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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 12, 1969] Earthshaking (October 1969 Galaxy)

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photo of a man with glasses and curly, long, brown hair, and a beard and mustache
by Gideon Marcus

Time for a change

My local rag, The Escondido Times-Advocate, isn't much compared to, say, The Los Angeles Times.  But every so often, they are worth the subscription fee (beyond the TV listings and the funnies).  Take this article, for instance, which might well be at home in a Willy Ley column:

Basically, CalTech has a new timepiece with more precision, accurate to the hundredth of a second, so that when it is used in conjunction with a seismometer, earthquakes can be better mapped.  More excitingly, the new clock weighs just eight pounds—less than a tenth that of the hundred-pound monster it replaces.

Transistors have made it to geology.

We hear all about small computers and more efficient satellites, but this story really drives home just how quickly the miniaturization revolution is diffusing to all walks of life.  Is a computerized pocket slide rule or a Dick Tracy phone that far off?

Making waves


by Gray Morrow

A lot has happened this year at the old gray lady of science fiction, Galaxy.  They changed editors.  They lost their science columnist.  And as we shall see from the latest issue, things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

Tomorrow Cum Laude, by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

The revolution does not begin with this piece, a direct sequel to "Kendy's World", which came out at the end of last year.  If you'll recall, Kendy was a boy during the National Emergency, a time of civil and racial strife that rocked the nation into a semi-permanent police state.  Kendy was recruited by a Mr. Smith, who gave him a scholarship at National University—which turned out to be a training camp for spies.  "Tomorrow Cum Laude" details Kendy's first mission.

He is sent to the University of Southern California to take pictures of a biological centrifuge.  Why he is sent on a domestic espionage mission when he has been trained in Russian is never explicitly stated.  Moreover, the overarching mystery remains: why did the first cosmonaut to Mars chicken out after finding…something…on Phobos, and why are the Soviets building a secret base on the Moon?  Did they find a monolith?  Two?

All of this is background to Kendy's personal story, his slow, jerky maturation into adulthood.  His growing feelings for his accidental roommate, the beautiful woman, Amani, from the southern Californian all Black city-state of Nairobi.  His conflicted loyalties to the government of the United States.

Aside from an overuse of the word "amble" (hint: try sprinkling in a "saunter" or two), it's not a bad story, actually.  It reads a bit like a juvenile except the subject matter is rather deep, and at one point, Kendy describes himself as, frankly, horny.

I'm enjoying this series more than his first one, about the Esks.

Three stars.

Truly Human, by Damon Knight

Here is where the change becomes noticeable.  Knight, who predates but has embraced the New Wave, offers up this interesting piece about triune aliens, who can only think as trios.  They abduct three humans to see if they can be adapted to their way of thought.  The test is, unfortunately, not altogether scientific.

The beginning and end are the most interesting bits, creatively rendered.  The middle part is wanly droll, though effectively conveyed.

Three stars.

The God of Cool, by J. W. Schutz

A smuggler is shot by fellow gang members on the steps of the hospital.  As he had willed his body to the organ banks, he finds life after death in a myriad of don-ee bodies.  There are three wrinkles:

  1. The recipients of his organs end up being members of his gang;
  2. The smuggler retains a degree of consciousness in his frozen state; and,
  3. The smuggler retains a degree of control over his scattered parts…

The setup sounds a little silly, but I actually found it quite an effective story.  It's not played for silly, as it might have been in F&SF, and it doesn't try to explain the psi in scientific terms, as might have happened if it had shown up in Analog.  It sure wouldn't work in Niven's universe as detailed in "The Organleggers" and "Slowboat Cargo", though!

Five stars.

Element of Chance, by Bob Shaw

Cytheron is a young being on the cusp of adulthood.  He fears maturity, afraid to lose his identity in the adult shared mind, so he flees to the edge of a quasar.  There, he believes he is free from pursuit as no information can leave the gravitational warping of the dead star/collection of stars.  But he is also trapped—and for him to be freed will require a minor supernova, one which might have an effect on a neighboring star system with a familiar number of planets.

It's a mildly cute story, but I am generally averse to Catastrophism in my science fiction.  The universe seems to work by general rules; our Sun is not unique.  In any event, the piece feels like a veneer of fiction on a science article Shaw happened to read recently, sort of how Niven's "Neutron Star" is based on an Asimov science fact article (I can't remember when it came out—probably '64 or '65).

Two stars.

The Soul Machine, by A. Bertram Chandler

Yet another tale of John Grimes, this one from early in his career when he was a Lieutenant in command of a tiny courier ship.  It is, in fact, the direct sequel to "The Minus Effect", which came out just two months ago.  Is a fix-up novel in the works?

In this tale, the exalted passenger isn't a chef-cum-assassin, but rather an amiable robot on a mission—to lead a mechanical movement that places humans on the bottom of the command chain for a change.  Luckily for Grimes, not all computers think alike.

As always, pleasant but not particularly memorable.  Three stars.

Ersalz's Rule, by George C. Willick


by Jack Gaughan

Two aliens have been playing a competitive sport for the last forty years.  Their playing pieces are one human being each, born at the same time.  The winner of the game is the one whose human survives longer.

At first, it seems one alien has all the advantages: his human can do no wrong, suffer no lasting malaise.  He is, however, bored and reckless.  The other alien's piece is a slob whom the breaks never favor.  These circumstances lead to the rare invocation of Ersalz's Rule, which affords the possibility of the two pieces switching places.  It's a Hail Mary gambit, but it's all the player's got at this point.

The problem with this tale, aside from its heavy handed clunkiness, is that everything is arbitrary.  The rules of the game are introduced such that there are no real stakes, and the ending is just kind of stupid.

Two stars.

Take the B Train, by Ernest Taves


by Jack Gaughan

On a train trip through France with his distant wife, a fellow discovers that his garage opener doesn't just trigger his door—it also swaps out his spouse with parallel universe versions of herself.  Investigating further, the man determines that the gizmo does a lot more than just that, and he ends up hip-deep in a temporal, spatial, and emotional trip from which he may never return.

This would have been a fantastic setup for a stellar novel, perhaps by Ted White.  As it is, I still enjoyed the romantic and fulsome writing of the the piece.  I also appreciated the protagonist's mixed feelings toward the various might-have-been marital partners.  Taves never does explain how how our hero acquired the device, though there are hints.

Four stars, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

For Your Information (Galaxy Magazine, October 1969), by Willy Ley

At the beginning of the century, there were just 92 "natural" elements.  Humanity has added 12 to the roster by dint of atom-smashing effort.  Ley talks about them and provides tables describing their stability (or lack thereof).

Asimov would have done it better (though we might not have gotten tables in F&SF).  Three stars.

Stella, by Dannie Plachta

A lonely man, perhaps one of the last, is sitting on the frozen surface of his world, watching as The Last Star rises.  He is alone, as his estranged wife has sought shelter and warmth underground.  Only a surgically implanted broadcast power receiver protects him from the elements.

Then Stella arrives on a dot of blue flame.  She is invisible, but she describes herself as desirable, and her voice and touch certainly indicate that she is.  When she begs the man for his receiver, he finds he cannot resist her entreaty, though it means his death.

It's all very unclear and metaphorical, and I suspect if I knew what Plachtas was trying to say, I might like it less than I did.  Nevertheless, I found it moving.  Maybe it's a Rorschach Test of a story and it hit me at the right time.

Three stars.

Dune Messiah (Part 4 of 5), by Frank Herbert

This was supposed to be the final installment of Dune Messiah, but the editor said he had just too much good stuff to fill the magazine.  Hence Part 4 rather than Part Ultimate.  Of course, having trudged through the prior three bits, I was not looking forward to yet another slog.

I was pleasantly surprised.  Oh, it's still a series of conversations.  Sure, not a whole lot happens.  But we do have an interesting situation set up and then resolved: Hayt, the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho, is mesmerized by Bijaz the Tleilaxi dwarf and given a frightful compulsion.  The tension of Part 4 is how this episode will play out, and Herbert manages it reasonably well.

Sure, there is way too much time spent on the now eyeless Paul and his frightening visions.  Yes, I could give two figs about Chani, Paul's true love, destined to die for the last two installments.  True, everything in the last 150 pages could probably be compressed to 50, and I'm still not sure if the payoff will be worth it.

That said, I was not disposed to skim, as had happened in each of the prior sections.  For that, Frank Herbert, you get…

Three stars.

Aftershocks

Thus, nothing Earth-shattering.  Nevertheless, there's a certain gestalt to this issue that feels a bit fresher than prior ones—even though almost half of the issue is devoted to continued serials!  Maybe it's because those authors are finally turning in better work than they have in a while.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a moment of change for this fading pillar of SFnal fiction.  It would be pretty neat to see Galaxy transform itself into a leading magazine again.

Stay tuned!


Hopefully, the magazine will fare better than this Ocotillo Wells home that got damaged in last April's quake…




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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 20, 1967] An Analog of Analog (August 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Imitation is…

I think it's safe to say that, for almost twenty years there have been three Big Science Fiction Magazines.  Each aims at a specific branch of the scientification fandom.  For instance, John Campbell's Analog (formerly Astounding) is at once the hardest of the Big Mags, focusing on near-future gizmo tech or sweeping galactic epics with a scientific core, and also one of the softest, given John's weakness for psi stories.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction covers the literary end of the STF spectrum, and it also veers into the outright fantastical (q.v. the masthead).  Galaxy navigates a sort of middle path between the two.

But the most recent issue of FS&F had me wondering exactly which magazine I was reading again, for this month, Ed Ferman's publication feels a lot like Campbell's.  Perhaps writers have finally answered FS&F's plea for harder works, or maybe Ferman finally had a sufficient number of such pieces to fill (most of) an issue.  Either way, it's an interesting departure, especially with the increased art throughout.  Does it work?  Let's find out!


by Ronald Walotsky

Nuts, Bolts, and Dragons

Reduction in Arms, by Tom Purdom

My good friend Tom Purdom offers up this fascinating piece set in the early '80s.  The superpowers have bound themselves by the Treaty of Peking to curtail the development and implementation of terrible weapons.  But there is always the suspicion that one side or another is working on some version of a "ninety-five plus virus"–one that will wipe out most of a non-incoluated population.

Sure enough, American agents are tipped off when a Soviet biologist, supposed to be a patient in a specialized "role-play" treatment center, is found cavorting with ladies at a bar 30 miles away.  A raid is authorized.  Between hostile Soviets and rogue team members, the investigation quickly becomes fraught with peril.

Tom himself has this to say about the tale:

After I got out of the army in 1961 I became very interested in arms control and disarmament.  I did a lot of reading on the subject and ended up writing two articles for the Kiwanis magazine (a good middle market for a new writer).  An opportunity to write an article for Playboy didn't work out but I got to interview some of the people I'd been reading.

Fred Pohl suggested I write a story on the subject for Galaxy.  I didn't think I could handle the technical stuff needed for a story about detecting nuclear weapons so I decided to write about biological weapons which seemed like they might be the next big threat.  Microbiology labs, in addition, can be hidden in all sorts of small spaces.  I decided to focus on a treaty banning secret research because I had come to the conclusion we tended to run the arms race against ourselves.  Our people thought up a possibility and we had to work on it because the Russians might be working on it.  If we could determine they weren't, both sides could avoid another cycle in the arms race.

I picked a mental health facility as the hiding place because it raised interesting human and moral issues.  The story revolves around ethical and political issues instead of a duel between inspection technologies and evasion technologies.  The programmed environment therapy seemed like a natural extension of Pavlovian conditioning.

Fred Pohl rejected the story.  My agent, Scott Meredith, tried it on Redbook and Esquire with near misses at both places.  The fiction editor at Esquire said he wanted to buy it but he was overruled by higher ups.

The story was a novelette, about ten thousand words.  Playboy said they'd buy it if I could cut it in half.  I did but they rejected it.  Ed Ferman at F&SF liked the short version but felt it needed to be longer.  So I expanded it to its original length.  He bought it and now it's the August cover story.  One of the peak moments in my writing career, so far.

The story grew out of intense, solid research and some deep thinking on the whole problem of arms control.  When I finished it, I felt I had summarized and dramatized the key issues and dilemmas.  Perhaps the sweeping treaty in the story isn't very plausible.  We live in a time when the advance of technology makes serious arms control seem a necessity–so necessary even the politicians will have to see it.  Science fiction explores What might happen if?  The If may seem unlikely, but is still worth exploring.

I originally called the story "1980".  Ed Ferman asked for a change and I thought Reduction in Arms had a nice military clatter.  I also suggested War and Peace and A Farewell to Arms but he preferred Reduction in Arms.

There's no question that Tom has gotten a feather in his cap for the placement of this tale.  I will say that, although I found the concept interesting, it suffers for being an action piece told in third-person by a largely uninvolved party.  Visceral immediacy would have given the story more punch.

Still, it was interesting to see a Reynolds-esque thriller outside of Analog— and without the nardy slang Reynolds employs.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

The Conflict, by Ilya Varshavsky

Here is an import from the Soviet Union, about the large and small scale strife between humans and their increasingly sapient "servants".

I think it loses something in translation.  Two stars.

The Baron's Dog, by L. J. T. Biese

When an unemployed governess in Italy is offered 25,000 lira a month to walk a Transylvanian wolfhound, what's a girl to think?  Especially when the employer is tall, dark, handsome…and strictly enjoins against photography of his pet?

I found this tale delightful, such a nice contrast from all the creeping horror that such a setup normally would have entailed.  It's not quite Analogian, but it is good.  And if L.J.T. Biese isn't a woman, I'll eat my hat.

Four stars.

Soft Come the Dragons, by Dean R. Koontz

Koontz is a brand new author, and he offers up the tale of a far-off world, the miners who live in fear upon it, and the gossamer dragons that turn beholders to stone.  It's all rather metaphorical and lyrical and not quite sensical, rather as if Koontz spent the night reading Zelazny's works and then tried his hand at it.

I'd say it works more than it doesn't, but Koontz' rawness definitely shows through.  Three stars.

Earthwoman, by Reginald Bretnor

Will Adamson, born on a distant world, is human in all qualities save one: he and his race are possessed of telepathy, knit into a consciousness collective.  He is sent to Earth to discern how it is that we can love without the possibility of true connection.  And if we truly be human, is there an innate telepathic skill just waiting to be awakened?

Bretnor usually write silly stories or bad puns, so this more serious piece is a welcome change.  I found it a touch too affected, but otherwise enjoyable.  And definitely something that could have appeared in Analog.

Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

Mosquito, by Theodore L. Thomas

F&SF's story seeder suggests mosquitos might be laden with vitamins and inoculants such that their bite becomes a beneficial distribution method.  As usual, he misses some important aspects of his invention.  To wit, mosquito bites are not controllable in distribution or quantity.  And even if they provide needed drugs and nutrients, they still aren't pleasant to receive.

Two stars.

Bugs, by Charles L. Harness

Speaking of bugs, Charles L. Harness (who used to team up with Thomas under the pen name Leonard Lockhard) has authored this story of living bugs employed as espionage bugs.

There's a lot of "as you know" explanations, and the smugness with which the Americans subvert their KGB counterparts is pure Analog.

Mildly interesting, but just a bit too glib as well as prolix.  Two stars.

The Bubble, by J. W. Schutz

The destruction of humanity's first and only space station has spooked the government, and now they've decided to pull the plug on space investment.  Deane Aircraft, the largest space contractor, is faced with a pivotal decision: retool back to making conventional vehicles, or become the first private space presence.  The linchpin to the success of the operation isn't Theodor Deane, President of the company, nor the thousands of engineers he employs.  It's certainly not Theodor's greedy wife, Lillian, nor her paramour, Briggs, who is also Theodor's financial wiz.

It's Georgia Lighton, Theodor's secretary, who comes up with all the brilliant, cost-saving ideas.

The whole thing reads like a cross between Silverberg's Regan's Planet and a soap opera.  Again, very Analog.

Not great, but Analog.  Three stars.

Moondust, the Smell of Hay, and Dialectical Materialism, by Thomas M. Disch

The first man on the Moon, Mikhail Andreivich Karkhov, is dying.  Does he die for science?  For love?  For the state?  Or something else entirely?

A beautiful, moving piece, made all the more poignant by the recent twin tragedies that claimed the lives of three astronauts and one cosmonaut.

Five stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

Argent Blood, by Joe L. Hensley

A man is being treated in a ward for the incurably insane.  Between fits of "disturbance" he begins to mistrust the charitable nature of his doctor and nurse.  But he has a plan…

A good, atmospheric piece.  Three stars.

Kaleidoscope in the Sky, by Isaac Asimov

In a rare return to topics astronomical, Dr. A. submits a nonfiction piece on the moons of Mars, and how these extremely low flying rocks would appear to a surface observer.  If, indeed, they are even suitably placed to see them, for unlike our Moon, Phobos and Deimos orbit so close to their planet that Martian pole-dweller could not see them.

Good stuff.  Four stars.

Quick with His Hands, by Avram Davidson

Capping things off, this vignette of sibling rivalry on Mars, ably told and with a tearjerking finale.

Four stars.

Doing the math

So, did F&SF's experiment in apery succeed?  Well, there were high points and low points, but the overall impression I was left with was favorable.  We'll just have to compare it to the real thing in just over a week to see if Brand X beat the competition!

(Speaking of kooky stunts, it looks like F&SF is joining forces with several other organizations to hold a writing contest.  I wish them the best of luck, although the last time a magazine (Galaxy in that case) did this, in the early '50s, they got bupkis, and Fred Pohl had to write as a novice under a pseudonym to give them anything worth publishing.)



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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[December 20, 1966] Above and beyond (January 1967 Fantasy and Science Fiction and a space roundup)

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[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]


by Gideon Marcus

Science Fact

In '57, Asimov stopped being a full-time science fiction writer to become a full-time science columnist, a change in vocation that has largely been a positive one.  Why did the creator of Nightfall, Foundation, and Susan Calvin make the leap?  Because, with the launch of Sputnik, science fiction had suddenly become reality, and the front page of the newspaper contained some of the most thrilling SF headlines going.

That trend has only accelerated.  This month, we entered the next stage of space travel, not with a flashy Gemini launch (though those are nifty!) or our first manned trip to the Moon, but with something called ATS.

NASA's "Advanced Technology Satellite" went up on December 7, 1966.  Some satellites, like TIROS, are weather satellites.  Some, like SYNCOM, relay communications.  ATS is the first to do both, and from geostationary orbit.  At its altitude of 36,000 km, it takes exactly 24 hours to circle the Earth.  Thus, from the ground, it appears to be standing still.  Equipped with a "spin-scan" camera, every 20 minutes, ATS sends back a full-globe image of the Earth with a resolution of just 3km.  For the first time, we have essentially real-time weather coverage of an entire hemisphere.

No less ambitious, but sadly less successful, was last week's three-day "Biosatellite" mission.  Biosat is the first in a series of spacecraft that will observe the long term effects of orbital life on a variety of organisms.  On board are a menagerie of bugs (including the ever popular fruit flies) as well as seeds and plants.  The plan was to launch the mission on the 14th and then bring it back on the 17th, observing the effects of weightlessness and radiation on the living cargo.  A retrorocket malfunction stranded the satellite in orbit, however.  I suspect the SPCA is filing a lawsuit as we speak…

NASA isn't the only American agency conducting science.  Last week, the Air Force launched two satellites at once in its low-cost "Orbiting Vehicle" series, OV1-9 and OV1-10.  Normally, these go into polar orbits, but the latest duo follow more conventional paths.  For the most part, these little guys investigate radiation, radio propagation, and other near-Earth conditions.  This is all of great interest to an organization that wants to put flyboys in a Manned Orbiting Laboratory next year, but there's also a valuable scientific yield for the rest of us.

Science Fiction (and Fantasy)

After all that exciting real-world news, could an SF magazine hope to provide the same thrills?  Turns out the first 1967 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction does!


by Gray Morrow

The Little People (Part 1 of 3), John Christopher

Bridget Chauncey is the heir to a most unusual estate in rural Ireland: a run-down country home built on the site of a ruined castle.  Enchanted with the place and its commercial opportunities, she essays a trial season running the place as a vacation lodge.  An odd assemblage of characters are introduced: a bickering middle-aged couple and their daughter on the edge of womanhood, a ruddy Wehrmacht veteran and his half-Jewish wife, Bridget's practical fianceé, Daniel, the estate handler's son, Mat, and the cook and maid. 

The Little People is slow to start, author Christopher allowing us to settle into the heads of each member of this queer group.  But when a two-inch sandaled footprint is discovered, and linked to the recent rash of minor thefts, the identity of the culprit(s) quickly is determined.

Fairies are real.

This is where we leave off this compelling chapter.  I look forward to the ramifications of "first contact" between giant and wee folk.  Four stars.

The Star Driver, J. W. Schutz

Less impressive is this tale of a man stranded on an asteroid with rapidly diminishing air reserves.  Rescue depends on propelling a beacon to orbital velocity.  This Analog-ish tale would have been better served had the ending not been spoiled from the start by editor Ferman (and to some degree, the title). 

On the other hand, I don't want to discourage F&SF from publishing, well, SF.  So, a low three stars.

Interplanetary Dust, Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests that the flux of micrometeoroids around the Earth might be netted up and squashed into a planetoid to live on.  I don't think he's researched how thin that flux actually is.

Two stars.

The Disenchanted Symphony, James G. Huneker

Here's a reprint from the turn of the century!  A Russian composer, infatuated with the link between music and mathematics, creates a symphony that punches a hole through the fourth dimension, whisking his wife and his orchestra away from our plane of existence.  Can he get them back?

I was impressed with how modern this story felt.  Judith Merril expressed in her Books column this month that SF owes much of its present sparkle to works created more than fifty years ago.  She was talking about H.G. Wells.  This sentiment could easily be said of Mssr. Huneker as well.

Four stars.

Bait, Bob Leman

Sometimes what a door-to-door salesman is peddling isn't the product he has on display.  This is a deliciously subtle tale that gets better after a night's thought on it.

Four stars.

The Knight-Errant, the Dragon, and the Maiden, Gahan Wilson

Sometimes the dragon is a chaperone, not a jailer.

Cute.  Three stars.

Right Beneath Your Feet, by Isaac Asimov

We're back to lists and geographical tidbits from The Good Doctor this month, this time describing what places lie directly opposite others on the globe.  Well, at least I learned the etymology of the word "antipodes" (still don't know how to pronounce it, though…)

Three stars.

Kingdom Come, Inc., Robert F. Young

Last up, a Christmas story.  Robert F. Young has never found a myth he hasn't wanted to shoehorn into a science fictional story.  This time, he adapts a reliable well: Christianity.  On the Seventh Heaven pleasure satellite, an angelic fellow named Mike shows up looking for a job.  He and his six brothers (Gabe the trumpter, Raf, etc.) are out of work of late since no one has gotten into their particular establishment for many years. 

It's an obvious tale and a tedious one, opting for the easiest, least challenging conclusion.  Two stars.

Back to Earth

With the exception of the final tale (accepted more for its fortuitous length and timely theme, perhaps), this is a quite good issue.  And with the unusual inclusion of a serial, there's all the more reason to look forward to the February issue when it arrives early next month.

Happy New Year, indeed!


by Gahan Wilson

[Today is the last day you can sign up at the reduced rate for next year's Worldcon.  Don't miss your chance to vote in next year's Hugos!]



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Magazine

[February 16, 1965] Return to a Quagmire (March 1965 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

Sliding Downhill

In the twenty years since the beginning of the Cold War, there have been many potential flashpoints between East and West.  In 1950, Chinese-backed North Koreans almost took the entire Korean peninsula in a see-saw, later stalemated, conflict that lasted until 1953.  Berlin twice became the hot spot — during the 1948 blockade and after the building of the Wall in 1961.  Cuba, too, has been a fraught locale, with the 1959 Communist takeover followed by the disastrous American-backed invasion in 1961 and then the near-calamitous Missile Crisis of 1962.

And then there's Vietnam.

Formerly part of French Indochina, the region has been divided into two roughly equal halves since 1954, when Ho Chi Minh's Viet Cong threw off the colonial yoke in 1954.  Since then, the Communist North has engaged in both insurgent and conventional tactics against the South.

Of course, the United States has backed South Vietnam despite it being a rather corrupt and authoritarian state that, for the past two years, has seen a revolving door of junta leaders running the country.  American involvement included air support and "military advisers", our presence including about 20,000 troops, all told. 

And then came the Gulf of Tonkin incident last August, in which American naval vessels reportedly were attacked off the coast of North Vietnam.  That opened the door for a flood of American air strikes, including into neutral Laos to bomb the "Ho Chi Minh" supply trail.

It was perhaps inevitable that the Viet Cong would hit back, first with a bombing of an American billet in Saigon last month, and now, on February 6, with a mortar attack on Camp Holloway, near Pleiku in central South Vietnam.

8 soldiers died in that attack, more than 100 were injured, and there was extensive damage to American equipment.  In retaliation, the U.S. launched Operation Flaming Dart, yet further intensifying the air war.  Wives and children of American personnel were ordered to leave Vietnam, Hawk surface to air missile batteries were set up at the airbase in Da Nang, and a general escalation of the conflict appears inevitable.  Publications, from the conservative Chicago Tribune to liberal LIFE Magazine, are clamoring for direct involvement.

That means American troops abroad, and anyone between 18-25 not currently enlisted in the military better start reconsidering their plans for the next few years.  People like my nephew, David, who just turned 23.  He's married, has a young son, and goes to UCLA, so perhaps he's safe.  For now. 

In any event, the papers are full of Vietnam news these days, and the voices against escalation are being drowned out by the hawks. 

It looks like we're about to slide, slow-motion-wise, into another Korea.  Call me an iconoclast peacenik, but I'm registering my protest early.  This won't end well.

No Relief in Sight

For those hoping that the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction would offer a respite from the world's glum news, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you.  The return to form we rejoiced in last month quickly fizzled.  This month's mag is a dud:

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, by Roger Zelazny

In the sultry oceans of Venus resides a leviathan of a fish, a kind of mammoth angler called "Ikki".  Bane to boaters, menace to fisheries, Ikki has been the target of big game hunters and professional exterminators.  None have succeeded.

Rich dilettante Jean Lucarich is willing to pick up where others have left off, driving a 10-acre raft equipped with tranquilizer harpoons and giant cages off in search of the modern day Moby Dick.  So keen is her desire that she has hired her old flame, a deep sea adventurer, to be a baiter.  His job is to lure the Ikki in range of Jean's craft…and capture.

Persons who are more familiar with literary fiction can probably tell me what style Zelazny (the author) is going for.  I found it overwrought and, in places, difficult to parse.  But what bugged me the most was the utterly archaic (virtually Burroughsian) rendition of Venus.  Zelazny's version of the Planet of Love is kinda warm, rather than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.  Its day is roughly like an Earth's day, rather than 250 days long.  The air is breathable, the water potable. 

I nitpick because there's no way that the author doesn't know his Venus is wrong.  Mariner 2, first interplanetary probe, finished its mission two years ago.  It was in all the papers.  Indeed, the story would have been more palatable had it taken place on Earth, say, in some remote corner of the Indian Ocean.  It might even have been so, originally — some reject planned for Collier's or some other mainstream mag.

Anyway, it's not bad, but it's not really SF, and I found it too consciously literary.  One Bradbury is quite enough.

Three stars.

Final Appeal, by J. H. Brennan

This first piece by the Ulsterian Brennan involves the quest for justice when the judges are all automated.  It's one of those pieces that requires such an implausible development of technology (in this case, no human involvement at all in the rendering of judgment) that the "clever" solution falls flat.

It doesn't help that the solution, itself, while it may appeal to the mainstream of society, will be distasteful to a more free-thinking sort.

Two stars, and only because it kept me along for the ride until the inevitable disappointment (which came about a page too late).

Essentials Only, by Jack Sharkey

An absent-minded professor accidentally opens up a portal to a virgin alternate-Earth.  He invites his friend to join him for a lifetime of simple pleasures, but of course, they need to bring their girlfriends.  And their girlfriends insist on some modicum of civilization.  And that includes certain, essential people.  And their possessions.  And more luxuries, just in case.  And so on.

Jack Sharkey varies between mildly impressive to (more often) rather dreadful.  But this story is pleasantly droll, inoffsenive.

Three stars.

The End of Eternity, by Ernesto Gastaldi

According to F&SF's new editor, Joseph Ferman, the state of Italian SF is pretty poor: mostly send-ups of cliches we abandoned in the Pulp Era.  But, Ferman promises, this imported tale (translated by Harry Harrison) is something different.

He's wrong.  End takes place in modern day Rome on the eve of its nuclear destruction.  The bomb that will destroy it, scientists say, is so powerful that the space-time continuum might be ruptured.  By the way, the protagonist is named "Romulo", and the story is redolent with reminders of the antiquity of the city.  Can you guess what will happen?

Two stars for this Italian version of the creation myth.

Tripsych, by Ron Smith

Ferman praises Smith for his satirically broad rendition of three hoary SF ideas in as many vignettes.  However, the world doesn't need more bad stories, even if their badness is intentional.

Two stars.

Illusion, by Walter H. Kerr

In 1951, J. T. McIntosh wrote Hallucination Orbit, the definitive tale on cracking up while on solitary assignment in space.  Kerr's poem is on the same topic and compares unfavorably in all respects.

One star.

Better Than Ever, by Alex Kirs

There's a movie playing "over there".  It takes a month to watch, and no one can tell you what it's about.  But those who see it come back…changed.  More mature, no longer plagued with their frailties and foibles.  Better, one might say.  An adman named Clinton is one of the last, stubborn holdouts, increasingly alienated as everyone he knows, one by one, goes to see this movie. 

This is his story.

Well, sort of.  Nothing much happens in this short piece, mostly just a portrait of social isolation — an isolation Clinton refuses to remedy with the obvious solution.  Can you blame him?

Anyway, it's a fair piece, I guess.  Probably some kind of metaphor.  I don't know. 

Three stars, sure.

Oh, East is East and West is East, by Isaac Asimov

In a recent Analog, editor Campbell included a geographical quiz: which states of the U.S.A. are the farthest North, South, East, and West?  It's kind of a trick question since it hinges on the fact that Alaska straddles the 180th meridian and, thus, is both the farthest East and West (and North, but that's obvious to anyone who's read the paper since 1959, when Alaska became a state).

I got the answer right, but then, my first book was an atlas.  The Good Dr. A. got it wrong, and thus produced an article to explain why he was really right.  It's cute, but it doesn't tell you any more than a decent map would. 

Three stars.

Ado About Nothing, by Bob Ottum, Jr.

There is a wall at the end of the universe posted with a sign that says that nothing exists beyond the wall.  If you don't believe it, put a quarter in the wall and look through the peephole for yourself.

It's a silly vignette, but it appealed to the former editor, Avram Davidson, whose collected materials Ferman is apparently still depending on.

Two stars.

Uncollected Works, by Lin Carter

If 50 million monkeys at 50 million typewriters could eventually produce the works of William Shakespeare, what could a computing machine with infinite monkeys worth of random creative capacity produce?

Lin Carter has been around for a while, at least in SFF and Lovecraftian fandom circles, but this is the first story of his I've run across.  Told from the perspective of an old literary critic, given to sentimental verbosity, it's a charming piece.  It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's charming.  I feel like a little more thought could have made the scientific conceit more plausible, which would have then made the story more effective.

Three stars, anyway.

Maiden Voyage, by J. W. Schutz

Thankfully, the end of the issue is the bright spot.  Schutz, currently American Consul General in Tangiers (Morocco), offers up this novelette in epistolary, detailing a scientific mission to Mars in the mid 2030s.  Refreshingly, it stars a woman, and in a chatty, engaging style, describes the rigorous training, arduous journey, and perilous events that she endures. 

It's straight science fiction, more what I'd expect from Analog than F&SF these days, and I enjoyed it.  Bravo, especially for a first effort.

Four stars.

War Report

Both Vietnam and F&SF have been troubled spots for some time, with only isolated moments of hope to keep us going.  I guess the question is this: do we continue to throw good money after bad?  Maybe we should stick both out for another year and see what happens.  If neither improves, maybe it's time to pull out, at last…




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