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Book, Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 18, 1964] Split Personality (October 1964 IF)

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[Don't miss your chance to get your copy of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), some of the best science fiction of the Silver Age.  If you like the Journey, you'll love this book (and you'll be helping us out, too!)


by Gideon Marcus

Which one is it?

It's election season, and the commercials are already out in force.  Maybe it's just my neighborhood, but it seems that LBJ is crowding the airwaves a lot more than Barry Goldwater at this point.  One effective ad notes several times the GOP candidate has made mutually contradictory statements and asks "How is a Republican supposed to note on his ballot which Barry he's voting for?"

This piece is a pretty low blow.  Make no mistake — there's no way I'm voting for a reactionary this November, but if there's one thing one can say for Barry, he's consistent.  I'd rather see some positive messaging.  Lord knows LBJ has plenty of successes to run on.

But while Goldwater's split personality may all be a Madison Avenue construct, the schizophrenic nature of IF, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine is very real.  IF has always been Galaxy's experimental little sister, the place where the more offbeat stories, the lesser known writers are featured.  As a result, it is the more variable mag, with higher highs and lower lows, often within the same issue. 

This dual nature is perfectly represented in microcosm with the latest October 1964 issue:


by Paul E. Wenzel (note the obscured "September 1964")

The first thing you might notice is that the issue was clearly intended to have a September date.  IF went to a monthly schedule in August (after years as a bi-monthly), but there was trouble at the printers, and things got delayed.

When the issue finally came, it was very much a mixed bag, with trouble appearing right from the start:

The Castle of Light, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

Within the pages of IF, Keith Laumer's name is inextricably linked with that of his creation, Retief, that sardonic super-spy in diplomat's clothing.  What began as a more tongue-in-cheek version of Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" is becoming a tired series of retreads.  This particular story involves an invasion by the squamous Groaci, who take legal possession of a planet by landing 50,000 troops in cities abandoned by the native populace during a global religious ceremony.  The piece rambles, and the jokes — like the characters — are flatter than usual.

Two stars.

Mad Man, by R. A. Lafferty

The ever-whimsical Lafferty offers up a piece about androids who only attain genius capability when given their daily dose of anger enzyme.  Said extraction is provided by a group of human individuals kept thoroughly miserable through poor working conditions and constant aggravation by paid actors.  But when one android develops a kinship for her donor, the formerly angry man's heart melts, and his biochemistry becomes useless.  Can a replacement be found?

I imagine some will like this story.  I found it contrived, cruel, and rather pointless.

Two stars.

Gremmie's Reef, by Hayden Howard


by Virgil Finlay

In which a teenage surfer is delighted to find a perfect wave break on a formerly unpromising beach, thanks to a new reef.  Turns out the reef is an alien biological probe, and as might be expected, it's not a friendly one.

The surfing scenes are nicely rendered, but the third-person omniscient viewpoint, the shrieky characters, and the Twilight Zone ending all suggested a young novice of a writer.  Imagine my surprise when I checked my notes and found that Hayden Howard has been writing for more than a decade, and I've even covered one of his stories before!

Nice try, but it's another two.

Rescue Mission, by Kit Reed

Science teacher goes on sabbatical to the mountains and finds his cottage besieged with bugs.  Turns out they are the servants of Mavna, the alien beauty who resides one cottage over, and she is using the crawlies to send the prof a message: (paraphrased) "Help me fend off these three oafs I'm staying with so I can sacrifice myself for the operation of our interstellar matter transmitter!"

Reed, an author I'm quite fond of, has written exclusively for F&SF since she started half a decade ago.  This rather silly piece would fit better in that magazine.  That it wasn't published there is not surprising — it's probably the weakest story Reed has produced.

Two stars.

Monster Tracks, by Robert E. Margroff

The last piece of short fiction in the issue is by a genuinely new author, about a boy raised in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by aliens.  They came in "peace", disguised as tourists, bringing gifts and cute pets, but it was all a ploy.  Their gifts were bombs, their luggage was guns, and their pets are poison.  Our young protagonist is almost taken in by a cute rabbit-like creature before being saved by his savvy uncle.

Not much to this one.  Two stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 3 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

"Where's the split?" I hear you ask.  So far, this issue has been a solid disappointment — how could it be a mixed bag?

Well, editor Fred Pohl got a ringer.

Robert Heinlein is one of the masters of the field with dozens of classic titles to his name.  To be sure, his record has been tarnished a bit lately by such substandard works as Stranger in a Strange Land and Podkayne of Mars.  Moreover, the first installment of his latest serial, Farnham's Freehold, got off to a stultifying start.

But then it got better.  In Part 1, Hubert Farnham and his family (including his house-servant and his side-girlfriend) are whisked thousands of years into the future thanks to a new Russkie bomb.  That first bit reads like a cross between a libertarian screed and the Boy Scout Handbook.  But in Part 2, we meet the inheritors of the atomically ravaged Earth, the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India.  Hugh and co. are made privileged slaves — except for Joseph, Hugh's servant.  His Black skin makes him a de facto member of the ruling caste, and he is afforded the privileges thereof.  We learn a lot about the new society, and this section is genuinely interesting.

Part 3 more-or-less sticks the landing.  It is all about Hugh's attempt to escape his gilded cage along with mistress Barbara and their newly born twin sons.  While his first attempts end in failure (and this part is not unlike the middle section of Have Spacesuit Will Travel — thrilling but ultimately pointless), Hugh's kindly master ends up sending him and his family back in time to just before the Bomb goes off, and they have a second chance at life.

It's a thrilling page-turner, and I liked the central message: decadence and depravity have nothing to do with color or national origin.  It all boils down to Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts".  I especially appreciated that the story recognized the unequal status of Joseph, and does not condemn him for throwing his lot in with America's new rulers.  Whatever loyalty Joe had to Hugh, he has found his Earthly paradise — unfair to others, perhaps, but wasn't that just after a lifetime of discrimination?  Hugh is dismayed, but not surprised.  After all, whatever his libertarian aspirations, he was part of the problem.

I'd give this last part five stars except that the ending is awfully abrupt.  All told, I think the novel earns an aggregate of 3.75 stars and, if you can get through the beginning, suggests a return to form of the author.

Making Whole

This latest issue of IF reminds me of Analog a few years back, when the serials were generally good and the other material sub-par (I note with bemusement that while Heinlein's Farnham would fit stylistically in Analog, the editor of said mag would never allow a storyline where the Whites are slaves…) When all is computed, the magazine actually scores above the 3-star middle, which tells you how good the second half is compared to the first.

In any event, the vice of a split-personality magazine is also its virtue: if one can always count on one or more stories not being very good, one can also expect at least one nugget of gold. 

And wasn't my entire state founded on the search for such nuggets?

[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 8, 1964] It's War! (The October 1964 Galaxy and the 1964 Hugos)

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[We have exciting news!  Journey Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Galactic Journey, has just launched its first book.  We know you will enjoy Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), a curated set of fourteen excellent stories introduced by the rising stars of 2019. 

If you enjoy Galactic Journey, you'll want to purchase a copy today — available physically and virtually!]


by Gideon Marcus

It's a War, Man

No matter which way you look these days, fighting has broken out somewhere.  Vietnam?  War.  The Congo?  War.  Yemen?  War.

Worldcon?  You'd better believe it's war.

Back in May, the committee putting on this year's event (in Oakland, called Pacificon II) decided that Walter Breen would not be allowed to attend.  For those of you living in a steel-plated bubble, Breen is a big-name fan in the SF and coin-collecting circles with a gift for inciting dislike in direct proportion to one's proximity.

Oh, and he's also a child molester.

Now there has been much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the draconian action taken by the Pacificon committee, likening the arbitrary action to McCarthy's witch trials of the last decade.  As a result, fandom has largely resolved itself into two camps, one defending the attempt to evict Breen from organized fandom, the other vilifying it.

I know we're a kooky bunch of misfits and our tent should be pretty inclusive, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere, don't you?  And what may have been fine for Alexander doesn't hold in the 20th Century.  I guess it's clear which side I fall on.

Well, despite the protests and the boycotts that tainted the Worldcon (which were part of what deterred me from attending this year), they still managed to honor what the fans felt was the best science fiction and fantasy of 1963.  Without further ado, here's how the Hugos went:

Best Novel

Here Gather the Stars, by Clifford Simak (63 votes)

Nominees

For the first time, the Journey had reviewed all of the choices for Best Novel before the nominating ballots had even been counted.  While we didn't pick the Simak for a Galactic Star last year, it's not a bad book, certainly better than the Heinlein and the Herbert, probably better than the Norton.  I suspect the reason the Vonnegut finished so low is that, as a mainstream book, fewer had read it.  Or perhaps just because it was so weird.

Short Fiction

The No Truce with Kings by Poul Anderson (93 votes)

Nominees

We got all of these this year, too.  The Anderson was our clear favorite, being the only one on the list to rate a Galactic Star.  The rest are in the order we had rated them.  Sadly, because this category encompasses so many stories, a great number got cheated out of recognition.  Perhaps they will divide the categories by length in the future.

Best Dramatic Presentation

None this year — insufficient votes cast for any one title to create a proper ballot.

I bet this will change next year what with so many SF shows coming out this Fall season (Rose Benton has got an article coming out in two days on this very subject!)

Best Professional Magazine

Analog ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr. (90 votes)

Nominees

It looks like people voted for the magazines in rough proportion to subscription rates, though F&SF did disproportionately well.  I am happy to say that this is the year we start covering Science-Fantasy…in its new incarnation under the editorship of Kyril Bonfiglioli.

Best Professional Artist

Ed Emshwiller (77 votes)

Nominees

Book covers are showing their influence on the voting — Krenkel and Frazetta don't do the SF mags. 

Best Fanzine

AMRA (72 votes)

Nominees

  • Yandro (51 votes)
  • Starspinkle (48 votes)
  • ERB-dom (45 votes)
  • No Vote (52 votes)
  • No Award (6 votes)

(isn't it interesting how close the ERB fanzine's tally is to Savage Pellucidar's…)

I was glad to see that Warhoon, which is full-throatedly in favor of Walter Breen, was not in the running.  Starspinkle, which makes no secret of its disdain for Breen, is the only one of these I read regularly.

Also, while Galactic Journey was not on the ballot again (for some reason), we did get a whopping 88 write-in votes.  So, unofficially, we are the best fanzine for 1964.  Go us!

Best Publisher

Ace Books (89 votes)

Nominees

  • Pyramid (79 votes)
  • Ballantine (45 votes)
  • Doubleday (35 votes)
  • No Vote (25 votes)
  • No Award (11 votes)

I should keep track of who is publishing what for next year.  The problem is, I usually read novels in serial format.

And that's it for my Hugos report.  It'll be interesting to see if fandom's scars heal at all by next year.

Veterans of Foreign Wars

Given the turmoil in the papers and in fandom, it's not surprising that war is a common theme in science fiction, too.  In fact, the October 1964 issue of Galaxy is bookended by novellas on the subject; together they take up more than half the book.  They also are the best parts.


by George Schelling

Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R. Dickson

Centuries from now, after humanity has scattered amongst a dozen or more stars, the species has splintered to specialize in particular traits.  The eggheads of Newton focus on scientific advance while the Cassidans make the building of starships their trade.  The mystical Exotics have devoted their lives to nonviolent pursuit of philosophy.  The Dorsai, of course, are renowned galaxy-wide for their military prowess.  And the hyper-religious "Friendlies" are committed to faith.

Our story's setting is the wartorn Exotic world of St. Marie, where Dorsai mercenaries have been employed to topple the Friendly mercenaries who had conquered the world years prior.  Newsman Tam Olyn has learned that the Friendlies' mission is a forlorn one, and he hopes to leverage that information to force the Christian zealots to do something desperate, illegal, to win the fight.  For Olyn has a grudge to settle with the Friendlies, having watched them slaughter without mercy an entire company of surrendered soldiers several years back.


by Gray Morrow

Set in the same universe as Dickson's prior Dorsai stories, Soldier is a more mature piece, asking a lot of hard questions.  Is Olyn's zeal any less than that of the Friendlies, any more laudable?  If Olyn's actions cause the destruction of an entire sub-branch of humanity, can the species' collective psyche withstand the loss of one of its vital components? 

Of course, the situation turns out to be far more complex than Olyn thought, with the Friendly commandant and the Dorsai commander proving to be independent variables beyond his control.  In the end, nothing goes as planned.

Soldier is not perfect.  It's overwritten in places, although since the tale is a first-person account written by a war correspondent, I wonder if this was intentional.  The omniscience of the Exotic, Padma, who has an understanding of events and factors that would make even Hari Seldon jealous, is a bit convenient as a storytelling device.  The idea that humanity has evolved in a few centuries, not just societally but mentally, such that vital components of our minds have been bred out of existence, is difficult to swallow.

But Dickson is a good writer, and I found myself turning the pages with avid interest. 

Four stars.

Martian Play Song, by John Burress

A variation of patty-cake that will make you chortle.  Three stars.

Be of Good Cheer, by Fritz Leiber

The first of two robot stories, this is a letter from Josh B. Smiley, Director-in-Chief of Level 77's Bureau of Public Morale to one Hermione Fennerghast of Santa Barbara.  It seems she just can't be happy living in a mechanically run world, where robots ignore the people, where people seem to be increasingly scarce, and where both the indoors and outdoors are being reduced to dull grayness.  Smiley does his best to reassure her that all is for the best, but the Director's verbal smile increasingly comes off as forced.

It's cute while it lasts, forgettable when it's over.  Three stars.

The Area of "Accessible Space">, by Willy Ley

Mr. Ley offers us a list of near-Earth celestial targets that could be reached in the near future by rockets and probes.  The author is quite optimistic about our prospect, in fact: "There can hardly be any doubt that a mission to a comet (unmanned) will be flown before a man lands on the moon."

Anyone want to lay odds?

Three stars.

How the Old World Died, by Harry Harrison

Robot story #2: computerized automata are programmed with one overriding desire — to reproduce.  Soon, they take over the entire world, having deconstructed our buildings and machines to make more of them.

The twist ending to the story is not only ridiculous, but it also is in direct contradiction to events described earlier.  Sure, perhaps the narrator (a crotchety grandpa who remembers the good old days) is not reliable.  But if that be true, then 90% of the story is invalid, and what was the point of reading it?

Two stars.

The 1980 President, by Miriam Allen deFord


by Hector Castellon

Have you noticed that every President of the United States elected in a year ending in zero ultimately dies in office?  Perhaps that's why, in 1980, the two big parties have nominated candidates they wouldn't mind losing (though they'd never admit it publicly).

A cute idea for a gag story, I guess.  Except, in this case, the parties have been maneuvered into their actions by alien agent, The Brown Man, and his goal is racial harmony and equality.

Yeah, I found the whole thing a bit too heavy-handed for my tastes, too.  I've liked deFord a lot, but her work lately has seemed kind of primitive, more at home in a less refined era of science fiction.

Three stars, barely.

The Tactful Saboteur, by Frank Herbert


by Jack Gaughan

From bad to worse.  This unreadable piece involves a government with a built in Department of Sabotage to ensure things don't run too smoothly.  I guess.  Maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.

One star.

What's the Name of That Town?, by R. A. Lafferty

A supercomputer is tasked with discovering an event not from the evidence for its existence, but from the conspicuous lack of evidence.  Lafferty's piece is an inverse of deFord's — a great idea rather wasted on a feeble laugh. 

Another barely three-star story.

Maxwell's Monkey, by Edgar Pangborn

What if the monkey on your back was a real monkey?  This monkey is a clunker.

Two stars.

Precious Artifact, by Philip K. Dick

Humanity emerges victorious from a war with the "proxmen", and Milt Biskle, a terraformer on Mars, is granted the right to return to Earth.  He does so only reluctantly, subconsciously dreading a trip to his overcrowded homeworld.

Once there, he is wracked with fears that the teeming masses of people, the burgeoning skylines are all imaginary.  Underneath, he is certain, lies nothing but ruins, smashed by the proxmen — who were actually triumphant and project this illusion to keep the few remaining humans sane.

But there is a level of truth even deeper…

A minor effort from a major author, Dick's latest warrants three stars.

The Children of Night, by Frederik Pohl


by Virgil Finlay

Lastly, Galaxy's editor picks up the pen to deliver a tale of marketing in the early 21st Century.  It's a topic near and dear to Pohl's heart, he having started out as a pretty successful copywriter, and it's no surprise that he often returns to this subject in his stories.

In this particular case, Pohl's protagonist is "Gunner", a fixer for the world's most reputable (and infamous) publicity firm.  They're the kind who'd even try to reform Hitler's image if the were enough Deutschmarks in the deal.  And in 2022, Moultrie & Bigelow's client is no less than the Arcturan insectoids who tried to wipe out humanity in a decade-long interstellar war.  I mean, how do you sell the public on a bunch of stinky bugs who killed indiscriminately and conducted experiments on children that would make Mengele blanch? (Who am I kidding — the bastard would take notes.)

Unlike many of the author's other marketing stories, this one is played straight; and while I don't know that I buy the ending, no one would argue that Fred Pohl can't write.

Four stars.

Picking up the Pieces

At times, the latest issue of Galaxy feels like a battlefield, with definite winners and losers.  In the end, though, this kind of war is a lot more palatable than the other ones going on in the world. 

At four bits, that's affordable and welcome R&R.

[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

[July 16, 1964] Un-Conventional (August 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

All Together Now

Out in San Francisco, in the humorously named "Cow Palace", the GOP are having a convention.  Their goal is to pick the fellow they feel most adequately represents the convictions of the party of Lincoln, of Roosevelt, of Eisenhower. 

To all accounts, they have settled on Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a nativist, opponent of the Civil Rights Act, and advocate for expanded use of nuclear weaponry.  Despite a last-ditch attempt by Republican moderates Scranton, Rockefeller, and Romney, nothing can stop General Goldwater from tilting against LBJ in November.

Whether or not Barry wins the general election (I don't believe he can), his candidacy has reshaped the Republican Party into something regressive, "Primitive".  God help us if someone with his platform actually ascends to the Presidency…

Politics takes center stage in the latest issue of Galaxy, too, and like the Cow Palace convention, most of the names between the covers of this magazine are heavy hitters, known to all.  Let's see if we get a better result from Mr. Pohl (editor of Galaxy) than we did from Mr. Morton, Chair of the GOP convention:

The Issue at Hand


by John Pederson, Jr.

The Dead Lady of Clown Town, by Cordwainer Smith


by Gray Morrow\

Over the past decade and a half, Cordwainer Smith has woven a tapestry of tales, telling the thousands year history of The Instrumentality, technocratic oligarchy spanning much of the galaxy (except for the longevity-drug-growing Norstrilia, the wealthy and proud remnant of the British Commonwealth).  This domain is run by true humans and maintained by underpeople, animals cast in the rough images of people but with no inherent rights.  In recent tales, we learned of the revolt of the underpeople that tore down the Instrumentality.  This latest story tells of the first abortive attempt that set the seeds for the successful rebellion.

At the center of Lady is Elaine, an embryo germinated and dispatched, by accident, from Earth to Fomalhaut III to serve as a physician.  The problem is that none of the humans there needed medical attention, thus rendering Elaine's life fruitless and frustrating.  But her coming was prophesied by Lady Panc Ashash, long deceased but imprinted on a Fomalhautian computer.  The Dead Lady introduces Elaine to D'Joan, a young dog person, who is to be the martyr who gives life, love, and hope to the underpeople.  Together, Joan and Elaine lead the first movement against the Instrumentality.  The measure of its success depends entirely upon the time frame in which its effects are gauged.

Lady presents a quandary for me.  On the one hand, I adore Cordwainer Smith, and his fairytale, off-center approach to science fiction is usually far more effective than it has any right to be.  This time around, however, I felt the format had gotten stale.  The story is laden with portentous language, like a tale from a religious text, but events are presented as overdetermined, inevitable, and none of the characters makes a conscious decision.  In particular, the "love scene" between Elaine and 'The Hunter', a telepathic human with mind control powers who sides with the underpeople is not only perfunctory but disturbing (smacking of rape).

In the end, this is a redundant story, one that did not need to be told.  And Smith's poetic style is more grating than compelling this time 'round.

2.5 stars (half stars being permissible for novellas and novels).

For Your Information: A Century of Fossil Man, by Willy Ley

This month's non-fiction is about the historical and current state of physical anthropology — the study of human fossils.  Willy is back to his recent mode: informative but brief and dry.  I miss Ley of the early '50s, the one who convinced me to subscribe to Galaxy in the first place.

Still, not bad.  Three stars.

Jungle Substitute, by Brian W. Aldiss


by Jack Gaughan

Deep in the heart of a decaying city, robots and humans live a symbiotic relationship of despair.  People no longer have meaningful jobs, their lives guided by endless superstition and taboo; the machines are slowly breaking down.  One young man, Robin, discovers a government project to declare him and his family obsolete — but is the Government Investigation Bureau what it seems to be?  And what can he make of the resourceful GIB agent, Gina, who seems to know far more about the city and its condition than anyone else?

With Jungle, Aldiss paints as good a dystopian vision of the man/machine world as I've ever seen, as exciting and evocative as the first stages of his Hothouse series.  This is the kind of quality that won him the Best Promising Author Honorable Mention in 1959.

Five stars.

The Watchers in the Glade, by Richard Wilson


by Jack Gaughan

Somewhat less effective (but no less vivid) is this story by pulp-veteran Richard Wilson.  In Watchers, four journalists and two medics are banished to an uncharted world after a ship's mutiny.  To survive, they must murder and feed upon the only edible matter on the planet — sentient, telepathic beings.

All six of them go mad in their own ways, living with their daily crime while they wait on the slender hope that rescue will someday come for them. 

A solid three stars.

Neighbor, by Robert Silverberg


by Jack Gaughan

Silverberg pens another intimate piece, on the most local of politics: the rivalry between two neighbors.  On a planet of vast holdings, old McDermott builds an enormous tower in full view of the Holt estate.  For decades, Holt amasses a huge arsenal, waiting for the chance to get even.  But when the opportunity finally presents itself, can he take it?

The author described it to me as "a pretty good character study."  It's told with a certain degree of style, anyway.  Three stars.

The Delegate from Guapanga, by Wyman Guin


by Virgil Finlay

Lastly, we have Wyman Guin's first piece in eight years.  It's really been too long — this is a wonderful piece.  Guin presents us an alien culture (if not an alien race) on the eve of election time.  Only the telepathically capable, the elite and the "cupra" half-breeds, are franchised; the two dominant parties are the conservative Mentalists, favoring peace, polygamy, and interbreeding of the telepathically gifted and ungifted, and the Matterists, who value work, monogamy, moral purity, and the invasion of Earth.

It's a most appropriate story for our politically fraught year of 1964, and the storytelling and worldbuilding are quite good.

Four stars.

Summing Up

All told, even with the inferior Cordwainer (and it's not horrible), I imagine you could get a lot more pleasure out of the latest Galaxy than a trip to San Francisco's convention.  It's cheaper, too. 

Anyone want to lay odds on the next issue versus the DNC convention?

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




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Book, Magazine

[July 6, 1964] Busy Schedule (August 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

SFlying Eastward

Today saw the Journey in the wilds of Utah, attending a small science fiction conclave out in the lovely summer desert of Deseret.  What could have impelled us to make another plane trek less than a week after having returned from a long sojourn in Japan?

Well, we were invited.  The things one does for egoboo…

Nevertheless, duty continues, and so I find myself pounding the typewriter keys early in the morning (to the chagrin of the folks in the neighboring rooms, no doubt) so you can read all about the first SF digest of the month, the August 1964 IF.

The Issue at Hand


by Fetterly

The big news is that IF is a monthly now after years and years as a bimonthly.  Lord knows where editor Fred Pohl is getting the material for this increased frequency, especially given that he also helms the sister books, Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow. Let's see how the new mag holds up under the compressed schedule:

The Slaves of Gree, by C. C. MacApp


by Gray Morrow

Young Jen wakes up spluttering in a pounding sea, his memories forgotten, with the trace of a foreign name in the back of his mind.  Who is "Steve Duke" and what is his relation to Jen?  The hapless jetsam of a man is rescued by his own kind, fellow slaves to the great Gree.  Jen soon gets back his memories, remembering that he belongs to the happy, harmonious Hive, a burgeoning galactic power. 

Or does he?

Turns out Jen is a double-agent, quite literally.  He has two personalities, which swap as needed.  One is one of the Hive's most promising subalterns, a puissant veteran of the space corps.  The other is Major Steve Duke, a rather unsavory Terran sent to topple the Hive from within.

There are the makings of a great story here, but it needs a lot of polish.  So much of the tale is told mechanically.  At one point, I counted ten sentences in a row beginning with "He [verbed]…"  Plus, I kept expecting a twist at the end, but instead, it's just a straight adventure story with (I felt) the wrong personality winning. 

Two stars, just shy of three.

A as in Android, by Frances T. Hall

A middle aged rebel against the system encounters an android with his face and imprinted with his memories – memories he'd sold for some quick cash a decade and a half before.  Has the robot, who was exiled to the hell planet called Cauldron, come for revenge or something else?

Frances Hall's first SF story (to my knowledge) is a solid triple.  Four stars.

The Prince and the Pirate, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

The latest Retief story sees our favorite interstellar diplomat/super spy thwarting the topple of a monarchy.  Neither the best nor the worst of the stories in the series, it entertains reasonably.  Three stars.

The Life Hater, by Fred Saberhagen

How do you convince a machine that biological life is superior?  And in the parley between human and sentient, life-hating battleship, who is playing who?

Fred Saberhagen continues to impress with his excellent tales of the Berserkers — sentient dreadnoughts who scour the galaxy, ridding it of biological infestations.

Four stars.

Farnham's Freehold (Part 2 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

Last up is the latest installment of Heinlein's most recent novel.  Last time, Hugh Farnham, a libertarian, nudist cat-lover (no resemblance whatsoever to his creator!) ducked into a bomb shelter with his family when the Russkies started to nuke America.  Instead of dying in the holocaust, however, Farnham et. al. found themselves transported to a virgin version of their world, one in which people had never existed.  Or so they thought.

At the beginning of this month's narrative, other people show up — technologically advanced black men who enslave the Farnhams (except for their house servant, Joe, who is black) and bring them to the Summer Palace of Ponse, Lord Protector of the region.  It turns out that this isn't an alternate universe, but rather some two thousand years in the future.  Descendants of the Africans now rule the world in a static society in which the whites are slaves.  Hugh must use his wits to carve a place for himself in this society before he is eliminated (or worse!) for trespassing.

This second part holds up a lot better than the first.  Near the end, we learn that there are still free savages hiding in the Rocky Mountains, an Part 3 will likely feature some kind of Farnhem-led insurrection.  All very patriotic and appropriate for Independence Day.

Four stars.

Summing Up

Truth to tell, I'd been dreading the Heinlein and leery of the rest of the issue.  In the end, though, Pohl managed to put together a readable (if not stellar) 132 pages of SF.  I will definitely be keeping my subscription!

Let's just hope that he…and I… can keep up this busy schedule.

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Magazine

[June 16, 1964] Strangers in Strange Lands (August 1964 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

We've probably all felt out of place from time to time, like the philosophical private eye Philip Marlowe quoted above. I'll bet that the Rolling Stones, a British musical group newly introduced on this side of the pond, felt that way when they made a very brief appearance on the American television variety show The Hollywood Palace this month. Their energetic version of the old Muddy Waters blues song I Just Want to Make Love to You lasted barely over one minute. The sarcastic remarks made about them by host Dean Martin took up at least as much time.


Here are the shaggy-haired troubadours at a happier moment, shortly after their arrival in the USA.

In Tears Amid the Alien Corn

Similarly, the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is full of characters who aren't where they belong, along with a couple of authors who might feel more at home elsewhere.


by Gray Morrow

I trust that the shade of John Keats will forgive me for stealing a few words from his famous poem Ode to a Nightingale, because they movingly evoke the emotions of those far from where they feel at home. The stories we're about to discuss may not have many tears, but they've got plenty of aliens, as well as, unfortunately, quite a bit of corn.

Valentine's Planet, by Avram Davidson


by Gray Morrow

Better known, I believe, as the current editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a fact that does not endear him to all readers, Davidson may seem a bit out of place as the author of a long novella of adventure in deep space. Be that as it may, his story takes up half the issue, so it deserves a close look.

We start with mutiny aboard a starship. The rebels kill one of the officers in a particularly brutal way, sending the others, along with a few loyal crewmembers, off to parts unknown in a lifeboat. They wind up on an Earth-like planet, inhabited by very human aliens. (There's one small hint, late in the story, that the natives came from the same ancestors as Earthlings.) The big difference is that the men are very small, no bigger than young boys. The women are of normal size, so they serve as rulers and warriors. (There's a male King who is, in theory, the source of all power, but he's little more than a religious figurehead, living in isolation from the world of war and politics.)

The survivors of the mutiny get involved with local conflicts, while they try to find a source of fuel so they can make their way home in the lifeboat. Things get complicated when the insane mutineer in command of the starship lands on the planet, intending to plunder it. After a lot of hugger-mugger, and a dramatic final confrontation with the rebels, the Hero gets the Girl, achieves a position of power, and is well on his way to reshaping the local matriarchy into something more to his liking.

As you can tell, I was not entirely comfortable with the implication that replacing a woman-dominated society with a male-dominated one is a laudable goal. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, and assume he was aiming at nothing more than escapist entertainment. On that level, it's a pretty typical example. The feeling of the story changes from space opera to science fantasy halfway through, and the transition is a little disorienting. Davidson avoids most of the literary quirks found in many of his works, although he indulges in a little wordplay now and then. (I lost count of how many times he told us that the armor of the Amazon warriors was black, scarlet, black and scarlet, scarlet and black, black on scarlet, scarlet on black, etc. He also gives names to a large number of the political factions on the planet, apparently just to amuse himself.)

Two stars.

What Weapons Tomorrow?, by Joseph Wesley

A nonfiction article, among a bunch of tales of wild imagination, may seem, as the old song goes, like a lonely little petunia in an onion patch. In any case, this is a rather dry piece, imagining what the tools of war might look like in 1980. The author describes satellites that could rain destruction from above, and energy beam weapons that could defend against them. He then explains why neither of these methods is practical. It's informative, if not exciting.

Two stars.

The Little Black Box, by Philip K. Dick


by George Schelling

This strange, complex story begins with a woman who is definitely not where she belongs. She's an expert on Zen Buddhism, sent to Cuba in an attempt to distract the Chinese Communists living there from their political philosophy. This quickly proves to be a deception, as she's really there so a telepath can read her mind and track down a religious leader. It seems that the woman's lover, a jazz harpist so popular that he has his own TV show, is a follower of the enigmatic mystic Wilbur Mercer.

Mercer is a mystery. He broadcasts an image of himself walking through a desert wasteland on television. His devotees use devices that allow them to experience his sensations, primarily his suffering as he approaches his death. Both sides of the Cold War consider him a danger. There is speculation that he may not even be human, but some sort of extraterrestrial. The United States government declares the empathy machines illegal, driving the Mercerites underground. The story ends in what seems to be a miraculous way.

Like most stories from this author, this peculiar tale contains a lot of a characters, themes, and subplots. Sometimes these work together as a whole, sometimes they don't. It certainly held my interest throughout, even if I didn't fully understand what Dick was driving at. Your enjoyment of it may depend on your willingness to accept that some things have no rational explanation.

Three stars.

We from Arcturus, by Christopher Anvil

Everything about this story makes it seem as if it fell out of the pages of Astounding/Analog and landed in a place where it doesn't belong. That's no big surprise, since Anvil has been a regular in Campbell's magazine for quite a while. You also won't be startled to learn that it's a comedy about hapless aliens who fail to invade Earth. The author can write that kind of thing in his sleep by now, so he pulls it off in an efficient manner.

A pair of shapeshifting scouts from another planet suffer various misadventures as they try to prepare the way for their leaders to conquer the world. Five such teams have already disappeared, so the new duo is cynical about the chance of success. (Like in many of these stories, even when it's human beings making the attempts, you have to wonder why they don't just give up.) One big problem is that the aliens get all their ideas about Earthlings from television. Eventually, they find out why the other scouts vanished, and the story ends with a mildly amusing punchline.

It's refreshing to have a comic science fiction story that doesn't degrade into crude slapstick, and Anvil has a light touch that can provide a few smiles. It's a pleasant enough thing to read, even if it will fade from your memory as soon as you finish it.

Three stars.

The Colony That Failed, by Jack Sharkey


by Jack Gaughan

Here we have not just one person in the wrong spot, but a whole community. Colonists disappear, one by one, from an agricultural settlement on a distant world. Norcriss, a fellow we've seen before in the so-called Contact series, arrives to take care of the problem. As in previous stories, he uses a device that allows him to enter the mind of other beings. One problem is that, in this case, he doesn't know what mind to enter. Adding a touch of what seems to be the supernatural is the fact that the coffin of a dead woman burst open, her body went missing, and other colonists heard her voice after she died.

The author provides a scientific solution to the mystery that is interesting, if not extremely plausible. The story accomplishes what it sets out to do, without anything notable about it. At least Sharkey wasn't trying to be funny.

Three stars.

Day of the Egg, by Allen Kim Lang


by Nodel

Talk about being in the wrong place! This story was supposed to be in the April issue, but because of some kind of goof it's only showing up now. I can't say that its disappearance was a bad thing.

This is a silly farce, set in a solar system where stereotyped British folks rule one planet, stereotyped Germans rule another, and bird people rule another. The protagonist, Admiral Sir Nigel Mountchessington-Jackson (are you laughing yet?), competes with his nemesis, Generalfeldmarschall Graf Gerhard von Eingeweide (still not laughing?), to sign a treaty with the birds. The egg containing the new monarch of the avian planet hatches, and the baby chick thinks the German is her mother. The Englishman comes up with a scheme to turn the tables on his opponent.

I found the whole thing much too ridiculous for my taste. The way in which the British guy wins the day was predictable, and the jokes fall flat. The author makes Anvil look like the master of sophisticated wit.

One star.

Not Fitting In

Reading this issue made me feel like I should have been somewhere else, doing something else. The stories range from poor to fair, with only Philip K. Dick rising above mediocrity. Even his unique story fails to be fully satisfying, and seems to have been shoved into a place where it doesn't quite belong.  As science fiction fans in the mundane world, I'm sure we can all identify with that situation. 


This newly published book provides a fit metaphor, but don't bother reading it. It's all about the pseudoscience of matching people to their proper careers through physiognomy.

Nevertheless, we're also a hardy breed, and we know that even when times are rough, something good is right around the corner.  Like this month's Fantastic…

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Book, Magazine

[June 8, 1964] Be Prepared! (July 1964 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In Preparation

In three days, the Traveler family returns to Japan for an unprecedented three-week trip.  That's an endeavor that calls for tremendous planning, from the purchasing of tickets (Pan Am flies direct from Los Angeles to Tokyo these days!) to judicious packing.  A house-sitter must be engaged.  Mail must be held at the post office.  And, of course, three weeks of The Journey must be plotted in advance.  Thank goodness we're such a broad team.

Out in the real world, the United States Senate, under the agile leadership of Hubert Humphrey, is putting its ducks in order.  The goal: to invoke cloture, ending the months-long "debate" over the Civil Rights Act and allowing a vote on the landmark bill.  This fate of this legislation, federally guaranteeing equality of the races regardless of the desire of certain states to retain barbaric discrimination practices,was never really in doubt.  By the time it came to the floor this year, after two years of increasing Black American protest, and support from the President's office (first JFK, now LBJ), it was a matter of when Southern resistance was crushed, not if.  Such are the fruits of good planning.

Twenty years ago, meticulous planning brought another racist regime to heel.  After months of preparation, the Western Allies lined up thousands of ships and tens of thousands of troops for an invasion of Nazi-occupied France.  D-Day at Normandy was a hard-won but smashing success that sounded the death knell for Hitler's empire.  The other night, Walter Cronkite met up with the operation's implementer, President/General Eisenhower, for a heart to heart in France.  It was good television, and stirring tribute to one of America's finest hours.

What If?

IF Worlds of Science Fiction, Galaxy's scrappy younger sister, has also launched a big operation, the result of a long-ranged plan.  For years, the magazine has been a bi-monthly, alternating publication with Galaxy.  Now, editor Fred Pohl says it's going monthly.  To that end, he lined up a slew of big-name authors to contribute enough material to sustain the increased publication rate.  Moreover, Pohl intends IF to be the adventurous throwback mag, in contrast to the more cerebral digests under his direction (Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow.  Or in his words:

"Adventure.  Excitement.  Drama.  Color.  Not hack pulp-writing or gory comic-strip blood and thunder, but the sort of story that attracted most of us to science fiction in the first place."

Frankly, it was Galaxy that got me into SF in 1950, so I'm not sure I want a return to the "Golden Age".  But I'm willing to see how this works out, and in fact, this month's issue is encouragingly decent, as you shall soon see.


by Gray Morrow

The Issue at Hand

Farnham's Freehold (Part 1 of 3), by Robert A. Heinlein


by Jack Gaughan

This issue starts with a serial that is all about being prepared.  In Heinlein's latest, Hubert Farnham and his family are interrupted during bridge night when the Russkies start pounding his town with atom bombs.  Luckily, this second example of a perspicacious Hubert had the foresight to build a well-stocked shelter.  'Hugh', his headstrong son, Duke, cheerful daughter, Karen, alcoholic and listless wife, Grace, 'houseboy' and 'Negro' Joe, and friend, Barbara (as well as Joe's cat, 'Dr. Livingston, I presume') all cram into the basement refuge as the first two warheads go off.

Drama quickly erupts.  Duke does not take kindly to his father's autocratic style (and he is all the more resentful since Hugh is always right).  After the second bomb, Hugh and Barbara keep watch together, and promptly commence to having an affair.  This would have been more palatable had there been any sort of build up or prior history.  Just a few pages ago, Hugh was lamenting that Duke and Barbara weren't an item yet.  All it takes is a couple of bombs, some sweltering heat, and a nearby knocked-out wife to fan the flames of passion, I guess.

There is a third walloping, but this time, there is no accompanying radiation or rumble.  Instead, when the six finally work their way out of the shelter, they find themselves in an utterly virgin version of their former home.  No city.  No people.  Just greenery and wildlife. 

Thus it is that Farnham's Freehold transforms from Alas, Babylon to Swiss Family Robinson. 

Hugh immediately creates a long-range settlement plan, complete with irrigation, plumbing, and light industry.  For several months, there is idyll in the new Garden.  But then (read no further if you don't want telling details) it turns out that both Karen and Barbara are pregnant.  Karen dies in the agonies of childbirth, as does her infant daughter.  Grace refuses to live under the same roof as Barbara and decides to leave, the Oedipally inclined Duke in tow.  Just as this split is about to come to fruition, other humans appear.

Black humans, with hoverships and paralyze rays.  They don't speak English, but they are kindly disposed to Joe.  Less so to the others.  End Part One.

After the disappointment that was Podkayne of Mars), I was not looking forward to spending hours with Bob Heinlein this month.  To some extent, my fears were borne out.  While I do admire the ability to tell a story completely in dialog, with the action implied in the lines of the characters, it is too much of a good thing here, especially since all of the characters sound like Bob Heinlein or Heinlein's Band of Straw Men.  The story reads like the screenplay for Heinlein — a One Man Show! crossed with The Boy Scout Handbook.  Bob even manages to cram in paeans to nudity, cats, and Libertarianism within the first 25 pages (I think he has a checklist).  And the "passionate" dialog between Hugh and Barbara?  Ugh.

That said, the book is readable and well-paced.  If you can look past the cardboard characters and the sparse scenery, the bones of the story are alright, I suppose.  Perhaps it's just my taste for the Post-Apocalyptic that kept me going.

Three stars for now.  We'll see what happens.

Weetl, by Jack Sharkey

This is a silly tale of man who was unprepared.  Raised in religiosity, a young zealot creates a machine that makes it impossible for anyone to weetle.  That is to say, when they try to say something weetleive, it is subweetletuted with the censoring sound, 'weetle.'  As you can see, beweetles a problem very quickly.

It starts great, ends dumb, and yet, I like the concept.  I can see a future where OMNIVAC ruins all of our computer programs by overzealously deleting words it finds offensive.  Or maybe Ma Bell implementing a razzer over particularly spicy phone conversations.

Three stars.

The Mathenauts, by Norman Kagan


by Nodel

Sometimes, things can't be planned for at all.  In the future, it turns out that the mathematically inclined can pilot spaceships that traverse pure math space, shortcutting the physical world.  But one of the geniuses in the crew goes too far and discovers that math isn't just an abstraction — it is the universe, and the physical world is just a construct of the beings that once thrived in the real (or should I say irrationally complex?) world of numbers.

This story left me completely cold, with its flat-falling jokes and easy philosophy ("Like, man, what if the dreams are real, and we're really asleep right now?!") But I know a lot of folks really liked this tale, and in deference to them, I gave the story multiple and deep readings.  After a while, I was able to refine my position.

I still don't like it.  Two stars.

(Full disclosure: I was not able to get past my third year of University mathematics, and proofs are my weak point.  I am a physicist, not a mathematician, and certainly not a philosopher.)

Old Testament, by Jerome Bixby

A wife and husband team of planetary explorers do their best to make a furtive survey of a planet inhabited by primitive extraterrestrials.  But the best-laid plans gang aft agley — the aliens have left a foundling child on board their ship, one who will die if they don't take it back.  Can they return the child without further tainting the culture?

I liked this one, a UFO story in reverse.  Four stars.

The Silkie, by A. E. van Vogt


by Gray Morrow

Last up is a most unusual story from pulp veteran A. E. van Vogt, featuring a profoundly altered variety of humanity that can not only breathe air but also live undersea and sail through the vastness of interplanetary space.  Cemp, a Silkie (sort of a telepathic, spacefaring cop) encounters an extraterrestrial incursion right on the eve of his once-in-a-decade period of spawning.  Talk about unplanned events!  Can he defeat the menace when he is at his most vulnerable?

It's the telling of this story, weird and subtle, that makes it.  Silkie feels less like van Vogt and more like Dick (and perhaps better Dick than a lot of recent Dick).  Not quite perfection, but interesting nonetheless.

Four stars.

Summing up

So far, Pohl's efforts to beef up IF appear to be paying off.  I look forward to seeing his plan further translate into reality!

Now I just need to figure out where to cram in the extra review every month…

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Magazine

[May 8, 1964] Rough Patch (June 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

I think I've got a bad case of sibling rivalry.  When Victoria Silverwolf came onto the Journey, she took on the task of reviewing Fantastic, a magazine that was just pulling itself out of the doldrums.  My bailiwick consisted of Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, IF, and Galaxy, which constituted The Best that SF had to offer.

Ah for those halcyon days.  Now Fantastic is showcasing fabulous Leiber, Moorcock, and Le Guin.  Moreover, Vic has added the superlative Worlds of Tomorrow to her beat.  What have I got?  Analog is drab and dry, Avram Davidson has careened F&SF to the ground, IF is inconsistent, and Galaxy…ah, my poor, once beloved Galaxy…

The Issue at Hand


cover by McKenna

To Build a World, by Poul Anderson


by Morrow

Wham!  Kaboom!  A giant drilling machine is sabotaged while releasing the gasses pent up under the Moon's surface.  A man dies, and the lunar terraforming project is thrown into jeopardy.  It is up to the drill team's foreman, Venusian Don Sevigny, to go to Earth and sniff out the plot…before his life is snuffed out!

Sixty pages of stilted exposition punctuated by standard action scenes ensue.  Moreover, overcrowded Earth has exactly one woman on it (at least that we ever see), and though she turns out to be a villain, she's far too good-looking to remain one.  Sigh.

Poul Anderson vacillates between brilliance and boredom, and To Build a World is a swing of the pendulum hard toward the latter extreme. 

Let's hope the thing doesn't get stuck there.  Two stars.

The King of the Beasts, by Philip José Farmer

Twenty years ago, this utterly predictable vignette might have made acceptable filler in Astounding.  Here and now, it's an embarrassing waste of space.

One star.

The Man from Earth, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Giunta

On the crossroads planet of Duhnbar, the Samarkand of the stars, a visiting human trader fails to observe a minor religious rite.  Duhnbar's all-powerful Director decides to make an example of the man, imposing a long-lapsed death penalty.  In a futile act of defiance, the man preserves his pride, if not his life.

This is a nicely written piece, and the setup is genuinely interesting, but the ending is a let down.  Three stars.

The Well-Trained Heroes, by Arthur Sellings


by Jack Gaughan (and not one of his best)

People often have the misapprehension that colonization reduced population pressure.  It doesn't; it increases it.  Colonies always fill up.  Passage is expensive.  Inevitably, home remains as crowded as ever, but the folks living there are all the more disgruntled for being stuck there.

In Heroes, Earth's citizens yearn to go to space, but barely one in a million make the cut to join the astronaut corps.  Tension builds, and town after town goes into unrest.  It is up to a pair of astronauts to defuse would-be rioters by convincing them that space isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Kind of a neat story, if a little meandering.  Three stars.

For Your Information: Anyone Else for Space?, by Willy Ley

After months of desultory articles, Willy Ley is back in form.  This month's column is nearly twice as long as it has been recently, and it's chock full of the latest news on rocket development outside the Big Two.  Having been to Japan's nascent launch facilities recently, it was exciting to hear about their latest developments (as well as those of the Europeans, the Israelis, the Egyptians, and the Indians!)

Five stars

Collector's Fever, by Roger Zelazny

Rock collecting is a fine hobby, provided the specimens aren't sentient and ready to deeble!  A slight, amusing piece that gets extra points for being told almost entirely in dialogue.

Three stars.

The Many Dooms, by Harry Harrison


by Nodel

On expeditions to hostile worlds, there is no margin of error.  When a cocky geologist's sloppiness threatens the lives of his crew-mates, fate (perhaps with a little push from human hands) deals with the problem.

I liked the writing on this one, and the subject matter is up my alley, but I found the ending both too straightforward and, quite frankly, disturbing.

Three stars.

An Ancient Madness, by Damon Knight


by John Giunta

On an island where breeding is artificial and strictly regimented, and romantic pairings are unheard of, one sixteen year old girl longs for a dramatic love.

A lot.  Loudly and repeatedly.  For twenty angst-infused, plot-stationary pages.  Then, in the final two paragraphs, she runs off with the Doctor to live happily ever after.

I'm not sure why this story was written.  I'm even less certain how I made it through the thing.

Two stars.

Men of Good Will, by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

In the near future, the Cold War has spread to near-Earth space, occasionally sparking into moments of heat.  For some reason, however, the Moon seems to be a zone of armistice.  The Norwegian UN ambassador heads to the Earth's companion to find out the secret.

The secret (read no further if you wish to remain unspoilt): The Yanks and the Ruskies did shoot it out — once.  Those bullets achieved orbital velocity, and every 27 days, their orbit intersects with the bases, peppering them with new holes.  It's simply too dangerous to keep up the fight.

It's a cute premise, but of course, it makes absolutely no sense.  The periapsis of the bullets only intersects with the bases once out of 24 x 27 orbits; the rest of the time, the bullets should be hitting lunar hills.  They should have been stopped after the first grounding.

C'mon, Ben!  You're a science writer fer cryin' out loud.  Two stars.

The Sincerest Form, by J. W. Groves


by Cowles

Last up, we have a tale told from the point of view of imitative aliens, spore-like things that have no consciousnesses of their own, but which can become replicas of the beings they devour.  The process is imperfect, and the thought processes get a bit garbled.  In fact, it takes a while for the reader to figure out what's going on; it is only when the imitators encounter bonafide humans that things become clear.

I have to give Groves credit for an interesting concept, but the very trickiness of the idea meant that proper execution lay slightly beyond the author's ability.  Still, if he doesn't quite stick the landing, Groves does leave you with something to think about.

Three stars.

Summing Up

So, on the one hand, I am left grousing at my fate, stuck with a 2.7 star issue while Vic reviews the good stuff.  On the other hand, I'm not John Boston, resigned to review bottom-of-the-pack Amazing every month.  Plus, is that a new issue of Gamma I see peeking out from under the stack of bills?

I suppose I do have blessings to count!

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Magazine

[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

[March 17, 1964] It's all Downhill(April 1964 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

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by Gideon Marcus

A friend of mine inquired about an obscure science fiction story the other day.  She expressed surprise that I had, in fact, read it, and wondered what my criteria were for choosing my reading material.  I had to explain that I didn't have any: I read everything published as science fiction and/or fantasy. 

My friend found this refrain from judgment admirable.  I think it's just a form of insanity, particularly as it subjects me to frequent painful slogs.  For instance, this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction continues the magazine's (occasionally abated) slide into the kaka.  With the exception of a couple of pieces, it's bad.  Beyond bad — dull.

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Jack Gaughan illustrating Into the Shop

Fred One, by James Ransom

We start off on reasonably sound footing, with a pair of preternaturally intelligent laboratory rats named Freds One and Two.  One is a genius, the brains of the operation.  The other, though possessed of a high order of intelligence for his kind, is clearly a sidekick.  It is not made clear whether the rats gained their smarts as a result of human intervention, or if they've always been bright and endure testing for their own reasons.

Not much happens, really.  The author relies on the humor of the conceit, writing with deadly earnestness from the brain rat's point of view.  The result is a fun but somewhat inconsequential story.  It might make a good cartoon someday.

Three stars.

Beware of the Dog, by Gahan Wilson

Here's a one-page vignette that's far better than the monthly Feghoots (which have recently stopped being produced).  I found it funny enough to read to my daughter.

Four stars.

Sun Creation, by B. Traven

Author Traven is some kind of ethnologist, a German who transplanted himself to Mexico and now translates native creation myths.  Sun Creation is about a brave warrior who makes a new sun after the old one is devoured by evil spirits; it's as good (if not better) than any of the Greek myths I grew up with.  I don't know if it belongs in this magazine, but it was my favorite piece of the issue.

Four stars.

A Piece of the Action, by Isaac Asimov

And now begins our downward slide.  The Good Doctor, brilliant as he may be in chemistry, has oft confessed to having a blind spot when it comes to math.  This is especially unfortunate as regards to this month's article, in which he tries to explain quantum mechanics and the discovery of Planck's constant.

The problem is, there are just some things you can't explain without math.  I remember being bored and frustrated with high school physics; it wasn't until college, when they taught us the calculus-based stuff that things really clicked.  I went on to take quantum mechanics my junior year in college (as part of an astrophysics curriculum).  Let me tell you, it is a subject that is absolutely beautiful with the proper mathematical underpinning…and utterly meaningless without it.

Asimov's explanation of the subject, bereft of any math, doesn't work.  I was barely able to follow along thanks to my prior education.  I can't imagine any of his readers will be able to make much of it.

My first two-star score for Dr. A.

Welcome, Comrade, by Simon Bagley

Ugh continues.  Here's a piece about a top secret project to orbit a brainwashing satellite.  The goal is to instill every human on Earth with a love for and inability to sway from American values.  You know: capitalism, democracy, and dispute resolution by fisticuffs.  The title gives away the ending, which you'd have seen miles away anyhow. 

Decent beginning, Analog-esque middle (especially if Bagley'd played it straight rather than satire), numbskull predictable ending.

Two stars.

Urgent Message for Mr. Prosser, by J. P. Sellers

Night watchman, so British that the rendition seems farcical, receives breathless calls at 1 AM.  The caller urgently desires to warn Mr. Prosser, the watchman's boss, that he is in danger of being poisoned by his wife.  Our protagonist meets with the caller one night and finds that he is, in fact, a dead ringer for Mr. Prosser.

The odd situation is never explained, though my guess is the caller is some sort of phantom made real out of the real Prosser's paranoid fears.  In any event, this is another facile story that doesn't do much but mildly entertain and take up pages.  Three stars, I suppose.

Van Allen Belts, by Theodore L. Thomas

I'm not sure why Thomas has this column; it's never worth reading.  This one, like all his others, starts like a non-fiction article and ends with a science fictional tail-sting.  Thomas recommends that the electrical current created by the charged particles circling the Earth could power satellites.  This is nonsense — the sun's photons provide far more energy than the weak fields in orbit could ever provide.

One star and stop wasting my time.

The Old Man Lay Down, by Sonya Dorman

A poem by an author I generally look forward to.  I couldn't make heads or tails of it.  Explain it to me?  Two stars.

The Crazy Mathematician, by R. Underwood

Mad scientist finds a way to travel the universes by way of a shrinking machine.  He takes a handsome journalist along on his journeys, who spends the trip romancing the various versions of femininity he finds at the various stops. 

Complete fantasy and not worth your energy.  Two stars.

Fanzine Fanfaronade, by Terry Carr

The third in F&SF's series on fandom, it is neither as good as last month's (on conventions), nor as mediocre as the one from the month before (on fandom in general).

Three stars.

The Compleat Consumators, by Alan E. Nourse

The premise to this piece is that two lovers, ideally matched, will not just become one metaphorically, but will fuse into a single physical identity.  It's a lovely idea, but here it's played for horror, and abandoned right when it could have become interesting. 

Two stars.

Into the Shop, by Ron Goulart

Intelligent cop car mistakes everyone for a suspect, including its human partner, with fatal results.  Sub-par stuff, and doubly disappointing given Goulart's fine reputation.

Two stars.

Oreste, by Henry Shultz

And here we hit the bottom with a reprint from 1952(!) about an eight year old child and the odd uncle with whom he has a telepathic connection.  It seems young Titus is stealing the thoughts of Uncle Oreste, writing books and composing music on borrowed talent.

Or something.  There's a twist ending, but after 20+ pages of a story that could easily have fit into five, I was too bored to care.

One star.

Summing Up

Oh dear.  Didn't I pledge just last month to be a lot nicer in my reviews?  I guess there's something about reading eighty pages of muck that puts me in a bad mood.  Like Uncle Oreste, someone has stolen my beautiful F&SF (my favorite magazine until Editor Davidson showed up in '62), and replaced it with nonsense.

I do bring one piece of good news, though.  I've got prints of my performance at San Diego Comic Fest.  If you've got a sound-capable 8mm, let me know, and I'll Parcel Post it to you:

[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

[March 9, 1964] Deviant from the Norm (April 1964 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

It's Spreading

25 years ago, a group of fen met in New York for the first World's Science Fiction Convention.  Now, conclaves are springing up all over the nation (and internationally, too).  Just this weekend, I attended a small event ambitiously titled San Diego Comic Fest.  It was a kind of "Comics-in," where fans of the funny pages could discuss their peculiar interests: Is Superman better than Batman?  Are the X-Men and the Doom Patrol related?  Is Steve Ditko one of the best comics artists ever?

I was there as an invited guest to speak on the current state of comics and science fiction.  I understand that the proceeding was filmed and may even be broadcast on local television.  When that happens, I shall be sure to give you a heads up.

Slinging my new color camera, I took photos of some of the new friends I made.  There was also excellent space-themed decor, which I had to capture for posterity.  Many thanks to my friends with the private dark room who developed these prints so quickly for publication:


Posters lining the bar at the Lunar Lounge


Mercury meets Sputnik


The Young Traveler (initials L.E.M.) poses with a mock-up of the Apollo LEM


Alvin of the Chipmunks (his name really is Alvin!)


The artist known as Napoleon Doom


The Traveler with a familiar face


A beautiful, newly commissioned drawing of Dr. Martha Dane, the Journey's unofficial mascot

While the con possessed many superlative qualities, I think my fondest memories involved reading the latest issue of Galaxy, sitting in the lobby of the event hotel, listening to one of the fans play an endless medley of classic and new tunes on the piano.  With that, I suppose it's appropriate I tell you about what I read…

The Issue at Hand


Cover by Sol Dember illustrating Final Contact

The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, by Cordwainer Smith

For years, Cordwainer Smith has teased us with views of his future tales of the Instrumentality, the rigid, computer-facilitated government of Old Earth.  We've learned that there are the rich humans, whose every whim is catered to.  Beneath them, literally, are the Underpeople — animals shaped into human guise (a la Dr. Moreau) who live in subterranean cities.  A giant tower, miles high, launches spaceships to the heavens, spreading the Instrumentality to the hundreds of settled stars of the galaxy.  All but one, the setting of Smith's newest book.

Old North Australia stands alone, an island in an Instrumentality-dominated sea of space.  On that grey, dusty world, its inhabitants still pledge fealty to the Queen of the British Commonwealth (she and that confederation dead some 15,000 years).  What enables this world, dubbed "Norstrilia," to stand alone?  Like Frank Herbert's Arrakis, Norstrilia is the sole producer of the longevity drug, stroon.  This has made Norstrilia fantastically wealthy, able to produce the most lethal of defenses (including Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons).

Our viewpoint in Boy is Rod McBan, a protagonist with a problem.  The scion of one of Norstrilia's oldest and richest families, he has been barred from achieving adulthood for his inability to communicate telepathically with his peers.  Four times the boy has lived to the age of sixteen; three times, he has had his memories erased in the hopes that Rod might develop the appropriate mental gifts to participate meaningfully in society.  Failure to do so a fourth time means judgment by tribunal and possible sentence to death.

How Rod escapes this fate and turns around his fortune so entirely (figuratively and literally) such that he becomes possessor of the Manhome, Old Earth itself, is an interesting tale I shan't spoil.  I can, however, share my thoughts on the story's execution.

Smith is one of the more unusual authors out there.  Having been raised in pre-Communist China and then employed by intelligence agencies, Smith has much more experience with non-Western cultures.  This shows up in his writing, with the Instrumentality and its denizens a fair bit further from the norm of SF societal depictions. 

The author is hampered, however, by choosing Norstrilia as his setting.  The planet is prosaic, deliberately so by choice of the inhabitants.  Missing is that lucid dream-like quality Smith has imparted his other Instrumentality stories.

Moreover, the novel is very short, and it ends abruptly just as it's getting interesting.  I suspect the piece has been cut for space.  The result is just two thirds of a story arc.

For these reasons, I give Boy 3.5 stars and hope that a fuller rendition comes out in proper book form.  Perhaps, like Heinlein's Starship Troopers, this will turn a flawed gem into a masterpiece.

Earth Eighteen, by Ernst Mason

After finishing the serious, humorless piece that was Boy, it was quite a jolt to be thrown into this comedy article, a tourguide for aliens visiting a ruined and mostly depopulated Earth.  Thus, it took me a while to slow down and get into the thing, but once I did, I found moments of genuine cleverness.  The Gaughan pictures are cute, too. 

Three stars.

For Your Information, by Willy Ley

The non-fiction article this month deals with statistical bell curves: the phenomenon whereby any set of things (height of people, size of noses, width of beans) falls within boundaries with the most common incidence being right in the middle.  It's not a bad piece, but it's short and ends abruptly. 

Three stars.

The End of the Race, by Albert Bermel

If you've read the recent novel (soon to be movie) Fail-safe, then you know the ending to this story, a farcical piece about negotiated disarmament between the superpowers.  It was better when it wasn't played for laughs, and not very good laughs at that.

Two stars.

Final Encounter, by Harry Harrison

Now here is the real gem of the book, and a real departure from the norm.  Ship's captain Hautamaki, of the race of Men, takes aboard a married pair of more conventionally human anthropologists, Gulyas and Tjond.  Their mission: to make first contact with aliens.  The extraterrestrials have left tantalizing clues of their existence, beacons on various worlds pointing to one star in the galaxy.  Friction quickly erupts amongst the crew.  Tjond, the sole woman, finds Hautamaki's insistence on nudity disturbing.  And she cannot comprehend at all the society of Men, which includes no women, involves marriage, love, and production of children by homosexual union alone. 

Worse yet, Hautamaki insists on jettisoning all weaponry and adopting a completely peaceful posture when approaching the aliens.  His reasoning is that the threat of violence could jeopardize the contact, and if the aliens prove hostile even in the face of no provocation, well, the next mission will be so alerted.

I absolutely loved this story.  It possessed that well-executed strangeness that I'd sort of expected from the Smith.  I appreciated that it was the Man who was the gentle pacifist.  And, as in Evelyn Smith's They Also Serve, a homosexual man is key to a peaceful first contact.  But unlike Smith's story, this is the first instance in SF (aside from Sturgeon's The World Well Lost from 1953) where the homosexuality is explicit — and completely unapologetic.

How times have changed.  Five stars.

At the Feelies, by Jack Sharkey

At the con, I had a discussion with a fellow who mused on the future of movies.  After silent films came talkies.  Then color, 3-D, "Sens-o-rama," and so on.  It was timely, then, that I read this piece right after.  It's a (fictional) review of Gone with the Wind redone such that the audience can feel and smell from the point of view of the actors — a technology with mixed blessings, as you can imagine.

It's cute.  Three stars.

Soft and Soupy Whispers, by Sydney Van Scyoc

Van Scyoc offers up a typically macabre piece about a mentally disturbed man whose insanity is kept under control through the installation of a mental companion.  In essence, the fellow is made sane through schizophrenia.  It's subtle and interesting, but a bit obtuse and more artful than plausible.

Three stars.

The Blasphemers, by Philip José Farmer

Last up is another piece from left field, this one dealing with a race of centaurs that possesses four sexes, all of which are necessary to produce (and capable of bearing) children.  The aliens are an advanced, starfaring race.  Highly religious, they venerate the spirits of their ancestors, holding sacred the statues of their elders.  One iconoclast leads his mated quartet to a shrine and proceeds to make love amongst the monuments.

He is caught and brought before a judge, but instead of being sentenced to immolation, he is congratulated for his heresy and informed that the state religion is bunk, actually a tool to justify the conquest of planets: one of the faith's tenets is that an early ancestor left statues of himself on planets to be colonized by the race; such statues were actually carved recently by advance scouts.

Our protagonist is then made a ship's captain and dispatched to colonize as many worlds as he and his companions can, until common sense prevails over faith and the old order is toppled.

Particularly interesting about this piece is the assertion that religious faith is instilled by nature, not nurture.  Like sexual preference, one can't help one's feelings on the subject, the story says.

Ambitious and laudable as Farmer's goals are in this piece, his execution is workmanlike.  Ted Sturgeon once called Farmer an author who always almost gets it right, and that record continues with The Blasphemers.  I suppose Harrison can't write all the iconoclastic tales.

Three stars.

Summing Up

With just one very short clunker in the mix, and despite the (relative) disappointment of the Smith novel, the April 1964 Galaxy is a welcome departure from the standard.  I'm impressed.  What wonders await us in two months?

[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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