Isn't it frustrating when you try to tune into your favorite program and hear nothing but static?
Sorry folks! I'd planned to give you Part 2 of this (last) month's F&SF. Well, the last third of the issue is taken up by a Poul Anderson novelette, and I know I won't be able to devote a whole article to just that, assuming I can even get through it. But I don't have enough to fill an article with the remaining stories.
Therefore, I have resolved to just give you all an extra-long column day-after-tomorrow! It will be worth the wait, I promise. There are some fine stories this month. And who knows? Maybe the Anderson story will be good.
…
…
(gasp)
All right, I can't hold my breath that long.
——–
In other news, if you've been tracking the flight of Pioneer IV, you may have heard that we finally lost communications with the plucky little probe at more than 400,000 miles away. This isn't the fault of the ground antennas, which could probably track the vehicle much further out. The satellite's batteries just ran out of juice. Hopefully, when we have bigger rockets (perhaps the Air Force's Thor "Hustler"?), we can send out satellites with solar panels on board that can broadcast indefinitely.
Anyway, the Russians are crowing that their Mechta made it further, but we're saying that our science was better. But can we really trumpet our mission as a triumph without a sodium flatulence experiment?
See you on the 10th!
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I promised a book review today, but then I misplaced my book. Life is like that. So, for your reading pleasure, I instead offer my meanderings through the March 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction (you know, the one I was supposed to have done last month instead of the prematurely secured April issue).
As with the last (next) ish of F&SF, it starts with a bang. Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies—" is an unique tale of time travel. Everyone has heard of the Grandfather's Paradox, but what if you end up being your own granpaw? I have to give extra credit to Heinlein for having a transsexual protagonist (i.e. someone who has been both male and female). I hope I'm using that word correctly–it's brand new.
I like Asimov's science article, Nothing, in which he points out that the mass of all the "empty" spaces between the galaxies actually exceeds the mass contained in the galaxies by a significant margin. I suppose that makes sense, but it is odd to conceptualize. I guess the Great Watchmaker needs to stir up the universe just a little more to get the lumps out…
Ray Bradbury has a tale involving mermaids in this issue called The Shoreline at Sunset. Any mermaid story in F&SF naturally invites comparison to Sturgeon's mermaid story A Touch of Strange (published in the Jan. 1958 issue). Unfortunately, unlike Sturgeon's quite brilliant piece, Bradbury's is well-written but somewhat pointless. But then, I might say that any time I compare Bradbury to Sturgeon.
Have you been following Zenna Henderson's stories of "The People"? Human in form but possessed of tremendous psychic powers, these interstellar refugees have been trapped on Earth in hiding for many years. They dwell in their sequestered valleys, occasionally venturing forth to rescue isolated members of their kind raised by native Earthers. Henderson's stories are always beautiful, often with a touch of sadness.
Well, with Jordan, the castaways finally have the opportunity to be rescued. More "civilized" members of their race arrive in a spaceship with an invitation to settle on a new planet, one on which they won't have to hide their powers or use rough technology to do what their powers could do more elegantly. Yet the exiled People have grown to love the Earth and even the crude methods they've had to employ to survive. Can they leave it all behind?
According to the editorial blurb preceding the story, it looks like Ms. Henderson finally has enough stories of The People to fill an anthology. I definitely recommend picking it up when it hits the shelves.
See you on the 8th!
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In any nascent endeavor, it is human nature to trumpet even the most modest of achievements. Sure, Pioneer I didn't make it to the moon, but it went pretty high and confirmed the Van Allen Belts. Sure, Vanguard I was the size of a grapefruit, but it taught us that the Earth is pear-shaped.
In that vein, sure, Pioneer IV, NASA's latest moon shot, may not have been entirely a success, but at least it will be the first (American) probe to sail beyond our planet's celestial companion and into solar orbit.
Launched yesterday on a Juno II, Pioneer IV is essentially an exact duplicate of the less-successful Pioneer III, with a little extra shielding around one of its charged particle detectors to better measure cosmic radiation. In the tradition of focusing on the positive, I will note that Pioneer IV's mission is not just to take snapshots of the moon, but to duplicate the mission profile of its predecessor so as to provide a comparative data set. This is the soul of science–the repeating and repeatability of experiments.
As far as the trip to the moon is concerned, there have only been a couple of minor hiccoughs: one of the three scaling factor taps on one of the counters got knocked out when Pioneer IV's engines shook it a bit too roughly. In English, a scaling factor allows scientists to convert the raw voltages, recorded when charged particles hit the spacecraft, into usable numbers. I don't think this critically damages the instrument. Pioneer IV's transmission also went on the fritz for about 30 seconds while the craft traversed Earth's outer radiation belt.
While we're on the topic of problems, it looks like the little spacecraft is going to pass wide of its target, missing the surface of the moon by some 37,000 miles. This is too far to activate the photoelectric sensors on the spacecraft, which would have been used to activate a camera–if the probe had been heavy enough include a camera! Not a huge loss.
What will really be exciting is to finally give the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's deep space tracking network a full run through its paces. We've never tried to monitor a spacecraft several hundred thousand miles from Earth before. On the other hand, if the Soviets can do it, I suspect we can, too.
So there you have it. We launched a probe that weighed sixty times less than Luna I and which missed its target by a distance ten times greater. And we did it two months after Luna I.
A success? You be the judge…
P.S. Following up on Discoverer I, the Air Force is claiming that they are still receiving sporadic signals from their spacecraft. They've also confirmed that their new rocket is a Thor-Hustler, whatever that is. The Swedish press is calling Discoverer I "The Whispering Satellite" since they can barely hear it, if at all.
I'm still unconvinced. Something's fishy. I just can't tell you exactly what.
See you on March 6 with a book review!
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Normally, I herald each new space launch with strident fanfare. After all, when Vanguard or Explorer go up, it's big news and everybody knows about it. But the Air Force's announced launch of "Discoverer" on February 28 has that same sort of strangeness and after-the-fact quality I've come to associate with Soviet Sputnik launches.
Let's back up.
Yesterday, the Air Force announced that it had launched "Discoverer" into polar orbit from its California launching facility, Vandenberg Air Force Base. They said it was an engineering flight designed to test what will someday be a biological sample return mission (i.e. the Air Force will send up animals, retrieve them after several days in space, and study them to determine the effects of space on living things). Apparently, this is the second time they have tried this; the first time was on January 26 of this year, but it was reportedly unsuccessful.
Here is where the story gets a bit dicey:
1) Why was Discoverer launched into a polar orbit? Normally, space launches are done from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Aided by the Earth's rotation, they go out on an Easterly course over the Atlantic. This restricts their track to a narrow range of latitudes. A satellite in a polar orbit eventually covers the entire Earth as the planet rotates underneath the track of the probe's flight, making it better suited for mapping and reconnaissance missions.
2) Why wouldn't strictly scientific missions be done under the auspices of NASA, as the Air Force did with the Pioneer moon shots?
3) If Discoverer made it into orbit, why have independent stations been unable to pick up its telemetry on their radios?
4) What did they use to launch it? A capsule-return spacecraft isn't a light vehicle, and neither the Thor-Able nor the Juno II are strong enough to send one into orbit.
Now, I don't want to be visited by the fellows in gray suits for my observational acumen, but putting two and two together, I'd conclude that Discoverer must be a prototype surveillance satellite. If I really wanted to get far out with my speculations, I'd conclude that it's a fake surveillance satellite designed to gauge the reaction of the Eastern Bloc to having a spy probe overhead.
Apparently, the Communists don't care much. Aside from one stern protest from an East German radio station (I know–all Commies are the same), the Warsaw Pact has been conspicuously silent about Discoverer.
Maybe they know it's a fake…
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And here we are with Part Two of our journey through Isaac Asimov's latest opus, the anthology Nine Tomorrows! One of my readers made the observation recently that if Asimov has a flavor, it's "light vanilla." It's not outstanding, but neither is it objectionable.
I think that's an astute observation (though I really like vanilla, so perhaps it's not fair to that poor, maligned spice). In any event, I've now finished this collection of Asimov's most recent work and shall resume my full report.
The Gentle Vultures came out in the December 1957 issue of Super-Science Stories, one of the few magazines that came out in the second boom of digests stating 1956. Devoted largely to "monster stories" now, it seems to be hanging in there, surprisingly. In Vultures, Hurrian representatives of a galactic federation have been monitoring our planet for the past 15 years, waiting for the inevitable nuclear apocalypse. I say inevitable because in the universe of Vultures, no race, with the exception of the vegetarian and thus non-competitive Hurrians, has managed to harness atomic energy without using it to destroy or nearly destroy itself.
You can argue with the premise or the basic assumptions if you like. I wouldn't, since the point of the story is that humanity sort of turns these assumptions on their head. So now you've got these Hurrians impatiently waiting and wondering whether or not they should, you know, give things a little push…
Skewing the data to fit a premise, indeed!
All the Troubles of the World also came out in Super-Science. Imagine the crime-stopping precogs of Dick's Minority Report are actually a big computer. Now imagine that this computer is sick of predicting crimes (and sicknesses and other species malaises). Now imagine that this is an amazing, groundbreaking story.
Two out of three ain't bad.
Spell my name with an 'S' came out in Star Science Fiction (I've never head of them either). This one came so close to being good as a satire of confirmation bias leading to self-fulfilling prophecy, but the end is a typical and uninspired gotcha. I do enjoy when Asimov writes close to home, culturally, however. He's a lanzmann after all.
I may get flak for this next one. The Last Question is one of Isaac's favorite stories, and my wife liked it a lot when it came out in a 1956 Science Fiction Quarterly. It is a trillion-year history of humanity, the computer that people built, and the universe. The story ends with the universe's heat-death and rebirth. While I admire the scope, the ending doesn't make a lot of sense for several reasons, which I won't detail here for fear of spoiling it, but about which I'd be happy to discuss over coffee and/or beer.
And now for something quite different. I read The Ugly Little Boy when it came out as Lastborn in Galaxy last year. This one may be the best thing Asimov has ever written, and it's a fine swansong to leave on if he's going to wear his non-fiction hat full time. The ugly boy is actually a Neanderthal child plucked from the Pleistocene and held (for sound scientific reasons) as a prisoner in a lab. His only friend is the protagonist, a woman doctor, who essentially adopts him. It's a lovely, touching story whose only fault is that it is too short. Isaac, I didn't know you had it in ye.
So there you have it. Asimov completists should pick up this representative sample of what may someday be known as his "Late Fiction Era." Who knows–maybe if he goes back to fiction in twenty years or so, he'll have learned how to end a story properly.
3.5 out of 5 stars.
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For twenty years, Isaac Asimov (spelled with an "s") has been a name synonymous with science fiction. Quite recently, Asimov has been making a name for himself as a science fact writer a la Willy Ley. It's a natural transition, I think, so long as you can swing it. Thus far, I've preferred Asimov's defunct column in Astounding to the one he does for Fantasy & Science Fiction, but that doesn't mean the latter one is at all bad.
But today, I'm going to focus on Asimov the science fiction writer. I've a confession to make: I recognize that Asimov is one of the field's major icons, but I've always found his work, well… workmanlike. Unlike Dick or Sturgeon or Sheckley, there's not much flavor to his stuff, and the writing and concepts are still rooted in the Golden Age of Campbell. I have a suspicion that his stuff will date poorly.
Why do I pick this particular moment to faintly praise my colleague in age, ethnicity and interests? Nine Tomorrows, an anthology of recent Asimov fiction was just published, and I thought you'd like to know what I think. I'll cover the first half today.
Being an avid digest reader, several of the stories were already familiar to me. To wit, I read the lead novella Profession in Astounding back in June of '57. In the story, it's the far future. Humanity has spread across the stars, and the demand for specialized knowledge is so acute that people now have a college degree imprinted in their brains at age 18. Yes, it's another "everyone does the job they are best suited for, and the one who can't be programmed ends up running the game." I liked it better the second time around, but it is hard for me to swallow that there can be sufficient innovation at the hands of so very few innovators. I am not surprised to hear (through the grapevine) that this was a Galaxy reject before Campbell took it.
The Feeling of Power came out in IF about a year ago, and it covers similar ground. In a world where all mathematical computations are done by computer, manual/mental arithmetic is seen not only as wasteful but impossible! It'd be good satire if Asimov meant it as such, but I don't think it is. Interestingly, Asimov posits that computers will have a minimum effective size and, as such, missile guidance will always be limited to a subhuman level of accuracy and responsiveness. In Power, it is concluded that the best use of the rediscovered human computation ability would be to employ humans as pilots for spacecraft and missiles.
It is such a strange point for the author to assert as even he concedes in other stories that computer logic components, if not computers as a whole, are trending toward the smaller. From mechanical switches to vacuum tubes to transistors. I don't know what's next, but I suspect it's not far off. Oh well.
If you like Asimov's scientifically inspired mysteries, you might enjoy The Dying Night. It's a straight whodunnit with the key to the puzzle being the environment in which the murderer has lived. Not bad. Apparently, it came out in one of the F&SF issues I missed before I started reading them regularly (July 1956).
Finally, for today, is I'm in Marsport without Hilda, which came out in Venture in the November 1957 issue (after Robert Silverberg made me stop reading it with his vile tale, Eve and the Twenty-three Adams–it's right up there with Queen Bee). It has the potential to be painful, but it degenerates (evolves?) into another decent whodunnit with a slightly dirty, somewhat silly solution.
I note and applaud that Asimov makes a conscious effort to include an international cast of characters in his stories. If only he'd recognize that women are people too…
So, thus far, a solid 3, maybe 3.5 stars out of 5. Not at all bad, but not the work I'd ascribe to a master, either.
See you on the 28th!
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A bit of a grab bag today as I finish off the odds and ends before the new (diminishing) crop of magazines comes in.
Firstly, the sad news regarding Vanguard II has been confirmed: the wobbly little beachball has got the orbitum tremens and is unable to focus its cameras on Mother Earth. So much for our first weather satellite.
Secondly, the sad news regarding the April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction. Yes, Poul Anderson does have a story in it. The Martian Crown Jewels is a science fiction Sherlock Holmes pastiche. As a mystery and as a story, it is fairly unremarkable. Still, Doyle-philes may enjoy it. As can be expected, both for the genre and for the author, the only women's names are to be found gracing ships, not characters.
There are a couple of oddball pieces in this issue. One is a translated Anton Checkhov parody of a Jules Verne story called The Flying Islands. Perhaps it's better in the original Russian.
There is also a chapter of Aldous Huxley's new book, Brave New World Revisited, comparing the myriad of mind-altering substances available today to the simple and perfectly effective soma that appeared in the original Brave New World. It is an interesting contrast of prediction versus reality. It is also a great shopping list for some of us.
As I mentioned earlier, Damon Knight is out of an editorial job after just three issues at the helm of IF. F&SF has found him a new place to hang his reviewer's hat–as the new writer for the magazine's book column. Good news if you like damonknight.
Jane Roberts, an F&SF regular, contributes a two-page mood piece called Nightmare. It's another two-minutes-to-midnight fright.
But the real gem of the latter portion of the magazine is Fred Pohl's To see another Mountain about a nonagenarian supergenius being treated for a mental illness… but is he really sick? Interestingly, I never liked it when Pohl and Kornbluth teamed up, but Pohl by himself has been reliably excellent. This story is no exception.
Where does that leave us in the standings? There isn't a bad piece in the bunch (the Anderson and Chekhov being the least remarkable). Let's say "four", maybe "four-and-a-half" given the greatness of the lead story.
Two days to Asimov!
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Happy birthday to me! I entered my fifth decade of life yesterday; I hope middle age will be kind to me.
This month's F&SF certainly has been. I have an interesting mix of stories about which to relate.
It has often been said that, to be a good writer, one must be an avid reader. There is no better way to learn the tricks of the trade than to see how others have manipulated the printed word. I, myself, have been a writer for two decades, but I still often find some new technique that impresses me sufficiently to enter my repertoire.
Permission to republish graciously granted by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Something that struck me while reading Gordon Dickson's quite good modern fantasy, "The Amulet," was its focus on sensual descriptions. You always know the temperature and flavor of the air, the tactile qualities of a seat, the character of sound and light. It makes this a very feeling story, very visceral.
The following psi/space-travel story, by brand-newcomer Anne McCaffrey, The Lady in the Tower, is far more spare in its descriptions. The focus is on a series of telepathic conversations that presumably carry little sensual information. It is a story drawn almost in skeleton sparseness, and it makes sense in the context.
Seeing the two techniques in stark juxtaposition really drove home how important it is to focus (or choose not to focus) on the scenery. Frankly, when I write fiction, I am often afraid to lavish attention on the background or prosaic items for fear of boring my audience. Yet spending some extra time describing an item or sensation is the literary equivalent of conveying the focus of a character's attention. It happens in real life, so it should happen in a story, where appropriate.
So an oldish dog can learn new tricks!
Aside from all that, you probably want to know more about the stories, themselves. Well, The Amulet has witches and all the paraphernalia associated with them. It's a dark story with a dark viewpoint character, about as different from The Man in the Mailbag (April 1959 Galaxy) as you can get. Gordy's got some range.
McCaffrey's tale features a future in which a few supremely powerful telepaths with the ability to teleport matter have become the foundation for an interstellar transportation system. It is a first contact story in several ways, and it is also a love story. I found it very good though perhaps with a bit of the rough-hewn quality one associates with new writers. I hope we see more of Anne in the future.
Speaking of unusual writing styles, Asimov has a piece of fiction in the issue in addition to his science article. Unto the Fourth Generation is an interesting mood piece involving the evolution of a name's spelling and pronunciation over time. Perhaps the only "Jewish" piece I've seen Asimov write, it is a departure from his usual unadorned, functional technique. I liked it.
That's that for this installment, but there are still several more stories on which to report. And if you're an Asimov-o-phile, you'll like this column 'round the end of the month.
Stay tuned!
P.S. Some have inquired as to what happened to the March F&SF and how I got my hands on an early April release. The answer is simple–the author of this column pulled a "Charlie Gordon" (as opposed to a "David Gordon," which some would argue is worse). I actually managed to pick up both the March and April copies at the same time at the source, the latter being a pre-release proof. So entranced was I by the cover that I started reading and forgot that I needed to do March first.
Please forgive me, and if the order bothers you, I recommend swapping your left eye for your right, or perhaps reading upside down.
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The April 1959 Fantasy & Science Fiction opens with a bang. The lead novella, Flowers for Algernon, is destined to go down as a classic, I'm sure.
But first, a quick detour to Asimov's column for the week. The old polymath (older than me–I don't turn 40 until tomorrow!) has been on a gloom kick lately. First it was melting ice caps. Now, he points out that the limiting factor to the density of life on Earth is the limited quantity of terrestrial phosphorous. Sure, there are lots of chemicals that are vital to life, but phosphorous is the one with the greatest imbalance between its concentration in living things and its abundance in nature.
Basically, living things have used up all the phosphorous, and if we want any more, we have to get it from the dead. In the ocean, this cycle is maintained by currents that scoop up dead creatures from the bottom and bring them to closer to the surface. On land, however, our rivers pour thousands of tons of soil into the ocean every year, and it comes back much more slowly than it leaves. COULD THIS SPELL DOOM FOR LIFE ON EARTH?
I suspect not. I am willing to wager that there is a nice equilibriating mechanism that we just haven't discovered yet, much like the one that regulates the ocean's salinity, sadly for those who wished to use the ocean's salinity as a yardstick to determine the age of the Earth.
But back to Flowers. Its writer is Daniel Keyes, who I know slightly from his work for Atlas Comics and as editor of the long defunct pulp, Marvel Science Stories. It follows the life of high-functioning moron Charlie Gordon, who wishes to become smarter. Diligent and good-natured, he is selected for a radical brain surgery that, if successful (as it had been for the eponymously named lab mouse, Algernon) will treble his I.Q.
The story is written in the style of a journal kept by Charlie. We get to see him progress from a barely functional human being to the highest level of genius–and then back down again. It turns out that the effect of the process lasts only a few weeks, barely enough time for Charlie to taste of brilliance before sinking to his former state.
What makes this novella is the writing. Keyes really captures the phases of Charlie's transformation. At first, Charlie is a simple person. Not childlike, which would have been, perhaps, easier to pull off. Just stupid, barely managing to write, and only after months of prior effort. Charlie is then made a genius, and that is when childishness enters the style, because Charlie is really a newborn at that point. He spends a lonely several weeks in virtual isolation, unable to communicate, as those he once found unspeakably brilliant become universally less gifted than he. This part resonated with me, a fairly bright person (though by no means a genius). I remember in 4th Grade, a teacher once chastised me saying, "you think you are so smart–how would you like it if everyone was as smart as you?" I replied, earnestly, "I'd love it! Then I'd have people to talk to!"
The poignancy of the story as Charlie declines and nearly dies is tear-jerking, but what really affected me was Charlie's condition at the end of the tale. He may still have an I.Q. of 68, but now he has the memory of being a genius. He is aware of his former place in society–a laughing-stock. Now Charlie burns to accomplish something, to recover, by the dint of his own effort, even the barest fraction of what he has lost.
And thus, we're left with hard questions: Is it better to have been smart and lost it than never to have been smart at all? Is ignorance bliss?
What do you think?
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At long last, the Vanguard team has launched the satellite it had always wanted to. Vanguard II soared into orbit atop its 3-stage launcher yesterday joining four other satellites (three American, one Soviet) around the Earth. It is expected to orbit for the next 300 years.
The Navy and NASA have been trying for almost a year to duplicate their first success back in May 1958. Vanguard I was ridiculed by Soviet Premier Khruschev as a "grapefruit." Truth to tell, he wasn't far off. The first Vanguard did little more than duplicate the work of Sputnik I. On the other hand, the Vanguard project also entailed the building of Earth's first world-wide satellite tracking system as well as the development of the first purpose-built civilian booster.
Well, that booster finally got some good use this year. Vanguard II is much bigger (beachball-sized) than its ancestor. Moreover, the new satellite has been touted as the first "eye in the sky." There are two photocells located at the tip of two optical telescopes mounted inside the probe. Their mission for the next two weeks (the lifespan of their batteries) will be to detect reflections off of clouds in the Northern Hemisphere.
If that doesn't sound exciting to you, how about if I tell you that this is the first step toward bonafide weather satellites? Within a couple of years, we will have automated orbital observatories with a clear view of much of the globe at any given time. They'll be able to spot hurricanes, cold fronts, jet streams.. you name it. After a few years, they will accumulate enough data to revolutionize our climatology models and maybe even lead to large-scale weather control. Aside from communications (pioneered in December with the launch of Project SCORE), weather is the prime commercial use for satellites.
Even more nifty is the tape recorder set-up they've got in Vanguard. This allows the satellite to collect and store data for later transmission down to Earth. As Space Age as this sounds, rumor has it that this sophisticated system is about to be superseded by an all new, digital development. That will be an exciting story to break, when I can.
Another interesting tidbit, to me, is how the Vanguard team chose to moderate the temperature onboard the satellite. There is no air in space, so all heat is received and transmitted away by radiation, and not by the more-efficient methods of conduction and convection, as on Earth. Translation: it's hot in the sun and cold in the shadow, and there is no moderation by a surrounding medium. It is important that the satellite not absorb too much heat or too little. On the Pioneers, at least the first three, they had an alternating black and white paint scheme to address this problem.
Vanguard, on the other hand, is coated with powdered silicon monooxide as insulation underneath the shiny aluminum picked for maximum visibility. Inside, the satellite is gold-plated! I assume this is to conduct heat to the silicon monoxide shell. I wonder how much that cost.
The only disappointment is that Vanguard II is tumbling as it spins like a wobbly top. This is going to make interpreting the photoscanner data a challenge. Still, it's an exciting first step. The next few years are going to be incredible.
Back to fiction in two days. Thanks for all the well-wishes!
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