Tag Archives: Harlan Ellison

Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 24, 1966] Increments: World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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by John Boston

Donald A. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966—second in this series—is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers.  This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year.

The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front.  There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first; the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard.  More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture. 


by Cosimo Scianna

Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years.  The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year.

So it’s a rather insular party.  But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith.  The editors seem to have been listening.  This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing.  More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor.

This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished.  Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens.  Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened. 

There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil.  In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture.  Is this the sort of intelligence that should ordinarily bar colonization outright? The “Conscience”—a bureaucrat in charge of making these decisions—thinks so, but proposes to split the baby, allowing colonization but providing that the humans will alter the climate to provide more dry land for the amphibians.  Of course, behind the bien-pensant speechifying, a still small voice says, “We’re just now starting to get rid of colonialism here, and you want to start it up again?” And another: “Ask the American Indians about the promises of colonists.”

Less weighty thoughts are on offer in James H. Schmitz’s Planet of Forgetting (from Galaxy), involving a fairly standard space war scenario with chase on unknown planet, with the wrinkle that some of the local fauna seem to be able to make people briefly forget where they are and what they are doing.  At the end of this smoothly rendered entertainment, suddenly the wrinkle becomes a mountain range. 

Similar cleverness-as-usual is displayed in Fred Saberhagen’s Masque of the Red Shift (from If), one of his popular Berserker series, in which a disguised Berserker robot appears and wreaks havoc on a spaceship occupied by the Emperor of the galaxy and his celebrating sycophants.  But it is promptly outsmarted and done in by the Emperor’s brother, who is resurrected from suspended animation and lures the Berserker into the clutches of a “hypermass,” which seems to be what scientists are starting to call a “black hole.” (Though on second thought, I’m not sure that “cleverness” is quite le mot juste for a story that falls back on the dreary cliche that a galaxy-spanning human civilization will find no better way to govern itself than an Emperor.) Jonathan Brand’s Vanishing Point (If) is an alien semi-contact story, in which the functionaries of the Galactic Federation have created an artificial habitat, a sort of Earth-like theme park complete with human curator, for the human emissaries to wait in and wonder what is really going on.

Engineering fiction is represented by Clarke’s slightly pedantic Sunjammer (as noted, Boys’ Life by way of New Worlds), concerning a yacht race in space, and by Larry Niven’s livelier Becalmed in Hell (F&SF), whose characters—one of them a brain and spinal column in a box, with vehicle controlled by his nervous system—get stuck on the surface of Venus (updated with current science) and have to improvise a primitive solution to get home.

There are a couple of near-future satires representing very different styles and targets of the sardonic.  Ron Goulart’s Calling Dr. Clockwork (Amazing) is a lampoon of the medical system; protagonist visits someone in the hospital, faints at something he sees there, wakes up in a hospital bed himself attended by the eponymous robot doctor, and can’t get out as his diagnosis shifts and things seem to be falling apart in the institution.  Fritz Leiber’s The Good New Days (Galaxy) is a more densely populated slice-of-slapstick extrapolating the welfare state, with a family living in futuristic but cheaply made housing (“They don’t build slums like they used to,” complains one character), with the TV on every minute, and Ma trying to avoid the demands of the medical statistician who wants her vitals, and everyone struggling to get and keep multiple make-work jobs (the protagonist just lost his job as a street-smiler), and things are all falling apart here, too, and a lot of the sentences are almost as long as this one.  The two stories are about equally amusing, which means above standard for Goulart and a little below standard for Leiber.

So that’s the ordinary, and a higher quality of ordinary than last year. 

A few items are unusual if not extraordinary.  R.A. Lafferty’s In Our Block (If) is an amusing tall tale about various odd characters with unusual talents residing in the shacks on a neglected dead-end block, like the woman who will type your letters but doesn’t need a typewriter (she makes the sound effects orally), and the man who ships tons of merchandise out of a seven-foot shack without benefit of warehouse.  It has lots of slapstick but not much edge, unlike the best by this idiosyncratic writer.  Newish writer Lin Carter (two prior appearances in the SF magazines, a lot in the higher reaches of amateur publications), in Uncollected Works (F&SF), extrapolates the old saw about monkeys on typewriters reproducing the works of Shakespeare, in the direction of Clarke’s The Nine Billion Names of God, leading to an unexpected and subtle conclusion.

In Vernor Vinge’s Apartness, from the UK’s New Worlds, the Northern War has destroyed the Northern Hemisphere, and generations later, an expedition from Argentina discovers people encamped in Antarctica, living in primitive conditions, who prove to be the descendants of white South Africans who fled from the uprising that followed the war and eliminated whites from the continent.  (Interesting that this American writer didn’t find a market for it at home.) They are not pleased to be discovered by darker-skinned explorers and try to drive them off.  The well-sketched background makes this more than an exercise in irony or just revenge.

On to the extraordinary—three of them, not a bad showing.  Traveler’s Rest, by David I. Masson, also from New Worlds, depicts a world where time varies with latitude, passing slowly at the North Pole (though subjectively very fast), where a furious—and possibly futile—high-tech war is in progress with an unknown and unseeable enemy.  Life proceeds more mundanely in the southern latitudes.  Protagonist H is relieved from duty, travels south, reorients himself to current society, establishes a career, marries and procreates over the years. He's known now as Hadolarisondamo, since names are longer in the slower latitudes.  Then, middle-aged, he is called back to duty, and arrives 22 minutes after he left.  This world’s nightmarish quality is highlighted by the dense mundane detail of the normal life of the lower latitudes; the result is a tour de force of strangeness.

Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin!” said the Ticktockman (from Galaxy) is a sort of dystopian unreduced fraction.  In outline, it’s a simple story of a future world where punctuality is all; if you’re late, your life can be docked.  One man can’t take it any more and dresses up in a clown suit and goes around disrupting things until he gets caught by the Master Timekeeper (the Ticktockman), brainwashed, and forced to recant publicly—though the end hints that his legacy lives on.  In substance, it’s business as usual; in style, it’s a sort of garrulous stand-up routine, and quite a good one.  It’s best read as a purposeful affront to the usual plain functional (or worse) prose of the genre (a reading consistent with the story’s theme) and a persuasive argument for opening up the field a bit stylistically.

The other outstanding item here—best in the book to my taste—is Clifford D. Simak’s Over the River and Through the Woods (Amazing), in which a couple of strange kids appear at a farmhouse in 1896 and address the older woman working in the kitchen as their grandma.  The gist: Ordinary decent person confronted with the extraordinary responds with ordinary decency.  It’s plainly written without a wasted word, deftly developed, asserting its homely credo with quiet restraint—a small masterpiece amounting to a summary of Simak’s career.  Simak is one writer who should ignore Ellison’s advice—and vice versa, no doubt.

The upshot: Not bad.  Better than not bad.  The field is taking small steps away from business as usual, and the usual seems to be getting a little better.  The kid may amount to something some day.

[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, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[December 24, 1965] Gallimaufry du Saison(The Year's best Science Fiction and Paingod and Other Delusions)

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by John Boston

Adventures in Miscellany

If it’s 1965, then it must be time for Judith Merril’s annual anthology from 1964.  Admittedly, it’s pretty late in the year, which likely has to do with Merril’s change of publishers.  After five years with Simon and Schuster, the new volume is from Delacorte Press, an imprint of Dell Publishing, which has published these anthologies in paperback since their inception in the mid-1950s.  But here it is, styled 10th Annual Edition THE YEAR’S BEST SF, in time for the Christmas trade.


by G. Ziel

Over the years these anthologies have become larger.  The growth is mostly in density; the page count has gone up a bit (400 pages this year), but the amount of text per page has grown remarkably from the early Gnome Press volumes. 

The books have also grown much more miscellaneous.  Their contents were initially drawn mostly from the familiar SF magazines, with a few other items from the well-known slick magazines.  No more.  This volume includes a gallimaufry of stories, quasi-stories, satirical essays, and what have you from sources as various as The Socialist Call, motive (sic—official magazine of the Methodist Student Movement), New Directions, and Cosmopolitan.  (No cartoons this year, unlike last year’s book.)

This is all in service of Merril’s editorial philosophy of science fiction, which is that it doesn’t exist—or, at least, that there’s no difference between it and everything else, or at least something else.  (See her soliloquy in the previous volume on what “S” and “F” really stand for, quoted in my previous comment on this series.  The theme is continued here in her between-stories commentary, like a background noise you stop noticing after a while). You may find this view intellectually incoherent, but, like the feller (or Feller) said, by their fruits ye shall know them, and Merril makes a pretty interesting fruit salad.  (Even if I have a bone to pick with parts of it.)

Unfortunately it’s hard to review a salad this big without sorting out its ingredients, which Merril might say defeats her purpose.  Nonetheless, onwards.  The book can only be discussed in layers.

Usual Suspects

The top layer, analytically speaking, is the first-class, or at least pretty good, SF and F from genre sources.  The outstanding items here are J.G. Ballard’s The Terminal Beach from New Worlds and Roger Zelazny’s A Rose for Ecclesiastes from F&SF—and stop right there: Merril’s benign eclecticism is nowhere better illustrated than in the contrast between Ballard, driving avant-garde style and imagery and his preoccupation with psychological “inner space” into the genre’s brain like an ice pick, and Zelazny, rehabilitating the old-fashioned pseudo-other-wordly costume drama of the pulps with high style and intellectual decoration.  Runners-up include Thomas Disch’s chilly Descending from Fantastic, John Brunner’s well-turned gimmick story The Last Lonely Man from New Worlds (the only story also to have appeared in the Wollheim/Carr best of the year volume), Norman Kagan’s audaciously zany The Mathenauts from If, and Kit Reed’s sprightly self-help/morality tale Automatic Tiger from F&SF. 

Barely making the cut is Mack Reynolds’s Pacifist, also from F&SF, a sharp piece of political didacticism about a pacifist underground that uses decidedly non-pacifist means to fight against warmongering politicians, unfortunately too contrived to have much impact.  Surprisingly, Arthur Porges, perpetrator of the dreadful Ensign Ruyter stories in Amazing, rises briefly from the muck with the affecting Problem Child, from Analog, about a professor of mathematics whose wife died bearing a mentally retarded child; the child proves to be anything but retarded in one significant way.  This one gets “better than expected” credit.  So does Training Talk, by the militantly eccentric David R. Bunch (Fantastic), in which he outdoes himself in grotesque lyricism (“It was one of those days when cheer came out of a rubbery sky in great splotches and globs of half-snow and eased down the windowpanes like breakups of little glaciers.”), complementing his even more grotesque plot.  Edging into this category is The Search, a poem by (Merril says) high school student Bruce Simonds, from F&SF, which is minor but clever, pointed, and readable. 

All right, downhill to the next layer, the less distinguished selections from the SF magazines, ranging from the merely competent or inconsequential to the actively dreary. There are several supposedly humorous trifles.  Fritz Leiber’s Be of Good Cheer, from Galaxy, is an epistolary satire, a letter from a robot at the Bureau of Public Morale to a Senior Citizen (as they are known these days) reassuring her unconvincingly that the absence of humans and prevalence of robots that she observes is nothing to worry about.  Larry Eisenberg’s The Pirokin Effect, from Amazing, is a more slapsticky satire about extraterrestrial signals received in a restaurant kitchen which may or may not be from the Lost Tribes of Israel, now resident on Mars; this one is distinguished from the Leiber story by actually being mildly amusing.  The same is true of Family Portrait by new author Morgan Kent, from Fantastic, a vignette about the mundane domestic life of a family that proves to have unusual talents. 

The same is unfortunately not true of The New Encyclopaedist, from F&SF, by Stephen Becker, a novelist (see last year’s A Covenant with Death) and translator of some repute, with no prior SF credits.  This comprises several satirical encyclopedia entries about events in the near future, but their main purpose seems to be to prove the author’s superior sensibilities, and they’re more tedious than funny.  I’m guessing the New Yorker rejected them.  Czech author Josef Nesvadba’s The Last Secret Weapon of the Third Reich belongs here as much as anywhere—it’s from his collection Vampires Ltd., which is apparently devoted to SF stories.  It’s a frenetic black comedy about a last-ditch Nazi effort to generate a new fighting force with a process for developing embryos to adulthood within seven days of conception; the story is less effective than it should be since . . . gosh . . . Nazis are kind of hard to satirize.

There are also a couple of yokel epics here, which is almost always bad news.  Sonny, by Rick Raphael, from Analog (where else?) is a dreary attempt at humor about a kid from West Virginia whose psionic talents come to light after he is drafted into the Army.  The Man Who Found Proteus, by the always promising but never quite delivering Robert H. Rohrer, Jr., from Fantastic, features a caricatured semi-literate miner encountering a hungry shape-changing monster and coming off no better than you’d expect.

Several other more conventional SF stories are just not very lively.  Richard Wilson’s The Carson Effect, from Worlds of Tomorrow, like much of his work to my taste, is a rather limp account of strange human behavior in what everybody thinks are the last days, but prove not to be, a denouement explained by a gimmick reminiscent of Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter.  The Carson of the title is Rachel.  Jack Sharkey’s The Twerlik, from Worlds of Tomorrow, is an alien contact story in which the alien, a planet-encompassing plant, tries to make sense of explorers from Earth landing in a spaceship; it’s an earnest effort (unusually for this author) that doesn’t quite revive a hackneyed theme.  A Miracle Too Many, by Philip H. Smith and Alan E. Nourse, from F&SF, concerns a doctor who wishes he could save all his patients, and suddenly he can, with grim consequences that are all too obvious.  Its problem is not ennui but predictability. 

That’s an awful lot of lackluster for a book with “Best” in the title.  More on that problem later.

Neighboring Provinces

The next stratum consists of fairly straightforward SF/F that Merril has trawled or excavated from the established mainstream magazines in the way of SF/F.  A couple of these are by well-established (or –remembered) genre names.  One of the best in the book is Arthur C. Clarke’s The Shining Ones, from Playboy, about an encounter with the fauna of the sea, rendered with the same dignified enthusiasm as Clarke’s portrayals of human encounters with the Moon and the other planets.  This is a writer who will never lose his sense of wonder, or his discipline in writing about it.  Interestingly, the plot takes off from the notion of powering a city with energy derived from temperature differentials between oceanic depths and the surface.  Maybe somebody should try that sometime.  The other big name is John D. MacDonald, who wrote a lot of quite good SF from 1948 to 1953 but gave it up for crime fiction.  Unfortunately his The Legend of Joe Lee from Cosmopolitan is unimpressive, a lame sort of ghost story about a teen-age hot-rodder whom the cops can’t catch, for reasons revealed at the end. 

The others in this category are all satirical extrapolations of things the authors have seen around them, a standard maneuver in standard SF and a game that anyone can play—though not always well.  The best of the lot is A Living Doll by Robert Wallace, from Harper’s; Wallace is said to be a photographer for Life, and the story to have been inspired by an encounter in a toy store with a doll that spoke to him and nibbled his finger.  The narrator’s sullen and sadistic daughter wants a doll for Christmas, along with some needles and pins and a book on Voodoo.  He discovers that dolls have become more sophisticated than he realized, and purchases one who proves to mix a mean Martini and to discourse knowledgeably about Mexican art—a considerable improvement over his daughter.  The rest follows logically.  Almost as good is Frank Roberts’s It Could Be You, from the Australian Coast to Coast (which seem to be an annual anthology of stories from the previous year, just like this one).  In the future, it posits, the populace will be kept entertained by a televised game: one person in the city is selected to be killed, with a hundred thousand-pound prize to the winner; and clues narrowing down the victim’s identity are given through the day to build suspense (a man; never wears a hat; black hair; blue eyes; etc.).  This is not exactly a new idea to readers of the SF magazines, but it’s sharply written and no longer than it needs to be.  James D. Houston’s Gas Mask, from Nugget, one of many cheap Playboy imitations, is a reasonably well done “if this goes on” piece about future traffic problems and people’s adaptation to them. 

And there are selections from places you wouldn’t think to look, but Merril always casts a wide net.  The satirical motif continues, unfortunately in combinations of facile, arch and ponderous.  Russell Baker’s A Sinister Metamorphosis is apparently one of his regular columns from The New York Times, taking off from the theme that sociologists “thought the machines would gradually become more like people.  Nobody expected people to become more like machines.” James T. Farrell’s A Benefactor of Humanity—the one from the Socialist Call—is about a man who can’t read but loves books; however, he dislikes authors, and devises a machine to replace them.  It’s overlong and not funny.  Hap Cawood’s one-page Synchromocracy, from motive, is a rather undeveloped sketch of government by computer and constant public opinion polling.

Farther Out

From here, things just get weird, for better or worse.  Donald Hall, a well-known poet and former poetry editor of the Paris Review, is present with The Wonderful Dog Suit, from the Carleton Miscellany (literary magazine of Carleton College), about a precocious child who is given a dog suit, and takes to it; the dog becomes rather shaggy by the end.  I suppose this is brilliance taking a day off.  The Red Egg, by Jose Maria Gironella, apparently a well-established Spanish writer, is a jolly tale about a cancer which flees its home on the skin of a laboratory mouse and takes to the air, feeding on industrial smoke and other toxic delicacies, terrorizing the populace while contemplating which human victim to descend upon.  It’s quite entertaining, but the point is elusive; too profound for me, I guess.  This first appeared in a collection titled Journeys to the Improbable, collecting the author’s “psychic experience” over a period of two years. 

Probably the weirdest item here—since I can detect no element of anything resembling S or F even by Merril’s ecumenical standard—is Romain Gary’s Decadence, from Saga (the men’s magazine?  Really?) by way of Gary’s collection Hissing Tales.  A group of mobsters goes to Italy to meet their charismatic leader, who after taking over a union was prosecuted and deported; now he’s eligible to return, but they find he has meanwhile become an acclaimed modernist sculptor with a rather different outlook than they had expected.  M.E. White’s The Power of Positive Thinking, from New Directions, is a first-person story told by a smart, fanatically religious schoolgirl which amounts to a horror story with no trace of fantasy, the horror only suggested, but heightened by the relentless mundanity of the account. 

The book closes with Yachid and Yechida by Isaac Bashevis Singer, from his collection Short Friday.  Singer is among other things the book reviewer for the Jewish Daily Forward, and the story was translated from Yiddish.  It is a theological fantasy about dead souls condemned to Sheol, a/k/a Earth, and their posthumous lives there, and it is absolutely captivating, one of the best things in the book.  This Singer really has something going; if he works at it, he might crack F&SF.

Summing Up

So, what to make of this “best SF” anthology, in which much of the SF/F is just not very interesting and is outshone by some of the loose marbles Merril has found in other yards?  At least part of the problem is her seeming unwillingness to include longer stories, which of course would displace multiple shorter ones and yield a less crowded contents page.  But much of the best SF writing these days is at novella length or close to it; consider Jack Vance’s The Kragen and Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart, from Fantastic, and Gordon R. Dickson’s Soldier, Ask Not and Wyman Guin’s A Man of the Renaissance, from Galaxy.  Merril would probably be better advised to devote a little more space to substance and less to short trifles.

But still, there’s a lot here—much of it quite good, much of it unexpected, and some of it both.  This anthology series is still in a class by itself.


by Gideon Marcus

Paingod and Other Delusions

Three years ago, Harlan Ellison released his first collection of science fiction stories.  It was a fine collection, representing the era of his writing career before he struck out for Hollywood to become a big-time screenwriter (some of his work not surviving to the small screen unscathed…)

Now he's back with a new collection.  A mix of stories recently written and others excavated from the vault, it offers up a strange combination of mature and callow Ellison, though none of it is unworthy.  Dig it:


by Jack Gaughan

Introduction

After seven stabs at it, Harlan reportedly threw up his hands and decided he wasn't going to write an introduction.  Instead, we get a several page nontroduction that is probably worth the price of the book in and of itself.  I read it aloud to my family while we were waiting to get into a new sushi place in town.  It's excellent, funny, self deprecatory, and illuminating.

Paingod

If God is Love, why does He allow pain to exist?  This moving, brilliant story tries to answer this question.  Nominated for the Galactic Star last year and covered previously by Victoria Silverwolf, there's a reason it leads this book.

Five stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman

In an increasingly time-ordered world, the wildest rebel is he who would gum up the works of society.

I didn't much care for this story when I first reviewed it, finding it a bit overwrought and consciously artistic.  Ellison's introduction, in which he explains his congenital inability to mark time accurately, makes the piece much more understandable.  I'd had trouble relating in part because my time sense is preternaturally perfect (I can tell you what time it is even after being asleep for hours).  So, with the story now in context, I can understand the enthusiasm with which it's been received.

Four stars.

The Crackpots

An exploration of a planet of misfits, who it turns out are the real movers and shakers of the galactic federation.

Based on the odd characters Ellison observed when manning an adult book stand on 42nd Street, this is an older piece, and it shows.  About ten pages too long and a little obtuse, but even young, imperfect Ellison is usually worth reading.

Three stars.

Bright Eyes

The former masters of the Earth have been diminished by war to just one representative and his oversized rodent sidekick.  Like a salmon swimming upstream, he returns to the blasted surface to witness the destruction one last time.

Inspired by a piece of art (that later accompanied the story—you can see it at Victoria's original review—it's a vivid piece.

Four stars.

The Discarded

A plague turns a number of humans into "monsters", who are exiled to an orbiting colony.  When a new outbreak occurs, suddenly the discarded find themselves valued as the potential source of a cure.  But will normal humans ever really tolerate the deviant?

I will go out on a limb here — this is my favorite story of the collection, one I enjoyed when I first read it in the 1959 issue of Fantastic.  It's a much more effective "misfit" piece than the previous story.

Five stars.

Wanted in Surgery

Automated surgeons displace their human counterparts.  Are they truly infallible?  And is it ethical to find fault in them?

This piece doesn't work on a lot of levels, plausibility-wise and narratively, as even Ellison concedes.  I suppose it's here to fill space and to make sure it got in some collection.

Two stars.

Deeper than the Darkness

Another misfit, this time about a pyrokinetic recruited to destroy the star of an enemy race.  Fools be they who expect a hated rebel to suddenly be overcome with patriotism…

This is another flawed, early piece that shows Ellison's potential without realizing it.

Three stars.

Summing Up

Two fives, two fours, two threes, and a two, not to mention a great Intro.  If that's not worth four bits, I'm not sure what is.  Get it!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 10, 1965] Strangers in Strange Lands (December 1965 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time for the Stars

I was having a lovely conversation with fellow traveler Kris about the mixed reviews for the British anthology show, Out of the Unknown.  Some critics are saying the stories aired would have been better served in a conventional setting rather than on Mars or wherever.

Indeed, this has been a common complaint for decades, that science fiction should be uniquely SF with stories that depend on some kind of scientific difference/unique setting, even if many of the trappings are familiar.

Galaxy is a magazine that has led this charge since its inception in 1950 and it therefore comes as no surprise that this month's issue features a myriad of settings that are in no way conventional, backdrops for stories that could take place in no genre but science fiction.

Citizens of the Galaxy


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Mercurymen, by C. C. MacApp

On the face of things, Mercury would seem a most inhospitable planet for colonization.  Until this year, the general conception of things was that the innermost planet of our solar system was tidally locked, presenting just one baked hemisphere eternally toward the sun, while the other remained in perpetual frigid night.


by Gray Morrow

C. C. MacApp offers up a most imaginative tale set on this half-cooked world.  The planet, or at least the twilight zone between the hot and cold sides, is overrun with the vines of a plant, the interiors of which are large enough and contain sufficient air and water to support human inhabitants.  How they plant came about or how the settlers came to dwell in them is a mystery, but hundreds of years later, the colonists have reverted to near savagery.  The ecosystem of the vines provides most of their needs: latex for vacuum suits, luminescent mold for light, oxygen-producing fungus for air.  But for precious metals and for new soil for crops, the denizens must venture into the airless waste outside.

Similarly, population pressure periodically forces tribes to split, members of a certain age tasked to form a new settlement further along the vine. The Mercurymen is the tale of Lem, eldest son of a recently expired chief, who leads a party out over the bleak landscape of Mercury in search of a new hope.  Along the way, he must deal with a deadly environment, hostile tribes, and treachery within the group.

Because so many of the concepts are alien, even as the characters are human, The Mercurymen can occasionally be a detailed, hard read.  Nevertheless, I appreciated MacApp's world building quite a lot, and I was carried along with Lem on his engaging, difficult adventure.  The novella would merit expansion into full length novel though the following discovery may require a complete change in setting to make it work:

From Nature, Volume 208, Issue 5008, pp. 375 (October 1965):

Rotation Period of the Planet Mercury, by McGovern, W. E.

The recent radar measurements of Mercury indicate that the period of rotation of the planet is 59 +/- 5 days1. This result is in complete disagreement with the previously quoted value of 88 days based on the visual observations of the markings on Mercury2-6. In this communication we show that the same visual observations can not only be reconciled with the radar-determined rotation period of Mercury but, in addition, can be used to derive an improved value for the period of rotation of the planet, namely, 58.4 +/- 0.4 days.

Yes, Mercury isn't tidally locked at all, and the stories that made use of this presumption are now all obsolete.  Editor Pohl may even have known this even when he put this issue to bed, as the news first broke in June.

Still, it's a good story, and again, you can squint your eyes and pretend it takes place on a different one-face world entirely.

Three stars.

Galactic Consumer Reports No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines, by John Brunner

The latest Galaxy non-fact article is written in the style of the venerable magazine Consumer Reports, offering evaluation of six cut-rate personal time machines. 

The aforementioned Kris noted that there seem to be two John Brunners: one who writes Hugo-worthy material like The Whole Man and Listen! The Stars… and another who churns out hackwork.  I'd say this piece is representative of a third Brunner, neither outstanding nor unworthy.  It's a cute piece, although I would have appreciated a little more time travel in it.

Three stars.

Laugh Along With Franz, by Norman Kagan


by John Giunta

In a disaffected future, "None of the Above" (the so-called "Kafka" vote) threatens to become the electoral candidate of choice.

More pastiche of outlandish societal explorations than tale, I found myself falling asleep every few pages.  I'm afraid Norm Kagan continues not to do it for me.

One star.

For Your Information: The Healthfull Aromatick Herbe, by Willy Ley

A rather defensive Willy Ley discusses the history of tobacco in his latest science article.  It's actually pretty interesting, though I am no closer to taking up the still-ubiquitous pasttime than I was before.

Four stars.

The Warriors of Light, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

In the previously published story, Blue Fire, Silverberg introduced us to an Earth of the late 21st Century, one that worships the Vorster cult.  Vorster and his disciples cloak the scientific pursuit of immortality with a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo, complete with a rosary of the wavelengths of light.

Warriors of Light is not a sequel to Blue Fire, per se.  Instead, it is a story from a completely different perspective, that of an initiate of Vorsterianism who is recruited by a heretical group to steal some of the cult's deepest serets.

Reportedly, Silverbob produces 50,000 words of salable material per week, enough to make it seem like SF is his full time career even though it's just a fraction of his overall output.  Light is not the brilliant piece that its predecessor was, but the Cobalt-90 worshipping future Earth remains an intriguing setting, and I look forward to the next story that takes place therein.

Three stars.

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison

In Ellison's latest tale, The Master Timekeeper, a.k.a. the Ticktockman, is the arbiter of justice for a chronologically regulated humanity.  Everything runs to schedule; tardiness is punishable by the lost of years from one's lifespan.  There is no room for deviation, nonconformity.

Yet one clownish fellow, known as The Harlequin, cannot be restrained.  His antics distract, his capers disrupt, his personality compells.  This dangerous threat must be stopped.  But in erasing the heretic, can even the master inquisitor escape just a little of the nonconformist contagion?

This is the most symbolic of Ellison's work to date, and with a deliberate, almost juvenile storytelling aspect that veers toward the Vonnegutian.  I appreciate what Harlan is doing here, but there's a lack of subtlety, a ham-handedness that makes the piece less effective than much of his other work.

Oh, my telephone is ringing.  One moment. 

Ah.  Harlan says I'm an ignorant so-and-so and if I withdrew my head from my seat, I might be able to better comprehend his work.  (Note: this is not an exact transliteration).

Anyway, three stars.

The Age of the Pussyfoot (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl


by Wallace Wood

Last up is the continuation of last month's serial by editor Pohl, who is indulging himself in his first love, writing.  Forrester, who died in the late 1960s only to be ressurrected in the 25th Century when medical technology was up to the task, has run out of dough and has become employed by the one boss who will have him, an alien from Sirius, member of a race with whom Earth is currently in a Cold War.

In this installment, we learn about how this state of not-quite conflict came to be, as well as about the Forgotten Men, the penniless humans who make a living outside of normal society.  We also learn how difficult it is to survive when one cannot pay the bill on one's "joymaker," the ubiquitous hand-held combination telephone, personal computer, and electronic valet. 

Let us hope that we never get so reliant on this kind of technology that we find ourselves similarly helpless without them!

Pussyfoot continues to be entertaining and imaginative, far more effective in execution of its subject than similarly themed Kagan piece, though less satirical in its second installment than its first.

Four stars.

Beyond This Horizon

My Heinlein motif for the article section titles may be a little misplaced given that R.A.H. doesn't appear in the pages of Galaxy this month. Call it artistic license since his most recent novels are coming out (or have come out) in sister mags Worlds of Tomorrow and IF.

Anyway, at the very least, the stories in the December 1965 Galaxy hold to the Heinlein tradition of fundamentally incorporating unique settings. No transplanted Westerns or soap operas here!

For the most part, it works, resulting in a solid 3-star issue. Why don't you pick up a copy, Space Cadet, and see if you agree!




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[March 26, 1965] Digging Up the Past (April 1965 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Out of the Depths

One of the more intriguing events this month was the discovery of the wreck of the Confederate cruiser Georgiana by a young man named Edward Lee Spence. The teenage diving enthusiast — he's been finding shipwrecks since he was twelve years old — located her remains in the shallow waters of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

The steam-powered vessel, said to be the most powerful cruiser in the Confederate fleet, was on her maiden voyage from the Scottish shipyards where she was built. She ran into the Union gunboat Wissahickon while attempting to reach Charleston.


The crew of the Union ship that defeated the Confederate ship.

Seems Like Old Times

Given the fickleness of those who listen to AM radio and purchase 45's, a year is a very long time in the world of popular music. Proving that they are hardy veterans, ready to brave the storms of fame and oblivion, those old pros the Beatles repeated what they did way back in early 1964, by reaching Number One on the American music charts with Eight Days a Week, another expertly crafted, upbeat rock 'n' roll number.


The front cover; or is it the back?


The back cover; or is it the front?

Yesterday and Tomorrow

Fittingly, although many of the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic take place in the future, they often involve days gone by in various ways. Others are set in ancient times that never really existed, or in a version of the present with a very different history.


Cover art by Gray Morrow.

Bright Eyes, by Harlan Ellison

Opening up the issue is a new story from a writer who is mostly working for Hollywood these days. I hope you caught Soldier and Demon with a Glass Hand, the episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits, because they're really good.

So what's he doing back in the pages of a magazine that can only afford to pay him a tiny fraction of what television can offer? Well, according to fannish scuttlebutt, Ellison was at the World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. (Discon, 1963) when he saw the drawing shown below. Impressed by the work of this fan artist, he remarked that he would write a story for it if somebody bought it. Cele G. Lalli, editor of Fantastic, happened to be present, and took him up on the offer.


Illustration by Dennis Smith; the only one in the issue! Maybe Lalli spent all of the magazine's art budget on it in order to snag a story by Ellison.

Bright Eyes is the only surviving member of a race of beings who inhabited Earth long before humanity showed up. He feels compelled to leave his underground home for an unexplained purpose. On the back of a giant rat, carrying a bag of skulls, he encounters wild dogs, bleeding birds, and a river of corpses, before we learn the reason for his excursion above ground.

This is a brooding mood piece, full of dark imagery and an overwhelming sense of vast eons of time. Ellison writes with great passion, creating vivid scenes of apocalyptic destruction. Once in a while his language goes out of control — acoustically-sussurating is a phrase you're likely to stumble over — but, overall, his work here is compelling.

Four stars.

The Purpose of Merlin, by Colin R. Fry

We're way back in time, during the reign of King Arthur. Our protagonist is a man of Roman ancestry, in the service of Arthur. He investigates an island inhabited by a lone madman and a lion-like beast that killed a boatful of men who landed there. With the help of a local villager and a band of warriors, he sets out to learn the truth of the matter and slay the creature. Merlin doesn't show up until near the end of the story, when we find out that this isn't quite the fantasy adventure we thought it was.

The way in which the author makes the legendary Arthurian era seem like real history was interesting. The unusual plot held my attention throughout. You may figure out the twist ending long before the story is over, but it's worth reading.

Three stars.

The Other Side of Time (Part One of Three), by Keith Laumer

I haven't read Worlds of the Imperium, to which this new serial is a sequel, so I was a little confused when it started. As best as I can figure out, the hero is a guy from our world who wound up in a parallel world ruled by the Imperium. I'm guessing that the World Wars never happened in this alternate reality, because the Imperium seems to be a British/German empire.

The protagonist appears to be comfortably settled in this strange place. He's happily married, has a loyal sidekick with whom he's shared previous adventures, and works for Imperial Intelligence. His boss is none other than Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron in our reality, now in his eighties. There's also mention of Hermann Goering working for the Imperium, so I suppose the horrors of the Nazi regime never occurred.

The Imperium has technology allowing them to visit other parallel worlds. It seems that improper use of this gizmo causes entire realities to vanish, leaving only a few worlds surviving in an emptiness known as the Blight.

All of this is just background information, and the author plunges us into the plot right away. Baron von Richthofen, for unexplained reasons, asks the hero a bunch of questions with answers that should be obvious to both of them. After this ordeal, he follows a figure who skulks around the headquarters of Imperial Intelligence, leaving blood and signs of burning behind. The mysterious person appears to be glowing with extreme heat.

Before we get any explanation for this bizarre turn of events, our hero gets knocked out. He wakes up to find himself in what seems to be the world of the Imperium, but all living things have vanished, even plants. As if two unexplained mysteries weren't enough, he soon discovers ape-men with their own vehicles that can travel between realities. He manages to sneak aboard one of these devices, and winds up a prisoner in the world of the ape-men, who make slaves of folks from parallel worlds. He meets a fellow prisoner who is a much more sophisticated kind of hairy fellow. The unlikely allies manage to escape, but the protagonist winds up in hot water in his new friend's reality.

As you can tell, a heck of a lot goes on in the first third of this novel. In typical Laumer style, the action never stops. It's a wild roller coaster ride all the way, never slowing down to let you catch your breath. We'll have to wait to see if the author manages to tie all these plot threads together into a coherent whole.

Three stars.

The Dreamer, by Walter F. Moudy

This is the only other work I've seen from the author of No Man on Earth, which was an interesting and unusual novel. This lighthearted story doesn't resemble the book at all.

Told in the fashion of a fairy tale, the plot involves an unsuccessful shopkeeper and his talking parrot. When his business fails, the fellow heads for another planet. The local ruler gives him his daughter's hand in marriage in exchange for the bird. The man has never seen the woman, so he suspects he's made a bad bargain. It all works out for the best in the end.

The whole thing is very silly but inoffensive. You may get a chuckle or two out of it.

Two stars.

Trouble with Hyperspace, by Jack Sharkey

In this brief yarn, faster-than-light travel allows a vehicle to arrive at its destination before it leaves its home base. (The author apparently thinks light is instantaneous, and that therefore anything faster than light is more than instantaneous, if you see what I mean.) After some discussion of the obvious paradoxes caused by this phenomenon, we get a weak punchline.

The premise reminds me of Isaac Asimov's joke articles about the imaginary substance thiotimoline, which dissolves before it is placed in water. The Good Doctor's pieces are just bagatelles, but they are far more cleverly done than this trivial attempt at humor.

One star.

The Silk of Shaitan, by John Jakes

Once again the mighty barbarian Brak faces magic and monsters in his quest to find his fortune. This adventure begins in medias res, so it takes a while to figure out what's going on.

It seems that Brak was beaten and left to die by a bunch of bandits. A man and his daughter happened to come by. In exchange for a healing potion, Brak agreed to accompany them on a dangerous mission. (By the way, there's also a servant along. You can tell right from the start that he's going to be the first victim.)

The leader of the bandits, a powerful sorcerer, demands that the man turn over the fabulous treasure that is to serve as his daughter's dowry. The man seems to accept this, but really plans to have Brak kill the magician. This isn't going to be easy, given the monster that lives in a pool, and magic silk that has a particularly nasty effect on those it touches.

As he has many times before, the author uses a vivid writing style to create a pastiche of Robert E. Howard's tales of Conan the Barbarian. This particular yarn has a more tragic ending than most, but otherwise it's up to the usual decent standard.

Three stars.

Predator, by Robert Rohrer

Finishing up the issue is a science fiction horror story. The main character works as a waiter aboard a luxury space vessel. Someone — or something? — altered his body so that it contains various electronic components, with a sinister purpose. Whoever it was left his hand in a gruesome condition, hidden behind a bandage, as a sadistic reminder of what happened to him. Without giving too much away, let's just say that very bad things happen.

The main appeal of this grim and bloody shocker is the author's intense, subjective, stream-of-consciousness style. We really get into the poor guy's head, and it's not a pleasant place to be. Although the motives of the unseen villains are never explained, and the ending isn't surprising, the story sets out to chill your bones, and pretty much succeeds.

Three stars.

Trash or Treasure?


Always nice to see honesty in advertising.

Like an antique store full of old stuff of uncertain value, this issue is very much a mixture of the worthy and the worthless, with most of the items falling somewhere in the middle. The Ellison is definitely a nice find, and the Laumer may turn out to be the same, if the author maintains the same level of interest. As far as the other stories go, you may prefer to spend your time entertaining yourself some other way.


Maybe catch a great old movie on the tube.

We'll be talking about these space flights and more at a special presentation of our "Come Time Travel with Me" panel, the one we normally do at conventions, on March 27 at 6PM PDT.  Come register to join us!  It's free and fun…and you might win a prize!




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TV

[November 13, 1964] Beat the Devil (The Outer Limits, Season Two, Episodes 5-8)

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by Natalie Devitt

Take Two

You may recall that the first month of the second season of The Outer Limits marked a big shift in the series, not just because the show experienced a number of major changes behind the scenes, but because the program only produced one truly memorable entry, The Soldier. Has the show returned to greatness or even surpassed expectations since we last met? Join me for a closer look at the latest from The Outer Limits.

Demon with a Glass Hand, by Harlan Ellison

Demon with a Glass Hand marks Robert Culp’s third appearance on The Outer Limits, after his previous roles in The Architects of Fear and Corpus Earthling. The third time is absolutely a charm. In this episode, Culp transforms into Trent, a man who recalls nothing of his past, but in the present is being pursued by human-like extraterrestrials called the Kyben.

The Kyben are after Trent to gain possession of his glass computerized hand, which “holds all knowledge.” His hand speaks, providing guidance to Trent to help him avoid capture. The Kyben already possess three of his fingers, which Trent needs in order to collect more information about his past. Along the way, he meets and is helped by a charming seamstress, Consuelo Biros, played by Arlene Martel of The Twilight Zone episodes Twenty Two and What You Need.

Harlan Ellison has done it again. Just like with The Soldier, Ellison‘s writing has helped The Outer Limits dive much deeper into science fiction. Ellison combines a lot of different things that, in the hands of a less skilled writer, might not work as well as they do here. The episode has an interesting premise, drama, action, and just a little bit of everything. Culp and Martel deliver spectacular performances. Back in the director’s chair is Byron Haskin, director of The War of The Worlds (1953) and this summer’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

I do have one complaint, though, which is that the makeup and costumes for the Kyben (essentially mime foundation, raccoon eye shadow, and white body suits) look very uninspired, especially after all the intricate makeup and elaborate costumes used to create different creatures last season. One thing that Demon with a Glass Hand certainly has going for it, however, is its location. Los Angeles’ Bradbury Building, which was also used in the noir classic D.O.A. (1949), heightens the episode’s film noir atmosphere. The special effects and the musical score are great, and everything is topped off with an interesting twist at the end. Demon with a Glass Hand has a cinematic quality to it, which is why it earns four and a half stars.

Cry of Silence, by Robert C. Dennis

Andy (Academy Award nominee Eddie Albert) and Karen Thorne (veteran actress June Havoc) take a trip from their current home in the city to the small town Wild Canyon to get a look at a property that they are considering purchasing. While driving, their convertible hits a large rock, leaving the couple stranded. As Andy assesses the damage, Karen falls down a hill and injures her ankle. Andy is unable to carry his wife back uphill to their car. Karen, being the more perceptive one in the relationship, begins to notices that some nearby tumbleweeds seem to be closing in on them. Andy expresses doubt, until the tumbleweeds begin to randomly fly at the them despite there being no wind. Karen fears the tumbleweeds are controlled by some kind of “force.”

Andy and Karen decide to build a campfire for the night, which is spotted by a man named Lamont, performed by character actor Arthur Honeycutt (The Twilight Zone’s The Hunt). Lamont invites the Thornes back to his farmhouse. He tells them that since a recent meteorite fall, the number of tumbleweeds in town has dramatically increased, his livestock have disappeared, and his telephone and electricity have stopped working. Lamont suspects that “there is a malignant intelligence in the weeds” and it will prevent any of them from leaving the canyon. Is it a demonic presence, or simply extraterrestrials too alien to effectively communicate?

What Cry of Silence lacks in artistry, it almost makes up for in charm. With its menacing tumbleweeds and killer flying bullfrogs, Cry of Silence is probably (unintentionally!) the funniest offering of the series thus far, even though I know Controlled Experiment attempted (deliberately) to add a little humor into the often dark and serious show. This entry does succeed in creating a few genuinely spooky moments, especially as the characters lock themselves inside Lamont’s farmhouse and the being from space begins to possess Lamont's body, but its just hard to sustain the terror for long when people are being stalked by tumbleweeds, and eventually rocks and frogs. The episode’s weak writing is improved a little by actors who play their roles with conviction, sometimes a little too much conviction. Objectively, it is not the greatest episode, but it can be fun, so two and half stars for Cry of Silence .

The Invisible Enemy, by Jerry Sohl

Adam West (Robinson Crusoe on Mars) plays Major Charles Merritt, who with his fellow astronauts, set out on an expedition to Mars to determine what became of a crew that landed on Mars three years earlier but never returned to Earth. It has been assumed that some kind of ghost is the only explanation for the last group’s disappearance. But when the latest crew arrives, they discover something that swims towards them from underneath the planet’s sandy surface, like “a blood-thirsty shark in the ocean.” To make matters worse, it turns out that there is not just one creature, but an entire “army of them.”

The Invisible Enemy is so very slow. Most of its characters are not terribly smart or likeable. There were also a number of weak performances by otherwise decent actors. Scientifically, The Invisible Enemy has quite a few problems. I got a kick out of things like one of the astronauts saying that helmets are not needed on Mars.

That said, this installment of the series is incredibly atmospheric. Kenneth Peach’s photography of the exterior shots of Mars’ surface combined with the set design, sound effects and the screeching violins in the musical score make for some beautifully eerie moments. But all of that comes crashing down the second that one of the growling space fish comes swimming by with their ridiculous claws extended out of the sand. Sure, they are not quite Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) bad, but pretty bad. Two stars, mainly for the production design and art direction.

Wolf 359, by Seeleg Lester

Wolf 359 is the story of scientist Jonathan Meridith (Patrick O’Neal of The Twilight Zone’s A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain), who has recreated a smaller version of much larger existing planet “eight light years away” in his lab. Jonathan calls it Dundee Planet. Time moves faster on Dundee: from a primordial state, the planet experiences changes in weather and begins to show signs of life. Its new form life begins evolving at a fast rate and even senses when others are watching it.

Jonathan is excited to be able to “watch evolution at work.” However, his wife, Ethel (Sara Shane of Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession (1954)) calls the creature “pure evil.” Eventually, Jonathan pushes away his wife and lab assistant rather than “expose them to the dangers of this creature.”

Wolf 359 is not the first nor best episode of The Outer Limits involving a scientist speeding up evolution, but it is interesting, even if it is not entirely successful. The episode is generally nice to look at and had some decent performances. It certainly has an odd if less than effective creature, which resembles a floating white glove. The writing is not quite strong enough to carry such an ambitious concept. Wolf 359 is worth the watch, but not quite good, so two and half stars.

Prognosis

The Outer Limits is not quite firing on all cylinders, but it has improved a little over the course of the past month. Looking back at it, there was the terrific Demon with a Glass Hand, Cry of Silence was amusing, The Invisible Enemy often looked great but lacked substance, and Wolf 359 almost had something. All in all, most episodes were intriguing, even if they were not as strong as they had potential to be.

Is it enough to warrant renewal?

[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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TV

[October 14, 1964] Back in Session? (The Outer Limits, Season 2, Episodes 1-4)

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by Natalie Devitt

The second season of The Outer Limits is now underway! As someone who is pretty devoted to her favorite shows, I anticipated the return of the science fiction anthology show with excitement. But something seems different. Could it be the result of the departure of producer Joseph Stefano, who contributed his creative vision and a number of scripts? Maybe changes in the show’s budget, time slot or its music? Read on, and tell me if you share my concern.

Soldier, by Harlan Ellison

Broken Arrow (1956-58)’s Michael Ansara plays Qarlo, a futuristic soldier who is unexpectedly teleported to the present day while in the middle of a conflict. Wandering the streets armed and dressed in plate armor with a space helmet, it does not take long before he ends up in a psychiatric hospital. There, one of the men assigned to Qarlo’s case is philologist Tom Kagan, played by Lloyd Nolan of 1957’s film adaptation of Peyton Place. Kagan tries to understand Qarlo’s language in order to interview him.

Unaware of Qarlo’s origins, Kagan soon realizes that the strange man has heightened senses and knows about things that scientists predict will occur in 1800 years. Additionally, the philologist determines that Qarlo did not come from another country, but another time. Qarlo simply views other living beings as either enemies or not enemies, and that “he doesn’t understand hate, or love, or compassion.” Kagan figures that this is because Qarlo “is really a Soldier. There is nothing about him that is not a Soldier. He is the perfect, ultimate infantry man. I don’t think he knows anything else.”

Even after taking all of this into consideration, Kagan vows “that given enough time, I’ll establish absolute communication“ with Qarlo. He thinks that one month should do the trick. Kagan requests that Qarlo be released into his care and he is reluctantly granted permission. Despite any initial reservations by his superiors and his loved ones, Kagan’s adorable family welcomes Qarlo into their home with open arms. Fascinated by their guest, the Kagan children are forbidden to tell their friends about Qarlo. But despite Kagan’s best efforts to keep his guest a secret, it does not take long for an enemy from Qarlo’s time to locate him.

Soldier certainly gets the month and the season off to a great start. While not quite the show’s finest hour, it certainly is one of the better entries. Gone is the man in the alien costume I have come to expect from the series. The sequences showing Qarlo in the future are beautifully filmed on impressive sets, and the special effects are effective. The makeup and costumes are not quite as not as strong as other aspects of the episode, but fine for a weekly program. The writing is exceptionally strong and provided by Harlan Ellison, author of the short story “Soldier from Tomorrow”, which served as a basis for episode. All of the actors deliver convincing performances. Overall, I give Soldier fours stars for an imaginative and well-crafted hour of television programming.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart, by Dan Ullman

In Cold Hands, Warm Heart, William Shatner (The Twilight Zone‘s Nick of Time and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet) is the charismatic Colonel Jeff Barton, who has just arrived home after becoming the first man to travel to Venus. Not long after being back, he is promoted and begins preparing for his next assignment, Project Vulcan, which will send him on a journey to Mars.

In the role of Jeff’s adoring wife, Ann, is Geraldine Brooks, making her second appearance on The Outer Limits after last season’s The Architects of Fear. Ann notices that Jeff has not been himself since his return. Whether he’s chugging scorching hot coffee or barricading himself in the local steam room, he just cannot seem to stay warm.

Jeff’s wife is not the only person to notice that something is off. After seeking medical attention, Jeff learns that his body temperature is only 91 degrees and he is told, “the whole chemistry of your body is changing.“ Soon, the skin on his hands begins to change, so much so that he eventually starts developing webbing between his fingers. Blood test reveals that “his blood isn’t human” and is actually impossible to classify because it does not seem to match any animal known to man. But what is perhaps most traumatic for Jeff is that he is haunted by terrifying visions of an extraterrestrial he encountered while in space.

This installment of the series was a bit of a disappointment, especially after watching Soldier just the week before. It does, however, deliver some unexpected laughs with a rather over-the-top performance by William Shatner and one goofy-looking alien, complete with glowing eyes, scales and long, flowing locks of hair. Special effects are not nearly as impressive as the show's vastly superior season premiere.

Brooks’ performance gives the episode a much needed boost. I know I often complain about romantic subplots, but I think the bond between Jeff and Ann is the episode’s greatest strength. On the topic of the episode’s writing, it is a little frustrating that it is never really explained what is really wrong with Jeff. I was waiting for some sort of payoff at the end, but the story lacks a satisfying conclusion. Taking all of these factors into consideration, two stars is all I can offer to Cold Hands, Warm Heart.

Behold, Eck!, by John Mantley

Veteran actor Peter Lind Hayes (The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T (1953)) plays Doctor James Stone, who arrives at work one morning to find that someone has ransacked his lab. To get a better look at things, he puts on a pair of special glasses that he designed from meteoric quartz. He discovers a two-dimensional creature, Eck, that can only be seen while wearing the glasses. The being attacks Stone, stealing his glasses. Eck also takes a list of the names of Doctor Stone’s clients who own matching pairs. Now, Doctor Stone is in a race against time to track down the patients before Eck gets to them. The only problem is that nobody believes Doctor Stone. Even his own brother thinks he is sick.

Behold, Eck! is pretty slow moving. It probably does not help matters that I hear the actors talking about action, but I do not see much. The episode tries to balance some serious and more light-hearted moments, though not very successfully. Most performances are adequate, but the real problem here is the writing. To make matters worse, a lot of things mentioned by characters just do not make much sense. One thing the episode has going for it is the sequence where Eck sparkles like a Christmas tree following an accident that made it luminous. Maybe if you do not give the episode too much thought, it works as pure escapism, but I am leaning towards two stars for Behold, Eck!.

Expanding Human, by Francis Cockrell

When someone breaks into a university lab, the authorities arrive on the scene, where they determine that someone has ripped the lab’s door off its hinges using only their bare hands. Inside the lab, they discover the body of a university night watchman. Upon further inspection of the lab, it is noted that “consciousness expanding“ drugs are missing. The same drugs that were recently being used for experiments that became part of a scandal that tarnished the university‘s reputation, resulting in threats to the school’s funding.

Those incidents are followed by more seemingly unexplainable events locally, all of which involve someone with incredible strength and/or advanced intelligence. It is not long before all signs point to one man in particular, Professor Roy Clinton, played by former child star Skip Homeier. The only problem is he has no memory of any involvement. Turns out, Clinton has been conducting some experiments of his own, using the drugs that he has been stealing from the university. Partaking of the substances not only improve his consciousness, but also his strength due to the fact that he transforms into a nearly indestructible monster.

This update of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , filled with references to Timothy Leary, has potential that it never really fulfills. It does not help that the episode feels a little padded to add time. One thing it has going for it is that Canadian actor James Doohan (The Twilight Zone‘s Valley of the Shadow) is quite convincing in his role as Lieutenant Branch. Skip Homeier, on the other hand, is believable in his role as Clinton, until he transforms into the creature with gigantic cheekbones and ridges on the sides of his forehead, then things begin to fall apart very quickly. Though, I do have to give Expanding Human some credit for attempting to tackle such timely subject matter, so it earns just two and half stars.

As you can see, after the first episode, there was a sudden drop in the show’s quality. To recap things briefly, this past month only gave us one memorable episode, Soldier. Cold Hands, Warm Heart was a letdown, Behold, Eck! was downright ridiculous, but Expanding Human had its moments. I consider myself a loyal viewer; is it premature to worry about the direction The Outer Limits seems to be headed?

[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 22, 1964] Not Fade Away (June 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Hello, Satchmo (And Mary)

A certain British quartet, which shall remain unnamed here, finally toppled from the top of the American popular music charts this month after dominating it for most of the year.  Whether or not this means the end of their extraordinary career on this side of the Atlantic remains unknown.  Whatever their fate may be, I wish them a fond farewell, at least for the nonce, and extend an equally warm welcome to two vocal artists from the United States.

Along with the proverbial flowers brought by April showers, the early part of May offered a hit song from a jazz legend whose career stretches back four decades.  Taken from a hit Broadway musical of the same name, Louis Armstrong's rendition of Hello, Dolly! reached Number One, and is likely to send more people flocking to the St. James Theatre to see Carol Channing in the title role.


Have you purchased your tickets yet?


Gotta love that smile.

Just recently, a much younger singer achieved the same chart position with a romantic rhythm-and-blues ballad.  Mary Wells, currently the top female vocalist for the Motown label, has a smash hit with the catchy little number My Guy.


The juxtaposition of the two titles on this single amuses me.

I suppose it's too early to tell if we're witnessing the slow demise of rock 'n' roll in the USA in favor of other genres, but perhaps the popularity of these two songs indicates something of a trend.  In any case, it's encouraging to see that, in a time when racial animosity threatens to tear the nation apart, music can cross the color line.

The Prodigal Returneth


by Robert Adrasta

Just as American performers reappear in jukeboxes and on transistor radios after an extended absence, a multi-talented author who has been away from the field for a while returns to his roots in imaginative fiction in the latest issue of Fantastic, and even earns top place on the cover.

Paingod, by Harlan Ellison


by Leo and Diane Dillon

After some years spent publishing a large number of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as crime fiction, mainstream fiction, and a nonfiction account of his experiences with juvenile delinquents, Ellison migrated to the greener pastures of Hollywood.  Writing for television definitely pays better than laboring for the magazines, and you may have seen his work on Ripcord and Burke's Law.  The lure of Tinseltown hasn't kept him completely away from the pages of the pulps where he got his start, however, nor has he lost his talent for creating tales of the fantastic.

Trente, the alien illustrated on the cover, serves the mysterious, all-powerful rulers of all the universes that exist, known as the Ethos, as their Paingod.  He dispenses suffering to all the sentient beings in all the worlds that exist throughout all possible dimensions.  After performing this duty without feeling for an unimaginably long time, Trente develops something completely unexpected: a sense of curiosity, even concern, about those to whom he sends misery and sorrow.  At random, he enters the body of one lifeform on an insignificant planet, which happens to be Earth.  In the form of an alcoholic derelict, he speaks to a sculptor, who is mourning over the loss of his talent.  They both learn something about the nature of suffering, and Trente discovers the motives of the Ethos, and why they selected him to be the Paingod.

This is a powerful story with an important theme, told in a way that holds the reader's attention throughout.  Particularly effective are the scenes in which Trente dispenses suffering to an extraordinary variety of entities, described in vivid and imaginative detail.  I also greatly enjoyed the life story of the man whose body Trente inhabits.  Although the character really plays no part in the plot – he's merely a shell for the alien to wear – the complete and compassionate biography of one who knew more than his share of unhappiness adds to the story's theme, and displays the author's skill at characterization.

The rationale offered for the existence of suffering is, almost inevitably, a familiar one, philosophers having debated this question for millennia.  Ellison has a slight tendency to write with more passion than clarity; the phrase centimetered centuries threw me for a loop.  Despite these quibbles, this is a fine story, likely to remain in memory for a long time to come.

Four stars.

Testing, by John J. McGuire


by Dan Adkins

With the exception of one story in a recent issue of Analog, McGuire is another author we haven't seen around for a while.  Unlike Ellison's success with screenwriting, the explanation for this absence is simply that McGuire isn't very prolific, his few stories mostly written in collaboration with H. Beam Piper.  Our Illustrious Host didn't like his previous solo effort at all, which doesn't bode well for this one, but let's give the fellow a chance.

The narrator is the pilot of a starship carrying a small team of experts whose mission is to determine if a planet is suitable for colonization, a premise that may seem overly familiar to many readers of science fiction these days.  Also unsurprising is the fact that only one of the members of the team is female, and it's obvious that her role in the story is to be the Girl.  They foolishly break with Standard Operating Procedure and step out onto the surface of the Earth-like world without taking full precautions.  Instantly teleported far away from their landing site, they find themselves under observation by a floating sphere with dangling tentacles.  An agonizingly long and dangerous journey begins, as the team makes their way back to the starship through lifeless deserts and snowy mountains, facing deadly alien creatures, constantly under the watch of the inscrutable sphere. 

The only suspense generated by the story is wondering who's going to get killed next, and by what, since the bodies pile up quickly once the sphere shows up.  The mystery of the sphere remains unsolved, although the narrator makes some educated guesses about its nature and motivation.  If the author's main intention is to make the reader feel the suffering of his characters, he does a fair job of acting as a Paingod.  Otherwise, I found it overly long and tedious, as I kept reading about one random, violent death after another.

Two stars.

Illusion, by Jack Sharkey

by Blair

Unlike the first two writers in this issue, Sharkey shows up in the genre magazines on a routine basis, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes not such a good thing.  His latest yarn is a variation on the old, old theme of a deal with the Devil.  (Well, technically, a demon, and not Satan himself, but you know what I mean.) The protagonist gets three wishes in exchange for his soul, which isn't the most original idea in the world, either.  The first is for a never-ending pack of self-lighting cigarettes; the second for complete invulnerability, unless he deliberately tries to harm himself; and the third is for the power to make illusions become reality.  If you've ever read one, or two, or a zillion of these stories, you know that things don't work out well, after some slapstick antics. 

Sharkey uses the word illusion in an odd way, meaning anything from tricks of perspective (objects looking smaller when they're far away) to whatever appears on a TV screen.  The whole thing is inoffensive, I suppose, but lacking the rigid logic this kind of story needs and not very amusing.

Two stars.

Body of Thought, by Albert Teichner


by Dan Adkins

Teichner, like Sharkey, also hasn't gone away, making an appearance in Fantastic or Amazing or If every few months or so.  This time he offers us a tale about a secret government project to collect the brains of outstanding intellectuals soon after they die, keep them alive, and attach them to a computer that will allow them to work together, producing results far beyond anything one mind could do alone.  The story moves at a very leisurely pace.  We follow the main character, an elderly physicist contacted by the folks behind the project, as he visits the lab where this is going to take place, and discusses it with a colleague who is also one of its subjects. 

I had no idea where the plot was going, or what point the author was trying to make, until near the end, when a group of potential brain donors argue about what use should be made of this symbiotic, semi-organic supercomputer, each one claiming that his (never her) field is the most important.  I can appreciate the statement Teichner is trying to make about the human ego, but he sure takes a long time getting around to it.

Two stars.

Genetic Coda, by Thomas M. Disch

Disch is another perennial of Cele Goldsmith's pair of publications, either as himself or as Dobbin Thorpe, a pseudonym that always makes me smile, just because it sounds so silly.  Under his own name Disch comes up with a sardonic vision of the future.  Sextus is a humpbacked freak, living with his equally deformed father, his physically normal but perpetually angry mother, and several tutoring robots.  After his mother dies and his father vanishes, he lives alone with the machines, hidden from a world that would force him to undergo castration because of his abnormal genes.  (His father managed to escape that fate through bribery and isolation.) Determined to father a child, Sextus invents a time machine, leading to the kinds of paradoxes you expect, as well as some very Freudian complications.

I have mixed feelings about this story, which some might see as nothing more than a dirty joke, and others as a razor-sharp satire on human aspirations and pretentions.  It's very clever, but you're always aware that the author knows exactly how clever he is — far more than the dolts he writes about.  I'm going to have to be wishy-washy about it and give it a barely passing grade.

Three stars.

From the Beginning, by Eando Binder


by Michael Arndt

We haven't seen that byline in the pages of a science fiction magazine for a long time.  That's not a surprise, since this Fantasy Classic is a reprint from the June 1938 issue of Weird Tales.

As many SF fans know, Eando Binder is actually a pen name for brothers Earl and Otto Binder; E and O Binder, get it?  The introduction by Sam Moskowitz explains that Earl stopped writing after a few years, and most stories under the name of Eando are the work of Otto alone.  The present example is one of those tales, old-fashioned even in the late 1930's, where one man invents or discovers something amazing, so his friend comes over and they talk about it. 


Cover art by Margaret Brundage, who drew a lot of scantily clad ladies for this publication.

The gizmo, in this case, is an incredibly ancient metal ball, found during a paleontological expedition.  When placed in an electrical field, it produces telepathic messages from the remote past.  These reveal that a race of robotic beings with radium-powered brains came to the solar system from another star in search of radium to replace their dwindling supply.  We get a blow-by-blow history of the planets, as the robots create things like the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and the canals of Mars in their quest for radium.  Eventually they come to Earth, after they have drained the outer planets of the vital substance.  They set out for yet another star system, allowing only a small number of the elite to escape (there is only enough room aboard their spaceship for a few, so of course the upper class gets to go). The others to perish at the metal hands of an executioner.  The source of the telepathic messages is a rebel, who chose to remain on Earth alone rather than die (which seems like a reasonable choice to me.) The climax of the story tells us about the origins of the human race. 

Although some of the events in the story create a Sense of Wonder, overall it's a creaky example of Gernsbackian, pre-Campbellian scientifiction, of historic interest only.  I had to look twice to make sure it came from 1938 and not 1928. 

Two stars

Many Happy Returns?

Other than Harlan Ellison's hard-hitting fable, this is a weak issue, full of disappointing stories.  It makes me hope that the author of Paingod won't be blinded by the bright lights of show business, and will stick around for a while.


The Chicago airport probably doesn't have Ellison in mind, but what the heck.

[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

[July 16, 1963] New old hand (Harlan Ellison's Ellison Wonderland)

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[A printing error in the first few paragraphs of this article led to some embarrassing apparent mis-statements as to who Mr. Ellison's English professor was.  If you read this article before 4:30PM Pacific Time, I recommend trying again!]


by Gideon Marcus

Until last month, I'd hardly known of Harlan Ellison.  Oh sure, his outsized personality and less-sized stature made him (in)famous in the fan community in the early '50s, but when he went pro in a big way around 1956, he mostly got published in SF mags I didn't read.  So I was delighted at the opportunity to catch up on what I'd missed with his latest book, a collection of science fiction work from his first eight years, amusingly titled Ellison Wonderland.


(at Worldcon in '55 [courtesy of Fanac])

This is what I know about the fellow: He went to Ohio State for a few semesters, where taught English professor Doris Pitkin Buck, one of the few members of academia who has managed to also have a thriving career in our genre (under her own name, at least).  Unfortunately, the English professor he got was a Robert Shedd, who told Harlan that he had no talent for writing. 

So Harlan dropped out of school and moved to New York in '55 to become a writer (I have a similar story — that's how I became a writer).  NYC adopted him, and he adopted it, and the two are now inextricably linked.  Over the next few years, he sold a raft of stories and not just to the SF mags.  In fact, the bulk of his work went into the mainstream and under-the-counter venues. 

He served in the Army for one hitch, came back, kept writing, and last year, he moved to Los Angeles to make it in Hollywood.  I understand Charles Beaumont helped get him on his feet by connecting him with the TV folks he knew. 

Ellison reminds me a bit of Robert Sheckley.  Both were in the military, both are Jewish, both were and are no longer married.  Their format of choice is the short story, often cynically humorous.  But Ellison's got more of a literary touch to his stuff, more affinity for the macabre.  It'll stand him in good stead as a screenplay composer, I think.

Anyway, his first collection is quite good, particularly in the latter half (the stories are not arranged chronologically, so I suspect he saved his better stuff for last).  You may have seen his stories when they were first published, but it's worth picking up the book for the introductions.  Here's what there is:

Commuter's Problem
from Fantastic Universe, June 1957

The longest piece deals with a salary man who takes the wrong train during his morning commute — and ends up across the galaxy.  A fair flight of fancy, but it never got in the groove for me.  Three stars.

Do-It-Yourself
from Rogue, February 1961

It seems you can get a kit for anything these days, including murder.  See all the ways Madge Rubichek tries to rid herself of her deteriorating husband.  Dark and sly, it's perhaps the Sheckleyist of the stories.  Four stars.

The Silver Corridor
from Infinity, October 1956

Dueling returns in the future, enabled by a fantastic machine that allows two opponents to fight in an unlimited variety of virtual settings.  But in a pure test of mental will, best make sure your convictions are strong!  A neat story, a bit like The Dueling Machine in a recent Analog — but Ellison does it better.  Four stars.

All the Sounds of Fear
from The Saint Detective Magazine, July 1962

The latest story published by Ellison (at least, at the time of the book's compilation) is a mature piece about an actor who really gets into his role.  Such is the danger of being a schizoid — latch onto the wrong model, and you're in for a world of pain.  Four stars.

Gnomebody
from Amazing Stories, October 1956

High school slacker makes a deal with a gnome, but his request is taken a bit too literally.  This is the most trivial piece in the collection, which fits given its early date of creation.  Three stars, barely.

The Sky Is Burning
from IF Science Fiction, August 1958

Why did the aliens fling themselves against our planet, committing suicide by immolation like so many cosmic lemmings?  And what terrible meaning does this have for humanity?  A bit overdone for my tastes — it just doesn't mean as much as it means to.  Three stars.

Mealtime
from Space Travel, September 1958

A trio of spacemen, representing all that is distasteful about our planet, are eaten by a sentient planet.  Indigestion results.  Three stars.

The Very Last Day of a Good Woman
from Rogue, November 1958

Arthur Fullbright is cursed with clairvoyance on the eve of the Earth's destruction.  Worse yet, he's never gotten laid.  That's a set-up for a wacky, slight piece.  This isn't either of those.  Five stars.


(also from Worldcon '55 [courtesy of Fanac])

Battlefield
from Space Travel, November 1958

Some people are career military.  That's all well and good, but what happens when war becomes just another profession, its soldiers a bunch of apathetic commuters doing pitched battle nine-to-five on the Moon (where civilians don't have to see or endure any of that messy killing business)?  If ever there was an argument for conflict to be well televised, this is it.  Three stars.

Deal from the Bottom (written with Joe L. Hensley)
from Rogue, January 1960

A stupid man makes an even dumber deal with the Devil…or at least, one of his understudies.  Cute.  Three stars.

The Wind Beyond the Mountains
from Amazing Stories, January 1957

Harlan Ellison found that, despite having schlepped from one end of the country to the other in his early life, New York was the town for him.  So strongly did he come to this conclusion that he wondered how he survived before he got there…and how he might fare upon having to leave.  Some can handle the disruption.  Others may find it fatal.  This moving story, about a band of interstellar explorers and the aliens they discover, explores that pain of dislocation.  Four stars.

The Forces That Crush
from Amazing Stories, December 1958

Some nebishes amount to too little to be noticed by the world.  One fellow, name of Winsocki, disappears from the ken of humanity altogether, to his chagrin.  I don't know why, but I love this story.  Five stars.

Nothing for My Noon Meal
from Nebula Science Fiction, September 1958

A spacewrecked astronaut finds salvation but tragic disfigurement upon encountering the fluhs, one of the few lifeforms on a barren planet.  But is the change such a curse?  Another story with staying power.  Five stars.

Hadj
from Science Fiction Adventures, December 1956

It's easy to think our species is pretty hot stuff, particularly once we develop space travel and all that jazz.  But it's entirely possible that the reaction we get from the galactic citizenry will be some variant of (as my nephew is fond of saying) "Siss on you, pister — you ain't so muckin' fuch."  Cute, but clearly an early story.  Three stars.

Rain, Rain, Go Away
from Science-Fantasy, December 1956

The third story Ellison ever wrote, it was inspired by the torrential rain storm that accompanied the first week of his arrival in New York.  It seems you can wish for the rain to leave…but it's a loan, not a gift.  Too fantastic for American magazines, it was eventually published across The Pond.  Three stars.

In Lonely Lands
from Fantastic Universe, January 1959

Last up, appropriately, is the story of a dying man and the alien who joins him for his final years as manservant and companion.  It's a lovely, haunting piece.  Four stars.


(a recent pic, from Westercon, with Poul Anderson [courtesy of Fanac])

There you have it — not a clunker in Ellison's first collection, and some instant classics, to boot.  Based on these and the few works of his I've managed to catch elsewhere, I think it's safe to conclude that here is a talent of the first rank, one who will go far no matter which coast he ends up on. 

Buy his book!

[P.S.  Did you take our super short survey yet?  There could be free beer/coffee in it for you!]

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Magazine

[July 18, 1962] It Gets Better? (August 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

There's a war going on in our nation, a war for our souls.

No, I'm not referring to the battle of Democracy versus Communism or Protestants against Catholics.  Not even the struggle between squares and beatniks.  This is a deeper strife than even these.


(from Fanac)

I refer, of course, to the schism that divides science fiction fans.  In particular, I mean the mainstream fans and the literary crowd.  The former far outnumber the latter, at least if the circulation numbers for Analog compared to that of Fantasy and Science Fiction are any indication. 

Devotees of editor Campbell's Analog, though they occasionally chide the editor's obsession with things psychic, appreciate the "hard" sf, the focus on adventure, and the magazine's orthodox style it has maintained since the 1940s.  They have nothing but sneering disdain for the more literary F&SF, and they hate it when its fluffy "feminine" verbosity creeps into "their" magazines.

F&SF, on the other hand, has pretentions of respectability.  You can tell because the back page has a bunch of portraits of arty types singing the magazine's praises.  Unfortunately for the golden mag (my nickname – cover art seems to favor the color yellow), many of the writers who've distinguished themselves have made the jump to the more profitable "slicks" (maintstream magazines) and novels market.  This means that editor Davidson's mag tends to be both unbearably literate and not very good.

This is a shame because right up to last year, I'd sided with the eggheads.  F&SF was my favorite digest.  On the other hand, I'm not really at home with the hoi polloi Campbell crowd.  Luckily, there is the middle ground of Pohl's magazines, Galaxy and IF. 

Nevertheless, there is still usually something to recommend F&SF, particularly Dr. Asimov's non-fiction articles, and the frequency with which F&SF publishes women ("feminine" isn't a derogatory epithet for me.)

And in fact, if you can get past the awful awful beginning, there's good stuff in the August 1962 F&SF:

The Secret Songs, by Fritz Leiber

Leiber is an established figure in the genre, having written some truly great stuff going back to the old Unknown days of the 30s.  He even won the Hugo for The Big Time.  However, Secret Songs, a tale of a drug addled Jack Sprat and wife with countering addictions, won't win any awards.  It's not sf, nor is it very interesting.  I give it two stars for creative execution and nothing else.

The Golden Flask, by Kendell Foster Crossen

Boy, is this one a stinker.  Not only does Davidson ruin it with his prefatory comments (I've stopped reading them – they are too long by half, inevitably spoil the story, and are never fun to read), but the gotcha of this bloody tale is puerile.  One star.

Salmanazar, by Gordon R. Dickson

Some obtuse tale of the macabre involving magic, Orientalism, and a sinister cat.  Gordy Dickson is one of the better writers…when he wants to be.  He didn't this time.  One star.

The Voyage Which Is Ended, by Dean McLaughlin

When the century-long trip of a colony ship is over, crew and passengers must struggle with the dramatic change in role and responsibilities.  This somber piece reads like the first chapter of a promising novel that we'll never get to read.  I did appreciate the theme: a ship's captain isn't necessarily best suited to lead a polity beyond a vessel's metal walls.  Three stars.

Mumbwe Jones, by Fred Benton

A vignette of undying friendship between a White trader and an African witch-doctor…and the vibrant world of sentient creatures, animate and otherwise, with which they interact.  An interesting piece of magic realism a little too insubstantial to garner more than three stars.

The Top, by George Sumner Albee (a reprint from 1953)

Career ad-man receives the promotion he's always desired, allowing him at last to meet the President of the sprawling industrial combine of which the copywriter is just a valuable cog.  But does the Big Boss run the machine, or are they one and the same?  Another piece that isn't science fiction, nor really worth your time.  Two stars.

The Light Fantastic, by Isaac Asimov

The good Doctor's piece on electromagnetic radiation is worth your time.  He devotes a few inches to the brand new "LASERS," artificially pure light beams that stick to a single wavelength and don't degrade with distance.  I've already seen several articles on this wonder invention, and I suspect they will make them into a clutch of sf stories in the near future.

By the way, the cantankerous has-been Alfred Bester has finally turned in his shingle, resigning from the helm of the book review department.  In an ironic departing screed, he lamented the lack of quality of new sf (not that he's contributed to that body of work in years), and states that people shouldn't have been so sensitive to his criticisms.  To illustrate, he closes with the kind of anti-womanism we've come to expect from Bester:

"A guy complained to a girl that the problem with women was the fact that they took everything that was said personally.  She answered, 'Well, I sure don't.'"

Good riddance, Alfred.  Don't let the turnstile bruise your posterior.

Fruiting Body, by Rosel George Brown

I always look forward to Ms. Brown's whimsical works, and this outing does not disappoint.  When mycology and the pursuit of women intersect, the result is at once ridiculous, a little chilling, and highly entertaining.  That's all I'll give you, save for a four-star rating.

The Roper, by Theodore R. Cogswell and John Jacob Niles

Some pointless doggerel whose meaning and significance escapes this boor of a reader.  One star.

Spatial Relationship, by Randall Garrett

Ugh.  How to keep two space pilots cramped in a little spaceship for years from killing each other?  Give them phantom lovers, of course.  I liked the story much better when it was called Hallucination Orbit (by J.T.McIntosh), and could well have done without the offensive, anti-queer ending.  You'll know it when you see it.  Two stars.

The Stupid General, by J. T. McIntosh

Speaking of J.T.McIntosh…  The literature is filled with if-only stories where peace-loving aliens are provoked to violence by the hasty actions of a narrow-minded general.  But what if the fellow's instincts are right?  A good, if not brilliant, story.  Three stars.

What Price Wings?, by H. L. Gold

This is the first I've heard from Galaxy's former editor in a couple of years – I have to wonder if this is something that was pulled from an old drawer.  Anyway, a classic tale of virtue being its own punishment.  It ends predictably, but it gets there pleasantly.  Three stars.

Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman, by Harlan Ellison

Many years ago, on a lark, I translated the classic story of Orpheus and Eurydice from an Old English rendition.  Now, in his first appearance in F&SF, Mr. Ellison presents a translation of the tale into hepcat jive.  It's an effective piece, though heavier on atmosphere than consequence.  Three stars.

The Gumdrop King, by Will Stanton

The issue ends with a fizzle: a youth meets an alien, and incomprehensibility ensues.  I'm not sure that was the result Stanton was aiming for.  Two stars.

Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LIII, by Grendal Briarton

Oh, and the Feghoot pun this time is just dreadful.  Not in a good way.

Good grief.  Doing the calculations, we find this issue only got 2.4 stars.  It's definitely a favorite for worst mag of the month, and indicative of momentum toward worst mag of the year.  Those philistines who subscribe to Analog are going to win after all…

(P.S. Don't miss the second Galactic Journey Tele-Conference, July 29th at 11 a.m.!  You'll have a chance to win a copy of F&SF – not this issue, I promise!)

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