by Cora Buhlert

The Escape Orbit by James White

The Escape Orbit by James White

When I spotted The Escape Orbit by James White in the spinner rack at my local import store, what first attracted me was the cover, showing two humans fighting a tusked and tentacled monstrosity. But what made me pick up the book was the tagline "Marooned on a Prison Planet". Because stories about space prisons are like catnip to me.

Though the space prison in The Escape Orbit is rather unconventional, housing human prisoners-of-war in the sixty-one year war with an alien race called "Bugs", because nobody can pronounce their real name.

At the beginning of the novel, the surviving officers of the battlecruiser Victorious ("erroneously named," the narrator Warren muses) are taken prisoner and dumped on what they assume is an uninhabited world. They are proven wrong, when one Lieutenant Kelso appears. Kelso informs the newcomers that the Bugs have dropped off half a million human prisoners-of-war on the planet with only scant supplies. Escape is supposed to be impossible. If the humans manage to flee anyway, there is a guardship in orbit. Kelso also insists that the newcomers are in danger.

It turns out that the human prisoners on the planet are divided into two groups. The Escape Committee, led by Kelso, who focus all their efforts on escaping, and the Civilians, led by one Fleet Commander Peters, who have resigned themselves to their fate and set up villages. The Civilians and the Committee are hostile towards each other and on the verge of fighting. The newcomers are expected to side with one group. But before making a decision, Warren wants to listen to both sides. And since he was Sector Marshall before he was captured, that makes him the highest ranking officer on the planet.

Warren and psychologist Ruth Fielding realise that the situation on the prison planet is volatile. The Committee is losing members, so those who remain become ever more fanatical. Ruth points out that the Committee are chauvinists, because most female prisoners join the Civilians and then seduce Committee members. Warren fears that as the Committee becomes more fanatical, they may try to take over the planet and cause a civil war. To prevent this, Warren decides to use his position to keep things calm. He joins the Escape Committee as a counterweight to Fleet Commander Peters and the Civilians.

The Great Escape… in Space

Warren takes over the Committee, learns about the escape plan and schedules the escape for three years in the future. He starts a good will initiative towards the Civilians to persuade them to help. Warren also tries to squash the not so latent male-centered prejudice among the Committee and appoints Ruth Fielding to his staff.

Warren may be no chauvinist, but he doesn't know much about women and people in general. And so he is surprised that the Civilians are forming families and having children. At this point, one suspects Warren needs a crash course in human biology. Furthermore, Warren also manages to bungle the chance at a relationship with Ruth Fielding – twice.

Once Warren succeeds in winning many Civilians over, the bulk of the novel focusses on the preparations for the escape. However, Warren also furthers the progress of technology, improves the communication network as well as the distribution and preservation of knowledge and even organises the colonisation of another continent.

As the escape draws closer, tensions erupt both between Civilians and Committee members as well as within the Committee itself. Things come to a head when a new group of prisoners arrives a few days before the escape. Hubbard, one of the new prisoners, reports that the war is over, because humans and Bugs have managed to battle each other to a standstill and both civilisations are falling apart. Even if the escape succeeds, it will be futile, because there is no military to return to.

Warren imprisons Hubbard and goes ahead with the escape anyway. The attempt succeeds and Committee commandos manage to hijack both the enemy shuttle and the guardship. The surviving Bugs are taken prisoner and sent to the planet, while their ship is crewed by the most loyal Committee members.

Warren returns to the planet once more to explain his true plan. For he had realised even before the arrival of Hubbard that the human military would collapse and that there was little hope of rescue. Warren also realised the prison planet was on the verge of civil war and would regress to savagery within a few generations.

By giving everybody a shared purpose, Warren managed to smooth over the tensions, preserve knowledge and create a stable society. Furthermore, he also used the escape to separate potentially violent Committee members from the general population. Warren announces that he will take off with the Committee members deemed unsuited to peaceful life and leave the rest of the former prisoners behind to rebuild civilisation. He also admonishes them to communicate and cooperate with the Bug prisoners, so future wars can be avoided.

I'm usually pretty good at gauging where novels are headed, but The Escape Orbit surprised me. Initially, the book seemed like a science fiction version of the WWII prisoner-of-war escape tales that have proliferated in both the German and English speaking world in recent years. The best known English language example is The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill from 1950, which was turned into a Hollywood movie two years ago. Meanwhile, in West Germany there is a flood of POW novels such as So weit die Füße tragen (As far as the feet will go, 1955) by J.M. Bauer or Der Arzt von Stalingrad (The Doctor of Stalingrad, 1956) by Heinz G. Konsalik, who specialises in such tales and also penned Strafbataillon 999 (Penal battalion 999, 1959), where the twist is that prisoners and guards are nominally on the same side. All of these novels were huge bestsellers and turned into successful movies and TV series.

Not actually Sector Marshall Warren and Major Ruth Fielding, but O.E. Hasse and Eva Bartok in the 1959 film adaption of Heinz G. Konsalik's bestselling novel "The Doctor of Stalingrad"

In The Great Escape and the various West German novels, escaping from the terrible conditions of a POW camp is a matter of survival. However, the conditions on the prison planet in The Escape Orbit are far from terrible. And so I quickly sided with the Civilians and wondered why Warren and the Committee were so eager to escape, when they were better off on the planet than wasting their lives in what was clearly a pointless war. For a time, I even had the sinking feeling that I had accidentally purchased a military science fiction novel akin to Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 Starship Troopers, which I disliked immensely, once I realised I was not in fact reading about a dystopia, but about a society the author considered admirable.

But White tricked me, for Warren was on the side of the Civilians all along and the escape plan was a way to occupy the Committee fanatics and keep them from interfering with the establishment of a peaceful society. Of course, military (science) fiction can be both pro- and anti-war. The Escape Orbit comes down firmly on the anti-war side. I was surprised to see a high ranking officer like Warren portrayed sympathetically, because in West German postwar literature and film, any officer with a rank higher than captain is usually portrayed as a blustering idiot or bloodthirsty warmonger, probably inspired by real world experiences with both types during WWII.

I knew nothing about James White before picking up this novel. Turns out White is a long-time science fiction fan and author best known for his Sector General stories about a hospital space station. White hails from Belfast (Andersontown, the city in the novel, is named after the suburb where he lives) in Northern Ireland, where religious tensions run high. Thus, White knows how easily hostilities between opposing groups can escalate into violence.

The Escape Orbit is not quite as brand-new as I assumed, since the novel was serialised, almost identically, as Open Prison (a more appropriate title in my opinion) in New Worlds last year, reviewed by our own Mark Yon.

The Escape Orbit is very much an anti-Analog novel, where humans are not superior to the aliens, where war is pointless and cooperation, both between humans and aliens and opposing groups of humans, is preferable to fighting. This is certainly a message for our times, as the spectre of war raises its ugly face again in South East Asia.

Four stars

Space Opera by Jack Vance


By Rosemary Benton

Jack Vance is a gifted writer who has received a lot of attention in the last year. He has rightfully been awarded praise for his world building in Ace Double F-265 and "The Star King", but thus far has proven to be somewhat inconsistent in the pacing of his stories. This is not to say that he hasn't been rapidly improving his writing. At times his storytelling has been spot on, such as in "The Kragen".

Thankfully, with "Space Opera" he does not fall short in either department. The pacing and world building are both excellent, but with Vance's latest release there still remain issues that prevent his works from rising beyond "entertaining", or even "ambitious". He has yet to become "timeless", but by God does he come close sometimes.

"Space Opera" is Vance's newest novel. In it he tells the story of humanity's pride, and how fragile it is. In the far future, Earth's high society is still very much preoccupied with its perceived perfection of music as an art form and humanity's generally superior understanding of music as a universal concept. Dame Isabel, a patron of the operatic arts, takes it upon herself to honor a promise made to a troupe of visiting musicians from the elusive planet Rlaru. As they sent a troupe to visit Earth, so will she bring some of Earth's finest music to their planet. In preparation for this she gathers an exclusive selection of singers and musicians, she brings the world's foremost musicologist aboard the good ship Phoebus, and sets off to Rlaru with missionary zeal. On the way they will of course stop to educate other alien races on the magnificence of Earth's musical accomplishments. The success of the undertaking is… complicated.

What Makes Something High Art?

Our cast of protagonists begin their journey with a very well defined and well researched mindset. The first few chapters of "Space Opera" are lousy with musical terms, phrases and theories that are absolutely esoteric for general audiences. Intentionally, Vance is setting up a practically aristocratic 19th century approach to how culture should be defined: if a culture's art is too accessible, then it's not sophisticated. If it's not sophisticated, then it's inferior.

Exclusivity is a prime ingredient to make a culture great in their eyes. Exclusivity of musical theory, exclusivity of musical venues, exclusivity of the language of music (in this case favoritism of German and French language operas on Dame Isabel's expedition), everything about an advanced musical sensibility in a culture should speak to exclusivity. Which of course also translates to the most desirable audience being comprised solely of wealthy patrons. The favored company of Dame Isabel is academic specialists, and the audiences she most voraciously seeks at each stop along her tour are the alien societies' elite.

The best parts of Vance's story are when these very human expectations are subverted. On Sirius the company is unable to make sufficient adjustments for the cultural norms of the native population and the performance fails spectacularly. On Zade they are vetted by a native music critic who mirror's Earth's own narrow minded music specialists. He judges the performance of Dame Isabel's troupe by applying his own culture's standards against Earth's operas, and finding them deficient dismisses them and then asks for monetary compensation for his time. On Skylark the troupe finds that just because the people planet-side express appreciation for operatic craft does not mean that such appreciation is meant truthfully – it turns out that their attempts to keep Dame Isabel's people on for more performances is just so that the convict population can begin switching out the crew's musicians for physically altered convicts with comparable musical proficiency.

Music's Greatest Power

The emotional resonances of music are the pinnacle of Vance's exploration of music's power. On Yan, Earth's operas are interpreted to represent that which has been lost by the planet's people. The response is one of violence from the spectral remnants of the native population. On fabled Rlaru, Earth's operas are too dry for the natives to become interested in. Their culture already achieved the highest levels of artistic perfection, so seeing another people's comparatively primitive attempt at high art is boring and uninspired. However, a passionate performance held in back of the ship by a ragtag, informal group of the performers draws a massive, appreciative crowd.

"Space Opera" is a novel of massive potential, but Vance tries to compress the issue of human beings' cultural superiority complex in too short a time. The setup is exceptional. We know exactly where Dame Isabel, Roger Wool, and Bernard Bickel are coming from in terms of background, personality, and motivation. They go through a harrowing ordeal in the process of reaching Rlaru, and their time on Rlaru is extremely memorable. The fall of the plot is that there is not sufficient time given for the characters to reflect on their experiences. Because of this "Space Opera" ultimately falls short on its final satirical delivery.

Dame Isabel, the character whom I would argue is the central protagonist of the story, concludes her expedition to spread Earth's "highest" cultural medium by returning to Earth and holding a brief press conference reflecting on her and the crew's experiences. She starts the story as an elitist and remains one by the end of the novella. Roger Wool, her bumbling nephew, returns to Earth with his on-again, off-again fiance Madoc Roswyn, and some vague promise of a forthcoming book about the Phoebus' adventure. He begins as the naive, clueless, kept relative of Dame Isabel, and concludes the story as such.

The one character who has the largest arc was Bernard Bickel, Earth's premier musicologist. Despite being relegated to the role of a world building tool and Dame Isabel's consultant, his dialogue in the last few pages at least hints at growth. At the press conference mentioned earlier he comments in a round about way that the expedition gave him an appreciation for the varied reactions Earth's music got on the different planets they visited. But the story's detachment to his experiences relegates any development of his character, and more importantly what he represents, to the background.

At the best he seems like an anthropologist accompanying an invading fleet. Along the way he watches the Earth musical missionaries meet disaster after disaster on their blind quest to prove humanity's superior grasp of music. At worst he could be seen as a character who should have been the primary protagonist, but was swept under the ornate, oriental rug of Dame Isabel's sponsorship and her nephew's charming fumbling.

The Curtain Call

"Space Opera"'s concept would make a great full length novel. But as nearly a novella, it's just doesn't go deep enough. I thoroughly believe that Vance has something really special here, but unless he expands the story in the future it's a piece that will fade into the background of science fiction in time. Perhaps Vance will come to see "Space Opera" as a practice piece for writing satire, but as it stands right now it's merely a three star story.




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 4, 1965] Madness: 2, Sanity: 1 (January Galactoscope)

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[January's edition of the Galactoscope offers three novels in two books.  Be warned — there's madness afoot!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Now that you've got the Doublemint Gum jingle running through your head, allow me to explain my reason for annoying you. The Ace Double Series has been going for more than a decade, offering two novels in one. Two short novels, to be sure; some are really novellas. Others are short story collections, as we'll see in today's review. The pair of mini-books are bound in what the printing industry calls dos-a-dos. (Sounds like a square dancing term to me.) That is, each half of the volume is upside down, compared to the other half. Sometimes both parts are by the same writer, sometimes not.

Let's take a look at Ace Double M-109, featuring G. C. Edmondson's first novel, as well as several briefer pieces from the same pen.

Mister Edmondson or Señor Edmondson y Cotton?

I can come up with no better way to introduce the author than by allowing him to speak for himself, in the blurb that comes with the book in question.

I don't know how seriously to take all of that, but it certainly makes for interesting reading. I hope the novel (yes, I'll get around to it eventually) proves to be at least as fascinating.

Appetizers Before the Main Course


Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Stranger Than You Think is a collection of all the Mad Friend stories that have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to date. Because our Noble Host has already reviewed these tales, I won't go into detail.

Suffice to say that they all feature the narrator and his Mad Friend in rural Mexico, and deal with time travel, alien probes, reincarnation, and such things. The tone is very light, and the stories are about ten percent plot and ninety percent local color. They remind me, a bit, of R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson. In general, the series is inoffensive but forgettable.

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream


Also by Gaughan

I told you I'd get around to it.

Our hero is Ensign Joseph Rate, commander of the good ship Alice, a unique vessel in the United States Navy of the modern era. You see, Alice is a wooden sailing ship, although she also has a diesel engine for emergency use. The idea is that she can engage in countermeasures against enemy submarines without making sounds that would reveal her position.

At the moment, Alice is engaged in testing new equipment, requiring the presence of an elderly meteorologist and his young assistant. Unknown to his motley crew, Rate is also supposed to investigate criminal activities aboard her.

All of this fades into insignificance, when lighting strikes Alice at the same time the ship's cook is messing around with a new way to distill illicit booze. (Believe it or not, this plays an important part in the plot.)

Full Speed Backwards

If you've read the title of the novel, it won't come as a big surprise to discover that Alice gets zapped back in time a millennium or so, as well as leaving the warm ocean area near San Diego for colder waters, somewhere between Ireland and Iceland. A battle with a Viking raider ensues, followed by a slightly less violent meeting with a merchant ship. Among the cargo she's carrying is a Spanish Gypsy, enslaved by the Norsemen. She winds up aboard Alice, and serves as the novel's main source of sex appeal. Besides that, she's also clever and a tough cookie, so I'll give the author some credit for that.

Here We Go Again

Skipping over most of the first half of the novel, we reach a point where Rate tries to duplicate the circumstances that led to this situation. This doesn't work out very well, because Alice doesn't return to her home, but instead jumps back another thousand years, and winds up somewhere in the Mediterranean.

After encountering Arab slave traders who temporarily take control of Alice, the time travelers eventually wind up on a rocky island, populated by goats and several naked young women, who are more than willing to supply the crew with plenty of wine and other carnal pleasures. There's an explanation for what seems like a sailor's fantasy, which involves another inadvertent visitor from the future, this time the madame of a brothel/speakeasy in 1920's Chicago.

A lot more happens before we reach the end of the novel, including battles with Roman warships and the misadventures of the only religious fanatic aboard Alice, a male virgin who finds himself in intimate situations with more than one alluring lady.

Worth the Voyage?

Although it's impossible to take the novel's version of time travel seriously, the plot doesn't stop for a second, always keeping the reader's interest. As you may have guessed, there's quite a bit of sexual content, which tends to be more teasing than explicit. There's also a lot of violence, given the constant attacks on Alice by just about every vessel that meets her.

The tone of the book ranges from darkly comic to intensely dramatic, with a bit of satire in the form of the religious fanatic. This character may raise some eyebrows among readers of faith, although his version of Christianity is clearly of the extremist variety. The ending raises the possibility of a sequel, but whether such a book will ever appear is up to the tides of time.

Three stars.

A Little Mental Illness for the New Year (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick)


by Jason Sacks

This is the fourth Philip K. Dick novel released in the last several months, and I’ve read them all. Clearly science fiction’s most surrealistic writer is in the midst of an unusually fecund period, one in which his astounding fiction seems channeled directly from the writer’s brain onto the printed page. And while that unfiltered creativity makes for fascinating reading, Dick’s latest fiction shows him to be wrestling with some intense personal issues, including dislocation and mental health concerns.

Those recent works (The Penultimate Truth, The Clans of the Alphane Moon, Martian Time-Slip and his most recently published novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich) share a lot in common with each other. All three books demonstrate a mind in constant motion, continually distracted and probing, with ideas seeming to spark from every page in a cascade which starts out as thrilling, becomes tiring, and ultimately proves to be overwhelming. Ideas, interesting and odd, bonkers and basic, philosophical and dully grounded, seem to flow from Mr. Dick as freely as the sweat which constantly seems to be on the foreheads of each and every one of his neurotic protagonists.

Eldrich starts from a template similar to his Dick’s other novels. Most Dick novels feature a neurotic protagonist, and this book is no exception. This time he is named Barney Mayerson and he is a wealthy man in a low-numbered conapt building (a major sign of status) with a great job as the New York Pre-Fash consultant at influential company P.P. Layouts. But Mayerson has problems – oh nellie does he have problems. As the book begins, the businessman wakes up with a hangover, a strange woman in his bed and, most frightening of all, a draft notice which will cause the UN to send him to Mars. That sounds like the beginning of a film noir, but as we follow Mayerson, he slips into a different sort of darkness than the doomed protagonists of our darkest films.

To help him escape the draft, Barney has purchased a robot named Dr. Smile, intended to help Mayerson avoid the draft by making him even more neurotic than he seems. But even the robot isn’t perfect; it calls him by the wrong name and doesn’t seem to pay close attention to Barney, adding to the seemingly endless list of degrading events Barney experiences in the first few pages — and far from the final humiliation he experiences in the book.

Like so many lead characters in recent Dick novels – poor doomed Norbert Steiner in Time-Slip and lovelorn, oblivious Chuck Rittersdorf in Alphane pop immediately to mind – Barney Mayerson is a confused man. He is neurotic, uncertain, perhaps mentally ill. He has tremendous problems relating to the women most important to him, especially his wife. He even gives up all hope of avoiding the draft and instead volunteers to go to Mars, simply to get away from a source of tangled neurotic pain. It is tough to spend time with Steiner, Rittersdorf or Mayerson, because they are so uncertain of themselves despite their apparent success. These are so conscious of their own flaws, their own massive insecurities, that we can understand why these feel rejected by the worlds which surround them. As readers, we want to reject them as well, want to follow characters with some measure of self-assurance, like Trade Minister Tagomi in Dick’s 1963 masterpiece The Man in the High Castle.

Taken one at a time, each of the recent Dick books provide an intriguing portrait of men whose own demons sabotage their own best aspirations. Seen together as a collection of books, it’s hard not to see some authorial autobiography flowing through these characters. After all, if Mr. Dick is writing his books so quickly, how can he avoid writing himself into his stories?

If we take that assertion as fact as part of my essay (and I would be delighted to hear counterarguments in the letters page), then Palmer Eldrich is the most frightening of all Dick’s novels so far. Because at its heart, and in the great thrust of its cataclysmic conclusion, is a break with peaceful reality that actually makes me worry about the author.

Without going too deep into the reasons why – part of the joy of this fascinating book lies in the ways Dick explores his shambolic but complex plot – Barney ends up on Mars and discovers that nearly all the Martian colonists are miserable and drug-addled. Their experience on Mars is so wretched and soul-crushing that only psychedelic drugs, shared among groups of colonists, provide a brief break from their mind-numbing lives.

Barney is responsible for helping a new drug to come to Mars, cleverly called Chew-Z, which promises better highs and more transcendent experiences. But as readers soon discover, the new drug also creates a schizophrenic experience, one in which the terrifying Palmer Eldrich comes to dominate Martian society – and much more – in a way that terrifies everyone who considers it. Eldrich is a terrifying creature, with steel teeth, a damaged arm, and an approach to the world which builds misery.

In truth, Barney Mayerson has unleashed a demon, and it’s not spoiling much in this book to say that by the end you will feel the same fear Barney and the rest of society begin to feel.

Eldrich, thus, is a deeply unsettling book, and fits Dick’s recent output in a way which makes me feel concerned for the author. It is the third out of the four recent novels to deal explicitly with mental illness (in fact, mental illness provides the central storyline of Alphane and a key secondary storyline in Martian Time-Slip). It’s intriguing that Dick sees in science fiction the opportunity to put the readers in the mindset of a man experiencing a schizophrenic break, a psychotic episode, or battling debilitating depression, but the continual presence of such ideas suggests a man whose life is also battling similar breaks.

If Mr. Dick is obsessed with mental illness, does he see that illness in himself when he looks in the mirror? And if we readers purchase Mr. Dick’s books in which mental illness takes a central role, are we aiding his therapy or abetting his continual wallowing?

Palmer Eldrich is not an easy book to read, not once it gets going and we start to realize the depths of Meyerson’s, and Dick’s problems. The plot ambles and wanders and is dense with philosophy and allusion. For a 200-page book, this is no quick Tarzan or Conan yarn. Instead, it is a deeply upsetting, deeply complex look into the disturbed psychology of both its lead character and its author. After consuming so many Dick novels all in succession, I’m craving something much lighter. Neuroses are exhausting.

4 stars




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 11, 1964] December Galactoscope

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by Cora Buhlert

The season of giving is upon us. For women, perfumes like the classic scent Tosca are the most popular gifts, while men tend to find ties, socks and underwear under the tree.

Tosca ad

Personally, I think that books are the best gifts. And so I gave myself Margaret St. Clair's latest, when I spotted it in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore, since I enjoyed last year's Sign of the Labrys a lot. Even better, this book is an Ace Double, which means I get two new tales for the price of one. Or rather, I get six, because one half is a collection of five short stories.

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair (Ace Double M-105)

Message from the Eocene by Margaret St. Clair

An alien in trouble

The first half is a brand-new science fiction novel called Message from the Eocene. The protagonist, a being named Tharg, is tasked with transporting a cosmic guidebook across hostile territory. The reader learns in the first paragraph that Tharg is not human, because he has a triple heartbeat. Tharg lives on Earth, but the Earth of billions of years ago (long before the Eocene, so the title is a misnomer), a world of volcanos and methane snow, devoid of oxygen. Tharg "breathes" via microorganisms inside his body that break down metallic oxides to oxygenate his blood and has extrasensory perception.

Tharg is in trouble, for a mysterious enemy is trying to thwart his mission. This enemy turns out to be the Vaeaa, a legendary alien race, who are believed to have deposited Tharg's people on Earth in the first place.

Tharg is taken is taken prisoner, but not before he manages to hide the book inside a volcano (it has a protective casing). Under interrogation, Tharg has an out-of-body experience. As a result, his consciousness remains, when his body dies during an escape attempt, to witness the extinction of both his people and the Vaeaa, though the Vaeaa manage to set up a projector on Pluto to keep out further cosmic guidebooks first.

Over billions of years, Tharg's spirit observes life arise and evolve on Earth. Tharg realises that the book might help with his condition, but he has no way to retrieve it. So Tharg decides to ask the Earth's new inhabitants for help. But how to make himself known, considering that Tharg is a bodyless spirit being and never was human in the first place?

Misadventures and miscommunications

Margaret St. Clair
Margaret St. Clair

The rest of the novel chronicles Tharg's attempts to communicate. Tharg's first attempt targets the Proctors, a Quaker family in 19th century England. This goes disastrously wrong, because not only do the Proctors come to believe that their house is haunted – no, Tharg also gets trapped in the house. Taken on its own, the Proctor segment feels like a Victorian ghost story, except that the ghost is a desperate disembodied alien. The insights into the lives of 19th century Quakers are fascinating, but then Margaret St. Clair is a member of the Society of Friends.

Tharg's next attempt targets Denise, who lives with her husband Pierre in a French colony in the South Pacific. Denise has extrasensory perception, making her the ideal subject. But once again Tharg only succeeds in giving Denise nightmares and causing hauntings in the mine Pierre oversees. Worse, the superstitious miners blame Denise for the hauntings. They kidnap the couple and give Denise hallucinogenic herbs to increase her abilities. Now Denise is able to communicate with Tharg long enough to realise that he wants them to recover the book.

So Pierre uses his mining job to blast a hole into a mountain at the very spot where Denise insists the book is hidden. After some trouble with Vietnamese workers – an incident St. Clair uses to explain that oppression during colonial times has left the Vietnamese angry and frustrated, which leads to violence, a lesson that is highly relevant to the situation in Vietnam today – Denise and Pierre manage to retrieve the book. Alas, once they open the protective casing, the book bursts into flame and is destroyed.

Tharg now sets his sights on the projector the Vaeaa installed on Pluto to keep future cosmic guidebooks away from Earth. For if another book were to arrive, Tharg might finally be able to escape his condition.

Sacrifices and success

There is another time jump to 1974, when strange things happen. An experiment detects a purely theoretical particle, a sea captain sees a mermaid, Canadians dance under the Northern lights and a Tibetan monk has a vision. Tharg views these events as signs that another guidebook is on the way. But due to the  projector on Pluto, it will never reach Earth.

In order to shut down the projector long enough to let the book through, Tharg has to dissolve himself in the collective consciousness of humanity, which will also mean his annihilation. So Tharg sacrifices himself and the book is picked up by an expedition to Venus. The novel ends with Tharg waking on the astral plane in a replica of his original body, just as the US-Soviet crew of the spaceship to Venus is about to open the book.

This is a strange and disjointed, but fascinating novel. Though Tharg is one of the rare truly alien aliens of science fiction, he is nonetheless a likeable protagonist and the reader sympathises with his plight. Tharg is also an unlikely messiah, sacrificing himself to assure the future of humanity.

Humanity being uplifted and our minds and bodies evolving is a common theme in our genre. However, Message from the Eocene offers a very different variation on this theme compared to what you'd find in the pages of Analog, even if psychic abilities are involved. The enlightenment offered by the book is reminiscent of both Buddhism and various occult traditions, while its arrival alludes to the so-called Age of Aquarius that astrologers believe will arrive soon.

In a genre that is still all too often peopled solely by white American men, the humans Tharg encounters are of all genders, races, nationalities and religions and all are portrayed sympathetically. For if the alien Tharg does not discriminate based on superficial criteria, then maybe neither should we. It is also notable that even before they receive the book, St. Clair's near future Earth is a more peaceful place than our world, where China has withdrawn from Tibet and the US and USSR cooperate in space.

Message from the Eocene is a story of failed communication, but also a story of evolution and enlightenment and overcoming one's limitations. Given the state of the world today, this may be just the message humanity needs.

Four and a half stars.

Three World of Futurity by Margaret St. Clair

Three Worlds and five stories

Three Worlds of Futurity, the other half of this Ace Double, is a collection of five short stories originally published between 1949 and 1962. The three worlds in question are Mars, Venus and Earth.

Thrilling Wonder Stories December 1950In "The Everlasting Food", Earthman Richard Dekker finds that his Venusian wife Issa has changed after lifesaving surgery. One night, Issa announces that she is immortal now, that she no longer needs to eat and that energy sustains her. Soon thereafter, she leaves, taking their young son with her. Richard takes off after her to get his son back, Issa's human foster sister Megan in tow. After many trials and tribulations, they finally find Issa – only for Richard to lose his wife and son for good. But while Richard is heartbroken, he has also fallen in love with Megan.

"The Everlasting Food" is a curious mix of domestic science fiction in the vein of Zenna Henderson and Mildred Clingerman and planetary adventure in the vein of Leigh Brackett, and never quite gels. I did like Megan, who is described as dark-skinned, by the way, but Issa is hard to connect to and Richard, though well meaning, falls for Megan a little too quickly. Furthermore, the villain feels like an afterthought who comes out of nowhere.

Startling Stories July 1949"Idris' Pig" opens on a spaceship to Mars. George Baker is the ship's resident psychologist. His cousin Bill is a courier and passenger aboard the same ship. When Bill falls ill, it's up to George to deliver the object Bill was supposed to deliver, a blue-skinned sacred pig. However, Bill can only give George very vague instructions about where to deliver the pig and so the pig is promptly stolen. And so George has to retrieve it with the help of Blixa, a young Martian woman. As a result, George gets mixed up with drug dealers and Martian cults, involved in an interplanetary incident and lands in jail. He also completely forgets about the woman he has been trying very hard not to think about and falls in love with Blixa.

This is an utterly charming story, a science fiction screwball comedy reminiscent of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby. A hidden gem and true delight.

Fantastic Universe July 1954"The Rages" is set in an overmedicated Earth of the future. Harvey has a perfect life and a perfect, though sexless marriage. However, he has a problem because his monthly ration of euphoria pills has run out. And without euphoria pills, Harvey fears the oncoming of the rages, attacks of uncontrollable anger, which eventually lead to a final rage from which one never emerges. The story follows Harvey through his day as he meets several people and tries to get more pills. Gradually, it dawns upon both Harvey and the reader that the pills may be causing the very rages they are supposed to suppress. The story ends with Harvey throwing all of his and his wife's pills away.

This is a dystopian tale in the vein of Brave New World and Fahrenheit 541. The future world St. Clair has built is fascinating, if horrifying, and I would have liked to see more of it. However, Harvey is a thoroughly unlikeable character, who almost rapes two women in the course of a single novelette. Maybe Harvey could have rediscovered his messy humanity without resorting to sexual violence.

Galaxy October 1962"Roberta" is the shortest and most recent story, first published in Galaxy in October 1962, reviewed by our editor Gideon Marcus here. Roberta is a confused young woman with the unfortunate tendency to kill men. Robert is the phantom who won't leave her alone. Eventually, it is revealed that Roberta had a sex change operation and that "Robert" represents her former self, as do the men she kills.

Transsexualism is a subject that science fiction almost never addresses, even though our genre is ideal for it. After all, there are transsexuals living in our world right now and science offers possibilities to make it much easier for them to live the lives they want to. So I applaud Margaret St. Clair for tackling what is sadly still a taboo topic (and for having her heroine utter another taboo word, "abortion"), though I am troubled that science fiction's only transsexual heroine (so far) is also a multiple murderer.

Weird Tales September 1952In "The Island of the Hands", Dirk dreams about his wife Joan who died in a plane crash at sea. He hires a plane to check out the coordinates from his dream and crashes on an invisible island. Dirk finds Joan's plane and a dead body and also meets Miranda, a young woman who suspiciously resembles Joan. He is on the Island of the Hands, Miranda informs them, where everybody can shape their heart's desire from mythical mist. Dirk tries to shape Joan, but fails. He spends the night with Miranda, who confesses that Joan is still alive, but trapped in the mist. Dirk goes after her and rescues Joan, only to learn that there is a very good reason why Miranda looks so much like an idealised version of Joan.

It's no surprise that this story was first published in Weird Tales, since it has the otherworldly quality typical for that magazine. "The Island of the Hands" reminded me of the 1948 Leigh Brackett story "The Moon That Vanished", where another heartbroken widower finds himself faced with a magical mist that shapes one's heart's desire.

All in all, this is an excellent collection. Not every story is perfect (though "Idris' Pig" pretty much is), but they are all fascinating and make me want to read more of Margaret St. Clair's work.

Four stars for the collection.

[But wait!  There's more!]


by Gideon Marcus

False Finishes

After such a remarkable pair of books, I hate to sully this edition with less than stellar reviews.  But the year is almost up, and there are a lot of books to get through.  So, here is a trio of novels that start promisingly and then fizzle out. 

The Greks Bring Gifts, by Murray Leinster

If you can get past the punny title, Gifts grabs your interest from the first.  In the near future, the humanoid Greks land in a miles-long spaceship.  They were just sailing by, training a class of Aladarian engineers, and thought they'd pop in to give humanity a myriad of technological gifts.  The aliens are welcomed with riotous joy — after all, soon no one will have to work more than one day a week, and all the comforts of the world will be evenly distributed. 

But one fellow, Jim Hackett, is suspicious.  Despite being a brilliant young physicist, he was rejected as a candidate to learn Grek science after failing to comprehend it.  Was he just not bright enough?  Or were the Greks feeding us gobbledegook to keep us ignorant?  And then, why did the Greks abruptly leave after six months, just as desire for the fruits of their wondrous technology was peaking, but the ability to sate said desire was lacking?  Finally, after the Grek ship had left, why did an archaeologist party find the bones of Aldorians in the ship's waste ejecta?  And worse yet, those of humans?

So Hackett and his fiancee, the capable Dr. Lucy Thale, work together to reverse engineer the Grek technology so that, when they return to a world whose populace is fairly begging for them to come back, Earth can stand against them and provide for its own.

What begins as a fascinating mystery quickly proves overlong.  Leinster is much better with short stories, before his Hemmingway-esque style can wear thin.  The endless repetition of certain phrases and epithets brings to mind the devices Homer used to make The Illiad easier to recite from memory, but they don't do a reader any favors.  As for characterization, Leinster might as well have named the characters A, B, and C for all the color they possess.  A shorter story would have made that issue stand out less.

Anyway, it's an interesting storyline; it would make a good movie, but as is, it's a mediocre novel.  Three stars.

Arsenal of Miracles (ACE Double F-299), by Gardner F. Fox

From the notable pen of comics writer and, now, SF author Gardner Fox, we have a brand new ACE novel.  And this one isn't a short 120-pager.  No, this time we've got 157 pages devoted to the adventures of Bran Magannon, formerly an Admiral of a Terran space fleet, vanquisher of the invading Lyanir, and now a discredited exile, wandering across the known and unknown galaxy.  Arsenal starts off beautifully, like a space age Fritz Leiber fantasy.  A nearly penniless Bran arrives on the desolate world of Makkador to make traveling funds through gambling.  There, he throws dice against, and loses to, the lovely Peganna, queen of the Lyanir.  And then we learn Bran's tragic past: how he divined how to defeat the seemingly invincible Lyanir ships; how he negotiated for the Lyanir to be given a sanctuary world within the Terran Cluster of stars.  How Bran was betrayed by an ambitious subordinate, who sabotaged the talks, discredited Bran, and condemned the Lyanir to inhabit a radioactive wasteland of a planet.

But now Bran has an ace up his sleeve — he has discovered the ancient portal network of the Crenn Lir, a precursor race that once inhabited countless worlds.  If Bran and Peganna can find the Crenn Lir arsenal before they are caught by Terran and Lyranir agents, they might be able to negotiate with the Terrans as equals and secure a sanctuary for the weary aliens.

I tore through the first third of this book, but things slowed halfway through.  I grew irritated that there was exactly one female character in the book, though I did appreciate the natural and loving relationship Peganna and Bran shared.  What promises to be a galaxy-trotting adventure with big scope and ideas ends up a rather conventional story on a very few settings.  Things pick up a bit in the final third, but I found myself comparing the endeavor unfavorably to Terry Carr's Warlord of Kor, a somewhat similarly themed Ace novel from last year.

Three and a half stars.

Endless Shadow (ACE Double F-299), by John Brunner

With the Fox taking up so much space in the Ace Double, the second title must needs be short.  Luckily, John Brunner's Bridge to Azazel, which came out in February's issue of Amazing, fit nicely.  Both lengthwise and thematically: Endless Shadow also features teleportation across the stars, in this case involving a Terra reestablishing contact with farflung space colonies.

The general consensus among the Journey's various readers is that this was a premise with a lot of potential, but that Brunner failed to deliver satisfactorily.  Ratings ranged from two to three and a half stars.  Call it an even three.

Books to Come

These days, there are almost more books coming out than a fellow (or even a band of fellows) can read!  So, to make sure we cover all of the important books of 1964, there will be a second Galactoscope in a couple of days.  May they be more akin to the stellar St. Clairs than the disappointing Leinster/Fox/Brunner.

[Holiday season is upon us, and Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), containing some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age, makes a great gift! Think of it as a gift to friends…and the Journey!

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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[October 26, 1964] A revolting set of circumstances (October 1964 Galactoscope #2)

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by Gideon Marcus

If there is one constant to the universe, it is change.  Appropriately, if there is one constant to government, it is that no system lasts forever.  Revolutions have occurred since the dawn of history, motivated by class resentment, public outrage, and plain avarice.  Some are cloaked in nobility, like the American Revolution; others started nobly but ended in darker places, like the French Revolution (whose darker points were recently spotlit on Doctor Who.) Even now, revolts roil the world — from The Congo to Vietnam, Iraq to Zanzibar, people are taking up arms to topple governments. 

It's not surprising, then, that the three books I read for this month's Galactoscope all deal with some kind of revolution.  Does the subject make for good science fiction?  Let's find out!

Star Watchman

Ben Bova is a fairly new phenomenon, his only previous book being The Star Conquerors, which I understand is in the same universe as Star Watchman.  He is probably better known to you as the fellow who writes non-fiction articles for Amazing.  So how's his fiction?

Turns out it's not bad at all.  Watchman is set on an agrarian planet of the Terran Empire known to the humans as Oran VI.  But to the natives (entirely human, curiously), it is the cherished world of Shinar.  Their revolt against the Terran authority has already happened by story's start, and the Shinarians have invited the rapacious, cat-like Komani to help throw off Earth's yoke.  But the Shinarians are about to find out that they have a tiger by the tail.  The Komani plan to subjugate Shinar, and to then rally the disparate cat-people dominions into an alliance that can attack the Terrans head on.

Enter Emile Vorgens, himself a non-Terran humaniform from another Imperial protectorate world.  A freshly minted Star Watchman (the Star Watch is essentially the galactic navy), he has the seemingly impossible task of defusing or defeating the revolution.  At his disposal is a powerful but small flotilla of hovercraft, ranging from "scouts" to "dreadnoughts".  It also turns out that there are Shinarians who are not happy with the current course and might be enlisted as allies.  But it will take all of Vorgens' diplomatic and tactical skills to effect a positive resolution to the crisis.

Per the author's own afterword, "We live today in a world peppered by revolutions, and in this tale I have tried to show some of the complex forces involved in revolution and how rebellion might lead, in the long run, to a growth of freedom and a better world."  Indeed, it is difficult not to look at the Shinarian case through the lens of current crises.  Given the Terran name for the planet, and the French name of the protagonist, my thoughts went to the Algerian movement for independence.  That one obviously did not work out as desired for the empire in question.  Ditto Indochina, whose destiny is still in doubt.

In fact, I struggle to find an example of a revolution that was peaceably ended, but which resulted in a more satisfactory internal situation for the province.  At least, not one that lasted any real length of time.  On the other hand, while the ending of Watchman is sort of a happy one, it is also left ambiguous as to Shinar's fate after the revolt. Bova's politics, while hopeful, are not entirely naive.

But how's the book?  One thing Bova does very well is portray battle and tactics.  His writing is clear, never lurid, and as a wargamer, I was always able to picture the tactics described.  And they seemed reasonable, too!  As for characterization, Emile is a bit like C. S. Forester's Hornblower, wet behind the ears, self-doubting, but game and quite talented.  I liked him, though I couldn't say he's very deep. 

There is, sadly, exactly one female character.  But Altai is a good one, essential to the Shinarian plans, and while there are some implied romantic chemistry between her and Emile, nothing is ever consumated.  I hate it when a woman is included in a story just to be a love interest (and a prize) for the hero. 

In fact, throughout the story, Altai makes it clear she knows that her contributions are less valued among the Shinarians for her being female.  I'd like to think that she will lead a revolt of her own on Shinar: for more respect and recognition of women's rights.  On the other hand, it's not like there are any female soldiers in either the Star Watch or the Terran Marines (which strained my credulity — hell, there was a woman Captain in the U.S. Marines just last week on Gomer Pyle).  So if there is to be a women's revolt on Shinar, it probably won't get much help from the humans.  Oh well.

Anyway, I enjoyed Watchman.  It's not literature for the ages, but it did keep me reading.  Call it three and a half stars.

Ace Double F-289

Demon World

I'm pretty sure I know the genesis for this book: someone approached prolific sf scribbler, Ken Bulmer, at a pub and said (gently weaving), "Hey!  What if there were a story where we were the rats, and aliens were the people?!"

Because that's the premise to Demon's World.  Humans live in warrens, surviving my making daring raids into the larders of the "Demons", beings some hundreds of feet high (square-cube law be damned!) Said Demons are uncannily conventional, with familiar-looking houses, furniture, and technology.  Of course, it takes us a while as readers to get the full view of the alien landscape since it's always viewed through the eyes of diminutive people.

That's the background.  The setting is somewhat interesting.  Humanity has no idea how it got to this world generations before — it only knows that, aside from cats and dogs, it seems to have no kinship to any of the strange creatures on the planet.  Civilization has stratified into hard castes, with the Controllers on top, the Soldiers (who wage wars against other warrens of people) next up, and the Foragers (who get food) along with the Laborers occupying the bottom rungs of society.  Only the Foragers ever encounter the Demons, who are widely believed to be a myth among the denizens of the warrens.

Our protagonist is an amnesiac named Stead, discovered by a squad of Foragers from the polity of Archon.  He is given a Controller's education and then dispatched into the same squad that found him.  This puts him in the unique position of understanding the ruling and under classes.  He also knows for certain that the Demons are real.  It is only a matter of time before Stead decides to lead a double rebellion: Foragers/Laborers against Controllers, and humans against Demons.

Demons World is an odd book, executed in a workmanlike fashion that suggests it was a quick draft (though without the egregious typographical errors that sometime mar Ace productions).  Descriptions of people and items are particularly bland, often repetitive.  We never even understand what it is the humans eat, their food invariably referred to as "food".  You'd think that in a story where half the scenes involve getting sustenance, there would be a bit more emphasis on the sensuous.

Women fare better in the Bulmer than the Bova.  The capable doctor, Della, is Stead's ward in Archon, and two members of the squad are women.  However, despite Bulmer's preference for unadorned writing, you can bet we always known how attractive the women are and in what ways.  Moreover, women in Demon World are still somewhat second-class citizens, treated like "girls" despite participating somewhat equally in society.

Unlike with Watchman, I found reading Demon's World something of a chore.  Two and a half stars for this one.

I Want the Stars

Ah, but flip F-289 over, and we're in an entirely different world.

Tom Purdom is quite new to the writing scene.  Over the past few years, he has been published in several of the sf mags, with stories ranging in quality from two to four stars.

Now, his first novel is out, and it's something of a revolution in and of itself.

Hundreds of years from now, after several near brushes with atomic extinction, humanity has reached the stars.  Not just the nearby stars but the entire galaxy is open to our hyperspace drives.  But we do not expand to conquer; Purdom subscribes to Arthur C. Clarke's notion that our species will never expand to space until we make peace with ourselves.  Consistent with that, all of the other starfaring races are also peaceful beings.  War is a concept confined to the planet-bound races. 

With the exception of the telepathic, xenophobic Horta.  On a planet 60,000 light years from Earth, they are in the last stages of subjugating the amphibian Sordini.  And there to witness, perhaps even stop the event, are five humans: three women and two men.  Raised in Terran tradition, they have never known want or strife.  Yet they are restless, impelled by some inner desire they cannot name. 

Combat with the Horta causes the death of the woman who planned the expedition.  The rest, scarred by her passing, and the rigors of combat with psionic aliens, numbly continue their tour of the galaxy.  They are looking for some key that will allow them to confront, perhaps defeat, the Horta before they pose a threat to the peace of the galaxy.

One possibility lies with a mysterious race called the Borg.  Aliens from another galaxy, they have made it their mission to enlighten the warlike races still lacking space travel.  They welcome representatives from any world to a sort of university planetoid, where they are given a decades-long course in history and philosophy whose end result is yet unknown to any of the students.

Our viewpoint humans enroll in the school, but long before their courses are complete, conflict breaks out on the planetoid.  This, of course, is inevitable — most of the student races are pre-starfaring, and many are jealous of the technologies the starfarers possess.  The arrival of the humans creates the catalyst for a bloody fight, a civil conflict that the Borg do nothing to stop.  The Terrans demand to know the Borg's true intentions: are they really cosmic benefactors, or are they sowing the seeds of galactic strife?  The answer, one way or another, promises to overturn the order of civilization.

What a fascinating book this is, by turns riproaring adventure, interesting philosophical rumination, and portrayal of an unique and plausible future for humanity.  Per the author's foreword,

"I like adventure stories when it's well done…but I think…that means above all it has to be believable.  For one thing, if the characters are future people, then they should be different from present day people.  And their social customs and politics should be different, too.  I can't believe in–which means I can't enjoy–space adventures in which the characters all seem to be people just like Twentieth Century Americans from a society just like Twentieth Century America…"

You will not find contemporary people in this story — the headstrong protagonist Jenorden, gentle Veneleo, haunted Theleo, resourceful Elinee, they are at once relatable yet different.  There is no distinction or inequality between men and women, and there is a strong suggestion of polyamory amongst the crew (or at least flexible relationships without jealousy).  Purdom lays out the motivations of his characters, and then lets the story flow from those precepts rather than conventional, modern-day ones.

It's not a perfect story.  Purdom is not as good at depicting battle as Bova.  The novel's parts don't tie together in a perfect through-line (although, to be fair, neither does life!) And the ending is a little abrupt — I understand it had to be cut from 50,000 to 40,000 words in the 11th hour. 

Still, I Want the Stars is a true science fiction novel, one of my favorites of the year.  What an accomplishment for the first time out!

Four stars.

Tallying the Score

Though the Bulmer is too minor and conventional a piece for recommendation, both Star Watchman and I Want the Stars show that science fiction affords a fresh look at old topics.  Indeed, per Purdom, "just by telling an exciting story, I think I've ended up saying more about nuclear weapons, love, death, the meaning of life, and what it is to be human, than if I had sat down and tried to write about all those things."

Sounds like the crashing of the British "new wave" on American shores.  Leave it to the youngsters to lead a revolution in our genre!

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




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Book

[October 18, 1964] Out in Space and Down to Earth (October's Galactoscope #1)

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There were quite a lot of books to catch up on this month, but two of them stood out for their quality.  As a result, they're going to get full-length treatments, and the other books we read will be dealt with later.  So please enjoy these exciting offerings, reviewed by two of the Journey's finest writers…


by Victoria Silverwolf

No Man on Earth, by Walter Moudy


Cover art by Richard Powers

Mister Moudy, Mysterious Missourian

Here's a writer who is completely new to me. In fact, after doing a little research, I believe that he is new to all readers. As far as I can tell, this is his first published work of fiction.

Beyond that interesting fact, I have been able to discover very little about the author. He comes from the Show Me state; he's an attorney; and his middle name is Frank. The book is dedicated to his wife, Marguerite.

In a way, it's a good thing to approach a novel without any preconceptions about the person who wrote it. We predict that certain elements will appear in a work by Heinlein or Bradbury. I have no idea what to expect from Walter Frank Moudy, so I hope I can provide an objective look at this fledgling effort.

Child of Violence

If you were to tear off the covers of this book — not that I suggest actually doing such a horrible thing — and hand it to me without the blurbs that appear on front and back, it would take me quite a while to figure out that it's a science fiction novel. The first few chapters make it seem like a backwoods fantasy, something like a darker version of the stories of the wandering balladeer John, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for some time now. (They can also be found in the collection Who Fears the Devil?, published last year by Arkham House, if you can find a copy of this limited edition, and are willing to shell out four bucks.)


Cover art by Lee Brown Coye

The novel begins with a young woman about to give birth. Her painful memories tell us that she was raped by a man she thinks is a witch. Everything about the setting, and the woman's dialect, suggests that this takes place in a primitive settlement in the mountains. (At first I thought it was Appalachia, but later details make it clear that we're in the Ozarks.)

The villagers wait for the child to be born, intending to kill it as a unnatural monster. The woman's brother, and the local midwife, who has secrets of her own, manage to save the baby's life. The newborn boy seems to be perfectly normal, but he learns to speak by the age of six months, and grows into a super-intelligent preteen with strange powers. Both loved and hated by his mother, he runs away from home after she makes a feeble, tearful attempt to end his life.

Escape From the Reservation

We get our first hint that the novel is set in the future when we find out that the First World War took place a century and a half ago. What makes this even stranger is the fact that the mother believes it was the last war that ever took place. At this point, I wondered if the villagers were so isolated they knew nothing about recent history. That didn't make sense, because there's a school nearby with plenty of books. Was this some kind of alternate time line? The truth turned out to be quite different.

In fact, the villagers live in a reservation, separate from the rest of the USA in the late 21st Century, and are deliberately kept ignorant about the modern world around them. The midwife is actually an observer, studying their culture. The boy is the only resident ever to make his way out of the reservation, thanks to his superhuman intelligence. He manages to survive, and even thrive, in this strange new world, eventually becoming enormously wealthy, due to his ability to create highly advanced inventions.

Searching the Galaxy for a Father

The young man uses all his acquired money and power to build the world's first faster-than-light spaceship. This technology threatens to upset the balance of power, which could lead to Armageddon. (In this future world, there was a limited atomic war. After this disaster, both sides of the Cold War worked together to make sure that neither gained any advantage over the other. The FTL drive could destroy this uneasy peace.)

The protagonist wants to explore the cosmos, determined to find the humanoid alien who impregnated his mother. In order to ensure that he does not return the spaceship to Earth and reveal its secrets to either power, he is accompanied by a female Russian cosmonaut and a male American astronaut, each keeping watch over the other. Acting on the orders of the President of the United States, a Federal law official is also along for the ride. His mission is to ensure that the spaceship does not return at all, even if it means killing the young man, of whom he has grown very fond.

What follows is a series of encounters with several different alien species, mostly very similar to human beings. After many adventures, the main character eventually tracks down his father, leading to the dramatic conclusion.

A Very Mixed Bag

This is an unusual science fiction novel, not quite like anything else I've ever read. In addition to reminding me of Wellman, as I've mentioned, it also brought to mind traces of Philip K. Dick, A. E. van Vogt, and Theodore Sturgeon. That's a quartet of very different writers, and I'm probably greatly misleading you by mentioning their names.

The book consists of many highly varied sections, told from several points of view. One particularly interesting chapter consists of multiple first person narratives, relating how different alien societies, from primitive to advanced, react to the human visitors.

Despite its frequent changes of mood, the author manages to make the novel into a coherent whole. (One chapter, late in the book, can only be described as a bedroom farce. Even this lighthearted interlude turns out to be relevant to later events.)

The complex plot always kept my interest. The characters, for the most part, are fully developed and win the reader's empathy. (The fate of one character, whom I have not even mentioned, comes as a real shock, about halfway through the book.)

The story has a fair amount of sexual content, particularly for a paperback science fiction novel. This, by itself, shouldn't bother mature readers, but one scene repelled me. Without giving anything away, let's just say that it reminded me of the late Ian Fleming's James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, which contains this statement from the female narrator.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.


Cover art by Richard Chopping, for what is generally considered to be the worst Bond novel

Like this quote, the scene in question made my skin crawl, particularly after the author effectively conveyed the young woman's horror of being raped at the very start of the story. Readers are also likely to find the end of the novel disturbing, in a similar way.

Despite my serious concerns about the book's treatment of sexual violence, overall I thought it was a good novel, particularly for a first effort.

Four stars.


by Cora Buhlert

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn

Edgar Pangborn has been writing science fiction under his own name for thirteen years at this point and was apparently writing under other names before that. However, none of his stories have been translated into German and the availability of English language science fiction magazines is spotty at best. Therefore, I had never encountered Pangborn's work before, when I came across his latest novel Davy in my local import bookstore.

Davy by Edgar Pangborn

Davy does not look like a typical science fiction novel. It's a hardback, for starters, with a plain cover enlivened only by a drawing of a man's hand holding a French horn. However, the cover is completely appropriate, because Davy is not your typical science fiction novel. Besides, a French horn plays an important part in the story.

Davy is set approximately three hundred years after a nuclear war, followed by various natural disasters, wiped out most of North America and threw what remained back into the dark ages. The North Eastern US has been reduced to small fiefdoms and walled towns besieged by mutated beasts that roam the wilderness. The Holy Murcan Church rules over all, hoarding forbidden knowledge from the "Old Time" and keeping the population in ignorance. Though the reader will have to infer this for themselves, because Davy takes the form of a memoir written by the titular character, with occasional footnotes and asides from Davy's wife Nickie and good friend Dion.

Coming of Age in the Post-Apocalypse

In a rambling and roundabout way, Davy tells us that he was born in brothel, which is why he has no last name, raised in an orphanage and eventually sold as a bond servant to an innkeeper. Though he has little formal education, Davy is intelligent. By his early teens, he begins to question church doctrine, though he wisely keeps his doubts to himself, as heretics are mercilessly executed. Davy dreams of running away and eventually does, after the stealing the French horn seen on the cover from a "mue" – a mutant Davy had befriended in defiance of church doctrine – accidentally killing a city guard and losing his virginity to Emmia, the innkeeper's daughter.

We get a blow by blow account of the latter event. As a matter of fact, Davy talks quite a lot about his sexual adventures, which frequently involve wrestling his partners into submission. Davy certainly gives a lot more room to sexual matters than is common even in the fairly liberal science fiction genre. Readers who are uncomfortable with such scenes may want to skip this novel.

After his escape, Davy falls in with a group of deserters from one of the many skirmishes between the various fiefdoms, finds his father and eventually joins a troupe of travelling entertainers named Rumley's Ramblers, where his self-taught horn playing skills come in handy. After his father's death, Davy sets out on his own and meets Nickie, the love of his life, who is not just an aristocratic lady posing as a man, but also puts him touch with a secret underground society of heretics who try to preserve "Old Time" knowledge. Via Nickie, Davy meets her cousin Dion, monarch of the nation of Nuin (which roughly corresponds to modern day Massachusetts). Both Nickie and Dion and much of the Nuin aristocracy are casually described as black, while Davy himself is white and redhaired, racial prejudice having thankfully died out along with the pre-apocalyptic world.

Together, Dion, Nickie and Davy try to introduce reforms and break the stranglehold of the church. They lose and are driven out of the country. A ship takes them and a few followers to the Azores, where they settle down and build a utopian colony. The memoir is written during Davy's time aboard the ship. The novel ends with Davy planning to sail to Europe, after Nicky has died in childbirth, giving birth to a mutated baby that did not survive either.

A Unique Narrator

Davy's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness, for it is Davy's first person narration with all its charming idiosyncrasies that makes what could have been a standard post-apocalyptic yarn come to life. However, Davy is also given to digressions and if he decides to interrupt the ongoing story to talk about a storm at sea, the difficulties of making reading glasses without "Old Time" tools or to give us an overview of the various fiefdoms of his home region and their major cities, all of which bear the corrupted names of cities in the North Eastern US (which is probably more interesting to someone actually from the region, whereas I found myself constantly referring to a Rand McNally road atlas, trying to figure out what the names might stand for), the reader has no choice but to follow along. Many of Davy's digressions are fascinating, others are just dull. Furthermore, Davy also tends to skip over parts of his life – for example, he mentions taking part in a war to expel pirates from Cape Cod, but we never see this undoubtedly exciting episode.

Not Your Typical Science Fiction Novel

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh BrackettThe Chrysalids by John Wyndham

In the past fifteen years, nuclear war and its aftermath have become both a timely and popular subject for science fiction, resulting in such varied works as A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, "That Only a Mother" by Judith Merril, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank or The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. Davy shares some DNA with these works and borrows the post-apocalyptic theocracy trying to suppress knowledge from The Long Tomorrow and The Chrysalids and the state-sanctioned murder of mutants from "That Only a Mother" and again, The Chrysalids, while the tale of a young man from humble origins making his way in the world is reminiscent of the various juveniles of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. But in spite of superficial similarities with other works, Davy is its own thing, a science fiction novel that doesn't feel very science fictional.

Tom Jones movie posterThe Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

At heart, Davy is a Bildungsroman, reminiscent of such 18th century novels as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding as well as last year's successful film adaptation thereof. If we are looking for a modern day literary comparison, Davy is far closer to John Barth's 1960 novel The Sot-Feed Factor (and indeed Pangborn tuckerises Barth as an author of forbidden texts from the "Old Time") than to anything found in the pages of Analog, even if parts of Davy appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February and March 1962.

A highly enjoyable picaresque adventure in a post-apocalyptic New England.

Four and a half stars.

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[September 20, 1964] Apocalypses and other trivia (Galactoscope)

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[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)]

[This month's Galactoscope features two global catastrophes, two collections, and four authors you've almost certainly heard of!]


by Jason Sacks

The Penultimate Truth, by Philip K. Dick

Like many fans, I first became really aware of Philip K. Dick after he won the 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel for his remarkable The Man in the High Castle. That book dazzled in its chronicle of an alternate history in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II (which opened up many areas of thought and conversation for me and my friends) as well as in its brilliant world-building and the fascinating, multifaceted characters at the heart of Dick's award-winner.

High Castle was also an amazingly tight novel, packing a dense plot into its mere 240 pages. As many of us Dick fans have learned, not all of his works are quite so tightly plotted. I adored his Martian Time-Slip and Dr. Bloodmoney from last year, but those books tended to both delight and annoy in their meandering, nearly stream-of-consciousness styles.

The newest Philip K. Dick novel, The Penultimate Truth (just out in paperback from Belmont) fills a bit of the gap between his ’62 masterpiece and the challenging ’63 books. This thoroughly delightful book wanders a bit but always held me in its comforting grasp.

The Penultimate Truth is shambolic and episodic, but that approach serves the work well. Its main characters are living shambolic lives, which Dick depicts as full of odd episodes which occasionally have great and beautiful moments of transcendence, even in the post-apocalyptic wasteland in which the book is set.

Note that this review will reveal elements of the book, comments that "spoil", if you will, so skip down to the next review if you love surprises in your fiction.

In the future world of this book, much of humanity lives in massive underground bunkers, nicknamed anthills, in which they build weapons and medical devices for the nuclear war they believe is ravaging the surface of the Earth. When Nick St. James, the president of one anthill, makes his way to the surface, St. James discovers his people have been lied to. The world on the surface has survived nuclear devastation and has emerged into a unique and odd civilization. Needless to say, the revelation of the relatively peaceful world surface changes nearly everything.

What makes this novel so special, though, is that those revelations don't change the way St. James views his world. He doesn’t become a noble crusader for truth or a vengeful destroyer of the new civilization. Instead our protagonist goes the opposite way of most heroic leads. Instead of rebelling, he goes out of his way to allow the world to stay in its current state. He will not let the truth of his world change life in the anthill. The penultimate truth of the story is the truth behind the nuclear war. But the ultimate truth is more powerful: it is the special bond society creates, the relationships created and enduring for decades, and the lies and half-truths that are necessary to perpetuate that society.

This description makes The Penultimate Truth sound heady and brainy, and it is filled with a intriguing level of intelligence and wisdom about human nature. But it is also has the several elements we have come to expect from Dick’s finest work.

First and foremost, this is an exciting story, with scenes of high adventure, escapes and shootouts which keep the reader turning the page. There are mysteries piled upon mysteries, characters who shift and change as the story proceeds only to have them revealed in ways for which the reader was foreshadowed but for which he likely could not have anticipated.

Secondly, this is a wise and fascinating study of human nature. The Penultimate Truth is about jealousy and lust for power balanced with trust and love for family and friends. It sets stability and chaos in opposite sides of the metaphorical coin in ways few other novels of any type have explored, and in doing so shows the power of novelistic science fiction in the hands of a master of the medium.

Thirdly, this book seems to explode with ideas, from the anthills (an idea Dick has explored in some of his short fiction such as “Second Variety”) to the vast demesnes in which the surface dwellers live, to the vast conspiracies used to keep ordinary people following their leaders. In fact, it is in that last set of ideas that Dick falls down a bit for me. I had trouble imagining a government systematically lying to its people in the way described here. In a world in which leaders are elected by the governed, there is no reason for leaders to lie to their people. [Oh, my sweet country mouse…(Ed.)]

And the last element I’ve come to love in Dick’s work comes from the very end of the book. In my mind there are two endings to this novel, and in fact I won’t reveal them here so you can experience them yourself. But I’m curious how many readers wish The Penultimate Truth had ended with the deeply ironic penultimate chapter as its conclusion as opposed to those who preferred the redemptive final chapter.

Throw in some gorgeously descriptive language and you have one of the finest science fiction novels of 1964. I hope Mr. Dick brings home another Hugo next year from London.

4.5 stars


by Gideon Marcus

Tongues of the Moon, by Philip J. Farmer

Three years ago, just before John Boston started reviewing Amazing for us, Philip Jose Farmer had a short story called Tongues of the Moon.  The tale began with a literal bang: the Axis of southern nations launched a preemptive strike on the Communist Northern Hemisphere (including a subjugated United States kept pacified with skull-mounted pain inducers!), and the entire world was destroyed.  At the same time, the "Axes" attacked their enemies throughout the solar system — from Mercury to the Mars, Copernicus to Callisto.  Our hero, a scientist named Broward, is caught in a crossfire at what was supposed to be a lunar peace conference.  Together with the monomaniacal American, Scone, he manages to escape the fight and deactivate the central pain induction center on the Moon.  Now free agents, Scone finds himself the leader of some of the very few human beings left alive.  Can he knit together a new human race from the four hundred survivors representing dozens of nations and ideologies?  Can a viable culture be created when men outnumber women 4:1?

These are all excellent questions, and I'm not surprised that Farmer decided to expand his novelette into a full novel.  Unfortunately, what could have been a fascinating sociological study is subverted in favor of a fairly pedestrian adventure story and a series of treasure hunts.

In the expanded portion of the book, Broward is dispatched to the ruined Earth to find a planet-destroying bomb.  The plan is to destroy the last significant Axis presence in the system, their colony on Mars, so that the Moon is safe.  But Broward recognizes paranoia when he sees it, and he is reluctant to carry out Scone's plan, which will cause yet more decimation of the human population.  He also, understandably so, has issues with Scone's plan to condemn the remaining women to forced multiple marriages.  And so begins a merry excursion — to the caves of Siberia, the undersea domes of the Mediterranean, the vastness of outerspace, the tunnels of Mars.  Tongues never stops to take a breath, and each sequence is more or less self-contained.  The most interesting bit involves the Siberian expedition, when Broward takes along as co-pilot the last Jew in the world (and probably the last person of Japanese extraction, too).  In this section are tantalizing hints of what the story might have been.  Alas, all development is tossed for more running and chasing.

It has been said of Farmer that he is "always almost good", which is not nearly as nice as "almost always good."  This latest book continues the trend.  Someday he'll make a masterpiece.  Until then, he's just a decent writer who can never quite deliver.

3.5 stars


by Rosemary Benton

Ace Double: "The Million Year Hunt" by Kenneth Bulmer and "Ships to the Stars" by Fritz Leiber

Ace Double novels are always a treat. Even though they are largely reprints of stories from the 1950s I always feel like I have rediscovered something special when I pick up one of these books at the bookstore. This month's release features titles by veteran authors Fritz Leiber and Kenneth Bulmer. Given the styles of each author I was intrigued to see how they would read back to back. Sadly to say, this was not one of the better lineups from Ace.

"The Million Year Hunt" by Kenneth Bulmer

Kenneth Bulmer's contribution to this month's Ace Double follows the adventures of a scrap yard worker turned savior of the human race. The story begins as we drop in on the aftermath of a prank pulled by protagonist Arthur Ross Carson, a mischievous young colonist on a back-water planet with few prospects. In short order he finds himself contending with the unjust killing of his fiancé Lucy, startling news of his parentage, and the piteous million-year mission of an alien conscious that enters his body. This is a lot to unwrap within less than 150 pages, and that's not even the full extent of the plot. Bulmer goes on to reveal a slew of converging political schemes to control the universe, including a program to selectively breed a successor to lead the intergalactic police force known as the Galactic Guard.

I felt like I was reading a much larger story that had been brutally and awkwardly chopped down to fit a page count limit. Up to the very last sentence the story is rife with major plot points that are not resolved, gawky transitions of emotion within the cast of characters, and plot twists that feel last minute and cheap. I can't overstate the issue that lies with the jerking sensation the reader gets as the story shifts from scene to scene. So awkward and halting was the pace that I just couldn't believe Bulmer was the one to give it a final proof read before sending it to publication. There was just no way a man as prolific as him could have been satisfied with this story, a public presentation by which he would be judged as a writer, going to press in the state it's in.

If "The Million Year Hunt" is indeed the butchered result of a much larger manuscript, then the most tragic victims of its murder were the emotional transitions of the characters and the quirky, adventurous and lighthearted atmosphere that was so desperately trying to take hold. The easy and funny dialogue between Arthur Ross Carson and the alien conscious that strapped itself to him nervous system is very entertaining to read. Their banter actually comprises some of the best scenes in this story. Instead of clunky exposition their conversations dynamically teased out information on their respective pasts, personalities, and surroundings.

If only Bulmer could have let the characters be themselves stumbling through space on adventures loosely tied to an end goal, specifically Carson's mission of revenge and his origin as the "savior" of the Galactic Guard, then this would have been a fantastic story. Unfortunately in its current state "The Million Year Hunt" is not a story that should have made it to print.

[Apparently, The Million Year Hunt is a fix-up of sorts, created from Scarlet Denial in Science Fiction Adventures No. 26, and Scarlet Dawn in Science Fiction Adventures No. 28. Both came out in 1962, published in the United Kingdom. The text is unchanged from the originals. (ed)]

"Ships to the Stars" by Fritz Leiber

On the other side of this Ace Double is a collection of six short stories by power house actor and novelist Fritz Leiber. In contrast to Bulmer's story, Leiber's "Dr. Kometevsky's Day", "The Big Trek", "The Enchanted Forest", "Deadly Moon", "The Snowbank Orbit", and "The Ship Sails at Midnight" are all well structured with tight plots and developed characters. Leiber's writing also demonstrates a more measured understanding of how to maintain the flow of a story. The tendency of his characters to repeatedly ponder the effects fear has on them makes them fragile, fallible, and very true to the duality of human nature. They want to know and see everything, but there are limits to what they can understand and what their eyes have access to. Leiber's inclusion of these relatable and basic human failings forms a tension in his stories that would be otherwise missing if he had held full faith in humanity's ability to rationalize everything with science.

The strongest short stories in this small selection were "The Big Trek" and "The Ship Sails at Midnight". In these two tales the reader can really see Leiber's deep connection with the gothic authors whom he draws inspiration from. In "The Big Trek" Leiber writes from the first-person perspective of a man joining a feverish march of bizarre beings from across the universe. The employment of fluctuating space and loose concepts of time's passage echoes William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland" (1908) and pretty much any piece by Edgar Allan Poe. The narrator's awe and trepidation touched with excitement are also very similar to Arthur Machen's inner voice within "The White People" (1904).

Like H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, Leiber's strongest talent as a writer is keeping his characters grounded by the weighty truth that humans are far from the most powerful forces in the universe. All of Leiber's stories have humans sprinting to stay out of the way of some larger, stronger entity charging through with little interest in our species’ plight. "The Ship Sails at Midnight" best encapsulates this with its accompanying message that humans have such potential but are so readily self-sabotaging.

The joy of reading Fritz Leiber’s short stories greatly made up for my disappointment in Kenneth Bulmer’s novella. Fast paced, thoughtful and touching, they make this Ace Double a worthwhile purchase. I will absolutely be looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.

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




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[August 15, 1964] What are you thinking? (The Whole Man aka Telepathist by John Brunner; The Universe Against Her, by James H. Schmitz)

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[This month's Galactoscope features a pair of books with a common subject — but you already know what it is, if you possess the powers associated with that subject…]


by Victoria Silverwolf

Out of Many, One


Baby USA and the National Bird fighting over a ribbon.

It may seem highly eccentric to write a piece about a novel by a British writer with a title borrowed from a traditional motto of the United States. However, there is some method to my madness, as I have a few reasons for selecting the familiar phrase.

For one thing, the author prefaces his creation with a Latin quotation, and I thought I would return the favor. For another, the book is an example of the phenomenon, common in the science fiction world, known as the fix-up novel. That is to say, it incorporates previously published stories into a single work. Last but not least, the phrase fits not only the theme of telepathy, with multiple minds merging, but also the main character's transformation from a shattered personality into a complete human being.

I'll discuss each of these things at the proper time, but first let's take a look at mind-reading in science fiction, and at the career of the fellow who offers us the latest example.

Penny For Your Thoughts

Telepathy is a very common concept in SF; some might say, given John W. Campbell's promotion of ESP in his magazine, too common. There are far too many examples to discuss, so I'll just mention a couple of my favorites.


The first appearance of Bester's novel; cover art by Don Sibley.

Alfred Bester's novel The Demolished Man, the first book to win a Hugo, featured a man trying to get away with murder in a future full of telepathic police. This pyrotechnic work made use of typographic tricks to convey the sensation of reading another's thoughts.


The first appearance of Anderson's story; cover art by Emsh.

Poul Anderson's short story "Journeys End" dealt with the theme on a more intimate level, as two lonely telepaths find each other, only to have their meeting end in a bitterly ironic way.

These two works are, to my way of thinking, the finest examples of telepathy in fiction. Can anyone hope to match them? Meet a man who's willing to give it a try.

Precocious, Prolific, and Professional


From left to right, John Brunner and editor Ted Carnell at the 1957 Worldcon in London.

Born in the delightfully named English village of Preston Crowmarsh, John Kilian Houston Brunner began publishing science fiction at the tender age of seventeen. He hasn't stopped since, with nearly twenty books and well over fifty stories appearing under his name during the last dozen years. Many of his longer works appear in the famous Ace Double series. In general, he has a reputation as a producer of skillfully written, unambitious space operas.

Once in a while, he aims for something higher. The Traveler gave a glowing review to his novella Listen! The Stars! (Analog, July 1962) and I greatly enjoyed his novelette The Totally Rich (Worlds of Tomorrow, June 1963.) Will his latest novel reach the same level as these fine stories?

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover


The American paperback.

Looking at the anonymous cover art, and the equally anonymous blurb that accompanies it, you might think this has something to do with a telepath and his beautiful companion, as they do something or other with some people in spacesuits. Nothing could be further from the truth.


The British hardcover.

My sources in the publishing industry gave me a peek at the version that will appear in the United Kingdom next year. The cover, which seems to combine photography with a simple drawing, is still anonymous, but less misleading. It's purely symbolic, of course, but at least it doesn't promise things it can't deliver.

When in Rome . . .

The novel begins with these lines from Virgil's Aeneid.

Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.

My knowledge of Latin is limited to the Pig variety, so I did some research and found this translation.

The spirit within nourishes, and the mind that is diffused throughout the living parts of nature activates the whole mass and mingles with the vast body of the universe.

Apparently, the most important phrase in the quote is mens agitat molem (mind moves matter), because Brunner uses each of those three words as the title of a section of the novel. (By the way, mens agitat molem is also the motto of several institutes of higher learning, including the University of Oregon. Go Ducks!)

Born to Lose

First up is molem, or matter.

The plot begins with the birth of the protagonist, Gerald Howson, to an unmarried woman. The setting, judging by the names of the characters, is an English-speaking nation torn apart by a failed revolution. Armed United Nations peacekeepers restore order, with the help of telepaths. (In this future, the UN is much more powerful than it is today, and acts as a sort of world government.)

Gerald comes into the world with every disadvantage you can imagine. Not only is his mother without a husband, his father is a dead terrorist. He is also born severely disabled, with mismatched limbs and other deformities. Even as an adult, he is barely over four feet tall.

Gerald manages to survive a painful and impoverished childhood in a nation that is slowly returning to normalcy. By chance, he overhears a conversation between two criminals, and informs a rival crime boss. This earns him some money, but soon the police are after him. With nowhere else to go, he collapses in an empty lot.

A young woman, deaf and dumb since birth, cares for him. To his amazement, he can communicate with her telepathically. (It's implied that he actually read the minds of the criminals but thought he heard them speak.) His telepathy is so powerful, in fact, than even a telepath in a spaceship bound for Mars is able to detect his ability. UN forces soon arrive to take him to a place where he can make the best use of his powers.

Finding a Calling

The second section of the book carries the title agitat, or moves.

Gerald and the woman arrive in Ulan Bator. This city, the capital of Mongolia, is now an ultra-modern metropolis, and contains the headquarters of the World Health Organization. The woman's speech and hearing are restored, and she returns to her native land to lead a normal life. Unfortunately, the part of Gerald's brain that controls his body image prevents surgeons from correcting his deformities. He remains in Ulan Bator, under observation by UN officials.

Meanwhile, a crisis threatens the organization. It seems that some UN telepaths, under the strain of their responsibilities, suffer from a form of mental breakdown during which they escape into fantasy worlds. To make things much worse, they are able to take the minds of others into these imaginary realms as well. If not rescued, the people trapped in the illusion remain in a comatose state, to the point of death.

Gerald witnesses a formerly powerful mindreader, now weakened by a brain tumor, attempt to bring an important telepath out of a fantastic version of ancient Greece. When she fails, and cannot exit the dream world, he uses his own strength to save them both. This success inspires him to become a professional healer of damaged minds.

Physician, Heal Thyself

The third and last part of the novel, taking up half the book, is titled mens, or mind.

Unlike the first two sections, which are, as far as I can tell, completely new, this one makes use of two previously published novellas.

The first, City of the Tiger, appeared in the British magazine Science Fantasy in 1958. It was reprinted in the American publication Fantastic Universe the next year.


Cover art by Brian Lewis, illustrating Brunner's story.


Anonymous cover art, not illustrating Brunner's story

The original version takes place almost entirely within an imaginary, magical version of the Orient. The reader doesn't find out that the whole thing is only a telepath's fantasy until the end. In the book, we know right away that Gerald enters the false reality in order to draw out a telepath who has deliberately entered it, and taken several people into it with him.

The second novella was published under the title The Whole Man in Science Fantasy in 1959. The same year, it appeared in Fantastic Universe as Curative Telepath.


Cover art by Brian Lewis, but not for Brunner's story.


More anonymous cover art, still not for Brunner's story.

As its original title suggests, this novella forms the heart of the novel. Gerald returns to his native land, in search of his roots. He meets the woman who used to be deaf and dumb, now married with children. The reunion is an awkward one. She envies his fame and glamorous life as an celebrated UN telepath. He envies her normal life and healthy body.

Gerald meets a group of university students at a tavern and goes to a party with them. They accept him as a peer, despite his deformity. While at the party, he meets an artist who is trying to combine music with visual media. He realizes that his abilities would be an enormous help to this project. He also saves a man's life in a particularly dramatic way, further convincing himself that he is a worthy member of society. At the end, Gerald is, at last, psychologically healthy. As the novel says, he is a whole man.

The Sum of its Parts

I believe this novel marks a turning point in Brunner's career. Although it contains melodramatic incidents, it is primarily concerned with the way in which the protagonist grows and changes. Some elements seem implausible, such as the notion that a certain part of the brain controls body image, and that this prevents surgical intervention. Overall, however, it is a realistic account of what telepathy might be like, a cautiously optimistic vision of a future world recovering from many challenges, and an acute psychological portrait of its main character. Expect it to be on the Hugo list next year.

Four stars.


A recent book on theology and psychology which nicely symbolizes Gerald's state of mind at the end of the novel. And the author's name is strikingly similar to the writer we've been discussing! Coincidence, or ESP?

[Continuing the skein of telepathy, we come to another "new" novel — unique in perspective, if lacking in execution…]

The virtues and vices of recycling


by Erica Frank

The Universe Against Her, by James H. Schmitz

James H. Schmitz writes, in two parts, the story of Telzey Amberdon, a 15-year-old genius in her second year of law school, with a Federation Councilwoman for a mother and a father who's an executive officer at an interplanetary bank. She also happens to be a powerful xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally with alien species as well as humans.

I was disappointed to discover this "novel" is very obviously two separate stories now just called "Part One" and "Part Two." In fact, you've seen them before: This "novel" has two parts that were previously published in Analog; "Novice" was from the June 1962 issue, and "Undercurrents" was in two parts, May and June 1964. No hint of the events from Part One spill into Part Two. Even the way Telzey thinks about her psionic powers changes between the two stories – in the first, she is trying to puzzle out "symbols" and how to interpret them; by the second, she's more familiar with her abilities.

In the first story, she discovers that her pet sabertooth tiger (not what it's called, but obviously what's intended) is part of a sentient species that's been hunted to near-extinction. In the second, the guardians of a friend from school are planning to murder the friend before she can inherit. The stories have several similarities: In both, her ability to read and persuade animals is a key part of the plot. In both, Telzey's parent gets involved and provides administrative and legal support. In both, Telzey shapes the emotions and mental focus of the people around her.

That last point is more interesting than most of the plot, especially of the second story, which rambled. It involved complex legal and government hassles that required several minor characters whose sole purpose was to expound on aspects of galactic law. (Does that sound needlessly elaborate and dull? It was!) That was boring; Telzey's discomfort with her mind- and personality-warping abilities was interesting. Unfortunately, after having brought up the topic, Telzey quickly rationalized that this was "the only way" to make her friend safe. Then she returned to trying to manipulate both the court and government agencies, because apparently in her galaxy, clear evidence that "This person is trying to kill someone" is not enough to lock them up.

I loved some of the ideas, but the execution was weak; the second story was especially convoluted. I agree with the Traveler's assessments of the stories, which you should see as I've no need to restate them here. As a whole for the book: Three stars if you love teen-focused stories; two stars otherwise.

[Thus ends our presentation of telepathic twins.  Next time… well, you already know what's coming, don't you?]

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Book

[July 18, 1964] Dog Day Crop (July's Galactoscope)

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by Gideon Marcus

Thank you for joining this month's edition of Galactoscope, where we plow through all the books that came out this most recent month of June/July 1964! Don't thank us; it's all part of the job…

(and if you found us at San Diego Comic-Con and can't figure out why we seem to be 55 years behind you, this should clear things up!)

Times Two

Time Travel has been a staple of the genre since before the genre had been formalized. H. G. Wells' The Time Machine is still a classic, and it was written last century. In the Journey's short tenure, we have encountered at least a dozen tales involving chronological trips, with notable books including John Brunner's Times without Number and Wallace West's River of Time, not to mention the stand-out tales, All you Zombies!, by Robert Heinlein (and his less stand-out tale, By His Bootstraps) and The Deaths of Ben Baxter, by Robert Sheckley.

This month, we have two variations on the theme, both invoking time in their title:

Time Tunnel, by Murray Leinster

As the specter of nuclear war threatens to manifest, a post-graduate student named Harrison is summering in Paris, waiting for school to resume. By chance, he runs across Pepe, a fiery Spaniard (are there any other kinds in books?) and fellow former student who reunites Harrison with Professor Carroll, late of the archaeology department of Harrison and Pepe's alma mater. It turns out that Carroll has made a tremendous discovery: he as learned how to bridge the gulf between eras. No special machine is required; one must simply find a sizeable hunk of cast metal that has been left alone since the time of its forger.

Carroll's private time tunnel goes back exactly 160 years to the France of Napoleon's time. Thus far, the professor has made little use of it, save to satisfy his wife's pecuniary avarice. She has enlisted her brother to start a little shop that sells perfectly preserved antiques pinched from 1804. But when the Harrison learns that someone from 1964 is undertaking to sell secrets of the future to the scientists of the past, he and his compatriots must stop the interference before history changes for good. In addition, they must complete their mission before rising international tensions instigate a nuclear war in the present, sealing off (and perhaps destroying) the time tunnel.

It's a great setup! We've seen fixed tunnels to the past, as recently as in River in Time, but they aren't common in the genre. I find them particularly compelling as they make points in the past more tangible destinations. One can't pick historical highlights at random; they have to soak in the local atmosphere one second at a time, just like the natives. I've even toyed with the idea of making a fanzine with that conceit, perhaps with a time shift of (to pick a length at random) 55 years. That would put me in 1909 with plenty of time to capture the pulp era as it happens.

Something to think about.

The problem with Tunnel is the same problem that has bedeviled most of his latest stuff — it's too long. Indeed, Tunnel is about three times longer than the story calls for, in large part because the author repeats everything he says several times throughout the book. Heck, Harrison's party doesn't even get to old France until halfway through the book, and then it mostly stays to the back roads and farms that have not significantly changed in "nearly two centuries" as Leinster insists on calling about a century-and-a-half.

It's too bad. There's an exciting novella here under all the chaff.

Three stars.

The Time Twisters, by J. Hunter Holly

The newest book by Ms. (the J. stands for Joan) Holly has the opposite problem: the writing is quite compelling, but the story doesn't work.

The time is present day, the protagonists the Garrison family — Rick, Lynn, and six year-old daughter Tina. We start with the family already ill at ease. A neighborhood boy has gone missing, and shortly before, a big brown patch appeared in his yard. Then, while touring an amusement park to distract themselves, a cluster of bright lights appear in the sky, eerie and menacing.

Over the course of the next few days, more children disappear. Tina longs to be allowed outside, affected by a sirensong the adults cannot hear. A monster appears on the block, terrifying the neighborhood. The Army appears and sets up camp around the small Great Lakes town. Throughout it all, Rick is suspicious of his new boarder, Marcus Jantz. That is, until Marcus helps defeat the monster, which turns out to be a tin-plated prop. Obviously, the alien invasion shtick is a ruse, a cover for something else. But what?

It turns out (as has been teased since the beginning, but it takes Rick a while to learn) that Marcus is actually an agent from the future. In this future, aliens have appeared, demanding millions of their children. But humanity of the future is near-sterile, thanks to an overabundance of nuclear energy. Their only source for children is the past, hence a series of raids throughout history. Indeed, the Pied Piper legend has roots in truth, a kidnapping strike from a century long distant. In the end, Rick follows the last child to be abducted, his own, into the future, where he makes a desperate plea to Marcus to let their children go.

The Time Twisters is a very quick read by a talented author (who, like Andre Norton, stays out of the genre magazines). The characters are nicely drawn, the situations nicely tense. Unfortunately, the plot is absurd. Any people with time travel have already won any war they might face. Moreover, surely the indiscriminate removal of ancestors must destroy countless future generations.

Still, I was entertained on my latest trip to Japan, and thus, I give this very flawed piece a full three stars.

And now, I turn things over to Mark Yon, who contributes the second half of this month's column…

Ace Double F-275: No Truce with Terra, by Philip E. High; and The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster


by Mark Yon

My latest read is one that I had delivered to me from my friends in the States. As it is an Ace Double, and being someone never to knowingly avoid a cliché, I must say that it is a book of two halves (although The Duplicators is a little longer than the other story): as befits a double book, they are quite different in tone and style.

No Truce with Terra

No Truce with Terra examines the premise of what might happen if Earth was invaded — not by the traditional all-guns-blazing War of the Worlds style invasion but instead by stealth. Written by Brit Philip E. High, it begins quite normally but soon becomes strange. Scientist Lipscombe goes home from work one evening to find that his fibroplastic home will not allow him entrance. All attempts to break-in are thwarted.

Furthermore, over the next few days the house changes shape and unusual objects appear to grow around the outside of the house. There’s some electric blue grass and a plant that gives those who touch it a near-lethal electric shock, for example. Impressions are that they are alien, a means of colonising the planet before taking overall control, a bridgehead before the full-blown invasion.

Michael Lipscombe and his colleague Peter Collard become part of the scientific observation group. Then the “house” is surrounded by the British Army and attacked, the house retaliates – “they have set the dog on us” is the summary from Lipscombe.

Lipscombe and Collard are evacuated to a research centre in the North of Scotland as the alien threat spreads. With their mentor Stanley Dyson, obviously “one of the greatest names in science”, they determine that the invading force is a form of “natural electronic life” which has evolved naturally on another planet.

The scientists create a contraption that warps the fabric of space time and allows the humans to be granted access to the alien world. They do so, believing that such an action would create an escape route for humans and also allow them to create a secret base that can organise retaliatory actions.

All of this is basically World War Two re-written, of course. It’s interesting, if a little predictable, beginning with lots of stoic scientists discussing things and then frantic battles between the military and the aliens.

What we also get is the alien perspective, that they are willing to discuss terms of future contact through Collard, who they select as an emissary between the two races. The aliens are odd but not the unholy terrors that other stories would have you believe, and it is this aspect that makes this fast-paced story readable.

Three stars.

The Duplicators, by Murray Leinster

The second story is longer (an expansion, in fact, of Lord of the Uffts), but I found it less enjoyable. This time around it is the humans doing the invading, in a faux- Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court kind of way. The Duplicators tells us of Link Denham, a non-too-scrupulous gadabout who, when he drunkenly signs himself up as an astrogator on the not-so-good ship Glamorgan under the equally drunk Captain Thistlethwaite, finds himself on the way to the mysterious planet Sord III. Thistlethwaite claims there are riches beyond compare there, which he is willing to share with Denham in return for his help.

On arriving at the planet, they meet two types of extraterrestrials. Firstly there are the rather sarcastic and oppressed pig-like aliens known as Uffts, who claim their ship on its landing, and secondly there are the humans, led by Harl, who live in Households and run the planet’s society using the Uffts as servants. Their response to Thistlethwaite’s arrival is to arrest him and agree to execute him for spreading sedition – for in offering to pay to send a message to his seller Old Man Addison he has caused great offense. Doing business, except with Uffts, is a major insult on Sord III.

Link’s attempt at rescuing Thistlethwaite – for how else is he going to escape the planet? – leads to Link also being arrested by Harl’s Household. Instead of being grateful, the non-too-stable Thistlethwaite seems annoyed, even betrayed, by Link for abandoning their spaceship.

By offering their spaceship and cargo as a guest-gift to Harl, Link manages to persuade the Householder to avoid hanging them, but the rather unpredictable Thistlethwaite, still determined to make a business deal and participate in the socially abhorrent activity of business, believes that Link has betrayed him.

To complicate things further, there’s a revolution brewing from the down-trodden Uffts. A deal is made by Thistlethwaite with the Uffts to arrange his escape and take advantage of the unrest felt by the enslaved group. Link is ‘fired’ by Thistlethwaite.

On a more positive note Link also meets Thana, Harl’s sister. She reveals the reason for Thistlethwaite’s interest in the planet, that the aliens of Sord III have the technology to duplicate objects with dupliers, something that Thistlethwaite believes would be worth a great deal. Harl disagrees, his reasoning being that such an invention would lead to the collapse of civilisation as societies become too lazy to bother working.

Thistlethwaite’s escape leads to a chase to try and recapture him before he makes a deal with Old Man Addison for dupliers. The dilemma of the novel then becomes how Link can manage to keep the dupliers a secret whilst not allowing Thistlethwaite to exploit the aliens on Sord III. It may not be a surprise that Link’s ingenuity saves the day, avoids an Ufftian Revolution, keep Thistlethwaite pleased and ends things happily ever after for Link and Thana.

The Duplicators is one of those heartily humorous tales, a story of manners and misunderstandings that is all about the behaviour of “strangers in a strange land”. It seems to be meant to be a lighter counterpoint tale to the Philip High story, a parody of politics and behaviour that is clearly meant to strike the reader as amusing but for me really wasn’t. In fact, at times there are places where it all becomes a bit silly. On the positive side, it’s well written, if predictable, but Animal Farm it isn’t.  2.5 stars.

Together these tales do what Ace Doubles tend to do – put on display deliberately different aspects of the genre. Whilst the two stories are undeniably entertaining, in the bigger scheme of things they are really minor league stuff. They are not the best Double I’ve ever read, but not the worst either and frankly neither story is the best work I’ve read from either author. File under “OK but not essential.”

Summing Up

I suppose one can't expect more from an average month than a bunch of average books. But, boy… it'd sure be nice!

We'll just have to wait for the next Galactoscope to see if our fortunes change (hopefully for the better…)

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[June 18, 1964] Bad Comic Book Style and Good Comic Book Style (Galactoscope)

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[This month's Galactoscope features a trio of books by two authors filled with riproar and comic-style adventure. We think you'll enjoy this foray into the past…and future!]

The Valley of Creation, by Edmond Hamilton


by Cora Buhlert

The Valley of Creation by Edmond Hamilton

Captain Future was the first science fiction I encountered, therefore I will always have a soft spot for Edmond Hamilton. And so I was happy to find a new Edmond Hamilton novel in the spinner rack of my local import bookshop, even if The Valley of Creation is quite different from Captain Future. The latter is space opera, the former is an earthbound adventure in the style of the "lost world" stories that were popular around the turn of the century.

The Valley of Creation follows the adventures of Eric Nelson, an American soldier of fortune (as he euphemistically calls himself) who got stuck in Asia after the Korean war. Together with a motley multinational crew of mercenaries – a Dutchman, an Englishman, a Chinaman and a fellow American (and a black man, at that) – Eric is fighting in the Chinese civil war, offering his guns and skills to whatever local warlord is willing to pay.

But Eric and his merry band of mercenaries are in a tight spot. Their latest employer is dead, the People's Liberation Army is encroaching and the mercenaries are about to find themselves on the wrong end of a firing squad. Luckily, a man called Shan Kar shows up and hires them to fight his private little war in a hidden valley in the Himalayas, far from the reach of the PLA. A hidden valley where platinum worth millions is just lying around for the taking.

If you're reminded of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon at this point, you're not alone. Alas, L'Lan, the titular valley, is no peaceful Shangri-La. It is a troubled paradise, where the conflict between Shan Kar's faction, the Humanites, and their enemies, the so-called Brotherhood, is about the escalate.

You'd think that a group calling themselves the Humanites would be the good guys. But you'd be wrong, because the Humanites are bigoted supremacists. The Brotherhood, on the other hand, is committed to equality between humans and non-humans. Non-humans in this case meaning sentient and intelligent animals, who happen to be telepathic as well.

Shan Kar hopes that the mercenaries and their modern weapons will turn the tide in his favour. But their attempt to infiltrate the Brotherhood's stronghold quickly goes wrong. Eric is taken prisoner and finds himself at the mercy of the Brotherhood. As "punishment", he has his consciousness transferred into the body of a wolf via quasi-magic technology.

Forced to literally walk in the paws of his enemy, Eric realises that he is fighting on the wrong side and vows to aid the Brotherhood against his former comrades. And just in time, too, because – quelle surprise – Eric's surviving mercenary pals reveal themselves to be murderous thugs willing to do anything in order to get to the platinum.

Startling Stories July 1948The Valley of Creation is an action-packed science fantasy adventure that feels like a throwback to the pulp era, probably because it is. For The Valley of Creation is an expanded version of a story first published in the July 1948 issue of Startling Stories. This has caused some anachronisms, e.g. at one point Eric remarks that he has been in Asia for ten years, which would set the story in 1960. However, the Chinese Civil War and the annexation of Tibet and the East Turkestan Republic, which are the reason why Eric and his comrades are in the Himalayas in the first place, happened in 1949 and 1950, i.e. shortly after the story was originally published.

The chapters that Eric spends in the body of a wolf are the highlight of the novel, for Hamilton makes a serious attempt to describe what the world would look, smell and feel like through the senses of a wolf. The other animals are characters in their own right as well, though the Brotherhood's commitment to equality between man and beast is undermined by the fact that their hereditary leader is human. But then, making the leader anything other than human would have been problematic, considering the plot requires Eric to fall in love with his beautiful daughter.

One can view the novel as a plea for animal rights. Or one can view it as an analogy for racial equality – after all, Eric muses at one point that equality between humans and animals seems as natural in L'Lan as equality between different races is in the outer world. That's an optimistic statement to make even in 1964, let alone in 1948. Furthermore, the Chinese mercenary Li Kin is a wholly sympathetic character, in a genre that is still all too often suffused with yellow peril rhetoric. Another member of the mercenary band is a black man, but unfortunately he is the main villain.

An entertaining novel that's well worth reading, even if it belongs to an earlier era of science fiction. 3.5 stars.

Outside the Universe, by Edmond Hamilton


by Jason Sacks

As the Journey’s resident comic book fan, I try to broaden my understanding of the industry’s creators by checking out some of their text-only work. This month brought two novels by prominent comic book writers. The contrast between the two works is strong.

First up is Outside the Universe by Edmond Hamilton, an Ace reprint of Hamilton’s final Galactic Patrol book. First published in a quartet of 1929 Weird Tales pulps, alongside work by Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and — I kid you not — Lois Lane — Hamilton’s epic tale of titanic space battles, courageous heroes and intergalactic alliances is a breathless, often overwhelming weird tale.

Written in a long-winded style which reads like Hamilton was desperate to allow the words to tumble from his typewriter lest they find a stray period, Outside the Universe is a wild and wooly journey which involves a million-ship battle between a mighty galactic empire and evil space serpents. Battles are enormous and seemingly endless, and space seems filled with astonishing dangers which imperil every space ship which passes through them. Our heroes and villains fight their ways through bizarre radiation clouds and unexplained hot areas, stars arranged geometrically and people transformed into statues.

It’s a humdinger of a tale, a rousing yarn which throws the reader from cliffhanger to cliffhanger with scarcely a moment to catch their breath — unless they stop to diagram one of the hundreds (thousands?) of 50-word sentences in this book. Hamilton seems to have never internalized the idea of varying sentence length to keep his readers engaged. Perhaps this is an artifact of 1920s pulp writing, but I found I couldn’t keep focus on this book for too long without desperately getting impatient for a quick breather from all Hamilton’s verbosity.

Hamilton moved to comics, where he often wrote for his friend Mort Weisinger on the Superman family of comics. Notably, Hamilton's run on the "Legion of Super-Heroes" tales in Adventure Comics is well known for its breakneck pace — “a new planet every page”, as one critical wag labeled it — and complete paucity of characterization. Apparently Mr. Hamilton changed little as he aged, as this early work reflects those tendencies. Outside the Universe is a hoot but this story has no teeth.

Rating: 2.5

Escape Across the Cosmos, by Gardner Fox

Meanwhile, Gardner Fox has released his newest through the Paperback Library. Escape Across the Cosmos reads at times like a print version of Mr. Fox’s comic book work. In this volume, he delivers a novel about a kind of extradimensional space superhero.

That’s appropriate for the man who has written many classic tales for National Comics’ heroes line, including the memorable “Flash of Two Worlds”, in which the super speedster met his cross-dimensional counterpart. In fact, rumor has it that Fox will be assuming the reins on Batman later this year, taking over the moribund Batman and Detective Comics titles from a team which includes Edmond Hamilton.

Escape Across the Cosmos is the tale of Kael Carrack, a war-ravaged man whose body has been rebuilt to be nearly indestructible. His silicon skin, cybernetic strength and superhuman abilities are urgently needed to defeat the dreaded Ylth’yl, a Lovecraftian monster from another dimension who has killed nearly everybody of importance in his dimension and who hungers to transport his evil to our dimension. In fact, as the story unfolds, it seems Kael has a special connection to the evil creature, one which may save — or doom — our dimension.

In contrast with the Hamilton novel, Fox doesn’t squander characterization for adventure. He takes pains to show readers Kael’s confusion and allows us to become willing and excited participants in the hero’s journey to self-realization. As he and we do so, Kael finds true romance with a human woman, grows into a more perfected version of himself. It will betray any surprises to say that Kael begins to fulfill his destiny by the end of this short book.

This short novel is a clever, quick read. It shines in comparison with Hamilton’s overcrowded prose, as Fox takes pains to allow the reader to move ahead at his own pace. I would have loved to see more depth on the hero and his universe, but perhaps we’ll learn more about him at some point in the future when Fox delivers a sequel in one form or another.

Escape Across the Cosmos reads like an origin story for a new superhero, and for all I know Kael may appear in the pages of National’s Showcase try-out book in the next several months. Maybe Kael will be their next great sci-fi hero. I would certainly welcome him in my comics stack each month.

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[May 26, 1964] Stag Party (Silverberg's Regan's Planet and Time of the Great Freeze)

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by Gideon Marcus

Science fiction is a hard business to make it in.  Back in the early '50s, during the post-war revival, there were some 40+ monthly magazines authors could send stories to.  It was pretty easy to get published back then although the quality was often…shall we say…indifferent.  By the end of the decade, with the fall of the largest magazine distributor and the public getting, perhaps, more discerning, there were just six mags and sff book publication was pretty slow, too.

A lot of authors left the genre to try their luck in the mainstream world.  That's why we lost Bob Sheckley, Ted Sturgeon, and Philip K. Dick for a while.  But times are tough in the real world, too.  Plus, of late, sff seems to be picking up again: IF is going monthly, we've got a couple of new mags in Worlds of Tomorrow and Gamma, books are coming out at an increasing rate.  And so Dick is back in force, and others who have left the field are nosing their way back in.

Robert Silverberg is another one of the authors who wrote sff like the dickens back in the '50s and then disappeared.  He's still writing and writing and writing, but most of his stuff doesn't end up on our favorite shelves or in our favorite magazines.

But sometimes…

In fact, in just the last three months, two Silverberg science fiction books have hit my to-review pile.  And since Silverberg writes the "Spectroscope" book review column for Amazing, it is apt that this edition of the Journey's book review column, the "Galactoscope", be Silverberg-centered.

Regan's Planet

The New York World's Fair has captured the hearts and minds of America this spring, an exposition of modern technologies, wild speculations on the future, and cultural displays from all over the globe.  Silverberg's latest adult science fiction novel, Regan's Planet, is billed as "The wild and wacky novel of the next World's Fair."  As it turns out, this is a bit of false advertising.

It is the end of the 1980s, and corporations are virtually states unto themselves, and the CEO of a sprawling enterprise wields more power than even the President of the United States.  Our protagonist is Claude Regan, head of Global Factors, one of the world's great corporate conglomerates.  At the ripe old age of 35, Regan is bored with success.  Like Alexander, he weeps for a lack of worlds to conquer.

Thus, he conceives a brand new kind of World's Fair, one to take place on the quincentennial of Columbus' first landing in the New World, one that will establish a permanent foothold for humanity in the next frontier. 

Yes, he wants to hold the event in space.

Most of the slim book's 140 pages features the organization and funding of the event.  There's not much wild about it and certainly no wackiness.  In fact, the whole thing reads like an account of a fairly normal, if grandiose, business venture. 

And though Regan's Planet is putatively science fiction, it's really sheer fantasy.  Silverberg posits that we'll have colonies on Mars in just a couple of decades, and that a the cost of sending dozens of Saturn-class rockets into orbit to build an Expo satellite (not to mention the dozens more rockets required to stock it and send attendees) is a significant but not overly expensive endeavor.

The premise doesn't work in a lot of ways.  Firstly, I don't know if Bob reads Aviation Weekly, but I do, and I know what NASA's budget is.  There's no way spaceflight is going to be as cheap as he thinks it is, not in less than thirty years.  Moreover, if space is that cheap, then there should be lots of satellites already in space, whereas Regan's Planet suggests that the Expo is the first, and it is being built precisely as a vanguard space settlement.

On a personal note, I was turned off by the inclusion of precisely one (1) female character in the story (out of a dozen or so), Regan's conniver wife.  In this future, men still rule, and women are graspers and not even good marital partners.  Also, you may be unable to stomach the way that Regan ultimately gets the Fair to be an unqualified success (to be fair, Regan himself isn't able to, either).

All that said, I've seen flashes of brilliance when Bob applies himself, and even when he doesn't, he still puts out workmanlike stuff.  The book does move along pretty well, and I had no trouble finishing it.  Silverberg himself has described this book as "a minor work".  Perhaps he spent a week cranking the thing out; thanks very much for the paycheck, on to the next "under the counter" book.

Two and a half stars.

Time of the Great Freeze

In the late 20th Century, a mysterious galactic cloud obscured the sun.  Not entirely, but enough to send the Earth into another Ice Age.  The tropics became temperate, and the temperate zones became glaciated.  The population of the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, and China, rushed southward only to be rebuffed by the emerging world, offering the industrialized nations a taste of their own anti-immigrant medicine.  And so the northerners either crowded into their barely inhabitable southern zones, or they established nuclear-powered underground cities, designed to be self-sufficient and protected by a mile of glacier ice.

Now, 300 years later, there are signs that the world's deep freeze is about to end, and a group of subterranean New Yorkers becomes curious about the half-forgotten world above.  After being cast out of the city by a paranoid oligarchy for making radio contact with underground London, nine men decide to undertake the trek to Europe.  Their goal: to see what civilization remains after three centuries of cold.

Time is a journey story, clearly written for a younger audience.  Along the way, we meet all manner of surface-dwellers, from illiterate hunters to half-savage bandits to civilized ice-dwellers.  There are exciting scenes of battle, of blizzard, of death.  In this book, we don't get a single woman, but I suppose no female characters is better than an unflattering single example. 

Again, I don't know if Silverberg put a great deal of energy into this book, but Bob writes like breathing, and there's a sort of a Time-Life The Poles feeling of realism about Time.  A kid (or kid-like adult, like me) will likely enjoy this combination of the Arctic expedition and post-apocalyptic genres.

Three and a half stars.

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