Tag Archives: Gordon R. Dickson

Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 21, 1964] Bridging the Gap (December 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

I'll Cross That Bridge When I Come To It

Citizens of the Big Apple now have a new way to travel between Staten Island and Brooklyn, with the official opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The structure is named for the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, said to be the first European to sail into the Hudson River, way back in 1524. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world, spanning a little over four-fifths of a mile.


Note to proofreader: The name of the bridge has one z, the name of the man has two. Go figure.

More than five thousand people attended the opening ceremony on November 21st, including New York City Mayor Robert Ferdinand Wagner II and New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Even President Johnson supplied a congratulatory speech.


The official motorcade crossing the bridge after the gold ribbon was cut. I don't think they had to pay the fifty cents that you or I would have to pay to get across.

If you'll allow me to stretch a metaphor to the breaking point, popular music can serve as a bridge between people of differing backgrounds, something we Americans could use during these times of racial strife. Case in point, as Rod Serling might say, is the fact that the Motown hit Baby Love, by the trio known as the Supremes, has been at the top of the US charts all month, and shows no sign of going away any time soon.


That makes the Supremes the first Motown act to reach Number One twice. Don't believe me? Ask any girl, or boy for that matter, who listens to Top 40 radio.

Appropriately, the latest issue of Fantastic features a lead novella about crossing the immense gap between the stars.

Why? To Get To The Other Side


Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham.

The Unteleported Man, by Philip K. Dick


All interior illustrations in this issue by George Schelling.

Rachmael ben Applebaum is a man with some serious problems. His father recently died, apparently by suicide. (There are hints that this may not be the case, but the question is never resolved.) Rachmael inherited the family business, which happens to involve faster-than-light starships. Not much faster, however; it still takes many years to reach their destinations.

Applebaum Enterprises is in ruins, because the rival company Trails of Hoffman has control over teleportation technology that reduces the travel time to minutes. In this future overpopulated world, millions of people have already paid a small fee to be zapped to Whale's Mouth, a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut. The teleportation machine only works one way, so nobody has ever returned. The sole evidence for what things are like on Whale's Mouth comes via broadcasts from the planet. They make the place sound like a paradise compared to Earth.


Two minor characters in the story, considering a long-distance move.

Trails of Hoffman deliberately became a major stockholder in Applebaum Enterprises, so Rachmael now owes them a huge debt. They also have the legal right to ownership of the only starship he still possesses. Desperate to find out what's really happening on Whale's Mouth, he engages the services of Listening Instructional Educational Services, derisively known as Lies, Incorporated. Despite the name, the organization is actually interested in the truth. They serve as a private espionage agency for their clients.

What follows is a complex tale of plots and counter-plots, involving not only the groups I've noted above, but the United Nations, which is now a powerful world government, dominated by a reunited Germany. After many adventures that could have come out of a very strange, futuristic James Bond novel, Rachmael manages to set out alone on his starship, willing to spend eighteen years getting to Whale's Mouth and another eighteen years on a return flight to Earth. Meanwhile, Trails of Hoffman, Lies Incorporated, and the UN have their own plans, not to mention the folks on Whale's Mouth.

As usual for this author, there's a complicated background, plenty of twists in the plot, and multiple viewpoint characters. Also typical is the fact that things are not always as they seem. It's obvious from the start that Whale's Mouth isn't the Utopia it claims to be, but it's also not quite what Rachmael fears it might be. One of the organizations mentioned above seems to be an enemy, but turns out to be an ally. Even the title of the story is misleading.

As I've hinted, the story has the flavor of spy fiction, mixed with a lot of science fiction concepts. Although the mood is serious, even grim, there's a touch of satire and absurdity. (One character fears losing his job to a trained pigeon.) The plot always held my interest, and the characters are intriguing. (Some meet with sudden, unpleasant ends, so don't get too attached to them.)


See what I mean?

My one quibble is that the novella stops in an open-ended fashion. Perhaps the author intends to expand it into a novel.

Four stars.

I Am Bonaro, by John Starr Niendorff

Here's an odd little story by an author completely unknown to me. A disheveled old man stumbles out of a boxcar, unable to speak, wearing a sign around his neck, bearing the words in the title. He wanders around, holding out a sponge to everyone he meets. Flashback sequences reveal his miserable childhood, when he developed the power to change himself into anything in order to escape his tormentors. The end explains his current condition, and the reason for the sponge. The whole thing is weird enough to be worth a look.

Three stars.

IT, Out of Darkest Jungle, by Gordon R. Dickson

Written in the form of a screenplay, this is a spoof of bad science fiction monster movies. You've got the young, handsome scientist, the beautiful assistant who loves him, the older scientist who makes an amazing discovery, and the monster. It's all very silly, and almost too close to what it's making fun of. (It makes me feel like I saw this thing on Shock Theater.) Readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland may get a kick out of it.

Two stars.

They're Playing Our Song, by Harry Harrison

In this very short story, a quartet of long-haired rock 'n' roll musicians, pursued by screaming teenage girls, turn out to be something other than ordinary superstars. This broad parody of the Beatles has an ending you'll see coming a mile away.

One star.

The Fanatic, by Arthur Porges


As the blurb suggests, sensitive readers may wish to skip this story.

The title character believes that alien invaders take the form of animals. He thinks he can detect them, because their behavior is slightly different from that of ordinary animals. He uses very disturbing methods in his quest to discover the truth. The conclusion is predictable.

I have to confess that there's a certain horrifying effectiveness to the narrative, but it's not one that most readers will enjoy.

Two stars.

Merry Christmas From Outer Space, by Christopher Anvil

Told through letters and interstellar messages, this is a comedy about Earthlings and aliens. Two rival extraterrestrial forces are hidden on Earth. One places a mind-disrupting device near the other's location. It turns out that the thing was pointed the wrong way, leading to a series of confused messages between a writer and a science fiction magazine.


I guess this is the machine that causes all the trouble.

You could easily take out the stuff about the aliens, and wind up with a mundane farce about miscommunication. Unless you find back-and-forth exchanges about payment and cancelled checks to be funny, I doubt you'll be amused.


Could this be the author having his story accepted by the editor?

One star.

Worth Paying The Toll?


OK, so this isn't the right bridge. Sue me.

By coincidence, a copy of the magazine costs just as much as crossing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (I doubt toll collectors will accept it instead of cash.) Making an analogy between the two, I'd say that the structure starts off strong enough, but the quality of the architecture drops off rapidly after that, ending with a big splash into a metaphorical ocean of poor-to-mediocre stories.

Of course, things could be worse, if you happened to be crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on November 7th of 1940.


The hopeful beginning.


The tragic end.

Let's just be thankful that reading a bad story isn't as dangerous as crossing a poorly designed bridge.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 8, 1964] It's War! (The October 1964 Galaxy and the 1964 Hugos)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Gideon Marcus

It's a War, Man

No matter which way you look these days, fighting has broken out somewhere.  Vietnam?  War.  The Congo?  War.  Yemen?  War.

Worldcon?  You'd better believe it's war.

Back in May, the committee putting on this year's event (in Oakland, called Pacificon II) decided that Walter Breen would not be allowed to attend.  For those of you living in a steel-plated bubble, Breen is a big-name fan in the SF and coin-collecting circles with a gift for inciting dislike in direct proportion to one's proximity.

Oh, and he's also a child molester.

Now there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the draconian action taken by the Pacificon committee, likening the arbitrary action to McCarthy's witch trials of the last decade.  As a result, fandom has largely resolved itself into two camps, one defending the attempt to evict Breen from organized fandom, the other vilifying it.

I know we're a kooky bunch of misfits and our tent should be pretty inclusive, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere, don't you?  And what may have been fine for Alexander doesn't hold in the 20th Century.  I guess it's clear which side I fall on.

Well, despite the protests and the boycotts that tainted the Worldcon (which were part of what deterred me from attending this year), they still managed to honor what the fans felt was the best science fiction and fantasy of 1963.  Without further ado, here's how the Hugos went:

Best Novel

Here Gather the Stars, by Clifford Simak (63 votes)

Nominees

For the first time, the Journey had reviewed all of the choices for Best Novel before the nominating ballots had even been counted.  While we didn't pick the Simak for a Galactic Star last year, it's not a bad book, certainly better than the Heinlein and the Herbert, probably better than the Norton.  I suspect the reason the Vonnegut finished so low is that, as a mainstream book, fewer had read it.  Or perhaps just because it was so weird.

Short Fiction

The No Truce with Kings by Poul Anderson (93 votes)

Nominees

We got all of these this year, too.  The Anderson was our clear favorite, being the only one on the list to rate a Galactic Star.  The rest are in the order we had rated them.  Sadly, because this category encompasses so many stories, a great number got cheated out of recognition.  Perhaps they will divide the categories by length in the future.

Best Dramatic Presentation

None this year — insufficient votes cast for any one title to create a proper ballot.

I bet this will change next year what with so many SF shows coming out this Fall season (Rose Benton has got an article coming out in two days on this very subject!)

Best Professional Magazine

Analog ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr. (90 votes)

Nominees

It looks like people voted for the magazines in rough proportion to subscription rates, though F&SF did disproportionately well.  I am happy to say that this is the year we start covering Science-Fantasy…in its new incarnation under the editorship of Kyril Bonfiglioli.

Best Professional Artist

Ed Emshwiller (77 votes)

Nominees

Book covers are showing their influence on the voting — Krenkel and Frazetta don't do the SF mags. 

Best Fanzine

AMRA (72 votes)

Nominees

  • Yandro (51 votes)
  • Starspinkle (48 votes)
  • ERB-dom (45 votes)
  • No Vote (52 votes)
  • No Award (6 votes)

(isn't it interesting how close the ERB fanzine's tally is to Savage Pellucidar's…)

I was glad to see that Warhoon, which is full-throatedly in favor of Walter Breen, was not in the running.  Starspinkle, which makes no secret of its disdain for Breen, is the only one of these I read regularly.

Also, while Galactic Journey was not on the ballot again (for some reason), we did get a whopping 88 write-in votes.  So, unofficially, we are the best fanzine for 1964.  Go us!

Best Publisher

Ace Books (89 votes)

Nominees

  • Pyramid (79 votes)
  • Ballantine (45 votes)
  • Doubleday (35 votes)
  • No Vote (25 votes)
  • No Award (11 votes)

I should keep track of who is publishing what for next year.  The problem is, I usually read novels in serial format.

And that's it for my Hugos report.  It'll be interesting to see if fandom's scars heal at all by next year.

Veterans of Foreign Wars

Given the turmoil in the papers and in fandom, it's not surprising that war is a common theme in science fiction, too.  In fact, the October 1964 issue of Galaxy is bookended by novellas on the subject; together they take up more than half the book.  They also are the best parts.


by George Schelling

Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R. Dickson

Centuries from now, after humanity has scattered amongst a dozen or more stars, the species has splintered to specialize in particular traits.  The eggheads of Newton focus on scientific advance while the Cassidans make the building of starships their trade.  The mystical Exotics have devoted their lives to nonviolent pursuit of philosophy.  The Dorsai, of course, are renowned galaxy-wide for their military prowess.  And the hyper-religious "Friendlies" are committed to faith.

Our story's setting is the wartorn Exotic world of St. Marie, where Dorsai mercenaries have been employed to topple the Friendly mercenaries who had conquered the world years prior.  Newsman Tam Olyn has learned that the Friendlies' mission is a forlorn one, and he hopes to leverage that information to force the Christian zealots to do something desperate, illegal, to win the fight.  For Olyn has a grudge to settle with the Friendlies, having watched them slaughter without mercy an entire company of surrendered soldiers several years back.


by Gray Morrow

Set in the same universe as Dickson's prior Dorsai stories, Soldier is a more mature piece, asking a lot of hard questions.  Is Olyn's zeal any less than that of the Friendlies, any more laudable?  If Olyn's actions cause the destruction of an entire sub-branch of humanity, can the species' collective psyche withstand the loss of one of its vital components? 

Of course, the situation turns out to be far more complex than Olyn thought, with the Friendly commandant and the Dorsai commander proving to be independent variables beyond his control.  In the end, nothing goes as planned.

Soldier is not perfect.  It's overwritten in places, although since the tale is a first-person account written by a war correspondent, I wonder if this was intentional.  The omniscience of the Exotic, Padma, who has an understanding of events and factors that would make even Hari Seldon jealous, is a bit convenient as a storytelling device.  The idea that humanity has evolved in a few centuries, not just societally but mentally, such that vital components of our minds have been bred out of existence, is difficult to swallow.

But Dickson is a good writer, and I found myself turning the pages with avid interest. 

Four stars.

Martian Play Song, by John Burress

A variation of patty-cake that will make you chortle.  Three stars.

Be of Good Cheer, by Fritz Leiber

The first of two robot stories, this is a letter from Josh B. Smiley, Director-in-Chief of Level 77's Bureau of Public Morale to one Hermione Fennerghast of Santa Barbara.  It seems she just can't be happy living in a mechanically run world, where robots ignore the people, where people seem to be increasingly scarce, and where both the indoors and outdoors are being reduced to dull grayness.  Smiley does his best to reassure her that all is for the best, but the Director's verbal smile increasingly comes off as forced.

It's cute while it lasts, forgettable when it's over.  Three stars.

The Area of "Accessible Space">, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley offers us a list of near-Earth celestial targets that could be reached in the near future by rockets and probes.  The author is quite optimistic about our prospect, in fact: "There can hardly be any doubt that a mission to a comet (unmanned) will be flown before a man lands on the moon."

Anyone want to lay odds?

Three stars.

How the Old World Died, by Harry Harrison

Robot story #2: computerized automata are programmed with one overriding desire — to reproduce.  Soon, they take over the entire world, having deconstructed our buildings and machines to make more of them.

The twist ending to the story is not only ridiculous, but it also is in direct contradiction to events described earlier.  Sure, perhaps the narrator (a crotchety grandpa who remembers the good old days) is not reliable.  But if that be true, then 90% of the story is invalid, and what was the point of reading it?

Two stars.

The 1980 President, by Miriam Allen deFord


by Hector Castellon

Have you noticed that every President of the United States elected in a year ending in zero ultimately dies in office?  Perhaps that's why, in 1980, the two big parties have nominated candidates they wouldn't mind losing (though they'd never admit it publicly).

A cute idea for a gag story, I guess.  Except, in this case, the parties have been maneuvered into their actions by alien agent, The Brown Man, and his goal is racial harmony and equality.

Yeah, I found the whole thing a bit too heavy-handed for my tastes, too.  I've liked deFord a lot, but her work lately has seemed kind of primitive, more at home in a less refined era of science fiction.

Three stars, barely.

The Tactful Saboteur, by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

From bad to worse.  This unreadable piece involves a government with a built in Department of Sabotage to ensure things don't run too smoothly.  I guess.  Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.

One star.

What's the Name of That Town?, by R. A. Lafferty

A supercomputer is tasked with discovering an event not from the evidence for its existence, but from the conspicuous lack of evidence.  Lafferty's piece is an inverse of deFord's — a great idea rather wasted on a feeble laugh. 

Another barely three-star story.

Maxwell's Monkey, by Edgar Pangborn

What if the monkey on your back was a real monkey?  This monkey is a clunker.

Two stars.

Precious Artifact, by Philip K. Dick

Humanity emerges victorious from a war with the "proxmen", and Milt Biskle, a terraformer on Mars, is granted the right to return to Earth.  He does so only reluctantly, subconsciously dreading a trip to his overcrowded homeworld.

Once there, he is wracked with fears that the teeming masses of people, the burgeoning skylines are all imaginary.  Underneath, he is certain, lies nothing but ruins, smashed by the proxmen — who were actually triumphant and project this illusion to keep the few remaining humans sane.

But there is a level of truth even deeper…

A minor effort from a major author, Dick's latest warrants three stars.

The Children of Night, by Frederik Pohl


by Virgil Finlay

Lastly, Galaxy's editor picks up the pen to deliver a tale of marketing in the early 21st Century.  It's a topic near and dear to Pohl's heart, he having started out as a pretty successful copywriter, and it's no surprise that he often returns to this subject in his stories.

In this particular case, Pohl's protagonist is "Gunner", a fixer for the world's most reputable (and infamous) publicity firm.  They're the kind who'd even try to reform Hitler's image if the were enough Deutschmarks in the deal.  And in 2022, Moultrie & Bigelow's client is no less than the Arcturan insectoids who tried to wipe out humanity in a decade-long interstellar war.  I mean, how do you sell the public on a bunch of stinky bugs who killed indiscriminately and conducted experiments on children that would make Mengele blanch? (Who am I kidding — the bastard would take notes.)

Unlike many of the author's other marketing stories, this one is played straight; and while I don't know that I buy the ending, no one would argue that Fred Pohl can't write.

Four stars.

Picking up the Pieces

At times, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a battlefield, with definite winners and losers.  In the end, though, this kind of war is a lot more palatable than the other ones going on in the world. 

At four bits, that's affordable and welcome R&R.

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




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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 2, 1964] June Gloom (June 1964 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Open Your Golden Gate

This weekend, the family and I took a trip to San Francisco for a small pre-Pacificon fan gathering. Well, not so small. By the end, attendance was measured well into the hundreds, and the informally dubbed "Baycon" boasted much the same schedule as any normal convention: panels, parties, even an exhibit hall and art show!

Of course, yours truly and co. were drafted to give a State of the Union on fandom as of May 1964. We were pleased to accept, and the resulting show was one of our best (we think). See for yourself!


The event by the Bay was the highlight of an otherwise dreary month, sfnally. Indeed, June 1964 (by cover date) may well be the worst month in the history of SF mags. Read on to understand why…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

John W. Campbell's Analog, once the clear flagship of the SF mag fleet, has become a rusted shell of itself.  From a distance, it still retains the proud lines of the S.S.Astounding (as it was once known), but up close, one can see the degradation of years of neglect.  Though many of the crewmen are the same, their uniforms are shabby and their work lackluster.  It's a depressing thing.  Witness this month's issue.

Plowshare Today, by Edward C. Walterscheid

The one truly bright spot of this issue is the nonfiction article.  Usually, the value of these pages is directly proportional to their absorbency.  This time is different — Walterscheid has given us quite an informative piece on the where we are in regard to using nuclear weapons for "peaceful" purposes.  Earth moving, isotope making, Fourth of July demonstrations…that sort of thing.

I learned a lot.  I also know not to expect this project to come to fruition any time soon.  Four stars.

Stuck, by John Berryman


by Steven Verenicin

Exactly one year ago, Berryman wrote a nifty piece called The Trouble with Telstar, a hyper-realistic tale of satellite repair in the near future.  Stuck is a sequel, in which our intrepid space repairman is contracted to catch an enemy spy satellite as it whips past the Earth in a hyperbolic orbit.

The situation is mildly interesting, but the characters aren't, and the writing is workmanlike.  It's a shame — I was looking forward to this one.

Three stars.

Dolphin's Way, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

From the movie, Flipper, to the recent Clarke novel, Dolphin Island, our friends, the littlelest of whales, have been quite the sensation lately.  In Dickson's tale, humanity is on the verge of a communications breakthrough with dolphins.  This attempt becomes time sensitive as budgets are threatened.  Moreover, the principal investigator on the project has a sneaking suspicion that success will be the linchpin to acceptance into a galactic community.

Not bad, though I could have done without all the googoo eyes the scientist has for the journalist who arrives to cover his efforts.  Three stars.

Snap Judgment, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

And then we hit the bottom.

The premise isn't bad: aliens come to Earth hoping to have us join their stellar Federation so that we'll vote for them in a pending referendum.  Through various contrivances, they never actually see humans — they only know of us from radio advertisements and from the luggage of a single space traveller.  From these scanty clues, they must craft a pitch that will win over all of humanity.

The thing is, the BEMs salvage a woman's luggage and, thus, deduce all the wrong things about humanity.  That we're frivolous, easily flattered, desperate for a protector.  The radio commercials only reinforce this view since they're aimed at the consumers of society.  You know.  Women. 

Their pitch falls flat when the MEN, who thankfully are in charge of society, are turned off by the aliens' appeal and respond in a way that maximizes Earth's gain over that of the extraterrestrials.

Lest you think I'm being touchy, and that McIntosh was not impugning all womankind, let me read you this tidbit from the end of the story:

"Why," Doreen said, "did women react one way and men another?"
Barker grinned.  "Because of you.  The Grillans only had time for a snap judgment.  they picked your ship and made a quick guess about us based on what they found onboard."
"What they found?"
"Feminine things.  The only personal things in the ship.  The only clues about the human race they had.  And what a mistake that was."
"Why?"
"However women may holler about sex equality, men will always decide things like what to do when contact with an alien race is made.  Right?"
Doreen shrugged.  "I guess so.  Women have other things to think about."
"As you say.  As you said — 'Nobody asks me when big things are decided.  I never expected they would.'  Women's goals are more personal.  More Earthbound."

It goes on from there.  It could not be more offensive if McIntosh had written the BEMs finding a Jew's suitcase and determining that humanity was grasping and miserly.  Or deducing from a Black person's luggage that humans just really love to be enslaved.

One star and 1964's winner of the Queen Bee Award.

Undercurrents (Part 2 of 2), by James H. Schmitz


by John Schoenherr

I left Part 1 of this story none too enthused about where the novella was going, and all of my suspicions were confirmed.  To sum up, 15 year-old Telzey Amberdon is a psionically adept young woman sent off-planet to college.  Her roommate, Gonwil, is about to come into control of great wealth as a result of her reaching majority.  When Telzey makes telepathic contact with Gonwil's giant dog guardian, Chomir, she discovers a plot to kill Gonwil.

Two things made this promising story an utter disappointment.  For one, it was obvious that the dog was going to be the tool of Gonwil's attempted assassination.  But worse still was the writing.  We hardly see Telzey do anything.  There are just endless pages of exposition, introducing and then disposing of plot points, or even just irrelevant information.  It's like Schmitz wrote an outline and then neglected to fill it in with a story.

Two stars, and what a shame.  I haven't been this let down since Podkayne of Mars.  Two stars.

Mustn't Touch, by Poul Anderson


by Michael Arndt

The first hyperdrive test is recovered from the orbit of Neptune after just 60 seconds of operation.  Unfortunately, all the biological specimens on board are dead or dying.  What caused this lethal event, and what does it mean for humanity?

Poul Anderson tends to vacillate between genius and garbage.  This piece falls smack dab in between, featuring some nice writing and a lot of good ideas, but failing to land any punches.  He's got a novel's worth of concepts in here: sentient robots, hyperspace, genetic manipulation.  But with only ten pages to get his point across, it all becomes a muddle.

Three stars. 

I, BEM, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Michael Arndt

Finally, the Richmond twins (I kid, they're probably married — of course, they could also still be twins) offer up yet another turgid short, this one on how robots will ultimately make all humans unemployed — but what happens when the robots have their work done for them?

Written like that, I actually kind of like the concept, but it's not very well done.  Two stars.

Doing the Math

Analog clocks in this month at an unimpressive 2.6 stars, tied with Amazing and beating out Fantastic (2.4).  But even the mags that beat Analog didn't do so by much: Galaxy scored 2.7 and F&SF got 2.8.  In fact, the best parts of the magazines were the nonfiction articles this month.  Only Kit Reed's Cynosure (in F&SF) and Harlan Ellison's Paingod (in Fantastic) merit much attention besides.

Of the 34 new fiction pieces, only two of them were penned (in whole or part) by women. 

Now, to be fair, I have not yet read the June 1964 issue of Gamma, but that's only because the magazine has such spotty distribution that I didn't get a copy until recently.  So it'll get lumped in with July's stuff.  I can only imagine that will be for the good!

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




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Magazine

[May 8, 1964] Rough Patch (June 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

I think I've got a bad case of sibling rivalry.  When Victoria Silverwolf came onto the Journey, she took on the task of reviewing Fantastic, a magazine that was just pulling itself out of the doldrums.  My bailiwick consisted of Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, IF, and Galaxy, which constituted The Best that SF had to offer.

Ah for those halcyon days.  Now Fantastic is showcasing fabulous Leiber, Moorcock, and Le Guin.  Moreover, Vic has added the superlative Worlds of Tomorrow to her beat.  What have I got?  Analog is drab and dry, Avram Davidson has careened F&SF to the ground, IF is inconsistent, and Galaxy…ah, my poor, once beloved Galaxy…

The Issue at Hand


cover by McKenna

To Build a World, by Poul Anderson


by Morrow

Wham!  Kaboom!  A giant drilling machine is sabotaged while releasing the gasses pent up under the Moon's surface.  A man dies, and the lunar terraforming project is thrown into jeopardy.  It is up to the drill team's foreman, Venusian Don Sevigny, to go to Earth and sniff out the plot…before his life is snuffed out!

Sixty pages of stilted exposition punctuated by standard action scenes ensue.  Moreover, overcrowded Earth has exactly one woman on it (at least that we ever see), and though she turns out to be a villain, she's far too good-looking to remain one.  Sigh.

Poul Anderson vacillates between brilliance and boredom, and To Build a World is a swing of the pendulum hard toward the latter extreme. 

Let's hope the thing doesn't get stuck there.  Two stars.

The King of the Beasts, by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, this utterly predictable vignette might have made acceptable filler in Astounding.  Here and now, it's an embarrassing waste of space.

One star.

The Man from Earth, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Giunta

On the crossroads planet of Duhnbar, the Samarkand of the stars, a visiting human trader fails to observe a minor religious rite.  Duhnbar's all-powerful Director decides to make an example of the man, imposing a long-lapsed death penalty.  In a futile act of defiance, the man preserves his pride, if not his life.

This is a nicely written piece, and the setup is genuinely interesting, but the ending is a let down.  Three stars.

The Well-Trained Heroes, by Arthur Sellings


by Jack Gaughan (and not one of his best)

People often have the misapprehension that colonization reduced population pressure.  It doesn't; it increases it.  Colonies always fill up.  Passage is expensive.  Inevitably, home remains as crowded as ever, but the folks living there are all the more disgruntled for being stuck there.

In Heroes, Earth's citizens yearn to go to space, but barely one in a million make the cut to join the astronaut corps.  Tension builds, and town after town goes into unrest.  It is up to a pair of astronauts to defuse would-be rioters by convincing them that space isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Kind of a neat story, if a little meandering.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Anyone Else for Space?, by Willy Ley

After months of desultory articles, Willy Ley is back in form.  This month's column is nearly twice as long as it has been recently, and it's chock full of the latest news on rocket development outside the Big Two.  Having been to Japan's nascent launch facilities recently, it was exciting to hear about their latest developments (as well as those of the Europeans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Indians!)

Five stars

Collector's Fever, by Roger Zelazny

Rock collecting is a fine hobby, provided the specimens aren't sentient and ready to deeble!  A slight, amusing piece that gets extra points for being told almost entirely in dialogue.

Three stars.

The Many Dooms, by Harry Harrison


by Nodel

On expeditions to hostile worlds, there is no margin of error.  When a cocky geologist's sloppiness threatens the lives of his crew-mates, fate (perhaps with a little push from human hands) deals with the problem.

I liked the writing on this one, and the subject matter is up my alley, but I found the ending both too straightforward and, quite frankly, disturbing.

Three stars.

An Ancient Madness, by Damon Knight


by John Giunta

On an island where breeding is artificial and strictly regimented, and romantic pairings are unheard of, one sixteen year old girl longs for a dramatic love.

A lot.  Loudly and repeatedly.  For twenty angst-infused, plot-stationary pages.  Then, in the final two paragraphs, she runs off with the Doctor to live happily ever after.

I'm not sure why this story was written.  I'm even less certain how I made it through the thing.

Two stars.

Men of Good Will, by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

In the near future, the Cold War has spread to near-Earth space, occasionally sparking into moments of heat.  For some reason, however, the Moon seems to be a zone of armistice.  The Norwegian UN ambassador heads to the Earth's companion to find out the secret.

The secret (read no further if you wish to remain unspoilt): The Yanks and the Ruskies did shoot it out — once.  Those bullets achieved orbital velocity, and every 27 days, their orbit intersects with the bases, peppering them with new holes.  It's simply too dangerous to keep up the fight.

It's a cute premise, but of course, it makes absolutely no sense.  The periapsis of the bullets only intersects with the bases once out of 24 x 27 orbits; the rest of the time, the bullets should be hitting lunar hills.  They should have been stopped after the first grounding.

C'mon, Ben!  You're a science writer fer cryin' out loud.  Two stars.

The Sincerest Form, by J. W. Groves


by Cowles

Last up, we have a tale told from the point of view of imitative aliens, spore-like things that have no consciousnesses of their own, but which can become replicas of the beings they devour.  The process is imperfect, and the thought processes get a bit garbled.  In fact, it takes a while for the reader to figure out what's going on; it is only when the imitators encounter bonafide humans that things become clear.

I have to give Groves credit for an interesting concept, but the very trickiness of the idea meant that proper execution lay slightly beyond the author's ability.  Still, if he doesn't quite stick the landing, Groves does leave you with something to think about.

Three stars.

Summing Up

So, on the one hand, I am left grousing at my fate, stuck with a 2.7 star issue while Vic reviews the good stuff.  On the other hand, I'm not John Boston, resigned to review bottom-of-the-pack Amazing every month.  Plus, is that a new issue of Gamma I see peeking out from under the stack of bills?

I suppose I do have blessings to count!

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




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[April 20, 1964] Play Ball! (June 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Opening Ceremonies

Howdy, sports fans!

Baseball season just opened up here in the good old USA.  The New York Mets, relative newcomers to the sport, faced the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game held at Shea Stadium, their new stomping grounds.


The first day, and already the scoreboard is broken

The Mets lost, 4 to 3.  I know the young team has a pretty bad win-loss record, but that's got to hurt.  Opening day at your brand new stadium and the visitors beat you by one run.

Like a baseball team, the latest issue of World of Tomorrow features nine men.  (No women.) I'm counting editor Frederik Pohl as one of the players, as well as the coach and manager, since he provides the magazine's editorial — it's an interesting essay about C. P. Snow's book The Two Cultures and a Second Look, and how science fiction can build a bridge between science and the humanities.  After he provides a few practice swings, let's get down to the real ballgame.

Batter Up!


cover by Gray Morrow

On Messenger Mountain, by Gordon R. Dickson

A reliable player steps up to the plate with a tale of war and survival in deep space.

The men (no women) of the starship Harrier are having a really bad day.  After discovering an Earth-like planet, they run into an alien vessel.  In this dog-eat-dog picture of the future, the two ships immediately try to destroy each other.  Many men and aliens die, and both vessels have to make crash landings.


by Gray Morrow

The few human survivors find themselves at the foot of a gigantic mountain.  One of the aliens attacks them right away.  They manage to kill it, but not without more casualties.  The aliens are able to alter their body structures rapidly to accommodate changing conditions.

As if that were not enough of a threat, the men have no way to signal for help without carrying a piece of equipment to the top of the mountain.  Three of the crew set out on a long, difficult, and hazardous climb.  Adding to their woes is the fact that there may be another alien alive, and it might be able to disguise itself as a human being. 

Dickson creates a great deal of tension and suspense.  The mountain climbing scenes are vivid and full of realistic details.  The icy environment and shapeshifting aliens remind me of the classic story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (but not The Thing From Another World, the movie loosely based on the story.) Dickson's aliens are described in more detail than Campbell's, and their ability to change their bodies is believable.

I could quibble with the assumption that first contact with aliens must inevitably lead to conflict, or with the story's ending, which promotes humanity as unique and superior.  These aspects of the story make it seem intended for the pages of Analog.  Overall, however, it's a very good adventure story.

Four stars.

The Twerlik, by Jack Sharkey

Batting second is a player who often strikes out, particularly when he's trying to be funny.  Sometimes he connects with the ball solidly, when he takes off his jester's cap and gets down to serious business.

The Twerlik is a very strange alien.  Its flat, monomolecular, multifilamented body extends over an area of ten square miles, but it only weighs one pound.  It survives on its cold, dark world by absorbing light from the planet's distant sun.  Humans arrive, bringing sources of light far greater than anything the Twerlik has ever known.  Grateful for the gift of energy from the strangers, and for all the new concepts it learns from them, it gives them what they most desire.

Although the themes of be careful what you wish for and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions have been used many times before, Sharkey handles them in a new way.  The alien is fascinating, particularly in the way it picks up novel ideas from the humans.

There's a small hole in the plot logic.  The alien does not even have the concept of self until people show up.  Why, then, does it think of itself as a Twerlik after they arrive?  The humans don't call it that, or even know that it exists.

Despite this tiny flaw, this is the best story by Jack Sharkey that I have ever read.

Four stars.

Short Course in Button Pushing, by Joseph Wesley

Instead of a seventh inning stretch, we get a break from fiction with this article from a writer who has published a handful of stories, mostly in Galaxy.  It starts off with a question that seems simple enough.

What is the range of one of our latest supersonic anti-air warfare Naval missiles?

The author goes on to show how a large number of variables make this impossible to answer.  Atmospheric conditions, the nature of the target; the factors involved are incalculable.  The article has a single point to make, and does it in an efficient, if not intriguing, manner.

Three stars.

Stay Out of Our Time!, by Willard Marsh


by Nodel

Back to the game with this satiric, semi-comic time travel story.

Hiram Wetherbee is a meek little fellow living in the late Twentieth Century.  In his time, it's as easy to visit the far future or the distant past as it is to take a trip to a vacation spot.  However, certain future centuries ban visitors from the past, blaming them for the way they ruined the future.  Hiram, a painter of mediocre talent, intends to travel to 1902, in order to impress the unsophisticated locals with modern art.  (His real motive is to seduce the women of the time, as he's not exactly a big success with the ladies.) A mix-up lands him in one of the forbidden centuries of the future, without enough funds to make his way back.  After some misadventures with the authorities, he gets a guided tour of the time from some friendly folks who find him a remarkable specimen.

I was never quite clear what the author was trying to say, in this portrait of a future without imagination.  Very few people have jobs.  Euthanasia is encouraged.  Abstract art flourishes, but realism is dead.  Hiram talks in clichés, and the people of the future think he's brilliant.  The story is readable, but wanders all over the place and never quite grabs the reader.

Two stars.

Lucifer, by Roger Zelazny

Next in the batting order is a player who is making a name for himself in the writing game.

A man returns to a city that lost all its inhabitants in some unexplained disaster.  He goes into the vast building that provided its power and restarts the generators.

That's the entire plot of this story, which has only one character.  Obviously, the author isn't going for pulse-pounding action.  It's all mood, description, and psychological insight.  On that level, it works very well.

Four stars.

The Great Doomed Ship, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gaughan

Up to the plate comes an old pro with a checkered career.  Although he always swings hard at the ball, he rarely sends it flying over the wall.

The biggest and fastest starship ever built is about to set out on her maiden voyage.  Because it is scheduled to leave exactly two hundred years after the Titanic disaster, some people think it is doomed.

There are other reasons to worry.  This is a time when some folks have premonitions about the future, although these are not always reliable.  A few people have vague feelings of impending disaster about the planned voyage.  Most troubling of all, the designer of the vessel is in a mental institution, having gone into a catatonic state.  Our hero, an investigator with some psychic ability, finds out that the mad engineer deliberately set the ship to blow up when it reaches a certain speed.  He fails to prevent the vessel from taking off, and there is no way to communicate with it.  Complicating matters is the fact that the investigator's sister, who also has extrasensory powers, is aboard.

As I was reading this story, I kept picturing it as a big budget Hollywood spectacular, in Technicolor and Cinemascope.  The characters all come from Central Casting.  Besides the hero, his sister, and the madman, we've got the stubborn head of the starship company; the hard-drinking co-designer of the ship; the sister's no-good boyfriend; the brave young captain of the vessel, who wins the affections of the sister; and so on. 

I have problems with some of the things McIntosh says about women in his stories, yet, paradoxically, he creates complex female characters who are often more capable than the men are.  The sister is a prime example.  Although she's in a destructive relationship with a faithless lover, her weaknesses never prevent her from winning the reader's sympathy. 

This cinematic epic was enjoyable, if hardly profound, until the end.  It falls completely apart, with an anticlimax that depends on a trivial change in the meaning of a certain premonition the sister has about her fate. 

Two stars.

The Realized Man, by Norman Spinrad

Here's a rookie with only a few credits to his name.  Is he ready for the big league, or should he go back to the minors?  Let's find out.

Derek Carmody is a man who has been mentally and physically enhanced to an extraordinary degree.  His purpose is to arrive alone, without special equipment, on a planet inhabited by primitive aliens, and prepare them for later human colonists.  He does this by becoming chief of the local tribe and offering them technological advantages over their rivals.  It all leads up to a final gesture that will make him a god in the eyes of the natives.

Although the way in which the protagonist uses his superpowers is quite interesting, the story suffers from a lack of suspense.  The author tells you in advance what the character is going to do at the end, and then he does it.  I was a little disappointed that the confident superman didn't get his comeuppance.

Three stars.

What the Dead Men Say, by Philip K. Dick


by Virgil Finlay

We go into the final inning with a novella from a prolific, award-winning, but sometimes controversial author.

Louis Sarapis may be the richest person in the solar system.  So rich, in fact, that not even the tax collectors know how much he's worth.  He is also dead.

In this future, that's not a huge handicap.  By keeping the recently deceased extremely cold, it's possible to temporarily preserve a low level of brain activity.  The so-called half-lifers can communicate with the living, albeit in a limited way.

Attempts to revive the mind of the dead man fail, for unknown reasons.  That would seem to be the end of the matter, except for one thing: messages that seem to be coming from the deceased arrive on Earth from deep in space.  Eventually they take over all forms of electronic communication.  You can't listen to the radio, watch television, or pick up the phone without hearing the dead man's voice.

The deceased's heir is his granddaughter, formerly a drug addict.  Because her grandfather is legally dead, although apparently quite active, she now runs his vast business empire.  She follows his orders from beyond the grave.  In particular, she promotes the political career of a politician who formerly failed to become President of the United States, convinced he can make a comeback and win the office.

There is much more to this long and complex story than I've indicated.  Many subplots appear, along with a wide variety of richly defined characters.  The author avoids his tendency to have disparate elements, not fully integrated, in his works.  The plotting is tight, with all of the seemingly mystical elements explained in a logical way.

(One trivial observation remains.  In passing, the story states that Richard Nixon revived his political career in the 1970's.  I know science fiction writers are supposed to come up with wild speculations, but that's really stretching things.)

Five stars.

The Box Score

Coach Pohl puts his big hitters at the front and back of the magazine, making up for a slight slump in the middle.  With all bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, slugger Philip K. Dick hits a home run.  It makes you want to root for the underdogs.  Go Mets!

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




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[May 6, 1963] The more things change… (June 1963 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Around the world, events herald a heightened rate of change.  Civil Rights marchers and boycotters in Birmingham, Alabama have been met with fire hoses, attack dogs, and mass incarceration.  Casualty reports for servicemen killed in Vietnam are becoming a weekly occurrence.  In a more hopeful vein, the nuclear test ban group at the United Nations appears to be making good progress, and it has been reported that the White House and Kremlin will soon be bridged by a "Hot Line:" a secure teletype link for instant communications.

And yet, within the latest pages of Galaxy, a magazine that established the vanguard of new-type science fiction when it came out in October 1950, it appears that time has stood still.  The proud progressive flagship appears to be faltering, following in the footsteps of Campbell's reactionary Analog.  It's not all bad, exactly.  It's just nothing new…and some of it is really bad.  Is it a momentary blip?  Or is Editor Pohl saving the avante-garde stuff for his other two magazines?

In any event, here it is, the June 1963 Galaxy:

Here Gather the Stars (Part 1 of 2), by Clifford Simak

A century after the American Civil War, Union soldier Enoch Wallace is found to still be alive on his Wisconsin family homestead.  Amazingly, he has retained his youth, as has his home, despite the age-decay of the nearby farmhouses.  The government puts the solider under 24-hour surveillance.  Yet, all they are able to learn of the reclusive man is that he no longer farms, goes for a walk for an hour a day, potters in his garden for short periods, and his only "friends" are the mailman and a deaf-mute young woman, a sort of local witch.

We soon learn, however, that Wallace's home is actually a galactic way station, a transfer point for teleporting aliens.  Both the home and Wallace (when he is inside) are freed from the ravages of time.  Day-in and day-out, members of an incredibly diverse collection of extra-terrestrials are translated across the light years into the station's holding tanks.  These are essentially copies of originals — great energies create new beings at each station, killing the earlier copies.  The corpses are then discarded.  It's a grisly kind of travel, when one thinks about it, and it certainly leaves little room for an eternal soul that clings to a physical form. 

Simak is one of the great veterans of our field, and he has been a staple of Galaxy since its inception.  He is unmatched when it comes to evoking a bucolic charm, and he has a sensitive touch when conveying people (human or otherwise).  This particular tale begins promisingly, but it meanders a bit, and it frequently repeats itself.  Either over-padded or under-edited, it could do with about 15% fewer words.  Three stars so far, but I have a feeling the next half will be better.

The Cool War, by Andrew Fetler

In contrast to Simak, Fetler is a newish author and a decidedly minor one.  He's finally made the jump from IF to Galaxy (a step up in pay and prestige), but I don't know how he earned it with this piece, a satire in which robots are used to replace political notables.  It's not very coherent, and it's not at all fun.  One star. 

For Your Information, by Willy Ley

This month's science article is surprisingly good.  The surprise isn't that Willy wrote a good piece — he's the reason I became a Galaxy subscriber in the first place, 13 years ago.  No, it's because I hadn't expected to be interested in the subject matter.

The topic is sounding rockets, those missiles that carry scientific packages into space but not into orbit.  They tend to get little press compared to their bigger cousins, and I've been as guilty of neglecting them as everyone else.  Yet hundreds of these little guys are launched each year by more than a dozen countries, and the scientific return they offer is staggering, particularly in consideration of their low cost.  Plus, the development of these small boosters has direct application to the creation of big ones.

Four stars.  Worth reading.

End as a Hero, by Keith Laumer

Kayle, a space-traveling psychologist is captured by the mind-controlling Gool and implanted with a mission to destroy the Terran Federation at its source: Earth.  But the aliens have picked the wrong subject for this treasonous task.  For Kayle has erected barriers to suggestion while giving himself access to the Gool mind-trust, thus turning the tides.  Now the race is on — can he make it back to Earth and give humanity the secret to instantaneous teleportation before his military colleagues kill him out of an abundance of caution?  And is Kayle really the one calling the shots, or is it just part of a many-layered Gool plot?

It's a strange Rube Goldberg of a tale, and if you stop to think about it, it falls apart.  Yet Laumer is quite a good writer., and sort of makes it work.  Think of it as a straight Retief story.  Three stars.

The Faithful Wilf, by Gordon Dickson

The interstellar Nick and Nora are back in their third diplomatic mystery adventure.  Unfortunately, unlike the last one (which appeared in a truly excellent issue of Galaxy), Wilf is wretched.  The female half of the pair is ignobly reduced to whining and simpering, and the story is told so elliptically that I'm still not quite sure what happened.  It's a shame because Dickson, when he wants to, is one of the genre's better writers.  But he only wants to about a third of the time…  One star.

The Sellers of the Dream, by John Jakes

Last up is an "if this goes on tale," taking the trend of planned obsolescence to its ludicrous end.  Not only are clothes, furniture, and cars all disposed of on an annual basis, but even personalities and bodies are swapped.  Not by stodgy males, of course, but that will come soon enough.  Sellers is the story of an industrial spy who discovers that this year's body model is, in fact, a tragically altered ex-fiancee. 

Thus begins a most improbable scheme to save the captive woman that leads our hero to the wastes of Manhattan, a decrepit penal colony for reactionaries who cling to the notion that things have permanent value.  Along the way, the spy learns the awful secret behind the 21st Century economy. 

Author John Jakes has flitted across the various SF magazines for more than a decade.  He occasionally produces a work of art.  More frequently, he write mediocre space-filler.  Sellers is neither.  While the story doesn't make a lot of sense, the satire is worthy, and I found myself interested the whole way.  Call it an idea piece.  Three stars.

In the end, this month's Galaxy probably won't make you cancel your subscription, but it will leave you pining for change.  Well, every month brings new opportunities (or in the case of this bimonthly magazine, every other month.).  Until then…

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[January 30, 1963] Escape Velocity (February 1963 Analog)

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[If you live in Southern California, you can see the Journey LIVE at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego, 2 p.m. on February 17!]


by Gideon Marcus

The latter half of January was filled with fanac (Fan Activity), and oh what a joy it was.  The third weekend in January, the Journey once again attended ConDor, San Diego's SFF convention.  And once again, we were guests, presenting on the state of current science fiction both Saturday and Sunday.  It was a chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones.  ConDor is always a fun event.

The highlight of that weekend, however, was a Saturday night trip up to San Juan Capistrano to watch Dick Dale and his Del-Tones perform.  If you're not familiar with the King of the Surf Guitar by now, he is easily the most exciting instrumental musician these days.  He puts on a hell of a show.

If the January's fanac was superlative, the February 1963 Analog, though beautifully illustrated by Schoenherr, was anything but.  Not that the stories were bad, mind you.  They just all had some significant flaw that kept them from being truly good. 

Code Three, by Rick Raphael

For those not in the know, "Code Three" is police-speak for a high speed chase.  It's an appropriate title for this Highway Patrol tale of the future, when North America is criss-crossed by mile-wide superhighways whose cars zoom at speeds of up to 400 miles per hour.  Raphael writes in a lovingly technical fashion that is oddly compelling but gives short shrift to its three human characters, who are so much cardboard.  I don't find Raphael's futuristic freeways particularly plausible, either, but they are fun to read about.  Three stars.

Hilifter, by Gordon R. Dickson

This is five sixths of a great yarn about a futuristic spaceship hijacker, who relies on daring and ingenuity to pull off a caper against all odds.  Dickson portrays his protagonist deftly and with subtlety, but the ending… hoo boy.  I'm not sure if Dickson wrote the expositional fatuity for editor Campbell, of if the editor sliced the original ending to bits, but it is the mustache on the Mona Lisa.  Three stars.

Something Will Turn Up, by David Mason

Stories with a lot of Beat jargon can often fall flat, but Mason does a good job of writing a poet/TV-repairman who pits forces against a hexed idiot box.  Cute.  Three stars.

"The Sound of Gasping", by Mel Sturgis

If you read (as I do) Aviation Week, then you're familiar with technical advertising.  It's made with the slick standards of any Madison Avenue product, but the subject matter is abstruse engineering.  Sturgis' piece is presumably on the growth and importance of technical advertising, as well as his experiences observing same at the recent convention, WestCon.  But if you get anything out of this article, you're doing better than me.  One star. 

(The title is an obscure reference indeed — a riff on Isaac Asimov's article The Sound of Panting in the June 1955 Astounding (that being this magazine's name before it became Analog).  The article was on the difficulty of keeping up with current technical literature.)

The Topper, by Arthur Porges

Cockroaches made sentient by radiation?  It must be a joke… right?  Well, probably.  A bit of improbable fluff, just long enough to entertain rather than annoy.  Three stars.

With No Strings Attached, by David Gordon (Randall Garrett)

A fellow markets an amazing new power source as a battery (it isn't, and you should know what it is right off) to prevent poaching and ensure exclusivity.  I've been around long enough to recognize most of Randy Garrett's pseudonyms, so I cracked into "David Gordon's" latest with trepidation.  Turns out Strings isn't bad (just devoid of women, like most Garrett stories).  Three stars.

Space Viking (Part 4 of 4), by H. Beam Piper

This last installment of Piper's latest is arguably the best of the bunch.  It contains the payoff of Prince Trask of Tanith's quest to forge a civilized empire out of the wreckage of the Old Federation.  Though Trask started as a Space Viking, plundering half-civilized planets, by the end of the book, his league of planets has surpassed the feudal Sword Worlds whence he came and is a local power center.

As I've stated in prior reviews, the problem with Viking is its sketchiness.  We hardly get to know any of the characters, interesting episodes are glossed over, giant spans of time are leaped without transition.  This is an epic series of books compressed to a novel-length outline.  I hope Piper gets a chance to expand on this genuinely interesting saga at some point, or perhaps open up his universe to collaborative efforts (has that ever been done before?)

As is, this is a four-star installment of a 3.25-star book.

Now it's time for the best part of the month, where we get to add up the numbers!  Galaxy is a clear winner at 3.3 stars, followed by F&SF with 3.1.  All of the other mags fell below the 3-star mark with Fantastic at 2.9, Analog at 2.8, Amazing at 2.4, and New Worlds at 2.3. 

But all of the magazines, with the exception of New Worlds, had at least one four-star story.  In fact, if you collected all the four and five-star stories, you could almost fill two magazines — twice as much material as last month. 

Finally, women wrote 3.5 of 37 fiction pieces.  Not a good showing, but again — better than last month.

Speaking of showings, next week I'll let you know if The Twilight Zone is worth watching in its new format (hint: so far, not so good…)

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




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Magazine

[January 10, 1963] (February 1963 Galaxy)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

The Traveler family has now been on the island of Kaua'i (in the newest state of the Union, Hawai'i) for five days, and I can feel the shackles of the mainland loosening.  We are staying in a vacant worker cottage on the Waimea Sugar Plantation, guests of one of the manager's, and it's just lovely.  Timeless beauty surrounds us.  There's no question but that this state is destined to be a tremendous tourist attraction some day – but I hope this island never loses its virgin charm.

It's hard to describe the relaxation that comes with visiting this sub-tropical paradise.  In the main room of our three-room cottage, the Young Traveler plucks away at her ukelele, singing Elvis' recent Hawai'ian hit, I can't help falling in love with you, and then the apt Jamaican Farewell popularized by Belafonte not long ago.  Last night, we were guests of the Gaylord family at their Kilohana estate.  After a sumptuous meal of meticulously prepared fish and delectable desserts (including a half-coconut), we dallied in the Sitting Room as one of the family played Scott Joplin tunes on the piano. 

Of course, even in this Westernmost bastion of America, modern civilization is encroaching.  We flew into the new small but international airport at Lihue (and commerce is already relocating from its traditional center here at Waimea to that burgeoning mini-city).  The grocery chain, Safeway, is building a supermarket on the island. 

And then there are the relics of the Mainland we've brought with us in the form of the books packed in our suitcases.  The Young Traveler has been devouring Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People (Watch out World!), while I have just finished this month's Galaxy.

Its editor, Fred Pohl, has spilled much ink over the role of the science fiction writer.  He insists that our job is not to predict the future, and indeed, we're pretty bad at such things, statistically speaking.  Rather than saying, "This is what will happen," we really say, "This is what will happen if."

The timing is no coincidence.  The February 1963 Galaxy is filled with "what will happen ifs," — have a look:

Home from the Shore, by Gordon R. Dickson

Dickson's story asks, "What will happen if the nascent trend of undersea living is carried to its logical conclusion?"  The result is, as we've seen previously explored in The Underwater City, a nation of humans living underwater.  Living in Castle-Homes and Small-Homes on the ocean floor, some six million people, enhanced by genetics and technology, thrive alongside their dolphin companions.

It is an uneasy existence, the Landers resenting the independence of their former brethren (who they'd hoped to use primarily as stock for space exploration).  As Home from the Shore begins, one of the sea people's leaders, Johnny Joya is defecting from the astronaut corps to rejoin his people.  It turns out that the precipitous action is the spark that provokes war between the Landers and the mermen.  Willy-nilly, this fight will catapult the sea people to the next phase of their existence.

Dickson pens a vivid piece, but it feels more prologue than complete tale, and the details are a bit too oblique to follow in places.  In particular, I'm never quite sure just how life underwater works or how it's sustainable.  I found myself stalling at the beginning a number of times.  I think Shore earns three stars, but just barely.

Think Blue, Count Two, by Cordwainer Smith

This latest tale of the "Instrumentality," Smith's unique far future, explores the ramifications of centuries-long space flight given an unchanging temperament for humans.  How will we keep our sanity, our morality, when faced with the yawning vastness of space, divorced from the society that keeps us civilized.

Think Blue, Count Two is a sequel, of sorts, to The Lady who Sailed the Soul, which introduced us to the concept of interstellar sailing ships and deep frozen passengers.  This latest edition stars an ingenue colonist, chosen solely for her beauty, and details how she manages the increasingly neurotic attentions of her two male co-passengers.

It's another beautiful Smith tale, but Think Blue is less about what the protagonist does but what happens around and to her.  Riveting but somehow unsatisfying stuff.  Four stars.

For Your Information: First Flight by Rocket Power, by Willy Ley

To project where we're going, one has to know where we've come from.  This month's science department traces down the very first rocket powered human flight and then describes the important ones since.  Three stars.

(Anyone want to lay odds on whether the Russians will beat Gordo Cooper to be the first person in space in 1963?)

Comic Inferno, by Brian W. Aldiss

Aldiss makes a bold prediction in this story of robots and people: As life gets easy, our breeding instinct will wane, and a hundred years from now, the world will be a fraction as populated.  Mechanical people will fill in the gaps, being our servants and our underclass.  But what if the romen tire of their inferior position?

There are great concepts in here, but Comic Inferno is rather rough sledding, what with its Extremely British satirical style.  Much like the Dickson, it takes time to get into, but in retrospect, the trip was rewarding.  Three stars.

Pollony Undiverted, by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Here is another journey into an indolent future, in which all needs are met save for the ones that matter most – those that give us emotional satisfaction.  Van Scyoc gives us a tale from a feminine perspective that captures the frivolity of existence and the fleeting nature of happiness in a world made infinitely small by teleportation.  Three stars.

Day of Truce, by Clifford D. Simak

Did you just put up a fence to keep tykes from riding their bicycles and scooters on your property?  Maybe a menacing "No Trespassing" sign?  What if these are the first unplanned shots in an escalating war between the Homeowners and the Punks?

Simak writes a fun, barbed story about a battle deep in the course of the conflict at a time when a man's home is truly a castle, and the teenage delinquents are armed with time bombs and Molotov cocktails.  Four stars.

The Bad Life, by Jerome Bixby

You may remember Bixby from his The Twilight Zone story, It's a Good Life.  His latest story shares no similarities but for the titles and the overwhelming sense of feeling trapped in a hellish situation.

John Thorens is a do-gooder, a Hand of the Helping Hands dispatched to the Jovian artificial moon/penal colony called Limbo to bring solace to the criminals living there.  The extrapolation in this piece is, "How would a first generation Australia in space treat a well-meaning vistor?" 

Not well.  An intellectual among boors, a civilized man among animals, Thorens is hounded and beaten to the point of insanity. 

This is a brutal story, difficult to read, made compelling by Bixby's sheer "writerliness" (as one of my readers might put it).  Not recommended for the easily disturbed, and perhaps Bixby overdoes the writing by 10%.  But it'll sure stay with you.  Three stars. 

And that's that.  A dense read, a hard read at times, but in many ways a rewarding one.  None of the futures depicted are pleasant ones, but they offer valuable signposts of potholes to avoid on the path of progress.

Next up – John Boston and this month's Amazing!

[P.S. If you registered for WorldCon this year, please consider nominating Galactic Journey for the "Best Fanzine" Hugo.  Check your mail for instructions…]




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[Dec. 31, 1962] So it goes… (January 1963 Analog)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

It is said that "No news is good news," but I imagine every publisher would disagree.  After the big-ticket headlines of October of November involving the Cuban and Chinese/Indian episodes things have quieted down on the domestic and world fronts.  The Cold War has thawed such that the only current evidence is a holey wall in Berlin and a small brushfire in Indochina.  The Katanga crisis in The Congo approaches resolution.  Even the latest manned space shot was a bore – six perfect orbits.  The biggest news is about something that hasn't happened yet: Kennedy wants to lower taxes significantly to spur the economy.  Of course, Conservatives oppose the move as they don't want to blow a hole in the deficit (a position I'm sure they will hold eternally).

This month's Analog, the last sf digest of the month, complements the news situation.  It's filled with pages and pages of pages, none of which will likely stick with you long after you set it down.  The stories in this month's issue don't even have the virtue of being terrible.  Just redolent in that smug mediocrity that so frequently characterizes this mag, once the flagship of science fiction.

"The Hard Way", by Gordon R. Dickson

An alien interstellar scoutship stumbles across a human derelict ship, spurring its captain, Kator, member of a rapacious felinoid race, to dream of conquest of the Earth.  Kator is dispatched to the solar system to surveil our defenses, find a weakness, and return to his homeworld to take charge of the invasion fleet. 

Kator finds Earth to be a curiously undefended planet, weapons seemingly nonexistent.  The cat-man finds this state improbable given our warlike history and quickly deduces that we store our weapons underground.  Thus ensues his mission of subterranean espionage, fraught with an increasingly difficult set of physical and mental challenges.  Is it just a run of bad luck?  Or a complicated trap set-up by the humans to evaluate would-be competitors?

Well, I won't leave you in suspense.  Campbell's the editor of Analog, and all of his stories feature Terran supremacy if he can help it.  As well-drawn as the first half this story is (Dickson really is an excellent author when he's not writing for Campbell), I just knew that it would end with a human waggling his superior finger at Kator, lecturing the felinoid that trying to subjugate Earth is a fool's errand. 

Setting aside the utter implausibility of the story, which requires an omniscience even Campbell's humans shouldn't be capable of, this kind of fatuous tale sticks in my craw.  Two stars.

Philosopher's Stone, by Christopher Anvil

Who will win the economic Cold War between the US and USSR?  It turns out it's the UK, which brings nobility and social stratification back as rewards for effecting (but not inventing) technological advance.  Because, apparently, money just isn't enough incentive. 

This paean to aristocracy, particularly the self-satisfied ending, isn't worth your time.  Two stars.

The Common Man, by Guy McCord

Three biochemists in concert discover a serum of invisibility.  One wants to give the formula to the the government, another feels the secret too dangerous to communicate.  The third proposes an experiment: under controlled conditions, provide the serum to an average American and see what he does with it.

Well, as one might expect, the power of complete stealth proves too heady a temptation for mortals.  The ambitious guinea pig uses his abilities to amass great wealth, build a criminal network, and capture the scientist trio.  His plan is nothing less than global domination.  Only the ingenuity of the scientists and the carelessness of the test subject put an end to the frightening turn of events.

I feel that this story could have said so much more than it did.  What could have been a horrifying illustration of the corruption of absolute power, or an illustration of how science (so often perceived as the unalloyed agent of positive progress) is often the handmaiden to misery, is reduced to a pat "eggheads really are the smart ones" piece.  It's a pity.  I've seen better from this author.  Well, not quite this author – "Guy McCord" is a new name to me, but given that "Mack" Reynolds' full name is Dallas McCord Reynolds, I'm pretty sure The Common Man is by the Analog regular who gave us the (much better) Mercenary.  Three stars.

The Search for Our Ancestors, by Prof. G. M. McKinley

We have learned so much about the evolution of humans recently, thanks to the work of Leakey's archaeology in Africa (and to some extent, Goodall's work with chimpanzees, too).  McKinley's article is a fascinating but sloppy summary of the current state of understanding in the field.  Three stars.

Space Viking (Part 3 of 4), by H. Beam Piper

Last up is the next segment in Piper's answer to Asimov's Foundation, in which the wreckage of the Old Federation is slowly knit back together by Prince Trask, Space Viking of planet Tanith.  This installment retains the same positives and negatives of the prior two: an interesting universe and plot marred by sketchy execution (almost an outline of a story) and a jarring paucity of female characters.  I'm still rankling at Piper's killing of Trask's bride, Elaine, in the first act of the novel to provide Trask with character motivation.  I will say concede, however, that the introduction of the young Crown Princess of Marduk in this episode is promising.  Three stars.

This being the last magazine for the month, we now can review the numbers for January 1963.  IF comes up the winner at 3.3 stars, while Amazing (3 stars) had the two best stories one of them being the only woman-penned story.  F&SF was the worst, at 2.3 stars.  Average for the entire month was a dreary 2.77 stars, but there are enough high-quality works to fill a good single digest.  Read those, and you'll be satisfied!

Next up – a look at the fantasy and horror films of 1962!

[P.S. If you want the chance to nominate Galactic Journey for Best Fanzine next year, you need to register for WorldCon before the end of the year! (or have registered last year… but then you can only nominate, not vote.) The Journey will be at next year's WorldCon, so don't miss your chance to meet us and please help put us on the ballot for Best Fanzine!]




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Magazine

[November 19, 1962] Reverse Course (December 1962 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[if you’re new to the Journey, read this to see what we’re all about!]


by Gideon Marcus

I've complained bitterly in this column on the meanderings of my favorite science fiction magazines.  Galaxy has gotten too tame.  Analog has gotten too staid.  F&SF has gotten too literary.  In fact, just last month, I was lamenting the streak of purple fluffiness that had corrupted that last mag.  Story after story of unreadable droll nothings, or at best, fantastic horrors without any hard sf.

The December 1962 issue did not promise to be any better.  It has the same line-up of authors, the same subject matter of stories.  There are even 11000…er.. 24 pages devoted to the concept of binary numbers.  Has F&SF lost its mind?!

So imagine my surprise to find that I actually enjoyed this month's issue, entirely due to the well-written nature of its material.  These are not the kind of stories I prefer, but this experience just goes to show that high quality trumps subject matter.  See if you agree:

The Depths, by Jim Harmon

The fastest route between two points is a straight line, so what better way to navigate the globe than through it?  One hardly even needs a locomotive force since one can simply fall to a destination.  Of course, there is the minor issue of building the shaft, but such trivialities are hand-waved in this pleasant, deliberately archaic tale of a trans-Terranian vessel that gets stuck half-way down.  Three stars.

Behind the Stumps, by Russell Kirk

I didn't much care for Kirk's ghost story in the last issue, and this one is in the same vein.  It is so nicely drawn and tautly composed, however, that I found myself engrossed.  In brief: fussy, meticulous census worker heads to the backwoodsiest of Appalachian towns determined to count every farmer, even those whose tie to the Earth is limited at best.  Suitably horrific, vividly realized.  Four stars.

Senhor Zumbeira's Leg, by Felix Marti-Ibanez

In a time when the depiction of sex in our genre ranges from prudish nonexistence to Garrett-esque male-chauvinism, it's nice to get a happy-go-lucky romp filled with equally game and enabled men and women.  This spicy Latin adventure features the Zumbeira family, father and son, who are motivated by comfort and cross-gender relationships.  When the ne'er-do-well son embarks on a journey to find a new prosthesis for his one-legged father, aided by a sorceress' magic charm guaranteed to bring luck, amusing hijinx ensue.  All's well that ends well, and the journey is good, too.  Four stars.

One, Ten, Buckle My Shoe, by Isaac Asimov

Only Asimov can wax pedantic on a dull subject and make the experience enjoyable.  I mean, it's a piece about a counting system in which there are only two digits!  But if we're going to get along with computers, I suppose we'd best learn the drill now.  Four stars.

On Binary Digits and Human Habits, by Frederik Pohl

Galaxy, IF, and (soon) Worlds of Tomorrow editor makes an unusual appearance in a competitor magazine with this piece on how to easily convey binary numbers verbally.  What at first seems a pointless exercise turns out actually to be kind of interesting – the first time through, I had a strong desire to throw the magazine against the wall; and then I got it and re-read with some fascination.  Three stars this time, but don't do it again, please.

Ad Infinitum, by Sasha Gilien

Freud put much stock in the symbolism of dreams.  Gilien takes things a few steps further, positing that there is an entire studio devoted to the production and innovation of said symbols.  A fantastic idea somewhat neutered by its gimmick ending.  Three stars.

Roofs of Silver, by Gordon R. Dickson

Can cultures devolve?  And if they can, what is the measuring stick?  Dickson sets up a universe where Terra's colonies have a habit of reverting to savagery, replacing conscience with taboo, morality with hidebound custom.  Roofs spotlights one world on the verge of such a fall, and the lengths one of its inhabitants goes to thwart it.

There's nothing wrong with the writing in this piece; when Dickson's on his game (and he certainly is here), he is one of the genre's more sensitive and interesting authors.  No, the only real failing of this piece is its utter predictability.  Four stars.

The Notary and the Conspiracy, by Henri Damonti (translation by Damon Knight)

Some people really live a double life – the problem comes when one chooses to live out that second span in a high-profile and highly dangerous historical position!  A fun piece, but it's one of Knight's more opaque translations.  Three stars.

—

In sum, this month's issue scored a respectable 3.5 stars.  I am left with a sense of bemused puzzlement.  Did editor Davidson finally turn his ship around?  Did all of the insufferable frivolity get used up by Galaxy?  Or is this simply the bounce of a dead cat, and I can expect a return to form in the new year?

As my wife is wont to say, "Don't borrow trouble."  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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