Just as America returned to space in a big way with this month's flight of Apollo 7, the Soviets have also recovered from their 1967 tragedy (Soyuz 1) with an impressive feat. Georgy Beregovoi, a rookie cosmonaut (ironically also the oldest man in space thus far, surpassing 45 year-old Wally Schirra by two years) has taken Soyuz 3 into orbit for a series of rendezvous and perhaps dockings (TASS is being vague on the issue) with the unmanned Soyuz 2.
Comrade Beregovoi in training
We've seen flights like this before, but this is the first time there has been a person involved. Many are calling this a harbinger of an impending lunar flight, though NASA is adamant that this particular flight won't go to the moon. Indeed, Dr. Ed Welsh, Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council says Soyuz and September's Zond 5, which went around the moon, are completely different craft and the Russians aren't even close to fielding a lunar mission.
We'll have more on this flight in a few days. Stay tuned.
On the ground
Like the flights of Soyuz 2 and 3, this month's Analog is outwardly impressive, but once you dig in, it's not so great.
Centuries from now, after the fall of the Age of Science, humanity is divided into two camps: the "Olsaparns", who dwell in isolated technological camps and retain a semblance of the original technology and society, and the Novos—psionically adept savages who live in conservative Packs. One of the Pack members is Starn, who possesses a brand new ability that allows him to best even the telepathically and premonitionally blessed. He runs afoul of Nagister Nont, a highly adept, highly disagreeable trader, who kidnaps his wife.
After a raid on the Olsaparns leaves Starn close to death, the technologists remake him into something more machine than man, like Ted White's Android Avenger. The Olsaparns want Nont out of the picture, so they help Starn in his quest to defeat the mutant and get back his wife.
I have no fault with the writing, which is brisk and engaging. I take some issue with the pages of discussion on whether or not psi powers be linked with primitiveness, or the concept that humanity could regress to Pithecanthropy in a scant few generations (or the idea that evolution must be a road that one goes forward and backward on; I thought we gave up teleology last century). But I blazed through the novella in short order, so… four stars.
The Ultimate Danger, by W. Macfarlane
by Kelly Freas
In which Captain Lew Frizel takes a shipload of eggheads to a hallucinogenic planet. He is the only one who, more or less, keeps his head. The message appears to be that LSD can be employed by aliens to judge our character. Or something.
Three stars?
The Shots Felt 'Round the World, by Edward C. Walterscheid
This piece, on atomic tests, was much easier reading than Walterscheid's last article. Do you realize that we have detonated half a billion TNT tons worth of nuclear explosives since 1945? It's a wonder there's anything left of Nevada.
Four stars.
The Rites of Man, by John T. Phillifent
by Rudolph Palais
A scientist is working on rationalizing the art of interpersonal relations (because in Phillifent's universe, no one has invented sociology). About twenty pages into that effort, humanoid (really, human) aliens show up and ask to be allowed to compete in the Olympics. They do, but they lose on purpose so we won't hate them. Then we interbreed.
Possibly the dullest, most pointless story I've ever read in this magazine. One star.
Humanity is a resilient creature, tough enough to tame any world. Except that planet Sibylla, with its poisonous soil, extreme axial tilt, thin atmosphere, temperature extremes, high gravity, and violent weather may actually be more than Terrans can handle. What does one do when a world is too minimal to sustain a colony? And what is the value of 10,000 settler lives against the teeming, impoverished billions of Earth?
This is a vividly written piece with some excellent astronomy. If I didn't know better, I'd say Poul Anderson is writing under a pseudonym. I felt the solution to the colonists' problem, though reasonable, was not sufficiently set up to be deduced. Also, I felt Karageorge missed the opportunity to make a more profound statement at the end than "well, humanity can lick almost all comers." I'd have preferred something on the point of colonization or the shifting of priorities on a racial scale.
Still, a high three stars.
Split Personality, by Jack Wodhams
by Kelly Freas
Mauger, a homicidal brute, agrees to be split in two for science instead of getting the chair. Instead of this resulting in two new individuals, it turns out that the two halves remain connected, the gestalt whole. Thus, Maugam can literally be in two places at once.
This is timely as the first interstellar drive has had teething troubles. Two test ships have gotten lost, unable to communicate with Earth. Now, half of Maugam can fly on the ship while the other stays home and reports, since telepathy, for some reason, is instant.
It's actually not a bad story, though it's really just a bunch of magic and coincidence. It works because Wodhams has set it up to work a certain way, not because this is any kind of realistic scientific extrapolation. Also, it's hard to work up any sympathy for a homicidal brute.
Three stars.
Doing the math
When everything is crunched together, we end up with Analog clocking in at exactly 3 stars—again, adequate, but vaguely disappointing. On the other hand, it's been something of a banner month in SF (provided you're not looking for female writers; they wrote less than 7% of the new fiction pieces published). Except for IF (2.6), every other outlet scored higher than 3. To wit:
There are all kinds of science fiction stories. Some explore the human condition, prioritizing people and how they might be affected by emerging technologies. Others are space or planetary adventures, utilizing an exotic locale as backdrop for classic derring-do.
Analog (formerly Astounding) has always emphasized technological pieces. They are stories of gadgets, of scientific implementations, not people. Even better is when the story underscores the libertarian, rather reactionary politics of one editor John W. Campbell Jr.
Sometimes, a skilled writer can get a story into Campbell's mag without that kind of tale. In this issue, virtually none of them did…
The issue at hand
by Kelly Freas
Secret Weapon, by Joseph P. Martino
The interstellar war against the Arcani is going badly. Now that the Terrans have doubled their Patrol Corvette fleet, suddenly their losses have quadrupled. Somehow, the alien enemy is tracking down their gravitational signatures as they zoom through their patrol lanes at four times the speed of light–and even when the human crews manage to intercept the enemy warships, somehow they elude destruction.
Two ships are dispatched to find the answer to this crisis, equipped with a new nucleonic clock that allows the ships to communicate even at superluminary speeds. Now they can cover each other in case of attack. When attack inevitably comes, they discover the secret to the enemy's success.
Joe Martino probably enjoyed writing this novella, and John Campbell obviously enjoyed reading this novella, so I suppose the story must be called some kind of success. However, if you don't enjoy things that read like the centerfold to a particularly dry issue of Popular Gravitics, I suggest you give this one a skip. This probably could have been a great novel, with time devoted to, you know, characters and prose, as opposed to a thinly dressed up engineering problem whose solution is implied to be beyond the comprehension of the alien foe.
Two stars.
Handyman, by Jack Wodhams
by Leo Summers
A married couple, trapped on a muddy world with virtually no trappings of civilization, try to make even the most basic rudiments of technology to ease their plight. Eventually, they figure out how to make ceramics, and when a rescue party finally appears, they are now happy to stay on their private world and even to start an export trade of their new kind of china. Chalk up a win for enforced entrepreneurialism!
I kept waiting for Wodhams to explain how the planet-wrecked pair figured out how to make their ceramic, given that all the ways that didn't work were so lovingly detailed.
Still, the story is at least readable. A low three stars.
Phantasmaplasmagoria, by Herbert Jacob Bernstein
by Kelly Freas
According to the scientists, power from nuclear fusion, harnessing the union of hydrogen atoms to produce boundless electricity, is just twenty years away. This story details the meandering road to the technology's serendipitous development.
It's a silly piece, and I'm not sure who thought it a good idea to put a fourth of the story in endnotes that one has to constantly refer to. They aren't worth the pay-off.
A hay fever drug has the unfortunate side effect of making everyone extra-friendly. Society breaks down as folks would rather kibbitz than work.
It says something about Analog and its editor's beliefs that too much friendliness will obviously lead to economic ruin, as opposed to increased efficiency through greater cooperation. Call me crazy, but I work better when I like my co-workers.
Anyway, this is another "funny" piece by Anvil for Campbell, and it's as good as you'd expect it to be.
Two stars.
Incorrigible, by John T. Phillifent
by Leo Summers
A naval officer is up for treason, having facilitated the transfer of technical knowledge to the Drekk, potentially Earth's most dangerous foe. The implacable lizards, inhabitant of a Venus-type planet (nicknamed "Wet" for its torrid, humid conditions) are incredibly quick studies, and interstellar spaceflight is only a few developments away.
But, the officer notes, at the end of a very long dialogue with his attorney (the sole point of which is to build to the punchline conclusion) the information leak was ultimately to humanity's benefit. For it involves the ability to teleport water, which the Drekk will use to colonize the nearby planet, "Dry". And once enough mass is teleported from Wet, the core will explode, destroying the evil aliens.
Well.
I can't imagine this is particularly sound science, this notion that Venus-type planets are at a critical point such that the lost of a few million tons of water can destabilize them, especially coming from a fellow who still characterizes Venus as "wet" five years after Mariner 2. That notwithstanding, I might have been more tolerant, given the decent writing in this piece, if the author (under his pseudonym) had not used the exact same gimmick to end his recent novel, Alien Sea!
Jason dinAlt's adventures appear to have come to an end with this third Deathworld novel. By the end of the story, the Pyrran city has been destroyed by the planet, the horse barbarians of Felicity have been defeated, and Meta and Jason have finally professed their love for one another.
How is Temuchin, highest chief of the Felicitan nomads defeated? After Jason is found out for the outworlder he is, the barbarian tosses him into a deep pit to die. Instead, Jason finds his way through a maze of caves, discovering a passage from the frozen steppes to the rich lowlands. All other methods of toppling Temuchin having failed, Jason tells the warlord the secret of the caves so that the barbarians can finally conquer the whole continent.
Almost immediately, Temuchin realizes his victory is really defeat, for taking all the cities means the inevitable death of the nomad way of life. The nomads collapse within weeks, and the Pyrrans set up shop.
There are a lot of problems with this book. Temuchin is supposed to be this awful, violent savage for slaughtering foreign invaders, and for wanting to take out the lowlanders. Does this justify the Pyrrans in killing and facilitating the killing of far more people than Temuchin ever could have managed on his own?
Beyond that, the historical "lesson" at the end of the story is specious. Sure, the Chinese sinicized the Mongols, but not all of them, and not in a matter of weeks. And as for the Goths and Huns (also cited), the former were invited to settle the Roman Empire rather than becoming Roman after conquering, while the Huns were simply defeated in fight after fight.
Thus, I find Jason's actions and motivations more ruthless and inhuman than Temuchin's; they are also out of keeping with the peacenik environmental message so beautifully expressed in Deathworld.
All that said, there's no question that Harrison is a terrific writer (he almost makes you accept the unrealistic extents to which Jason pushes his body). I turned to this serial first each of the last three months, and I finished each installment in a sitting. As a result, while I give this segment three stars, and even though I find the premise repugnant, I still am giving the novel as a whole three and a half stars.
Local Effect, by D. L. Hughes
by Leo Summers
An alien space drive discarded near Earth's moon has drastic effects on human scientific development. It turns out that the speed of light is not a constant…except around Earth. Thus, Einstein's theory of relativity only describes a local phenomenon, not the universe as a whole. Alien anthropologists from a faraway star survey humanity and note this local aberration with interest.
This is an interesting premise, but Hughes, knowing his audience (a certain editor named Campbell), turns it into an anti-scientific-establishment polemic, noting that, if only humans were a little more broad minded, they might not have gotten stuck in their rut. After all, how dare we assume that the rules that hold locally apply to the whole universe?
Except, of course, that is the very soul of the scientific method. Moreover, observations this century make it clear that relativity does hold throughout the universe–as early as 1919, just four years after the publication of General Relativity, light was seen to have been deflected around the sun's gravity well, pursuant to theory.
This could have been a fascinating story of aliens assuming that all beings should follow an "obvious" course of scientific development, deluded by their own understanding of all the facts. Instead, we get…this.
Two stars.
Doing the math
If it's a race to the bottom, Analog has won handily, scoring just 2.3 stars this month. This accomplishment is all the more sad when one realizing that this is a better score than it got last month!
Women penned just 4% of the new fiction this month, and even with all the issues of Famous (lumped due to logistics into this one month), there was still only 2.5 to 3 issues' worth of superior stuff.
I guess we'll see if the Pohl mags continue to reign, or if all fortunes oscillate. I think it's safe to say, though, that Analog could definitely use a loosening of its editorial prescriptions. Hope springs eternal!
It's been something of a rocky week. A few days ago, Israel unilaterally announced that it was annexing all of Jerusalem, which had been de facto split after the 1948 war , and which de jure was supposed to be an international city. The good news is, the government promised to integrate the Jewish and Arab halves peacefully, and so far, it looks like they are trying to do just that. Still, the move is drawing condemnation from the world (strangely, I don't recall hearing aspersions cast against the Jordanians when they took half of the city…)
In sadder news, actress Jayne Mansfield was in a fatal car crash not far from New Orleans. You may remember her from Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and other films and TV shows. She'd earned a reputation as a budget Marilyn Monroe, but from recent performances, it was clear her talent ran deeper than that. The only bright spot is that her three children, also in the car, escaped with minor injuries.
And in the You-gotta-laugh-or-you'll-cry department, Beach Boy Carl Wilson was set free after being tried for draft evasion. Seems being a conscientious objector works for some people, but not others. Witness one Muhammad Ali. Let me know if you can tell me what's different about the two cases.
All ahead, half speed
by John Schoenherr
Meanwhile, this month's Analog is not so much ups and downs, but a straight shot. Sort of like Route 99 to Sacramento–easy going, but a dull drive.
The Man from P.I.G., by Harry Harrison
by John Schoenherr
First up is an unusual interstellar fixit story in the Retief or Chris Anvil mold. Bron Wurber, pig herder, arrives on a remote world in the middle of a crisis. Its governor had just sent out a distress call about the mysterious plateau just outside of town that not only appears to be haunted, but is fatal to any who explore it. Bron seems the most unlikely of support…until he reveals he really is a government agent, and the pigs are of the one-ton, super-intelligent variety. With the help of his porcine aides, Bron cracks the case and saves the day.
P.I.G. works as an action-adventure story, and if you can get past the "as you know" explanations of why pigs are better than dogs (and who can argue with that? Cats beat them both, though…) then you'll enjoy yourself. The piece does not work as a whodunnit, though. Harrison has to explain the characteristics of the culprit at the end of the tale rather than dropping clues throughout. I have to wonder if I missed a setup story somewhere. Alternatively, this may be the first in a series, and the next one will thus be better prepped.
A couple of months back, we got a story about a troubleshooter who helps establish the sapience of an indigenous race of cat people, thus frustrating the commercial schemes of a settling corporation.
This tale rather unnecessarily retells the same story, but from the point of view of the commercial types. Anvil adds a silver lining at the end of the story, depending, of course, on psionics (this being John Campbell's mag, after all).
The first story was decent. This was is rather pointless. Two stars.
Annual Report, by Listening Inc.
Instead of contracting a science writer this month, Campbell just borrowed a catalog from an outfit called Listening Inc. They make all kinds of interesting sonar/listening gear, including stuff for talking to dolphins.
There's not a lot there, but it's interesting. Three stars.
Aim for the Heel, by John T. Phillifent
by Kelly Freas
Accompanied by the most striking art of the issue, Heel is the story of an international agent whose job is to facilitate, but not directly cause, the assassination of otherwise unreachable criminals. He does it by researching his targets, and then maneuvering them into a situation whereby they end up dead at their own hands.
It's somewhat gray, morally, rather like the season of Mission: Impossible we just watched. It also delights a bit too much in what it does, to the point of being lurid.
But it is readable. Three stars.
Something Important, by E. G. Von Wald
by Rudy Palais
I liked this one, about a disabled alien ship that sends out a distress call, and the communications team that cracks the code to effect a rescue. There's not much to it, but the message (no pun intended) is nice.
Last issue, we were introduced to the autocracy of Alphaland, which had just gone to war with its rival, Betastan, and run into difficulties. The Betastani refuse to fight fair, retreating from their cities, only using subs for naval engagement, and using thousands of agents to create havoc within Alphaland. As a result, Alphaland, despite computer predictions to the contrary, is on the verge of collapse.
Reynolds likes to cloak history lessons in the guise of fiction. Sometimes he's successful at the task, and sometimes it feels like he's submitting a series of essays with a thin veneer of plot around them. This latest effort is the latter. The characters are cardboard, although the lessons have some applicability to our current quagmire in Vietnam.
A low three stars.
Bite, by Lawrence A. Perkins
by John Schoenherr
Lastly, an unpleasant tale of an unpleasant doctor who contracts rabies, and the unpleasant choice another doctor has of deciding whether it's worth treating him or not.
I didn't like it. Two stars.
Traffic statistics
Not only did this month's Analog score a rather peaked 2.7, but there is a smug sameyness to every story, as if each one was pressed through the Campbell machine and laminated with a greasy coating. The other mags this month, such as there were, weren't much better though. Fantasy and Science Fiction and IF also scored 2.7, and only Fantastic (3.2) and New Worlds (3.5) were better, the first comprising mostly reprints, and the latter a half-size mag.
All told, you could take all the good fiction and fit it in one decent-sized digest. Two of the 30 new fiction pieces were by women, both of them quite short. I guess it's no surprise that the action is in SF novels these days.
Still, I like my magazines, and I hope they get their act together. Otherwise, this is going to be one throughway most folks will want to turn off from.
There are many different kinds of science fiction stories. Time travel, future societies, parallel worlds, and so on. When most people think of science fiction, however, they probably imagine tales set in outer space.
I recently came across three new works of SF that might be called space opera. Although all of them feature adventures set, at least partly, on planets orbiting distant stars, they are quite different from one another. For one thing, they vary in length. Let's take a look at them, from shortest to longest.
A Three-Course Literary Meal
First up is a light appetizer from a prolific British author who has already won quite a bit of praise from Galactic Journeyers. His creations are almost always competent, at least, and sometimes outstanding.
As you can tell, this is one part of an Ace Double. I almost said half of an Ace Double, but it takes up much less than fifty percent of the book. Well under one hundred pages in length, with plenty of white space between chapters, it's really a novella rather than the Complete Novel bragged about on the cover.
Our protagonist is a woman named Kynance Foy.
Wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Let me dig through some old magazines and figure this out.
I knew it! A Planet of Your Own was previously published in Worlds of If just a few months ago under the title The Long Way to Earth, and reviewed by my esteemed colleague David Levinson. I've taken a look at both versions. If there's any difference at all, it must be very minor.
Cover art by Hector Castellon. It's still not a complete short novel.
Anyway, Kynance is stuck on a planet with no money and few prospects for getting back to Earth. The company that supplies so-called pelts from another world offers her a job that sounds too good to be true. (The extremely expensive pelts are actually vegetable matter that changes color and produces pleasant aromas.)
All she has to do is stay alone on the pelt planet for a year, so the company can maintain its claim. In exchange, she'll get a fortune in cash and a free ride to Earth.
Of course, there's a catch. Nobody has ever been able to avoid violating the company's rules, so they get tossed out without payment, and are expected to die on the uninviting world of pelts. However, a few previous employees have managed to survive, barely managing to feed themselves on the plant life that covers the entire watery planet.
These poor guys make their way to the company's station, where Kynance violates her contract by waving at them. (The evil corporation has very strict rules.) Is she doomed to the same ghastly fate as the other ex-employees?
This is an enjoyable story, maybe not groundbreaking but certainly engaging. The heroine is appealing, and the way she uses her knowledge of the law is clever.
Four stars.
After our palate has been sharpened by this hors d'oeuvre, even if we've tasted it before, let's flip over the book and savor something a little bit more substantial. (Soup or salad?)
Another British writer supplies the larger part of this Ace Double. John Rackham is the pen name of John T. Phillifent. He's mostly been published in British magazines, although he's also shared a couple of Ace Doubles prior to this one. The phrase First Book Publication makes me wonder if this novel appeared in some magazine somewhere, but I can find no evidence for that.
Our hero is a fellow called Rang. (I'll try to avoid You Rang? jokes.) We first meet him hunting a six-legged beast on an eternally stormy planet with three suns. Helping him are an enormous bird of prey and a gigantic canine. This unlikely trio are the title beasts.
Kohl is a huge, sea-dwelling, tentacled alien. He collects species from various planets, including Rang and his friends. Kohl comes to realize that Rang is more than just an animal, so he offers to send him back to Earth, from which he was taken when he was a small child. Rang is happy living with Kohl in an underwater shelter, but Kohl insists that he visit his home world first and then decide whether to stay there instead.
Accompanying Kohl, Rang, the bird, and the dog, is a woman called Rana. (First rule of science fiction nomenclature: Female names have to end with the letter a.) She's one of the beasts of another member of Kohl's species, and is a little wilder than Rang.
Once their spaceship lands in the ocean on Earth, Kohl casually mentions the fact that, due to time dilation at speeds near those of light, about one hundred thousand years have gone by since Rang and Rana were last on Earth. We find out that they're Cro-Magnons, and they're now in the modern world.
(There are a few hints that this is the future, but for the most part it might as well be 1966.)
The two fish-out-of-water and their giant pets get mixed up with a genius who earns large amounts of money for offering his opinions; his secretary, who carries a torch for him; a film maker working on a documentary about the genius; the greedy financial manager of the genius; and some other folks. This part of the novel offers a satiric look at today's society through the eyes of the visitors.
When the manager arranges to have the genius meet a couple of Soviet agents, the book turns into a spy thriller, with Rang in the role of a primitive James Bond. (Rana does her fair share of beating up the bad guys as well.) It all leads up to a car/helicopter/submarine chase, with some vital help from Kohl, who remains in the underwater spaceship.
It's not a bad yarn, if you're willing to put up with the changes in mood from drama to comedy to adventure. The romance between the genius and the secretary is a little corny, with each of them attracted to the other but not saying anything about it until the end. You might agree with Rang and Rana that modern people are badly mixed up in their minds about logic and emotion.
Three stars.
Grab your steak knife and get ready to dig into the main course.
Here's the first novel from a new author who has shown up in various magazines for a couple of years. It starts off in true space opera form, with a fleet of human spaceships engaging in battle with a relentless enemy intent on extermination. The humans are outnumbered by the ruthless Duglaari, so the commander of the fleet beats a hasty retreat, abandoning a human colony world to their foes.
The war has been going on for centuries, and the humans are slowly losing. Their only hope is the nearly legendary home world. The solar system has been cut off from the many other human planets for about three hundred years. The inhabitants of humanity's place of origin are supposed to show up and defeat the enemy with a secret weapon.
The commander of the defeated fleet happens to be reporting to his superior officer when these so-called Solarians arrive. Instead of a huge number of warships, only a small vessel appears. It carries three men and three women, which seems hardly enough to turn the tide of battle.
The six Solarians have various psychic powers, from telepathy to the ability to control another's body. This is obviously a great advantage, but it still seems impossible that they would be able to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat.
Their outrageous plan is to travel to the Duglaari home world, and offer terms of surrender. Through sheer force of personality, aided by demonstration of their powers, they manage to convince the officer in charge to send the commander with them as a supposed ambassador from the human worlds.
The commander is suspicious of their motives. He is also uncomfortable about their lifestyle. The half-dozen Solarians live in a group that isn't quite a family, but something like one. One of the women openly offers to have sex with him, although she's in love with one of the men, and the fellow she loves isn't jealous at all. The commander eventually learns to accept this new way of relating to other people during the long trip to the Duglaari planet.
That changes when he thinks the Solarians have double-crossed him, by offering the Duglaari the chance to destroy the rest of humanity if they'll leave the solar system alone. Although the Duglaari reject this offer, the commander imagines himself surrounded by traitors as their spaceship heads back to Earth. Of course, the reader is aware that the Solarians have something up their sleeve.
The combination of classic space opera with sociological science fiction, in the form of the Solarians' way of life, is intriguing. There's a climax that's spectacular in its scale, but you'll probably see it coming. The novel is quite talky, and all the human characters sound about the same. The aliens are interesting. Overall, it's a decent first novel, if not great.
Three stars.
What's For Dessert?
After that hefty triple offering, you're probably in the mood for something a little lighter to clear the palate, although still featuring heroic space adventures.
Thief of Llarn is the third or fourth book written by Gardner Fox that I’ve written about for this fanzine, and a pattern has definitely emerged in terms of the man’s work. The fabulous Mr. Fox is just fine at delivering solid, exciting, comic-booky sci-fi filled with traditional action and adventure. Every novel of his that I’ve read is a delightful but shallow page turner, with plenty of swashbuckling Flash Gordon action but little character depth or new wave insights. He’s more like early Heinlein than later Heinlein, so to speak.
Which isn’t a bad thing, and Fox’s latest short novel, Thief of Llarn, fits comfortably in his oeuvre. It stars a larger-than-life lead character who seems like a DC superhero, say someone like Adam Strange. Thief of Llarn features breathtaking escapes and horrific villains and a never-ending journey across a planet and beautiful princesses, yeah yeah yeah I see your head nodding and yep we’ve all seen this sort of thing before but that derivativeness is sort of the point of the work.
Thief of Llarn sat comfortably in my local Woolworth’s next to novels by Rice Burroughs and (ugh) Lin Carter, with Tarzan and Conan and Thongor all pleasant peers to Fox’s protagonist Alan Morgan in their delivery of high adventure and traditional heroism. All swashes are buckled, all heroes are wise, all thieves are rogues, and all planets are explored. This novel gives 40¢ worth of thrills and earned the author a few hundred dollars in payment from publisher Ace Novels, and that’s a transaction which benefited everybody. It's a workmanlike novel, but that's kind of the point.
I enjoyed this book precisely as much as I wanted to. There are exciting time travel elements, thrilling escapes from dark castles, journeys across arctic wastelands, a brilliant guild of thieves and some astonishing cars gliding across the skies. We get strange variations on polar bears, a doddering Cthulhu type creature, a murder fortress and a Disney style castle. We have a hero who doesn’t introspect too much, some fighting companions of his who are of mixed genders, and even an ending that allows our hero to love two women without two-timing either of them. It’s 146 thoroughly solid pages that acts as a delivery mechanism for a story which will delight any fan of traditional planets and sorcery sci-fi.
If Llarn doesn’t have the literary merits of the works of Zelazny or Moorcock or even Leiber, that’s just fine, and those limits should be part of our expectations. Mr. Fox has a side job writing for the rather staid National Comics on series like Adam Strange, Justice League of America, The Spectre, The Atom and Tomahawk. Alan Morgan could have come right out of any of those series. And on top of his comic book work, Fox also finds time to write four novels per year. Talk about a man chained to his typewriter! Gardner Fox is a working writer delivering excitement at 35¢ a pop – and I’m just fine with that.
3 stars
After Dinner Coffee
Wrapping things up, how about a nice warm cup of java to go with that dessert?
Lester Del Rey has been one of the most prolific writers of science fiction over the last thirty years. He started in the pulps, and he's never really stopped (though he had a slow patch a few years ago).
His latest novel is with a quite new publisher: Belmont. They've been prolific since their establishment ~1960, though their line is confined mostly to anthologies and a small stable of authors. I think this is Del Rey's first book with them.
It opens with a bang. Mike Strong is an Assistant Professor of Logic at "Kane University" somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic. At the tail end of a typical class, he is suddenly visited by a vision, transported to another world entirely, though just for a moment.
So begins an increasingly disjointed existence. By turns, he finds himself in the bodies of countless alternate Mikes: the husband of an adulterous actress, fixer for the Mob, leader of a ragtag group of refugees following a nuclear war, and on and on. The only common element is Mike, and the fact that he always returns to "the real world". And to the waiting, patient ear of Paul Bender, a former soldier-of-fortune and fellow faculty member, who serves as Mike's anchor and sounding board.
Is Mike actually plane-trotting? Are his lives connected? And what awaits him if any of his alter egos die?
Scheme is the sort of book that, in the hands of someone less skilled, could have been potboiling mediocrity. Instead, Del Rey makes each of the realities, each Mike, independently interesting. The book almost feels like the other, yet-unwritten, half of The Man in the High Castle. Its threads weave together into an interesting discourse on the difference between consciousness and awareness. Plus, it's a riveting, quick read.
I don't know if it'll be a candidate for next year's Hugo, but it certainly is a feather in the growing Belmont cap.
Things are getting a bit depressing in Blighty at the moment. This can be easily seen in the musical charts. The top 4 right now are the cheery combo of Get Off of My Cloud by The Rolling Stones, The Carnival is Over by The Seekers, Yesterday Man by Chris Andrews and Tears by Ken Dodd. A little further down the hit parade are the satirical songs It’s Good News Week and Eve of Destruction.
It is possible these musicians have been looking at the news recently. Conflicts seem to be emerging all over the world. The Rhodesian crisis is continuing to roll on without any solution. In Java there has been a massacre in the continuing Civil War. Israel and its Arab neighbours are continuing to increase each other's death tolls of late. Kashmir continues to be a source of conflict between India and Pakistan, and that is not even touching on Vietnam.
Peter Griffiths, MP for Smethwick
Closer to home a bomb has been sent to the home of Smethwick MP Peter Griffiths (famed for running an anti-immigration campaign to oust a safe Labour MP) with a note apparently claiming responsibility on behalf of an anti-white “Gregory X”. However, the suspicions of the police is that the package is actually from a group of white extremists trying to make trouble. We have also seen two people charged in the so called “moors murders”, where five children were found in shallow graves in Northern England.
This air of gloom has clearly been permeating Carnell’s editorship as well. In the sixth edition, he has produced a much darker and more depressing New Writings anthology than any he has previously put out.
Continuing his omnipresence in British SF publications, about a third of this volume is made up by Keith Roberts’ new novella.
Jimmy Strong travels on a train the town of Warwell-on-Starr after his father’s death. However, he cannot work out why he desired to come here and why he has a sense of homecoming to a place he has never been.
Whilst there he becomes unnerved by the apparent “niceness of the town”, the dreamlike logic by which events are occurring, and his recurring dreams of a giant wheel centred on Warwell.
At the same time, we hear a conversation between a person apparently watching Jimmy and unnamed voices in the void.
This an ominous tale that starts as disconcertingly as it means to go on:
The voices are in a void. The void has no colour. Neither is it dark
There are formless shapes in the void. There are soundless Noises. There are swirlings and pressures, twistings and squeezings. The voices fill the gaps between nothingness. The voices are impatient, “Where? they ask “Where…?”
This kind of narrative style helps give it a darker edge, rising it above standard small town terror stories. It was however, for me, too long. It was only exploring one conceit and doesn’t really have much new to say.
I think this is going turn out to be a divisive piece. Personally, I am a fan of weird Roberts over whimsical Roberts, so it appealed to me more than some of his other writings.
A low four stars
Horizontal Man by William Spencer
One of Carnell’s old regulars returning for the first time in a year with a distinctly New Wave tale.
Here we join Timon as he experiences Earth via a time-sphere, a device which creates illusions as real as if he was personally interacting with them. Whilst Timon is a very different creature to us, with claws, a weak spine and only possessing artificial eyes, he is able to experience the world as if he was a human being. However, Timon has been forced to do this for centuries and now finds these same illusions tedious. He simply wants to be able to sleep.
This is a strange and horrifying vision of an immortal life that feels quite unlike anything I can recall reading before. The ending is a little weak, but I will give it strong marks for originality.
Four Stars
The Day Before Never by Robert Presslie
Presslie is another of the British SF magazine writers who seemed to vanish after the end of Carnell’s editorship of New Worlds. It is nice to see him back, although The Day Before Never does not resemble what I used to associate him with.
At first this does not appear to be a speculative piece, but rather a narrative of the thoughts of a killer as he travels across Europe. As it goes on our narrator meets Elke, a Finder, who can help him with his mission.
I am honestly unsure what to make of this. It starts as a dark psychological piece, moves into a travelogue, then on to an apocalyptic thriller. But all veiled with the kind of uncanny sense I have noted in the prior two stories in this anthology.
Baxter is another New Writings regular whose stories I generally look forward to, however this tale is outside of his usual style.
On the planet Huxley a space crew are transformed in various ways. They return to headquarters in a largely abandoned city on another world (possibly New York) and ruminate on how they feel.
I have read this through four times and I am still not sure I understand what has happened or even the point of it. It is certainly a disturbing tale but if there is anything beyond that I have missed it.
E. C. Tubb has seemed to me to be one of the more reliably traditional British SF writers, with even his recent pieces in New Worlds and Science Fantasy being solid tales without being outstanding (almost every piece reviewed by the Journey has been awarded three stars). This is, however, a more experimental work from the old hand.
We jump between following multiple crew members on a journey to claim a new planet in the name of the Pentarch. Each of them have their own individual grumbles about each other and we get their own expressions of discomfort at the situation.
The prose in this vignette is so florid I wonder if he is trying to satirize the New Wave writers. It is as good a guess as any as to what this is meant to be, as the whole thing is near unreadable.
Maybe best stick to what you are good at, Edwin?
One star
Atrophy by Ernest Hill
Most work is now done by machines and people can experience stimulation through artificial means. In order to avoid atrophy, people are made to use IT, a computer system which they connect to and construct logical thought streams. We follow Elvin, a worker who seems depressed at the world around him.
The most traditional tale in this anthology, reminding me somewhat of The Machine Stops. Solid but nothing surprising comes of it.
A low three stars.
Advantage by John Rackham
Colonel Jack Barclay is head of a unit terraforming planets for colonization, currently working to do so for the planet Oloron. His secretary, Lieutenant Rikki Caddas, has the unusual ability to feel someone else’s pain before they experience it, keeping the accident rate on all projects incredibly low.
Coming to the planet are observers Honey and Wake to inspect the project. Whilst Barclay is determined to keep both his star rating and Caddas’ abilities a secret, Caddas begins to fall for Honey.
Rackham displays his usual degree of solid storytelling ability, taking typical themes of SF and putting his own spin on them. However, there is a significant flaw that cannot be overlooked. Barclay is very anti-woman throughout the novelette and the story seems to agree with him. If there is a moral to this tale it seems to be that getting involved with women will lead to nothing but trouble.
Two stars
Endarkenment
After the very high quality of New Writings 5, number 6 is a bit of a let-down. It is still a pretty reasonable anthology, but Carnell is continuing to rely on his usual Rolodex of writers, where many of them do not seem to be up to the task of producing the kind of experimental tale he wants to feature.
New Writings 7 is not due until January, hopefully the new year will bring in some newer writers, helping these anthologies live up to their name.
There are two John Brunners (or maybe three). One is the brilliant New Wave writer who gave us classics like last year's Hugo Finalist, The Whole Man, and a standout from a few years ago, Listen…The Stars!. Then there's the rather conventional, American-style Brunner whose work is competent but not amazing. (The third Brunner produces work of such embarrassingly low quality that it's hard to believe he's related to Brunner #1 — thankfully, this Brunner rarely makes an appearance.)
The Long Result is definitely a work by Brunner #2. In brief:
Several hundred years from now, Earth is a stagnating paradise, its torch in the process of being passed on to its more vigorous colonies, particularly that on Epsilon Indi: Starhome. Roald Savage Vincent is a placid Assistant Chief at the Bureau of Culture, happy to catalog the poetry and sculpture of the Terran colony Viridian, when the xenophobic "The Stars are for Man League" launches a terrorist attack on a clutch of Tau Cetian visitors. Now, racing against time, Vincent must pursue an attempted murder investigation before the Starhomers capitalize on the incident to declare their independence from Earth.
Brunner builds some decent worlds: the senescent Earth; vigorous, kibbutz-like Starhome; Amish-esque Viridian; the chlorine-breathing Tau Cetians; the nigh-indestructible, clearly superior, yet starflight-less Regulans; these are all nicely fleshed out. I also liked the concept, which I had not seen before, that star drives are only good for one use. Thus, spaceships must be big enough to carry spares, greatly limiting their range.
Result is also a decent who/whydunnit story, though elements of it are painfully obvious and it's difficult to watch the otherwise brilliant Vincent struggle with them.
What keeps Result out of four-star territory is its shallowness. It all seems rather pat and glib and comes together too easily. Plus, everyone's emotions and deliveries are dialed up a notch, with exclamation points used with almost as much abandon as is found in comic books.
But as a read, it's extremely brisk and enjoyable, which puts it on the good side of three stars.
Call it three and a half.
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I picked up the latest Ace Double Novel at my local Woolworth's the other day, and had to share my opinions of the two novels with my fine science fiction friends.
On one side of the double was the deliriously wacky cover shown below, which actually is a scene in John Rackham's meandering but intriguing new novel. By my reckoning, this is at least the third Ace double this prolific author has delivered over the last two years, and though I haven't read either Watch on Peter or Danger from Vega yet, this slim novel – a true Ace double at 137 pages – makes me want to try them out too.
The main character of We, the Venusians is Anthony Taylor, a man who feels himself out of place on a future version of Earth. Though the timing of that future isn't revealed in the novel, it's clear he lives in a bit of a dystopian world. Advertising is pervasive and unavoidable, commerce and greed rule the world, and the arts are trivialized and mocked.
This all matters because Taylor is an accomplished musician and the owner of a small club in which he plays Liszt, Schubert, Bach and the other classical artists to an ever-diminishing tribe of listeners. He is truly a man on the outside of his time. That's why he has a mixed reaction when a strange man wanders into Taylor's club and offers an obscene amount of money to travel to the Terran colony on Venus to play music, Taylor is both intrigued and repulsed by the opportunity. He is intrigued by chance to get rich quick and the chance to make a new start. Taylor is also repulsed by the idea because he has a secret he fears will be revealed on his new home: though his skin appears human color, he is actually a Greenie, a green-skinned Venusian native.
Through a series of plot machinations, Taylor does end up journeying to Venus along with two other musicians, one of whom, named Martha Merrill, is a beautiful woman who possesses an unbelievable singing voice. They also discover that the human colonists have enslaved thousands of apparently mindless Greenies to do menial labor in order to keep the colony buzzing along. Taylor and Merrill escape the human domes into the native lands, and both performers literally go native – Martha is also secretly a Venusian.
Though Merrill soon dies, Taylor finds his destiny among his own people and ends up becoming a force for revolution among his adopted people against the colonists.
One of the most intriguing elements of the book is the beans which grow on Venus and provide nutrition and energy for the people living there. While the Venusians protect their precious resource carefully, the humans try to exploit the beans and export the incredibly valuable food back to Terra. This element of the plot had an intriguing post-colonial feel to it. It's easy for the reader to substitute tobacco or silk as the exploited resource in our own history. It's a smart choice by Rackham to bring in that idea, as it adds resonance and contrast to the human/greenie struggle.
We, the Venusians is full of interesting ideas, from its resonances to the Civil Rights movement of today to its treatment of Indians in the west to the ways pop music overwhelms classics. Rackham keeps his story focused on character, and that keeps the reader involved in this novel. I enjoyed reading how Anthony Taylor grows and changes as this book goes along, and that growth gives this book a lot of its energy.
That said, the book rambles and wanders a bit too much and seems to frequently lose its focus. I know it's anathema to us fans of Ace doubles, but another 20 pages of meat would have made this book's bones stronger.
Fred Saberhagen is another science fiction writer who has settled into a journeyman status at this point. He's appeared in a number of the science fiction magazines in recent years, and his "Berserker" stories have started to gain more attention from aficionados. My colleague David Levinson has praised Saberhagen's ability to pull off modern fiction within the framework of space opera, and that skill is well on display in The Water of Thought.
Like We, the Venusians, Saberhagen's novel takes place on an alien planet on which native peoples are in conflict with Terrans. The planet Kappa is a kind of garden of Eden, a paradise and perfect place for rest and relaxation for exhausted Space Force planeteers. It's also the home to native peoples and a type of water which provides amazing changes in people. When a planeteer named Jones samples the water, he goes crazy and disappears from the colony. Planeteer Boris Brazil must follow to investigate.
Jones becomes megalomaniacal under the influence of the "water of thought", and rapidly becomes an addict. Jones is constantly seeking his next drink, like a heroin addict looking for his next fix. When Jones forces Brazil to drink the water, it has a different effect on him. Brazil is nearly paralyzed and loses his free will while in proximity to Jones, but does not become addicted. The battle between the two men, and the story of the humans and natives caught in the middle, is an important part of the book.
Like We theVenusians, this book has a natural resource as a key point of conflict between humans and Kappans as the water is seen by some as a resource to be exploited for personal gain. The human mayor of Kappa sells the water as a drug, trying to earn a neat profit off of a local resource. Meanwhile a human scientist has slightly more noble goals: he believes the water may help the local hominid species gain intelligence and gain their freedom from slavery by the natives.
The Water of Thought is a more complex book than it seems at first glance, and reveals some of the shallowness of Rackham's world. Where Rackham draws a pretty clear line between humans and greenies on Venus, Saberhagen presents Kappa as a more complex world. Kappa is a place where the lines between hero and villain are somewhat unclear, where everybody is exploiting each other in some ways, and in which the precious natural resource has ambiguous effects.
This book adroitly shows Saberhagen's skills at mixing space opera elements with a psychological and philosophical elements. The Water of Thought feels contemporary for our year of 1965, a time in which the smartest people are embracing ideas of the past but providing new approaches to those ideas.
4 stars.
Gamma #5: The Worst Sci-fi Magazine Ever Published?
by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall
Back in the early 1950s, when the market was flooded with magazines, there used to be plenty of forgettable magazines that would crank out terrible stories. Whilst it may be possible my memory is cheating me, I cannot recall a single issue as awful as this issue of Gamma:
This terrible issue of Gamma starts as it means to go on with another lurid cover from John Healey. I had hoped the style from the last issue was just due to it being a special edition calling back to the 30s, apparently this is the direction the magazine is going, with it illustrating the lead novella.
John Healey himself is a talented artist apparently working on shows like Johnny Quest, so I more question the editorial choice than his skill.
Now, take a deep breath, and let us all work together to get through this issue:
Nesbit, by Ron Goulart
Taking up nearly half the magazine, the perpetually disappointing Ron Goulart returns as, apparently, the editors simply cannot resist his writing. Once again, I find my eyebrow raised at this assertion.
This novella follows an attempt to shoot a pilot for a “jungle series”. When the Hollywood lot turns out to be in use Tim McCarey goes to visit Vincent Belgraf’s estate, to convince him to let them use his transplanted jungle for the shoot. However, on arriving he cannot get ahold of Mr. Belgraf and the other residents tell him it is not for rent.
Tim believes something else is amiss and finds a gorilla running around the estate in a soldier’s outfit. It turns out that this is Nesbit Belgraf. After being attacked by his own private army he had his brain transplanted into that of a gorilla, so he will be strong enough to become emperor of the United States and battle the unseen forces secretly controlling everyone’s lives.
Whilst Tim does not agree with this fascist conspiracy-minded gorilla and his family, he agrees to help with his propaganda efforts in exchange for being able to use part of the jungle for filming. However, Nesbit is very emotional and has difficulty keeping his cool.
I have trouble working out what Goulart is trying to do with this piece. If it is a satire on fascism and right-wing conspiracy theories, it fails. For, apart from Nesbit being a gorilla, it feels more like a documentary piece, as I am fully aware of the existence of those who believe in Jewish-Communist conspiracies controlling the world. It never does anything to really contradict what the Brelgrafs say, nor even to particularly suggest that their plans to put all non-white people into concentration camps or exterminate them, is as horrific as it really is.
If it is trying to be just an adventure story, it also fails. Intelligent gorilla stories are two-a-penny in comic books but are usually mindlessly enjoyable. This is incredibly dull and padded, full of side details that another might make charming, yet Goulart makes unbelievably tedious.
I could imagine many interesting ways a more skilled writer could have taken this piece, but instead Goulart produces something truly dreadful.
An exceptionally low One Star.
Policy Conference, by Sylvia Dees and Ted White
Peter and The Chief meet in the latter’s office to discuss how they could improve “interregional relations” for their boss Old Nick (I offer no prizes for guessing who that actually is).
Whilst this story is more supernatural than science fictional it weirdly has the same conceit as the previous tale, of someone having to work on PR for a monster. It just helps highlight how unoriginal a concept this is. Mercifully, this one is very short.
One Star
We get the return of the unrelated sketches. Depressingly they are better than the actual text.
Auto Suggestion, by Charles Beaumont
Returning from the earlier issues of Gamma (publishing the best story in issue 1) The Twilight Zone writer brings a story of automobiles. Unfortunately, this is definitely not his best work.
Abnar Llewellyn, a nervous driver, suddenly finds his car talking to him and it encourages him to be a more aggressive on the roads. It also starts to interfere in other areas on Abnar’s life, asking out women for him and instructing him on how to commit crimes.
I have gone on record saying I am no lover of cars, and so tales like this generally leave me cold. However, even accounting for that, I felt the story was bad. It is painfully overwritten to the point of being juvenile:
A truck’s air horn began some car lengths away. A frightening sound, a terrible sound, like the scream of a wounded elephant, and it led other smaller cars to renew their anger, shrill now beneath the dump-truck’s might below, shrill and chittering, like arboreal creatures gone mad.
Even Lovecraft would probably tell him he needed to cut out some description!
It also ends up not doing anything particularly interesting, just being a story where the protagonist does unpleasant things and may or may not be insane.
One Star
Welcome to Procyon IV, by Chester H. Carlfi
This is not a new writer to these pages but, rather, another story by longtime editor Charles E. Fritch, contributing his 4th story to the magazine.
In this vignette, Jameson and his wife are the last people left alive on the dead world of Porycon IV, with humans having wiped out the natives and disease killing the rest of the human population. On his ancient radio Jameson hears a human expedition coming but when they come to in to his cabin they discover a terrible truth about Jameson’s wife.
This feels like a pale imitation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian stories. It is more competent than the previous two pieces in the magazine, but a lot remains heavily unexplained. Also including a genocide in one line without any further thought left a bad taste in my mouth.
One and a half stars
Interest, by Richard Matheson
Cathryn is to be married to Gerald Cruickshank, yet find his parents and their house terrifying. However, she cannot work out why that is.
As stated in the introduction, this is a Poe-esque tale, although the purpose of it escapes me. Feels more like a derivative work you would find in a bad fanzine.
One Star
Another sketch, holding my interest much more than Matheson’s story did.
Lullaby and Goodnight, by George Clayton Johnson
In the aftermath of a nuclear war, an outpost of shelters is setup outside of an unnamed city. Our narrator (also unnamed) talks about the trouble Sarah Hartman is having with trying to keep her baby Adam alive in the radiation-soaked world.
This vignette marks a short foray into the New Wave from the usually conservative Gamma. It is not the best example, but the melancholic atmosphere raises it above the rest of the stories here.
This is a reprint from New Detective Magazine from almost 19 years ago and, unfortunately, it shows.
It narrates the story of a haemophiliac author, named Rob, who keeps being sent sharp objects in the mail, in an attempt to stop his book from being published.
I know Bradbury is popular right now, but do we have to reprint everything he did in his early days? The truth is he has evolved as a writer and most of his work before 1950 is simply not that good!
This is not really a science fiction or fantasy piece, but I suppose it could be classified as uncanny horror. Unfortunately, it lacks anything interesting, it seems more like a sequence of unusual events, like reading someone’s disconnected nightmare.
The story is written in a pale imitation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style along with a second person narration. Whilst I do like experimentation this one fails for me.
Two stars
The Late Mr. Adams, by Steve Allen
Another reprint, this time from the publisher’s own collection, Fourteen for Tonight. This is my first experience with Mr. Adams' writings myself, although I hear he is big television personality in the United States.
This is a very silly life-story of a man who is always late. Really, that is all there is to it.
One Star
Wet Season, by Dennis Etchison
Etchison is generally a middling new writer. Shows promise but I am still waiting for a story that astounds me. Unfortunately, this is not it.
In a town there have been an unusually high number of drownings and the women seem to be acting strangely. At the same time rainfall levels are apparently increasing. After Madden’s daughter dies his Brother Bart comes to tell him of his suspicions.
Etchison really seems to like his Puppet Masters style stories and this is another one in that mold. I am willing to concede that it has a good atmosphere but that is all I am going to give.
A low two stars
I love this illustration. Why couldn’t this have been one of the pieces inside?
Summing Up
This issue of the magazine is truly terrible. Some stories are not as bad as the others, but it would be a stretch to say anything is actually good.
I am beginning to feel foolish that I took out a subscription from issue 2, as I have already paid for more of these. However, if the quality continues like this, I find it hard to imagine this magazine continuing much beyond that.
That's all for today, folks! Join us next month for another exciting Galactoscope!
and…
Our next Journey Show: At the Movies, is going to be a blast!
As Summer draws on, we seem to have got into a somewhat lethargic routine here in Britain. Is it the weather, or is that we are saving our energy for the Worldcon at the end of next month?
As per usual, the issue that arrived first in the post this month was Science Fantasy..
And we have another Keith Roberts’ cover, this month back to the weird style of the January-June covers. I must be getting used to them – this one’s OK. The light tones reflect the golden Summer us Brits are known to get every year… or perhaps not.
The Editorial this month takes up that idea mentioned a few times by Kyril in previous months. It talks of the 1930's origins of sf before going on to say that sf must evolve from what it was. Like our reading habits change as we grow older and become more mature, so must the genre. As per usual, it is well argued and explained, but nothing that different to what we’ve read recently. It also echoes Mike Moorcock’s rallying call in last month’s New Worlds.
To the stories themselves.
The Desolator, by Eric C. Williams
The first story this month (title on the cover being “The Desolators”, title on the story being the singular) is a Time Travel tale, from an author we last saw in last month’s New Worlds with The Silent Ship.
John Prince is a thief, but one who travels into the past and the future to loot what he needs. On his trail are the Time Police, determined to catch those who profit from other’s work. It’s a nice idea, though one that is pretty much the whole point of the story. There’s a twist in the tale at the end which seemed a little throw-away to me. In summary, it’s OK, but not the best time travel story ever written, nor the best start to an issue of Science Fantasy. 3 out of 5.
Chemotopia, by Ernest Hill
Sometimes the title tells you exactly what the story is going to be. So – Chemicals…drugs… you get the idea. Chemotopia gives us an idea of how crime and punishment could be dealt with in a future society dependent on drugs. Crimes are dealt with on the principle that punishment as vengeance for crimes is outmoded and is being replaced with rehabilitation, chemical usage and reintegration. When a trio of unruly teenagers are arrested for damaging property and injuring people, the view of the older police of what punishment should be utilised is at odds with the modern-day approach. We then go through a number of procedures, involving drugs, to mollify the delinquents. The ending is rather jarring, involving a doctor and a nurse whose attraction may, or may not, be influenced by drugs. It reads like a simpler, less intelligent version of Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange. 2 out of 5.
Another Keith Roberts story, making his grand total of pages in this issue a mere 84 out of 130 pages. But this is another Anita story, the teenage witch who has wound her way through this magazine over the past couple of years. The Idiot’s Lantern of the title is what some call television, and the story is about what Anita and her Granny make of this innovation of the modern age. When they have a television fitted to the cottage, Anita and Granny Thompson become obsessed, to the point that they apply and become contestants on a quiz show recorded in London. Unsurprisingly this causes problems as they go to the big city.
Like all Anita stories, this one might divide opinion, although they are popular. For me it depends on how much Anita’s mentor Granny Thompson appears, as generally the more she’s there, the less I like the story. This story has considerable Granny Thompson presence, but I found it tolerable, though I get the impression that these stories are running out of steam a little. It’s lightly humorous – for some. 3 out of 5.
Paradise for A Punter, by Clifford C. Reed
The title of this one might need a little explaining to non-Anglophiles in that a ‘punter’ is a gambler, someone willing to take a risk. It is important to know that as the story is of Mr. Rogers who seems to be offered a risk he cannot afford to miss, although there’s the inevitable twist in the story expected. A fair Twilight Zone type story. 3 out of 5.
A Way With Animals, by John Rackham
The return of John Rackham, last seen in the March 1965 issue. This is one of John’s more superficial stories about a man who reluctantly takes on responsibility for a pet dragon. Chaos ensues. It’s pretty much what’s expected. I’m tempted to call it a shaggy dog type of story… except it’s about a dragon. 3 out of 5.
Grinnel, by Dikk Richardson
Richardson’s short story in last month’s New Worlds had the dubious honour of getting my first one-star summary. I was hoping that this would be better. It’s not but it is memorable, even if it is not in a good way – a meaningless snippet of a story about a man who seems to drive others insane by repeating the word “Grinnel”. At two pages, at least the story’s not long, but still probably too long. 2 out of 5.
You might have noticed that I did enjoy most of Keith’s first part last month. I was interested to see whether his story of giant wasps could maintain the pace of the first part.
Last issue we were left with the cliff-hanger that Bill Sampson and his young friend Jane had made a dash to the coast in order to try and escape the giant wasps and leave the country. Jane had been put upon a boat to France, whilst Bill had returned to England and was grabbed by a group of adults who seemed to be working with a wasp….
So, in this part we widen our perspective and are introduced to a motley crew of various refugees. Bill and his new group are being herded by the wasps to an old Army camp and kept there in order to collect supplies and work for the wasps. The humans seem to adapt to this, although this may be perhaps in some sort of collective shock. Bill and others from his hut in the barracks escape and hide out in caves near Shepton Mallet. They begin to fight back, targeting camps and wasp nests, with varying degrees of success. It ends on another cliff-hanger as Bill tries again to get to the coast to find Jane.
Often in the middle of a story the pace can slow a little. This is not the case here. However, although it might sound like it, this second part is not some boy’s adventure tale, either. It is quite dark with some of the characters clearly traumatised from their experiences, something which Roberts is not afraid to show. There are some shocking moments. 4 out of 5.
Summing up Science Fantasy
Well, we’ve certainly got a range of stories in Science Fantasy this month – time travel, drugs, dragons and giant wasps! However, what we gain in breadth we seem to lack in depth as the other stories are a bit pedestrian, frankly. After a wobbly start, the issue improves as it goes along. I’m pleased that The Furies has managed to keep the momentum of last month’s story going, and I am really looking forward to its conclusion next month.
This month’s editorial from Mike Moorcock is one of two halves. The first tells us how great Harry Harrison’s novel is (I’ll comment on that later) before going on to entice us with future attractions. The second part reminds us that we have a Worldcon in London in about one month’s time, which we should be excited about. (Have I said in the last few minutes that Brian will be Guest of Honour at next month’s Worldcon in London?)
We also have the appearance of “Dr. Peristyle” (who is rumoured to be a certain Mr. Aldiss), who will alternate with the Letters Pages in the next few months. His somewhat unique and unusual responses have been great fun in the British Science Fiction Association journal Vector, and I look forward to reading more of them here.
This one, the first of three parts, is heralded with a bit of a flourish. You may have noticed that the front cover of this month’s issue proclaims it as “Harry Harrison’s finest novel”, although to be fair he’s only had three published to date, with similar themes – Planet of the Damned, Deathworld and its sequel Deathworld 2.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this novel has been commended by Harry’s friend and co-author, Brian Aldiss! (Have I said in the last few minutes that Brian will be Guest of Honour at next month’s Worldcon in London?)
Illustration by Harry Harrison
The bad news is that it is a parody, something that in my experience splits the readership. Some will be impressed by how wittily the author and his prose cocks a snook at the establishment, whilst others will just not find it funny and even rather silly.
Guess which reader I am?
It may be a generational thing. If I was aged twenty-something, I might be amused by the naming of characters such as recruiting 'Sergeant Grue' or 'Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang' that good-intentioned Bill encounters as he bumbles his way through military training and active service against the alien Chinger. If I had undertaken National Service, I might be impressed by how the tale repeats real-life tales of bureaucracy and incompetence, amplified to a supersonic level.
But I did not, and as a result it just seems rather silly, and too forced to be funny. I can see what it is trying to do and was a little amused by the jabs at the old guard, but in the end I found it rather monotone and rather relentless. Whilst it did make me think of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in a new light, I don’t think J G Ballard has much competition here, or even Robert Sheckley! But I did like Harry’s own illustrations. 3 out of 5.
Illustration by Harry Harrison
[This novel appears to be an expansion of The Starsloggers, which appeared in Galaxy last year. I liked it more than Mark, giving it 5 stars, but perhaps it loses something in the lengthening. (Ed.)]
The Source, by Brian Aldiss
Speaking of Harry’s friend…. According to the banner at the top of the story, The Source is an attempt to write a science fiction story based on Jung, which probably would’ve worked more for me had I more than a fleeting knowledge of the philosopher’s ideas. However, from what I've read here this seems to involve sex, nakedness and your mother, in various dream-like states. As this is an sf magazine, though, we have all of that bolted on to a notional science fiction idea of aliens visiting Earth and trying to determine what they see. Not one of Brian’s best, but I was a little hamstrung here by my limited knowledge of philosophers. 2 out of 5.
And Worlds Renewed, by George Collyn
The reappearance of George after his book reviews last month. This story seems to show the sinuous relationship between decadence and art, for in this future culture and artistic reputation can be determined by the work of an artist on a planet sized scale. Nefo Seteri is commissioned to complete a commission on Rigel XXII by a man-with-more-money-than-sense, Junter Firmole. The project is completed by Seteri in secret, until the grand unveiling, which is the surprise ending. It’s really a one-idea story, with lots of description about Seteri’s process, leading to the conclusion, the ultimate in narcissistic planet-shaping. I did wonder how one would go about keeping some art this big a secret. 3 out of 5.
The Pulse of Time, by W. T. Webb
A weird but short story of a prominent heart surgeon who is offered a job by a mysterious benefactor. When they meet, the surgeon is shown what I will describe as a life-clock, running by being connected to a living heart. Where the heart that powers the clock comes from is the big reveal at the end. 3 out of 5.
By The Same Door, by Mack Reynolds
Another attempt by Moorcock to sneak an American author into this British magazine? (Mind you, it has worked for Vernor Vinge from a couple of issues ago, who, as you will see later, did very well in that issue’s ratings.)
However, this one's not great. This is a story about an unpleasant man, Mr. Bowlen, who insists on Alternatives Inc. honouring its promise to customers of being able to put someone in any world they want. Bowlen demands to be sent to a place where some “secret perversion” that he has read about takes place. The difficulty for the company is that he never found out what the secret perversion was, exactly. And neither do we, in this story that sputters out to no real resolution. 2 out of 5.
Preliminary Data, by Mike Moorcock
I’m amazed that the editor has time to write as well these days, but here’s a Jerry Cornelius story that combines the action of The Avengers TV series with modern cultural references and religion. It is difficult to describe, but involves stylishly trendy modern icon Jeremiah Cornelius and his wife Maj-Britt appearing to be kidnapped by Miss Brunner and taken to Finland. In actual fact, they have had nothing of the sort happen and are actually involved in creating some sort of god-like superhuman.
This is one of those stories where everything seems to have been thrown in. There's some meanderings on the cyclical nature of cosmology and religion, combined with contemporary cultural references and the perhaps inevitable psychedelic dream sequences. It should be a combination I dislike, but I was impressed by the fast-pace and enthusiasm of it all. Rather odd, but I liked it. 3 out of 5.
Songflower, by Kenneth Hoare
The title gives this one away, a minor tale of what happens to sailors – sorry, spacemen – when they call into port. In this case, they spend time in bars with aliens and then get fleeced by local traders with an alien singing plant. 3 out of 5.
Book Reviews, Articles and Dr. Peristyle
In the reviews this month James Colvin (aka Mike Moorcock – how does he manage the time?) evaluates H L Gold’s story collection The Old Die Rich and the “undemanding” fourth volume in the New Writings in SF series edited by John Carnell.
New name Ron Bennett reviews The Joyous Invasions by Theodore Sturgeon in some detail. Hilary Bailey (aka Mrs. Moorcock) reviews The Screaming Face by John Lymington, The Thirst Quenchers by Rick Raphael and the ‘frightening’ Paper Dolls by L. P. Davies.
So to Dr. Peristyle. This perhaps has to be read, rather than described:
As you can see from the extract above, here the not-so-good Doctor answers, in his acerbic style, questions asked by readers. It’s all in good-humour and a little silly, but it made me smile.
But as I mentioned earlier, hasn't Vernor done well? I expect to see more American authors in the future.
Summing up New Worlds
How much you like this issue will depend on how much you like Bill, the Galactic Hero. It dominates the issue in terms of pages, although there is a little variety in terms of the shorter stories. I liked the Moorcock, which I was surprised to find that I liked more than his other material of late, and would happily read more of the free-wheeling, asexual, anti-hero Jerry Cornelius in the future.
The message is clear, though – this ‘new’ New Worlds is not afraid to make fun of what has come before it, as it sets off to blaze a new trail. It’s edgy and a little cynical, although at the same time rather British in its gentle manner of knocking down precious icons of the science fiction world.
Summing up overall
Both issues have their strengths and weakness this month. However, the continued excellence of The Furies means that this month’s best issue for me is Science Fantasy.
And that’s it for this time. I'm off to get more British sun!
A snapshot of Margate this summer.
(Or perhaps not.)
Until the next…
(come join us in Portal 55, Galactic Journey's virtual lounge!)
As I briefly mentioned last time, much of this month has been about the country dealing with the death and subsequent state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. It has felt like the passing of an era – the old guard, admittedly, but an end, nevertheless. It seems to have cast a cloud over everything.
I turned to the two magazines to try and cheer me up.
[Impressive cover this month. Remember the bad old days covers of the Carnell New Worlds era?]
Looking beyond the arty cover by Agosta Morol, I see that the magazine, like New Worlds, now has an Associate Editor. In this case its J. Parkhill-Rathbone (no first name given.) This is, no doubt, to cope with the extra volume created by the magazine going monthly.
Not that that is shown particularly by the Editorial, which even admits that there’s little to say this month and then fills the space by mentioning up-coming works of interest. There’s also an intriguing glimpse into the life of an editor, which involves Kyril, Jim Ballard, Brian Aldiss and some Liebfraumilch.
To the stories themselves.
The Outcast, by Harry Harrison
We start with a big name, the usually wonderful Harry Harrison. He has been here before but in his many guises as short story author, editor and collaborator. It is great to read a longer story. This is one of those “spaceships as cruise liner” type of tales, with a notorious passenger causing unrest amongst the passengers. I guess that it must be akin to being on a holiday with someone like Josef Mengele!
It’s told with the usual Harrison skill, with the occasional plot-point to keep the reader guessing. The protagonist is given a surprisingly nuanced character and is not the monster some would suggest, and by the end the story becomes one of redemption. Solidly thought-provoking, if unremarkable. It’s a good start to the issue. 3 out of 5.
Song of the Syren, by Robert Wells
A story about singing alien plants and the development of bad worker relationships, but also about the trouble women cause in space when surrounded by men. As bad as it sounds, this attempts to tell a mystery plot with misogynistic clichés that I thought went out with the pulps of the 1940’s. For example, “She was a sixth year student, one of the brightest in the unit’s botanical section, but it was an open secret that she would resign when her seven years tour of duty was complete and opt for a mating and reproductive role back in Solar.” Not one of the magazine’s brightest moments. 2 out of 5.
Moriarty, by Philip Wordley
A crime story about the protagonist’s relationship with a female telepathic cop in L.A. The twist here is that the policewoman wants the burglar to hold off from robbing a bank so that she can get a bigger catch, a big-time mobster planning to rob the same bank in a few days’ time. Another predictable story that doesn’t upset things too much. 2 out of 5.
Peter Raynor is a biochemist who finds himself abducted by a group of VIPs for a secret mission – the Prime Minister has been struck down with Ringer’s Parethis – a brain disease which has only been cured before by accident – before a major political conference in three weeks’ time. Raynor is asked to try and come up with a cure for the PM. The solution appears to be one in the past, so Raynor travels to get it. An adventure story, admittedly fast-paced, that seems rather contrived when you stop to think about it. 2 out of 5.
What? Another month, another Keith Roberts story? This is the latest from a magazine favourite, an Anita story that was delayed from last month’s issue. If you like the continuing stories of this young teenage witch, described as “shameless” in the banner, I can’t see why you wouldn’t like this one – even with the still-present annoying Granny. This time Anita and Granny Thompson are on holiday at the seaside when Anita meets a mermaid, much to Granny’s disgust. Anita catches a Serpent ride into the sea… and then the story abruptly stops, as if the writer had run out of time and space. I would have liked more, which is the sign of a good story, although I’m going to dock a point for its abrupt end, which makes it feel like more of a story extract than a story. However, like most of these Anita stories, The Jennifer is light and fun, even if Granny still irks me. 3 out of 5.
A Cave in the Hills, by R. W. Mackelworth
Here’s an author you may recognise from the Carnell New Worlds days. He was last seen in the February 1964 issue of New Worldswith The Unexpected Martyr. This is the story of a bored housewife who in a utopian future finds that her boring husband has ended up in debt and in Debtors prison. Her own future is uncertain, dependent on a visit from the Adjudicator. But bigger issues are at play. This is another story of the value of identity and being different from the majority, themes that Mackelworth has examined before, but manages pretty well. 3 out of 5.
Hunt a Wild Dream, by D. R. Heywood
Another new writer. Do you remember recently when editor Kyril Bonfiglioni said that he was a fan of “time-travel safari” stories? Well, this one starts with a safari, at least.
Our hero of the piece is Manfred ‘Mac’ Cullen, known for “bringing them back alive” (which wins points from me, though I’m not entirely sure whether that statement means animals or tourists!) We follow Cullen as he starts a journey into the African grasslands, which suggests that he’s a more complex character than my stereotype might suggest. However, this one just starts to get interesting and then stops. There’s some ruminations on the spiritual beliefs of the local Nandi tribe, that Cullen knows and understands, but as soon as we hear of some murders that may have happened on lands where the locals refuse to go, the story stops, to be continued next month.
Based on what I’ve read here, this could develop into an interesting and scary story or fizzle to nothing. The jury is out, but based on what I’ve read here I’ll give Hunt A Wild Dream a cautious 3 out of 5 so far.
Summing up Science Fantasy
Although this issue of Science Fantasy is more up-beat than the last, I am a little underwhelmed by it. There’s nothing badly wrong – OK, there’s one story that’s really not good – but it’s a solid issue. And that may be the problem. Most of it is entertaining, but there’s nothing here to really grab my attention like the Burnett Swann serial did in previous months. I’m pretty sure that this is another issue that was worth me buying, yet I’ll have forgotten about by the end of the year. The best stories for me are the Harrison, and even that is not the best of his I’ve read, and the Anita story, which has its issues.
So let’s go to my second issue.
The Second Issue At Hand
As the cover heralds, this month’s New Worlds has a couple of well-known authors: J G Ballard and Arthur C Clarke.
This month’s Editorial, I’m pleased to say, is back to the discussion format that we seemed to have lost last month. It’s another call to arms, a rumination that science fiction is moving away from the traditional space exploration story to ones set on Earth and are more involved with inner space – the mind and its “capacities and defects”. It’s an interesting point, and I guess one which makes the British SF increasingly different to the majority of stories I see in the American magazines. It ends with the point that new young writers must look forward and not back as the values of the Sixties are not those of the 1950’s.
A stand-alone novelette from Barrington J (BJ) Bailey this month. And I liked it very much, up to the end.
In 2034 the Earth has been invaded and peacefully vanquished by aliens, who whilst keeping control over the locals fight against each other over the Earth territories. The story is told by Smith, the human second in command who with Holath Horan Sorn has kept Britain generally peaceful for the alien King of All Britain, although, unsurprisingly, Sorn and our narrator are seen as traitors by many of the native populace.
The story begins with the fact that Sorn has died and there is an impending power struggle to take his place. Smith is bullied by Hotch to take the human’s side and use the disruption to cause chaos for the King, who has relied heavily on the advice of his human advisors to maintain order. It has in the past made decisions that are mistakes that the humans have had to nullify.
At the same time the King is concerned with a war between himself as King of Britain and other aliens who have taken over Brazil. Much of the story is how Smith tries to fulfil the role of Sorn as intermediary between the alien King, who is aware that his thinking is very different to that of Humans, and at the same time Smith struggles to represent the British people, who are constantly fretting under the control of an alien leader.
So why did I really like this one? The setup is intriguing. It’s an engaging mixture of historical ideas (kingdoms, courts, feuding Kings) in a future setting (spaceships, alien art, electric trains), with a character-based tone that I really engaged with. I was going to give this one 4 stars, until I got to the ending, where the author abruptly gives everything up and the lead character basically says “I don’t know what happened.” 3 out of 5.
Sunjammer, by Arthur C Clarke
I really like Arthur’s clarity of prose and this one doesn’t disappoint, although my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that it is a reprint of a story first published in the USA as a juvenile story in Boy’s Life in March 1964. Sunjammer is the story of a race around the Solar System using spacecraft that use solar winds for propulsion. I really liked it as a good old-fashioned ‘sense of wonder’ story that Clarke is so good at – but it also shows us what was mentioned in the Editorial, that British SF has changed a lot recently and this one is definitely old school. Like I said last month about another old-style story, Sunjammer’s exciting and I enjoyed it a lot, but it is nothing that would be out of place from the magazines of the 1950’s, and it has been printed before. 3 out of 5.
First Dawn, by Donald Malcolm
Here’s the return of an author from the Carnell Era. Donald Malcolm was last seen in the April 1964 issue of New Worlds, the last issue edited by Carnell. I thought that beyond the reach of storms was OK, if nothing special. I liked this one more, though it is a minor piece describing dawn on an ice planet as seen from the perspective of a mole-like alien. It’s nicely done but like Malcolm's last effort nothing to remember for too long. 2 out of 5.
Dune Limbo, by J G Ballard
To say that this story is much-anticipated is an understatement. If you didn’t know already, JG is making an impact not just here in Britain but also overseas with his strange fiction. He is an author that always makes me think and pushes literary boundaries at the same time. I never know what a story of his is going to say, or indeed how it is going to say it!
Dune Limbo is a little bit of a cheat however, as it is an extract from a bigger work. The Drought (also known as The Burning World to you in the US) is due out as a novel later in the year (hurrah!) and Dune Limbo is from the middle part. This is a little disappointing – how do you feel about starting a novel in the middle? – but there is a lengthy summary of what has gone before at the start.
It is obvious early on that Dune Limbo does have some of the usual Ballard-ian themes though. It is basically about a world in decline, where a global drought has changed the world we know. To this Ballard brings his usual types of characters – strange and often unpleasant. This middle part shows us a story of this new harsh environment, with humans hanging on to existence in a world different to our own.
This sounds like the Ballard of The Drowned World and Equinox. But…. dare I say it, Dune Limbo is slightly more straight-forward, perhaps even less challenging than some of Ballard’s other recent work I’ve read. It feels like there’s elements here I’ve read before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that for me it doesn’t quite have the impact that, say, The Terminal Beach had. Don’t get me wrong – there’s some lovely images created by the prose, for example – but it may not create as much of a stir as some of his earlier work. I liked it, though.
Perhaps it may introduce the author to some new readers previously unfamiliar with Ballard’s work, but I felt a little short-changed as it felt more like an advertisement for his upcoming novel than an actual story. Nevertheless, Ballard’s prose is still seductive, and so for all my grumbles it is still 4 out of 5.
Escape from Evening, by Michael Moorcock
And here’s another story by the Editor. This time it is a novelette from the ongoing series that riffs heavily on the later stages of H G Wells’ The Time Machine. (Well, if you’re going to borrow, why not borrow from the best?)
Escape from Evening is set in a distant future, where a Moonite decides to go and live on the Earth. Despite the Earth people feeling that he would find their decaying society boring, Pepin Hunchback revels in the fact that Earth is real and not artificial like the Moon and decides to explore his new home. His travels lead him to Lanjis Liho, where we pick up points and meet characters we have heard of before back in the story The Time Dweller in the February 1964 issue of New Worlds. Lanjis Liho is the home of the fabled Chrononauts who (as we found out in the last Chrononaut story) can travel through time at will. Pepin attempts to travel back in time to a place where he would feel more in tune with their world, but there are revelations it would be wrong for me to reveal here.
There are parts of this story I liked, and it is quite different to Moorcock’s last outing – though the use of a character named ‘Pepin Hunchback’ and a ‘Hooknosed Wanderer’ may be borrowing from the classics a little too much for comfort. 3 out of 5.
The Uncivil War, by R J Tilley
Another war story in this issue, of a sort. RJ Tilley’s tale is an attempt to lighten the mood a little as we read of a young reporter’s first visit to the notorious Firkl’s Bar. Whilst there he is regaled with a shaggy-dog story about an old space-dog’s secret mission where miscommunication and bad assumptions almost start a war. Tired and overlong. 2 out of 5.
Articles
Mixed throughout the issue this month. There’s a review by Alan Dodd of the film Voyage to the End of the Universe (isn’t current thinking that there is no end?) and a summary of the latest amateur magazines.
In terms of Books this month, there is only one book reviewed, but as has been the trend of late, the review is in detail. Assistant Editor Langdon Jones has a quote for a title guaranteed to grab your attention – "That Is Not Oil, Madam. That Is Jellied Consomme", a quote from the Introduction of The Weird Ones, a collection introduced by H L Gold, who you may also know as the Editor of Galaxy magazine.
The book surprises with its unusual introduction (and is where the titular quote comes from) but is quite frugal otherwise. Frederik Pohl’s Small Lords starts well but soon becomes no more than ‘readable’, Poul Anderson’s Sentiment Inc. the same, whilst Milton Lesser’s Name Your Tiger is the most readable and perhaps predictably Eando Binder’s dated Iron Man the worst. There’s some wincingly awful quotes to make that point too.
The Letters Pages are a pleasing mixture of praise and complaint. Moans about Ron Goulart’s review of Aldiss’ Greybeard, praise for the move to monthly and monstrous book reviews – and still more argument about Langdon Jones’ story I Remember, Anita (reviewed back in issue 144).
Ratings this month for issue 146 (January 1965). Very pleased with this one. Well done to David Rome, one of the more accessible New Wave stories of late – and we have a tie!
Summing up New Worlds
Another strong issue this month, perhaps the one I have consistently enjoyed most in a long time. There’s the usual eclectic mixture – it is mentioned as such in the Editorial – but it was one of the rare issues where I loved pretty much everything, even the stuff I would normally say I didn’t. No religious preaching, no apocalyptic Armageddons, for a change.
Summing up overall
Whilst Science Fantasy has its moments, the New Worlds issue is a clear winner.
And that’s it for this time. Until the next…
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by Gideon Marcus
Wandering
Setting: The Sinai, after the Exodus
Aaron: Hey, Moses! We've been walking a long time!
Moses: Nu?
Aaron: Haven't we seen that rock before? Are you sure you know the way to the Holy Land?
Moses: Who's the Moses here? I know the way to go. The Sinai is only 150 miles across. It'll only take us…
Narrator: FORTY YEARS!
I cite this absolutely accurate historical vignette for two reasons. One, my daughter has decided to give the Torah a deep dive and analysis over Winter (I believe the gentiles call it "Christmas") Break. The other is, well, the next installment of Frank Herbert's Dune World saga has been staring me in the face for weeks, ever since I bought the January 1965 issue of Analog. I found I really didn't want to read more of it, having found the first installment dreary, though who am I to argue with all the Hugo voters?
And yet, as the days rolled on, I came up with every excuse not to read the magazine. I cleaned the house, stem to stern. I lost myself in this year's Galactic Stars article. I did some deep research on 1964's space probes.
But the bleak desert sands of Arrakis were unavoidable. So this week, I plunged headfirst into Campbell's slick, hoping to make the trek to the end in fewer than two score years. Or at least before 1965. Join me; let's see if we can make it.
The Issue at Hand
by John Schoenherr
It's Done with Mirrors, by Ben Bova and William F. Dawson
Our first step into the desert is deceptively mild. Amazing's science guy and his friend offer up the suggestion that the universe really isn't so big — all the billions of galaxies we see are really the light from a few thousand going round and round a small universe.
It doesn't sound very plausible to me, but I enjoyed the cosmological review, and the picture included was drafted by my nephew's astronomy professor at UCLA!
The Prophet of Dune is not just the sequel to Dune World; it picks up right at the cliffhanger where the other left off. Unlike most serials, but similar to how it was done with Cordwainer Smith's The Boy Who Bought Old Earth, the story begins without explanation. You simply have to have Dune World fresh in your mind.
Otherwise, you won't know why Paul Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica, are refugees from Baron Harkonen in the deserts of Arrakis. You won't know who the Padisha Emperor is or why his Sardaukar elite forces are dressed in Harkonen House garb. You won't know who Duke Leto Atreides was, or why he's dead; who Yueh was and why he defected from House Atreides to the Harkonens; the significance of Hawat the mentat…or even what a mentat is. The significance of the melange spice, which is the desert planet's sole export.
I'm not sure why (editor) Campbell didn't include a summary at the beginning, but unless you've read Dune World, you will be lost.
If you have, you'll be bored.
by John Schoenherr
I won't go into great detail since this serial will cover a ridiculous five installments before it is done, but suffice it to say that includes all the features I came to dread in the first serial. That is to say:
Characters declaiming in exposition.
Endless fawning over wunderkind Paul Atreides, who has the gravitas of his father, the ability to see all futures, and no weaknesses (or character) that I can discern.
Every other line is an internal thought monologue, usually unnecessary, flitting from viewpoint to viewpoint according to author Herbert's fancy.
Lots of sand.
Dune presents an interesting, well-developed world populated by uninteresting plots and skeletal characters. And it looks like I'm suck in its deserts for at least another half year.
A momentary respite as we trudge out of sand and onto more solid ground…
Schmitz shows us the maiden voyage of a new space vessel, jumping not into overspace but to the quantum beyond — Space Three! But upon its arrival, a terrifying entity appears and invades the ship, wreaking havoc with its systems.
The nature of the encounter is not what it seems. I like a story that turns a horror cliche on its head.
Three stars.
A Matter of Timing, by Hank Dempsey
by Robert Swanson
A tingling in our mind distract us, and suddenly we are again ankle deep in the dunes.
Until I read the byline (I've never heard of Dempsey), I thought A Matter of Timing was an inferior entry in Walter Bupp's psi series, in which a secret organization keeps a cadre of esper talents on hand to deal with weird events. While Dempsey's introduces a lot of potentially interesting characters (all apparently quacks; the organization that handles them is the Committee for Welfare, Administration, and Consumer Control — CWACC), the story doesn't do anything with them.
Droll setup and no resolution. Two stars.
Final Report, by Richard Grey Sipes
From out of nowhere, there is a blast of hot wind, and we are inundated with a spray of stinging sand and…paper?
Told in military report style, complete with typewriter font and army-esque jargon, Final Report pretends to be the results of the test of a psionic radio system. In the end, despite the set's fantastic capabilities, it is rejected as a prank, especially as it's too cheap to even be government pork.
Heavy handed, highly Campbellian, and utterly pointless. One star.
As we reel from the last blow, the clackety clack of machinery assails our ears, but at least we're walking on stable rocks again.
In The New Boccaccio, Anvil covers the same ground as Harry Harrison did a couple of months ago in Portrait of the Artist — an automatic creator is brought into a publishing house to replace a human artist.
The prior story was serious and involved a comic maker. Anvil's is comedically satirical and involves a device that writes literate smut. It's a bit smarter, I think, but not worth more than the three stars I gave the other story.
Finnegan's Knack, by John T. Phillifent
by Kelly Freas
Look! Off in the distance…is that a line of trees? Or is it just a mirage? Our pace quickens, but our boots keep sinking in the shifting sands.
John Phillifent's Finnegan's Knack involves the arrival of an alien ambassador. His race is so far in advance of ours that there's nothing we can do to impress him. A demoralized Colonel joins his rather lackadaisical Major friend on a fishing expedition to relate his woes. Along with them is a certain Private Finnegan with a knack for accomplishing the darndest things (landing fish with a boat hook; making a hover car pop a wheelie; make a call to a private number). Maybe he can impress the aliens with his illogical prowess?
Maybe. Certainly nothing in the story made any particular impression on me, and as with so many of the other stories in the issue, the lack of a solid ending killed whatever competent writing came before.
Two stars. Oasis lost.
Does not Compute
"Rhoda" the robot…signed by Julie Newmar, herself!
How can it be that the one-proud magazine that Campbell built can pour forth little but a torrent of desert dust? All told, the magazine earns an dismally low 2.1 stars, This is significantly below the 2.5 star mags (Amazing) and (Fantasy and Science Fiction) and far below IF (2.9), Fantastic (3.3), and New Worlds (3.5).
Maybe SF is suffering in general, if this month's distribution is any indication. Certainly, it was a sad month for female representation (2 stories out of 37). On the other hand, it's not all bad news: you could fill three magazines with the superior stuff this month.
Every desert has an end, even if it's just the desert of the sea. Perhaps, if we keep trekking, we'll find out way back to verdant lands.
You know — after four more months of this fershlugginer Dune installment…
Happy New Year anyway! Thank you for following the Journey!
Politics seems to have calmed down a little after the shock election result last month. Mr. Wilson seems to be intent on trying to change the laws created by 13 years of continuous Conservative rule. Although he’s only been in office for just over a month, it is noticeable that there are changes, but at the same time obvious that major change isn’t going to happen straight away. Nevertheless, there has already been a vote to suspend the death penalty for murder in Britain, which should happen in 1965. I suspect that we will see more and possibly even bigger changes in the next few months.
In music, I’m pleased to let you know that after I wrote last time, Sandie Shaw has been replaced as Number 1 by…. the return of Roy Orbison and Oh Pretty Woman.
I really like it, so I am pleased.
Perhaps it is only fair that we see some quality American acts in our charts in return for our British exports. I understand that you’ve recently had a deluge of British acts hoping to emulate the success of The Beatles, including another Brit favourite, The Rolling Stones, who were on the Ed Sullivan Show a couple of weeks ago. Their singer, Mick Jagger, had a few moves to show you!
At the cinema I am pleased to write that I have had a stay of execution regarding the musical My Fair Lady. As sometimes happens, the trailers led me to believe that the movie would be here in the next couple of weeks. I now understand that the film will be appearing at my local Odeon in January. The good news then is that it gives me more time to come up with an excuse to avoid it, hopefully.
As we always go as a family to see a 'movie for Christmas’, it looks like the movie we will see as a family this year will be Father Goose, starring one of my favourites, Cary Grant.
Looks like quite a different role for Cary…
On the television the genre pickings have still not been many. I am still enjoying most of Doctor Who, and Jessica’s excellent reports on that series’ progress need no further comment from me, but my latest find this month has been another popular series for children. I am quite surprised how much I have enjoyed its undemanding entertainment, as Gerry Anderson’s Stingray has been shown on ITV. Be warned though – it’s a puppet series! Nevertheless, its enthusiasm and energy, combined with great music in a wonderful title sequence has made this unexpected fun. I understand that it has been entirely filmed in colour, although like the majority of the 14 million British households with a television, we’re forced to watch it in good old black-and-white.
The Issue At Hand
Just to reinforce the mythical theme, this month’s cover of a Bronze Centaur is quite striking and would not perhaps be out of place on the front of a History magazine. It is, of course to do with the second part of Thomas Burnett Swann’s serial, The Blue Monkeys (started last issue), of which more below.
The Editorial, like the snippet in New Worlds last month, extols the virtues of Brian Aldiss’s new novel Greybeard. I haven’t got a copy yet – Christmas is coming! – but I must admit that I like what I’m hearing.
The Editorial also seems to rate Charles Harness’s The Paradox Men as a superior Space Opera, although it has been around a while. I understand Brian Aldiss likes it a lot, and it sounds like it could be my sort of thing as well. Let’s hope that Santa is kind this year.
Other than that, the Editorial makes a valid point about not labelling book covers with “A Science Fiction Novel”, as if it is something to be ashamed of, and finishes with the good news that Science Fantasy may soon go monthly. Sales must be up, then.
The second part of this serial tells us what happens to teenage Thea and Icarus now that they are under the care of Eunostos, the Minotaur. This part of the story is written from the perspective of Eunostos. It appears that taking Thea and Icarus into his world has not been easy. Much of this part is about how bringing up Thaea and Icarus has changed his world, firstly by affecting Eunostos’s relationship with his friends Moschus the Centaur (presumably the cover star this month) and Zoe the Dryad and then when Icarus is coerced into bed by Amber the Thria. There’s some history – we are told how Eunostos knew the children’s parents and has been in the background of their lives since they were born, for example. The story ends when we discover what Ajax plans to do to get the children to return to the human world, which will no doubt be concluded in the final part next month. I really like this reinterpretation of ancient myths. The style is engaging and written in a wryly amusing manner throughout which appeals to my own sense of humour. What is still surprising is how adult in tone the story is – much of this is about getting the teenagers into bed, which was a little disconcerting, but on the whole this one reads as effortlessly as last month. So, like last time, 4 out of 5.
Room With A Skew, by John Rackham
To lesser things, now. The last time I read a John Rackham story was in New Worlds with his story Crux in November 1963, although he was in Science Fantasy in the July/August issue. This is a light story about the things mad inventors create – in this case, a means of creating extra space in a flat by accessing the fourth dimension. Doctor Who would not have this problem! It is a one plot idea that is better than the pun-ish title suggests, but really is just an amusing space-filler. 3 out of 5.
EJ Carnell – A Quick Look, by Harry Harrison
It’s nice to see the return of Brian Aldiss’s friend, editor and author Harry Harrison in this issue, although the subject matter of his non-fiction article is something less palatable to my tastes – recently departed New Worlds editor John Carnell. Despite my own personal grumbles about the poor last few issues of New Worlds, there’s no denying that John has had an impact on British SF and it would be wrong of me to not appreciate that, but really this is nothing more than a sycophantic promotional post for him. 3 out of 5.
The Charm, by Keith Roberts
Very pleased to see the return of this writer, who impressed me in the last issue. The Charm is another ‘Anita’ story, about the “very lovely but rather inexperienced” teenage witch finding her feet in a modern world. Think of her as a sexualised Sabrina the Teenage Witch (from Archie’s Mad House). This does involve her *cough* ‘finding experience’ in this story by being firstly captured by a witch-hunter and then going to bed with him. Using a witch’s power to make it work, the two use a Time Charm to travel backwards in time, where it all borrows heavily from H G Wells. The end of the story is a bit abrupt but generally Anita’s as amiable as she was last issue, albeit still with the annoying Granny. “I’m allus the same…” the Granny says. Quite. Whilst Anita as a character is an alluringly engaging enigma, and there’s not really a great deal to this story, The Charm is an entertaining read. 3 out of 5.
Not Me, Not Amos Cabot!, by Harry Harrison
And here’s Harry returning, this time to write fiction. I enjoyed this more than his non-fiction article. Not Me, Not Amos Cabot! tells the story of a grumpy old curmudgeon who when he receives a glossy magazine in the post with the cheery message that he is about to die – and is he prepared for it? – is determined to prove the magazine wrong. It’s all a bit Twilight Zone, emphasised by the fact that it seems to be set in New York rather than, say, London. I get the impression that it’s meant to be a parody of advertising, an exaggeration of what can happen in today’s commercialised world, but it all sounds quite possible to me. Entertaining enough. Harrison’s gently humorous writing style carries a story that’s actually not very original. 3 out of 5.
The Madman, by Alistair Bevan
A writer new to me. Like Harrison’s story, this is another one about an old man, set in the future. This centenarian upsets his family and his neighbours for saying how much better things were in the past, to the point that he is regarded as insane and incarcerated into a Sector Asylum for causing disruption. I guess that the message is that the future’s not what it’s supposed to be, but we should spend our time looking forward, not back. There is little value in the old – something I suspect historians and archaeologists may disagree with. 3 out of 5.
Joik, by Ernest Hill
After his appearance in last month’s New Worlds, Ernest returns with a poor novella that’s about a dystopian future where African people rule the planets. In the Rationale (what that actually is is unclear) any idea of beauty is severely dealt with. It’s basically Big Brother but where the dictator is black, not white. Imagine, for example, a British Empire run by the oppressed, not the oppressors.
To give it a futuristic feel, not to mention New Wave anxiety, there’s artificial intelligence and spaceships but also metaphysical angst, weird dream states and torture. The plot, for what it is, is an investigation where Dadulina’s partner, Tantor, has disappeared. We discover that Dadulina has actually been arrested and tortured. This appears to be to do with Joik, the means of travelling around the universe, although it all rather disappears up into some sort of metaphysical mess. Obviously, this also involves taking narcotics to gain the full experience of whatever it is they are experiencing, from which I emerged confused and decidedly uninterested.
I can see why some readers might like it. It’s determined to be edgy and controversial (Drugs! Sex! Race!), creates words to make it sound like the dialogue of the future and has a fast pace. However, for me its drug-induced navel-gazing all seemed a little dull. One of those where you have to be there to gain the full experience, I feel. 2 out of 5.
One of Those Days, by Charles Platt
We finish this issue with a minor story about a character having a miserable existence in a hotter future climate, who having complained about the noise, the hot weather and his wife and children, then dies. Seems a bit pointless, other than a chance to moan about domestic life for the future male. I was almost tempted to think of it as a Ballard-ian parody, but that would give the story more value than it deserves. There’s not a lot to fuss about over here. We finish with a whimper. 2 out of 5.
Summing up
This is a tough one to summarise, as it is an issue that I both enjoyed and I got frustrated by. It starts well, but seems to run out of steam by the end. Overall though, I’m pleased to say though that, despite my grumbles, there’s a lot in this issue of Science Fantasy that I’ve enjoyed, and it is still more enjoyable than the last New Worlds. Despite both issues having stories that are quite depressing, Science Fantasy is just more engaging for me. I think I am still enjoying the variety and range of the stories more with Science Fantasy than I am with New Worlds.
The bottom line is that when I have finished reading the two magazines, I remember the stories from Science Fantasy much more positively than the ones in New Worlds. Where New Worlds does score is that it seems to be more determined to experiment with form and style whereas Science Fantasy is more about just telling a story. At the moment though, for me plot is winning over form. It’ll be interesting to see if this continues into 1965.
I should be back to a new issue of New Worlds next month. Until next time… have a great Christmas!
UK Beatles fans, of which there are many, have been sent a Christmas greeting from the Fab Four on flexidisc.
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[Image by the writer]
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