Tag Archives: joe poyer

Magazine, Science / Space Race, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[November 30, 1968] Up, Up, and Around! (December 1968 Analog)

7 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Once more with feeling

Less than two months ago, the Soviets sent Zond 5 on a trip around the Moon in a precursor to a manned flight.  And on November 18, Zond 6 repeated the feat with, apparently, even more success.  There was some suggestion that Zond 5's reentry and descent was fraught with issues.  No such trouble (reported) on Zond 6.


A photo of the Earth from the vicinity of the Moon returned by Zond 6.

The USSR now says (or say, if you're British) that they might well have a manned flight to lunar orbit by early December.  This is even as NASA prepares to send Apollo 8 on a circumlunar course on December 21.  Yes, it sure seems like the breakneck Space Race is on again.  May it claim no more lives in the process.

Once more with mild enthusiasm


by Kelly Freas

The Custodians, by James H. Schmitz

In the far future, Earth's one-world government has collapsed, leaving a plethora of princely states to war with indifferent ferocity.  Further out, the settled asteroids, turned into giant space ships, placidly orbit the Sun, maintaining civilized culture as well as they can.  And beyond lie the alien-settled "out planets".

After an unprofitable eight-year cruise, Jake Hiskey, commander of the Prideful Sue, has a jackpot plan.  He is smuggling in a ship of Rilfs—humanoids with a deadly, natural weapon that kills all animals within a twenty-mile radiius—to serve as mercenaries on Earth.  But to get them to Terra, he must first stage on an asteroid.  The obvious choice is the one that the sister of Harold, the Sue's navigator, calls home.

The catch: the Rilf who goes by the name McNulty insists that no one know that the Rilfs are on the asteroid.  That means all potential witnesses must be eliminated.  This includes all of the asteroid's residents and, by extension, Harold, since he is afflicted with a conscience.

Well, Harold is no fool, and he susses out the plan just at its moment of murderous implementation.  Can one unarmed man thwart his captain's evil scheme before the asteroid's population is slaughtered?  And are the people on the giant rock as effete and defenseless as they seem?


by Kelly Freas

This is a riproaring piece, filled with well-executed action and interesting concepts.  If anything, it's a bit too short, reading like two sections of a more fleshed-out novel.  The concepts revealed at the end, when we learn the true purpose of the asteroid, are explained too quickly, and in retrospect.

I have to wonder if Schmitz needed to sell this before it was quite ready; I hope an expanded version makes its way to, say, an Ace Double.

Four stars.

A Learning Experience, by Theodore Litwell


by Leo Summers

A fellow signs up for a correspondence course and gets a Type III tutor robot trained at the Treblinka Institute for the sadistically inclined.  While the mechanical's browbeatings do get the student to buckle down, he ultimately decides he will get more satisfaction from tearing the robot bolt from bolt.

Just as he is expected to…

Do you have a child who has trouble focusing?  This may be just what the tyke needs.  Just be ready to sweep the floor afterwards.

Three stars.

The Form Master, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

The more complicated a bureaucracy, the better chance someone will find a way to take advantage of it.  But he who lives by the forged form may ultimately die by the forged form.

At first, I thought this piece was going to be a celebration of the "rugged individualist" who comes up with a clever justification for stealing from his neighbors.  It's not, but it's still kind of tedious.

Two stars.

The Reluctant Ambassadors, by Stanley Schmidt


by Kelly Freas

Humanity's first colony is on a marginal planet of Alpha Centauri.  It has been failing for decades.  Only one of the two sublight colony ships made it, and there just aren't enough people to make a go of things, especially since the planet's weird orbit takes it between the two bright stars of the trinary, resulting in massive swings of temperatures over the decades.

When FTL drive is invented, a follow-up ship is dispatched from Earth to check on the settlement.  On the way, its crew note that hyperspace, which is supposed to be empty, appears to have inhabitants…or at least something is emitting a mysterious glow off the port bow.  Once at Centauri, apart from the much bedraggled but doughty Terrans, the relief crew also find evidence of alien visitation, which apparently has been going on since the start of the colony.  The colonists had been reluctant to investigate the aliens too deeply as the extraterrestrials had done their best not to be seen. Thus, the first faster-than-light reconnaissance turns into a kind of ambassadorial mission as the captain of the relief vessel heads off in search of the aliens not only to learn their secrets (and the reason for their secrecy) but also to find clues as to the disappearance of the other colony ship.

This is solid, SFnal entertainment, if a little dry and drawn out, and with aliens who are much too humanoid for anything but Star Trek.  I like the setting, though.

Three stars.

Situation of Some Gravity, by Joseph F. Goodavage

Analog had been doing so well with its nonfiction articles of late that the appearance of this one is highly disappointing.  It's a screed about how the magnetohydrodynamics of the planets affects physical phenomena and people as much as, if not more than, gravity, and that's why astrology works.

I think that's what Goodavage is trying to say.  It's certainly what editor Campbell says (in a two-page preface) what Goodavage is trying to say.  I found the thing incomprehensible and unreadable, not to mention offensive.

One star.

Pipeline, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

The year is 1985, and the Earth is entering the next Ice Age.  Its most immediate impact is a subtle shift in weather patterns, plunging America's industrial northeast into drought.  Luckily, engineering has a solution: a great Canadian aqueduct to ship water from the frozen North to the thirsty Eastern Seaboard.

But there are folks not too happy about the project, and just before the pipeline's inaugural activation, saboteurs break the conduit, threatening forty miles of tubing.  It is up to a small band of engineers to fix the breach and stop the terrorists before it's too late.

Poyer has written a competent "edge-of-tomorrow" thriller.  We never find out just who was behind the sabotage.  Strongly implicated is some combination of Japanese businessmen and right-wing Birch-alikes (my suspicions went with some left-wing group like a militant Sierra Club).  Anyway, I think this is the first time I've seen Japan as the bogeyman in an SF story.  It's a novel twist, and given how much is Made in Japan these days, perhaps a valid prognostication.

Three stars.

Once again with the computers

Here we are at the end of the year for magazines, and it's been a rather middle-of-the-road month.  Analog finishes at a mediocre 2.7 star rating, beating out Orbit 4 (2.7), Fantastic (2.6), and IF (2.6)

Scoring above Analog are Galaxy (3.5),
New Worlds (3.5), and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.2).

Women wrote about 9% of the new fiction published this month, and you could fit all the 4/5 star stories in two magazines out of the seven publications (including one anthology).  Really, that sums up the state of magazine SF in general—some excellent stuff, a lot of mediocrity, and attention now focused on television and novels.

That said, it's still clear that magazines contribute a lot to the genre, particularly in the area of short fiction.  Certainly Michael Moorcock thinks so, as he is composing a book a week just to keep New Worlds afloat with his own money!  That he manages to turn out pretty good stuff in a single tea-fueled draft is a feat that makes him the British Silverbob…with fewer descriptions of underaged bosoms.

So, bid a fond adieu to 1968, at least in cover dates, and let's see what 1969 has in store!


William Shatner waves to the crowd at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York…but he might also be saying goodbye to 1968




7 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 31, 1968] No easy answers (August 1968 Analog)

9 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Hard reality

"Fans are Slans", or so the legend goes.  Inspired by the psychic supermen in A. E. Van Vogt's Slan, the notion is that SF fans are a breed apart.  Better than the average Joe, who are comparative Palookas.  And why not?  We're obviously smarter, given our intellectual proclivities, and our favored choice of fiction has all the answers.  A problem is presented, our brilliant heroes hatch a solution, and we live happily ever after.

How else to explain Fred Pohl's call for Galaxy readers to submit solutions (in 100 words or fewer!) to the Vietnam war?  Never mind that the problem has occupied our greatest minds for two decades, with no solution in sight.  Indeed, ever since the Tet offensive, things have gotten more complicated.

You see, according to the Pentagon (per Aviation Weekly and Space Report), we won the Tet offensive.  Handily.  And that onslaught was actually a desperate 'Hail Mary'–Soviet and Chinese advisors had told the North Vietnamese that they were losing, big-time, and they had to do something to shatter American and South Vietnamese morale, no matter the cost.

And it worked!  It induced LBJ to throw in the towel, declare a bombing holiday, and start a peace process, the only tangible effect of which has been to allow the communists to resume logistical deliveries down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to offload shipments of Soviet materiele in the port of Haiphong, which had been interdicted by the U.S. Air Force.

That's not the only setback to the Allied cause–Khe Sanh, that forward Marine base that held out against siege for a full season, has been abandoned.  No good explanation has been forthcoming.

Now, I'm not defending our presence in Vietnam, and I'm not arguing against the peace process.  I'm saying no science fiction writer, no matter how brainy, is going to have an answer.  Not even an easy one.  I don't think there is one.

But so long as easy solutions exist in our science fiction, we Slans will keep thinking there is.  Certainly, this month's issue of Analog is chock full of solvable problems, a bunch of scenarios that might well have been developed by high school or college professors as logic puzzles for their students.These are the kind of stories you find most often in Analog, which aims at the clear-thinking, black-and-white engineering set.

Now, that's fine.  Analog's job is to make money, and it has the most readers of any SF mag, so it must be doing something right.  It's certainly not editor Campbell's job to disabuse fans of their Slan aspirations.

Nevertheless, as someone who isn't an engineer, I find Analog often to be a slog.  I like to have more story in my stories.  Sometimes Campbell lets a compelling tale slip into his pages; more often he does not.  The proportion of story types usually determines whether I give an issue more or fewer than three stars.

Given the tone of this preamble, you can probably guess what kind of issue this will be…


by Kelly Freas

Logic Puzzles

The Baalim Problem, by Bruce Daniels


by Kelly Freas

Problem posed: the human race has spread throughout the stars, setting up all sorts of empires, nations, and leagues.  They have never encountered evidence of aliens–until now: a putatively nonhuman distress beacon has gone off over an independent human world.  Two polities, an extremely libertarian nation and a group-thinking bureaucracy, have, at their computers' recommendations, sent single representatives to investigate.

The beacon leads them both to a hostile world, one beyond the means of either of scouts to handle alone.  So, these adversaries must work together to escape the planet and bring back news of what they've found.

And what they find is that the "alien" evidence is an obvious hoax, developed by…someone…for…some purpose.  Who might have hatched the scheme and why is the puzzle to be deciphered by the reader.  Or, if the reader be lazy, to simply read about as the characters in the story explain the answer to each other.

The sentiment is nice, but I'd rather have had the thing play out narratively rather than in narration.

Three stars.

The Fuglemen of Recall, by Jack Wodhams


by Leo Summers

Problem posed: a number of people seem to have lost their minds, convinced they are someone else.  The Feds investigate and determine the common factor was that each had just had an engagement with Lidlun Spacial Electronic Enterprises.  Some kind of mind/memory transfer hocus pocus is clearly afoot.  But when they apprehend the President of Lidlun for interrogation, is he really who he seems?

I suppose the lesson of this tale is that cops should always have a picture of the person to prevent a false arrest.

Unfortunately, Wodhams had to write a bit too obliquely and clumsily, and also had to make the investigators morons, to make this puzzle a challenge for the reader.

Two stars.

How the Soviets Did it in Space, by G. Harry Stine

Problem posed: how did the USSR so handily beat us to orbit, and why did they keep scoring space spectaculars earlier than us?

If you've got a subscription to Aviation Weekly, you know the answer, but rocketry popularizer Stine does an excellent job of summarizing all the tidbits that have been leaked over the last few years.  Now we know that the Soviets had a Saturn-class rocket from the beginning while we were still piddling around with Thors, Jupiters and Atlases.

So why didn't the Russkies keep their lead?  Well, we don't know that another Soviet spectacular isn't around the corner.  But assuming it isn't, I would guess it's because our Saturn 1 was the beginning of a family of superboosters whereas their Vostok/Luna/Zond launcher has already topped out its potential.

On the other hand, their new Proton rocket seems to be operational, and something launched Soyuz 1…

Great schematics, and I appreciated the strong line drawn between the development of ICBMs and the almost incidental exploitation of the rockets for civilian applications.

Four stars.

Appointment on Prila, by Bob Shaw


by Leo Summers

Problem posed: a gray terror, an alien being that can mimic anything perfectly, is trapped on a hostile cinder of a world when a Terran survey team arrives.  Six self-contained pods leave the human mothership to conduct a geodetic survey; seven return.  Worse still, the alien has the ability to take over any organic mind that it finds.  Is there anything the team can do to withstand this menace?

Well, as it turns out, no.  Indeed, the humans do precious little, and salvation relies on factors already baked into the scenario.  I will confess that I had the ending spoiled for me before I started, so that might have diminished things.

That said, Shaw is a sensitive and evocative author, and this work is the highlight of the issue.

Three stars.

Satan's World (Part 4 of 4), by Poul Anderson


by Kelly Freas

Problem posed: Serendipity Inc., a knowledge broker for the loose knit Polesotechnic League of stars, is actually an intelligence-gathering front for the Shenn, an up-and-coming race of rapacious beings.  Plenty of stuff happens as a lead up to this, the fourth installment in the serial, but most of it is inconsequential.  This particular instance is concerned with the following questions:

1) Who are the Shenn, and how, with their frankly primitive, impulsive, and aggressive mindset, did they get control of an advanced, robotic civilization?
2) How can one reconcile their above racial habits with the fact that they are herbivores, who tend toward peaceful, communal societies?
3) How did the six human members of Serendipity's board end up in thrall to the Shenn, and how is that the linchpin to dealing with the seemingly implacable aliens?

These are all fine questions, and they are all answered tidily, in pages and pages of explanation that might well have been copied from a 30th Century encyclopedia.  As often happens with Poul's work, he's created an interesting universe, only developed a plot for half of his story, and employed uninteresting caricatures to carry it out.

I'm sick of Nicholas van Rijn and his lusty Dutch oaths.  I'm tired of the Buddhist dragon-centaur Adzel and the irritable (though admittedly adorable) Chee Lan, and the callow Davy Falkayn.  Again, I want stories, not historical tracts of Anderson's future universe.

Two stars for this installment and 2.5 for the book as a whole.

Specialty, by Joe Poyer


by Kelly Freas

Problem posed: Tupac Araptha is an Alto Plano Peruvian, adapted to low pressure from birth.  As a result, he is uniquely qualified to work on the moon.  He can operate his suit at lower pressures, which means less resistance to movement, meaning he can work eight hours a "day" (twenty-four hour cycles are arbitrary on the moon) whereas lowlanders can barely manage three.  How does Kelly, the local mining boss, handle the interpersonal jealousy that springs from this issue?

This story would be better served if it weren't set in the same timeline as "Spirits of '76", in which a dozen moonshiners (pun intended) establish a libertarian "republic" on the moon; it makes the context sillier, when the story is rather serious.  I was also annoyed that Kelly's first solution was to suggest that Tupac beat up his rival in a manly display (on the moon?  Surrounded by high vacuum?!), and when Tupac demurs, Kelly's next solution is to…take a leave of absence.

There could have been an interesting story here, but there ultimately isn't.

Two stars.

Harsh reality

Doing the math, Analog finishes at a mediocre 2.7.  As uninspiring a finish as this is, it actually consitutes a median: Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.4) was worse, as were Fantastic (2.3) and Orbit 3 (2.3).  IF (2.8) was a near tie.

The saving graces of this month were Famous Science Fiction (3.5), though that was mostly reprints, and Galaxy (3.9), which I seemed to like more than everyone else.  Well, that's my privilege!

Despite the low aggregate ratings, there was actually enough good stuff to fill two decent sized magazines.  Women contributed 10.5% of the new fiction this month, which sounds better than average, but all but one of the tales was in Orbit, which is technically a paperback rather than a magazine.

Bringing things full circle, the issue of getting more women in print has been a perennial one, one that has defied solution (or even the notion that it's a problem that needs solving).  Since the magazines won't or can't fix the situation, women have moved to other media.  So we see women in anthologies like Orbit.  We see women like A. M. Lightner and Madeleine L'Engle writing "young adult" (the new term for juvenile) series.  We see women prominent in the writing and production of science fiction shows like Star Trek.

I think it's fandom's loss when the SF mags become stag parties.  I remember the salad days of Galaxy and F&SF back in the early '50s, and part of what made them great was the diversity of stories, the range of viewpoints and styles.  I'd hate to lose that to other venues (though the mags' loss is obviously other media's gain).

How do we get more women back into the mags? How do we get folks to recognize the value of women in the mags?  I wish I knew.  After all, I'm no Slan, just a man…




9 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[June 30, 1968] Hawk among the sparrows (July 1968 Analog)

9 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

It's all in who you know

This month, the legendary Earl Warren, former governor of my state of California, and Chief Justice during one of the Supreme Court's most dramatic eras, announced that he was stepping down.  No sooner had he done this that President Johnson tapped Abe Fortas, Associate Justice since 1965, for the chief position among the top black-robes.

Fortas and LBJ go way back, all the way to 1948's Texas Democratic primary for Senator, when the young lawyer successfully won a legal challenge to LBJ's victory.  Since then, their stars have been interlinked.  Some of Fortas' fellow justices (and many newspapers) suggest that the Justice and the President's relationship is a bit too chummy.  Still, Fortas has been a good, liberal judge, and he'd probably be a fine Chief Justice.  Sometimes the good ol' boy network doesn't hurt anybody.

This segues nicely into my review of this month's issue of Analog.  Campbell, like many SF magazine editors, has a stable of reliable authors.  This means he always has work of a certain quality to fill his issues.  It also tends to crowd out new talent.  This results in a kind of conservatism, and often a bit of mediocrity.  This month, however, things work out a bit better than average.

Let's take a look!


by Kelly Freas

Familiar faces

Hawk Among the Sparrows, by Dean McLaughlin


by Kelly Freas

Howard Farman is the pilot of the Pika-don, a cross between the SR-71 hypersonic recon plane and the VTOL "Harrier" (which is about to enter British service).  On a mission to monitor a French weapons test, some scientificish gobbledegook happens, knocking Farman back in time to 1917–the midst of The Great War.  Sort of a reverse of the Twilight Zone episode, The Last Flight.

Once there, he finds himself ensconced with a French fighter squadron.  They are being trounced by a German Ace.  Eighty men died trying to break his spree, but no one can stop the bloody Red Baron of Germany.  Actually, it's not Richtofen; it's a fictional(?) #2, for whom there is no canine counterpart.

Farman is convinced that he can turn things around if he can just get his advanced fighter off the ground, something that will require building a whole industry of jet fuel production.  And even once he manages that, his missiles and radar won't track the wood-and-canvas Fokkers of the enemy.  What to do?

This is a very pleasant story, quite readable.  It does have a few holes big enough to ram a Nieuport through.  For one, it is most unrealistic that a man from 1975 with ten thousand flight hours would have no understanding of propeller planes.  You can't get Air Force wings today without first racking up dozens of hours in simple prop aircraft, and Farman must have first gotten commissioned before or around 1968.  Maybe if the jet came from some time in the 21st Century, it'd be more plausible (though I can't imagine ever starting fighter jocks on jets–that's a recipe for disaster).

The second hole is that Farman is oblivious for far too long of the effects of the jet wash, something with which he should be intimately familiar.

Finally, while I appreciate the nod to logistics, what with Farman needing to manufacture kerosene for his plane, it strains credulity that a super-advanced jet could reliably fly after several months in a field with no maintenance.

Four stars, but it is clear that McLaughlin (who has been AWOL from Analog since 1964) does not have a strong aviation background.

Null Zone, by Joe Poyer


by Kelly Freas

How does one stop the Ho Chi Minh trail, when it is really a vast network of mini-trails with far too many branches to interdict?  By building a highway of nuclear waste across it, of course!

Joe tells an engaging story, with the spark of color with which he always imbues his technical pieces.  But I can't imagine the logistics of transport/production make this a feasible possibility, never mind the humanitarian aspects.  Does editor Campbell ever mind the humanitarian aspects?

Three stars.

"To Sleep, Perchance to Dream … ", by W. C. Francis


by Kelly Freas

Alright, there's always an exception that proves the rule.  I've never heard of Francis before, so I guess Campbell did save a slot for a novice.

On the way to the stars, a spaceman in stasis finds himself lost in an increasingly convoluted nightmare.  Is this part of the process, or has something gone off the rails?

Reading this story was akin to hearing someone tell you about the dreams they had last night.  It's usually fascinating for the teller and dull for the audience.  The ending to the tale, however, pulls this piece into the low three star range.

Winkin, Blinkin and πR²?, by R. C. FitzPatrick


by Kelly Freas

I think this one takes place in the same setting as The Circuit Riders from six years back.  Cops are using emotion detectors to track down a gang of bank robbers.  For the most part, the criminals keep their cool, but every so often, their ring-leader blows his stack, and it pops up as a blip on a scope at police HQ.

Kind of a dull tale, this police procedural, with a lot of casual grousing and bickering in lieu of characterization.  Probably the worst piece in the mag.

Two stars.

Icarus and Einstein, by R. S. Richardson

Analog's resident astronomer offers up a science fact piece about the Earth-grazing (comparatively) asteroid of Icarus.  The bulk of the piece is on how the mile-long hunk of rock could be used to test General Relativity, in the same way Mercury has been.

It's a fascinating topic, though Richardson fails to explain why General Relativity affects orbits. This is a common failing of all works on the topic, mainly because the explanation is not particularly simple to relate.  Well, maybe it's not.  Let me try:

There is a Special Relativity variant of Newton's law of motion, in which a bit (expression) is added to the equation to factor for an object's proximity to the speed of light.  It can generally be omitted at the low speeds we're used to since the speed of light is on the bottom of that fraction, and thus, it comes out pretty close to zero most of the time.

Similarly, with General Relativity, in addition to the effect of gravity being equal to the proportion of the masses of two objects divided by the square of their distance, there's an additional expression that factors in the warping of space by the gravity of a mass, which gets higher the closer one gets to it.  As in the Special Relativity equation, the value of this expression is usually close to zero.  But when the object is as massive as the Sun, and the other object gets really close, it becomes significant.

There.  That wasn't so hard.

Anyway, the problem with the article isn't the content, but the presentation.  I understood it, but I also majored in astrophysics.  I suspect most people will scratch heads in confusion.  Which is a little weird; Richardson is usually better than that.

Three stars.

Satan's World (Part 3 of 4), by Poul Anderson


by Kelly Freas

If you recall the last installment of this serial, merchant captain David Falkayn and his raccoon-like associate, Chee Lan, had arrived at the mysterious world of Satan.  The planet had been in a deep freeze for eons, but now it is approaching its hot sun, and its cryosphere is evaporating, uncovering a bonanza of valuable minerals.  But 23 alien warships have suddenly also appeared, and a confrontation is inevitable.

When it occurs, Falkayn is surprised to find that Latimer, one of the five shareholders for Serendipity Inc. (the knowledge brokers that have become a linchpin of the galactic economy), is working for Gahood, a member of the minotaur-like race of aliens called the Shenn.  The Shenn are using Serendipity as a kind of fifth column, and they are the first real threat to the Galactic Commonwealth.

Some genuinely thrilling scenes ensue.  I particularly liked the evocative bit where Falkayn's ship, the Muddlin' Through, careens through the stormy atmosphere of Satan, 19 robotic destroyers in hot pursuit.  I kept thinking, "You can't find this kind of imagery anywhere but in books.  Movie technology just can't capture such magic the way the printed word can."

But just as I was about to give this segment a four on the Star-o-meter, the last five pages brought back the bawdy merchant Van Rijn and the collossal bore, Adzel, along with five pages of expositional writing.

Back to three it goes!  Conclusion next month.

Leveraging human capital

I don't say this too often, but thank goodness for Analog!  Clocking in at 3.1 stars, it and Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3) are the only mags that ended above the 3 star line.

The other mags included IF (2.9), New Worlds (2.7), Galaxy (2.6), and Amazing (2.5).

You could fit all of the above-3 stuff in a single magazine (wouldn't that be nice?) And women accounted for just 2.6% of all the new material–that is to say, thanks to Carol Emshwiller and F&SF from keeping this month from being a stag shut-out.

Another reason to look beyond plowed pastures for talent–we might get more stories by women-folk in our mags!




</small

9 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[January 31, 1967] The Law of Averages (February 1967 Analog)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Bump in road

Here, just a few days after human spaceflight's greatest catastophe, it's easy to begin to doubt.  Is this madcap race to the Moon, hanging on a construction leased out to the lowest bidders, all worth it?  The cost in money and lives?  We've lost six astronauts thus far; Elliot, Bassett and See were all killed in training accidents, but their souls are no less valuable than those of Grissom, White, and Chaffee.

Indeed, the Russians have already announced that they've given up.  With the war heating up in Vietnam, with society on Earth not yet Great, should we continue to bother?

The answer, of course, is yes.  Any man's death diminisheth me, as John Donne said, but as large as this tragedy looms in our vision now, it will be the smallest of footnotes compared to humanity's epic trek to the stars, which surely must come.  It is our species' saving grace that we recover from missteps and proceed more vigorously than ever.  And it is out there in the stars that we will find the answers to the riddles of the universe, the exciting frontiers, the possible partners in science and empathy.

Out there

This month's Analog offers a sneak preview of what this far future, when humanity is established in space, will look like..


by Kelly Freas

Pioneer Trip, by Joe Poyer


by Kelly Freas

On the first expedition to Mars, an electrical fire causes one member of a three-man crew to succumb to chemical-induced emphysema.  His condition, fatal if the ship does not turn 'round (though dubious even if it does) jeopardizes the mission.  The commander makes one decision; the stricken crewman another.

I'm not usually a fan of Joe Poyer, who writes as if he gets the same thrill from technical writing as others might from the works sold under the counter and wrapped in brown paper.  Nevertheless, this story was pretty affecting–and all the more poignant in light of last week.  A solid three star effort.

There Is a Crooked Man, by Jack Wodhams


by Kelly Freas

Science fiction usually explores the positive effects of technology.  This mildly droll story deals with how new advances are used for nefarious purposes.  Teleportation, brain transplant, mind-blanking frequencies, a precognition drug–these all lead to a race between criminal elements and the police.

Told in a bunch of very short snippets, it's a surprisingly readable, if not tremendous, tale.

Three stars.

The Returning, by J. B. Mitchel


by Leo Summers

A little spore, the only remaining particle of an alien expedition thousands of years old, is awoken by a flash flood through a desert air force proving ground.  The creature quickly awakens, eager to make contact with the sender of the modulated signals it is receiving.  To its dismay, the alien finds only a weaponized drone, hallmark of a savage society.  But the pacifistic being has other uses for the plane…

If J.B. Mitchel be "John Michel", then he is a veteran, indeed.  He first started writing in the 1930s, and I don't believe I've seen anything from him since I started the Journey.  His skill shows.  His prose is evocative, his descriptions vivid.  And I very much appreciate a story where the "monster from outer space" is basically a good guy, not bent on Earth's conquest.

Four stars.

The Quark Story, by Margaret L. Silbar

The one piece by a woman published in any SF magazine this month is this nonfiction article.  It's quite good. 

Last year, I read a lot of physics books for laymen.  The consensus has been that the menagerie of subatomic particles was reminiscent of the zoo of elements discovered by the late 19th Century.  There must be some underlying simplicity that results in the multiplicity.  For elements, it was electrons, protons, and neutrons.  For those and smaller elementary particles, the answer appears to be still smaller bits called "quarks".

It all makes perfect sense the way Ms. Silbar lays it out, even if editor John Campbell is a doubting Thomas about it.  The only fault to the article is it could have used another page or two to explain some of the trickier concepts (e.g. Pauli Exclusion Principle).

Four stars.

Amazon Planet (Part 3 of 3), by Mack Reynolds


by Kelly Freas

The final chapter of Mack Reynold's latest turns everything on its head.  In the first installment, we followed Guy Thomas, a would-be merchant, to the planet of Amazonia.  Said world is reputed to be utterly dominated by women, and men aren't allowed to escape.  Upon arriving, it was revealed that Thomas is none other than Ronny Bronston, Section G agent extraordinaire.

Part Two involved Bronston meeting up with a domestic masculine resistance movement, "The Sons of Liberty", several attempts on his life, capture and truth-drug doping by the Amazon government, and copious examples of an almost laughable communistic, female-run despotism.  At this point, I had to wonder what the normally sensitive Reynolds was trying to do.  His matriarchy was a paper-thin caricature.

Turns out it was all a big put-on, mostly at the instigation of the daughter of one of the world's leaders.  Amazonia has long since evolved beyond its primitive beginnings and is actually quite a good example of enlightened equality and meritocracy.  The trouble in paradise comes not from within, but without–at the hands of a rogue Section G agent.

Part Three is half adventure story and half political lecture (as opposed to Part One which was all lecture and Part Two, which was mostly adventure).  Nevertheless, Reynolds isn't bad at both, and I do appreciate his both subverting expectations and extrapolating an interesting political experiment. 

Three stars for this segment, and three and a half for the whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts.

Elementary Mistake, by Winston P. Sanders


by Kelly Freas

I really liked the setup on this one: there's no faster than light drive, but there are matter transmitters (a la Poul Anderson's story "Door to Anywhere" in Galaxy).  So ships are sent out at relatavistic speeds to set up teleporters on distant worlds.  The trip takes five or ten or twenty years for outside observers, but the actually crew experience only a matter of months.  And so, humanity spreads.

Only on the world of Guinevere, not only are none of the required minerals available to build the transmitter, but the atmosphere itself has an inebriating effect.  What's a creative crew to do?

It's a reasonable puzzle story, though I have trouble contemplating a world where calcium doesn't exist but strontium does in quantity.  The only thing I took umbrage with was 1) the lack of women on the exploration team, and 2) the explicit implication that the only thing women are good for is servicing men.

Given that this issue has both a great science article by a woman and the conclusion of a serial about a perfectly good planet run by women, this stag story set in the far future is particularly jarring.  But Anderson/Sanders has always had a problem with this, which strikes me as strange given that his wife is herself a science fiction writer.

Anyway, three stars.

Leading the pack

Speaking of averages, Analog, which had hitherto been relatively low in the ranks of magazines for several months suddenly emerges as the best of the lot, clocking in at a decent 3.3 stars.  That's partly because its competition is rather weak.  Only SF Impulse (3.1) finished above water.  All the others scored less than three stars: IF (2.9), Fantasy and Science Fiction (2.6), Worlds of Tomorrow (2.5), Galaxy (2.4), and Amazing (2.2).

Analog also, atypically, featured the most women contributors…since none appeared anywhere else!  Given that Lieutenant Uhura appears front and center on every episode of Star Trek, I think it's time literary SF caught up with its boob tube sibling.

Or we might end up with a much more lasting disaster!



5 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[September 30, 1966] Return to Base (October 1966 Analog)

6 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Comfort of Old Friends

One of the brilliant things about the new show, Star Trek, is that it combines the storytelling breadth of a science fiction anthology show (a la The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits with the anchoring of a returning ensemble cast.  This has never really been done before (at least in the United States — the UK has Doctor Who and the various marionette shows).  In addition to the exciting new situations that arise every week, we can also enjoy watching our favorite characters grow over time.

Many science fiction magazines are like the older anthology shows, offering a brand new cast of characters and new ideas with every montly set of stories.  Others, like Analog, and in particular this month's issue, are like Star Trek, bringing us back to familiar territory for further explorations of a known universe.

I think both are valid formats, particularly if the established properties are successful.  Analog did a pretty good job this month.  Let's dive in…

The Issue at Hand


by John Schoenherr

Strangers to Paradise, by Christopher Anvil

Chris Anvil is an author who has occasionally shown flashes of promise — but always in other magazines.  In Analog, he has dug himself a rut with an anvil-weighted plow and happily buried himself in it.


by John Schoenherr

Strangers is yet another story that takes place in his galactic trade universe.  This one involves a ship whose gravitor has broken down, and whose crew has made planetfall to seek repairs.  Unfortunately, though the Michelin guide said there was a Class II repair facility on the colony world, it was never actually built.  Instead, the colonists proved so unruly that the computer running the outpost established draconian control.  The technicians who could override the machine exiled themselves rather than deal with either the colonists or the computer!

To fix their ship, the traders need help from the city dwellers.  But to get the help, they need the technicians back.  How do they repair the impasse?

I thought this might be setting up a Deathworld scenario, where the immigrants are the key to restoring harmony.  But this is Chris Anvil in Campbell's mag.  Instead, they accidentally develop a psychic projector, able to instill any emotion into any human at any range.  Over the course of many pages, they manipulate the entire planetary population in a haphazard fashion, ultimately getting what they need.  In the end, they consider dismantling the device as an unethical abomination…but decide to keep it.  Just too useful to destroy, you know.

I found this story quite distasteful.  Less glib than Anvil's other tales, but callous in a way that suggests support rather than condemnation for the actions of the shipwrecked crew.

Two stars.

The Sons of Prometheus, by Alexei Panshin


by Leo Summers

Sons sees the return of a fine new author who you've not only seen before, but who has even written a guest article for the Journey!  (the line between fan and pro in the 'zines is a blurry one.) This new tale appears to be set in the compelling timeline set up in What Size are Giants? and the amazing Down to the Worlds of Men.

The premise: on the brink of atomic self-destruction, Earth sends out more than a hundred colonies.  Fifteen years later, Earth is a radiated wasteland.  The only humans left live either in struggling settlements or rather comfortably as crew and passengers on starships.  This sets up a haves and have-nots situation.  The planeteers are primitive, suspicious folks.  The ship dwellers have limited resources to assist.

This particular tale involves a fellow named Tansman, who embeds himself on a plague-infested colony to conduct anthropological research.  His ultimate dilemma: does he offer what limited medicine he can to save a few, revealing himself, putting his mission and possibly his person in danger?  Or does he watch as the colonists die in droves?

It's a vivid story, though I feel it doesn't do quite enough with the setup.  It also stacks the deck a bit toward a certain outcome.  I also could have done without the extremely graphic, drawn out scene in which Tansman puts a suffering colonist out of his misery (warning: it's in the last third of the tale).

So, three stars, but I wouldn't mind seeing more in this setting.

Challenge: The Insurgent vs. the Counterinsurgent (Part 2), by Joe Poyer

With the non-fiction column, we return to last month's topic — namely counterinsurgency.  Poyer notes the great strides that have been made in tracking insurgents, using infrared, electronic bugs, even scent.  He correlates this increase in counterinsurgency effectiveness with the decline in successful insurgencies since 1956.  He makes the hopeful prediction that the golden age of guerrilas may be at an end.

The problem, of course, is that better counterinsurgents only addresses one prong of the problem.  As even Poyer notes, until the populace's needs are addressed, insurgency will thrive.  Moreover, I was reading in the latest diplomatic journals that few expect the United States to be successful in Vietnam, our latest counterinsurgent operation.  That is because the issue is an Asian problem, and the US has limited ability to project force and influence in another continent.  Vietnam is not a colony.  It is a sovereign country riven with civil war.  One way or another, they're going to have to solve their own issues.  Our presence is an ephemeral condition, and it is arguable that it is making the situation any better.

Three stars for an interesting read and lots of pretty charts, but I doubt the author's conclusion.

Romp, by Mack Reynolds


by Leo Summers

Back to the world of Joe Mauser, where the Earth of the 1980s is divided into four camps: the free countries of Latin America and Africa, Common Europe, the somewhat democratic SovWorld, and the "People's Capitalism" of the West.  The United States has calcified into economic castes, and upward mobility is virtually impossible.

Enter Rosy Porras, born into the long-dead job of pretzel twister.  He has figured out how to live a life of crime in an ostensibly crimeless world.  When his latest "romp" goes sour, he has to make a run for the border.  Can he make it in time?

I find the Mauser setting fascinating if based on increasingly unlikely premises.  This story is a bit too pat, but it's a competent thriller.  Three stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 3 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

And now we return to the world of Lord Darcy, a timeline in which magic has displaced science, the Angevin Empire is squared against the Polish Confederation, and a Holmes analog is tasked with solving two murders.  We learned in the last installment that both were secret agents in the employ of HRM, and that their deaths are connected with a super secret magical confusion ray.

What we don't know is how one succumbed in a locked room, how Demoiselle Tia Einzig (accused of dealing in the Black Arts) of a southern slavic state was involved, or how certain was the loyalty of the murdered agents.

This continues to be a fun novel, and the setting is positively lavish.  If there's just one thing that's mildly unconvincing, it's the development of modern-style military ranks, as well as English colloquialisms, in a timeline that diverged from ours nearly a millennium ago.

Also, it can be a little tough to keep track of an intricate mystery spread out over four months of reading.  Nevertheless, four stars for another fine installment, and high hopes for a satistfying ending in October!

Reading the Results

It's a shame about the Anvil, as it drags the issue down to a straight 3 stars.  The issue feels better than that because it improves as it goes along.  Ah well. 3 still puts Analog alongside Alien Worlds (3.0) and just below Galaxy (rounds to 3 but was slightly above).

This makes Campbell's mag better than New Writings #9 (2.9),
Amazing (2.5), and IF (2.5) this month, and not as good as Impulse (3.2), New Worlds (3.3), or Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.3).

Worthy stuff (four and five stars) could easily fill two magazine's worth, but women wrote just 7.5% of the new fiction this month.  So much for the renaissance I predicted last month.

That wraps up the October 1966 magazines.  In two days, the November crop comes in!



6 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[August 31, 1966] Flights of Fancy (September 1966 Analog)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Nonstandard Deviation

Mr. Campbell of the good ship Analog is an interesting character.  Known for his strident, occasionally downright offensive editorials, his fetish for pseudoscience, and his increasingly inconsistent (one might say half-hearted) story selection, he is both much-loved and much-maligned.

But, as Galactic Journey's editor likes to say, people contain multitudes.  Or more simply, he and his magazine aren't all bad.  If Analog sometimes hits disappointing lows, it also still reaches highs reminiscent of Analog's golden days (when it was called Astounding).  His story sets are not monolithic.  Sometimes they're downright surprising.

As Exhibit A, I submit the September 1966 Analog, a most unusual issue:

Charting new terrain


by John Schoenherr

The Mechanic, by Hal Clement

Hal Clement is best known for his nuts-and-bolts science fiction, as crunchy as unmilked cereal — and often as dry.  This piece tells the tale of a near-future hydrofoil dispatched to the Arctic to determine what's causing the extinction of zeowhales.  These cybernetic creatures have metal bodies but psuedoliving flesh, and some disease is dissolving them from the inside out.

Of course, the hydrofoil is also metallic, and bad things happen to a disintegrating ship zooming along at hundreds of miles per hour.


by Kelly Freas

Slow to start and very very explanatory, but the ideas are interesting and the latter half riveting if gruesome.

Three stars.

A Matter of Reality, by Carole E. Scott


by Leo Summers

A common charge leveled at Campbell is that he doesn't like to publish women.  I don't think that's fair.  The industry as a whole has an unfortunate shortage of woman-penned stories.  If Analog tends to be mostly a stag mag, it's just at one end of the bell curve, not a true outlier.  Indeed, Campbell discovered Pauline Ashwell and Katherine Maclean, two of the field's brightest lights.

Women not only write for Analog, they read it, too: A Matter of Reality came off the slush pile, submitted by Ms. Scott, a self-proclaimed admirer of Campbell and his mag for nearly two decades. 

Her first story contains none of the Campbellian touchstones: no psionics, no smugly superior Terrans, etc.  Instead, it's an interesting piece about an old man's final act, a literal embodiment of the phrase, "All the world's a stage."

I'd expect to find such a fantastic piece in Galaxy or F&SF, but Scott likes Analog the best, and her story makes for a nice change of pace in Campbell's mag.

Three stars, and I look forward to her next piece.

… Not a Prison Make, by Joseph P. Martino


by John Schoenherr

With the Vietnam war escalating and the President calling for double the troops (600,000 — this proposal just rejected by Congress), it's not surprising that the situation is finding echoes in our science fiction.

Martino offers up a proxy war between the Terrans and the Kreg on a third-party planet peopled by primitives.  The humans are subject to the most debilitating hit and run raids by the indigenes, who possess the powers of teleportation and limited clairvoyance.

Two viewpoints are espoused in the story: the military leader opines that the raiders are bandits, and the best bandit is a dead one.  The civilian expert believes that the hearts and minds of the populace must be won or the insurgency will have infinite longevity. 

Some clever defenses are built up against the natives, but they only constitute delaying actions.  The paradigm must be radically altered if success is to be had.

This story really had potential, but it ended just as it was getting interesting, and with none of the more profound points addressed.  Of course, no one really knows how to end a guerilla insurgency (predicting its death by the close of this century seems optimistic), but I'm dissatisfied with a story that concludes essentially with "then we won!"  I did appreciate that the characters were all South/Southeast Asian (from what I know of surnames).

Three stars.

Challenge, by Joe Poyer

The fictional piece is followed by an in-depth analysis of insurgency and counter-insurgency.  The author suggests that until the counter-insurgents learn to fight the insurgent game, and better than the insurgents, they won't win.  Interestingly, the latest plan for Vietnam is to field division-sized battlefield units, not just to quell the VC, but also to engage in peaceful, nation-building activities.  I'm not hopeful.

Anyway, Challenge is not a bad piece, though I don't know that it qualifies as "science."  Also, I would not classify the Watts riots as an insurrection.

I miss Robert S. Richardson's astronomy articles.  Three stars.

Symbols, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

The river has frozen a month early, and the Gurt are under attack.  The Ghisrans are pouring across the ice now, threatening a precious mine that is vital to the Terran Navy.  If a handful of agents with an unarmed spaceboat are unable to stop them, the sector may fall.

I'm not sure what's more offensive: the portrayal of the lone female character as "hysterical" or the padding of this vignette to double size with Campbell-pleasing folderol about symbolic logic. 

Definitely the most reactionary of this month's pieces.  Two stars.

Too Many Magicians (Part 2 of 4), by Randall Garrett


by John Schoenherr

Ahh, but all that is washed away with the latest installment of the adventures of Lord Darcy, investigator in an alternate 1966 where thaumaturgy has trumped science.  As we saw last time, there had been two murders by unknown assailants, both by similar knives.  One of the victims was an Imperial double agent, killed while trying to ferret out a traitorous Anglo-Frenchman.  The other was an exalted state wizard.

The bombshell of this installment is that the two murders are connected, tightly.

A lot of great detective work in this one, as well as a tour to magical London's equivalent of a World Expo.  Garrett channels Doyle more and more these days, but so far it's working.

Four stars!

Charting a New Course

This experimental issue of Analog doesn't break any records, finishing dead-averagely at 3 stars.  Nevertheless, I applaud Campbell's willingness to experiment, and I enjoyed the issue.  Finishing above it were the superlative New Worlds (3.8 stars), the fine Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5 stars), and the decent (but mostly because of a reprint) SF Impulse (3.2 stars).

Analog barely edged out IF (3 stars) and decidedly beat Fantastic (2.7 stars).

It was a good month overall for reading.  If one took all the magazine stories/serials that got 4 or 5 stars, they could potentially fill three magazines!  Also, women were responsible for 15.6% of all new fiction, a high water mark for sure.

On this triumphant note, I am off to Cleveland for this year's Worldcon.  Who will win the Hugos?  We'll have to wait a week to find out!  Rest assured, you'll be able to read all about it here long before the next edition of Ratatosk or Focal Point (or Skyrack, for my British friends) hits your mailbox.

And if you are in Cleveland next weekend, be certain to join us for the showing of the first Star Trek pilot at 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific!).




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Serial

[July 31, 1966] Dimmed lights (August 1966 Analog)

16 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Blackout

This morning, Janice noted sparks coming from the socket by her typewriter desk.  With great swiftness, she unplugged the lamp and radio.  There was a respite, but only briefly, and soon the wall was spurting flame again. 

I heard her calm bellow, "Gideon, hit the circuit breaker.  Now."  You never saw someone descend a flight of stairs so fast (at least in control of their feet).  She called an electrician – fortunately the phone company have a separate power supply – and we went out for breakfast until the fellow could arrive.

That afternoon, we got a stern lecture on overloading our poor house's circuits.  We thanked and paid the fellow and were back to work by 1 pm.

Whereupon the entire neighborhood's power went out.

And that, dear readers, is why this article was typed by the light of the window rather than artificial incandescence!

Flicker, flicker

It was fitting that we should be failed by the men and women of our investor-owned, business-managed electric light and power company just as I turned to write about this month's Analog.  It's not that the stories were horrible, but I've definitely seen better in these pages.


by John Schoenherr

Too Many Magicians (Part 1 of 4), by Randall Garrett

To date, the Lord d'Arcy stories, set in an alternate 1960s with Victorian technology but replete with magic, have all been novellas or shorter.  This latest piece is the first full length novel.

A naval courier has been killed, perhaps while bearing crucial intelligence.  The Anglo-French Empire's most renowned magical detective is contracted to get to the bottom of the case.  Meanwhile, Sean O'Lochlainn, d'Arcy's sorcerer assistant, is thrown in the Tower after witnessing a second death at a wizards' conference; this locked-room murder has a similar murder weapon to the first.

And so, the setup for a magical who/howdunnit.  As with the rest of the series, Garrett's tale compels (though none engage so thoroughly as the excellent first d'Arcy adventure.) If I have a complaint, it's that Garrett is starting to rely a bit too much on pastiche: d'Arcy gets more like Holmes with every installment.  Indeed, his cousin, the Marquis, is Mycroft in all but name.  I half-expect our hero will take up the violin and acquire a cocaine habit.

Four stars so far, but we'll see.

Spirits of '76, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

A representative from the UN pays a visit to a lunar squatter, who has illegally laid claim to a piece of the Moon's surface and established a distillery.  After a great many homebrewed drinks, the agent decides that free enterprise and private ownership are actually just fine.

I suspect maintaining an independent habitation on our airless neighbor will be a lot harder than this story would have us believe.  Still, the libertarian spirit of the piece surely tickled Campbell's capitalist heart.

It'll go in one eye and out the other, but it's harmless, at least.  Three stars?

One MOL Step Forward , by Lyle R. Hamilton

Hamilton opens up this non-fiction article with a promise to explain how the X-20 "Dynasoar" spaceplane was killed by paperwork.  Instead, he offers up a meandering piece, told largely in contractor interviews and press releases, which culminates in a description of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.  This budget space station, serviced by an Air Force Gemini, is the current DoD space project of size.

I suppose there's useful information in the piece, but not much point.  I've gotten much better insight from my subscription to Aviation Week and Space Technology.

Two stars.

Psychoceramic, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The fearless editor follows Hamilton with a shorter piece on a ceramic that can apparently extract pure oxygen and produce power at the same time.  Typical Campbellian kookery, or is he onto something?  I guess only time will tell.

Two stars for the unnecessary smugness and having cried wolf too many times.

By the Book, by Frank Herbert


by Kelly Freas

An aged troubleshooter is summoned from retirement to fix a big beam.  It's some kind of launching laser that propels seed packets (vegetable and human) toward colony worlds.  Problem is, it keeps killing technicians trying to service it.

I had many problems with this story, the biggest of which was the devotion of so many words to setting up a technical problem whose resolution I had no interest in.  A real snoozefest of gizmo-speak.

One star.

Technicality, by Norman Spinrad

The MPs have arrived, fearsome conquering aliens whose greatest strength is their ability to vanquish whole armies without firing a shot.  But does their nonviolent rapaciousness hide an Achilles Heel?

While the gimmick falls a little flat, Spinrad tells this no-blood-or-guts tale with fine detail and not a little subtle satire.

Three stars.

Light of Other Days, by Bob Shaw


by Kelly Freas

A quarreling married couple touring the Scottish Highlands come across a purveyor of "slow glass."  This remarkable substance passes light so slowly that, after ten years of absorption, will replay the scene that played across it for the next decade.  Thus, a city dweller might install one of these wonder panes and enjoy ten years of a view of the rugged north of Scotland rather than local squalor.

The technical bits felt a little overdone, but Shaw tells the story with a light, domestic touch that reminds me of Cliff Simak.

Three stars, and eagerness to see him tackle a longer subject.

Something to Say, by John Berryman


by Leo Summers

Last up, the fellow who gave us the Walter Bupp psychic stories gives us, instead, one of his more nuts-and-bolts tales.  The Earth Federation (apparently an evolution of the UN) has reason to believe that Soviet-aligned agents have infiltrated a primitive world to poison the natives against the West.  Said planet has a breathable atmosphere some six times as dense as Earth's.  This affords a far more airborne ecology, and even the indigenes have Bronze Age flying machines.

A troubleshooter is dispatched to thwart the Soviet plot, but is overpowered by a Communist.  The two crash land and are taken prisoner.  The Sovworld agent seems to have the leg up, as she is fluent in the indigenous tongue, but our plucky hero has an ace up his sleeve: an encylopedic knowledge of gliders.

There is a good story lurking in here, with a great setting and a decent setup.  It is hampered by its truly insufferable and two-dimensional characters.  As well, Berryman seems to have forgotten much that he's learned about pacing.

An uneven three stars.

After the lights go out…

2.7 stars is not a great score, though it's actually the median for this year's crop of Analogs.  And also for the month.  Coming in below it are IF (2.6), Galaxy (2.5), Worlds of Tomorrow (2.2), and Amazing (1.9).  Note that three of those four are Fred Pohl's triplets.

Ahead of Analog are Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.1), New Worlds (3.2), and Impulse (3.4)

There was exactly one woman-penned new story this month, and four/five-star stories would have barely filled two slim magazines (and one of them is a reprint of Make Room, Make Room!).

Ah well.  At least there's only one more month of summer, after which, ironically, things should get brighter!

Have you gotten your copy of Rosel George Brown's new hit novel, Sibyl Sue Blue?  If not, get down to your local newsstand and pick it up!




16 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[April 30, 1966] Ormazd and Ahriman (May 1966 Analog)

3 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Good News and Bad News

The ancient Persians believed in two roughly co-equal deities: Ormazd, the God of Creation and Light, and Ahriman, the God of Destruction and Darkness.  Unlike, say, the dual concept of the Chinese Yin and Yang, one was decidedly good and the other bad.  Indeed, these twin deities may have inspired the near parity of the Christian God and Satan.

Apparently, these forces hold sway even today.  This month's Analog started off so well, it bid fair to be a contender for best magazine of the month.  Then about half way, the influence of Ahriman took ascendance, and the issue faded away to a truly dreadful ending.  Ah well.  I come not to bury John Campbell but to review him.  At least we start with the good stuff…

Mixed Bag


by John Schoenherr

The Wings of a Bat, by Paul Ash

Anyone who's anyone knows that Paul Ash is really Pauline Ashwell, one of 1958's Hugo nominated Best New Writers — and boy, she's still just great.

Her latest tale stars a middle-aged doctor cum veterinarian stationed at Indication One on the shores of Lake Possible.  Cycads and dinosaurs dominate the landscape, and with good reason: Indication One is based sometime in the Cretaceous!  Against all of his instincts and inclinations, said doctor is tasked with raising a baby pteranadon named Fiona. 

Part country vet story, part mining camp adventure, this tale is by turns and sometimes simultaneously witty and exciting.  I loved it so much, I immediately read it a gain, this time aloud to the family as their bedtime story on two consecutive nights.

If this doesn't get nominated for the Hugo and/or the new SFWA Nebula awards, there's something wrong with the universe.  Five stars!

Call Him Lord, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Centuries from now, when Earth is just one of many hundreds of human planets, the crown prince of the Empire is dispatched to humanity's cradle for a tour.  One man is tasked to be his bodyguard, escorting the arrogant man-child as he rides, wenches, and bullies his way across the countryside.  But is this a mere sight-seeing tour…or a test?

While the story is slightly overdrenched in testerone and stoic manliness, Dickson is an excellent writer and his tale compels.  I dug it.  Four stars.

The Meteorite Miners , by Ralph A. Hall, M.D.

Earth has been the site of countless meteor impacts, many of them secondary strikes of ejecta loosed from prior events.  What we learn from the mineral concentrations at these craters can tell us a lot about the primordial history of our planet…and even the universe.

It's a fascinating topic, and it should have gripped me, but the presentation was a bit too abstruse and disjointed to hold my attention.  It took me several sessions to finish.

Three stars.

Titanium – The Wonder Metal (uncredited, but probably John W. Campbell, jr.

The piece is followed by another non-fiction article, this time a more lay-oriented essay on titanium, what makes it great, and what made it so hard to use economically. 

It's fine.  Three stars.

Two-Way Communication, by Christopher Anvil


by Kelly Freas

When an inventor develops a universal receiver that allows the owner to transmit right into an announcer's microphone, chaos ensues.  Is it the ultimate democracy or a recipe for anarchy?

In this cute story, Anvil argues the former.  With constant and immediate input (and censure) the vast wastelands of radio and television are made verdant with quality programming.  The author forgets two important factors: 1) most TV and much radio isn't live these days, so interruptions at the source wouldn't have as much effect as depicted — this isn't 1951 after all; 2) people are jerks — interruptions would be constant and annoying.

Still, it was not unpleasant reading.  Call it a low 3 stars.  Ormazd and Ahriman are wrestling, but neither has ascendance.  Yet.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky…, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

In this edge-of-the-future story (indeed, the depicted Gemini 9 mission is scheduled to occur less than three weeks from now), one astronaut is lost during an extravehicular jaunt.  His partner must use all of his wits to rescue him before their oxygen and fuel run out.

Joe Poyer has written a couple of other stories for Analog, both of which showed a fair ability when it came to depicting technology but little talent for characterization or detailed plot.  Starry Sky plays to the author's strengths, presenting a nice little Marooned-esque tale in a vivid fashion.  It ends quickly enough that you don't mind where it's undeveloped.

Three stars.  There are stars of light among the black sky.

The Alchemist, by Charles L. Harness


by Kelly Freas

Ah, here's where it all goes to Hell.  This long, flip, utterly unengaging tale manages to combine alchemy, psionics, making the Russians look stupid, and making scientists look stupid, all in one sure-to-please-the-editor package. 

This is truly an example of Ahrimanic possession as the last story by the author was one I liked very much.  But The Alchemist?  One star.  Feh.

Doing the math


Geraldine "Gerry" Myers, mathematician at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division at the Manned Space Craft Center in Houston

As might be expected from such a violent collision of positive and negative forces, the whole thing ends up about a wash: 3.1 stars.  This puts it above IF and New Worlds (3 stars) as well as Worlds of Tomorrow (2.6)

The May 1966 Analog finishes below Impulse (3.2), Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.5), and the astonishing, but mostly reprints, Fantastic (4).  Thus, Analog is the dead median for this month!

Nevertheless, it has contributed two stories to one of the best months for 4 and 5 star material since the Journey began.  You could fill three big magazines with nothing but excellent stuff.

Women did so-so in April, only writing ~6% of new material, though Judy Merril had a good reprint in Impulse.

And so, the battle between good and bad (quality) continues.  Will Ormazd be ascendant next month?  Or will Ahriman have the final laugh?  Stay tuned…

[Don't miss the next (and FINAL) episode of The Journey Show:

1966 and the Law — smut, marriage, voting rights, justice, and more. With Erica Frank and Ethan Marcus! With special musical guest, Nanami!

3 Comments Leave A Comment
Magazine

[February 26, 1966] Such promise (March 1966 Analog)

5 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Tuckered out

Imagine training your whole life to run in the Olympics.  Imagine making it and competing in the quadrennial event, representing your nation before the entire world.  Imagine making perfect strides, outdistancing your competitors, sailing far out in front…and then stumbling.

Defeat at the moment of victory.


Ron Clarke of Australia, favored to win 1964's 10,000 meter race, is blown past at the last minute by American Billy Mills (and aced by Tunisia's Mohammed Gammoudi )

Every month, as a science fiction magazine reviewer, I am treated to a similar drama.  Usually, the law of averages dictates that no month will be particularly better or worse than any other.  But occasionally, there is a mirabilis month, or perhaps things are really getting better across the entire genre.  Either way, as magazine after magazine got their review, it became clear that March 1966 was going to be a very good month.  Not a single magazine was without at least one 4 or 5 star story — even the normally staid Science Fantasy turned in a stellar performance under the new name, Impulse.

It all came down to this month's Analog.  If it were superb, as it was last month, then we'd have a clean sweep across eight periodicals.  If it flopped, as it often does, the streak would be broken.

As it turns out, neither eventuality quite came to pass.  Indeed, the March 1966 Analog is sort of a microcosm of the month itself — starting out with a bang and faltering before the finish.

Frontloaded


by John Schoenherr

Bookworm, Run!, by Vernor Vinge


by John Schoenherr

Norman Simmonds is on the lam.  Brilliant, resourceful, and inspired by his pulp and SF heroes, he breaks out of a top security research facility in Michigan, his mind full of inadvertently espied government secrets.  His goal is to make the Canadian border before he can be punished for his accidental indiscretion. Thus ensues an exciting cat and mouse chase toward the border.

Did I mention that Norman is a chimpanzee?

With the aid of surgery and a link to the nation's most sophisticated computer, Norman is not only smarter than the average human, he has all of the world's facts at his beck and call.  His only limitation (aside from standing out in a crowd) is that he can only get so far from his master mainframe before the link is strained to breaking.  The pivotal question, then, is whether Canada lies inside or beyond that range.

Bookworm is a compelling story whose main fault comes (in keeping with this month's trend) near the end, when we leave Norman's viewpoint and instead are treated to a few pages' moralizing about why such technology must never be allowed to be used by humanity lest one person gain virtual godhood.  I have to wonder if that coda was always in the tale or if it was added by Campbell at the last minute to make less subtle the themes of the story.

Anyway, four stars for Vinge's first American sale (and second overall).  I look forward to what he has to offer next.

The Ship Who Mourned, by Anne McCaffrey


by Kelly Freas

Speaking of intelligence in unusual forms, The Ship Who Mourned is the sequel to the quite good The Ship Who Sang, starring a woman raised nearly from birth as a brain with a shapeship body.  In that first story, her companion/passenger/driver, Jennan, died, leaving Helva-the-ship distraught.

But with no time to grieve.  Her next assignment comes almost immediately: take Theoda, a doctor, to a faraway world so that she might treat the aftereffects of a plague that has left thousands completely immobile, trapped in their nonresponsive bodies.  Though Helva is initially frosty toward Theoda, they bond over their own griefs, and together, they manage to bring hope to the plague-blasted planet.

This is a good story.  I'm surprised to see it in Analog in part because the series got its start in F&SF, and also because the mag has been something of a stag party for a long long time (even more than its woman-scarce colleagues).  Despite enjoying it a lot, there is a touch of the amateur about it, a certain clunkiness of execution.  McCaffrey may simply be out of practice; it has been five years since her last story, after all.

Nevertheless, I suspect that the cobwebs will come right off if she can get back to writing consistently again.  A high three stars.

Giant Meteor Impact, by J.  E.  Enever

Asteroid impact seems all the rage this month.  Asimov was talking about it in his F&SF column, and Heinlein may soon be talking about it in If.  Enever describes in lurid detail the damage the Earth would suffer from an astroid a "meer" kilometer in width — and why an ocean impact is far, far scarier than one on land.

The author presents the topic with gusto, but a little too much length.  It wavers between fascinating and meandering.  Had we gotten some of the juicy bits included in Asimov's article, that would have made for a stellar (pun intended) piece.

As is, three stars.

Operation Malacca, by Joe Poyer


by Leo Summers

And it is here, at the two thirds mark, that we stumble.

Last we heard from Joe Poyer, he was offering up the turgid technical thriller, Mission "Red Clash".  This time, the premise is a little better: Indonesia has planted a 5 megaton bomb borrowed from the Red Chinese in the Straits of Malacca.  If detonated, it will wipe out the British fleet and pave the way for a takeover of Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.  Only a washed out cetecean handler and his dolphin companion can save the day. 

Sounds like a high stakes episode of Flipper, doesn't it?

Well, unfortunately, the first ten pages are all a lot of talking, the dolphin-centric middle is utterly characterless, merely a series of events, and then the dolphin is out of the picture the last dull third of the story.

Unlike McCaffrey, my predictions for Joe's writing career are rather pessimistic.  But we'll see…

Two stars.

10:01 A.M., by Alexander Malec


by John Schoenherr

At 10:01 A.M., a couple of joyriding punks cause the hit and run murder of a little girl.  Within the space of an hour, they are swallowed by a floating "fetcher" car, hauled before a detective, thence to a judge, and capital sentence is rendered.

Malec writes as if he was taking a break from technical writing and could not shift gears into fiction writing. Compound that with a lurid presentation that betrays an almost pornographic obsession with the subject matter (both the technological details and the grinding of the gears of justice), and it makes for an unpleasant experience.

Two stars.

Prototaph, by Keith Laumer

And lastly, a vignette which is essentially one-page joke story told in three.  Who is the one man who is uninsurable?  The one whose death is guaranteed.

Except they never explain why his death is guaranteed.

Dumb.  One star.

Tallying the scores

And so Analog limps across the finish line with a rather dismal 2.6 rating.  Indeed, it is the second worst magazine of the month (although that's partly because most everything else was excellent). To wit:

Ah well.  At the very least, Campbell took some chances with this issue, which I appreciate.  And the first two thirds are good.  There was just a lot riding on the mag this month.  The perils of getting one's hopes up!

As for the statistics, I count 8.5% of this month's new stories as written by women, which is high for recent days.  If you took all of the four and five star stories from this month, you could easily fill three magazines, which is excellent.

Always focus on the positive, right?

The Journey is once again up for a Best Fanzine Hugo nomination — and its founder is up for several other awards as well!  If you've got a Worldcon membership, or if you just want to see what Gideon's done that's Hugo-worthy, please read his Hugo Eligibility article!  Thank you for your continued support.

5 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[November 30, 1965] War is Swell (December 1965 Analog)

10 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Thrill of Combat

It was just twenty years ago that the second war to end all wars drew to an explosive close. Two titans of tyranny (and their little brother) were defeated by the Arsenal of Democracy.  Clearly, World War 2 was "the good war:" there's a reason it is now as popular on television and in wargames as the Western and the Civil War.

And just in time.  After the sloggish stalemate of Korea and the painful "escalatio" in Vietnam (credit to Tom Lehrer), war needs to be fun again.  I suppose it's no surprise that war is not only a common theme in science fiction, but the good and fun kind of war is the thread that ties together the December 1965 issue of Analog, notoriously the most conservative (reactionary?) of the outlets in our visionary genre.

One War after Another


by Kelly Freas

Beehive (Part 1 of 2), by Mack Reynolds

Ronny Bronston, forgettably faced but utterly competent agent for Earth's "Section G" is back.  Last we saw him, he'd been on the trail of interstellar troublemaker, Tommy Paine, spurring revolution on dozens of worlds.  Turned out that Paine was actually Section G, itself, skirting the non-interference clauses of the galactic charter to ensure that the colony worlds didn't stagnate.

In Beehive, we find out why: a century ago, the first sentient alien was found.  Well, actually, its corpse — it had been a casualty of a war of extermination.  And we still don't know who their enemy was, or if they'll soon be knocking on our doors.  That's why the super secret service has been surreptitiously trying to speed of progress on all of the colony worlds so that when the aliens do come, we'll be as ready as possible.

One of the more successful colonies, the putatively libertarian but actually authoritarian world of Phrygia appears to be making a play to turn the galactic society into an Empire, and Bronston is dispatched to get the facts on the ground.  But when he gets there, the agent discovers that the wheels have wheels within them, and the Phrygian dictator knows far more about the alien threat than Section G.


by Kelly Freas

While this serial has a definite hook of a cliffhanger, for the most part, it's not Reynolds' best…or even his middlin'.  There's a glib, breezy quality to it that is both smug and serves to reduce the tension.  The central idea is repugnant, too — that Earth knows best, and their underhanded means of stimulating progress are justified.  But then Campbell probably didn't watch that recent documentary on how the CIA messed up in Guatemala.

Anyway, I'll keep reading, but it's two stars right now.

Warrior, by Gordon R. Dickson


by Kelly Freas

Another sequel and another war.  In Dickson's Dorsai universe, humanity has spread to thirteen worlds, each focusing on an aspect of cultural development.  The Dorsai have made war their profession, turning it into a sublime art, and they are the most esteemed and feared mercenaries.

In the novella/novel, Soldier, Ask Not, we were introduced to twin brother generals, Kenzie and Ian Graeme.  The former is a charismatic leader, the latter a sullen but matchless strategician.

Ian Graeme returns in Warrior, traveling to Earth to seek justice for 32 of his men, slaughtered when their glory-hunting captain disobeyed orders to lead a hopeless charge.  The officer was court martialed and executed, but Graeme knows that the real culprit is his gangster brother.  Warrior tells the tale of Graeme and the brother's eventual and climactic confrontation.

There are a lot of inches in this story devoted to the obvious prowess of Mr. Graeme, his dark eminence, his barely suppressed strength, his intimidating military demeanor that requires no uniform, etc. etc.  Frankly, it all runs thin early on.

Still, it's a pretty good story (breathlessly recommended by my nephew David…but then so was Beehive), and the display of Dorsai tactics, trapping the brother within the trap being laid for Graeme, was effective.

Three stars.

Heavy Elements , by Edward C. Walterscheid

Ever wonder how the transuranium elements were fashioned?  Walterschied returns for a very comprehensive article on the subject.  There's a lot of good information here, and it's reasonably well delivered.  It's also very dense (no pun intended), certainly not in the Asimov style.  It took me a few sittings to get through.

Three stars.

Mission "Red Clash", by Joe Poyer


by Gray Morrow

Joe Poyer's first story is essentially the Analog version of the MacLean novel, Ice Station Zebra.  The pilot of a next-generation recon plane, the hypersonic X-17, is forced to bail out over Norway after being shot down by a Russian interceptor.  Now he, and the three men dispatched from the nuclear cruiser John F. Kennedy, must evade squads of Soviets and survive frigid conditions to get critical intelligence back to our side.

Told with technophiliac details so lurid that I felt it belonged under rather than on the counter, there's not much of a story here.  Mission lacks context, characterization, and conclusion, leaving a competently told middle section of an unfinished novel.  It's low budget Martin Caidin.

Two stars.

Countercommandment, by Patrick Meadows


by Domenic Iaia

Last up, a computer scientists is rushed to NORAD to find out why, three hours after World War 3 was declared by the Chinese, the Big Brain has not executed a countersrike.  And why, despite the efforts of the enemy, their missiles haven't launched either.

This is a two page story padded to ten with the gimmick that the computers, having access to our most sacred documents, which all speak to the sanctity of human life, could not in good conscience end humanity.

It might work in Heinlein's new serial currently running in IF.  It makes no sense for computers of 1970s vintage, and it comes off as mawkish.

One star.

One Million Deaths is a Statistic

This war-soaked issue of Analog scores a dismal 2.2, barely beating out the truly awful Amazing (1.8).

Above it, we have IF (2.6), New Writings #6 (2.9), Galaxy and New Worlds (3), Science Fantasy (3.1), and the superlative Fantasy and Science Fiction (3.9)

In keeping with the (not entirely accurate) notion that war is a "man's game", there were no entries by women this month.  Zero.  Goose egg.  Color me dismayed.

And on that note, we are done with all of the science fiction magazines with a 1965 cover date.  Rest assured, we have compiled all of the statistics from the past year, and our Journey-Vac will be spitting out a fine edition of the '65 Galactic Stars at the end of next month. 

You won't want to miss it!

And speaking of stars…

If you caught my review last year of Tom Purdom's I Want the Stars, then you know why I was so excited at the chance to reprint it. And now it can be yours! This new Journey Press edition also comes with a special 'making-of' section.

Get yourself a copy, and maybe one for a friend!




10 Comments Leave A Comment