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[July 31, 1962] The Brass Mean (August 1962 Analog Science Fiction)

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


by Gideon Marcus

"I don't like science fiction."

How often have you heard this?  Loved ones, co-workers, indignant acquaintances with noses reared up to the sky will happily give you their opinion of our degenerate genre.  And it's a dumb opinion.

Why?  Because science fiction isn't a magazine or a story or an author.  It's a wide genre.  Saying "I don't like science fiction" is like saying "I don't like red books" or "I don't like movies that have dogs in them."  Sure, there's plenty of bad science fiction, in print and (especially) in film, but there's also, per Ted Sturgeon, about 10% gold – as in any genre.

Science fiction runs in quality from the humdrum, technical gotcha stories of the last two decades to the absolute peaks of sublimity (q.v. Cordwainer Smith, Zenna Henderson, etc.) Moreover, such ranges can generally be found even in individual sources; i.e. you can find both excellent and lousy stories in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy, or any other digest.

Of course, if anyone is going to be turned off of sf as a genre, it probably will be the humdrum, workmanlike stories that do it.  Not bad enough to be noteworthy, not good enough to be recommended — just dull, mediocre stuff.

And that's what we have a lot of in the August 1962 Analog, a magazine that will only contribute to the notion that science fiction just ain't that good. 

The Toughest Opponent, by Christopher Anvil

The Terran "Special Effects" corps is back with their herd of psychically controlled animals: gorillas, lions, yellow-jackets, even a giant (artificial) snake.  Last time, they quelled a civil war.  This time around, they are helping a beleaguered base defeat a Malthusian nightmare of humanoid bezerkers on an uncivilized, overpopulated planet. 

There is some nice characterization in this one, or at least, the characters are recognizable through their characteristics.  But it drags somehow, and the payoff isn't worth it.  The first of several stories in this book I'd give 2.5 stars to if I allowed half-stars in story reviews.  Instead, I'll be uncharitable and say "two stars."

The Bramble Bush, by Randall Garrett

A moonbase nuclear reactor goes critical, and it's up to one plucky fellow to keep its twin from exploding until help can arrive.  Garrett goes through a lot of trouble to set up the chemistry of the reactor technology (which does not conform to current theory) such that the solution seems less clever than arbitrary.  I did appreciate the portrayal of the hero's indecisive crewmate — not everyone is a man-of-action.  Less appreciated is Garrett's need to pun at every opportunity.  Another 2.5 downgraded to two stars story. 

Watch the Sky, by James H. Schmitz

German cum Californian James Schmitz is an interesting writer, never quite hitting it out of the park, but rarely turning in junk, either.  Watch the Sky, about a backwoods colony that tries to manufacture an alien threat to secure funding for a bigger military base, starts promisingly but ends weak.  Forgettable, but not offensive.  Two stars.

The Big Job of Moving Little Things and The Color of Space, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

Amazingly, perhaps my favorite part of the issue includes Campbell's "slick" nonfiction sections.  The first is a photo parade illustrating a new synchrotron that accelerates and smashes particles; scientists can then sift through the debris for exotic subatomic particles.  Not much substance to the piece, but the pictures are pretty.

The second, shorter piece references the cover and notes how we can get color photographs of deep space objects.  Mind you, these are not colors that any human observer would ever see — the light levels are too dim for us to discern anything but black and white.  Nevertheless, the colors do exist, and they can be extracted using clever techniques. 

Three stars in amalgam.

Border, Breed Nor Birth (Part 2 of 2) , by Mack Reynolds

Last up is Part 2 of Reynolds' continuing saga of North Africa.  El Hassan (formerly Homer Crawford of the Unites States of the Americas) becomes increasingly aloof and dictatorial has his band of idealists attempts to unify the Mahgreb.  It's readable, and the attention to cultural detail is excellent.  Also, a story that features naught but Black characters is refreshing.  However, the piece feels passionless, as if Reynolds was rushing through its production for the paycheck.  I liked it, but I didn't love it.  Three stars.

Where does that leave us for the month?  F&SF is at the bottom of the pack with a dismal 2.4 stars.  Analog is just above at 2.5 (and a different kind of bad — where the former was wildly inconsistent, the latter was unremarkable).  Amazing does slightly better at 2.6, with similar issues as Analog.  Galaxy had the highly entertaining The Dragonmasters, which means it has the best story, even though it only garnered 2.9 stars.  And Fantastic was the surprise winner with 3.1 stars — it was good enough that I took the time to read through the choicer bits.

Disappointingly, there was just one woman author this month, Rosel George Brown, making appearances in two magazines. 

Next month, we have a pleasant surprise: in addition to the five American digests, we have a guest correspondent covering the September 1962 issue of New Worlds!  Be sure to budget a good amount of time for reading…

—

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[July 2, 1962] Getting to the Point (July 1962 Analog Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

There are many ways to measure the strength of a story.  Is the plot innovative?  Does it resonate emotionally?  Are the featured characters unusual?  Does it employ clever literary devices?

As a writer, I am always particularly impressed by efficiency: the ability of an author to develop his tale with a minimum of exposition, unfolding a plot teasingly so as to keep the reader turning those pages with increased anticipation, and then delivering a solid conclusion at the end – where it belongs.

The July 1962 Analog Science Fiction delivers a series of object lessons in how (and how not) to write efficiently.  In some cases, the execution can be admired even if the story isn't great shakes.  And vice versa.  Read on!:

Listen! The Stars!, by John Brunner

Brunner is a new British author whose prolific writings have already enchanted one of the Journey's writers.  Now it's my turn.

Listen! takes place a few decades from now, just after the discovery of an esoteric electronic principle that allows one to literally eavesdrop on the stars.  Using a sort of acoustic telescope, the "stardropper," one can tune in to the mental vibrations of extraterrestrials.  This isn't telepathy, and even if it were, who could understand the minds of total aliens? 

Yet, listening to these emanations is compelling in the extreme.  There is the feeling that, if you could just wrap your head around them, the secrets of the universe might be yours.  Stardropper addiction runs rampant…and then the disappearances begin.  Users simply vanish, though very few cases are actually witnessed.  Concerned at the ramifications, the American government dispatches a special agent to investigate the vanishings. 

Listen! is perfectly constructed, fitting its novella length just right.  The plot is also novel, though there are shades of Clarke's Childhood's End.  The characterizations serve the tale rather than being tacked on.  A five star story.

Junior Achievement, by William M. Lee

This tale of a gaggle of precocious kids and their science project is neither engaging nor novel.  I think the idea is that fall-out from an atomic exchange has caused the kids to surpass the adults by leaps and bounds, but otherwise, I couldn't see the point.  Two stars.

The Other Likeness, by James H. Schmitz

Alien agents in human form are inserted into a Terran Federation with the goal to destroy it from within.  A textbook example of how not to write: three quarters of this story is action without explanation, followed by the most expository of endings.  The result is that one wonders why one is reading until the finale and then feels let down for the effort expended.  Two stars.

Brain Waves and Thought Patterns, by John Eric Holmes, M.D.

I normally cringe at the prospect of reading non-fiction in Analog given Editor Campbell's preference for crackpots pushing psychic malarkey, but July's piece genuinely intrigues.  We are finally learning a bit about the black box of the mind that lies between stimulus and response.  The key has been to implant electrodes into the brain and measure the electrical output.  Cats are the subject of choice being the perfect combination of ubiquitous and medium-sized.

The result?  We now know a lot about the brainwaves of cats.  What this means for the future of humanity, brain research, Dr. Rhine, etc. remains to be seen.  Three stars.

Border, Breed Nor Birth (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

El Hassan, the mythical would-be uniter of North Africa is back in Reynolds' second tale set in the Mahgreb of the 1980s.  As in the first, it follows Homer Crawford and his band of Westernized Negroes as they promulgate the virtues of democracy and technology under a collective assumed identity. 

I'm a little warmer to the idea that Africa can use the help of its displaced children across the sea, and I do appreciate the attention to detail in the setting and the politics (no surprise – Reynolds spent a good deal of time in Morocco and Algeria).  However, the presentation is still too flip, and I suspect the endeavor is going to prove all too easy.  But perhaps the naive ambitions of Crawford et. al. will be thwarted in Part II.  Three stars so far, but I'm waiting for the thump of shoe #2.

The Rescuer, by Arthur Porges

Last up is the chronicle of the destruction of a machine, perhaps the most powerful and important machine in human history.  The pay-off is as hoary as your grandmother, but the unveiling is rather masterful.  Three stars.

Summed up, this month's Analog is the least good of the Big Five magazines, scoring a still respectable 3.1 stars – and it has the month's best story, in my opinion.  Given that no digest scored under the three stars this month, it has been an unusually fruitful July for science fiction lovers.

***

(P.S. Don't miss the second Galactic Journey Tele-Conference, July 29th at 11 a.m.!  If you can't make it to Worldcon/Chicon III, this is YOUR chance to Vote for the 1962 Hugos!)

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[December 21, 1961] Reviewer's Burden (January 1962 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

I read a lot of stuff every month.  I consider it my duty, as your curator, to cover as broad a range of fiction as possible so that you can pick the stories most likely to appeal to you.  What that means is I wade through a lot of stones to find the gems.

Analog is the magazine with the highest stone/gem ratio, I'm afraid.  Nevertheless, it's rare that an issue goes by without something to recommend it, and the January 1962 edition has at least one genuine amethyst amongst the quartz.

It is the first story, Naudsonce, by one of my favorite authors, H. Beam Piper.  Like his earlier classic, Omnilingual, it is an extra-terrestrial linguistic puzzle story.  Unlike the prior story, Naudsonce involves a living alien race, one with no discernible language, and which displays nonsensical reactions to human speech.  Is telepathy involved?  Is the Terran contact team missing a fundamental clue?

It's an interesting riddle, to be sure, but what really sells this story is the social commentary.  From the beginning, we see that the human explorers, while not bad people, are interested in one thing: finding a colonizable planet.  The concerns of the aboriginals are casually treated, and the callous, jaded attitude of the scouts is evident, particularly at the end.  This kind of cynical self-awareness is quite rare for an Analog story, and it contrasts strongly with the utter lack of it in Mack Reynold's serial (see below).  I also appreciated that the contact team was thoroughly integrated, ethnically and sexually; but then Piper has always been ahead of the curve on this issue.  This diversity of characters highlights that the casual rapine associated with imperialism is not an ethnic problem, but a human one.  Four stars.

Idiot Solvant, by Gordon Dickson, is a story that could have been much better.  The premise is exciting: You know how you often get flashes of inspiration when you are sleepy?  Or a solution comes to you in a dream?  Clearly, some magic happens when one's left brain relinquishes control and lets the right go wild.  Something similar happens to the protagonist of Solvant, allowing him to accomplish some truly miraculous feats.  What kills this story, however, is the several pages of exposition that set up the gimmick.  Moreover, a story, especially a short story, only gets so much leeway before it exceeds its "hand-wave" allowance.  Dickson asserts too many premises in too short a space.  The result is a contrived mess.  Two stars.

E.C. Tubb's Worm in the Woodwork is a competent interstellar thriller about an undertaking to save a Terran logician who has fallen into the hands of a hostile colonial star league.  The thoughtful bits involving the captive genius, Ludec, are particularly engaging.  Three stars.

The science fact pieces continue to be where Analog falls down.  Campbell went through the trouble of giving his magazine a "slick" section, using the kind of paper one normally finds in news periodicals like Time.  Nevertheless, the articles often aren't worth the paper they're printed on.  Big Boom in Forming, by Willis Cain, has an interesting topic – explosive formed metals (where big booms press metal plate against molds to make parts) – but the piece is, by turns, overly kiddie and excessively obtuse.  Two stars.

Editor John Campbell's When the Glaciers Go is much worse, though.  Some garbage about how rapid climate change (over the course of hours!) is evidenced by the frozen Mastodons in Siberia.  The climate is changing, and our species is a big contributing factor these days, but it don't work like that.  Bleah.  One star.

That brings us to Black Man's Burden (Part 2 of 2), by Mack Reynolds.  I had high hopes for this piece, about Afro-Americans spearheading efforts in Africa to promote democracy and progress.  After all, Reynolds is an accomplished writer of political thriller, and he's spend a good deal of time in the Mahgreb.  Africa, a continent that has seen nearly twenty new nations spring up in the wake of decolonization, is a rich (and unusual) setting. 

In the end, however, Burden was a disappointment.  While no one knows where Africa is heading, I like to think that, after the normal teething pains, its states will join the community of nations as vibrant, mature members.  Reynolds' premise is that they simply can't, that without the aid of Westerners (Free or Communist), Africa will remain a tribal and/or despotic mess.  Or at least, that's what the protagonists of the story all believe.  At one point, it is even asserted that Islam is a dead-end for nation-building; no Islamic country on Earth has an advanced social system.  I take particular umbrage with this idea given the flowering of the Muslim world in the "Middle Ages." 

This idea that Africa must be boot-strapped into modernity by its abducted sons, the descendants of American slavery, is an insulting one.  It slights Africans, and it paints a veneer of redemption on "that peculiar institution."  There is a throwaway reference to the destruction of African culture in the process of "improving" it, but it feels perfunctory.  Worst of all is this bland superiority that suffuses the whole thing.  Africans are pawns.  Americans are superior.  I appreciate that the characters of Burden are all Black, but that quality is only skin-deep.  It is, ultimately, a story of White Americans, who happen to be of dark hue.  And unlike Naudsonce, it's played completely straight.  2 stars.

Sum it all together, and you've got a 2.3 star issue.  This is worse than, well, any of the magazines that came out this month.  If this is the digest that will win the Hugo, I've got a closet full of hats to eat…

…but Naudsonce is worth reading!

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[November 19, 1961] See Change (December 1961 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Every successful endeavor goes through the cycle of growth, stability, decline, and renewal (or death, in which case, there's no cycle).  Science fiction magazines are no exception.  A particularly far-sighted editor can plan for decline by setting up a successor.  For instance Galaxy's H.L. Gold has turned over the reigns to Fred Pohl with no apparent drop in the digest's quality.  Anthony Bourchier transitioned to Robert Mills at F&SF, and I understand that Renaissance Man Avram Davidson is waiting in the wings to take over.  That event can't happen too soon, as F&SF has been lackluster of late.

Analog has had the same master since the early 30s: John W. Campbell.  And while Campbell has effected several changes in an attempt to revive his flagging mag (including a name change, from Astounding; the addition of a 20-page "slick" section in the middle of issues; and a genuinely effective cover design change (see below)), we've still had the same guy at the stick for three decades.  Analog has gotten decidedly stale, consistently the worst of The Big Three (in my estimation).

You can judge for yourself.  Just take a gander at the December 1961 issue.  It does not do much, if anything, to pull the once-great magazine from its shallow dive:

As has been the case for a couple of years now, the serialized novel (in this case, the first part of Black Man's Burden, by Mack Reynolds) is the best part of the book.  Burden is the story of modernization in near-future North Africa.  Reynolds is currently living in the Mahgreb, so his tale is laced with authentic cultural insight.  Reynolds' Tuareg tribesmen read like the best-developed sf alien cultures…except they're for real!  I'm looking forward to see where this goes; rating reserved until I've read the whole thing.

Next up is a cute little time travel story involving an historian who attempts to change the course of events for a little nascent country called Texas.  I've never heard of R. R. Fehrenbach, so I assume Remember the Alamo! is his first story.  As such it's not bad, though I tend to prefer my viewpoint not wander from character to character at the convenience of the author.  Three stars.

Tom Godwin is a fellow whose works get published in the magazines I don't follow, so The Helpful Hand of God is the first story of his I've read.  Rapacious Terran Empire is thwarted by a bevy of scantily clad conscientious objectors.  Readable, but not very good.  Two stars.

This issue's cake-taker is the ridiculous "science fact" article by Randall Garrett: Engineer's Art.  It's on dowsing, fer chrissakes.  You know, that mystical art of finding water by holding a couple of steel rods in front of you?  Truly a new low for this magazine.  One star.


How Campbell finds his stories and articles

It's followed by a short, uncredited piece on a Neptune Orbit Observatory, whose main purpose would be to derive accurate distances to the stars through trigonometry (we'd know the angles and the length of the base of the triangle made up of points Earth, Neptune, and target star; the longer the base can be, the more precise our ability to measure the other sides of the triangle).  It's a cute idea, though I suspect our telescopes will be good enough for the task long before our interplanetary engines are developed sufficiently for exploration of the eighth planet.  Three stars.

Randall Garrett (as David Gordon) offers up some fiction in the form of The Foreign Hand-Tie, a story of telepathic Cold War espionage.  As such things go, it's not bad.  Reynolds probably could have done it better, but he can't write the entire issue, can he?  Three stars.

Finally, the disappointing Sleight of Wit, by Gordon Dickson, portraying a battle of brains between a human planetary scout and his alien competitor.  It is disappointing because it requires the alien to be so featherbrained, the course of events the human relies on so convoluted.  Gordy does better when he ignores this mag.  Two stars.

Analog has only topped a three-star overall rating thrice this year, and this wasn't one of those times.  That's pretty lousy.  F&SF has done it seven times, and Galaxy never earned less than three.  I'll be very surprised if Analog gets nominated for the Hugo for 1961. 

It's time for a change, methinks.

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