Tag Archives: henry slesar

[November 10, 1968] Ratings (December 1968 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Alphabet Soup

On the first day of this month, a new movie rating system created by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went into effect. Although the system is voluntary, filmgoers in the USA can expect to see a letter of the alphabet accompanying almost every movie.

This is very old news to those living in the United Kingdom, where a similar system has been in place since 1912. There have been some changes over the years, but currently the British ratings are:

U for Unrestricted (everybody admitted)

A for Adult content (children under 12 must be accompanied by adults)

X for Explicit content (no one under 16 admitted)

The new American system uses different letters, although they kept the scary X.

G for General audiences (everybody admitted, no advisory warnings)

M for Mature audiences (everybody admitted, but parental guidance is advised)

R for Restricted (persons under 16 not admitted without adult parent or guardian)

X for Explicit (no one under 16 admitted)

Gee, Magazines R Xciting!

In the spirit of the MPAA, let me experiment with offering my own similar ratings for the stories in the latest issue of Fantastic, in addition to the usual one-to-five star system of judging their quality.


Cover art by Johnny Bruck.

As with previous issues, the cover art for this one comes from the German magazine Perry Rhodan.


Hell Dance of the Giants, or something like that.

The fine print under the table of contents reveals that former editor Harry Harrison is now the associate editor, and former associate editor Barry N. Malzberg (maybe better known under the authorial pen name K. M. O'Donnell) is now the editor.  I have no idea if this swapping of job titles really means anything.

The Broken Stars, by Edmond Hamilton


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

As the cover states, this is a sequel to Hamilton's famous space opera novel The Star Kings, from 1949. (I believe there have been a couple of other yarns in the series, published in Amazing.) However, it's certainly not a short novel. By my reckoning, it's a novelette, not even a novella.

I haven't read The Star Kings (mea culpa!) so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (The fact that several paragraphs near the start are printed in the wrong order doesn't help.)

Three guys escape from a planet in a starship stolen from aliens. One fellow is the main hero, a man of our own time who somehow wound up in a far future of galactic empires and such. Another is a man of that time. So is the third one, but apparently he used to be the Bad Guy in previous adventures. Now he's working with the two Good Guys for his own self interest.

It turns out there's an alien on the ship as well. It can control human minds, but only one at a time. The trio solves this problem by crashing into a planet.


Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The place is inhabited by nasty winged reptile aliens, who are part of an army of various extraterrestrials being collected by a Bad Guy to invade a planet ruled by the woman our time-traveling hero loves. Can he find a way to save her? Can he trust his former enemy? And what about those pesky mind-controlling aliens? Tune in next time!

This slam-bang action yarn reads like a chapter torn out at random from a novel. Besides starting in medias res, it stops before reaching a final resolution.

Hamilton is an old hand at writing this kind of space opera (they don't call him The World Wrecker for nothing!) so it's very readable. The former Bad Guy is the most interesting character (and he seems a lot smarter than the two Good Guys.) Too bad the story doesn't stand very well on its own.

Three stars.

Rated G for Good old scientifiction.

Ball of the Centuries, by Henry Slesar

Here's a brief tale about a guy who uses a crystal ball to see into the future. He warns a couple about to get married not to go through with it. Of course, they don't listen to him. Years later, they have the argument he predicted. The husband tracks down the guy and finds out the real reason he warned them.

That sounds like a serious story, but it's really an extended joke, with a double punchline. It's OK, I suppose, but nothing special, and a very minor work from a prolific and award-winning writer of fantasy, mystery, television, and movies.

Two stars.

Rated M for Matrimonial woes.

The Mental Assassins, by Gregg Conrad


Cover art by H J. Blumenfeld.

From the pages of the May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures, this story is the work of Rog Phillips under a pseudonym.


Illustration by Harold W. McCauley.

People who have been horribly maimed in accidents are kept alive and made to experience a shared dream world. The trouble begins when three of the twenty people develop evil alternate personalities. (As usual, the story thinks that schizophrenia literally means split personality.)

The physician in charge of the project asks the hero to enter the dream world and kill these doppelgängers. (This won't actually harm the real people, just eliminate their imaginary wicked doubles.) He gives it a try, but finds the experience so unpleasant he backs out of the deal.

The story then turns into a sort of hardboiled crime yarn, as the hero gets mixed up with a couple of mysterious women, a hulking bouncer, and two cab drivers who know more than they should. A wild back-and-forth chase ensues, partly on a spaceship, followed by a double twist ending.

You may be able to tell what's really happening as soon as the hero exits the dream world, but I don't think you'll guess the other plot twist, which is rather disturbing. This yarn reminds me of Philip K. Dick's games with reality, although it's not quite as adept.

Three stars.

Rated R for Really shocking ending.

The Disenchanted, by Wallace West and John Hillyard


Cover art by Vernon Kramer.

This fantasy farce comes from the January/February 1954 issue of the magazine.


Illustration by Sanford Kossin.

The ghost of Madame de Pompadour shows up at the apartment of a publisher. Present also is the author of a novel about the famed mistress of King Louis XV. The ghost objects to what the writer said about her in the book, and demands that it not be printed. When the publisher refuses, she has her ghostly buddies uninvent things, leading to chaos.

Strictly aiming for laughs, this featherweight tale ends suddenly. As a matter of fact, because the usual words THE END don't appear on the last page, I have a sneaking suspicion part of the story is missing. [Nope. It's that way in the original, too! (ed.)] Be that as it may, it provides a small amount of mildly bawdy amusement.

Two stars.

Rated R for Risqué content.

The Usurpers, by Geoff St. Reynard


Cover art by Raymon Naylor.

The January 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures is the source of this chiller by Robert W. Krepps, an American author hiding behind a very British pen name.


Illustration by Leo Summers.

The narrator is a one-armed veteran of the Second World War. An old comrade-in-arms shows up and tells him a bizarre story.

It seems the fellow recovered from a serious eye injury. When his vision was restored, he saw that about half the people around him were actually weird, horrifying monsters in human disguise. He reaches the conclusion that beings from another dimension are infiltrating our own, intent on displacing humanity.

Things go from bad to worse when some of the creatures realize the guy can perceive them. They try to kill him, while he destroys as many of them as he can, leading to the violent conclusion.

This shocker is most notable for the truly strange and creepy descriptions of the monsters, each one of which has a different form. As an ignorant American, I found it convincingly British, although somebody from the UK might disagree. Overall, a pretty effective horror story.

Three stars.

Rated R for Revolting creatures.

The Prophecy, by Bill Pronzini

Like Henry Slesar's piece, this is a miniscule bagatelle about a prediction. A prophet who is always right announces that the world will end at a certain time on a certain day. When the hour of doom arrives, the unexpected happens.

Even shorter than the other joke story, this tiny work depends entirely on its punch line. I can't say I was terribly impressed. I also wonder why the magazine printed two similar tales in the same issue.

Two stars.

Rated G for Goofy ending.

The Collectors, by Gordon Dewey


Cover art by Barye Phillips.

My research indicates that somebody named Peter Grainger is an uncredited co-author of this story from the June/July 1953 issue of Amazing Stories.


Illustration by Harry Rosenbaum.

A very methodical fellow, who keeps track of every penny, tries to figure out why a small amount of money disappears every day. He runs into a woman who experiences the same phenomenon. It seems to have something to do with a vending machine.

The editorial introduction dismissingly says this story is . . . no classic, to be sure, it isn't even a minor classic . . . which seems like an odd way to talk about something worth printing. I thought it was reasonably intriguing. In this case, the open ending seems appropriate.

Three stars.

Rated M for Mysterious conclusion.

Unrated

As I mentioned above, the MPAA rating system is voluntary.  No doubt a few movies will be released without one of the four letters.  In a similar way, the stuff in the magazine other than fiction isn't really appropriate for rating.

Editorial: The Magazines, The Way It Is, by A. L. Caramine

Brief discussion of the rise and fall of science fiction magazines, with an optimistic prediction that they're on the way up again.  A note at the end states that A. L. Caramine is the pseudonym of a well-known science fiction author.

Digging through old magazines, the only reference I can find to A. L. Caramine is as the author of the story Weapon Master in the May 1959 issue of Science Fiction Stories.


Cover art by Ed Emshwiller.

A glance at the magazine tells me that, in addition to a story by Robert Silverberg under his own name, there are book reviews by the same fellow under his pseudonym Calvin M. Knox.  Given the way that single authors often filled up magazines with multiple pen names, I suspect that the mysterious A. L. Caramine is Silverberg as well, although I don't have definite proof of this.

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Laurence Janifer

One page article that praises the film named in the title, and says that Planet of the Apes is lousy. Just one person's opinion, take it or leave it.

The Rhyme of the SF Ancient Author or Conventions and Recollections, by J. R. Pierce

Parody of the famous Coleridge poem mocked in the title. It says that science fiction writers shouldn't go chasing money by writing other kinds of stuff. Pretty much an in-joke, I guess.

Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber

Mostly notable for a glowing review of Picnic on Paradise by Joanna Russ. May be the best-written thing in the magazine!

Good? Mediocre? Rotten? Xcruciating?

All in all, this was a so-so issue. The two star stories weren't that bad, the three star stories weren't that good. Not a waste of time, but you might want to listen to the current smash hit Hey Jude by the Beatles instead.


David Frost introduces the Fab Four as they perform the song on his television program.

Rated G for Groovy.






[September 14, 1968] Half a Loaf is Better Than None (October 1968 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

You don't have to be a sociologist to realize that the past few years have been one of cultural upheaval. The hippies, the struggle for civil rights, protests against the war in Vietnam; I could go on and on.

An example happened one week ago, when hundreds of women protested at the Miss America pageant. They asked to be treated as human beings, not as stereotyped images of artificial standards of beauty.


Members of the emerging Women's Liberation movement toss things like stiletto heels, makeup, and copies of Playboy magazine into a symbolic garbage can.

A recurring theme of these social changes is the desire for freedom. It can even be seen in popular culture. For nearly a month, for example, the number one song in the USA has been People Got to be Free by the Rascals.


They seem very serious about it.

This is a laudable goal, of course, and there's a long way to go before we can truly say that oppressed groups are liberated. An optimist might say we're halfway there.

Speaking of halfway . . .

Four of One, Half an Octad of the Other

I've been griping for quite a while about Fantastic filling its pages with reprints, along with one or two new stories per issue. Maybe somebody at the magazine heard me. Of the eight stories in the latest issue, only half are reprinted. That's progress!


Cover art by Frank R. Paul.

You can see the cover screaming New at you. Ironically, the cover art is old. It served as the back cover of the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.


As you can see, they reversed it, covered up a pretty big part of it, and just generally made it look worse.

Did I say halfway? The four new stories take up somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the magazine. They're all clustered together at the front.

The Sound of Space, by Ross Rocklynne

A spaceman returns from a two-year voyage to Alpha Centauri. He shows up at Triton, a moon of Neptune, where his fiancée is waiting for him.


Illustration by Jeff Jones.

She's upset because he hasn't aged at all. (This is supposedly an effect of weightlessness, which seems unlikely to me.) She also doesn't like the fact that space travelers are notorious for being irreligious. She takes him to church, and tells him that she's going to marry the pastor unless he goes back to Earth and ages in its gravity. The spaceman comes up with a wild scheme to show the woman and the pastor what deep space is really like.

The premise of gravity being the cause of aging isn't exactly plausible, to say the least. The story is written in an odd style, with verbal quirks. The woman inserts a fair amount of French into her speech. People often talk in flowery language that doesn't sound like anything anybody would really say. Folks are often referred to as Sir So-and-So (such as Sir Preacher); the spaceman even calls mortality Sir Death.

Two stars.

The Dragons of Telsa, by Arthur Porges

As an example of the care with which the magazine is put together, the cover and the table of contents call this yarn The Dragons of Tesla (note the change in spelling.)

Anyway, this is the latest in a series of science lessons disguised as fiction featuring the clever Ensign De Ruyter. In this tale, he and his captain explore the planet Telsa (not Tesla). It's hot and has an atmosphere without oxygen. There are a huge number of dangerous reptilian predators around.

(Herds of hundreds and hundreds of predators? That seems unlikely, given the typical predator-to-prey ratio you'd expect.)

After wiping out a whole bunch of the beasts with their ray guns, the unlucky pair run out of the energy that powers their weapons. They go hide in a cave, which just happens to have exactly the stuff that De Ruyter needs to save the day.

As I may have suggested above, the plot depends on a pretty outrageous coincidence. (Gosh, the cave has a pool of liquid rubidium and an object that's shaped like a shallow bowl! Just what we need to play Mister Wizard!)

It's like minor league Hal Clement.

Two stars.

Oaten, by K. M. O'Donnell

It's not a big secret that K. M. O'Donnell is actually Barry Malzberg, the magazine's new assistant editor. He's had a few New Wave stories published here and there.

This epistolary tale relates the misadventures of a sort of social psychologist, for lack of a better term, among aliens. He goes through a ritual, not understanding what's going on, leading to a bizarre climax.

I've supplied a pretty bad synopsis, because it's not easy to figure out what's going on. The nature of the so-called Oaten, for example, is particularly puzzling. Then there's that ending . . .

I really don't know what to make of this thing.

Two stars.

Where Is Mrs. Malcolmn?, by Susan A. Lewin

The magazine proudly announces that this is a first publication. That's not always a good sign. In another example of careful editing, the table of contents spells the character's name Malcolm, which looks more normal to me. The text makes it clear that it's really the less likely Malcolmn.


Uncredited photograph, one of three accompanying the story that pretty much all show the same thing.

A woman recovering from a heart attack investigates what she thinks is a water tower that appears out of nowhere. If you've ever read any science fiction before, you'll know exactly what happens.

There's not really much to say about this extremely predictable first story. Was it written just to go with the photographs? Lots of room for improvement, I suppose.

One star.

So much for new stuff. On to the reprints.

Lords of the Underworld, by L. Taylor Hansen

The April 1941 issue of Amazing Stories supplies this yarn.


Cover art by J. Allen St. John.

Three guys are fooling around in the California desert, doing archeological stuff. One of them very casually mentions that he's built a time machine. The main character (the other two disappear from the story quickly) sends himself back thousands of years.


Illustration by St. John also.

This leads to a rip-roaring adventure, as the hero defeats an evil empire nearly by himself. There's a beautiful princess to help him, a sinister cultist to destroy, vampire bats, a saber-toothed tiger, and, yes, a dinosaur. Lots of stuff goes on.

It's all nonsense, of course. There are some nice descriptions, but the whole thing is pretty darn goofy. The open-ended conclusion suggests a sequel, but I don't think there was one.

Two stars.

Between Two Worlds, by Milton Lesser

The December 1955 issue of the magazine is the source of this fantasy story.


Cover art by Edward Valigursky.

A meek fellow has dreams about being Jason from mythology. Of course, he really is living as the legendary hero. He falls in love with the warrior maiden Atalanta, fights with Hercules, wins the golden fleece, and so forth. If you've seen the nifty movie Jason and the Argonauts, you know what to expect. There's a surprise ending that's not surprising.


Illustration by Louis Priscilla.

This piece comes from a brief, odd period in the history of Fantastic when it was dedicated to wish fulfillment stories. Or, as you can tell from the cover, male fantasies. It's not as openly voyeuristic as the other stories seem to be, judging by their descriptions, although Atalanta is stark naked at one point.

As a retelling of an old story, it's OK. Otherwise, there's not much to it.

Two stars.

Bandits of Time, by Ray Cummings

This wild and wooly adventure comes from the December 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Rod Ruth.

A mysterious fellow approaches a reporter and his blind girlfriend. He promises them a wonderful life if they'll meet him at a certain place in the middle of the night. He also says he'll restore the woman's sight.


Illustration by Ruth as well.

Understandably, the reporter is suspicious. He takes his girlfriend home and shows up at the designated place with a fellow newsman, hoping for a big story. Instead, he discovers that the woman has been kidnapped. She and the two reporters are sent two million years into the future.

The weird man who approached them has a mad scheme to set up his own private empire in a distant future when humanity has devolved to a primitive state. He takes along male criminals from all periods of history, as well as kidnapped women to mate with them.

Can the two heroes escape being executed by the insane dictator? Will the woman regain her sight? Will the seductive would-be empress prove to be an enemy or a friend?

Two time travel yarns from 1941, both of them full of nonstop action. This one isn't quite as wacky as the first one, although there's a revelation about the madman's identity that comes out of nowhere.

Two stars.

The Monument, by Henry Slesar

We finish up with a mood piece from the July 1956 issue of Amazing Stories.


Cover art by Ed Valigursky.

A small group of tourists are on a spaceship headed for the Moon. A couple of them complain a lot. The captain opens the observation window to show them something.


Illustration by William Llewellyn.

The plot is very simple. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do. Maybe that's enough.

Three stars.

Half Empty or Half Full?

Either I'm in a bad mood or this was a very weak issue. Maybe I should have given out some three star ratings to some of the stories, maybe not. My time might have been better spent making a sandwich.


A full loaf of diet bread counts as half a loaf of regular bread, doesn't it?






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[August 20, 1968] A tale of two issues (September 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Split Personality

There's an interesting piece by Ted White in May's Science Fiction Review.  He talks about how the magazines are on a slow, inexorable decline due to a number of factors.  The biggest is that SF mags used to be just one subgenre of the myriad pulps, all of which had their lurid covers prominently displayed at every corner newsstand.  Sure, the SF pulps weren't exactly of a piece with their mystery, Western, and thriller brethren, but Joe Palooka didn't care, grabbing the most attractive issues.  So, SF thrived, making a profit even if it sold just 25% of a print run.


Note Astounding (now Analog) in the upper left and Amazing in the upper right

Then the pulps died in the 50s, partly due to changing tastes, mostly due to the collapse of American News Company, the main distributor for monthly mags (and comics).  The remaining SF mags were consigned to lesser shelves, all by themselves.  The average schmo got his entertainment from TV.

The profit mark has now risen to 50%–in other words, at least half of the issues printed must sell for the run to break even.  This makes it very risky for the mags to try to expand their market by printing more issues.  If they, say, print 50K and sell 35K, well and good.  But if they then print 200K and sell 96K…they've lost money on the run.

Add to that even SF people are losing interest in mags, lured by paperbacks and the new paperback anthologies, and dismayed (as I have been) by the declining quality of stories over the last ten years.  The only thing that keeps us subscribing is inertia and brand loyalty.  That'll wear off unless the magazines manage to turn the ship.

The magazines have been around for almost half a century.  Assuming they are around in the 21st Century, and if this trend continues, they will service an increasingly small fraction of the SF-interested community.  They will be like the horseshoe crab: living fossils, unchanged for 300 million years, clinging to life in a wildly different environment.

But that's all speculation.  For now, enough good stuff still comes out in the mags to keep me buying.  Though the high variability of the latest issue of F&SF may cause me to revisit that policy…

Over Hill and Dale


by Chesley Bonestell—this is the same nebula featured repeatedly in the Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor"

Ogre!, by Ed Jesby

It's been four years since Ed Jesby offered up his first tale, Sea Wrack, which was so-so.  His sophomore tale, Ogre!, is an improvement.

Knut the Ogre takes a nap sometime in the Middle Ages.  When he awakes, covered in loam and with mushrooms growing in his ears, he finds he has slept clear through to the 20th Century.  There (then), the seven-foot beast befriends a timid bookie on the run from the Mob.  You see, Ogres are actually misunderstood creatures, quite nice and mild despite the calumny heaped upon them by humans.

Together, Knut and the bookie (and the bookie's seamstress pal) hatch a scheme to get the bookie off the hook and out of the business.  And of course, it involves horses:

To Harry the plan seemed to be basically sound: after all the way to make money was on the races; there was no better way. You took bets or you made them, all other ways of earning a living were mysterious, square, or the result of inheritance.

It's really a charming tale, and it put me in a charitable mood for the rest of the issue.  More fool me…

Four stars.

Butterfly Was 15, by Gilbert Thomas

A scurrilous German scientist has learned how to manipulate others with the judicious use of electrodes and remote transmitters.  He meets his match when he locks horns with a traditional psychologist with methods of his own.

This is supposed to be a funny piece.  I found its themes of mind control and Ephebophilia to be thoroughly repellent.

One star.

Sos the Rope (Part 3 of 3), by Piers Anthony

Once again, we turn to our friend, Brian, who will likely never volunteer for anything ever again…


by Brian Collins

We now find ourselves in the final installment of the latest F&SF serial, but unfortunately it’s so long as to encompass nearly half the novel. We run into trouble before we’ve even jumped into the story proper, as the recap section commits the grievous sin of telling us about things that we have not been able to read for ourselves. At the end of the previous installment you may recall that Sos and Sol are about to fight in the battle circle to see who takes custody of Sola and Soli, Sol’s wife and adopted daughter respectively. Apparently, between installments, Sos lost the fight, and is now journeying up “the mountain” to commit ritual suicide.

I do not understand how this happened. It could be that Anthony had turned in an early draft of the novel and had intended to write the fight scene between Sos and Sol, but all the same, this is such a glaring oversight as to show incompetence. I was confused at first because I thought I had somehow missed the ending of the previous installment, but no, I had not missed anything; it’s just that the fight and its immediate aftermath were kept “offscreen.”

Now up to date, we find Sos who, naturally, does not die on his way up this freezing mountain, but falls unconscious and is rescued by a small society of people who are somewhere between the crazies (the civilized people) and the nomads who roam the wasteland. We come across the second major female character of the novel (foreboding music plays), who, as you would expect, goes unnamed at first. She’s a short athletic girl whom Anthony repeatedly calls childlike and “Elfen,” but also attractive, which makes me wonder if Anthony might be appealing to a certain subspecies of male reader here. The girl steals Sos’s bracelet and makes him work for it, all but forcing him into taking her as his wife. As if the institution of marriage were not already filled with holes, the system presented in this novel may be fit for ants, spiders, and other small invertebrates, but not actual humans.

Since this is at least theoretically the last stretch of the narrative, in which we find our hero at his lowest point before he rises from the darkness, I need not go into great detail as to what happens next—except for one thing: Sosa (for that is her name now) reveals that she’s been desperate to find a husband, having gone through several men already, because she feels great angst at not being able to produce a child. Infertility is often sad news, to be sure, but in a world where contraception is presumably hard to acquire, I can’t imagine this strikes Sos’s ears as too sad; after all, he’s still committed to Sola in his heart.

Piers Anthony seems to understand women about as much as I understand the inner workings of a submarine.

Having given up his rope in his fight with Sol (another major detail we are not told about until after the fact), Sos has not only regained his confidence but taken up fists as his new weapon. I don't recall if we get his new full name (as men in the novel’s world have a monosyllable followed by their weapon of choice), but Sos the Fist sounds…….

Anyway, there is an inevitable rematch, and this time Sos is victorious. The ending here implies that there may be a sequel in the works, but I’m not waiting to see what Anthony does next. 1 out of 5 stars for this installment, and barely 2 out of 5 stars for the novel.



by Gideon Marcus

Faunas, by L. Sprague de Camp

Someone in the zines was complaining that magazines never run worthy poetry anymore, that back in the golden days of the 50s, most of the pieces were memorable.

Keeping up the trend, De Camp offers up a snatch of doggerel comparing the titanic beasts of yore with the primate beasts of now.  Pretty pat stuff.

Two stars.

Harry's Golden Years, by Gahan Wilson

It is amazing the lengths to which people will go to maintain a sinecure.  Harry Van Deventer is the richest man in the world, senile and filled with infantile rage and a teen's hormones.  His hangers-on can only manage him by keeping his surroundings perfectly controlled—a willing nurse here, an emergency surgery to fix a day's incaution there.  But even a 24/7 watch can slip up…

It's hard to imagine a man both so utterly terrible and yet so rich and powerful that so many would endure so much to keep him alive.  But I suppose venality trumps all.

Three stars.

The Evaporation of Jugby, by Stephen Barr

Wadsworth Jugby is a big zero, a department store Vice President-without-portfolio, mediocre in every way.  He finally gets the opportunity to live life from a different perspective when his friend, Dan Byron, invents a psyche-swapping machine.  Intoxicated by his exchange, he eagerly agrees to expand the scope of the experiment, round-robining with six other folks.  The end is…well, given away by the title.

Fluff, with one funny line:

"Jugby could suggest a puzzled frown without lowering his eyebrows-some monkeys can do this."

Two stars.

The Dying Lizards, by Isaac Asimov

Last month, the Good Doctor had a terrific article on the dinosaurs.  This month, unfortunately, he indulges in speculation, which never works out well.

The topic this time 'round is the sudden death of the dinosaurs.  He advances various climatic and medical hypotheses, discarding each one in turn.  He poopoos the idea of mammals being "superior" as we existed alongside dinosaurs for most, if not all, of their tenure on Earth.  Asimov leaves off with the suggestion that an external event caused it, specifically a nearby supernova that spiked radiation-induced mutations.

Again, I have trouble seeing how the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and icthyosaurs and pleisiosaurs could all have destructive mutations but not the birds and mammals.  I think Ike's cute idea that dinosaurs evolved intelligence and killed themselves with powerful weapons, which would have occurred in the blink of an paleontological eye and thus escape excavation, is more plausible.

Three stars.

A Scare in Time, by David R. Bunch

The demarkations of time, the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and centuries, have met in their onion dome.  Tired of being measured and metered by humanity, they plot their ultimate revenge…only to have it foiled by human ingenuity.

A cute modern fairy tale.  Three stars.

The Moving Finger Types, by Henry Slesar

Twilight Zone department: Legget couldn't figure out what was wrong with his life.  It was like his every move was laid down in a script, and he'd lost the page.  Little did he know, that's exactly what had happened.

A fun bit on predestination told in Slesar's competent screenwriter fashon.

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Mixed feelings

You can see my problem.  If you read from either end of this issue, you've got a good 30 pages of material (and you can count Merril's book column, too, though I rarely agree with her assessments, and her tastes are drifting far afield of SF these days).  But if you read through the middle, that's a lot of one-star territory to slog through.  A lot.

Is half a loaf better than none?  More importantly, is it worth fifty cents a month?

Only you can decide…






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[December 6, 1967] Brotherly Love (Dangerous Visions, Part Two)


by Victoria Silverwolf

A couple of months ago we looked at the first third of a massive new anthology of original science fiction and fantasy stories, put together by one of the most colorful figures in the field of imaginative fiction. Let's jump into the middle of the book and see if it maintains the same level of quality and controversy. As before, I'll provide traffic signals to warn you how dangerous each story might be.

Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison


Front cover by Diane and Leo Dillon.

Gonna Roll the Bones, by Fritz Leiber

A fellow with the incredible ability to throw small objects with extreme accuracy goes out to shoot dice at a very strange and disturbing casino. But is he ready to risk the ultimate bet with the Big Gambler?

I have to admit up front that I can't be objective here. I am head-over-heels, madly in love with this story. Leiber blends science fiction, fantasy, tall tale, horror, and every other kind of imaginative fiction you can name into a perfectly crafted work of art. Just read it.

Five stars. GREEN for fine writing.

Lord Randy, My Son, by Joe L. Hensley

A man dying of cancer has a very strange young son with seemingly miraculous powers. The boy observes a cruel world outside. What will he grow up to be?

The premise reminds me a bit of Jerome Bixby's story It's a Good Life and the Twilight Zone episode adapted from it. That was an out-and-out horror story, however, and this one is more ambiguous. Randy is capable of great good and great evil, and it looks like the people of Earth are going to get what they deserve. In a way, that's more chilling than Bixby's monster.

Three stars. YELLOW for religious references.

Eutopia, by Poul Anderson

The protagonist is from a parallel world in which Alexander the Great lived to a ripe old age, and the Hellenistic culture is dominant. They've colonized other planets, and have even figured out a way to visit alternate realities. (There are hints that the main character explored our own world, and found it utterly repulsive.)

In a North America inhabited by a mixture of Norse, Magyar, and Native American cultures, he violates a taboo and is pursued by folks out to kill him. He makes a desperate attempt to escape, eager to rejoin his beloved in his own, much more civilized world.

Anderson has obviously done his homework. The various parallel realities we learn about seem very real. The plot follows the action/adventure/chase structure we're familiar with, and which Anderson can write in his sleep. The only dangerous part of the story comes at the very end, when we finally figure out what taboo the protagonist violated. The revelation is more of a punchline, really, and not a major part of the story.

Four stars. YELLOW for the last line.

Incident in Moderan, by David R. Bunch

Here's the first of two brief tales from one of the most debated authors of speculative fiction. As the title indicates, it's part of his series about the dystopian future world he calls Moderan, a hellish place where people who have replaced almost all of their flesh with metal and who live in heavily fortified strongholds wage endless wars with each other. In this story, one of these hate-filled semi-humans meets a more normal person, barely existing in the no-man's-land between fortresses. Typical of the series, it's a dark and bitter satire of humanity's evils.

Three stars. YELLOW for grimness.

The Escaping, by David R. Bunch

Here's the other one. The narrator is imprisoned, and spends time imagining the rolling and unrolling of the sky. Something like that, anyway.

Two stars. YELLOW for surrealism.

The Doll-House, by James Cross

A guy who is up to his eyebrows in debt goes to his father-in-law for help. The old man isn't very sympathetic, but he gives his son-in-law a miniature house that contains a tiny, immortal oracle, who can answer all questions. Can you guess that this won't work out well?

This is an efficient fantasy story of the be careful what you wish for school. There's nothing particularly distinguished about it, for good or bad. Worth reading, anyway.

Three stars. GREEN for being a decent, typical yarn of its type.

Sex and/or Mr. Morrison, by Carol Emshwiller

The narrator is a rather strange woman who is obsessed with a very fat man who lives in the same building. She hides in his room, watching him undress, in order to find out if he's a human being or an Other.

You can interpret the plot as science fiction or as the delusions of the narrator. In either case, what it's really about is the human body, particularly those parts we're not supposed to expose or talk about. It's the kind of thing you expect to find in New Worlds.

Three stars. RED for New Wave writing and sexual content.

Shall the Dust Praise Thee?, by Damon Knight

God and his angels show up at the end of the world, just like it says in the last book of the Bible. The only problem is that there aren't any people around to witness the Apocalypse. A little digging around reveals a final message from humanity.

Knight is thumbing his nose at traditional religion here. This tiny little story is basically a grim joke. Don't show it to your local cleric.

Three stars. YELLOW for blasphemy.

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?, by Theodore Sturgeon

A guy figures out that valuable stuff is coming from a planet that official records claim doesn't even exist. Folks who know it's real make it nearly impossible to get there. On another world where just about all activities are tolerated, somebody who shows up from that planet is instantly attacked and is likely to be killed. The guy finally reaches the place, and finds out what the big mystery is about.

It's hard to talk about this story without revealing too much about the premise, although the title gives you a clue. It breaks my heart to have to give a poor rating to a work by one of the true masters of speculative fiction, but this is really a lecture in lightly fictionalized form.

The climax is nothing but a long discussion as to why one of the strongest of cultural taboos should be broken. Sturgeon makes his point carefully and logically, to be sure, but forgets to engage the reader with an honest-to-gosh story. Inevitably, this work is going to compared to his groundbreaking tale The World Well Lost, but that one worked perfectly well as fiction, and not just as a debate.

Two stars. RED for advocating something most people would rather not think about.

What Happened to Auguste Clarot?, by Larry Eisenberg

This is a madcap farce in which the main character tracks down a missing scientist. There's a lot of slapstick and general silliness. It's really out of place in this anthology. Even Ellison's introduction jokingly says he was crazy to buy it. You may get a few chuckles out of it. With the French setting, I pictured Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther as the protagonist.

Two stars. GREEN for wacky hijinks.

Ersatz, by Henry Slesar

In a future world devastated by war, a weary soldier reaches one of the few places where he can rest for a while. All he can get there is fake food, fake tobacco, and something else that isn't real.

This very short story depends on its ending for its impact. It definitely creates a grim, dystopian mood.

Four stars. YELLOW for unrelieved gloom.

Middle of the Road

The central portion of this massive volume isn't quite as consistent as the first part, although Leiber's story is the best in the book so far. Sturgeon's polemic is a major disappointment, and there are some other pieces that don't really work for me. Maybe the last third of the anthology will be better. We'll see.





[February 18, 1966] Fixing up the old place (March 1966 Fantasy & Science Fiction)


by Gideon Marcus

Inside the Modern Home

Interior decorating has always been a passion of mine, and few times have been as exciting to be a fan of home interiors than today.  Gone are the pastels and pillows of the 1950s; the mid 1960s are a time of bold colors, Space Age shapes, and stark contrasts. 

Dig this brightly hued dining and living space, vivid in primary colors but also subdued with its Japanese influence and pink walls.  This is a pad screaming for a party.

If you want something more intimate, how about this shaggy, flame-themed family room?


(just don't tell these happy folks that their Albers painting is hung sideways…)

Of course, not all innovation is beautiful.  Concrete has foundationed the New Brutalism, and I hate it.  I understand the new La Jolla campus of the University of San Diego is going to be done up in this shelter chic, which is a pity.  It's a good thing I'll never have to attend classes there (Lorelei, on the other hand, might well).



Inside the Modern Magazine

The changing vista of science fiction offers its beauties and eyesores, as well.  Thankfully, the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction offers a suite of worlds that, though I may not want to live in all of them, most of them were worth a visit.


by Gray Morrow

Angels Unawares, by Zenna Henderson

Is there anything more eagerly awaited than a new story of The People?  In this case, as always, Henderson delivers.  I believe this is the earliest story in the series, chronologically, taking place as it does some time in the 19th Century.  A young woman and her mining engineer husband are heading West to the bustling copper town of Margin when they come across the burned remains of a home in the wilderness.  Four charred bodies are inside, incinerated by zealots as witches.  But a child survives, shocked into muteness but possessed of extraordinary powers.  The settlers adopt her, and thus ensues a tale of pain, maturity, and rebirth like only this author can tell.

Stories of The People feature a set group of ingredients, and yet somehow Henderson manages to make a delicious new recipe every time.  Five stars.  Bon appetit.

I Remember Oblivion, by Henry Slesar

In an effort to replace brutality with mercy in our penal system, a young murderer is taken off Death Row and given new memories.  Harsh, abuse-filled past is swapped for bright sunny days and love in the hopes of creating a well-adjusted psyche.

But the widower of the killer's last victim has other plans…

There's a kernel of a good idea here: are we the sum of our memories, or is there more to the human soul?  Unfortunately, Slesar, a screenwriter who has yet to really impress me, goes for the cheap gimmick.  The result is the least satisfying piece of the issue.

Two stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Tomlinson, by Rudyard Kipling

The author of The Jungle Book has been dead for thirty years, long enough (Editor Ed Ferman suggests) for a poem of his to be uncontroversially reprinted.  A story of life after death, it's Tomlinson this and Tomlinson that, and Tomlinson go away, as he is rejected by both Heaven and Hell for being a fellow who neither sinned nor achieved good deeds.

Pleasant enough.  Three stars.

Lil, Rorrity, and A Foamin' Sea of Steam Beer, by Richard Olin
"Daniel Rorrity was a short, stubby…fisherman," begins the tale, and so it ends as well.  In between, from his well-worn stool 'Roarey' regales Lil, the B-girl, of the adventures he'd had and the places he'd visited before his back was lamed.  And one day, he swore (when the beers were many and the mood was high), he'd buy his own boat and sail the world with his lady love.  Karl, the disdainful barkeep, inadvertently provides the impetus to transform a boastful sot into a captain of fantastic seas.

It's a lot more style than substance, but the style is lovely.  Four stars.

White Night, by John Tomerlin

In the South of France, a lost hiker takes refuge in a battered auberge.  The serving girl takes a shine to him, and they spend the night together.  But the morning reveals a hideous transformation.

A reasonable piece of trivial horror, though if the protagonist doesn't get eaten, I'm honestly not sure what the fuss is.  It's not as if he didn't have fun, regardless of what she looks like now…

Three stars.

Grow Old Along with Me, by Julius Fast

In a twist on the Deal with the Devil cliché, Fast's tale is of a young man who declines the offered gifts of Old Nick, and in turn gains something better — a friend.

Lucifer ain't such a bad guy after all!

Three stars.

The Rocks of Damocles, by Isaac Asimov

If Mariner 4 taught us anything, it's that sizable planets are just as prone to being blasted by asteroids and meteorites as moons.  In his latest article, the Good Doctor explains why it's only a matter of time before humanity gets walloped by an extraterrestrial bullet.

Sleep well!  Four stars.

The Blind God's Eye by Kathleen James

It's our world, but in a bleaker, poorer future, and Alice, living a bleak, poor life, is just trying to muddle through widow-hood as a bar dishwasher.  Then she meets Red, a burly young man with an iron liver…and a curious resonance of fate with Hugh Veron, an up-and-coming dictator who will be making a speech right in front of the bar in a few days.

A tale of love and tragedy, it's told in a sort of breathless, diary-like fashion that could have been grating, but for me was riveting.

Four stars.

Mickey Finn, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Lastly, another poem about the afterlife.  A man goes to Heaven when he's ready for it, and not before, and when he gets there, it's as dingy as he expects.

Oddly placed and somehow trivial, it is not helped by the typo in the last line.

Three stars.

Digging the Decor

It's not often that a magazine manages to crack the 3.5 star barrier, but F&SF has done it twice in four months.  Plus, Zenna Henderson makes any issue worthwhile (though I can't say I'm a fan of the lurid cover — I believe it's Gray Morrow's first for the mag).  In any event, if you're looking for a clutch of science fiction to go with your mod decor, the March 1966 F&SF is a safe bet.



The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.




[October 24, 1964] Nothing Lasts Forever (November 1964 Fantastic)


by Victoria Silverwolf

This Too Shall Pass

There is an ancient fable of Persian origin, retold many times over the centuries, about a monarch who asked the wisest sages in the realm for a statement that could apply to all possible situations. The answer, of course, is the title of this piece.

It is impossible to deny the ephemeral nature of all Earthly things, even if we speculate that the universe may be eternal. (The truth of that is still a matter of scientific debate, as to whether the cosmos will expand forever, or eventually collapse into itself.)

Evidence for the temporary nature of politics, for example, came with the unexpected fall of Nikita Khrushchev from power in the Soviet Union, as discussed by our host in detail.


Americans were caught by surprise, it seems.

Obviously, the most common evidence for the fragility of humanity is the universality of death. To mention just one recent example, Herbert Hoover passed away this month, at a more advanced age than any other former President of the United States.


Let him be remembered for his extraordinary work providing supplies of food to millions of starving Europeans during and after World War One, rather than his failure to deal with the Great Depression.

In a less sober way, the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first to be held in Asia, came to an end as well, with a memorable closing ceremony in the Tokyo setting.


Why summer games in October? To avoid the heat and typhoon season.

Few things are as short-lived as popular music, as shown by the fact that two songs reached the Number One position on the American charts this month. First came Oh, Pretty Woman, a tribute to feminine beauty by singer and guitarist Roy Orbison.


I'm used to seeing him with dark glasses.

This was quickly replaced by the nonsensically titled Do Wah Diddy Diddy by the British group Manfred Mann.


Confusingly, the name of the band is the same as the name of the keyboard player.

In Search of Eternal Life

Fittingly, the two lead stories in the latest issue of Fantastic deal with futile attempts to escape the ravages of time.


Cover art by George Schelling

The Knocking in the Castle, by Henry Slesar


Interior illustrations also by Schelling

We begin with a chilling tale set in modern Italy. A widow attends a party, during which the host suggests an excursion to a nearby castle, said to be haunted. The woman reluctantly goes along, only to scream in fear when a knocking emerges from within the dungeon. A flashback reveals the reason for her horror at the sound.

In the United States, she married a man whose ancestors built the castle. Once a year he goes back to the family estate, where his sister lives year-round, rarely emerging from seclusion. We soon discover that the man is well over two hundred years old, despite his youthful appearance. He returns to the castle for an annual dose of the liquid which keeps the siblings from aging.


The magical elixir, a few drops of which drives back the Grim Reaper.

A violent quarrel breaks out between brother and sister when the man wishes to share the potion with his bride. Driven to extreme measures, the sister hides the key to the chamber holding the supply of liquid in a particularly macabre way.


Extreme measures, indeed.

What follows is a grim account of the man's desperate attempt to find the key before time runs out. It all leads up to the frightening conclusion, explaining the woman's terrified scream.

I found myself imagining this story as one of those Italian Gothic horror movies that make their way to the USA in badly dubbed and edited form. That's one reason I enjoyed it, to be honest. I pictured Barbara Steele, veteran of such films, in the role of the mysterious sister. I could see the gloomy interior of the castle in glorious black-and-white, and hear the spooky violin music on the soundtrack.

From a fan of Shock Theater and Famous Monsters of Filmland, a very subjective four stars.

Elixir for the Emperor, by John Brunner


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

Our second account of a quest for eternal life also takes place in Italy, but goes back thousands of years to the days of the Roman Empire. A general and a senator plot against the life of a popular emperor. Their subtle plan involves offering a large reward for an effective elixir of immortality, convincing the emperor that it really works, thanks to the deceptive aid of the ruler's trusted slave, and substituting poison.

Complicating matters is an old man, saved from death in the arena by the emperor's mercy. In gratitude, he manages to create a genuine potion granting endless life, but is too late to prevent the emperor from being murdered. He hatches his own plot against those who slew his savior.

This is mostly a story of palace intrigue and vengeance, with just a touch of fantasy. The ancient setting is convincing, and there's a bit of philosophical musing at the end. It's very readable, if not particularly memorable, and not quite up to the author's usual high standard.

A middle-of-the-road three stars.

The Man Who Found Proteus, by Robert Rohrer

The gods of mythology, with some exceptions, enjoy the freedom from death sought by the protagonists of the first two stories. This comic romp features the god Proteus, famous for being able to change into any shape.

A grizzled prospector encounters the deity, first as a moving rock, then in the form of a talking mule, and later as a series of letters appearing on the ground, allowing the god to announce his desires in writing. His wants are simple enough; he's eternally hungry, ready to devour anything the prospector can provide. As you might imagine, things don't work out well for the old sourdough.

For the most part, this is a silly comedy, more notable for a certain amount of imagination than for belly laughs.

A slightly amused two stars.

Seed of Eloraspon (Part 2 of 2), by Manly Banister


Illustrations by Schelling again

The hero of this thud-and-blunder yarn may not be immortal, but it sure seems that way some times. As you may recall from last month, he set out to find the ancient city of the long-vanished, technologically advanced inhabitants of an alien world, accompanied by a warrior princess, an enemy turned friend, and a fellow Earthling. After many battles with the wicked Tharn, and a strange encounter with their mysterious rulers, the Bronze Men, they were about to be killed by huge flying monsters.

The author cheats as badly as any old movie serial, by setting up a cliffhanger from which there seems no escape, and then offering a disappointing way out. It seems that the hero, because he's got the advanced mental powers of what the story calls a magnanthropus, is able to communicate with the creatures. It seems that they're on his side, and want him to fulfill his quest. (There's a weird explanation that the flying beasts, along with other beings on this world, are the incarnation of emotions. That seemed really goofy to me.)


A typical battle. I like the use of the circle.

After getting out of that scrape without any effort, our quartet of adventurers fight the Tharn, get captured, escape, and so on. Eventually the hero discovers the secret of the Bronze Men, which will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever read any science fiction, and triumphs over all challenges. This pretty much just involves pulling a lever, which is pretty anticlimactic.


A defeated Bronze Man, although it sure looks more like a stone statue to me.

I got the feeling that the author really rushed through this half of the story. Things move at a breakneck pace, but without much purpose or meaning. The whole thing just sort of fizzles out at the end, leaving the reader exhausted and unsatisfied.

A disappointed one star.

Hell, by Robert Rohrer

(The Table of Contents credits the story to somebody named Howard Lyon. As best as I can figure out, this is a pseudonym meant to disguise the fact that the author has two pieces in the same issue. Rohrer and Lyon, get it? The Table of Contents also lists the author of The Man Who Found Proteus as Robert H. Rohrer instead of plain Robert Rohrer, so I guess there was some confusion around the editorial offices.)

A man finds himself, as the simple title implies, in the infernal regions. He passes some damned souls lying immobile on a beach under a cloudy sky, then takes a ride across the water with a demonic boatman assumed to be Charon. The fellow has no fear of eternal punishment, because he feels ready to face any psychological torment Hell might provide. As you expect, his attitude turns out to be badly mistaken. In a way, he faces the worst kind of immortality, if only in a spiritual sense.

The ending of this brief tale is not surprising. I never did figure out what the point of the motionless bodies on the beach was supposed to be. The story is decently written, but there's not much to it.

A confused two stars.

The Mermaid and the Archer, by Barry P. Miller


Illustration by Robert Adragna

The title characters in this romantic fantasy are two department store manikins, unable to move but conscious and able to communicate through a kind of telepathy. They were crafted by a master puppet-maker, whose affection for his creations gave them life. A violent storm threatens their physical existence, but a painter is able to preserve their love in his art.

This gentle, bittersweet fable suggests a kind of immortality in the works of gifted artists. Written in a introspective, poetic style, it is sure to touch the reader's emotions.

A sentimental four stars.

Daughter of the Clan, by Wilton G. Beggs

A teenage girl, who was adopted as an infant, experiences a gnawing, unsatisfied hunger. An attempted rape leads to the discovery of her true nature, and she meets others of her kind. A particular kind of immortality is implied.

Despite a certain moody intensity in the author's style, this is a simple, predictable tale, which ends just when it starts to get more interesting. Like the lead story, it attempts to produce old-fashioned chills, but not as effectively.

An unsatisfied two stars.

From Here to Eternity

Although none of the stories in this issue are likely to win undying fame, a couple of them should remain in the reader's memory for quite some time, if not forever. It makes me wonder how long copies of the magazine are likely to exist; if not in paper form, maybe on microfilm or some other medium. Whether anybody will be reading this issue in the distant future is an unanswerable question. Let's just be grateful we can enjoy the best of it here and now.


[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…]




[March 13, 1964] NOTHING MUCH TO SAY (the April 1964 Amazing)


by John Boston

Within Narrow Constraints

The April 1964 issue of Amazing features a story titled Prisoner in Orbit and a cover (by Alex Schomburg) depicting a guy in a transparent bubble, scarcely taller than he, looking out into space with a disgruntled expression.  One might suspect that this depiction is overly literal, but no: it’s just what the author called for.  Or, more likely, the story was written around the cover, an old magazine practice that has undoubtedly survived to the present. 

Prisoner in Orbit, by Henry Slesar

The story is by Henry Slesar, a prolific contributor to Amazing in the late ‘50s and an occasional one since then, though that may be changing: he had a story in the last issue and has two in this one.  Here, humans are fighting against the Maks, the android army of the Indasians, and the protagonist and his soldier buddies have been captured and sent to a prison asteroid, run entirely by the Maks.  The story slips into the familiar groove of prisoner of war stories, with the captives scheming to escape and the Maks trying to keep them in line. 

This old plot is made science-fictional by the rigid mechanical thinking of the Maks, who, after being informed that they really don’t need to kill prisoners who misbehave, since a little solitary confinement will do just as well, devise a confinement so solitary it drives the miscreants crazy.  The cover thus justified, the story moves on to its real business: the war is over, won by the humans so conclusively that there’s no chain of command left to tell the authority-minded Maks to stand down and let the humans go.  How to persuade them? 

Clever solution, coming right up.  Slesar has served a rigorous and prolific apprenticeship in Ellery Queen’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s, and other crime fiction magazines as well as in sf, and it shows.  This is a highly professional if rather bloodless performance, with background deftly sketched in, the pace jazzed up with flashbacks and flash-forwards, in as smooth a style as you’ll find anywhere.  Three stars for slick execution, even if there’s no reason to remember the story once you’re done.

The Chair, by O.H. Leslie

Slesar’s other story, The Chair, appears under his pseudonym O.H. Leslie, familiar from the Ziff-Davis magazines but even more so to the readers of Alfred Hitchcock’s. It is a bit livelier than Prisoner in Orbit but just as formulaic, splitting the difference between early Galaxy satire and the cautionary mode of, say, Richard Matheson or Charles Beaumont when they are not writing outright fantasy. 

The eponymous Chair is an expensive commercial product that promises the ultimate in comfort and satisfaction of every need, at least if you get the extras like the Food-o-Mat and the Chem-o-Mat Plumbing Unit.  You can see where that is going, and go it does, with the journalist protagonist chronicling the decline of his friend who gets a Chair, until the manufacturer figures out the perfect way to silence him.  This one too is slickly executed, and enhanced by Slesar’s obvious familiarity with advertising style.  Also there’s more of a point to it and you might remember it a little longer than Prisoner in Orbit.  Three stars, a bit more lustrous than those for Prisoner.

The Other Inhabitant, by Edward W. Ludwig

Of course most of us presumably read sf for something other than slick execution.  But we might miss it when it’s not there, as illustrated by this story, in which Astro-Lieutenant Sam Harding, exploring “Alpha III” (a planet of Alpha Centauri, apparently), discovers that he’s not alone; something is following him.  As the story proceeds we learn that Lt. Harding’s situation is not quite what he thinks it is.  This kind of psychological near-horror stands or falls on execution, and this one falls.  In the hands of a more skilled writer it might have been quite effective.  Two stars.

A Question of Theology, by George Whitley

A. Bertram Chandler, using his frequent pseudonym George Whitley for no apparent reason, contributes A Question of Theology, in which humans are about to land on a planet of Alpha Centauri (yes, that one again), which some time ago was visited by an unmanned vessel carrying experimental animals, and which now seems to have a well-developed civilization with cities.  The humans’ reception is predictable to the reader if not to the characters.  It’s perfectly readable—Chandler is no Slesar but he will serve for most purposes—but it reads as if the author wasn’t really very interested in it, and the theme is unfortunately reminiscent of some of his earlier, much better stories: the incisive The Cage, from Fantasy and Science Fiction seven or so years ago, and Giant Killer, the 1945 Astounding novella that made his reputation.  Two stars.

Sunburst (Part 2 of 3), by Phyllis Gotlieb and The Saga of “Skylark” Smith, by Sam Moskowitz

The rest of the issue is taken up by the second installment of Phyllis Gotlieb’s serial Sunburst, to be reviewed next month, and another of Sam Moskowitz’s SF Profiles: The Saga of “Skylark” Smith.  Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., is of course author of The Skylark of Space and numerous other grandiose space operas of bygone days done in a bygone style, and has failed to adapt to a more sophisticated genre and its audience, as Moskowitz essentially acknowledges.  While some of the biographical detail is interesting, the point is otherwise elusive.  Two stars.

Spectroscope

Last month, the editor proudly announced the advent of Lester del Rey as new proprietor of The Spectroscope, the book review column.  This month, with no comment at all, del Rey is gone and the book reviewer is Robert Silverberg, who is knowledgeable and adept.  Let’s hope he lasts more than a month.

Post-Mortem

So, the upshot: nothing terrible, which compared to recent performance is an improvement, but nothing especially interesting either, except possibly the serial installment.  To be continued.

[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…]




[January 12, 1964] SINKING OUT OF SIGHT (the February 1964 Amazing)


by John Boston

Uh-oh.

The blurb for the lead story in the February 1964 Amazing says: “Once every few years a science fiction story comes along which poses—and probes—philosophical questions: for instance: What is life that Man must live it?  In a novel rich in incident, fascinating of character, John Brunner questions the essential meaning of life and death and purpose.”

That’s the pitch for Brunner’s 74-page “complete novel” The Bridge to Azrael.  The last time we saw such an editorial panegyric, the mountain labored and brought forth—well, not a mouse.  A capybara, maybe.  Anyway, a modestly capable pulp-inflected novella, Daniel F. Galouye’s Recovery Area, not exactly the promised philosophical masterpiece for the ages.  Sort of the same here, but worse: the mountain has labored and brought forth a mess.

But let’s back up.  John Brunner has for years been a mainstay of the British SF magazines, with occasional appearances in the US magazines, growing more frequent in the past couple of years.  His most notable contribution has been a series of solid and unpretentious novellas in the UK’s Science Fantasy, some of which have made their way across the Atlantic to become better-than-usual Ace Doubles, like The 100th Millennium and (my favorite) Echo in the Skull—the top of the line at the bottom of the market.  So news that Brunner had a novella appearing in Amazing was cause for optimism. 

The Bridge to Azrael, by John Brunner

Unfortunately it trips over its pretenses and falls flat.  It is proposed that Earthfolk have gone out to the stars in ships and colonized dozens of planets, with which Earth has since lost touch and which have developed over centuries in wildly varying ways.  Now, however, Earth has FTL travel via a technology called the Bridge, upon which, if the equipment is properly aligned, one can walk across the light-years.  Earth is reopening contact with the the scattered fragments of humanity and trying to bring everyone together by connecting them to the Bridge system.  They’re up to 40 worlds.

This process is presided over by Director Jorgen Thorkild, and we are given to understand that he works very hard at his big and (it says here) “fantastically responsible” job.  However, when he meets with representatives of one of the next two candidates for Bridging, he realizes that one of them isn’t buying it at all, and he starts to go to pieces.  Doesn’t stop, either, and checks into the hospital, overwhelmed with the futility of it all.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to the “programmers.” These are the people charged with scouting and assessing the cultures of the planets to be Bridged, and they are impossibly superior intellectual supermen (if there are women in this clubhouse, they aren’t mentioned).  So completely absorbed in their work are they that they can’t stay interested in anything else, like comely members of the opposite sex who adore them, as we learn from the viewpoint of one of the latter.  But these hyper-competent intellectual powerhouses are ridden with a paralyzing fear of being wrong.  Exactly what will happen if they are wrong is not explained—do they lose their minds?  Commit suicide?  But the very prospect can impair their judgment and lead them into danger (for one of them, a knife in the chest).  Some supermen!

There are plots and subplots here, some of which might be interesting in another context, though the resolution of the reluctant planet problem is irredeemably facile all on its own.  But the two whopping implausibilities just recounted make it difficult to take anything here seriously, and undermine any attempt at grand philosophical argument, if there were one of any coherence.  So Brunner, whose more modest work sometimes transcends its lack of pretense, has tried something pretentious and fallen on his face.  One hopes he takes the lesson.  Two stars, generously.

Beside the Golden Door, by Henry Slesar

There is little succor to be found in the short stories.  The best of them is Henry Slesar’s Beside the Golden Door, a slightly rambling but reasonably agreeable story about extraterrestrials finding a far-future Earth on which humans have gone extinct, leaving artifacts like the one depicted on the cover (one suspects the story was written around the cover) and records that the aliens are able to decipher quickly.  These reveal another story about an earlier wave of aliens who had arrived on Earth seeking refuge after a disaster and were ultimately treated the way humans frequently treat those different from themselves, and there’s an unsurprising revelation at the end that pulls the stories together.  Fine conventional sentiments, adequate if slightly hackneyed execution, three stars.

I Bring Fresh Flowers, by Robert F. Young

From here, it’s downhill.  Next is I Bring Fresh Flowers, marking the return of Robert F. Young, like a recurring influenza epidemic, though this outbreak is at least milder than some.  It’s short, and less of Young is always more.  Rosemary Brooks, a beautiful young woman firmly dedicated to God and the United States, becomes an astronaut (or, as Young of course has it, Astronette), and she accomplishes her mission to orientate (sic!) the satellite that will bring genuine weather control to Earth. 

But something happens during re-entry.  “All that is known is that Rosemary became a falling star.” But not in vain—the weather becomes really fine, all because of her work.  “She is the sun coming up in the morning and the sun going down at night.  She is the gentle rain against your face in spring.” Et cetera, at some length.  In other words, Rosemary has been reincarnated as the pathetic fallacy.  Could be worse.  Has been, in fact.  Two stars.

Heavy, Heavy, by F.A. Javor

Bringing up the rear, or letting it down, is F.A. Javor’s Heavy, Heavy, the tale of a tough guy down on his luck, not as badly written as you might expect, but ending with the revelation of a supposed scientific gimmick so ridiculous as to erase any prior glimmer of merit.  One star.

SF Profile: L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, by Sam Moskowitz

Sam Moskowitz coasts through another SF Profile, L. Sprague de Camp: Sword and Sorcery, as usual with better coverage of his pre-World War II material than his later work, omitting to mention his last several SF novels: The Tower of Zanid (1958), its predecessor The Hand of Zei (1950), and The Glory That Was (1960, magazine 1952), plus two out of three of his major 1950s short stories, A Gun for Dinosaur and Aristotle and the Gun.  (He does mention the other one, Judgment Day.) The commentary is generally superficial and obvious.  Two stars.

Coroner's Report

The cover of this issue, which portrays a deteriorated and morose-looking Statue of Liberty buried up to its armpits, cogently sums up the issue, and, it appears, the state of the magazine generally: sinking out of sight.




[April 13, 1963] SCRAPING BY (the May 1963 Amazing)


by John Boston

Another month, another Amazing, and the persistent question: is this magazine worth reading?  Let’s check this May issue against the hopeful benchmark I announced last time: at least something unusually good, and nothing unusually stupid.

It flunks the second criterion right off the bat.  Robert F. Young is back and Biblical again.  His short story The Deep Space Scrolls is the supposed transcript of a Senate hearing involving astronauts who happened upon “Spaceship X,” which contains ancient documentation showing that it is actually Noah’s Ark (apparently the Flood was on another planet and Ararat is us).  What next?  Characters who turn out to be Adam and Eve?  The best that can be said is that Young does capture the bombast and logorrhea of some politicians—meaning the story is fairly tedious as well as dumb.  One star.

The lead novelet, Jobo , by Henry Slesar, seems promising at first.  In backwoods Tennessee, there’s this big strong guy Jobo with a funny face that everybody but his Ma makes fun of.  On the other side of the world, a professor and his sidekick are approaching Easter Island seeking the provenance of a small statue that looks just like the giant Easter Island monoliths but is made of some super-hard material unknown on Earth and impervious to metallurgists’ tricks.  The prof wonders if extraterrestrials could be involved.  His beautiful and brilliant daughter gets into the act on Jobo’s behalf, and the two stories continue in parallel, meeting considerably short of infinity and indeed short of any resolution not obvious and predictable.  Slesar is an experienced and facile writer, so it’s perfectly readable, but progressively less interesting.  Two stars.

Albert Teichner’s story Cerebrum in the January Amazing, I said, “takes a well worn plot device and fails to revitalize it.” Here we go again with The Right Side of the Tracks, which takes perhaps the most-worn plot device in SF—space travelers approach a planet to find out what’s going on there—and doesn’t do much better, though he tries hard.  The investigators are from the Galactic Glia, whose member planets are supposed to be in touch with all the others no less often than once an hour, and this planet Nodar has fallen entirely silent.  Arriving, the investigators are largely ignored and are told that the inhabitants are working on something that will “widen the scope of everyone everywhere” and the investigators are displaying bad manners; indeed, the locals spank them and send them away.  By that time, they have observed the Nodarans are not keeping their robots, machines, and facilities in very good repair, and have seen them frequently making seemingly pointless hand gestures, listening to music over earphones while they converse, and watching visual displays consisting of “blobs rapidly sinking toward the floor and similar patches reappearing near the ceiling while words, mathematical symbols, three-dimensional color patterns and other disconnected symbols streamed in and out of the confusion to add the final touch of chaos.” Anyone who has read Katherine MacLean’s 1950 novella Incommunicado —and many who haven’t—will recognize immediately that the Nodarans have developed new and superior means of thinking and perceiving, as the one sensible member of the ship’s party realizes on the way back home. 

The clumsily derivative premise is matched by Teichner’s incidental and slightly shaky invocation of standard SF notions, e.g.: “Then they were landing, the anti-gravity jets letting the Probe sink slowly into the waiting cradle. . . .” (Why would anti-gravity employ jets?) “They had spent a grueling three months at speeds far beyond that of light and were impatient to be finished with the assignment.” (Does he think travelling faster than light would be any more grueling than travelling at any other speed?) Is this guy paying any attention to what he’s writing, or just cutting and pasting?  This whole low-resolution mess, compared, say, to its distinguished antecedent by MacLean, recalls Mark Twain’s wisecrack about the lightning and the lightning-bug.  Or maybe I should invoke that old Thelonious Monk tune: Well, You Needn’t.” Two stars, mostly for effort.  Thanks for trying, fella, but . . . don’t bother on our account.

It is with palpable relief that I turn to The Road to Sinharat, a novelet by Leigh Brackett, who is definitely paying attention to what she’s writing.  Brackett is a distinguished practitioner of what might be called Chamber Pulp: standard-brand adventure fiction rendered with unusual clarity, precision, intelligence, and feeling.  This story is a pleasure to read at the word-and-sentence level, and would probably be an even greater pleasure to hear read aloud.  “Sinharat was a city without people, but it was not dead.  It had a memory and a voice.  The wind gave it breath, and it sang, from the countless tiny organ-pipes of the coral, from the hollow mouths of marble doorways and the narrow throats of streets.  The slender towers were like tall flutes, and the wind was never still.  Sometimes the voice of Sinharat was soft and gentle, murmuring about everlasting youth and the pleasures thereof.  Again it was strong and fierce with pride, crying You die, but I do not!.  Sometimes it was mad, laughing, and hateful.  But always the song was evil.”

That said, the story is, ultimately, relatively minor.  It’s set in Brackett’s now-obsolete slowly dying Mars of dry sea-beds, canals, and colorful factions of essentially human Martians.  The Earth-dominated government has a Rehabilitation Project to impound the planet’s remaining water and move the population to where the water will be; the ungrateful Martians are having none of it, believing that they know better how to manage the resources of their dying planet.  War looms, which the Martians will lose, and they will be slaughtered by the Earthers’ higher-tech weapons.  Renegade bureaucrat Carey, of Earth, with his Martian compatriots, must reach Sinharat, the forbidden city of the ancient Rama, who achieved near-immortality by taking the bodies of others.  The Rama archives will contain records that will show all the bureaucrats who won’t listen how survival on Mars really works.  So off they go, pursued by a Javert-ish cop, on a perilous (even grueling) journey across Mars, for a rendezvous with a rather perfunctory ending that wastes much of the dramatic tension Brackett has built up.  But still, it’s a luxury getting there.  Four stars.

The usual non-fiction suspect this month is Ben Bova, with Where Is Everybody?: if the galaxy is full of intelligent aliens, why haven’t we heard from them?  After reviewing the state of scientific thought, Bova proposes a variation on Charles Fort: we are not property, but are the subjects of research and surveillance.  Like all Bova’s articles, this one is perfectly readable, but a bit livelier than most.  Three stars.

There’s an unusual suspect here, too: A Soviet View of American SF by Alexander Kazantsev, a writer of SF himself, who has elsewhere proposed that the Tunguska detonation of 1908 was an extraterrestrial spaceship blowing up.  This is an edited translation of his introduction to a Soviet anthology of American SF containing Heinlein, Leinster, and Bradbury, among others.  It’s less ridiculous than some I’ve seen of this type; the author actually knows something about English-language SF; but it is still turgid and ritualistic in places.  E.g., he says of Heinlein’s story The Long Watch: “The story reflects a change for the better in American public opinion which was subsequently so strikingly manifested at the time of the visit by N.S. Khrushchev in America.  Heinlein, like many Americans who yesterday were still deluded, today believes, wants to believe, that crime may be prevented.” Dialectical, comrade!  Two stars, bright red of course.

So Amazing scrapes by another month on the strength of Brackett’s fine writing, Bova’s competence, and Comrade Kazantsev’s amusement value.  Hangman, slack your rope for a while.




[December 24, 1962] The Year 2 A.D. (After Davidson – the January 1963 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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


by Gideon Marcus

Trends are tricky things.  They require multiple data points to become apparent, and even then, careful analysis may be required to draw a proper conclusion.

I think I can safely say, however, that one-plus year into Avram Davidson's tenure as editor of F&SF, the magazine's quality has trended sharply and consistently downward.  Stories tend toward the obtuse, the purple, the (and this surprises me) hackneyed.  It's just not the sublime lyric beauty it used to be.

Why is this?  Let's explore some possible explanations:

1) F&SF can't get good writers anymore.

This clearly isn't true.  The Table of Contents of any given issue reads like a who's who of the genre.

2) Nobody is writing good sf anymore.

Demonstrably false.  Just look at the other mags.

3) The good writers save their best stuff for other magazines

This could be true, but given that F&SF pays some of the best rates (for science fiction anyway – three or four cents a word), I'd can't image F&SF is a second-resort mag.

4) Davidson's editorial preferences are driving the direction of F&SF.

A ha.  Davidson has been a writer of sf for many a year, and the trend in his writing has been toward the obscure and the prolix.  It shouldn't be a surprise to see the Davidson style creep into his magazine.  One trend I find particularly disturbing is the disappearance of women from F&SF's pages.  This magazine used to be the stand-out leader in publishing of woman authors, and its pages were better for it.  Now, female writers been conspicuously absent for two issues, and there had been fewer than normal in the months prior.  Nor can one argue that women are leaving the genre — F&SF's loss is the gain for the other digests.

The inevitable destination of this downward trend, the limit of quality as the time of Davidson's tenure goes to infinity, as it were, appears to be zero stars.  Sure, there are still stand-out issues, but they come fewer and farther between.  And the January 1963 F&SF isn't one of them…

The Golden Brick, P. M. Hubbard

The issue starts off well enough with this story of a Cornish ghost ship, imprisoned in which is a four hundred year old mad Alchemist with the Midas touch.  The tale is nicely crafted and atmospheric, but stories like this have been a dime a dozen in this mag.  Competent writing and imagery aren't enough.  Three stars.

Zap! and La Difference, Randall Garrett

Ugh.  Go away, Randy.

Dragon Hunt, L. Sprague de Camp

De Camp's life is the stuff of legends, as shows this essay on the globetrotting he undertook to familiarize himself with the locales of his recent historical fiction.  The piece contains tidbits of genuine interest, but the presentation is somehow lackluster.  Three stars.

Myths My Great-Granddaughter Taught Me, Fritz Leiber

In which the author's precocious descendant notes the frightening parallels between the Cold War of the 1980s and Ragnarok of Norse Myth.  This is the best story of the magazine, but again, we're treading familiar ground.  A minor piece from a major author.  Three stars.  (Happy 52nd birthday, by the way, Fritz.)

He's Not My Type!, Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor's non-fiction articles always get read first, but I was disappointed this time around.  Perhaps it's because I felt Asimov explained blood types better in his recent book, The Living River, or maybe Davidson's too-barbed introduction put me in a bad mood (I must stop reading those first).  In any event, it is readable, which is the worst Asimov ever gets.  Three stars.

Way-Station, Henry Slesar

Imagine Zenna Henderson wrote a The People story, but rather than have it end in poignance, instead wrote a stock "horror" ending that one could see a mile away.  That's what scriptwriter Slesar offers up.  Where is Henderson, anyway?  Two stars.

Punch, Frederik Pohl

Pohl is a busy boy – not only does he edit two mags (three, come early next year), but he finds time to be published in all of them and Davidson's.  In Punch, it turns out that the many technological gifts of the newly encountered galaxy-spanning aliens have a sinister motivation.  It would have made a decent, if typical, episode of The Twilight Zone.  Three stars.

Speakeasy, Mack Reynolds

Last up is a short novel from a fellow who is typically featured in AnalogSpeakeasy depicts a future in which society has been stultified by success, a meritocracy that has calcified thanks to nepotism and inertia.  Only a few revolutionaries remain to shock life into the decaying culture of the Technocracy. 

Reynolds can do very good political thriller, viz. Mercenary from last year's Analog.  Unfortunately, Speakeasy is a rambling, naive mess that jumps the tracks about halfway through and runs headlong into a wall near the end.  I wonder if Analog's editor Campbell rejected it.  If so, I wonder why Davidson accepted it.  It doesn't really fit F&SF, either the current or past iterations of the magazine.  Two stars.

So there you have it, an issue that clocks in at a miserable 2.3 stars.  Even Davidson seems to agree that his stuff hasn't been very good – check out the scathing letter at the end of the mag (which may or may not have come from Davidson's pen, itself).  No more "purple cows," indeed.

Ah well.  That's enough kvetching for this season.  It's Christmas Eve, as well as the fourth night of Hannukah.  Go light a candle, illuminate a tree, drink some eggnog.  Or as a recent fancard admonishes, let there be "Goodwill to mellow fen."

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