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[May 3, 1961] Passing the Torch (June 1961, Galaxy, 2nd Half)

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Something is changing over at Galaxy magazine.

Horace Gold, Galaxy's editor, started the magazine in 1950, near the beginning of the post-pulp digest boom.  He immediately set a high bar for quality, with some of the best authors and stories, and including a top-notch science columnist (this was before Asimov transitioned from fiction).  Galaxy only once won the Best Magazine Hugo (in 1953, and that one it shared), but it paid well, eschewed hoary cliches, and all-in-all was a pillar of the field.  It was the magazine that got me into reading science fiction on a regular basis.

Warning bells started to clang in 1959.  The magazine went to a bi-monthly schedule (though at a somewhat increased size).  Author rates were slashed in half.  Gold, himself, suffering from battle fatigue-induced agoraphobia, became more erratic.  This new Galaxy was not a bad mag, but it slipped a few rungs. 

Fred Pohl came on last year.  He was not officially billed as the editor, but it was common knowledge that he'd taken over the reigns.  Pohl is an agent and author, a fan from the way-back.  I understand his plan has been to raise author rates again and bring back quality.  While he waits for the great stories to come back, he leavens the magazines with old stories from the "slush pile" that happen not to be awful.  In this way, Galaxy showcases promising new authors while keeping the quality of the magazine consistent.

The June 1961 Galaxy is the first success story of this new strategy.

Last issue, I talked about how Galaxy was becoming a milquetoast mag, afraid to take risks or deviate far from mediocrity.  This month's issue, the first that lists Pohl as the "Managing Editor," is almost the second coming of old Galaxy — daring, innovative, and with one exception, excellent. 

Take Cordwainer Smith's Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons, in which an interplanetary ring of thieves tries to steal from the richest, and best defended planet, in the galaxy.  Smith has always been a master, slightly off-center in his style; his rich, literary writing is of the type more usually seen in Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Kittons is ultimately a mystery, the nature of the unique (in name and nature) "kittons" remaining unknown until the last.  A brutal, fascinating story, and an unique take on the future.  Five stars.

Breakdown is by Herbert D. Kastle, one of the aforementioned novices.  Despite his green status, he turned in an admirable piece involving a farmer who finds the world increasingly differing from his memories.  Is he sliding across alternate universe?  It is a cosmic prank?  A gripping story, suitable for adaptation to The Twilight Zone.  Four stars.

The one dud of the issue is Frank Herbert's A-W-F Unlimited: thirty pages of pseudo-clever dialogue and inner monologue set in a mid-21st Century ad agency as its star executive attempts to fulfill a recruiting drive contract for the space corps.  I got through it, but only by dint of effort.  1 star.

Poul Anderson has another entry in his Time Patrol series, though My Object all Sublime does not betray this fact until the end.  It's a slow, moody piece; the reflections of a man from the far future, flung into the worst areas of the past as punishment for a nameless crime.  In one thought-provoking passage, the condemned man notes that being from the future in no way guarantees superiority in the past, for most people are not engineers or scientists with sufficient knowledge to change the world.  Moreover, they arrive penniless, and who can make a difference without money?

This is actually a problem I've considered (i.e. what I'd do if ended up stuck far back in time).  While I probably wouldn't recognize salt-peter if I smelled it, I suspect just introducing germ theory and Arabic numerals would be enough to carve a niche.  Zero must be the most influential nothing in the history of humanity…  I rate the story at four stars.

Rounding out the issue is Fred Saberhagen's The Long Way Home.  Two thousand years from now, a (surprisingly conventional) man and wife-run mining ship discovers an enormous spacecraft out among the planetoids near Pluto.  How it got there and where it's going pose enigmas that should keep you engaged until the end of this competently written tale.  Three stars.

In sum, the June 1961 Galaxy weighs in at a solid 3.5 stars.  If you skip the Herbert, you end up with a most impressive regular-length magazine.  Given that Pohl also edits Galaxy's sister mag, IF (also a bi-monthly, alternating with Galaxy), I am eagerly looking forward to next month!

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[April 30, 1961] Travel stories (June 1961 Galaxy, first half)

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My nephew, David, has been on an Israeli Kibbutz for a month now.  We get letters from him every few days, mostly about the hard work, the monotony of the diet, and the isolation from the world.  The other day, he sent a letter to my brother, Lou, who read it to me over the phone.  Apparently, David went into the big port-town of Haifa and bought copies of Life, Time, and Newsweek.  He was not impressed with the literary quality of any of them, but he did find Time particularly useful.

You see, Israeli bathrooms generally don't stock toilet paper…

Which segues nicely into the first fiction review of the month.  I'm happy to report I have absolutely nothing against the June 1961 Galaxy – including my backside.  In fact, this magazine is quite good, at least so far.  As usual, since this is a double-sized magazine, I'll review it in two parts.

First up is Mack Reynolds' unique novelette, Farmer.  Set thirty years from now in the replanted forests of the Western Sahara, it's an interesting tale of intrigue and politics the likes of which I've not seen before.  Reynolds has got a good grasp of the international scene, as evidenced by his spate of recent stories of the future Cold War.  If this story has a failing, it is its somewhat smug and one-sided tone.  Geopolitics should be a bit more ambiguous.  It's also too good a setting for such a short story.  Three stars.

Willy Ley's science column immediately follows.  There's some good stuff in this one, particularly the opening piece on plans to melt the Arctic ice cap to improve the climate of the USSR (and, presumably, Scandinavia and Canada).  Of course, if global warming happens on schedule, we won't need any outlandish engineering marvels to make this happen; we can just continue business as usual.  Hail progress!

I also appreciated Ley's reply to one of his fans, who asked why he rarely covers space launches anymore.  His answer?  They come too quickly!  Any reporting would have a 4-5 month delay – an eternity these days.  It's hard enough for me to keep up.  Four stars.

The Graybes of Raath is Neal Barret, Jr.'s third story in Galaxy.  It should be a throw-away, what with the punny title, the non-shocker ending, and the hideous Don Martin art.  But this tale of a well-meaning immigration agency attempting to find the home of a family of itinerant alien farmers is actually a lot of fun.  Barrett is nothing if not consistent.  Three stars.

Now here's a weird one.  Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth have a new duet out called A Gentle Dying.  Now, the two have worked together for many years; that's not the surprising part.  Nor is the fact that the story, about an incredibly elderly and beloved children's author's last moments, is good.  No, it's strange because Kornbluth has been dead for five years!  I can only imagine that Pohl (now de-facto editor of Galaxy, per last month's F&SF) dusted this one off after having waited for the right venue/slot-size.  Three stars.

Last up is R.A. Lafferty's absolutely lovely The Weirdest World.  Can a marooned alien blob find sanctuary, even happiness, among aliens so strange as those that live on Earth?  I've always kind of liked Lafferty, but this one is his best to date, with its gentle writing, and its spot-on portrayal of cross-species telepathy.  Five stars.

This column began with travel, and it ends with travel.  My wife and I are in Las Vegas for a weekend, enjoying the food and the sights.  Sinatra doesn't seem to be at the Sands right now, but that's all right.  We'll catch Ol' Blue Eyes another time.

While we were here, we ran into Emily Jablon, a famous columnist and Jet Setter who spends much of her time flitting across the world.  She gave us some tips on travel that were new even to us!  Of course, we introduced her to Galactic Journeying, and what better way than with this month's Galaxy?

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[March 12, 1961] Mirror Images (April 1961 Galaxy, second half)

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Last time, my theme was "more of the same," pointing out that Galaxy is keeping its content as consistent as possible, at the expense of taking any great risks.  It is ironic that, as I pound the keys of my typewriter, my radio is playing a new version of "Apache."  This bossanova version by a Danish cat, name of Jörgen Ingmann, is fair, but I like the British one better, the one compellingly performed by The Shadows. 

You are, of course, here to find out if the rest of the April 1961 Galaxy follows the trend set by the first half.  The answer is "yes."  It's a good issue, but not a great one.

Let's start with the next story, I can do Anything by J.T. McIntosh.  I know I have readers who aren't particularly fond of him, but I find he usually turns in a good show.  So it is with this story, about a man exiled to a miserable mining world for the crime of being a bit more than human.  His power is an unsettling one; I'm glad to see it employed solely for good.  A gritty piece with depth.  Four stars.

Homey Atmosphere is a cute tale about the virtues and difficulties inherent in employing sentient computers in one's starships.  Daniel Galouye is another author on whom I often find opinion divided.  I generally fall on the side of liking him.  This story has an ending you might suspect before it occurs, but that doesn't make it a bad one.  Four stars.

All the People is a strangely unwhimsical and straightforward piece by R.A. Lafferty about a man who knows everyone on Earth despite never having met most of them.  The story gets a quarter star for mentioning my (obscure) home town of El Centro, California, and it loses a quarter star for spoiling the ending a page early with a telling illustration.  Three stars.

I don't know Roger Dee very well.  In fact, I've never reviewed any one his stories in this column, and though my notes suggest I've encountered him before, none of his creations stuck in my mind.  I suppose, then, it should come as no surprise that his The Feeling similarly failed to impress.  The notion that astronauts should feel an overwhelming sense of homesickness immediately upon leaving their home planet is not justified by any scientific research, and while, as the spacemen's ship approaches Mars, the story careens near an exciting resolution, Dee adroitly manages to avoid it.  Two stars.

But then there's Ted Sturgeon, who can write three-star stories in his sleep (and probably does, to pay the bills).  Tandy's Story reads like a Serling preamble to an episode of The Twilight Zone and features two poignant themes.  The first is a Sturgeon perennial: the symbiotic merger of minds with a result decidedly greater than the sum of the parts involved.  The other is a human perennial: the unease at watching one's children grow up far too fast… 

A very good story, but it doesn't tread any new ground for Sturgeon or Galaxy.  Thus, just four stars.

On the plus side, we have a 3.5-star issue, and only one below-average entry in the bunch.  In the minus column (paradoxically) are the good stories, none of which are outstanding.  That said, I do like the fellows they've now got doing the art.  I say if you're going to include pictures in your literary magazine, make them good ones.

Give me a couple of days for next entry—I'm making my way through James Blish's Titan's Daughter.  It's not bad, so far, though it feels a little dated, which makes sense given that the first half of the novel was written as the novella, Beanstalk, nine years ago.

Stay tuned!

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[March 8, 1961] Bland for Adventure (April 1961 Galaxy, 1st half)

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As we speak, my nephew, David, is on the S.S. Israel bound for Haifa, Israel.  It's the last leg of a long trip that began with a plane ride from Los Angeles to New York, continued with a six-day sea cruise across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, and which currently sees the youth making a brief landing in the Greek port of Piraeus.  He's about to begin a year (or two) in Israel on a kibbutz.  An exciting adventure, to be sure, though I will miss our discussions on current science fiction, even if his tastes were, understandably, a little less refined than mine. 

So I hope, dear readers, that you will make up for his absence by sending me even more of your lovely comments!

Of course, you can hardly prepare your posts until I've reviewed this month's set of magazines.  First on the pile, as usual, is the double-large issue of Galaxy, the biggest of the science fiction magazines with 196 pages packed with some of the biggest names in the field. 

But is bigger always better?  Not necessarily.  In fact, Galaxy seems to be where editor H.L. Gold stuffs his "safe" stories, the ones by famous folks that tend not to offend, but also won't knock your socks off.

So it is with the April 1961 Galaxy, starting with the novella, Planeteer, the latest from newcomer Fred Saberhagen.  It starts brilliantly, featuring an interstellar contact team from Earth attempting to establish relations with an aboriginal alien race.  Two points impressed me within the first few pages: the belt-pouch sized computer (how handy would that be?) and the breakfast described as, "synthetic ham, and a scrambled substance not preceded or followed by chickens."

The race, however, is disappointingly human; the tale is a fairly typical conundrum/solution story.  On the other hand, the alien king does show some refreshing intelligence—no easy White God tactics for the Planeteers!  Three stars.

Fritz Leiber offers up Kreativity for Kats, an adorable tale of a feline with the blood of an artiste.  Now, any story that features cats is sure to be a cute one (with the notable, creepy exception of The Mind Thing…) It's not science fiction at all, not even fantasy, but I read it with a grin on my face.  Four stars.

Galaxy's science fact column, For Your Information, by German rocket scientist Willy Ley, continues to be entertaining.  This bi-month's article is on the Gegenschein, that mysterious counterpoint to the Zodiacal Light.  There's also a fun aside about the annexation of Patagonia by a bewildered German professor as well as silly bit on Seven League Boots.  Three stars.

Last up for the first half of the book is James Stamer's Scent Makes a Difference, which answers the question on everyone's mind: What if you could meet all the alternate yous—the ones who took different paths in life?  Would you learn from all of your possible mistakes?  Or would you merely commit the biggest blunder of all?  I didn't quite understand the ending (or perhaps I overthought it).  Three stars.

That's that for now.  Read up, drop me a line, and I'll have the second half in a few days!

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[January 12, 1961] A matter of taste (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 2)

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How should I rate a story which is objectively well done, but which I just don't like? 

We taught our daughter manners at a very early age.  When she encountered a food she didn't enjoy, she was to say, "This is not to my taste," rather than something more forceful and potentially bruising of feelings.  I recognize that my readers are turned on by different things than I am; one person's trash is another's treasure, etc.  But at the end of every review, I have to come up with a numerical score, and that score necessarily reflects my views on a piece. 

This conundrum is particularly acute with the current issue of Galaxy, dated February 1961.  None of the stories are bad.  Many are well crafted, but I found the subject matter in some of them unpleasant.  But they may be the bees knees for you.  Take my reviews with that disclaimer in mind, and you should be all right.

I covered the first half the issue time-before-last.  I'd rated all of the stories a solid three stars–reader feedback indicated that they liked the stories more than I (which is what led to the musings with which I started this column).  Part two begins with C.C.MacApp's The Drug.  Is the ability to transcend one's consciousness beyond one's skull the key to eternal health and happiness?  An exploration of a fun idea as well as a pleasant slice-of-life depiction.  Three stars.

Gordy Dickson is back with An Honorable Death, contrasting a decadent but advanced Terran society with a primitive, vibrant aboriginal culture.  It's got a wicked sting in its tail.  This is one of those stories that made me uneasy, but whose quality is undeniable.  Three stars… but you may give it more.

One of my readers once said that he "bounces" off Daniel Galouye, a writer with real talent, but whose writing is not to everyone's taste.  I happen to like his stuff quite a lot, though his latest, The Chaser, about two spacewrecked fellows on a planet whose population is engaged solely in romantic games of tag, doesn't seem to have much of a point.  Three stars.

Damon Knight offers the cutting and unpleasant Auto-da-fe, about the last man on Earth and the 59 sentient canines over whom he reigns.  As he reaches his last years of life, will he allow the dogs to breed and thus become master of the Earth?  Another off-putting story of high quality.  Three stars.

Rounding things out is a delightful novelette from the master of interstellar adventure, Murray Leinster.  Doctor shows us a galactic polity of humans imperiled by a plague that appears unstoppable, but is, for the moment, limited in scope.  Just one planet has succumbed, but its sole survivor, a precocious 10-year old girl who has lived her life in an aseptic bubble, has been shipped off-world in defiance of quarantine.  Is she infected?  If so, has she doomed the inhabited universe to destruction?  Or is she the key to the plague's eradication?  Leinster's viewpoint character, the spaceship's doctor who must deal with the enormity of the situation, is a compelling one, and I greatly liked the relationship forged between him and the girl.  Four stars.

Add it all up, and you've got an issue that barely tops three stars–enjoyable, but not superlative.  I don't think that tells the whole tale, however.  Galaxy (and its sister, IF) are taking chances, and for that, they are to be commended.  I'm very interested to know how you feel about these stories.  Drop me a line, would you?

My editor says I'll get more response if I include a picture of a pretty girl and a cat…  Is she right?

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[January 6, 1960] Watch your tongue?  (February 1961 Galaxy, Part 1)

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The old saying goes, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."  As you know, I am rarely reserved when I don't like a piece of work.  Every once in a while, I get a gentle chiding.  One reader said he didn't want to hear about stories I don't like–just the ones I do.  Another opined that my fans might tire of my consistently negative reviews of a certain author. 

I don't want to discount these criticisms as I think they are valid.  On the other hand, if I am unreserved in my scorn, I am similarly effusive about what I like.  My columns are rarely completely negative.  Moreover, I recognize that even the works I don't like often appeal to others, and I love receiving letters from folks who disagree with my judgments. 

Besides, you good folk likely come here to see me as much as to get reading recommendations.  Alfred Bester said in F&SF last month that he prefers English non-fiction to American as English authors will intrude into the text.  There are only so many ways to package facts; the only distinguishing character is the personality of the packager.  Certainly, I read Asimov as much for the science lesson as for the fun anecdotes.

So, enjoy all of me, even the kvetching.  And if you don't, feel free to tell me just how much you dislike me.  I may even agree with you…

On to the task at hand–reviewing the first half of the February 1961 Galaxy!

Evelyn Smith (formerly Gold, same name as the editor, natch) takes up most of it with Sentry in the Sky, a story about a malcontent in a futuristic caste system who is enlisted to become a long-term spy mole on a more primitive world.  It's not bad, but it is awfully simplistic, and the point meanders.  Moreover, it relies on awfully human aliens.  Of course, it's satire as much as anything else–the primitive world has a culture that is immediately familiar to 20th Century people.  Let me know what you think.  Three stars.

Doorstep is a cute short by Keith Laumer about an overachieving general and the UFO he tries to crack open.  Sort of a poor man's Sheckley; something I'd expect from 1952.  Three stars.

Willy Ley's article is pretty interesting this month.  He covers the new science of "seeding" clouds to create rain in Let's do Something about the Weather.  Three stars.

Finally, we have what may be the very first piece from a new writer, Volume Paa-Pyx by Fred Saberhagen.  It's a fun twist on the future where those with specific aptitudes get placed in appropriate professions.  When is a police state not a police state?  Three stars.

It doesn't take a slide rule to calculate this issue: Three stars across the board!  Nothing exceptional, nothing horrid.  Satisfying, but ummemorable.  Let me ask you–is it better to be delivered a dose of strong ups and downs or a steady, bland mean?

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[November 13, 1960] Evening out (December 1960 Galaxy, second half)

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It's hard to keep the quality up in a long-format magazine like Galaxy, especially when your lower tier stuff gets absorbed by a sister magazine (IF).  Thus, it is rare to find a full issue of Galaxy without some duds that bring the average down.  Editor Gold has saved this month's weak entries for the second half.

Not that you could tell at first, given the fascinating Subject to Change, by Ron Goulart.  A creepy story about a woman, her gift for transformation, her struggle with kleptomania, and her increasing estrangement from her fiancee.  Four stars.

H.B. Fyfe's Round-and-Round Trip is a hoot.  If you're an inveterate traveler like me, you'll especially appreciate this tale of a fellow who seems to be trapped on the interstellar version of the M.T.A., endlessly shuttling from planet to planet, never reaching his destination.  But does he actually have one?  Or is the journey the thing?  I'm torn between three and four stars.

But then we have Blueblood, by Jim Harmon.  Human explorers find a planet of blue humanoids racially divided based on the depth of the skin's hue.  The darker ones are seemingly dumber than the lighter ones.  I held my breath for some kind of satire or allegory regarding our present prejudicial woes in this country, but the story took a left turn somewhere and just left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  If it's allegory, the message to be gleaned is disturbing, and if it is not, then it's just a weak tale.  It's too bad–Harmon is fairly consistently good.  Two stars this time.

Patrick Fahy is another complete novice, and Bad Memory, illustrated by Mad Magazine's Don Martin, is unimpressive.  A space horticulturalist sacrifices all to turn his planet into a Jovian swamp.  On the upside, he falls in love.  On the downside…well, I didn't like the downside.  Two stars (you might like it more than me).

The issue is wrapped up by Daniel Galouye's Fighting Spirit, about a space force clerk who shennanigans his way into real combat only to find that war isn't quite the rifle and stiff upper lip type.  More the garlic, cross, and mirror type…  Three stars.

All told, we end up with an issue that just barely crests the three-star line on the Journey-meter.  Still, that's pretty good for an issue in "decline," and there are some definite gems, albeit more amethyst than emerald.

By the way, speaking of Don Martin, the newest Mad Magazine has hit the stands.  As you can see, they successfully predicted the outcome of the race:

But they also hedged their bet–this was the outside cover:

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[Nov. 11, 1960] A Celebrated Veteran (December 1960 Galaxy)

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Ten years ago, a World War Two vet named H. L. Gold decided to try his luck as editor of a science fiction digest.  His Galaxy was among the first of the new crop of magazines in the post-war science fiction boom, and it quickly set an industry standard. 

A decade later, Galaxy is down to a bimonthly schedule and has cut author rates in half.  This has, predictably, led to a dip in quality, though it is not as pronounced as I'd feared.  Moreover, the magazine is half-again as large as it used to be, and its sister publication, IF, might as well be a second Galaxy.  All told, the magazine is still a bargain at 50 cents the issue.

Particularly the December 1960 issue.  There's a lot of good stuff herein (once you get past yet another senilic Gold editorial):

The reliable J.T. McIntosh leads off with The Wrong World, in which the Earth is conquered…accidentally.  There was some misunderstanding by our invaders as to the technological level of our world; for the more advanced planets, we're supposed to get an invitation to interstellar society, not a savaging.  It's kind of an oddball piece, but it kept my attention despite the late hour at which I began it.  Three stars.

Next up is brand-newcomer, Bill Doede with Jamieson, an interesting tale of teleporting humans whose talents are viewed as akin to witchcraft.  Not a perfect tale, but definitely a promising beginning to a writing career, and with a female protagonist.  Three stars.

For Your Information is interesting, if not riveting, stuff about a Polynesian feast involving thousands of mating sea worms.  I understand they're a delicacy.  I'll take their word for it…  Three stars.

Charles V. de Vet is back with Metamorphosis, a story about a symbiotic life form that makes one superpowered… but which also turns the host into a ticking time bomb.  You spend much of the story pretty certain that you know how to defuse the bomb, such that it strains the credulity that there should be anything to worry about.  The ending, however, addresses the issue nicely.  Three stars.

Finally (for today) we have Snuffles by the rather odd but compelling R.A. Lafferty.  He writes stories in a style that shouldn't work but somehow does.  That's either some innate talent or blind luck.  Given his track record, I'm betting on the former.  In any event, the novelette details the misadventures of a six-person planetary exploration crew (two women, life scientists–women are always cast as biologists for some reason) who are at first charmed and then menaced by a sexless Teddy Bear monster with delusions of Godhood.  A fascinating story.  Four stars.

Next time, we'll have works by Ron Goulart, H.B. Fyfe, Jim Harmon, Patrick Fahy, and Daniel Galouye.  That's a pretty good lineup!

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[September 1, 1960] Looking up (October 1960 Galaxy, second half)

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I'm sure you've all been waiting like caught fish (with baited breath), so I shan't keep you in the dark any longer regarding the October 1960 Galaxy.  The second half of the magazine is better than the first, but it is not without its troubles.

Neal Barrett is back with his sophomore effort, The Stentorii Luggage.  This engaging little tale highlights the dangers involved in running a hotel for dozens of disparate (and mutually incompatible) alien races.  It also justifies the "no pets" policy common to most places of lodging. 

A Fall of Glass gets my nomination for the best story of the issue.  This is also a second effort, by Stanley R. Lee, in this case.  Breezy, light touch tales are hard to pull off, but I think Lee has managed in this one, a romance set inside a climate-controlled, post-apocalyptic dome.  Superficially similar to World in a Bottle in subject matter, but far better in execution.

That brings us to Edward Wellen's "non-fact" article, Origins of the Galactic Short-Snorter.  It's an unwieldy title, to be sure, and these droll attempts at humor generally fall flat.  But this one, about a museum of obsolete currency, isn't bad.

The one familiar name in the issue is Gordon Dickson.  He can usually be counted on to turn in a decent story; his The Hours are Good is rather masterful.  It's not the vaguely futuristic setting or the details of the plot that stand out.  What distinguishes this thriller is the measured, deliberate way Dickson reveals what's going on in, culminating in a nice kicker.  I like stories that show rather than tell, and it's all show in this one.

Sadly, the issue doesn't stop there.  It's final tale, David Duncan's The Immortals, is a loser.  In brief: the inventor of immortality wants to know the effects his efforts will have on civilization.  He enlists the aid of a computer simulations expert.  When the projection shows that everlasting life leads to cultural torpor, the pair insert themselves into the simulation to learn more.

Duncan's story is B-Movie fare.  The idea that a computer could predict the future with perfect accuracy, so long as it is fed sufficient data, is silly on its face.  Anyone with a background in mathematics knows that even single equations often have several answers; many have an infinite number.  Add to that implausibility the idea that one could wander around this virtual reality and interact with its denizens using computers of current vintage…well, let's just say I'll need a splint for my strained credulity.

It's really too bad.  The societal impacts of everlasting life are worth exploring.  So is the notion of creating "life" within the memory banks of a computer.  Either would merit a novel of development.  Both get short shrift in this clunky novelette.

In more positive news, my family enjoyed a lovely, sunset stroll down Grand Avenue in nearby Escondido a few days ago.  I picked up copies of my reading material for this month, so you can expect reviews of Sheckley and Sturgeon in short order.

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[August 29, 1960] One shoe down (October 1960 Galaxy, 1st half)

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There is an old saw: "Just when I got my mule to work without being fed, she up and died on me!"

At the end of 1958, Galaxy editor H. Gold announced that his magazine was going to a bi-monthly publication schedule.  He did not mention that he was also slashing writer pay rates in half.

Last issue, Gold crowed about his stable of fresh new authors who would carry the torch of science fiction creation.  And, of course, there is plenty of room for the new authors now that the old names have departed for greener pastures.

Is this how a great magazine dies?  Not with a bang, but with a whimper?  You may disagree with me, but the October 1960 issue of Galaxy feels like a throwback.  A lesser mag from the mid '50s.  Let me show you the first half of the issue, and you'll see what I mean.

Allen Kim Lang opens things up with his novella, World in a Bottle.  The premise is an interesting one: take a group of people with no resistance to diseases (such people exist today).  Put them together in a sort of commune.  What are the sociological and practical implications?  What kind of life can they expect to have?

Some of the story rings true, particularly the feeling of imprisonment and the lack of attraction for one's fellow commune residents.  This isn't science fiction–this is what's happening right now on the kibbutzim in Israel.  What kills the story, for me, is the breezy style and the overly neat finish at the end.  It's a pity–Lang has been good enough to get printed in F&SF.  I'm sure he could turn out better.

The Hills of Home, by Alfred Coppel, originally came out in Future Science Fiction back in 1956.  It reads like an inferior version of Sturgeon's sublime The Man who lost the Sea, but I guess Coppel's came first, so perhaps Sturgeon's is a polish-up.  In any event, it's a clunky piece, but not horrible.  It does show that Galaxy is now resorting to reprints to fill its pages.  That's probably not a good sign. 

Marshall King is, as far as I can tell, a complete newcomer to science fiction.  His Beach Scene, about a cute little alien who can stop time, is rather engaging.  The creature's encounter with a band of rapacious human colonizers is bittersweet.  Mostly bitter.

Willy Ley seems to be coasting these days.  His latest article, The Air on the Moon, is not a stand-out.

Then we've got James Stamers' The Imitiation of Earth, positing a sort of planetary sentience that deliberately fosters the evolution of life.  This is Stamers' fourth published story, and Gold has bought every one of them.  I've noted in my reviews of his last three that his work tends to be forgettable stuff with occasional interesting ideas mixed in.  He continues this trend with his newest story, which starts out in a quite compelling manner, but ends prosaically. 

That brings us to newcomer Andrew Fetler's Cry Snooker, a satiric tale about the havoc wreaked on a suburban town by an experimental little flying machine.  It reads like a lesser Rosel George Brown story.  Heavy on the domestic banter, crude with the lampooning.

Now, things could turn around quite suddenly in the second half of this month's issue, but thus far, we're looking at a 2.5 star issue.  It would be a crying shame if Galaxy, once my favorite science fiction digest, ended up below Astounding!

In happier news, I met a lot of wonderful folks at the local science fiction convention last week.  One of them was dressed up as the new member of the family from Krypton, Supergirl.  Well, it turns out she is a local, and she sent me a photo to share with my fans.  Meet Janel, everyone!

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