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[March 22, 1966] Summer in the sun, winter in the shade (April 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Time of (no) change

Seasons don't mean a whole lot in San Diego.  As I like to say, here we have Spring, Summer, Backwards Spring, and Rain.  All of these are pretty mild, and folks from parts beyond often grumble over the lack of seasonality here.

I grew up in the Imperal Valley where we had a full four seasons: Hot, Stink, Bug, and Wind.  San Diego is a step up.

Judith Merril, who writes the books column for F&SF these days asserts that there is a seasonality to science fiction as well, with December and January being the peak time of year in terms of story quality.  If it be the case that the solstice marks the SF's annual zenith, then one might expect the equinoxes to exhibit a mixed bag.

And so that is the case with the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which contains stories both sublime and mediocre.  Trip with me through the flowers?

Spring is here


by Jack Gaughan

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, by Philip K. Dick

Given the prolificity with which Dick produces SF these days, one can hardly believe there was a long time when he'd taken a hiatus from the genre.  This latest story fuses his recent penchant for mind-expanding weirdness with the more straight science fiction characteristic of his work in the 50s. 

To wit, Douglas Quail is a humdrum prole who dreams big.  Specifically, he really wants to go to Mars, but such privilege is reserved to astronauts and high grade politicians.  Luckily, there is an organization whose business is literally making dreams come true…or perhaps I should say Rekal Incorporated makes true come dreams.  They inject their clients with artificial memories, lard them with convincing physical ephemera, and so a dream becomes reality — at least for the customer.

But when Quail is put under for the procedure, it turns out that he already has memories of a trip to Mars, which have been imperfectly wiped.  In short order, Quail becomes the center of a spy thriller, pursued by countless government agents.

On the surface, this is a fun gimmick story, but knowing Dick, I'm pretty sure there's a deeper thread running through the plot.  Indeed, clues are laid that make the reader wonder if the entire story is not the phantom adventure, deepening turns and all.  As with many recent Dick stories, the question one is left with is "What is reality?"

Four stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Appoggiatura, by A. M. Marple

A flea with an amazing tenor and the music-loving but otherwise talentless cat on which he resides, get swept into the world of urban opera.  Can their friendship withstand sudden fame?

This silly story by newcomer Anne Marple shouldn't be any good, but the whimsy of it all and the utter lack of explanatory justification keeps you going for a vignette's length.

Three stars.

But Soft, What Light …, by Carol Emshwiller

Spring is the time for romance, and so a fitting season for this piece, a love story between a computer with the soul of a poet, and the young woman who wins its heart.

Lyrically told, avante garde in the extreme, and just a bit naughtier than the usual, But Soft makes me even more delighted to see Carol Emshwiller return to the pages of this magazine.

Five stars.

The Sudden Silence, by J. T. McIntosh

The city of New Bergen on the planet of Severna goes silent, and a rescue team is dispatched from a nearby world to find out what could suddenly quiet the voices of half a million souls.

This novelette would be a lot more tolerable if 1) the culprit were more plausible and 2) McIntosh didn't have two of the male members of the team more interested in seducing their crewmates than saving lives. 

It's a pity.  McIntosh used to be one of my more favored authors.  These days, his stuff is both disappointing and difficult to read for its shabby treatment of women (though at least he includes them in his futures, which is uncommon).

Two stars.

Injected Memory, by Theodore L. Thomas

The latest mini-article from Mr. Thomas is about the promise of skills and experiences induced with genetic infusions.  It's a neat idea, lacking the usual stupid execution the author includes at the end of these. I don't know if the article's inclusion in this issue alongside the Philip K. Dick story mentioned above was serendipitous or deliberate, but I suspect the latter.

Three stars.

The Octopus, by Doris Pitkin Buck

Time is an octopus, tearing us in both directions.

Decent poem.  Three stars.

The Face Is Familiar, by Gilbert Thomas

I had to look this story up twice to remember it, which should tell you something.  A Lovecraftian tale of terror recounted by one man to another in Saigon.  The latter has seen real horror.  The former saw his wife preserved after death in an…unorthodox manner…which just isn't as shocking or interesting as is it's supposed to be.

Some nice if overwrought storytelling, but not much of a story.  Two stars.

The Space Twins, by James Pulley

There was a hypothesis going around for a while that long term exposure to weightlessness would have not just adverse physical but psychological impacts.  In this piece, two astronauts on their way around Mars revert to their time in the womb and have trouble returning.

Clearly written before Gemini 6, it comes off as both quaint and facile.

Two stars.

The Sorcerer Pharesm, by Jack Vance

Continuing the adventures of Cugel the Clever in his quest to bring back a magic item to the wizard Iucounu, this latest chapter sees the luckless thief happen across an enormous carved edifice.  Its goal is to entice the TOTALITY of space-time into the presence of the great sorcerer, Pharesm.

Of course, nothing goes as planned for Pharesm or Cugel.  Clever byplay, some good fortune, lots of bad fortune, and a bit of time travel ensue.

Vance strings nonsense words and scenes together with enviable talent, but the shtick is honestly running a bit thin.

Three stars.

The Nobelmen of Science, by Isaac Asimov

Instead of a science article, the Good Doctor offers up a comprehensive list of Nobel Prize winners by nationality.  Seems a bit of a copout, though I imagine it'll be useful to someone.

Three stars.

Bordered in Black, by Larry Niven

Lastly, Niven returns with an effective story of two astronauts who head to Sirius and encounter a clearly artificially seeded world.  Is it merely an algae farm planet, or is there something more sinister going on, associated with one of the continents, fringed with an ominous black ring?

Niven is great at building a compelling world, and the revelation at the end is pretty good.  It's a bit overwrought, though.  Also, I'm not sure why Niven would think Sirius A and B are both white giants when Sirius B is famously a dwarf star.

Anyway, four stars, and a good way to end an otherwise unimpressive section of the magazine.

Spring comes finally

And with the equinox, I turn the last page of the issue.  In the end, the April F&SF is a touch more good than bad, which is appropriate given the now-longer days.  Will the magazine obey the seasonal cycle and turn out its best issue in June (at odds with Ms. Merril's predictions)?

Only time will tell!


Spring is also the time for new beginnings — a fitting season to release its new daughter magazine, P.S.!

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[November 16, 1965] Crime and Punishment (January 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Breaking The Law On Stage

An incident in the United Kingdom earlier this month caught my attention and made me think about the limitations on artistic expression. The play Saved by Edward Bond had its premiere on November 3rd at the Royal Court Theatre in London. What does this have to do with violations of the law? Well, that requires a bit of explanation, particularly for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

You see, ever since 1843, all plays produced for the public in England have to be licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. (Please don't ask me to explain what a Lord Chamberlain might be. That's far beyond my feeble American mind.)

The current Lord Chamberlain refused to grant a license to Saved unless it were severely censored. The folks at the Royal Court Theatre put it on anyway, trying to get around the letter of the law by calling it a private performance. From what I hear, they're going to get in trouble with the authorities anyway.


A scene from the play, in which a baby is stoned to death. You can see why this might be considered controversial.

Justice Between The Pages

Fittingly, many of the stories, and even a nonfiction article, in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow deal with criminals and crimefighters, in literal or in metaphorical ways.


Cover art by Mclane. Once again, the only thing I can find out about this artist is a last name.

Project Plowshare (Part Two of Two), by Philip K. Dick


Illustrations by Gray Morrow.

It takes a while for the crime aspect of this novel to show up. Meanwhile, let's recap a bit.

In the future, the Cold War has evolved into a purely symbolic struggle. Each side has a psychic who uses drugs to perceive visions of designs for weapons. The trick is that these things are really used to manufacture odd consumer items. The ruling government, capitalist or communist, fools the public into thinking it's winning the arms race. When threatening alien spacecraft show up, the two powers bring the psychics together, hoping that they will be able to come up with a real weapon.


The invaders, who never directly appear in the story.

Things get pretty darn complicated in the second half of the novel. We find out quickly that the weapon designs perceived by the psychics come from a trashy comic book, which doesn't offer much hope for victory against the aliens. They're a serious menace, as we learn when entire cities disappear behind obscuring mists. Meanwhile, romance blooms between the two psychics, leading to a classic example of the Eternal Triangle.


Jealousy rears its green-eyed head.

Add in androids and time travel, and you've got a convoluted plot that leaves the reader dizzy. Oh, and the criminal subplot I hinted at above? That comes in the form of a nasty fellow who, for his own petty reasons, plots to assassinate members of the government who rejected him. He even kills folks who were foolish enough to join his conspiracy.


A man and his gun.

The author tosses everything but the kitchen sink into this yarn. At times, I thought he was making fun of science fiction, given the large number of mixed-up SF elements. There's definitely a touch of satire here and there, but it's not a comic novel. Some parts, in fact, are tragic. It definitely held my interest throughout, even if the climax seems to be thrown together hastily.

Four stars.

The Sleuth in Science Fiction, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of fantastic fiction traces the development of detective stories in the field. Starting with a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, he delves into the dusty pages of very early pulp magazines. Much of the stuff he digs up has to do with lie detection technology. This article takes the reader up to about 1930, and a sequel is promised.

Moskowitz certainly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. I can admire his scholarship, but the resulting essay makes for very dry reading.

Two stars.

Sunk Without Trace, by Fritz Leiber

The weird creatures on the cover of the magazine appear in this story. One of them has a dream about an object that landed on their world, while his more practical wife insists that he get back to processing the seaweed that serves as their food. It's clear from the start that the thing is a spacecraft from Earth — the editor's blurb gives it away, too — but the rest of the plot may be a bit more surprising.

There's not much to this work other than the premise and the setting, but those are intriguing enough to make it worth a look. Of course, Leiber is incapable of writing a bad sentence, so the style adds a lot. Overall, it's a decent effort from an author who often does much better.

Three stars.

At Journey's End, by J. T. McIntosh


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

We jump right into a confrontation between criminals and law enforcement, in a particularly crude form, near the beginning of this story of a starship on its way to a new home for humanity.

After decades of travel, it seems that tensions among the crew have reached the boiling point. A couple of murders result, and the captain acts as judge, jury, and executioner, killing those guilty on the spot. Without giving too much away, let's just say that justice is truly blind here, playing no favorites at all.

After this grim opening, we watch the ship approach the planet. They have a big surprise waiting for them when they arrive. It all leads up to a darkly ironic ending.


Our three protagonists, awaiting their fate.

At first glance, I thought the first part didn't have much to do with the resolution. After musing over it for a while, however, I realize that the author intended the two scenes to provide a sort of thematic contrast. Some of what happens may be predictable. Taken as a whole, this is a serviceable, if undistinguished, story.

Three stars.

Stars, Won't You Hide Me?, by Ben Bova

In this case, the criminal is the human race as a whole, and the punishment comes from aliens determined to wipe out the entire species. When the story begins, in fact, there is only one human being left alive, alone in his automated spaceship, wandering through the cosmos in an attempt to escape judgment.

During his eons-long journey, which leads him across gigantic distances in space, he learns of humanity's crime and discovers what became of Earth. The climax leads to a final scene of almost unimaginable immensity.

The most notable thing about this story is the vastness of the author's vision. I don't think I've read anything that covers such enormous amounts of time, except maybe the works of Olaf Stapledon. In addition to that, there's a great deal of emotional appeal. If you think Bova is just a decent science writer, you may be surprised.

Five stars.

How To Understand Aliens, by Robert M. W. Dixon

Let's get away from criminology for a while and talk about linguistics. The author imagines the difficulty of communicating with the inhabitants of other worlds. As examples, he creates beings who spend most of their time burrowing underground, as well as aliens who fly. The point seems to be that culture has an important effect on language, and it's not just a matter of translating things word-for-word.

Dixon seems to know his stuff, as evidenced by his discussion of human languages unfamiliar to most speakers of English. The fictional aliens make the article more readable than just a dry discussion of the topic.

Three stars.

Buggaratz, by John Jakes

The military has its own system of justice, dealing with such crimes as lack of discipline. That's a problem for the commander of a small outfit on another planet. The only function of the unit is to produce inflatable uniforms as toys. Given this dull and trivial chore, it's not a shock to find out that things have gotten awfully lax around the place.

A visit from an inspecting officer threatens to expose how badly the situation has gotten out of hand. The presence of the habit-forming substance named in the title doesn't help matters.

This is a pretty silly comedy, with maybe a trace of satire directed at military thinking. It's an inoffensive bit of fluff, unlikely to make much of an impression on you.

Two stars.

Riverworld, by Philip Jose Farmer


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

As you may recall, one year ago the magazine offered Farmer's novella Day of the Great Shout, wherein everybody who ever lived on Earth was resurrected on a planet dominated by one huge river. This new tale takes place in the same setting.

The hero is cowboy movie star Tom Mix. Along with a woman who lived during the time of Moses, and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, he sails down the river, escaping a brutal religious dictatorship. The trio join forces with some friendly folks from the Renaissance, and war breaks out with the bad guys.


A battle along the river.

There's lots of violent action, to be sure, but that's not really the most important part of the story. The author deals with religion in ways that may seem blasphemous to many readers.

The identity of the fellow traveling with Tom Mix is clear from the start, but I won't reveal it here. Suffice to say that this is likely to be the most controversial part of the story. The fact that the two men look almost exactly alike raises a lot of questions in my mind, which seem likely to remain unanswered.

Farmer has his hands on a strong premise here, with lots of possibilities. (Another story in the series is promised for the next issue.) I'll definitely keep reading to find out who else I'll run into along the river.

Four stars.

The Verdict

In the case of The People v. FP et al., the court dismisses all charges against PKD and PJF, with special commendation for BB. The other defendants are released with a warning to avoid tedium in the future, an admonition particularly directed at SM and JJ. The court further directs FP, leader of the accused, to retain the services of a good lawyer, in case of further charges in the future.


I don't think this guy ever lost a case.




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Magazine, Serial

[February 28, 1965] Tragedy and Triumph (March 1965 Analog)

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by Gideon Marcus

Casualty of War

Malcolm X was shot on my birthday.

While I was celebrating with friends on February 21, 1965, enjoying cake and camaraderie at a small Los Angeles fan convention, Malcolm X, one of the highest profile fighters for civil rights in America, was gunned down.  At a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), a group X founded, three shooters attacked the 39-year-old father of four (soon to be five), wounding him sixteen times.  He did not survive the trip to the hospital.

Two of the assailants were captured, but their motive is still unclear.  All fingers point to the Black Muslims, however.  After his disillusionment with and fraught departure from the group, X had cause to worry that they intended to rub out a man they thought of as a traitor.  Indeed, X had received a number of death threats prior to the OAAU meeting. 

Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Black Muslims, had to arrive at a rally at New York's Coliseum on February 26 flanked by police protection.  Addressing the large audience, he made clear that he'd come to savage X, not to praise or bury him. 

Malcolm X was a controversial figure.  Whereas Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent methods have earned him almost universal admiration from America (those who fight the old order, anyway), X was a militant Afro-American.  It was only recently that his attitude toward Whites began to soften, the result of a pilgrimage to Mecca, which he shared with many light-skinned Muslims.  Nevertheless, there is no question that the war for civil rights has claimed one of its most important generals. 

As Black Americans prepare for a freedom march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the cynic in me wonders who will be next.

Cheering News

In recent months, that kind of a downer headline would segue easily, if dishearteningly, into a piece on how the latest Analog was a disappointment.  Thankfully, the magazine is on an upswing, and the March 1965 Analog, last of the "bedsheet" sized isues, is one of the best in a long while.


by John Schoenherr

The Twenty Lost Years of Solid-State Physics, by Theodore L. Thomas

Theodore L. Thomas takes a break from his rather lousy F&SF science vignettes to talk about the patenting of the first transistor.  Apparently, a fellow named Lilienfeld worked out the theory long before Shockley et. al., filing a patent as early as 1930!  Yet, Lilienfeld never tried to build the thing, and the invention had no effect on the world save for complicating the filing of later patents by others.  Sad, to be sure, although Lilienfeld had a prolific career otherwise, and I'm given to understand that materials technology was not sufficiently advanced to make the device back then anyway.

Still, it makes you wonder what other inventions lie buried at the patent office, lacking a vital something to bring them into common use.

Four stars.

The Case of the Paradoxical Invention, by Richard P. McKenna

Speaking of inventions that haven't found their era, McKenna offers up a motor powered by the stream of radioactive particles from a decaying source.  The problem is, it appears to be both physically possible and impossible simultaneously.

The math is over my head, and probably over the head of most of Analog's readers, too.

Two stars.

The Iceman Goeth, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

Andrew Coe is an iceman.  Years ago, he had his emotions wiped clean, both punishment and societal protection, for Coe had murdered an ex-lover for unfaithfulness.  Now he makes a living with a clairvoyant and telepathy act — except it's no act.  He's the real deal. 

It appears nothing will change the colorless unending cycle of work and sleep, but outside Coe's harshly circumscribed life, the city he resides in is slowly going mad.  Psychotic breaks followed by motive-less murders and suicides have been steadily on the rise.  The police are at wits end as to their cause until a scientists pinpoints their origin to an unexploded dementia bomb, dropped in a war 50 years before. 

To find the thing, Coe will have to have to use his full mental powers, only accessible if he gets back his emotions.

There is a five star story here, one where the drama resides in the decision to restore Coe to his former self.  Coe is a killer; is it worth it unleash one madman on the world to stop a hundred?

The problem is, that's not how McIntosh plays it.  Instead, Coe simply finds the bomb, receives a pardon, gets a new girl, and everyone lives happily ever after.  No mention is made of his past crimes.  We never learn about the woman he killed.  If anything, McIntosh almost seems to excuse Coe's act as forgivable given the circumstances.

Deeply dissatisfying, but God, what potential.  Three stars.

(Have we seen this concept of the iceman before?  It seems awfully familiar.)

Balanced Ecology, by James H. Schmitz


by Dean West

The McIntosh is followed by a tale as delightful as the prior story was disappointing.  On the planet Wrake, the ecosystem is uniquely interdependent.  Among the groves of diamondwood trees reside the skulking slurps, whose primary prey are the ambulatory tumbleweeds, whose seeds are tilled by the subterranean and invisible "clean-up squad".  Other denizens are the monkey-like humbugs, with an annoying tendency to mockingbird human expressions, and the giant tortoise-like mossbacks, who sleep for years at a time in the center of the forests.

Ilf and Auris Cholm are pre-teen owners of one of these woods, heir to a modest fortune thanks to their well-moderated timbering operation.  When greedy off-worlders want to effect a hostile takeover for a clearcutting scheme, do a pair of kids stand a chance?  Not without a little help, as it turns out…

I really really liked this story, almost an ecological fable.  The only bumpy spot, I felt, was the part where the villain revealed his evil scheme in a bit too much of a stereotypical, if metaphorical, cackle.

Four stars.

The Wrong House, by Max Gunther


by Adolph Brotman

Out in the suburbs, they're building giant subdivisions with rows of handsome houses on gently curving lanes.  Many find them charming, but others find them unsettling — like the young woman who confesses (in The Wrong House) to her engineer husband that her home seems somehow "unfriendly."  To his credit, the man takes his spouse seriously and determines to understand why the air duct pipe is warm instead of cool, and just what all those strange electronics installed in their attic might be…

Another good story, maybe a little too pat, but well executed.  Four stars.

The Prophet of Dune (Part 3 of 5), by Frank Herbert


by John Schoenherr

Now we come to the centerpiece of the issue, the sweeping serial scheduled across the first five months of 1965.  In this latest installment, Paul Atreides and his mother, the Bene Gesserit Lady Jessica, fulfill prophecy and become spiritual leaders of the Fremen, the indigenes of the desert planet Arrakis.  Meanwhile, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, usurper of the Atreides fiefdom on Arrakis, schemes to parlay his control of the geriatric spice melange into rulership of the entire galactic Empire.

There were times when the immense scope and obvious attention to detail threatened to elevate Dune into four star, even classic territory.  And then Frank Herbert's fat fingers got in their own way and gave us such classic passages as this:

Paul heard hushed voices come down the line: "It's true then–Liet is dead."
Liet, Paul thought.  Then: Chani, daughter of Liet.  The pieces fell together in his mind.  Liet was the Fremen name of the Planetologist, Kynes.

Paul looked at Farok, asked: "Is it the Liet known as Kynes?"

"There is only one Liet," Farok said.

Paul turned, stared at the robed back of a Fremen in front of him.  Then Liet-Kynes is dead, he thought.

I guess Kynes is dead.  He's also called Liet.  I thought.

How about this one:

"This" — [Baron Harkonnen] gestured at the evidence of the struggle in the bed-chamber–"was foolishness.  I do not reward foolishness."

Get to the point, you old fool! Feyd-Ruatha thought.

"You think of me as an old fool," the Baron said.  "I must dissuade you of that."

Fool me thrice, shame on Herbert.  The third-person omniscient/everywhere/everyone vantage is clumsy; a better writer could go without such exposition and switching of viewpoints, instead saving it, perhaps, for the times when Paul goes into one of his prescient fugues.

But I do want to keep reading, if for nothing else than to know what happens.

Three stars.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

For some reason, Analog's editor, John W. Campbell Jr., decided to include a set of homilies from the inside of Old Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, dated 1692.  At first, my atheistic side bridled, but I ultimately found the platitudes refreshing and timeless.

No stars for this entry, for it's not really a tale nor an article.

The Legend of Ernie Deacon, by William F. Temple


by Dean West

Last up, we follow the exploits of Arthur, captain of a two-place merchant ship plying the lanes between Earth and Alpha Centauri.  It's a twelve year trip, reduced to a subjective 18 months thanks to time dilation.  It's still a long time, but Art finds it lucrative and satisfying, trading full-sense movies called "Teo's" for the life-saving medicine, varos.  Legend is a philosophical piece, discussing the morality of preferring a vicarious life to a "real" one (and of facilitating the addiction thereto), and also evaluating the reality of fictional creations whose existence comes to shadow that of their creators (e.g. Holmes over Doyle).

Good, thoughtful stuff, with an ending that can be viewed as mystical or simply sentimental.

Four stars.

Summing Up

The counter to tragedy is hope, and the latest Analog gives me a lot of hope — that the magazine that ushered in the Golden Age of science fiction will rise to former glory (some may argue that the magazine never fell; it has maintained the highest SF circulation rates for decades.) In fact, Analog is the month's highest-rated mag, at 3.3 stars, for the first time in years.

Fantastic followed closely at 3.2; all the rest of the mags were under water:

Amazing and New Worlds both merited 2.9 stars (but the former made John Boston smile, so that's something).  Science-Fantasy scored a sad 2.6.  Fantasy and Science Fiction was a lousy 2.3.  IF, at 2 stars, was so bad that I'm not sorry to stop reviewing it; that harsh task now falls on the shoulders of one David Levinson, whom we shall meet next month.

And February does end with one more bit of tragedy: out of 45 fictional pieces published in magazines this month, only one was written by a woman.

Here's hoping March offers better news on that front, and others.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy

[January 6, 1965] Plus C'est La Même Chose (February 1965 Galaxy)

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[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine!  We work for egoboo…]


by Gideon Marcus

Things in Flux

I read an article yesterday about how America was retiring all of its first-generation nuclear missiles, the hundreds of Thors, Jupiters, Atlas Ds, Es, Fs, and Titan Is.  It's astonishing when you think how short their operational lifespan was.  The first Atlas D base came online in 1959; the first Titans were activated in 1962!  Yet there they go, replaced by just two types: the solid-fueled Minutemen and the liquid-fueled Titan IIs, both of which can be launched straight from atom-proof silos. 

It reminds me of the big science fiction magazine boom at the end of the 1940s.  After the War, Amazing and Astounding were among the few genre mags remaining in publication after the big pulp bust.  But around the turn of the decade, Fantasy and Science Fiction came about, and New Worlds and Galaxy…and the floodgates were opened.  By 1953, there were some forty magazines in more-or-less regular production.

Well, there wasn't enough talent to fill those pages, and probably not enough readers either (I remember struggling to keep up with seven mags in 1957), and by the end of the '50s, we were back down to six.  That number has grown a bit since then, but it's nothing like the old "glory days".

Even the magazines that still exist have changed substantially.  Astounding changed its name to Analog and went "slick".  F&SF is now on its fourth editor, and the quality of its contents is markedly diminished since last decade.  Amazing and its '50s born sister, Fantastic, not only got new management under Cele Goldsmith, but she recently got married and changed her name to Cele Lalli!

But Galaxy, my favorite since its establishment in October 1950, seems virtually unchanged.  Sure, it went to bimonthly in 1959, it's a little thicker, a little more expensive.  Fred Pohl, one of the magazine's primary contributors, now runs the show.

Nevertheless, Willy Ley still does the science column, the contents are still more thoughtful than technical (though less toward the extreme than F&SF), and the names remain familiar: Cordwainer Smith.  J.T. McIntosh.  James H. Schmitz.  Robert Silverberg (though he was in short-pants when the magazine first started.)

And quality-wise, I think it's still, pound-for-pound, the best sf mag on the market.  Is it perfect?  Hardly, but always worth a subscription.  Check out the February 1965 edition, and tell me if you don't agree.

An Island of Stability


A fascinating cover by newcomer "Wright" — it's not connected with any of the stories, as is common for Galaxy.

On the Storm Planet, by Cordwainer Smith

The neat thing about Smith's Instrumentality series, detailing an odd far future, is that it has been around long enough to have a near infinite number of plot threads.  In Storm Planet, we are reintroduced to Casher O'Neill, an exile from the planet Mizzer, who had previously searched for aid and arms on a planet of jewels.  Now, he has come to Henriada, a tempest of a world where cyclones run amok, and where once 600 million lived, just 40,000 remain — deterred by economic failure in the distant past. 


by Virgil Finlay

Upon arriving, Casher is offered a powerful cruiser by the planet's Administrator.  The price?  Casher must kill a girl.

Not just any girl.  She is an underperson, a rightsless animal shaped into human guise to be a servant.  Yet, somehow she is the most powerful person on the planet, someone who has resisted countless assassination attempts.

Who T'ruth really is, and why she holds such sway, are the central mysteries of this excellent novella, to which I find I must award five stars.

A Flask of Fine Arcturan, by C. C. MacApp

An interstellar whiskey company has a rather spectacular failure when the aliens responsible for the bottling go on an unplanned jag.  A cautionary tale against poor interdepartmental company communications, this epistolary is something of a throwaway.  Barely three stars.

Forerunners of the Planetarium, by Willy Ley

If you're of my generation, you grew up during the great planetarium boom, when every educational facility of merit was getting its own interior star chamber.  And over the last two decades, they've gotten cheap and portable enough that they're practically everywhere now.

Willy Ley does his usual competent job of explaining the origin of the planetarium and its ancestors, the orrery, the armilla, and the astronomical clock.

Four stars.

The Sixth Palace, by Robert Silverberg

The greatest treasure in the galaxy is guarded by a clever robot who, sphinxlike, demands correct answers to its questions.  Two men believe they have an ace up their sleeve that will let them prevail where others have failed: a little computer that knows everything.

Can it be that simple?

There's not much to this tale, but it's told very well.  Four stars, I think.

The Man Who Killed Immortals, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gary Morrow

McIntosh has already written about immortality, in his excellent Immortality for Some from five years ago.  This time, he adds an interesting twist.

Several hundred years from now, a costly operation enables those who undergo it to live forever — unaging, unchanging.  But the downside is enormous: they are unable to heal from any wounds.  These "elsies" (for LC or Living Corpse) accumulate great wealth, but they mostly use it to cocoon themselves in exquisite safety.

But someone who calls himself The Avenger, wants to change the status quo.  He's begun demanding millions of dollars of elsies lest he slice their vulnerable skin.

A fairly unremarkable whodunnit, it lacks the deep interest of his last story of immortals.  Three stars.

Harry Protagonist, Brain-Drainer, by Richard Wilson

Mr. Protagonist sells mental taps on four astronauts so that the American population can vicariously experience the first Mars Landing.  Unforseen events interfere.

This joke tale falls pretty flat, though I did appreciate this line:

The Marsbound astronauts…each had an I.Q. no lower than 130 and no higher than 146 (the NASA director's I.Q. was 147).

Two stars.

Fin's Funeral, by Donald H. Menzel

Frederick I. "Fin" Nolan is a brilliant physicist who passes away at the age of 68, just after coming up with a theoretical way to reverse the passage of time (something to do with Steady State expansion of the universe).  His will includes the curious request that his coffin be left sealed, and that, at his funeral, the dials on it be set just so.

I'm pretty sure you can guess what happens.  It's a pretty prosaic story, the sort of thing I'd expect of a first-timer who hasn't been reading our genre for decades.

(Interestingly, I understand the fellow is actually a brilliant theoretical astronomer — his nonfiction is probably pretty good; Funeral isn't badly written, just novice plot material.  Also, I'll put good money down that that the Steady Staters are going to lose to the Big Bangers.  Any takers?

Two stars.

Planet of Forgetting, by James H. Schmitz


by Jack Gaughan

Last up is a piece by an old pro.  Schmitz is inclined to storytell through exposition, which suits this first-person thriller.  It starts intriguingly enough, with a special agent awakening on a wilderness planet with only gradually returning memory of how he got there.  The novelette then meanders through a workmanlike adventure story of no particular interest, but the interesting ending brings things back into three-star territory. 

All's Right in the Galaxy

As you can see, Galaxy is amazingly consistent.  Any of these stories would have been suited to any of the issues over the last 15 years of publication.  I'd worry about stagnation, but with a 3.5 star aggregate rating, I don't mind things remaining as they are for a while.

Analog and F&SF, however…they could afford a little change!




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Book, Magazine

[November 7, 1964] Landslides and Damp Squibs (December 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In Your Heart, You Knew He Was Wrong

It's been a month for dramatic political change.  In the Soviet Union, Khruschev was deposed after eight years in power, and the British Labor party came to the fore after thirteen years in the wilderness.  And in the United States, the reactionary politics of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater have been loudly repudiated: Lyndon Johnson has been elected President in the biggest landslide in recent memory.

On his coattails, Democrats have ascended to high offices around the country.  In the Senate, Robert Kennedy beat incumbent Ken Keating for the open New York seat, Joseph D. Tydings trounced incumbent James Glenn Beall in Maryland, and Joseph M. Montoya smashed appointed incumbent Edwin L. Mechem in New Mexico.  Only in California did former hoofer George Murphy win against the Democrat, Pierre Salinger, in something of an upset.  What's next for the Golden State?  Ronald Reagan as Governor?!

And in the House, Democrats picked up a whopping 37 seats.  This means that the party of Jackson and Roosevelt (#2) has not only the White House, but veto-proof control of both houses of Congress.  It's likely that The Great Society will continue unabated through the next two years.

Even in the science fiction world, revolutions are happening.  Avram Davidson is leaving his post at F&SF (thank goodness), and Cele Goldsmith, at the helm of Fantastic and Amazing, has gotten married. 

But with this month's IF, editor Fred Pohl's neglected third daughter, things are not only business as usual, they're a little worse…

The Enemy is Us


by Gray Morrow

When Time Was New, by Robert F. Young

We begin with a tale of time travel.  Howard Carpenter, a native of 2156 A.D. Earth, has gone back to the late Cretaceous in his "Triceratank", designed to fit in with the Mesozoic fauna.  His mission is to find out why there is a modern human skeleton lying in 80 million year old strata.

But once there, he finds two children, Marcy and Skip, who are on the run from kidnappers.  But these kids aren't time travelers — they're actually space travelers from a contemporary (to the far past) Martian civilization!


by Gray Morrow

Thus ensues an adventure whose style and subject matter would make for a fine kiddy comic or Danny Dunn adventure, but which is somewhat jarring for a grown-up mag.  Also, I find it highly improbable that a race of humans identical to those on Earth (specifically, the blonde, blue-eyed kind) would arise on Mars, and 80 million years ago, no less.  A slightly lesser quibble is the appearance of Brontosaurs; they were long extinct by the Cretaceous period. 

And then there's the relationship between the 32 year old Carpenter and the 11 year old, however precocious, Marcy.  It's all very innocent and largely on Marcy's part. I can't say more without spoiling the story, but in the end, we get a situation not unlike the reveal in The Twilight Zone episode, The Fugitive.  I didn't mind it all that much, but some may find it off-putting.

Anyway, I'm sure John Boston would give the story one star, two at best.  But Robert Young, even at his worst, is still a pretty good author, and despite the story's flaws, I did want to know what was coming next.

So, a low three. 

The Coldest Place, by Larry Niven

Niven, a brand new author, takes us to the coldest place in the universe, home to a most unique kind of lifeform.  The kicker, revealing the setting, is interesting, as are the various concepts Niven introduces in the piece.  On the other hand, there's really a bit too many ideas here for the short space allotted, so the story doesn't really go anywhere.

I have a suspicion that, given proper time to develop, this author may be one to watch. 

Three stars.

At the Top of the World, by J. T. McIntosh


by Nodel

Two hundred years after the last war, Gallery 71, deep underground, prepares for Ascension Day.  What awaits them on the surface?  Is there even a sky?  Or all the legends just mythical doubletalk?

It's a good setting for a story, not dissimilar to the author's previous 200 Years to Christmas, but the ending is both a fizzle and a letdown.  Also, I could done with less of the author's unconscious sexism.  No father admirers his daughter's "exquisite curves" and I would have expected a greater role for women in the piece than two teenagers of little consequence.

Another low three.

Pig in a Pokey, by R. A. Lafferty

Lafferty, whose middle name would be whimsy if it didn't start with an A., offers up a duel of wits between a porcine head-collector and the human who would claim the former's asteroid.

Neither foul nor fine (which makes it "fair", I guess), it's over before you know it.

Three stars.

The Hounds of Hell (Part 2 of 2), by Keith Laumer


by Ed Emshwiller

The bulk of the issue is taken up with the conclusion to Keith Laumer's latest novel.  Last time, John Brandeis was on the run from a horde of demonic dog things who assumed human guise and filched human brains.  Brandeis went so far as to have his body highly cyberneticized so that he could fight the hell hounds on an even footing.  With the help of the feeble-minded sailor, Joel, he managed to give them the slip.

But not for long.  Upon arriving in America, Brandeis' worst fears are realized: the aliens have taken over key positions of authority, probably throughout the world.  Worse, when he lures one of them to a remote spot in Colorado, in the hopes of ambushing and interrogating one of the invaders, Brandeis is, in turn, ambushed and killed.

And when he wakes up, it's in the body of a 70 foot tank, waging a war against other brain-run tanks on the Moon!


by Ed Emshwiller

Hounds of Hell has a lot of promising threads.  It could have been an exploration of what it is to be human in an increasingly inhuman body.  The robot tank angle, brilliantly explored in prior stories, could have been developed as a sort of prequel to those pieces.

The problem is, we never learn a damned thing about Brandeis, nor do we really care about the world that the Hell Hounds have taken over.  The only character with any substance is Joel, and he plays a minor role.  In the end, Hounds is a series of action scenes that aren't even up to the author's normally decent standard.

Two stars; two and a half for the book.

The Results

IF used to be Galaxy's experimental twin.  It was a magazine with rawer authors and more outré stories.  Now that Pohl has to spread his material three ways, IF seems to be the dumping ground for the least worthy stuff.

This month, at least, it wasn't worth the 50 cent cover price.  A poor issue to accompany the Christmas subscription renewal drive!

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




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 16, 1964] The Waiting Game (November 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Patience is a Virtue

If you're like me, you look forward to the arrival of the latest issues of your favorite magazines at the local newsstand. You carefully calculate the exact day they'll show up and get there ahead of time, eager to meet the delivery person who loads all the publications off the truck. There they are, ready for the metal wires that hold them together in bundles to come off so they can go on display.

You may understand my consternation, then, when Worlds of Tomorrow failed to make an appearance on the scheduled date last month. Since it's a relatively new magazine, I figured that, like so many other science fiction publications, it was out of business.

Imagine my delight when I saw it again, thirty days later. Why the delay? Let me hand the microphone to editor Frederik Pohl, who can explain the situation better than I can, and who will also offer us a preview of the next issue.

Thanks for clearing that up, Fred. Now let me take a look at the contents of the current issue.

Better Late Than Never


Cover art by George Schelling

Killer!, by Robert Ray


Illustrations by Gray Morrow

Taking up one-third of the magazine is a novella by an author new to me. The gentleman with the gun, pictured above, is trained as an assassin by the taller man standing next to him, his half-brother. There is no love lost between the two. The intended target is the newly arisen dictator of a planet populated by very human aliens. (The only important difference between the two species is that the aliens are all short, light-skinned, and fair-haired. In this future, almost all human beings are tall, dark-haired, and have black or dark brown skin. Our antihero happens to be one of the rare persons who resemble the aliens.)

The agency for which the half-brothers work believes that the dictator poses a threat to Earth, even though his species does not yet have space travel. If that seems paranoid, well, so do nearly all the characters in this grim story.


The target.

The assassin's mission is to disguise himself as an alien and use a local weapon to kill the dictator, so Earth won't be blamed. What he doesn't know, but the reader does, is that the agency planted a hypnotic suggestion in his brain, so that he will kill himself immediately after the assassination.


Surfing down to the planet.

As soon as he arrives on the alien world, things go wrong. The dictator's forces are far more powerful and technologically advanced than the agency thought, thanks to the secret intervention of another species of alien. (They aren't quite so human, thank goodness, so we can keep track of who's doing what.)


The hero in typical form, about to knock out an innocent bystander.

What follows is an extended series of captures, escapes, chases, and violent battles. The protagonist, formerly ready to murder without qualms, slowly develops a conscience after he kills several aliens.


Take that, alien scum!

He eventually figures out that he's been set up as a sacrificial lamb, and tries to carry out his mission while staying alive. It all leads up to a very dark ending.

This is a fast-moving, action-packed spy adventure, with plenty of twists and turns in the plot. It's a quick read for its length, although some of the author's sentences are a little clumsy. The story's cynical view of espionage reminds me of last year's bestselling novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré, although I certainly wouldn't say it's as good. Worth reading, but not a classic by any means.

Three stars.

Natural History of the Kley, by Jerome Bixby

This mock article deals with microscopic intelligent beings who live on animal hairs. Humans only find out about them after they've been wiped out by a substance that kills all animal parasites on Earth. The mood changes from black comedy and satire to sheer silliness, as the author treats us to a series of groan-inducing puns. It's inoffensive, and not as bad as a Feghoot, but that's about the best I can say.

Two stars.

The Long Way, by A. Bertram Chandler and Susan Chandler


Illustration by Norman Nodel

A male space explorer and a female artist at a nudist colony, not quite romantically involved, meet a fellow who believes in dowsing. He's able to demonstrate the procedure successfully. (It seems that dowsing works better when you're naked.) Convinced that there's something to it, the spaceman does his own dowsing, in order to find a missing earring for the artist. Because the earring is shaped like a star, and the man is thinking about interstellar travel at the time, they wind up very far from home indeed. They are able to make their way back to Earth by doing some more dowsing, but things don't turn out the way they hope.

This collaboration between a well-known author and his more obscure wife isn't very convincing, as you can probably tell from the above synopsis. The theme of dowsing makes me wonder if it was intended for the pages of Analog. I think even John W. Campbell, Jr., would reject the premise as too unbelievable. The twist ending adds another layer of implausibility.

Two stars.

The Kicksters, by J. T. McIntosh


Illustrations by Gray Morrow

A group of thrill-seeking teenagers, the sons and daughters of the wealthy, play dangerous games of chicken to see who's the bravest. Their latest competition, as shown above, involves free-falling from a great height while wearing a jet pack. The trick is to turn on the jets at the last possible moment, in order to avoid being smashed into a pulp.

The boldest of the gang is a girl named Peach. Bored with risking her life in the usual ways, she decides on an even more hazardous prank. She and her boyfriend, who tries to convince her to drop the whole thing all the way through the story, travel to the Moon under false identities. She sneaks into the main jet of a spacecraft ready to return to Earth. The ship doesn't use the main jet until it's about to land, so she'll be able to survive inside a spacesuit. The joke is to force the ship to turn around and land on the Moon again. (It doesn't need to use the main jet in the lesser gravity of the satellite.)


Peach, approaching the ship unseen.

The captain of the spacecraft hates spoiled brats, particularly female ones. Since he doesn't have absolute proof that anyone is inside the main jet, even though Peach's boyfriend, as planned, lets everybody know, he refuses to delay his journey to Earth. The second-in-command, desperate to save the girl's life, comes up with various plans, but all of them prove to be impossible. It seems as if Peach is doomed.

The sense that the laws of physics are conspiring to kill the heroine reminds me of the famous story The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. The story creates genuine suspense as to whether the protagonist is going to live or die. I'll admit that the situation is a bit contrived, but I have to give the author credit for thinking up all possible objections to the premise, and answering them in a logical fashion. Peach, although definitely foolhardy and selfish, also manages to be appealing in some ways. The captain and the second-in-command also turn out to be more complex characters than they might seem at first.

Four stars.

The Carson Effect, by Richard Wilson


Illustration by Norman Nodel

At first, this story seems to be nothing but a series of unrelated vignettes. A newspaper reporter struggles over the writing of an article about something that hasn't happened yet. A man, desperate for money to pay for his wife's operation, makes a feeble attempt at robbing a bank, only to have the teller give him much more cash than he demands, without a word of argument. A woman nervously asks her employer for a small amount of money to make up for the taxi she had to take to perform an errand, and winds up getting hundreds of dollars and the rest of the day off. A six-year-old boy thinks he can buy an extremely expensive brooch for his mother from Tiffany's, and the clerk gladly sells it to him for one dollar. The President of the United States resigns his office, turning it over to the Vice President, who is obviously unfit for the job.

We return to the reporter and discover the reason for these strange events, which I won't reveal here. I also won't talk about the ironic ending, which changes everything that happened before. Suffice to say that the story looks at a very big event from several very small perspectives, and does so in an effective manner.

Four stars.

The Fruit of the Tree, by Lester del Rey

This issue's non-fiction article speculates about the possibility of altering the genetic characteristics of living organisms. By 1980, the author believes, we'll be able to produce fruits and vegetables that will stay edible, without refrigeration, for many years, and even have flavors previously unknown. We'll be able to get edible nuts, maple and/or latex sap, and lumber, better than any used today, from a single tree. New kinds of animals will appear, supplying carnivores with novel cuts of meat. (Vegetarians, like myself, will have plants that taste exactly like meat. I'm not sure I want that.) Scientists will create replacement organs, grown from scratch, for those suffering from disease.

The author lets his imagination run wild, coming up with a lot of ideas for science fiction stories, if nothing else. I doubt I'll see all these wonders a mere sixteen years from now, but I could be wrong. Even if it's hard to believe everything this essay says, it makes for interesting reading.

Three stars.

Somewhere in Space, by C. C. MacApp


Illustrations by John Giunta

Some time before this story begins, people found alien teleportation technology on Mars. Since then, it's been used routinely, with few problems. Up until now, that is. Without explanation, folks without close relatives or friends disappear into thin air after using the teleportation device. The protagonist is a technician who accepts the dangerous but extremely lucrative assignment of figuring out what's going on. Not only does he know as much about the technology as any human being can, he's another loner, expected to vanish when he goes inside the machine.

He winds up on an unknown planet, naked and without any of his equipment. There to meet him is a very human alien, a young woman whose only differences from a human female are the fact that she has no thumbs, and that her skin is an odd color. She's one of the slaves that another group of aliens kidnap from all over, including Earth. (Our hero is very lucky that the slavers aren't around to grab him. They happen to be at some kind of celebration, getting drunk.)

With the help of the woman, the protagonist gets away from the slave facility, facing the challenge of surviving on a strange, alien world. Things get really weird when he reaches a mountain, which is really an ancient, all-powerful being, able to take on any form it pleases.


The ball of light the mountain uses to communicate with the man.

After many adventures, and falling in love with the alien woman, the hero battles the slavers against seemingly impossible odds, using only simple weapons like rocks and wooden spears. Can he possibly defeat the Bad Guys, return to Earth, and win the Girl? Well, maybe with a little help from a deus ex machina, in the form of a god-like mountain-being.


Chaos at the slave camp.

You might be able to tell from my tone that I found it hard to take this wild adventure seriously, although it's certainly not intended as a comedy. The nonstop mishaps that the hero faces kept me reading, even if I didn't believe a second of it. The mountain, alien, god, or whatever you want to call it, is the most interesting character. Although it reminds me of the lead novella in some ways, it's got a much more optimistic mood.

Three stars.

Worth Waiting For?

So, did the delay in receiving this issue have any effect on my reaction to it? Did I have high expectations that it failed to meet? Or, did I assume that the extra month would sour me on the magazine, so that I wouldn't be able to fully enjoy it?

None of the above, really. This is a typical issue. A couple of decent, if not great, adventure yarns; a couple of good stories; a couple of poor stories; and a so-so article. Good enough for half a buck, I'd say.

I guess biding my time until it appeared paid off. It's better than, say, waiting around for somebody who never shows up.

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 25, 1964] Combat Zones (September 1964 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Wars Near and Far

The involvement of the United States in the conflict in Vietnam reached a turning point this month, with the signing of a joint resolution of Congress by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on August 10.


Doesn't look like much, for a piece of paper sending the nation into an undeclared war.

In response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 2, when three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the United States destroyer Maddox, the resolution grants broad powers to the President to use military force in the region. All members of Congress except Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, and Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York voted for the resolution. (Morse and Gruening voted against it, while Powell only voted present during roll call. Perhaps that was a wise move on his part.)

The name of the Navy vessel involved in the battle reminds me of the tragic domestic conflict in the USA over racial segregation. That's because restaurant owner and unsuccessful political candidate Lester Maddox shut down his Pickrick diner rather than obey a judicial order to integrate it. Let's hope this is the last we ever hear from this fellow.


This is a recently released recording of a news conference he gave in July defending his refusal to serve black customers. Please don't buy it.

The Battle of the Bands

With all that going on, it's a relief to turn to less violent forms of combat. After withdrawing from the top of the American popular music charts for a couple of months, the Beatles launched an all-out assault with the release of their first feature film, an amusing romp called A Hard Day's Night.


Wilfrid Brambell is very funny in the role of Paul's grandfather.

Of course, the title song shot up to Number One.


I should have known better than to think we'd seen the last of these guys.

Not to be outdone, crooner Dean Martin, no fan of rock 'n' roll, drove back the British invaders with a new version of the 1947 ballad Everybody Loves Somebody, proving that teenagers aren't the only ones buying records these days by replacing the Fab Four at the top.


The Hit Version; as opposed to the forgotten version he sang on the radio in 1948.

His victory was short-lived, however, as a three-woman army entered the fray. Just a few days ago, The Supremes replaced him with their Motown hit Where Did Our Love Go?


I assume he does not refer to Dean Martin.

Order of Battle

The stories in the latest issue of Fantastic feature all kinds of warfare, both literal and metaphoric.


Cover art by Robert Adragna

Planet of Change, by J. T. McIntosh


Interior illustrations also by Adragna

We begin our military theme with a courtroom drama, in the tradition of The Caine Mutiny. This time, of course, the court-martial involves the star-faring members of an all-male Space Navy rather than sailors.

Before the story begins, the crew of a starship refused to land on a particular planet, despite the direct orders of the captain. This seems reasonable, as previous expeditions to the mysterious world disappeared. The mutineers obeyed their commander in all other ways.

During the trial of the second-in-command, who subtly persuaded the others to rebel, the prosecuting attorney investigates the defendant's background. It turns out that records about his past life and service record were conveniently destroyed. Under questioning, the strange truth about the planet comes out.

At this point, I thought the officer was going to be exposed as a shape-shifting alien in human form. I have to give McIntosh credit for coming up with something more original. The secret of the planet is a very strange one. Without giving too much away, let's just say that previous voyages to the place didn't really vanish.

Because the story takes place almost entirely at the trial, much of it is taken up by a long flashback narrated by the defendant. This has a distancing effect, which makes the imaginative plot a little less effective. The motive of the second-in-command, and others like him, may seem peculiar, even distasteful. As if the author knew this, he has the prosecutor react in the same way. Overall, it's worth reading once, but I doubt it will ever be regarded as a classic.

Three stars.

Beyond the Line, by William F. Temple


Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

A war can take place inside one's self also. The main character in this sentimental tale is a woman who is well aware that her asymmetrical face and body are unattractive. After a childhood spent escaping into fairy tales, and later writing her own, she decides to face the harsh truth of reality. Just as she does so, however, a rose appears out of nowhere in her lonely bedroom. It is asymmetrical also, and fades more quickly than a normal flower.

So far this reads like a romantic fantasy, but the explanation for the rose involves concepts from science fiction. Some readers may find it too much of a tearjerker, but I enjoyed it. It reminded me, in some ways, of Robert F. Young and his reworking of old stories, mixed with his emotional love stories. It's very well written, and is likely to pull a few heartstrings.

Four stars.

Fire Sale, by Laurence M. Janifer

Back to the world of armies and soldiers in this variation on one of the oldest themes in fantasy literature. The Devil appears to an important American officer. His Soviet counterpart is willing to sacrifice a large number of his own people to Satan, in exchange for killing the American. The Devil asks the officer if he can come up with a better offer. The solution to the dilemma is a grim one, which could only happen in this modern age.

This mordant little fable gets right to the point, without excess verbiage. You may be a little tired of this kind of story, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

Three stars.

When the Idols Walked (Part 2 of 2), by John Jakes


Illustrated by Emsh

It would be tedious to repeat the previous adventures of the mighty barbarian Brak, as related in last issue. The magazine has to take up four pages in its synopsis of Part One. Suffice to say that he faces the wrath of an evil sorceress and the invading army following her. The story eventually builds up to a full scale war between the Bad Guys and the Good Guys, but first our hero has to survive other deadly challenges.

In our last episode, as the narrator of an old-time serial might say, Brak wound up in an underground crematorium, from which nobody has ever returned. In a manner that involves a great deal of good luck, he finds a way out, leading to a rushing river. Next comes an encounter that could be edited out without changing the plot. Brak fights a three-headed avian monster, whose heads grow back as soon as they are chopped off. As you can see, this is stolen directly from Greek myth, and the author even calls the creature a bird-hydra.

Once he escapes from the beast, he finds the city of the Good Guys under attack from without, by the war machines of the Bad Guys, as well as from within, by the giant walking statue controlled by the sorceress. A heck of a lot of fighting and bloodshed follow, until Brak gets to the mechanical controls operating another giant statue, as foreshadowed in Part One.

Jake can certainly write vividly, and the action never stops for a second. The story is really just one damned thing after another, and certain things that showed up in the first part never come back. What happened to the strangling ghost? Whatever became of the magician who fought the sorceress? This short novel is never boring, but derivative and loosely plotted.

Two stars.

A Vision of the King, by David R. Bunch

Like many stories from a unique writer, this grim tale is difficult to describe. In brief, the narrator watches a figure approach with three dark boats. They talk, and the narrator refuses to go with him. As far as I can tell, it's about death, one of the author's favorite themes. It's not a pleasant thing to read, but I can't deny that the style has a certain power.

Two stars.

Hear and Obey, by Jack Sharkey


Illustrated by George Schelling

War can be waged with words instead of weapons, of course. In this version of the familiar tale of a genie granting wishes, a man purchases Aladdin's lamp from one of those weird little shops that show up in fantasy fiction so often. The genie takes everything the fellow says literally. (It reminds me of the old Lenny Bruce joke about the guy who says to the genie "Make me a malted.")

After a lot of frustrated conversation, the man finally gets a million dollars in cash. Since we have to have a twist ending, the fellow says something that the genie takes literally, with bad results. The tone of the story changes suddenly from light comedy to gruesome horror, which is disconcerting.

Two stars.

2064, or Thereabouts, by Darryl R. Groupe

Let me put on my deerstalker hat and do a little detective work here. Take a look at the author's name. Remind you of anything? Well, there's a first name starting with D, the middle initial R, and a last name that is almost like group, which means a collection of objects, just like the word bunch.

Even before reading the story, we can guess that this is David R. Bunch again, under a different name to weakly disguise his second appearance. Once we get started on it, the style and theme are unmistakable.

The setting is a dystopian future full of people whose bodies have been almost entirely replaced by machines. An artist visits, eager to do a portrait of the most extreme example of the new form of humanity, with only the absolute minimum of flesh left. Their encounter leads to a grim ending.

The plot is less coherent than I've made it sound. Like the other story by Bunch in this issue, it holds a certain eerie fascination for the reader, even as it confuses and disturbs.

Two stars.

Mopping Up the Battlefield

With the exception of a single good story, this was yet another issue full of mediocrity and disappointment. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because of the looming threat of global warfare abroad, and a new civil war at home. I should probably relax and watch a little television to get my mind off it, even if I have to put up with those lousy commercials.

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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

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

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by Gideon Marcus

Open Your Golden Gate

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

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


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

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

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

Plowshare Today, by Edward C. Walterscheid

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

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

Stuck, by John Berryman


by Steven Verenicin

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

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

Three stars.

Dolphin's Way, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Leo Summers

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

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

Snap Judgment, by J. T. McIntosh


by Leo Summers

And then we hit the bottom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


by John Schoenherr

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

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

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

Mustn't Touch, by Poul Anderson


by Michael Arndt

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

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

Three stars. 

I, BEM, by Leigh Richmond and Walt Richmond


by Michael Arndt

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

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

Doing the Math

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

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

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

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

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Opening Ceremonies

Howdy, sports fans!

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


The first day, and already the scoreboard is broken

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

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

Batter Up!


cover by Gray Morrow

On Messenger Mountain, by Gordon R. Dickson

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

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


by Gray Morrow

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

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

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

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

Four stars.

The Twerlik, by Jack Sharkey

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars.

Short Course in Button Pushing, by Joseph Wesley

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

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

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

Three stars.

Stay Out of Our Time!, by Willard Marsh


by Nodel

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

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

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

Two stars.

Lucifer, by Roger Zelazny

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

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

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

Four stars.

The Great Doomed Ship, by J. T. McIntosh


by Gaughan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two stars.

The Realized Man, by Norman Spinrad

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

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

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

Three stars.

What the Dead Men Say, by Philip K. Dick


by Virgil Finlay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five stars.

The Box Score

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

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Magazine

[February 21, 1964] For the fans (March 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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[Due to an oversight (clearly!), Galactic Journey was not included on Locus' Awards Ballot this year.  If you're a fan of the Journey, we be grateful if you'd fill us in under Fanzine!]


by Gideon Marcus

A New Leaf

Today's special birthday (mine!) edition of the Journey is for the fans.  It seems F&SF has been running a three-part series on current (as of 1964) fandom, and it occurred to me it might be fun to spend a little time on the authors who appear in this month's issue.  I also want to take the effort to show the context of each writer's work.  This is in response to the letter of one of our readers who made me realize I can be a bit harsh (even in jest) on a story.  The fact is that writing is hard, and even the worst stories that get printed are usually, though not always, better than most unpublished work. 

Which is not to say that anything like Garrett's Queen Bee will ever get a pass, but I'm going to try to be a bit nicer.  I will, however, never ask John Boston to change his style; when Amazing is bad, well, you'll know…

The Issue at Hand


This picture, by Mel Hunter, is almost worth 40 cents by itself

Automatic Tiger, by Kit Reed

Kit Reed is one of the writers featured on the Journey whom I am honored to call "friend."  She began publishing fiction in 1958, and she is (so far as I know) an F&SF exclusive — and what fortune that is for the magazine!  Her work is "soft" SF, where it is SF at all, but since her rough start, Ms. Reed has been a reliably above-average contributor.  In particular, her To Lift a Ship, almost a Zenna Henderson The People story, got my nomination for the Galactic Star one year.  Sadly, Kit has moved away and left no forwarding address, so our correspondence has come to an end. 

Nevertheless, I can still enjoy her fiction.  Tiger, the lead tale in this issue, is a vivid piece about Benjamin, a nebbishy fellow who acquires a mechanical tiger, which instantly bonds to his master.  Just the knowledge that he is the proud owner of such a creature fills the man with confidence, and he quickly rises in social stature and success.  His downfall is an expensive woman and hubris' inevitable companion, nemesis.

It's not SF at all, nor does it make a great deal of sense, but as a fairy tale, it's worthy reading.  I have only one significant issue with the story, but it's a central one: I was disappointed that Benjamin ends the story roughly the same as how he started, though now aware of what he's lost.  It's a bit like the short story, Flowers for Algernon, except without the inspiring finish.  A strong three stars for this flawed jewel.

Sacheverell, by Avram Davidson

More beard than man, Avram Davidson has been a big name in the field since the mid-50s, charming science fictioneers with his sometimes moody, sometimes effervescent short stories.  Right around 1962, when he took over the editorship of F&SF, his writing became a bit overwrought and self-indulgent.  It's gotten to the point that I generally approach his byline with trepidation (and his editorial blurbs that come before the stories in his mag have gotten bad again, too — thankfully, he's stopped bothering to preface Asimov, at least). 

Sacheverell does nothing to improve his reputation.  It's about a sapient circus monkey who has been kidnapped, rescued in the end by his carny companions.  The story left little impression on me while I read it and none after, such that I had to reread it to remember what it was about.

I suppose forgettable is better than awful?  Two stars.

Survival of the Fittest, by Jack Sharkey

I've been particularly harsh on Jack Sharkey.  No, not the boxer (who could pound me into hamburger), but the prolific author who has been around since 1959.  That's because, while he is capable of quite decent work, much of what he's turned out is pretty bad. 

Survival falls somewhere in-between, I guess.  It's a variation on the, "is my real life really the dream?" shtick mixed with a healthy dose of solipsism.  Not great, but I did remember the piece, at least.  On the low end of three stars.

The Prodigals, by Jean Bridge

The first poem of the issue is by newcomer Jean Bridge, and it suggests that after humanity has matured out of a need for interstellar wanderlust, Earth will be waiting, no matter how long it takes.

Unless the sun eats our planet first, of course, though we may be advanced enough by then to save our home out of nostalgia.  Nice sentiment, nicely framed.  Four stars.

Forget It!, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor probably needs no introduction, having been a titan of sf since his debut in 1938, and a deity of science fact from the 1950s.  However, I will note with pride that he is, like me, a Jewish Atheist of Russian extraction, and of very similar age (we're both the same vintage of 39), spectacle frame, height, and writing style.

This particular non-fiction piece, on the superfluous weights and measures we'd be better off chucking, kept me company while I watched my daughter compete (victoriously) at an inter-school academic competition.  It's an interesting article, noting that just as the English language has regularized itself almost to the point of sense, but with lingering spelling issues that confound any new learner, so have pecks and bushels and furlongs and fortnights overstayed their welcome.  It's time that they went the way of florins and chaldrons and ells.  Let's all adopt the metric system like sensible people!

Who can argue with that?  Four stars.

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is, of course, a fixture of the Victorian age whose wit still finds currency today.  This piece, which I read on a long walk one fine morning, is a pleasant tale about Lord Arthur, a young aristocrat with love, money, and not a care in the world — until a cheiromancer informs him he will commit a murder in the near future.  Convinced of his fate, the young Lord undertakes to perform the deed in as personally nondisruptive manner as possible. 

It reads well, but the ending is just a bit too pat and inconsequential.  And while I am appreciative of the opportunity to rediscover lost classics, I am not certain why Davidson chose to devote half an issue to one.  I should think that a modern magazine could do with less 1887 and more 1987.

Three stars.

Pure Water from Salt, by Theodore L. Thomas

Theodore Thomas oscillates between mildly engaging and somewhat dreary.  A lawyer by profession, he is best with fiction that explores interesting aspects of patent law.  This particular piece is about the value of adapting people to process salt water as opposed to pursuing desalination.  It feels like an incomplete story outline that Davidson bought to fill a vignette-sized hole.

Two stars — one for each page.

Incident in the IND, by Harry Harrison

After his debut novel-sized effort, the superlative Deathworld, Harrison seemed to be in a bit of a rut with none of his stuff cracking the three-star mark.  But Incident, about the evil that lurks in the shadows of the subway tunnels, is a nice piece, indeed.  It's got a sharp, atmospheric style that is a big shift from the author's usual Laumer-esque breeziness.  If I have any complaint, it's just that I wish it had been the fellow and not the lady who gets et in the end.

Four stars.

Humanoid Sacrifice, by J. T. McIntosh

Scotsman James Murdoch MacGregor, who goes by J. T. McIntosh, has been around since 1951.  He hit it out of the park early on with one of my favorites, Hallucination Orbit, and his One in Three Hundred series of stories was good, too.  He's another author who has been in kind of a slump lately, but I always hold out hope for his work, given his prior glories.

Humanoid Sacrifice is an engaging-enough tale with two parallel plot threads involving the same protagonist.  A human troubleshooter is employed by an advanced alien race to fix their rebelling weather control machine.  At the same time, the aliens inform the repairman that they have a human female in suspended animation, a specimen snatched from Earth for study back in 1850.  She is thawed and a written correspondence between the two humans ensues.

It's cute and readable and that's about all I can say.  Three stars.

The Shortest Science Fiction Love Story Ever Written, by Jeffrey Renner

I don't know Jeff Renner, but I think the magazine would have been better served filling these two inches with one of those little EMSH drawings they used to have.  One star.

The Conventional Approach, by Robert Bloch

Bob Bloch has been a pro author for a couple of decades now, creating enduring classics of horror and science fiction.  Like Wilson Tucker, he's also kept one foot firmly in the fan world that spawned him.  He took over Imagination's "Fandora's Box" column from Mari Wolf in '56 (I still miss her) for instance.  Now he has an excellent article on the history of Worldcon, which was so good and witty that I had to read it aloud to my wife on a walk this morning.

I suspect it will be as relevant amd rewarding 55 years from now as it is today.  Five stars.

The Lost Leonardo, by J. G. Ballard

Last up is a novelette by a UK author who has made a big splash on both sides of the Pond.  His Drowned World garnered a Galactic Star from us, and many of his stories have gotten four or more stars.  There's a somber, almost ethereal quality to his work that works or doesn't depending on your mood, I suppose.  I liked this one, in which a certain wanderer of Biblical fame becomes an art thief to do penance for his sins.

It's pretty neat, straightforward but well-executed.  Four stars.

Summing Up

Goodness, it feels good to be positive for a change!  It doesn't hurt that this has been one of the better issues of F&SF, a magazine that has been largely in the doldrums since Davidson took over.  Do tell me what you think of these stories and of the fine folk who wrote them!

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