A few days ago, folks in the Soviet Union must have been surprised to see nudity on their television sets. Nude scenes from the controversial new play Oh, Calcutta! and photographs of sex magazines appeared on one of the Soviet Central Television networks.
The intent was not to titillate the audience (although that may have been an accidental side effect) but to point out the decadence of American culture.
The Soviet station's logo. You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
What does this have to do with the latest issue of Fantastic? Keep your hat (and other clothing) on and you'll find out.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
As usual, the cover is (ahem) borrowed from a German publication.
The original always looks better.
Editorial, by Ted White
The new editor introduces himself. He relates how he failed to produce a fancy, expensive magazine called STELLAR Stories of Imagination. Some of the stories intended for that stillborn publication will appear in Fantastic and Amazing. He also promises to provide what he calls different stories in the magazines. We'll see.
No rating.
What's Your Excuse, by Alexis Panshin
Here's a tale that was supposed to appear in STELLAR. A professor plays a trick on a graduate student who is in his late twenties, but who appears to be in his teens. The student has his own secret up his sleeve.
It's hard to say too much about this brief yarn, which depends entirely on its premise. Is it different? Yeah, I guess so. Is it good? Well, maybe not. A trivial oddity.
Two stars.
The Briefing, by Randall Garrett
Another very short story. The narrator is aboard a spaceship. He's about to be sent down to a planet in disguise, in order to shorten an impending Dark Ages.
Without giving away anything, let's just say that you may be able to predict the twist ending. Extra points for being a bit of a dangerous vision, at least.
Three stars.
Emphyrio (Part Two of Two), by Jack Vance
Taking up half the magazine is the conclusion to this new novel.
Illustrations by Bruce Jones (obviously.)
We first met our hero, Ghyl Tarvoke, with his head literally cut open. His brain controlled by those holding him prisoner, he was forced to tell the truth.
This led us into a long flashback, from Ghyl's childhood until he decided to run for mayor under the pseudonym of Emphyrio, the name of a semi-legendary hero.
Part Two begins with Ghyl losing the election, but coming in third. That's enough to draw the attention of the authorities. Ghyl's father was already in trouble with them, and the situation only gets worse.
After the death of his father, Ghyl agrees to join his friends in a plot to steal a starship from the Lords and Ladies who rule his world. He makes them promise not to do any killing or kidnapping or pillaging after this single crime. Don't expect any honor among thieves.
Ghyl winds up leading a group of Lords and Ladies through the wilderness of another planet. The place is full of dangerous animals and people.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
He is eventually captured (leading back to our opening scene of interrogation) and sentenced to exile. However, there are a lot more adventures ahead, as he discovers the truth about the Lords and Ladies, and about the real Emphyrio.
Last time I said that the novel was very good, but maybe a bit leisurely and episodic. It turns out that incidents I thought were of little importance have great significance. I underestimated the intricacy of the author's tightly woven plot. At least I acknowledged his ability to create complex, imaginative worlds and cultures.
Five stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic. Apparently the new editor prefers to avoid taking things from Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, which may be a good thing.
Let's Do It For Love, by Robert Bloch
The November/December 1953 issue is the source of this farce.
Cover art by Vernon Kramer.
A guy invents some stuff that makes folks love everybody. The narrator is a public relations agent who tries to promote the wonderful chemical. Too bad nobody wants universal siblinghood.
Anonymous illustration.
There's a touch of satire, of course, but this is mostly just a silly romp, full of wacky jokes and tomfoolery. If that's your thing, fine. The way the story deals with the inventor's shrewish wife may not please too many readers.
Two stars.
To Fit the Crime, by Richard Matheson
This ironic tale comes from the November/December 1952 issue.
Cover art by Barye Phillips.
A curmudgeonly poet insults his relations in creative ways as he lies dying. In the afterlife, he faces an appropriate fate.
Illustration by David Stone.
There's not much to this except for the poet's way with words. The unpleasant fellow's version of perdition may cause some amusement.
Two stars.
The Star Dummy, by Anthony Boucher
The Fall 1952 issue provides this lighthearted story.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A ventriloquist imagines that his dummy talks to him. Oddly, that's not really what the story is about. It actually deals with a goofy-looking alien, newly arrived on Earth, looking for his vanished mate. The extraterrestrial and the ventriloquist wind up helping each other.
Illustration by Tom Beecham.
This is mostly a comedy, of a very gentle sort. One unusual aspect of the story is that it also deals with the ventriloquist's religious faith. There's some discussion of science fiction itself as well.
Slightly eccentric, moderately entertaining.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Ted White
Leiber discusses three new novels that add explicit sex to science fiction plots. (I told you I'd get to that!) For the record, the trio consists of The Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer, The Endless Orgy by Richard E. Geis, and Season of the Witch by Hank Stine. Leiber gives them mixed reviews, but welcomes the new frankness with which they describe sexual behavior.
The editor offers a long, glowing review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny. I liked it, too.
No rating.
The Hungry, by Robert Sheckley
Back to reprints. This one comes from June 1954 issue.
Cover art by Ernest Schroeder.
A malevolent thing preys upon the negative emotions and physical suffering of a young married couple. Only the baby of the family and the pet cat can see it. The infant does what it can to help.
Illustration by Sanford Kossin.
Told from the viewpoint of the baby, this is an offbeat little story. Minor, but nicely done.
Three stars.
The Worth of a Man,by Henry Slesar
The June 1959 issue supplies this grim tale.
Cover art by Ed Valigursky.
A veteran of a future war has much of his body replaced with metal parts. He talks to a psychiatrist about his sense that somebody is out to hurt him.
Of course, his supposed paranoia is more than a delusion. What happens to him is disturbing, which is apparently the author's intent. I found it to be a powerful and all-too-plausible chiller.
Four stars.
Fantasy Fandom, by Ted White and Bill Meyers
I wasn't even going to discuss, let alone rate, this new column from the editor, in which he intends to reprint writings from fanzines. However, the first one knocked me out.
First published in Void, White's own fanzine, the essay by Meyers relates the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien to the author's childhood. It's a thoughtful, elegantly written piece, not so much about Tolkien as it is about the way that our early years influence how we react to literature.
I may be prejudiced in its favor, because Meyers grew up in the Chattanooga area, where I currently reside.
Five stars.
The Naked Truth
That was a very mixed bag of an issue. One excellent novel, one excellent essay, stories old and new ranging from below average to above average. You might want to skip some of the lesser pieces and go see a play instead.
The cast of Oh, Calcutta! You didn't expect me to show you the nudity, did you?
Yesterday the Vatican announced that more than forty saints have been removed from the official liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. How come? Because there's some serious doubt that these holy folks ever existed.
The most famous of these former saints is Christopher, patron of travelers. There are plenty of people with Saint Christopher medals hanging from the rear view mirrors of their cars, hoping for safe journeys.
A typical Saint Christopher medal. Note the infant Jesus carried on his back.
The story goes that Christopher (whose name, appropriately, means Bearer of Christ) carried the baby Messiah across a river. I guess we'll never know now how He made it. Perhaps He crawled on water.
Long Hair Music
I'm sure that ex-Saint Christopher will continue to be associated with a divine youth. In this modern age, what could be more associated with secular youth than the hippie movement? The popularity of the musical Hair is proof of the cultural importance of these groovy young people.
Further evidence, if any be needed, is the fact that Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, a medley of two songs from Hair performed by The 5th Dimension, has been Number One in the USA since the middle of April, and shows no signs of leaving that position anytime soon.
Maybe I'm prejudiced in the song's favor because I'm an Aquarius.
Bildungsroman
Fittingly, the latest issue of Fantastic is dominated by the first half of a new novel in which we see the main character develop from a child to a young adult.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
The cover is, as usual, borrowed from an issue of the German magazine Perry Rhodan.
What happened to the green halo around the sphere in the upper right corner?
Editorial: Don't, by Laurence M. Janifer
The associate editor tells us why writing is a bad career choice. Although the piece is intended to be humorous, I can't help feeling that there's a trace of true bitterness to it.
No rating.
Emphyrio (Part One of Two), by Jack Vance
Illustrations by Bruce Jones.
Taking up half the magazine, this initial segment begins with a bang. We witness our protagonist, Ghyl Tarvoke, held prisoner in a tower. His skull is cut open and his brain attached to a sinister device. His captors manipulate his mind, bringing him from a vegetative state to one where he is able to answer questions, but lacks the imagination to lie. The torturers want to know why he committed serious crimes before they kill him.
After this dramatic opening we go into a flashback. Ghyl is the son of a woodworker. They live on a planet that was colonized so long ago that Earth is just a legend. Centuries ago, a war devastated the place where they live. Wealthy and powerful people restored basic services and now rule as lords, collecting taxes from their underlings.
Ghyl and a friend sneak into the spaceport where the aristocrats keep their private starships.
Ghyl's father engages in the forbidden activity of duplication; that is, he builds his own device that allows him to make copies of old manuscripts. (Other forms of duplication are also illegal; everything has to be made by hand.) He eventually pays a very heavy price for his crime.
In what starts as a joke, Ghyl runs for mayor (a purely symbolic office, but one that might offer the possibility of changing the oppressive laws of the lords) under the nom de guerre of Emphyrio. This half of the novel ends just as the election is about to take place.
Vance is a master at describing exotic settings and strange cultures, and his latest work is a particularly shining example. I have failed to give you any idea of the novel's complex and detailed background. (Vance is the only SF author I know who can get away with the copious use of footnotes to explain the worlds he creates.) Ghyl and the other characters are very real, and their world seems like a place with millennia of history.
If I have to have a few minor quibbles, I might say that the novel (with the exception of the shocking opening scene) is very leisurely and episodic. Readers expecting an action-packed plot may be a bit disappointed. Personally, I found Ghyl's world fascinating.
Four stars (and maybe even leaning toward five.)
The Big Boy, by Bruce McAllister
The only other original work of fiction in this issue is a blend of science fiction and religious fantasy. Space travelers, including clergy, discover a galaxy-size, vaguely humanoid being deep in the cosmos. It manipulates stars and planets. An attempt to communicate with it yields a garbled message that seems to indicate that it is God. A clearer version of the message reveals something else.
I didn't really see the point of this story. The second version of the message isn't some big, shocking twist, but rather a slight modification of the original. (That's how I saw it, anyway, although the characters react wildly to it.)
Two stars.
On to the reprints! They all come from old issues of Fantastic, instead of the usual yellowing copies of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures.
Time Bum, by C. M. Kornbluth
The January/February 1953 issue of the magazine supplies this comedy.
Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.
A con artist rents a bungalow from a married couple. He drops hints that he's from centuries in the future. Revealing his identity as a time traveler would be a capital offense in his future world, or so he convinces them. The plan is to have them bring him a fortune in diamonds that he can supposedly duplicate for them.
Illustration by David Stone.
This is an amusing little jape. The author has a good time making fun of time travel stories and science fiction in general. (The wife is a reader of SF magazines, tearing off the covers with their scantily clad space women.) It's a minor work, and you'll see the ending coming a mile away, but it's worth a chuckle or two.
Three stars.
The Opal Necklace, by Kris Neville
The very first issue of the magazine (Summer 1952) is the source of this horror story.
Cover art by Barye Phillips and Leo Summers.
The daughter of a witch living way back in the swamp marries a man from New York City. The witch warns her that she will always be a part of the swamp. She gives her daughter a string of opals, each one of which contains one of the husband's joys.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
When the marriage inevitably falls apart, the woman turning to booze and cheap affairs, she destroys the opals, one by one. The first time, this causes the death of the man's pet dog. It all leads up to a tragic ending.
Besides being an effective chiller, this is a very well-written story with a great deal of emotional power. The woman is both victim and villain. The reader is able to empathize with her, no matter how reprehensible her actions may be.
Four stars.
The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch, by Eric Frank Russell
This grimly comic tale comes from the Fall 1952 issue.
Cover art by Leo Summers.
A series of gruesome deaths occurs in a small town in France. They all happen near a place where a meteorite fell. Only the village idiot knows what is responsible.
Illustration by Leo Summers also.
Does that sound like a comedy to you? Me neither. The basic plot is a typical science fiction horror story, but the author treats it with dry humor. Frankly, I found it in questionable taste, and not very funny.
Two stars.
Root of Evil, by Shirley Jackson
A tale from a truly great writer comes from the March/April issue.
Cover art by Richard Powers.
A man places an ad in the newspaper offering to send money to anybody who writes to him. Sure enough, folks who send in a request get the cash. We see several people react to this strange ad in different ways. At last, we learn about the fellow giving away all this loot.
Illustration by Virgil Finlay.
I was expecting a lot from the author of the superb short stories The Lottery and One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts as well as the excellent novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I didn't get it. The initial premise is interesting, but the story fizzles out at the end.
Two stars.
What If, by Isaac Asimov
The same premiere issue that gave us Kris Neville's dark story of an unhappy marriage offers this sentimental tale from the Good Doctor about a happy one.
Illustration by David Stone.
A lovey-dovey couple are on a train. A strange little man sits across from them with a box that says WHAT IF in big letters. He doesn't say a word, but he shows them a glass panel that allows them to see what would have happened if they had not met the way they did.
This isn't the most profound story ever written, but it makes for very pleasant reading. The message seems to be that some people are truly meant for each other, and that things tend to work out for the best. An optimistic point of view, to be sure, but it will probably appeal to the old softy inside all of us.
Three stars.
Fantasy Books, by Fritz Leiber and Hank Stine
Leiber has high praise for the dark fantasy novel Black Easter by James Blish (I agree; it's very good) and the story collection A Glass of Stars by Robert F. Young, particularly noting the latter's skill with love stories. (I agree with that also.)
Although it's not a book, the column includes an appreciation of the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows by Hank Stine.
No rating.
Worth Spending Your Youth On?
This was a pretty good issue, despite a couple of disappointments. The Jack Vance novel is clearly the highlight. If you'd rather skip the rest of the magazine, you can always read an old literary classic.
Yesterday, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a huge celebration took place. International dignitaries attended, US Marines fired cannons, Local Choirs sang specially composed songs.
What was all this in aid of? The beginning of one of the strangest architectural projects of our time. The reconstruction of London Bridge.
An Abridged History
Old London Bridge, in the 18th Century
Whilst there has been a bridge across the Thames for at least as long ago as The Romans, the longest lasting and one that has been immortalized in song is the medieval “Old London Bridge”, which was completed in 1205. As you are probably aware it was constantly beset with problems. After endless changes, removal of properties and attempts to shore it up, a committee in 1821 was formed to build the New London Bridge.
The ”New” London Bridge, at a less busy time
This new version was opened to the public in 1831 and has fared reasonably well for over a century. However, the increased volume of traffic has caused it to slowly sink. This was not as much of an issue in the era of the horse and cart, but with hundreds of tonnes of steel sitting on it every rush hour, and not prepared for the passage of millions of Londoners, a change had to be made.
Not made for this kind of weight
In order to recoup some of the costs for the destruction of the old bridge and construction of a new one, Ivan Luckin of the Common Council of the City of London, put it up for auction. After a promotional campaign, two dozen serious bids came in. In April, the winner was announced to be Robert P. McCullough of McCullough Motors, planning to rebuild it in Arizona.
“In The Modern House They Throw In A Few Antiques”
What does a motor company want with 100,000 tons of granite? To understand that you have to know a little more about where it is going.
Not your typical holiday destination
In 1938, the Parker Dam was built on the Colorado River, providing water and power to Southern California. Behind it sits the reservoir of Lake Havasu. In 1942 the US government built an auxiliary airfield and support base there. What they were apparently unaware of was the land was not theirs to take but was actually owned by Victor and Corinne Spratt. After the war, the couple were able to get the land back and turn it into a holiday resort.
In 1958 McCullough enters our story. He was looking for a site to test onboard motors and convinced the Spratts to sell most of their land to him. He turned it from a resort into a city and set up a chainsaw factory there in 1964.
However, this is not exactly prime real estate. Lake Havasu City sits in the middle of the Mojave desert, around 40 miles from the Colorado River Reservation, a hundred miles from the Hoover Dam and almost equidistant between Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Phoenix. There is little else of interest, unless you like a lot of rocks. What could attract people? Maybe a piece of history…
Anglophilia
McCullough, now the proud owner of the world’s largest antique
Whilst this may be the strangest and, at over $2.4m, possibly the most expensive purchase of a piece of British design, it is not unique. The Queen Mary currently sits at Long Beach, California and the Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury was recently relocated to Missouri.
Will this grand venture pay off? It will take at least three years to complete the project, so we will see if in the mid-'70s people are coming from all over to see London Bridge, or if Lake Havasu City becomes another ghost town.
Ghosts of the Past
Talking of this kind of reconstruction project, this month, across two publications, I read 21 short stories, all of which are attempting to revive something of the past.
The Farthest Reaches
Joseph Elder is not a name I was familiar with before. He appears to be a fan of the old school, endorsing the “sense of wonder” over literary pretensions. As such he has asked his contributors to only include stories set in distant galaxies containing Clarke’s ideals of “wonder, beauty, romance, novelty”. Let’s see how they have done:
The Worm That Flies by Brian W. Aldiss
As these are sorted alphabetically, we of course start with Mr. Aldiss (at least until Alan Aardvark gets more prolific). And, just as obviously, it is one of the strangest in this volume.
Argustal crosses the world of Yzazys collecting stones to build his parapattener. When he is then able to communicate with Nothing, he hopes to answer the strange questions emerging about phantoms called “childs” and the dimension of time.
The ideas of this story are not particularly new and the mystery is reasonably obvious. However, what Aldiss manages to do well is create such a strange unnerving atmosphere, such that it carries the reader along and raises it up above standard fare of this type.
A low four stars
Kyrie by Poul Anderson
The spaceship Raven is sent to investigate a supernova, a crew consisting of fifty humans and one Auregian, a being of pure energy. This being, Lucifer, has its orders communicated telepathically by technician Eloise Waggoner.
I am not usually as much a fan of Anderson’s science fiction compared to his fantasy, but this one impressed me. It has an interesting mix of hard-science with psi-powers but a strong character focus. A compelling read.
Four Stars
Tomorrow Is a Million Years by J. G. Ballard
I am not quite sure why the cover claims these tales are never before published, as this one has been printed a number of times, including in New Worlds two years ago.
I don’t have much to add to Mark’s review, I will just say it is a strange, but wonderful piece.
Four Stars
Pond Water by John Brunner
Men attempt to create their ultimate defender, Alexander. The creation, indestructible and with all the knowledge of humanity, proceeds to invade and take control of more and more worlds. But what is Alexander to do when there are no more worlds to conquer?
This progresses well and Brunner shows us the scale of conquest vividly in such a short space. Unfortunately, the ending is so pat it wouldn’t even appear in the worst Twilight Zone episode.
Three Stars
The Dance of the Changer and the Three by Terry Carr
Forty-two men died on a mining expedition on the gas giant Loarra. According to a PR man who was there, the answer to what happened lies in an ancient myth of the native energy forms, The Dance of the Changer and the Three.
This is a very challenging story and you may need to read through a couple of times to fully understand it. However, it is definitely worth your patience. Carr really makes an effort to show the Loarra as truly alien, but not in an unknowably menacing way as Lovecraft does. Rather they have a completely different understanding of what life and reality is.
Five Stars
Crusade by Arthur C. Clarke
On an extra-galactic planet, a crystalline computerized creature sets out to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
What Clarke gives us here is a kind of fable about the dangers of biases and science for its own sake. A more cynical take than is usual for him; perhaps Kubrick's influence is rubbing off?
Four Stars
Ranging by John Jakes
Jakes’ tale is set centuries in the future, where generations range the universe, in order to map it and send back data. Whilst Delors wants to carefully explore as instructed, Jaim wishes to rebel and jump trillions of light years at a time.
This could have been an interesting take on exploration but it mostly descends into the two leads yelling at each other “you cannot understand because you’re just a man\girl”.
Two Stars
Mind Out of Time by Keith Laumer
Performing an experimental jump to Andromeda, the crew of the Extrasolar Exploratory Module find themselves at the end of space, where they start to experience reality outside of time.
I feel like Laumer was going for something analogous to the final section of 2001. However, he lacks the skill of Kubrick and Clarke, making what could be mysterious and profound merely serviceable.
A low Three Stars
The Inspector by James McKimmey
Steve Terry, hero of the planet of Tnp, went into orbit, walked out of his spaceship and suffocated. Forest and his team are sent to investigate why this happened, and why no one has attempted to retrieve the body.
This is the one story that does not conform to the brief—there is no particular reason this could not be set on Earth. In fact, there isn’t much need for it to be SFnal at all. With half a dozen small changes you could have it contemporaneously on a newly independent Caribbean Island.
Putting that aside, it is not a bad story, just rather pedestrian, where I had deduced the themes and mystery by the second page.
A low Three Stars
To the Dark Star by Robert Silverberg
Three scientists, a human man, a human woman altered to suit alien environments and a microcephalon, are sent to observe a star. One problem: they all hate each other.
Your feelings for this story will likely depend on how you feel about unpleasant protagonists. The narrator in this piece is incredibly so and the whole thing left me cold.
Two Stars
A Night in Elf Hill by Norman Spinrad
After 18 years of service, Spence is depressed that his travels in space will be over and he must choose a single planet to settle on. He writes to his psychologist brother Frank begging him to talk him out of going back to the mysterious city of The Race With No Name.
This is quite an impressive short story. Spinrad manages to seamlessly move from science fiction to fantasy to horror, creating a real emotional thrill. He also does it through a letter that has a unique tone of voice and gives a whole new sense to Spence’s descriptions.
It does sound like it might resemble what I have read of the Star Trek episode The Menagerie but I think Spinrad spins this yarn well enough that it doesn’t bother me.
Four Stars
Sulwen's Planet by Jack Vance
On Sulwen’s Planet, sit the wreckage of millennia old ships of two different species. Tall blue creatures, nicknamed The Wasps, and small white creatures, nicknamed the Sea Cows. A team of ambitious scientists departs from Earth, all determined to be the first to unravel these aliens' secrets.
Like Silverberg’s piece, this is also a tale of squabbling scientists, here primarily focused on the two linguists. Competent, enjoyable but forgettable.
After a 15-year hiatus Lester Del Rey returns to editing. He opens the magazine with a rambling editorial taking us from ancient firesides, through folktales, modern uptick in astrology, Tolkien, and theories of displacement, before concluding it doesn’t really matter as long as the stories are fun.
As Brak is fleeing from Lord Magnus he rescues a woman from rock demons. She reveals herself to be Nari, also fleeing but from Lord Garr of Gilgamarch and his wizard Valonicus, who can send forth shadow creatures after them with his magic mirror. Nari’s back is tattooed with a map to a treasure, one that could win or destroy a kingdom. Together the two attempt to flee across the Mountains of Smoke, but can they outrun such power?
This is a pretty standard story, full of the usual cliches of these kinds of tales. It probably would have managed a low three stars, except that it treats a rape victim very poorly. Brak does not seem to understand why a woman running scared would be wary of getting naked in front of a stranger who angrily badgers her for information about torture and sexual assault. And the ending is just disturbing in the wrong way.
A low two stars
Death is a Lonely Place by Bill Warren
Miklos Sokolos is a 68-year-old vampire who leaves his crypt in Parkline Cemetery to feed. But when he meets his latest potential victim, he is not sure if he can kill her.
I was originally surprised to see this here as it seemed like it would be more suited to Lowdnes’ Magazine of Horror, but, as it went on, I realized it was less a Lord Ruthven style tale, and more a meditation on how much of a curse the situation might be.
More thoughtful than expected.
Four Stars
As Is by Robert Silverberg
Sam Norton is transferred from New York to Los Angeles, but his company will not pay moving costs. To save money he rents a U-Haul and buys an unusual secondhand car that was left for repairs a year ago but never returned to. Not long after Sam sets out, the prior owner returns and wants his vehicle back. How will he catch up with Sam before he reaches LA? By renting a flying horse, of course!
Eminently silly short.
Two stars for me, although car owners might give it three.
What the Vintners Buy by Mack Reynolds
Matt Williams is a hedonist who has tried everything twice but has grown bored. As such he approaches Old Nick to make a deal for the ultimate pleasure.
Yes, another “deal with the devil” story, a dull and talky example. I can’t help but wonder if this was a reject from The Devil His Due.
One Star
Conan and the Cenotaph by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp
A young Conan “untampered by the dark deceits of the East” is working for the King of Turan, transporting back a treaty from the King of Kusan. Enroute their guide, Duke Feng, tells Conan of an ancient treasure hidden in a haunted valley and suggests together they can retrieve it.
This is another new tale of Conan from his biggest fans, however Carter and de Camp lack even a quarter of Howard’s skill. Over described, dull and the plot feels stretched even over these 10 pages. This would be bad enough but it, as you can probably tell from the quoted phrase above, invokes some horrible racism.
This can be seen most prominently in the villain of the piece. Duke Feng encapsulates every negative Asian stereotype, managing to somehow be both Fu Manchu and a sniveling traitorous coward. Whilst there are problems in Howard’s original work (the finer points of which my colleague Cora and I have expended much paper debating) this takes it many steps further.
One star
After Armageddon by Paris Flammonde
At the start of the “Final War”, Tom accidentally stumbles on the fountain of youth. Centuries later, after everyone else has died, Tom continues to wander the Earth.
This is another last man tale, the melancholic philosophical kind that used to fill the pages of New Worlds a few years back. This is not a great example and doesn’t add anything new to the already overused subgenre.
Two Stars
A Report on J. R. R. Tolkien by Lester Del Rey
The editor gives a look at the publishing history of The Lord of the Rings, the status of its planned sequels and the effect it is having on the industry.
Fine for what it is but, at only two pages, it does not delve into the why or give any information not already reported in multiple places.
Three Stars
The Man Who Liked by Robert Hoskins
A small man appears in the city dispensing joy to the residents. Who is he? And why is he being so generous?
A pleasant vignette, but one where you are continually waiting for the penny to drop. When it does, it is not where I would have predicted it going, but it works well.
Three Stars
Delenda Est by Robert E. Howard
The first printing of one of the many unpublished manuscripts that were left by the late author. This one is primarily a historical tale, set in the Vandal Kingdom of the Fifth Century. As King Genseric ponders his position, a mysterious stranger comes to convince him to sack Rome.
Howard clearly did his research and manages to explain the history of this much neglected period in an entertaining fashion. It also only contains a mild piece of speculative content (the rather obvious identity of the stranger), which is probably why it remained unsold.
Three Stars
However by Robert Lory
After having accidentally caused his boatman to be eaten, Hamper finds himself stuck in Grath. There, people are committed to only doing their profession, no matter how useless or obsolete it is. As such, getting across the water is to prove incredibly tricky.
Robert Lory has been writing for the main magazines for over 5 years, with some modern feeling pieces under his belt. This, however, feels like a reprint from the 19th century, one that might have been intended as a satire of mechanization but now reads as a tall tale.
Serviceable but silly and rambling.
Two Stars
A Delicate Balance
What the New-New London Bridge may look like
As can be seen, trying to do stories in an old style can be difficult work. Some, like Anderson and Warren, are able to use the ideas in a new way to make something profound. Others, such as de Camp and Carter, create an object of significantly less value. Whether constructing prose or pontoons it takes both skill and imagination few possess. However, those that do make the journey rewarding.
As people who read my review of last year’s Orbit will recall, I loved Joanna Russ’ new fantasy hero Alyx the Adventuress. These stories combined a modern sensibility, great characterization and the kind of fun you would get from Howard or Leiber.
Needless to say then, I was extremely excited to learn we would be getting a new novel of Alyx’s adventures so soon afterwards. Trying to go into the book with as little foreknowledge as possible, I found it was definitely not the story I was expecting.
When we last left Alyx she was escaping Orudh and planning her next move. In the opening paragraph of Picnic on Paradise we are reintroduced to her:
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I cannot believe you are a proper Trans-Temporal agent; I think-” and he finished the thought on the floor his head under one of his ankles… “I am the Agent, and My name is Alyx.
To understand what a sharp diversion this is, imagine picking up Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror and finding it opens in 1917 with Conan at the Battle of the Somme. A fascinating choice but also one that requires a lot of readjustment of expectations as well as explanations.
Eventually what we piece together is that while she was escaping by sea after robbing the Prince of Tyre, she was somehow brought to the future and has come to work for the transtemporal agency. Although she has learnt some elements and language of this future millennia and these weird new worlds, she is still largely a stranger.
What is continued from the previous installments is Alyx’s impatience for impractical people. Here it is the tourists she must shepherd across Paradise. They are all different representatives of this future, showing different facets of the time, but for Alyx they are all fools in one way or another, coddled by society and unable to survive without it.
In some ways this could be seen as a version of Montaigne’s Des Cannibales but it significantly improves upon it. Whilst the original uses cultural relativism as a means to critique contemporary society, Russ sets up two opposing societies as alien to us as each other: the ancient Mediterranean of Alyx and the highly complex future of the tourists, and compares them to make more complex points as well as building fascinating worlds.
It should not be thought as an old-fashioned kind of text at all, as it does not pull any punches. Instead, we have explorations of drugs, sex, religion, complex psychology, violence, humanity and much more. It is like all of society attempting to be distilled into one perilous journey.
I know it is only January but if this isn’t to be my favourite novel of 1968, something really special will have to come along in the next 11 months.
A very high Five Stars
by Victoria Silverwolf
Short and Not So Sweet
I recently came across a trio of new works of speculative fiction that don't require a lot of time to read. In fact, I was able to finish all three books in one day. Each features a fair amount of disturbing material, even though one is a comedy, one is intended for younger readers, and one is a action-packed thriller. Let's take a look at these brief, dark-tinged novels.
I use the word new loosely for this satiric Russian novella from an author who died in 1940. It was actually written in 1925, but has never been officially published in the Soviet Union. (I understand that copies of it have been circulated in the underground form known as samizdat.) Michael Glenny's translation is its first appearance in English, I believe.
Cover design by Applebaum & Curtis, Inc., according to the back cover, but the artist remains anonymous.
In classic horror movie fashion, a Mad Scientist adopts a homeless pooch for the bizarre purpose of transplanting a dead man's testicles and pineal gland into the animal's body. (The detailed descriptions of surgery are the gruesome parts of the book. Dog lovers beware.)
The mutt changes into a man, of a particularly vulgar sort. The canine fellow claims to be a loyal Communist, turning against the aristocratic scientist and siding with the bureaucrats who want the doctor to give up several rooms in his apartment.
It's obvious that the author is attacking the Bolshevik revolution in his portrait of the dog-man and the other collectivists. He also satirizes quack medicine of the time.
The narrative alternates from first person, in the dog's point of view, to third person, sometimes in a single paragraph. Some readers may find these sudden transitions jarring, although otherwise the book is quite readable. (Kudos to the translator.)
Despite the blood-soaked scenes of surgery and the savage satire of Communism, much of the novel is pure slapstick. There's an extended sequence in which the newly created man chases a cat, leading to the flooding of the apartment. Overall, the book is both amusing and thought-provoking.
Next we have an unusual fantasy for young people. I think this is the author's first book.
My sources suggest that this art is by John Holder.
We jump right into a scene of nail-biting suspense. A sixteen year old boy and his kid sister are trapped on a small rock in the sea off the coast of England. Folks with spears are ready to kill them if they make it back to shore. The tide is rising, ready to drown them.
The boy got hit on the head by one of the mob and has amnesia. This gives the girl a good excuse to tell her brother (and the reader) what's been going on for the last five years.
A mysterious something made the inhabitants of Britain hate machines. They've gone back to a medieval way of life. The boy was caught messing around with a motorboat, and his sister was seen drawing pictures of machines. The fanatical locals are ready to execute them for witchcraft. (Apparently the anti-technology effect has worn off on them.)
The boy is a weathermonger; that is, he can control the weather with his mind. (Every village in England has one, it seems. I suppose it's a side effect of the machine-hating phenomenon.)
He uses this power to create a fog. The siblings escape, make their way to the forbidden motorboat, and reach France. (The anti-technology effect is limited to Britain.)
That's just the start of their adventures. The French authorities, seeing that they are immune to the phenomenon, send them back to track down its source. Thus begins a wild odyssey to Wales, making use of a snazzy 1909 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost stolen from a museum. (I get the feeling the author is in love with that classic car.)
It's an exciting book, with one heck of a climax. The explanation for what's going on strains credibility, even for fantasy. The story is too intense for very young readers, I think, but it should be fine for teenagers. Adults who don't mind reading so-called juveniles should enjoy it as well.
The cover makes it clear that this is the start of a series. The name of the series, and the illustration, suggest that we're in for the kind of SFnal sword and sorcery yarn you might find in an old copy of Planet Stories. That's pretty accurate, but there's a bit more to it.
Cover art by Jeff Jones, who also provides a couple of interior illustrations.
The author doesn't waste any time. In just a couple of pages, a starship is destroyed by a weapon launched from the planet it's orbiting. A scout ship carrying two guys crashes on the planet. A few pages later, one of them is dead.
Let's catch our breath and see where we are. See the tiny black dot in the middle of the left side of the map? That's where the scout ship landed. The sole remaining hero won't get very far from that spot by the time the book ends. He just travels a bit to the northwest, not even reaching the coast. There are a few references to other places on the map, but the vast majority of the rest of the planet is going to have to wait for other volumes in the series.
The map art is not credited, but might be by Jeff Jones as well.
If you think the geography is complicated, wait until you hear about the population. There are humans of many different cultures present, for reasons explained later. There are at least four species of aliens, broken up into subgroups. The aliens who give the book its title, for example, are divided into the Old Chasch, the Blue Chasch, and the Green Chasch.
Complicating matters is the fact that some humans are (pick one) servants/slaves/worshippers/devotees/imitators of the various aliens. One such person is the book's most amusing character.
With all this going on, we still have a nonstop action-packed plot, as our hero sets out on a seemingly hopeless quest to get back to Earth. Along the way, he meets the traditional beautiful princess, whom he has to rescue from captivity no less than three times.
(At this point, I had to wonder if the author was poking subtle fun at the kind of work produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard.)
The story is full of violence and, frankly, kind of puerile. What distinguishes it from a typical thud-and-blunder yarn is the extraordinarily intricate setting. The author is a master of creating exotic cultures, and that's a lot more interesting than the endless killing and corny plot.
If the male characters are two-dimensional, the females are one-dimensional. The princess exists only to be stunningly beautiful, get kidnapped, and fall in love with the hero. There's a cult of priestesses who hate men and loathe attractive women. There are no other female characters of any importance, just servants and the like.
Taking a break from her various long-running series, Andre Norton, one of the most prolific science fiction novelists, has produced a new one-off. It's a simple, dare I say, old-fashioned tale wherein ex-GI Ray Osborne gets inadvertently whipped into the distant past when he stumbles across an experimental time travel beam. Emerging into the primeval forests of "The Barren Lands" that will one day be North America, he is quickly captured by a party of Atlanteans (as in from the lost continent of Atlantis) and turned into a galley slave. Fortunately, he is able to make his escape, with the help of a fellow prisoner named Cho. The two, now sword-brothers, secure passage on a warship commissioned by Atlantis' rival, the Pacific continent-nation of Mu. On said ship, Ray and Cho make their way to the land of the Sun, where Ray is elevated to the aristocratic rank of Sun-born and welcomed.
But Ray is in for more than he bargained, as he is imbued with a subconscious geas to infiltrate the perfidious former colony of Atlantis and stop their nefarious plan to bring in other-worldly demons, their doomsday weapon in a cold war about to turn hot…
Operation: Time Search is all very Burroughsian in its setup and execution, up to and including the pseudo-scientific, modern era bookends (that do not add much to the book save padding). It's essentially riproaring action from beginning to end, and Norton delivers it competently. There are also agreeable relationships between the sword-brethren Ray and Cho, as well as, later in the book, Ray and a buccaneer captain named Taut.
This is a peculiarly shallow book, however. The Murians are portrayed as universally good and just (even when they commit actions that are not so nice, as in making Ray an unwitting weapon). The Atlanteans are foul in every respect. This could be fine–after all, when has Conan been subtle? But the writing is peculiarly sparse, almost oblique, when describing the many visceral horrors and foes of this bloody world, almost as if Norton were censoring herself (or perhaps she was censored after the fact). An encounter between Roy and "The Loving One", a gruesome Lovecraftian menace, in particular suffers for this.
Plus, I was sad that the potentially interesting Lady Ayna, captain of a Murian warship, essentially disappears shortly after her introduction. The saintly Lady Aiee, Cho's mother, is not nearly so compelling; in any wise, she is gone halfway through the book, too. Really, there just isn't a lot to become attached to in this book: Ray isn't a good enough character, and the setting is too one dimensional.
All in all, it felt like Norton was just going through the motions on this one. Three stars.
Until now, the protests and unrest have been confined to the bigger cities, particularly West Berlin. My hometown of Bremen did have its share of protests, but those were mostly just a few dozen people standing around on the market square, holding up placards. Though protests are getting bigger even here. On the day before Christmas, there was a protest against the war in Vietnam of several thousand overwhelmingly young people outside the US general consulate.
Right now, however, Bremen is seeing the biggest protests since the Bremen Soviet Republic fifty years ago. And for once, those protests are not against the war in Vietnam or the West German emergency laws or a visit of the Shah of Persia or former Nazis in positions of power, but about something far more mundane, namely an increase in bus and tram fares from 60 to 70 Pfennig for single tickets and 33 to 40 Pfennig for group tickets popular with students and apprentices. On the surface, this increase seems modest. However, for students, apprentices and young people in general who neither have cars nor a lot of money and rely on public transport to get around the city, even a small fare increase is a big problem.
The tram protests started small on January 15 with approximately fifty students of several Bremen high schools protesting the fare increase on the Domsheide square, one of the main tram traffic hubs in the city center. When the protest was ignored, the students decided to stage a sit-in on the tram tracks. The police removed the students, whereupon the protest continued outside Bremen central station – another major traffic hub – where other young people joined in.
Protesting youngsters on the Domsheide squarePolice officers face teenaged protesters on DomsheideProtesting students stage a spontaneous sit-in on the tram tracks.
In the following days, the protests continued to grow. On January 16, there were roughly 1500 young people staging a sit-in on the tram tracks, holding placards with slogans like "70 Pfennig – Lieber renn' ich" (70 Pfennig – I'd rather walk). The initial protesters had been high school students, but by now they were joined by students of the technical and pedagogical colleges and apprentices of various local companies. The protest managed to bring tram traffic in Bremen's city center to a complete halt with a backlog of trams stretching all across town.
Student leaders speak to the protestersStudent leader Christoph Köhler addresses the protesters.Young protesters hold up a banner saying "70 Pfennig – I'd rather walk"More placards. One protester announces that he will henceforth go by bike, while another declares "Avoid the tram – 70 Pfennig is crazy".
And the protest was still growing. The next day, there were 5000 young people protesting and blocking the tram tracks to the point that the public transport company BSAG suspended all tram traffic across the entire city.
Police officers stationed on the Domsheide square.
Bremen's chief of police Erich von Bock und Polach, who was a Colonel in the Waffen-SS before he reinvented himself as a member of the Social Democratic Party, proved that he had learned nothing whatsoever from the tragic events in West Berlin last June and ordered the Bremen police to attack the protesting students with truncheons, batons and water cannons. Hereby, the police not only managed to beat up several innocent bystanders, but the resulting unrest also caused damage to twenty-one tram cars and fourteen busses.
Sadly, we have seen pictures like these all too often. Police officers beat up a protester.A police water cannon attempts to blast protesters on Bremen's market square, but only manages to hit the stall of the Bürgerpark tombola and the Roland statue.A police water cannon blasts protesting students in front of the St. Petri cathedral, whose rector supported the protesters. Note the trams in the background.Two young protesters face off against water cannons and are clearly loving every minute of it.The police arrest a very dangerous protester who appears to be fourteen or fifteen at most.Police officers drag off a protester and chase a very dangerous kid on a bicycle.The editor of this student newspaper thought that marking his car as "press" would protect him from police violence, but the police officers dragged him out of the car anyway.This protesters holds up a placard asking the police not to beat up protesters, but negotiate, sadly without success.Protesters hold up placards decrying police violence.
Chaos on the streets of Bremen
And still the protests grew. The workers of the AG Weser shipyard and the Klöckner steelwork, the two biggest companies in Bremen, employing thousands of people, many of whom rely on public transport, declared their solidarity with the protesting students and apprentices. By January 18, twenty thousand people were protesting in the city center.
By January 18, the protest had grown to twenty thousand people and the protesters are no longer just teenagers.A representative of the metal workers' union speaks to the protesters.
The city was in utter chaos by now and the Bremen senate held an emergency meeting. Thankfully, cooler heads than the noxious chief of police von Bock und Polach prevailed and so Bremen's new mayor Hans Koschnik, who has only been in office since November, met with representatives of the protesters in the townhall, while the protests were still going on outside and threatened to boil over into violence again.
Bremen's new mayor Hans Koschnik has only been in office since November and really deserves better.The police has cordoned off the area around the townhall to allow members of the city parliament to attend the emergency meeting.
An unlikely heroine emerged in 54-year-old Annemarie Mevissen, deputy mayor and senator for youth, sports and education. Mrs. Mevissen left the relative safety of the townhall and went out to talk to the protesters directly. On the Domsheide, where the protests had begun four days earlier, Mrs. Mevissen climbed onto a crate of road de-icing salt, grabbed a megaphone and spoke to the protesters, explaining why the fare increases were sadly necessary, but also expressing sympathy for the protesters. Annemarie Mevissen's speech as well as the meeting with Mayor Koschnik did the trick and the protests gradually ceased. As of today, trams and busses are mostly running again.
Senator for Youth, Sports and Education and deputy mayor Annemarie Mevissen speaks to the protesters to express sympathy and call for calm.Annemaire Mevissen is a remarkable woman. Since she also is Senator of Sports, she is showing off her ball kicking skills while meeting with young football players.
By chance, I was shopping in the city center on the second day of the protests. I could still get into the city by tram, but by the time I wanted to go home I had to walk several kilometres to where I had parked my car. However, I still found the time to stop at my favourite import bookstore to peruse their spinner rack of English language paperbacks.
The Return of the Dynamic Duo: The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber's delightful pair of rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, have had a troubled publication history. They debuted in the pages of Unknown, Astounding/Analog's fantasy-focussed sister magazine, almost thirty years ago. After Unknown's demise in 1943, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser were left adrift, until they finally found a new home in Fantastic under the editorship of Cele Goldsmith Lalli. However, with the sale of the Ziff-Davis magazines to Sol Cohen, the appearances of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser in the pages of Fantastic became scarce. It seemed the dynamic duo was homeless once again, unless they shacked up with Cele Goldsmith Lalli over at Modern Bride magazine, that is.
So imagine my joy when I spotted the brand-new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser adventure The Swords of Lankhmar in the spinner rack of my trusty import bookstore. Nor was this adventure short fiction, like the duos' previous outings, but a full length novel. So of course I had to pick it up, even if I had to carry it five kilometres through the city, dodging protesters and aggressive police officers.
The story
Fafhrd and Gray Mouser return to Lankhmar, only to find themselves first attacked and then hired by Lankhmar's overlord Glipkerio Kistomerces to escort a fleet of grain ships to a neighbouring city. The fleet's cargo is a gift to Movarl of the Eight Cities in exchange for some help with a pesky pirate plague. Also aboard the grain ships – and another gift to Movarl – are the Demoiselle Hisvet, daughter of Lankhmar's wealthiest grain merchant, her maid Frix and Hisvet's twelve trained white rats. The ship's captain isn't happy about the presence of the rats, because rats and grain don't mix. Meanwhile, both Fafhrd and Mouser are fascinated by the Hisvet and her maid.
It does not take long for trouble to find Fafhrd and Mouser, who soon find themselves fighting off monsters, pirates and rat attacks. The two rogues also have their hands full with Hisvet and Frix. Luckily, they get some help from Karl Treuherz, a German-speaking time-travelling hunter capturing monsters for Hagenbeck's Zeitgarten. Karl Treuherz (his last name means "true heart") is a delightful character, particularly if you're German and can understand not only his dialogue in flawless German (kudos to Mr. Leiber), but also understand that Hagenbeck's Zeitgarten is a riff on Hagenbecks Tierpark, the famous Hamburg zoo, which apparently will open a time- and dimension-travelling dependency in the future. Cover artist J. Jones clearly likes Karl Treuherz, too, and put him on the cover.
The distinctive main entrance of Hagenbecks Tierpark in Hamburg. So far, they don't yet display alien monsters, but it's only a matter of time.
Something smells of rat here
If the story feels a little familiar, that's probably because it is. For the first half of The Swords of Lankhmar appeared under the title "Scylla's Daughter" in the May 1961 issue of Fantastic. That novella ended on a cliffhanger with the treacherous Hisvet and Frix escaping aboard one of the ships, leaving Fafhrd and Mouser marooned.
Fantastic's cover artist clearly liked Karl Treuherz as well.
The novel follows the two ladies as well as Fafhrd and Mouser back to Lankhmar, where even more intrigues await. For sinking a fleet of grain ships was just the start for Hisvet and her twelve trained rats. It turns out that Hisvet and her father are members of a race of intelligent rats, who live in Lankhmar Below and want to take over the entire city. Mouser shrinks himself down to rat size to spy on them, only for the mad overlord Glipkerio to ignore his warnings in favour of building a contraption that may or may not send him to a parallel universe. The way of defeating the rat invasion is as obvious as it is ingenious by using the rats' hereditary enemy against them.
The Lankhmar Below scenes were my favourite parts, probably because as a kid, I envisioned thumb-sized beings, both humans and animals, who inhabit a parallel city in the sewers, basements and walls of our world. In order to cross between the two worlds you needed a magical shrinking potion. Reading Leiber's descriptions of Lankhmar Below felt as if he had reached into my mind to bring my own fantasy world to the page. Or maybe there really is a parallel world of intelligent rodents and both Fritz Leiber and I somehow stumbled upon them in early childhood.
My imaginary parallel world of little people and animals sprang from the collection of small figures kept in this cookie tin featuring a picture of the Cologne Cathedral, hence I called them "church box people".
An ode to interracial and interspecies romance
Because this is a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story, there also are plenty of romantic entanglements. Mouser falls for Hisvet and finds himself wondering if she's human or rat underneath her floor-length gown and if it even matters to him. Fafhrd prefers Frix, but Hisvet likes Frix, too. Furthermore, Mouser is fascinated by Reetha, a maid at the overlord's palace who is completely hairless, while Fafhrd starts a relationship with Kreeshkra, a ghoul with transparent skin and flesh who is basically a walking skeleton.
Over the past few years, the amount of sex in science fiction and fantasy has been creeping upwards, as the sexual revolution makes it possible to write about previously taboo subjects. This is not necessarily a good thing, since some writers feel the need to foist sexual fantasies that had better remained private upon the unsuspecting reader – see Piers Anthony's Chthon or John Norman's Gor books. Thankfully, Leiber does not go this route, even though there is quite a bit of sexual content, including sexual content of the more unusual sort, in The Swords of Lankhmar. However, nothing here is even remotely as prurient as Chthon or the Gor books. Instead, Leiber's message – even spelled out at one point – is that love is love, no matter the gender, race or species of the participants. And indeed, none of the women Fafhrd and Mouser become involved with in this story are in any way standard love interests. Frix is a black woman, Reetha's hairlessness does not match any classic beauty standards, Hisvet may or may not be part rat and Kreeshkra is essentially a walking skeleton. Furthermore, there are several not so subtle hints that Hisvet and Frix are in a romantic relationship as well.
All in all, The Swords of Lankhmar is a thoroughly enjoyable fantasy adventure and a welcome return to the world of Nehwon and its most famous rogues. However, the plot meanders a bit, particularly in the second half. The genre that Robert E. Howard pioneered in the pages of Weird Tales almost forty years ago and that Fritz Leiber named sword and sorcery works best in the short form. Almost all of Howard's tales about Conan the Cimmerian or Kull of Atlantis, C.L. Moore's adventures of the medieval swordswoman Jirel of Joiry, which I hope will be reprinted eventually, as well as Michael Moorcock's stories about Elric of Melniboné and all previous Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories have been novellas and novelettes. A genre that focusses on action and adventures thrives best in the short form and tends to meander at novel length, a problem that's also apparent in Robert E. Howard's sole Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon, recently reprinted as Conan the Conqueror.
The August 1967 Amazing looks out on the world through one of Frank R. Paul’s later and less interesting works, trimmed of course from its original pulp size. This one, titled A City on Uranus, is from the back cover of the April 1941 Amazing, as usual cropped to fit the lower half of this smaller magazine. The issue’s overall contents and presentation are also as usual: one new story and a bunch of reprints, with Harry Harrison’s intelligent book reviews taking a few pages.
Once more I say—at the risk of repeating myself repeating myself repeating myself—when a first-rate author shows up at the bottom of the market, there’s a reason for it. The one non-reprinted piece of fiction here is Jack Vance’s “Great New Short Novel,” as the table of contents has it, The Man from Zodiac. Zodiac Control, Inc., is a corporation that sells government services to colony planets across the galaxy, or galaxies (there is ambiguous reference to Andromeda), with competitors like Aetna, Fidelity, and Argus.
by Gray Morrow
The eponymous Man is Milton Hack, a Zodiac employee (and also a minority shareholder, a fact which ultimately has little significance), who is charged by the main owners with getting and supervising a contract with the Phrones of Ethelrinda Cordas. The Phrones are cartoon barbarians who have (or whose elite has) little interest in schools, sewer systems, and the other usual appurtenances of government; they wish only to obtain weapons with which to smite their neighbors and enemies, the equally cartoonish Sabo.
Hack engages in a course of bamboozlement and chicanery and ends up representing both the Phrones and the Sabos with identical contracts, and persuading them to live in something resembling peace, outsmarting everyone in sight at every opportunity since they are all utterly stupid. It’s frankly pretty crude, devoid of Vance’s usual sharp satirical wit; worse, it’s thoroughly boring, and gives the impression that the author is as bored as the reader. Or maybe he is attempting to emulate the literary and commercial success of Christopher Anvil. Two stars.
Martian and Troglodyte, by Neil R. Jones
The reprints are the usual mixed bag, slightly better mixed than in some issues. The longest and oldest—a “Special—Short Novel” per the contents page—is Neil R. Jones’s Martian and Troglodyte, from the May 1933 Amazing. Jones is best remembered for his protracted “Professor Jameson” series, about a scientist who is revived from his orbiting tomb and who goes chasing around the universe for a couple of dozen stories with the robot-bodied Zoromes. In this one, Thrag, a cave guy who has been chased out of his tribe in a dispute over possession of the winsome Tua, is saved from becoming lunch for a cave bear by visiting Martians on a voyage of discovery. (Jones’s Earth has many perils. In addition to cave bears and saber-tooth tigers, tyrannosaurs and pterodactyls are still around.) Thrag learns not to be afraid of the Martians and they help him out in his quest to recover Tua from her brutal usurper by lending him lethal Martian technology. Thrag’s and the Martians’ efforts to figure each other out are surprisingly well done.
by Leo Morey
Overall, this is a pleasant antique, though Jones’s peculiar verbosity is sometimes a distraction. (Any resemblance to the present commentator is entirely illusory.) A sample:
“In the depths of space between the earth and its contemporary planet, known to present day man as Mars, a small space ship sped at an inconceivable speed across the millions of miles of space towards the earth. It was now very close, having been upon its journey through the stellar void for the period of time in which it had taken the great globe it was approaching to turn upon its axis forty times. Forty times the topographical features of the planet earth had swung lazily before the eager eyes of the two space navigators within their interstellar craft as day by day, according to the rotation of the cosmic sphere, the planet grew larger in proportion as they drew near.”
Two stars; it probably would rate higher by the standards of its time.
Theodore Sturgeon’s Blabbermouth, from the February 1947 Amazing, is about a captivating woman who is telepathic and compulsively blurts out people’s secrets to those from whom they are being kept secret. This brings ruin to her husband’s career as a prominent New York radio emcee, but by the end he figures out how to make lemonade (i.e., money) from this particular lemon. The story is told in an affected semi-Damon Runyonesque style that bespeaks a writer trying to execute the cliches he thinks his market requires. And maybe it did. Or not. This is only the second published story Sturgeon sold to an SF or fantasy editor other than John W. Campbell, and maybe he didn’t have much confidence about following his own bent anywhere else. Two stars.
There are two stories here from the magazine’s brief high-word-rate renascence of 1953-54. Alfred Bester’s The Roller Coaster, from the May-June 1953 Amazing, is also told in an affected style, but it’s Bester’s own affectation, so it’s a lot more convincing than Sturgeon’s off-the-rack costume in Blabbermouth. It starts with a slap to the reader’s face of Spillaneish violent sadism—quite appropriate in context, as it turns out—and continues without letup or wasted words to retell a familiar SF story. It’s as if somebody said, “You read Vintage Season? Here’s how it really goes.” Four nasty stars.
In the other renascence item, Jerome Bixby’s One Way Street (Amazing, December 1953-January 1954), the protagonist has a split-second blackout, drives off the road, and wakes up in a wrecked car and a slightly different world—phone numbers are different, his dog is different, there’s no Hamlet, Shelley, Keats, or atomic power, and Stalin’s alive. His wife’s a little different too, but he likes the differences and is trying to make a life in this new world when he gets a chance to try to go home via an experimental procedure. The surprise ending is about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning, but overall the story is sharply and economically done. Three stars, pushing four.
North God’s Temple, by Henry J. Kostkos
by Leo Morey
We dip back into the archaic with Henry J. Kostkos’s North God’s Temple (Amazing, August 1934), in which a Professor Challenger-type blowhard, Professor Norton of the Cosmopolitan Museum, receives a telepathic summons from the historians of the People of the Magnetic God, who live undersea near the North Pole. So he fakes up a pretext for an expedition to seek out the magnetic pole. Once there he is summoned alone and sucked underwater and then underground in a rowboat, and finds the Temple of the Magnetic God (it must be, since he’s pinned to the wall until he manages to work his steel revolver out of his pocket). This Temple landed on Earth after the breakup of the former fifth planet that became the asteroids. Then Norton gets sucked back underwater in a contretemps that apparently is intended to explain the migration of the magnetic poles. Two stars for this tiresome period piece.
Vis Scientiae, by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.
But there’s still one more piece of archaic to eat: Vis Scientiae, a poem by Miles J. Breuer, M.D. (Amazing, May 1930), which seems to be a lament by the ancient gods that they’re no longer in charge of those pesky humans. It must speak for itself:
“They have chained the livid lightning that goes hurtling down the sky,
Made it slave for them and pass them scatheless as it hurtles by;
They have trapped the furious tempest at whose breath the forest reels,
And the angrier it rages all the merrier turn their wheels; . . .”
Et cetera, though the meter varies. The substance of Tennyson and the accidents of Robert W. Service? The best to be said for it is that it could have been worse. Two stars.
Summing Up
A couple of stories well worth reading, a couple more at least readable, and a couple of wastes of time. La de da de da.
I know, I know. By now you're a little tired of the Fab Four. Well, the release of their latest album in the USA early this month may change your mind.
(Those lucky folks in the UK got it late last month.)
After evolving from catchy, expertly crafted pop songs into new musical territory with the albums Rubber Soul and Revolver, the Liverpudlians have taken a giant leap.
You could spend hours just studying the cover art.
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is extraordinary. It takes rock 'n' roll, mixes it up with other forms of popular music, adds more than a little modern psychedelic surrealism, and comes up with a genuine work of art. I'm afraid I'm going to wear out lots of phonograph needles listening to it over and over.
Because I've already got the songs from this album stuck in my head, let me suggest the ones you might listen to while reading the latest issue of Fantastic.
Cover art by Johnny Bruck.
The image on the front is stolen from one of the weekly German magazines featuring the adventures of space explorer Perry Rhodan.
Perhaps one of our German Journeyers can supply a translation.
The Narrow Land, by Jack Vance
Illustrations by Gray Morrow.
The only new story begins with the birth of our hero, forcing his way out of an egg and fighting off others of his kind. He then grows up swimming in swampy water with other amphibian youngsters.
You can tell he's not a human being, can't you? All of the characters are of his species, but there are different kinds. The number of ridges on their heads indicates what variety they are.
One-ridge folks are the most common, and exist as fully developed males and females. Two-ridge types are sexually neuter. Three-ridge individuals are invariably male. As we'll learn later, there used to be a lot of them, but war with the two-ridge kind left only one alive. There's also one four-ridge being, a monster that preys on the one-ridge children.
Confused? So is our hero, as he tries to understand his world. As the title implies, it's a thin strip of inhabitable land between a region of cold, dark mist and an ocean of constant thunderstorms.
(The editorial blurb states that this is a planet with one side always facing its sun. This is not explicitly stated in the text. It explains why it's always twilight.)
There are also birds, but they are barely mentioned.
We'll get a detailed explanation for the various subtypes of aliens. Suffice to say that the main character leaves the water and is taken in by the two-ridge folks as one of their own. Later, however, he is labeled a freak, and has to escape to the realm of the three-ridge being. He learns a lot more about what's going on from that fellow, and comes up with a plan.
The story's setting and exotic alien biology is fascinating. The author does a good job of seeing things through the eyes of a character very different from a human being. The end comes rather suddenly, suggesting the possibility of a sequel.
Four stars.
(Suggested listening: Fixing a Hole, because the protagonist is trying to fill the gaps in his knowledge of the world.)
The Ship Sails At Midnight, by Fritz Leiber
Cover art by Robert Gibson Jones.
This lovely and sad story comes from the September 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Illustrations by Henry Sharp.
The narrator is one of a quartet of jaded, world-weary intellectuals in a small college town. He's a writer. One is a philosopher, another is studying physics. The only woman in the group is a sculptor. They're all fairly skilled in their various fields, but far from brilliant.
The four meet a strikingly beautiful woman working as a waitress at an all-night diner. She doesn't say much, and reveals almost nothing about herself. Somehow or other, she brings out the best in each of them. They lose their cynicism, and produce works of genius.
She claims her name is Helen, suggestive of the ancient Greek myth of the Trojan War.
It's obvious from the beginning that she's from another world. If the illustration wasn't enough of a clue, the story starts with reports of a meteorite falling to earth and sightings of a UFO.
The narrator falls in love with Helen, and she returns his affection. A strange man shows up, telling her it's time to leave. She chooses to stay. It turns out that the other two men are in love with Helen as well, and had also won her heart. Jealousy rears its ugly head, leading to sudden violence.
(As a side note, it seems to me that the author very subtly suggests that the sculptress is in love with Helen too. This is somewhat disguised by the fact that she is engaged to be married to the physics student. I may be reading too much into this, but I would not be very surprised if Leiber, a sophisticated writer always ahead of his time, meant to offer hints of a lesbian romance.)
This is a beautiful and heartbreaking tale of joy won and lost.
The May 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures supplies this futuristic farce.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
At some unspecified time in the future, human activities are controlled by time travelers from an even more distant future. In particular, they forbid a researcher from inventing time travel, because it's not supposed to be invented until a later time.
(I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Time travel stories are confusing.)
The guy decides to invent it anyway, and to heck with the consequences. He tricks the narrator into getting sent to the Twentieth Century. The fellow just wants to go back to his own time. Complications ensue, partly because people of the future don't wear clothing.
After hiding in a garbage can for a while, he winds up with a wisecracking newspaper reporter. It seems his story makes for hot news, even if nobody really believes him.
This is a silly story, without much of the satiric edge often found in Tenn's sardonic yarns. As you can tell from the title, it's full of goofy invented words. That always annoys me in a science fiction comedy.
The November/December 1953 issue of the magazine is the source of this look at tomorrow's psychiatry.
Using a device that gives a patient a word association test and analyzes it, the headshrinker is able to determine that a woman needs psychological surgery. This consists of altering her memory of an incident in her past.
As a secondary plot, another patient fails to show up for an appointment, and the psychiatrist suspects he's going to kill somebody. This part of the story turns into a kind of mystery, with a twist ending of sorts.
The background assumes that psychiatry is going to take over many of the functions of medical care. An outbreak of influenza among children, for example, is said to be caused by their anxiety over an event in the Little Orphan Annie comic strip!
At that point, I thought the author's intent was satire. As far as I can tell, however, the story is meant to be serious. The premise reminds me of the pseudoscience of Dianetics. (There's even a reference to pre-birth experiences as a source of mental disorders, which sure sounds like part of L. Ron Hubbard's nonsense to me.)
Setting aside my disdain for Dianetics, this isn't a very exciting story. There's some banter between the psychiatrist and his receptionist to fill up space. The two plots never come together, and they're resolved pretty much as you'd expect.
Two stars.
(Suggested listening: A Day In The Life, because the story takes place during one long day and night for the psychiatrist.)
The Man with the Fine Mind, by Kris Neville
Cover art by Robert Frankenberg.
This chiller comes from the January/February 1953 issue of the magazine.
Illustration by Leo Summers.
A man is at a party with his fiancée. He's drinking pretty heavily, and he doesn't seem to be too happy. He even thinks about killing her.
(Don't ask me why these two are engaged. They seem like a very unlikely couple indeed.)
She makes some remarks about how it's a shame he has to leave. He insists that he's staying. Things get weird when everybody at the party acts like he's gone. They ignore him completely. Figuring that this is some kind of cruel prank, he gets angrier and drunker. The situation ends badly.
I have to admit that I didn't fully understand this story. I wasn't sure if the guy had actually left, and some kind of unseen doppelganger was left at the party, or the other way around. Despite my confusion, and an unpleasant lead character, it held my interest.
Three stars.
(Suggested listening: With A Little Help From My Friends, because the protagonist was in desperate need of assistance from his acquaintances.)
Here's the conclusion of a novella that appeared (in one part) in the Summer 1932 issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly.
Illustration by Morey also.
Last issue, we met a fellow who attempted suicide because his loss of religious faith led to his girlfriend leaving him. (Oddly, the guy remains a rather jolly, wisecracking sort.) A Mad Scientist rescued him. In return, the man agreed to undergo a bizarre experiment.
Part of his brain went into the body of an ant, so he could experience its sensations. (This involved a lot of shrinking and growing. That's one talented Mad Scientist.)
In this half, the guy's mind goes into several different kinds of ants. We learn about gentle farmers of fungus, aggressive warriors that enslave other ants, herders of aphids that live on the liquid they secrete, and so forth. It all winds up with the fellow regaining his faith in God, based on life among the ants, and going back to his sweetheart.
As in the first part, the main appeal of the conclusion is in the detailed description of the ant colonies. The author must have done a lot of research. Some of this stuff is a little too anthropomorphic, but otherwise it seems very accurate.
The subplot of attempted suicide and loss of faith seems way out of place with the rest of the story. It's not a comedy, but it's very lighthearted. (The man gives whimsical nicknames to the other ants, such as Sherlocka Holmes.) The premise is outrageous, of course, but go along with it and it's not a bad read.
Three stars.
(Suggested listening: When I'm Sixty-Four, because this is the oldest story in the issue, and the song is also a featherweight piece of fluff.)
Mr. Steinway, by Robert Bloch
Cover art by Augusto Marin.
From the April 1954 issue of the magazine we get this bit of dark fantasy.
Illustration by Bill Ashman.
The narrator is a woman who falls in love with a pianist. The musician practices an odd sort of meditation, in which he enters a trance. In this unconscious state, he communicates with everything, including inanimate objects.
In particular, he has a special relationship with his piano. Nicknamed Mr. Steinway, it was a gift from his mother, now deceased. The instrument has its own preferences. It doesn't like certain composers, for example.
As the two lovers grow closer, Mr. Steinway displays signs of jealousy. As you might imagine, this doesn't end well for anybody.
On a superficial level, this is just a spooky yarn about a haunted piano. There's a bit more to it than that, I think. The author does a pretty good job of writing from a woman's point of view, which is not always something you can say about a male writer. What happens to the narrator is more subtle and disturbing than you might expect.
(If they made this into a movie, her fate would be a little more openly violent, I think.)
Three stars.
(Suggested listening: She's Leaving Home, because the narrator is never going home again.)
Well, that was a pretty decent issue, with only a couple of poor pieces, a very good new story, some readable reprints, and one great classic. Not as perfect a masterpiece as the latest Beatles album, but enough to keep smiles on our faces.
My brother Louis and I diverge quite a lot. He's an observant Jew, I'm an atheist. He served in World War 2 (drafted into the Navy), I did not. He's an affluent pawnbroker. I'm a writer of questionable success.
But where we differ the most is the subjects of our avocational devotion. Lou loves opera. Specifically operas written in 1812 between October and November. I kid, but his musical tastes are really quite narrow; his radio knob never turns from the FM classical stations. I am far more catholic in my interests, enjoying everything from classical, to the swing of my teen years, to the brand new sounds.
Also, Lou hates science fiction.
Interestingly, his son David (thus, my nephew), loves SF as much as I do. Must be this newfangled "generation gap" we're starting to hear about.
For the last 15 years or so, he and I have swapped recommendations, and he's even lent me some of his magazines. Our tastes are not identical. He recently canceled his subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and he is a big fan of Analog. But we have some strong overlap, particularly where it comes to Galaxy. In fact, that picture is him in his San Pedro home enjoying this month's issue.
I am thankful that my own daughter, David's first cousin, is also a devoted science fiction fan. I'd hate to have to throw her out of the house before her eighteenth birthday.
Kidding, again! I'd surely wait for her to be of age before disowning her.
But, that's not anything we have to worry about, for we are all one big happy family of fen, and we all dug the December 1966 Galaxy — read on and see why!
Humanity has developed teleportation technology, and Mars has become a hub for galactic exploration. But a recent jaunt to the edge of the known universe caused the destruction of several portals and the loss of a senator's brother-in-law. Now the politician has arrived on the Red Planet to investigate.
When Poul Anderson sets his mind to it, he can write. Not only is this an effective story, with the mystery disclosed one layer at a time, but it is technically interesting. It's the first depiction of teleportation I've read that takes relative velocities into consideration. A trip to a nearby star could require hops to a dozen intermediaries across the galaxy, or multiple galaxies, to ensure the difference in relative momenta is not too great. I also appreciated the political discussion over the virtues and peril of building a teleporter too close to the Earth.
Where the story falters to some degree is its characterization: Anderson is still in the Kowalski, Yamamoto, Singh habit of defining players by their nationality — and women are strangely absent. Also, the Hoylean/Hubblean fusion of cosmological theories seems like a lot of gobbledegook.
Nevertheless, it's a riveting read. Definitely four stars.
Children in Hiding, by John Brunner
I'm told there are two John Brunners. One is the brilliant Englishman who produced Listen…the Stars! and The Whole Man, both Star-winners and Hugo nominees. The other is the American who produces schlock.
The latter wrote Children in Hiding. The premise: the children on a colony world are born healthy but never develop mental capacities beyond that of infants. A terran troubleshooter is brought in to fix the problem. He does, but not to the benefit of the colony.
There's a lot of angry dialogue and excessive use of exclamation points, and the end is just stupid. I'll give the piece two stars because both Brunners write coherently, but all in all, it's a disappointing story.
The Modern Penitentiary, by Hayden Howard
by Jack Gaughan
Ah, and now we have another story of the Esks, a race of Eskimo/alien hybrids that spawn children every month. Children that mature in five years. Throughout the series, we've seen the Esks explode in population, exhausting their environment and crowding out the real Eskimos. In this, they are facilitated by the do-gooder Canadians, who refuse to see the Esks for the meance they are. Instead, they give the Esks food, relocate them to other areas, etc.
Only one man, Dr. West (who always conjures up the Lovecraft character), knows the truth. When no one listened to his Cassandra cry, he tried to sterilize them with a disease (last story). The plan backfired, killing 23 actual Eskimos. For this, he was imprisoned in the nicest cell ever, complete with a therapeutic nurse-lover. Modern Penitentiary details West's attempts to escape, as well as his rather difficult-to-read sexual adventures.
These installments stand less and less on their own, and they become more implausible every time. Thankfully, we've only one left.
Two stars.
For Your Information: The Sound of the Meteors, by Willy Ley
I really dug this article, all about whether or not one can hear a meteor. It was timely, too, as I read it right before our trip out to the desert to stargaze last weekend.
Four stars (and enjoy these pictures of Borrego Springs!)
The latest Niven story is another set on Mars, a locale we've visited in Eye of the Octopus and How the Heroes Die. Hole takes place a good seventy years after the last story. A smuggler on the run from Belter cops tries to take refuge on Mars at the old base. He finds the crew long dead, murdered when someone, or several someones, slashed their bubble. Was it Martians?
The story also features the return of Luke Garner and Lit Schaeffer from World of Ptavvs, tying Mars to that universe. Along with this month's A Relic of the Empire, which ties Ptavvs in with The Warriors (featuring the Kzinti) and the Beowulf Schaeffer stories set several centuries hence, it appears Niven has knit together six hundred years of future history to play in. Fun stuff!
Four stars.
Decoy System, by Robin Scott
This is a Mack Reynoldsy thriller featuring an American agent's meeting with his Soviet counterpart. Some third party has been sabotaging both the US and USSR's early warning systems so that they will indicate massive nuclear strikes. Aliens are determined to be the culprit. An era of peace and cooperation ensues.
Of course, it was all a Yankee plot. I think I'd have liked this story if I hadn't read the premise before (and seen it as recently as The Architects of Fear). It feels a lot like an Analog story. Also, it's a lot of buildup for an ending that is obvious early on.
Last time, if you'll recall, I hadn't been overly enamored with Jack Vance's latest novel, a direct sequel to The Star King. Kirth Gersen, a rich and supertalented assassin, is on the hunt for Viole Falushe, one of the "Demon Kings" of crime who murdered his parents. The prior installment took us to Earth, where Gersen, disguised as a reporter (working for a paper he has purchased), investigates Falushe's childhood home. Back then, he was known as Vogel Filschner. His best friend and inspiration, before he went into kidnapping and slaving, was the poet, Garnath.
It is the houseboat-dwelling, nigh-incomprehensible Garnath, who provides Gersen his opportunity to meet and kill Falushe. Along the way, he becomes increasingly entangled with Garnath's ward, "Zan Zu of Eridu", who is an exact likeness of Falushe's childhood infatuation.
The first two thirds, in which Gersen plays a cat and mouse game with Falushe, is riveting. The final section, which sees Falushe invite Gershen to his private sanctum ("The Palace of Love") in the far reaches of space, is heavy on description but light on interest.
Still, I'd give this section four stars. It'll be up to the last installment to determine if the whole affair ends up on the three or four star side of the ledger.
Last up, an obtuse piece on the differences in educational policy and success between two planets. It's supposed to be whimsical (when isn't the word applied to Lafferty?), but it's mostly tired.
Two stars.
Summing up
Finishing up at 3.1 stars, I'd say Fred Pohl has done his job to keep Galaxy on our subscription lists for another year at least. And I do mean our — you have to count me in, too!
[Speaking of stories you and your family will enjoy, Sirena, the second book in The Kitra Saga, is out! Fun for adults, young and old.
Buy a copy…you'll be supporting me and getting a great read at the same time!]
Last week saw the debut of the exciting science fiction anthology show Star Trek. The opening narration describes a five-year mission, going "where no man has gone before." Indeed, the second pilot of the program bore that very title. Never mind that in two of the three episodes I've seen thus far (and in the sole episode yet officially aired), the featured space ship Enterprise went places men had gone before; the promise is still there.
This month's Galaxy, on the other hand, treads entirely familiar ground. Not necessarily in the subject matter or the plots — these are reasonably fresh. I mean that pretty much every story save the last constitutes the continuation of a prior story or setting.
Magazine editor Fred Pohl once explained that he has a reliable stable of authors for Galaxy. As Pohl travels the country on various speaking engagements, he hits his writer friends up for new material. Cordwainer Smith was on that list until his tragic passing last month. Frank Herbert is (sadly) also on that list. And so are most of the authors below. I imagine each conversation with his pet authors eventually wanders around to "when do you think I might see more of…"
This isn't a bad thing, especially if you like the universes that get expanded. On the other hand, it is the reason there about are twice as many Retief stories as there should be.
In Vance's novel The Star King, we were introduced to Kirth Gersen. Gersen is a vigilante, roaming the galactic space lanes to track down the elusive and nearly omnipotent "Demon Princes" of crime. His first target, a fellow named Grendel, is defeated in the wild Beyond, the belt of untamed systems that ring the placid inner worlds.
Now, in Palace, Gerson applies the vast wealth of Grendel toward the next Demon Prince on his list, the volatile slaver and crime boss, Viole Falushe. This time, the trail leads back to the original home of humanity, specifically, the portion of Europe known as Holland.
by Gray Morrow
I like Vance a lot, but this particular universe has never appealed to me. Indeed, Palace has the exact same issues that plagued Kings. At first, Vance's detailed setting descriptions and odd dialogue are compelling. Over time, they just get tiresome. Moreover, whereas in stories like The Dragon Masters or The Last Castle, Vance creates a rich world almost from nothing, filled with exciting new places and ideas, the far future in which Kirth Gersen resides feels almost unchanged from 20th Century Earth.
I have a suspicion that the remainder of this book is going to be a slog. Three stars so far.
Larry Niven returns us to the Mars he set up in this year's short story, Eye of the Octopus. The initial expedition that discovered evidence of indigenous Martians has been succeeded by a dozen humans in a bubble dome archaeological base. When the natives prove elusive, tedium and frustration sets in. One of the members of the all-male crew makes a pass at another. Enraged, the target of his advances kicks him in the throat and watches him die.
Knowing that the rest of the team won't stand for it, murderous John "Jack" Carter plunges his Mars buggy through the dome in an attempt to release the air and kill his compatriots. His plan fails, thanks to the fast reactions of the team. Alf Harness, the party's linguist, heads out in pursuit.
The cat and mouse chase, with each of the two trying to outsmart the other such that only one can come back alive, working within the constraints of their air supply and their equipment at hand, is a pretty tight bit of writing. I could have, however, done without the several paragraphs Niven devotes to the motivation of the crime: Lieutenant-Major Shute drafts a report to Earth explaining that a bunch of isolated men together always succumb to homosexuality. Just like in the Navy. Or boys-only schools. Or the Third Reich (I'm not making these examples up). The solution: Earth needs to send women with them, damn the Morality Leagues that frown on co-ed missions.
This reminds me of stories I read last decade where female crew members were carried along solely for their convenient orifices. I had hoped tales endorsing such notions were a thing of the past. As for modern-day temperance leagues, while I recognize that cultures can regress, it seems to me that women have been serving alongside men for decades now. Why, I recently saw an episode of Gomer Pyle featuring a woman Marine Captain. I can't imagine that the trend over the next century is toward a reversal of that practice.
At least the characters in Heroes don't endorse the victim's murder. The characters (and thus the author) seem to be saying that queers are people too, but that they are the sad creations of circumstance. (Mr. Niven is apparently unacquainted with Dr. Kinsey, or the excellent documentary on homosexuality, The Rejected).
Many years ago, in The Magazine of Science Fiction, Anne McCaffrey introduced us to KH-834, the cybernetic spaceship. The story was called The Ship Who Sang. It involved the close relationship between the vessel's female resident brain, Helva, and the ambulatory "brawn" component, a man named Jennan.
Jennan dies in that story, leaving Helva devastated but still spaceworthy. She is detached from scout duty, instead being used for a sequence of odd job missions. Her first, in which Helva's passenger is a doctor dispatched to a plague-ravaged world, was detailed in a recent Analog in a story titled The Ship Who Mourned.
And now Killed, appearing in yet another magazine. This time, Helva is to be a metallic womb, ferrying a hundred thousand frozen fetuses to a world that has suffered a sterilizing catastrophe. Her passenger is Kira, responsible for obtaining the unborn children from various worlds and taking care of them on their journey. She has suffered the recent loss of her partner, too, and is expressedly suicidal. Helva's orders are explicitly to avoid worlds on which suicide is legal. Unfortunately, not all such worlds are cataloged…
One interesting bit is that Kira is a "Dylanist", part of a sect of cynical singer-songwriters who have almost deified ol' Bob. She even plays "Blowin' in the Wind" at one point. It's rather bold to extrapolate such a huge impact from something so recent as a popular singer (is there a rival faction known as "The Beatlers"?) And while it is possible that the former Mr. Zimmerman may go on to be so influential as to spawn religious adherents, McCaffrey fails to account for musical evolution: Kira employs the acoustic guitar in Killed, an instrument Dylan has already abandoned.
Such is the danger of precise prediction!
Anyway, that's just a side note. The story itself has a reasonably good setup, but McCaffrey's writing style, filled to the brim with adverbs and acid repartee, just isn't doing it for me. Each story in this series has been less compelling than the last. This may explain why each one has been published in a new magazine; usually, editors hold onto writers as long as they can.
Two stars.
For Your Information: The Delayed Discovery, by Willy Ley
Willy Ley meanders through the history of atomic chemistry, covering a great many topics shallowly and without a lot of causality. Asimov usually needs to trim his articles; Ley needed more connective tissue to make this one work.
Two stars.
Too Many Esks, by Hayden Howard
by Jack Gaughan
We're now four stories into the saga of the Esks, inhuman hybrids of Eskimos and an alien invader, who live above the arctic circle in Canada. Esks grow to maturity in just five years. Female Esks gestate and bear a child every month. This new race has already outgrown its food supply, relying on government handouts to stay alive.
Dr. Joe West has been warning of a Malthusian nightmare for months now. At last, some folks are starting to listen to him. But the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, and West is concerned that once the hybrid Esks interbreed with humans (as one did with West), homo sapiens will be displaced by the more fecund breed. Once this happens, there are signs that the original aliens will return to enslave the Earth.
And so, West hatches a plan to sterilize the Esks through biological warfare. Like all of West's other endeavors against the Esks, the mission is a dismal and emotionally fraught failure.
These Esk tales oscillate between tedious and mildly engaging, all requiring a healthy dollop of suspension of disbelief. I've been along for this ride long enough that I'm now kind of curious as to how it will end.
Three stars.
Planet of Fakers, by J. T. McIntosh
by McClane
McIntosh is an author with a long career. He's written five-star stories, a number of pedestrian pieces, and a few truly awful ones. Often, his works contain Sexist (or at least anti-feminine) portrayals of women.
So it was that I approached this last piece of the issue with some trepidation (especially given the weird art that suggested a sexual farce).
I am happy to report that I was pleasanty surprised.
Planet starts in medias res. A tense trio, one man and two women, are subjecting a queue of persons to a test. Their goal: to prove the humanity of each subject.
Through adroit exposition, McIntosh slowly clues us in to the situation. A colony of a few hundred has been besieged by an alien race of body possessors. The fake humans are in telepathic communion with one another, so while it was once a trivial task to tell humans from sham-people, tests can only be used effectively once. And the colonists are running out of tests.
While Planet does not take place in a preexisting universe, the bodysnatching genre has been around for decades, including such classics as Campbell's Who Goes There? and Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (and, of course, the 1956 movie which gave the genre its label). Nevertheless, what McIntosh does with it is so deftly executed, and so neatly contrived, that's it's clear the old subject still has life in it. At least in the hands of a master.
I'd originally planned to give it four stars, but it has stayed with me such that I think it earns a full five.
Dust Bowl's a comin'
With the exception of the standout final story, the October 1966 Galaxy is pretty mediocre stuff. I think the lesson I've gotten is that fields can grow fallow, especially ones that weren't very fertile to begin with.
I think Pohl's writers would do themselves well to find some new land to plow. And maybe Galaxy could use a more diverse set of farmers…
(If you're looking for something new, join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)
Summer is looming, and it looks like we're in for another riot season. I suppose it only stands to reason given that inequality still runs rampant in a nation ostensibly dedicated to equality. This time, the outrage boiled over in Chicago, and the group involved was of Puerto Rican extraction.
Things started peacefully, even jubilantly: June 12 saw thousands gather for the Puerto Rican pride parade. But after the festivities, the cops shot Cruz Aracelis, 21, and violence erupted. For three days, police cars were overturned, property went up in flames, and people were hurt (and some died). Despite the exhortations of the community's leaders, the rioting continued, and it was not until Mayor Daley promised much-needed reforms that the outbreaks lapsed, on June 15.
Tectonic shifts are rarely gradual. Similarly, we lurch toward progress with the accompanying devastation of an earthquake. Just as we're starting to build for seismic destruction in California, if we want to see riot summers a thing of the past, we'll need to build real systems for equality sooner rather than later.
Eye of the Storm
Chicago may burn, Kansas may be savaged by tornadoes, and Indonesia might be going to hell in a hand basket, but the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction is by comparison pretty mellow stuff. Indeed, it's a pretty unremarkable issue even compared to recent issues of F&SF! Still, there's good reading in here. Take a break from the outside world's madness and join me:
Retief author Keith Laumer departs from comedic satire for a reasonably straight story. In a future borrowed from Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, the only escape from Earth's 29 billion inhabitants is a five year journey in stasis to Alpha Centauri 3. But what really lies at the end of a grueling journey that includes a savage boot camp and the stripping away of all humanity?
A competent piece, Founder's Day nevertheless is no more than that. This story of friction between colonist and transport crew could have been set in 19th Century Australia as well as space. Laumer doesn't really bring anything new, in concept or execution.
Three stars.
The Plot is the Thing, by Robert Bloch
Psycho author Robert Bloch doesn't do much fantasy these days, but his turns are always slickly done. In this vignette, young heiress Peggy is the portrait of disassociation, abandoning reality for the Late Show, the Late Late Show, and the All Night Show — any program that will give her the horror flicks she craves. But when drastic medical intervention rescues her at the brink of death, is it salvation, or merely the gateway to greater unreality?
No surprises but the usual excellent execution.
Four stars.
by Gahan Wilson
Experiment in Autobiography, by Ron Goulart
The best part of Goulart's latest story is the double-meaning in the title. One gets the impression that the absurd lengths to which the protagonist, a free-lance writer, must go to collect his ghosting fee, is only slightly removed from reality.
Three stars for Goulart fans; knock one off for everyone else.
Brain Bank, by Ardrey Marshall
Sturm is a brilliant mathematician cut down in the prime of his life. Too valuable to be left to molder, Sturm is brought back as a disembodied brain, forced to offer his expertise to all who request it: students, businessmen, colleagues. He is a true slave with no human rights and the fear of being switched off perpetually hanging over him. Especially when an old rival, now a tenured professor who made his reputation by stealing the work of his T.A.s and associates, becomes Sturm's latest client.
In setup, it's not unlike Calvin Demmon's vignette The Switch, which appeared in F&SF last year. But the execution here is breezy, the story more of a potboiler.
I don't know if I buy the premise, but I can easily imagine a much put-upon sentient computer in the same situation. The rather conventional adventure story overlies some thoughtful philosophy.
Three stars.
Man in the Sea, by Theodore L. Thomas
Is oxygenated water the solution to problems posed by deep sea diving? What about direct oxygenization of blood? Some neat ideas that I can't immediately poke holes in for once.
This flip piece posits that our current art culture, and the ease with which it is manipulated, is no new thing at all. Indeed, it's been with us since we've been recognizably human.
Fun fluff. Three stars.
Balancing the Books, by Isaac Asimov
The latest article from The Good Doctor is about conservation of charge and mass in the subatomic particles. I suspect the material could have been covered in a piece as short as Thomas' column. Padded to ten pages, it loses its punch.
Three stars.
Revolt of the Potato Picker, by Herb Lehrman
A spud farmer, one of the last dirt agriculturalists in a time of yeast and lichen hydroponics, buys a sentient tractor to do his harvesting. All is well until the robot's sensitive side comes to the fore. Instead of devoting its (her?) time to picking and peeling, all it (she?) wants to do is pursue artistic interests.
Meant to be a winking, nudging joke of a story, I found it both distasteful and also just kind of stupid.
Two stars.
The Manse of Iucounu, by Jack Vance
At last, the meanderings of Cugel the Clever come to a close. Banished to the ends of the Dying Earth by Iucounu, the mage he was trying to rob, Cugel at last finds a way home with the treasure he was sent to find. The key turns out to be a misadventure with sapient rats and a liaison with a sorcerer liberated from their clutches.
Like the rest of the series, it wobbles between wittily imaginative and routine, too episodic to really engage. If anything, it feels like a modern day, rather adult Oz story. With a thoroughly unpleasant though sometimes entertaining antihero.
There are issues of F&SF that astound, leaving an indelible impression. There have been others (not recently) that are better left to gather dust on the shelf (if not utilized for kindling next winter). The July 1966 issue lies on neither extreme. But if you find yourself wanting a quiet weekend away from the strife of the real world, this issue will be a fine companion.
Over in England, they're swimming in science fiction anthology-esque shows, from Out of the Unknown to Doctor Who. What have we got Stateside? Lost in Space? My Favorite Martian? Ever since The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone went off the air, TV has been something of an SF wasteland. That may all be changing come Fall.
A new show, called Star Trek is supposed to be kind of an anthology/serial — the same crew every week, but wildly different stories, many by actual science fiction authors. It could end up being like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Forbidden Planet (i.e. pretty but dumb), or it could be the revolution necessary to bring science fiction to the masses. We won't know for another four months. I'm prepared for disappointment, but I also can't help being a little excited.
The Present
Until then, I've got a pocket full of futures right hear in front of me with this month's Fantasy and Science Fiction. As usual, it's a grab-bag of good and ho-hum, the latter in greater proportion… but whaddaya want for four bits?
Zelazny has made a name for himself with his fantastic but punchy prose, sort of an SFNal Hemingway, the vanguard of the American New Wave. For me, he's hit or miss, though his hits are worth waiting for. Storm looked like it was shaping up to be a hit, but I'd say it's a near miss.
Dozens of light years from Earth lies Tierra del Cygnus, a rustic "stopover" colony where folks on decades-long STL interstellar trips can break out of hibernation and stretch their legs before embarking for their final destination. Our protagonist, Godfrey Justin Holmes, is a Hell Cop, responsible for civic peace and weather safety with his 130 floating, autonomous metal eyes. He'd settled on Cygnus after fleeing a tragic personal loss, and on Cygnus, he believes he has found the key to mending his heart.
But in the midst of solving this long term problem, an acute short term one arises: the biggest storm his area of the planet has seen in recorded history is brewing. And for a week, it lashes with unabated fury.
I have the same problem with Storm that I did with Keith Roberts' Lady Anne: I'll be reading right along, enjoying the evocative prose, but after a few pages, I find myself wondering, "What the hell is all this? Get to the point, man!" Pretty writing isn't enough.
Beyond that, Storm feels utterly conventional. Take out the spaceflight trappings, which is easy to do as they are not central to the story, and you've got a thoroughly terrestrial story.
It's not bad, mind you. Zelazny does a masterful job of introducing the world and the relevant considerations in subtle snatches of detail rather than a single burst of exposition. Others might also enjoy the blunt, first person perspective; I eventually found it a little tiresome and too reminiscent of the better …and call me Conrad.
So, a minor work from a major player. Three stars.
The Little Blue Weeds of Spring, by Doris Pitkin Buck
A winged woman commits the horried crime of breeding outside her caste. Her punishment is exile to ground-bound humandom on Earth. But a plucked bird can still find ways to soar…
A nice poetic piece that's perhaps a bit too trivial. Three stars.
Care in Captivity Series: Tyrant Lizards Tyrannosaurus Rex, by Barry Rothman
This is one of those non-fact pieces, in this case, about raising a tyrant lizard what had been frozen for 70 million years. Very slight stuff. Two stars.
The Adjusted, by Kenneth Bulmer
A pair of caretakers mind the last vestiges of humanity, locked in cages, fed porridge, clad in rags, but hypnotized to think they are leading fulfilling lives. It's all part of the computers' plan, you see — a way of dealing with the hordes unemployed and pointless humans. They can't just be killed off, but they also can't be left to their own chaotic devices.
Of course, there's a sting in the story's tale, one that you'll see a mile away. It's not very clever, at first, but there's something compelling about a world of humans under the thrall of machines, all living in a shared fantasy world, slave to some sinister but inscrutable purpose.
It might make an interesting movie someday. Three stars.
Migratory Locusts, by Theodore L. Thomas
Thomas suggests that since locusts are just grasshoppers that get too crowded together, maybe humans will turn into something else altogether when Indian/Chinese conditions become the worldwide norm. I suppose there's an SF story in there somewhere. In this case, there's not enough here here to provoke much thought.
Two stars.
Memo to Secretary, by Pat de Graw
Pat de Graw offers up an ode to bureacratic paperwork, Stone Age style. Nicely done, particularly the line about the wing/ed/itorial bull.
Four stars.
A Quest for Uplift, by Len Guttridge
A carny agent out looking for freaks in a world where access to health care has largely addressed unwanted deformity follows a tip that leads to a genetic lineage of true levitators.
Unfortunately, elevation turns out to be involuntary — and communicative.
Guttridge's narrator tells the story in an unbroken harangue that will glaze your eyes over by page three. It also manages to be casually and offputtingly offensive several times over.
One star.
Forgive Us Our Debtors, by Jon DeCles
Ah, but then we have a rather sublime tale of an empath whose job is planetary evaluation. On the world of Red Kitra (a fine name), said empath is tasked with attuning to a world's entire ecology to determine if the glimmer of sentience lies therein. He ends up in a literal and metaphorical web of karma, learning the value of life, as well as the meaning of charity, in the process.
I may be a little biased as I happen to be friends with Jon, but I think this is inarguably the best piece of the issue. Four stars.
The Isles of Earth, by Isaac Asimov
Another list article from Dr. A, this time on the size and distribution of Earth's islands. Diverting, I suppose, but nothing you won't find at the beginning of any decent atlas (of which I have about two dozen — I like atlases!)
Three stars.
The Pilgrims, by Jack Vance
We wrap up with the penultimate tale of the ordeals of Cugel the Clever, hapless magical errand boy in the far future setting of The Dying Earth. As related in prior episodes, this is a set of stories that gets less appealing as it goes on, though Vance does mix in some amusing literate ribaldry.
This particular installment doesn't even have a proper ending. Let's hope the series as a whole does.
Three stars.
The Edge of Tomorrow
All told, the latest F&SF merits a drab 2.9 stars, definitely one of the weaker entries of the past year. But every month offers a chance at redemption, and the next issue is only a few weeks away. Will the July issue offer a collection of immortal classics or more of the humdrum same?
The anticipation, waiting to find out, is half the fun!
![[July 10, 1969] Sex! Now That I Have Your Attention . . . (August 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[May 10, 1969] Youth (June 1969 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/COVERSMALL.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[September 24, 1968] Reconstructing The Past (<i>The Farthest Reaches</i> & <i>Worlds of Fantasy</i> #1)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Featured.png?resize=672%2C372)
![[January 20, 1968] Alyx and Company (January 1968 Galactoscope)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/680120covers.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[July 14, 1967] The Beat Goes On (August 1967 <i>Amazing</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/amz-0867-cover.png?resize=383%2C372)
![[June 10, 1967] Music To Read By (July 1967 <i>Fantastic</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/fantastic_196707-2-1.jpg?resize=235%2C218)
![[November 12, 1966] A Family Tradition (December 1966 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/661112cover.jpg?resize=469%2C372)
![[September 14, 1966] All the Old Familiar Places (October 1966 <i>Galaxy</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/660912cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[June 16, 1966] Calm Spots (July 1966 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/660616cover.jpg?resize=672%2C372)
![[May 20, 1966] Things to Come and Things that Are(June 1966 <i>Fantasy and Science Fiction</i>)](https://i0.wp.com/galacticjourney.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/660518cover.jpg?resize=669%2C372)
