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Book, Magazine, Science / Space Race, Serial

[December 5, 1964] Steady as she goes (January 1965 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

A tale of two missions

Mariner 4, launched November 28, 1964, is on its way to Mars.  Shortly after launch, the smart folks at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (some of whom I met last weekend!) determined that Mariner was going to miss its destination by some 200,000 kilometers.  So they calculated the nudge it would take to deflect the ship toward a closer rendezvous with the Red Planet.  This morning, the little spacecraft was ordered to fire its onboard engines for a 20 second burn, and it now looks like Mariner will come within just 10,000 kilometers of its target!

On the other side of the world, the Soviets have informed the world that their Zond 2 probe, launched two days after Mariner 4, needs no course correction.  On the other hand, on Dec. 2, it was reported that the probe is only generating half the power it's supposed to.

Similarly, in the science fiction magazine world, no fewer than three magazines got new editors this year (Fantasy and Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, and New Worlds), and two of them have the same editor with a different name (Amazing's and Fantastic's Cele Goldsmith is now Cele Lalli).

But in Fred Pohl's trinary system of Galaxy, Worlds of Tomorrow, and IF, not only is leadership unchanged, but so is content.  Nowhere is that clearer than in the January 1965 issue of IF, which like its predecessors, is an uneven mix of old and new authors, old and new ideas, and generally inferior but not unpleasant work. 

In other words, on course, but running on half-steam.

The Issue at Hand


by Gray Morrow

In many ways, this is not the issue Pohl wanted on the news stands.  The cover doesn't illustrate any of the contents of the issue; it's supposed to go with Jack Vance's novel, The Killing Machine.  But since that story ended up in book print before it could be serialized, it was pulled from appearing in the magazine.  Instead, we got the sequel to Fred Pohl's and Jack Williamson's The Reefs of Space, which had the virtue of being an IF-exclusive series and co-written by the editor. 

It's a good thing Pohl had it in his back pocket!

Starchild (Part 1 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson


by Gray Morrow

Hundreds of years from now, the solar system is ruled by the Plan of Man, a computer-led collective in which everyone's lives are ordered, and dissent is rewarded with a quick trip to the body banks for organ harvesting.  But out in the stellar outskirts, in the frigid birthplace of comets, the steady creation of matter in the universe provides rich feeding grounds for the fusorians.  These cosmic plankton eaters in turn create vast reefs in space, homes to the seal-like spacelings and their predators, the dragonesque pyropods.  These reefs have also become shelters for Terran dissidents yearning to be free.  The Reefs of Space told the tale of their first human visitors.

Starchild is the story of Machine Major Boysie Gann, a spy sent to Polaris station to suss out traitors to the Plan.  He ends up kidnapped to the Reefs and then made a messenger to the Planner, the human liaison with the Planning Machine.  Mysteriously teleported back to Earth, Boysie bears with him The Writ of Liberation: if the Plan of Man does not end its attempts to subjugate the free people of the Reefs, the "Starchild" will blacken the Sun…

I was a bit chary of this serial at the beginning.  Williamson is a pulp writer from the way-back, and it shows.  Pohl can be brilliant, but Reefs was more pedestrian (except for the gripping middle section).  But Starchild kept me going the whole way, sort of a Cordwainer Smith "Instrumentality" story, though with less poetry.

Four stars so far.

Answering Service, by Alma Hill

A Boston fan and writer, Hill is new to my ken but has apparently been published since 1950. Service shows us a world where the SPCA has won, cats and other "aggressive" animals are tolerated only in zoos, and mice are overrunning the world without check.  One man is determined to reverse this situation.

Utterly forgettable.  Two stars.

The Recon Man, by Wilson Tucker


by Nodel

A young man wakes up from an amnesiac coma with a push to his back out the door of a house.  Onto a Heinlein moving road he goes, along with dozens of other male commuters to some mysterious labor destination.  A spitfire, himself, the other drones are so many zombies.  Only the pink jumpsuited women have any personality; they seem to run the show.

The man is harnessed to a machine, tasked with creating bacon by conceptualizing it so it can materialize in front of him.  He soon gets bored with this role and makes neckties and carpentry tools instead.  This shuts down the assembly line early, and one of the female supervisors takes him home to see what's wrong with him. 

Slowly, memories of a fatal car crash, centuries before in 1960, coalesce in the man's mind.  How did he get to this strange world?  For what purpose?  And how long does he have to live?

Recon Man is a neat little mystery with a truckload of dark implications.  I liked it a lot.  Four stars.

Vanishing Point, by Jonathan Brand


by Gray Morrow

This is the second outing by Brand, his first being a disappointment.  He fares better with this one, a space story within a bedtime story (the framing is cute but not particularly necessary) about Earth travelers on the first emissary mission to an alien race.

The place chosen for first contact is a sort of mock-Earth made by the aliens, a beautiful park of a world stocked with all sorts of game.  It even has a centenarian, human caretaker.  But neither the park, nor the old man, are what they seem.

Not bad.  Three stars.

The Heat Racers, by L. D. Ogle

Then we come to our traditional IF "first", the piece by a heretofore unpublished author (or at least an unpublished pseudonym).  This one is a vignette about a race of anti-grav sailboats.  I think.  The motive force and levitative technologies are never really explained.

Another trivial piece.  Two stars.

Retief, God-Speaker, by Keith Laumer


by Jack Gaughan

And last up, we have yet another installment in the increasingly tiresome saga of Retief, the diplomatic superspy of the future.  This one involves a race of money-grubbing, seven-foot, theocratic slobs, and the diminutive, subterranean aliens they mean to wipe out like vermin.  Can Retief establish formal relations with the former while saving the latter?

By the end of the novelette, you probably won't care.  This is easily the goofiest and most heavy-handed entry in the series.  I think it's time for Laumer to cut his losses.

Two stars.

Summing Up

All told, this month's issue is more "half a loaf" than "curate's egg".  The parts I liked were lots of fun, and as for the dreary bits, at least they made for quick reading.  I've said before that Pohl doesn't really have enough good material for three mags, but he could have a dynamite pair.

On the other hand, IF is a place to stick new authors and off-beat stories.  I just wish they were more consistently successes!

Maybe 1965 will be the year IF gets a mid-course correction…

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Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[September 12, 1964] A Mysterious Affair of Style (October 1964 Amazing)

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by John Boston

Georgia on My Mind

We’ve just seen that standing up for civil rights in the South is a hazardous business from the murder of the civil rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner.  It looks like merely being a Negro passing through the South can be just as hazardous, even in the service of one’s country. 

Lemuel Penn was an assistant superintendent in the Washington, D.C., school system, a decorated veteran of World War II, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.  There’s an annual summer training camp for reservists, and Colonel Penn went to Fort Benning, Georgia, for the occasion.  Driving back to Washington on July 11, Colonel Penn and two fellow reservists were noticed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, who followed them and killed Penn with two shotgun blasts.

The Klansmen were easily identified and brought to trial remarkably quickly—and acquitted last week by an all-white Georgia jury, according to the local custom. 

But the last word may remain to be spoken.  Days before the murder, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes prosecution of such civil rights violations in federal court by federal authorities, was enacted.  Will it make a difference, before another Southern jury?  And will the federal government reconsider a practice that requires Negroes to travel to the South where their mere presence may provoke local racist whites to homicide?

The Issue at Hand

The October 1964 Amazing is fronted by an Ed Emshwiller cover that is, if anything, more hideous than the one on the July issue, though more capably rendered.  It looks like something a non-SF artist might do satirically for a mainstream magazine article trashing SF as silly and juvenile; more charitably, like a failed attempt at an Ace Double cover that Emshwiller found in the back of his closet.  I wonder if it was meant for one of A.E. van Vogt’s Null-A books.  The guy in the shiny white flying chair (notice how much it looks like he’s sitting on a toilet?) has a forehead high enough to accommodate an extra brain, or two or three.  The contrast between this and Emshwiller's much more sophisticated work for Fantasy and Science Fiction (for example, the April 1964 issue) is nothing short of . . . amazing.

Enigma From Tantalus (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

by Ed Emshwiller

The cover story is John Brunner’s Enigma from Tantalus, a two-part serial beginning in this issue, which per my practice I will read and review when it is complete.  Of course its mere presence is a source of trepidation.  Which Brunner are we getting?  The Brunner of the capable and intelligent novelets and novellas he has been publishing for years in the British SF magazines, some of which have been fixed up into fine books such as The Whole Man and Times Without Number?  Or the pretentiously befuddled Brunner of his last appearance here, February’s The Bridge to Azrael?  Stay tuned.  Stars, hold back your radiance.

In the Shadow of the Worm, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Once past the serial, the major fiction item is In the Shadow of the Worm, a long novelet by the unevenly talented Neal Barrett, Jr.  The blurb telegraphs this one: “The Beautiful Lady . . . the Android who does but may not love her . . . the Mad Villain . . . the Unutterable Menace . . .  These are stock (almost laughing-stock) figures of science fiction.  Now Neal Barrett . . . takes them and makes them vibrant with suspense, with poetry, with meaning.”

Uh-oh.

Well, the bad news is that the story is in large part an exercise in bombastic oratory and striking of poses.  The mitigating news is that Barrett sort of brings it off, at least in its own terms.  The Lady Larrehne (am I the only one tired of a human future festooned with titles of nobility?), with her non-man Steifen, an artificial person programmed to serve and obey her, have crossed space in the good ship Gryphon (“Oh, fearsome and great she is!  A league and a half of terror and love from silver beak to spiked bronze tail—a’shimmer with golden scales from steel-ruffle neck to dragon wings; and each bright horny shield as wide as fifty humans high.”).

They are now on Balimann’s Moon, presided over by the Balimann (sic), which orbits around a planet called Slaughterhouse, which apparently produces meat for the rest of the galaxy, in the form of parodic engineered animals without much to them except the edible (“terrible blind herds stumbling toward death before birth could register on feeble brains”).  Slaughterhouse in turn is ruled by one Garahnell, who ostentatiously stages phony space battles for the visitors.

But why are Larrehne and Steifen here anyway?  To see the Worm, a/k/a the Eater of Worlds, an entity, force, effigy, or something between our galaxy and Andromeda and heading our way, and Balimann’s Moon is the best vantage point (“the last sprinkled mote of sand before the great sea begins”). 

They are also here to visit Slaughterhouse, though somehow that goal gets lost in the proceedings.  Everything is symbolic, of course, as the characters point out in case you missed it.  Says the Lady: “Is there a more cutting parody of the Good and Evil we have known back there, than Garahnell’s mock war—or the birth-death of Slaughterhouse?  When I think of the life we left—Oh, Steifen, it’s hard to say which nightmare mirrors the other!”

There’s more, much more, including but not limited to the fate of humanity, all saved from terminal tiresomeness by Barrett’s sure touch with his contrived and gaudy style.  This is not at all my cup of tea, but I must concede it’s well brewed.  Three stars.

Urned Reprieve, by Arthur Porges


by Robert Adragna

Next is the trivial and annoying Urned Reprieve by Arthur Porges, another contrived little story of Ensign Ruyter triumphing over adversity with very basic science.  Ruyter is about to be sacrificed by primitive aliens to their jealous god but saves himself with a demonstration of air pressure that wows the savages.  This is dreary enough to start, but Porges notes in passing that these aliens “were quite primitive, roughly on the level, it would seem, of the Red Indian tribes of Earth’s infancy.” Doesn’t this guy know anything besides junior high school science?  Maybe he should start with Edmund Wilson’s Apologies to the Iroquois (1960), about some “Red Indians” who were arguably more civilized than the people who subjugated them.  Two stars, grudgingly.

The Intruders, by Robert Rohrer


by Blair

The suddenly prolific Robert Rohrer is here, for the third consecutive issue, with The Intruders, an improvement over its predecessors.  It’s a jolly romp about a maniac with a meat cleaver trying to avoid and defeat his pursuers, from the maniac’s point of view, set in a spaceship rather than a haunted house (and being in the spaceship is what drove him mad—that’s what makes it science fiction and not just an updated rehash of Poe).  (That’s mostly a joke.  Sort of.) The hackneyed extremity of the plot is made tolerable and quite readable by an economical style that focuses on mundane physical detail and agreeably contrasts with its loony content.  This Rohrer is getting pretty good; if he sticks with it he may produce something memorable.  Three stars, towards the high end.

Demigod, by R. Bretnor


by Virgil Finlay

The last piece of fiction here is Demigod, by R(eginald) Bretnor, who has not previously appeared in Amazing, being most frequently found in Fantasy & Science Fiction, with the occasional foray into Harper’s, Esquire, Today’s Woman, and the like.  The Demigod is a giant golden-green humanoid who emerges from his spaceship at “the isle and port of Porquegnan, where Lucullus Sackbutt’s yacht, the Grand Eunuch, swam at anchor in an emerald sea and an atmosphere delicate with hints of duck and truffle and whispered music.”

We are quickly introduced, inter alia, to Mr. Sackbutt, the Mayor Hippolyte Ronchi, “a large, middleaged woman named, of all things, Mme. Bovary, who had come to deliver Lucullus Sackbutt’s more intimate and finer laundry,” Sackbutt’s “little friend,” Prince Alexei Alexandrovitch Tsetsedzedze, “known familiarly as Poupou . . . but who had nonetheless found his way to Lucullus Sackbutt via dress-designing and interior decorating.” Sackbutt has only just come from his bath, with “a pair of lithe, young, naked Nubian girls, whose duty it was to wash him, and who had long since learned that nothing at all exciting was going to happen to them while at work,” while Prince Poupou read to Sackbutt from his projected biography of Sackbutt, patron of the fine arts and arbiter of taste.

So Sackbutt appears to be a stereotyped homosexual, and the story continues in its arch and mannered fashion to parody what was undoubtedly a parody to begin with.  The Demigod approaches Sackbutt and stares at him, from which Sackbutt infers that he has been selected to parade for this first alien visitor all the achievements of Earthly high culture, while the rest of the world looks on, until the Demigod decides he has had enough and carries Sackbutt off to a summary end.  Bretnor is adept enough at this artificial style (reminiscent of an overstimulated P.G. Wodehouse) to keep it amusingly readable enough, as long as one can ignore the fact that the whole thing is an exercise in exploiting the last prejudice that seems to be acceptable everywhere.  Two stars for execution discounted for silliness, a burnt-out cinder for moral stature.

Jack Williamson: Four-Way Pioneer, by Sam Moskowitz

An almost welcome note of the prosaic is sounded by Sam Moskowitz, with his SF Profile, Jack Williamson: Four-Way Pioneer.  This one begins by quoting a New York Times review stating that Williamson’s writing is “only slightly above that of comic strip adventure”—a review which netted Williamson a job writing a comic strip, Beyond Mars in the New York Daily News Sunday edition.  This may not be the credential Mr. Williamson would most like to see heralded.

Aside from this promotion by pratfall, Moskowitz recounts Williamson’s childhood in the wilds, or at least the farmlands, of Mexico and the Arizona Territory, his discovery of this very magazine in 1927, his success at selling A. Merritt pastiches to it starting in 1928, and his development as a more versatile writer in the 1930s.  Moskowitz describes Williamson’s 1939 novella The Crucible of Power as “a giant step towards believability in science fiction” (read it and draw your own conclusions).  As usual, Moskowitz focuses on Williamson’s material of the ‘20s and ‘30s, with less emphasis on the ‘40s and none at all on his post-1950 work (two novels on his own not worked up from earlier writings, plus one in collaboration with James Gunn and four in collaboration with Frederik Pohl, and a dozen-plus short stories); his sole comment is “But science fiction stories continue to trickle out.”

Oh, the four ways?  “He is an author who pioneered superior characterization in a field almost barren of it; new realism in the presentation of human motivation; scientific rationalization of supernatural concepts; and exploitation of the untapped story potentials of anti-matter.” You might think becoming an academic with a specialty in science fiction was one, too.  Anyway, three stars; this one is a little meatier than Moskowitz’s usual.

Summing Up

Who would have thought it?  An issue of Amazing in which the merit, such as it is, of most of the fiction contents turns on the authors’ mastery of style: in Barrett’s and Bretnor’s cases, their ability to maintain a grossly artificial style consistently enough to keep the reader going, as opposed to laughing at their lapses, and in Rohrer’s, his ability to recount bizarre and grotesque events in the plainest and most matter-of-fact language so the story will not seem as far around the bend as its protagonist.  Well, you take what you can get with this hit-or-miss magazine.

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[October 8, 1963] The Big Lemon (November 1963 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

New York.  Gateway to America.  Home of Broadway, the Empire State Building, Times Square, etc. etc.

Big deal.

This week, my wife and I took a United 707 from LAX to Newark for a mini-vacation.  A good friend of ours, whom we met in fandom, lives in Morristown, New Jersey.  We stayed in bucolic west New Jersey for a couple of lovely days before hopping the train into Town.  You see, I'd never really been to the Big Apple, and my wife had enjoyed the last couple of times.  Plus, there was a little convention going on at the time to serve as an anchor.  What the hell.

Hell and anchor are right.  Lemme tell you, bub — two nights in mid-town, with the bums, the horns, and the smoke, will sour anyone on the place.  Maybe the folks here are inured to this constant assault on all of the senses, but for a country boy like me, it warn't no fun.  The con was a crummy, disorganized mess, too.

All right.  I can see you natives getting your fur up.  To your credit, there were some interesting-looking shows on the Great White Way, and my last meal on the island involved some of the tastiest pizza I've ever had, and we managed to meet a clutch of truly excellent people in Manhattan.  But we're happy to be back in quiet ol' Morristown for our last day, and ever-so-glad to be heading home tonight.

The experience is not unlike the one I had reading this month's IF Science Fiction.  It had a few bright spots, but otherwise was a tough slog.  I understand that IF was the low rent sister to Galaxy, offering a bare cent and a half per word and getting what it paid for.  When Fred Pohl took over the mag in 1961, he raised the rates for new stories and closed the deal on a bunch of previously rejected bargain stuff to fill the cracks.  This issue appears to be made up entirely of the chaff.

The Governor of Glave, by Keith Laumer

Laumer's Retief series is getting long in the tooth.  There are only so many stories of a diplomat/super-spy (spy/super-diplomat?) we need.  This one was especially tired: the rabble coup the eggheads running a planet dependent on skilled engineers to keep the terraforming plants running.  Decent plot but horrible execution.  Hint to Laumer — if Retief doesn't feel any need to worry, neither does the reader.  Two stars.

The Second-Class Citizen, by Damon Knight

A hand-less dolphin trying to make it in a human world is truly a fish out of water.  But what happens when the roles reverse?  Damon Knight has returned to fiction writing after a long stint translating European works and doing book reviews.  That he's chosen the friendly bottlenose as his subject shouldn't surprise given the success of the recent movie, Flipper (not to mention Clarke's novel, People of the Sea.  This particular tale had promise, but it ends too quickly and ham-fistedly.  I look forward to better tales from Knight and about dolphins.  Three stars.

Muck Man, by Fremont Dodge

Here's a neat concept.  After a century of interstellar exploration, humanity has found a dozen inhabitable planets, but none of them are carbon-copies of the Earth.  Survival on any of them requires physical modification to deal with the immense gravities or impurities in the atmosphere or dangerous predators.  Thus, people who settle these alien worlds become, themselves, aliens.  It's very refreshing to find a depiction of a universe that isn't filled with perfectly suitable worlds.

This particular tale involves a fellow who is framed for the theft of a Slider egg, a coruscant treasure found only on Jordan's Planet.  Not only is one difficult to obtain, as they are vigorously defended by the fearsome Slider beasts, but they also have a limited lifespan.  Asa Graybar was working on a way to keep them alive indefinitely; thus, a put-up job by the Director of Operations of the primary distributor of Slider eggs, who wants to preserve their scarcity and value. 

Rather than cool his heels for five years in a conventional prison, Graybar elects to serve a one-year hitch on Jordan's Planet as a Muck Man — a human modified to be a powerful frog-like being.  Muck Men are well suited for digging Slider eggs and thriving in the swampy environs.  Graybar hopes to use his tenure on the mud planet to continue his research and, perhaps, clear his name.  Unfortunately for him, the guy who framed him also comes to Jordan's Planet to ensure Graybar doesn't finish his sentence.

It's a good, vivid story, and it even has a competent female character (heiress to the Slider egg distributor company).  However, it's about a third too short, perhaps cut for length like Panshin's Down to the Worlds of Men a few issues back.  Moreover, I'm getting tired of there being room for just one woman in any tale, and she only in a position of importance due to breeding.  Can't women make it to the top on their own merit?  Three stars and hoping for more next time.

Long Day in Court, by Jonathan Brand

This is the first story from "Brand," a university employee operating under a pseudonym.  It's an interstellar court of law story, consciously aping the not-at-all futuristic Perry Mason series.  The puzzler case of the day: when is beating your spouse both the crime and the punishment?

It's about as amusing as it sounds, though at least it's in English.  Two stars.

Glop, Goosh and Gilgamesh, by Theodore Sturgeon

Mr. "90% of everything is crap" proves that the rule applies to its inventor as well as the rest of us mortals.  This piece on asphalt is readable, but the guy is phoning in his non-fiction.  Get back to fiction, Ted!  Two stars.

The Reefs of Space (Part 3 of 3), by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl

The first part of this three-part serial introduced us to Steve Ryland, a physicist condemned to life imprisonment for subversive acts against the oppressively harmonious world-state run by a giant computer, The Machine.  Ryeland is asked to recreate the reactionless space drive and find the legendary Reefs of Space, free-floating inhabitable structures far beyond the orbit of Pluto.  The hope is that this will allow Earth's authorities to find Ron Donderevo, the one terran ever to escape the Machine's regime.

Part Two was almost a standalone tale, chronicling Ryeland's exile to and attempt to escape Heaven, where convicts are doped up and allowed to live a pleasant life — as their organs are harvested one by one until the host can't sustain life anymore.  Ryeland fails in the end, but is rescued by Donna Creery, daughter of The Planner, the one person on the planet with authority to change the Machine's programming. 

She and Steve escape to the Reefs of Space on the back of the seal-like "starchild," a beast that can travel across light years of vacuum without adverse effects.  In their new home, with the aid of the exiled Donderevo, they must prepare to face down dangers both indigenous and Earth-born

Reefs of Space is an odd duck.  It's a pair of pulpish book-ends around a virtually unassociated novella.  I suspect Parts 1 and 3 were written by Jack Williamson, whose bibliography goes back to the 20s, and Part 2 was done by Fred Pohl.  Certainly, the fascinatingly horrific aspects of it feel very Pohlian.  In any event, whereas Part 1 barely merited three stars and Part 2 was a surprisingly decent four-star episode, Part 3 is a muddled mess that ends on an abrupt and unsatisfactory note.  Plus, of course, it has the mandatory sole female whose high position is earned solely from having had a well-placed father.

Two stars for this section, three stars for the whole story.

A Better Mousetrap, by John Brunner

Last up, a piece from the often (but sadly, not always) excellent Britisher, John Brunner.  Hostile aliens have seeded the solar system with asteroid-sized clusters of precious metals that turn out to be ship-destroyers.  A very talky piece, as dull as it is nonsensical.  Two stars.

***

I won't denigrate this issue too much; IF has always been of widely variable quality, and the good issues make up for the lousy ones.  Still, if ever there was an issue to miss, this is it.

You're welcome.

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[August 16, 1963] Time and Time Again (October 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow)

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[Did you meet the Traveler at WorldCon?  Please drop him a line!]


by Victoria Silverwolf

I believe that time, even more than space, is the great theme of science fiction.  Not only time travel, but also the ways in which the passage of time changes people and the way they live.  Most SF stories take place in the future, and offer visions of the years, centuries, and millennia to come. Some feature precognition.  Others deal with distortions in time, such as the slowing of time associated with velocities approaching the speed of light.

It's not surprising, then, that many of the stories in the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow feature characters struggling with the mysteries and challenges of time.

The Night of the Trolls, by Keith Laumer

The narrator of this novella is thrust out of his own time and into another.  He is placed in suspended animation for a routine test, which is only supposed to last a few days.  He awakens to discover that nearly a century has passed.  The secret government installation where he works is in ruins.  The compound is still guarded by a gigantic, heavily armed, automated tank called a Bolo.  (Such a device first appeared in Combat Unit, from the November 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  That story takes place many centuries after this one, so no knowledge of it is needed to appreciate the new tale.)

Getting past the mechanical guardian is the narrator's first task.  Later he discovers that an apocalyptic event left most survivors barely able to stay alive.  Feudal lords leading lives of luxury rule over them.  The narrator infiltrates the fortress of one such dictator.  He encounters a figure from his past, and becomes involved in a scheme to activate another Bolo. 

This is a fast-paced, vividly written adventure story.  The narrator is one of the author's super-competent heroes.  His ability to fight and bluff his way into the lord's stronghold strains credibility.  The antagonist is a two-dimensional character of pure villainy.  However, these are minor quibbles.  The action-filled plot always holds the reader's attention, and there are moments of powerful emotional impact.  Four stars.

The Hermit of Mars, by Stephen Bartholomew

The protagonist of this story also journeys alone through the years, but by his own choice.  An archeologist, he was part of an exploration team sent to the red planet.  A minor heart problem made it risky for him to return to Earth when the mission ended.  He gladly volunteered to remain behind, because unhappy relationships with women made him a misanthropic loner.  Unmanned spaceships send him supplies.  For thirty-five years he lives alone, studying the incredibly ancient artifacts left behind by the extinct Martians.  Two men arrive after all this time.  It soon becomes clear that they are up to no good.  They tolerate the hermit as a harmless old fool, but he proves to have a trick up his sleeve.

There is nothing particularly noteworthy, for good or bad, about this story.  The author's style is serviceable, but undistinguished.  There are no surprises in the plot.  The resolution is something of a deus ex machina.  There's an enjoyable bit of irony at the very end.  Three stars.

The Good Friends, by Cordwainer Smith

An astronaut returns to Earth after an emergency.  While recovering in a hospital, he inquires about the other members of the crew.  The doctor caring for him tells him the frightening truth.  Like other stories in this issue, a long period of time is involved.

This is a brief story with the flavor of an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It will disappoint fans of the author's beautiful and mysterious myths of the far future.  The style is simple and direct, without the intricate wordplay and imaginative images found in tales of the Instrumentality of Mankind.  It's not a bad story, but it pales into insignificance compared to masterpieces like Alpha Ralpha Boulevard and The Ballad of Lost C'Mell.  Three stars.

Orphans of Science, by Stephen Barr

This is an informal article about small mysteries.  Why does light reflecting off metal create small white highlights?  What, exactly, is white light?  Why does a mirror reverse things from left to right, but not top to bottom?  (The magazine's editorial explains the author's confusion on this point.) The rest of the article discusses a few more minor puzzles.  These trivial ponderings are mildly interesting.  Two stars.

All We Marsmen (Part 2 of 3) , by Philip K. Dick

This section of the novel concentrates on three characters.  At the heart of the story is a boy who is severely autistic, one who has never spoken.  The wealthy and powerful head of the Martian water workers union believes the child is able to foresee the future.  He plans to have a skilled handyman, who suffers from episodes of schizophrenia, build a device that will allow the boy to communicate.  The theory behind this is that the child perceives time moving at a very fast rate.  This allows him to look beyond the present, but also prevents him from talking.  An important subplot involves the handyman's father, who has a scheme to make a large profit by buying seemingly worthless Martian land.  The boy draws a picture that provides hints about the future of this project.

So far, the narrative style is realistic.  This changes drastically when bizarre images of death and decay fill the page.  These are associated with the nonsense word gubbish.  If I understand the author's intent correctly, this neologism appears in the boy's mind to describe the inevitable disintegration of all material things with time.  As if this were not disconcerting enough, a meeting between the handyman and the union leader is described multiple times before it actually occurs.  These descriptions repeat certain words and events, but have important differences.  Surreal images of a disturbing nature fill the repetitions.  Whether these are hallucinations, symbolic visions of the future, or indications that the child is somehow able to manipulate time, the effect is frightening.

I suspect that some readers will give up on the novel at this point.  Before this section, the multiple plotlines were complex, but comprehensible.  The sudden change to inexplicable images and strange distortions of reality make the plot difficult to follow.  It's impossible to predict where the author will take me next, but so far the journey has been fascinating, and I'm eager to find out what our destination will be.  Four stars.

The Lonely, by Judith Merril

This story takes the form of a transcription of a message intercepted from space.  An eel-like alien lectures other aliens about human beings.  It seems that very few sentient species reproduce sexually.  Of those that do, humanity is almost unique in having only two sexes.  A statue of a woman holding a rocket, created by unicellular aliens after humans visited their world, is involved.  Eventually humans return to that world and find the statue.

This is a very strange story.  I credit the author for coming up with aliens that do not resemble people at all.  Other than that, the story's intent is unclear.  It seems to be saying something about art and symbolism, as well as the way in which men and women view each other.  Two stars.

To Save Earth, by Edward W. Ludwig

Earth's sun is going to explode in a little over twelve years.  Six astronauts spend six years journeying to a distant planet, looking for a place where humanity can survive.  The length of the trip causes mental disturbances.  One becomes an alcoholic, one a kleptomaniac, one an amnesiac, one a paranoiac, one a schizophrenic, and one feels compelled to break things.  The latter destroys their communication equipment.  Unable to contact Earth, they face the horrifying challenge of making the long journey back, just in time to begin the exodus of its population.  The new planet is inhabited by friendly aliens, who invite them to stay.  The aliens offer them delicious food and drink, beautiful alien women as lovers, and a life free from all care.  They must decide whether to turn their backs on Earth or endure the voyage home.

In sharp contrast to the previous story, these aliens are just slightly different from people.  The familiar plot device of telepathy allows them to speak to their human visitors.  As you can see from the synopsis above, the story has many other implausible events.  Two stars.

The Masked World, by Jack Williamson

Six survey ships are lost without a trace after visiting a distant planet.  The captain of the seventh ship discovers the skeleton of his wife, the pilot of the sixth ship.  Near her remains is a strange plant, unlike anything else on the planet.  Its DNA structure turns out to be the key to solving the mystery.

This is a very short story with a unique concept.  I had to wonder why anyone would keep sending survey ships to a place where they always disappear.  Three stars.

I see by the old clock on the wall that our time is up for today.  See you next time!

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[August 8, 1963] Great Escapes (September 1963 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

In the United States, the Fourth of July is perhaps our biggest holiday, celebrating our declaration of independence from our former motherland, Great Britain.  It was our escape from taxation without representation, from capricious colonial government, and from forced tea-drinking. 

This latest Independence Day saw the premiere of one of the biggest and best summer blockbusters ever made, the appropriately themed The Great Escape.  Directed by John Sturges, and starring James Garner, Richard Attenborough, and Steve McQueen, it is the vaguely true-to-life story of a prison break from a Nazi Stalag.  Exciting, moving, and beautifully done, it's sure to be a contender for an Oscar or three.  Watch it.

The September 1963 Worlds of IF Science Fiction continues the escape motif.  Not just in the normal sense in that it provides an escape from reality, but rather, each of its stories involves an escape of some kind. 

Was this a deliberate editorial choice by Fred Pohl or simply a happy circumstance?  Either way, it makes for an enjoyable issue that is better than the sum of its parts.

The Expendables, by A. E. van Vogt

Van Vogt, one of space opera's most prominent lights, has been away from the SF scene for fourteen years.  So it's quite a scoop for Pohl to have gotten this latest piece, depicting the final stages of a generation ship's journey.  A mutiny against the authoritarian captaincy is brewing as the ship nears its destination, and when it turns out the planet intended for colonization is already inhabited, all-out rebellion ensues.

This is a tale that combines two of my favorite topics, first contact and generation ships, and I'm a big fan of Van Vogt.  However, I am disappointed to report that Expendables just doesn't hang well together.  The science is shaky, the dialogue rather implausible, and the characters a bit too gullible.  There is also a queer, slapdash quality to the writing.  I suspect this was written in a hurry; a do-over could turn it into a fine story, indeed.  Two stars as is.

The Time of Cold, by Mary Carlson

Curt, a spacewrecked man trapped without water on a parched world has little hope of surviving long enough to be rescued.  Xen is an amorphous hot-blooded being, native to the planet, desperate for more warmth.  Both are menaced by liquid scorpions, beasts who kill in an instant and don't care what world you come from.  Are the two aliens the key to each other's survival?

There is an art to telling a story from alternating perspectives such that each scene moves the story forward without repetition.  Mary Carlson, a young lady from South Dakota, mastered that art in her first published piece.  It's a beautiful, uplifting tale.  Bravo.  Five stars.

Manners and Customs of the Thrid, by Murray Leinster

In Thrid culture, the Governor can never be wrong, and woe be to one who disputes him.  Jorgenson, a representative of the Rim Star Trading Corp., dares to stand up for his native business partner, Ganti, whose wife the Governor would have for his own.  Both are exiled for life to a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, escape from which would daunt even the fellows who broke out of Alcatraz. 

But, escape they do, and the method is quite ingenious — and logical given the central tenet of Thrid society.  Writing-wise, it's a rather workmanlike piece, but the thrilling bits more than compensate.  Three stars.

Science on a Shoestring – Or Less , by Theodore Sturgeon

In this month's science column, Sturgeon extols the merits of UNESCO's book, Sourcebook for Science Teaching.  I love Ted Sturgeon, don't get me wrong, but sometimes his article topics just don't merit the space they take up.  Two stars.

The Reefs of Space (Part 2 of 3), by Jack Williamson, and Frederik Pohl

In the future, Earth is a dystopia under the stifling computerized control of the Machine and its inscrutable Plan.  Those who resist the Plan, or for whom the Machine can make no use, are condemned to the Body Bank for reclamation.  The last installment, in which state criminal Steve Ryeland was forced by the Machine to develop a reactionless drive, only mentioned the Body Banks in passing.  Part 2 deals almost exclusively with them.

In the midst of his work, Ryeland, accused of plotting a wave of disasters around the world, is exiled to Cuba.  The tropical paradise has been turned into a kind of leper colony, except limbs and organs are not lost to disease, but instead, according to the demands of the citizens for whom parts are harvested.  Over time, the residents lose more and more of themselves until there is not enough to sustain life.  One might survive as long as six years, if you can call a limbless, mouthless existence survival.  Of course, the tranquilizing drugs they put in the food and water keep you from minding too much…

Fred Pohl already proved he could write compelling horror in A Plague of Pythons.  This latest installment of The Reefs of Space would do fine as a stand-alone story (and I have to wonder if it was originally intended as such).  The tale of Ryeland's attempt to escape an escape-proof prison is gripping, even if the trappings of the greater story aren't so much.  Four stars.

The Course of Logic, by Lester del Rey

A mated pair of parasitic aliens, who use other creatures as their hosts, have been trapped on a bleak world for eons.  Their home galaxy has been destroyed, and the only compatible beasts they've found lack the fine motor skills to construct spaceships for escape — or any other kind of technology.  So they are delighted when they come across a pair of humans, for our form is absolutely perfect for their needs.  Will these puppet masters, once ensconced in our guise, escape their planetary prison and become unstoppable conquerors?

Lester has been too long from our ranks, but it looks like he's back to stay, given his recent record of publication.  This is a grim piece but with a splendid sting in its tail.  I also particularly enjoyed this bit of evolutionary teleology, said by the dominant female to her mate:

"The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female.  How else could it care for its young?  It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for itself.  The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all."

And before you scoff, recall the hyenas and the bees.  Four stars.

The Customs Lounge, by E. A. Proulx

This vignette appears to be a Tale from the White Hart, but it's really a story of human cleverness under alien domination.  It is apparently the first piece by Proulx, "a folk singing star-gazing man from upstate New York," and while it's nothing special, it's also not bad.  Three stars.

Threlkeld's Daughter, by James Bell

Last up, we have a tale not of escape, but of entrapment.  A six-legged, tailed tree-creature from Alpha Centauri takes on comely human female form and travels to Earth to secure a male homo sapiens specimen for study.  But with the human body comes human hormones and emotions, and love creates its own entrapments. 

It's a cute little piece, more like something I'd find in F&SF.  Three stars.

Thus ends a fine issue of an improving magazine.  If you ever find yourself imprisoned, in gaol real or virtual, one of these stories might give you the inspiration to break out.  Or, at the very least, make a few hours of your sentence more pleasant.

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[June 4, 1963] Booked passage (July 1963 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

How quickly the futuristic becomes commonplace.  Just two years ago, I marveled about how fast one can cross the oceans by jet.  Now, on the eve of another trip to Japan (we really have joined the Jet Set, haven't we?) I look at the flight itinerary and grumble.  Why must we stop in Hawaii?  That adds several hours to the trip — it'll take more than half a day to get from LAX to Haneda.

Spoiled rotten, I tell you.

Speaking of travel stories, a fresh crop of science fiction digests has hit my mailbox.  Many of them will be joining me on my trip to the Orient, but I finished one of them, the July 1963 IF, pre-flight.  All of them feature some element of star-hopping, and so this issue sets a fine mood as we embark on our latest journey:

That Notebook Again, by Theodore Sturgeon

I find it interesting that editor Fred Pohl has gotten Ted Sturgeon to write his editorials for him.  I'm not complaining — it's always nice to see Sturgeon in print in any capacity.  This time around, he treats us to a number of technological proposals, a wishlist of inventions that should be right around the corner, given a little interest and effort.  I found his idea for a home TV-tape camera and player particularly titilating (and not farfetched — my nephew already audio-tapes television shows onto reel-to-reel).

The Reefs of Space (Part 1 of 3), by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl

A good third of the issue is given to a new serial (illustrated on the cover — EMSH is big in this issue, though I also like the work of Nodel, who is new to me).  Hundreds of years from now, Earth's population is highly regimented, its economy utterly socialized, under the authority of The Machine and its master Plan.  Dissent is punished by incarceration and the forced wearing of an explosive ring around one's neck.  Further disobedience results in one's "salvage" (dissasembly into component body parts for the use of others). 

Steve Ryeland is an experimental physicist, a touchy job to have when scientific advancement poses both boon and risk for the Plan.  At Reef's beginning, he has been a prisoner for three years, unaware of his crime, but consistently questioned about "spacelings," "fusorians," "reefs of space," and "jetless drive" — terms about which he knows nothing.  Adding to his confusion is a three-day gap in his memory.

And then comes the urgent summons — the Machine will have Ryeland discover the secret of the reactionless drive, and soon, or be sent to the Body Banks.  For at the edge of the solar system lies a biological construct, the tremendous analog of a coral reef created by organisms that live on interstellar hydrogen.  Not only does this alien structure pose a hypothetical threat to the Plan, but it affords sanctuary to a more existential opponent — the revolutionary-in-exile, Donderevo.  Can Ryeland accomplish his mission in time to save his hide and human society?  Is such a goal even worth fighting for?

It's an interesting concept for a novel, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired.  It suffers from the same plodding repetitiveness as Simak's concurrent serial in Galaxy, but betrays none of Simak's literary expertise.  The writing is simple, uninspired, and the scientific concepts (including Hoyle's steady-state theory, which I find uncompelling) feel dated.  Two stars, but with cautious hopes for the next installment.

The Faces Outside, by Bruce McAllister

Here is a short tale of a married couple, the last of humanity, mutated to live in a large alien aquarium with a host of other terrestrial life forms.  The Terrans have the last laugh when the male of the pair develops psychic powers and compels the aliens to commit mass suicide.

McAllister is the first and weaker of the two new authors featured in this issue.  His writing shows potential, though.  Two stars, trying hard for three.

Mightiest Qorn, by Keith Laumer

Another IF, another Retief story.  This time, the omnipotent but much-suffering Terran agent is tapped to investigate the sudden reappearance of the fearsome Qorn, a race of dreadnought-wielding, glory-seeking warriors who appear to have the power of teleportation.

Unfortunately, the Retief shtick is starting to wear thin (arguably, it raveled a while ago), and it's really time Laumer focused his attention to the more worthy efforts we know he's capable of.  The bright spot is that Retief's nominal boss, Magnan, is now pretty game to do whatever his "underling" says.  Some might call that progress.  Two stars.

In the Arena, by Brian W. Aldiss

Given up?  Take heart — it's all better from here.  Prominent British writer, Aldiss, gives us another man-and-woman pair in the thrall of aliens.  In this case, it is two gladiators performing for a race of insectoids who have conquered the Earth (but not all of humanity).  Call it Spartacus for the 30th Century.  It's a nicely written trifle.  Three stars.

Down to the Worlds of Men, by Alexei Panshin

14-year old Mia Havero is part of a society of human space-dwellers, resident of one of the eight galaxy-trotting Ships that represent the remains of Earth's high technology.  She and 29 other young teens are dropped on a primitive colony as part of a rite of passage.  There is always an element of danger to this month-long ordeal, but this episode has a new wrinkle: the planet's people are fully aware (and resentful) of the Ships, and they plan to fight back.  Can Mia survive her coming of age and stop an insurrection?

Panshin hits it right out of the park with his first story, capturing the voice of a young almost-woman and laying out a rich world and an exciting adventure.  Finally, I've got something I can recommend to the Young Traveler.  Four stars, verging on five.

The Shadow of Wings, by Robert Silverberg

The last story introduces Caldwell, an expert in the dead language of Kethlani.  He is called back from a family vacation when a real live Kethlan shows up, bearing the banner of peace.  Can the linguist overcome his revulsion of the alien's form and forge a partnership between the two species?

This piece could have been a throwaway save for Silvergerg's careful drawing of the Caldwell's personality.  I found myself wishing the story had been longer — certainly, it could have taken some of the pages away from the stale stories of the first half.  Four stars.

Like my impending vacation, this month's issue starts with a hard slog but ends with great reward.  I'd say that's the right order of things.  See you in Tokyo!

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[March 10, 1962] Mail Call! (The April 1962 Galaxy)

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by Gideon Marcus

If there is any true measure of fame, it might well be the amount of fan mail you get.  Many stars employ services to plow through their truckloads and give each missive personal response.  Jack Benny came out on his TV stage last night holding a giant sack of fan mail – of course, it was really filled with trash and old cans… 

Galactic Journey's popularity lies somewhere inbetween; we do get our fair share of postcards, but I haven't needed to hire help to read them…yet.  Truth be told, it was for these correspondences that I started this column.  I love meeting you folk – you start the most interesting conversations! 

Science fiction magazines get letters, too.  Many of these digests feature letter columns: Analog, IF, Amazing, and Fantastic.  The two notable hold-outs are Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy.  I suspect the main reason for F&SF is lack of space, it being the shortest of the monthly mags.

Galaxy's reasoning is more complex.  In fact, its editors (first H.L. Gold, now Fred Pohl) have polled readers to see if they wanted a lettercol.  In the last 12 years' of the magazine's existence, the answer has always been no.  Ironically, as much as I love talking to fellow fans, I think I'm in agreement (though I do like letters in comic books).  More room for stories!

Speaking of which…have a look at the stories that came out in this month's quite good Galaxy, dated April 1962:

A Planet for Plundering, by Jack Williamson

Things start a bit slowly with our lead novella.  Wain Scarlet is an anachronism – an atavistic maladjust in an interstellar society of humans.  Where his countrymen are universally beautiful in form and thought, Scarlet is ugly and venal.  Dispatched to the remote star system of Sol to determine whether or not to melt the Earth to use as a galactic stoplight, his sole concern is which of the parties involved can bribe him the most.  Even the revelation that the third planet of the system may well be the ancestral home of humanity means little to him.

Jack Williamson has been around a long time, and his pulpish instincts often creep to the fore in this tale of first contact.  Planet has moments of engagement, and the protagonist is delightfully anti-heroic, but the rough patches bog it down.  Two stars.

Tail-Tied Kings, by Avram Davidson

Davidson, now editor for F&SF, continues his slide into mediocre self-indulgence.  If you recall Miram Allen Deford's Oh Rats! from issue before last, you've got the plot of this one – superrats escape from captivity, poised to take over the world from their bipedal erstwhile masters.  Not unreadable (like some of Davidson's other recent stuff), but why bother rehashing the same story?  And so soon?  Two stars.

Star-Crossed Lover, by William Stuart

Ah, but then we have William Stuart, who rarely disappoints and usually delights.  This Galaxy veteran offers up a fun, tongue-in-cheek tale of romance between a loveable schlub and an eager-to-please, highly wanton ET.  What could go wrong when you've got the literal woman of your dreams?  You'll have to read and find out.  Four stars.

For Your Information, by Willy Ley

Everyone's favorite German returns this bi-month with a piece on shaped charges.  These are explosive shells whose effectiveness is multiplied by how the powder inside is molded.  Pretty fascinating stuff, actually, but the letter Q&A portion afterward is lackluster.  Three stars.

The Long, Silvery Day, by Magnus Ludens

You ever have one of those perfect days?  When everything goes just perfectly?  Ever wonder if someone was behind it?  The impressively named Magnus Ludens is a brand new author, and he hits a triple his first time at bat.  Four stars for this charming story.

Big Baby, by Jack Sharkey

If Stuart is a name that raises expectations, Sharkey's is one that lowers them.  Big Baby is the next in his series starring Jerry Norciss, a telepathic member of the Contact service.  His job is to jump into the minds of beasts on various planets to learn more about the local ecology.  It's not a purely scientific mission – there's always a colony in trouble.  The tidbits about the lonely, junkie-esque life of the esper are compelling, but Baby's menace isn't as interesting as the ones in his last story, there's far too much exposition, and the solution is clumsily rendered.  Two stars.

Gourmet, by Allen Kim Lang

I've no particular reason to like Gourmet, about a spacer who can do wonders with algae rations – but I do.  Perhaps it's because I fancy myself a gourmand, or because Lang is pretty good with the typewriter.  Either way, it's a swell story.  Four stars.

Founding Father, by J.F. Bone

Did the slaveowners think they were righteous?  Do the Whites who lynch Blacks feel good about what they do?  Founding Father puts us in the minds of a pair of reptilian aliens who investigate modern-day Earth.  Their ship has insufficient fuel for the return trip, so they place mental taps into a married couple and compel them to collect some. 

What ensues is a difficult read, particularly if mental coercion is your weak point.  There is no happy ending, and the enslaved's resistance is slowly, methodically destroyed.  Yet the slavemasters are not uncivilized.  Their actions are justified, at least to themselves.  And it's all rendered with a somewhat insouciant touch, appropriate given whose viewpoint we see through.  Chilling.

This is an awfully hard piece to be objective about.  It's a cruel story, all the more shocking for its lightness of tone.  But I think it's deliberate.  I've read enough of J.F. Bone to be assured that he knows what he's doing.  If you finish Father without having addressed your feelings about slavery, racism, and the indignity of nonconsensual control, then you're either not getting the point, or you may have no soul.  Tough stuff, but worthy.  Four stars.

Moondog, by Arthur C. Clarke

About an astronaut and the dog who saves him, even over a distance spanning hundreds of thousands of miles, several years, and the veil of life.  This is a rather pedestrian tale from perhaps the most preeminent of British sf authors, but to be fair, I'm more of a cat lover.  Three stars.

So there you go – a jumbo-sized issue of Galaxy that finished on the good side of decent.  Something to write home about?  I leave that to you to decide…

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[March 1, 1962] Hearts and Flowers (April 1962 Fantastic)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

March has roared in like a lion here in Eastern Tennessee, with high temperatures below fifty and a bit of snow falling in Chattanooga.  Can it be possible that spring is right around the corner?  Perhaps it would be best to turn our thoughts away from the tempests of winter and concentrate on sunnier matters.

After his triumphant orbiting of the Earth, Colonel John Glenn is scheduled to be treated today to what is predicted to be the largest ticker tape parade in history, filling the streets of New York City with tons of shredded paper. Not great news for the street sweepers of the Big Apple, but the rest of us can celebrate.

For those of us stuck indoors due to the weather, we can tune our radios to just about any station playing the Top Forty and enjoy the sound of Gene Chandler's smash hit Duke of Earl, which has been at the top of the charts for a couple of weeks. It may not have the most profound lyrics in the world, but this catchy little number is sure to be heard in the background of many a teenage courtship as a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Appropriately, The April 1962 issue of Fantastic is full of romance, along with the sense of wonder demanded by readers of speculative fiction.

Before we get to the mushy stuff, however, Judith Merril offers us a mysterious look at The Shrine of Temptation.  George Barr's beautiful cover art appears to have inspired this ambiguous tale of good, evil, and strange rituals.  Barr's work has appeared in a handful of fanzines for a few years, but I believe this is his first professional publication.  Based on the quality of this painting, I believe the young artist has a fine career ahead of him.

Merril's story takes place on an island where the native population is being studied by a group of anthropologists.  I was never quite sure whether this was supposed to be taking place on Earth or on another planet.  Although the inhabitants of the island are fully human, there are hints that their year is not the same as ours.  In any case, a young native, nicknamed Lucky by the anthropologists for his intelligence and cheerful nature, quickly learns English and befriends the strangers.  He introduces them to his culture, but the secret of the shrine is unknown even to him, since it is only opened once in a very great while.  The trouble begins when a group from a rival nation arrives on the island.  (Whether their ship travels by sea or through space is not entirely clear.) Eventually the shrine is opened, and what happens is truly unexpected.  This is an intriguing story, if somewhat opaque, and rewards careful reading.  Four stars.

We turn to what we might delicately call the physical aspects of love in R. Bretnor's comedy Dr. Birdmouse.  A pianist whose act is extremely popular with women winds up on a planet with an unusual form of reproduction.  All the animals are as intelligent as humans, and any animal can mate with any other animal, resulting in all sorts of bizarre hybrids.  The title character, for example, combines the characteristics of the creatures found in his name.  (When he learns English from the pianist, he also speaks and acts in an outrageously fey manner.  Combined with the pianist's enthusiastic female audience, I had to wonder if these two characters were intended as a parody of the flamboyant entertainer Liberace.) Despite the loyalty of his feminine fans, the pianist is not a success when it comes to romance, particularly when compared to his untalented but very masculine brother.  He plans to bring some of the inhabitants of the planet back to Earth as an exhibit, in hopes that this will win him a harem of mistresses.  However, Dr. Birdmouse and the others have plans of their own.  This is a moderately amusing trifle, worthy of three stars.

As I predicted last month, the two bickering members of Congress wind up in each other's arms in the concluding half of the short novel Joyleg by Ward Moore and Avram Davidson.  This part of the story takes place almost entirely in the home of the seemingly ageless Revolutionary War veteran Isachar Z. Joyleg, and could easily be adapted for the stage as a romantic comedy.  The secret of his longevity is revealed, drawing the world's attention.  For political reasons, a hostile bureaucrat attempts to accuse Joyleg of desertion, multiple seductions, and even piracy.  To add to the confusion, a document signed by John Paul Jones while that famous naval commander was in the service of Catherine the Great grants Joyleg possession of a large tract of land in Siberia.  A Soviet diplomat arrives in this remote corner of Tennessee, hoping to convince Joyleg to turn his back on an ungrateful USA and instead become a respected citizen of the USSR.  It's all very amusing and charming.  Four stars.

Love also blooms at the conclusion of this month's fantasy classic.  Nonstop to Mars by Jack Williamson is reprinted from the February 25, 1939 issue of Argosy.  A pilot known for making long nonstop flights in his one-man plane is forced to land on a remote island after a weird storm disables his craft.  Alone on the island is a beautiful young scientist, who is studying the phenomenon.  It turns out that aliens from another solar system have landed on Mars, and are using super-advanced technology to teleport Earth's atmosphere to the red planet.  Humanity seems doomed, but our hero bravely enters the storm and literally flies to Mars.  This is an old-fashioned adventure story with a wild premise.  It certainly holds the reader's attention, and is more vividly written than most pulp yarns from its time.  Three stars.

There is a lot to enjoy in Fantastic this month.  You may not fall deeply in love with this issue…but you may be infatuated with it.

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