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Book, Magazine

[January 8, 1964] A Taste of Homely (February 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Lost that Zing

It's tough to get out of a rut.  After all, you went through all the trouble of digging the trench in the first place — why expend extra effort getting out of it?

But the fact is, the house that H.L. Gold built in 1950, the superlative Galaxy Science Fiction digest, has gotten pretty stale lately.  Sure, the authors are still household names, but the works aren't their best.  Maybe Editor Pohl, who succeeded Gold a couple of years ago, is starved for material given that he maintains an industry record of three simultanteous mags.  Or perhaps Galaxy just doesn't have the cachet (or the budget to pay authors) of F&SF or Fantastic.

Maybe it's just a slow patch.  Anyway, take a gander at the February 1964 Galaxy and see what I mean:

The Issue at Hand

Grandmother Earth, by J. T. McIntosh

It was just a couple of months ago, in Poul Anderson's Conversation in Arcady, that we last saw the a decadent, paradisical Earth visited by more vigorous colonists.  McIntosh's variation on the theme features a less happy homeworld, one on which humans have given up for lack of challenge, and the sum population of Earth is reduced to a few tens of thousands stretched along France's idyllic Mediterranean coast.  When the last efforts at changing the status quo from within founder, it us up to a pair of extraterrestrial Terrans to come up with a solution.


(I have to wonder if this picture is the main reason the story was accepted…

McIntosh is a pretty good writer, though his best days seem far behind him.  The pacing and execution are engaging even if the plot is hackneyed.  What really tips the balance from four to three stars is the utterly unnecessary exposition at the end.

Hence: Three stars.

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

A wormlike alien lands in a small Arkansan town, but before it can open discussions with the citizens, a ramshackle exterminator shoots it dead.  A trial ensues to determine whether or not the extraterrestrial counts as a person such that the killer can be tried with murder.  Ultimately, the alien is classified as a person and the exterminator, excluded from the definition, is labeled vermin — and exterminated.

Summarized like that, it sounds like a pretty good story.  It's not.  Unpleasant and preposterous, Laumer must have dashed this one off for a quick buck.  Two stars (if that).

Shamar's War, by Kris Neville

When the completely humanoid inhabitants of a another planet refuse Earth's entreaties to formally ally, humanity sends a spy to foment rebellion and install a more friendly government.  The aliens are under a dictatorship, you see, and Earth deems them ripe for a bit of Democracy.  When efforts to install a formal voting system fail, the aliens come up with a more brute force option: selective boycotting of goods nonessential to life but essential to the economy.

It's hard to believe this piece was written by a veteran author, one who has produced several excellent stories over a career lasting more than a decade.  This piece is filled with short, unncompelling sentences; the characterization is nonexistent; and the exposition is endless.  The aliens aren't at all, and the solution to the story's puzzle is laughably simplistic.  I have to wonder if this wasn't an early piece of work that Neville had stuffed in a desk somewhere and which Pohl accepted out of desperation.

In any event, two stars.

The Early Days of the Metric System, by Willy Ley

Our favorite German rocket scientist had been going through a lackluster period, but this non-fiction article on the origin of standard weights and measures, though in some ways overlapping an old F&SF article by Dr. Asimov, is entertaining and informative.  This is the Willy that compelled me to start my subscription to Galaxy umpteen years ago.  5 stars.

Oh, to Be a Blobel!, by Philip K. Dick

Here's another human-sent-to-spy-on-aliens story, except this one takes place after the espionage.  It features a young man whose physical form was altered to match that of the invading amorphous Blobels.  Though promised to be reconditioned back to human physiognomy, the fellow finds himself reverting to Blobel form half the day, making his life thoroughly miserable.

Luckily for him, the other side had spies, too, and some of them are having similar readjustment trouble.  Our hero marries a young female Blobel spy, and all is well…for a while.  But feelings of inadequacy (she is smarter and more successful than he) and the hybrid nature of their children cause rifts.  Ultimately, the couple must choose between love and individual fortune.

This is a story that shouldn't work, ludicrous as it is in its premise.  But it's Dick, and it does. 

Four stars.

The Awakening, by Jack Sharkey

Imagine being one of hundreds preserved in suspended animation against a global catastrophe, only to wake up countless ages after the planned date.  Your machines are rusted, your elders rotted, and the world you knew has drastically changed.  How would you feel?  What would you do?

This story belongs in the "Color Me Surprised" department.  While the plot of the story is not particularly innovative, the execution is perfect — a sharp increase in quality from Jack Sharkey's usual output.

Four stars.

The Star King, by Jack Vance

In the last installment of The Star King, a fellow named Gersen was tracking down the "Demon Prince," Grendel, one of the Galaxy's most notorious crime bosses.  The trail had led Gersen to a university on the civilized world of Alphanor in search of the patron who had commissioned a survey of an Eden-like world far Beyond the edge of civilization.  For Gersen had every reason to believe that this patron was Grendel, especially after he killed his surveyor for refusing to reveal the location of the planet.

Part 2 opens Gersen facing several obstacles.  Foremost is that Grendel could be any of three professors at the school, all of whom profess ignorance of the murdered surveyor.  Then there are Grendel's three lieutenants, all of whom are deadly assassins who want Gersen out of the way.  Finally, there is the issue of Pallis Atwrode, an employee of the university who is the first to touch Gersen's heart after a life of nothing but revenge-seeking.

The conclusion to this novel ties all the threads together, throwing all of the characters onto one ship where Gersen can declaim the solution to the mystery, Poirot-style.

The Star King's problem isn't the plot, it's the execution.  After a rather gripping first half of the first half, the novel becomes a plodding bore, particularly with the unnecessary encyclopedic inserts every few pages.  Vance did such a good job of building a fresh new world in The Dragon Masters (also a Galaxy novel), but he rather flubs it here.  Moreover, Vance completely missed his opportunity to give us a real surprise ending, instead deciding on Grendel's identity almost at random, it seems.

Two stars, two and a half for the whole thing.

Summing Up

When I transfer the story data to punch card and run it through my Star-o-Vac, I get a roll of tape with the computation: 3 stars.  That doesn't sound so bad, right?  Thoroughly adequate compared to some of the other mags we've suffered through lately.  But it's the cavalcade of blandness that saps the will over time.  It's like a steady diet of matzah.  Sure, it gets you out of Egypt, but where's the milk and honey, man? 

Cordwainer Smith's in the next issue.  Maybe we'll make it to the Holy Land in March…

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Book

[January 4, 1964] Something borrowed, something blue (Ace Double F-253)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every good New Year's begins with a resolution.  Mine is to have the Journey review every single new SFF book that comes out in 1964 (that we can get our hands on, anyway).  I figure there's only about 30-40, and this way, we can make truly informed Galactic Stars recommendations.

All journeys begin with a single step, and as luck would have it, the first novel of the new year to hit the book stands was an Ace Double, two-for-one deals that often feel like less of a value than a single novel. 

This was one of those times…

The Twisted Men, by A.E. Van Vogt

Sometimes an Ace Double is an original piece (like One of our Asteroids — see below).  Sometimes it's a reprint like Isaac Asimov's Foundation (in his unfortunate case, chopped up into The 1,000 Year Plan).  I've also seen expansions of novellas (e.g. Brunner's Listen! The Stars! and Anderson's Let the Astronauts Beware!) and fix-up novels (for instance, Leigh Brackett's Alpha Centauri or Die!— a fusion of two separately published stories).)

The Twisted Men is yet another kind of Ace book: a compilation of unrelated pieces with no attempt to bind them.

I suspect the main motivation for these reprints was price.  None of these stories are younger than 12 years old, and they are not among author Van Vogt's better works.  They appear to be unaltered versions of what came out in the magazines, so what you're getting are original pieces from the end of the Pulp Era. 

The Twisted Men

The sun is about to go nova, and Averill Hewitt is the lone scientist convinced of the fact.  His only solace after being labeled a fool and ostracized is the commissioning of an interstellar colony ship, The Hope of Man.  Relief turns to consternation when the ship returns after just six years — far too soon for the trip to have been successful.  Worse yet, when he forces his way aboard the ship, he finds the crew virtually frozen in time, their bodies foreshortened with Lorentz contraction of the variety encountered at close to light speeds.

It's a thrilling set-up, but it's not how physics works.  Some efforts are made to blame the effect on unusual zones of space a la Anderson's Brain wave, but they're feeble, indeed.  For the most part, it's a science mystery with bad science crossed with a vapid thwart-the-spacejacking tale.

Two stars.

The Star-Saint

On a newly colonized world, engineer Leonard Hanley faces two problems: rampaging sentient boulders and a half-alien hunk assigned to the colony to deal with them.  Hanley tries to counter the stony threat himself, and fails.  The womenfolk coo over (and fraternize with) the hunk.  Ultimately, said hunk placates the rock beings and ships out, possibly leaving behind a brood of quarter-breeds.

It's readable enough, but it doesn't make much sense nor does it do women any favors with its characterizations.

Two stars.

The Earth Killers

This one was actually passable.  During the test flight of a Mach 9 "rockjet," Captain Kane Field encounters an ICBM bound for Chicago, part of an overwhelming attack on the United States.  Not only is he unable to stop the missile, but upon landing, he is court-martialed for his inability to identify the rocket's country of origin, insisting that the warhead came from directly overhead.

Kane breaks out of his imprisonment and hijacks his plane, taking it around the nation in an attempt to find the real culprits.  I guessed the answer; you might, too.

Parts of the story feel grounded and realistic (Killers takes place in 1964, and the rockjet is close kin to the real-life X-15).  Others, including the bit where Kane gasses up his ride as easily as one fills up a Studebaker, strain credulity.  Nevertheless, it's a fun read and the best piece of the Double.

Three stars.

One of our Asteroids is Missing, by Calvin M. Knox

The "blue" half of the double (because it's the title with the blue-shaded background on the spine, natch) takes place in the far-future year of 2019.  John Storm is a youth with a yen to make it rich in the asteroid belt.  Apparently, in 55 years, driving spaceships will be about as easy as driving mules was for the '49ers.  At least, that's what I got from the quick travel times and comparative ease of operation. 

Anyway, Storm, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Viking of a young man, finds an eight mile wide hunk of precious metals after two years of prospecting.  With visions of dollar signs dancing in his head, he stakes a claim on Mars and then heads home to his fiancee in New York.  But there, he finds that his papers were never properly processed — in fact, not only does his claim not exist, but per the nation's records, neither does he! 

Storm's suspicion that something underhanded is afoot is reinforced when a set of goons makes an attempt on his life.  This compels the miner to head back to the Belt to check up on his claim, brushing aside the objections of his bride-to-be ("Space is a lousy place for a woman," he says.  "I wouldn't want the responsibility of your safety up there.")

Sure enough, Storm discovers a fleet of Universal Mining Cartel spaceships preparing to make off with his prize.  This is a bold and unusual move.  Sure, the asteroid is a valuable one, but it's penny-ante to a big conglomerate like UMC.  Why risk law suits, bad publicity, and attempted murder charges?

The answer to this question is pretty obvious, but I'll let you figure it out.  A hint: this plotline is well-trodden ground, including appearances in Raymond Jones' The Alien and Murray Leinster's The Wailing Asteroid (and that's just books I've covered). 

Of course, you may give up before you get to the revelation.  One of our Asteroids is not great fiction, with lots of literary shortcuts and pretty uninspiring writing.  Also, for the most part, you could transfer the entire story with hardly an alteration to a Western setting.  This is probably why the author insisted on using a pseudonym so as to not tarnish his good name (said writer being none other than the not-at-all blond and blue-eyed, Robert Silverberg.)

2.5 stars.

***

Next up: The President and the traveler — see the intersection of JFK and the Journey…

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Book, Magazine

[January 2, 1964] All's well that ends well (January 1964 Analog science fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Auld Lang Syne

Greetings from 1964!  Given the challenges we faced in the latter part of last year, it was proper and cathartic to wrap up 1963 with a bang.  Here are some snapshots from our gala (and weren't we lucky to find a film developer willing to work on New Year's Day?)

Speaking of wrapping up, the last magazine of the old year, though dated January 1964, was the January 1964 Analog.  This is usually among the lesser science fiction magazines I read, but this time around, I was pleasantly surprised.  Come take a look!

Ending Well

Secondary Meteorites (Part 1 of 2), by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Could that black chunk of meteorite actually be from Mars?  There is an increasing body of evidence that the meteorites that hit the Earth were, themselves, bits of other planets blasted away by their own meteor strikes.  The subject matter is fascinating, but Dr. Hall manages to make it nigh incomprehensible.  It's too technical and presented all out of order (even Dr. Asimov learned early in his career that you have to define your terms first).  And this is only PART ONE!

Two stars.

The Eyes Have It, by Randall Garrett

My disdain for Mr. Garrett has been a constant of the Journey, ever since the offensive and just plain bad Queen Bee.  Over time, he has occasionally written decent stuff, and when he teams up with others, his rough edges get smoothed a bit.  Still, his name in the Table of Contents has always made me less eager to read a magazine.

Well, never let it be said that I can't keep an open mind.  Garrett's latest work is a tour de force.  If Asimov perfected the science fiction mystery with The Caves of Steel, Garrett has created the genre of magical mystery with The Eyes Have It.

The year is 1963, the place, France.  But this is no France we know.  Instead, it appears to be in a timeline that diverged nine centuries prior, one in which the Angevin Empire remained ascendant…and in which the use of magic developed. 

Lord D'Arcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, summoned to investigate the murder of the fantastically lecherous Count D'Evraux.  With the aid of his assistants, Sorcerer Sean O Lachlainn and chirurgeon Dr. Pately, he must find out how and at whose hand the Count met his untimely demise, and he has just twenty four hours to do it.

The attention to detail, the world-building, the characterization, the writing — all are top notch.  This is the sort of work I'd expect from Poul Anderson (and only when at the top of his game).  For Garrett to pull this off is nothing short of miraculous.

Dammit, Randy.  It's going to be hard to keep hating you.

Five stars.

Poppa Needs Shorts, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond

The last piece by the Richmonds was an utterly unreadable book-length serial.  This one, on the other hand, is a cute vignette convincingly told from the view of a 4-year old child who just wants to know about "shorts."  Leigh and Walt have a pretty good idea how kids learn, I think.

Three stars.

Subjectivity, by Norman Spinrad

The pages of our scientific journals offer a wealth of ideas that can be turned into SF stories.  New author Norman Spinrad seizes on Dr. Timothy Leary's paean to LSD in technical clothing, Psychedelic Review as inspiration for his second story:

Though humanity has invented an engine that will propel spaceships at half the speed of light, the heavens remain out of reach.  It's not the endurance of the ships that's the problem — it is that of the crew.  No matter how well-adjusted they are, all of them go crazy in less than half the time it takes to get to Alpha Centauri.  After twelve failed attempts, the powers that be assemble a crew of misfits with a twenty-year supply of hallucinogenics to keep them sane (if potted) and open up the stars.

Mission #13 succeeds…but not in a way anyone could have predicted.  A fun, slightly acid (no pun intended) little piece.  Four stars.

See What I Mean!, by John Brunner

In this disappointing outing from Brunner, a deadlock in negotiations between East and West is resolved when the four foreign ministers involved are psychoanalyzed, and it turns out the British and Russian officials have more in common with each other than with their ideological partners (from the U.S. and China, respectively).

Not much here.  Two stars.

Dune World (Part 2 of 3), by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's epic in the desert, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia in space, continues.  After the assassination attempt on his son, and with warnings that he has a traitor in his midst, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides attempts to shore up his position on Arrakis, sole source of life-extending "spice".  The planetology and culture bits are pretty interesting, particularly the depiction of the forbidding dune world of Arrakis and the spice-mining operations thereon.  I continue to get the impression, though, that Herbert is still too raw for this project.  The viewpoint jumps from line to line, much is conveyed through exposition, and the incessant use of italics is really trying to read.

Three stars again.

Crunching the numbers

So how did the first batch of magazines dated with the new year fare?  There are definitely some surprises.

  • Analog, came in first with a respectable 3.4 star rating.  Moreover, Randall Garrett of all people had the best story.  These must be the end times.
  • Fantastic came in a close second at 3.3.  New World tread water at 3.  IF got 2.8.  F&SF scored a disappointing 2.5.  Amazing dragged through the muck at a miserable 1.9.
  • All in all, there were nearly 200 pages of good-to-excellent stories.  Not a bad haul.
  • Women only wrote one and a half of the 31 fiction pieces this month, and theirs were short ones.  No surprises there.

Next up: the first book of the new year!

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Book, Magazine, Science / Space Race

[December 21, 1963] Soaring and Plummeting (January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos.]

The Balloon goes Up

It's been something of a dry patch for American space spectaculars, and with projects Gemini and Apollo both being delayed by technical and budgetary issues, it is no wonder that NASA is hungry for any positive news.  So you can excuse them for trumpeting the launch of Explorer 19 so loudly — even if the thing is just a big balloon.  How excited can anyone get about that?

As it turns out, plenty excited.

Explorer 19, launched December 19, 1963, is a spherical balloon painted with polka-dots (they keep the sun from making it too hot or cold), and what it does is measure the atmosphere as it circles the Earth.  Not with any active instruments, but just by moving.  All orbiting spacecraft have an ideal route, one determined by Newton's laws.  If there were no air at all up there, the satellite would just keep orbiting in the same path forever (though the Moon and the Sun exert their own influences).  But there is air up there.  To be sure, the "air" up above 600 kilometers in altitude is hardly deserving of the name — it's a harder vacuum than we can make on the ground!  Nevertheless, the stuff up there is denser than what is found in interplanetary space, and we can tell its density from the slow slip of Explorer 19 in its orbit. 

If we want to know what kind of science we'll get from Explorer 19, all we have to do is look to Explorer 9.  Launched two years ago, it is a virtual twin.  Both Explorers were launched from cheap, solid-fuel Scout rockets.  Both have tracking beacons that failed shortly after launch.  The only way to get any data from these missions is to track the satellites by sophisticated cameras.

Explorer 9 has already contributed immensely to our knowledge of Earth's upper atmosphere.  Thanks to constant photographic tracking of the satellite, scientists have seen the expansion of the atmosphere as it heats up during the day as well as shorter term heating from magnetic storms in the ionosphere.  As a result, we are getting a good idea of the "climate" on the other side of the atmosphere over a wide range of latitudes. 

This is not only useful as basic science; the folks who launch satellites now have a better idea how long their craft will last and the best orbits to shoot them into, saving money in the long run.  It is one of the many examples of how the exploration of space bears immediate fruit and also extended benefits.

And that's something to be excited about!

The other shoe drops

On the other hand, the January 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction begins the year on the wrong foot.  It is yet another collection of substandard and overly affected tales (leavened by a few decent pieces that somehow manage to get through), something like what Analog has become, though to be fair, I'm really looking forward to Analog this month. 

But first…

Pacifist, by Mack Reynolds

The best piece of the month is Pacifist by the prolific, seasoned, and (on occasion) excellent Mack Reynolds.  On a world much like ours, but where the balance of power is held between the north and south hemispheres, an anti-war group determines that the only way to curb our species' bellicose tendencies is to frighten the war-wagers with violence.  But can you really quench fire with fire?

It works because of the writing, something Reynolds never has trouble with.  Four stars.

Starlight Rhapsody, by Zhuravleva Valentina

This curious piece, in which a young woman astronomer discerns intelligent signals being broadcast from the nearby star, Procyon, originated in the Soviet Union.  It was then translated into Esperanto, of all languages, and then found its way into English.  The result is…well, I'll let our Russian correspondent give us her thoughts:


by Margarita Mospanova

In Russian, Starlight Rhapsody is actually a very pretty story — melodic and full of poetry, literally and metaphorically. It’s fairly melancholy, with just a touch of underlying Soviet optimism, nothing too garish in this case. But the translation…

Man, the translation makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s awful. It misses entire paragraphs of text as well as actual poems in the beginning and in the end. And the prose itself in no way resembles the original. Hell, it’s as if the translator used some kind of computerized translation device and just removed the grammatical mistakes afterwards. I’m really disappointed because the original story is really unexpectedly good.


by Gideon Marcus

You can get a glimmer of the story's original strength even from the twice-butchered version that editor Davidson provides.  Thus, three dispirited stars.

The Follower, by Wenzell Brown

Witness the perfect match: A milquetoast who decides to make his mark on society by stalking someone, and a paranoiac who only finds satisfaction when someone really is after him.  But their game develops a twist when their twin psychoses create a third player combining the worst aspects of both.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  If it were better done or more profound in its revelation, it might have been.  As is, it straddles the line between two and three stars, leaning toward the former.

The Tree of Time (Part 2 of 2), by Damon Knight

The conclusion of last month's adventure, in which a not-quite-man from the future is abducted from our time by frog people from his and then left to die in an experimental dimension ship.

After a reasonably thrilling beginning, the book reverts to what it was from the start — a pointless pastiche of the worst elements of science fiction's "Golden Age."  Deliberate or not, it's no less unreadable for it.

One star.  Feh.

Thaw and Serve, by Allen Kim Lang

Lang explores an interesting idea: hardened criminals are quick-frozen and deposited two centuries into the future.  It is the ultimate passing of the buck.  Turns out the future doesn't know what to do with them either, choosing to dump them in the wilds of Australia.  There, they fight it out for the televised amusement of the future-dwellers.

Written and plotted with a heavy hand, it's not one of Lang's better works.  In fact, the best thing about the story is the biographical preamble (Lang's middle name was given to him by Koreans during the war).

Two stars.

Nackles, by Curt Clark

"Curt Clark" (I have it on good authority that it's actually Donald Westlake) offers up the chilling story of the creation of a deity.  In this case, it's Santa Claus' dark shadow, the child-abducting "Nackles," who is caused to exist the same way as any other god — through widespread promulgation of belief.

Deeply unpleasant, but quite effective.  Three stars (four if this is your kind of thing).

Round and Round and …, by Isaac Asimov

At long last, I finally understand the concept of the "sidereal day," as well as the length of such days on other planets.  Thank you, Doctor A!  Four stars.

The Book of Elijah, by Edward Wellen

If you haven't read First and Second Kings (or as the uninitiated might call them, "One and Two Kings"), Elijah was a biblical prophet, passionate in his service of the Lord, who ascended to Heaven in flame and is due to return just before the End Times.  Ed Wellen, best known for his "funny" non-fact articles in Galaxy, writes about what happens to Elijah during his sojourn off Earth.

The Book is written in pseudo-King James style and is about as fun as reading the Bible, without any of the spiritual edification.  One star.

Appointment at Ten O'Clock, by Robert Lory

Last up, we have the tale of man with just ten minutes to live…over and over and over again.  Ten O'Clock has the beginning of an interesting concept and some deft writing, but it is short-circuited in execution.  It reads like the effort of a promising but neophyte author (which, in fact, it is — this is his second work).  Three stars.

This is what the once proud F&SF has been reduced to: a lousy Knight serial (shame, Damon!), a disappointing translation, some bad little pieces, and a couple of bright spots.  And Asimov's column, which I read, even if few others seem to.

Oh well.  I've already paid for the year.  Might as well see it through.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 11, 1963] Count every star (1963's Galactic Stars)

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by Gideon Marcus

[Time is running out to get your Worldcon membership!  Register here to be able to vote for the Hugos.]

Goodness, is it the end of the year already?  1963 may go down in the history books as the most eventful year of the 1960s.  The Mercury program wrapped up, the Soviets launched the first woman in space, we lost our President to a sniper's gun, we made progress in the march toward civil equality, Harvard Business School is finally letting women into its MBA program…

What could possibly top the last twelve months?

In any event, it's now December, a time for reflection.  Specifically, reflection on which book, stories, artists, creators, films and TV shows stood out from all the rest.  Yes, folks — it's time for the 1963 edition of The Galactic Stars!

——
Best Poetry
——

Lullaby: 1990,by Sheri S. Eberhart (Galaxy)

Eberhart's song for a post-atomic baby is beautiful and chilling.

Here's Sport Indeed

Ib Melchior's twist on The Bard is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Jazz Machine

If a man can bleed into a saxophone, Richard Matheson's caught the scent.

——
Best Vignette (1-9 pages):
——

The Putnam Tradition, by S. Dorman (Amazing)

Hybrid vigor revitalizes a family of witches.

The Time of Cold, by Mary Carlson (IF)

Heatstroked astronaut and freezing alien need each other to survive.

The Last of the Romany, by Norman Spinrad (Analog)

If the Romany didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

Honorable Mention:

Black Cat Weather, by David R. Bunch (Fantastic)

The Voyage of the "Deborah Pratt", by Miriam Allen DeFord (F&SF)

Countdown, by Julian T. Grow (IF)

Of significance is that three of the six winners in this category are women.  For some reason, when women are published, it tends to be shorter length stuff.

——
Best Short Story (10-19 pages):
——

Castaway, by Charles E. Fritch (Gamma)

An immortal soul outlasts the mortal form.

To See the Invisible Man, by Robert Silverberg (Worlds of Tomorrow)

The worst punishment is to be rendered invisible to society.

On the Fourth Planet, by J. F. Bone (Galaxy)

Mariner 15 almost destroys Martian civilization, but all's well that ends well.

Honorable Mention:

Cornie on the Walls, by Sydney van Scyoc (Fantastic)

Green Magic, by Jack Vance (F&SF)

Fortress Ship and Goodlife, two "Beserker" series stories by Fred Saberhagen (IF and Worlds of Tomorrow)

——
Best Novelette (20-45 pages)
——

Counter Security, by James White (F&SF)

The late-night department store terror isn't what it seems…

Hunter, Come Home, by Richard McKenna (F&SF)

Confounding a human-borne ecological catastrophe on a sentient planet.

The Totally Rich, by John Brunner (Worlds of Tomorrow)

Absolute power breeds…

Honorable Mention:

The Encounter, by J.G. Ballard (Amazing)

Down to the Worlds of Men, by Alexei Panshin (IF)

Bazaar of the Bizarre, by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic)

End Game, by J.G. Ballard (New Worlds)

Unlike last year, which had several seminal stories, this year's winners feel less outstanding.  Not a bad crop, but nothing that will be remembered in a few decades.

——
Best Novella (46+ pages)
——

No Truce with Kings, by Poul Anderson (F&SF)

Integrity and cunning preserve a post-apocalyptic Californian republic.

No Great Magic, by Fritz Leiber (Galaxy)

A shellshocked young woman takes refuge in a Manhattan acting troupe that just happens to be making The Big Time.

Let the Spacemen Beware, by Poul Anderson (Ace Books)

I didn't finish this short novel until last week (on the plane to Washington D.C., no less) so this is the first time you're seeing it.  Nevertheless, this is a love triangle set thousands of years from now.  Divergent evolution has fundamentally changed humanity, culturally and physically, on the various fragments of a shattered interstellar empire.  A fascinating and sensitive read.  Five stars.

Honorable Mention:

Night of the Trolls, by Keith Laumer (Worlds of Tomorrow)

The Visitor at the Zoo, by Damon Knight (Galaxy)

Chocky!, by John Wyndham (Amazing)

——
Best Novel/Serial
——

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston)

A tangle of doomsday, off-beat religion, and satire from an SF writer who composes for the masses.

All the Colors of Darkness, by Lloyd Biggle Jr.

This one slipped under the radar, only getting completed in the last few days.  Thus, I didn't have time to give it a proper review (I'll be better in 1964, I promise).  In brief, the first transcontinental teleporter service is opened up in New York in 1986, sending Americans to big cities on both sides of the Atlantic.  Soon after Universal Transmitting Company's inauguration, passengers start disappearing mid-transit.  Enter Jan Darzek, detective extraordinaire, who is hired by the Board of Directors to find out what or who is causing the vanishings.

Suffice it to say, this story doesn't go where you'd expect it to, and a good half of the book is devoted to some of the best First Contact and alien biology/ethics exploration I've seen in science fiction.  Sure, the human dialogue seems right out of Burke's Law (though that kind of slick banter has its charm, too), but the other stuff is beautiful. 

Four and a half stars, and probably sleeper of the year.

All we Marsmen, by Philip K. Dick (Worlds of Tomorrow)

Dysfunction and altered perception in a masterfully written soap opera on the Red Planet.

Honorable Mention:

Here Gather the Stars, by Cliff Simak (Galaxy)

People of the Sea, by Arthur C. Clarke (Worlds of Tomorrow)

Sign of the Labrys, by Margaret St. Clair (Bantam)

The Game-Players of Titan, by Philip K, Dick (Ace)
(no review; recommended by Gwyn Conaway)

——
Science Fact
——

Just Mooning Around, by Isaac Asimov (F&SF)

Welcome Stranger, by Isaac Asimov (F&SF)

—

Dr. A. now stands pretty much alone.  Willy Ley is phoning them in at Galaxy, Ted Sturgeon's column in (IF) is trivial, and Analog's round robin of bad writers is a joke.  Only Ben Bova at Amazing shows much promise.  Maybe next year.

——
Best Magazine
——

Galaxy (3.12 stars; best story of the month, twice)

Worlds of Tomorrow (3.04 stars; best story of the month, zero (not counting serials))

New Worlds (3.02 stars; best story of the month, zero)

IF (2.9 stars; best story of the month, twice)

Fantastic (2.82 stars; best story of the month, twice)

Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.78 stars; best story of the month, thrice)

Analog (2.78 stars; best story of the month, once (not counting serials))

Amazing (2.68 stars; best story of the month, twice)

and Gamma, with only two issues (3.35, once)

—

Goodness!  Nine magazines, and that doesn't count Science-Fantasy, which yet eludes our coverage.  Fine stuff in all of them at one point or another, though Gamma stands out when it has an issue.  F&SF still tends to feature the most women (even if that's just a pitiful one per month sometimes), but Pohl's and Goldsmith's magazines also do, on occasion.  And Gamma.  But never Analog, which is almost entirely a stag operation these days.

——
Best author(s)
——

Philip K. Dick

Dick came back in a big way last year, and his output, while a bit variable in quality, is generally welcome.

Poul Anderson

Another variable star, but his good work is excellent.

Honorable Mention:

John Brunner

J.G. Ballard

A pair of British authors.

——
Best Artist
——


Ed Emshwiller


Virgil Finlay


George Schelling

—

These three are household names, though this is the first time Schelling has made our list.  EMSH is best known for his covers, Finlay for his interiors.  Schelling goes both ways.

——
Best Dramatic Presentation
——

(These are) The Damned

Horror and radiation in an underground community of unusual children.

The Birds

Hitchcock's avian horror.

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

As it says on the tin, but a couple of steps up from your typical Drive-In shocker.

The Outer Limits

Turning into a fine new anthology show.

Astro Boy (in its Japanese form, Tetsuwan Atomu)

Honorable Mention:

The Day Mars Invaded Earth

La Jetée

Jason and the Argonauts (review coming soon!)

Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse)

Der kleine dicke Ritter (The little fat knight)

—

I've heard complaints that this year's batch of SF movies was no great shakes.  I'm looking forward to the cinema version of Failsafe next year.

——
Best Fanzine
——

Starspinkle

A chatty little rag, but it comes out often and usually entertains.

Science Fiction Times

Still the gold standard and invaluable for its published books listings.

Galactic Journey

Well, we can't actually nominate ourselves for a star, but Galactic Journey was a finalist for the Hugo!  Please help put us over the top next year!

——

And that's that!  Do let us know if we missed any of your favorites.  Even with a dozen writers interpolating their tastes, decisions still must be based on subjective sensibilities.

Until next year…

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Conventions/Performances, Fashion, music, politics, sports, Magazine

December 9, 1963 Indifferent to it all (January 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

Picking up the pieces

It's been two weeks since President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and the country is slowly returning to normal (whatever normal is these days).  Jackie has taken the family out of the White House, President Johnson is advancing the first legislation of his social welfare plan, the "Great Society," and all around the nation, streets, parks, and buildings are being renamed in the slain President's honor.  In fact, Cape Canaveral, launching site for all crewed flights, is being christened "Cape Kennedy."

We're still trying to make sense of the events surrounding Kennedy's death.  Within an hour of the shooting, there were two divergent theories as to who shot the President.  CBS reported on the trail that led to Marine-turned-defector, Lee Harvey Oswald.  NBC, on the other hand, interviewed a woman who saw a shooter on a grassy knoll overlooking Dealey Plaza.  On December 5, the FBI determined that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, did the deed.  Of course, Jack Ruby ensured that Oswald would never speak in his own defense.  The seven member "Warren Commission," headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, has begun a more thorough investigation.  We may never know who shot Kennedy or why.

A eulogy for Kennedy

Yesterday, I appeared at a local venue to present a eulogy for Kennedy and enlighten the audience as to the youthful President's numerous accomplishments.  In the end, we all drank a toast to Jack.  We taped the performance so you can view it even if you couldn't make the event.

Meanwhile, the science fiction magazines continued as if nothing unusual had happened.  This makes sense given the vagaries of production schedules and the need to have work to press months in advance.  Still, it is an eerie feeling to have the world turned upside down and yet see no evidence of turmoil in one's reading material.

Maybe that's a good thing.  One can use stability in crazy times.

In any event, the January 1964 issue of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction was the first sf digest of the new year.  As usual, it contained a mixture of diverting and lousy stories.  Let's take a look:

The January 1964 IF

Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 1 of 2), by Poul Anderson

On the Jovian moon of Ganymede, American colonists warily greet the arrival of the U.S.S. Vega, a battleship out from Earth.  Thanks to a recent civil war in the USA, it is uncertain where the loyalties of the ship's crew lie.  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of miles below, the inhabitants of Jupiter's surface are also preparing for a war of their own.  The common thread to the two stories is the neutrino beam link set up by the human protagonist who makes his home on Jupiter's biggest moon.

It's an interesting set up, but it utterly fails in its execution.  Poul Anderson is the patron saint of unreliability.  On the one hand, he produced some of last year's gratest works, including Let the Spacemen Beware and No Truce with Kings.  On the other, he produced drek like this piece.

Some examples: Anderson likes to wax poetic on technical details.  He spends a full two pages describing what could have been handled with this sentence: "I used a neutrino beam to contact the Jovians; nothing else could penetrate their giant planet's hellish radiation belts or the tens of thousands of thick atmosphere."

Two.  Pages.

Worse, while I applaud Anderson's attempt to depict a Jovian race, he fails in two directions.  Firstly, it's highly doubtful anything could live on the solid surface of Jupiter, if the planet even has one.  If there is a rocky core, its surface gravity must be around 7gs, and the air pressure would be more crushing than the bottom of the Earth's ocean.  Assuming life could stand those conditions, it would have to be something akin to the well-drawn creatures portrayed in Hal Clement's Close to Critical (in the May 1958 Analog).  Instead, Anderson gives us centaurs with quite human characterization and motivation.

The dialogue is stilted.  The writing is uninspired.  And there's enough padding to comfortably sleep on.

One star.  And, oh boy, a whole 'nother part to read in two months.

Mack, by R. J. Butler

Dolphin stories are big right now, from Clarke's People of the Sea to Flipper.  New author, R. J. Butler, gives us another one.  Something about the thwarting of an alien invasion of fish people.  Pleasant enough but it won't stay with you.  A very low three stars.

Personal Monuments, by Theodore Sturgeon

IF's non-fictionalist tells us about six science fiction authors he believes deserve more credit than they get.  He's probably right.  Three stars.

Science-Fantasy Crossword Puzzle, by Jack Sharkey

A welcome feature that is as long as it needs to be (two pages for the game and half a page for the answer).  Three stars.

The Competitors, by Jack B. Lawson

Here is the jewel of the piece.  Humans and androids have evolved in their own directions, each with a stellar sphere of influence.  When humanity comes across an alien race, whose close ties with their own robots make them more than a match for our species, a crotchety old man and a powerful (but subdued) android take on the enemy.

The interactions between human and humanoid robot are priceless and illuminating.  Neither can stand the other, but both see the value in their cooperation.  In the course of their quest, our human protagonist learns the pros and cons of too close integration of humanity and machinery.

Excellent stuff that packs a wallop: Four stars.

The Car Pool, by Frank Banta

Car Pool is a cute little joke in which a gaggle of human petty criminals turns a run-in with the Martian law into a profitable venture for all concerned.  Three stars.

Waterspider, by Philip K. Dick

There is a sub-genre of science fiction known as "fan fiction."  It is written by SF fans (of course) and involves said fans going on wild and fantastic adventures.  Laureled SF author, Philip K. Dick, offers up the fannest of fan fiction in which a pair of folks from the 21st Century employ a time machine to visit a gathering of "pre-cogs" in 1954 to get help with some thorny spaceflight issues.

The gathering is the 1954 World Science Fiction convention in San Francisco, and the pre-cog the Futurians seek is none other than Poul Anderson.  He is kidnapped back to the future, where he runs into mischief before making it back home (with the notes for a story, of course — probably this one).  Along the way, we get an alien's eye view of the various personages who attended SFCon, including A. E. Van Vogt ("so tall, so spiritual"), Ray Bradbury ("a round, pleasant face but his eyes were intense"), and Margaret St. Clair, whom the aliens anachronistically revere for The Scarlet Hexapod, which she hadn't written yet.

It's a bit of silly, self-indulgent fluff saved from banality by the talents of Mr. Dick; I don't know that it merits a quarter of IF's pages.  Three stars.

Summing up

So, yes, it certainly looks like IF will remain steady and true through any crisis.  This means some bad stories, occasional winners, and a lot of filling. 

Things could be worse.

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Conventions/Performances, Magazine, Science / Space Race

December 1, 1963 Last stop (December 1963 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

LosCon in Los Angeles!

It's been an exciting November for the Journey.  After a sad interlude on the East Coast, which saw the untimely death of our President, we flew back to Los Angeles for a small science fiction convention put on by the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.  It was great fun, a real class act.  Not only did we get to put on a show (in which the assassination, of course, featured prominently), but we also met Laura Freas, wife of Kelly Freas, the illustrator who painted Dr. Martha Dane.  As y'all know, Dr. Dane graced our masthead until very recently, and she remains the Journey's avatar.

And for those of you who missed the performance, we got it on video-tape.

At last, success for NASA

I read an article in Aviation Weekly that noted that 1963 just hasn't been a great year for NASA space shots.  There have only been eight successful missions thus far.  Unlike in the old days (you know, five years ago), when satellites didn't fly because of balky rockets, now missions are more likely to be delayed for lack of funding on the ground or for thorny technical issues as mechanisms get more complicated.

But successes do happen, and on November 27, Explorer 18 soared into orbit.  Also known as the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP), it is essentially a deep space explorer.  At the closest point in its orbit, it zooms at an atmosphere-scraping 160 kilometers in altitude, but at its furthest, it flies up to a quarter million kilometers out — more than halfway to the moon.

IMP is the first of seven satellites that will monitor the sun's output over a long period of time, measuring its ups and downs over the course of its 11 year activity cycle.  It will also measure interplanetary magnetic fields, the speed and composition of the solar wind, and the strength of the cosmic rays that shower the solar system from intergalactic space.

In many ways, Explorer 18 continues the missions of Explorers 10 and 12, spacecraft that made incredible discoveries about our local space environment.  What makes IMP so special is its size and endurance: it will be in space much longer than its predecessors, and its more advanced instruments are capable of more refined measurements. 

It is also hoped that IMP will be for interplanetary space what TIROS is for Earth — a weather satellite providing up to date information on the environment "up there."  Thus, Explorer 18 will not only expand our knowledge of interplanetary physics, it will also be an early warning system, alerting astronauts as to upcoming solar flares and other potentially dangerous events. 

Pretty neat!

Last magazine of the year

Every month, the Journey does its level best to review every science fiction magazine that gets published.  As far as I can tell, we cover all the regular American ones plus the British New Worlds (only Science Fantasy, also British, escapes our coverage).  By tradition, Analog is the covered last, and thus, the December 1963 Analog is the last magazine of the year.  Once this one is reviewed, we can finally get down to the fun business of determining the stats: which mag had the best stories, the most consistent quality, the most women published, and so on.  Call it SFnal baseball.

So how was this last issue?  Read on!

The Nature of the Electric Field, by John W. Campbell

In addition to a nonsensical editorial, Editor Campbell wastes several oversized pages with the reprint of a century-old treatise on electricity.  I guess it's to show how times change, and therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to denounce things like Dianetics, reactionless drives, psionics, dowsing, and other pseudo-sciences.

One star.

Cracking the Code, by Carl A. Larson

Larson's article is on DNA and scientists' attempts to understand how a sequence of amino acids can be the blueprint for all of life's manifestations.  It's a subject that would have been better handled by Asimov…or really, anyone else.  On the other hand, some of Larson's poetical turns of phrase are cute, like analogizing cells to an alien race whose environment is so utterly foreign to our ken, and that's why it's taken so long to decipher their language.

Two stars, I guess.

Dune World (Part 1 of 3), by Frank Herbert

I was mistaken when I called this new serial Herbert's first novel.  He had a serial back in 1956 called Under Pressure that I must have read some seven years ago, but I couldn't tell you what it was about if you put a gun to my head.

Anyway, this new one seems to be generating a lot of buzz, and I can see why.  It features Paul, 15 year-old scion to House of Atreides, whose father, the Duke of Atreides, has been granted the fiefdom of Arrakis.  Arrakis — desert planet — Dune.  This barren wasteland, where water is worth its weight in platinum, offers but one export: Melange, the geriatric spice that affords immortality, cures ailments, and tastes really good, too.  As Arrakis is the only source of melange, control of the planet is a sought plum, indeed.

Except, the Duke knows it is a trap set by the planet's former masters, the Barony of Harkonnen.  In collusion with the Padishar Emperor, Harkonnen has hatched a complicated plan to humiliate and discredit (and probably kill) the Duke, a scheme which whose intricacy might even give Machiaveli pause.

There is a lot to admire in this new work.  It's a fresh universe, highly developed, with a lot of attention to detail and inclusion of many foreign cultural influences.  Women play a prominent role, with the genders being apparently somewhat segregated, each having their own spheres of power.  There are at least two important female characters, something I'm always delighted to find in my science fiction.

One of the aspects of Herbert's world is the conscious disdain for, and even ban on, the use of computers.  Instead, human "mentats" have been bred for the ability of calculation.  This not only creates an interesting new class of person, it neatly relieves the author of predicting the development of electronic brains.

Dune Planet is not, however, an unalloyed success.  In the hands of Cordwainer Smith or even Mack Reynolds, folks who have a deep grounding in other cultures as well as the writing chops to convey them, it would be a masterpiece.  Herbert, on the other hand, is a pretty raw writer.  His stuff can be creaky and dull, the viewpoint shifts from paragraph to paragraph, and his use of ellipses dots is…exuberant (they say we hate most in others what we dislike about ourselves; Herbert writes a bit like I did not long ago before certain editors whipped me into shape).

So, three stars so far, but I'm still reading and look forward to more.

Conversation in Arcady, by Poul Anderson

In George Pal's The Time Machine, Rod Taylor arrives at the far future and discovers humanity living under (seemingly) idyllic circumstances.  They no longer need toil for food, shelter, or clothing.  They do not fight each other nor feel the need to rule.  At first impressed, the time traveler is dismayed to find that the desire to advance, the struggle to improve has been lost.  In perhaps the most effective scene of the movie (at least, it was for me), Taylor finds shelves of books that crumble to dust at the slightest touch.

Poul Anderson's latest is a note for note copy of this scene with the exceptions that 1) Anderson's Eloi are not so simple and childlike, 2) there are no Morlocks fattening up people for supper, and 3) the time traveler can see nothing positive about the situation whatsoever.

I think Anderson is trying to say something poignant, that our race is nothing without the need to better itself.  Or perhaps he's striving for a subtler point — that those who only find meaning in struggle can never find peace, and maybe peace isn't a bad thing.  Or maybe he's saying both things at the same time.

I think he was going for just the first, though.  Three stars.

The Right Time, by Walter Bupp (John Berryman)

John Berryman's series is set in the current world but where psionics are common (but secret).  It's a perfect fit for Analog what with Editor Campbell's peculiar pseudo-scientific beliefs, yet somehow Berryman's stories manage to be good.  This one, about a telekinetic precog with the ability to predict and potentially heal a fellow's heart attack, is my favorite yet.  Four stars.

Thin Edge, by Johnathan Blake MacKenzie

Author Randy Garrett is back under the pseudonym he prefers when he writes about life in the asteroid belt.  This latest piece is about a Belter who is killed by Earthers for the secret of the super strong cording used for rock towing, and about the other Belter who comes to Earth looking for revenge.

It's written with some facility, but the Belters are always too clever and the Earthers too dumb.  A low three or a high two, depending on your mood.

All right!  It's time to tabulate the data for December!

Analog finished in the middle of the pack with 2.8 stars, above F&SF (2.1) and Fantastic (2.2), but below Galaxy (3.2), Amazing (3.2), and New Worlds (3.2), not to mention last month's issue of Gamma, which I didn't get to until this month (3.3).

There were 44 pieces of fiction between the seven magazines, four of which were written by women.  9% is fairly standard these days, sadly.  I'm not sure what's causing the decline, though the numbers were never that much better.

Next up, we'll be covering the UK's newest SF TV show, and beyond that, 1963's Galactic Stars!

Stay tuned.

[The party's still going on at Portal 55.  Come join us for real-time conversation!]

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[November 22, 1963] President Kennedy has been assassinated

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by Gideon Marcus

We interrupt the Journey's normal publication schedule to bring you breaking news.

According to several television, radio, and wire services, John F. Kennedy was shot twice, at around 12:30 p.m., CST, as his motorcade traveled through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.  The gravely injured President was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead of his wounds shortly thereafter.  Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as Kennedy's successor one hour later. 

At about the same time, President Kennedy's assailant was apprehended by local law enforcement, but not before the killer slew a Dallas police officer. 

We will have more details on this event as they come in.  In addition, several of the Journey staff will be submitting observations on the events: their impact on themselves and those around them.  We welcome yours as well.

Please stay tuned.  Be strong.  We are all in this crisis together. 

Together, we will get through it.

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Magazine

[November 19, 1963] Fuel for the Fire (December 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

The once proud golden pages of F&SF have taken a definite turn for the worse under the Executive Editorship of onef Avram Davidson.  At last, after two years, we arrive at a new bottom.  Those of you with months remaining on your subscription can look forward to a guaranteed supply of kindling through the winter.

The Tree of Time (Part 1 of 2) by Damon Knight

Gordon Naismith is professor of Temporal Physics at an early 21st Century university.  We quickly learn that this 35-year old veteran has lost all memory of his life prior to a crash that occurred five years ago.  Moreover, he keeps suffering blackouts, during which people close to him are killed, fried by unknown energies.  Who is he?  Is he even human?  And what is the nefarious scheme of the pair of froggy humanoids from the 200th Century who kidnap Naismith before the police can nab him?

Damon Knight, an ofttimes brilliant author, seems to have taken a bet.  His challenge: to recreate the hoariest, most cliche-ridden dialogue and style of the "Golden Age of Science Fiction," the sort of stuff A.E. Van Vogt did much better.  66 pages is far too much space to take up with a joke.  And this is only Part 1! 

Two stars.

The Court of Tartary by T. P. Caravan

A stodgy professor of the classics wakes up as a bull the day his herd is scheduled for the stockyard.  Attempts to convince the wranglers of his humanity prove fruitless, and in the end (as an astute reader will have figured out), we learn that his circumstances were not unique.

Some might find it droll.  I thought it pointless.  Two stars.

The Eternal Lovers by Robert F. Young

The same Robert F. Young who gave us the brilliant To Fell a Tree has been reduced to cranking out overly sentimental shorts.  This one stars the astronaut whose ship misses the moon and the adoring wife who shanghais her own craft to join him on his voyage to nowhere.

The story relies on the notion that astronauts cannot stand the mental rigors of being alone in space for "any length of time," an hypothesis clearly disproven by Comrades Tereshkova, Bykovsky, Nikolaev, Popov, and Titov (not to mention Captain Cooper).  The rest of the details are equally woolly.  Even for a poetic tale, it's lazy.

Two stars.

Pete Gets His Man by J. P. Sellers

Don Kramer is hounded by Pete Kelly, the most famous, most handsome, and most fearless detective in the world.  Is Don a criminal?  A jealous rival?  The answer to this question is the brilliant spot in an otherwise pedestrian tale of a descent into madness.  Three stars.

Roll Call, by Isaac Asimov

Like Willy Ley over in Galaxy this month, Asimov has decided to phone things in for his nonfiction article.  It's about the origin of the names of the planets.  Schoolboy stuff.  Three stars.

What Strange Stars and Skies, by Avram Davidson

Damon Knight is not the only one aping an out of date style in this issue.  Editor Davidson, in an impenetrable imitation of interwar British composition, writes the tale of a do-gooder Dame who is abducted by aliens to do-good elsewhere.

I'm sure my readers will point out that Davidson has done a perfect send-up of some 1920s writer or other, thus exposing me for the boor that I am.  Nevertheless, I was only able to soldier halfway through this dreck before skimming.

One star.

While I appreciate Mr. Davidson's earnest desire to augment his (dwindling number of) readers' coal supply, all the same, I think I'd rather have my favorite SF magazine back. 




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Book

[November 17, 1963] Galactoscope (Three Ace Doubles!)

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by Gideon Marcus

Here at the Journey, we read virtually every piece of science fiction and fantasy published.  Our goal is not only to provide you with a complete encyclopedia of available works, but also to ensure we can make informed decisions come award-giving time.

Now, that's a lot of printed words.  It used to be that I would publish a separate article for each book, but with such a big backlog of books waiting to be reviewed, I decided it'd be best to do the queue all at once, like they do in the review columns of the various magazines (for instance, Amazing's "Spectroscope").

As it turns out, the volumes you'll hear about today are all Ace Doubles (published with two complete books back-to-back and reversed), so if you're a fan of these odd blue-and-whites, this will help you manage your 1963 shopping list.

Alpha Centauri or Die!, by Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett is a legend.  One of the relatively few women in the SFF arena, she is also a renowned scriptwriter, having penned the screenplay for The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo.  Brackett has managed to keep plugging along in Hollywood in spite of the prevailing opinion of the last decade that women just don't get "male" genres like crime dramas and westerns.

Her SFF works have been recommended to me with increasing volume and frequency so I was delighted to have a chance to enjoy her latest novel, luridly titled (as all Ace Doubles are) Alpha Centauri or Die!.  This book is really two stories in one: Part 1 involves a rebel movement on Mars led by the human, Kirby, and his love, the Martian humanoid named Shari.  They dare to steal a manually controlled space ark, filled to the brim with colonists eager to emigrate, and evade the robotic sentinel spaceships that patrol the solar system.  Their destination: an inhabitable planet in the triple Alpha Centauri system.

There's a lot of action and chases, both planetbound and in the black gulf between the stars, culminating in a an exciting scene in which a squad from the fleeing Lucy Davenport boards and deactivates a pursuing robot fighter ship.

Part 2 takes place on the newly colonized world, which shortly after settlement, is besieged by unseen, psionically equipped aliens that kidnap terrans via teleportation.  Will this diabolical race end the colony, or is it all a misunderstanding?

That the two sections are so different in subject matter and tone is no coincidence.  Alpha Centauri or Die! is a fix-up of two stories from the early 1950s, both published in Planet Stories.  I'd only previously read The Ark of Space (on which Part 1 is based) so I can't tell you if the two tales were ever meant to be linked.  In any event, the resultant novel is not a great introduction to Brackett's works.  Particularly frustrating is the short shrift the women characters get, even at the hands of a woman author.  With the exception of Shari, they are a herd of complaining housewives.  The Martian heroine fares a bit better, joining the raiding party against the robot starship and using her esper powers to help deduce the nature of the beasts of Alpha Centauri, but her exploits point out just how alone she stands in representation of an entire gender.

Aside from that, Alpha Centauri or Die! is a competent but not groundbreaking action piece, slightly less than the sum of its parts, not progressing far from the pulp era in which Brackett made her first appearances.

Three stars.

Legend of Lost Earth, by G. McDonald Wallis

It's common practice in SFF for women to initialize their first names (or flat-out take on male pseudonyms).  I have been told vociferously by one of my readers that this practice has nothing to do with any bias against women in the genre; nevertheless, it is puzzling that men don't seem to do it.  In any event, the "G." stands for Geraldine, and this is her second Ace Double, the first being The Light of Lilith, which I have not read.

Lost Earth takes place on the dusty, red world of Niflhel, its atmosphere foul with the soot of a million mines.  Even the memory of Earth, destroyed by a human-caused catastrophe, is taboo.  But Giles Chulainn is seduced by the teachings of a secret society that keeps the half-remembered dream of their home planet alive.  A cat and mouse game ensues, with Giles taking on the role, by turns, of a subversive, a double, and then a triple agent. 

The true nature of the barren colony world and its connection with the lost verdant fields of Earth is ultimately revealed, though by the time you get there, you might not care, having been increasingly bombarded with a bamboozle of pseudo-scientific mysticism, Celtic legend, and plot incoherence. Nevertheless, Lost Earth does have a strong first half and a nice flavor throughout.  Three stars.

Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany

Delany is another author I'm catching on his second Ace book, the first being The Jewels of Aptor, which came out last year.  He is noteworthy for being the first black SF novelist (I believe; correct me if I'm wrong).

Captives of the Flame takes place on a blasted Earth, the remnants of humanity confined to just one city and its adjacent shoreline and islands.  Around it lies a radioactive barrier that has constricted over the years: just two generations before, it engulfed the city's neighboring polis, forcing its inhabitants to flee.  It is implied early on that the barrier is not of human origin.

The novel details the efforts of a mismatched band of heroes, including an exiled member of the royal family rendered invisible by the radiations, a young woman acrobat/thief, and an ambitious Duchess, to determine the true nature of the alien incursion and to use the extraterrestrials' powers to right the bellicose, corrupt human government. 

On the plus side, the novel features an interesting world and a refreshingly varied set of characters, male, female, and alien.  On the red ink side of the ledger, the plot is sketchy, and viewpoints shift with little warning or context.  I have to wonder if this is the author's fault or simply a result of Ace's hatchety editing style. 

Three stars.

The Psionic Menace, by Keith Woodcott

Those in the know are aware that "Keith Woodcott" is a pseudonym for English writer, John Brunner.  And those who have followed this column since the arrival of author Mark Yon will soon find that The Psionic Menace is an Ace-style retitling of Crack of Doom, which appeared under the Woodcott name in two issues of New Worlds last year.  It's about a universe-spanning psychic distress call, and the efforts humanity takes to decipher it.

It is word for word the same book, which means you will enjoy it as much (or little) as the serialized version.  Mark gave it three stars.

The Rebellers, by Jane Roberts

What a beginning on this one!  Gary Fitch is an artist on a crushingly overpopulated Earth.  His job is to take old classics and make copies as vehicles for conveying government propaganda.  He and his colleagues live under lock and key in a barracks, barely receiving enough sustenance for survival.  Yet their situation is the enviable one for outside their prison walls lies the teeming masses of humanity, hungrier and denied access to the books and artworks the painters have.

One day, rioting plebeians storm the prison walls, providing Fitch an opportunity to escape — from the frying pan into the fire.  The artist hooks up with an insurgent organization, "The Rebellers" (why not simply "The Rebels?") but their motives aren't as simon-pure as advertised.  Worse yet, a virulent plague is spreading, threatening to wipe out the human race once and for all.  Can Fitch take over the remnants of local government to avoid complete catastrophe?

Roberts' book starts out strong but resolves abruptly and rather implausibly.  For instance, it is discovered that the plague largely affects pregnant women and mandatory birth control becomes the linchpin on which combating the virus turns.  If birth control is so ubiquitous and effective, why wasn't it in common use before our planet was choked with people? 

This is the first novel by Roberts, whose short fiction I've greatly enjoyed.  While this book is a mixed success, she may get the hang of the form in time for her next effort.  In any event, it's nice to see her back after a four-year hiatus.

Three stars.

Listen!  The Stars!, by John Brunner

Last up is the novelization of John Brunner's Listen! The Stars!, a novella that appeared in Analog last year.  The tale of the "Stardroppers," who use extra-dimensional telescopes to plumb the unknown depths of the universe was one of my favorites from Brunner.  In fact, I gave it a Galactic Star.

Unlike The Psionic Menace, this Ace version is significantly revised.  The story's no different, and all the same scenes are there, but Brunner (or the editor) has padded every paragraph with enough extra words to fill 96 pages.  Or maybe Analog's editor, John W. Campbell, had cut the original to fit the pages of his magazine.

In any event, both versions are good, worthy of five stars.  If you want a shorter read, find the magazine, and if you want something lengthier, well, you get this and the Roberts novel, too.

So there you have it, a typical grab bag of Ace production.  A good half of it was scoured from the pages of the magazines, and only the Brunner (under his own name) really hits it out of the park.  Still, at 20 cents a novel (40 cents for a double), all of it at least readable, you could do a lot worse.

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